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282 an impatient rejection of the literary restrictions which have so long insulted their intelligence and moral courage.

Such, then, are the strength and the weakness respectively of the Church of Rome in the present stage of its conflict. During its protracted existence it has encountered and triumphed over many kinds of opposition. It emerged brilliantly victorious from its secular struggle with polytheistic Rome and then with the destructive neo-Hellenism of Alexandria; it met confidently and rose upon the flood of barbarism that poured out over Southern Europe; it guided its fortunes safely through the age of iron that followed, and then controlled the fierce intellectual activity of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; it subdued and repressed the Renaissance and almost compensated its losses in the great Reformation. But the Church has never had so varied and so powerful a host of adversaries to encounter as it has at the present day. Apart altogether from the rival Christian sects—and in point of fact these seem more disposed to friendly alliance with it than to a continued conflict—the number of opposing forces of every character, intellectual, ethical, political, and æsthetical, is a matter of grave consideration.

In the first place there is Rationalism—taking the term in its broad sense so as to include not only 'naturalism,' but also that attenuated theism which rejects orthodox Christianity in virtue of the results