Liberal Catholics trembled for the consequences to Church and State of Jesuit Court confessors and far-aiming but short-seeing plans. They knew that the devout Jesuit calls upon all to regard the Papal government as the model for the whole world; and that if statesmen and jurists could be replaced by Jesuits at the various Courts, a combination of plan and an unity of action might be secured everywhere for a great movement to establish the dominion of Christ in a higher degree than the Thirty Years' War did in Austria and Bohemia.
There is a point illustrated in this pamphlet which seems to enter into the English head more slowly than any other. We mean the conscientious view of a true Ultramontane as to what constitutes religious liberty, or violates it. Englishmen sometimes not only transfer their own views on this subject to Ultramontanes, but betray the feeling that they are generous in doing so. It is never generous, or even just, to ascribe views to a man which he religiously condemns. If the Englishman will clearly set before his mind the first postulate of the Ultramontane, that God has appointed a vicar upon earth, to whom He has committed all power, surely he will see that religious liberty must principally consist in the freedom of that vicar to do all which he conceives it to be in his province to do, and in the freedom of those who receive his commands to carry them out, exactly according to his intentions. If any king or nation limits his freedom to act and command, "the Pope becomes the one really bound." The Englishman may say that, on this principle, no guarantee is left for any liberty but that of the Pontiff, or of those who represent authority derived from him. But that is precisely what the Ultramontane does not believe.
On the contrary, he holds that the highest guarantee for all legitimate liberty lies in the complete freedom of the Pontiff. No liberty can be legitimate that consists in exemption, or assumed exemption, from divine authority. And further, the authority of the Vicar of God, being exercised under unfailing guidance, is not liable to commit violations of any right.
We thus see begun the movement for the restoration of ideas, as preparatory to the restoration of facts. Ranke has traced the course of the "ecclesiastical restoration," which was rendered necessary by the damage inflicted on Rome by the Reformation, without being careful to mark the principles or to track the processes by which "restoration" was effected in Bohemia, Austria, Spain, Italy, and France. That restoration, however, had been real and momentous. A second restoration had taken place after the wreck of the French Revolution, when the Papacy had been smitten by its own sons. It was the pride of the clergy to cite the fact that the rulers of England and Prussia had co-operated in that restoration, as proof that the Papal throne was even in Protestant eyes the central point of order. Now a third restoration was to be effected--one which would do all that had been left undone by the other two. The Pope's throne was not only to be reared up again in Rome, but was to be gradually elevated to a spiritual supremacy equal to the highest claimed in former Bulls, and to a temporal supremacy as complete as when Hildebrand triumphed at Canossa.