"I have just learned in Neisse that a heavy storm is gathering over you. You are said to be the author of an article in the Saxon Vaterlands-blatter, in which language is employed very unlike what one would expect from any Catholic, not to speak of a Catholic priest. It is also said, as I am assured by an otherwise trustworthy and respectable man, that you have been questioned in regard to it by the right reverend Administrator of the Bishopric, and that you have returned a very evasive, answer. If it be really so, Oh, let me entreat that you will not neglect to say at once Pater, _peccavi!_ (Father, I have sinned!) Write immediately to the right reverend Vicar, and assure him, with a self-denial which would be highly honourable (?) to you, that you wrote in well-meant (?) precipitation. If you do not follow my brotherly counsel, you may expect, from the determined character of the right reverend Vicar, soon to be suspended (deposed), as I have also learned from respectable authority. And to what would this suspension lead! Oh, believe me, my dear brother, it would then be no longer in the power of your former friends to help you. So long as we are Catholics, Rome must always be to us the centre point of the visible Church; and so long as we wish to be Catholic Christians, and particularly priests--servants of the Catholic Church, we dare not speak and write of Rome in such a slighting manner,--I might say, with the hatred and contempt exhibited in the article, which I have also read. I assure you, that not even Protestants would take you under their protection, if you are really the author of that article. I will not speak of Catholics. In so far as I am concerned, I marvelled at the author's deficiency in historical and theological knowledge, who had subscribed himself 'A Chaplain.' "Be not offended at my openness. A well-meaning brother must not hesitate to speak the truth even at the risk of the momentary loss of a brothers affection. I entreat you once again to do immediately what I advise. I know you to be an otherwise well-disposed person (_what honour!_); it would grieve me to see you brought into a position which cannot, now-a-days, be honourable (_do I not understand?_). It is great-minded to make amends for faults and for offence which one may have given! and little-minded to have the courage only to impugn time-honoured truths, without acknowledging the fact as soon as questioned by those who, in virtue of their station, have a right to demand the acknowledgment;* and so, dear friend, behave wisely and well, and turn away all evil from yourself. Make my respects to your Vicar. * Great is the absurdity of this sentence; small the man and priest who can desire to see truth degraded to the condition of a venal slave.