Page:An Index of Prohibited Books (1840).djvu/141

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responsibility, by the Council of Trent, the most binding of all the Roman Councils, as being the last esteemed œcumenical,) and the fourth anti-biblical one in particular, are esteemed as of universal force throughout the whole extent of Papal Christendom. But the truth is, here, in England, the advocates of Rome may talk as largely and boldly as language will permit them, of the free allowance of the perusal of the Scriptures to the members of her Church. The liberty she gives them is that of doing whatever she pleases. She has the

    ticularly a Protestant translation, in this hostile and brutal manner. God forgive and convert! As respects the burning part of the Papal Catholic's love for the Scriptures, the reader may be referred to a valuable tract or epistle of J. R. Kiesling, entitled, De Pæna ignis in Tabularum Sacrarum Versiones a Romanensibus constituta, insigni Scripturæ Sacræ Contemptus Teste. [Lipsiæ) 1749. In all persecutions of seceders from Popery by Papists, the rage of the latter against the Bible is critically and pre-eminently conspicuous. I have been looking through the two accounts of the persecution and exile of the Protestants in the archbishopric of Saltzburg, about a century ago, and of which a signal repetition has just now been given in nearly the same place, and under the same circumstances, particularly the asylum afforded by the same prince, as the English reader can hardly fail to have learned from the interesting translation of the Exiles of Zillerthal: and there, particularly in the second part, it appears, how faithfully the executioners of the commands of the main persecutor, the archiepiscopal sovereign, took care to discover and destroy all prohibited books, but especially as the root of the evil — the Sacred Scriptures!