When Peter and John were brought into court and “charged not to speak at all, nor teach in the name of Jesus,” they should have submitted at once, upon the theory that the state has the right to exact supreme and undivided allegiance; but they appealed to their divine commission, just as the bishops of Germany do to-day, and answered, “We cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard.”[42]
And in the council at Jerusalem, “an ecclesiastical corporation” surely, the apostles say: “For it hath seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to us, to lay no further burden upon you than these necessary things”;[43] plainly indicating and using their right to impose commands and exact obedience. But enough of this. The persecutors of the church to-day are not at all concerned about the teachings of the New Testament. The attempt, however, to make it appear that only Catholics protest against the doctrine of absolute and undivided allegiance to the state is wholly unjustifiable. There is no Protestant sect in England or the United States which would submit to the intervention of the government in its spiritual life and internal discipline. Would the Methodists, or the Baptists, or the Presbyterians permit the state to decide what kind of education their ministers are to receive, or to determine whether they are capable of properly discharging their spiritual duties, or to keep in office by force those whom the church had cast off?
They would go out to pray on the hillside and by the river banks rather than submit to such tyranny.
Is not the right of revolution, which in our day, especially outside of the Catholic Church, is held to be divine, based upon the principle of divided allegiance? Practically it is impossible to distinguish between loyalty to the government and loyalty to the state; and no man in this age thinks of questioning the right of rebellion against a tyrannical government. This divided allegiance marks the radical difference between Christian and pagan civilization. Before Christ there was no divided allegiance, because the individual was absorbed by the state, and nothing could have wrested mankind from this bondage but a great spiritual organization such as the Catholic Church; and this, we believe, is generally admitted by our adversaries. They fail to perceive, however, that there is no other institution than the Catholic Church which has the power to prevent the state from again absorbing the individual and destroying all civil and political liberty. If the church could be broken up into national establishments, and the entire control of education handed over to the state, the bringing all men to the servile temper which characterizes the Russians and Protestant Prussians would be only a question of time. Many will be inclined to hold that the general freedom, and even license, of thought of our time would be a sufficient protection against any such danger.
A little reflection, however, will suffice to dispel this illusion. No number of individuals, unless they are organized, can successfully oppose tyranny; and mere speculations or opinions as to the abstract
right of resistance can not stop the march of the state toward absolutism. The most despotic states have often encouraged the most unbounded freedom of thought, and we need not go beyond Prussia for an example. In no country in the world has there been more of what is called free-thinking, nor has any government been more tolerant of wild theories and extravagant speculations; and yet the free-thinkers and illuminati have done nothing to promote the growth of free institutions or to encourage civil or religious liberty. They are without unity or organization or programme. Many of them to-day are the strongest supporters of Bismarckian despotism. Even in 1848 they succeeded only in getting up a mob and evaporating in wild talk.
The divine right of resistance to tyranny would have no sanction or efficacy if it were not kept living in the hearts of men by supernatural religion.
This is thoroughly understood by the advocates of absolutism, who do not trouble themselves about doctrines of any kind, except when they are upheld by organizations, and for this reason all their efforts are directed to the destruction of the organic unity of the church. Had Prince Bismarck succeeded in his attempt to get the Catholic congregations which have been deprived of their priests to elect pastors for themselves, there would have been but another step to open schism, which would have inevitably resulted in favor of Old Catholicism. But, as we have seen, out of more than a hundred parishes, not one has lent itself to the iniquitous designs of the enemies of the church.
Another striking example of the perfect unanimity of thought and action which in Prussia exists between
priests and people was given last year when the so-called State-Catholics tried to get up a protest against the encyclical letter of the Pope, in which he declared that the May Laws were not binding upon the consciences of Catholics. All the liberal papers of Germany were loud in praise of this project, which presented the fairest opportunity to Catholic government officials to curry favor by showing their acceptance of the Falck laws; and yet, in spite of every effort that was made, only about a thousand signatures were obtained, most of which were found outside of the eight millions of Prussian Catholics.