Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber : $b or, The influence of Romanism on trade, justice, and knowledgeWylie, J. A. (James Aitken)
History
Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber : $b or, The influence of Romanism on trade, justice, and knowledge
Wylie, J. A. (James Aitken)
Catholic Church -- Italy; Italy -- Description and travel
We have yet other illustrations of the pestiferous influence of Romanism
on the temporal happiness of its subjects. We have already alluded to
the determined manner in which the Pontifical Government has hitherto
withstood the introduction of railways. And yet, if there be a country
in Europe where railways are indispensable, it is the Papal States. The
roads in the territory blessed by the Government of Christ's vicar, are
more like canals than roads, with this difference, that there is too
little water in them for floating a boat, and far too much for
comfortable travelling. Besides, they are infested by brigands, whose
pursuit a railway might enable you to distance. But a railway the
subjects of the Pontifical Government cannot have. And why?
One would think that the mere mode of conveyance is a very harmless
affair. What is it to the Pontifical Government whether the peasant of
the Alban hills, or the citizen of Bologna, or the merchant of Ancona,
visit Rome on foot, or in his waggon, or by rail? Is he not the same
man? Will his ride convert him into a heretic, or shake his faith in
Peter's successor? or will the laying down of a few miles of railroad
weaken the foundations of that Church which boasts that she is founded
on a rock, and that the gates of hell themselves shall not prevail
against her? Or if it be said that it is not the mode of the journey,
but the length of the journey, what difference can it make whether the
man travel twenty miles or two hundred miles? The stability of the
Church cannot be seriously endangered by a few miles less or more. Is
the Pope's system of so peculiar a kind, that though it is possible for
the man who walks twenty miles on foot to believe in it, it is wholly
impossible for the man who rides two hundred miles by rail to do so? We
know of no Roman doctor who has attempted to fix the precise number of
miles which a good Catholic may travel from home without endangering his
salvation. One would think that all this is plain enough; that there is
no element of danger here; and yet the sharper instincts of the papacy
have discovered that herein lies danger, and great danger, to its power.
If the influence of Rome is to be preserved, it is not enough that the
Bible be put out of existence, that the missionary be banished, and that
the art of printing, and all means of diffusing ideas, be proscribed and
exterminated: the very right of moving over the earth must be taken from
man. Even _motion_ must be placed under anathema.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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