Japan and the Japanese

DISCOURSE ON OBEDIENCE. 9l
assembly, and impart of them to all the faithful. What joy ought not all
Christians to feel, and especially the Roman people, at seeing the ambassa-
dors of such great princes come from the ends of the earth to prostrate
themselves at the feet of your Holiness, through a pure motive of religion,
a thing which has never happened in any age ! What satisfiction fur them
to see the most generous and valiant kings of the East, conquered by the
arms of the faith and by the preaching of the gospel, submitting themselves
to the empire of Jesus Christ, and, as they cannot, from their avocations,
come in person to take the oath of obedience and fidelity to the holy see,
acquitting themselves of this duty by ambassadors so nearly related to them,
and whom "
they so tenderly love !
In the following passage the orator alludes more at length to the
revolt in Europe against the authority of the Pope, which Philip
II., no less than the Pope, was at this moment vigorously laboring
to put down, by the recent introduction of the Jesuits into the
Netherlands, where the Protestant rebels had been suppressed,
by war against Holland, by aiding the French leaguers, by coun-
tenancing the retrograde movement then in rapid progress
in Ger-
many, and by preparing to carry out against Elizabeth of England
the sentence of deposition which the Pope had fulminated against
her.
" 0, immortal God ! What a stroke of thine arm ! W
T
hat an effect of
thy grace ! In places so distant from the holy see, where the name of Jesus
had never been heard, nor his gospel ever preached, as soon as the true
faith shed there the first rays of the truth, men of temperaments quite dif-
ferent from ours, kings illustrious by their nobility, redoubtable for their
power, happy in the abund mce of their possessions, conquerors and warriors
signalized by their victories, acknowledge the greatness and dignity of the
Roman church, and hold it a great honor to kiss the feet of the church's
head by the lips of persons infinitely dear to them ; all this happens while
we see men at our very gates blind and impious enough to wish to cut otf
with a parricidal hand the head of the mystic body of Jesus Christ, and to
call in doubt, to their own ruin, the authority of the holy see, established by
Jesus Christ himself, confirmed by the course of so many ages, defended by
the writings of so many holy doctors, recognized and approved by so many
councils !
-" But it is not proper that I should give way to grief, or trouble the joys
'
of this day by the recollection of our miseries !
To this address, on behalf of the Japanese princes and theii
ambassadors, Monseigncur Antony Uocapaduli replied in Latin, in
the Pope's name, as follows :