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but them: that all we would exact of them is their conscientious obedience with us to the laws of visible unity under Christ, our Head.
Still less is aid from the public revenue to be desired, on the other ground I have referred to; I mean the condition of the Church itself. It has been our habit too long to look for help abroad when we ought to find it at home. It is strange and sad to see, with what unconsciousness of anything amiss, rich people and wealthy parishes, when they have a new church to build, or an old one to restore, or a school to form, or some such local, and almost personal duty to fulfil, begin by asking how much they can obtain from this or the other society, and by sending far and near for aids to relieve them of their own obligations. In like manner, some would make the Church to lean upon the State; forgetting that this was not the way in which our parish churches were raised and endowed. The true and pure voluntary principle, of which some that know so little clamour so much, is to be found in the self-extension of the Catholic Church. The churches and glebes of our 10,000 parishes are the fruits and the witnesses of the law of free-will oblations; and it is to this principle we must appeal again. If it lie dormant, it can be awakened; if it be extinct, no legislative church-extension will do much for us.
Now, it is precisely because we are beginning to
