experience of all ages, portend the downfal of the most powerful and flourishing empires.
Hither tends that worst and never sufficiently to be execrated and detested liberty of the press, for the diffusion of all manner of writings, which some so loudly contend for, and so actively promote. We shudder, Venerable Brethren, at the sight of the monstrous doctrines, or rather portentous errors, which crowd upon Us in the shape of numberless volumes and pamphlets, small in size, but big with evils, which stalk forth in every direction, breathing a malediction which we deplore over the face of the earth. Yet are there not wanting, alas! those who carry their effrontery so far, as to persist in maintaining that this amalgamation of errors is sufficiently resisted, if in this inundation of bad books, a volume now and then issue from the press in favour of religion and truth. But is it not a crime then, never sufficiently to be reprobated, to commit deliberate and greater evil, merely with the hope of seeing some good arise out of it?—Or is that man in his senses, who entrusts poison to every hand, exposes it at every mart, suffers it to be carried about oh all occasions, aye, and to, become a necessary ingredient of every cup, because an antidote may be afterwards procured which chance may render effective?
Far other hath been the discipline of the Church, in extirpating this pest of bad books, even as far back as the times of the Apostles, who we read committed a great number of books publicly to the flames.[1] It is enough to read the laws passed in the fifth Council of Lateran on this Subject and the constitution afterwards promulgated by Our predecessor of happy memory, Leo X.; "that what was wholesomely invented for the increase of faith, and for the extension of useful arts, may not be diverted to a contrary purpose, and become an obstacle to the salvation of Christ's faithful."[2] The subject engaged the closest attention of the Fathers of the Council of Trent, and as a remedy to so great an evil, they passed that most salutary decree for forming an index of the works in which depraved doctrine was contained.[3] "No means must be here omitted," says Clement XIII. Our predecessor of happy memory, in the Encyclical Letter on die proscription of bad books,—"no means must be here omitted, as the extremity of the case calls for all our exertions, to exterminate the fatal pest which spreads through so many works; nor can the materials of error be otherwise destroyed, than by the flames which consume the depraved elements of the evil."[4] From
- ↑ Acts xix.
- ↑ Act. Conc. Lateran V. sess. 10. ubi refertur Const. Leonis X.
- ↑ Con. Trid. sess. 18. 25.
- ↑ Lett Clem. xiii. Chretianæ, 26 Nov. 1766.
