On this page

• Text (1)

  Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

  • 

    Untitled Article

• Transcript

  • Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

    Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.

    Untitled Article

    This spirited description of the great Tuscan novelist , written about the year 1340 , would require some modification in order to be applicable to the year 1780 . Yet , although vice did not stalk abroad so boldly in the day of the eighteenth as it had done in the night of the fourteenth century , while it was compelled by the improved manners and advancing illumination of the times to shrink into concealment , the disease appeared to assume a more

    malignant and pestilential form , in proportion as it became pent up within a narrower space . The most corrupt of the religious houses , at the period of which we speak , were those under the spiritual direction of the Dominicans . Although Ricei had prepared and designed for publication the detail of circumstances dishonourable to human nature , correctly alleging that " the scandal belongs not to those who expose vice , but to those who are guilty of it , " the reader will gladly be spared the repetition . Suffice it to remark , that indecent comedies were acted by the monks and nuns , and that the

    minds of the latter were imbued with a revolting species of Atheism , in which , while the existence of a Spiritual Being , of a future state , human accountability , and the possibility of sin , were distinctly denied , the most sacred rites of the Church of Rome * and even the language of Scripture itself , were made the channel of conveying licentious sentiments to the mind . While the worldly libertine seeks only the sensual gratification of his passions , the ecclesiastical seducer begins with perverting the conscience and

    seducing the soul . We should not have said even thus much , but for two reasons ; first , because the existence of such abuses of the original design of monastic institutions , in modern times , is sometimes denied by Catholics ; and , secondly , for the sake of the warning it holds out to us against the pretended harinlessness of error . That persons of either sex should bind themselves by the most solemn vows , in the name of their Maker and their Redeemer , to shut themselves out from the commerce of their fellow-men

    for their whole remaining days , to lead a chaste and single life , and abstain from all the pleasures of the world , in order to spend the hours of the day in holy meditation and devotion , and even cut short the hours of nightly repose in order to rise and trim the lamp of watchfulness and prayer , and that the flesh should be mortified by abstinence and chastised by stripes into

    complete subjection to the spirit , may seem a harmless if not laudable addition to the Christian system . But all such vows of seclusion and abstinence are a perversion of the precepts and spirit of the gospel of Christ , ( which requires us not to shut ourselves out from the world , but faithfully to discharge our duties in it , ) and a tempting of feeble human nature beyond its strength . The result is easy to be anticipated , and was seen in the monasteries

    of Pistoia and Prato . The inquiries of Ricci having fully convinced him that the disorders of these convents were principally owing to their being under the controul of the Dominican monks , he fully informed the Sovereign Pontiff of the true state of the case , and at once obtained from him , with apparent frankness and cordiality , the power of himself directing the spiritual affairs of the

    misguided devotees . But as the Generals of all the religious orders reside at Rome under the immediate eye of the Pope , and are the principal instru * ments by which his secret influence is extended through all its va , st ramifications ; and as th , e Dominicans were amongst the most enterprising and faithful soldiers of the church militant , it would have been too much ( o have expected the Court of Rome , however surprised by shame or fear , cordially to approve or permanently to acquiesce in ; a measure , so opposed to its

    Untitled Article

    Memoir of Svipw da llicci . 445

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 2, 1828, page 445, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2562/page/13/