In Dublin we see the crucifix that sheds tears of blood. In Loretto
we see the house once inhabited by the Virgin, and we were told, that
some angels, chancing to be at Nazareth when the Saracen conquerors
approached, fearing that the sacred relic might fall into their
possession, took the house bodily in their hands, and, carrying it
through the air, deposited it at its present place. In Bavaria they
show us the brazen android which Albertus Magnus had so cunningly
contrived as to serve him for a domestic, and whose garrulity had so
much annoyed the studious Thomas Aquinas. In Alsace the abbot Martin
shows us the following inestimable relics, which he had obtained for
his monastery: a spot of the blood of Jesus, a piece of the true cross,
the arm of the apostle James, part of the skeleton of John the Baptist,
a bottle of milk of the blessed Virgin, and, with an ill-disguised
envy, he told us that a finger of the Holy Ghost is preserved in a
monastery at Jerusalem.
Everywhere we are told that the arch fiend and his innumerable
legions of demons are forever hovering about us, seeking our present
unhappiness and the future ruin of mankind; that we are at no time,
and at no place, safe from them; that we cannot be sufficiently on our
guard against them, for sometimes they assume the shape of a grotesque
and hideous animal; sometimes they appear in the shape of our nearest
and dearest relatives and friends; sometimes as a beautiful woman,
alluring by more than human charms, the unwary to their destruction,
and laying plots, which were but too often successful against the
virtue of the saints; sometimes the Evil One assumes the shape of a
priest, and, in order to bring discredit upon that priest's character,
maliciously visits, in this saintly disguise, some very questionable
places and allows himself to be caught in most disgraceful situations
and environments. Can we imagine an invention more ingenius to hide the
foul practices of the corrupt among the clergy?
Everywhere the clergy finds it a very profitable traffic to teach how
the people might protect themselves against the Evil One. The sign
of the cross, a few drops of Holy water, the name of the Virgin, the
Gospel of St. John around the neck, a rosary, a relic of Christ or of a
saint, suffice to baffle the utmost efforts of diabolic malice, and to
put the Spirits of Evil to an immediate and ignominious flight.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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