its mind and essence. This separation of Church and State, abnormal, and replete with moral and spiritual dangers, is an established fact in the larger part of the modern world. The Church can at least draw from it this advantage, that if the State will no longer invite it to save the people, its own spiritual action is left free and pure.
(5.) Another change which demands an adjustment of the laws of the Church is to be found in the spoliations which the last centuries have perpetrated. The Church has a divine right to hold property. This right it has originally from its Divine Founder, not from any human law. It is therefore lawful, good, and expedient that it should hold and transmit endowments which are the patrimony of the poor, and the means of spiritual good to the millions of Christendom. The sixteenth century began to spoil, and the revolutions of the last fifty years have swept those endowments away in one half of Europe. The spoiler is again busy to rob the Church in Italy of its birthright. The spoliation of the Church is always, and everywhere, a sin and a sacrilege; nevertheless, the Church knows how to draw power and strength even from spoliation. There is no doubt that it will rise in Italy, as it has risen in France and in Ireland, over all robbery and wrong; and rule the hearts of men with a renewed power. The destruction of benefices has at least released us from patronage, secular interference, lay abuses, with all the moral parasites which infected the old order of nations. A General Council will know
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