unknown among our people.[1] Hence, to give effect to the law of toleration, it was necessary either to invent new forms of religion, which was not easy, or else to import them from abroad. The second expedient was the simpler, because by the dollars (hard cash) of the missionaries, with its wonted efficacy and persuasion, innumerable adepts were to be procured; these missionaries being not a little aided by the ignorance especially of the people concerning the origin, principles, methods, and objects of the sects dissenting from the Catholic Church.
"As our almanac is an essentially popular publication, we think that in no place would an article be more appropriate which aims to make known the fathers of the distinct sects comprehended under the common name of Protestants. Indeed, let us copy from a Compendium of Universal History by a friend, still unpublished for immaterial reasons, the part which relates to the origin of the Protestant Reform. From this will appear the corrupt manners, the excessive pride of the Reformers, and the vile motives which impelled them to separate from the Church in which they were born, and to attack doctrines which they had believed from parental instruction when young, and through personal conviction when grown up. We shall see, like Tertullian, the confirmation of the proscription of Catholic doctrine against the innovators of all times, since it alone has sprung from the apostolic fountain, and runs limpid, unpolluted with corrupt and foreign elements, down to our days, precipitating foreign ideas into the impure gutters of heresy, and vigilantly guarded by two hundred and sixty popes in uninterrupted succession from Saint Peter: a phenomenon which has given it a character of truth and divinity in eyes less thoughtful or more prejudiced against it."
<references>
- ↑ The following was appended to the original: "Only our illustrious neighbors, the Yankees, have this faculty, be it said, unless we except the new sect of the Mormons, so that we are in fear and trembling lest our friends who have done us so much good should bestow it on us, and with them should come polygamy, community of goods, and other happy gifts which afflict our friends just mentioned; and, moreover, they are not very scrupulous, as we say."
