that the blood of the martyrs was a harvest of new proselytes to the faith. No, the war which really afflicts her, the war which makes her cry "Ecce in pace amaritudo mea amarissima," is that which springs from intellectual aberrarions in virtue of which her doctrines are despised, and there rings through the world that cry of revolt for which the rebel hosts were driven from heaven.
And rebels, indeed, they are, those who profess and spread abroad under artful forms monstrous errors on the evolution of dogma; on the return to the Gospel—the Gospel, that is to say, stripped, as they put it, of the explanations of theology, of the definitions of Councils, of the maxims of asceticism; on the emancipation of the Church, but conceived after a new fashion—an emancipation which will enable them not to revolt, so that they may not be cut off, and yet not to submit, so that they need not abandon their own convictions; and, finally, on adaptation to the times in everything—in speech, in writing, even in the preaching of a charity without faith which, while extremely tender to the unbeliever, is opening up the path to eternal ruin for all.
You see clearly, Venerable Brethren, whether
