Gladstone, entitled 'Vaticanism', in which the awful
implications involved in the declaration of Infallibility were
laid before the British Public. How was it possible, Mr.
Gladstone asked, with all the fulminating accompaniments of his
most agitated rhetoric, to depend henceforward upon the civil
allegiance of Roman Catholics? To this question the words of
Cardinal Antonelli to the Austrian Ambassador might have seemed a
sufficient reply. 'There is a great difference,' said his
Eminence, between theory and practice. No one will ever prevent
the Church from proclaiming the great principles upon which its
Divine fabric is based; but, as regards the application of those
sacred laws, the Church, imitating the example of its Divine
Founder, is inclined to take into consideration the natural
weaknesses of mankind.' And, in any case, it was hard to see how
the system of Faith, which had enabled Pope Gregory XIII to
effect, by the hands of English Catholics, a whole series of
attempts to murder Queen Elizabeth, can have been rendered a much
more dangerous engine of disloyalty by the Definition of 1870.
But such considerations failed to reassure Mr. Gladstone; the
British Public was of a like mind; and 145,000 copies of the
pamphlet were sold within two months. Various replies appeared,
and Manning was not behindhand.
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