have either separated altogether, like Prussia and England, from the fold: or, like France and Belgium, having lost their internal unity of faith, they have separated their public laws from the unity of the Church. It is evident that at this moment there is hardly a government on earth which acknowledges the Catholic Church to be its guide. Governments, the public law of States, and international law, have all departed, some more and some less, from the laws of the Church. Nations, as political societies, are no longer Catholic. But the masses of the people in many countries, and a large proportion in others, remain firmly and vividly Catholic. Gallicanism, Josephism, Anglicanism, were devices of government, and diseases of the ruling classes. The people never shared them, never understood them; would have rejected them if they had; and do reject them as soon as they come to see that the choice lies between a State religion and the faith of Christendom, between a royal supremacy and the authority of the Vicar of Christ. To this clearer understanding a General Council will contribute. The supreme spiritual independence of the Church, convened by its head, without dependence on any civil power, freely legislating for the whole Catholic unity, must appeal to every pure instinct of Christians.
The withdrawal of Christian nations, or of their public laws, from the unity of the faith, has produced in past times prolonged conflicts between the supreme spiritual and civil powers. In England, to pass over all other countries, the penal laws in matters
