In addition to this charge to Kaspar Hoffmann, Dr. Ritter had
commissioned a zealous divine of the younger school,* to persuade me to
retract. On the 1st and 15th of January 1843, I received letters from
him, and from a narrow-minded priest in the College at Neisse, in
which, under cover of the most high-flown expressions of Christian
brotherly-love, I am required to become a contemptible liar. As these
letters are written in ecclesiastical style, and reveal the character of
Dr. Ritter--his artifices, and those of the men who permit themselves
to be made his tools, I consider myself called upon to publish them:
besides, the writer is no friend of mine, as the Decree of Suspension
falsely intimates, but merely an acquaintance.
I had at first almost believed that the assurances of friendship
contained in the letters of Schneeweiss were true, in spite of their
suspicious highflying; and although I had already, in like manner, been
deceived by others of my colleagues, I was almost tempted to believe
in their honesty. But after the epistle of the narrow-minded priest had
betrayed to me that Dr. Ritter was in the game, I was forced to despise
the letter-writer as a hypocrite. Schneeweiss feigned friendship, but
he could have no respect, and therefore no friendship, for me, when
he recommended me to commit an act of baseness, namely, the denial
of well-known facts--the shameful recall of that which I had lately
asserted--and a cowardly and degrading submission to the despotism of
Dr. Ritter. I suppose, also, that Schneeweiss had imagined that I was
quite imbued with hierarchic views. He might in that case represent the
blind and cowardly submission as an act of virtue on my part; but he
could not expect that I should retract the blame I attributed to the
quarrels and _informings_* of the candidates for the episcopate, and
even my censure of the long delay on the part of the Pope--for they
were injurious to the Church. Had he considered my station as a Catholic
priest, as a teacher of the people, and of religion in the sense of
Christ's teaching, and desired to be accounted such himself, he could
not have advised me to a disgraceful retractation and denial of a truth
which I had dared to avow. No; he would have encouraged me to bear
unflinching testimony to the truth, and in the face of greater danger
than the loss of office.
* Compare the Decree of Suspension of January 30th, 1843.
For that _is_ true, which I have written; the quarrels and intrigues of
the candidates for the bishop's mitre, I repeat it, have been proved,
and they were (I myself have heard it,) the theme of scandal and censure
at once to priests and laymen. It was disgrace enough to the clergy,
that no one of the elder ministers dared openly avow his censure--that
they loved their livings more than truth and their fair name. But
Schneeweiss does not seem to have thought of these things. It may
be gathered from the mixture of assertions and contradictions in
his letters, that he was not quite clear of the propriety of what he
required of me, at the same time that he does not seem very well to know
what he would be at. However, so it also happens with many others of
my colleagues. They become inconsistent in their opinions; for, being
called to fight in the front rank for truth and freedom, they, on the
contrary, act in opposition to them, as the conscious or unconscious
slaves and servants of the hierarchy. I fancied, when I knew Schneeweiss
in earlier days, that he had a more enlightened zeal, but Gibbon's
words, alas! are true--"The spirit of bigotry, at once so credulous and
insinuating, when it has once taken root in a noble mind, overturns by
degrees the living principles of virtue and of truth."
* I have received the most precise information in regard to
them from trustworthy men, well acquainted with the
episcopal candidates.