The Sun.
London, England, 1851-03-21 00:00:00

FATHER GAVAZZI'S LECTURE.

On Wednesday Father Gavazzi continued his course
of lectures on the abuses of the Church of Rome, at
Willis's Rooms.

The Reverend Father commenced by referring to
he renewed accusations which had been cast upon
him in the British House of Commons by Mr.
Moore, that he was an apostate whose charges
against the Church which he had abandoned ema-
nated only from rancour and disappointed ambition,
and were unworthy of credit. Those who make
such an accusation against him could not understand
the true force of the word " apostate," and that
they could only have charged him with apoetacy
through malice or ignorance, for he denied that he
had ever abandoned the principles of Catholicity,
or transferred his name or his faith to any
Church dissenting from the Church of Rome.
Neither had he ever connected himself with any sect
or party, political or religious ; but where he had been
mixed up in political movements, it was solely from a
sincere love of his country, to free her from the oppres-
sion under which she groaned. It had been said that
he was a Mazzinian. It was true that he had known
Mezzini in Rome, he respected him as an individual,
and he believed him to be an honest man, and a
sincere patriot; but if the name of Mazzini signified
a party, and not a principle, then he renounced all
connexion with him. He was an Italian, not a
Mazzinian, and he refused to labour for the re-
generation of his country for the sake of any sect
or party, but merely for the love of principle, and
the love of liberty.—(Applause.) He belonged
neither to the Carbonari nor to Young Italy, but to
his country alone. He believed the regeneration of
Italy was possible, and not a chimera—he believed
the people of Italy were entitled to the blessings
of liberty and the possession of a free Govern-
ment ; but what he wished to see was a Govern-
ment firm, tranquil, and well ordered, ba,ed on
religion and order, not on incredulity and anarchy.
He trusted that, before he had concluded, he should
convince Mr. Moore, and the English Parliament and
people, that he was neither an apostate nor a sectary,
but that his sole desire was to make known the abuses
by which the Church to which he belonged was cor-
rupted, in order that they might be removed. Fana-
ticism or bigotry alone could deny the existence of
those abuses, and his object was to show what
were their nature and effects, and the mode
in wLii.,h they might be remedied without in-
juring the true fabric of the Church. It was far
from his intention to touch the sacred principles of
the Church, or those institutions which were coeval
with its foundation by the Divine Head of
Christianity. He dealt only with its abuses, which
were the work of men, and had grown up in the
progress of time thicker and thicker around it,
until they utterly buried and concealed the great
basis of truth on which it rested. He did not
attack the Church, but the abuses of the Church, and
it was for this that he had been stigmatised as blas-
phemous and apostate by those who owed wealth
and rack, and splendour to those abuses, and would
perpetuate them by any and every means.
(Applause.) In the early days of the Christian
Church, when she was exposed to persecution in
every shape, and had to be administered in secrecy
and silence, abuses were unknown ; but no
sooner was the protection of the State cast around
her, and her bishops and priests permitted to wear
their authority in open day, than abuses crept in on
every side. The fathers and doctors of the early
Church, and the canons of the councils down to the
Council of Trent, and since then the universal voice
of public opinion, all pointed to the existence
of abuse of the most marked and dangerous cha-
racter. The dogmas of the Church, its hierarchy
and its liturgy, were all tainted with the evil, which
every succeeding age strengthened and confirmed.
Most, if not all of them, were owing
to the blending of the spiritual nature of the Christian
Church with the temporal quality of earthly sove-
reignty. The luxury and ostentation, the pomp and
show of the Court of Rome, had influenced the
Church of Rome until, in fact, they became one, the
spiritual being rendered grosser, and the temporal
more odious by the connexion. What had been the
effect of their corruption of the Church from its
primitive purity and simplicity ? In the first place,
it had rendered material and superstitious the
pure and ethereal religion of Christ, which, being
heavenly and spiritual, was made to be the universal
religion of the world, binding all men in one general
tie of brotherhood. The result is that dissent
and schism are created, man is set against man,
and people against people, and all the nations of
the earth are presented in uniting in one fraternal
embrace that the cardinals and princes of the
Court of Rome may live in toilless splendour, and
Jesuits rule the whole body of the Catholic Church to
gratify their ambitious longings for power. What had
characteriseof Itoee
caused the
nothing
northern schism, when Ger-
many and
Englandsevered themselves from the see
thing but the infamous abuses which
thetraftoimngishin Church of thaendsixteenth
century—the
dispen-
sations, the shamelessofththeev-ice.s of the very head and ruler
cluenriverslal,lprofiigacy, which per-
vade every class
divhidetgreventbed evenf the
chance of a reunion of thogsYe.
Whmetmh members of
nthe
one common Church of Christ ?
eriacmeeuzbdutaene.ihaistioaut pyr, e
suet existence
the
grasping the nar-
gofratshpoi-zue; ealvta%
row-wiadeiduess and bigotry of the Papal system of