lpless women to the brutality of men who were tired of the
restraints of morality--no, that the Pope could never permit. If the
Court, if the palace of the domestic hearth refused a shelter, Rome was
always open, a refuge to injured and downtrodden innocence.

"One must obey God more than man." This has ever been the language of
the Popes, whenever there was question of defending the laws of God
against the powers of the earth; and in thus defending the laws of God,
they protected against outrage the personal dignity, the moral liberty
and the intellectual freedom of man. "Because there was a Pope," says a
Protestant historian, "there could not any longer be a Tiberius in
Europe, and the direction of the religious and spiritual welfare of man
was withdrawn from the hands of royalty." Because there were Popes, the
will of Caesar could not any longer be substituted for law; for the Popes
made the Gospel the law-book of the nations. Now the Gospel teaches that
all power comes from God; that from God the sovereign derives his power,
to rule in justice and equity for the welfare of his subjects, and that
the subjects are bound to obey their rules, for conscience sake. Hence,
adopting the great principal of action, the Popes have at all times
condemned the spirit of rebellion, and have anathematized those
principles, those factions, those organizations whose aim is, and has
always been, to overturn lawful authority and to substitute anarchy in
the place of the harmony of legitimate government. In conformity with
this rule of action the Popes Clement XII., Benedict XIV., Pius VII.,
Leo XII., Gregory XVI., and Pius IX. have condemned secret societies,
whose object is the overthrow of civil and religious government. But at
the same time that the Popes required from subjects obedience to their
lawful governments, they have ever defended subjects against the abuse
of power, or against the tyranny of unjust rulers. In Pagan times it had
the appearance as if the people existed for the sovereign, and not the
sovereign for the people; but in the days and in the countries where the
spiritual supremacy of the Pope was acknowledged by rulers, the Pagan
idea had necessarily to disappear, for the Popes gave the princes to
understand that they existed for the people, and not the people for
them.

Viewed in this light, what a magnificent spectacle does the Catholic
Church present to our admiration, and how does the honest heart of
downtrodd