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ESSAYS ON LIBERTY

We must also acknowledge that in the Church the rust of abuses and of a mechanical superstition is always forming afresh; that the spiritual in religion is son1etimes materiaìised, and therefore degraded, deforn1ed, and applied to their own loss, by the servants of the Church, through their indolence and want of intelligence, and by the people, through their ignorance. The true spirit of reform 1TIUst, therefore, never depart from the Church, but must periodically break out with renovating strength, and penetrate the n1ind and the will of the clergy. In this sense we do not refuse to admit the justice of a call to penance, when it proceeds from those who are not of us,- that is, of a warning carefully to exan1ine our religious life and pastoral conduct, and to remedy what is found defective. At the sa1ne time it must not be forgotten that the separation did not ensue in consequence of the abuses of the Church. For the duty and necessity of ren10ving these abuses has always been recognised ; and only the difficulty of the thing, the not always unjustifiable fear lest the wheat should be pulled up with the tares, prevented for a time the Reformation, which was accomplished in the Church and through her. Separa.tion on account merely of abuses in ecclesiastical life, when the doctrine is the same, is rejected as criminal by the Protestants as well as by us. It is, therefore, for doctrine's sake that the separation occurred; and the general discontent of the people, the weakening of ecclesiastical authority by the existence of abuses, only facilitated the adoption of the new doctrines. But now on one side some of these defects and evils in the life of the Church have disappeared; the others have greatly diminished since the reforming movement; and on the other side, the principal doctrines for which they separated, and on the truth of which, and their neces- sity for salvation, the right and duty of secession was based, are given up by Protestant science, deprived of their Scriptural basis by exegesis, or at least made very uncertain by the opposition of the most eminent Protestant divines. Meanwhile we live in hopes, com- forting ourselves with the conviction that history, or that process of development in Europe which is being accomplished before our eyes, as well in society and politics as in religion, is the powerful ally of the friends of ecclesiastical union; and we hold out our hands to Christians on the other side for a combined war of resistance against the destructive movements of the age. There are two circumstances which make us fear that the \vork will not be received in the spirit in which it is written, and that its object will not immediately be attained. The first of these is the extraordinary effect \vhich was produced by the declaration which the author made on the occasion of the late assembly of the Catholic associations of Germany at Munich. He stated simply, what is understood by every Catholic out of Italy, and