of Rome, to which error cannot have access, as the experience of so many ages demonstrates, in as much as her faith is made sure, by the never failing promises of Jesus Christ,-this See, which teaches to all the truth of the faith, has prescribed the rules and the cautions with which any one, who remains attached to the doctrines of the fathers, and to the interpretation of the Church, ought to treat with great respect and trembling this precious gift of God, and not surely to profane it rashly, and to abandon it, as it were a vile and trivial thing, into the hands of idiots and impure persons. Our holy father, Pius the Seventh himself, has, in his briefs, spoken against such an abuse. But enough of this argument. I send you a letter for Hofbauer. Profit by this disgrace, which you owe to yourself, for not having obeyed that which I ordered you, through the medium of Ostini. I am not angry with you, although my duty has obliged me to take a resolution which has given me great pain. I wish to help you in any way, and you can write me with freedom. I pray God that he will preserve you from evil companions, and perfect in you that great gift, which he has bestowed upon you, in calling you to the faith. Your most affectionate,

other

Laurence Cardinal Litta. P. S. By the first opportunity, your books and some others, will be sent to you from the Propaganda."

I was in the most melancholy frame of mind,

when I arrived at Vienna.-The recollection of being sent away from my pious German friends at Rome, without having been able to embrace them before my departure that I had been banished by Pius the Seventh, whose private piety I respected, and whom I did like very much,-that I had been separated from a visible church, and condemned by its Bishop,-the idea, that I should now become an object of persecution, and the experience, that many of my German Catholic friends, who had accorded with my sentiments against the Pope, now began to fear the Pope's power, and to turn away from me-all these things stood clear before my mind, as well as the probability that my career was now stopped, and that I should never be able to preach the Gospel to my brethren. Considering all these things, I wrote a letter to P. Hofbauer, Vicar-general of the Ligorians, whom I had always regarded as a pious character. P. Hofbauer, having been informed of my banishment, and the reason of it, before he received my letter, came to see me in my lodgings, and conducted me to his own house. On the first day he seemed to me to be very much irritated against the Court of Rome, but in three days he changed his tone, and said to me, " Rome is, notwithstanding, mistress of the Catholic Church, and the Pope the true successor of St. Peter. Rome was the only Church which believed in the true divinity of Christ in the time of the Arians, and you have not done well in disclosing the shame of the universal mother."

I was surrounded in a short time by followers of Schlegel, who asked me if I did not know the sad condition of the German Catholics who denied the authority of the Pope. The fact was, that many Catholics of Germany, who were adversaries of the Pope, became afterwards Socinians, or embraced an allegorical system of Christianity. They adulterated the Gospel with the philosophy of Kant, Hume, Jacob Behmen, Plato, and Shaftesbury. After the few days which I passed with Hofbauer and his friends, I became very melancholy. I had expected to find in Hofbauer, and amongst his penitents who were attached to the Pope, a certain zeal for Christ; and to have found the same also amongst the other Catholic clergymen of Vienna, and especially amongst the monks of Austria who were opposed to the Pope. I found, however, not only a great lukewarmness, but likewise great immorality. I therefore entreated P. Hofbauer to send me to his convent at Valsainte in Swizerland, that I might end my days there. He pretended that he was not inclined to incorporate me into his order; but as often as I said I would leave Vienna and go to another convent, he refused to permit me to go. I was treated by him and his followers, for more than seven months, in a very harsh manner, and I was obliged every day to hear censures of my conduct at Rome. I excused this in Hofbauer, as he was a man of an ardent temperament; and I thought I must now suffer, because I had been too violent, and that I ought to be reconciled with the Pope. I began to hate Separatism. It is true

that I suspected the intolerance of Hofbauer and his club, against all who were of different opinions and sentiments.

The followers of Hofbauer and Schlegel find fault with Rome on account of her mildness towards those who dissent from the Romish church government: and my time of independent thinking was passed, and the prophecy of the German painter was about to be accomplished, that I should at length embrace all the abuses of the Romish church which I had hated so long, and against which I had protested with such violence: but the Lord permitted this, that I might experience and taste self-righteousness, and then I found that the way of self-righteousness is an abomination unto God, and that it leads to desperation, to unquietude of heart, to sorrow, and to the abominable system of Jesuitism.

I saw no more of that lady who came to Hofbauer when I was before at Vienna. They told me she escaped with a great sum of money from the house of her parents, and nobody, neither Hofbauer nor any one of his fraternity, knew where she was. I was told, that the Bohemian Baron was at Bucharest, where Hofbauer had established a convent of his order, and had sent the Baron, who was a member of his order, as master of the establishment. Hofbauer sent with him, likewise, some Austrian young gentlemen, whom he persuaded that his convent was the most easy of any as a road to heaven. The Bohemian Baron took a passport from the police at Vienna for Herman

stadt in Transylvania, from whence he escaped to Bucharest; and when he returned afterwards to Vienna, on the business of the convent, he came under the name and address of an Armenian gentleman, and did not go himself to the police to sign his passport, but the Pope's Ambassador sent it to the police by his servant. With respect of the lady, I could hear nothing of her at Vienna.

I must mention here another circumstance, which will afford, perhaps, more light as to the spirit of Jesuitism and the tyranny of Popery. P. Johann Sabelli, one of the fraternity of Hofbauer, and his secretary, was desirous of entering into the convent Valsainte, or some other which was under Hofbauer; but Hofbauer refused him permission, and without such permission he could by no means go according to his vow of blind obedience to the superior. Sabelli wrote therefore to the Pope. One evening when I was at Hofbauer's, the auditor of the Pope's Ambassador came to him, and in his presence delivered to Sabelli a letter from the general of the Ligorians who resides at Rome, and another from the Pope himself to Sabelli; and the auditor said to Hofbauer, that it was the express command of the Pope that Sabelli should enter a convent of the Ligorians at Rome. Hofbauer was very angry. He said they were all tyrants at Rome. At length the auditor of the Ambassador and Sabelli agreed with Hofbauer, that if he would not object to Sabelli going to the convent at Valsainte in Swizerland, the Pope should be satisfied-and it was