Yet it is important to remember that in the ages of faith the same unity prevailed in political ideas, and that the civil as well as the religious troubles of our time are in great measure due to the Reformation. It is common to advise Catholics to make up their minds to accept the political doctrines of the day; but it would be more to the purpose to recall the ideas of Catholic times. It is not in the results of the political development of the last three centuries that the Church can place her trust; neither in absolute monarchy, nor in the revolutionary liberalism, nor in the infallible constitutional scheme. She must create anew or revive her former creations, and instil a new life and spirit into those remains of the mediaeval system which will bear the mark of the ages when heresy and unbelief, Roman law, and heathen philosophy, had not obscured the idea of the Christian State. These remains are to be found, in various stages of decay, in every State,--with the exception, perhaps, of France,--that grew out of the mediaeval civilisation. Above all they will be found in the country which, in the midst of its apostasy, and in spite of so much guilt towards religion, has preserved the Catholic forms in its Church establishment more than any other Protestant nation, and the Catholic spirit in her political institutions more than any Catholic nation. To renew the memory of the times in which this spirit prevailed in Europe, and to preserve the remains of it, to promote the knowledge of what is lost, and the desire of what is most urgently needed,--is an important service and an important duty which it behoves us to perform. We are greatly mistaken if these are not reflections which force themselves on every one who carefully observes the political history of the Church in modern Europe. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 300: _The Rambler_, 1858.] [Footnote 301: Tertullian, _Apologeticum_, 39; see also 30, 32. "We pray also for the emperors, for the ministers of their Government, for the State, for the peace of the world, for the delay of the last day."] [Footnote 302: _De Civil. Dei_, xv. 5. "The fratricide was the first founder of the secular State."] [Footnote 303: "The Church reckons her subjects not as her servants but as her children."] [Footnote 304: "It is the maddest insolence, not only to dispute against that which we see the universal Church believing, but also against what we see her doing. For not only is the faith of the Church the rule of our faith, but also her actions of ours, and her customs of that which we ought to observe" (Morinus, _Comment. de Discipl. in administ. Poenitentiae_, Preface).] [Footnote 305: "Apud vos quodvis colere jus est Deum verum" (Tertullian, _Apolog._ xxiv.).] [Footnote 306: August. _de Civ. Dei_, xx. 19. 3.]