This is not the spirit of the Apostle, who in the excess of charity declared that he could desire "to be anathema from Christ" for his brethren according to the flesh, and yet, for the love of souls could say, "I would they were even cut off, who trouble you;" because the purity of the faith is vital to the salvation of souls, and the salvation of the flock must be preferred to the salvation of a few.

I will touch but one other topic, and then make an end. The same prophets who foretold disastrous consequences from the definition, are now foretelling the downfall of the Temporal Power. Day by day, we hear and read contemptuous censures of the obstinacy of Pius the Ninth, who has ruined himself by his Non possumus, and sealed his downfall by the definition of his own infallibility. I do not hesitate to say, that if what is now happening had been caused by the definition, which is not the fact, yet any external trials would be better than an internal conflict arising from a contradiction of revealed truth. Gold may be bought too dear; but truth cannot.

Perhaps we ought not to wonder that the Protestant and anti-Catholic world should persist in declaring that Rome, by the definition of the Infallibility, has altered its relations to the world; or, as I have lately read, "disgusted all the civil governments of Europe." They do not know, or are willingly ignorant, that the doctrine of the Infallibility was as much the doctrine of the Church before as after the definition. The definition only declares

* Gal. v. 12.

it to be revealed by God. The relations of Rome to the Civil Powers are therefore precisely what they were before. If the Civil Powers 'are disgusted, it is only because the Ecumenical Council declined to swerve from its duty in compliance to their dictation; or because they can no longer affect to disbelieve that the Infallibility of the Roman Pontiff is the true and traditional doctrine of the Catholic Church. We are called superstitious, because we do not believe in the downfall of the Temporal Power; and obstinate, because we will not recognize the right of Italy to invade the Patrimony of the Church. Our superstition consists in this. In the history of the Church the Temporal Power has been suppressed, as the phrase is, over and over again. The first Napoleon suppressed it twice. The Triumvirate suppressed it in 1848. There is nothing new under the sun. The thing that has been, is the thing that shall be. We do not believe in the perpetuity of anything but the Church; nor in the finality of anything but justice. Sacrilege carries the seeds of its own dissolution. A robbery so unjust cannot endure. When or how it shall be chastised we know not; but the day of reckoning is not less sure for that. Of one thing there can be no doubt: the nations which have conspired to dethrone the Vicar of Christ will, for that sin, be scourged. They will, moreover, scourge one another and themselves. The people that has the chief share in the sin, will have the heaviest share in the punishment. We are therefore in no way moved. If it be God's will that His Church should suffer persecution, it will be thereby purified; but the persecutors will fall one by one.

Rome has seen the map of Europe made over and over again; but Rome remains changeless. It will see out the present dynasties of conquered and conqueror; suffering, it may be, but indefecti

ble.

I have already said, that the definition was made on the eighteenth of July, and war on the nineteenth. Since that date, a crowd of events have hurried to their fulfillment. The French Empire has passed away. Rome is occupied by the armies of Italy. The peace of Europe is broken; never again, it may be, to be restored, till the scourges of war have gone their circuit among the nations. A period of storm has set in, and the rising waters of a flood may be seen approaching. If a time of trial for the Church is at hand, a time of ruin and desolation to all countries in Europe will come with it. The Church may suffer, but cannot die; the dynasties and civil societies of Europe may not only suffer, but be swept away. The Head of the Church, be he where he may, in Rome or in exile, free or in bondage, will be all that the Council of the Vatican has defined, supreme in jurisdiction, infallible in faith. Go where he may, the faithful throughout the world will see in him the likeness of His Divine Master, both in authority and in doctrine. The Council has thus made provision for the Church in its time of trial, when, it may be, not only Ecumenical Councils cannot be held, but even the ordinary administration of ecclesiastical government and consultation may be hardly possible.

Peter's bark is ready for the storm. All that is needful is already on board. Past ages were wild

and perilous, but the future bids fair to exceed them in violence, as a hurricane exceeds an ordinary storm. The times of the Council of Trent were tempestuous; but for these three hundred years the licence and the violence of free thought, free speech, and a free press, which spares nothing human or divine, have been accumulating in volume and intensity. All this burst upon the Council of the Vatican. And in the midst of this, the Vicar of Jesus Christ, abandoned by all powers of the once Christian world, stands alone, weak but invincible, the supreme judge and infallible teacher of men. The Church has, therefore, its provision for faith and truth, unity and order. The floods may come, the rain descend, and the winds blow and beat upon it, but it cannot fall, because it is founded upon Peter. But what security has the Christian world? Without helm, chart, or light, it has launched itself into the falls of revolution. There is not a monarchy that is not threatened. In Spain and France, monarchy is already overthrown. The hated Syllabus will have its justification. The Syllabus which condemned Atheism and revolution would have saved society. But men would not. They are dissolving the temporal power of the Vicar of Christ. And why do they dissolve it? Because governments are no longer Christian. The temporal power had no sphere, and therefore no manifestation, before the world was Christian. What matter will it have for its temporal power, when the world has ceased to be Christian? For what is the temporal power, but the condition of peaceful independence and supreme direction over all Christians, and all Christian so

cieties, inherent in the office of Vicar of Christ, and head of the Christian Church? When the Civil powers became Christian, faith and obedience restrained them from casting so much as a shadow of human sovereignty over the Vicar of the Son of God. They who attempt it now will do it at their peril.

The Church of God cannot be bound, and its liberty is in its head. The liberty of conscience and of faith, since the Church entered into peace, have been secured in his independdence.

For a thousand years his independence, which is sovereignty, has been secured by the providence of God in the temporal power over Rome; the narrow sphere of his exemption from all civil subjection. But men are nowadays wiser than God, and would unmake and mend His works. They are therefore dissolving the temporal power as He has fashioned it; and in so doing, they are striking out the keystone of the arch which hangs over their own heads. This done, the natural society of the world will still subsist, but the Christian world will be no more. One thing is certain : let all the Civil powers of this world in turn, or all together, claim the Vicar of Jesus Christ as their subject, a subject he will never be. The Non pos sumus is not only immutable, but invincible. The infallible head of an infallible Church cannot depend on the sovereignty of man. The Council of the Vatican has brought out this truth with the evidence of light. The world may despise and fight against it, but the Church of God will believe and act upon this law of divine faith.