differing but very little from that which was most dexterously and successfully headed by Luther. That work of Dr Vigil was condemned, and its author excommunicated by a pontifical bull; and yet, despite this circumstance, the book circulates from hand to hand freely throughout Peru, and the doctor himself lives in perfect tranquillity in the midst of his fellow-countrymen, respected by all, and employed by the government in the distinguished post of director of the national library.
In New Granada this reformation has proceeded from the government itself. The archbishop and the Jesuits have been banished from the territory of the republic, the legislative power has sanctioned the liberty of worship, and the public writers employ themselves in enlightening the people upon the falsity of the Roman doctrines, and the necessity of undoing the work, which, ever since the discovery of the new world, has been set up and perfected in it by the enemies of the true faith of Jesus Christ.
If the publication of this present work shall contribute, in any manner, to the intellectual emancipation of those favoured portions of the human race, its author will have received the only recompence which he desires.
the end.
Footnotes:
[15] Cover me with flowers,
For I am dying of love.
[16] The Virgin of Anguish,
She it is who knows my grief,
Because I go to her chapel
And am never tired of crying.
[22] Isabella foresaw the advantages of free trade at a time when all Europe groaned under the yoke of the most severe prohibitions. Not only did she abolish all those which the fiscal legislation of Spain prior to her times had sanctioned, but she had the merit of being the founder of the first tribunal of commerce, and of expressly ordering that in all matters of mercantile contract, shipwrecks, &c., submitted to her judgment, barristers should take no part, so that the course of justice might not be obscured with pedantic arguments and formal technicalities.
[25] The Spanish Protestants and their Persecution by Philip II. By Don Adolfo de Castro. Translated from the original Spanish, by Tho. Parker. Gilpin, London, 1851.
[26] Novena. A devotional practice applicable to the worship of all saints, and consisting of music, prayer, mass, &c., and of nine days’ duration.