Page:Pastoral Letter Promulgating the Jubilee - Spalding.djvu/21

Rh believe in Christ and His Revelation, and exhibited a commendable respect for religious observances. Therefore their action could not have been condemned, or even contemplated, by the Pontiff, in his recent solemn censure, pronounced on an altogether different set of men with a totally different set of principles—on men and on principles so very clearly and emphatically portrayed in the document itself, which every sound canon of interpretation requires to be strictly construed.

All other matters contained in the Encyclical, as well as the long catalogue of eighty propositions condemned in its appendix, or Syllabus, are to be judged of by the same standard. These propositions are condemned in the sense of those who uttered and maintained them, and in no other. To be fair in our interpretation, we must never lose sight of the lofty stand-point of the Pontiff, who steps forth as the champion of law and order, against anarchy and revolution, and of revealed Religion against more or less openly avowed infidelity; nor should we forget the stand-point of those whose errors he condemns, who openly or covertly assail all revealed Religion, and seek to sap the very foundations of all well-ordered society; who threaten to bring back into the world the untold horrors of the French Revolution, and to make the streets and the highways run with the blood of the best and noblest citizens. Their covert attacks against Religion and Society are, perhaps, even more formidable than their open assaults. Against the latter, the virtuous are readily guarded and armed; against the former, which often bear the appearance of good, and whose evil drift is not so easily perceived, we are are not so well prepared, and the poison of error is often insidiously instilled into the minds and hearts of the well-disposed but simple-minded, before they even think of guarding against danger, or seasonably applying the antidote.

And this naturally leads us to another remark, the justtice and fairness of which will be apparent to every rightminded thinker. It is this. Propositions condemned in globo like those in the Syllabus, are intended to receive dif-