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 confirms. And it is a remarkable fact, that the same potentates who are combining in this impious war are every day more and more throwing off the mask, and openly avowing their utter hatred of Catholicity. Look at what is now going on in Piedmont and in Spain, where the ruling power declares its determination to strip the Church of Christ of all its temporal possessions! Look at Germany,—the same odious and impious policy reigns in the Grand Duchy of Baden, in the kingdom of Prussia, and I am sorry to add, even in Austria! We heard a great deal lately of the piety of the young Emperor of that mighty state, how he had swept away all the iniquitous enactments of the Emperor Joseph, and had given complete liberty to the Church. But I grieve to say this is far from being the case. I lately saw a letter from a distinguished ecclesiastic, high in the Emperor's favour, and holding a very conspicuous position in Vienna, in which the writer affirms the very reverse. He praises the Emperor himself, whom he represents as a young man of pious and Catholic feelings, but he affirms that the Church is as much enslaved by the secular government at the present moment, as it was in the worst times that are passed.

If we consider all these things, we shall not be surprised at what follows in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth verses of this same chapter. We are there conducted to the same awful catastrophe, which we have already contemplated in the concluding chapter of this