Church and State. Although condemned by Rome at the instance of the French Bishops, and although his distinguished followers left him to stand alone in his resistance, yet other errors, milder but dangerous, sprang up as remnants of his teaching at a later period. In reaction against these errors there arose another class of unsound doctrines that touched upon the relations of reason with faith, whilst there was another class to contend against in which was advocated either Rationalism, or some sort of Pantheism.
Not only had the Popes of recent times to strive against these various errors infecting even members of the Church, but they had likewise to contend against a number of political assaults upon the rights and immunities of the Church that for many ages she had held in undisputed possession. From the time that Napoleon I. had foisted his Organic Articles into the Concordat concluded between him and the Pope, there had been successive violations of conventions with the Holy See on the part of various governments, and those of the most unjustifiable character. Civil marriages were forced upon Catholic populations; ungodly systems of education were forced upon them against their will; Bishops were imprisoned for maintaining the principles of their religion and the rights of their sees; the Catholics of Russia and of the Polish kingdom were ruthlessly dealt with, especially under the Emperor Nicholas, their Bishops exiled to Siberia, and everything that the stiff politico-religious bigotry of the Greek schism could devise, was put in force to undermine and destroy the Catholic faith in those regions.
The ecclesiastical revenues of Spain were seized by
