Chapter V. Popery unchanged.

IN some respects Popery has indeed changed, notwithstanding her boasted claim of immutability. Pius IX, the world’s “infallible teacher in faith and morals,” though the successor of Gregory VII, would find exceeding great difficulty in forcing a modern Henry IV. to stand in the court of his palace, hungry and shoeless, humbly pleading during three successive days from morning till night—the Holy Father meanwhile enjoying the society of an intelligent, beautiful, honored countess, his illegitimately endeared friend— for the superlative privilege of kissing the toe of him, “appointed of heaven to pull down the pride of kings.” Popery, so far as regards the respect it is able to command, has greatly changed since the twelfth century, when kings considered themselves honored in being permitted to lead by the bridle rein the sacred horse, or even the holy mule, that bore Christ’s Vicar. Now his Holiness begs the favors he no longer can command, soliciting Peter’s pence from those despising his anathemas; impotently imploring the support of bishops who scorn his holy indignation. Urban VIII. condemned as “perverse in the highest degree” the doctrine of the earth’s revolution. His successors, with as much grace as possible, have silently yielded to the inevitable. Now this little orb is allowed to revolve, no one, not even an infallible Pope, objecting. Formerly, and even now in countries purely popish, agencies for disseminating religious literature must incur anathema; now, as the press is a powerful agent in moulding public sentiment, the Catholic Publication Society of New York, organized with the sanction of the Pope for the express purpose of combating Protestantism with its own weapons, is issuing tracts and pamphlets which in Italy would even now, as in former times, be considered unfriendly to the sacred prerogatives of God’s vicegerent on earth.

Whilst in methods of exhibiting her temper, Rome has changed somewhat—endeavoring to put old wine into new bottles—it is undeniably true that in reality she is the same, unprincipled monster; in dogma unaltered, in spirit unbroken, unsubdued, untameable. “Those,” says Hallam, “who know what Rome has once been, are best able to appreciate what she is.” “It is most true,” says Charles Butler, “that Roman Catholics believe the doctrines of their Church unchangeable ; it is a tenet of their creed that what their faith ever has been, such it was from the beginning, such it is now, and such it ever will be.” What else could be expected from a Church claiming infallibility? To alter its dogmas, or to condemn the cruel practices of the past, would be to overturn the foundation on which it rests.

Hence we search in vain in the Encyclical Letters of the present for the slightest intimation that Popery has changed its character or purposes. Has one single decree been revoked? one solitary regret expressed for the atrocities which have made her name a synonym for cruelty? Does any doctrine once held by the Church now lack strenuous defenders? All the superstitious and idolatrous practices of the past find advocates in the present,—the adoration of the host, the invocation of saints, the granting of indulgences, the worship of the Virgin, the veneration of relics, absolution by the priest, the cursing of “all heretics, be they kings or subjects,” and detestation of “Protestantism, that damnable heresy of long standing.”

Patient waiting for a return of strength, or of a favorable opportunity, is not change of nature. The sleeping lion, with wounded paws and broken teeth, is a lion still. In most countries Romanism does indeed lack the power to execute its fiendish designs; and even in those nations almost exclusively Roman Catholic, it would be the acme of human folly to insult the untrammelled conscience of Christendom; but its principles, doctrines and spirit are in no respect changed for the better. It is simply restrained by a public sentiment which it despises and does all in its power to break down, which, however, it dares not so far disregard as to re-enact the untold horrors of the Inquisition. This would be its certain destruction. And yet, even in republican America, it is in spirit the same despotism it was in Europe. Of individual liberty, of education, of the general diffusion of gospel truth, and of government by the people, it is the same uncompromising foe it has always been.

Is the Romish Church less eager for power now than during her past history? Certainly not. Never were greater exertions made to retain the influence it has, and to recover what it has lost. The Jesuit order, which has been revived and inspired with new energy, is straining every nerve to enlarge its numbers and secure a controlling influence in legislation, especially in these United States, with the hope of ultimately bringing them under Papal domination. True to their principles —deceitful always—they laud the liberty of our country while forging the weapons for its destruction. Warmed into life by our self-denying kindness, like the fabled serpent, they are distilling deadly poison into the bosom to which they owe existence itself.

Is Rome less avaricious now than in the ages past? No. Her system which, it would seem, must have been devised for the express purpose of procuring money—each of her seven sacraments is a market, every spiritual blessing has a price—is as admirably adapted to this end, and as efficiently operated now as heretofore. And so perfect is the machinery of this iniquitous system of collecting revenues, and so successfully is it driven, that Catholicism has impoverished every country in which it has held sway. Spain pays annually out of her penury fifty millions to the Romish Church. Ireland’s poverty is traceable directly to Popery. Even from our own land large sums are annually exported to the treasury of the Pope,—last year three millions, this year all that can possibly be raised for “Peter in prison.”

Is Romanism less intolerant than formerly? The hope is vain. Her ever memorable words are: “The good must tolerate the evil, when it is so strong that it cannot be redressed without danger and disturbance to the whole Church, . . . . otherwise, where ill men, be they heretics or other malefactors, may be punished without disturbance and hazard of the good, they may and ought, by public authority, either spiritual or temporal, to be chastised or executed.” Is this less than an open declaration of determination to persecute even unto death so soon as they can obtain the power? We exist merely by tolerance, being mercifully allowed to retain our own cherished doctrines and worship God in the way that to us seems according to Scripture, simply because Rome has granted us present indulgence. But the right to chastise us with rods of iron, Holy Mother has not yielded. Her loyal sons defend every act of persecution, even all her past enormities. The Crusades are lauded. Even the Inquisition is unblushingly defended and even applauded. It is declared: “It saved society from a danger only second to that from which it was preserved by the Crusaders.” Rome is represented as the one “place on earth where error has never been permitted to have a foothold.” Protestantism is declared to be “a gigantic rebellion against the Church of God.” Accordingly, Rome establishes “the Congregation of the Inquisition” to “protect the souls of her children from the fatal pestilence of heresy and unbelief.” “ Protestantism is everywhere the intruder—the innovator.” By the right of prior occupation, “in a special manner she claims this land.” And whilst they have the right to persecute and silence us, we have scarcely the right to protest, for “Protestantism tolerating every error can make no exception against the truth.” Sublime arrogance!

With a candor that is truly refreshing, considering whence it proceeds, the Jesuits, Rome’s sworn adherents —who by intrigue and perjury and diabolical malignity have sown discord everywhere, and been thirty nine times expelled from the different countries of Europe— whilst claiming full liberty to extend the principles of their Church unmolested and even unchallenged, yet unequivocally deny that they have abandoned the right to persecute. Did ever audacity equal this? It amounts to saying that constitutional liberty must warm them into vigor, that they may have the power to inflict upon it a deadly wound. The Shepherd of the Valley, a Catholic paper published in St. Louis, with the approbation of the archbishop, says:

“The Catholic who says that the Church is not intolerant, belies the sacred spouse of Christ. The Christian who professes to be tolerant himself, is dishonest, ill-instructed, or both!”

“We say that the temporal punishment of heresy is a mere question of expediency. Where we abstain from persecuting them (the Protestants), they are well aware that it is merely because we cannot do so; or think that by doing so we should injure the cause that we wish to serve… .. If the Catholics ever gain—which they surely will do—an immense numerical majority, religious freedom in this country is at an end. So say our enemies, so we believe.”

“Heresy and unbelief are crimes, that’s the whole of the matter; and where the Catholic religion is an essential part of the laws of the land, they are punished as other crimes.”

The Freeman’s Journal a few years since treated its readers to the following:—

“A Catholic temporal Government would be guided in its treatment of Protestants and other recusants, solely by the rules of expediency.. . . . Religious liberty, in the sense of liberty possessed by every one to choose his own religion, is one of the most wicked delusions ever foisted upon this age by the father of all deceit. The very word liberty, except in the sense of permission to do certain definite acts, ought to be banished from the domain of religion.”

“None but an atheist can uphold the principles of religious liberty. Short of atheism, the theory of religious liberty is the most palpable of untruths, Shall I therefore fall in with this abominable delusion and foster the notion of my fellow countrymen, that they have a right to deny the truth of God, in the hope that I may throw dust in their eyes, and get them to tolerate my creed as one of the many forms of theological opinion prevalent in these latter days?”

“Shall I hold out hopes to him that I will not meddle with his creed, if he will not meddle with mine? Shall I lead him to think that religion is a matter of private opinion, and tempt him to forget that he has no more right to his religious views than he has to my purse, or my house, or my life-blood? No! Catholicism ts the most intolerant of creeds, It is intolerance itself—for it is truth itself. We might as rationally maintain that a sane man has a right to believe that two and two do not make four, as this theory of religious liberty. Its impiety is only equaled by its absurdity.”

A Papal bull annually “excommunicates and curses —on the part of God Almighty, the Father, Son and Holy Ghost—all heretics, under whatever name they may be classed.” To such anathemas we may reply in the language of David to Shimei, “It may be the Lord will look on our affliction, and requite us good for their cursing.”

The text-books now studied in their theological seminaries are well calculated to keep alive the spirit of persecution. Dr. Den, in his “System of Theology,” a standard with Papists, affirms: “Protestants are by baptism and by blood under the power of the Romish Church. So far from granting toleration to Protestants, it is the duty of the Roman Catholic Church to exterminate their religion.” Again, “It is the duty of the Roman Catholic Church to compel Protestants to submit to her faith.” The Rhemish Testament, in its commentary on Matthew xviii. 17, declares: “Heretics therefore, because they will not hear the Church, be no better, nor no otherwise to be esteemed of Catholics, than heathen men and publicans were esteemed among the Jews.” Again, 2 Cor. vi. 14: “Generally here is forbidden conversation and dealing with all heretics, but especially in prayers and meetings at their schismatical service.” Once again: “Protestants ought by public authority, either spiritual or temporal, to be chastised or executed.” In exposition of these words, “ drunken with the blood of the saints,” these Rhemish annotators say: “The Protestants foolishly expound it of Rome, for that there they put heretics to death, and allow of their punishment in other countries; but their blood is not called the blood of saints, no more than the blood of thieves, man-killers, and other malefactors, for the shedding of which by order of justice no commonwealth shall answer.” Liguori, in his “ Moral Theology,” a work very highly prized in their theological seminaries, says: “As the Church has the right of compelling parents to hold to the faith, so she has the power of taking their children from them.” Canon XII. of the recent Ecumenical Council affirms :—“If any think that Christ, our Lord and King, has only given to his Church a power to guide, by advice and permission, but not ordain by laws, to compel and force by anterior judgments, and salutary inflictions, those who thus separate themselves, let them be anathema.” Surely, in language at least, Rome is no less intolerant than in the centuries past. And doctrines such as these are taught to youth in this land of Protestant liberty!

And Rome’s actions, as well as her teachings, unmistakably evince the same unchanged spirit. Jewish parents in Rome employ a Catholic nurse. Their infant son is clandestinely baptized by a Popish priest. Henceforth it is the child of the Church. Stolen from the home of its parents—who in vain demand the God-given right to their child—immured in a monastery, carefully instructed in the doctrines of Popery, the Jewish dog, transmuted into a priest, Mortara, at manhood enters the world thanking God that His true church is a babystealer.

Raffaele Ciocci, honorary librarian of a Papal college in Rome, is entrapped by Jesuits into a monastery. Infallibility, carefully instructing him in the mysteries of Romanism, designs him for a missionary to distant lands steeped in the ignorance of Protestantism. Becoming, through the instrumentality of God’s blessed Word, a determined enemy of the Papacy, death is decreed against him. With Jesuitical hypocrisy, under the cloak of friendship, a poisoned beverage is handed him. Saved by a timely antidote, he seeks release from the iron grasp of his inhuman persecutors by appealing to the Pope. This only rendering his situation doubly more intolerable, he finally consents to sign a recantation in the hope of effecting an escape. Landing, in the year 1842, on the shores of free England, he is watched and dogged by Franciscans and Jesuits, and every available means employed to entangle him again in the cruel snares of Romanism. In his revelations of the Man of Sin, Ciocci has conclusively proved that Popery in this nineteenth century is the same uncompromising foe of the Gospel, the same bitter persecutor, unchanged and unchangeable.

We must content ourselves with a mere reference to most of the recent cases of Popish intolerance. Protestants, and especially American Protestants, ought not to forget the cruel persecutions of the unhappy inhabitants of Lower Valais, Switzerland, where, in 1845, the Jesuits after innumerable iniquitous proceedings, signalized their triumph by the passage of a law prohibiting all Protestant worship, public and social; forbidding God’s people to meet for the reading of his Word even in their own houses. And in what language shall we characterize the banishment, in 1837, of 400 Protestants from one of the States of Austria on the simple charge of refusing Papal supremacy?—or the imprisonment, in 1843, of Dr. Kally, a Scottish physician, on the island of Madeira?—or the sentence of death pronounced against one of his converts, Maria Joaquina, for “maintaining that veneration should not be given to images, denying the real presence of Christ in the sacred host, and blaspheming the Most Holy Virgin, Mother of God?” And assuredly every lover of liberty will bear in sad remembrance the history of the lengthy imprisonment, cruelty and protracted sufferings of the Madiai family; the studied persecution, arrest, impoverishment, imprisonment, and sufferings of Matamoros in a loathsome cell —where in sickness he was refused a physician and even medicine; his condemnation to the galleys for nine years on the testimony of suborned witnesses; his banishment from Spain, to which his throbbing heart and enfeebled voice would fain have proclaimed, “Salvation is of the Lord,” and his triumphant death in Switzerland, whither he had gone in the faint hope of sending some message of life to his endeared countrymen enslaved by the superstitions of Rome. Even our own land within a few years, for aught we know, may have given a martyr to the truth. Bishop Reese of Michigan, charged with ecclesiastical error, entered Rome in response to the citation of the Pope. So far as the world knows, he entered eternity the day he stepped within the magic circle of the heartless Inquisition.

Until the present year—and for the change no thanks to Popery—Protestant worship was prohibited in Rome. Did ever intolerance equal this? While allowed in England and the United States to hold their services, build churches, found monasteries, establish theological seminaries, collect enormous sums of money for transmission to the Pope, and foment insurrection and rebellion against the Governments whose protection they claim, they will not permit Protestant worship even in a private house where they have the power to prevent it. The foreign resident who dares to join with his countrymen in worshipping God according to the forms of worship to which he has been attached from youth, places himself “in the power of the Inquisition, both for arrest and imprisonment,” and is earnestly advised, unless he courts exile or a dungeon, “never again to repeat these illegal acts.”

Another fact evincing the present spirit of Popery claims attention. A full regiment of Canadians, a few years since, proffered their services to aid in upholding the temporal power of the Pope. The spirit of Peter the Hermit still lives. From every Catholic pulpit in Canada appeals were made for aid for Pius IX. in his embarrassments. With every Catholic newspaper office a recruiting station, and with a central committee to secure unity of action, volunteers offered themselves in greater numbers than were needed. On the day of their departure an address was delivered by Archbishop McCloskey:— “You are going to stand with others like you, as a rampart of defense and a tower of strength around the presence of your Holy Father, to protect his safety and defend his rights.” Defend his rights; his right to steal the children of heretics, to imprison Protestants, to prevent all forms of worship except Popish, to fetter freedom, to curse the institutions of modern liberty, to trample on the dearest hopes of the Italian people, and keep them, though longing for escape, in the grossest ignorance, under the severest despotism, in the most abject poverty!

The Archbishop continues :

“They (Catholics in the United States) are as strongly devoted to the sustenance and maintenance of the temporal power of the Holy Father as Catholics in any part of the world; and if it should be necessary to prove it by acts they are ready to do so. . . If that policy (non-interference) should ever change to a sympathy with the Italians as against the Holy Father, then Catholics must be prepared to show their readiness by acts as well as words, to give their lives, if necessary, for their Holy Father.”

This first crusade failed. And now, forsooth, the tocsin is sounding a grander, a world-wide crusade. From all the nations that on earth do dwell, the faithful, for multitude like the swarms of flies in Egypt of old, are to meet at some designated spot, proceed to Italy, wipe out the rebellious sons of Holy Mother, and restore Pius IX. to the throne from which he has been ejected by the almost unanimous voice of his own people. Festinate. “Whom the gods design to destroy, they first make mad.” In this holy work the Catholics of these United States—those ardent friends of popular Government, who so loudly proclaim that every nation, even every State has the right to the choice of its own government—are expected, and are preparing, by firing their enthusiasm by volumes of wordy protests—they have all turned Protestants at last—to take a prominent part, the highest seat in the synagogue of war.

We have authority stamped with the signet of infallibility for asserting that the first allegiance of the Catholic of the United States is due not to our Government, but to the Pope. We are explicitly told that we are protecting an organization which holds itself ready at any time to obey the commands of a foreign despot.*

*The Tablet, in a recent issue, asks:—Is the American idea higher than this Church idea? No Catholic can pretend it; for to him the Church idea is divine, and nothing is, or can be, higher than God, who is Supreme Creator, proprietor and Lord of all things, visible and invisible. If, then, between the Church or Catholic idea, and the American idea, there should happen to be a collision, which should give way, the lower or higher? The Catholic idea being supreme, must be the law, the universal standard of right and wrong, of truth and falsehood, and consequently all ideas, whether Celtic or Saxon, English or American, that contradict it, or do not accord with it, are to be rejected as false and wrong, as repugnant to the supreme law of God, even to God himself, and not to be entertained for a moment.”

Certainly, on the question of intolerance and detestation of civil and religious liberty, none can charge Rome with vacillation. If language and actions express the determination of the will, and the desire of the heart, we may certainly be excused for believing the assertion of our Catholic friends :— “If the Catholics EVER GAIN AN IMMENSE NUMERICAL MAJORITY, RELIGIOUS FREEDOM IN THIS COUNTRY IS AT AN END.”

Since Popery is an outgrowth of the depraved heart, may we not expect that it will remain essentially unchanged, so long as human nature remains unaltered? Are we not taught in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, and Daniel’s vision, and Paul’s prophecy, that this giant evil shall afflict the world until the dawn of the millennium?*

* But the judgment shall sit, and they shall take away his dominion to consume and to destroy it unto the end.”—Dan. 7:26.

“And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming.” “ Unto the end,” “shall destroy with the brightness of his coming.”The best Commentators say, till Christ’s Second Advent.—2 Thess. 2:8.

By gradually undermining the foundations of a simple faith in the unadulterated Gospel, Popery established itself as the desperate and malignant foe of all that is life-giving in the spiritual religion of Christ, all that is ennobling in the liberty it inspires. And how otherwise than by gradual destruction can the doctrines and superstitions of millions of human beings be utterly consumed? Their overthrow “in an hour” would not produce in the hearts of the enslaved instantaneous detestation of these follies and errors. Rome’s temporal power is indeed gone, perhaps forever, but her spiritual despotism is still complete, and may continue nearly or quite the same for centuries. So long as there are those who are willing to be victims of spiritual thraldom, there will no doubt be those who are ready to enslave them. Consume the hated organization today, and tomorrow another, phoenix-like, will spring from its ashes. Love of power, and preference of the forms of devotion to the spirit, will no doubt continue— calling for the unceasing labors of God’s people—till the river of time issues into the ocean of eternity.

We may, therefore, expect in the future what we have witnessed in the past—an unceasing struggle. Many complications may arise. Often victory may seem to perch on the banners of the enemy. Many hopes will be crushed, the hearts of God’s people “failing them for fear, and for looking after those things that are coming upon the earth.” Since, however, we have witnessed in the last three centuries the gradual decay of Popery, may we not confidently rejoice in the hope that He who delights to write on the page of history the evidence of his far-reaching designs will, in his own time, strike the final blow, causing this gigantic system of falsehood to dissolve like mist before the rising sun? Ours is the task of hoping, laboring, praying, till even in Rome spiritual liberty shall dawn on civil,

“Like another morning risen on mid-noon.”
“How long, O Lord our God,
Holy, and true and good,
Wilt Thou not judge Thy suffering Church,
Her sighs, and tears, and blood?”

THE END.

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