that, on the opposite side, the men are often better than the system
to which they are, or deem themselves, attached; and that, on the
contrary, in the Church the individuals are, on the average, inferior
in theory and in practice to the system under which they live....

The union of the two religions, which would be socially and
politically the salvation of Germany and of Europe, is not possible
at present; first because the greater, more active, and more
influential portion of the German Protestants do not desire it, for
political or religious reasons, in any form or under any practicable
conditions. It is impossible, secondly, because negotiations
concerning the mode and the conditions of union can no longer be
carried on. For this, plenipotentiaries on both sides are required;
and these only the Catholic Church is able to appoint, by virtue of
her ecclesiastical organisation, not the Protestants....

Nevertheless, theologically, Protestants and Catholics have come
nearer each other; for those capital doctrines, those articles with
which the Church was to stand or fall, for the sake of which the
Reformers declared separation from the Catholic Church to be
necessary, are now confuted and given up by Protestant theology, or
are retained only nominally, whilst other notions are connected with
the words.... Protestant theology is at the present day less hostile,
so to speak, than the theologians. For whilst theology has levelled
the strongest bulwarks and doctrinal barriers which the Reformation
had set up to confirm the separation, the divines, instead of viewing
favourably the consequent facilities for union, often labour, on the
contrary, to conceal the fact, or to provide new points of
difference. Many of them probably agree with Stahl of Berlin, who
said, shortly before his death, "Far from supposing that the breach
of the sixteenth century can be healed, we ought, if it had not
already occurred, to make it now." This, however, will not continue;
and a future generation, perhaps that which is even now growing up,
will rather adopt the recent declaration of Heinrich Leo, "In the
Roman Catholic Church a process of purification has taken place since
Luther's day; and if the Church had been in the days of Luther what
the Roman Catholic Church in Germany actually is at present, it would
never have occurred to him to