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trols the Civil Government, it is exclusive, despotic and grasping; but when, as in England, and until lately in Canada, it is unconnected with the State, it confines itself to its proper functions of teaching piety and morality.
To prove that the policy of adaptation is not a vague or unsupported charge, but has been the principle upon which the Church of Rome has invariably acted, I shall have to quote at length from the writings of Dr. Joseph Fessler, late Secretary General to the Vatican Council, in his work on the "True and the False Infallibility of the Popes," which was a defense and explanation of the Dogmatic Decrees, and which received a Brief of Approbation from Pius IX.
"Externally, however, we find that in the course of centuries the Church has adopted a very different conduct towards heretics, according to the different circumstances in which she has been placed in her intercourse with the world.
Thus we may distinguish four different periods.
The 'First period' reaches from the commencement of the Christian era to the first decade of the fourth century. During this time, in treating with heretics, Christians acted according to the words and examples of the Apostles. What this way was, the Apostle Paul told the faithful: 'A man that is a heretic, after the first and second admonition avoid, knowing that he that is such an one is subverted and sinneth, being condemned by his own judgment.' (Titus iii. 10, 11.) And the Apostle John says: 'If any man come to you and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house, nor say to him, God speed you (2 John v. 10). This is the way in which the early Catholics protected themselves from heretics; they excluded them from their communion, and in some cases, even broke off intercourse with them in order that they might not be corrupted by tbeir errors.
The 'Second Period' begins with the First Council of Nicæa, A.D. 325, at which time the Christian rulers of the Roman Empire sent the principal teachers of error into banishment from political
