Page:History of Freedom.djvu/537

 THE VATICAN COUNCIL

493

Once, during the struggle for the temporal power, the question was pertinently asked, how it was that men so perspicacious and so enlightened as those who were its most conspicuous champions, could bring themselves to justify a system of government \vhich their own principles condemned. The explanation then given was, that they were making a sacrifice which would be compensated hereafter, that those who succoured the Pope in his utmost need \vere establishing a claim which \vould make them irresistible in better times, when they should demand great acts of conciliation and reform. I t appeared to these men that the time had come to reap the harvest they had arduously sown. The Council did not originate in the desire to exalt beyond measure the cause of Rome. It w s proposed in the interest of moderation; and the Bishop of Orleans was one of those who took the lead in promoting it. The Cardinals were consulted, and pronounced against it. The Pope overruled their resistance. Whatever em- barrassments might be in store, and however difficult the enterprise, it was clear that it would evoke a force capable of accomplishing infinite good for religion. It was an instrument of unknown po\ver that inspired little confi- dence, but awakened vague hopes of relief for the ills of society and the divisions of Christendom. The guardians of immovable traditions, and the leaders of progress in religious knowledge, were not to share in the work. The schism of the East was widened by the angry quarrel between Russia and the Pope; and the letter to the Protestants, whose orders are not recognised at Rome, could not be more than a ceremonious challenge. There \vas no promise of sympathy in these invitations or in the answers they provoked; but the belief spread to many schools of thought, and was held by Dr. Pusey and by Dean Stanley, by Professor Rase and by M. Guizot, that the auspicious issue of the Council was an object of vital care to all denominations of Christian men. The Council of T ren t impressed on' the Church the stamp of an intolerant age, and perpetuated by its decrees