The Emperor of the French has read the Ultramontane Bishops
of France a greatly needed lesson. The Archbishops of Cambrai, Tours, and Rennes, and the Bishops of Metz, Nantes, Orleans, and Chartres actually issued a sort of round robin on the elections—a pamphlet signed by them all, and telling the people which way to vote. They assumed, in fact, the power of a Synod, and this in temporal matters. They are accordingly informed by an Imperial decree of August 16, drawn up in the form which gives it the effect of law, "that it is a fundamental maxim of the public law of France that the Head of the Church and the Church itself have not received any power except upon spiritual matters," and that the pamphlet is an abuse of power, and is suppressed. The parti prare has gone too far, and roused the one unchangeable Erastian sentiment of France—the resolve that the collective society called the State shall be above the sectional society called the Church. The Emperor deserves the thanks of all Europe for that outspoken reminder of a truth too often forgotten even in Protestant lands.
Previous page
