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Nor is this all. Taking courage from the remissness of those whose duty it is to maintain the foreign rights of British subjects, the Portuguese authorities of Madeira are now threatening to try Dr. Kalley on a capital charge, reviving for this purpose an obsolete law, which assigns to his alleged offences the punishment of death! And to make sure of him in the interval, they are proposing to send him to the Ilhéo, which is a prison on a fortified island, or rather rock, on the shores of Madeira. Once there, it will be next to impossible for any person to hold communication with him; in all probability, his friends would never see him more.

Let it not be said that, while valiant in sending the gospel to the simple African and harmless Hindoo, we shrink from carrying it where is equally wanted, with only this difference, that it is fiercely denounced and bitterly persecuted.

THE FETE DIEU.

BY CÆSAR MALAN, D.D.

I HAD just left the priest, and was reflecting upon all which he had said to me about the eucharist, and of its being my duty to enter the Roman church, when I perceived the people crowding towards one of the squares of the city, and raising my eyes, I saw the street where I was, all decorated with festoons, and garlands of flowers and evergreens, pictures and hangings, which advanced to the middle of the pavement.

I was going to walk over one of these carpets, when a bookseller, who was standing before his half-closed shop, informed me by voice and gesture immediately to draw back.

"What is there, then, and what are they going to do?" asked I, approaching this monitor.

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"Oh, that is a Reposoir," replied he, quickly. "Do not you know that the good God (le bon Dieu) will pass by directly." Stranger. The good God pass by! do you say? But the Lord, is he not in heaven?

Bookseller.-Ah!-I see that you are a heand that you know nothing about religion.

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a Protestant,

Stranger, (with gentleness.)—That is true, sir, I am a Protestant ; but since they press me to enter the Romish church, I am trying to become acquainted with it, and I beg you to bear with my ignorance.

Bookseller, (officiously.)—Very well, very well!-See, the Sacrament is coming-enter here, and you will see through the opening in the shutter-but I beg they may not see you.

The procession advanced slowly, and with the greatest pomp.

Men-at-arms richly equipped advanced before and along the sides. Lively music filled the air, drowning the sound of all the church bells. The trumpets were silent at intervals, and then were heard chants and litanies, which the voices of young girls and children repeated after the priests, whose numerous ranks were followed by a cortège of ecclesiastic and secular dignitaries, and several confraternities, all carrying lighted tapers, flowers, or images, statues of their patron saints, or the banners of their different orders.

Then came a splendid dais, supported by four principal men of the city, and covering a priest magnificently dressed in fine cambric, holding with both hands before his face, walking all the time, a precious piece of wrought gold, in the centre of which was seen a white wafer of a circular form. Around this personage, young boys waved censers which raised clouds of incense, and after them and other bands of men and of women, in different costumes, crowded the mass of the people, carrying also flowers or burning wax-lights.

A small bell tinkled. The procession stopped. A solemn silence succeeded to the chants; and suddenly, in the square, in the street, along by the houses, and even within the dwellings, each one prostrated himself and seemed to be in profound adoration.

The bookseller rose after the procession had resumed its march, and he observed me with a scrutinizing air.

Well! said he, at length, fixing his eye upon me, is that a religion !—What is that of a Luther or a Calvin in presence of the worship of Rome? How glad I am that you have seen with your own eyes the holiest of our fêtes. What imposing pomp! What grandeur, and at the same time, what holiness!-The whole of the clergy, all the civil authorities, and the whole people, surrounding with veneration the good God himself, advancing in the midst of them, and adoring him with the humblest devotion! What a ceremony! What a spectacle, and at the same time what a blessing from heaven upon a church in which God even renders himself thus visible !-Say, sir, does not all this strike and strangely touch you?

Stranger. Dear sir, have you then, really, adored with all your heart, and as God ought to be adored, this wafer which one could hardly see?

Bookseller, (indignant.)-A wafer! sir?-know that the consecrated host is God himself! Yes, sir, it is the body of Jesus Christ, with his soul and his divinity. This is why (for I have read more than one book upon the subject) this fête is called Corpus Christi, or Fête Dieu, (God's fête.) Also, sir, according to the terms of the holy Council of Trent, the worship latria, which signifies the supreme adoration which belongs to God

only, should be offered to the consecrated host; and he who refuses it, declares this council, is anathematized and cursed.*

Stranger. Thus, then, that which was instituted in memory of Jesus Christ absent, is found to be Jesus Christ himself.

Bookseller.—It is a prodigy, I allow-but it is not less a reality. Stranger. Your famous and powerful pope, Hildebrand, was then cursed, when this Gregory VII., in presence of three of his cardinals, threw the host into the fire. Certainly, then (that is in the eleventh century) they did not believe at Rome that the body of Christ was in this host.

Bookseller.-The Council of Trent was infallible, and the host, it has decreed, must be adored; for the consecration makes it become God himself.

Stranger. Then those priests were impious, and even those cardinals, who at Rome, and in the presence of Luther, said to the host, while consecrating it-Panis es, et panis manebis— Bread thou art, and bread thou wilt remain?

Bookseller.-The Council of Trent has not erred when it repeated the holy Council of Lateran. It was already a truth, in the thirteenth century, that the Eucharist is transubstantiated into God; and the unbelievers will answer to it.

Stranger.-Alas! alas! poor Averroès !

Bookseller.-What has that Turkish† physician to do with it,

sir?

Stranger.-Alas! dear sir, I deplore his sad end. You doubtless remember that this mussulman, otherwise so distinguished by his learning and high qualities, replied to some Romish

*Concil. Trid. Sess. XIII. c. v. et can. VI.

+ This tract was published and distributed in great numbers in the neighbour hood of Geneva upon the last celebration of this fete, in the month of June. It caused the strongest manifestation of indignation on the part of the Roman priesthood, who everywhere, when it was in their power, gathered and destroyed the copies; in one village they were even so ridiculous as to make a public auto da fè of those they could collect. Some replies were attempted in the form of newspaper letters and one or two short tracts, but nothing substantial was produced in the shape of refutation, except this be one-" The Turk Averroès, (till now this physician was believed to be an Arab, our author makes him a Turk.)"

It is amusing to find that the writer of the little tract which contains this, affects to believe that it is an Englishman who has written La Fête Dieu; this, we suppose, is in order to afford him an opportunity of pouring his unqualified scorn upon those whom he terms "the saints of England," "the country of the thousand sects." As a specimen of this author's sentiments we quote this curious sentence:- "It was by preaching that St. Peter converted eight thousand persons on the day of Pentecost; it was by their speaking that the apostles changed the world, not by throwing at the head of the people bibles, tracts, and pamphlets." He creeps out of the awkward corner into which the absurd miracles quoted drive him, in the manner usually adopted by those who take up the Protestant gauntlet on this subject, and quietly says-"No one obliges the Catholic to believe them; he can disbelieve them all and still be a good Catholic."

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doctors who, in order to convert him to Christianity, had spoken of the Eucharist to him, as you speak of it to me at this moment. -Let my soul remain philosophic rather than submit to the absurdity of a religion which first makes its God and then directly after eats him!

Bookseller.-This Averroès, though called so great a philosopher, was only a miscreant; but the Council of Trent was infallible.

Stranger, (sighing.)-So that, sir, it was really the Creator of the heavens and of the earth, the eternal God, incomprehensible and infinite! that this personage, clothed in white, carried in his hands?

Bookseller, (warmly.)-Sir, it was my lord bishop who held the ostensoir.* He was dressed in white, because a holy father has thus instituted it, in order that the triumph of the body of Christ over Satan (and over heresy, also, sir) be made in holiday garments, (habits de fête.) It is the Council of Trent which speaks of this triumph, and which at the same time curses whoever does not confess that the holy sacrament should be carried in processions and before all the people.†

Stranger.-Catherine of Medicis was, then, cursed, although she had shewed so much zeal for the church of Rome; for I have read somewhere that she wrote to the then pope, that the Eucharist had been established by Jesus Christ, for a hidden adoration and a spiritual worship, and not for pomp and spectacles.‡

Bookseller.-The church, I repeat, is infallible, and the Council of Trent was the organ of the Holy Ghost in the church. The Fête Dieu is, then, a heavenly institution, and its origin proves it as well as the prodigies which accompany it.

Stranger. Nevertheless, it is not of very old standing in your church. It dates, I believe, from the middle age.

Bookseller-Everything in the Roman church is ancient and apostolic. But the Holy Spirit has his times of manifestation. It was thus I know that he did not appoint this great fête till 1264, and by the holy father, Urban IV. But, sir, what brightness has he not shed upon it since its origin ?—Listen, and see it yourself. From the time of the great Constantine, who adored the holy host in his cabinet, (as the reverend father Lupus has proved,§) the church had felt the want of a solemn fête dedicated to the holy sacrament. You have only to read upon this point the learned work of the grand vicar of Sens, the Doctor Jacques Boileau.

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Stranger.-Ah!-was it not he who said that "the Jesuitslengthened the creed and shortened the decalogue"?

Bookseller, (discontentedly.)—That has nothing to do with the Fête Dieu. Boileau then proved what need the church had already had of this fête, when in the year 1230, at Liege, a holy nun, called Julienne, had a miraculous vision, in which the moon appeared to her at full, but having a spot or rather a chasm. Troubled, but at the same time experiencing a divine emotion, she prayed to the Virgin, who revealed to her that this chasm was an indication from God that the church still wanted one fête, and

Stranger, (interrupting the bookseller.)-But, dear sir, are you speaking seriously?

Bookseller, (firmly.)-Poor unbeliever, who deny yourself even evident signs from heaven!-at least be patient, and if possible, become humble !-St. Julienne then received the celestial vision, as St. Peter that of his vocation to the Gentiles, and St. Paul that of his ministry in Macedonia.

Stranger. But again, sir, let me remind you that these two apostles were led by the Holy Ghost himself, whilst that

Bookseller, (decidedly.)-The Holy Ghost is with those who have taken the vows, says the church, and St. Julienne was one of these. The Holy Ghost, then, was also with her;* and what undeniably proves it is, that as soon as she had communicated her vision to another holy woman, this one, without any delay, was informed from Heaven (mark that) that the fête of the Holy Sacrament had been from all time in the decree of the very Holy Trinity, and that the angels had never ceased to pray that it might finally be granted to the world. This was positive, you see. And, nevertheless, a certain priest of Bolsena, in the Roman states, rejected even this evidence, and he would not recognise the presence of God even in the consecrated host. But what happened?-One day, when this man, whose spirit Satan blinded, officiated at the altar, at the moment when he pronounced the sacramental words-blood, sir, (let those believe who hear! cries Platina, the historian of the popes,)† yes, drops of blood fell from the host which the priest held, even upon the corporal and upon his surplice, where they formed so many figures of bloody hosts.

Stranger, (with a sigh.)-And you believe even that, dear sir?" Bookseller, (warmly.)-What, sir, do I believe it ?-Platina, who relates it, has he then lied?-And, more, this bloody corporal, which Pope Urban caused to be carried in procession before all the people, is it not even at present one of the most precious.

* Bellarm. De Monach. liber. passim.
+ Platina, Urb. IV. vita, Annot, p. 228.

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