NOTE.
I avail myself of the call for another issue of this Pastoral, to add a few notes and some appendices in further elucidation of what has been already said. The appendices chiefly regard three points: (1) The right and occasionally the duty of the clergy to take part in certain political questions; (2) The answer given by Dr. von Döllinger to those who, as he says, "especially in Germany and England, brand the Papal power as being boundless, as being absolutist, as one which recognizes no law capable of controlling it." This answer must derive a special value, not only from the fact that it is directed to Englishmen, but from its occurring in one of the last works published by the Professor. We must regard it as the mature and deliberate judgment of an author who had been thirty-five years before the world, and whose whole life had been engaged in the study of Church and Papal history. It may be supposed that Mr. Gladstone will be ready to admit that we shall find in Professor v. Döllinger, if anywhere, what he calls "the truth and authority of history and the inestimable value of the historic spirit" (p. 14).
Lastly (3), there is the subject of Mariolatry." Mr. Gladstone has characterized the Definition of the Immaculate Conception as "a violent breach with history," a "deadly blow," "an act of violence," a hurrying on, and a precipitating of a doctrine of "Mariolatry." To enter upon this subject at any length would be to exceed my limits. But I will call attention to a work just issued from the press, entitled "Our Lady's Dowry," by the Rev. T. E. Bridgett, C.SS.R. (Burns & Oates). It is not a work of controversy, but of historical research into the belief, love, and practices of Englishmen over a thousand years ago down to the sixteenth century, in regard to our Blessed Lady. Though not intended as such, it is an unanswerable refutation of Mr. Gladstone's charge of "a violent breach
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