“MORE than two hundred and fifty years before the signing of the Declaration of Independence, and more than two hundred years before the utter rottenness of the Papal Church in France which we are told gave rise to the doctrine that the people are the source of civil authority, Luther, Lanck, Melancthon, Bugenhagen and Amsdorff, ‘the fathers of the Reformation,’ announced the same doctrine. In a letter to the Elector Frederick, they said: “No prince can undertake a war without the consent of the people, from whose hands he has received his authority.’ This was good Protestantism and good Christianity then, and it is just as good Protestantism and just as good Christianity now.”—American Sentinel.
Will the Sentinel be manly enough to add that more than eight hundred years before Luther was heard of, a pope name Zachary wrote to the French: “The prince is responsible to the people whose favor he enjoys. Whatever he has—power, honor, riches, glory, dignity—he has received from the people, and he ought to restore them to the people from whom he has received them. The people make the king: THEY CAN ALSO UNMAKE HIM.”—The Monitor.
Now the AMERICAN SENTINEL has been “manly” enough to publish the above, will the Monitor be manly enough to tell its readers that the AMERICAN SENTINEL copied the expression, “Peoples and Princes of the Universe” from the pope’s encyclical as it appeared in the Northwestern Chronicle (July 20, 1894, page 5), a standard Roman Catholic paper, and that therefore its charge that “the AMERICAN SENTINEL is not able to interpret the title to a modern document, written in so simple a language as Latin,” and that “any school boy who has got as far as hic haec hoc would be able to tell it [the SENTINEL] that this [Pincipibus Populisque Universis] does not mean the princes and peoples of the universe,” applies to Cardinal Gibbons who sent the encyclical to the Northwestern Chronicle, or in case he sent a Latin copy, then to the editor of the Northwestern Chronicle, “Rev. John Conway.” Will the Monitor be manly enough to tell its readers that this charge of gross ignorance, instead of appying [sic.] to the AMERICAN SENTINEL applies to the editor of the Northwestern Chronicle, a priest of the “Church of the Latin rite”?
While we are compelled to differ with the Monitor on religious questions, we desire to regard the editor of that paper as being manly and honest.