Acton's views, was destined to pass away. It was no more than a temporary, if protracted, disease from which the Church must at length recover. Meanwhile, therefore, he held to his post, accepting the present discomfiture in the hope of better days; waiting until this tyranny be overpast. He had no thought of departure. The Roman Communion was the Church of his birth and of his devotional affinities. He spoke of it reverentially as "the Church whose communion is dearer to me than life."[1] He would never have left it of his own accord. But, while wholly identified with the ancient Catholic conceptions, he absolutely repudiated the principles of the Ultramontane. By what process he retained his place while Döllinger was exiled seems not altogether clear. Acton felt acutely the possibility that, like Döllinger, he also might be cast out.
Whether wisdom or prudence or diplomacy refrained from him and let him alone, there at any rate he lived and died. But the legitimacy or consistency of his position was the theme of a fierce and bitter controversy in the Roman journals after he was dead.
So the great struggle in the Roman Communion between the episcopal and the papal conceptions of Authority, the collective and the individual, came to an end. Every Bishop of the minority submitted. This is a magnificent tribute to the power of Rome. It held its defeated Episcopate in unbroken unity. Only the old Catholic movement created an independent community. But when the motives are considered which induced the minority to yield, the strongest principle appears to be the maintenance of external unity. The abler minds resisted, after the Decree
- ↑ Letter to the Times.
