News and Miscellany

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 26, 1872

News and Miscellany.

“Can ye not discern the signs of the times?”

Great Discussion at Rome.

We have had occasion, for many years, to chronicle no event at Rome (save the declaration of the infallibility of the pope) of such importance as the discussion of the question, “Whether St. Peter was ever at Rome,” so graphically described by our correspondent. It was not the question that is of such significance, but the fact that the discussion could take place, and that, too, by the invitation of the pope’s own doctors of theology, under the sanction of the pope. It is a new era in the history of the city of Rome, the center of the great apostasy. It is a new leaf turned over in the records of the papacy, and the reading of it cannot fail to have a great influence upon those who have been taught that to listen to the words of a Protestant orator is a mortal sin.

The effect of this discussion, as we learn from other sources than the letter of our correspondent, has been most beneficial to the cause of truth. The Roman daily paper, liberal in politics,—the Capitale,—has a report of the speeches, which occupy twenty-one columns and which will be read by thousands. It characterizes the discussion as “an event of immense importance.” It sums up the arguments by saying that the result of this trial of strength was most damaging to the priests, and that “the triumph of the evangelical ministers could not have been more splendid.” Signore Gavazzi, one of the disputants on the Protestant side, writes to a friend in Dublin from Rome:

“It is here considered the greatest event of the century, even more than the material entrance of our army by the breach of Porta Pia. It is the entrance after fourteen centuries of mental enslavement, of the freedom of thought, of examination, of choice. Moreover, it is an admission that the doctrines of Rome are subject to controversy, and can be refuted and denied. This circumstance alone contributed a complete revolution in the Roman system of blind obedience and compulsion. Moreover, still, it is an explicit confession of our rights, because till then to the present time they tried to treat us as apostates, heretics, almost like brigands, and yet they are now obliged to recognize us as true believers, and their equal compeers in the field of discussion. Under these circumstances, the fact of our controversy took the largest proportions, and its uppermost importance was well understood by all classes here especially for its incalculable consequences. We have to be glad of the result.”

“It is significant,” writes the London Daily News correspondent at Rome, “that the pope has ordered Cardinal Patrizi to address a letter to the College of Theologians, forbidding hereafter any of its members, or any other member of the Church of Rome, publicly to confute Protestant preachers. Evidently the debate on the presence of St. Peter in Rome has been considered at the Vatican as a failure, and those gentlemen have no desire to enter upon a fresh contest.”—N. Y. Observer.