POSTII1JMOUS SUPREMACY OF ROME.
RoxE at present enjoys the most of such living existence as re- mains to her, not on the Seven Hills, but under the immediate shade of the French and Austrian Emperors ; and where she is ii teoted, there she makes her influence felt as an indignity and a
r. Through a section of the French clergy, the Pope has effected a considerable stride in establishing absolute spiritual au- thority in France. His pioneers prepared the way. One of those semi-clerical personages unknown to the Protestant Church of
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England, an Abbe, named Gaiune, raised a controversy on the sub- ject of education : he endeavoured to discontinue the use of the Classic Greek and Roman writers in public schools, and to substi- tute the Fathers, contending that the Classics are profane and in- decent, the fathers trustworthy as authorities on subjects of anti- quity. This was a direct attempt to bring up the youth of France in an absolute spiritual slavery unknown to the middle ages ; since those times were too rough for the people to be grasped so com- pletely as they might be now that they are tamed. The Abbe Gaume was supported by the (Juicers, an Ultramontane journal of Paris, which set itself up as the censor of the Moderate party in the Church.. The Archbishop of Paris forbade the reading of the journal to his clergy and their flocks ; the editor, M. Veuillot, ap- pealed to the Pope ; the Pope with all the indirectness of circum- locution insinuates a rebuke at the Archbishop ; and the Prelate retracts. The letter of the Pontiff lauds the protecting care of his "dear son in Jesus, Napoleon Emperor of the French"; recommends "the excellent works of the Holy Fathers, and of the most celebrated heathen writers after they have been carefully ex- purgated"; and inculcates as the paramount duty "fidelity to the Holy See, and most perfect obedience to all that it teaches, esta- blishes, and decrees?' Here we see the true object nakedly exposed. Attacks on the mythology of the Pagans have often come from the Roman Catholic clergy—attacks which sometimes covered a taste to luxuriate in that fanciful region ; and many " persuasions " besides the Romanist might hesitate to instruct youth through the epistles of Horace or the satires of Catullus, however polished; but the object here is positive, not negative— to make the Fathers the standard of literature the guard against advancing science the patterns of ecclesiastical' absolutism.
The Pope expects to be more absolute in France than he can be in Italy, or even in Rome. It is true that he holds down his sub- jects, forbidding to them almost every act of the life of a free people ; but he does not do so by his spiritual authority over their own will : it is the bayonets of France that uphold him over his people on the West Italian shore, those of Austria on the 'F.fi stern shore. He has officially, declared to the Austrian Minis- ter, that if he were left by the foreign troops in :Rome, he could not sustain himself a day against the hatred and revolt of his subjects. There cannot then be amongst them much belief in his infallibility. And it is well known that throughout Italy the educated classes, who do not make a trading profession of subser- viency to powers that be, are rapidly becoming more and more in- dependent of Rome. But Austria uses the Romish priesthood to teach the Lombard catechism, which tells the young Italian that he holds his property from the Emperor, to whom he owes obe- dience hie that rendered to God. Austria' therefore, who can be Ghibeline when it suits her, is Guelph in Lombardy, Guelph in her assaults on Sardinia. Lc:Wm Napoleon also has used the clergy
of Rome to get up those theatrical displays which have done so much to throw over his ill-gotten power the gloss of a spurious
authenticity. He may use them still to teach obedience to him- self, and also to the Pope, if it must be so. For the Holy. Father knows his power abroad, and makes terms now, with a will of his own. If Louis Napoleon supports him with bayonets' he recipro- cates the support with missals ; if France holds down the body _of Rome, Rome holds down the mind of France • and Pius the Ninth, accounting himself acquitted, declines to throw into the bargain the coronation that Louis Napoleon asks at his hands.
For us in this country, who are even now struggling with the last remains of the difficulty to secure civil instruction inde- pendently of ecclesiastical control, the view of the opposite ex- tremity of the struggle is useful. On the Continent, Popery is gaining ground exactly as Absolutism advances ; Protestantism in like manner yields by whole states—Hungary fallen, Belgium tottering, France herself no longer neutral. It would, however, be greatly to misconstrue this spectacle if we were to derive from it no more than the impulse to engage in an Anti-Popery agitation. If you seek to meet Popery doctrinally and spiritually, you can only do so by rivalling its own despotic measures,—by forbid- ding it to preach or to think after its own fashion and dictating another by destroying, in short, that very freedom of the atmosphere in which genuine Popery cannot survive. In tho- rough freedom Popery becomes absolutely harmless,—like a mephitic gas in a high wind. In the United States, Popery cannot maintain even the nominal statistics of its hereditary population. In no tabulated statement of the religious denominations in the American Union shall you find any numbers equivalent to the in- dubitable heirs in blood of the Catholic immigrants. The priests of Ireland well know that fact, and hence their dread of emi- gration. Their flocks might become wealthier across the Atlantic, but Peter's pence are not a staple of American produce. But how is it that this tremendous spiritual engine becomes powerless on the other side of the sea P—Because in the Great Republic there is absolute freedom for all sects, and possession of temporal authority for none. It is that privation of temporal power which leaves the ecclesiastic without power to coerce. This is felt even in Italy, where Sardinia has been endeavouring to establish a gradua.1 Protestantism by withdrawing civil authority from ecclesiastics; but wanting Protestant support, Sardinia has yielded under the threats by which Austria backed the Pope. If civil power be left in ecclesiastical hands, it will still be an object towards which Rome would work by systematic encroachments. She has almost regained in France what she is trying to regain in England ; her chances of success being exactly in proportion to the restricted state of opinion and education.
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