ROME'S VIRTUOUS TOLERANCE.
By M. C. W.
HE who is honest-hearted and desires to do right, will not seek to cover up a defective character or bad reputation by seeking to blacken the reputation of others; but it is otherwise with the wicked and malicious. The Roman Catholic press is an example of this at the present time. Knowing that its black record of the past is all too true, and being unable from the force of circumstances to compel the homage of the people, it seeks to make itself appear virtuous by defaming others, or pointing out their sins or mistakes,—sins which almost sink into insignificance compared to the terrible crimes of Rome, which she has never for a moment denounced or renounced. A sample of this is given in the Catholic Review of June 8. In speaking of the ill-treatment of a crank by some Presbyterian ministers, that paper says:— "The Catholic Church treats its slanderers with much more foresight. Maria Monks, Justin D. Fultons, Bishop McNamaras, and ex-Mother Cusicks are allowed to go about unmolested, venting their spite, their wounded pride and unreasoning hate. They defeat themselves by the extravagance and virulence of their charges." How the Catholic Church has treated simply those who have not been able to conscientiously agree with her soul-corrupting and truth-destroying doctrines, let Savanarola and Huss, and Jerome of Prague and John of Wycliffe and Hooper, and Cranmer and Ridley and Bilney and myriads of others, and the St. Bartholomew massacre and many other "acts of faith" by that same church, testify; so Satanically cruel when she had the power, so tolerant and liberal now that that power is taken away. Would this "unchangeable" and "infallible" church do otherwise now than in the Dark Ages if she could control civil powers? Could she, and still be unchangeable and infallible? Witness at present Spain and Equador and, in the recent past, Mexico, for Rome's lenient and "unmolested" treatment of her "slanderers." Rome's morality in this respect is the morality of the murderer in his dungeon. She slays not, because she cannot.