teaching, but because others had considered it advisable to undertake the alteration, and to make opinions into Articles of Faith."
But why not make a sacrifice of his intellect:—
"Because," says Döllinger, "if I did so in a question which is for the historical eye perfectly clear and unambiguous, there would then be no longer for me any such thing as historical truth and certainty; I should then have to suppose that my whole life long I had been in a world of dizzy illusion, and that in historical matters I am altogether incapable of distinguishing truth from fable and falsehood."
But this would undermine his whole confidence in historic fact, and thereby shatter the foundation of his religion. For it is on historic facts that Christianity itself reposes. Prior to the historic problem of the Papacy is the historic problem of the Apostolic times. "I must first be convinced that the principal events narrated in the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles are essentially true and inviolable." And to destroy confidence in historic judgment in one case is to ruin its validity in all others.
Archbishop Scherr was succeeded in the diocese of Munich in 1878 by Von Steichele, a former pupil of Döllinger, and attached to him by feelings of the deepest veneration. Von Steichele made overtures for Dóllinger's reconciliation with the Papacy. He wrote in 1879 a delightful letter:—
"With the thankfulness of a pupil to a venerable teacher; with the respect of a disciple for the honoured bearer of the richest knowledge; with the love of an anxious Bishop for the brother who unhappily is not yet at one with him in things of highest moment."
