definition only declares it to be revealed by God. The relations of Rome to the Civil Powers are therefore precisely what they were before. If the Civil Powers are disgusted, it is only because the Œcumenical Council declined to swerve from its duty in compliance to their dictation; or because they can no longer affect to disbelieve that the Infallibility of the Roman Pontiff is the true and traditional doctrine of the Catholic Church. We are called superstitious, because we do not believe in the downfall of the Temporal Power; and obstinate, because we will not recognise the right of Italy to invade the Patrimony of the Church. Our superstition consists in this. In the history of the Church the Temporal Power has been suppressed, as the phrase is, over and over again. The first Napoleon suppressed it twice. The Triumvirate suppressed it in 1848. There is nothing new under the sun. The thing that has been, is the thing that shall be. We do not believe in the perpetuity of anything but the Church; nor in the finality of anything but justice. Sacrilege carries the seeds of its own dissolution. A robbery so unjust cannot endure. When or how it shall be chastised we know not: but the day of reckoning is not less sure for that. Of one thing there can be no doubt; the nations which have conspired to dethrone the Vicar of Christ will, for that sin, be scourged. They will, moreover, scourge one another and themselves. The people that has the chief share in the sin, will have the heaviest share in the punishment. We are therefore in no way moved. If it be God's will that His Church should suffer persecution, it will be thereby
