cal for the Italian mind, but unbelief. The second attempt to make Protestantism live in Italy has been made in this century, with what success remains to be seen. In the year 1844, Gregory the Sixteenth, of blessed memory, a Pontiff of great wisdom and inextinguishable zeal, detected and condemned the proceedings of the New York Christian Alliance, which had undertaken the work of seducing Italy from her allegiance to the successor of Peter. Protestant Bibles and tracts were to be scattered in profusion over the land. The avowed object was to revive in the Italian population the spirit of religious liberty; the real object, which some of the bolder or more incautious conspirators would now and then darkly indicate, was the political independence of Italy, and its union, federative or consolidated, as a prelude to the revival of the re-establishment of the republic. Some mischief was done by a wretched band of apostate friars and priests, who fled to Malta, and there, under the protection of the British flag, established a paper called the Maltese Indicator, which, being circulated by stealth, but in great numbers, throughout Italy, was expected to be no inefficient aid in the work of making the Italians Evangelicals, that is to say, Protestants, meaning by this term revolutionists and parricides.

"At the same time there became apparent a state of things and a change in the popular mind, which the enemies of the Church of God and of His people saw, and of which, to the cost of Italy, they took every imaginable advantage. A yearning after some vague, indefinable species of liberty, of which no one knew either the object or the end, took sudden possession of the fantasy of the multitude. Marching under the banner upon which was inscribed that magical word PROGRESS, change, incessant change, and novelty for its own sake were sought in every department of life; every knee was bent in homage to the new idol called Italian Unity and Independence. Perverse and irreligious men, who had long been united in the bonds of a secret conspiracy against the altar and the throne, regarded Italy with a bitter smile of derision and contempt. They saw their unwearied efforts about to be crowned with success, and their deep designs on the eve of accomplishment; they saw thrust into their hands the means of obtaining the good things for whose possession they had given over their souls to Satan, their own aggrandizement and political domination under the specious names of the unity and independence of Italy. Yet they saw clearly that their

hopes and their expectations were in vain so long as the true Catholic faith had a place in the Italian heart. It would be too violent a step to promulgate the doctrines of socialism and communism, involving the abolition of all the dogmas and positive institutions of Christianity. Insuperable resistance might be expected from the people. But, in view of the existing state of the popular mind, another course, more cunning and more likely to succeed, was adopted by these men. So the warm passions of Italians were aroused and made to burn fiercely, the instruments of mischief being dark insinuations, periodicals, tracts, sheets, and books prepared for the purpose, popular meetings, lectures, assemblies, secret clubs, and all the means which political conspirators know so well how to employ, and all designed to convince credulous and superficial persons that the only proper method of driving Austria [lo straniero] from Italy, and of restoring to the nation not only her long-lost unity and independence, but her Primacy over the nations, was, to deliver her from priestly tyranny, and from the servitude imposed upon her by her own superstitious fears. A purer and a more spiritual religion, free from the bonds which had dragged generous spirits to the earth and had fastened them to it, was the religion which the newly awakened dignity and liberty of the Italian nation called upon her to profess. Mark, said they, the prosperity and grandeur of the British nation, the greatest empire in the world! See you not that the power and the glory of England are the legitimate effects of what some call the Anglican schism, but which should be termed the emancipation of that kingdom from Rome ?

"In this style the conspirators wrote and talked. Their way was but too well prepared for them by a fervid and powerful writer, (Gioberti,) who had written several volumes in order to prove that the sun of Italian regeneration was about to rise. Almost every one read his books. His style is vivid and moving, and he well knew how to employ every art that the most refined sophistry could invent. The new Italian heavens described by him were colored with the tints of refined Paganism; the new era promised by him was an era of Paganized Christianity. It was necessary, in order to chase away the clouds which yet hovered around the birthplace of the rising sun of Italy, to array the wornout and ragged cultus of the old Church in modern, classical, and Italian garments. Under the name and species of Jesuitism he sought to plant in the Italian heart an aversion and contempt for all religious orders, societies, and congregations; for all secular clergymen who would not, or could not, understand and embrace his dazzling theories; for all salutary exercises of devotion which practical Christians are accustomed to perform, and, finally, for all Christian ascetic life.

THIRD SERIES.— VOL. III. NO. III.

46

"Meanwhile the faction calling itself the party of Progress, that is to say, the demagogy, waxed stronger and stronger; it domineered over Italy, and felt itself powerful enough to be insolent in Rome, the centre and seat of Christianity. Tracts, cunningly prepared as arguments against Catholicity and in favor of Protestantism, were distributed in great numbers by unseen hands. The Holy Father warned his people against this new plot designed for their ruin, and the bishops of Italy, especially the bishops of Tuscany, raised their voice to sound the alarm to their flocks. But the warnings evoked by pastoral zeal were, for the moment, in too many places rendered inefficacious by the artifices of the demagogues.

"The state of Italy grew worse and worse every day. The Holy Father was insulted, his liberty abridged, and his life men. anced by the triumphant faction, and he was at last compelled to leave Rome, for a season, to the mercy of the demagogues. There hastened to Italy, and especially to Rome, foreign preachers sent by the wrangling sects. Most of the intruders were from England. Italian apostates ran to Rome, there to parade their apostasy as if it were a triumph over God, and to drag in open day as many poor souls as they could cajole or frighten into submission, into the mire in which they were plunged. A very large edition of the corrupt Bible most Calvinistically rendered into Italian by Diodati, was prepared and distributed throughout the country. It was seriously proposed to seize the Pantheon, known as the church dedicated to all the Saints, and to desecrate it by restoring it to its old, Pagan uses, that is to say, by making it a Protestant place of meeting. [The Paganism inherent in Protestantism was clearly seen in this thing, for the Pantheon, the only old Pagan temple now in a state of preservation at Rome, was the very church of all others coveted by Protestants. Symmachus, the last high-priest of Pagan Rome, made the same demand on the forbearance of the Emperor Theodosius.] All the signs of the times were such as are wont to indicate a formal renunciation of the Catholic faith on the part of the people. Members of religious orders, and virgins consecrated to God, were driven from their peaceful retreats; the churches were despoiled of their sacred ornaments, and even the bells which called the people at stated times to the house of God were stolen; clergymen were exposed to every species of affront, and compelled to abandon the open exercise of their ministry or to fly for their lives, and the pulpits and confessionals, some of them wrought most exquisitely in precious wood, were sold at mock auctions or burned in the public squares by the Vandals, as a mark of their hatred and contempt for the religion of the priests. The blood of the priests flowed plentifully, for it is well known that many of them were inhumanly butchered.

"With such a beginning, and with such rapid progress, who at that time could foresee what would be the condition of Italy and of Rome, with respect to religion, after the lapse of five or ten years? But God loves Italy, and delivered her also this time from the apparently insurmountable dangers which menaced her. When the winds and the waves in this horrible tempest seemed about to do their very worst, God spake, the winds ceased to blow, the sea became calm and the heavens serene. Demagogy was overcome, public order was restored, religion returned to its former splendor, and the successor of Peter was borne back in triumph to his Chair, and quietly resumed the exercise of his legitimate authority as temporal sovereign. What true Catholic witnessing these things could refrain from exclaiming, in the fulness of his heart, O Lord! who is like unto thee? Who can resist thy will? A little while, and the wicked shall be no more! I passed by, and lo! he was not. I sought him, and he was not to be found.'

"The Catholic, while pausing to reflect upon the desperate attempts which have been made to introduce Protestantism into Italy, will not fail to observe, that at the very time when Protestantism, as a religion, was dead, and had been transformed into indifferentism, rationalism, pantheism, and Manicheism, at the very time when this deadly Upas-tree had shown to the world what fruits it would bring forth during its accursed life of three centuries, when it had made patent to the whole world the intrinsic barrenness of its nature, when so many noble intellects of divers nations, after a protracted combat with their own reason and with the grace of God in the vain attempt to defend the errors in which, as in a raging whirlpool, they were hurried to the depths, rendered themselves willing captives to Christ, and obedient sons of the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church, and in their writings tell the whole world that they have found in the Church, and only in her, the Truth which satisfies the mind, and the Good which fills the heart, while they demonstrate the absurdity, the nakedness, the emptiness, and the principles destructive to human reason of Protestantism, finally, at the very time when in Protestant Germany, in Holland, and in England there is a general movement, growing stronger every day and now well-nigh resistless, towards the Church, as the only refuge for those the sons of Adam who seek peace, true liberty, and the salvation of their souls, at this very time the enemies of Italy, some of whom call themselves her sons, would force upon her this miserable Protestantism, which has cursed every soul that loved it, every king that protected it, and every people that received it. They would have her repudiate the Power which conferred upon her the primacy over all the nations, which secured to her the purity

of her faith, and the sublime privilege of being the moral centre of the world by the location in her midst of the Apostolic Chair, and the supreme visible Governor of the Church of God. They would have her forget in one instant the sublime dogmas, the august traditions, the illustrious memories, and the immense benefits which she has received from the Church during eighteen centuries. They would thrust Italy into the beginning of that terrible cycle which the Protestant nations have well-nigh completed, through rivers of blood, to anarchy in all orders, civil, social, political, and religious." - Disc. Prel., pp. x. — xvi.

Such persons as may think that Perrone assumes too much and proves too little in the last few sentences, have only to glance at the helpless and almost anarchical condition of Protestant England, the political head of Protestantism, at the present moment. She is near the end of

the terrible cycle.

It is quite evident that Father Perrone, as an Italian and a priest, does not fear Protestantism, considered as a quasi system of religion. He fears it, inasmuch as it is, in the hands of the bigots of Exeter Hall, of the "Christian Alliance," and in the hands of the Italian demagogues, a powerful instrument in the mad attempt at the estab lishment of democracy in Italy. The democratic and socialistic republic is the end sought by the demagogues who really direct the movement. The phrases, Italian Unity, Italian Independence, are mere mottoes inscribed upon the democratic banners. Some would make the state of things indicated by those phrases the end of their labors for the "regeneration of Italy," but these persons are comparatively few, and powerless withal. Moreover, they are dreamers, and while they dream, Mazzini works. He most skilfully uses them as tools convenient for a season, but let them beware of the day when their services are no longer needed, and when the revolution sweeps beyond them, and carries them away, not as men floating securely down the stream in a good boat, but as poor wretches hurried by the raging torrent far out into the bottomless ocean. Their experience during the years 184849 should serve to convince them that in Italy there is at present no practical medium between the Red Republic and Italy as she is. There are theoretical media in abundance, but of what value are these when those stern facts, the sword of legitimate authority, and the dagger of the