72
probability be supported, that these infamous
publications are not the genuine and authentic
productions of the Papacy ? We have seen the
way prepared by the Penitentiary Canons ; and
to them have succeeded the regular Tax-books,
of the genuineness of which no reasonable
doubt can be entertained ; the first of which,
to more than the number of twenty, issued from
countries and places devoted to the Roman See,
the very first, to the number of Fifteen, from
Rome itself, most of them attested by Audif-
fredi in a professed work enumerating the first
Roman editions, dedicated quite devoutly to
Pius Sextus, Pont, Opt. Max. (quasi Deo Opt.
Max.) ; the rest from Paris, Cologne, Venice
— that from the last place under the auspices of
Pope Gregory XIII. The printing — ^not the
publication, with which perhaps Rome little
deserves to be charged — was probably rendered
necessary or expedient from the number of
agents, or collectors of these taxes, employed
by the successors of St. Peter. And beyond
Rome in the countries subject to these imposi-
tions it might be desirable for individuals to
know what their vices would cost them, and
how far they could sustain the expence. It ap-
pears from Momay, in his Myst^re d'lniquit^,
p. 656, (it is the same in the English trau&Ia-
