Europe have likewise expired, with the religious unity which alone rendered them just. But the unity of the French nation renders it yet possible that influences and claims inconsistent with the liberty of the Church may still exist. Anything that fosters this idea of National Churches, independent, except in a few vital relations, of the Holy See, powerfully excites a spirit which is not filial. An Episcopate which depends as little as it can upon the Pope, rears a laity which depends as little as possible upon the Episcopate. I am not saying that such is the spirit of the noble and Catholic people of France at this day; but I should not be going too far if I were to give this as a description of Gallicanism, and of the spirit and tendencies generated by it. So long as the Articles of 1682 remain as a standard of orthodoxy, this spirit and tendency will be kept alive. When these Articles are buried, one of the worst germs of Regalism will be extinct.
In speaking of France, I think it a duty to guard against a misunderstanding which appears—contrary, I must believe, to all reason and justice—to have arisen from some words addressed by me to you, reverend and dear brethren, two years ago, in a Pastoral on the eighteenth Centenary of S. Peter's Martyrdom.[1] In speaking of the supremacy of S.
- ↑ Two pamphlets have appeared in Paris, the one by the Abbé St. Pol, Chanoine Honoraire, the other by the Abbé d'Upalgaz, de l'Université d'Alcalá. In both, and almost in the same words, I am censured for saying that Gallicanism produced the great French Revolution. No proposition so shallow was uttered by me. What I really did say, and here repeat, is, that, as the despotism of the Tudors corrupted the Church in England, and produced
