'M 
 
 iW^;. :. . 

 
 L I E) RAR.Y 
 
 OF THE 
 
 U N IVLRSITY 
 
 or ILLI NOIS
 
 BISHOP KEINKENS' 
 
 ON 
 
 CHRISTIAN UNION 
 
 AND 
 
 OLD CATHOLIC PROSPECTS, 
 
 DELIVERED IN THE CONGRESSES OF COLOGNE AND CONSTANCE. 
 
 mitf) a Preface 
 
 By bishop EEINKENS 
 
 AND 
 
 TRANSLATED AND EDITED BY THE REV. 
 
 JOHN E. B. MAYOE, M.A. 
 
 FKI.LOW OF ST. JOHK'S COLLEGE AKD PROFESSOR OF LATIN IN THE DNITERSITT OF CAMBBIDGK. 
 
 PRINTED FOR THE ANGLO-CONTINENTAL SOCIETY. 
 
 EIVINGTONS 
 Hontion, €);i;forti anö Cambrftige. 
 
 1874.
 
 ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 "When I begged of Bishop Reinkens a word of greeting for his new 
 audience, I warned him that many Englishmen eye his reform with 
 jealousy, as a political legerdemain. He might, I thought, best 
 combat the error indirectly, by shewing how each reader, without 
 forsaking the Church of his baptism, could in his place and degree 
 help to heal the wounds of the Church Catholic. 
 
 But the Bishop has not gone to school with Polonius or Loyola 
 he cannot " by indirections find directions out." His warfare is 
 more native and Herculean ; he loves to take the bull by the horns, 
 to close with falsehood and prejudice at the first onset, and bear 
 them down by sheer weight of plain dealing. The speeches here 
 printed, and indeed the entire Old Catholic literature,^ of them- 
 selves furnish an antidote to the calumnies, which malice breeds 
 and ignorance scatters broadcast, to poison men's minds against 
 the new reformation. The best witness to the singleness of the re- 
 formers' aims is however to be sought, not in their words, not even 
 in their recorded lives, but in the fascination of their presence, in the 
 Spirit which, as they believe, animates their assemblies, so that free 
 and often warm debates end in unforced accord, and an authority 
 purely moral is loyally and without a murmur obeyed ; for perfect 
 trust reigns among men who have together passed through the fires, 
 and have not been found wanting. If instead of ten Englishmen, 
 fifty or a hundred, equipped with an adequate knowledge of the con- 
 troversy, were to attend this autumn's congress, the real facts must 
 filter through our insular society, and touch many hearts far and 
 near, and so the work of reunion, instead of creeping, as now, would 
 take wings and fly onwards to its goal. 
 
 I append the Bishop's letter, omitting only the first and last para- 
 graphs. These are too personal to concern the public, except indeed 
 where " in the name of many thousands " he thanks me for endeavour- 
 
 1 A complete list of the German portion of it has been published by P. 
 Neusser at Bonn : Verzeichniss von empfehlenswertJien auf die nltkathoUsche Beweg- 
 ung bezüglichen Schriften.
 
 4 ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 ing " to spread abroad in England the right understanding of our Old 
 Catholic movement of reform." Such a certificate may entitle me 
 to a hearing on this subject, as against witnesses who have witnessed 
 nothing with ears or eyes, or as against judges who have neither 
 studied the law (i. e. in this case Church history and doctrine) nor 
 followed the evidence. 
 
 JOHN E. B. MAYOR. 
 
 St. John's College, Cambridge, 14 Jan. 1874. 
 
 , uiuc ,
 
 LETTER OF BISHOP REINKENS TO THE TRANSLATOR. 
 
 Bonn, 10 Jan. 1874. 
 I WILL not deny that I am flattered by being brongbt into a certain 
 spiritual relation witb tbe English people, wbich appears to me stiU 
 to possess those natural gifts and excellences, which of old tempted 
 Rome to enthrall and press into its service England's already free- 
 born Church. As she has produced great men in every field of 
 culture, and as a nation has already passed through periods of 
 renown, so, I think, in the future also her inherent power of produc- 
 tion and of creation will approve itself and ensure her honorable 
 position among the civilised peoples. And precisely because I 
 entertain this conviction, I trust also, that sound sense and the 
 consciousness of the connexion between religion and freedom in your 
 country will soon lead Englishmen to a general and just appreciation 
 of our Catholic movement of reform. 
 
 Our movement sprang, not from the brain of any statesman, but 
 from the Spirit of God hy means of conscience} No politician led 
 us amid the din of war, immediately before the catastrophe of Sedan, 
 to Nuremberg, where on the 25th and 26th of August 1870 we 
 sketched the first published ^ declaration against theYatican treason, 
 but singly and solely conscience, the unshaken witness which " the 
 Spirit (of God) Shnself gave to our spirit, that we are children of 
 God " (Rom. viii. 16), but not of the pope, that not service of the 
 pope and worship of rank is " the end of the (Divine) commandment, 
 (but) love out of a pure heart and good conscience and faith unfeigned''' 
 (1 Tim. i, 5). None of the speeches, which I have since delivered, 
 have been written beforehand, but they have rather proceeded from 
 the situation of the moment in each case; and I hope that you 
 will always meet in them the same Spirit. 
 
 Our religious struggle against Rome was for a long time exceed- 
 ingly irksome to the leading statesmen in Germany ; we found not 
 the smallest support or encouragement amongst the governments, and 
 
 \} See J. H. Eeinkens, Ueber den Ursprung der jetzigen kirchlichen Eeform- 
 bewegung aus dem Gewissen der Katholiken. Vortrag in Köln. Köln, E, H. 
 Maijer. 1872. 2| Ngr.] 
 
 [2 It may be seen in the Stenographischer Bericht über die Verhandlungen des 
 Katholikencongresses abgehalten vom 22. bis 24. September 1871 in München. 
 München, Th. Ackermann. 1871. pp. iv-vi. ; and in E. Friedberg, Sammlung 
 der Actenstücke zum ersten vaticanischen Concil mit einem Grundrisse der Geschichte 
 desselben. Tübingen, H. Laupp. 1872. pp. 157-159. cf. p. 57.]
 
 6 BISHOP REINKENS PREFACE. 
 
 only a partial negative protection.^ Indeed I can according to the 
 best information affirm, that in Berlin the recognition of the Old 
 Catholics and the grant of positive protection to them were never 
 seriously considered till after the notorious papal allocution of the 
 little stone and the colossus ^ (23 Dec. 1872). 
 
 If any one insists on learning the causal connexion between the 
 religious and the political struggle against the Roman curia in 
 Germany, it is this, that the religious movement first made the state 
 aware of the danger threatening its own existence. Besides the two- 
 fold conflict is alike unavoidable for a twofold divine order, for reli- 
 gion and law. A religious man can from both points of view draw 
 reasons for embarking in the struggle. To the Roman curia religion 
 is not an absolute end, but the means of money -making and of tem- 
 poral dominion. A state, which does not at the right moment descry 
 the peril therefrom impending, and take measures of self-defence, 
 will have no future. 
 
 Old Catholicism however assails directly the abuse of what is to it 
 
 [' On the persecution which Old Catholic pastors, schoolmasters and pro- 
 fessors have endured "because they believed in the evening of IS July 1870 
 the same as they believed in the morning," the English jjublic has received 
 no authentic information. Ultramontanes laugh in their sleeve, when they 
 hear the " free press" of England echoing their outcry against that Herod or 
 Nero or Diocletian or Attila of the 19th century, tJie emperor of Germany ! 
 Ignorance may enslave a press and a " reading public " as effectually as bribes 
 or fear. Those who have the courage to form an independent judgement can 
 consult the following documents : Thomas Braun, Aus der katholischen Kirche. 
 Verfokjungsgeschichle des Verfassers. Frankfurt, Baist. 1863. 7 Ngr. E. Fried- 
 berg, Sammlung der Actenstücke, which contains a complete collection of ßucli 
 papers, bearing on the question, as had appeared in print up to the date of 
 publication. J. Grunert, Meine Verhandlungen mit dem Bischof von Ermland 
 Dr. Philippus Krementz über die päpstliche Unfehlbarkeit. Königsberg, Braun und 
 Weber. 1872. 3 Ngr. P. Gscbwind, Appellation an die öffentliche Meinung 
 gegen die jüngste Excommwiikationsseyitenz des Herrn Eugen Lachat. Bern, Wyss. 
 6-| Ngr. Fr. Michelis, Der häretische Charakter der Infallibilitäislehre. Eine 
 katholische Antwort auf die römische Excommunikation. Hannover, Meyer, 1872. 
 12 Ngr. 0. V. Kichthofen, Zu;ci Erklärungen über seine Stellung zur päpstlichen 
 Unfehlbarkeit. Köln, E. H. Mager. 1873. 4 Ngr. [J. Fr. v. Schulte] Das 
 Vorgehen des Herrn Erzbischofs von Köln gegen Bonner Professoren gewürdigt von 
 einem katholischen Juristen. Bonn, Cohen, J871. W. Tangermann, Die römisch- 
 jesuitische Neuerung. Mit Beziehung auf das Verfahren des Herrn Erzbischofs von 
 Köln gegen den Pfarrer von Unkel, zugleich als Denkschrift für das königl. 
 Ministerium. Bonn, Cohen. 1861. 6 Ngr. H. Waldmann, Zurückvjeisung 
 grundloser Beschuldigungen. Antwort auf das am Charsamstag gegen mich erlassene 
 Hirtenschreiben des Bischofs von Paderborn, Dr. Konrad Martin. Heiligenstadt, 
 Delion. 1871. 3 Ngr. Dr. A. Westermayr und P. Petrus Hötzl. Von einem 
 katholischen Geistlichen. München, Rieger. 1870. 6 Ngr. Gymnasial-Lehrer 
 Dr. P. Wollmann, Der kirchliche Conflict am Gymnasium zu Braunsberg, Abwehr 
 gegen die Schrift des Dr. A. Kolberg : " Die Secte der Protestkatholiken.'' Königs- 
 berg, Braun und Weber. 1872. 6 Ngr. Peinliche Zwiegespräche mit Bischöfen 
 der vaticanischen Mehrheit über unsere kirchliche Lage. Von einem Altkatholiken. 
 Basel, Bahnmaier. 8 Ngr.] 
 
 [^ The little stone of the papacy which should shatter the colossus of the 
 German empire; Dr. Volk, in his speech at Constance 14 Sept. 1873, bore 
 witness to the impulse which this allegory had given to the reforming move- 
 ment. See below, p. 42.]
 
 BISHOP EEINKENS PREFACE. 7 
 
 an absolute end, religion, and therefore remembers that He, wbo was 
 meek and lowly of lieart, Jesus Christ our Lord, only once bound 
 up and used a rod, — tliat is, wlien He drove tbe money-market out of 
 the temple. We desire to rid the church of money-making and 
 politics. Old Catholicism, casting off the narrow-hearted particu- 
 larism of the Roman Church, which is incessantly severing and 
 sundering, desires to awaken the consciousness of the union of all 
 baptised believers in Christ, — to set aside the distinctions arising 
 from error and from sin by purifying the religious temper in each 
 individual Christian, — to open men's eyes to the fellowship of the 
 same Spirit amid the variety of gifts, and to attain as its ultimate 
 goal not the sameness {Einerleihe it) and uniformity, but the living 
 imity of the confessions, living by the same Spirit and by the fuU 
 sovereignty of the evangelical law of love. We yearn for a fellow- 
 ship of Christians, wherein by the grace which has appeared to all 
 men, all may also " live soberly (in self-control), righteously (according 
 to the law of love towards our neighbour) and godly in this woidd, 
 loohing for the blessed hope and the glorious appearing of the great God 
 and our Saviour, Jesus Christ" (Tit. ii. 11-13). 
 
 Letter of Bishop Reinkens. 
 
 Ich will nicht leugnen, dass es mir schmeichelhaft ist, mit dem 
 englischen Volke in eine gewisse geistige Beziehung zu treten, das, 
 wie mir scheint, noch immer jene natürliche Gaben und Vorzüge 
 besitzt, welche einst Rom reizten, die bereits freigeborene Kirche 
 Englands sich zu unterwerfen und dienstbar zu machen. Wie es auf 
 allen Gebieten der Cultur grosse Männer hervorgebracht hat und in 
 seiner Gesamnitheit ruhmvolle Perioden schon durchlief, so, denke 
 ich, wird auch in Zukunft die ihm inwohnende productive und 
 schaffende Kraft sich bewähren und ihm seine ehrenvolle Stellung 
 unter den Culturvölkern sichern. Und eben weil ich diese Ueber- 
 zeugung habe, vertraue ich auch darauf, dass der gesunde Sinn und 
 das Yerständniss für den Zusammenhang von Religion und Freiheit 
 in Ihrem Heimathlande zu einer allgemeinen und gerechten Wür- 
 digung unserer Katholischen Reformbewegung führen wird. 
 
 Unsere Bewegung ist nicht aus dem Geiste irgend eines Staats- 
 mannes entsprungen sondern aus dem Geiste Gottes durch das 
 Gewissen. Kein Politiker führte uns unter dem Kriegsgeräusche 
 unmittelbar vor der Katastrophe von Sedan nach Nürnberg, wo wir 
 am 25sten und 26sten August 1870 die erste in die Oeffentlichkeit 
 gedrungene Erklärung gegen das Yaticanische Attentat entwarfen, 
 sondern einzig und allein das Geivissen — das unerschütterliche Zeug- 
 niss, welches " der Geist (Gottes) selbst unserm Geiste gab, dass wir 
 Kinder Gottes seien " (Rom. viii. 16), nicht aber des Papstes, — dass 
 nicht Papstdienst und Würdencult der Endzweck des (göttlichen) 
 " Gebotes sei (sondern) Liebe aus reinem Herzen und gutein Gewissen 
 und ungeheucheltem Glauben" [1 Tim. i. 5). Sämmtliche Reden,
 
 8 BISHOP REINKENS' PREFACE. 
 
 welche ich seitdem gehalten habe, sind vorher nicht aufgezeichnet 
 gewesen, vielmehr aus der jedesmaligen Situation hervorgegangen, 
 und ich hoffe, Sie werden darin stets demselben Geiste begegnen. 
 
 Unser religiöser Kampf gegen E-om war den leitenden Staatsmän- 
 nern in Deutschland lange Zeit sehr ungelegen ; wir fanden nicht 
 die geringste Unterstützung oder Ermunterung bei den Staats- 
 regierungen, und nur einen theilweisen negativen Schutz. Ja ich 
 kann nach den besten Informationen die Yersicherung geben, dass 
 man in Berlin die Anerkennung der Altkatholiken und die Gewähr- 
 ung eines positiven Schutzes erst ernstlich in Erwägung zog nach 
 der berüchtigten päpstlichen Allocution vom Steinchen und Koloss 
 (23 Dec. 1872). Will man durchaus einen ursächlichen Zusammen- 
 hang zwischen dem religiösen und politischen Kampfe gegen die 
 römische Curie in Deutschland wissen, so ist er dieser, dass der Staat 
 durch die religiöse Bewegung erst aufmerksam geworden ist auf die 
 ihm selbst drohende Gefahr. Uebrigens ist der Doppelkampf gleich 
 unausweichlich für eine doppelte göttliche Ordnung, für Religion 
 und Recht. Ein religiöser Mann kann aus beiden Gesichtspuncten 
 Motive zum Eintritt in den Kampf gewinnen. Der römischen Curie 
 ist die Religion nicht Selbstzweck, sondern ein Mittel für Gelderv/erb 
 und Weltherrschaft. Ein Staat, welcher die ihm daher drohende 
 Gefahr nicht zur rechten Stunde erkennt und zur Yertheidigung 
 schreitet, wird keine Zukunft haben. Der *Altkatholicismus aber 
 wendet sich direct gegen den Missbrauch der Religion, die ihm 
 Selbstzweck ist, und desshalb erinnert er sich, dass der Sanftmüthige 
 und von Herzen Demüthige, Jesus Christus unser Herr, nur einmal 
 eine Ruthe gebunden und angewendet hat,— als Er nämlich das 
 Geldgeschäft aus dem Tempel trieb. Gelderwerb und Politik wollen 
 wir aus der Kirche hinausschaffen. Der Altkatholicismus will, 
 abwerfend den engherzigen Particularismus der römischen Kirche, 
 die immerfort trennt und scheidet, das Bewusstsein der Zusam- 
 mengehörigkeit aller getauften Gläubigen in Christo wecken, durch 
 Läuterung der Religiosität in jedem einzelnen Christen die Unter- 
 schiede des Irrthums und der Sünde beseitigen, die Gemeinschaft 
 desselben Geistes bei der Vielheit der Gaben zur Erkenntniss 
 bringen, imd als letztes Ziel nicht die Einerleiheit und Unif ormität 
 erzwingen sondern die lebendige Einheit der Confessionen herbei- 
 führen, — lebendig durch denselben Geist und durch die volle Herr- 
 schaft des evangelischen Gesetzes der Liebe. Wir ersehnen eine 
 Gemeinschaft der Christen, in welcher durch die allen Menschen 
 erschienene Gnade auch alle "besonnen (sich selbst beherrschend) 
 gerecht (nach dem Gesetze der Nächstenliebe) gottselig leben in 
 dieser Welt, harrend der seligen Hoffnung und der Ankunft der 
 Herrlichkeit des grossen Gottes und unseres Heilandes Jesu Christi" 
 (Tit. ii. 11-13).
 
 LIFE OF BISHOP REINKENS. 
 
 Joseph Hubert Reinkens was born 1 March 1821 at Burt- 
 scheid near Aix-la-Ohapelle. His elder brother, the chief pastor of 
 St, Remigius' church at Bonn, is described as " a highly esteemed 
 clergyman, of whom it is notorious that he only endures, but does 
 not endorse, the Yatican decrees." A younger brother is burgo- 
 master of Erkelenz, a little country town in the circuit of Aix-la- 
 Chapelle. The future bishop studied theology and philology at 
 Bonn university 1844-7, entered the seminary for priests at Cologne 
 in the autumn of 1847, and was ordained priest 3 Sept. 1848 by the 
 late card. v. Geissel in the Minorites' church, lately claimed by 
 the Old Catholics for their use. He afterwards returned to Bonn to 
 continue his studies, graduated as doctor in the theological faculty 
 at Munich in 1849, settled as private tutor {Privatdozent) at Breslau 
 in 1850, was appointed in 1852 preacher on festivals and penitentiary 
 at the cathedral and incumbent of the electoral chapel; in 1853 
 extraordinary professor of church history and ad interim chief 
 preacher at the cathedral; in 1857 ordinary professor of church 
 history in Bitter's place; he refused a canonry offered by prince 
 bishop Förster in 1858, and from that time devoted himself whoUy to 
 the service of Breslau university, of which he was rector 1865-6. 
 
 Our brilliant professor's learning and eloquence aroused the envy 
 of the obscurantist clergy, who strove to overwhelm him by a flood 
 of protests after his publication (in 1862) of a faithful history of 
 Breslau university, on occasion of its jubilee. Beinkens witnessed 
 the persecution of his colleague Baltzer,^ and in Italy (1867 and 1868) 
 watched the workings of Jesuitism in its Italian stronghold. He 
 was one of the foui-teen professors who at NiTremberg protested 
 against the Yatican decrees in August 1870. Bishop Förster, 
 though he had himself for some time contemplated resignation to 
 avoid the acceptance of those decrees, suspended professors Beinkens, 
 Baltzer and Weber for signing the ISTureniberg protest^; and in 
 the beginning of May 1872 excommunicated the' four Abdiels of his 
 diocese, Beinkens, Weber, Hassler and Hirschwälder (editor of the 
 
 1 See J. H. Eeinkens, Ueber päpstliche Unfehlbarkeit. München, 1870, p. 117. 
 Ad. Franz, Joh. Baptista Baltzer. Ein Beitrag zur neuesten Geschichte der Diocese 
 Breslau. Breslau, Aderholz. 1873. 8vo. pp. vi. 188. 1 Thlr. E. Friedberg, 
 Joh. Baptista Baltzer. Ein Beitrag zur neuesten Geschichte des Verhältnisses 
 zvjischen Staat und Kirche in Preussen. Leipzig, Duncker und Huinhlot. 1873. 
 8vo. pp. IV. 170. 1 Thlr. See Prof. Keusch's review in the Theolog. Litera- 
 turhl. 25 Oct. 1873. 
 
 2 See E. Friedberg, Sammlung der Actenstücke zum ersten Vaticanischen Goncil. 
 Tübingen, 1872. pp. 58, 159.
 
 10 LIFE OF BI8H0P REINKENS. 
 
 Deutscher Merhur). The suspension emptied the theological lecture- 
 rooms ; but in 1871 the university of Leipzig did itself honour 
 by conferring on Reinkens the degree of Doctm- philosophiae honoris 
 causa. 
 
 The mere list of his works will shew how zealously the silenced 
 professor has laboured in Germany and Switzerland to advance the 
 work of reform ; but one must have heard him to appreciate fully 
 the spell of his personal presence. In spiritual conquests, in " the 
 annexation of hearts" (to use a term which became proverbial at 
 Constance) few indeed of our generation can compare with him. 
 Many, before indifferent, confess with the burgomaster of Constance, 
 that it was his voice that awakened them from their slumbers. 
 
 I take the following from the Rhein- und Buhrzeitung (9 June 
 1873) : 
 
 " Reinkens, a man in the prime of manly strength, has a most 
 winning and gracious air. The priestly gentleness of his whole 
 nature, the great goodness of heart which speaks even in his out- 
 ward appearance, the blameless purity of his life, on which not 
 even the foul venom of the lowest ribald prints of the ultramontanes 
 can cast a slur, an unfeigned, evangelical piety, combined with solid 
 learning in theology and history, with rare energy, with an unflag- 
 ging power of action and inexhaustible zeal on behalf of his Church, 
 and lastly with polished manners, betraying the highest social 
 breeding ; all these qualities, which adorn the newly-elected Catholic 
 bishop, will not only draw to him the hearts of believers, but will 
 also in wider circles arouse sympathy and good- will for the cause, to 
 which, as hitherto, so still more for the future, he is ready to con- 
 secrate his whole life. 
 
 "We think we cannot more worthily conclude this short sketch 
 than by citing the following passage from a letter of an eminent 
 Protestant scholar : 
 
 " ' The last climax of Roman corruption has driven him out of this 
 (the "Vatican) Church. In all this there is nothing remarkable ; his 
 sense of truth, his conscience, his scientific equipment set him only 
 side hy side with so many other noble spirits, who have feared God 
 more than men, who see in religion not an instrument of tyranny, 
 but a moral consecration, a deliverance and an elevation of the soul 
 to the God of truth and love. What marked him out for election as 
 bishop, must be something else, which many others do not possess 
 in the same degree as he. I believe that it is the wonderful power 
 of his personality. When Reinkens set foot on Swiss ground, and 
 there— about a year ago — delivered lectures, it was said ; through him 
 first did the Old Catholic movement there obtain a positive basis ; 
 then first did the bare revolt against ultramontanism become in 
 many a religious effort, an enthusiasm for true religion and Chris- 
 tianity. 
 
 " ' A deep and lofty nature speaks in all that proceeds from him ; 
 he seizes men's souls by the grandeur of his conceptions, by the
 
 OKIGIN OF THE OLD CATHOLIC MOVEMENT. 11 
 
 impression of inmost experience, by true, unforced, most heartfelt 
 enthusiasm. Of his earlier writings I have read but one, an acade- 
 mical essay on the course and laws of universal history. I only 
 remember that it seemed to me to treat its subject in bold and deep 
 outlines, and with most perfect freedom. Assuredly it was the best 
 choice that could have been made, though a decision which made 
 acceptance in these times difficult to this man. May the government 
 now lend no wavering support to the further steps of Old Catho- 
 licism.' " 
 
 On 4 June 1873 Professor Reinkens was elected bishop.^ An 
 extract from Professor v. Schulte's speech at Constance (13 Sept. 
 1873, 3 P.M.) will serve as the best introduction to this turning-point 
 in the history of the man and his Church : 
 
 " It is the third Old Catholic congress, whose first public meeting 
 I herewith open. We say in common life ' aller guten Binge sind 
 drei'' (' all good things go in threes '). 
 
 " Though I cherish the stedf ast hope, that of the good things — I 
 mean here Old Catholic congresses — we shall have not three alone, 
 but one every year, yet this sacred number three has a peculiarity of 
 its own, and the circumstance, that this number is completed pre- 
 cisely in Constance, has a very special significance. 
 
 " You all know how the movement, which brings us here together, 
 began in 1870. We saw ourselves driven, in the full conviction of 
 the Christian conscience, in the full strength of manhood and with 
 full constancy of character, to rebel against the attempt to impose 
 upon us a single mortal as an earthly God, from whose will and 
 behests we must look for salvation in this world and in the world to 
 come. 
 
 " In 1871, at our first meeting in Munich, our business was to 
 express in the most general form our leading principles of action, 
 which were in brief as follows : ' We declare aloud and publicly, 
 that we hold fast to the Catholic Church, as founded by Christ the 
 Lord, as He laid its foundations in His holy Gospel, as on the ground 
 of this foundation of the holy Gospel, of the holy Scripture, the 
 ancient tradition of the one undivided Church has ever been main- 
 tained. We hold fast to the entire, fiül truth of Chiistianity. But 
 we have learnt, that the truth has been encumbered with a mass of 
 
 1 See in the official report of the Cologne congress (1872) pp. x. xi. the 
 names and functions of the committee appointed to bring about the election ; 
 and in the report of the Constance congress pp. 39-44 the regulations drawn 
 up by the committee (e.//. the bishop shall be consecrated simply as bishop, 
 without assuming the title of any existing see, and shall act as missionary 
 bishop for Germany) and the names of the thirty eligible priests. Prof. v. 
 Schulte on the morning of Friday 12 Sept. 1873 {ibid. 57-65) gave infor- 
 mation to the delegates respecting the proceedings of the committee, its nego- 
 tiations with the church of Utrecht and with the goveraments etc. The 
 "Promemoria" on the rights of Old Catholics, sent to the governments 29 
 Nov. 1872 is printed ibid. pp. 27-38, and may be recommended to the notice of 
 those who (after the newspapers) fasten on the Old Catholics the charge of 
 Erastianism.
 
 12 CONGRESSES OF MUNICH AND COLOGNE. 
 
 eiTors, of forgeries, of human counterfeits. It is our task, our endea- 
 vour, to cast off these human counterfeits, which men have at last 
 presumed to force upon us as Divine revelation. We desire to 
 restore the ancient Christian Church in its original purity.' 
 
 " These thoughts we expressed nakedly and plainly for everyone 
 who can understand what conviction means, the simple word, needing 
 no ornament of rhetoric, because its intrinsic truth is warrant for its 
 accuracy. 
 
 " In the second congress, held last September in ' holy Cologne/ 
 we further defined these principles, and carried them out on all sides, 
 by drawing consequences from them in detail. Already in Munich 
 we attained to the conviction, that it is not enough to deny, to 
 declare that one rejects this or that, but that one must act also. 
 The Lord said ' Whosoever loveth father or mother more than Me, is 
 not worthy of Me.' Accordingly it is the duty of all, who are named 
 by the name of Christ, not merely to confess their faith with the 
 mouth, but also to carry it out in act If therefore we would be 
 reaUy true to the Gospel, which we regard and accept as the founda- 
 tion of all culture in humanity, we were also constrained to lay down 
 the principle : ' We will not allow ourselves to be cast out of God's 
 temple.' (Bravo! Bravo!) 
 
 "As then those, who have adhered to the innovation, were de facto 
 m possession of all the outward means of divine worship, as they 
 were in possession of the churches, we could not escape the duty of 
 setting on foot a service of our own. It would have been treason 
 to our convictions, want of character, a reproach against religion 
 where duty called for a frank and open confession of the true Gospel, 
 if we were to join in a service conducted by one who, whether from 
 conviction or for any other reasons, in fact submits to eiTor and to 
 falsehood. (Applause.) What has been called the Gemeindehildung 
 (formation of congregations) was the expression of the inmost 
 Christian heart. In Munich we resolved: ' in every place, where the 
 necessity occurs and the persons exist, a regular cure of souls must 
 be established.' This resolution was adopted 22 Sept. 1871, and 
 to-day there are already about a hundred congregations in the 
 German empire alone, which confess the Old Catholic faith, which 
 do not regard a man as the mediator of salvation in this world and 
 the next, but hold loyally to Christ the Lord, by whom we may be 
 saved through active faith in Him. (Bravo !) 
 
 " In Cologne we expressed the principles which clearly define and 
 justify in detail our position with regard to the New Catholics, the 
 adherents of the Yatican decrees. We further adopted in Cologne 
 various resolutions about our relation to the civil governments. We 
 have declared what we expect from the governments, and also what 
 we expect from all who share our views and convictions. We had 
 arrived at the point of transition from looser forms of combination 
 to the closer form of the ancient Church. 
 
 " If you read the ancient fathers, a St. Ignatius the disciple of an
 
 ELECTION OF THE BISHOP 4 JUNE 1873. 13 
 
 apostle and Clement of Rome, yon will find stated as tlie cine, I may 
 say to all their letters, the tliought : ' The Chnrch is, where believers 
 rally aronnd their bishop; the Chnrch is, where bishop, clergy and 
 believers form one congregation.' In all the patristic writings, in 
 the old conncils, the thought recurs : ' He is no true bishop, who is 
 not called by the confidence and choice of clergy and congregation.' 
 (Applause.) The ancient councils have declared this most emphati- 
 cally, most definitely and clearly. Now a long process — I will not 
 trouble you here with its history — has landed us in this result, that 
 the bishop has at last been imposed on the faithful by every other 
 means than by the confidence and the call of Christ's flock, to lead 
 which, as the apostle Paul says, the Holy Ghost appointed the 
 bishops. I will not dwell further upon the ways and means of their 
 election, but it is a fact, that most bishops are strange to their con- 
 gregations, that oftentimes they neither belonged to the diocese, nor 
 were known to the congregation, over which they were placed. But 
 as the majority of the bishops, — imhappily in outward show all the 
 G-erman bishops, one after the other, even those who so heroically 
 and with such a pompous flourish had declared, that they would die 
 rather than recognise the innovation, — on returning to the enjoy- 
 ment of their incomes had embraced the innovation and abandoned 
 their flocks, the moment was come to give eff'ect to the resolution 
 already adopted in Munich: 'we are entitled, when the right moment 
 shall have arrived, to take steps for the establishment of a regular 
 episcopal jurisdiction.' 
 
 " At Cologne a committee was charged with the execution of this 
 resolution. The Lord, we may say, the Spirit of the Lord, the Holy 
 Spirit, was with us. On 4 June 1873 at Cologne, in an assembly 
 consisting of twenty- one priests and fifty-six laymen, the representa- 
 tives of all the distant shires of our German country, we elected as 
 our bishop a man, who enjoys the confidence of all, a man who, as 
 regards knowledge, character and past life, is not only inferior to none 
 of all those bishops, who see in parti-coloured clothes and ' infinitely 
 higher jurisdiction'^ the task of their offices, but far surpasses 
 them. 
 
 " This election, honoured assembly, was a work of which all pre- 
 sent must say, the Spirit of the Lord swayed the assembly. It cost 
 us pains to move the man to accept this thorny office, the whole 
 difficulty of which he perceived. But I may say, not merely as eye- 
 witness, but as leader of that meeting for the election of a bishop, 
 it was an inspiring moment ! I may say, since the apostles' days it 
 has not come to pass, that an assembly lay in tears, to win the man 
 of its confidence and of its choice. And whereas at other times 
 
 ^ [This phrase, proverbial among the Old Catholics, was employed by one 
 German bishop (v. Ketteler) to another in a company at Kome, where one priest 
 (Friedrich, who tells the story in his Diary of the Vatican Council) found 
 himself alone among bishops. The jurisdiction is that of bishops, which is 
 infinitely higher than that of priests.]
 
 14 OLD CATHOLIC CONSTITUTION. 
 
 every possible engine, secular and ecclesiastical, is brought to bear 
 upon episcopal elections, and it is known long before, how this man 
 and that and dozens are yearning to obtain the dignity, and how the 
 outward state, all the honours, the halo, the revenues are the baits, 
 which tempt each and all to strive after this dignity, — we had 
 before us a man, who in the sense of what awaited him was as it were 
 prostrated, and whom only the tears of such a crowd of men raised 
 and moved, — the tears of an assembly and the consciousness that, as 
 the Holy Ghost had called him, he might not shrink back. It was a 
 moment, such as the Church has not seen since the apostolic times. 
 (Loud long-continued Bravo.) 
 
 " We thereby truly linked our time to that time, we have again exer- 
 cised a right, which should never have been withdrawn from believers. 
 I do not oppose rights, which rest on prescription. But it was not the 
 fault of the laity entitled to a voice, that the novel, mischievous forms 
 sprang up. All evil, honoured assembly, which has arisen and come 
 to pass in the Church is due to the misconception of their mission on 
 the part of the rulers of the Church from the highest to the lowest. 
 (Bravo!) Against this, I hope, we are secured for the future by 
 this one act, by the way in which it was brought about, by the way in 
 which it was welcomed, by the success which it has already had. 
 
 "After this act a great work still remained to be done, viz. the 
 giving ourselves that outward form without which existence is im- 
 possible. For an order is necessary in the world, to the end that, as 
 our honoured bishop so beautifully explained last Tuesday at Frei- 
 burg, necessity and freedom, the two principles that move the world, 
 may be brought into full accord. Our ecclesiastical affairs could only 
 be settled in a permanent outward form on the basis already indi- 
 cated, viz. that amongst us there should not prevail command and 
 obedience, a party of autocrats and a party blindly submissive. We 
 desire no obedience not resting on conviction, we desire no assent not 
 founded on the inward persuasion that what is required is right. So 
 we were fain to choose an organisation, which at once gives full ex- 
 pression to this principle, and also demonstrates, that it is our settled 
 maxim not to swerve from the goal : to hold fast to the one ancient, 
 undivided Church of Christ. 
 
 " By God's help we have successfully brought this work to a pre- 
 liminary conclusion; yesterday and to-day we have discussed and 
 adopted a constitution for the synod and congregation. By this con- 
 stitution the bishop is the head, he is our leader, but not a leader 
 demanding blind obedience. On that day, 4 June, he said himself : 
 I desire as the form Love and Reverence instead of Obedience. By 
 his side stands an organ [the Synodalrepräsentanz'] consisting of 
 [four] clergymen and [five] laymen, which advises and aids him in 
 administration, and with him comes to a decision in matters of busi- 
 ness. But the work is to be crowned by the yearly convocation of a 
 synod, wherein clergy and laity, the latter by chosen representatives 
 of the several congregations, deliberate and decide. Thus by God's
 
 CONSECRATION 11 AUG. 1873. 15 
 
 help we have secured an organisation, by which we may surely and 
 confidently expect to be guarded from all the storms, whereby the 
 Church of Christ has at last sunk into a caricature, into a machine 
 set in motion exclusively by a Roman valve. (Bravo !) Next we have 
 created a constitution for the congregation. Here the same prin- 
 ciples are expressed. The spiritual leader of the congregation is 
 chosen by the congregation. He and the representatives of the con- 
 gregation are the born, the natural organ, and amongst us henceforth 
 they are also the legal organ for the direction of the congregation." 
 
 No one who has seen Prof. v. Schulte in his presidential chair 
 will charge him with a sickly sentimentality ; the very word Männer 
 has on his lips somewhat of a Homeric ring. No common crisis 
 could draw tears from him and threescore and ten strong men, 
 steeled by persecution to bear hardship ; they felt that their " holy 
 cause " was at stake, when they implored the man of their choice not 
 to flinch from the burden which he thought himself all too weak to 
 bear. 
 
 On "Wednesday 4 June 1873 the electors met at Cologne in the 
 large church of St. Pantaleon, which was crowded with Old Catholics 
 of the city. At 8.30 a.m. the mass of the Holy Ghost began. After- 
 wards while the hymn Veni, Creator Sjpiritus was sung, the electors 
 entered the side chapel and the doors were closed. On the scrutiny 
 Reinkens received 69 votes, Reusch 5, Langen and Michelis each 1 ; 
 one paper was found blank. Reinkens, like others of the eligible 
 priests, had deprecated election on purely personal grounds; and 
 after his election again refused to accept the office. An earnest re- 
 monstrance of Prof. V. Schulte seconded by the other electors, at last 
 overcame his scruples. Few eyes were dry in the chapel when Prof. 
 V. Schulte weeping embraced him and thanked him in the name of 
 all for the sacrifice he had made. He made a condition that the vow 
 should be the primitive vow of love and reverence, not that of obe- 
 dience, which Rome has forged into so crushing an instrument of 
 tyranny. The vow was joyfully taken, and the bishop for his part 
 bound himself by a like vow to his flock. The procession moved out 
 of the chapel, Pastor Tangermann declared the news to the waiting 
 crowd from the pulpit, the bells rang out, and the Te Deum was sung. 
 
 Archbishop Loos of Utrecht, who had made a tour in 1872 through 
 the Old Catholic congregations of Germany^ confirming the children 
 and encouraging the adults, died on the very day of the election at 
 Cologne. The Ultramontanes exulted in this manifest judgement ; for 
 the archbishop had promised once more to aid the Old Catholics in 
 their need by consecrating their first bishop. But uno avulso non 
 deficit alter aureus et simili frondescit virga metallo — the one remaining 
 bishop of the Utrecht church, Heykamp of Deventer, fulfilled the 
 
 ' See the most interesting pamphlet: Die apostolische Peise des Erzhischofs 
 von Utrecht nach Deutschland 1872. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Katholischen 
 lieformhewegung. Aus Briefen und andern Schriftstücken zusammengestellt von J. 
 Üenftle, Pfarrer in Mering. Augsburg, Lampart. 1872, pp. IT. 87.
 
 16 THE OLD CATHOLIC COMMUNION. 
 
 promise of his metropolitan, when on the 11 August 1873, assisted 
 by the vicars general of the other two dioceses of his church, he con- 
 secrated at Rotterdam E-einkens as missionary bishop of Germany, 
 and Rinkel as bishop of Haarlem. Instead of the pope's order 
 {mandatum apostolicum) the formal proofs of the legal election of the 
 new bishops were read. On the refusal of Reinkens to notify his 
 consecration to the pope, bishop Rinkel is said to have followed his 
 example, being the first bishop of his church to dispense with the 
 hollow form of allegiance.^ Pastor Rol, speaking afterwards at 
 Constance in the name of the Dutch church, declared its readiness 
 to proceed to further reforms hand in hand with its German sister. 
 It was expected that the twelve or fourteen bishops of the Armenian 
 Old Catholics would have delegated one of their number to bear a 
 part in the Rotterdam consecration. This was found impracticable, 
 but ever since the most friendly intercourse has subsisted between 
 the three churches. 
 
 The governments of Prussia, Baden and Hesse have acknow- 
 ledged Reinkens as a bishop of the Catholic Church recognised by 
 the state ; a commission appointed by the Bavarian government to 
 examine his claims is expected shortly to report in the same sense. 
 
 The king of Prussia addressed the following letter to the bishop, 
 in reply to his congratulations on the new year : — 
 
 HocHWUERDiGEE Here, Bischof ! I thank you for your hearty 
 congratulations on the change of the year. May God's blessing in the 
 new year also advance the work begun in His name ! May the certainly 
 correct conviction, shared by you, win ground more and more, that 
 in my states respect for the law may easily be reconciled with the 
 exercise of religion on the part of every community, which pursues 
 no earthly aims, but only the One aim : to seek the peace of man 
 with God. 
 
 (Signed) Wilhelm. 
 
 Berlin, 17 Jan. 1872. 
 
 1 I take this statement from a newspaper, and cannot vouch for its 
 accuracy ; but of the important point, the willingness of the Utrecht church 
 to entertain proposals of reform, there is no doubt. [In order to leave no room 
 for error, I wrote for information to canon van Vlooten at Amersfoort, who 
 consulted bishop Riukel himself. He replied : ' dat Hij zelf niet aan den 
 Paus heeft geschreven, maar dat de Vicarissen van Utrecht sede vacante van de 
 wijding der beide bisschoppen Reinkens en Rinkel naar Rome eene kennis- 
 geving hebben gezonden, met opgave der redenen die onze handelwijze recht- 
 vaardigen;' i. e. 'that he did not himself write to the pope, but that the vicars 
 of Utrecht sede vacante sent to Rome a notification of the consecration of the 
 two bishops Reinkens and Rinkel, with a statement of the grounds which justify 
 our course of action.'] 
 
 2 D. Nutt, 270, Strand, has for sale copies of the large photograph of 
 bishop Reinkens by R. Schlegel of Elberfeld.
 
 WOEKS OF BISHOP EEINKENS. 
 
 De demente Alexandrino homine, scriptore, philosopho, theologo 
 liber. Breslau, Aderholz, 1851. pp. x. 358. 1| Thlr. 
 
 Sendschreiben an Hrn. Redlich, königl. Superintendent u. s. w., 
 als Antwort auf seine " Beleuchtung des neuesten Hirtenbriefes des 
 Kardinals u. Fürstbischofs von Breslau." Svo. Breslau, Aderholz. 
 
 1852. pp. 27. 2JNgr. 
 
 Der Protestantismus als politisches Princip von F. J. Stahl, nach 
 den Principien gewürdigt. Breslau, Aderholz. 8vo. pp. iv. 131. 
 
 1853. 15 Ngr. 
 
 Die Flucht des Herrn Stahl vor dem Prineipienkampfe. 8vo. 
 pp. 32. Breslau, Aderholz. 1854. 5 Xgr. 
 
 Clemens von Rom, nebst 3 kleineren Legenden. [Poems.] ff. 2. 
 pp. 256. Breslau, Aderholz. 1855. 1 Thlr. 
 
 Die barmherzigen Schwestern vom h. Carl Bon-omäus zu I^ancy. 
 2nd edit. Breslau, Aderholz, 1855. 8vo. pp. xvi. 176. 18 Ngr. 
 
 Das Sommerkind oder der Grund der Yölkerwanderung. Ein 
 episches Gedicht. 16mo. pp. 79. Paderborn, 1858. [Anonymous]. 
 
 Anecdota sintne scripta a Procopio, inquiritur. Yratislaviae, Msch- 
 kowsky. 1858. 8vo. pp. 29. 
 
 Gedächtnissrede auf des hochsei. Königs Friedrich Wilhelm lY. 
 Majestät, gehalten am 17 Febr. 1861 zu Breslau in der Pfarrkirche 
 zu St. Maria auf dem Sande. 8vo. pp. 15. Breslau, Aderholz. 
 2J Ngr. 
 
 Die Universität zu Breslau vor der Yereinigung der Frankfurter 
 Yiadrina mit der Leopoldina. Breslau, Aderholz, 1862. 4to. pp. vi. 
 132. IThlr. 
 
 Meine Festschrift zur Jubelfeier der Breslauer Universität, und 
 die gegen mich gerichtete Bewegung im schlesischen Clerus. Eine 
 Yertheidigungsschrift. 8vo. Breslau, Gosohorsky. pp. viii. 52. 
 10 Ngr. 
 
 Religiöse Parabeln. 16mo. pp. 68. Breslau, Aderholz. 1863. 
 6 Ngr. 
 
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 1864. 2 Thlr. 
 
 Die Einsiedler des heil. Hieronymus. 8vo. pp. xli. 306. Schaff- 
 hausen. 1864. 1 Thlr. 
 
 Die Geschichtsphilosophie des heil. Augustinus. Mit einer Kritik 
 der Beweisführung des Materialismus gegen die Existenz des Geistes. 
 Re(ie gehalten bei der Uebernahme des Rektorats der Universität 
 Breslau am 15 Octbr. 1865. 8vo. pp. iv. 41. Schaffhausen, Hurter. 
 1866. 
 
 B
 
 18 WORKS OF BISHOP REINKENS. 
 
 Martin von Tours der wundertliätige Mönch und Bischof. In 
 seinem Leben u. Wirken dargestellt. 8vo. pp. x. 288. Breslau, 
 Mälzer, 1866. 1 Thlr. 10 Ngr.— 2nd edit. pt. 1, ihid. 1870. 8vo. 
 pp. 96. 10 Ngr. 
 
 Aristoteles über Kunst besonders über Tragödie. Exegetische 
 und kritische Untersuchimgen. 8vo. pp. ix. 339. 1870. Wien, 
 Braumüller. 2 Thlr. 20 Ngr. [Reviewed by J. Wrobel in Zeitschr. 
 f. d. österr. Gkjmnasien xxi. 706-729.] 
 
 Papst und Papstthum nach der Zeichnung des h. Bernhard von 
 Clairvaux. Uebersetzung und Eiiäuterung seiner Schrift de con- 
 sideratione. 8vo. pp. xlviii. 191. Münster, Brunn, 1870. 22i Ngr. 
 
 lieber die päpstliche Unfehlbarkeit (vol. ii. pt. 3, pp. ix. and 
 325-486 of Stimmen aus der Kath. Kirche. 1870. München, Olden- 
 bourg). 20 Ngr. 
 
 Die päpstlichen Decrete vom 18 Juli. Münster, Brunn. 1871. 
 6 Hefte ä 5 Ngr. 
 
 I. Der Universal- Bischof im Yerhältniss zur Offenbarung. Nach 
 Gregor dem Grossen und Pius IX. 
 
 II. Die Traditionsregel der alten Kirche und die moderne 
 päpstliche Unfehlbarkeit. 
 
 III. Die Unregelmässigkeit und Unfreiheit des Yaticanischen 
 Concils. 
 
 IV. Die Unterwerfung der deutschen Bischöfe zu Fulda in ihren 
 Gründen geprüft. 
 
 Y. Glaube und Unterwerfung in ihrem Unterschiede dargestellt. 
 
 YI. Die Infallibilisten und der moderne Staat in ihrer Unver- 
 träglichkeit nachgewiesen. 
 
 Stenographischer Bericht über die Yerhandlungen des Katho- 
 liken-Congresses, abgehalten vom 22 bis 24 Sept. 1871 in München. 
 Mit einer historischen Einleitung und Beilagen. 8vo. pp. xx. 233. 
 München, Ackermann. 1871. 1 Thlr. [Contains several of R.'s 
 speeches.] 
 
 Stenographischer Bericht über die Katholiken- Yersammlung in 
 Regensburg, 14 Jan. 1872 (speeches of Zirngiebl, Huber and Rein- 
 kens). 8vo. Regensburg, Forchthammer, 1872. 3 Ngr. 
 
 Ueber den Ursprung der jetzigen kirchlichen Reformbewegung aus 
 dem Gewissen der Katholiken. Yortrag in Köln. Köln, E. H. Mayer. 
 1872. 2 Ngr. 
 
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 felden. Rheinfelden, Baumer. 1872. 
 
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 Nebst einem Bericht über diese Yersammlung. Luzern, Doleschal. 
 1872. 8vo. pp. 21. 2 Ngr. 
 
 Reden gehalten bei der Altkatholiken- Yersammlung zu Offenburg 
 14 April 1872 [by Reinkens and Knoodt]. Offenburg, Trübe. 1872. 
 2d Ngr. 
 
 Die Yerhandlungen des zweiten Altkatholiken- Congresses zu 
 Köln. Köln, E. H. Mayer. 8vo. pp. xxiii. 131, 112. 1 Thlr. 10 Ngr.
 
 WORKS OF BISHOP REINKEN3. 19 
 
 [The wliole of R.'s speeclies at this congress are translated in this 
 pamphlet. The long speech " Ueber die Hindernisse nnd HoiFnungen 
 der altkatholischen Bewegung " may be had separately for 3 Ngi\] 
 
 Rede gehalten 1 Dec. 1872 am Altkatholiken-Tage in Olteu. 
 Bern, Jent 11. Reinert. 1872. 2 Ngr. 
 
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 land, besonders in Preussen. Rede geh, am 21 Jan. 1873 in Breslau. 
 8vo. pp. 21. Köln, E. H. Mayer. 1873. 3 Ngr. 
 
 Ist an die Stelle Christi für uns der Papst getreten? Rede in 
 Würzburg. Würzburg, Stahel. 1873. 3^ ]^gr. 
 
 Die Lehre des h. Cyprian von der Einheit der Kirche. Würzburg, 
 Stahel. 1873. 10 Ngr. 
 
 Hirtenbrief vom 11 Aug. 1873. Bonn, Neusser. 1 Ngr. — Englische 
 Uebersetzung. 5 Ngr. [Also published in English by the Anglo- 
 Continental Society, London, Rivingtons, 1874, with the following.] 
 
 Der dritte Altkatholiken-Coiigress im Constanz im Jahre 1873. 
 Constanz, Meek. 1873. 8vo. pp. 310. 1 Thlr. 18 Ngr. [The shorter 
 speeches of R. are given in this pamphlet, the long address (on 
 reading the Bible) has been published by the Bible Society, and also 
 by the Anglo-Continental Society, 1874, with the pastoral of 11 
 Aug. 1873. Both are translated by the Rev. G, E. Broade.] 
 
 Hirtenbrief vom 14 Dec, 1873 gegen die Encyclica Pius IX. 
 vom 21 Nov. 1873, 8vo. pp. 19. Bonn, Neusser. 1 Ngr. [Trans- 
 lated into English for the Anglo-Continental Society. 8vo. pp. 13. 
 London, Rivingtons. 1874. Another version, by Mr. Madden, has 
 been published at Bonn by P. Neusser. London, Nutt.] 
 
 Sei getrost, dein Glaube hat dir geholfen. Predigt, gehalten in 
 Breslau 9 Nov. 1873. Breslau, Fiedler u. Hentschel. 1874. 2k Ngr.
 
 SPEECHES OF PEOF. REINKENS IN THE MEETING 
 OF DELEGATES, ON THE MORNING OF 21 SEPT. 
 1872 AT COLOGNE. 
 
 The president, von Schulte, thonglit that the discussion on the 
 subject to be introduced by Prof. Reinkens, the Pi^eunion of Churches, 
 might be reduced to a very small compass, as much had been already 
 said in the meetings on the 20th respecting the importance and neces- 
 sity of reunion. 
 
 Prof. Beinkens: HONOURED SiRS ! I entirely agree with our 
 respected president. Few speakers stood up yesterday without 
 touching on the point which now comes on for deliberation. The 
 president himself has repeatedly declared his view of it, and I have 
 the agreeable feeling, that in substance my duty as reporter is 
 already discharged. Much of the time yesterday was consumed in 
 this room by listening to what was said of the need of union. 
 Accordingly I too am of opinion that the discussion may be very 
 short, or may be dispensed with altogether, though I should be the 
 last person to trench in any way upon the freedom of speech which 
 is the birthright of the freeborn man. 
 
 My duty as reporter is hard and easy ; easy, for the very reason 
 that so much has already been said of the matter in hand, and I 
 need only sum up; hard, because everyone thinks he has already 
 heard it all, because perhaps one or two consequently allow their 
 attention to flag, and afterwards think themselves bound to bring 
 forward some point which has been already handled. Hard too is 
 my report for the further reason, that the theme strikes deep home 
 into the feelings of Christians ; and where feeling is stirred, a bois- 
 terous demand often makes itself heard for the sudden completion 
 of a work, which it must perhaps be left to coming generations to 
 complete indeed; easy again, because this same feeling meets the 
 proposal which we have to make with entire sympathy. Allow me 
 then the following brief remarks. 
 
 In the reconciliation of the confessions, and in our endeavours to 
 accomplish union, there are four things which we cannot use. 
 These four things are unbelief, misbelief {Aberglaube, " superstition "), 
 indifference and politics. (Applause.) Unbelief has no hope, and 
 where no hope is, no Church is possible. Misbelief (sviperstition) is 
 darkness, and only the light that shines into the darkness can form 
 a Church. Indifference is not, as so many in their lordly dreams
 
 UNITY NOT UNIFOEMITY. 21 
 
 assume, tlie force of the man, of the free scientific man, but it is 
 impotence, lack of energy ; and spirit and life alone create a Ohurch. 
 PoHtics has an entirely different sphere from that of Church-union ; 
 and if politics employs religion as a mean for its ends, whereas religion 
 is surely the highest end of human life, that is an outrage against 
 religion; therefore by moves with religion on the chessboard of 
 diplomacy the weKare of mankind, which lies in the union of the 
 confessions, can never be advanced. 
 
 I wish further briefly to state the experience furnished by history 
 in regard to the reunion of Churches. It is as follows. We know 
 that for fifteen hundred years schisms have not only disturbed peace 
 within Christendom as a religious community, but have also brought 
 unhappiness upon the human race in general. The bloodiest wars 
 have been those whose motives were to be sought ultimately in the 
 intolerance of the confessions.. Hence it has often happened, that 
 the need of union has been felt. But most attempts at healing the 
 great schism between East and West originated in politics. These 
 attempts could not possibly succeed ; for precisely here did politics 
 fall into its besetting sin of treating religion as a mean to its own 
 ends. In later times, it is true, single individuals, animated by the 
 best aspirations, have endeavoured to bring about union ; but they 
 had no footing in their time, and therefore also no result. This 
 was the case in the days of Bossuet and Leibnitz and Hugo Grotius. 
 The essays of Bossuet, Leibnitz and Hugo Grotius left no result, 
 because they with their wishes and views did not stand in their time, 
 but towered above their time. We however have learnt a lesson, 
 both from the political attempts and also from the efforts of those 
 noble-minded men. Of one thing we are satisfied. A union of con- 
 fessions cannot possibly consist in uniformity. It is indisputable, 
 that the national peculiarities which find expression in the great 
 Christian confessions have a justification. Hence in endeavours 
 after union of the confessions there should be no tendency to efface 
 these national peculiarities. Indeed those who desire to pave the 
 way to union must from the first renounce the hope of forcing their 
 own national peculiarities on another nation. (Bravo !) They must 
 also come with the resolve not to abandon what is characteristic of 
 their own nation; they must be as resolute in maintaining the 
 national development of Christianity among themselves, as they 
 must be discreet and considerate in saving the national peculiari- 
 ties of the other confessions. Hence it follows, that attempts 
 at union cannot proceed from a single confession, but are only 
 possible when all go forth to meet one another. Freedom is here 
 the law, no constraint of any kind, no attempt at subjugation. 
 Therefore I must as decidedly declare it to be an error, when from 
 the West the cry is addressed to us, " We are ready to unite, but 
 you must come to its," as I do when the same voice reaches us from 
 the East. I can by no means assent to the proposal of the Fi-ench 
 priest who has joined the Oriental Church, Guettee, that our
 
 22 BASIS OF BEUNION. 
 
 reforms slionld be undertaken ad normam ecclesiae orientalis. He 
 uses tlie expression, tliat the greatest merit of the Oriental Church 
 is the immobility of its creed. I hope that we may have no mis- 
 understanding here. Immobility in the faith is no merit, but un- 
 changeable in the faith we must remain ; for faith is a force, and 
 force is never immoveable ; faith is a light, and light is never with- 
 out motion. Immobility can only apply to the letter, and the letter 
 killeth. I suppose however, what is meant is, that nothing has been 
 lost and nothing added ; that the pure text of the first seven councils 
 has been held in honour and guarded with a certain pious jealousy. 
 That is another matter. I too am convinced, and our honoured 
 ÜSTestor, Herr Reichsrath von DöUinger, has indeed explicitly pro- 
 pounded the thesis, that a union of confessions may be attained on 
 the basis of Holy Scripture and of the cecumenical confessions of 
 the early Church, expounded in accordance with the doctrine of the 
 undivided Church of the first centuries. But this which we here 
 advocate is no immobility ; we do not hereby deny the entire sub- 
 sequent development, the deeper insight into our Church and its 
 treasure of faith, but assert only, that whoever will be a Christian 
 must stand on Christian ground ; and where should we find Chris- 
 tian ground if not in the ancient Church ? 
 
 Again another experience is, that not only all attempts miscarry 
 which are originated by statesmen, but such also as are undertaken 
 by the official authorities of the different Churches. Yery recently 
 Rome has made great efforts to unite the East with itself, at least a 
 portion of the East, over which it had already cast its nets. In the 
 years 1867 and 1868 I found there a commission in full action, and 
 a very sanguine confidence, not only in Yalerga, patriarch of Jeru- 
 salem, but also in the keex3er of the archives, Theiner, both of whom 
 were on this commission. They thought a union was already accom- 
 plished. But the upshot has been, that Rome has lost what it already 
 possessed ^ and has again made the breach with the East complete. 
 'Not from the official authorities of the Church can the union pro- 
 ceed, as regards the Russian Church either, and that because in this 
 Church, as in the Roman, the hierarchy has been severed from the 
 believers ^ ; so they have themselves bluntly stated. Wherever the 
 hierarchy regards itself alone as the essence of the Church, and not 
 the sum total of believers as the Church founded by Christ, in which, 
 to be sure, the clergy is also comprised, there the hierarchy is never 
 free from the lure of ambition. (Loud applause.) If then the official 
 hierarchical authorities seek to effect a union, always on the one side 
 or the other the endeavour to lord it over the others will again frus- 
 trate the attempts. And even if the hierarchy on all sides concluded 
 terms of reconciliation, still it would not thereby be accomplished 
 in the hearts of the millions of believers. 
 
 If now we ask ourselves, where then the foundation of union can 
 
 [1 The united Armenians; tifeio above, p. 1(J.] 
 [- See below, p. 2G.]
 
 RUSSIA ÄND ENGLAND. 23 
 
 lie, we shall find the answer in the high-priestly prayer. The founda- 
 tion of union can be sought only in the hearts of the faithful. If 
 they come together in the consciousness — We are God's children and 
 of His household, and should have no strife in God's house, then the 
 temper exists, on the foundation of which a union can follow. ( Yehe- 
 ment bravo !) Therefore our present efforts are altogether new in 
 Church history. In fifteen hundred years, indeed since great 
 schisms broke out at all in Christendom, such an attempt has not 
 been made, namely that not the official authorities, but believers, 
 come and say. We must prepare the way for union with one another, 
 for the yearning after unity is awakened in us ; and that is an im- 
 pulse of the Holy Ghost, who bears sway in the Church of God, an 
 impulse which is passing through our generation, and which we 
 follow, while we undertake, in the first instance for our own selves, 
 to give shape to that for which we yearn. And for this purpose we 
 would propose the ai^pointment of a permanent committee, which 
 may reduce into clear conceptions the common basis which we 
 possess, and wherein we hope to have communion with one another. 
 (Applause.) I must mention that in the E-usso-Gieek Church, 
 especially in the Russian branch of it, and in the Anglican Church 
 for the last twelve ^ years, a movement is perceptible, which found 
 indeed a speedy echo in our hearts, but which first came to the light 
 in those churches. " The Anglo-Continental Society," which we find 
 organised already in 1860^ with a definitely expressed aim, although its 
 operations may not have been very extensive, and though in some 
 years its results may have been slight, yet even so early gave utter- 
 ance to thoughts which to-day are stirring us all. On the 22nd of 
 June 1862 there was founded at Moscow a society which expressed 
 in yet more decided terms the aim of the Anglo-Continental Society ; 
 and in its latest form, in the " Society of the Friends of Spiritual 
 Enlightenment " in St. Petersburg, it has concentrated all its enei'gy 
 as a branch society with a proportionate degree of independence. 
 Therefore if we come forward to propose a committee which is to 
 have an international imjportance, we must confess that in England 
 and Russia they have already set out with deeds to meet us. 
 
 On one more point I must here lay stress. If we aim at a union 
 of Christendom for the future, every thought of proselytism must be 
 banished. N'o Church must desire to swallow up the other. Who- 
 ever comes with this thought belongs not to us^. The first step to 
 
 [* Rather nineteen.] 
 
 [2 Founded in 1853.] 
 
 [3 Compare the resolutions, dated 1st May 1861, of the Committee of the 
 Anglo-Continental Society : — " That the Society shall not form in Italy, nor 
 minister to, by its agents, any congregations wliich may separate themselves 
 from the National Church of Italy." Also the letter (printed in the Society's 
 Eeport for 1873, p. 39 seq.) of the grand protosyncelus of the patriarchal 
 oecumenical throne in Constantinople to Stephen Hatherly, appointed priest 
 over the orthodox Church in Wolverhampton ; you are to instruct the Httle 
 orthodox flock over which you have been called to be priest, " never, no not
 
 24 RUSSIA AND ENGLAND. 
 
 amendment is self-knowledge. We frankly confess that liitlierto tlie 
 Roman Churcli, when it thought of dissidents, never prayed other- 
 wise than for their conversion. On the contrary you find in the 
 instructions for agents of the Anglo-Continental Society for 1860 
 the aim is expressly levelled at union, and the corresponding 
 prayers^ also only aim at union. Indeed, the Common Prayer Book 
 of the Anglican Church, which has, as you know, an official character, 
 contains only prayers for reunion^. The same is the case in Russia 
 also, as we heard the day before yesterday from the honoured lips of 
 one^ of the most intelligent representatives of the Russo-G-reek 
 Church. The Russian Church also has an official prayer for reunion. 
 Besides these two Churches maintained better than we have done 
 the consciousness of the unity of the great Christian Church. The 
 famous name Pusey, in England, may here be cited. A few days ago, 
 in a letter to the central committee here,* he stated that he,""from his 
 point of view, and with him the Anglo-Catholic Church, never could 
 acknowledge Rome's refusal of communion between the Churches as 
 a severance within the one Church. That is regarded as a usurpa- 
 tion, whereby the real unity of the one great Catholic Church, 
 founded in baptism into the name of the most Holy Trinity, cannot 
 be rent asunder. Pusey says, " We have regarded the Roman Churcli, 
 as well as the orthodox communions in the East, as forming with 
 ours one Catholic Church." The Russo- Greek Church on its side has 
 since the schism never made the attempt to convene an oecumenical 
 council, saying : We are not the whole of Christendom, and a fraction 
 of the Christian Church can hold no oecumenical council. Thus in 
 these two Churches the consciousness of unity was more living and 
 powei-ful than in the Roman Catholic Church. With such a confes- 
 sion we gladly meet our sister Churches, not officially, as I hasre said, 
 — we are no authorities, but we are simply believers, we are simply 
 
 in mind, assuming to proselytise one single member of the Anglican Church, 
 which has signally exhibited of late towards our orthodox Church so many 
 proofs of sisterly love and sympathy. Our fervent desire is, not that we 
 t-hould receive into the bosom of our church live or possibly ten members of 
 the Anglican or any other Church, but that, differences being removed through 
 care and previous labour undertaken in the spmt of meekness, the unity of 
 the Churches may follow."] 
 
 [1 The prayer for union used by members of the Anglo-Continental Society 
 is : " Gracious Father, we humbly beseech Thee for Thy holy Catholic Church ; 
 fill it with all truth, and in all truth with all peace ; where it is corrupt, purge 
 it; where it is in error, direct it; where it is dark, enlighten it; where it is 
 superstitious, rectify it; where it is amiss, reform it; where it is right, 
 strengthen and confirm it ; where it is in want, furnish it ; where it is divided 
 ;ind rent asunder, heal the breaches thereof, O Thou Holy One of Israel, for 
 Jesus Christ's sake. Amen."] 
 
 [2 The allusion is chiefly to the beautiful prayer in the office for the 
 Queen's Accession.] 
 
 [* Archpriest Janyschew, rector of the Clerical Academy at St. Petersburg, 
 who in a very eloquent German speech stated that the Russian liturgy 
 contained prayers for all Christian Churches and for their union.] 
 
 [* At Cologne.]
 
 BEFORM A CONDITION OF REUNION. 25 
 
 Christians, who wish now to prepare what perhaps one day the 
 legitimate organs will joyfully sanction. 
 
 Briefly then I will sum up : the different confessions and special 
 types of Christian communion must, if a union is to be obtained, one 
 and all learn and confess that they themselves, in their actual state, 
 need reform and are capable of amendment. Self -righteousness, as 
 it condemns the individual Christian, so does it condemn an entire 
 confession no less. The second point is : only from the midst of 
 Christians, of believers, by the force of love and by the power of 
 science, of sacred science, can the understanding gradually be 
 attained which makes union possible for the official delegacies of 
 the Churches. Hereby we abide in the consciousness that we have 
 one single ground under our feet, that we have in common the Holy 
 Scripture, that we confess as with one mouth the oecumenical confes- 
 sions of the first general councils, that we unanimously claim as our 
 own the entire science of the Fathers of the Church, that we honour 
 the martyrs of Christian antiquity in one and the same way as 
 belonging to us, that the Christian life of antiquity is our common 
 life, that we are one in prayer, that we know one another as brethren, 
 that we are united in love. ( Vehement bravo !) 
 
 What can now be done is preparation only. In this meeting we 
 may deliver a hundred speeches, which stir us to enthusiasm ; but 
 thereby we do not for the present unite the Churches in their official 
 representation. Hence nothing can.be done except the appointment 
 of a permanent committee, aiming at the union of confessions in the 
 path indicated, and this is the committee which we propose in the 
 printed document which you have all in your hands. 
 
 "What the committee may be expected to effect is stated in three 
 paragraphs. 
 
 [The paragraphs are, as printed in the report of the Cologne Congress, 
 p. XII. : — 
 
 1. To enter into communication with the societies already existing or in 
 process of formation for putting an end to the ecclesiastical schism ; 
 
 2. To institute and encourage scientific researches respecting existing 
 diff"erences and the possibility of their removal, and to give facilities for the 
 publication of the results of these researches in scientific works and journals ; 
 
 3. By popular writings and essays to promote the knowledge of the doctrines, 
 institutions and condition of the separated Churches and confessions, and also 
 a correct estimate of the existing points of union and differences, and 
 generally to arouse and keep up in wider circles an intelligent interest in the 
 agreement to be desired.] 
 
 I would however add that such persons should be elected upon 
 the committee as may in their deliberations easily supply any omis- 
 sion in the present scheme. I further observe, that we have the 
 advantage of seeing amongst us leading representatives of those 
 Churches which desire union, and that consequently the committee 
 can at once form personal acquaintances, which facilitate relations 
 and business. The secretaries of the above-named societies in the 
 sister Chui-ches are present. Accordingly nothing more remains 
 for me to do. I presume that it is not necessary to read the para-
 
 26 REFORMS IN RUSSIA. 
 
 graphs. (It is not required.) Well then, unless essential objections 
 are offered, I can only recommend the greatest practicable brevity in 
 the discussion. If however objections should be raised which do not 
 appear profitable and practical, I do not decline to speak, but reserve 
 to myself the last word. (Loud bravo !) 
 
 [Abbe Michaud proposed that the congress should declare its 
 acceptance of the first seven general councils, and deny the oecume- 
 nicity of the occidental councils ; he also asked whether the French 
 Old Catholics, who were forbidden to meet for worship in numbers 
 exceedino- twenty, would be justified under these circumstances in 
 attending the services and partaking of the Eucharist in the Greek 
 Church. After the President, Prof, von Schulte, had replied, and 
 some conversation had ensued :] 
 
 Frof. Beinhens ; With all respect for Abbe Michaud, I must 
 lament that precious time has been so consumed. His information 
 respecting the state of affairs in France' would have been quite in 
 place in the public session. With regard to the Western councils 
 however, I feel constrained to remark that it is no such easy matter 
 at once and without more ado to pass sentence on them as on the 
 Yatican Council. When during the Yatican Council mention was 
 made of the Florentine Council, an entire literature at once spmng 
 up about one single document, the Decree of Union. With the 
 severity of German research, it is no light matter to arrive at the 
 history of the councils, and hitherto very little has been done 
 towards it. The documents of the Yatican Council however lie in 
 such completeness before us, that our view of it cannot be changed. 
 It is very different with the mediseval councils. ISTow the function 
 of the committee is precisely to organise scientific researches, and 
 by means of popular writings to make known the results thereby 
 established to the public, which must indeed finally occupy every 
 conquest of scientific inquiry. On this head I have nothing further 
 to add. But if I said before (p. 22) that in the Russian Church the 
 hierarchy has severed itself from the laity, I wish to guard my words 
 from the misconstruction, that the case is so at the present time. 
 There is now in Russia a great upheaving ; the education of the 
 clergy and hierarchy, and also the reconciliation of their knowledge 
 and life with the knowledge and life of the faithful, are the subject 
 of most eager discussion; unions are forming among the laity; 
 religious interest and spiritually enlightened life are spreading 
 among the laity from day to day, and we found on all this in every 
 respect the fairest hopes. 
 
 As a general supplement to my report I will add : — One great and 
 already assured vantage ground of the efforts for reunion is this — 
 that the Churches are engaged in internal reforms, and are become 
 conscious of the spirit which lives in them. One further point I 
 may here utter aloud, in order still further to reassure Abbe Michaud, 
 lest perchance he should think that our heart is narrow. Love is the 
 mainspring of ouv attempts at union ; but love makes the heart wide.
 
 REUNION WITH PROTESTANTS. 27 
 
 If I accidentally omitted to mention liov/ our lieart beats towards 
 truly believing Protestants also, I will liere expressly repair tlie defect. 
 (Bravo !) Since tbe year 1863, when tbe treatise, " Pax vobis, die 
 hirchliche Wiedervereinigung " (" Peace be to you. Ecclesiastical Re- 
 union "), appeared, we have closely watched the movement in the 
 Evangelical Church also. We greeted with great delight in 1870 
 F. W. Schulze's book, "Bomanisirende Tendenzen " (" Romanising Ten- 
 dencies "), and in this year we considered most attentively the book, 
 *' Gedanlien zur Wiedervereinigungsfrage " (" Thoughts on the Question 
 of Reunion"), by a Protestant, stimulated by[Dr. von »Dollinger's 
 lectures ; and even what is written from the extreme positions of 
 unflinching Protestantism does not escape us, if only it is borne 
 onward by the general impulse of love. Our committee will of 
 course constitute itself into various sections, as the condition of 
 things in the Russian Church is very different from that in the 
 Anglican or Protestant. We shaU keep a look out in all directions. 
 It appears — and I think there is no vain-glorious boasting in what I 
 now say — it appears to lie in the nature of the case, that of all coun- 
 tries Germany should form the centre of these relations. It may 
 indeed so turn out that we approach more closely to one confession 
 than to another. We wish however and aim at the union of the 
 wliole of Christendom, and expect also as the ultimate result, that' 
 tlie spirit of Christianity, which is a spirit of peace, will renew the 
 face of the earth. Hitherto we Christians altogether form perhaps 
 30 per cent, of the entire population of the whole earth. This is no 
 great result after more than 1800 years' duration of Christianity : 
 and why is the result so scanty ? T will say it frankly : since 
 quarrelling and strife arose in Christendom, since the severance 
 between Christians, the expansive power of Christianity has abated. 
 In union we shall recover it, and then we shall joyfully greet the 
 whole earth as our home. I beg you therefore to leave to the com- 
 mittee the work of mutual understanding. Mutual alliance can only 
 come later by a synod which truly represents Christendom. We have 
 only to pave the way for the understanding, and this is the piirpose 
 of the committee, which I once more recommend to you. (Bravo I) 
 
 [After the unanimous acceptance by the delegates of the three 
 clauses of the motion (above, p. 25), Prof, von Schulte said : The 
 reporter will now make a proposition respecting the constitution 
 of the committee.] 
 
 Prof. ReinJcens : Certain members of the congress have combined 
 to form a list for the composition of the committee, which I take the 
 liberty of reading, to you :,.von DöUinger, Friedrich, Langen, Lutter- 
 beck, Michaud, Michelis, Reinkens, Reusch, Rottels, von Schulte. 
 
 [After a question, "Are then none but Catholics to be elected on 
 the committee ? "] 
 
 Prof. Ueinkens : The congress is not authorised to elect on its 
 committees members of other confessions. 
 [The list was unanimously approved.]
 
 SPEECH OF PEOF. EEINKENS IN THE PUBLIC 
 MEETING OF THE COLOGNE CONGEESS, 22 
 SEPT. 1872. 
 
 Prof. Beinhens (greeted witli vehement cheers) : Honoured Assembly ! 
 Yesterday and to-day mention has been made in this tribune of 
 our adversaries' wish that our movement may run to waste in the 
 sand ; so let me begin with that. The ultramontanes, though long 
 since in many things detected as false prophets, yet are never weary of 
 prophesying that the Old Catholic movement will be lost in the sand. 
 Of all who join in the cry the red Internationalists are the loudest. 
 But not a few also of the indifferent, with extraordinary self-com- 
 placency, swell the numbers of this strange chorus of prophets, at 
 which the inexperienced easily take fright. Countless is the host of 
 ♦those who, for this very reason, from dread of this chorus of prophets, 
 stand on one side, though in heart they sympathise with us. These 
 are not to be praised. But, even assuming for the moment that Old 
 Catholicism should not in the issue lead to that great regeneration 
 of the Church, to that reunion of all Christendom, which we hope 
 from it, still it is even at present undeniable that the motives of this 
 movement are in the highest degree moral and deeply religious, and 
 that it spreads a blessing around, by contributing largely to the 
 advancement of sincere devotion, to the rescue no less of all Chris- 
 tian civilisation than of the modern constitutional state. 
 
 Who in Germany would not praise the German Rhine ? With its 
 feeders it forms glorious lakes, it opens to the civilised nations one 
 of the world's highways, it carries to broad valleys refreshment and 
 fruitfulness. Should we not count that man crazy, who, dwelling by 
 one of those lakes, or on the fruitful bank of the beautiful Rhine, 
 would not delight in the stream, would not sail on its ships, because 
 forsooth he was told that the noble stream is lost at last in the sand ? 
 (Bravo !) Still more brain-sick however are they, who, while they 
 sympathise with its, hold aloof from us for fear of the like fate pre- 
 dicted for our movement ; for I say : It is not possible that this move- 
 ment should ever he spent in the sand. (Bravo !) You all know the 
 poet's winged word touching the curse of the evil deed^; the form 
 belongs to the poet, the source of the word is the Holy Scripture, 
 where the thought is completed by a second clause, to the effect that 
 
 \} ScHn^LER's Ficcolomini, v. 1, where Octavio says to his son : 
 Das eben ist der Fluch der bösen That, 
 Dass sie, fortzeugend, böses muss gebären.]
 
 THE pope's righteous MAN. 29 
 
 the blessing of the good deed reaches further than the curse of the 
 evil. This is according to a necessary law. For all who believe that 
 a higher hand controls the world's history, it is an assured truth, 
 that light and goodness ever more and more overcome darkness and 
 evil ; consequently it is plain, that the blessing of the good deed 
 reaches further than the curse of the evil. Even suppose then, that 
 the expected new birth of the Church should not finally be accom- 
 plished as we think, still the blessing which the Old Catholic move- 
 ment already spreads abroad will not be lost for the generations to 
 come. 
 
 Yet suppose not that I doubt of the Church's new birth. "We are 
 no way blind to the hindrances to be encountered. We are continu- 
 ally hearing of apprehensions, and many lose their slender scantling 
 of courage because of them. Well then, let us for once look theee 
 hind/rances in the face ; we shall see that the hopes are mightier. 
 
 The Old Catholic movement is a spiritual current. Conscience 
 opens the source, its contents are faith in the unquenchable light of 
 eternal truth, and its motive powers are those inalienable divine 
 gifts, reason and freedom. (Bravo !) Here we light on a great 
 hindrance. Eor whither is this current to shape its course ? Into 
 the mind and heart of the millions of Catholics. But here it meets 
 a mass which, by the completion of the ultramontane system — that 
 system which pretends to represent God by the pope alone — has for- 
 feited all inwardness and depth. Christ said to His disciples, that is, 
 to all who believe on Him, The hing dorn of God is within yoti, 
 in the inmost heart of man, of every Christian ; but the watchword 
 of that mass is. The hingdom of God is ivithout us, in the pope. 
 (Bravo !) Yery convenient, to be sure ; for thus they think to rid 
 themselves of the duties of their conscience and wash their hands of 
 all personal responsibility ; for the pope has the conscience. (Bravo !) 
 Clerical authorities used these very words to priests troubled on 
 account of the Vatican council, What is this talh of responsibility ? 
 The pope has the responsibility ; you have to obey 1 (Assent.) So they 
 make of the pope a kind of universal conscience (laughter), and 
 are quite at ease, if he assumes the responsibility; — as if it were not 
 the individual conscience of each man and each woman that alone 
 can make possible a truly moral and religious life ! So then they 
 tell us, religion is obedience to the Pope, religion is outward 
 righteousness of the law. Ton may quickly tell on your fingers the 
 palpable ingredients of such a righteousness as this : hear masses — by 
 order ; receive the sacraments — by order ; rehearse certain forms of 
 prayer — by order ; observe definite injunctions of fasting — by order ; 
 throw in a modicum of faith in the miracles of Lourdes and of La 
 Salette, Peter's pence, fanaticism and intolerance towards one's 
 neighbour, and the righteous man is complete (Bravo! laughter), 
 i. e. the pope's righteous man. Such a papal saint, who in tim.e may 
 be promoted to the rank of doctor ecclesiae, may all the while in heart 
 gainsay the fundamental principles of Christian morals, and as a
 
 30 RELIGIOUS ROUTINE. 
 
 pious son of tlie Cliurcb, i. e. of tlie pope, may deceive the world and 
 enjoy the workl. If then ive accost such a man with the demand of 
 inward truthf uhiess and righteousness, love of God and of his neigh- 
 bour, love of his enemy ; above all if we tell him that Jews too and 
 heathen are his neighbours, he does not so much as know what we 
 mean. (Bravo !) For conscience opens no spiritual source, no faith 
 of his own attracts the stream of light from on high, and the moving 
 forces, reason and conscience, have been sacrificed, you know, to the 
 pope. 
 
 In the spirit of Christianity religion has been conceived as life. 
 But with that party religion is not life, but religious exercise. There- 
 fore among the ultramontanes every religious activity is called 
 exercise. A man exercises an act of faith, — i. e. he reads heedlessly a 
 creed out of a prayer-book. That is exercise (laughter), and many 
 are inexpressibly fluent in this exercise. (Renewed laughter.) And 
 in this altogether outward exercise the whole stress of the law is 
 shifted from God's ten commandments to the five commandments of 
 the Church, i. e. of the hierarchy. The Saviour said : the greatest 
 commandment in the law is the love of God above all, and of our 
 neighbour by the standard of our self-love. According to this it is 
 in love that religious life is to be revealed. Ultramontanism sets 
 little store by the law of love. A Christian may love his neighbour 
 to the point of surrendeTing everything for him, even life itself; 
 he may love God so that every fibre of his being quivers with devo- 
 tion; if he is not blindly obedient to the pope, all is of no avail. 
 (Bravo !) The performance of the pope's injunctions — this and this 
 alone brings salvation. Religion, you know, is exercise, and the 
 exercise consists mainly in a mechanical fulfilment of the pope's 
 orders, at most in thinking after what the pope thinhs before. 
 (Laughter.) No doubt a certain untruthfulness prevails everywhere 
 in these matters ; perhaps I do not express myself with absolute 
 distinctness, when I allude only to thoughts of the pope ; for not to 
 mince matters, I believe that much passes into the world as a thought 
 of the pope, under his great seal, which he has indeed signed but not 
 himself thought, nay, not even at the moment of signature thought 
 after the author. (Laughter.) So then I will put it thus : Religion 
 is the thinking that afterwards which is proclaimed as a thought of 
 the pope's. In the same sense, what the pope ivills the believer 
 must also will ; whoever is best exercised herein is most religious. 
 In a word, religious routine is a great hindrance to the spiritual 
 current which we would turn upon the masses. I know men spiritu- 
 ally awakened and of very resolute character, whom I have seen 
 quake when required to tear away from the leading-strings of the 
 pope, even when he was manifestly in the wrong. Men tell the 
 people a breach with the pope is irreligion ; to refuse obedience to a 
 pope who is destroying religion in theory and practice is to have 
 religion no more ! 
 
 From the same point of view we must explain the prevalence, even
 
 SERVILITY OF CONSCIENCE. 31 
 
 among the clergy, o£ servility of conscience in religious matters. For 
 if tlie immediate tie to the Saviour — who dwells in us by our faith, in 
 whom we are incorporate, whose members we are — if the conscious- 
 ness of this living tie of our Lord and Saviour's grace and love 
 towards us, and of our love to Him, exists no more, but a mediation 
 is imagined to take place through the pope, then conscience loses 
 its independence, and this loss of independence produces trouble of 
 conscience, scrupulosity. But this scrupulosity is the cause, the 
 motive not always understood, why the best of the Catholic clergy, 
 still officiating in the ultramontane camp, shrink from the deci- 
 sive step of leaving the erring pope to take their stand with God. 
 (Bravo !) Many are so surely convinced that the Yatican decrees do 
 not contain God's word, that they could die for this conviction ; yet 
 they serve the diffusion of the lie, and do not withstand the teacher 
 of error to his face, because it is he who mediates between them and 
 God, because he is the deputy for their conscience, and their own 
 enslaved conscience delivers them up to anguish and to scruple. 
 Owing to the same uncertainty of conscience even bishops have not 
 shaken off the notion that their resistance to the pope's demands 
 would be schism, and that schism is the deadliest mischief in the 
 Church. Bishops Hef ele ^ and Haneberg fell victims of this scrupu- 
 
 \} J. H. Eeinkens, Glaube und Unterwerfung^ Münster, 1871, pp. 46-48 : " A 
 general council exists not for itself, but for the faithful^ and is responsible to 
 them next to God, and therefore may have nothing in common with a secret 
 society. Bishop Hef ele already at that time boasted of his Rottenburg diocese, 
 because its bearing was so calm and passionless, /. e. because it, and above all the 
 Tübingen faculty of catholic theology, in the convulsive struggle for the purity 
 of the gospel and of God's Church, maintained an entirely passive attitude, 
 shewed itself neither cold nor hot. In his manifesto of backsliding dated 10 
 April (Easter Monday !) 1871, he again expresses his satisfaction that his diocese 
 'has been spared internal quarrels and the like' — just, that is, as sleepers are 
 spared quarrels with one another. His words (' but ecclesiastical peace and 
 the unity of the Church are so lofty a blessing, that great and severe personal 
 sacrifices may be made to secure them ') sound so strange in a bishop's mouth, 
 that we would choose rather to leave the sense wholly unguessed. We could 
 wish from the heart, that Bishop Hefele could assure us that by the ^ great 
 and severe personal sacrifice ' he did not mean submission to the Vatican decrees 
 in spite of the contrary conviction of the truth, that is, the entering on a course of 
 hypocrisy from regard to the Church's outward unity. If he did mean this, 
 may a word of the apostle Paul occur to him in some serious hour : ' Are 
 we then to do evil, that good may come ? Such are to be condemned, and 
 justly.' (Eom. iii. 8.) AVhat boots it then to cry 'Peace, peace,' where 
 there is no peace? Is it haply only Ms oion person that Bishop Hefele has to 
 represent in the critical struggle, that he thinks the thing is settled if he 
 makes 'personal sacrifices'? Has he not to maintain the wellbeing of the 
 whole Church and the highest possessions of the faithful ? Is then, external 
 legal unity, whose bond is a penal code, the end of the Church ? If the end is 
 lost, what profits the iron framework ? Are then the bishops, who can allege 
 no other motive for their submission than fear of a breach (schism) of unity 
 with the pope, willing to surrender the truth 9 To act against their convic- 
 tion, to give up their freedom to be chained for obedience' sake; is this 
 allowed? Have they a right to sacrifice their understanding, to benumb their 
 conscience, to allow their human dignity to be abused ? Wherein then does 
 the unity of the Church at last come to subsist ? Why in unity of opposition
 
 32 CONFESSIONAL. MATERIAL INTEREST. 
 
 losity. Because conscience is not independent, they could no longer 
 apprehend tlie clear thought that unity in a lie profits nothing, but 
 ruins all. (Bravo !) 
 
 A zealous Old Catholic whispered to me a while ago that I 
 should also touch upon a point which cannot be mentioned without 
 a certain embarrassment. The fact is undeniable; but I know not 
 how the evil is to be cured. However I will mention it : a great 
 hindrance to our Old Catholic movement is the disastrous influence — 
 an influence not to he controlled or combated — of the submitted priests 
 over women in the confessional. (Yehement applause.) Abundant 
 evidence proves that women who so often and so frankly reveal their 
 heart in the confessional, and frequently address the priest as God's 
 representative with trembling awe, losing their self-command before 
 the urgent claims of the clergy, make engagements and undei-take 
 tasks in the name of the family, the upshot of which is that they for 
 ever lose domestic -pesice, or that their husbands also submit, and so 
 destroy themselves morally in their own and others' eyes. (Bravo !) 
 I will add however, there are exceptions, but not many. (Laughter.) 
 
 An almost insurmountable hindrance which confronts us is 
 Tnaterial interest. That material interest, the necessity of subsis- 
 tence, has played a great part in the submission, the shameful sub- 
 mission, of the clergy ; — on this point a public opinion was at once 
 declared, which no protests of clergymen can ever blot out of the 
 history of the world. (Yery true !) The education of the younger 
 generation of our Catholic clergy, at least in the last twenty years, 
 has unhappily been such, that while it is drilled in the most one-sided 
 fashion for the ultramontane propaganda, it knows nothing besides. 
 (Bravo ! Yery true !) If these clergy by their manly courage lose 
 their appointments, and with them, in default of private property, 
 their bread, they are not seldom in the position of so many of the 
 French clergy, whom the bishops there so often suspend in an ofi"- 
 hand jaunty way ; I mean they are driven to the most menial offices 
 in order to win their scanty daily bread. And this is a great 
 hindrance for us. If we could secure to-day the bare maintenance of 
 thousands of priests, we should soon be far nearer to our goal. 
 (Yery true !) But not the clergy alone are held back from joining 
 us by this material interest, but hundreds of thousands of laymen 
 also.^ In a great cathedral city a tallow-chandler, in very good 
 
 to revealed truth, in unity of the utter materialism of Catholicism in a right- 
 eousness of outward works, in unity of a general slavish submission under the 
 tyranny of a spiritual monarch of the faithful, such as the world has not yet seen. 
 And is this to be reckoned so great a good ? Truth is a higher good than 
 external legal unity. If the possession of truth is at stake, the Lord's word 
 holds good : ' I am not come to bring peace, but tlie sword.' "J 
 
 [} Compare with this and what precedes the words of Father Hyacinthe at 
 Munich in the first pubHc meeting of the congress 23 Sept. 1871 : " Je n'en 
 chercherai pas la cause dans (ies calculs vulgaires, mais il est des inte'rets si 
 graves et si delicats qu'ils en deviennent presque sacres. C'est de ceux-la 
 seulement que je veux parier. Pour le prctre, c'est la pauvrete et le de'shon-
 
 MATERIAL INTEREST. 33 
 
 business, betrayed some hankering after Old Catholicism ; but a hint 
 was given him that if once he protested against the Yatican decrees, 
 no clergyman of the diocese of Cologne could buy tapers of him 
 again ; and so, seeing his livelihood endangered, he held his peace ; 
 and this is only one instance out of many thousands in every branch 
 of retail trade. But there are also other classes of which one would 
 be slow to believe it ; there are not a few physicians and lawyers 
 who among their friends scoff at those pretended dogmas, and yet 
 go with the Ultramontanes for fear of damaging their practice. 
 (Bravo !) I shall be told, But that is a want of character ! Yes, I 
 don't dispute it. (Laughter.) But characters are formed only by 
 
 neur sous le coup de I'interdit, sous les foudres de I'anatheme ; c'est la parte 
 de ce ministere de I'autel et des ämes auquels dans sa jeimesse 11 s'etait si 
 joyeusement imraole'. Pour le laique, c'est la souffrance dans cet honneur et 
 dans ces biens qui ne sont pas uniquement les siens, mais qui appartienneut 
 encore a une femme, et que tous deux lis doivent le'guer a leurs enfants ; fonc- 
 tionnaire, c'est son avaucement qu'il comproraet sous un ministere ultramon- 
 tain ; depute', c'est son election ; me'decin on avocat, son clientele ; comraerqant, 
 ses affaires ; citoyen quel qu'il soit, sa consideration aupres d'un grand nombre 
 de ses compatriotes, Dois-je nommer enfiii ce qu'il y a de plus profon dement 
 douloureux ? la paix de son foyer et le respect de son cercueil ! Ali ! messieurs, 
 pour vaincre de tels obstacles, il ne faut pas seulement du courage, il faut de 
 rheroisme! (Bravo!) 
 
 " Que sera-ce done si la conscience se fait la complice du coeur, si eile ajoute 
 au poids de nos faiblesses, le poids de ses terreurs ; si eile nous arrete, eperdus, 
 devant le crime d'un schisme imaginaire ! A tout prix, s'e'crie-t-on de toutes 
 parts, il faut e'viter le schisme ! — Eh ! sans doute il faut eviter le schisme ; mais, 
 pour I'eviter, il faut le connaitre, et jamais mot n'a ete si puissant et en meme 
 
 temps moins compiis 
 
 ■ "II ne sont done pas sehismatiques, ceux qui, reste's fideles a I'autorite' du 
 Saint-Siege et de Tepiscopat, se refusent a confondre cette autorite divine avec 
 Tabus que les hommes en font. 
 
 " Non, ils ne sont pas sehismatiques ceux qui pour reconnaitre la foi catho- 
 lique dans les decisions d'un concile, exigent que ce concile soit vrairaent un 
 
 concile, non une assemblee sans liberte, comme Test aujourd'hui celle 
 
 de Eome. Non, enfin, il ne sont pas sehismatiques, ceux qui s'obstinent sainte- 
 ment a demeurer dans I'Eglise malgre les efforts que I'ou fait pour les f-n 
 chasser, et qui refusent e'galement de sacrifier la veiite'a I'unite et I'unite a la ve'rite'. 
 
 " Ce n'est pas la le schisme, c'est plutot le martyre ! 
 
 " J'en rends grace a Dieu, messieurs, ce martyre a ete le notre. Toutefois, 
 si glorieux qu'il soit, j'ose dire qu'il ne suffit pas tout seul : il y faut encore 
 joindre Tapostolat. Pretres, nous avons ete' faits ministres du Christ et dispen- 
 sateurs des mysteres de Dieu. Si nous avions prevarique contre notre sacer- 
 doce, nous me'riterions d'en etre depouilles, ou plutot nous nous en serious deja 
 depouilles nous-memes. Nous lui sommes demeure's fideles, et c'est pour cette 
 fidelite meme que Ton nous persecute. Nous avons done le droit, — ce n'est pas 
 assez dire, car on pent rennncer a I'exercise d'un droit, on ne reuonce pas a 
 raccoraplisseinent d'un devoir, — nous avons le devoir, dans certains cas au moins, 
 de monter a I'autel du sacrifice et de la louange, de distribuer aux fideles le 
 pain de la parole et de I'eucharistie, I'onction de la grace et des sacrements. 
 
 "Vous le comprenez, messieurs, notre action ne deviendra populaire et 
 feconde que lorsqu'elle sera entre'e dans cette voie. Si Ton creuse aux fonde- 
 ments de lEglise, on y rencontre sans doute les e'crits des docteurs et le sang 
 des martyrs, mais on y trouve surtout la parole et le ministere des apotres. 
 'Allez dans le monde entier, prechez I'Evangile a toute creature: celul qui 
 croira et sera baptise sera sauve.' ' ] 
 
 c
 
 34 MULTIPLICATION OF DOGMAS. 
 
 the unconditional love of truth ; unconquerable truthfulness of dis- 
 position, simple truth in word and deed, these are indispensable con- 
 ditions if we would have men of character. (Bravo !) 
 
 To be sure such a love of truth is also inseparable from reverence 
 for God's word, thirst for its light, enthusiasm for its contents 
 recognised as truth. And here in the great mass of the ultramon- 
 tanes another hindrance meets us ; I mean ignorance with regard to 
 God's word and indifference to truth. Because they can have the 
 truth so handy from the infallible pope, they have no truth at all. 
 (Laughter.) It is well known that the Roman curia has been for 
 centuries, since its centralisation in the Latin Church, exceedingly 
 fertile in the framing of dogmas with and without a council. Set 
 here before me the whole of the German bishops, and let me ask 
 them, How many dogmas has the Roman Church ? Not one of them, 
 I am convinced, will know. (Laughter. Bravo !) Not long ago, on 
 the 30th of July 1870, after the council, the Prince Bishop of 
 Breslau, who had not then submitted, said to me, " They laid before 
 us whole volumes of scholastic formulae, and we were expected to 
 make one and all into dogmas." (Laughter.) No wonder then, if 
 the Roman Catholic Christian no longer knows what he is to believe. 
 Precisely the Catholics whom the pope so highly commends — who 
 stand in the van of the general assemblies of the German Catholic 
 unions — are very superficially acquainted with the modern dogmas, 
 dogmas of sentimentalism and pope - worship, with which our 
 pulpits have been ringing these twenty years ; while of the sublime 
 ideas of the Christian revelation they know little or nothing. They 
 may even name the dogmas without understanding the substance of 
 them. Take the counts and barons who sat in St. Yincent's House 
 at Breslau — the gentry who think it possible by genuine heathen 
 jealousy for their patents of nobility and their privileges to represent 
 the best Catholic temper — and let a scholar once tease them with 
 twelve dogmatic questions, and you may take my word for it, to eleven 
 they find no answer at all, and to the twelfth a wrong answer. (Great 
 laughter.) I know these gentry ; the knowledge of dogmas they leave 
 to theologians. How different things were in times gone by ! In 
 Christian antiquity the treasure of supernatural truths, of revela- 
 tions, was a jewel on which Christian eyes and hearts were riveted, 
 in the knowledge, esteem and love of which the laity often vied 
 with the bishops ; and now we are come to such a pass that amid 
 all the countless dogmas we find among the loudest confessors of 
 Yaticanism no interest remaining in truth of any kind. In those 
 days the creed was so short and plain, that even St. Augustine ^ could 
 still assert, the simplest, the child, can keep in mind the doc- 
 
 [^ See J. H. Eeinkens, Die Traditionsreijel der alten Kirche. Münster, Brunn. 
 1871. p. 27. Augustini enchirid. §§ 6, 7 : Facile est ut dicatur quid credendum, 
 
 quid sperandum, quid amandum sit Nam ecce tibi ebt symbolum et 
 
 dominica oratio ; quid brevius auditur aut legitur ? quid facilius meinoriae com- 
 mendatur? cf. §§ 9 seq. 114 seq. id. de fide et symbolo § 1.]
 
 IGNORANCE OF SCBIPTUIIE AND TRADITION. 35 
 
 trines necessary for membership in the Church ; but then also the 
 fathers entered deeply into the spirit of revelation, and the faithful 
 applauded^ them in the church from joy at the fulness of the Divine 
 light offered to them. But now-a-days there are countless dogmas, 
 and no one any longer rejoices in truth in the church. (Bravo !) 
 
 Still less do those gentlemen know of Holy Scripture and tradi- 
 tion ; for the pope has said, of that they understood nothing, but he 
 alone understands it. So then of course they do not study it, for it is 
 of no profit to do so. And if the pope flatly contradicts Scripture and 
 tradition, if he interprets a passage^ respecting St. Peter's conversion 
 quite differently from Christian antiquity, indeed in direct opposition 
 to the unanimous interpretation of the fathers, then they never- 
 theless bow down, saying : to be sure, we understand nothing of it, 
 the pope alone understands it. Says the Katholih in Mainz, that 
 text can no longer be expounded otherwise ; the matter is settled, 
 for, you know, the holy father has pronounced his infallible sen- 
 tence. If doubts however force themselves upon a man ; if a bishop ^ 
 goes in tears to the pope and exclaims, " I cannot make all square 
 with tradition ; " the holy father rejoins, " Tradition ? I am tradi- 
 tion." Christianity is an historical fact ; only in their historical de- 
 velopment can its dogmas be known and conceived as true. But the 
 history of doctrines also is entirely unknown to that party ; for this 
 also the multitude leaves the responsibility to the pope. 
 
 The slavish temper, which submits to the imposition of absurd 
 doctrines contrary to reason and freedom, indifference to every 
 article of faith and absolute ignorance as respects the history of 
 dogmas ; these are for us hindrances, which seem invincible. How 
 then shall we find access to such a mass ? Here nothing can help 
 
 [* On the acclamations usual in churches as in the lecture-rooms of rheto- 
 ricians, see Bingham xiv. 4 §§ 27, 28, and the special treatises of Cresol and 
 Ferrarius.] 
 
 2 Luke xxii. [32. See the complete catena (cent. 1-16) of interpretations of 
 this and kindred texts, in the three parts, published by Weber at Bonn, 1871-3, 
 of Prof. J. Langen's work ; ' Das Vaticanisc/ie Dogma von dem Universal-Episcopat 
 und der Unfehlbarkeit des Papstes in seinem Verhältniss zum Neuen Testament 
 und der exegetischen Ueberlieferung . Bitte um Aufklärung an alle katholischen 
 TheologenJ~\ 
 
 [^ So Prof. Knoodt at Cologne 21 Sept. 1872 : " In the strict logical conse- 
 quence of his dream of infallibility he replied to cardinal Guidi, who tried to 
 dissuade him from his purpose by an appeal to the testimony of tradition : La 
 tradizione son' io = I'd'glise dest moi (I am tradition, I am the church). This 
 means no less than : The truth of revelation, the truth and reality of all past 
 church history, am I ; what does not agree with me, with my aims and infal- 
 lible determinations ex cathedra, whether you call it scripture or tradition or 
 faith or science or modern state, all that is error, lying, devil's work. The 
 way, the truth and the life, the perennial source of that faith and action of 
 all mankind which is necessary to salvation, is the infallible pope, and he 
 alone. This is frightful, for hereby Christ is ousted by his vicar ; but the 
 holy father will have it so. For free unity in the grace, truth and love of 
 Christ, there is foisted on us as a dismal changeling the despotic unity of an 
 absolutism raised to the pitch of murdering spirits ; and so the church is 
 ruled to death,"] 
 
 c 2
 
 36 THE ULTRAMONTANE PRESS. 
 
 but awakening of conscience and instruction. But how can even the 
 most glowing love with the light of truth approach, in order to 
 awaken and instruct ? Between the believing people of the Roman 
 Catholic Church and us there is posted a hierarchy, with its countless 
 clergy in vestments secular and regular, and this hierarchy inter- 
 poses its authority to debar the people from all culture. Here it is 
 only step by step that we can win ground : if the clericals denounce 
 us to the masses at their back, let us give no heed to their railing, 
 lying and slander, but untie the bandages which hoodwink here one 
 there another, and draw them again into the circle of civilisation. 
 The apostle Paul, we know, said : " Prove all things, what is good^ 
 that hold fast !" — not " the best," that is only a popular rendering — 
 but all that is good : so the saying wins in force. And the bishops 
 say : Prove nothing, what we tell you, hold fast. They add : When 
 you have heard what we tell you, then stop your ears ! To this effect 
 we read in a pastoral : "Hearken not to what others tell you." They, 
 to be sure, have cause to say so. (Laughter.) We will hinder no 
 Old Catholic from reading every single production of the ultra- 
 montane press, if he has the requisite patience. We are convinced 
 that by such reading we shall not lose one individual from our ranks. 
 (Loud applause.) But once let the bishops allow the deluded people 
 to read our writings, and critically to hear our addresses, and soon 
 there is an end of Vaticanism and pope- worship. (Applause.) 
 
 Only a terrorising seclusion, unworthy of Christians, of " God's 
 children," only a sentencing of the Church, i. e. of the congregation 
 itself, to perpetual nonage, can still for a season place blind masses 
 at the disposal of the hierarchy. Yet I must observe that the 
 bishops certainly do not think, that nothing whatever should be read 
 except their pastorals ; that also would be hazardous ; they are so 
 poor in intellect, so feeble in faith, so barren and dry, so monotonous, 
 that not even the weakest among Christians would any longer be 
 contented therewith. Here then they cast between the believing 
 people and us a press — the so-called Catholic press — consisting of a 
 turbid flood of newspapers and pamphlets. Now and then indeed 
 they are ashamed of it ; from time to time they disown this or that 
 journal ; to be sure the pope then comes post-haste with a laudatory 
 brief to comfort the editorial staff : but the bishops also in general 
 again acknowledge them, aye, and often contribute thousands to 
 the establishment of such papers, or to aid them where subscrip- 
 tions fall short. Yes, and you see and hear priests in the Catholic 
 casinos and congregations, aye, from the pulpit and in the confes- 
 sional, canvass for subscribers. When the Deutsche Beichszeitung 
 of Bonn, a paper which constantly flouts at the German empire as 
 well as at the spirit of Christianity, was prohibited in Alsace, the 
 priests, the Jesuits, dunned needle-women in the confessionals for 
 subscriptions ! — What kind of a press is that, which the pope so 
 highly commends and bishops so zealously promote ? ! It is a press, 
 whose essence and whole force consists in reckless lying about the 
 writings and speeches of the Old Catholics, and in coarse unchristian
 
 THE ULTRAMONTANE PRESS. 37 
 
 innnendos about their private life. "We liave among us a distin- 
 guished representative of the Evangelical confession in France, 
 eminent alike for learning and honorable feeling — Pressense, who 
 called the chief editor of the Univers, Louis Yeuillot, " the greatest 
 calumniator in the entire contemporary press." We may add, that 
 many editors of our Catholic press noway yield the palm in this 
 point to the great slanderer Louis Veuillot. And who then marches 
 in the van of this press ? No one else but the pope. Take his bulls, 
 briefs and allocutions; never yet did a pope so incessantly revile 
 the whole of mankind as Pius IX. He heaps cursing and shame 
 upon more than a thousand millions of contemporaries, who think 
 differently from him. It has always been a mark of ultramontanism . 
 to suifer from a mania for railing. When Bossuet, whose noble 
 greatness is firmly established in history, endeavoured in the so- 
 called Galilean liberties to rescue but a few remnants of the old inde- 
 pendence of the French episcopate, and the ultramontanes could not 
 reply to his arguments, they began to defame his private life in the 
 most shameful innuendos and most lying inventions. But never did 
 this poisonous fruit of ultramontanism appear everywhere so fre- 
 quently and so destructively as in our days. And this press has a 
 language hitherto unknown in the educated world. I must frankly 
 confess, before the existence of this press I really did not know the 
 stores of the German language in nicknames, or its capacity of new 
 formations in this kind. Read this language in the light of our 
 experience, that such papers can hold their ground for more than 
 three months, and you must lower somewhat your estimate of the 
 general culture of our nation : for if truly Christian education, as is 
 commonly supposed, were indeed universal, such a moral indignation 
 would arise on all sides, that in a great town such a paper could not 
 hold its ground more than three months. I am not thinking of 
 force, of smashing windows and the like ; such means we scorn ; I 
 only mean, that people would regard themselves as degraded by sup- 
 porting such a paper. This so-called Catholic press devastates the 
 last remnants of Christian life in the Roman Catholic people, which 
 thereby becomes accustomed to untruthfulness, uncharitableness and 
 fanaticism. 
 
 I come now to a hindrance which I cannot mention without the 
 deepest grief ; yet mention it I must, though I bring before you 
 nothing but what you know. The greatest hindrance, which I have 
 now in view, I call a bad example and a scandal. It is the bad 
 example and the scandal given by the shepherds to their flocks. 
 Let us briefly recal to our minds what the bishops ^ have done. The 
 bishops of the most highly-educated nations, standing in the van 
 of civilisation, the bishops of the greatest dioceses, what have they 
 done ? The German bishops, before they went to Rome, pledged 
 their word to us, that " no new principles would be set up, no others 
 
 [' Sec J. H. Reiukens, Die Unterwerfung der deutschen Bischöfe zu Fulda. 
 Münster 1871.]
 
 88 DEFECTION OF THE GERMAN BISHOPS. 
 
 than those which are written in our heart by faith and conscience :" 
 and they have not kept their word to ns. (General assent and 
 Bravo !) When the bishops left E-ome, many of them, more than 
 half a hundred, gave one another their word, that with reference to 
 the Vatican decrees they would only act in concert; and they have 
 broken their word to one another, (Applause.) In Rome they 
 affirmed unanimity to be indispensable in dogmatic resolutions, and 
 stated in an official document that their conscience would be crushed 
 by an intolerable burden if resolutions were adopted otherwise than 
 unanimously. And then when, out of 1037 members of the council 
 recognised by the curia as qualified, of whom only 535 were present, 
 on the 18th of July 1870 533— surely that is not the whole 1037— 
 had assented to the pope's decrees, the bishops after a few months 
 would fain teach us that the unanimity which was demanded is not 
 necessary, or that the resolution was unanimously adopted, because 
 they forsooth meanwhile had submitted. But we never heard before 
 that submission is an assenting vote. Nor do they themselves 
 believe it, but put upon themselves and upon us that a vote 
 was unanimous, against which they themselves with a hundred 
 others bore witness. — They again and again registered protests 
 against the order of proceeding, and declared that the council was 
 not free, that its cecumenicity would be disputed; and now they 
 declare to us that they had after all the requisite freedom. But the 
 documentary evidence to the contrary is still on record in the acts. 
 — Further, they have declared in official documents that the doctrine 
 of papal infallibility, both name and thing, was foreign to Christian 
 antiquity ; they have testified that even to this day it is unknown in 
 name to entire dioceses and countries ; they have boldly expressed 
 their conviction that this is no Catholic doctrine, because it has no 
 place either in Holy Scripture or in the traditions ; they have said 
 that, if it be elevated into a dogma, the Church would commit 
 suicide. In a paper circulated by bishop von Ketteler they have 
 asserted that it would be a spectacle in the highest degree worthy 
 of the amazement of all centuries, if by such a dogma the council 
 should declare itself superfluous ; and now they come back and inform 
 us, that in substance this dogma has been taught in all centuries. 
 (Bravo ! Very right !) The bishops in Rome stood up as witnesses to 
 the truth, and said. We bear this witness, because the duty of our office 
 commands us, because our oath requires it ; we can testify no otherwise 
 than we do ; — and now, where is the duty of their office, where the oath 
 which they swore ? They said it would be the destruction of souls ; — 
 and now they themselves destroy souls ! (Bravo !) Either they must 
 now frankly and honestly confess, that in spite of the appeal to their 
 oath they were not at Rome witnesses to the truth, or they must 
 acknowledge to us that their present testimony is worthless. — Fur- 
 ther they declared in Rome, We preach a doctrine of the relation 
 between Church and State very different from the ecclesiastico- 
 political system contained in the bulls of Boniface YIII. and
 
 THE GERMAN BISHOPS. THE GOVERNMENTS. 39 
 
 Paul TV. — let us now add, in tlie syllabus of Pius IX. — according to 
 whicli the pope's sovereignty, exalted above every state dignity, 
 judges princes and nations, constitutions and laws ; they protested, 
 that it is impossible to remodel civil society by this system ; — now 
 they come back and feign that they never preached any other doc- 
 trine ; they attempt the impossible, and wonder if the state govern- 
 ments fall into conflict with them, a conflict which they themselves 
 predicted as inevitable. (Applause.) At Rome they proved the 
 design of Pius IX. by a mock council to abolish for ever the whole- 
 some institution of councils ; they proved this design by their own 
 experience, and from his own briefs, and now they deny what they 
 proved, — They registered reclamations and protests against all 
 infringements on their dignity and office at the council on the part 
 of the pope and his officers, and declared that they only registered 
 these reclamations as perenne documentum, as a testimony for ever, 
 whereby before men and the terrible judgement of God they dis- 
 claimed the responsibility of all the consequences. And not two 
 months later they took the responsibility upon their own shoulders ; 
 and so that document has become a testimony for ever, that in their 
 appeal to God's terrible judgement they played a blasphemous 
 game. (Yehement applause.) Finally in the face of the living 
 Father in heaven and before all Christendom they have denied and 
 violated their duty to the truth, and have confessed that they did 
 so because they would not tell their pretended father Pius IX. to 
 the face that he falsified God's word in declaring himself infallible ! 
 This is a great scandal and bad example before all Christendom. 
 This is a scandal unparalleled in all Church history. The heralds 
 of the Gospel from fear of man deny the truth, and in conse- 
 qiience of this scandal clergy and people lie prostrate in moral 
 impotence. 
 
 Finally we have heard from eloquent lips ^ speaking with profes- 
 sional authority, what difficulties the state governments cast in our 
 way. The state governments have often confessed that they were 
 entirely taken aback by the Church and State conflict ; in the last 
 generation they fostered ultramontanism by ignorance, by moral 
 weakness and by an excess of cunning (Bravo !) ; and they them- 
 selves stifled every voice that was raised against it in the Catholic 
 Church, promoting the noisiest ringleaders of the ultramontanes 
 and lending to the bishops the hand of the police to annihilate such 
 men as stood up warning and struggling against the Jesuitism which 
 endangers states, and which was assuming an ever bolder and bolder 
 front. This is what the state governments did! (Yehement ap- 
 plause.) Even now the growth of their statesmanlike insight in 
 this department is infinitely tardy, though they are at last aware, 
 that it is a question of life and death for the states themselves. 
 Still to this very day their eyes are not so far opened, as to see 
 
 P Those of Prof. Maassen, an eminent canonist of Vienna.]
 
 40 THE STATE GOVEKNMENTS. ROME. 
 
 their grievous need of men who have any knowledge of the matter. 
 (Bravo !) For example, they cannot yet understand that a bishop, 
 e. g. who has sworn allegiance to the king, and has been installed in 
 his office solely by virtue of this oath, if by conscious breach of the 
 state laws he violates the oath of allegiance, violates it in practice, 
 and bluntly declares that on principle he will always violate it for the 
 future, whenever the state laws appear to him to contradict the 
 pope's laws — they cannot yet understand that such a bishop can be a 
 bishop no longer. (Bravo ! and assent.) In Bavaria the government 
 declares the Vatican decrees to be dangerous to the state, and in 
 childlike innocence appoints at the university a number of pro- 
 fessors of this dangerous doctrine, and fills the sees with bishops 
 who so teach ! In France Thiers and Gambetta would fain embrace 
 ultramontanism, though they have in their hearts no spark of this 
 kind of devotion, ^merely in order to rise in the state by its help. 
 (Bravo !) This is the reason why in France, with a few honorable 
 exceptions, we have no Old Catholic movement. Once more the 
 state o-overnments, as I know from the mouth of statesmen them- 
 selves, are entirely blind to the civilising power of sound religious 
 principles : that the moral idea of the modern state, a state founded 
 on equal rights, cannot at all, at any time, be realised without a 
 healthy religion, — this thought seems to lie wholly beyond the ken of 
 our governments. Rather then than concede to the Old Catholics 
 so much as the joint use of a church belonging to the state, they 
 choose with a painful legality to exert the summum ius on behalf of 
 petty state institutions, which becomes summa iniuria against the 
 general welfare. In political readjustments they rose with such a 
 genial ease to the ideal standing-point, elevated above many scruples 
 of legal right; and in this religious crisis out of regard to material 
 right they readily endure the destruction of all ideal right of State 
 and Church ! 
 
 Great then and numerous are the hindrances which confront us. 
 Shall we despair? This day in the service we heard a voice of 
 mighty promise borne aloft by a wondrous melody, which sang : " Be 
 thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee the crown of life! 
 Fear not, fear not, fear not ! I am with thee ! " Here lies the secret 
 of victory over all these hindrances. Whoso stands in the truth, let 
 him be faithful to death, and he belongs to the salt of the earth, 
 whereby the face of the earth is renewed. I also remember, that 
 yesterday from this place the Saviour's words were uttered to you ^ : 
 " Fear not, thou little flock, behold, I have overcome the world ! " 
 — Those hindrances are nothing else than just the world, which 
 appears in them embodied in various shapes. I know well that Pope 
 Pius IX. understands by " world " the modern constitutional state, 
 and asserts with Louis Yeuillot that such a state is the incarnation 
 of Belial, the prince of this world. But the apostle John, the 
 disciple of love, has given us another interpretation of the " world," 
 
 [^ By Pi-of. Knooflt ; see p. 40.]
 
 TRUE AND FALSE CATHOLICITY. -4:1 
 
 and he, we may suppose, knew what the Lord meant by the term. 
 By world he understood lust of the eyes, lust of the flesh and pride 
 of life. What is the world ? If we would see this in a concrete 
 place, let us read a truthful history of the Roman court, and we 
 shall find an embodiment of the world. (Bravo on all sides.) He» 
 whom we trust, has overcome the world ; His word, " Fear not," is a 
 power, by which we surmount all those hindrances. The world 
 embodied at E-ome has not been overcome by the pope and his 
 retinue — no, not to this very day. Once when at E-ome the contrast 
 was felt between the pretended vicar of God and his pompous 
 display, a ceremony was devised, which is acted at his first triumphal 
 procession, when he takes possession of the papal dignity. It is 
 this : a herald holds before the new pope and thrice burns a bundle 
 of tow, exclaiming : Sic transit gloria mundi ! Once indeed a pope 
 was vexed at this, so that he remarked : " Enough, I know it 
 already !" but that was a mistake ; even to this day the pope does not 
 know it ; and therefore also he has not yet overcome the world ; he 
 deceives himself and his partisans, by clothing them — the luxurious 
 world — in religious uniform. But it is the Lord that has over- 
 come the world, and whoever rally round Him, need not fear, for 
 they also are victors. 
 
 It is God's power in us which removes' the fear of those hindi'ances. 
 But the necessity of our final victory is also clear to us. — Our hope 
 for the Old Catholic movement is above all manifest in the Jiopeless- 
 ness of the ultramontane Church. Nothing in the world, which has 
 lost the power of growth, can continue to subsist. This is an un- 
 changeable law : what has lost the power of growth must perish. The 
 catholicity of the Church of Jesus Christ has four qualities, like love ; 
 it has its height and its depth, its breadth and its length. Its height 
 is its origin from God ; its depth is the mystery, that it moulds that 
 which is eternally one in an endless multiplicity and in a fulness of 
 glorious forms ; its breadth is the expansive power to embrace all 
 nations of the earth in its bond of love ; its length is the capacity 
 which belongs to Christianity of development through all ages, and 
 therewith the capacity of always appearing in shapes adapted to the 
 vai'ious stages of culture. (Bravo !) But ultramontanism has no 
 catholicity ; it is not catholic, but Romano Therefore it has no 
 
 P See Barrow in "Wordsworth's Christ. Inst., iv^. 209 : " So divers prevalent 
 factions did assume io themselves the name of Catholic ,- and the Roman 
 Church particularly has appropriated that word to itself, even so as to commit 
 a bull, implying Rome and the universe to be the same place ; and the per- 
 petual canting of this term has been one of its most effectual charms to weak 
 people." Wordsworth cites Crakantliorp contra Spalatinum 15 : " Catholica 
 universalis est, tota est, per orbem omnem diffusa ac disseminata: Romana 
 pars solum est, particularis est et Romae pomoeriis circumscripta. Cum Catho- 
 licam liomanam dicis, idem dicis ac universalem particularem, totam partem, 
 id est Catholicam non Catholicam." Professor Michelis, on 21st September 
 1872, said at Cologne : " How can the Church be other than catholic ? It is 
 essentially catholic. I know what I said when I was excommunicated, — I 
 accepted it joyfully. I am now severed from the Roman Catholic Church. 
 But there is precisely the self-contradiction. What is Greek- and Anglican.
 
 ^2 VATICANISM TOTTERING TO ITS FALL. 
 
 heiglit, for it springs from ambitious men of little insight ; it has no 
 depth, for it sees unity in superficial uniformity ; it has no breadth, 
 for it is shrivelling up more and more, has already cast off half 
 Christendom, and now occasions fresh divisions, and will not cease to 
 shrivel up, till it vanishes from the earth ; finally it has no length, 
 for it can grow no further ; since beyond the dogmas of papal inf al- 
 liioility and omnipotence this system admits of no development. The 
 acutest thinker can devise nothing more that can possibly grow 
 out of it. This is the judgement iipon ultramontanism : it decays, 
 because it can grow no further. And the same is our hope ; if it 
 decays, we grow ; for from its ruins the nations arise with their eyes 
 opened, who will then also embrace the truth, and with us feel them- 
 selves happy. (Tumultuous applause.) 
 
 But the Vatican Church is falling also for another reason : it has 
 torn authority out of the conscience, and made it rest on constraint. 
 If a political power, if a civil corporation, cannot subsist for good, 
 if it rests on constraint alone and has no foundation in men's con- 
 sciences, much less can a religioiis authority hold its ground which 
 is uprooted from conscience. (Bravo !) 
 
 There are yet other signs, which foretell the ruin of Vaticanism. 
 The pope asserts that the doctrine of his infallibility is the funda- 
 mental dogma of all Christianity. Well then, this doctrine is a lie ; 
 it sprung up by forgery, by deceit and by incapacity to apprehend 
 history, and has finally been carried through by all the means of 
 craft and force. A Church i*esting on such a foundation of lies must 
 faU. (Bravo !) 
 
 Once more there is no principle that can maintain the Church but 
 that which founds the ChurchS and that is the power of faith. Power 
 of faith however is wholly lacking to ultramontanism; for the 
 bishops' submission is nothing but the fruit of their impotence of 
 faith. If they believed, they would also have gladness and power 
 to make sacrifices for their faith, which they are unable to do. This 
 Church has no longer any faith at all, in clergy or in people ; for 
 what they call faith is only lack of understanding, lack of courage 
 and of love for the truth ; this is only an outward " submission," as 
 they call it themselves ; and a Church which possesses no power of 
 faith must fall. (Bravo !) It must finally die of the absurdity, the 
 unreasonableness of its doctrines, which the younger generation, 
 trained as it is more and more in history, can never assimilate with 
 its intellectual growth, but can only cast off. So then on all these 
 accoimts the prophecy^ of the "little stone" which should detach 
 
 Catholic? There is only one Catholic Church, namely, that founded by 
 Christ."] 
 
 \} An allusion to the words of Sail. Cat. 2, cited in the preface to 
 Neander's History : " Imperium facile his ortibus retinctur, quibus initio 
 partutn est."] 
 
 V^ The pope's propliecy, perpetually cited in German speeches and joui'nals. 
 See above p. G.]
 
 CHRIST THE ONLY MEDIATOR. 43 
 
 itself and shatter a " colossus," may more easily be applied to tlie 
 Vatican Chnrcli tlian to tlie German empire. 
 
 But we have not merely this negative side of our hopes ; we may 
 lean on positive grounds also. The power of faith resides in the 
 Old Catholic movement ; this is shewn by the sacrifices already made 
 and still daily made by the members of this association, sacrifices of 
 material means, of faculties, sacrifices of tbeir rest, of their outward 
 peace, sacrifices in every kind of surrender of which the human heart 
 is capable. And where sacrifices are made for faith, there is also the 
 power of faith. (Bravo !) Whoever will convince himself that faith is 
 in us, let him attend our service, and ask himself whether he finds in 
 the infallibilist Church the same expression of thoughtfulness and 
 devotion as in our service. (Applause.) 
 
 When this morning, in St. Pantaleon's church, the echo of the 
 Gloria would not die away from our ears, when the joy in the glory 
 of the Son of Man in the majesty of the Father with the Holy Spirit 
 would not cease to sound, then the involuntary yearning came over 
 us that rehgion might at last be turned toward its ti-ue goal, God the 
 Lord, with whom it unites us ; that no man might intrude any more 
 between the great Lord and Father of the universe and our hearts. 
 If then the universal praise of God so rose unhindered, no heart of 
 man would any longer be capable of an evil thought, much less of 
 the evil deed. Then came the earnest voice of the priest, who 
 devoutly sang to us the epistle, and the epistle ended with the words', 
 " Behold, I make all things new ! " and the word of promise awakened 
 the hope that the face of the earth may be renewed in the Spirit of 
 the living God. And see, scarcely had this word of blessing died 
 away from our ears, — the thought abode in our heart, — when a tune 
 of rare sweetness arose, bearing upward a hymn to the Redeemer, 
 who for our sakes died on the cross. There we were fain to connect 
 this hymn, Ave, verum corpus, with the gospel, though no such con- 
 nexion was designed in singing it out of the usual order of the 
 service. The Gospel is a light which only shines when not severed 
 from Him who on the cross kindled this light, never more wholly 
 to be quenched in mankind ; where it shines, it shines in connexion 
 with Him. The Gospel cannot be severed from Christ ; you might 
 as well sever the solar ray from the sun, as sunder the Gospel from 
 Him, who is the Sun of Righteousness. (Bravo!) Whilst then, 
 wherever the mighty spiritual current of our movement makes its 
 way, we bring the Gospel again in this direct relation to Christ, and 
 thereby set the believer's heart in direct connexion with the Saviour, 
 we have the warrant, from this higher point of view also, that our 
 movement will never be lost in the sand. — When the Saviour was to 
 appear in the fulness of time, the rumour spread over the face of the 
 eai-th that One of wonderful greatness would come, a Prince, who 
 should be the peace of the nations. This was not merely the effect 
 
 ^ Ecv. xxi, 5.
 
 44 THE CROWN OF THORNS. THE PAPAL CROWN. 
 
 of the dispersion of the Jews, but also the expression of a religions 
 stirring of the nations. To-day the religious movement passes again 
 over the whole earth. In these days we have kept here an interna- 
 tional of love, an international that foretells the union of the human 
 race in Christ. Everywhere there is awaking the yearning after the 
 full enjoyment of love, after the fire, to kindle which the Son of the 
 living God of love came down upon earth. But this yearning, 
 awakened by God, is itself a promise that Divine Providence has 
 decreed a religious reunion of Christians. The way and manner in 
 which the representatives of different Churches and confessions from 
 different quarters of the world have here met together— for there 
 were not lacking brethren from Asia also, from North America and 
 from Brazil, — this way and manner is an evidence that it is God's 
 Spirit that moves us. That beyond the bounds of language, beyond 
 national distinctions, we hold out the hand to one another in true 
 unfeigned sympathy, this is an evidence that the faith also is 
 unfeigned, and therewith also a guarantee that our movement will 
 lead to the new birth of the Church. (Bravo !) 
 
 This new birth can only be accomplished in most intimate fellow- 
 ship with the One Master, who brooks no other by His side, who 
 holds out to everyone that will follow Him the crown of thorns, and 
 not an earthly crown. The beautiful term " Church Militant " has 
 very often been abused. The Church is militant, because the congre- 
 gation, which is, you know, the Church, combats sin in itself ; and 
 each individual Christian is a soldier, who wages war with the sin in 
 his own breast. All representatives of the different confessions have 
 now avowed that they have attained to self-knowledge, and find 
 that they must i:)ecome better, that we may be enabled truthfully 
 to grasp one another's hands, not by the conversion of the one party 
 to the other, but by the amendment of all. (Applause.) By this 
 fellowship, which presupposes a previous conflict with sin in our own 
 heart, — by this fellowship we shall ensure that, though we take from 
 the Lord's hand the crown of thorns, still we are happy even on this 
 earth, happy, because we bear about within us the true peace. The 
 one who has disturbed this peace, — this one has not understood the 
 word ; in place of receiving of the Lord the crown of thorns, he has 
 grasped a threefold crown, which should give him a sovereignty over 
 princes and x^eoples. But whoever mounts on high and usurps Divine 
 prerogatives, grasps the crown of Him who sits at the Father's right 
 hand, and He will not brook it, — He will humble the proud, but the 
 lowly He will lift from the dust. (Bravo !) Under the banner of His 
 cross we stand and fight, and reach to one another the hand of 
 brotherhood from continent to continent, and rest not till peace is 
 again restored in hearts, peace in families, peace in congregations, 
 peace in State and Church, peace between the nations. For this we 
 strive, this is our goal, and the One Shepherd, under whom we then 
 walk, one in spirit and in love, is the great God, the Father in the 
 heavens ! (Long-continued, repeated, enthusiastic applause.)
 
 SPEECH OP BISHOP RETNKENS ON THE EVENING 
 OF SEPT. II 1873 IN THE COUNCIL HALL AT 
 CONSTANCE. 
 
 Honoured Friends and Guests ! 
 
 If in this moment I mount tlie tribune and deliver to you a 
 sliort address, it is not for the purpose of instruction, but to utter 
 two words of thanks and of greeting. 
 
 The first is a word of thanks. We have just heard the greetings of 
 the guests ; sympathies have been conveyed to us from beyond the 
 ocean, from St. Petersburg, London and Paris, as well as from the 
 heart of Germany and from Switzerland. There we heard them speak, 
 our esteemed guests, in various languages — but I caught one only 
 language, the language of the heai-t, the language of the Christian 
 soul's yearning for fellowship in the Lord, for purity of religion and 
 for union, for the unity of Christians in truth and in love. This 
 language is truly religious, it is a proclamation of the returning 
 light that is to enlighten the earth. It is said in an old Church 
 prayer in the rite of Eastertide : " The earth trembled and became 
 still ^." We too see it now tremble, and this trembling also will 
 lead to rest. That prayer is interpreted of the earthquake at the 
 resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Head of the Church. In the 
 present quivering of the nations we hail the sign of the Church's 
 resurrection. For the Spirit, now passing through the peoples of 
 Christendom and moving them, is an elevating, a healing and a 
 reconciling Spirit. It is not the spirit of that frenzy which looks for 
 miracles everywhere, and drives men in shoals to those pilgrimages 
 which plunge mankind again in fetish worship ; no, it is the Spirit 
 of God which speaks : " Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven 
 image, to worship it ;" it is the Spirit of truth, wherein we worship 
 God alone ; it is the Spirit of light, of love and of peace. Whoever is 
 touched by this Spirit, moved by His breath, does not isolate himself 
 in self -righteousness, has no desire to justify himself in self-com- 
 placent contemplation of his own doings, but humbly seeks the 
 enlightening and warming fellowship of all who are moved by the 
 same Spirit. In this fellowship the individual, however much he 
 
 ^ Ps. Ixxv. 9, 10 [= Ixxvi. 8, 9 of our Bible and Prayer Book] quoted in 
 the missal under Easterday offet^t. : " Terra tremuit et quievit, dum resurgeret 
 in iudicio Deus."
 
 46 PEAR NOT, THOU LITTLE FLOCK ! 
 
 may give, is still always a receiver also. I thank our honoured guests 
 for attesting to us in their sympathies the intercommunion of the 
 same Spirit ; one day the intercommunion of worship will follow. 
 
 The second word is a greeting of friendly encouragement to my 
 nearer associates in faith and sentiment. To them I cry : " Fear not, 
 thou little flock, for the Lord," whom thou f ollowest, He " hath over- 
 come the world," also the world in the garb of the hierarchy. I 
 uttered the same word ^ of assurance to my friends, when, at the end 
 of August 1870 we met for the first time at Nuremberg, fourteen 
 men*^ strong, to bear witness aloud to the truth. I repeat it with 
 greater force now that we count by thousands, the Lord having so 
 marvellously blessed our confession. I will now compare the little 
 flock to an army of warriors, for we march forwards and ever for- 
 wards to the spiritual conflict. Fear not, thou little army ! We go 
 to battle not with those dark forebodings which a combat on bloody 
 battle-fields brings with it, where even the conquerors weep the costly 
 sacrifices left behind on the ground ; we hasten to the combat with 
 the joyful feeling that, the more we conquer, the more the list of our 
 comrades swells ; for they whom we conquer die not, but are raised 
 with us to new life in Christ. 
 
 In combat we began our holy work, in combat we continue it, and 
 we combat till victory is won. And though our enemies clothe them- 
 selves as angels of light, and their leader sets his throne above 
 the stars, He who stands above these stars and above this throne 
 calls to us : " Fear not, thou little flock, I have overcome the world," 
 and therefore I too take up the watchword, just sounded ^ in spirit- 
 stiii*ing tones : " With God ! Forwards ! " 
 
 [} The text is classical in Old Catholic exhortations. Prof. Knoodt con- 
 cluded a powerful speech at Cologne 21 Sept. 1872 with the words : " With a 
 cheerful courage, with unshaken fidelity to oiu* conviction, with the public 
 confession of our Old Catholic faith, we lift our eyes and hearts to Him, who 
 has said : ' Fear not, thou little flock, for I have overcome the world ! ' He 
 will prove Himself strong in us, who feel ourselves infinitely weak. He will 
 help us to victory." To these words Prof. Keiukens alluded on the next day, 
 see above p. 40.] 
 
 [2 Professors von Döllinger, Friedrich, Eeischl, Knoodt, Keusch, Langen, 
 Baltzer, Keinkens, Weber, von Schulte, Mayer, Löwe, Michelis, Dittrich. Of 
 these Eeischl afterwards submitted; he died in 1873, and it is related as a 
 rare exception that after his submission he maintained friendly relations with 
 his Old Catholic colleagues. The Nuremberg manifesto is printed pp. iv. — vi. 
 of the introduction to the Stenographischer Bericht über die Verhandlungen des 
 Katholiken-Gongresses abgehalten vom 22 bis 24 September 1871 in München. 
 (Munich, Theod. Ackermann, 1871.) See above p. 5,] 
 
 [3 By Landammann Keller.]
 
 SPEECHES OF BISHOP REINKENS IN THE MEETINGS 
 OE DELEGATES 12 AND 13 SEPT. 1873 AT CON- 
 STANCE. 
 
 [In tlae afternoon of Friday 12 September 1873 ObeiTegierungs- 
 rath Wülfl&ng proposed in § 22& of the " Constitution of tlie Synod 
 and Congregation," which included among members of the synod 
 " all Catholic clergy," to read " all Catholic clergy, who are discharg- 
 ing pastoral functions."] 
 
 Bishop Reinkens : I should not like to vote for the paragraph 
 exactly in its present shape. There is some justice in the objections 
 of Oberregierungsrath WülfSng. There are already single examples 
 of Catholic clergy who hold by us, from whose presence in the 
 synod I anticipate no profit. We must also avoid the exclusion 
 under any pretence, of men who are eminently serviceable to our 
 cause, e. g. the respected editor of the Deutscher Merhur^. Who 
 would desire the exclusion from a synod of so capable a clergyman 
 as Mr. Hirschwälder ? In future too we shall probably have teachers 
 of religion in public schools. Why should we exclude these ? Hence 
 I would take the liberty of introducing an amendment, which goes 
 much further than Mr. Wülffing's. Prof. Messmei*^ also would pro- 
 bably be contented, if the clause ran for instance thus : " all Catholic 
 clergy, who are active in the sei'vice of our Church with the bishop's 
 approval." 
 
 [Mr. Wiilffing and Prof. Reusch accepted the Bishop's amendment, 
 but Prof, von Schulte pointed out that the approval e. g. of an editor 
 would amount to a quasi-censorship, and that in the existing scarcity 
 of clergy nothing would be gained by exclusion of one or possibly 
 two drones. In any case the laity present at the synod would out- 
 number the clergy by at least three to one. Ultimately the clause 
 passed in the original form. In regard to Mr. Whittle Lowry's 
 objection to § 45 of the Constitution, that it excluded Old Catholic 
 women from the parish vestry, and consequently subjected them to 
 the direction of the clergy, as among the ultramontanes,] 
 
 1 The weekly organ of tlie Old Catholio Keform, published at Munich ; 
 agent for England D. Nutt 270 Strand. 
 
 ^ Prof. M. pointed out that Mr. Wülffing's amendment would exclude all 
 professors, and recommended the original wording on the ground : •' That every 
 one may contribute his mite, awakens trust and gives courage, and many a man 
 who hitherto persists in peace, i. e. in inactivity, is spurred on to activity, and 
 so we only win."
 
 48 CURATES. TWO FUNDS. 
 
 Bishop Beinliens : If Mr. Lowry should think that we excluded 
 from our congregations and abandoned to the ultramontanes women 
 of independent position, widows for example with their children, 
 who have no man to represent them, he would be in error. This is 
 not the case ; in all our congregations we have such independent 
 women, who have enrolled themselves on the lists and pay the con- 
 tributions to the funds of the congregation; only they are not 
 invited to take part in the deliberations. 
 
 [In § 57 of the Constitution, " with the pastor's consent permanent 
 curates may be appointed in a parish," Justizrath Eilender proposed 
 to substitute "on the proposal of the Church Coimcil" for "with the 
 pastor's consent." Mr. Wülffing said that even the ultramontanes 
 do not make the pastor's consent necessary to the appointment of a 
 curate. A worn-out pastor always thinks himself equal to the entire 
 work of the parish, and may very probably refuse his consent, though 
 there may be urgent need of a curate.] 
 
 Bishop Beinhens : One word of explanation. I did not draw up 
 the paragraph ; but I think I know the motives which dictated it. 
 If Mr. Wülffing thinks the motives were ultramontane, he is mis- 
 taken. "What was present to the mind of the author of the paragraph 
 is a very bitter experience. I could myself reckon up a whole list of 
 pastors who, during a great part of their lives, opposed with great 
 earnestness and real devotion all ultramontane materialism, and 
 then the bishop against their will saddled them with a curate, who 
 was a spy and informer against them, obtained influence over them, 
 and finally after a thousand intrigues their spirit was broken, and 
 they sank into ultramontanism. Therefore it is here expressly 
 stated, " with the pastor's consent." But I should have no objection 
 to the addition of the other provision, " on the proposal of the Church 
 Council." But the significance of the condition, " with the pastor's 
 consent," is this — the freer the pastor is, and the more he is trusted 
 by the congregation, the better he is. I should recommend there- 
 fore, that the paragraj)h should begin thus : " On the proposal of the 
 Church Council, with the pastor's consent." 
 [This suggestion was adopted.] 
 
 [On the morning of Saturday 13 September a proposal was made 
 to form two funds ; one for the support of students of theology, the 
 other for the support of pastors insufficiently remunerated, or emeriti. 
 Mr. Wülffing said that congregations were ready to contribute libe- 
 rally for the maintenance of working clergy ; but he questioned the 
 existence of any Old Catholic clergy who were past work. Prof. 
 Knoodt could name two clergymen who were unfitted for parochial 
 work, but had made great sacrifices for the cause. One had lost a 
 rich benefice, was nearly deaf, but was constantly employed in writing 
 books of great research and sterling value. Pastor Thürlings feared 
 that the off'er of exhibitions to students of theology might prove a 
 bait to candidates of little talent who desired to rise in the world. 
 The separate congregations might subscribe for the support of stu-
 
 STUDENTS OP THEOLOGY. 49 
 
 dents of special merit personally known to tliem ; but a central 
 committee conld easily be imposed upon. Burgomaster Stromeyer 
 supported both proposals as a make-shift, but at the same time up- 
 held the rights of Old Catholics to public endowments. There were 
 such endowments in Constance, which might be applied to the 
 support of Old Catholic students in Bonn. We must have courage 
 to maintain our just claims.] 
 
 Bishop Beinkens : Mr. Burgomaster Stromeyer has said a part of 
 what I intended to say, better and with more authority than I could 
 have done. I would start from his last exhortation, and assure you 
 that the synodal committee will not fail to set the example of 
 courage. AH will be done on our part that can be done to obtain 
 possession of what is due to us, both on behalf of theological 
 students and on behalf of veteran or ill-paid clergymen. I take the 
 liberty of remarking, that the establishment of this fund — for I 
 advocate both parts of the motion — is designed merely to meet a 
 temporary necessity ; therefore any contributions made are not of 
 the nature of a lifelong tax ; we only desire for the moment, as we 
 must help ourselves, and in fact do help ourselves, to do the one and 
 not to leave the other undone. The whole point of Pastor Thürling's 
 argumentation against the first proposal is broken off, if we simply 
 say that the synodal committee will not apply the theological 
 students' fund in favour of the incompetent and untrustworthy, as 
 it examines the candidates, and of course requires the necessary 
 testimonials from their homes also. At present the state of things is 
 this, that the clergy, whatever outward reverence may be paid to it, 
 is nevertheless despised by educated society. The clerical profession 
 is no eligible and enviable one for young men who are in a position 
 to choose another profession. "We must first by the reform of the 
 Church, i. e. by the renewal of the Church's life in the fullest sense 
 of the word, procure for the clergy such respect, that even princes' 
 sons may look upon admission among the clergy as a thing to be 
 coveted. (Bravo!) But as yet we have not come to this; as yet 
 matters stand thus, that students of theology are with few excep- 
 tions needy. We cannot wait to recruit our ranks ; we require on 
 the instant candidates of theology, and those who have offered them- 
 selves are very poor ; but they are — for we have examined them — 
 capable, and if they pass through the training of the Old Catholic 
 faculty at Bonn, they will supply us with very different priests from 
 such as we have often the opportunity of accepting now. Within 
 two months four priests have placed themselves at my disposal, whom 
 I could not accept, and yet they are in full activity on the ultramon- 
 tane side, enjoy the favour of their bishops, and all is well with them. 
 Yet their characters are such, that it was impossible for me to accept 
 them. Of course I will not violate confidence by any hint of the 
 stage of these gentlemen's labours. But so the matter stands. Our 
 hopes turn only to the aftergrowth, reared in our spirit, and with 
 regard to that we must not loiter for one instant. Accordingly I can 
 
 D
 
 50 VETERAN CLERGY. BISHOP BROWNE. 
 
 only recommend warmly tlie establisliment of this fund also; bnt 
 I repeat, it is no permanent tax tliat is here in question, but only a 
 momentary relief to meet the emergency. I am firmly convinced 
 tliat we sball very soon have many funds at our disposal, among 
 others some for theological students. The civil governments will be 
 unable for good to withhold from us our rights, and if our adversa- 
 ries continue to act on the principles which they have proclaimed as 
 unchangeable and eternal, we shall soon live to see them expelled 
 from entire institutions, because according to their principles they 
 cannot remain in them when the civil government assigns to us our 
 fair share. (Bravo !) 
 
 As regards the other point, I can only support most warmly what 
 my friend Prof. Knoodt has said. We have already occasion to sup- 
 port aged clergymen, and not the two alone to whom reference has 
 been made ; we have also occasion in many cases, even where congre- 
 gations have good will in abundance, to advance them sums of money, 
 in order at once to enable them to secure a priest. If then before 
 long priests place themselves at our disposal, as I do not doubt they 
 will, they must be able also to undertake the administration on the 
 terms of the constitution which we have accepted for the synod and 
 congregation ; and as we have abolished all perquisites of our pastors, 
 it is our duty to secure them a decent existence in society. For the 
 moment such a fund is decidedly necessary to us. I am convinced 
 too, that after the information we have given, Mr. Oberregierungs- 
 rath Wiilffing will abandon his opposition. {Mr. Wülßng : "Cer- 
 tainly ! ") I recommend to you both funds, as I have said, merely in 
 order to surmount a temporary difficulty ; for the future not chance, 
 but God, will provide, and also what we do in His Name. (Bravo !) 
 [On Saturday 13 Sept. 1873 Dean Howson spoke in English and 
 read a message from Bishop Browne.] 
 
 Bisho}:» Eeinhens : I cannot forbear thanking the Very Rev. the 
 Dean of Chester personally for his hearty address. At the same 
 time I most earnestly entreat him to convey to the Lord Bishop of 
 Winchester, whom we had last year the honour of greeting at our 
 congress as Bishop of Ely, my most deep-felt thanks for the warm 
 and cordial sympathy, which he has here expressed through the 
 Dean of Chester. I beg you to assure him, that on my side too the 
 same sympathies are cherished towards him, that I shall not forget 
 him, that his earnest and deeply religious temper, which I learnt to 
 appreciate last year, will be ever present to my soul, and that I will 
 return his prayers before God. I beg you with my reverence to bear 
 to him my thanks and greeting.
 
 ANGLO-CONTINENTAL SOCIETY. 
 
 Patron and President. 
 
 The Right Rev. the Loed Bishop of Winchestee. 
 
 Patrons and Vice-Presidents. 
 
 The Archbishop of Canterbury. 
 The Lord High Chancellor. 
 The Archbishop of York. 
 The Archbishop of Armagh. 
 The Archbishop of Dublin. 
 The Marquis of Salisbury. 
 The Marquis of Lothian. 
 The Earl of Harrowby. 
 The Earl of Carnarvon. 
 The Lord Lyttelton. 
 The Bishop of London. 
 The Bishop of Bangor. 
 The Bishop of Bath and Wells. 
 The Bishop of Chester. 
 The Bishop of Chichester. 
 The Bishop of Ely. 
 The Bishop of Lichfield. 
 The Bishop of Lincoln. 
 The Bishop of Llandaff. 
 The Bishop of Peterborough. 
 The Bishop of Rochester. 
 The Bishop of Salisbury. 
 The Bishop of Nottingham. 
 The Bishop of Derry. 
 The Bishop of Moray. 
 
 The Bishop of St. Andrews. 
 
 The Bishop of Calcutta. 
 
 The Bishop of Antigua. 
 
 The Bishop of Bloemfontein. 
 
 The Bishop of Brisbane. 
 
 The Bishop of Columbia. 
 
 The Bishop of Fredericton. 
 
 The Bishop of Gibraltar. 
 
 The Bishop of Jamaica. 
 
 The Bishop of Newfoundland. 
 
 The Bishop of Ontario. 
 
 The Bishop of Perth. 
 
 The Bishop of Illinois. 
 
 The Bishop of Maryland. 
 
 The Bishop of North Carolina. 
 
 The Bishop of Pennsylvania. 
 
 The Bishop of Tennessee. 
 
 The Bishop of Western NewYork. 
 
 Bishop Abraham. 
 
 Bishop Harris. 
 
 Bishop Hobhouse. 
 
 Bishop MacDougall. 
 
 Bishop Nixon. 
 
 Bishop Trower. 
 
 Bishop Southgate. 
 
 Secretaries. 
 
 Rev. Frederick Meyrick, BUcUing, Aylsham. 
 
 Rev. the Lord Charles A. Hervey, Ohesterford, Saffron Waiden. 
 
 Wm. Talmadge, Esq., 135, Boidevard Haussmann, Paris, for France. 
 
 Yen. Archdeacon Huxtable, Sutton Waldron, Shafteshury, for Italy. 
 
 Rev. Matthew Powley, Beading, for Spain. 
 
 Rev. Professor Mayor, St. John's Coll., Camhridge, ) ^^^ Germany. 
 
 Chris. Benson, Esq., Elizaleth Strasse, Wiesbaden, f 
 
 Rev. F. S. May, 32, Craven Road, London, W., for Scandinavia. 
 
 Rev! Charles R. Hale, Auburn, New York, for America. 
 
 Treasurers. 
 
 Rev. Joseph Oldknow, D.D., Bordesley, Birmingham.. 
 
 Rev. Canon Wade, St. Ann's, Soho, London. 
 
 Messrs. Rivington, 3, Waterloo Place, London. 
 
 Messrs. Coutts' Bank, Strand, London. 
 
 T. P. Woodcock, Esq., Ghardstock, Chard, for Italy. 
 
 Messrs. Hoare's Bank, Fleet Street, London, for Italy. 
 
 Rev. P. S. May, 32, Craven Road, London, W., for Scandmavia.
 
 LATELY PUBLISHED. 
 Present state of Religion in France, Italy, Spain, 
 
 Germany, Switzerland, Holland, Armenia, Bulgaria, Turkey : Report of 
 the Anglo-Continental Society for 1873. '^^^ 
 
 Report of the Congress of Constaitce. By the Rev. 
 
 John E. B. Mayor, M.A., Fellow of St. John's College, and Professor 
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