Attending the precedent relation, it is allowed that this present work of Davanzati may be printed. Vincent Rabbata, etc.

It may be printed, July 15.

Friar Simon Mompei d'Amelia, chancellor of the holy office in Florence.

Sure they have a conceit, if he of the bottomless pit had not long since broke prison, that this quadruple exorcism would bar him down. I fear their next design will be to get into their custody the licensing of that which they say Claudius intended, but went not through with. Vouchsafe to see another of their forms, the Roman stamp; Imprimatur, If it seem good to the reverend master of the holy palace. Belcastro, vicegerent.

Imprimatur, Friar Nicholo Rodolphi, master of the holy palace. Sometimes five imprimaturs are seen together dialogue wise in the piatza of one title page, complimenting and ducking each to other with their shaven reverences, whether the author, who stands by in perplexity at the foot of the epistle, shall to the press or to the spunge.

In our own country, this has not yet been attempted. But who will stand security that it may not be done? If the claim which has been recently insisted on that there are some points in the political state of things in this country, or in its theology, which may not be examined, should be persevered in; if the claim should be met with the same unconcern which has been carried on with increasingly less surprise and alarm; if the right to condemn books should be claimed as it has been extensively in some portions of the church, and should gradually be conceded to be a right; if the demand should continue to be made that certain papers, and documents should not be allowed to be conveyed by the public mail; and if the right to examine and withold all suspected documents should be given to postmasters, then the next step is easy; and it is a step which will soon be taken alike in church and state. It will be but the consistent following out of these exorbitant claims; those claims which have already struck so deep at our liberty. It will be demanded that there should be laws against the "liberty of unlicensed printing," and that there should be created a censorship of the press with unlimited powers. And it will be the easiest way; and the best way. It will save much time; much public money; much excitement. It will be safer for the liberty of

free discussion. How much better would it be to commit the task of examining a book to an authorized body of censors who shall, or shall not give it their imprimatur, than to throw it before the world, to agitate the church, and then to be condemned by a tribunal. How much time would be saved to the ministers of religion could it be at once submitted to their hands, rather than to be thrown upon the world, to be reviewed, and condemned there; to wake up a spirit of hostility, and alarm, and enkindle angry passions; to agitate and perplex the ecclesiastical tribunals year after year. How much better and cheaper, and easier to strangle an infant Hercules in the cradle, than to be at all the expense and trouble of a public war, when he is endowed with a giant's power. And in regard to all books and pamphlets heretical, how much easier would it be to have appointed some faithful men who shall destroy the cockatrice eggs rather then suffer them to be hatched; or to crush them rather than to suffer them to break out into a viper. In some cases which have recently occurred in our own country, and which are within the memory of all who have watched the progress of ecclesiastical affairs, how much better would it have been to have had a control committee with ample powers to sit, as Milton expresses it," cross-legged over the nativity of the man's intellectual offspring, and stifle the issue of the brain, at once, than to have produced excitement from the Land's End to the Tweed," in all the ecclesiastical courts to secure its condemnation. If the doctrine is to prevail, therefore, that ecclesiastical bodies are to condemn books; that they are constituted for this; and that they are to be regarded as censors appointed for this purpose, we maintain that it should be done by those who are appointed to this work, and who "in the piatza of a title page," may "compliment and duck to each other with their shaven reverences whether the author who stands by in perplexity at the foot of the apostle shall to the press or to the spunge." In our apprehension, the ecclesiastical bodies have some very material disadvantages in their organization for this important work, and it should be committed at once to an obligated body of men.

And the same things are to be remarked in regard to every other prohibited subject of discussion. It would add greatly to the expense in this work should every postmaster be appointed to determine what should be borne in the mails. Of the competency of the mass of postmasters in this country to determine

what are proper subjects of public discussion, and what may be properly transmitted in the mail, no one can entertain a reasonable doubt. But it would consume much of their time. It would demand an augmented number should this duty be expected of them. There would be the expense of conveying documents from one postmaster to another until they should come within the territorial limits where it would be proper to prohibit it; or until they should reach one who should detect the latent poison, and commit them to the flames. On every account, therefore, it would be better that there should be a censorship of the press. Time, money, peace, security all demand it. And, if the extraordinary principles which have obtained in some portions of the church gain ground; if the doctrine contended for that there are some subjects, which are not to be discussed, be admitted; if the recommendations which have been made from high authority that there shall be the power of search and arrest lodged in the hands of postmasters for papers that discuss certain points, be adopted, or continue to excite as little alarm as has been done, then we contend that this nation is ripe for the slavery of the press; that there are coiled in its bosom the essential principles of the papacy; and that there has been, and is, at work here the very principles preparatory to the return of the night of ages long before Austria contemplated the subjugation of the United States to the papal power.

The next mode of preventing free discussion which we suggest, consists in erecting ecclesiastical ramparts adapted to confine the freedom of thought, and to confine inquiry within certain specified limits. It consists essentially in the formation of creeds, and in attaching to them a sacredness equal to, or superior to the reverence which is felt for the Bible; in procuring from ecclesiastical bodies or councils decisions on points of doctrine, and in denouncing all who differ from those decisions; in creating by means of such decisions a public sentiment against a man and his doctrine, and causing it to rest upon him like the blight and mildew on the tender blade of grain, or to come in around him, and envelope him like a dense mist from the ocean; in endeavoring to send down the condemning authority of the council, or the tribunal to accompany, or to anticipate his name should it perchance to travel down to future times; and in producing a profound and superstitious veneration for antiquity, and a belief that all that can be achieved has been accomplished by the mighty minds of the past. All these are efforts manifestly

to reserve some points from independent inquiry; and to meet the spirit of free inquiry, not by manly argument, but by the force of authority; by the power of tribunals which God has not erected for this purpose, and which have been reared evidently from the conscious defect of argument, and a fear of meeting the conflict for truth in an open field, and on equal ground. When a man can throw himself behind a tree or a rock; or when he can ascend on a craggy cliff; or when he can take advantage of a deep mist, or fog; or can involve his adversary in a cloud of smoke and dust, he has evidently the advantage, and can usually secure a kind of victory. But it is such as an honorable mind will disdain. And yet it would be a most curious inquiry as a point of ecclesiastical history to ascertain how much of the effect of the councils of Nice, or Constantinople, or Ephesus, or Trent, or Dort was produced in this way.

We are no enemies of creeds. We deem them valuable in their place; nor do we suppose that a church can exist without a creed expressed or implied. And we deem it altogether the most manly and correct course for a church to make known its creed to the world. We hold also that the ministers and members of a church, in a liberal construction of its articles, should be the friends of those articles, and should in good faith adhere to them. Our objection is only to their being made the rampart to be thrown around the doctrines of a church in such a sense that they are not to be approached for free inquiry, and to their being supposed to constitute limits within which alone the human mind has liberty to range. And we scarcely know a more effectual means of preventing liberty of free inquiry, than in forming a creed, and giving to it the sanction of ecclesiastical decisions, and denouncing all as heretical who dare to transcend in their inquiries the limits which have been prescribed.

In their pro

We are no enemies to ecclesiastical decisions. per place they are of value. Confined to their legitimate objects, they may be of inestimable worth in the advancement of religion. Our objection is to making use of such decisions in default of argument; or appealing to this factitious power where reasons fail, and where there is a consciousness of weakness in argument, or too much indolence, or too little talent, or learning, to engage in open and manly discussion. We regard an attempt made by a man to obtain in favor of a doctrine the decision of an ecclesiastical tribunal as prima facie evidence that

he is conscious of imbecility to meet an argument, or that he has misgivings that his opinions cannot stand the test of open discussion. We deem it always as evidence of a weak or a dishonest mind; and as evincing a purpose in the arena of controversy to secure a factitious advantage-like the skulk of a savage behind a tree which would be resorted to by no fair and honorable mind. For what has truth to fear in the open field of debate? What has the Bible to apprehend in the honest conflict of mind with mind? What has a favorite dogma to apprehend, if it is founded on truth, in the manly conflict of unfettered inquiry? And what permanent advantage will an ecclesiastical decision give to a doctrine? What has been secured for the dogmas of the papacy by the decisions at Trent, or at Constance? Do such decisions give any permanent basis on which the truth shall rest? Is there any thing in them which an honorable mind; a mind conscious that it held the truth, and that truth had nothing to fear, would feel to be needful, or would desire? And yet there have been men who seem to have lived for little else than to procure in their favor a decision of some ecclesiastical tribunal; men never seen on the open and fair field of debate; men never visible except on some safe crag of ecclesiastical authority, or within the safe ramparts of the ecclesiastical enclosure; men who never strike a blow in defence of truth, or even of their own belief until they have sought to envelope their adversary in a dense fog of suspicion, and to pour upon the alleged heretic, not the power of argument, but the prostrating power of an overwhelming ecclesiastical decision.

We

Nor are we enemies to the fathers; nor would we despise the voice of former times. There have been many men at whose feet it would be a privilege to sit; and from whose lips it is well to derive the lessons of wisdom. Every age has furnished such men; and the church of Christ has been more honored in this respect by far than any other society of men. hold that the men who have adorned the christian church — the Cyprians, and Augustines, and Tertullians, and Chrysostoms of former times, were men who would have done honor to any science, to any rank or society of men; and would have deserved immortal remembrance in any department of thought or eloquence. But they would have been among the last men who would have desired that the use should be made of their names which has been made. But all the fathers were