DESIRES OF MY OFFICIAL COLLEAGUES.
In addition to this charge to Kaspar Hoffmann, Dr. Ritter had commissioned a zealous divine of the younger school,* to persuade me to retract. On the 1st and 15th of January 1843, I received letters from him, and from a narrow-minded priest in the College at Neisse, in which, under cover of the most high-flown expressions of Christian brotherly-love, I am required to become a contemptible liar. As these letters are written in ecclesiastical style, and reveal the character of Dr. Ritter—his artifices, and those of the men who permit themselves to be made his tools, I consider myself called upon to publish them: besides, the writer is no friend of mine, as the Decree of Suspension falsely intimates, but merely an acquaintance.
I had at first almost believed that the assurances of friendship contained in the letters of Schneeweiss were true, in spite of their suspicious highflying; and although I had already, in like manner, been deceived by others of my colleagues, I was almost tempted to believe in their honesty. But after the epistle of the narrow-minded priest had betrayed to me that Dr. Ritter was in the game, I was forced to despise the letter-writer as a hypocrite. Schneeweiss feigned friendship, but he could have no respect, and therefore no friendship, for me, when he recommended me to commit an act of baseness, namely, the denial of well-known facts—the shameful recall of that which I had lately asserted—and a cowardly and degrading submission to the despotism of Dr. Ritter. I suppose, also, that Schneeweiss had imagined that I was quite imbued with hierarchic views. He might in that case represent the blind and cowardly submission as an act of virtue on my part; but he could not expect that I should retract the blame I attributed to the quarrels and informings* of the candidates for the episcopate, and even my censure of the long delay on the part of the Pope—for they were injurious to the Church. Had he considered my station as a Catholic priest, as a teacher of the people, and of religion in the sense of Christ's teaching, and desired to be accounted such himself, he could not have advised me to a disgraceful retractation and denial of a truth which I had dared to avow. No; he would have encouraged me to bear unflinching testimony to the truth, and in the face of greater danger than the loss of office.
* Compare the Decree of Suspension of January 30th, 1843.
For that is true, which I have written; the quarrels and intrigues of the candidates for the bishop's mitre, I repeat it, have been proved, and they were (I myself have heard it,) the theme of scandal and censure at once to priests and laymen. It was disgrace enough to the clergy, that no one of the elder ministers dared openly avow his censure—that they loved their livings more than truth and their fair name. But Schneeweiss does not seem to have thought of these things. It may be gathered from the mixture of assertions and contradictions in his letters, that he was not quite clear of the propriety of what he required of me, at the same time that he does not seem very well to know what he would be at. However, so it also happens with many others of my colleagues. They become inconsistent in their opinions; for, being called to fight in the front rank for truth and freedom, they, on the contrary, act in opposition to them, as the conscious or unconscious slaves and servants of the hierarchy. I fancied, when I knew Schneeweiss in earlier days, that he had a more enlightened zeal, but Gibbon's words, alas! are true—"The spirit of bigotry, at once so credulous and insinuating, when it has once taken root in a noble mind, overturns by degrees the living principles of virtue and of truth."
* I have received the most precise information in regard to
them from trustworthy men, well acquainted with the
episcopal candidates.
LETTERS OF SCHNEEWEISS AND GLÕCKNER.
"My Dearly Beloved Brother,—You will be surprised to receive a letter from me, but do not let your surprise induce you to forget that it is sincere affection which prompts me to address you.
"I have just learned in Neisse that a heavy storm is gathering over you. You are said to be the author of an article in the Saxon Vaterlands-blatter, in which language is employed very unlike what one would expect from any Catholic, not to speak of a Catholic priest. It is also said, as I am assured by an otherwise trustworthy and respectable man, that you have been questioned in regard to it by the right reverend Administrator of the Bishopric, and that you have returned a very evasive, answer. If it be really so, Oh, let me entreat that you will not neglect to say at once Pater, peccavi! (Father, I have sinned!) Write immediately to the right reverend Vicar, and assure him, with a self-denial which would be highly honourable (?) to you, that you wrote in well-meant (?) precipitation. If you do not follow my brotherly counsel, you may expect, from the determined character of the right reverend Vicar, soon to be suspended (deposed), as I have also learned from respectable authority. And to what would this suspension lead! Oh, believe me, my dear brother, it would then be no longer in the power of your former friends to help you. So long as we are Catholics, Rome must always be to us the centre point of the visible Church; and so long as we wish to be Catholic Christians, and particularly priests—servants of the Catholic Church, we dare not speak and write of Rome in such a slighting manner,—I might say, with the hatred and contempt exhibited in the article, which I have also read. I assure you, that not even Protestants would take you under their protection, if you are really the author of that article. I will not speak of Catholics. In so far as I am concerned, I marvelled at the author's deficiency in historical and theological knowledge, who had subscribed himself 'A Chaplain.'