urpose of his treatise is to prevent the nailing of the Catholic
colours to the stake. The spirit is that of the early lectures, in which
he said: "Diese Schutzgewalt der Kirche ist rein geistlich. Sie kann
also auch einen solchen oeffentlichen hartnaeckigen und sonst unheilbaren
Gegner der Kirche nur seiner rein geistlichen kirchlichen Rechte
berauben." Compared with the sweeping vehemence of the Frenchmen who
preceded, the restrained moderation of language, the abstinence from the
use of general terms, leaves us in doubt how far the condemnation
extended, and whether he did more, in fact, than deplore a deviation
from the doctrine of the first centuries. "Kurz darauf trat ein
Umschwung ein, den man wohl einen Abfall von der alten Lehre nennen
darf, und der sich ausnimmt, als ob die Kaiser die Lehrmeister der
Bischoefe geworden seien." He never entirely separated himself in
principle from the promoters, the agents, the apologists. He did not
believe, with Hefele, that the spirit survives, that there are men, not
content with eternal flames, who are ready to light up new Smithfields.
Many of the defenders were his intimate friends. The most conspicuous
was the only colleague who addressed him with the familiar German _Du_.
Speaking of two or three men, of whom one, Martens, had specially
attacked the false liberalism which sees no good in the Inquisition, he
wrote: "Sie werden sich noch erinnern ... wie hoch ich solche Maenner
stelle." He differed from them widely, but he differed academically; and
this was not the polish or precaution of a man who knows that to assail
character is to degrade and to betray one's cause. The change in his own
opinions was always before him. Although convinced that he had been
wrong in many of the ideas and facts with which he started, he was also
satisfied that he had been as sincere and true to his lights in 1835 as
in 1865. There was no secret about the Inquisition, and its observances
were published and republished in fifty books; but in his early days he
had not read them, and there was not a German, from Basel to
Koenigsberg, who could have faced a _viva voce_ in the _Directorium_ or
the _Arsenale_, or who had ever read Percin or Paramo. If Lacordaire
disconnected St. Dominic from the practice of persecution, Doellinger had
done the same thing before him.

Weit entfernt, wie man ihm wohl vorgeworfen hat, sich dabei Gewalt
und Verfolgung zu erlauben, oder gar der Stifter der Inqu