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Dr. Stanley so greatly, touching the "viper-brood of doubts," and the infidel pupil dying in "darkness and despair." Let the bishop, a Patron of this Society, preaching obedience and faith at Oxford and helping on sedition and unbelief in Spain, remember that Spanish sub-deacons as well as Oxford undergraduates may not impossibly suffer from temptations to doubt, and have immortal souls.

Don Ambrogio, who had his licence withdrawn for conduct which his bishop and the bishop's chapter thought "scandalous," has become a mob-orator and street-preacher. Reasonably enough he is very much against all authority. His shriek is "Liberty, liberty!" He desires "the fullest licence to think or act as he pleases." He is of course against the "the tyranny of the Bishop of Rome." In language and diction he reminds us of Bishop Bale of Ossory, one of the most foul-mouthed of the Anglican Reformers. Yet he is an ally of the Anglo-Continental Society, and Mr. Meyrick tells of his reforming doings as a sign of "progress" in his advocacy of that Society at the Norwich Congress.-(Report of Church Congress, p. 147.)

Dr. Scudieri, of Messina, who, like Dr. Colenso of Natal, has apparently lost his faith and desired to retain his pay, is another telling example of the Society's miserable work. On his own showing (Report, 1865, p. 14) his brother priests very properly" declare aloud that I am a false prophet, and that I teach doctrines contrary to the holy religion of Jesus Christ," which no doubt he does, while he in return tells them that they “have reduced religion to mere external ceremonies and superstitions."-(P. 14.) Of course the result is that he has been very properly" deprived of the church of the SS. Trinitá and of all my Church offices," and has been "thrown into a very bad state financially."-(Report, p. 17.) For our own part we certainly think that after such a sacrifice Mr. Meyrick is bound to support him.

"Ever since the moment that the gracious God called me to a knowledge of the errors of Rome," writes Dr. Scudieri, "my mode of action has always been to enter into all classes of society, and in public as well as in private conversation to denounce the errors introduced by the Roman Church, and her additions to the doctrines of Holy Scripture, and I have had the pleasure of obtaining sympathy in my view of the necessity of a religious reformation, although, as to acting, no one will resolve to take the initiative.

"When these proceedings of mine became known to my ecclesiastical superiors, who are opposed to the doctrines that I hold, they used every means to make me desist from my intentions, and tried by promises and threats to induce me to subscribe with my own hand to a profession of faith founded on that of Pius IX. I resisted their persuasions, and was suspended a divinis, as you have been informed by the two newspapers I sent you."(Report, 1865, pp. 18, 19.)

These are some of the fruits of the Society's operations. "By their fruits ye shall know them." Now, let us add a few words regarding the "agents."

One of these is Count Tasca. He appears to be a gentleman by birth, and holds an office under the Piedmontese Government. Like most of the other "agents," he has been cut off from communion by his bishop, and like other people in a similar position, has become an ardent reformer, and one of Mr. Meyrick's tools. The virtuous king, Victor Emmanuel, as Count Tasca tells us, approves of him :

"Of the marked progress of public opinion in our favour, I can offer a personal instance, which is of great comfort to me in the midst of the many sorrows which oppress me: it is that, in spite of all the anathemas hurled at me by Monsignor Speranza, and in spite of my being proclaimed a heretic, apostate, and impenitent, the sympathy of my most gracious king, and the esteem and respect of my fellow-countrymen have never diminished towards me, for which I return most fervent thanks to Heaven; for in the honourable but difficult position in which my religious convictions have placed me, the esteem and respect of the public are essential to me.-(Report, 1864, p. 13.)

A parliamentary deputy, Signor Moretti, published a work,† similar in kind to that of Dr. Colenso on the Pentateuch, in which the rationalistic principle was apparent throughout:

but the

"I publicly congratulated the author upon his happy production," writes Count Tasca, "and he publicly thanking me, confessed that he owed to me and to my exhortations his conversion from the path of error to the way of truth. He and I were anathematized by the incensed Bishop of Bergamo; nor were the most furious censures of the book lacking; sharpest criticisms fell powerless against the dictates of the Gospel and the truth of strict logic. We were denounced by the Bishop and his party, but the applause of the good, and the favour of the majority of the public, and, more than all, the testimony of our own consciences, amply indemnified us for the anathemas. This work was a precious acquisition for Italy, and it is only the blind who can fail to see the hand of God in the good effects produced by it upon the people."-(Report, 1865, pp. 7, 8.)

* The following exclamation is amusing to those who, acquainted with facts, remember that Bishop Trower ruled the Protestant Diocese of Glasgow from "Wiston Park, Tunbridge Wells :""Oh! if Monsignor Speranza, Roman Catholic Bishop of Bergamo, possessed even a portion of the modesty, the gentleness, the learning, and the virtues of Dr. Trower, Anglican Bishop of Gibraltar, how much happier would be the diocese under his administration."-(Report, 1865, pp. 11, 12.)

It was entitled The Word of God and the Modern Pharisees.

Such a paragraph substituting "Bishop of Capetown for "Bishop of Bergamo," and "England" for "Italy," might have been penned by Dr. Colenso.

M. Varnier, an excommunicated priest, (quondam Father Felix), Signor Gatti, Signor Donna, Signor Pifferi, are all persons who have been cut off from communion with the Italian Church, and are chosen, therefore, to represent an organization, the members of which preach obedience to their flocks in England and do their best to incite rebellion and insubordination abroad.

Mr. Archer Gurney, the Society's agent at Paris, in the language of an Exeter Hall fanatic, (warmed into deeper extravagances by female applause,) writes as follows:

"Here are great if not insuperable difficulties. Firmly convinced as I am that the whole working system of Romanism is rotten to the core,-that the grossest Mariolatry is rampant everywhere, that the moral teaching of the Church is fatally corrupt, and her moral influence pernicious as to truth and falsehood, right and wrong,-still I cannot think that much can be done here at present by the Anglo-Continental Society, [a point to be thankful for.] Thus thinking, I might rather say thus knowing, it seems manifest that nothing but a most sweeping reformation, or revolution even, can regenerate the heart of France."(Report, 1864, p. 2.)

And again, in the same letter, rash and impetuous, with a notable absence of good taste, considering that he is existing on sufferance in a foreign land—a tolerated schismatic in a Catholic country :—

"It is a received principle in France, among all but Protestants, (!) that a man should always tell a lie to serve a friend, or, in fact, whenever it is convenient so to do (!!). The inevitable consequence is that the great body of the educated laity look on the Gospel as a pious fraud, and believe prophets and Apostles and the Son of God to have been engaged in a vast moral conspiracy for the amelioration of mankind, of course from the noblest of motives. Hence the vast success of M. Renan's otherwise insignificant book, because it expressed an almost universal sentiment."— (Ibid.)

A libel more insolent, insulting, or atrociously false and uncharitable it would be impossible to pen. Were Mr. Gurney, his Anglican schism-gallery, and all its appurtenances, turned out of France, after such a gratuitous slander, he would only receive his just deserts. God forbid that he should be looked upon as a representative of the Church of England!

Professing to "make the principles of the English Church

known," they disseminate books which in no sense represent it. For example, who will say that Bishop Cosin's treatise on Transubstantiation-full of peddling arguments against principles, to deny which would be to deny the Incarnation—is a part of the Faith of the English Church? That treatise may represent Bishop Cosin, but it certainly does not represent the Church of England. It was possibly useful in its day, but the idea of reprinting such a book for the instruction of persons who are notoriously bound by the Creed of Pope Pius, is either exceedingly childish or excessively wrong. To endeavour to rob people of their faith is more cruel than to rob them of their good name, fair fame or property: for the former concerns "the life of the world to come," and once lost is seldom regained, while the latter has reference only to the present. The Anglo-Continental Society is "circulating," writes a Roman Catholic author, "books in France, Italy and Spain, no one of which a Catholic in those countries could read without sin, except by permission of authority, and no one of which any Catholic authority in Christendom would allow to be read except for the purpose of publicly refuting it." The Bishop of Oxford, soon after his most eminent brother, Archdeacon Wilberforce, left the communion of the Church of England, very needlessly thought it necessary to assure the Protestant public who had mistakenly suspected him of “ leaning to Popery" that he had no intention of following that example. To do this he adopted a remarkable method by going out of his way to attack the Blessed Virgin, on the feast of the Annunciation 1855, in her own Church at Oxford in language which was not simply shocking but heretical. His lordship maintained, in opposition to S. Leo the Great and every Catholic writer on the Incarnation, that our Blessed Saviour assumed human nature in its corrupt form. He argues in

* His Lordship has himself to blame if any such prima facie improbability were imagined, remembering that, after Archdeacon Manning's secession, he is reported to have remarked to the late Prince Consort, who was. lamenting it, that if that dignitary had been made a Bishop he would never have become a Roman Catholic. Being an Anglican prelate himself, therefore, his gratuitons attack on our Blessed Lady was surely a work of supererogation.

Here is the passage from the authorised French version:-"Si cette nature qu'il prit ainsi dans le sein de la Vierge Mère n'était pas celle dont cette Vierge, comme tous les autres êtres humains, avait hérité d'Adam, mais nuc nature spéciale, faite par la puissance créatrice de Dieu, pour exister dans de nouvelles conditions de pureté originelle, comment pouvonsnous dire qu'il prit réellement d'elle notre propre nature? Sa nature à laquelle il emprunta cette chair qu'il nuit à sa Divinité était donc, non point notre nature décline, mais une nature nouvelle et différente, et alors sa fraternité parfaite avec nous est détruite."-(P. 19.) Rome-son nouveau dogme, et nos devoirs par Monsig. Wilberforce. Oxford: Parker, 1856.

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this sermon which was published, that if the Blessed Virgin were conceived without sin then our Lord received human nature in a pure form, and not in its fallen condition, whereas the latter and not the former doctrine, he maintains not only to be, in his opinion, the truth but also the doctrine of the Church of England.* Now it is this startling homily—to read which makes the flesh of a true believer creep-that has been selected to be translated into French, German, and Italian for the edification of foreign Catholics. This novel doctrine, as radically false as any statement in the Essays and Reviews or Dr. Colenso's sceptical treatises, is maintained to be, forsooth, part of the Faith of the Church of England! There are other productions of a similar character, which only need to be examined to make evident the untold evils which are being deliberately perpetrated by this organization.

It can cause no wonder, therefore, that Count Tasca and his allies, in their anti-Christian work of stirring up religious strife and sedition, commit breaches of the peace. We note that in each Report of the Association there is a formal record of a row or a riot. Here is one :

"Three priests prevailed upon some poor creatures who belonged to the dregs of the populace to assemble in the piazza where the Hall is situated. When the Protestant Minister appeared, [the agent of the Society as we imagine,] they began to make a threatening demonstration, and to utter coarse oaths against him; and from words passing to deeds, they assaulted him, and, had it not been for the intervention of myself and some of my friends, who, not without risk to ourselves, rescued him from their hands, I know not what would have happened." Report, 1865, p. 24.)

In a previous very dangerous riot-referred to at p. 5 of the Report for 1864, the faithful of Italy-like the late Lord Campbell in the case of the Holywell Street literature,—very properly made short work of these literary importations :—

"In this disturbance," writes Count Tasca, "my seller of Bibles and religious tracts had his shop, which was set up in the public market, overthrown; when a great number of the books which I had entrusted to him were torn and spoilt. By the time that the people had come to the rescue the work of destruction was already completed, nor did I think it an act of justice in such a misfortune to consider him responsible to us for the damaged volumes."

*We are of course aware that it is an allowed opinion that our Lord's bodily nature was under the condition of the fall, but as that has nothing to do with the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, we understand the Bishop to refer to His moral nature. We should be very glad to find ourselves mistaken.

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