Continued from Historical Retrospect — The Great Schism

HISTORICAL RETROSPECT — POPE SIXTUS IV.

Platina, the papal historian, confesses that Pope Sixtus IV, who came to the throne of Rome in 1471, was an extremely foul and wicked man. Cornelius Agrippa de Nettesheim records of him (De vanitate et incertitudine scientiarum, cap. lxiv. De lenocinio) that: “Lupanaria utrique veneri erexit; Cardinalique cuidam, masculæ veneris usum, certis mensibus indulsit.” Again: “Romæ nobile admodum lupanar extruxit.” (See also Bayle, Dict. Hist. et Crit., § Sixte IV.)

On his tomb the following lines were placed:

Sixtes! jaces tandem; deflent tua busta cinædi,
Scortaque, lenones, alea, vina, venus.

Those sorts and conditions of persons who wept over his tomb could not have imagined that they were praying to a saint! Yet, bad as he was in morals, he was worse in worship, for he set himself up as a god.

On a triumphal arch erected on the bridge of St. Angelo in Rome in 1484—the year when death made him yield the tiara to, if possible, a worse Pope (according to Rohrbacher), who in 1492 gave place to a still worse one—on that triumphal arch erected to his honour by his creatures, these lines were inscribed:

Oraclo vocis, mundi moderaris habenas,
Et meritò in terris diceris esse Deus.
Thy words an Oracle, which all obey;
That thou art God on earth we truly say.

This horrible man hired assassins to kill the Princes of the Medici while at mass, and the elevation of the host was the preconcerted signal for the murderers to strike with their poniards. He moreover enriched himself by imposing a tax on the inhabitants of brothels, and to increase his exchequer he encouraged their multiplication, so that at last Rome was said to be one vast brothel—a veritable “Mother of Harlots.”

THE BULL OF POPE SIXTUS IV AND MARIAN INDULGENCES

Such being the character of the man, we expect him to encourage Mariolatry. Let us see. In 1476 he issued a bull, which is embodied in the canon law (Extrav. Comm., III. tit. xii. c. 1), in which he recommended the Festival of the Conception of the Immaculate Virgin—not the Festival of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin—giving remission of all sins to every one who shall observe it, and the same absolution as might be gained at the Feast of Corpus Christi.

Those indulgences must have been somewhat stale, after Boniface VIII. in 1489 granted such a plenary indulgence to every one who should deliver a heretic to the Inquisition to be tortured, the Pope asserting that it was an act of equal merit with joining in a crusade against the Saracens. Verily, the Popes try to appear like lambs, but have the mouths of dragons!

But to return to the bull of Pope Sixtus IV. In that bull he said that “after the birth of our Lord, Mary still continued to be a Virgin immaculate,” and that God “had prepared her, by His Holy Spirit, to be the dwelling of His only begotten Son.” By “prepared” he evidently meant the removal of Mary’s sins, because he added that “human nature, by the sin of the first man, Adam, had come under the condemnation of eternal death; yet that which is attributed to any nature secundum se, must be attributed to all substances in which that nature is found,” thus including the Virgin in the condemnation.

But “Human nature was reconciled, by Jesus Christ, to God, its Author,” and thus the Virgin Mary was reconciled to God by Jesus Christ. Pope Sixtus ordained the Feast of Conception to be kept on December 8th in every year (the date on which, according to the tradition of the Roman Church, Anna and her husband Joachim first came together), instead of February 25th, which is eighty days after, or the period of quickening. But on December 8th there was certainly no soul of the Virgin Mary in existence, and therefore no subject for either sin or freedom from sin. The bull, therefore, was clearly absurd.

FORGERIES AND EXTRAVAGANT INDULGENCES

In the Office of the Conception, passages of Scripture which were written concerning our Lord are applied to Mary. For example, the passage of Proverbs: “By me kings reign,” etc.

In the “Secunda Lectione” a pretended passage of St. Augustine is given, which Augustine never wrote. It is a forgery. It begins: “Beata Virgo, mox ut in mundum,” etc. In the “Tertia Lectione” there is a similar forgery ascribed to St. Ildephonso: “Beata Virgo, nisi in utero matris sanctificata.” The same may be said, I believe, of all the pretended quotations. So necessary was forgery to the support of the dogma.

In the prayer-books of this time, there is a prayer to the Virgin Mary to which Pope Sixtus IV. had attached an indulgence of 11,000 years for all who should devoutly recite it (Amort, I. p. 52). In a Dutch prayer-book of the beginning of the next century (Archief voor kerkelyke Geschiedenis, I. 241) there is a prayer to Mary which carries an indulgence of 100,000 years, together with many other such graces of shorter periods.

Joannes Major (in Sent. iv. Dist. 20, quest. 2) rightly says: “Some of those indulgences of 20,000 years to every one who shall say five Paternosters before such and such an image are idiotic and superstitious… Really the Bishops should repudiate and put them down, because they bring the system of indulgences into contempt and derision, and besides they cannot be true.”

CARMELITE PRIVILEGES AND THE SILENCING OF DOMINICANS

On the calends of April, 1477, Pope Sixtus issued a bull in favour of the Order of Carmelites, saying that they had often been approved by former Popes and by himself, “having been designated by a special title by Mary, the glorious Mother of God, ever Virgin; so that, by reason of their veneration for the Virgin, the whole Order may properly be fully venerated by all the faithful in Christ, who, aided thereto by the suffrages of the Virgin Mary, may, with greater ease, obtain the prizes of eternal rewards.”

In 1479, that infamous Pope attached an indulgence to Bonaventura’s Psalterium Beatæ Mariæ Virginis (Amort, De Indulg., i. p. 170) and gave one also to every one who shall daily say as many Ave-Marias as there are Psalms (viz. 150), “in honour of the blessed Virgin, and as a preservative against imminent dangers to the world.” In 1482, the wicked Pope canonized Bonaventura, who composed that blasphemous edition of Psalms.

The next year the Pope promulgated another bull, which also is set out in the canon law, against “the diverse Orders of Preachers (Fratres Prædicatores, or Dominicans), who, in their public sermons in various cities and countries, have to this day not blushed to affirm and to preach daily, that all those commit a mortal sin (i.e. idolatry) and are heretics who hold and profess that the glorious and immaculate mother of God was conceived without the stain of Original Sin, as also are all those who say the Office of the Immaculate Conception… Not content with preaching, those preachers have also written and published books on the subject, whence a grave scandal and stumbling-block has arisen in the minds of the faithful, and threatens, day by day, to assume a more formidable character.”

Pope Sixtus also pronounced the sentence of excommunication against every one who should in future accuse of heresy either the advocates or impugners of the doctrine, as the point had not been decided by the Holy See. He evidently felt that the dogma would not bear investigation, and that the less said about it the better.

Cardinal Gabriel Biel, in 1477, wrote his book on the Canon of the Mass. There he says (lect. 30): “By these and similar reasons, the aforesaid heretics who taught that we should invoke the dead to pray for us, were deceived. And many Christians in our time are similarly deceived.” (lect. 31): “We must say that the saints are not aware of any prayers uttered by those who are living on the earth; they cannot hear either vocal prayers or mental prayers, because of their enormous distance from us… Neither is it an essential part of blessedness that the saints should see in the mind of Jesus every morning, either our prayers or anything we may do. And whether it belongs accidentally to their state of blessedness to see our prayers in Christ, is very doubtful… Yet it is a Probable Opinion that, although it is no necessary part of the bliss of saints to hear our prayers, yet by reason of congruity it may be that God reveals to them all the offerings that we make to them.”

Yet the Jesuit Cardinal Bellarmine (De Eccles. triumph. lib. i. cap. 20) says: “If the saints need such a new revelation as that, the Roman Church would not say so boldly to all the saints: Pray for us; but she would, at least now and then, pray to God to be good enough to reveal our prayers to them.”

Further, Cardinal Biel wrote (lect. 80): “We fly for refuge, first and foremost, to the most blessed Virgin, the Queen of Heaven, to whom the King of kings, the Heavenly Father has given the half of His kingdom. That fact is made known to us by the history of Queen Esther, who, when she went to King Ahasuerus to pacify him, the king said to her: I will give thee even to the half of my kingdom. So the Heavenly Father has a kingdom of which the chief elements are justice and mercy; but the justice He keeps to Himself, while the mercy He has given away to His virgin mother.” That quotation is a fair sample of the confusion and utter folly in the minds of even the best divines of the day.

Towards the close of this fifteenth century, through the malign influence of Pope Sixtus IV., there was a recrudescence and exacerbation of idolatrous devotion to Mary. A Franciscan of the name of Bernardinus de Bustis flourished in 1480; and in 1494 he published at Milan a series of blasphemous and ridiculous sermons in her honour, calling the book by the name Mariale. The first part consists of eight sermons, “De Conceptione Mariæ.” Then comes his “Officium Immaculatæ Conceptionis gloriosæ Mariæ,” which was confirmed by Pope Sixtus IV.

His fundamental doctrine is that no mercy comes from God to us, except from the hands of Mary; for she is the one mediator between God and man, our salvation, our justification, our reconciliation, our means of communication with God. More than that; he bids us appeal, from God’s court of justice, to Mary’s court of mercy: “a foro justitiæ Dei appellandum est, ad forum misericordiæ matris Ejus.” For this raving monk, who is a saint of the Roman Church, had adopted the Sistine theory announced by Cardinal Biel. Thus (Mariale, Pars III., Sermo 3): “Since God has both justice and mercy, He retained the justice for Himself for exercise in the present world; but the mercy He made over to Mary His mother. And so, if any one should feel that he has been hardly dealt with or oppressed in God’s court of justice, he may appeal to the court of His mother’s mercy.”

There Bernardine differed from the inspired writings (Heb. iv. 16): “Let us come boldly unto [Christ’s] throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.”

Again, Bernardinus de Bustis says (vi. 2, num. 3): “Verily, oh most lovely Virgin, if I may say so, thou hast in a manner done much greater things for God than God has done for thee and for the whole human race. I desire to publish what thou, through modesty, hast not mentioned. For thou didst sing only: He that is mighty hath done to me great things; but I sing and proclaim that: Thou hast done greater things for Him that is mighty.”

Further (ix. 2): “The ornament of an earthly kingdom is to have a king and queen. And therefore when any king has no wife, his subjects approach him, and petition him to get one. Therefore the Eternal King and Almighty Ruler, wishing to ornament the kingdom of heaven, created this most blessed Virgin, so that He might make her the Ruler and Empress of that kingdom and empire; and thus was fulfilled that prophecy of David (Ps. xlv. 9): Upon thy right hand did stand the Queen, in gold of Ophir.” Before that he had asserted (III. 3): “The most blessed Virgin is the Empress, because she is the wife of the Eternal Emperor of whom it was said (John iii. 29): ‘He that hath the Bride is the Bridegroom.’”

Further (ix. 2): “Since the blessed Virgin is the mother of God, and God is her Son; and since every son is by nature inferior to his mother, and is her subject, and the mother has the pre-eminence and is superior to and above her son; it follows that the blessed Virgin is superior to and above God, and God is her subject, because of the humanity which He derived from her.” Just imagine any Pope approving of such blasphemy, and declaring the writer to be a saint!

Again (x. 1, p. 2): “Perhaps, O Lord, lest a doubt should assail Thy heavenly court, as to which of the two we should rather have recourse to in prayer—to Thee, O Lord, who tookest flesh in order to come and seek Thy kingdom; or to Thy Queen, who ascended into heaven after having obtained her own kingdom in virtue of her mother’s right,” etc. This blasphemy has been copied by the Jesuit Sebastian Barrad (Concord. Evang., lib. vi. cap. 11) and by many others.

Further (xii. 1, p. 1): “O our Queen, most serene; thou canst indeed say, in the words of Esdras: The Lord hath given to me all the kingdoms of the earth. And we can say to thee (Tobias xiii.): Thy kingdom is from everlasting to everlasting; and (Ps. xlv. 13): Thy kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and thy dominion endureth throughout all generations; and (Dan. ii. 44): It is a kingdom which shall never be destroyed. Come, then, O Mary, and assume thy dominion over us; for we may say of thy kingdom (Ps. ciii. 19): Thy kingdom ruleth over all things; and (Luke i.): Of her kingdom there shall be no end.”

Again (xii. 2, p. 1): “From the instant that the Virgin Mary conceived the Word of God in her womb, she received a jurisdiction and authority over the whole of the temporal procession of the Holy Spirit, so that no creature can obtain any grace or power or virtue from God, except by the dispensation of His holy mother.”

In the Speculum vitæ Francisci, etc., by Bernardinus de Bustis (Pars II. cap. 45), there is described a red ladder reaching to heaven, on the top of which Christ is leaning; from this ladder, those who try to mount, fall off backwards and are killed; but there is another ladder, which is white, and the Virgin Mary is on the top of it, holding out her arms; and all who step on it mount with ease to the top, and none fall off backwards. In other words, “the faithful” are taught to discard Christ as a Saviour, and to look for eternal life to the Virgin Mary.

The effect of appealing from “God’s Court of Justice” to “the Court of the Mother of Mercies” was very speedily seen. That infinite mercy was shown in the burning of four Dominicans at the stake in Berne, in the year 1509 (De quatuor hæresiarchis Ordinis Prædicatorum de Observantiâ nuncupatorum, apud Switenses, in civitate Bernensi combustis, A.D. 1509, reprinted in Hottinger’s Hist. Eccl. Sec. XVI., seu Pars V. p. 334). The occasion was as follows:

John of Trittenheim, or Trithemius, had published an anonymous work in 1494, De Laudibus Sanctæ Annæ, in which he maintained the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of Mary. The Dominican, Wigand Wirth of Frankfort, attacked the work, disputing the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. This brought out a number of works in defence. The Dominicans then tried to obtain, in Rome, a condemnation of the work of Trithemius, but failed (Trithemii Chron. Spanheimense). Wigand Wirth was next condemned by a Papal Commissary.

Upon this, the Dominicans held a Chapter in Wimpfen in the year 1506, and secretly planned some miracles, after the fashion of those always common in the Roman Church, in support of their own view. Next, the Prior, Subprior, Lector, and Procurator, in 1507, played off upon a poor, bigoted tailor of Berne some pretended visions of St. Barbara virgin, St. Cecilia, and St. Catherine of Siena, after the manner of the visions of Bridget. They made on him “the five wounds of Christ,” they soaked Hosts (or consecrated wafers) in blood, they made an image of the Virgin weep, and so forth. Then they made to him certain revelations against the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. At last he discovered the imposture, and they tried to poison him and save themselves; but he escaped and informed against them. For the imposture, the Dominicans could not well be punished, for false miracles, as Lyra informs us, were very general in the Romish Church in all ages. But for working against Mariolatry they could be burned alive; and they were.

We have now arrived at the sixteenth century. Let us pause to consider the state of the controversy on Mariolatry. In the year 1500, Paulus Cortesius, Prothonotary of the Pope (III. Sent., Dist. 4), wrote these words: “A very bitter contest is arising as to whether the goddess mother (Dea Mater, the pagan name of Cybele) was or was not contaminated by Original Sin. The Divine Thomas (Divus Thomas) asserted that, without the smallest doubt, she, as a descendant from Adam, was in captivity to the devil.” We see then that the controversy was becoming extremely bitter, even to burning opponents alive. The doctors and “saints” were on one side; on the other were Popes, and feast days, and the worship of the Romish Church.

Let us pause on the latter point. The Roman Breviary, which every priest must daily read aloud (Sept. 9), addresses Mary as “the only hope of sinners” (“tu es spes unica peccatorum”). Of the churches and chapels in Rome, 15 were dedicated to our Lord, as against 121 consecrated to the Virgin Mary; and in the porch of “S. Maria delle Grazie,” close to the Vatican, a garbled text from Heb. iv. 16 is set up: “Let us come to the throne of Mary the Virgin, that we may obtain mercy.”

The Rosary was the common, if not the only form, of private prayer, and consisted of: The Creed, 15 Paternosters, 15 Gloria Patris, 3 Salve Reginas, and 150 Ave Marias. The Ave Marias, from the year 1507, had this clause annexed: “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death;” although this clause was not formally ordered until the bull of Pope Pius V., in July, 1568. The Angelus was recited three times a day, consisting of three sentences, three Ave Marias, and a prayer to Mary.

As to the feast days of our Lord, these were the following: Circumcision, Epiphany, Passion Sunday, Good Friday, Easter Day, the Transfiguration, the Holy Redeemer, the Nativity. I do not count the following days, sacred to material things: Invention and Exaltation of the Cross, Holy Name of Jesus, Spear and Nails, Winding Sheet, Five Wounds, Precious Blood, Crown of Thorns, the Sacrament (Corpus Christi).

The feasts of the Virgin were: the Espousals, Purification, Annunciation, Blessed Lady Help of Christians, Visitation, Joseph Spouse of Mary, Anne Mother of Mary, Blessed Mary in the Snow, Assumption, Nativity of Mary, Holy Name of Mary, Seven Dolours of Mary, Rosary, Maternity of Mary, Purity of Mary, Patronage of Mary, Presentation of Mary, Immaculate Conception, Expectation of Mary. Thus was the worship of our Lord most heavily handicapped in the race against Mariolatry and other idolatries.

EARLY SIXTEENTH-CENTURY VOICES ON ORIGINAL SIN

Still some witnesses feebly raised their weak voices. In 1500, Nicolaus Gilles, Gallicus (Postilla super Luc. i.), wrote: “When the Holy Spirit overshadowed the Virgin (when Jesus was conceived) He freed her from the lust of sin; and before that time, while she was still in her mother’s womb, he cleansed her from Original Sin.” Guido de Arbona said the same in a Sermon on the Virgin’s Nativity.

Michael de Furno, Doctor Parisiensis, in the same year wrote that (Sermo de Annunc. and Sermo de Assumpt.) it was only after quickening that the blessed Virgin was freed from Original Sin, by God’s grace. In 1513 Pope Leo X. virtually denied the dogma of the Immaculate Conception.

On the other hand, in 1520, Cardinal Bembo (Epist. ad Carolum V.) called Mary “Our Lady Goddess,” “Dominam Deam nostram.” But, in the same year, Radulphus, the Cistercian (De Vitâ Christi), wrote: “The blessed Virgin was conceived in Original Sin, from which, by a peculiar privilege, she was cleansed while in the womb.”

MARIOLATRY AND EXTENSIVE INDULGENCES IN THE 1520s

The Penitentiary of Rouen, Ricardus a S. Laurentio, however, in 1525 proclaimed Mariolatry in these words (De laud. Virg., IV.): “As the mother and Son have one and the same power, which is omnipotent, because the Son is omnipotent; and as there is no power except from Him; therefore Mary says, with her Son, All power is given to me in heaven and earth.

Yet she is more supremely powerful in the Church triumphant; wherefore she says: My power is in the heavenly Jerusalem; a power, namely, to command whatever I choose, and to rule not only the Angelic Powers, but also all holy souls; and a power, moreover, to introduce any one she chooses into that heavenly kingdom. Of her it was truly said by Solomon (Ecclus. xlii.): All things are compelled to obey her.”

He further wrote (Lib. ii.): “The blessed Virgin can not only pray her Son for the salvation of those who worship and serve her; this any saint can do; but she can also command Him with a mother’s authority. Wherefore the Church prays to her in these words: Show thyself to be a mother—meaning, Demand this of thy Son, with a maternal, and therefore imperious authority.”

In the year 1528, Pope Clement VII. was at Orvieto (Urbevetana), and issued a bull renewing and confirming the bulls of John XXII. and Alexander V. Paulus-ab-omnibus-Sanctis gives a list of all the indulgences which may be gained, on each day in the year, by every member of the Carmelite Order, under that bull of Clement VII.

The result is astoundingly ridiculous: each member may in every year gain 2,323 plenary indulgences, may liberate 73 souls from Purgatory, and may further gain 19,841,042 years and 27,753 days of indulgence! Fancy 2,323 plenary indulgences, and nearly twenty million years of indulgence, besides liberating 73 souls from Purgatory, and that for every year of every Carmelite’s life! Moreover, it is to be observed that, in the bull, Clement VII. vouches for the authenticity of the bulls of John XXII. and Alexander V. That he should have thought it necessary to do so is a proof that a very considerable and widespread doubt was entertained on the subject.

THEOLOGICAL DEBATES AND PAPAL BULLS IN THE 1530s AND 1540s

In 1530, Thomas de Vio, Cardinal Cajetan, wrote a tract on the Conception of the Virgin Mary, in which he distinctly maintained that she was conceived and born in Original Sin. But he was as a voice crying in the wilderness. Nearly all had been carried away in the overwhelming flood of folly and wickedness.

Pope Paul III., Alexander Farnese, whom Platina declares to have been a wicked man, issued a bull called Provisionis Nostræ, in which he vouched for the truth of the bull of Pope Clement VII. and endorsed it. Yet, in 1540, the year that the Jesuit Society was confirmed by the Pope, Marinus, a Cistercian, wrote (Sermo de Nativ. V.): “All women who conceive, conceive in sin; Christ only was conceived without sin.”

In the same year, John Aventinus, the author of the Annales Boiariæ, in a tractate, Ex quo inter alia, etc., traced back all this Mariolatry to its true source. Writing of “Candlemas,” or the Purification, he says (Wolfii Lect. Mem., ii. 276): “The primitive Church scoffed at the pagans for having mendicant priests, and for lighting candles in their temples. Your gods have bad eyes, said they, and cannot see in your temples; therefore you are compelled to light candles for them.” It is not alone at Candlemas that Romanists light candles, but at every mass. They also make a conflagration, with a perfect blaze of light, at benediction.

CARDINAL HOSIUS AND THE SYMBOL OF THE DOOR

Cardinal Hosius, explaining the Angelic Salutation in 1542 (cap. lx. p. 238), said that the custom had obtained in the Catholic Church, and that not in recent years, of joining the angelic salutation, or Ave Maria, to the Lord’s Prayer. Then he speaks of the “image or symbol” of that “door of heaven,” namely, Mary, the glorious divinity, which he considers to have been prophesied by Ezekiel (xliv. 1–3).

For, said he, the Prince of Peace entered in and went out, without violating its integrity, but only consecrating the sanctuary. “The words of the prophet (said Cardinal Hosius) are: The gate of the outward sanctuary looketh towards the east, and it was shut. Then said the Lord, This gate shall be shut, it shall not be open, and no man shall enter in by it; because the Lord, the God of Israel, hath entered in by it, therefore it shall be shut; it is for the Prince.

Yes! the gate was shut in Mary: clausa fuit in Maria virginitatis porta, per quam intravit Dominus Deus Israël, et per ipsam processit, et in æternum porta Virginis clausa, salvatâ virginitate, permansit.” He continues to assert that as God is a consuming fire, therefore every sinner who approaches Him must be melted like wax. “Therefore we must of necessity have a mediatrix to approach for us to the Mediator; namely, Mary, who is the Minister of Reconciliation.”

As to the symbol of the door which the Cardinal mentioned above, we have doubtless all seen it in churches, especially in the churches of the Jesuits. The Lamb is represented within an oval; and we are reminded of a worship which, I believe, is still found in India, and was the Yoni worship of many ancient nations. So pagan is Popery in its character! It worships a representation of the Lamb before His birth, and within the Vulva.

EXTRAVAGANT MARIAN TITLES AND THE ASSUMPTION

Let us turn from such a subject to another Cardinal. In 1544, Cardinal Catharinus, in his oration before the Council of Trent (Sess. 2; Crabée, iii. 988), called Mary, “fidelissima Dei socia”—the most faithful fellow and companion of God! While St. Thomas of Villanova, Archbishop of Valentia, declared that “she is something infinite, as she is the mother of Him who is infinite.”

Henricus Stephanus also said (Apol. pro Herod., Wolfii Lect. Mem., ii. 751) that, “As a Franciscan taught in Sicily that St. Francis annually went, on his feast-day, to hell, and brought back to heaven the souls of all who had given money or gifts to the Friars Minor; so the Jacobites of Mary the Virgin teach that the Virgin Mary descends to purgatory every Saturday—the day sacred to her honour—to bring back with her to heaven the souls of all who had made any gifts to any of the Orders devoted to her.”

Yet in the year 1546, Melchior Cano, Bishop of the Canary Islands, wrote (Loci Comm., vii. cap. 1): “All the saints which have mentioned the subject, have asserted unanimously that the blessed Virgin was conceived in Original Sin.”

The Fable of the Assumption of the Virgin dates back to Gregory of Tours, in 573, in whose writings it first appeared (De Gloriâ Mart. i. cap. 4). But Petrus Canisius the Jesuit, in 1550, did not believe the absurd story, for he says: “It is not for me to decide, in this little work, on matters concerning which the most learned writers cannot agree. This much we believe and profess with the utmost certainty, agreeing therein with the universal Church, that if the most revered body of Mary, in which God took flesh, is still buried somewhere in the earth, there it will remain until the destruction of Antichrist, when it will rise and be seen.”

THE JESUIT SALMERON AND THE COUNCIL OF TRENT (1546)

In the same year, the Jesuit Alphonsus Salmeron (Ep. ad Rom., lib. ii. Disp. 51) let out the secret as to how the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception had been forced on the Roman Church: “For in that most famous University of Paris, no one was held worthy to receive the title of Master in Theology, unless he had first bound himself with a solemn vow and oath to defend and vehemently fight for this privilege of the Virgin” (see also Laur. Sur. Commentar. rerum in orbe gestarum, 1501).

To know that belief in any dogma, or rather a professed belief, could only be obtained by bribery, would be sufficient to open the eyes of every sensible man and cause him to doubt the truth of the dogma. Yet Salmeron was a fervent worshipper of saints, and thus expressed himself upon the subject (i 1 Tim. ii. vii. § ult.): “The Church, having the Spirit of God, approaches God through the saints; the Church hardly ever approaches God immediately. Moreover, to address God by means of invocation of saints argues a greater humility, such as that which the centurion showed.”

The centurion approached God directly, but added that it was not necessary for Jesus to come to the house, as it would be sufficient for Him to speak the word only. The Romanists do not themselves approach God, but ask the saints to do so; and they do think it necessary for God to be corporeally present, as expressed in their false doctrine of Transubstantiation. Moreover, Salmeron has convicted the Romanists (Col. ii. 18, 23) of “a voluntary humility and worshipping of angels… and things which have a show of wisdom in will worship and humility.”

In the Council of Trent, the Franciscans made strenuous efforts in favour of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception; but the Council decreed, in its fifth session (De Pecc. Or.), in 1546, no more than this: “Nevertheless, this Holy Synod declares that it is not its intention to comprise, under this decree concerning Original Sin, the blessed and immaculate Virgin Mary, the mother of God; but that the Constitutions of Pope Sixtus IV. of blessed memory are to be observed, under the penalties there mentioned; which Constitution this Synod renews.”

For that Council decreed that, by Adam’s fall, he and every man at once lost the holiness and righteousness in which God had created man, and came into captivity under the power of the devil, the old serpent, who thenceforward had empire over death (Codex dogmatum, p. 181). If the Virgin Mary was naturally begotten, she too was in captivity under the power of the devil; and if she was not naturally begotten, she must have been divine. The limitation of the council above quoted points, therefore, to the Divinity of Mary.

(To be continued.)