The
Pope continues to damn them all conformably with the tradition of the
Church; but he has given up levying armies to make war upon them here
below.
Things are improved when we daily find the Head of the Roman Catholic
Church in friendly intercourse with the foes of his religion. He
partakes of the liberality of a Mussulman Prince; he receives a
schismatic Empress as a loving father; he converses familiarly with a
Queen who has abjured Catholicism to marry a Protestant; he receives
with distinction the aristocracy of the New Jerusalem; he sends his
Majordomo to attend upon a young heretic prince[11] travelling
_incognito_. I hardly know whether Gregory VII. would approve this
tolerance; nor can I tell how it is judged in the other world by the
instigators of the Crusades, or by the advisers of the Massacre of St.
Bartholomew. For my own part, I should award it unbounded praise, if I
could believe it took its source in a spirit of enlightenment and
Christian charity. I should regard it differently, if I thought it was
to be traced to calculations of policy and interest.
The difficulty is to penetrate the secret thoughts of the Sovereign
Pontiff; to find a key to the real motive of his tolerance. Natural
mildness and interested mildness resemble each other in their effects,
but differ widely in their causes. When the Pope and the Cardinals
overwhelm M. de Rothschild with assurances of their highest
consideration, are we to conclude that an Israelite is equal to a
Roman Catholic in their eyes, as he is in yours or mine? Or are we to
conclude that they deem it expedient to mask their real sentiments
because M.
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