y of Catholics. The Holy See has had their
support in maintaining a view of the obligations of Catholic literature
very different from the one which has been upheld in these pages; nor
could it explicitly abandon that view without taking up a new position
in the Church. All that could be hoped for on the other side was silence
and forbearance, and for a time they have been conceded. But this is the
case no longer. The toleration has now been pointedly withdrawn; and the
adversaries of the Roman theory have been challenged with the summons to
submit.

If the opinions for which submission is claimed were new, or if the
opposition now signalised were one of which there had hitherto been any
doubt, a question might have arisen as to the limits of the authority of
the Holy See over the conscience, and the necessity or possibility of
accepting the view which it propounds. But no problem of this kind has
in fact presented itself for consideration. The differences which are
now proclaimed have all along been acknowledged to exist; and the
conductors of this _Review_ are unable to yield their assent to the
opinions put forward in the Brief.

In these circumstances there are two courses which it is impossible to
take. It would be wrong to abandon principles which have been well
considered and are sincerely held, and it would also be wrong to assail
the authority which contradicts them. The principles have not ceased to
be true, nor the authority to be legitimate, because the two are in
contradiction. To submit the intellect and conscience without examining
the reasonableness and justice of this decree, or to reject the
authority on the ground of its having been abused, would equally be a
sin, on one side against morals, on the other against faith. The
conscience cannot be relieved by casting on the administrators of
ecclesiastical discipline the whole responsibility of preserving
religious truth; nor can it be emancipated by a virtual apostasy. For
the Church is neither a despotism in which the convictions of the
faithful possess no power of expressing themselves and no means of
exercising legitimate control, nor is it an organised anarchy where the
judicial and administrative powers are destitute of that authority which
is conceded to them in civil society--the authority which commands
submission even where it cannot impose a conviction of the righteousness
of its acts.

No Catholic can contemplate without alarm the evil that