These are facts on which both Protestant and Catholic can judge; and
Catholics, as well as Protestants, will tell you the same thing. Then if
this be so, and that it is so I assert fearlessly, in what right, human
or divine, are a number of God's creatures to be forced to live out that
one short life of ours in dull, abject misery? If you tell me that their
misery is necessary to the maintenance of a religious creed, be that
creed Protestant or Catholic, I reply that the sooner then that creed
disappears, the better for mankind and for faith in God.
And now, a few words in parting about the future. The end I believe is
coming on so rapidly, has indeed advanced so far, since first I began to
write these letters, little more than a year ago, that I hesitate to make
prophecies which to-morrow may render vain. The whole Italian revolution
is eminently a political one, not a religious one. It is possible a
religious change, whether reformation-like or otherwise, may follow in
its steps, but that time is not come. There is no wish in the Italian
people, unless I err much, to alter the national faith, or to dispense
with the Pope, as a spiritual potentate. Before long Pius IX., having
caused as much misery as one man can well cause in one lifetime, must
depart from this world; and then, if not sooner, some arrangement must be
come to between the Pope and the Italian people, if the Papacy is to last
at all.
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