"Many thanks to your Eminence, as well as to the Pope, and to the secretary of the Propaganda. This office, which in the time of the apostles was very desirable, according to the words of St. Paul to Timothy,[81] is now no longer so; at least, not in my eyes. Indeed, such as the episcopacy is in our day, I would counsel no man to accept it: far less would I accept it myself. My objection does not apply alone to the see of the Ionian Islands, but to every bishopric whatsoever, belonging to the Church of Rome. The laws and general usages connected with them are such that I could never conform myself to them, either as regards practice or precept. I wish it therefore to be understood that I do not refuse a poor bishopric, in the hope of obtaining a rich one; it is the dignity itself, the prelacy that I object to: what I consider therefore as a dangerous acquisition, I am by no means disposed to possess." "Come, take three days to consider of it. Your refusal is too hasty, you ought to reflect before you decide. Offer up your prayers, these three days, to the Lord and the most holy Madonna, that they may enlighten you." "Well, I will wait three days, and offer up my prayers to the Lord, and at the end of that time I will communicate the result to your eminence." A few hours after the expiration of the allotted period, the Cardinal came to me again, to know my decision. "Everything," I replied, "strengthens me in the resolution I have already expressed to your Eminence, of declining to accept the bishopric. I look at what is true in the office, and at what is false. The duty of a bishop is essentially that of a shepherd; as the one leads his flock to pasture, so the other conducts his people into the way of truth. But the shepherd has become the doctor. He has, and _very inappropriately_, assumed a command, an authority, a jurisdiction, a power which usurps dominion: yet He who said to Peter, 'Feed my sheep, feed my lambs,' also said to him, and to all the apostles, 'Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that are great exercise authority upon them. But it shall not be so among you.'[82] Now the office of a bishop at the present day is totally opposite to what it ought to be. By a bishop, we understand an ecclesiastic who, in consequence of possessing a dominion, has authority and a right to command; which right it is pretended he receives from Christ, through the apostles. But it is evident that the apostles themselves never had such right. And what are our present bishops? Shepherds? Would to God they led their flocks to the pastures of truth, to the holy Word! If any one in the present day were to fulfil his duty as bishop, according to the original signification of the office, he would soon be at issue with Rome, from whence all the scandal proceeds, and which stigmatizes as innovations any return to the customs and observances of the early times of Christianity."