180 APPENDIX. 



" Ye arc not ignorant, venerable brethren, that there are not 

 M'anting, at this day, men who, applying to civil society the im- 

 pious and absurd principle of natumlwn, as they call it, make 

 bold to teach that the perfection of government and the progress 

 of States demand that society be constituted and governed with- 

 out taking any more account of religion than if there were no 

 such thing, or at least without making any discrimination be 

 îween the true religion and the false. Furthermore, contrary to 

 ihe doctrine of the Scripture, the Church, and the holy Fathers, 

 they do not hesitate to declare that the best government is that 

 in which no obligation is recognized in the authorities to repress 

 by legal penalties the violators of the Catholic faith, except so 

 far as the interests of the public peace demand. Setting out with 

 this absolutely false conception of government, they do not stick 

 at encouraging that erroneous opinion, fotal to the Catholic 

 Church, and to the salvation of souls, which our predecessor, 

 Gregory XVI., of happy memory, characterized as a dc'Iinu?7i, that 

 liberty of conscience and of worship is a right which belongs to 

 every man, and which ought to be proclaimed by law, and pro- 

 tected in every well-constituted State; and that citizens have a 

 right to the' full liberty of manifesting their opinions, whether 

 it may be by speech, by printing, or otherwise, without any 

 power of restriction on the part either of the ecclesiastical or of 

 the civil authority. Now in maintaining these rash declarations, 

 they neither think nor consider that tliey are preaching the lib- 

 ert}' of perdition, and tliat if it is always permitted to human 

 opinions to dispute everything, there will never be wanting those 

 who will dare to resist the truth, and put confidence in the words 

 of man's reason — a most mischievous vanity which Christian 

 faith and wisdom must carefully avoid, according to the instruc- 

 tion of our Lord Jesus Christ himself 



"And since wherever religion is banished from civil societ3\ and 

 the doctrine and authority of the divine revelation rejected, the 

 true notion even of human justice and duty becomes obscured 

 and lost, and material force takes the place of true justice and law- 

 ful right, it is precisel}'' on this account that certain men, making 

 no account of the most settled principles of sound reason, dare to 

 proclaim that the will of the people, manifested by what they call 

 public opinion, or in some other waj', constitutes the supreme law, 

 independent of all right, divine and hu.man, and that in political 

 affairs, established facts, by tlie veiy fa(;t of their being estaljlished, 

 have the force of right. 



