To these military consolations were added such as a crown and a nation once great could now bestow. Queen Isabella strongly recommended from the throne, and her Cortes almost unanimously voted, that the forces of the nation, acting in alliance with the Emperor of the French, should be ready to defend the Holy See.[126] What was more important, the King of Prussia, in reply to Ledochowsky, spoke clearly in support of the temporal power. It was also told with satisfaction how, at banquets, both at Malines and Namur, the health of the Pope was drunk before that of the King of Belgium, and how pleasantly the Nuncio gave the health of the local and subordinate sovereign after that of his master, as the Lord Paramount, had received its meed.[127]
It is not easy for us, whose faith has always rested on the fixed standard of God's Word, to enter into all the feelings of suspense which are to be read between the lines of a lecture by Professor Menzel, then of Braunsberg, now of Bonn, printed for private circulation among his former pupils.[128] He is teaching them the doctrine of _Church_ infallibility, but not, as he had hitherto done, in the twofold confidence of persuasion and personal security. Persuasion abides, reinforced by fresh study and animated by assault. But security is gone. The consciousness that he may never more be allowed to teach this doctrine weighs upon all he utters. Before another session, should his own faith not change, that of his chair probably will. The Church which he had served, as permitting the membership of those who denied the infallibility of the Pope, had been catholic enough for him. But now, after pausing since the Reformation, she had actively resumed the process of narrowing the terms of membership by dogmatizing new shibboleths. One had been already added in his own day. Another now hung overhead, still more momentous, because it not only altered the doctrine of the Church, but altered the standard of doctrine, and was moreover self-propagating--a seed bearing fruit after its kind.
"This complete subversion of the old Catholic principle, _everywhere, always, and by all_," cries the poor Professor, "has found its most doughty champions in the Jesuits of the _Civiltá Cattolica_, with their branch at _Maria Laach_, and in the Archbishops of Malines and Westminster, Deschamps and Manning."[129] In the struggling argument of the Teacher of this year, we cannot help hearing, by anticipation, the sighs of the excommunicated of next year; excommunicated for holding fast what he had always taught, with the sanction of the Church, and from one of her chairs! And as the iron enters into his soul, he evidently feels it hard that an English hand should be one of the foremost in driving it home.