p to draw
the line between injuries inflicted by the tongue and injuries inflicted
by the hand? Shall we defend our persons, our property, and our lives,
and take no notice of those who impiously and deliberately would destroy
our souls by their envenomed blasphemies? Shall we allow the wells of
water which spring up to everlasting life to be poisoned by the impious
atheists and scoffers, who in every age set themselves up against Christ
and His kingdom, and are only allowed by God Almighty to live, as the
wild beasts of the desert or scorpions and serpents are allowed to live?
Let them live, but let us defend ourselves against their teeth and
fangs. Are the overseers of God's people, in a world of shame, to be
mere philosophical Gallios, indifferent to our higher interests? Is it a
Christian duty to permit an avalanche of evils to overwhelm the Church
on the plea of toleration? Shall we suffer, when we have the power to
prevent it, a pandemonium of scoffers and infidels and sentimental
casuists to run riot in the city which is intrusted to us to guard? Not
thus will we be disloyal to our trusts. Men have souls to save, and we
will come to the rescue with any weapons we can lay our hands upon. The
Church is the only hope of the world, not merely in our unsettled times,
but for all ages. And hence I, as the guardian of those spiritual
principles which lie at the root of all healthy progress in
civilization, and all religious life, will not tamely and ignobly see
those principles subverted by dangerous and infidel speculations, even
if they are attractive to cultivated but irreligious classes."

Such may have been the arguments, it is not unreasonable to
suppose, which influenced the great Leo in his undoubted
persecutions,--persecutions, we should remember, which were then
indorsed by the Catholic Church. They would be condemned in our times by
all enlightened men, but they were the only remedy known in that age
against dangerous opinions. So Leo put down the Manicheans and preserved
the unity of the faith, which was of immeasurable importance in the sea
of anarchies which at that time was submerging all the traditions of
the past.

Leo also distinguished himself by writing a treatise on the
Incarnation,--said to be the ablest which has come down to us from the
primitive Church. He was one of those men who believed in theology as a
series of divine declarations, to be cordially received whether they are
fully grasped b