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austed. It keeps alive under the appearances by which it is concealed. The inexhaustible volcano is at work amongst us, not only since 1848, but for three hundred years. The abjuration of law, and even of all principle of right, is only the form or expression; the essence of our malady is the denial of God and His Church. The revolution is apostacy, the disunion of the nation is schism, its anarchy Atheism. Whoever, like myself, has witnessed the public negotiations of Germany, knows full well that the political struggle was, for a long time, and particularly for the last three years, a contest between the religious confessions. Such evolutions of evil possess a certain life, although it be only that which leads to dissolution. They spring one from another, and the new growth is always an improvement on that by which it was preceded. I say it with sorrow. The strife of political parties comes at last to be civil war, which, in its turn, becomes a religious war, and such war soon grows to a war of unbelief against Faith, of antichrist against Christ. The end is not uncertain. Christ will be victorious; for it is appointed that the power of hell shall not prevail." In such a state of things the first duty of German Catholics is that they be united. It is necessary that the German church should remain in intimate union with the Holy Apostolic See, relinquishing all pretension to be a separate National Church. The aspiration of our author, so warmly expressed in 1850, that the German Episcopate should, in mind and action, be one body in the nation, acting and suffering together, appears, in these later days, to have been realized. It was also his firm conviction that it behooved them to labor to obtain complete liberty of action for the church, particularly in forming an exemplary clergy, both in the lesser and greater seminaries, as well as in those higher institutions, the German universities. Neither should the laity fail in the fulfilment of all Christian and charitable duties. (M25) It is well known that, in ancient times, no countries in the world were more Catholic than Spain and and Portugal. The great wealth and power and glory to which they attained was, one would say, a mark of Heaven's approbation. Wealth, however, is a dangerous possession. In the countries referred to it induced corruption and degeneracy. Principles of anarchy came to be disseminated, devolution on revolution followed. The authority of the
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