Many people in our enlightened times would denounce this treatment as illiberal and persecuting, and justly. But consider his age and circumstances. What was Leo to do as the guardian of the faith in those dreadful times? Was he to suffer those who poisoned all the sources of renovation which then remained to go unrebuked and unpunished? He may have said, in his defence, "Shall I, the bishop of this diocese, the appointed guardian of faith and morals in a period of alarming degeneracy,--shall I, armed with the sword of Saint Peter, stop to draw the line between injuries inflicted by the tongue and injuries inflicted by the hand? Shall we defend our persons, our property, and our lives, and take no notice of those who impiously and deliberately would destroy our souls by their envenomed blasphemies? Shall we allow the wells of water which spring up to everlasting life to be poisoned by the impious atheists and scoffers, who in every age set themselves up against Christ and His kingdom, and are only allowed by God Almighty to live, as the wild beasts of the desert or scorpions and serpents are allowed to live? Let them live, but let us defend ourselves against their teeth and fangs. Are the overseers of God's people, in a world of shame, to be mere philosophical Gallios, indifferent to our higher interests? Is it a Christian duty to permit an avalanche of evils to overwhelm the Church on the plea of toleration? Shall we suffer, when we have the power to prevent it, a pandemonium of scoffers and infidels and sentimental casuists to run riot in the city which is intrusted to us to guard? Not thus will we be disloyal to our trusts. Men have souls to save, and we will come to the rescue with any weapons we can lay our hands upon. The Church is the only hope of the world, not merely in our unsettled times, but for all ages. And hence I, as the guardian of those spiritual principles which lie at the root of all healthy progress in civilization, and all religious life, will not tamely and ignobly see those principles subverted by dangerous and infidel speculations, even if they are attractive to cultivated but irreligious classes." Such may have been the arguments, it is not unreasonable to suppose, which influenced the great Leo in his undoubted persecutions,--persecutions, we should remember, which were then indorsed by the Catholic Church. They would be condemned in our times by all enlightened men, but they were the only remedy known in that age against dangerous opinions. So Leo put down the Manicheans and preserved the unity of the faith, which was of immeasurable importance in the sea of anarchies which at that time was submerging all the traditions of the past.