The-papacy-its-history-dogmas-genius-and-prospects-wylie

502 SHAM REFORM AND REAL RE-ACTION.have again fallen back into Popery.They know also enoughof Europe at this hour to be aware that, were Poland, wereBohemia, were Italy, and, we may add, Spain, toacquire aconstitutional government, these countries would not remaina single day under the papal yoke. It is their absolute regimealone that prevents the immediate erection of a Protestantnational Church in Poland and Bohemia. A ChristianChurch would be formed at Pome, but for the sacerdotalgovernment. No sooner did Piedmont become a constitutionalkingdom in the spring of 1848, than the WaldensianChurch obtained its religious freedom, and its memberstheir constitutional rights ;while the despotism of Russia tothis day excludes the missionary from her Asiatic provinces.These factsshow that the Jesuits have good cause for plottingthe overthrow of the liberties of 1848.They have attacked these liberties one by one.First, thepress groans in its former chains. In France, in Austria,in Naples, and, in short, all over Catholic Europe, the pressis the object of prosecution, of fine, and not unfrequently ofactual suspension.*This rigour is not limited to newspapers,but extends to all useful books, and especially to the Bible.As an instance, we may mention that, in the spring of 1850,the priests prosecuted two printers of Florence for having,under the government of the republic, printed a translationof the New Testament in Italian, and that on the expressground of " their having published the gospel in the vulgartongue, so that every one may be enabled to read it."Thusthev show their dread of letters, and their hankering: afterthe darkness of bygone times. The excuse put forward forthese tyrannical proceedings is, that a free press is propa-* As reported in the " Tuscan Monitor" of February 9, 1850, on the doctrinethat the Pope is Christ's vicar were legal proceedings institutedagainst tlic editor of the "Nazionalc," who was sentenced to one month's imprisonment,and a fine of three hundred livres. Does not this illustrateall we have said respecting the vicious incorporation of Church and Stateunder the Papacy, and that the dogma of the one necessarily guides thetvcord of the other I