old monarchies; and, though the Church could not die, he would not
undertake to say that she would revive in her old forms.[352] The Pope,
he said, had so zealously embraced the cause of antichristian despotism
as to sacrifice to it the religion of which he was the chief. He no
longer felt it possible to distinguish what was immutable in the
external organisation of the Church. He admitted the personal
fallibility of the Pope, and declared that, though it was impossible,
without Rome, to defend Catholicism successfully, yet nothing could be
hoped for from her, and that she seemed to have condemned Catholicism to
die.[353] The Pope, he soon afterwards said, was in league with the
kings in opposition to the eternal truths of religion, the hierarchy was
out of court, and a transformation like that from which the Church and
Papacy had sprung was about to bring them both to an end, after eighteen
centuries, in Gregory XVI.[354] Before the following year was over he
had ceased to be in communion with the Catholic Church.

The fall of Lamennais, however impressive as a warning, is of no great
historical importance; for he carried no one with him, and his favourite
disciples became the ablest defenders of Catholicism in France. But it
exemplifies one of the natural consequences of dissociating secular from
religious truth, and denying that they hold in solution all the elements
necessary for their reconciliation and union. In more recent times, the
same error has led, by a contrary path, to still more lamentable
results, and scepticism on the possibility of harmonising reason and
faith has once more driven a philosopher into heresy. Between the fall
of Lamennais and the conflict with Frohschammer many metaphysical
writers among the Catholic clergy had incurred the censures of Rome. It
is enough to cite Bautain in France, Rosmini in Italy, and Guenther in
Austria. But in these cases no scandal ensued, and the decrees were
received with prompt and hearty submission. In the cases of Lamennais
and Frohschammer no speculative question was originally at issue, but
only the question of authority. A comparison between their theories will
explain the similarity in the courses of the two men, and at the same
time will account for the contrast between the isolation of Lamennais
and the influence of Frohschammer, though the one was the most eloquent
writer in France, and the head of a great school, and the other, before
the late controver