cal, because they have refused to acknowledge its usurpations. It is full time such noisy misapprehensions should cease.
We proceed, then, to demonstrate that it is the Papacy itself which is guilty of schism; that after having provoked division, it has perpetuated and consolidated it by its innovations; in a word, that it has caused its divisions to pass into a state of schism.
This proved, we shall be at liberty to conclude that those who are considered by the Papacy as schismatics because of their opposition to her autocracy, are in reality the true Catholics, and that it has, in seeking to separate others from it, become itself separated from the Church.
There are those in the West who would present the Papacy as the legitimate development of the Christian idea, as Christianity arrived at its completion. The truth is, that it is the negation of the evangelical idea, of the Christian idea. Can, then, the negation of an idea be considered as its development? There will be some astonishment perhaps in seeing us enter upon such a subject with this degree of candor. We answer, that at the epoch in which we live, there is need to speak frankly without mental reserve. We do not understand circumlocution with respect to error. Indulgent, charitable toward men who are deceived, we believe that we obey a true instinct of charity in waging open war with the errors that deceive men. "To speak truth," as wrote the Patriarch Photius to Pope Nicholas, "is the greatest act of charity."
L'Abbe Guettée.
