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reins sufficiently in her own hands. It is hers to determine, who are the persons fit to be intrusted with the liberty in question; and she needs no more. Confessors manage the business ultimately; and it is their office to make authoritative inquiries. Real liberty in this respect requires no provisions at all. And such is the condition of things in simply Christian Britain. What, then, mean the multiplied, the minute, the rigid, the jealous, the varying regulations in the Church of Rome? In connexion with the profession, that she imposes no restraint upon the reading of the Scriptures, they are vile hypocrisy, and nothing other or less. But while the cloven foot is an essential member of Rome, we are thankful to her for occasionally shewing it. No: she does not enforce her Biblical restrictions. We do not accuse her of doing what she cannot. And as little do we accuse her of publishing the wish, when by the same act she would publish her impotence as well as excite alarm and counteraction.[1]
- ↑ There is a Papal document, which Roman apologists are much accustomed to appeal to, and use, as the most triumphant confutation of the alleged calumny of Protestants in the charge of the latter, that the Church of Rome discourages and restricts the free perusal of the Scriptures.
This document is the letter of Pope Pius VI. to Martini,
