The Bishop of Ermeland was ordered to withdraw his excommunication, because it might affect those who came under it in their civil capacity, under pain of suspension by the government. The answer of the Bishop, Monsignor Krementz, was admirable in every way, and we regret that our limited space compels us to exclude it. It is enough to say that the bishop shows, beyond the possibility of doubt, that he is actually within the law, by a special provision of the Prussian Constitution, which declares in Article XII. “that the enjoyment of civil and political rights is independent of religious professions,” while he declares at the same time that in such matters he is not bound by the civil law. Those opposed to him in faith must support him in this. Recent decisions in the English courts on behalf of the Established Church support him. And we need hardly waste the time of our readers by entering into such a question. If a government acknowledges a church at all, it must allow that church to work in its own way so long as it does not intrench upon the civic rights of the subject. The men in question, who were condemned, received their orders and powers of teaching, preaching, and saying Mass from the church, to which they made the most solemn oaths of entire obedience in matters of doctrine. If afterwards they grew discontented, they possessed the civil right to leave it. But as honest men, how could they remain in it, receiving emolument from it, using its property, and all the while persisting in preaching doctrines contrary to it, and endeavoring to destroy it? Those who defend the decision of the German government must allow that when, as not unfrequently happens, a Protestant clergyman becomes a convert to our faith, he may still abide in the Protestant church, preaching the Catholic faith to his congregation. Our battle, then, and in this we are all Jesuits, is with the Bismarck empire, with the supreme power of the state. These ideas of Prince Bismarck are not new; they are as old as old Rome. The Roman was taught from his infancy that he belonged body and soul to the state; and no doubt Rome owed much of her vast power and boundless acquisitions to the steady inculcation of this materialistic doctrine from childhood upwards. “The divinity of the emperor” is not far removed from the divinity of the Chancellor. It is a very simple doctrine, and no doubt very convenient for those whom it benefits. But unfortunately for it and its defenders, One came into this world to tell us that we were “to render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” This is the Catholic golden rule of politics, as we believe it to be of all orthodox Protestants. Prince Bismarck will excuse our obeying Jesus Christ in preference to him.