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play of one banner against another, and we shall appeal to the College of Heraldry opposed to the College of the Propaganda. The theory of nobility rests on virtue and on glorious achievements, and, among all the armorial bearings in the world, the most expressive and the noblest are those which were acquired by the Columbian navigators. The arms of Columbus consisted of a range of islands in front of a gulf, a representation of America, with the motto A Castilla y a Leon nuevo mundo dio Colon.* The loyal Diego Mendez bore in his coat-of-arms the figure of a Canoa," with the word as a motto. To Oviedo the historian were given for bearings the glorious stars of the Southern Cross. But the most striking of all were the arms given to Del Cano on his return from sailing round the earth, which consisted of the terrestrial globe, with the motto applied to the bearer, Primus circumdedisti me.t Against that banner and motto, displayed to the world as evidence of a great physical fact, the papal power upraised the keys of heaven and earth, and, with the word "Pax" inscribed, condemned the greatest philosopher of the age to a dungeon for maintaining the truth of nature and its laws.

* Irving's "Life of Columbus."

+ Humboldt's "Cosmos," ch. 'Oceanic Discoveries.'

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PAPAL IGNORANCE

OF THE

ROTATION OF THE EARTH, AND OF PURGATORY.

CHAPTER IV.

The celebrated Bull of the Partition of the Ocean, and Decree against Galileo. An enormous Blunder made by the Bishop of Rome, and gross Ignorance displayed.-Practical Consequences, and fatal Issues to the Souls of Men by trusting to pretended Infallibility of the Papistical Bishops and Priests. -If they cannot fix a position on Earth, how can the locality of Purgatory be ascertained by them?

WE have demonstrated that, as regards the form, magnitude, and situation of the earth in space, the bishop of Rome, his cardinals, and the Holy Inquisition, were completely fallible, and fell into the grossest mistakes and errors in matters that are on the earth. They were fallible in their judgment of the latitudes and longitudes of countries which they pretended to grant to the kings of Portugal and Spain, and the result was altogether different from what the bishop and his cardinals designed when they signed the bull or document of concession. This is a subject which, we dare say, has not been much considered by intelligent Catholics, or by those hardy mariners who cross and recross the ocean from the different countries of Europe and America. If a man fail in his delibe

P

rate judgment on a minor proposition, it does not require a knowledge of theology to be convinced that he may and will be fallible on the major proposition or dogma.

At this point of our argument it will be necessary to bring together and compare the substance of the two celebrated documents issued by the papal power, namely, the bull of partition of the ocean and of a great portion of the globe between the aforementioned kings in 1493, and the decree in 1632 against Galileo, for asserting that the earth moves on its axis, and round the sun. In the latter document there is a very satisfactory passage to which we beg leave earnestly to invite the attention of any member of the Roman church who may take the trouble to read this section. The passage is," The proposition that the sun is the centre of the world and immovable from its place, is absurd, philosophically false, and formally heretical, because it is expressly contrary to Holy Scripture." The remarkable thing here is, for the bishop of Rome to quote the Scripture at all in support of any of his decrees, for as he claims an infallibility in the interpretation of Scripture, it is a singular circumstance to find such an act of condescension on his part. The allusion is made to the phraseology used in the Scripture of describing the movements of the heavenly bodies as they actually APPEAR to the human eye. To describe the sun, and moon, and stars, as rising and setting to the earth, is a mode of expression universal among men; and even modern astronomers in Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, with the aid of the telescope and the finest instruments to observe the heavens, still use the same expression of sun rise" and sun set." The Holy Scriptures do not profess to be books on astronomy, on geology, or botany, or any other scien

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tific subject; but they treat of matters which are beyond the reach of physical science. It was not necessary that they should contain the principles of astronomy, or of the figure and dimension of the earth, for God has revealed in the very works themselves the principles and rules which enable man by the exercise of the computative powers of his mind to measure to the minutest fraction distances in space and time. But man, although he may reckon to half a second of time the motions of the earth for two thousand years, and perform mighty wonders within the compass of his senses and his intellect, cannot penetrate into the invisible and spiritual world without a direct light and guide from God. In this respect the bishop of Rome and the humblest peasant and the roughest sailor are precisely on the same level; and each for himself, without the Holy Scriptures, can do nothing to find out the true and certain way. When cardı. nals, philosophers, ploughmen, carpenters, and navigators, read and study the Scriptures for themselves, they will discover that their contents are in accordance with common sense, and in perfect harmony with the movements of the earth, and the heavenly bodies. The simpler things are made the better, and as respects the great masses of men, who must bear their own burdens and answer for their own sins, bulls of popes, and old decrees of councils, are just the concentrated essence of old rags.

The great error and mistake committed by the bishop of Rome, in the matter of the sun's supposed movement round the earth, arose from taking the words of Scripture in their literality; and the same principle of fallibility will be found in other literal interpretations, which lead to consequences of vast importance to the souls of men, and to those who

trust in papal calculations of the position of certain places of the invisible world.

We now come to the verge of a subject of awful importance, compared with which the partition of land and ocean is like a point in space. The Roman bishops and their monks have settled and decreed that there is, in some part of the universe, a locality to which they give the name of purgatory; where the souls of just men are confined for longer or shorter periods, and exposed to torture more or less severe until they are purified for heaven. The duration and severity of the imprisonment in that place of horror depend on certain rites and ceremonies, performed on the earth by priests, at the rate of so much money. The souls are retained in pawn until the price shall be paid. We would earnestly and kindly implore Catholic men and women to ponder deeply this subject, and, by searching the Scriptures, to ascertain if there really be such a locality of intermediate existence in the unseen world and let them take counsel with their own souls before they intrust them to any human creature, on a mere peradventure into the immensity of space, there to wander to all eternity, lost for want of the true latitude and longitude of heaven.

It would be an affront to the intelligence of people living in the present day to give here the data on which the earth's rotundity and its diurnal and annual motions are ascertained; but it has been found quite impossible by any pope or conclave to demonstrate where the locality of purgatory is to be found in space, whether to the eastward or westward, or to the northward or southward of the planetary and solar system.

In this uncertainty of the locality and the distance of that strange world, fixed or rolling in the blackness