186 REV. CHANCELLOR J. J. LIAS, M.A., ON THE DECAY OF 
uncertainty. It would be observed that the subject had been 
treated in its historical aspect ; and he (the speaker) considered that 
all great social, or religious, movements of the day were subjects 
properly open to discussion and examination by the Victoria Institute. 
He confessed that he had from the commencement taken a great 
interest in the movement known in Germany as the “ Alt Katholik,” 
from the time when the illustrious Professor of the University of 
Munich, Dr. Von Dollinger, had headed the band of protesters 
against the modern assumptions of the See of Rome. He had long 
hoped for a reform movement within the Roman Church itself 
which, discarding the accretions of Romanism as laid down by the 
Council of Trent, and the still more recent innovations of the 
Vatican Council of 1870, might fall back on the doctrines of the 
Council of Nice — which were held by all the churches of the 
Reformation. The declaration agreed to at the Congress held in 
Lucerne in 1892 gives us the true position of Old Catholicism as 
“ being no mere protest against the novel dogmas of the Vatican, but 
a return to the true Catholicism of the ancient and undivided 
Church, and at the same time a call to all Christian communities to 
unite upon this basis of Christian antiquity.” This resolution was 
introduced by Professor Friedrich in' an eloquent address (the- 
Record , September 23, 1892). Surely such? a call ought to be 
heartily responded to by members of all Reformed Churches ! It 
was however, lamentable, to learn from the author’s paper that in 
Protestant Germany, the government with [Prince Bismarck at its 
head, should have taken up an unfriendly (attitude to the New 
Reformation, though ultimately obliged to give it recognition. As 
an authentic statement of the enthusiasm with which the movement 
had been welcomed at the beginning [of this century a paragraph 
from the Vienna correspondent of The [Times, dated March 29,. 
1899, may here be inserted : — 
“ The extension of the revolt against the jrolitical influence of the 
Roman Catholic Church in this country is daily becoming more manifest. 
Constant evidence is forthcoming that should means not he found for 
counteracting it there is every likelihood of its assuming considerable pro- 
portions. The apprehension entertained that it would in course of time 
find an echo across the frontier proves to have been correct. An appeal 
on behalf of the agitation, just issued by the Berlin branch of the German 
Evangelical Association, which is specially devoted to assisting the move- 
ment in Austria, is announced in this evening’s telegrams. The number 
