Untitled - Rore Sanctifica

Corporate Re-union. 239
of the sanctitv of treaties, and of international
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obligation, which manifestly spring from the
weakening of the religious Principle,
as the
weakening of that has itself sprung from the
anarchy of religious division ? Writers, like
those in the Dublin Review or like the furious
zealots of The Monde, complain of religious
division, and would cure it by lighting once more
the fires of the Inquisition, but they forget that
in the very nature of things nothing but argument
can exterminate error : they would deal with
tf
error, as if it were a physical rather than
an intellectual evil, and as if force could con
vince the human mind : they fall into the old
/
blunder of Pagan legislation in defiance of all
the lessons of history, and they forget all the
experience to be derived from the facts and
precedents everywhere exhibited during the
last three centuries. We, who advocate Cor
porate and dogmatic Re-union, are assuredly the
very last people to advocate political and religious
indifference, the very last to deprecate or decry
Christian legislation, or to assert the impious
maxim that statesmen owe no responsibility
to
the Law of GOD, and that the State should be
indifferent to Truth, whether natural or revealed.
But we do contend that there is but one
effectual way for the State to uphold Divine
Truth, and that is not by the exercise of penalties,
but by giving the freest development to the