It was much pleasanter work to tell of the Anti-Council of the Freethinkers at Naples. Praying Protestants are to be hated and extinguished. But vaunting infidels are to the Jesuits what fires are to insurance offices—their apparent foes, but their only real supports. That assembly spent a couple of days in vague and sometimes vast talk. It abused the Pope, and the Jesuits say it blasphemed God. It proposed to find a code of morals without religion, those flowers without any stems which are the holy grail of such knights errant. Finally, it attacked the French Emperor and the Italian monarchy, and was dissolved by the police. Demonstrations of a somewhat similar kind were attempted in a few other cities of Italy. In France, on the contrary, the following cities were illuminated, and were lauded not only in their local clerical journals, but in the great Civiltá: Lyons, Bordeaux, Marseilles, Toulouse, Limoges, Clermont, Saint-Etienne, Laval, Moulins, Nismes, Auch, "and others." Even in Paris many convents illuminated their facades. (Guérin, p. 78.)
At Vienna a meeting of the nobility, gentry, clergy, and officials composing the Catholic Societies, and numbering, it is said, four thousand, was held to celebrate the day. The only Italian city specified as having made any favourable demonstration was Brescia; and the account amounted to no more than that of an attendance of some Society of young men at Mass, and of the sending of a promise of adhesion to the Council.
FOOTNOTES:
[198] Frond, iii., p. 254. M. Fisquet is author of the work Gallia Christiana, in fifty volumes.
[199] The Hindu Bhagavad Gita thus represents the distinction between God and the gods. "I behold, O God! within Thy heart the dews (gods) assembled, and every specific tribe of beings. I see Brahma (the creator, only a god) sitting on his lotus throne, all the Reeshees, and heavenly Ooragas.... I see Thee without beginning, without middle, and without end.... The space between the heavens and the earth is possessed by Thee alone, and every point around.... Of the celestial bands, some fly to Thee for refuge; whilst some, afraid with joined hands sing forth Thy praise. The Maharshees holy bands hail Thee"; and then follows an enumeration of various orders of celestials, who "all stand gazing on Thee, all alike amazed."(a)
(a: Wilkins' translation, Garrett's ed., pp. 34, 55.)
While thus Hinduism long anticipated either Pagan or Papal Romanism, in a system of inferior worship to inferior powers, it more logically attached inferior paradises to such worship. "Those who worship the Devatas (gods) go unto the Devatas; those who worship the Patriarchs go unto the Patriarchs; the servants of the spirits go to the spirits; and they who worship me go unto me."(b) That is sensible as a polity, if fallen as a religion. But it may be doubtful whether those who worship the Inquisitors would like to go to the Inquisitors.
(b: Ibid., p. 46.)
[200] Dr. Philip, author of The Ghetto and Rome's Great Show.
[201] See Liverani at full.