"Protestants in Germany, but one opinion prevails as to the "conduct and praise-worthy intentions of Baron Wessenberg; "they are unanimous in their wishes for his suscess. Even the attention of the Catholic princes has been powerfully directed to the struggle in which he is engaged, feeling, it is asserted, the most ardent desire to free themselves and their people from the shackles of hierarchical usurpation.

Charles Theodore Von Dulberg, Prince Primate, the former bishop of Constance, wishing, after he had attained to an advanced age, to associate with himself a successor in whom he confided, had recommended Wessenberg, of whose character and talents he entertained the highest opinion. The Court of Rome, however, upon application being made for its confirmation of this arrangement, preserved the most profound silence; and thus virtually refused the request which had been presented. Upon the death of the Prince Primate, Wessenberg was elected Capitular Vicar of the diocese, and this was immediately announced to the Pope. To this intimation the following answer was returned, which, for many reasons, must be read with much in

terest.

"Beloved Sons, our salutation and Apostolical blessing.-Your letter of the 18th ultimo, in which you announced to us the death of Charles Theodore, Archbishop of Ratisbon, and administrator of the Church of Constance; and in which you informed us, at the sametime, that the office of Capitular-Vicar had been conferred by you on Baron Ignatius Henry Von Wessenberg, has filled us with no small degree of pain. It cannot be unknown to you, and is in reality not unknown, that the said Von Wessenberg had excited our displeasure to such a degree in matters of the utmost importance, that we wished his removal from the place of Vicar-General, which he filled. How then has it happened that, laying aside all reverence for us, and this holy chair, you could elect the very man of whom we disapproved as Vicar-General, to fill the still more important office of Capitular-Vicar? But still, not satisfied with this, you have even dared to desire from us the confirmation of your election. Let the following serve you for answer to your request, which, to speak of it in the mildest terms, was most unadvised. We not only do not approve the election of Von Wessenberg, as Capitular-Vicar, but we will not even in any manner recognise him as such, or Antony Reineger as his representative; nor will our spiritual tribunals acknowledge them, or pay the smallest attention to any writings which may be issued by them. We therefore, in virtue of the apostolical power entrusted to us by God for the good of the whole church, command you, that, setting aside the election of Von Wessenberg, you make choice of a CapitularVicar in good repute with Catholics, and capable of discharging, in a correct and proper manner, the duties of the office to which he is appointed. This letter will grieve you, but may it grieve you unto repentance, that you may yield obedience to us, and afford a solace to

you

have occa

our affliction, and a speedy remedy to the evils which sioned. In the certain hope of this, we bestow on you affectionately our apostolical blessing. At St. Peter's, under the Fisher's ring, Given at Rome the 15th March, in the year of Salvation 1817, and in the 18th year of our pontificate."

There is here an absolute command to set aside the election of Wessenberg, merely because he was not acceptable to the Pope,' and that command is issued in virtue of the apostolical power en-. trusted to him by God, language plainly indicating that little change has taken place in the real spirit of popery. This, indeed, is explicitly asserted by the writer of the introduction to this

work.

"The fundamental system of the Papal See, unlike that of other courts, is not the result of individual opinion, adapted to particular exigencies, but dates its origin from the earliest ages of the Roman Church. In spite of its long duration, and without the aid of documentary support, tradition alone, as in the case of national superstitions, has faithfully preserved and handed it down, unbroken and undiminished to the present time; its sway at this day, though more concealed, is the same as it was centuries ago, notwithstanding even the mild character of the present supreme Pontiff. Its aim is the unlimited extension of the papal power over secular princes as well as ecclesiastical dignitaries."

A letter was also addressed by the Court of Rome to the Duke of Baden, the sovereign in whose dominions Constance is situate, in which the Pope remonstrated against the election of the Bishop, alluded to a former mandate for depriving him of the office of Vicar-General, which had been disregarded; accused him as a man of perverse doctrine, and very bad example, a charge explained by the addition made to it, that he had been guilty of wicked and malicious opposition to the commands of the Apos tolic Chair; intimated the rejection of him as Bishop, and called upon the Duke to exercise his authority in support of this rejection, because no respect could be entertained by believers for a man whom all the good abhor, and of whom they know, by means of certain and undoubted proofs, that he did not possess the approbation of the Pope. Von Wessenberg was thus not only required to divest himself of his bishopric, but his sovereign was called upon, as a dutiful son of the Church, to use his authority to compel him to do so. In other times, whatever might have been the case with the Prince, there would have been no hesitation on the part of the Prelate; he must at once have obeyed, casting himself prostrate before the successor of St. Peter. But Wessenberg, although professing the utmost reverence for the Pontiff, determined to retain his situation, and, with a just sense of what he owed to himself, and a manliness shewing his fitness for the arduous part which he had to act, to

repair to Rome that he might repel the charges, or rather the insinuations against his doctrine and conduct, and endeavour to extort from infallibility itself an acknowledgment of error. However we may admire this intrepidity, it was quite inconsistent with popery, and implied in it a resolution, should it be requisite, of renouncing even nominal adherence to it.

The Duke of Baden replied to the letter of the Pontiff with becoming respect, but defended the election of Wessenberg; bore the most ample testimony to his high merit, and to his qualifications for the dignity to which he had been exalted; declared his conviction, that, after due investigation, his Holiness would afford to this man suitable reparation, confirmed, as he had no doubt that the Pope would be, in the innocence of the Prelate; and concluded by expressing his trust, that, under these circumstances, no attempt would be hazarded to effect an alteration in the present condition of things, or to undertake any thing prejudicial to his just rights. When the Bishop finally resolved to go to Rome, he was furnished by the Duke's minister for foreign affairs with an official letter to the Pope's secretary of state, in which the minister declared how extremely agreeable it was to his master that Wessenberg had expressed a wish to throw himself at the feet of his Holiness, and afford all such explanations as the Holy Father might demand, adding that the Bishop enjoyed in his own country the highest degree of respect, esteem, and confidence.

Upon his arrival at Rome, Wessenberg communicated to the secretary the purpose for which he had come to it, and in reply to this intimation he was furnished with an enumeration of all the grounds upon which the Pontiff regarded him with abhorrence, and considered it as part of his sacred duty to remove him from the situation which had been so honourably conferred on him. Before proceeding to these, however, it was observed to him, that his Holiness would not fail above all things to be infinitely astonished and grieved, that he still continued to take the title of Capitular-Vicar, and to interfere with the administration of the bishopric of Constance, even after the brief of his Holiness had been issued against him, declaring the determination of the Pope not to acknowledge him, and enjoining the Chapter to proceed to the election of another person. This certainly, according to the maxims of Rome, was rebellion against the head of the church, because it implied a virtual abjuration of that infallibility upon which the whole system of Popery must rest.

But there were other charges brought against Wessenberg, to which it is proper to allude, as throwing light upon the principles which he entertained, and upon his general conduct with respect

to religion. The secretary informed him, that the Holy Father was indignant at a decree, which, as Vicar-General of Constance, he had published, relating to marriage, and which was branded as being directly at variance with the common law recognised by the council of Trent. He was farther accused of having defended the infamous P. Thaddeus Dereser, as he is styled by the Papal secretary, and for having done so, although this man had been formally condemned by his Holiness Pius the Sixth. Dereser had promulgated certain tenets most offensive to the court of Rome, and which it lost no time to reprobate. The archbishop of Cologne had formed a very different opinion of them, and had given Dereser the most satisfactory testimonies; in consequence of which Wessenberg had, as it was asserted, declared that these testimonies annihilated every doubt as to the orthodoxy of the man to whom they were granted, all accusations of him having been found groundless by the legitimate archbishop, to whom the right of inquiry into this matter belonged. This remark the secretary stigmatizes, as involving in it the positions, that the sentence of the Holy Father, in points of doctrine, may be corrected by a mere bishop,—a proposition which no Catholic, he maintains, at all acquainted with his religion, ever conceived that salva fide he could affirm, and that as it thus does not belong to the Holy Pontiff to decide as to doctrine, he assumes when he does so a right that was not granted to him by Jesus Christ. The bishop was farther accused of having composed or approved certain books containing the most exceptionable tenets, and particularly of having given his sanction to a particular work as being pure Catholicism, in which amongst others the following points were inculcated:

That the proofs adduced by theologians in support of the infallibility of the church, although strong, are not however of such a nature but that they might be easily refuted. That the Catholic church does not require a supreme pastor, and a visible head.-That infallibility was bestowed by Jesus Christ upon the whole body of believers who form the true church.-That the supreme authority of the Roman Pontiff is dangerous, and similar to the Trojan horse, as having been the cause of incalculable evils, particularly in ancient times, when the Roman Pontiffs exercised a despotic power over the kings and princes of the earth.-That a supremacy of jurisdiction in no respect belongs to the Roman Pontiff, but solely a supremacy of pure honour.-That the Catholic doctrine, that there is no salvation out of the true church of Christ, which is the Catholic church, is contrary to Christian love, and false and erroneous. -That the doctrine of transubstantiation is absurd, the rite of the mass theatrical and ostentatious, the invocation of saints superstitious, the Catholic doctrine of purgatory fantastical, and the worship of images idolatrous."

There can be no doubt, if the cardinal secretary was right in his assertion that Wessenberg considered these tenets as pure Catholicism, that the bishop had to all intents abjured the Roman church, and embraced the Protestant faith.

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The secretary also communicated to him, that in many ways he had given offence to believers, as for example, “ He had "abolished by a decree, a number of holidays and vigils; he "had granted dispensations with respect to abstinence from "flesh meat on all Saturdays of the year, the four quarterly "fasts not excepted; he had sanctioned an ordinance by which "all writs from Rome had been deprived of effect in the district "which he superintended, till they had received the approbation "of the ecclesiastical body of the province; he had prevented pastors within his bishopric, who were desirous of receiving "briefs from the Apostolical Chair respecting absolution and “the like, from obtaining them; he had introduced the mother "tongue and other scandalous abuses into the holy liturgy, un"der pretence of zeal for the ancient discipline of the church; "and he had given consent to many secularizations of religious persons, granting dispensations to some of them from their so"lemn vow of chastity." All this was in direct opposition to the system of Popery, but still they do not amount to any charge against the moral character of the Bishop of Constance, or afford any ground for the representation which, in an official document the Court of Rome had given of him, that he disgraced by his enormities his sacred character. It may fairly be inferred from this, that nothing could be adduced against Wessenberg detracting from the purity of his life; but perhaps the Secretary imagined that the heavy accusation, to which we have alluded, was supported by the following passages: "Many other and certainly very grave denunciations have, on many occasions, been trans"mitted to the Holy Chair against you, as, for example, that you are a member of the society of Free Masons; that you are "considered one of the first, if not the most distinguished of the conspirators against the centre of Catholic unity, a charge esta"blished by the letter of a Protestant, who, in connection with "others, attempting the great object of a separation of Germany "from Rome, makes mention of your name; and that you are ac"cused by most respectable persons of having, with five other "worthless clergymen, formed and avowed the abominable inten"tion of banishing, in the short space of two years, every idea of "the divinity of Jesus Christ from Germany." This is indeed a heavy accusation, but it loses much of its force from what immediately follows," not to mention your design of wishing to "annihilate the exercise of all Papal authority in the regions in

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