It is contended that: "In this true knowledge of the Divine Nature was revealed to man their own relation to a Creator as sons to a Father." This tender relation was revealed by the Catholics to the Pagans, the Arians, the Cathari, the Waldenses, the Albigenses, the heretics, the Jews, the Moriscoes, the Protestants--to the natives of the West Indies, of Mexico, of Peru--to philosophers, patriots and thinkers. All these victims were taught to regard the true God as a loving father, and this lesson was taught with every instrument of torture--with brandings and burnings, with flayings and flames. The world was filled with cruelty and credulity, ignorance and intolerance, and the soil in which all these horrors grew was the true knowledge of the one true God, and the true knowledge of the one true Devil. And yet, we are compelled to say, that the one true Devil described by the Catholic Church was not as malevolent as the one true God. Is it true that the Catholic Church overthrew idolatry? What is idolatry? What shall we say of the worship of popes--of the doctrine of the Real Presence, of divine honors paid to saints, of sacred vestments, of holy water, of consecrated cups and plates, of images and relics, of amulets and charms? The Catholic Church filled the world with the spirit of idolatry. It abandoned the idea of continuity in nature, it denied the integrity of cause and effect. The government of the world was the composite result of the caprice of God, the malice of Satan, the prayers of the faithful--softened, it may be, by the charity of Chance. Yet the Cardinal asserts, without the preface of a smile, that "Demonology was overthrown by the church, with the assistance of forces that were above nature;" and in the same breath gives birth to this enlightened statement: "Beelzebub is not divided against himself." Is a belief in Beelzebub a belief in demonology? Has the Cardinal forgotten the Council of Nice, held in the year of grace 787, that declared the worship of images to be lawful? Did that infallible Council, under the guidance of the Holy Ghost, destroy idolatry? The Cardinal takes the ground that marriage is a sacrament, and therefore indissoluble, and he also insists that celibacy is far better than marriage,--holier than a sacrament,--that marriage is not the highest state, but that "the state of virginity unto death is the highest condition of man and woman." The highest ideal of a family is where all are equal--where love has superseded authority--where each seeks the good of all, and where none obey--where no religion can sunder hearts, and with which no church can interfere.