The Press.
London, England, 1855-01-13 00:00:00

JANUARY 13, 1855•

of this important doctrine? To such questions
Roman Catholic casuists could not give any
other answer than to fall back on the alterna-
tive of its being a matter of doubt until now.
But such an answer only puts them deeper
into difficulties, for they cannot show either
scriptural warrant or ecclesiastical authority
for their recent procedure, nor could they
account for the necessity of all the prelates
being summoned from all the quarters of the
globe to enforce a point of speculative faith,
not in the Deity, nor in any of the Divine
persons of the Hely Trinity, but in the birth
of the Blessed Virgin. On the third alter-
native, of the falsity of this dogma, affirmed
dogmatically by the Papacy, we need not
remark.
But true, or dubious. or false, the dogma
itself is a matter of indifference at Rome.
The Pope wanted a pretext for organising the
episcopal leaders of the clerical cohorts through-
out the globe, and the inauguration of a fresh
movement in favour of Mariolatry presented a
fair opportunity for combining his forces. We
may feel well assured that there is not a single
State in Christendom, Protestant or Roman
Catholic, that will not be made to feel the
effect of the clandestine legislation of the
Pope's unreported Parliament. We must
recollect that the suffrages of all these
bishops could easily have been obtained and
forwarded to Rome by the primates of their
national churches. But with such objects as
his " Holiness" has now in view, he " ignores"
both the electric telegraph and the post-
office,as if they were Protestant institutions.
None but devotees would believe that the
assembled prelates were meditating during
their stay at Rome on the " Immaculate
" Conception." Before they set out from their
dioceses they knew that they were going to be
ordered to believe it, and they were ready to
render their obedience. Discussion of the
subject was altogether nugatory. But not
without effect was the organisation and artful
method displayed upon the occasion. Fresh
reasons for aversion to the Protestant and
intellectual world were given, and, still worse,
fresh fetters were forged for the servile na-
tures who exult in clanking the manacles of
Rome.
For the recent dogma was nothing more or
less than a disguised coup d kat in order to
leave full license for exhibiting the whole
apparatus of " infallibility." It was a bold
stroke to obtain fresh power, to awe the timid,
to seduce the frivolous, to entrap the unwary,
and to astound the vulgar of the earth, with
the deceitful semblance of a fictitious
" unity," and the theatrical display of a spu-
rious miracle. It was a thoroughly Romanist
mixture of the Italian pattern, in which pro-
found policy and pious fraud were wonder-
fully joined. It was planned so as to please
Papal devotees, and effect the purposes of
Jesuitical designs and Pantheistic philosophy.
The art with which another masked battery
was opened within the trenches of the Vatican
may be admired as a piece of intellectual
strategy ; but it is obvious that the tactics of
indifferentism, as professed by the Ministerial
favourers of Romanist aggression, will not
sustain the reformed faith. Protestantism
must have a policy, national, defensive, and
decisive. Rome will not allow quiescence,
and it is ready to steal a march upon nations
that are apathetic or weak, from the sectarian
schisms ingeniously fomented by the clandes-
tine missionaries. What Mr. DISRAELI has
called " the present anomalous condition of
" the constitution of this realm," in relation
to the Church of Rome, must receive the
gravest attention of patriotic statesmanship
legislating in the Protestant rights of Eng
land " with earnestness and without equivo-
" cation."
We should not, therefore, be surprised if
good were finally to result to the reformed
faith from the recent procedure at Rome.
" Forewarned is forearmed." We know what
the Pope aims at by his organising in a new
polemical crusade the prelatical authorities of
his Church. We may be certain that more
than once in their recent conclaves the names
of some of our present Ministers were men-
tioned with complacency. The associates of
the holy brotherhood possibly expatiated on
what Mr. Disassu so happily called " the