Page:True and False Infallibility of Popes.pdf/369

First of all, as Catholic divines tell us, the propositions are intended to be condemned in sensu auctorem, to wit, in the sense given to them in the books or writings from which they have been picked out. This point of Catholic doctrine deserves attention. The truest and most wholesome axiom may have a poisonous meaning in the mouth of a wily foe to religion and morals. The Pope condemns it in the baneful sense which the whole tenor of the writing from which it is taken shews to have been intended by the writer, not in the healthful one in which anyone else may utter it. Thus, an English Catholic may well express his satisfaction at the fact that in England, through the non-recognition of Catholicity by the State, we enjoy a religious liberty which Anglicans and Presbyterians may well envy us; yet the same Catholic will heartily condemn and detest the fifty-fifth of the errors enumerated in the Syllabus, to wit: "The Church should be severed from the State, the State from the Church." This assertion, if spoken by a Catholic, would be harmless; in the mouth of the infidel it is simply impious. The Catholic looks on a State in which religion should be the prime mover of all political action, as a dream too bright to be realized. And viewing its realization as a thing not to be hoped for, he prefers isolation from the State to slavery and Cæsarism. But isolation of Church from State and State from Church, in the mouth of the condemned writer, meant that no State should be controlled in its policy by the laws of God or checked by His ministers in its career of unjust aggrandizement. As anyone may see, the utility of the Papal censure would be lost, were the treacherous sen-