internally divided; that the Council has revealed this division; and that it is nowhere more patent than in England. It is, I know, useless to contradict this illusion. It is not founded in reason, and cannot by reason be corrected. Prejudice and passion are deaf and blind. Time and facts will dispel illusions, and expose falsehoods. And to this slow but inexorable cure we must leave them. It is no evidence of division among us, if here and there a few individuals should fall away. I said before, the Council will be in ruinam et in resurrectionem multorum. It is a time of spiritual danger to many; especially to those who live perpetually among adversaries, hearing diatribes all day long against the Church, the Council, and the Holy Father, reading anti-Catholic accounts and comments upon Catholic doctrines, and upon the words and acts of Catholic Bishops, and always breathing, till they are unconscious of it, an anti-Catholic atmosphere.
St. Paul has foretold that 'In the last days shall come dangerous times,'[1] and 'in the last times some shall depart from the faith.'[2] Those days seem now to be upon us; and individuals perhaps may fall. But the fall of leaves and sprays and boughs does not divide the Tree. You will know how to deal with them in charity, patience, and firmness, before you act on the Apostolic precept, 'A man that is a heretic, after the first and second admonition, avoid.'[3] You will use all the patience of charity, but you will use also, if need be so, its
