IV. Cesarism and Ultramontanism

acknowledgment of which is identical with treason to our Church. No Roman Catholic Christian will, if mindful of his duty, resort to such a tribunal. If, on that account, the judicial protection of the rights guaranteed to our Church is to be withdrawn, we shall bear in patience this wrong, like all the other penalties threatened in these laws, and tread the path in which the Christians of the first three centuries walked, in order to be true to their faith and consciences, in opposition to the laws of the heathen Roman Empire. All the rest we leave in the hands of God the Lord.' a

4. The same objector tells us, that all this ' is a question not of right but of power, or, rather, it is a question in which might makes right.' ' It is a case in which the best man will win, and in which the result alone can show wiiich is the better of the two.' If I understand these words, they deny the existence of right altogether, and therefore of all Divine law, and therefore of any Divine Lawgiver. This grim jurisprudence would seem to me to belong neither to heaven nor earth, but to the hard realms where the Supreme Judge makes might to be right, and inflicts punishment before he hears the cause. If the justice of a cause is to be learned, not from its intrinsic nature, but from its accidental issue, that is, from its success, all morality seems to me to be extinct. This worship of material force throws much light on the worship of smallpox in India. We must be allowed to deny, with the Syllabus and Christianity, that accomplished facts are the tests of justice.

3 Pall Mall Gazette, Dec. 31, 1873.

5. The same writer has affirmed that before the authority of the Church as a ' separate and supreme' jurisdiction can be admitted, it will be necessary to prove the existence of God, the revelation of Christianity, and the divinity of our Saviour, &c. This is what I said. I affirmed that no man could deny these principles ' without renouncing his Christian name or the coherence of his reason.' The reasoning powers of the objector are manifestly coherent.

6. The same objector says that I affirm that modern CaBsarism owes its rise to the influx into Italy of Greeks and Byzantinism after the fall of Constantinople. I made no such narrow assertion: but carefully enumerated many other causes. I affirmed that Csesarism pervaded the Middle Ages, — nay, that it is in flesh and blood, and that Byzantinism was one of the causes which gave to Csesarism a particular form. No Imperial or Eoyal supremacy had ever before attempted to suspend the canons of the Church, to prohibit the meeting of Councils, to annul their decrees, and to cut off appeals to the Holy See. They had always pretended to continue in union with Kome. The essence of Byzantinism is separation from the Holy See.

7. Again, we are told that the offence of the Emperor and Prince von Bismarck is that, in a country in which the clergy are ' State officers,' they are made to obey the laws. What laws? Not the laws which ex isted before the Falck laws. The Catholics of Germany are appealing to them, as Englishmen appealed to the laws of ' good King Edward.' They were willing to be, if I must use such a phrase, ' State officers,' under laws which respected the Divine constitution of the Catholic Church. These laws they never did and never would refuse to obey. But the Falck laws are not these laws: they are new laws, tyrannous and persecuting. Bather than obey them, the Catholic Bishops of Germany have made their election. They refuse any longer to be * State officers,' whatsoever costs, privations, or penalties they may have to endure. They have made their choice between two things, which I cannot better express than in the well-chosen words, ' the mess of pottage, or the portion of the bride.'

8. Lastly, notwithstanding incessant contradiction, we are told, over and over again, that the Catholic Church was the first to innovate; that the Vatican Council established as an authoritative article of faith a point on which opinion was formerly free; and that the plain truth is, that the decree of infallibility ' definitely cut the Church adrift from all existing moorings.' I cannot doubt that the public writers who make these assertions believe them to be true; but I am at a loss to conceive how men of undeniable ability, with the facts of history before them, can make such assertions. The governments of the world have consciously framed all their contracts and concordats with an infallible Church. The conditions on which those relations of amity were founded were always based upon the laws - and principles of an infallible Church. The question as to the seat of that infallibility is not temporal, or civil, or political, or diplomatic, or external, but strictly internal, domestic, and theological. The Vatican definition has not altered, by the shadow of a jot or a tittle, the relations of the civil powers of the world to the in fallibility of the Church. To allege the Vatican definitions as a justification of the Falck laws appears to me to be a blot upon the good sense or upon the candour of those who allege it. Into which of the Falck laws does the infallibility of the Pope enter? No one can pretend to believe that it does. This declamation about the Vatican Council and the Pope's infallibility appears to me to be the evidence of a weak case. It is easy to create a prejudice against the accused when the world hates him, and there is a motive for doing so when the witnesses cannot agree together.

January 1, 1874.

OESARISM AND ULTBAMONTANISM.

My object in this paper is to inquire whether there be any special character in the conflict which the Church has to encounter at this day; and, if so, of what kind it is. In one sense the conflict of the Church and the world is always the same. The enmity of the world is one, and the truth is one; nevertheless the forms of that enmity are endless and always changing. In one point indeed the warfare of the world against the Church is always the same. It always uses the same weapons; but the motives and aims of those that use them vary. The weapons have been, are, and always will be, the civil power. For the first three centuries the Jews and the heretical sects excited the suspicions, fears, and hatred of the Roman Empire against the Church. In the Middle Ages the ambition or despotism of Christian princes wielded the civil power against the spiritual. Now for the last three hundred years, and especially in this century, it is a world departing from Christianity which uses the civil power for the oppression of the Church. In one word, the antagonist of the Church has always been Csesarism, or the supremacy of the civil over the spiritual.

In a former paper I traced this out in the history of Christianity in England, and showed, first, with what

VOL. II. K care our Saxon forefathers recognised and guaranteed, by the oaths of kings and by Acts of Parliament, the full spiritual liberties of the Church; next, that during the whole Norman and English period of our monarchy, our Parliaments always recognised and guaranteed the liberties of the Church in the very text of the statute law, even in times when custom, the corruption of Eoyal courts, or national jealousy, habitually violated its freedom; and, lastly, that from the date when the legal Church of England was established, the word ' liberties,' which till then had always been incorporated in Acts of Parliament, vanished from the Statute-book. What thus happened in England has happened also throughout the history of Europe. Caesarism is to be found in all ages and countries, but the Caesarism of the nineteenth century has a character of its own.

I. The first manifestation of Caesarism in history, for I am not dealing with prehistoric legends or with Oriental tyrannies, may be seen in the Imperial despotism of Home after the suppression of the Kepublic, and in the Roman Emperors who have stamped it with their name. In essence it is the absolute dominion of man over man: the power of life and death, including supreme power over liberty and goods, and extending to the whole life of man, political and religious, social and domestic. It may be summed up in a few words — 'Divus Caesar, Imperator et'Summus Pontifex.' There is nothing in the public or private life of man that escapes from the sweeping jurisdiction of this universal sovereignty. The sovereignty of Caesarisrn is absolute and dependent on no conditions; it is also exclusive, because it does not tolerate any jurisdiction above or within its own. It does not recognise any laws except of its own making.

Now this supreme power need not be held in the hand of one man. It may be a People or a Senate, or a King or an Emperor. Its essence is the claim to absolute and exclusive sovereignty. It by necessity excludes God, His sovereignty and His laws. The sole fountain of law is the human will, individual or collective. Caesar finds the law in himself, and creates right and wrong, the just and the unjust, the sacred and the profane. He has no statute-book but human nature, and he is the sole and supreme interpreter and expositor of that natural law. Therefore law, morals, politics, and religion all come from him, and all depend upon him. The Sovereign Prince or State legislates, judges, executes, by its own will and hand. This sovereign power creates everything: it fashions the political constitution; it delegates jurisdiction, revocable at its word; it suspends or measures out personal liberty; it controls domestic life; it claims the children as its own; it educates them at its will, and after models and theories of its own device.

Now this exclusion of God is the deification of man. It puts man in the place of God as supreme legislator, the fountain of authority, liberty, law, and right. It gives to him the control of men's actions and men's minds. ' Quod principi placuit legis habet vigorem,' and ' Cujus regio ejus est religio,' are the axioms of Caesarism.

This is the Lex Regia; and where this is, human liberty no longer exists. When I say that God was excluded from the State of Imperial Home, I mean the one true God, Creator and Governor of all things: for Rome was full of gods. But the Supreme Pontificate of all the religions congregated in Rome was vested in Caesar. He was * Summus Pontifex.' He was invested with a divinity. He was addressed as '.ZEternitas Tua,' and Diocletian could say, l Diocletianus maximus aeternus Imperator ad divinas aures nostras fama quaedam pervenit.' The author of the Histoire Universelle de rEglise* describes in these words the Caesarism of Caligula: ' The Pagan idea of the Pagan Caesar was perfectly realised in his person. He declared himself to be a god; he consecrated to himself a temple, with priests and sacrifices. His sister Drusilla, with whom he had been guilty of incest, being dead, he made her a goddess, and publicly swore by her divinity.' He gave to his agents in Rome authority over all the goods of all men; and he told one of his kindred to remember that everything was lawful to him in respect to all men — omnia et in omnes sibi licere. It is not to be forgotten that Caligula made his horse a Consul.

Such is the Lex Regia, which may be thus summed up. Caesar inherited all the rights of the Senate and of the people. In political matters he was the chief of the army and of the navy; he had the power of peace and war. In administration he was perpetual Consul, Proconsul, Senator, President of the Senate, and Tribune of the people. In the civil order he was Censor

4 Kohrbacher, Hist. Univ. de VEglise, torn, xviii. pp. 1 and 2.

and Praetor; his edicts, letters, rescripts, decisions, had force of law. In religion he was priest, augur, Sovereign Pontiff, head of all priesthoods and of all religions. He was judge of all questions of religious rights, ceremonies, and worships, and interpreter of all mysteries. In fact, the sovereignty of the people in all its functions was transferred to Caesar.

Terrasson describes the Lex Regia in these terms: ' All power — religious, political, legislative, and civil — in a word, omnipotence in all things and over all things — the people and the Senate transferred to Caesar when the Kepublic passed into the Empire.' And this took place in virtue of the Lex Regia, of which Ulpian speaks in these words: ' Quod principi placuit legis habuit vigorem, utpote cum Lege Regia, quae de imperio ejus lata est, populus ei et in eum omne suum imperium et potestatem conferat.' This Imperial power was therefore absolute, exclusive, unlimited, and omnipotent.5

II. We will now proceed to trace the course of Caesarism in the Christian world. The greatest of Divine acts is the Incarnation of God. Christianity has changed the state of mankind in every relation to God and to men, in this world and in the world to come. The theological aspect of the Incarnation lies beyond the bounds of our subject; but the political conse quences of the Incarnation constitute the essence of the moral, social, domestic, and civil life of men and of nations. King Herod had a true instinct in seeking

5 Gaume, Recherches Historiques sur la Revolution, torn. vi. pp. 14-16.

the life of the King who was born in Bethlehem. The Caesars of this world have followed his example. There can be no Caesarism where Christ reigns.

Christianity, in consecrating the civil authority of the world, has laid on it the limits of the Divine law. Christianity has confirmed the civil power within its own sphere as a delegation from God Himself; but by the same act Christianity has limited the sphere of its jurisdiction. It has withdrawn from its cognisance and control the whole inner life of man. The civil power cannot command his intellect, it cannot control his conscience, it cannot coerce his will. Christianity has indeed subjected the outward actions of man to civil government, but it has withdrawn from civil rulers the whole domain of religion.

The State may imprison the body, and even take its life, but it has no jurisdiction over the soul. All its acts are free. They know no lawgiver or sovereign but God alone. By the coming of Christ into the world the kingdom of God was set up among the kingdoms of men. Caesar was no longer ' Divus' nor ' Pontifex Maximus,' nor absolute nor exclusive lord of men. No man any longer had unlimited sovereignty over man, and no man could by right hold property in man. The Son. of God had brought deliverance to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that were bound. He had redeemed men into the liberty of the sons of God, and He secured that liberty for ever by a sovereign act. He divided the two powers, spiritual and civil, and gave them into different hands, so that they could never be again united in one person, except Himself and His

Vicar, upon earth. By this Divine fact the Lex llegia was abolished for ever, and the cujus regio ejus religio became a heresy as well as a tyranny..

The presence of the Catholic Church among the civil powers of the world has changed the whole political order of mankind. It has established upon earth a legislature, a tribunal, and an executive inde pendent of all human authority. It has withdrawn from the reach of human laws the whole domain of faith and of conscience. These depend on God alone, and are subjected by Him to His own authority, vested in His Church, which is guided by Himself.

This is the solution of the problem, which the world cannot solve. Obedience to the Church is liberty; and it is liberty because the Church cannot err or mislead either men or nations. If the Church were not infallible, obedience to it might be the worst of bondage. This is Ultramontanism, or the -liberty of the soul divinely guaranteed by an infallible Church; the proper check and restraint of Caesarism, as G&- sarism is the proper antagonist of the sovereignty of God. But to this we will return hereafter.

I will draw out somewhat more exactly and technically what is the separation and partition of the two powers, spiritual and civil, in order to show that it is from the Christian Church that the world has learnt the stable liberties of the civil order and the measured equity of a written law.

Pope S. Gelasius, in his letter to the Emperor Anastasius, enunciates the whole doctrine in few words. * There are,' he says, ' august Emperor, two things by which this world is governed — the sacred authority of the Pontiff and the power of Caesar. The authority of Bishops is all the more to be venerated as they must render account to God in the last judgment, even of the salvation of kings. You are not ignorant that, though your dignity lifts you above other men, you are bound humbly to bow the head to Pontiffs, who are charged with the dispensation of Divine things, and that you owe to them submission in all that belongs to the order of religion, and to the administration of the holy mys teries.... In all things which are of the public order these same Bishops obey your laws, and in your turn you ought to obey them in all things which concern the sacred things of which they are the dispensers.'6

And what a Pontiff said to an Emperor an Emperor said to Bishops. Constantine at Nicea said: ' God has elected you to be priests and judges, to judge and to decide (the contentions of the people), forasmuch as God has set you to be over all men.'7

S. Bernard expresses the same in a passage of profound insight and beauty. Writing to Conrad, King of the Komans, he says: ' The Empire and the Priesthood could not be more sweetly, peacefully, or closely united and mutually interwoven than that both should alike meet in the Person of the Lord; who, according to the Incarnation, was made unto us of both tribes, Priest and King. Not only so, but He mingled and confederated these in His own Body, which is the Christian

6 Epist. S. Gelasii ad Anastasium; Labbe et Cossart Concil., torn. v. p. 308.

7 Gelasii Cyzic. Hist. Concil. Nicaen.; Labbe et Cossart Concil., torn. ii. p. 175.

people, He being the Head; so that this race of man kind is called by the voice of the Apostle an elect nation, a Royal Priesthood.... Therefore what God has joined together let no man put asunder. But rather what Divine authority has sanctioned, let the will of man strive to fulfil; and let them unite in mind who are united by laws. Let them cherish one another; let them defend one another; let each one bear his own burden. The Wise Man says, when brother helps brother, both shall be consoled. But if — which God forbid — they gnaw and bite one another, shall not both be brought to desolation? Let not my soul enter into the counsel of them who say that either the peace or liberty of the Church is hurtful to the Empire, or the prosperity and exaltation of the Empire hurtful to the Church. For God, who is the Founder of both, has united them, not unto destruction, but unto edification. If you know this, how long will you connive at the common insult and the common injury of both? Is not Rome both the Apostolic See and the Head of the Empire? To say nothing about the Church, is it honour to the King to hold in his hands an empire- which is a headless trunk? I know not indeed what your wise men and princes of the kingdom counsel you in this matter; but I, speaking in my unwisdom, will not be silent of what I think. The Church of God, from its beginning unto these times, has been oftentimes in tribulation, and oftentimes delivered. Hear, lastly, what it says of itself in the Psalms, for it is its own voice: "Often they have fought against me from my youth, but they could not prevail over me. The wicked have wrought upon my back: they have lengthened their iniquity" (Ps. cxxviii. 2, 3). Be sure, 0 King, that neither now will the Lord leave the Kod of Sinners upon the lot of the just. The hand of the Lord is not shortened, nor is it made weak to save. He will set free in this time also without a doubt His Spouse, whom He has redeemed with His own Blood, and endowed with His Spirit, and adorned with heavenly gifts; and, moreover, with earthly gifts. He will set it free, I say, He will set it free; but if in the hands of another, let the princes of the empire see whether it be for the honour of the King or the good of the empire? No, by no means. Wherefore gird thee with thy sword upon thy thigh, 0 most mighty, and let Caesar restore to him self what is Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's. Both are the interest of Caesar: that is, to de fend his own crown and to protect the Church. The one becomes the king, the other the advocate of the Church. Victory, as we confide in the Lord, is at hand.'8

S. Thomas Aquinas defines this doctrine more precisely as follows. The end of the Commonwealth is the same as that of individuals. ' God has created us and placed us in this world to know, to love, and to serve Him, and by these means to obtain eternal life, which is our final end.' Every Christian Society is ordained by God to the same collective end. From this S. Thomas proves that though the king or prince has only civil power, he is bound to use it for the eternal good of the Commonwealth. He adds, ' If man

8 S. Bernard! ad Conradum, epist. ccxliii. torn. i. p. 242 (Paris, 1690).

could obtain by his natural power this last end it would be the duty of the King to guide him in it.... But, as man cannot by merely human virtues attain to his end, which is the possession of God, it follows that it is no human direction, but a Divine direction, that must conduct him to it. The King to whom that supreme direction belongs is not man alone, but God also — our Lord Jesus Christ. In order that spiritual things may be distinct from earthly things, the authority of His kingdom is committed not to earthly kings, but to priests, and especially to the chief of priests — the successor of Peter, the Vicar of Christ, the Eoman Pontiff, to whom all kings of Christendom ought to be subject, as to our Lord Jesus Christ Himself. Forasmuch as the bliss of heaven is the end of the life which we now live, it belongs to the office of a king for that reason to promote a good life in his people, with a view to attain the bliss of heaven — that is, in enjoining those things which tend to the attainment of heavenly bliss, and in forbidding, as far as possible, what is contrary to them. But what things conduce to the bliss of heaven, and what things are a hindrance to its attainment, are to be known out of the Divine law, the teaching of which belongs to the office of priests.'9

From these principles we see the difference between the Pagan Csesarism and that which I will call the Christian Csesarism.

1. The first regards the State as its own creation, the second as the creation of God.

2. The first is Pontiff and King over body and

9 S. Thomas Aq. de Regimine Principum, lib. i. chap. xiv.

soul absolute and exclusive; the second is subject in all that belongs to the soul to the Divine law and to the Church of Jesus Christ.

3. The first makes religion an instrument or department of the State; the second makes it the limitation of civil power, and the protection of human liberty.

4. The first treats the Church as subject to itself; the second treats all civil power as subject to God and His law, of which the Church is the guardian and the interpreter.

5. The first regards all power, civil and religious, as derived from the people; the second regards civil power as formally from God, and the spiritual power as exclusively from God, and therefore dependent on God alone.

This is Ultramontanism: the essence of which is that the Church being a Divine institution, and by Divine assistance infallible, is, within its own sphere, independent of all civil powers; and, as the guardian and interpreter of the Divine law, it is the proper judge of men and of nations in all things touching that law in faith or morals.

Inasmuch as at this moment the term * Ultra montane ' is used as a nickname to kindle persecution against the Church by false accusations and misleading the public opinion of this country, I will draw out a proof that Ultramontanism and Catholicism are identical, as are also Catholicism and perfect Christianity.

Christianity, or the faith and law revealed by Jesus Christ, has, as I have said, introduced two principles of Divine authority into human society: the one, the absolute separation of the two powers, spiritual and civil; the other, the supremacy of the spiritual over the civil in all matters within its competence or divine jurisdiction. I do not know how any man, without renouncing his Christian name or the coherence of his reason, can deny either of these principles. I can indeed understand that, admitting both, he may dispute as to the range or reach of that jurisdiction. He may contend that it is wider or narrower, that it does or does not extend to this or that particular matter. But on this, also, I will speak hereafter. For the present it is enough to say that these two principles are held by all Christians, except Erastians, who deny the spiritual office of the Church, if not also its existence; But I hope to show that these two principles are Ultramontanism; that the Bull ' Unam Sanctam ' contains no more, that the Vatican Council could define no less; that in its definitions it enun ciated nothing new; that its two Constitutions were, as Parliament would say, not enacting but declaratory acts; that they have changed nothing and added nothing either to the constitution of the Church or to the rela tions of the Church with the civil powers of the world.

To make this clear, let us shortly examine these two principles.

First, as to the separation of the spiritual and civil powers, the whole history of Christendom is sufficient evidence. The civil sovereignty is coeval with man. Society is not of man's making. The relations of authority, submission, and equality lie in the human family, and from it are extended to commonwealths, kingdoms, empires. The civil sovereignty resides materially in society at large; formally in the person or persons to whom society may commit its exercise. Immediately, therefore, sovereignty is given by God to society; mediately, through society to the person who wields it. Both materially and formally, mediately and immediately, sovereignty is from God, and within its competence is supreme and sacred. Civil allegiance to sovereigns is therefore a part of Christianity, and treason is both a crime against a lawful authority and a sin against God, who has ordained that authority. Ultramontanism teaches that within the sphere of its competence the civil power is to be obeyed, not only ' for wrath, but for conscience' sake.'10 It is a part of the Christian religion to obey ' the powers that are.' As to the independence of the Spiritual Power, we need waste no words. The existence of the Church and the primacy of its head in these eighteen hundred years are proof enough. Further, no Christian of sound mind will deny that these two distinct and separate powers have distinct and separate spheres, and that within these spheres respectively they hold their power from God. Where the limits of these spheres are to be traced, it is easy enough to decide in all matters purely civil or in all matters purely spiritual. The conflict arises over the mixed ques tions. And yet here there ought to be no real difficulty. Nobody can decide what questions are pure or what questions are mixed except a judge who can 10 Romans xiii. 5.

define the limits of these two elements respectively, and therefore of the respective jurisdictions. In any question as to the competence of the two powers either there must be some judge to decide what does and what does not fall within their respective spheres, or they are delivered over to perpetual doubt and to perpetual conflict. But who can define what is or is not within the jurisdiction of the Church in faith and morals, except a judge who knows what the sphere of faith and morals contains, and how far it extends? And surely it is not enough that such a judge should guess, or opine, or pronounce upon doubtful evidence, or with an uncertain knowledge. Such a sentence would be, not an end of contention, but a beginning and a renewal of strife.

It is clear that the civil power cannot define how far the circumference of faith and morals extends. If it could, it would be invested with one of the supernatural endowments of the Church. To do this it must know the whole deposit of explicit and implicit faith; or, in other words, it must be the guardian of the Christian Revelation. Now no Christian, nor any man of sound mind, claims this for the civil power: and if not, then, either there is no judge to end strife; or that judge must be the Church, to which alone the revelation of Christianity in faith and morals was divinely intrusted. And if this be so, still, unless the Church be divinely certain of the limits of its commission and of its message, no doubt or controversy between the two Powers can ever be brought to an end. But if the Church be certain with a Divine certainty as to the limits of its jurisdiction, its voice in such matters is final. But an authority that can alone define the limits of its own office is absolute because it depends on none, and infallible because it knows with a Divine certainty the faith which it has received in charge.

If, then, the civil power be not competent to decide the limits of the spiritual power, and if the spiritual power can define with a Divine certainty its own limits, it is evidently supreme. Or, in other words, the spiritual power knows with Divine certainty the limits of its own jurisdiction; and it knows therefore the limits and the competence of the civil power. It is thereby in matters of religion and conscience supreme. I do not see how this can be denied without denying Christianity. And if this be so, this is the doctrine of the Bull ' Unam Sanctam,' and of the Syllabus, and of the Vatican Council. It is, in fact, Ultramontanism, for this term means neither less nor more. The Church, therefore, is separate and supreme.

Let us, then, ascertain somewhat further what is the meaning of supreme. Any power which is in dependent and can alone fix the limits of its own jurisdiction, and can thereby fix the limits of all other jurisdictions, is, ip so facto, supreme. But the Church of Jesus Christ, within the sphere of revelation, of faith and morals, is all this, or is nothing, or worse than nothing, an imposture and an usurpation — that is, it is Christ or Antichrist. If it be Antichrist, every CaBsar from Nero to this day is justified. If it be Christ, it is the Supreme Power among men; that is to say:

(1) It holds its commission and authority from God alone;

(2) It holds in custody the faith and the law of Jesus Christ;

(3) It is the sole interpreter of that faith and the sole expositor of that law. It has within the sphere of that commission a power to legislate with authority; to bind the consciences of all men born again in the baptism of Jesus Christ; it alone can fix the limits of the faith and law intrusted to it, and therefore the sphere of its own jurisdiction; it alone can decide in questions where its power is in contact with the civil power — that is, in mixed questions: for it alone can determine how far its own Divine office, or its own Divine trust, enters into and is implicated in such questions; and it is precisely that element, in any mixed question of disputed jurisdiction, which belongs to a higher order and to a higher tribunal.

For instance, a Catholic Professor of Theology in a State University, salaried by the State, refuses the definitions of the Vatican Council. The Bishop excommunicates him; the State supports and pays him, in spite of the excommunication of the Church, as a Professor of Catholic Theology. Here is a mixed question made up of stipend and orthodoxy. Surely orthodoxy is a higher element than stipend; faith is of a higher order than thalers; and to judge of orthodoxy and faith belongs not to the Civil but the Spiritual Tribunal, which is, in that sphere, superior, absolute, and final.

VOL, n. L

The same is true of every mixed question of benefice, or collation to benefice, or privation of benefice — in a word, of every question of contract between the Church with the State, so far as faith and morals enter; and it belongs to the Church to determine whether they enter or no, and how far they enter and are implicated in the conflict.

Now let it be clearly understood that in these assertions I am vindicating to the Church her Divine rights. I am not denying to the State its power to violate every Divine right upon earth. It may abuse its power at the license of its will — Imperial, Koyal, Bureaucratic, Democratic. I deny only its right. ' Id potest quod jure potest.' It can re-enact and enforce the Lex Regia against the Church. But its power is violence, and its acts are tyranny.

I have affirmed, then, that the Csesarism of the Pagan world, which was the enemy of God and the de stroyer of all the liberties of man, was by one Divine act reduced to its lawful sphere. The separation of the spiritual power from the civil, and the supremacy of the spiritual over the civil order of the Christian world, have redeemed princes from the degradation of tyrants, and mankind from an inhuman slavery.

Caesarism, whether in one person, or in a senate, or in a populace, always has been, is, always must be, tyranny in the civil and persecution in the spiritual order. The direct antagonist of this worst of human ills is the Divine law revealed by Jesus Christ, and the Divine authority committed to His Church. It has been, and ever will be, the source of all human liberty.

The Church was the mother of all free nations. All freedom of soul and conscience in men, in families, in States, comes from the limitation of the civil power; but the limitation of the civil power can only come from a superior authority. That superior authority is not in the order of material power, but of Divine right. The limitation which has changed Caesarism into Christian Monarchy is law; and that law the law of God, represented, expounded, applied upon earth, by an authority of His own creation, and by judicial powers of His own delegation, independent of all human Legislatures and superior to all prerogatives of kings.

Now what I have here asserted is Ultramontanism, but it is not Ultramontanism alone; it is Christianity as it has been held by all men, in all ages, by Catholics and by Protestants alike, by Ultramontanes and by Gallicans, by Anglicans and by Presbyterians, by the Free Churches of England, whose noble and pathetic history has just been written, on the eve, as I fear, of their apostasy from the high and heroic spirit of their Founders and Fathers in patience and fidelity to the great law of Christian Liberty in Jesus Christ.

The sum, then, of our argument is this: Csesarism consists

(1) In the union of the two powers in one person;

(2) In the claim of supremacy over all causes and persons;

(3) In the coercion of conscience in spiritual matter;

(4) In the isolation of national religions on the plea that no foreign jurisdiction can enter the State;

(5) In the isolation of national Churches, and thereby the rejection of the universal authority of the Church.

Ultramontanism consists

(1) In the separation of the two powers, and the vesting them in different persons;

(2) In claiming for the Church the sole right to define doctrines of faith and morals; and

(3) To fix the limits of its own jurisdiction in that sphere;

(4) In the indissoluble union of the Church with, and submission to, the universal jurisdiction of the Holy See.

Such, then, was the Caasarism of the heathen world: the dominion of man over man, both in matters of civil obedience and in matters of religious worship; and such was the restraint of this absolute and intolerable sway of man over man by the separation of the two powers, temporal and spiritual, into distinct authorities and spheres of jurisdiction vested in distinct persons. To this we owe the order, progress, civilisation, and, so far as there has been peace on earth, the peace of the Christian world.

III. But Csesarism is in human nature. It is the government of flesh and blood, or of ' blood and iron;' and though restrained for a time by Christianity, it has never been extinct. Through the whole history of Christendom, from the fourth to the sixteenth century, it has been always striving to reassert itself. The Ro man Empire was no sooner translated to the East than Caesarism began to reappear. The Byzantine despotism over civil freedom and ecclesiastical liberty is a byword. Byzantine and despotic are convertible terms. The

Roman Empire was no sooner revived in the West than the same tendency hegan to reappear. Even Charle magne stretched his protectorate, or episcopate of out ward things, into many violations of ecclesiastical liberty. But the CaBsarism of the Saxon, Suabian, and Bavarian Emperors, as seen in the conflicts of S. Gregory VII., Alexander III., Innocent IV., makes the reign of Charlemagne to seem normal and Christian, like the reign of Constantine.

The two chief causes of the revival of Csesarism in Christendom are — first, the school of jurists created by the Pandects of Justinian and the University of Bologna, from which sprang the whole theory and organi sation of the Ghibelline Csesarism; and, secondly, the influx into Italy of Greeks and Greek literature and Byzantinism after the fall of Constantinople. It was this that rendered possible in Christian Europe the royal supremacies of the sixteenth centuiy. The theory of investing the prince with supreme legislative and judicial power over all persons and in all causes, ecclesiastical and civil, is not only Byzantine, but Pagan. It is the reunion in one person of the two powers which Christianity has put asunder. And it has been fol lowed, in every country where it has taken root, and so long as it has existed, by civil despotism and by religious persecution. The most ample exhibition of this is to be found in the Tudor legislation, and in the enforcement of a legal religion in England and Ireland by penal statutes. The religious history of England, Scotland, Denmark, Sweden, and the North of Ger many, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, is the history of the revival of Csesarism, and of a reaction against the liberty of religion and of conscience with which Christ has made us free. What is chiefly to be noted is, that this oppression of Christian freedom has been accomplished to the cry of liberty of religion and of conscience.

For proof of this, it is enough to refer to a book entitled A History of the Free Churches of England,11 in which the sufferings of Nonconformists and Catholics under the Csesarism of the English Crown are patiently and fully described. The effect of this mixed civil and religious despotism has been gradually to obtain for one-half of the English people and the whole population of Ireland a complete religious liberty. Scotland has always rejected the interferences of kings in matters of religion; and in our day one-half of the Scottish population has rejected even the remnants of civil interference lingering in the law of patronage. The political tendency of the whole world is towards ' free churches;' that is, to the desecration of the civil power and to the rejection of the Church.

The temporal sovereignty of the Supreme Pontiff has been violated on the plea that the civil and spiritual powers ought to be once more separated, not as Providence has ordained hitherto, but on the impossible theory of a free Church in a free State. The Italian Revolution has put this forward as its solution of the religious conflicts of the nineteenth century. It will endure until the first quarrel, and the first quarrel will arise upon the first pontifical act in condemnation of the » By Mr. Herbert S. Skeats (Miall, 1868).

usurpations of the free State. The supremacy of the civil power will then be declared to be vital to its free dom. It must, however, be acknowledged that, violent and sacrilegious as the acts of the free State have been and still are in practice, Italy has hitherto refrained from committing itself in the domain of principle and of law to doctrines such as are embodied in Prussian ecclesiastical legislation. From this the Catholic faith and instinct of Italy have saved it. Through twenty years of revolution, it has never entangled itself in the tyrannous and pedantic absurdities of the Falck laws. It has had two things profoundly impressed upon its intellect and its conscience — the one, the impious monstrosity of the 'Divus Caesar;' the other, an inextinguishable consciousness that the Catholic Church is a Divine creation. Excepting a handful of Petruccelli della Gattinas, no people in Europe can look upon the Prussian persecution with less sympathy or more secret contempt than the Italians.

But the pretensions of the Berlin Government are only the first indications of an Imperial omnipotence, which will hereafter be more explicitly and violently put forth. This Imperial legislation may be regarded as the link between the old royal supremacies of the sixteenth century and the revived Lex Eegia which the anti- Christian revolution is preparing for the future of Europe.

The following quotations will best exhibit what I mean. I will give a passage from a leading journal, re presenting a school of political doctrine which, though not yet numerous, has already obtained a place among us. After saying that there is a conviction widely spread hostile to the Catholic Church, the writer goes on to say: ' Side by side with this negative conviction, a positive conviction, vague indeed and indistinct, but exceedingly powerful, has been and still is growing up, that a nation, as such, is essentially a better thing than a Church; that it is, in fact, of all positive human institutions at present known to us, the most sacred, the most deeply-rooted in human nature, and the best fitted to engage the affections of a rational man. Contrast for a moment the English nation and the Catholic Church, and see to which of the two it is best worth an Englishman's while to be loyal.... All this, we say, puts nations — for the same sort of statements are true of most other nations besides England — above Churches as objects of affection and loyalty.... We should regard no one as really loyal to his nation who did not regard it as being to him a higher and more sacred object than any Church whatever.'12 This doc trine is revived Paganism.

In the Prussian Chamber, Dr. Falck laid down the following doctrine on the 15th of January last year: 'We have become more "concrete;" we have estimated the rights of the State. There is the reason why the proposed laws must be carried.' On the 17th of January he added: ' If the State and the Church are equal in the domains of moral power, the State must always have the supremacy in the domain of law.' That is to say, as M. de Pressense remarks, ' This amounts to saying that the Church has all the benefits

12 Pall Mall Gazette, Jan. 23, 1873.

of equality in the domain of abstractions, on the condition that the State has all power in the domain of the ''concrete;" that is, Eight is a theory, Force is the only reality.'13

This brings out the essence of modern Caesarism, which is not only that the State has supreme power over the Church in all persons and causes, but supreme right to determine the limits of the rights of the Church, its liberties, offices, and duties; or, in other words, that the State can determine, and the Church cannot determine, what is the authority and commission in trusted to it by its Divine Founder. This is the vital point in the contention. The Church claims to be the sole, because the divinely-appointed, judge of the sphere of its own spiritual office, authority, and jurisdiction. The modern Caesarism claims this ultimate power of determination for the State. Between these conflicting claims there can be no modus vivendi. To concede or to abdicate this supreme spiritual office would to the Church be death. It was for this that a long line of its martyrs died. It was for this that S. Thomas of Canterbury died, which the other day was described as his 'exploits.' It is for this that the Archbishop of Posen has also declared his readiness to die. And now the Berlin Government, it is said, is about to attempt to impose on every future Bishop the following oath:

' The Bishops are henceforward to swear obedience to the laws of the country, to bind themselves by oath to exhort the clergy and laity to be loyal to the king, patriotic and obedient to the laws, and not to permit

13 Revue des Deux Mondes, Mai 1873, ler liv. p. 27.

the clergy under their control to teach or act in opposition to these principles.'14

The cynicism of this oath is clear as day. The Berlin Government supports the Old Catholic heretics against the Catholic Church, on the ground that the Church has innovated in its doctrines. It now proposes to bind Catholic Bishops to ohey the laws of the State after all the Falck innovations. It refuses the innova-. tions of an infallible Church, but binds the Bishops of the Church by oath to obey whatsoever laws may now or hereafter be made by a fallible State. But Csesarism is infallible in ' the domain of the concrete.' ' Divus Caesar.'

Prince von Bismarck declared in the Chamber of Peers that ' the future of an Evangelical Empire has shown itself clearly on the horizon of Germany;' that is to say, the Catholic Church, which is the direct antagonist of the Evangelical Empire, must cease from before it. Such is, in fact, the inevitable effect of this legislation. Finally, the Emperor justifies his legislation against the Catholic Church by asserting a claim of absolute independence against all religious or spiritual authority whatsoever upon earth, which is equivalent to claiming a supremacy over all religious and spiritual matters within the Empire of Germany. 'The Evangelical creed, which, as must be known to your Holiness, I, like my ancestors and the majority of my subjects, profess, does not permit us to accept in our relations to God any other mediator than our Lord Jesus Christ.'

14 Times, Friday, December 19th, 1873.

As it is impossible to suppose that the august personage whose name is attached to this letter could intend that the Pope had claimed to be a mediator between God and man, except as the Chief Pastor of the Church of God, these words must be taken to deny the existence of any such Church, under any such ministry, bearing Divine authority upon earth. This denial, coupled with the assertion of supreme power over the Catholics of Germany, is equivalent to the claim of an absolute and unlimited Caesarism. The recent ecclesiastical legislation, which violates both religion and conscience, is the legitimate consequence of this supreme Pontificate. This is the key to the Falck laws, the effects of which are in sum as follows:

First, they cut off appeals to the Holy See, by de claring that all causes must be determined by German tribunals. This cuts the Church in Germany from the centre of Catholic Unity and from its universal jurisdiction.

Secondly, they suspend the power of excommunication upon the concurrent sanction of the civil authority, which is to deprive the Church of its judicial power of deciding who are and who are not of its communion.

Thirdly, they give to the State the office of forming and educating the clergy, by compulsory education in the gymnasiums, lyceums, and universities of the State, leaving to the Bishops to superadd a course of theology on men whose whole intellectual and moral nature has been shaped by a State training: and even in their theological examinations the presence of a commissary of the State is required.

Fourthly, they suspend the power of the Bishops in giving cure of souls, and changing their clergy from cure to cure, upon the assent of the civil power.

Fifthly, they establish an Ecclesiastical Council, which is, in fact, the supremacy of the Crown put in commission, invested with a final jurisdiction over ecclesiastical persons and matters. The effect of this is to substitute the Emperor for the Pope; and to invest him with supreme power over religion and conscience, over the Church, the Episcopate, and the clergy, as the head of all religions and of all priesthoods within the Empire.

The result, then, of these laws is that no ' official function,' as the Berlin Government puts it, — that is, no spiritual act, from the excommunication of a heretic down to the teaching the catechism to school-children, — can be performed without the sanction of the civil power, under pain of fine or imprisonment, and, this failing, of deposition. The Ober-Prasident of Posen has already called on the Archbishop of Posen to resign his archbishopric for numerous offences against the Falck laws; which offences are so many high spiritual duties. If he refuse to resign within eight days, he is to be cited before the Ptoyal Tribunal in Berlin. The Act 24 and 25 Henry VIII. made the king outright head of the Church, and by one stroke all jurisdiction formerly belonging to the Pope was transferred to the Crown. This was intelligible. The Falck laws are in direct and circuitous. They compass what they do not claim. They suspend all spiritual jurisdiction on the civil power, and make the sovereign absolute in matters of religion.

What is this but * Divus Caesar'? It is the re uniting in one person of the two powers which God has separated, and a denial, not only of the supremacy of the spiritual power of the Church of Christ, hut a denial that any such spiritual power of Divine institution exists upon earth. This, as we have seen, was formally enunciated by the Emperor in his letter to the Pope.

Now we might at first sight wonder how such a preposterous claim could have been set up in the nineteenth century. But there are agencies at work which will account for it.

First, there is, perhaps, no country in Europe from which the Christian faith has been more completely wiped out than Prussia. It became Christian in the thirteenth century; it fell into the Lutheran heresy in the sixteenth; it has developed into simple rationalism in the educated, and into materialism among the masses of the people. The idea of a Church with spiritual authority is simply effaced. The civil power, with its military organisation, is the sole ideal of power before the eyes and the minds of the Protestant population of Prussia. The fusion of the Lutherans and the Calvinists, some years ago, into an Evangelical Church has prepared them for the return of the old rule — Ejus religio cnjus regio.

We have seen how the vivid consciousness of the Divine authority and office of the Church has restrained and saved Italy from greater revolutionary excesses. There is nothing of this kind to restrain or to save Prussia. In rejecting the Church of God it is deifying We are going back into the barbarism of the

Old World. And this is not said as a mere stroke of rhetoric or of controversy. There has been for some time a school of writers in Germany labouring to re store the Byzantine C£esarism. Just as the jurists were the satellites and flatterers of the medieval em perors of Germany, and as Machiavelli and Gravina and Hobbes have been the apostles of royal supremacies and modern Erastianism, so the school known at Munich as Byzantines has been preparing the way for the Imperial primacy of Berlin. The Byzantines got their name from their literary labours upon the Greek Church and the canon law of the Patriarchate at Constantinople. They so far affected the Government of Munich as to induce it to meddle with the seminaries of the Bishops. It was this school, together with certain persons once honoured among us, who used Prince Hohenlohe as their mouthpiece in conspiring against the Vatican Council. After this their ecclesiastical politics were carried to Berlin, and the Government of Prussia was thereby led to commit itself to the patronage of the ' Old Catholic' heresy. Like all heretics, they sheltered themselves under the civil power, and flattered it into the attempt to carry out that Byzantine Erastianism against the Catholic Church in the Empire. Witness the oath lately taken by Dr. Eeinkens, and the State grant which was its reward.

Finally, there is another agency which has been far more potent than all others in bringing about this present persecution. There is no manner of doubt that the sect of Freemasons has been long labouring to break up the religious settlement in Germany. The

Peace of Westphalia secured the political status of Christianity, though divided into Catholic and Protestant. The Freemasons desired the overthrow of hoth. They thought that the time was come to complete what the Thirty Years' War left unfinished. They believed that the Catholics in Germany, weakened by the overthrow first of Austria and next of France, would easily fall under the power of the Evangelical Empire, as Prince von Bismarck calls it. I am but repeating his.own words. In the Prussian House of Peers in 1870 he spoke as follows:

' Peace began to be disturbed after the war in Austria, after the fall in 1866 of the Power which was the bulwark of the Roman influence in Germany, and when the future of an Evangelical Empire showed itself clearly on the horizon of Germany. All tranquillity was lost when the second-rate Catholic Power in Europe had followed in the way of its predecessor, and Germany became the first great military power for the moment, and, according to the will of God, for a long time.'

Does Prince von Bismarck fear for the stability of ' the first great military power ' of the world? What could the Catholics of Germany do against it? What would they ever have desired but its perpetual stability if it had only dealt justly with them, according to the existing laws? Prince von Bismarck creates resistance by persecution, and then pleads that resistance to justify the persecution which has called up that resistance. There was no resistance to the existing laws as they stood before the newFalck legislation. It cannot be doubted that the object of the Falck laws is to render impossible the existence of the Catholic Church in Germany, — that is, to exterminate it. I say this because no Catholic, without sin against God, can obey these laws. Every man who obeys them ceases in that moment to be a Catholic. Can we, then, for a moment imagine that Prince von Bismarck was not aware of this? That he acted in ignorance, or unconsciously, or on misjudgment? That he so little knows the Catholic doctrine and discipline as to expect obedience? He does not desire it. He wished for a pretext, and has made it. Nobody can doubt that he knew to the full extent the violation of conscience and of faith which he was inflict ing. These laws can be no otherwise understood than as a deliberate scheme to render it impossible for Catholics to obey, that they might then be accused and dealt with as resisting the authority of the Empire. But in this the astuteness of the German Chancellor has overreached itself. If the Falck legislation had been such as a Catholic could by any subterfuge obey, even though its injury to the Church were never so great, then the nations of Europe might have been misled into condemning the Catholics of Germany as contumacious and refractory.

But at this time not a nation in Europe commends the Falck laws. A handful of strangely - assorted persons about a year ago went on a pilgrimage to offer their incense to Prince von Bismarck on his penal laws. They were peers and gentlemen, Free Kirk men and Liberals, and the preachers of ' our glorious Revolution' and of civil and religious liberty; and now we are informed that the delegates of cities and towns in England are to meet this month, under the presidency of Earl Russell, to express sympathy with Prince von Bismarck in his persecution of Catholics and in his violation of religious liberties; which, for half a century, has been the special political cry of the noble Earl. We are a paradoxical people, and somewhat too reckless of what the outside world may think of our political incoherencies. But it is well to see how we are regarded from with out. M. de Pressense, a Frenchman and a Protestant, in denouncing the Prussian persecution, has given to Englishmen a warning which I hope will not be lost upon us. In last May, after detailing the injustice of the ecclesiastical legislation of Prussia, he added:

' That which is more grave is that (public) opinion is misled even in countries which, like England, are the classic land of religious liberty. The religious policy of the German Emperor receives in England congratulations which we must be permitted to look upon as scandalous. We know that the English Parliament would not allow any one of the laws passed at Berlin to be so much as discussed: but it is not right to applaud that which we would not do. We ought more than ever to rise above sectarian passions, and to remind ourselves that the persecution which strikes our religious adversaries strikes that which is our common good, and our sole guarantee in the conflict of ideas and beliefs — I mean, the liberty of conscience.'15

We have now traced in outline the three Caesarisms — the Pagan CsBsarism, the Christian, and the modern,

15 Revue des Deux Mondes, Mai 1873. VOL. II. M which I must describe as the Csesarism of the last age of civil power lapsing or lapsed from Christianity. But it is more than time to make an end. I hope that I have made clear that Christianity has redeemed man and society from Cassarism — that is, from the unlimited despotism of man over man — and that so long as the two powers, spiritual and civil, are vested in distinct persons, the liberty of conscience and the liberty of religion, as well as the liberty of man in his public and private life, are secured; that wheresoever the civil power or Sovereign usurps upon the spiritual liberty of the Church, and affects to exercise a supremacy over it, all liberties are at stake — the liberty of conscience, the liberty of religion, the domestic liberty of families, and the political liberty of citizens. Under Caasarism all kinds of freedom alike are violated.

The natural antagonist of Ca3sarism is the Christian Church, with all its liberties of doctrine and discipline, of faith and jurisdiction; and the vindication of these liberties of the Church in their highest and most sacred form is Ultrarnontanism. Therefore the world hates it. Therefore it now rails against it in all its tones and with all its tongues. 'Divus Caesar' and 'Vicarius Christi' are two persons and two powers and two systems, between which there can be not only no peace, but no truce. They have contended for eighteen hundred years. In Germany they are locked once more in conflict. The issue is certain. The same who has always conquered will conquer again. Where, now, are the Emperors of Eome, Germany, and France? But Peter is still in his See, and Peter now is Pius IX.

y.