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is acquainted with our tenets. Look over the history of the world since the establishment of Christianity, and where have there been republics? Have Have the objectors read the history of Italy? A soil fertile in republics, and most devoted to our religion! What was the religion of William Tell? He was a Roman Catholic. Look not only to the Swiss republics, but take San Marino-this little State, during centuries, the most splendid specimen of the purest democracy, and this democracy protected by our Popes during these centuries. Men who make the assertions to which I have alluded cannot have read history. Amongst ourselves, what is the religion of the venerable Charles Carroll of Carrollton? Men who make these assertions cannot have read our Declaration of Independence. What was the religion of the good, the estimable, the beloved Doctor Carroll, our first Catholic Archbishop of Baltimore, the founder of our hierarchy, the friend of Washington, the associate of Franklin? Have those men been degraded in our Church because they aided in your struggle for the assertion of your rights, for the establishment of our glorious and our happy republic? No-they are the jewels which we prize, the ornaments of our Church, the patriots of our country. They and others, whom we count as our members, and esteem for their virtues, have been the intimate and faithful associates of many of our best patriots who have passed from our transitory scene, and of some who yet view in consolation our prosperity. What is the religion of Simon Bolivar? What the religion of the whole population of our republican sisters upon the southern continent? We are always assailed by speculation. We always answer by facts. Have been found traitors in your councils, unfaithful to your trust, cowards in your fields, or in correspondence with your enemies? Yet we have been consulted for our prudence, confided in for our fidelity, enriched your soil with our blood, filled your decks with our energy; and though some of us might have wept at leaving the land of our ancestors because of the injus

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tice of its rulers, we told our brothers who assailed you in the day of battle that we knew them not, and we adhered to those who gave to us a place of refuge and impartial protection. Shall we then be told that our religion is not the religion calculated for republics, though it will be found that the vast majority of republican States and of republican patriots have been, and even now are, Roman Catholic? It is true, ours is also the religion of a large portion of empires, and of kingdoms, and of principalities. The fact is so far an obvious reason, because it is the religion of the great bulk of the civilized world. Our tenets do not prescribe any form of government which the people may properly and regularly establish. No revelation upon which my eye has fallen, or which ever reached my ear, has taught me that the Almighty God commanded us to be governed by kings, or by emperors, or by princes, or to associate in republics. Upon this God has left us free to make our own selection. The decision upon the question of expediency as to the form of government for temporal or civil concerns, is one to be settled by society, and not by the Church. We therefore bind no nation or people to any special form; the form which they may adopt lies not with us, but with themselves. What suits the

genius and circumstances of one people might be totally unfit for another; hence, no special form of human government for civil concerns has been generally established by divine authority. But the God of order who commands men to dwell together in peace, has armed the government which has been properly established by the principles of society, with power for the execution of the functions which are given by society to its administration. Whilst it continues, within its due bounds, to discharge properly its constitutional obligations, it is the duty of each good member of society to concur in its support. He who would resist its proper authority, would in this case resist the ordinance of the God of peace and of order, and, as the Apostle says, would purchase damnation for himself. This

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principle applies alike to all forms of government prop established and properly administered-to republics and kingdoms alike. It is then a mistake to imagine that Church has more congeniality to one species of civil ernment than to another; it has been fitted by its Aut who saw the fluctuating state of civil rule, to exist indep ently of any, and to be suited to all. Its own pec forms for its internal regulation may and do continu be adhered to under every form of temporal rule.

But is it not a tenet of our Church, that we must secute all those who differ from us? Has not our reli been propagated by the firebrand and by the sword? not the Inquisition one of its component parts? Are our boasted South American republics persecutors still? in the code of our infallible Church have we not canon persecution which we are conscientiously bound to obey to enforce? Did not the great Lateran Council, in command all princes to exterminate all heretics? If, we are not persecutors in fact, it is because we want power, for it is plain that we do not want the dispos

I would humbly submit, that not one of these ques could be truly answered in the affirmative. The spin religion is that of peace and of mercy, not that of per tion; yet men of every creed have persecuted their bre under the pretext of religion. The great Founder of Church, at a very early period, checked this spirit in Apostles. When some cities would not receive His trine, they asked why He did not call down fire heaven to destroy them; but His calm and dignified re was, that they knew not by what spirit they were led was the spirit of human passion assuming the gar heavenly zeal. I know of no power given by God to man, or to any body of men, in the Christian disp tion, to inflict any penalty of a temporal description their fellow-men for mere religious error. If such shall cause the violation of peace, or shall interfere

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lished to prevent such disorders, have their own inherent right, but not a religious commission, to interfere merely for that prevention. Each individual is responsible to God for his conduct in this regard; to Him, and to Him only, we stand or fall. He commissioned the Church to teach His doctrine-but He did not commission her to persecute those who would not receive it. He who beholds the evidence of truth and will not follow it, is inexcusable; he who will not use his best exertions to obtain that evidence, is inexcusable; he who having used his best exertions for that purpose, and having with the best intentions made a mistake in coming to his conclusion, is not a criminal because of that mistake. God alone, the searcher of our hearts, can clearly see the full accountability of each individual upon this this head-because each each person must be accountable according to his opportunities. I feel that many and serious mistakes are made by my friends in this country. I know who are mistaken, but far be it from me to say that all who err are criminal. I have frequently asked myself whether, if I had had only the same opportunities of knowing the doctrine of my Church and its evidences that many of them have had, I would be what I now am. Indeed, it would be very extraordinary if I was. They labor under those mistakes, not through their own fault in several instances; and if the Roman Catholic Church were, in her doctrines and her practices, what they have been taught she is, I would not be a Roman Catholic. They imagine her to be what she is not; and when they oppose what they believe her to be, it is not to her their opposition is really given. To God, and to Him alone, belongs it ultimately to discriminate between those who are criminal and those who are innocent in their error; and I look in vain through every record, in vain I listen to every testimony of my doctrine to discover any command to persecute, any power to inflict fine, or disanalification, or bodily chastisement upon those who are in

Catholic Church; I do not know that it is the doctrine of any Church calling itself Christian; but, unfortunately, I know it has been practiced by some Roman Catholics, and it has been practiced in every Church which accused her of having had recourse thereto. I would then say it was taught by no Church; it has been practiced in all. One great temptation to its exercise is the union of any Church with the State; and religion has more frequently been but a pretext with statesmen for a political purpose, than the cause of persecution for zeal on its own behalf.

Christ gave to His Apostles no commission to use the sword or the brand, and they went forth in the simplicity of their testimony, and the evidence of their miracles, and the power of their evidence, to convert the world. They gave freely their own blood to be shed for the sake of religion, but they shed not the blood of their opponents. Their associates and their successors followed their example, and were successful by that imitation. And the historian who represents the chastisements of infidel barbarians, by Christian princes, for the protection of their own people, and the security of their own property, misleads the reader whom he would fain persuade, that it was done for the purposes of religion at the instigation of those who laid down their own lives in the conversion of those barbarians. It is true, indeed, that we cannot call error truth, nor style truth error; it is true that we say there must continue to be an essential distinction between them; it is true that we cannot belie our consciences, nor bear false witness to our neighbors, by telling them that we believe they adhere to the doctrines of Christ, when they contradict what we receive as those doctrines; we cannot believe two contradictory propositions to be at the same time true. But such a declaration on our part does not involve as its consequence that we believe they ought to be persecuted. The Inquisition is a civil tribunal of some States, not a portion of our religion.

We now come to examine what are called the persecuting

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