The Papacy and the Civil Power

received, or may have reached improper and unwarrantable conclusions, is altogether probable; for, unlike the supporters of the papacy, I lay no claim to infallibility, or even to exemption from ordinary frailty. This is all I claim: that I have endeavored to be candid, and to state the convictions of my mind as inoffensively as possible; being content that others shall decide for themselves how far they are right and how far wrong.

During the celebrated controversy between Dr. Breckenridge and Archbishop Hughes, some years ago, the former had occasion to make a quotation from the catechism of the Council of Trent; and not having the original before him, took it from the works of Archbishop Usher, one of the most learned and extensively known of the English divines. Making no immediate question about the correctness of the quotation, Archbishop Hughes thus, in a seemingly supercilious air, evaded the matter: "Who this Usher is," said he, "I am at a loss to conjecture. There is an author of that but he does not possess much authority with Catholics, for the reason that he happens to be a Protestant archbishop."* Illiberality of this kind is calculated rather to mislead and deceive than to discover the truth; and I have not suffered myself to be betrayed into it. I should be slow to conclude that a Roman Catholic writer is to be discredited merely on account of his religious belief, or that what a Protestant says is to be accepted as unconditionally true merely because he is a Protestant.

name;

At the risk of swelling this volume to an undesirable size, I have made extended quotations from different authors, and from the bulls, encyclicals, etc., of the popes. This is deemed preferable to briefer extracts and condensed statements, because it furnishes the means of testing the fairness and accuracy both of criticisms and arguments. When I have found an author manifestly a mere partisan on either side, I have endeavored not to be biased by his influence. Cormenin, although not a Protestant, seems to me to be too sweeping in his denunciations of many of the popes, and,

*"Hughes and Breckenridge Controversy:" Preliminary correspondence, pp. xiv., xv.,

xvi.

therefore, has excited in my mind such suspicion of his impartiality that I have adopted his personal opinions in but few instances. Some of his pictures of the general corrup tion and depravity prevailing at Rome must be too highly colored. I know of no reason, however, why he should be any more discredited than other historians upon general questions of fact.

As my inquiries have been prosecuted in the midst of active business occupations, with the assistance of only a very limited and self-acquired knowledge of classical learning, and with no access to a single authority or volume beyond my own private library, this book is not designed for the instruction of the educated classes, who have the means of making like inquiries for themselves. It is intended for the people, who, in the main, are without these means, and who are the final arbiters upon all public questions. If their attention shall be arrested by it, and they shall be excited to additional diligence in guarding the civil and religious rights guaranteed to them by the Government of the United States, it will concern me very little to know that it has invited criticism, or that I, on account of it, have incurred the animosity and anathemas of such as pay for the protection our institutions give them by Jesuitical plottings to establish a "Holy Empire" upon their ruins.

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