And in the council at Jerusalem, “an ecclesiastical corporation” surely, the apostles say: “For it hath seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to us, to lay no further burden upon you than these necessary things”;[43] plainly indicating and using their right to impose commands and exact obedience. But enough of this. The persecutors of the church to-day are not at all concerned about the teachings of the New Testament. The attempt, however, to make it appear that only Catholics protest against the doctrine of absolute and undivided allegiance to the state is wholly unjustifiable. There is no Protestant sect in England or the United States which would submit to the intervention of the government in its spiritual life and internal discipline. Would the Methodists, or the Baptists, or the Presbyterians permit the state to decide what kind of education their ministers are to receive, or to determine whether they are capable of properly discharging their spiritual duties, or to keep in office by force those whom the church had cast off? They would go out to pray on the hillside and by the river banks rather than submit to such tyranny. Is not the right of revolution, which in our day, especially outside of the Catholic Church, is held to be divine, based upon the principle of divided allegiance? Practically it is impossible to distinguish between loyalty to the government and loyalty to the state; and no man in this age thinks of questioning the right of rebellion against a tyrannical government. This divided allegiance marks the radical difference between Christian and pagan civilization. Before Christ there was no divided allegiance, because the individual was absorbed by the state, and nothing could have wrested mankind from this bondage but a great spiritual organization such as the Catholic Church; and this, we believe, is generally admitted by our adversaries. They fail to perceive, however, that there is no other institution than the Catholic Church which has the power to prevent the state from again absorbing the individual and destroying all civil and political liberty. If the church could be broken up into national establishments, and the entire control of education handed over to the state, the bringing all men to the servile temper which characterizes the Russians and Protestant Prussians would be only a question of time. Many will be inclined to hold that the general freedom, and even license, of thought of our time would be a sufficient protection against any such danger.