Page:The Great Encyclical Letters of Pope Leo XIII.djvu/260



254 ALLEGIANCE TO THE REPUBLIC.

Empire. The calumny made headway; and in their credulity the pagans called the first Christians " useless creatures, dangerous citizens, factionists, enemies of the Empire and the Emperors. But in vain did the apologists of Christianity by their writings, and Christians by their splendid conduct, endeavor to demonstrate the absurdity and criminaUty of these qualifications: they were not heeded. Their very name was equivalent to a declaration of war; and Christians, by the mere fact of their being such, and for no other reason, were forced to choose between apostasy and martyrdom, being allowed no alternative. During the following centuries the same grievances and the same severity prevailed to a greater or less extent, whenever governments were unreasonably jealous of their power and maliciously disposed against the Church. They never failed to call public attention to the pretended encroachment of the Church upon the State, in order to furnish the State with some apparent right to violently attack the Catholic religion.

We have expressly recalled some features of the past that Catholics might not be dismayed by the present. Substantially the struggle is ever the same : Jesus Christ is always exposed to the contradictions of the world, and the same means are always used by modern enemies of Christianity means old in principle and scarcely modified in form ; but the same means of defence are also clearly indicated to Christians of the present day by our apolo- gists, our doctors and our martyrs. What they have done it is incumbent upon us to do in our turn. Let us there- fore place above all else the glory of God and of His Church; let us work for her with an assiduity at once constant and effective, and leave all care of success to Jesus Christ, who tells us: "In the world you shall have distress: but have confidence, I have overcome the world."

To attain this We have already remarked that a great union is necessary, and if it is to be realized, it is indis- spensable that all preoccupation capable of diminishing