(2.) Not content with thus _emendating_ the Fathers, our pains-taking Inquisitors, in order that their editions might throughout be perfectly harmonious and consistent, fell doggedly to work upon the very tables or indexes, which contained any references to the expunged passages: for, of course, it were unseemly, that a reference should appear, indicating the occurrence of a place which _itself_ could no where be found in an improved or expurgated edition. Thus, out of one of Froben’s indexes, they have directed the erasure of the following references: _The use of images forbidden_; _The Eucharist no sacrifice_, _but the commemoration of a sacrifice_; _Works_, _although they do not justify_, _yet are necessary to salvation_; _Marriage is granted to all that will not contain_; _Venial sins damn_; _The dead Saints_, _after this life_, _cannot help us_. And thus, out of the index of Augustine’s Works by Claudius Chevallonius at Paris in the year 1531, they have commanded a still more extraordinary erasure of a reference: _Dele_, _Solus Deus adorandus_; that is, _Blot out the words_, _God alone is to be adored_. {71a} (3.) On such disgraceful practices, Bp. Taylor well remarks: _These instances may serve_, _instead of multitudes which might be brought_, _of their corrupting the witnesses and razing the records of antiquity_, _that the errors and novelties of the Church of Rome might not be so easily reproved_. _Now_, _if the Fathers were not against them_, _what need these arts_? _Why should they use them thus_? _Their own expurgatory indices me infinite testimony against them_, _both that they do so_, _and that they need it_. {71b} III. It were easy to have multiplied specimens of the same description: but these, I apprehend, may well suffice. Respecting such a topic, any observations of my own are quite superfluous. By some marvellous perversion of the moral sense, Sixtus Senensis, indeed, has even _lauded_ Pope Pius V, because he had taken diligent care, that the writings of all catholic authors, and more especially the writings of the ancient Fathers, should be _expurgated and emaculated_: but the plain good sense of every upright and honourable man will deem such praise no very flattering compliment. {71c} Yet, though I shall not weary the prudent inquirer with any needless remarks of my own, either on the Douay Principle itself, or on the reduction of that principle to systematic practice: I may, at parting, be permitted, in all good will, to offer him a word of not altogether useless advice. Whenever a Romish Doctor makes a large or extraordinary or startling assertion, there clearly can be _no harm_ in A CAUTIOUS SUSPENSION OF BELIEF, until either the enquirer himself or some competent and trust-worthy friend shall have had an opportunity of ACTUAL AND PERSONAL VERIFICATION OF ALLEGED AUTHORITIES. CHAPTER X. CONCLUSION.