Page:An Index of Prohibited Books (1840).djvu/215

 

 Nihil est quod absque argento Romana curia dedat. Nam et ipsæ manus impoaitiones, et Spiritus Sancti dona venduntur. Nee pecoatorum venia nisi nummatis impenditur. Ep. LXVI. p. 549. Opp. Basil. 1571.

this Letter Mr. Green has honoured me with a notice, for which he is entitled to my best thanks; and not the less for the opportunity which he has afforded me, p. 22, of correcting an oversight into which I had fallen in my Venal Indulgences, &c. p. 105, where, in a note, meaning to refer to Bellarmine de Indul. 1, ix. I had cited the cardinal as adjoining the remission of culpa, at least venlalis, to the Plenissima Indulgentia. He disclaims the opinion himself; while he attests it as that quorundam. My monitor therefore has given me plural for singular. I have accordingly in the first line of the note, after plenissima, added in MS. for any future edition, the words — "according to the opinion of some, in his church necessarily, and possibly quite as good as his own, although rejected by himself, as not solid." — Lines 5 and 6 I alter thus — "They will probably kick away any of their advocates for the turn." —

My obligation does not end here. Mr. G. has attracted the attention of the public to a subject of mighty importance, particularly at the present crisis; and he may be assured, that the reading and better judging part of that public will not rest satisfied with interested, superficial and partial views of it. If the effect be such as I anticipate from his criticism of my own small works, and his intention were in accordance, I ought to express my gratitude to him for much good will.

For my own subordinate concern in the burthen of two years' gestation, of which Mr. G. has just been happily delivered, I should be perfectly contented to throw myself on the re-perusal by any candid and competent reader of the works which Mr. G. would appear to have shaken. Those works, the Spiritual Venality of Rome, giving