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 known to be true philosophy, without disobeying the solemn and published law of the Church, or without having to resort to a fiction to evade such disobedience.

It is well known that the Roman Church has, of late, for no inconsiderable time, smarted under both the inconvenience and disgrace of putting the most exalted of human sciences in chains, when in every other territory it had long been at liberty. Presumed and exclusive orthodoxy in divine science might compensate for much deficiency and backwardness in such as is simply natural. But even so spiritual a community could not easily brook the ridicule, if not contempt or rebuke, of being anticipated by nations of heretics in what she well enough knew to be demonstrable truth; but was withheld, by the shame of reversing past sentences and decrees, promulgated in the most solemn manner, from joining in its adoption. But the time was come for relaxing the rigour of this imaginary dignity; and in the thirty-fifth year of the nineteenth century, the dishonour became too heavy a burthen to be borne any longer!

The Sacred Congregation of the Index is a body of great importance in the constitution