infidelity to the exuberant mercies of God in nature and in grace, may receive its heaviest scourge. It may be delivered over to its own will, and be deprived for a time of the presence which makes it the first of Christian nations. On all these contingencies the mind of the Pontiff meditates. Calmly and surely he will bide his time, in supernatural confidence that no power of man can bind him when the hour of liberation comes. Peter was bound with chains in Jerusalem, and again in Rome, and men have striven for eighteen hundred years to bind his successors. Persecutors in Rome, emperors in Constantinople, heretics in high places, Lombard kings, Counts of the Marches, Norrnan dukes, Roman factions, French monarchs, Infidel republics, Imperial conquerors, Gallican assemblies, secret societies, diplomacy without faith,—all in succession have thought to bind the hands of Peter, and in him to bind the Church of God. It is an old tale. When men least look for it; when all seems surest for their policy, on a sudden, without warning, and as by the touch of unseen might, the fetters fall off from the sacred hands. And in Peter the Church goes forth free and sovereign.
Miris modis repente liber, ferrea,
Christo jubente, vincla Petrus exuit.
Ovilis ille Pastor, et Rector gregis,
Vitæ recludit pascua et fontes sacros,
Ovesque servat creditas, arcet lupos.
Peter reigns still, Chief Shepherd of the one fold, opening the pastures of life and the sacred fountains,
