OF POPE PIUS IX. ΤΟ "ALL PROTESTANTS AND OTHER NON-CATHOLICS," "I sayde I would be judged by the Olde Church; and which doctrine LONDON: WILLIAM HUNT AND COMPANY, HOLLES STREET, CAVENDISH SQUARE. PREFACE THE Apostolical Letter of Pope Pius IX., announcing the Ecumenical Council, now being "celebrated" at Rome, and addressed to all "Protestants and other non-Catholics," from the unqualified demands which it puts forth, requires more than a passing notice at the present moment. At the very outset his Holiness claims to have "been raised to the chair or throne of Peter, and, therefore, advanced to the supreme government of the whole Catholic Church." If this claim were well founded, a message from such a quarter, in whatever form, would be entitled to respectful attention. If, on the contrary, it should prove on examination to rest on no Scriptural or other reliable evidence, such an appeal as that contained in the present letter can only be regarded as expressing the views of an individual primate or patriarch at most, who, as such, could have no more legitimate right to stigmatize as "pestilential errors |