is at this very day consigned by the profane touch of that Church to the same condemnation, in which some of the best human works (I am willing to admit some very bad works also) are already by her sentence intermingled and engulphed. The House will observe, that one of the Rules promulgated by the Council of Trent, begins with the preamble: "Since it is manifest by experience, that if the Holy Bible in the vulgar tongue be every where indiscriminately permitted, more evil than good will thence arise, in consequence of the rashness of men," the House will also observe, that the same rule (proceeding in consequence to provide, that for the reading of the Bible a license be granted by certain authorities) closes thus: "He who, without such license, shall presume to read or to possess the Bible, cannot, unless he shall first give it up to the ordinary, receive absolution of his sins." If I had been compelled to look for this rule in a contemporary work of the Council of Trent, I should not here have referred to it: I will have no more of history than the Honourable Gentlemen who are so averse to it, and so much in favour of the claims of the present Roman Catholics, are pleased to allow me; but this is not history it is the journal of to-day: it is re-printed, re-enacted, re-enforced by the Papal See in 1819.

But I may be told, in reference to this distrust of Scripture, as in reference to many other charges against the Church of Rome, that it is not fair to argue, that because, in compliment to her own in

fallibility, she reprints in the present century the anathemas thundered by the Papal See in the sixteenth century, she really believes in their validity, or in her right to enforce them :-" You must not expect," I am to be told," that a Church, which has once claimed to be infallible, can ever admit totidem verbis, that she has erred: you must make allowances; you must be candid; you must take the opinions, the spirit of the Church of Rome, not from her mere diplomatic recognition to-day of the decrees of the Council of Trent, (a recognition which is formal and technical only, and inoperative,) but from her own recent conduct in these matters: you will find how much she has softened all these rigours, how entirely she has relaxed these restrictions, how different the Church of Rome now is from the Church of Rome three or four centuries ago." ."--Be it so I will look, then, not to the mere republication of the Regula, which, so republished, I thought I might have quoted as an act of the present day, but to some subsequent modification of it-let it then be observed, that the Regula in question conveyed to certain authorities the faculty of granting a license to read any versions of the Scriptures. How stands the matter now? To the eye of Clement VIII. this meaning conveyed to subordinate functionaries too dangerous a trust': the

"Howbeit," say the translators of the Bible to King James, in their preface, 1611," it seems too much to Clement the Eighth, that there should be any license granted to have them in the vulgar tongue; and therefore he overruleth and frustrat

trust was therefore practically withdrawn by his mode of interpreting the rule. This, however, is of less consequence since the original faculty was by Benedict XIV. restored in 1757, with this saving clause, that the versions, the reading of which was to be licensed, should have been approved by the Holy See; and, accordingly, the Italian translation of the New Testament, made by Martini, Archbishop of Florence, was not only approved at the time by Pope Pius VI. but actually came forth with a recommendatory letter from him; a letter which has very frequently since been reprinted by Protestants. But how soon was this gleam overcast; how little has the day risen; how much darker rather has it not become! for not only at this time are all the versions of the Scriptures, published by the British and Foreign Bible Society, in any and every spoken language, prohibited, (this indeed is consistent with the clause to which I have referred, for those versions at least never had the required sanction), but in one of the latest additions to that Index, a single sheet printed in 1820, and containing the works prohibited since the publication of the volume in 1819, are two editions of that very translation of the New Testament, by Martini, both printed in Italy, both having the identical letter of Pius VI.

eth the grant of Pius the Fourth. So much are they afraid of the light of Scripture, that they will not trust the people with it no, not as it is set forth by their own sworn men; no, not with the licence of their own Bishops and Inquisitors."

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prefixed; and neither of them stated to have a single heretical note or addition. The prohibitory clause is as follows:-the Pope having recited the condemnation of the Italian editions of the New Testament in question, of an English impression of the same translation, and of seven other works, one on Medical Jurisprudence, one on Physiology, proceeds: "Therefore let no one, of any rank or condition whatsoever, read or possess the said works;

'The condemnation so recited is as follows: DECRETUM Feria 11. Die 17 Januarii MDCCCXX.

Sacra congregatio Eminentissimorum ac Reverendissimorum S. Romanæ Ecclesiæ Cardinalium a SANCTISSIMO DOMINO NOSTRO PIO PAPA SEPTIMO, sanctaque sede Apostolica Indici Librorum prava Doctrinæ, eorumdemque proscriptioni, expurgationi ac permissioni in Universa Christiana Republica Præpositorum et Delegatorum, habita in Palatio Apostolico Quirinali, damnavit et damnat, proscripsit proscribitque, vel alias damnata atque proscripta in Indicem Librorum prohibitorum referri mandavit et mandat opera quæ sequuntur. Nuovo Testamento Secondo la Volgata tradotto in Lingua Italiana da Monsig. Antonio Martini Arcivescovo di Firenze. Livorno, 1818.(Then follow the other editions, and the other works.)

Itaque nemo cujuscumque gradus et conditionis prædicta Opera damnata atque proscripta, quocumque loco, et quocumque idiomate, aut in posterum edere, aut edita legere, vel retinere audeat, sed Locorum Ordinariis, aut hæreticæ pravitatis Inquisitoribus ea tradere teneatur, sub pœnis in Indice Librorum vetitorum indictis.

Quibus SANCTISSIMO DOMINO NOSTRO PIO PAPE SEPTIMO, per me infra scriptum Secretarium relatis, SANCTITAS SUA Decretum probavit, et promulgari præcepit. In quorum fidem, &c. Datum Romæ.

Michael Cardinalis de Petro Præfectus.

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but give them up at once to the Ordinary, or to the Inquisition, under pain of mortal sin."

From the tyranny over the human mind, thus exercised by the Church of Rome, wherever it has power, I draw this conclusion, that to give it new power any where would be most unsafe: and if it were given on the ground that the Church of Rome has changed its character, would be most contrary to the evidence of facts. It has still the same grasping, dominant, exclusive, and intolerant character: it is weaker indeed than it was; but it carries with it every where the same mind. You have indeed shorn and bound the strong man; but the secret of his strength is still upon him; and if, from whatever motive, you admit him into the sanctuary of your temple, beware, lest the place and the opportunity should call that strength into action; and with all the original energies of his might restored for the occasion, he should pull down the temple of the constitution upon you, and bury you, and your idols, and himself, in one common ruin.

The prohibitions which I have quoted are not, I repeat it, from old worm-eaten authorities; they were published not seven years ago, in Rome, by the last Pope. His own personal conduct accorded too much with the spirit of the book which contains them. Though he owned how large a share the heretics of England had in his restoration; though he owned specifically that it was the act of England which was the means of restoring to him all those treasures of ancient greatness, of which Rome