10. Matt. xxvi. 52.
POLITICAL WRITINGS 195
Spirit, even so it is now;"^ whence those who have understanding may perceive that it is rather the
Catholic Church which suffers persecution through the pride and impiety of those camal men whom it endeavours to correct by afflictions and terrors of a temporal kind. Whatever therefore the true and rightful Mother does, even when something severe and bitter is felt by her children at her hands, she is not rendering evil for evil, but is applying the benefit of discipline to counteract the evil of sin, not with the hatred which seeks to harm, but with the love which seeks to heal. When good and bad do the same actions and suffer the same afflictions, they are to be distinguished not by what they do or suffer, but by the causes of each : e.g. Pharaoh oppressed the people of God by hard bondage; Moses afflicted the same people by severe correction when they were guilty of impiety:® their actions were alike; but they were not alike in the motive of regard to the people's welfare,—the one being inflated by the lust of power, the other inflamed by love. Jezebel slew prophets, Elijah slew false prophets;^ I suppose that the desert of the actors and of the sufferers respectively in the two cases was wholly diverse.
Look also to the New Testament times, in which the essential gentleness of love was to be not only kept in the heart, but also manifested openly: in these the sword of Peter is cafled back into its sheath by Christ, and we are taught that it ought not to be taken from its sheath even in Christ's defence.^^ We read, however, not only that the Jews beat the Apostle. Paul, but also that the
7. Gal. iv. 29.
8. Ex. V. 9 and xxxii. 27.
9. 1 Kings xviii. 4, 40.
10. Matt. xxvi. 52.