The Express.
London, England, 1851-01-20 00:00:00

FATHER OAVAZZI'S THIRD ORATION
TESTERDAI, IN INS PRINCESS'S CONCERT HALL.
"TILS HOLY INQUISITON."

The influx of hearers and the enthusiasm of this
new church of "refugees" is a feet of growing im-
portance, and when considered with reference to the
immeLee gathering of haling which the Crystal
Pal.ce will attract to the sphere of the eloquent
friar's irrtsistible oratory, its telling effect oa tl e
twine prospects of the Peninsula cvt scarcely be
overratel. A public pulpit of thi3 sort in the free
porstesion of a disenthrallcd patriot rust, glowing

With the fervour of honest cQr.vietion,ais an'enirine of

forty-cardinal power, and we can well fancy that if
such a tremendous agency were allowed full scope in
the heart of Italy, it would cos reduce to utter
inanity the irrational and imbecile outpourings which
the multitude are forced to at up vti.h jus'. as a
deep and copious artesian well dries up all the pariah
pumps in its neighbourhood.
The subj,ct or the day was the snfficiently I ack-
ncyed theme among us of inquisitorial absurd:Ms and
atrocities; but from the lips of en Italian, and in the
tniteul and pictureeque idiom of the country which it
tortures and degrades, its detainciation came with a
peculiar novelty, and the talent of the speaker was
able to give it a freshness, even for us who have from
childhood beea familiar with the history of its happily
far removed terrors. Suave marl magno al:ovine spec-

tare Worm, as Lucretius sings of the tempest When
viewed from the security of dry land. The fath..r
brought the odious and monstrous topic before his
auditory by an opening description fall of power and
poetry, wherein the " holy office" was depictured as
the pagan colossus of the Chaldean kit.g, with its lower
extremities of clay, and its trunk and members of
unblushing brass, with one foot on one hemisphere
and the other on South America, its gi.dle hung
round with rosaries and halters, its huge pouch filled
with indulgences and thumbscrew', and exhibiting
from its hand a scroll on which lettere of blood
boasted of " five centuries of torture fur the iloritica-
, Lion of God."

How is this hideous phantom to bodes% with ? Where
is the " stoco cut out without human band " that is to smith
this infernal image of priestly pred,exinance, end cause it to
vanish tram the earth it encumbers, as the hurricane of
heaven ',atm.:he chaff from the enema, r thrashing fleor," and
its elan is known no more Public opinion alone can cope
with it ; it is the ally and accomplice of priests and kings:
to the unassisted people belongs the task of its demolition,
and wherever of late it has been crippled or cloven down to •
brawny arm of the public has alone been instrumental In its
downfall. ' f was right it should be so. Liberty of speech,
freedom of thought, unsbsokled use of God's gilts to maw
these were what it sought to crueh--thise have smote their
monstrous and hell-born aggremor. Yes, " public opinion,"
for the peps' which I acknowledge recognis.e ie
eta plenitude that mightiest end moat majestic of the safe-
guards and bulwarks of mankind. Did not Paul in repeated
outages rectigniao use power of °pinto. 6, Did he ellte to
bring Christ's holy tidings into disrepute? Did he dreg
them in the mire, or cause the voice ut reason to cry e.ame
on his method of propagating then, ? No, my friends.
" Prove all things." Free inquiry and reasonable adhesion
arc aloha worthy of God's acceptance. He spurns and
loathes the seerifiez of 'laves. Tile inquisitorial principle is
a devil's device,—• foul dishonouring blasphemy planned by
unbelieving miscreants to render the belief of others dis-
creditable and inglorious; to sully and pollute the free
allegiance of millions by stamping it wail a character of
mare brute and mechanical loyalty, and thus defraud our
God of that which alone is worthy of Him,—the homage of
en unfettered fealty. Is not the testimony I publicly bear
in this free lard and this free pulpit to what I told to be
catholic truths worth all the compulsory concord of the moat
orthodox hypocrisy ? This independence LI the boast and
blessing of my ministry among you, and thus untrammelled
coo I raise a freemen's voice on behalf of Christian claims
and pure evangelical evidences, while strenuously deneuue•
ing the sordid contrivances, the crafty devices, end the
soul-debasing turpi.udes of the popedom.
How did this infamous institution originate? I'll tell you.
Ages had rolled over the church since the disappearance of
eta primitive holiness. Decked out and bedizened with
berrowed pagan trumpery, with incoherent and repubive
finery once belorgiog to the idolatry of Rome, the popery in
the 13th century must needs also adopt Mehemetw untied.
Mimeses ; the wrinkled kanidan received them at the bands
of a Spanish coiffeur, Don Domenico Guzman. Not content
with appropriating the Moorish rosary (en innocent adapts
lion of Sunman devotion), she must learn from the canal-
driver of Mecca the nae of the sword in promulgating the
doctrines of our Redeemer. On the heads of the Albigenses
fell the edge of her new plaything, gird as the tiger grows
ten told more sanguinary after the first blood, the Bosun
priesthood mod its heed Mufti quickly acquired an in
taste for human butcheries. The parable of the Good
Shepherd, of the Good Samaritan, of the Prodtgal Son end
his indulgent Father were at once blotted oat of the Gospel
and their place supplied by I know not what unguinery
peening of the Reran. Then began a series of blood thirsty
decrees laming troen the Vatican; and as it to eclipse in
ferocity the scimitar of the Calif., fire mud faggot were intro.
duced as papal improvements on Terkish inhumanity. Peter
we nil knew had been told to " put hack his sword into the
scabbard," an injunction never caucelled or repealed;
but he resumed in the persons of tb se who profess to hol
bee place the brutal bunoun of his unconverted nature, and
no longer cotfined himself to "cutting off the ears" of Jew
or gentile, or better Christians than hien-self, but ran siet in
promiscuous blood-shedding. A regular daughter-house
was, under the atrocious title of • " holy office," erected next
the shrine of the Apostle; and there were enacted in &tell,
for centuries, perpetrations far outrunning the wholesale
Carnage of St, S•rtholoinOW, though uncommemorated, like
that exploit, by • nu dal from the Papal mint or a glorifying
tre'co in the Vatican. Have we not seen this golgoth•
Has not the whole population of the city thronged for days
its dungeons and CAMELS of horror, so hideously mistreating
with the voluptuous apartments om fined, when the " holy
officials" made merry over the groans of the uodergrounde
hags and the bones of the entombed. Do I talk of bygone
rtheminations ? No; but of what is done at this hour!.—a
system at work in every Italian confusional, • trade by
which mitres and red hats are earned to this day, an
organised espionage of which the infamous Nerdmis are
bat the open unblushing aunts, but of which high
church diguit tiles are the secret and ministers
of religion (!) the humble erayeagers. That every lover
of a free and independent Italy should be track,d ou'
and denounced is natural enough, beino - the declared
toe and inevitable nouns of these ignoble wretches who
have changed Christ's missionaries into en unholy gendlrr-
merle of decrepid despotism. Bat the poor Jews, what but
the very wautonneas of cruelty can keep up the ruth'essurse
with which they are hunted down? To nuns or suckle an
infant of that race es the galleys for • Christian woman. 0
nature ! common mother of us all ! how do priests and
Popes outrage thy holiest ministrations ! To be found pos-
sessed of the Talmud is imprisonment; are the Jews ex-
pected to cot, fire their reeding to the fanatic ravings of
Liguori? But why speak of reading? Is not the invention
of printing sought to be neutralised altogether ? Is not
typography the great bugbear of all? Tne "holy alio"
takes charge of it as a matter of course, and then God help
the press, its provider., and artificers! Let England, let
America, let civilised Europe look at that gagged, crippled,
shackled, manacled, and brutalised thing, the press of R man
Italy ! Aye, let them look, and bless God that the arm of
Papal power is withered, and that the paralytic beg can
only mumble in her toothless jaws empty curses and male-
dictions against transalpine and transatlantic freedom !
Look at yon conclave of ignorant Ligon gathered
round a table of the " holy office," strewed with the
bright volumes of genius and the glorious woks
of human intelligence. Mark how they wince and
scowl and vent their impotent and imbecile rancour en the
embodiments of immortal mind : besotted as well as bigotted
c admit's, whose iatellect or scquirements are barely adequate
to catalogue tee book they abhor in what they cell en
" Index," and add the author's name to tell him how they
hate his beams. How have they dared to stigmatise Resmini,
the purest, brightest, holiest philosopher of my native land 1
How have they sought to vilify Ventura, our proudest
boast of pulpit and patriot oratory ? But who, in the
broad effulgence of this noonday of knowledge, heeds these
red-hatted owls who nod and jabber at each other in the
dismal darkness of their grotesque gatherings and goasippings.
The earth will continue to go round with the octogenarian
Galileo, though it roll in its diurnal motion the lumber of
the conclave as well as the brains of the astronomer.
The Father then gave a rapid sketch of the esta-
blishment and progress of the Inquisition in southern
Europe, enumerating the various bulls of she-
,ch‘arlailclte" riPeiint;
euve.ed,
he
enrg
Urban
nwent popes,‘loini I, :uhal! cd
various
t Gregory , Clementx a
grades of atrocity and
degrees of malignity these papal documents preterit.
He entered into the detail of privileges and indul-
gencies and diernsations enjoyed by the familiars
and spies of the " holy tribunal ;" showed how odious
anti intolerable its working was found in Italy; how
the Venetian republic manfully flung it back in the
face of the Popedom; how even down-trodden and
degraded Naples succeeded in resistance to the
Spanish-born and papally nursed tyranny ; how the
Low Countries flung off the yoke of Spain, mainly in
abhorrence of this inhuman institution; how Spain
itself sank into the lowest imbecility and decrepitude
through its influence on the whole range of society;
and then, in allusion to the Hiberno-Spanish Cardi-
nal lately imported here, after remarking that red '
bats and red robes were both significantly introduced
about the same period that the red hands of the
Popedom were first imbrued with inquisitorial blood,
Oa the B'h of December this purple delegate of the conclave
'old his auditors in Southwark that ao tear of the icquisition
need haunt the English mind. It had never been intro-
duced into Austria, whence he had jut come—Bavaria,
which he had just vialted--er the Brazils. What dolly
he must take you fur, men of England ! lathe erection of a
pnisonhouse and torture chamber necessary for the exercise
in England of itmedeitcriel proceedings? Mast an official
mount distinguish necessarily the secret familiar of the
holy office in London? Is hOt ealuinny as crushing an
engine as the rack; and cannot the whisperings of malig-