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Catholic sentiment against the Protestants. No vilification was spared.
They were spoken of as atheists; they were declared incapable of being
honest men; their sects were pointed out as indicating that their
secession was in a state of dissolution. "The followers of Luther are
the most abandoned men in all Europe." Even the pope himself, presuming
that the whole world had forgotten all history, did not hesitate to say,
"Let the German people understand that no other Church but that of Rome
is the Church of freedom and progress."

Meantime, among the clergy of Germany a party was organized to
remonstrate against, and even resist, the papal usurpation. It protested
against "a man being placed on the throne of God," against a vice-God
of any kind, nor would it yield its scientific convictions to
ecclesiastical authority. Some did not hesitate to accuse the
pope himself of being a heretic. Against these insubordinates
excommunications began to be fulminated, and at length it was demanded
that certain professors and teachers should be removed from their
offices, and infallibilists substituted. With this demand the Prussian
Government declined to comply.

The Prussian Government had earnestly desired to remain on amicable
terms with the papacy; it had no wish to enter on a theological quarrel;
but gradually the conviction was forced upon it that the question was
not a religious but a political one--whether the power of the state
should be used against the state. A teacher in a gymnasium had been
excommunicated; the government, on being required to dismiss him,
refused. The Church authorities denounced this as an attack upon faith.
The emperor sustained his minister. The organ of the infallible party
threatened the emperor with the opposition of all good Catholics, and
told him that, in a contention with the pope, systems of government can
and must change. It was now plain to every one that the question had
become, "Who is to be master in the state, the government or the Roman
Church? It is plainly impossible for men to live under two governments,
one of which declares to be wrong what the other commands. If the
government will not submit to the Roman Church, the two are enemies." A
conflict was thus forced upon Prussia by Rome--a conflict in which the
latter, impelled by her antagonism to modern civilization, is clearly
the aggressor.

ACTION OF THE PRUSSIAN GOVERNMENT. The government, now recognizing its
antagonist