DE PRESSENSÉ ON MEN AND PARTIES. 185 



Ciilholics wlio dcH line to sell out their most earnest eonvietions. 

 Hence the importance of this noble and loyal protest : 



" What arc the resources of that cohort of zealots who are 

 laboring to realize, sooner or later, the subordination of the tem- 

 poral power to the spiritual, and the indirect reign of the Church 

 over the nations ? If they attempt to carry their point l)y main 

 force, they will fall at the first step upon insurmountable obsta- 

 cles. Can they overcome them to-day ? No. They are not able 

 to hold the very ground they already occupy. Well ; the daj' 

 after a dogmatic decision, the obstacles will be greater yet; and 

 they will have fewer allies, fewer auxiliaries, fewer soldiers, per- 

 haps: the}' will be more watched, more hampered, more attacked. 

 From that time, their best weapon will be cunning. They will 

 find themselves reduced (it is so, from this day forth) to demand- 

 ing liberty for the Church in the name of justice, in the name of 

 equal rights — hiding their inner thoughts and ulterior intentions. 

 They will have to conceal their object, in order to accomplish it. 

 Vain subtlet}-- ! They will onl}' lose honor, without achieving suc- 

 cess. The trick is discovered. By the hundred tongues of the 

 press it will be exposed and balHcd. This is already the way 

 witli it, in some measure. How will it be, when no man shall be 

 able to say, ' I am a Catliolic, and nevertheless I do not aspire to 

 establish the domination of the Church over the State V 



" To weaken the cause of the liberty of the Church, to 

 strengthen the camp of its adversaries — such would infallibly be 

 the consequences of erecting into dogmas those opinions to which 

 the Encyclical, Quanta cura, restores, we cannot disguise it, a 

 part of the authority Avhich they had lost. Let us hope that 

 things will go no further, and that an obligatory definition will 

 not aggravate the embarrassments of a situation already sufii- 

 ciently difficult." 



The effect of the Encyclical was very considerable in tlie G;d- 

 lican division of the Church. All the eminent men who belonged 

 to it were wounded to the heart; but their characteristic doctrine 

 of the non-infallibility of the Holy Father, so long as he speaks in 

 his own name, suflered them to consider the Encyclical as a mere 

 Roman manifesto, deplorable enough, no doubt, but not binding 

 on the conscience. But it would have been very desirable to 



