Page:History of Freedom.djvu/578

 534

ESSAYS ON LIBERTY

The tempest of criticism was weakly met; and the opponents established at once a superiority in debate. At the end of the first month nothing had been done; and the Session imprudently fixed for the 6th of January had to be filled up with tedious ceremonies. Everybody saw that there had been a great miscalculation. The Council was slipping out of the grasp of the Court, and . the regulation was a manifest hindrance to the despatch of business. New resources were required. A new president was appointed. Cardinal Reisach had died at the end of December without having been able to take his seat, and Cardinal De Luca had presided in his stead. De Angelis was now put into the place made vacant by the death of Reisach. He had suffered imprisonment at Turin, and the glory of his confessorship was enhanced by his services in the election of the Commissions. He was not suited otherwise to be the moderator of a great assembly; and the effect of his elevation was to dethrone the accomplished and astute De Luca, who had been found deficient in thoroughness, and to throw the manage- ment of the Council into the hands of the junior Presidents, Capalti and Bilio. Bilio was a Barnabite monk, innocent of court intrigues, a friend of the most enlightened scholars in Rome, and a favourite of the Pope. Cardinal Capalti had been distinguished as a canonist. Like Cardinal Bilio, he was not reckoned among men of the extreme party; and they were not always in harmony with their colleagues, De Angelis and Bizarri. But they did not waver vvhen the policy they had to execute was not their own.

infeeerunt genium saeeuli hujus, sed numquid eredendum est, eorruptionis eontaginem non contigisse, si ejusmodi errores decretorum anathemate prostrati fuissent? . . . Pro tuenda et tute servanda religione Catholica praeter gemitus et preces ad Deum aliud medium praesidiumque nobis datum non est nisi Catholica scientia. cum recta fide per omnia concors, Excolitur summopere apud heterodoxos fidei inimica scientia, excolatur ergo oportet et omni opere augeatur apud Catholicos vera scientia, Ecclesiae arnica,. ,, Obmutescere faciamus ora obtrectantium qui falso nobis imputare non desistunt, Catholicam Ecclesiam opprimere scientiam, et quemcumque liberum cogitandi modum ita cohibere, ut neque scientia, nee una alia animi libertas in ea subsistere vel florescere possit, . ., Propterea monstrandum hoc est, et scriptis et factis manifestandum, in Catholica Ecclesia veram pro po pulis esse libertatem, verum profectum, verurn lumen, veramque prosperitatem.