bidding Protestants to erect of their individual authority Episcopal sees in the Papal States; but we cannot doubt, from his own conduct in the parallel case, that it will be his earnest wish that Protestants may have that liberty, even though it be not granted. At all events, however, the imperfect measure of liberty of free action and free speech, which he and his co-religionists have enjoyed here, would then be allowed throughout the domain of Rome,- that at least, we take it for granted may be made sure of Whether, indeed, the possibility of such liberality will be a recommendation with the Conclave to elect him, is another question. It is to be hoped, at all events, that the papal chair may not, in his case, work a transformation like that wrought on Æneas Sylvius, who, till his elevation, pleaded for the preeminence of a Council over the Pope,-giving as a reason for the clergy's generally thinking otherwise, 'that a Pope confers bishoprics and abbeys, but a Council gives none;' but who, when made Pope himself, had his eyes opened to discern the great privileges of St. Peter's chair! We rejoice at another result of the recent movements. They afford palpable proof of the real progress which the mass of the people have made since the Lord George Gordon riots. That a great nation, so deeply stirred throughout its length and breadth should have spoken so decidedly and acted so moderately; should have uttered such vehement convictions, and yet mantained so much self-control, is a phenomenon equally novel and gratifying. It is true, indeed, that the Earl of Shrewsbury, writing from the distant land of Sicily, and of course under circumstances singularly favourable to accuracy of information, speaks, somewhat pathetically, of the 'persecu tion which his Roman Catholic fellow-subjects have endured, and even talks, with much naïveté, of the Lynch Law' to which they have been sometimes abandoned! Once, indeed, and only once, was human life sacrificed, but we beg to inform his Lordship that the victim was a Protestant policeman, who was endeavouring to repress the exuberant liberty of some Irish Roman Catholics. Those of us who have lived in the midst of the agitation may well be surprised at the novelty of his statements. It It may be sufficient to set against them the testimony of the noble Earl's amiable and candid co-religionist Lord Camoys, delivered (as the result of actual observation) in the House of Peers, in the debate on the address :—' Before he sat down, let him express the great satisfaction he had felt at observing the liberal feeling which had pervaded all the public meetings on this subject; at none of them had any resolution been passed which went beyond the points which the meeting deemed it essential to maintain for the defence of their own religious rights and liberties; at none of them had there been any manifestations of intolerance towards others, of a desire to withdraw from others the toleration conceded to them.' For our own parts, we venture to say that Protestants will be quite satisfied with similar treatment from Roman Catholics. When they see countries in which the Roman Catholic religion is as predominant as Protestantism is with us, exhibiting a similar spectacle of liberality and moderation, they will be perfectly content. When, for example, they see the Government of the Papal States, not only freely tolerating a minority of Protestants in the exercise of their religion, but calmly leaving them in possession of their privileges, at the very moment that the Government is most indignant at the spectacle of what it may have conceived an encroachment on its civil rights, they will not ask greater proofs of moderation and forbearance. When they When they see a foreign and a Protestant Power dividing Italy into dioceses with territorial jurisdiction-the head of such a hierarchy proclaiming (in imitation of Cardinal Wiseman in the parallel case) that the 'country' is Protestant, and the principal Protestant organs (as the Tablet with us) assuring the Roman Catholics that the said Protestant priests are the only rightful spiritual guides of every baptized person, even in spite of his protest and against his will; when, we say, Protestants shall see all this, and yet see the Roman Catholics, though rising as one man against these assumptions, under sufficient self-command to leave the Protestant minority in the peaceful possession of the fullest toleration, they will be perfectly well satisfied with the result But unhappily, as Protestants assert, the experiment cannot be tried, from a two fold impossibility; it is impossible that the Pope should be liberal enough to practise the unlimited toleration of Protestantism, and impossible that Protestantism should imitate the assumptions of the Pope. We trust that Cardinal Wiseman will do something to render doubtful the former impossibility; the latter we are content should remain. The day is coming when either the ultramontane theory, as developed by such writers as De Maistre, will be universal and paramount, or the theory of the infallibility and supremacy of the Church of Rome will crumble to atoms. The theory of a divided allegiance the nations will at length find to be untenable. There are three theories, any one of which is consistent: the first is that of the universal monarchy of the Pope, with one sword under the other,' ac cording to the Gregorian notions; this is, in other words, the direct spiritual and indirect temporal supremacy, as expounded by Bellarmine and De Maistre. The second is that which denies that any earthly sovereign, pope or king, has any claim to spiritual allegiance, the supreme head of the Church being supposed invisible and celestial; whose august prerogatives, therefore, come not into competition with the paltry rights of earthly princes. The third theory applies in those cases (though they are very rare) in which a nation is nearly unanimous in adopting the same religious belief, and the State and the Church all but coincide. In all these cases, different as they are, there is at least no divided allegiance: and though in the last case dissenters exist, still if they recognise none but an invisible and superhuman head of the Church, there is no ground for political jealousies. But when a man acknowledges that half his allegiance is due to a foreigner, and him again a foreign potentate, the supreme director of his conscience, it is impossible that discord, strife, and embarrassment should not result as they ever have done. While such a state of things lasts in any nation, it will be wisdom to give to citizens in this condition the amplest religious liberty, and especially to take the utmost care that no impediment be offered to the unrestricted exercise of their public worship and the free expression of opinion; but to imagine, that cases will not arise in which the two claims will come into collisionin which the spiritual supremacy will demand indulgences and make encroachments which the temporal sovereignty neither will nor ought to yield, is perfectly absurd; this must happen, when the seat of religious empire is local, and its occupant a man, a foreigner, and a prince.-- Let us suppose a case. If the Wesleyan Methodists, who are admitted to have a very compact ecclesiastical organisation, had a local centre and a supreme head at New York; if a Wesleyan 'Pope' there (we intend no offence to the Pope by thus comparing him with the President of the Conference, nor, we may add, to the President of the Conference by comparing him with the Pope,) had the power of influencing and directing the opinions and actions of the entire Wesleyan body here, in relation to a variety of our national institutions, and at every critical moment in the history of the two countries; if that Wesleyan Pope were also the perpetual President of the United States*; further, if, however the numbers, wealth, and endowments of the body might increase, it were sought that a 'corpus juris' like the Canon Law should regulate their conduct; and lastly, that that law contained only one such sentence as that an oath to the disadvantage of the Church-contra utilitatem ecclesiasticam-is not to be observed,'- it would, we suppose, be impossible not to be jealous of such a foreign influence; and if told that to interfere with it would be to interfere with spiritual rights, the answer would doubtless be, that the fault lay with those who attempted the impossible task of making a perfect partition of two incompatible forms of allegiance-in recognising the claims of two local and visible sovereigns, one foreign * It is of no avail to plead the political insignificance of Rome. Rome was not always politically insignificant; nor was it, we presume, because it was so that it was selected as the seat of the Universal Church, whether Saint Peter, or any one else, chose it in preference to Jerusalem or Antioch. But the evil lies deeper. A dependent state or public body represents the political importance of the Governments on which it may depend. Where is lodged the political weight of the Greek Church at present? and how wielded? (1851.) *** This has been significantly illustrated since, in 1853-4. |