ious calumny against us. It is true
that with intimate affection of heart we love all mankind, but not
otherwise than in the charity of God and of our Lord Jesus Christ, who
came to seek and to save that which had perished, who wisheth that all
men should be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth, and who sent
his disciples through the whole world to preach the Gospel to every
creature, declaring that those who should believe and be baptized
should be saved, but those who should not believe, should be
condemned. Let those therefore who seek salvation come to the pillar
and support of the Truth, which is the Church,--let them come, that
is, to the true Church of Christ, which possesses in its bishops
and the supreme head of all, the Roman Pontiff, a never-interrupted
succession of Apostolic authority, and which for nothing has ever been
more zealous than to preach, and with all care preserve and defend,
the doctrine announced as the mandate of Christ by his Apostles; which
Church afterward increased, from the time of the Apostles, in the
midst of every species of difficulties, and flourished throughout the
whole world, radiant in the splendor of miracles, amplified by the
blood of martyrs, ennobled by the virtues of confessors and virgins,
corroborated by the testimony and most sapient writings of the
fathers,--as it still flourishes throughout all lands, refulgent in
perfect unity of the sacraments, of faith, and of holy discipline.
We who, though unworthy, preside in this supreme chair of the Apostle
Peter, in which Christ our Lord placed the foundation of his Church,
have at no time abstained, from any cares or toils to bring, through
the grace of Christ himself, those who are in ignorance and error to
this sole way of truth and salvation. Let those, whoever they be,
that are adverse, remember that heaven and earth shall pass away, but
nothing can ever perish of the words of Christ, nor be changed in the
doctrine which the Catholic Church received, to guard, defend, and
publish, from him.

"Next to this we cannot but speak to you, Venerable Brethren, of the
bitterness of sorrow by which we were affected, on seeing that a few
days since, in this our fair city, the fortress and centre of the
Catholic religion, it proved possible to find some--very few indeed
and well-nigh frantic men--who, laying aside the very sense of
humanity, and to the extreme disgust and indignation of other citizens
of this town, were not wi