Part 18

The Pope of Rome, according to Papists, cannot sin; he is not only _infallible_, as the most eminent Popish writers assert, but _impeccable_; see Belarmine, a standard writer in the Popish Church. But I will no longer detain the reader on this particular subject of reserved cases, and Popish follies of ancient times. Bishop Fenwick, and the rest of the right reverend brethren: of the Popish Church, will say that my statements are all "old lies;" that the holy Roman Catholic Church never did, nor does it now, prevent her subjects from speaking to heretics, or those who differ from her in their belief. I will venture the assertion, that if any Protestant theologian call upon any Roman Catholic bishop in the United States, he will deny this fact, or give an equivocal answer, though there is not to be found a solitary work on Popery in any library in the United States, or elsewhere, which does not sustain me in the assertions I have made. But we will not go to ancient times for authority. I will state to the reader a case to the point, which occurred about the year 1822, and to the truth of which thousands of our fellow citizens in Philadelphia can bear testimony. When I first opposed Popery in that city, by recommending that the Bible should be circulated among the people, and that the children of the poor Catholic Irish should be sent to school to be educated in its pure and unsullied doctrines, the Roman Catholic Bishop of that city, a poor, little, irritable Irishman, by the name of Conwell, prohibited his people, or his subjects, as he called them, from speaking to me, the heretic Hogan, or his followers, Hoganites; and the most amusing part of it was, that by way of giving his subjects good example, whenever we passed each other, even on opposite sides of the street, his lordship took off his hat and crossed himself, repeating the AVE MARIA! This he never failed to do, wherever we passed, much to the amusement of the Protestant inhabitants of that city, and to the great edification of the Papists. It may appear exceedingly strange or amusing to Bostonians, should I tell them that a similar belief in the criminality of speaking to heretics is taught in Boston, the capital of New England; but this is a fact, and if Papists term it a new "lie," it cannot be helped, for what I am about to state occurred only the other day. I chanced to meet, in a book store in Washington street, a convert to Popery, just fresh from the hand of Bishop Fenwick. I had never seen the gentleman but once before, and he was then, as well as during most of his previous life, one of those men in whose faith I had not the least confidence. I did not know that he was present when I entered the store, and was in the act of inquiring for a vile thing, called Brownson's Quarterly Review, which he published in the month of July, 1840. During my inquiries for this Review, the author, Brownson, addressed me, as nearly as I can recollect, in the following words: "I know you, sir; you once owned a whig press in Savannah; you criticized my Review. I marked you--but I am not allowed by my Church to speak to a heretic." I looked around me in some astonishment I did not expect to hear such language on the land of the Puritans; but sure enough, there stood Brownson, a Roman Catholic, fresh from the anvil of Popery! There he stood, _totus teres adque rotundus_, full-blooded and fully developed; the very Brownson himself, who has been consistent in nothing but infidelity and unbelief, now a good Roman Catholic; the very Brownson who has never been true to either his Maker or to his church, now a good Roman Catholic, whose church and whose conscience would not allow him to speak to a heretic! I never noticed the man much before, but now I fixed my eye upon him, and I shall not easily forget his countenance. On first intuition, I could scarcely imagine it was the Rev. Mr. Brownson who stood before me. My imagination presented to me a different character. I could not suppose that one who was once a clergyman would entertain the sentiments which I had the misfortune of subsequently hearing him utter. I was, however, mistaken. It was the Rev. gentleman. He strongly reminded me of characters between whom and himself there existed a strange similitude; but comparisons might offend the delicate sensibilities of some of my readers.

I looked at him a second time, and I could not restrain the involuntary exclamation--Popery, thou child of sin, treachery, and intrigue, bad as thou art, is it come to this--that thou must take by the hand as thine advocate and supporter this wretched being, who for thirty years has been sporting with the attributes of the great God, alternately extolling and ridiculing them, as best suited the ungovernable bent of his unstable mind, which thou mightest read in the demoniac-looking face of this man? But this is one of the secrets by which Popery spreads itself all over the United States. The Popish Church will admit any men or women, be they saints or devils, into full communion with them, if they swear allegiance to the Pope of Rome. This is one of the grand causes of the success of Jesuitism in this country. How different is it in some of the Protestant Churches! It requires some tact and church generalship in any man who has not been brought up a Protestant, to obtain admission into them upon any terms. Far be it from me to insinuate that Protestants should follow the example of the Papists, in admitting such things as Brownson into communion with their Churches: Nor should I mention the fact of the admission of Brownson at all, into the Romish Church, if I did not look upon this circumstance as a prominent instance of the corrupt evils of its infamous practices, and an irrefragable argument against its alleged good. But Brownson has been purified from all his sins by some Popish chemical process; he has gone to confession, is no longer a sinner, and therefore he is too pure, too immaculate, and too strong in the faith of the Popish Church, to render it otherwise than sinful in him to speak to a heretic! It is said that the Pope has recently given his subjects in the United States a dispensation, by which they are allowed to transact business with heretics, and speak to them in case of necessity. Wonderful condescension this!

Such statements as I here make, must appear incredible to American Protestants. Many will suppose that I am dealing in fables--that such rigmarole and such silly pretences as I have charged the Papists with, have never been countenanced in any age or among any people, much less American freemen; but let us see what are the facts in the case. I would not ask the reader to take my word for it. In 1555, Pope Paul IV, in his famous bull against heretics, supports me in every assertion I make; charging Papists with deeming it unlawful and criminal, to hold any intercourse with Protestants. Will the reader be pleased to attend to what this infallible Pope says, and that, only between three and four hundred years ago? I call upon our civil authorities to ponder and weigh well the import of his words, and never to forget, that there is no Catholic in this country or elsewhere, who will dare to say that the decretals and commands of Paul IV., are of less force or less binding upon them than those of the present Pope. "All heretics, viz. Protestants, be they kings or subjects, are accursed." Mind that, Mr. Polk, President of the United States! attend to it, you Governors and Magistrates! you are each and every one of you accursed, and none of our citizens are allowed to speak to you 21 without a dispensation from the present Pope. That identical Pope, Innocent III.,--of whom I have just been speaking, and who has, without any objection from either party, been selected, by Bishops Hughes, and Fenwick, and myself, out of about three hundred Popes, as a fair sample of a good Pope,--has declared it to be unlawful for any Protestant Executive, | whether King or President, to require any allegiance from a Roman Catholic. Take heed, Mr. President Polk! it is said you are a Presbyterian; ask no allegiance from a Roman Catholic; he is not allowed by the present Pope,--who of course follows in the footsteps of his illustrious predecessors, Paul IV. and Innocent III.,--even to speak to you without a dispensation. It is utterly useless to multiply cases of this kind. No article of the Romish faith is better established, than that which teaches them to hold no communion with heretics, and try by every means in their power to overthrow all Protestant governments. Will this statement too be called an old lie? If it is a lie, it is assuredly a very old one, and a very new one too. Will the reader go back with me, to the history of ancient times? It will afford me pleasure if he does. The source of truth is as open and accessible to him as to me, and if he thirsts for it sincerely and honestly, he can slake it to his heart's content at its very fountain.

The general reader knows that at a very early period of Christianity, a considerable number of native Christians was found in the Peninsula of India; I believe they were first discovered by the Portuguese. They have been represented as harmless, guileless, and gentle in the extreme. They professed the pure doctrines of the bible. Even the Portuguese who discovered them, admitted that their lives were blameless, and that they were true Christians in every respect, except that they did not believe in the infallibility of the Pope and the supremacy of the Romish church. Here was an opportunity for the Romish church, of showing her charity, if she or her pioneers had any. These native Indians never did them any harm; they never before heard of a Pope or a Romish church; they believed in the Lord Jesus Christ and in the all-sufficiency of his atonement for the sins of man, but never heard of a Pope; such a word was not found in their simple, native vocabulary; this was a crime not to be forgiven by their ignorant Popish discoverers; and how were these simple people treated by them? I refer the reader to that admirable work, written by Lacroze, for a full account of the manner in which they were treated by these jackals who discovered them. Suffice it to say that they were at once reduced to obedience to the Pope of Rome, to acknowledge the Pope's church as infallible, and compelled to worship the images of a set of vagabonds called saints and virgins, who if living now-a-days amongst us, should be considered fit subjects for our penitentiaries and work houses. The reader will also see an account of the condition and character of this people in Buchanan's Researches.

I refer to the case of those primitive Christians as corroborative of my charges against Popery, and to show that her corrupt and persecuting spirit has always been the same, and that nothing better could be expected from the great changelings Brownson, or any other convert to her dogmas, than a compliance with all her injunctions. Unfortunate Brownson! while you tried to support yourself and family, by alternately lecturing and publishing your sceptical and unintelligible theories, the community in which you lived, and who knew your circumstances, felt a kind and deep sympathy for you. They knew--and every man knows--that theoretical scepticism, and some sentiments of honor, are not always incompatible. A man may be a sceptic and not entirely destitute of honor. A man may be a sceptic and yet an honest man. Your fellow citizens imagined that you might have been among that class of people; but now they know you. They know that for twenty or thirty years, you have not only been a sceptic in theory, but a practical doubter, saying yes to one thing, and again yes to the contrary. You must not, of course, be surprised at seeing yourself sink in morals and principles, until you lose all claims to the sympathies of society. If any individual should think it an object worth his notice or time, to satirize or lampoon you, the best and bitterest way would be, to bind up into one volume, all the twattle you have written upon religion, morals and metaphysics, and send it to you. I could with sincerity reproach myself for having thus deviated from the subject of these pages, to notice this unhappy individual, Brownson, for I believe there is not a well-informed gentleman in the United States, who does not know that there never was a period in the history of Popery, when the Pope and Papists were not the implacable enemies of Protestants. Even Papists themselves offer no defence against this charge, but that Stale and hackneyed falsehood, Popery is not now what it was in old times; this seems plausible to Americans, but let us see what are the facts in the case. Let us inquire whether Popery is, at all different now, from what it was in the days of Paul IV. and Innocent III. Is its persecuting spirit the same? Are its tenets more liberal, its doctrines more mild, and its Popes, from the last century up to the present moment, less ambitious and more tolerant? Papists say they are; Bishop Hughes of New York, and Bishop Fen-wick of Boston, say they are; and their Corporal Trim, Brownson of Boston, touches his hat and nods his head. I say they are not We are now at issue. The question between us is one of veracity. The Bishops and Trim are liars, or I am one, in this matter. How are the public to know which? There is but one mode of ascertaining this. Let us appeal to history, and to facts. One of the best and I believe the most recent authorities to which we both can appeal, is a work recently written by Wm. S. Gilli, D. D., and published in London. I call it one of the best authorities, because many of the truths which he gives us, confirm my assertion, and are matters of profane history, and connected, indirectly, with national treaties, with which we are all more or less acquainted. This connexion throws an additional light on, and gives more force to the statements of Dr. Gilli; besides, it gives a strength and momentum to my charges against Popery, which no Popish casuistry can check. The work which I allude to, is entitled "The _Waldensian Researches._" This excellent work commands great and deserved popularity among all parties, religious and political, in Europe. It is a matter of historical truth, that as early as 1690, and on the 20th of October of that year, a treaty was made between Holland and England,--then the two-great Protestant powers of Europe,--securing to the Vaudois, or Waldenses, the free exercise of their religion and safe enjoyment of their property, This treaty was assented to by all the powers of Europe. The Vaudois were a small community of Christians, living in the valleys at the foot of the Alps, whose origin is involved in some obscurity. They give us, themselves, no record of their antiquity, prior to the ninth century, but are supposed by antiquarians to have been the descendants of a band of Apostolic Christians, who fled from Italy to escape the fury of barbarians, which had overrun that country during the decline of the Roman empire, and who sought for shelter in the secluded valleys of the Alps, in the western part of Piedmont; though, as far as we know, they have in a measure escaped the mad and bloody fury of the northern barbarian, in their lonely valleys, they had not been able to escape that of a still more bloody barbarian, the Pope of Rome. All Europe, who had any knowledge of this people in their lonely valleys, felt great sympathy for them. They were comparatively few in number, their wants few and easily supplied by their own industry; their valleys were to them a second paradise, but they were not long so, when the great serpent of Rome entered it, and brought upon them such an amount of misery, hardships and persecutions, as probably never were heard of before in the annals of history. I will refer to this hereafter. Let us first see what becomes of the treaty to which I have alluded. It was solemnly made and formally sanctioned; they were promised full protection, by his royal holiness the Pope, only about one hundred and forty years ago. How did the Pope act? How did he keep his faith with this poor harmless people? History tells the tale. He summoned the Inquisition, and threatened Victor Amadeus, a good Roman Catholic, with excommunication, if he did not violate his treaty in favor of the Vaudois, and renounce all treaties which he had ever made with the heretics; and he called upon his subjects, that is, upon all Catholics, Bishops and Inquisitors, to proceed against heretics, and look upon all compacts and treaties made with heretics as null and void. Passing over, for the present, the sufferings of the Waldenses in former times, let us see what their condition is now. This will satisfy the reader that the church still persecutes heretics, and refuses to hold any communion with them. It proves also that Popish bishops, who assert that Popery is different now from what it was formerly, and that Hughes and Fenwick, of New York and Boston, together with their Corporal Trim, Brownson, have deliberately misstated facts. Hear to what Mr. Gilli says of the spirit of Popery as it existed the other day.

"The son of a Waldenesean soldier, who served under the conscription of Napoleon, being born in a garrison where there was no Protestant minister, was baptized by a Roman Catholic Priest. He was shortly afterwards brought home to the valleys, was educated as a Protestant, in the communion of his forefathers, attended Protestant worship and received the sacrament in a Waldensean Church. He was married to a Waldensean woman, by a Waldensean pastor, but this marriage is now called a mixed marriage, under the allegation that he is an apostate Roman Catholic, and a process with all its penalties hangs over the family." (Grievances, p. 13.) Now Messrs. Bishops Hughes and Fenwick, do you approve of the manner in which your Popish church has treated this Waldensean soldier? Do you see any difference manifested here towards heretics, and that which the Popes have always shown towards them? Would you not, if you could, persecute every heretic in the United States? Do you not believe that every marriage between Catholics and Protestants in the United States and elsewhere, is invalid and not binding in the sight of God? Does not your Pope, your church, and do you not, yourselves, teach that the parties in such marriages are living in a state of adultery? Do you not teach that if a Catholic lady marries a Protestant, without a dispensation from your church, she is an adulteress and ought to be treated accordingly by your church, which, in the plenitude of her mildness, consigns her body to the holy inquisition, to be broken on the rack, and her soul to hell to perish everlastingly. Do I state the truth, reverend gentlemen? Will either of you contradict me? If you do, I will lay before you Antoine's Moral Theology, _De Matrimonio_, which some of your priests and myself studied in the same class, in the college of Maynooth, Ireland. Is this persecuting heretics or not? Did Paul IV., or Innocent III., ever show an instance of greater intolerance than you do, under your present Pope, even in these United States? But what would you do had you the power? The past history of your predecessors can best answer this question. Look at yourselves, you impostors of the present day; view yourselves in the mirror of truth, and if you are not too far gone in falsehood and hypocrisy, you must blush at the deceptions and impositions which you are trying to practise upon the citizens and government in this country. You will perhaps say that in 1794, all the edicts in force against the Vaudois, or Waldenses, were repealed by the king of Sardinia. It is more than probable that the soft-headed and brainless minister now at that court from the United States, may inform you, if you have not the fact from any other source, that the Vaudois have full liberty of conscience in the full exercise of their religion and the education of their children.

Our present minister, Wm. H. Stiles, Georgia, at that court, who is nothing better than a living libel upon diplomacy, was elected to Congress by the votes of Irish Papists. He had just tact enough--no fool is without more or less of it--to ingratiate himself with President Polk, and obtain the appointment of Charge to Sardinia, In him you have a pliant tool, who will tell you the king of Sardinia has issued orders to prevent the taking away children, with a view of obliging them to embrace the Catholic religion, and requiring also, that those children which have been taken away, shall be restored. This proves two important facts which cannot be doubted, as the King of Sardinia cannot even be suspected of any want of allegiance or respect for his royal brother, the Pope of Rome. It proves, in the first place, that the Roman church has authorized its members to go into the Alpine valleys, and steal from their Protestant brethren their beloved children, with a view of proselytizing them to the infamous-doctrines of Popery. It shows, in the second place, that the cries of their bereaved parents for their restoration, have been disregarded by those Popish robbers, otherwise the royal order for their restoration need not have been issued.

In spite of these edicts, children are now taken away, as Gilli informs us, under pretence of their being illegitimate. Two lamentable and heart-rending cases occurred in the year, 1828. Mind, take notice, Messrs. Bishops, of the date. This is not an old lie, as you have been pleased to call many of the statements in my books. If it be a lie at all, it is a new one. The case I refer to is this. A Popish priest demanded from a poor Protestant woman, her infant child, in order that it might be brought up in the faith of the infallible church. She refused, of course, to do so, but clung to it the more closely, pressing it to her bosom with a fondness such as a mother only can feel or describe, and fled to the mountains, preferring to perish with it there, rather than to have it brought up in the idolatries of Popery. And what was the consequence? I blush to relate it, for the honor of humanity. This Popish priest, in obedience to the commands of his holy church, did precisely what any Popish priest in the United States would do under similar circumstances. He ordered a small guard of carabineers to pursue her, and bring her, that she might be dealt with according to Popish laws. For many weeks she lived a miserable life, flying from place to place, until the sufferings of the mother and child excited the pity of the Popish monsters who issued the order for her apprehension. The order was withdrawn, but not revoked, and the woman's fears and anxieties continue, while she remains exposed to the same severity. Will you, Messrs. Bishops, after this, presume to say that the Popish church does not sanction the persecution of heretics? will you dare assert that she does not sanction their total extirpation? You cannot do so, and I risk nothing in saying, that you, Messrs. Fenwick and Hughes, would be the first to strike the blow, should a favorable opportunity offer.