The Pope's Toleration To-Day.
WE recently published the order from the Vatican expelling a Protestant preacher from Rome in 1866. That was nearly twenty years ago, and under a former pope. Now read this from Pope Leo XIII., addressing his cardinals last Christmas:— “It is with deep regret and profound anguish that we behold the impiety with which Protestants propagate freely, and with impunity their heretical doctrines, attacking the most august and the most sacred dogmas of our very holy religion, even here, at Rome, the center of the faith and the seat of the universal and infallible teacher of the church; here, where the integrity of the faith should be protected and the honor of the only true religion should be secured by the most efficient means. “It is with sorrow of heart that I see the temples of heterodoxy multiplying under the protection of the laws, and liberty given in Rome to destroy the most beautiful and most precious unity of the Italians, their religious unity, by the mad efforts of those who arrogate to themselves the impious mission of establishing a new church in Italy, not based on the stone placed by Jesus Christ as the indestructible foundation of his heavenly edifice.” He declares it is with sorrow of heart that he sees Protestantism establishing churches in Italy “under the protection of the laws.” Happily he no longer makes the laws, but if he could he would expel every Protestant minister from Rome, from Italy, from Europe, from the world.—N. Y. Observer.