Page:History of Freedom.djvu/441

 Dë)LLINGER'S HISTORICAL \VORK 397

the weake
 * t link, judging the man by his totals, he was

not less severe on his theological ethics. Meinerseit habe ich noch eine andre schwere Anklage gegen ihn zu erheber.l, nämlich die, dass er durch seine falsche Imputa, tionslehre das sittlich-religiöse Bewusstseyn der 1Ienschen auf zwei J ahrhunderte hinaus verwirrt und corrumpirt hat (3 rd July 1888). The revolution of 1848, during which he did not hold his professorship, brought him forward uncongenially in active public life, and gave him the means of telling the world his view of the constitution and policy of the Church, and the sense and limits of liability in which he gave his advocacy. When lecturing on canon law he \vas accustomed to d\vell on the strict limit of all ecclesiastical authority, admitting none but' spiritual powers, and in- voking the maxims of pontiffs who professed themselves guardians, not masters, of the established legislation- "Canones ecclesiae solvere non possumus, qui custodes cano- num sumus." Acting on these principles, in the Paulskirche, and at Ratisbon, he vindicated Rome against the reproach of oppression, argued that society can only gain by the emancipation of the Church, as it claims no superiority over the State, and that both Gallicans and] esuits are out of date. Addressing the bishops of Germany in secret session at Würzburg, he exhorted them to avail themselves fully of an order of things which was better than the old, and to make no professions of unconditional allegiance. He told them that freedom is the breath of the Catholic life, that it belongs to the Church of God by right divine, and that whatever they claimed must be claimed for others. From these discourses, in which the scholar abandoned the details by which science advances for the general principles of the popular orator, the deductions of liberalism proceed as surely as the revolution from the title-page of Sieyès. It should seem that the key to his career lies there. It was natural to associate him \vith the men whom the early promise of a reforming pope inspired to identify the cause of free societies with the papacy which had Rosmini for an adviser, Ventura for a preacher,