shocked and alienated by the injustice, the variation, the trickery, and dishonesty discoverable in almost every literary sentence of their supreme head, when he assumes to sit as judge upon moral and religious doctrine and learning; and that they do not at once give him up as the sovereign arbiter of their faith, who, in order to keep good his title to philosophic orthodoxy, is obliged to expunge a solemn decision of his own of two centuries' standing.
There is plainly an infatuation in the case;[1] [2]
- ↑ His holiness, it appears, has most unaccountably forgotten his "Patroness and Protectress,"—"his greatest hope, yea the entire ground of his hope"—the most blessed Virgin Mary. Perhaps eight years have improved his divinity.
- ↑ "The children of the Church," enlisted by baptism, of any kind, into the Pope's church militant, and punishable as deserters if they leave it.
strenuously exhorting you, and all the members of the pious Association over which you preside, to offer up fervent prayers with us to the Father of Mercies,
that he would propitiously remove the lamentable darkness which still covers the minds of so many dwelling unhappily in error, and in his clemency bring the children of the Church,
who have wandered from her, back to the bosom of the mother whom they have left.
"Meanwhile, to you and to all your countrymen, who belong in any way to the Catholic Institute, we most affectionately impart our Apostolical benediction.
"Given at Rome, at St. Peter's, on the 19th day of February, 1840, the tenth of our Pontificate.
"GREGORY,
"P. P. XVI."
