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T HE K I N G ' S B U S I N E S S
kept In slavery my intellect for such a long timie? How could I see the light, or enjoy freedom of discussion, the only means by which, by the constitution of human nature, men arrive at the truth? Can a bird born in a cag§, and there kept, learn to fly freely? Oh! how could I convey to you with sufficient power of expression the suffocating sense of this intellectual slavery? It seems to me that the sympathy of Christian people for the victims of physical slavery is ill spent, while they are indifferent to the spiritual slavery in which live, toil and suffer so many human beings, under the yoke of a falsely called Christian religion. Only a man like myself, who went through all this curbing of the intellect, can rightly appreciate the full joy of deliv erance, and of the free exercise of the God-given liberty of conscience, and free research of His truth in the open air. The curbing of the free exercise and expression of thought is thoroughly ac complished by the vigorous censorship of the Congregation of Index, a Roman tribunal, which forbids the reading of thousands of books, under penalty of ex- communication. As a formally estab lished institution, the Index dates back only to the sixteenth century, but the practice of forbidding the reading of books antagonistic to the interest of the Roman Church is very old. It is, how ever, not so much the purity of doctrine which the church meant to defend by those proceedings, as her position as a power in the world. Only books accept able to the rigid interpretation of abso lute papal authority and infallibility are allowed. Any other book which might have been written by a devout Catholic, who happens not to. be a papist, is strictly forbidden. Consequently when, by the reading of the Bible, people be came aware of the huge discrepancy be tween the ideal of the church founded by Christ and the actual Roman Church, the Bible itself was made a forbidden
book, translations in the vernacular tongue were prohibited, and a Council of Toledo (1229) forbade laymen to have in their possession any of the books of the Old and New Testament. In 1564, Pius IV issued a new Index, generally known as Index Tridentinum; and Sixtus V finally organized a special con gregation of the Index, which is still in operation, and adds'to the list year by year hundreds of newly prohibited books. The Congregation of Index is the most ugly anachronism of our time. It is a permanent indictment against human reason and a free press: it is a medieval power, still trying to control the advancing wave, of men’s thought. It surpasses now all my imaginative powers to think of the asinine docility of millions of people throughout the world, who supinely submit to it. But I must admit that 1 used to be one of this supine company, and for this reason I feel rather pity than contempt for them. In the joyous and glorious sentiment of my deliverance, I can never forget the anguish of mind that for so many years had tormented me; and, as much as lies in me, I do not want to see an other soul on the face of the earth suf fer what I did suffer. To this end I pray, I work, J write. It is for this that I feel it to be my most sacred and im perative duty to sound the alarm to the Protestants of this free and great coun try, warning them of the impending danger of losing their hard-won liber ties; warning them of the oncoming black cloud, prophetically seen by the immortal Lincoln. O Americans, Americans! Be aware of the system that the Roman Church is- trying to impose on you, destroying your religious and political liberties.
The author o f the above is now Pastor o f the Italian U. P. Church , Los Angeles.
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