ORESTES A. BROWNSON, COLLECTED AND ARRANGED BY HENRY F. BROWNSON. VOLUME XI. CONTAINING THE SECOND PART OF THE WRITINGS ON CHRISTIANITY AND DETROIT: THORNDIKE NOURSE, PUBLISHER. EDITOR'S PREFACE. THE essays in this volume on the papacy and the supremacy of the spiritual order, directed chiefly against Gallicanism and political atheism, seem to me as necessary to meet the dominant spirit and tendencies of the present time as they were when first published, some thirty years ago. The corrections and alterations in them were made by the author about ten years ago, when preparing two essays, which will appear in the thirteenth volume, on Church and State and the Papal Infallibility. These additional essays were produced in order to carry out more fully the original design, which was left incomplete. The essays on the papacy were not received with favor by all the members of the hierarchy, and were strongly opposed, not as unorthodox, but as inopportune, as imprudent, and likely to expose the church in this country to unnecessary odium. But since the publication of the Encyclical of Pius IX., and the Syllabus, December 8th, 1864, and the decrees of the holy Council of the Vatican defining the supremacy and infallibility of the successor of Peter in the See of Rome, they are more likely to be regarded with favor by the hierarchy than they were when first published. The view taken in these essays of the supremacy of the spiritual order, the normal relations of church and state, and of the power exercised by the popes over temporal sovereigns in the middle ages, when there was a Christendom, was the view held by the late illustrious Bishop of Boston, whose correct theological learning and sound judg ment were always of assistance to the author until his removal to New York from Boston, in October, 1855. The same view was given the author by his own study of ecclesiastical history, and he always held it, and always regarded himself as a thorough-going papist, never what is called a liberal Catholic. If a contrary impression was at one time entertained by the Catholic public, it was not owing to any change of doctrine or opinion on his part, but to his forbearing to insist on the high-toned papal doctrine of these essays. Dr. Brownson addressed these essays to Catholics believing it more important to labor to check the liberalism and latitudinarianism which he |