in all the
doctrines of the Church, they have obtained the free permission of their
parents or guardians.

The Church is, indeed, intolerant in this sense, that she can never
confound truth with error; nor can she admit that any man is
conscientiously free to reject the truth when its claims are convincingly
brought home to the mind. Many Protestants seem to be very much disturbed
by some such argument as this: Catholics are very ready now to proclaim
freedom of conscience, because they are in the minority. When they once
succeed in getting the upper hand in numbers and power they will destroy
this freedom, because their faith teaches them to tolerate no doctrine
other than the Catholic. It is, then, a matter of absolute necessity for
us that they should never be allowed to get this advantage.

Now, in all this, there is a great mistake, which comes from not knowing
the Catholic doctrine in its fulness. I shall not lay it down myself, lest
it seem to have been gotten up for the occasion. I shall quote the great
theologian Becanus, who taught the doctrine of the schools of Catholic
Theology at the time when the struggle was hottest between Catholicity and
Protestantism. He says that religious liberty may be tolerated by a ruler
when it would do more harm to the state or to the community to repress it.
The ruler may even enter into a compact in order to secure to his subjects
this freedom in religious matters; and when once a compact is made it must
be observed absolutely in every point, just as every other lawful and
honest contract.(301) This is the true Catholic teaching on this point,
according to Becanus and all Catholic theologians. So that if Catholics
should gain the majority in a community where freedom of conscience is
already secured to all by law, their very religion obliges them to respect
the rights thus acquired by their fellow-citizens. What danger can there
be, then, for Protestants, if Catholics should be in the majority here?
Their apprehensions are the result of vain fears, which no honest mind
ought any longer to harbor.

The Church has not only respected the conscience of the people in
embracing the religion of their choice, but she has also defended their
_civil_ rights and liberties against the encroachments of temporal
sovereigns. One of the popular errors that have taken possession of some
minds in our times is that in former days the Church was leagued with
princes for the oppression of the p