“ROME, _6 December 1882_. “MY DEAR LORD ARCHBISHOP (of Saint Andrews and Edinburgh),—I have just received a message from the Cardinal-Prefect (of Propaganda, Cardãl Simeoni,) to tell your Grace ‘che il noto sacerdote il quale voleva citare i Vescovi incorrerebbe senza dubbio la censura al primo atto efficace che ponesse, ossia all’ atto della citazione, come _cogens Ecclesiasticum ad tribunal laicum_. Se fosse ancora in tempo sarebbe bene che l’Arcivescovo ne avvertisse il Sacerdote per distoglierlo da tale atto.’ “Yours very respectfully, “F. A. CAMPBELL, “(then Rector of the Scots College of Rome.)” The censure was Excommunicatio latae sententiae speciali modo reservatae Romano Pontifici. Bulla _Apostolicae Sedis. VII_.[93] Seldom does a case of Excommunication terminate in a perridiculous collapse, as this one did, when the Cardinal-Prefect denied having sent the quoted message. Seldom, on the whole, is Excommunication _latae sententiae_ made effectual by proof of guilt and declaration of proof of guilt by a competent judge. The effect can be produced in another and far more exitial way. Simple secret instructions, or even hints, can be given by bishops to clergy, or adverse opinions can be expressed by one clerk to another, suggesting that it would be well (that it would tend ad majorem Dei gloriam, some say,) to obstruct the worldly welfare of such and such an one, to refuse him his rites and sacraments, or at least to offer the last upon such conditions as the “proper pride” in human nature will disdain to accept. This mode is purely devilish. It is capable of abuse by unworthy clerks for personal ends. It admits of no defence, of no appeal, of no redress, by the very reason of its intangibility. It constricts a man in phantom folds. It blanches him with venomous breath. The world, ever ready to pity some obscene dog who manifests his pain, here sees nothing save one bruised and broken; desperately digladiant, struggling with some invisible (and therefore incredible) foe. The civilized world goes in terror of the invisible; goes by “on the other side.” Excommunication of any kind is a fearsome thing for him to whom the Faith once delivered to the saints is the only prize worth having. To the man who, in defect of spiritual advice, is convinced of his own integrity, to whom the sacraments are as “odorifera panacea,”[94] to whom the sacraments are the only means which keep him from Despair, their deprivation, by the revenge of a personal enemy, of an offended vanity abasing spiritual powers to satiate secular ambition, signifies that, for the excommunicate, the light goes out of life, love is eradicated from the heart, confidence in man is killed, hope is banished from death. Sympathy he may have from aliens, if he can humiliate