The dogmatic decision and definiteness of Catholic faith on the one hand, and the firmly rooted private convictions of Protestantism on the other, are very compatible with an historical judgment of historical events. Difficult as this may appear to the absolute spirit of our age, it is this very historical impartiality which must prepare the way for the complete triumph of truth, and the consummate glory of Christianity. And it is in this consists the great distinction between true toleration and the fatal indifferentism of our age, and of the age immediately preceding. True toleration is founded on the humble and consequently religious principle and firm hope, that while one leaves in quiet what has already an historical existence, God will conduct and arrange all things, and bring them to their appointed end. This is widely remote from that pretended equality of all religions, provided they inculcate but a good morality--a system which strikes at the root of all religion. Intolerance, on the other hand, is grounded in the proud, and therefore impious opinion, that it can mould all things to what it fancies they ought to be, without any regard to the limits of human weakness--and without reflecting that what is put down by outward force, not unfrequently grows up in secret in an altered, though still more dangerous, form. Of this truth, it would not be difficult to adduce many historical proofs. In the absolute spirit of our age, and in the absolute character of its factions, there is a deep-rooted intellectual pride, which is not so much personal or individual, as social, for it refers to the historical destiny of mankind, and of this age in particular. Actuated by this pride, a spirit exalted by moral energy, or invested with external power, fancies it can give a real existence to that which can only be the work of God: as from him alone proceed all those mighty, and real regenerations of the world, among which Christianity--a revolution in the high and divine sense of the word--occupies the first place; and in these plastic moments, every thing is possible that man can wish or dare to hope, if in what he adds on his own part, he mars not much in what the bounteous monarch of the universe, from the overflowings of his ineffable love, outpours upon his earth. For the last three hundred years this human pride has been at work--a pride that wishes to originate events, instead of humbly awaiting them, and of resting contented with the place assigned to it among those events, and of making the best and most charitable use of those circumstances which Providence has decreed.