of heaven gave their rain. And he who
styles himself God's Vicar sees all this misery! Sees it, do I say! he
is the author of it. It is to uphold his miserable throne that these
prisons are filled, and that these widows and orphans cry in the
streets. And yet he tells us that his reign is a model of Christ's
reign. 'Tis a fearful blasphemy. When did Christ build dungeons, or
gather _sbirri_ about him, or send men to the galleys and the scaffold?
Is that the account which we have of his ministry? No; it is very
different. "The Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the
meek; he hath sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty
to the captive, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound." A
few months ago, when the Pope proclaimed his newest invented dogma,--the
Immaculate Conception,--he gave, in honour of the occasion, a grand
jubilee to the Roman Catholic world. We all know what a jubilee is.
There is a vast treasury above, filled with the merits of Pio Nono and
of such as he, out of which those who have not enough for their own
salvation may supplement their deficiencies. At the Pope's girdle hangs
the key of this treasury; and when he chooses to open it, straightway
down there comes a shower of celestial blessings. Well, the Pope told
his children throughout the world that he meant to unlock this treasury;
and bade his children be ready to receive with open arms and open
hearts, this vast beneficence of his. Ah! Pio Nono, this is not the
jubilee we wish. Draw your bolts; break the fetters of your thirty
thousand captives; open your dungeons, and give back the fathers, the
husbands, the sons, the brothers, which you have torn from their
families. Put off your robe, quit your palace, take the Bible in your
hand, and go round the world preaching the gospel, as your Master did.
Do this, and we shall have had a jubilee such as the world has not seen
for many a long year. But ah! you but mock us,--bitterly, cruelly mock
us,--when you deny us blessings which it is in your power to give, and
offer us those which are not yours to bestow. But it is a mockery which
will return, and at no distant day, in sevenfold vengeance upon, we say
not Pio Nono, but the papal system. Untie the fetters of these men; make
them free for but a few hours; and with what terrible emphasis will they
demand back the friends whom the Papacy has buried in dungeons or
murdered on the open scaffold! They will seek their l