150 I. 8 TO BISHOP SPALIDING.



reverend sir, do you deny it  Do you, who have
solemnly sworn that all " heretics, echismatics, and
rebels against our Lord, the Pope, I will persecute
and attack"-do you hold an opinion which
"brands you as a heretic  " Strange, indeed, is it,
that you could, in the midst of an intelligent
community, say that the temporal power of the
Pope was not a doctrine of your Church; and that
his power was entirely spiritual. Surely, in the
language of Brownson, already quoted, it was an
"invention to escape the odium" which attaches
to such a ruinous and arrogant assumption of
Romanism.   From that Coryphoeus of Romanist
editors in America-endorsed, let it be remem-
bered, by the bishops-the following shows a
boldness, which a year ago seemed dauntless, and
which characterized the whole Catholic press and
hierarchy; though one short year has caused a
marvellous change to pass over the spirit of their
dreams.
  "There is," says the fearless Brownson, " in our
judgment, but one valid defence of the popes, in
their exercise of temporal authority in the middle
ages over sovereigns; and that is, that they ossess
it by divine right, or that the Pope holss that
authority by virtue of his commission from Jesus
Christ, as the successor of Peter, the prince of the
apostles, and visible head of the Church. Any
defence of them on a lower ground must, in our
judgment, fail to meet the real points in the case,
and is rather an evasion than a lair, honest, direct,
and satisfactory reply. To defend their power as
an extraordinary power, or as an accident in Church
history, growing out of the peculiar circumstances,



150