Page:History of Freedom.djvu/359

 DÖLLINGER ON THE TEMPORAL POWER 3 I 5

fused with human elements, and is injured by a degrading alliance. In this way even piety may lead to immorality, and devotion to the Pope may lead away from God. The position of perpetual antagonism to a spirit which we abhor; the knowledge that the clamour against the temporal po\ver is, in very many instances, inspired by hatred of the spiritual authority; the indignation at the impure motives mixed up with the movement-all these things easily blind Catholics to the fact that our attach- ment to the Pope as our spiritual Head, our notion that his civil sovereignty is a safeguard of his freedom, are the real motives of our disposition to deny the truth of the accusations made against his government. I t is hard to believe that imputations which take the form of insults, and which strike at the Church through the State, are well founded, and to distinguish the design and the occasion from the facts. It is, perhaps, more than we can expect of men, that, after defending the Pope as a sovereign, because he is a pontiff, and adopting against his enemies the policy of unconditional defence, they will consent to adopt a view which corroborates to a great extent the assertions they have combated, and implicitly condemns their tactics. I t is natural to oppose one extreme by another; and those who avoid 'both easily appear to be capitulating with error. The effects of this spirit of opposition are not confined to those who are engaged in resisting the No-popery party in England, or the revolution in Italy. The fate of the temporal power hangs neither on the Italian ministry nor on English influence, but on the decision of the Emperor of the French; and the loudest maintainers of the rights of the Holy See are among that party who have been the most zealous adversaries of the Imperial system. The French Catholics behold in the Roman policy of the emperor a scheme for obtaining over the Church a power of which they would be the first victims. Their religious freedom is in jeopardy while he has the fate of the Pope in his hands. That \vhich is elsewhere simply a manifestation of opinion and a moral influence is in France an active