I. The fundamental objection to Gallicanism was not so much that it denied any explicit definition of pope or council, as in the fact that it misconceived and misstated the essential nature and office of the church as the kingdom of God on earth, especially the necessary relation of the spiritual and the temporal, or of the two orders. The Gallican will listen to no argument drawn from the natural supremacy of the spiritual over the temporal. He admits, or may admit, that the spiritual is superior to the temporal, that the church. represents higher and more important interests than are represented by kings and princes, but not therefore has she any authority over them, any power to subject them to her discipline for any thing they may do or not do in the civil order. The first article of the Gallican declaration denies that she or the successor of Peter, the vicar of Christ, has received any power over them, or any right to subject them to the authority of the keys, to depose them, to release their subjects from their civil faith and obedience, or to absolve them from their oath of allegiance, since no express grant, the Gallican contends, of power to that effect, is found in the commission to the church or the papacy. He does not or will not see that such power does not need to be expressly granted, for it follows as a necessary consequence, if not expressly denied, from the supremacy or superiority of the spiritual order, and from the fact that the temporal in the very nature of things exists for the spiritual, or is ordered ad spirituale. The body is the organ of the soul, not the soul of the body; and power belongs to the superior, not to the inferior.

The Gallican, excluding by his first article, all papal or ecclesiastical power over kings and princes in temporals or civil affairs, makes the temporal order independent, and places it on an equality in power with the church, and consequently, virtually denies both the supremacy and the superiority of the spiritual order. As the church is Catholic and is the only medium through which the divine sovereignty is exercised in the government of men and nations, the Gallican, by denying the power of the church in the civil order, withdraws that order from the sovereignty of God, from all subjection to the divine order, and asserts as we have so often maintained, political atheism, all but universally dominant in our age. By withdrawing the temporal or civil order from its obligation to consult and obey the spiritual order, the Gallican makes that order subject to no law but

what it is to itself, leaves it perfectly lawless, free to act, to govern, to tyrannize, and to oppress, as it pleases. The nations have lost liberty just in proportion to the rejection of the papal authority by their governments and the govern-ing classes. Kings and princes are but men and stand as much in need of the restraints of religion and the discipline of the church as any other men.

The learned and excellent M. Gosselin, author of the book before us, with admirable simplicity attempts to defend the popes from the charge of usurping the power they ex-ercised over civil rulers, in the middle ages, excommunicating and deposing sovereigns, and absolving their subjects from their allegiance, by maintaining, as we have said, that they did it, not by divine right, but by human right, by the request or assent of the people, by the jus publicum, which even the sovereigns themselves recognized. This theory was very favorably received even by many Protestants, and before the publication of the decrees of the Vatican on the supremacy and infallibility of the successor of Peter in the see of Rome, true vicar of Christ, was very widely adopted even by theologians who wished to avoid Gallicanism. Yet it contained all the Gallican virus. The popes never professed to excommunicate or depose a sovereign prince by virtue of human right, but in every instance, as far as we recollect, did it by virtue of their apostolic power, as the vicars of Christ. This is manifest from the judicial sentences themselves. Boniface VIII., in the well-known bull, Unam Sanctam, which his successor declared that he could not revoke, because it contained a dogmatic decision, plainly defines that the power of the pope extends over sovereigns as well as over private individuals, and a greater or more learned pope, though grossly calumniated and greatly decried, and made prisoner by the grand-son of St. Louis, has rarely sat in the chair of Peter. It is idle, or worse than idle, to pretend that the popes knew not by what title they held their power, and we are obliged to hold, as Catholics, that they could neither mistake nor misrepre

sent it.

And here, perhaps, we hit upon the secret of the chief opposition manifested at the time of the council against decreeing the papal infallibility. The sovereigns and their ministers were made to believe that the definition affected them, and concealed a blow at their independence. At first sight it would seem that the definition could change, as it.

really has changed, nothing in the relations of the church to the state, and in no case could it invalidate the concordats between the two powers. It is purely an internal question between the church and her own members. But it was remembered that several popes had asserted for the papacy, by divine right, the superiority of the spiritual power over all orders of men in the church, whether cleric or laic, governors or governed, princes or subjects, states, communities, or individuals-that supremacy indeed of the spiritual over the temporal which inheres in the spiritual, and is inseparable from the kingdom of God on earth. Once it is defined that the pope is infallible in deciding questions of faith or morals in the universal church-and the question of the office, powers, and prerogatives of the supreme pontiff is as much a question of faith as is the mystery of the Blessed Trinity or the Incarnation-that supremacy cannot be denied without heresy. Gallicans deny the papal infallibility in order to be able with less scruple to deny the papal supremacy. It is the papal supremacy, its superiority to the temporal power, and its right to exact their obedience to the law of God, that kings and princes and their ministers and courtiers dread-not the papal infallibility in itself considered-because it is the only practicable barrier against arbitrary power, tyranny, and oppression, or practicable guaranty either of order or of liberty.

The power claimed by the popes in the middle ages, exercised with so much effect by the Gregories, the Innocents, and the Bonifaces, and which we contend is inherent in the spiritual order represented by the vicar of Christ on earth, is a power that kings and emperors, statesmen and courtiers do not like, have never liked, have always resisted when they dared, and the very memory of its former exercise makes them fear, drives them mad, and fills them with satanic rage. No matter whether politicians are monarchists, imperialists, republicans, or democrats, they are all equally hostile to the papal supremacy, and seek its destruction. How often have we heard even men who believed themselves orthodox Catholics exclaim, "I respect as sincerely and as profoundly as any one can the priest at the altar, and so long as he keeps in his place and minds the proper duties of his office; but let him come out of the sanctuary, and interfere with politics, and seek to control the affairs of this world, and I cease to respect him, I refuse to obey him, and if need be, will resist his authority as I

would that of "! Who defines the place and other man any duties of the priest, and decides when he does or does not keep in his place? Do the sheep teach, keep, or guard the shepherd? Power, wisdom, and knowledge are from above, not from below.

There is no doubt that, as alleged, many troubles were occasioned and public tranquillity sometimes disturbed by the exercise of the papal power against the chiefs of the civil society. But whose was the fault? Was it the fault. of the pope laboring to bring them into subjection to the law of God, and to secure the reign of justice, or of the rulers who abused their trusts, despoiled the church of her goods, the religious of their houses, the clergy of their rights, and labored to bring the kingdom of God into bondage to the kingdom of man-to the civil tyrant, as Prince Bismarck is now doing in Germany? Does the good man cause the disturbance that follows his attempt to resist and expel the midnight robber or assassin who breaks into his house to plunder it, or to murder his wife and children? We are aware that those statesmen and politicians, courtiers and court-lawyers, who decry the papacy, when the question is between Peter and Cæsar, always assume that Peter is necessarily in the wrong, and Cæsar in the right. Cæsar is always a poor innocent, working every moment for the highest and best interests of society intrusted to his charge, and at every moment, on every side, thwarted by the fiery Peter, the haughty triple-crowned old man who puts himself in the place of God, and would be worshipped as God, by some insolent churchman, or intermeddling friar. Yet the reverse of all this is the verdict of history. The haughtiness, the arrogance, the insolence, the wrong, are on the other side. The pope is set for the defence of the kingdom of God, that is, the kingdom of right and justice and therefore for the defence alike of both civil and spiritual society; for whatever tends to repress the spiritual, saps the very basis of the civil, and all history proves that the pope is ever too slow to arrest the tyranny, oppression, the wickedness of crowned monsters, such as were Henry IV. of Germany, the Hohenstaufen, Henry of Luxemburg, and Louis of Bavaria, to name no others. The papal forbearance to strike, and liberate the church from oppression and society from wicked and lawless rulers, is one of the marvels of history.

But by assuming that in the bitter struggle between the

pope and the emperor the emperor is always in the right and acts always within his legitimate sphere, encroaching never on the rights of Peter, as do the enemies of the Holy See, the Gallicans are able to make out a rather strong case against a certain number of popes. But with the facts of history before us we cannot do this, unless we assume that the church-which the Gallican as well as the Catholic holds to be the visible kingdom of God on earth, instituted by him who is King of kings and Lord of lords, for the assertion, defence, and maintenance of the divine sovereignty in human affairs-has no rights which human governments are bound to respect, and is wrong whenever she resists Cæsar in his efforts to bind her by his enactments, and to prevent her from fulfilling her divine mission, or obeying the law of God. To be able to do it, we must assume the absolute subjection of the spiritual to the temporal, of the church to the state, and, if we know what we assume, of God to man—which is the denial of God and the deification of man or the state. This is atheism, and Gallicanism has resulted, historically, in atheism, wherever it has had its free development. It is long since official France has ceased to believe in Christ, and Paris had as large a proportion of avowed atheists in the sixteenth century as in the nineteenth.

For ourselves, we see nothing in the power exercised by the popes over temporals in former times to be dreaded by any one who believes in God, loves justice, and desires to advance civilization; but we do see great need of it, in our modern society, and great evil in the fact that its exercise is now almost everywhere impracticable. On any ground it was far better to depose a prince by the judicial sentence of the highest and most venerable authority under God, than by a Parisian or a Berlin mob. The disorder occasioned by the excommunication and deprivation of that impersonation of perfidy, the emperor Frederic II., shrinks to nothing in comparison with the disorder and social dislocation caused by the old French revolution. Not only order, but liberty, intellectual and civil, social and individual, was infinitely larger and securer under the guardianship of the popes than it is in our modern society, which imprisons the vicar of Christ, despoils the church and the poor, invades the rights of God, and contemns the clerical body. What has society gained by deposing the pope, rejecting the papacy, learning to contemn the clergy, to scoff at religion, and giving itself