an
examination. But if we doubt the history of the Conquest, we must doubt
the history of all the miracles of the Church, for all of them rest on
the like untenable grounds. I did not wonder at finding the country
abounding in unbelief. Now that the fires of the Inquisition have
ceased to burn, the priesthood are made the butt and laughing-stock of
those who are educated. Still, the national mind does not run toward
the pure Gospel, which is here unknown and prohibited, but to
infidelity and socialism. A sincere Protestant can have no sympathy
with either side.

AN INTERDICT.

The following is Thomas Gage's account of an affair that took place in
this temple in his time:

"Don Alonzo de Zerna, the archbishop, who had always opposed Don Pedro
Mexia and the Virey, to please the people, granted to them to
excommunicate Don Pedro, and so sent out bills of excommunication, to
be fixed upon all the church doors, against Don Pedro, who, not
regarding the excommunication, and keeping close at home, and still
selling his wheat at a higher price than before, the archbishop raised
his censure higher against him, by adding to it a bill of _cessatio a
divinis_, that is, a cessation of all divine service. This censure is
so great with them that it is never used except for some great man's
sake, who is contumacious and stubborn in his ways, contemning the
power of the Church. Then are all the church doors shut up, let the
city be never so great; no masses are said; no prayers are used; no
preaching permitted; no meetings allowed for any public devotion; no
calling upon God. The Church mourns, as it were, and makes no show of
spiritual joy and comfort, nor of any communion of prayers one with
another, so long as the party remains stubborn and rebellious in his
sin and scandal, and in not yielding to the Church's censure.

"And whereas, by this cessation _a divinis_, many churches, especially
cloisters, suffer in the means of their livelihood, who live upon what
is daily given for the masses they say, and in a cloister where thirty
or forty priests say mass, so many pieces of eight [dollars] do daily
come in, therefore this censure is inflicted upon the whole Church,
that the party offending or scandalizing, for whose sake this curse is
laid upon all, is bound to satisfy all priests and cloisters, which, in
the way aforesaid, suffer, and to allow them so much out of his means
as they might have daily got by selling away their ma