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 CONFLICTS WITH ROME

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Protestant monarch, like the King of Prussia. The demonstrations of science n1ay oblige us to believe that the earth revolves round the sun, or that the donation of Constantine is spurious. The apparent interests of religion have much to say against all this; but religion itself prevents those considerations from prevailing. This has not been seen by those writers who have done most in defence of the principle. They have usually considered it from the standing ground of their own practical aims, and have therefore failed to attain that general view which might have been suggested to them by the pursuit of truth as a \vhole, French \vriters have done much for political liberty, and Germans for intellectual liberty; but the defenders of the one cause have generally had so little sympathy with the other, that they have neglected to defend their o\vn on the grounds com mon to both. There is hardly a Catholic writer who has penetrated to the common (source from which they spring. And this is the greatest defect in Catholic literature, even to the present day. In the majority of those \vho have afforded the chief examples of this error, and particularly in Lamennais, the weakness of faith which it implies has been united with that looseness of thought which resolves all kno\vledge into opinion, and fails to appreciate methodical investiga- tion or scientific evidence. But it is less easy to explain how a priest, fortified with the armour of German science, should have failed as completely in the same inquiry. In order to solve the difficulty, we must go back to the time when the theory of Frohschammer arose, and review some of the circumstances out of which it sprang. For adjusting the relations between science and authority, the method of Rome had long been that of economy and accommodation. In dealing with literature, her paramount consideration was the fear of scandal. Books \vere forbidden, not merely because their state- ments were denied, but because they seemed inj rious to morals, derogatory to authority, or dangerous to faith. To be so, it was not necessary that they should be untrue.