3 1 0
ESSAYS ON LIBERTY
any intention of offending; that I have only said \\ hat must be said, if we would go to the bottom of these questions; that I had to do with institutions which, because of the dogmas and principles from which they spring, must, like a tree that is nailed to a wall, remain in one position, however unnatural it may be. I am quite ready to admit that, on the opposite side, the men are often better than the system to which they are, or deem themselves, attached; and that, on the contrary, in the Church the individuals are, on the a verage, inferior in theory and in practice to the systelll under which they live. . . . The union of the two religions, which would be socially and politically the salvation of Germany and of Europe, is not possible at present; first because the greater, more active, and more influential portion of the German Protestants do not desire it, for political or religious reasons, in any form or under any practicable conditions. It is impossible, secondly, because negotiations concerning the mode and the conditions of union can no longer be' carried on. For this, plenipotentiaries on both sides are required; and these only the Catholic Church is able to appoint, by virtue of her ecclesiastical organisation, not the Protestants. . . . Nevertheless, theologically, Protestants and Catholics have come nearer each other; for those capital doctrines, those articles with which the Church was to stand or fall, for the sake of which the Reformers declared separation from the Catholic Church to be necessary, are now confuted and given up by Protestant theology, or are retained only nOlninally, whilst other notions are connected with the words. . . . Protestant theology is at the present day less hostile, so to speak, than the theologians. For whilst theology has levelled the strongest bulwarks and doctrinal barriers which the Reformation had set up to confirm the separation, the divines, instead of viewing favourably the consequent facilities for union, often labour, on the contrary, to conceal the fact, or to provide new points of difference. l\1any of them probably agree with Stahl of Berlin, who said, shortly before his death, "Far from supposing that the breach of the sixteenth century can be healed, we ought, if it had not already occurred, to make it now." This, however, will not continue; and a future generation, perhaps that which is even now growing up, will rather adopt the recent declaration of Heinrich Leo, "In the Roman Catholic Church a process of purification has taken place since Luther's day; and if the Church had been in the days of Luther what the Roman Catholic Church in Gern1any actually is at present, it would never have occurred to him to assert his opposition so energetically as to bring about a separation." Those who think thus will then be the right men and the chosen instruments for the acceptable work of the reconciliation of thè Churches, and the true unity of Germany. Upon the day when, on both sides, the con- viction shall arise vivid and strong that Christ really desires the unity of His Church, that the division of Christendom, the n1ultiplicity of
