Church that no one could dispense from the law of God. But the non-Italian Bishops, and nearly all the Italians themselves, were at first in favour of declaring it to be “the Divine law,” so strong was the evidence. And it was seen clearly enough that from the divinely imposed obligation must again be inferred the equally divine rights and institution of the episcopate. Meanwhile the Jesuit General made his two famous speeches to show that all episcopal authority was a mere emanation from the Pope. For ten months, from September 18, 1562 to July 14, 1563, all sessions of the Council had to be suspended to prevent any decree being made on the subject; and at last, on July 14, 1563, the twenty-eight Spanish Bishops and “the Divine right of residence” succumbed to the majority of 192 votes, about three-fourths being Italians. _Absit omen!_ The _Civiltà_ of February 5, 1870, in its article, “I Politicastri ed il Concilio,” has supplied a noteworthy commentary on the canons or decrees of the third _Schema_, which affirm the Church to be an institution armed with coercive powers of inflicting bodily punishments; for that is obviously the meaning. The “Politicastri” are those statesmen who imagine that the State has a sphere of its own, independent of the legislation of the Church and the interposition of the Pope. That, according to the Roman Jesuits, is a most abominable error. A law which contradicts a law of the Church has not the slightest validity for men’s consciences. For the authority of a Council—and _a fortiori_ of a Pope, from whom, on the Jesuit theory, Councils derive all their force and validity—is above the authority of the State.(50) Should the State therefore require obedience to a law opposed to an ordinance of the Council, it would do so without any real right (_senza vero titulo giuridico_), and, should it enforce compliance, would be introducing a suicidal tyranny. It is further explained that this by no means applies to those religious laws only which rest on Divine ordinance, but also to those which are purely ecclesiastical, and therefore on Catholic principles are variable. Let us take the twelfth of the _Canones de Ecclesiâ_, which anathematizes all who doubt the Church’s power to inflict corporal punishment; and consider further that the Popes have most solemnly declared that by baptism all heretics are become their subjects, are amenable to the laws of the Church, and must, if needful, be compelled to obey them.(51) Consider further that the Syllabus condemns the toleration or equality of different religions, and no doubt can remain as to what system it is intended to introduce.