true light the fidelity of the first Christians to their princes, we should remember with Tertullian, that at that time "the Christians were neither wanting in numbers, nor in resources to resist their persecutors. We are but of yesterday," he exclaims, "yet do we fill every place around you; your cities and your islands; your fortresses and your municipal towns; your councils, your very camps; your tribunes and the palace, the senate and the forum. To what warlike achievements should we not be adequate, and prepared for, even against forces more numerous than ourselves? We, who so little fear death, if our religion did not require us rather to suffer than to inflict death. If numerous as we are, we had retired from you in some distant corner of the earth, the desertion of so many citizens of every class, would have branded the character of your government with infamy; and would itself have been your punishment Then would you have stood aghast at the solitude extending before you. … You would have asked for your own subjects. The number of your enemies would then have exceeded that of the citizens left behind; but as it is, those enemies shew meanly before the multitude of Christians."[1]
These illustrious examples of unshaken subjection to Rulers necessarily flowing from the ever holy precepts of the Christian Religion, loudly condemn the insolence and impiety of those who, maddening in the free unbridled passion of untamed liberty, leave no stone unturned to break down and destroy the constitution of states, and under the appearance of liberty to bring slavery on the people.—This was the object of the impious ravings and schemes of the Waldenses, of the Beguardins, of the Wickliffites, and of the other children of Belial, the refuse of human nature and its stain, who were so often and so justly anathematized by the Apostolic See. Nor had they any other object than to triumph with Luther in the boast "that they were independent of every one;" and to attain this the more easily and readily, they fearlessly waded through every crime.
Nor can we augur more consoling consequences to religion and to governments, from the zeal of some to separate the Church from the State, and to burst the bond, which unites the priesthood to the Empire. For it is clear, that this union is dreaded by the profane lovers of liberty, only because it has never failed to confer prosperity on both.
But in addition to the other bitter causes of Our solicitude, and of that weight of sorrow which oppresses Us in the midst of so much confusion, come certain associations, and political assemblies, in which, as if a league were struck with the followers of every false religion and form of worship, un-
- ↑ Tertul in Apologet Cap. 37.
