Page:An Index of Prohibited Books (1840).djvu/90

 of 1821, we observe standing in its proper alphabetic place,. In the present Index it is thrown into the less obvious place of. No one who was not acquainted with the subject, and felt some curiosity respecting it, would look for the thing under such a name. The subject, indeed, is, and ought to be, a sore one to all interested in the exculpation and support of the Romish religion and Church; for that Church is terribly implicated, not only in the proper baseness of the matter, but in the adventitious disgrace of the means made use of to shelter it from view and reprobation. Added to which, the concern to which it refers is far less lucrative than it was in days of yore, when the gainer, whatever the people might do, would applaud and bless himself. The market for sacerdotal absolution, dispensation, indulgences, with totquots, in articulo mortis, and with purgatorial efficacy, is fairly dead and buried, except in Italy, Spain, and Ireland. Formerly, the wicked editions of the Taxæ, particularly those of the Penitentiary, by the heretics, were pretty freely adverted to; but even then Rome herself could not muster