that, some fifty years hence, when some future Pius shall have heard that in the heretical country of England there had existed, about this time, two such men as Dugald Stewart and William Paley, their names will be added to those of Bacon, Locke, and Cudworth; and their works also will be condemned as fatal to the faith of man?*

"Much modern poetry has been proscribed: but in this class I will only mention one example, the Paradise Lost of Milton. The reading of this book was interdicted nearly a hundred years ago indeed; but the prohibition was renewed in 1819.

"Many historians are, of course, either from their names, or from their religion, or from their want of religion, proscribed; here, at least, therefore, Burnet and Gibbon might be expected to meet; but other names, not so obnoxious on either ground, Guicciardini and Thuanus, Robertson and Sismondi, share their fate.

"Nothing can be more impartial than the prohibition of the Mathematics of Astronomy. The Church of Rome has proscribed Copernicus, both in his own work and in Kepler's Epitome; but to make all things even, she has proscribed Descartes also, and more than one of his commentators. Will the House believe it possible, that the

* The knowledge of Goldsmith's History of England has just travelled to Rome; and the work has accordingly been proscribed, donec corrigatur, by a Decree, Jan. 20, 1823.Index, Paris edition, p. 75.

celebrated sentence against Galileo, a sentence immortalized by the execration of science in every country where the mind is free, should be renewed and republished in 1819? Yet of this fact I hold the proof in my hand in the volume of the Index which I have quoted.* The work of Algarotti on the Newtonian System,† and Fontenelle's plurality of worlds, suffer the same condemnation; so that every modification of science,

It has been said, (Bergier, Dict. Theol., art. Galilée,) "That the Roman Inquisition condemned Galileo not for maintaining the system of the earth's rotation, but for founding that system on the divine authority of Scripture." Even if this were accurate in the case of Galileo, it cannot apply to the case of Copernicus: it cannot apply to the famous apology of the Jesuit editors of Newton, cited in the next note; but it does not apply even to the case immediately quoted. If nothing more were known of the mind of Galileo than the celebrated exclamation, "E pur si move," which burst from him the moment after he had made his recantation, it would be sufficient to prove that it was the theory of the earth's motion, and not the foundation of that theory--the fact, and not thế quotation, which the Inquisition compelled him to renounce.

It is very true, that the best edition of Newton's works was published by two ex-Jesuits;-but what prostration of mind does the Church of Rome require, when it can obtain from two such men as Le Seur and Jacquier, such an apology for their Newtonianism as the following-" Declaration of Fathers Le Seur and Jacquier :-Newton, in this third book, assumes the hypothesis of the earth's motion. The propositions of that author could not be explained except by making the same hypothesis. We have therefore been forced to act a character not our own. But we declare our submission to the decrees of the Roman Pontiffs against the motion of the earth." This declaration was made in 1742.

in other words, every effort of free enquiry, every attempt to disengage the mind from the trammels of authority, is alike and universally consigned to the Inquisition.

"After this the House will not be surprised to find that the Church of Rome is singularly jealous of Ecclesiastical History. Not only is an account of a Protestant Synod proscribed, but the Histories of the Council of Trent by two Roman Catholics, Fra. Paolo, and Dupin, are alike condemned. Even the very epitaph of Fra. Paolo, whether copied in manuscript or in print, is prohibited; and so is a justification of him printed 150 years after his death. Any thing relating to John Huss and Jerome of Prague is forbidden. All Jansenists are of course given up; but' even a Jesuit, (Daniel. Papebrochius,) one of the most learned of his order, is not spared when he attempts to relate the history of a conclave.

"As to English works which are in any way connected with religion, the sentence of the Index is very sweeping; our Liturgy, and our Reformers, are of course among the first who suffer; Latimer and Ridley, Jewel and Parker, the Pseudo Archbishop of Canterbury,' as he is called. They are followed by almost every great name in the church of England. These, however, as Protestants writing upon religion, might expect this treatment; but Protestants

who write on other and very different subjects, Salmasius, and Vossius, and Scaliger, even Grotius, De Jure Belli et Pacis, and Puffendorf, can claim no exemption; nor, in the judgment of the Pope, can the Koran be left in the Christian world without a risk of its making converts.

"The political use to which, in relation to the measure before you, the names of some great men in the Church of Rome have been applied, justifies me in calling the more immediate attention of the House to the treatment which they have experienced from the Church which they are held to represent.

"It has been asked whether the Church which these men (Fenelon, Nicole, and Pascal) represented, could be fairly an object of the aversion with which we regard it? I answer, I answer, whatever the Church may be which these men represent, it is not the Church of Rome. The Church of Rome will have none of them. It' proscribed them living, and condemned them dead.' And yet it is by these names, the names of Fenelon, Pascal, and Quesnel,* that the Church of Rome is most advantageously known in this country; it is in the meekness and piety of these menso renounced by that communion, not merely in their own times, but even at the present day,

* "The opinions of Baius or Quesnel should never be mentioned if you wish to conciliate the Roman Catholics,' says Dr. Doyle, in a Letter published in Dublin in 1824.”

(see the Index,) that we are told to see the spirit and temper of the very Church which disowned and abandoned them.

"Even after all which I have already adduced, to prove that the reigning spirit of the Church of Rome is as hostile as ever to the freedom and intelligence of mankind, the House will still be scarcely prepared to believe, that the Bible itself 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 everywhere 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

6

* Let it be remembered that the principle upon which the Church of Rome proceeds in her Index, is thus stated by one of her communion, L'Abbé Tosi, (in a passage translated and published in the French edition,)" savoir; d'examiner et de prohiber des livres infames ;" and the frontispiece to the original and Roman edition of the Index, represents the Ephesians burning before the Apostles the works which those Apostles had condemned!