But our object is not to refute or expose its inconsistencies, contradictions, misrepresentations, falsehoods, and calumnies, as the book, left to itself, is far below our notice. But the case is different when Messrs. Ivison, Phinney & Co. set their machinery in motion for introducing this SCHOOL-BOOK into all the schools in the country, send their agents from school to school soliciting their introduction, and advertise in school publications throughout the country that "this _History_ has an extensive circulation, has received the highest recommendations from hundreds of presidents and professors of colleges, principals of academies, seminaries, and high-schools." It is these powerful and, we are sorry to say, successful efforts that have caused us to take any notice whatever of this demoralizing book; for left to itself it would be of very little consequence. In the same page from which we have already quoted, p. 332, the author assents that "the avarice of Pope Leo X. was equal to the credulity of the Germans; and billets of salvation, or indulgences professing to remit the punishments due to sins, even before the commission of the contemplated crime, were sold by thousands among the German peasantry." And then he goes on to tell us that Luther bitterly inveighed against the traffic in indulgences, and that he was a man of high reputation for sanctity and learning. Here the author is so anxious to falsify the Catholic doctrine of indulgence, and to blacken the character of Leo X., that he goes so far as to slander and misrepresent even his idol, Martin Luther. For Luther did not inveigh against the pope for the sale of indulgences, or ever say that an indulgence was a pardon for sin past, present, or to come. It was left for his followers to coin this falsehood, and it is a slander on Luther to accuse him of the fabrication. He has enough to account for without charging him with what he is not guilty of; and he knew and taught while a Catholic priest that an indulgence does not pardon sin, and that a person in mortal sin cannot gain an indulgence. We may return to Willson's _Histories_ again, for he has written others besides the one referred to, and all in the same strain; but we trust we have said enough to draw the attention of our readers to the character of the work, and we hope that neither the solicitations of agents, nor the high-sounding recommendations of interested parties in its favor, will prevent them from opposing its introduction into our schools, public and private, and preventing its introduction whenever they can. Count de Maistre has testified that history, for the last three hundred years, is a grand conspiracy against truth; and although the Willsons and their tribe are still numerous, active, and powerful, the progress of the age warns them that they cannot delude the public. -----