Part 21

"But at length, taking heart and trusting in the mercy and help of God, of the goodness of their cause, and being confident, because of the impiety and treachery of their adversaries, they resolved once again to defend themselves. To this end they appointed their guards and garrisons, fortified several places, blocked up passages, and were wholly resolute upon this point, to die rather than they would in any measure obey a perfidious and wicked prince in so abominable a matter. But what need many words? Things were come to such a pass, that in several fights above nine hundred of the enemy were slain, whereas, on our side, hardly fifteen were wanting."

Such was the spirit of Popery during Brownson's thousand years of remarkable intellectual and literary activity! Do you, Americans, wish that the next thousand years of your existence as a nation should be distinguished by a similar intellectual preeminence in mental activity and Christian literature? But, continues Brownson, in his Review of January, 1845, all these things were altered. What things does Brownson mean? The universities? or the remarkable activity of Popish minds between the sixth and sixteenth centuries? Who denies the former? No one who is acquainted with history, or who knows that the world, a large portion of which was then under Popish dominion, needed to be purified from the idolatrous and disastrous doctrines of Popery. The insolence of Brownson is assuredly unequalled. Either that, or his ignorance of history, is unpardonable. "At the period of the English Revolution," says this consummate hypocrite, Brownson, "_the mass of the English people were buried in the grossest ignorance. Even long after, when the Wesleys first started, they talked of the ignorance even of the people of London, as they would of the South Sea Islanders_." This, as we say up here in New Hampshire, beats all. Was it not about this very period that the world gave birth to the illustrious Milton? Was it not at this period that Dryden was born? Was it not at this period that the brightest lights of literature that ever illumined the world were shining in all their glory? I might here give as many names of illustrious men and illustrious minds as ever adorned humanity; men whose lives were an honor, not only to science, but to religion, to Christianity, and true piety. Did not Erasmus live before the English Reformation? Was he grossly ignorant? Did not Luther live before the Reformation? Neither of those were Papists, but they knew Papist doctrines so well as to break loose from them and appeal to the Christian world to rise as one man and pull down and raze to the ground Popish universities and colleges, as calculated only to cover the world with darkness, by substituting the legends of monks for true science, and the decretals of Popes for the Word of God.

"From the eleventh century," says Brownson, "down to the sixteenth, literature and science received no check." Review of 1845, Jan. No. p. 17. Hear, reader, to this modern Esau, According to him, literature received no check from the years 1100 to 1600. This assertion is made without any qualification or exception. Does this Brownson believe that his readers are all a parcel of ignoramuses? It cannot be so; he must be aware that he states an untruth, and no man who has ever read history can think otherwise. It would be difficult, I apprehend, to meet a school boy in the United States--I may venture the assertion, that it would be impossible to find a child in America, over the age of ten or twelve years,--who does not know that the illustrious Galileo was born during that very period, and who could not tell, that his glorious discovery of the motion of the earth, not only met with opposition from the Church of Rome, but, that the ruling Pope countenaced his incarceration in the dungeons of the inquisition. Did not the Romish Church claim and enjoy the exclusive honor of striking the first blow at a man and a mind such as the world never saw before? Did not Pope Urban VIII., in 1623, declare and pronounce the motion of the earth to be perverse in the highest degree? It was about this time, as a living writer observes, that the whole Catholic Church looked upon all the earth as a condemned world. This absurdity was rejected by Galileo. He established an equality between heaven and earth. He showed that the latter is subject to the same laws and floats in the same splendor as the former; he put serenity and life in the place of mystical theory. For this he was opposed by Popish priests, the sworn enemies of science and literature. See, as the same writer observes, this venerable man, Galileo,--this good man, seventy years old, on his knees, barefooted and stripped to his shirt, before the officers of the holy inquisition; and for what? He tells you himself, in a letter to one of his friends. "They--the inquisitors--look upon my book as more abominable and pernicious to the Church than the writings of Luther." Look at him! you Brownson, thou contemptible cat's-paw of Popery, and say--if your heart has not been seared against the truth with something hotter than the hottest iron--whether literature and science did not receive a check, in the persecutions which your infallible church inflicted upon this great man? "The four hundred years which preceded the Reformation," says Brown-son, "were ages of prodigious activity. In them we meet with the great name of Abelard, under whom Heloisa studied philosophy." Mr. Brownson forgot, I presume, to inform us that he also taught Heloisa moral philosophy. In this latter science she was eminently skilful, and left the world some evidence, at least, of her not being an inapt scholar in the doctrines of genuine Popery. The great changeling, Brownson, could not give more illustrative examples of the beauties of Popery and of the advantages to be derived from a course of education at their schools, than that of Abelard and Heloisa; but he need not have gone so far from home for examples of this kind. There are hundreds of them to be found in the United States. We have schools, such as that which Abelard kept, and to which, Brownson tells us, "great flocks fled for education." One of these schools, my readers may recollect, recently flourished on Mount Benedict, Charlestown, Mass. Abelard, as every reader must recollect, lived in the twelfth century--at the very period, when, according to the great changeling--the Popish Church displayed her remarkable activity of mind in science and literature. Abelard was a learned doctor in the Church of Rome. He was, of course, a confessor; he boarded in the house of a Popish canon in Paris, whose name was Fulbert. This canon had a niece called Heloisa, whom he was anxious to send to a fashionable school and bring up in the doctrines of the infallible Church of Rome. Accordingly he sent Heloisa to attend the lectures of the pious and God-like Abelard, just as many of our American mothers, with the advice and consent of their lords and masters, send their children in this country to be educated, to Popish seminaries, kept by pious priests and saint-like nuns. Heloisa had not gone long to confession, when Abelard, her confessor, seduced her and prevailed upon the poor unthinking girl to become his mistress. In order to conceal this atrocious conduct and finding his dupe likely to become a mother, he sent her to a sister of his who lived at a considerable distance, where she was delivered of a son. It is said, that to appease Fulbert, the uncle of this victim of seduction and priestcraft, Abelard consented to marry his victim privately; but no sooner was he married and the anger of the uncle partially appeased, than he sent her to a monastery or nunnery and compelled her to take a religious habit; thus adding treachery to crime and requiting a pure and simple-minded girl's love, by additional ingratitude and villany. But the poor girl had many friends besides the uncle, who, seeing the cruel manner in which Abelard treated her, determined upon revenge, and they had it They surrounded his chamber at night, and took from his bed this man whom Brownson would hold up to Americans as a model teacher of morality, and had him emasculated. All this was done in the twelfth century. This was one of the great men whom the church produced in Brownson's golden age of Popery.

But what else could be expected of this Brownson? What else could be expected from any man who would hold and profess such sentiments as the following, which we find in his Review of 1840. "For our part," says the great changeling, Brownson, "we yield to none, in our reverence for science and religion; but we confess that we look not for the regeneration of the race from priests and pedagogues." Very respectful language, especially from one who has been a priest and pedagogue himself! "They,--the priests," continues Brownson--"have had a fair trial. They,--the priests--cannot construct the temple of God. They--the priests--cannot conceive its plan. They--the priests--know not how to build it They--the priests--daub with untempered mortar, and the walls they erect tumble down if so much as a fox attempt to go up thereon. We have no faith in priests and pedagogues," says Brownson; "they merely cry peace, when there is no peace and there can be none." Again the same traitor to God and religion, thus spews forth his Popish hatred to pure Christianity. "One might as well undertake to dip the ocean dry with a clam shell, as to undertake to cure the evils of the social state by converting men to Christianity." "For our part," continues Brownson, in another page of his Review, "we are disposed to seek the cause of the inequality of the conditions of which we speak, in religion, and to charge it to the priesthood. Rarely do we find, in any age or country, a man feeling himself commissioned to labor for a social reform, who does not feel that he must begin it by making war upon the priesthood. Indeed it is felt at once, that no reform can be effected without resisting the priests and emancipating the people from their power. Historical research, we apprehend, will be found to justify this instinct, and to authorize eternal hostility to the priesthood. Again, when once the class--that is, the class of priests--has become somewhat numerous, it labors to secure to itself distinction, and increases them. Hence the establishment of priesthoods or sacerdotal corporations, such as the Egyptian, the Braminical, the Ethiopian, the Jewish, the Scandinavian, the Druidical, the Mexican and Peruvian." Fie! fie! Mr. Brownson, the Mexicans belong to the Infallible Church, and like yourself, are strict members thereof. "These sacerdotal corporations," continues Brownson, "are variously organized, but everywhere organized for the purpose of monopolizing power and profit. The real idea at the bottom of these institutions, is only to enslave the mass of the people to the priests, who, by pretending, honestly or not, to possess the secret of rendering the gods propitious, are able to reduce the people to the most wretched subjection, and keep them there, at least for a time." At page 384, of Brownson's Review, of July, 1840, we find the following sweeping anathema against the Christian priesthood--not in the United States alone, but all over the world--and I would defy the most learned historian or impatient infidel upon earth, to produce any thing more blasphemous or more calculated to disturb the peace of man or the good order of society. "But, having traced the inequality we complain of, to its origin, we proceed to ask again, what is the remedy? The remedy is first to be sought in the destruction of the priest. The bad must be removed before the good can be introduced--conviction and repentance precede regeneration; Christianity is the sublimest protest against the priesthood ever uttered, either by God or man. In the person of Jesus, both God and man protest against the priesthood. What was the mission of Jesus but a solemn summons to judgment, and of the human race to freedom. He--Jesus--instituted himself no priesthood, no form of religions worship. He recognized no priest but a holy life, and commanded the construction of no temple but that of a pure heart." Take care, Brownson! don't let the Pope hear you. "He---Jesus--preached no form of religion." Take heed again! Did he not preach the religion of the Romish Church, think you? Have a care! you will commit yourself, unless I occasionally caution you. "He--Jesus--enjoined no creed." What, sir! not even that of the Pope of Rome? "He--Jesus--set apart no day for religious worship." Not a single one of those numerous holy days which the Infallible Church sanctions? "The priest is universally a tyrant, universally the enslaver of his brethren, and therefore it is that Christianity condemns them. Christianity could not prevent the establishment of a hierarchy, but it prepared for its ultimate destruction by insisting on the celibacy of the clergy." Really, friend Brownson, I am beginning to tremble for your safety in the Popish Church. "Again," says Brownson, in his Review of the same year, page 336, "we insist upon it"--remember, reader, that Brownson is the mouth-piece to Popery in the United States,--"that the complete and final destruction of the priestly order in every practical sense of the word priest, is the first step to be taken towards elevating 'the laboring' classes" Pray, Mr. Brownson, what shall we do with the ten thousand Romish priests which are to be found at the present time in the city of Mexico alone? Has the infallible Church concluded to ship them to our western States? "Priests," says Brownson, "are necessary enemies to freedom; all reason demonstrates this, and all history proves it." Look out, sir! you 're committing yourself again. Where are all those colleges you speak of as having been established between the sixth and sixteenth centuries, and in which you say was displayed a remarkable activity in science and literature? Nothing better than asylums or schools, for the education of men in such sciences as were calculated to overthrow the freedom of man. I told you so a while ago, and proved it too. All reason demonstrates this and all history proves it.

Again, Brownson says, in the same page of his Review, "There must be no class of men set apart and authorized, either by law or fashion, to speak to us in the name of God, or to be the interpreters of the word of God." Is it so, indeed, Mr. Brownson? I thought the Pope was authorized to do so, and that he and his church were especially empowered, to the exclusion of all, without distinction, to interpret the word of God. The word of God, you say again, "never drops from the priest's lips." What! do you mean to say that the word of God never drops from the Pope's lips? Rest assured, my worthy friend, that if you repeat that again to Bishop Fenwick, he will put you on short allowance. "The priests were always a let and hindrance to the spread of truth." Assuredly you cannot mean the Romish priests. You tell us, in your Review of this year, that the four hundred years which preceded the Reformation were ages of prodigious activity, and that during that time Abelard, St Bernard, Albert the Great, and Thomas Aquinas, were remarkable men. All these were priests; yet you say that priests have always been the enemies of freedom, and a let and hindrance to the spread of truth. You thought, the other day, that these were good men and learned men, especially Abelard. What do you think of them, now that you have become a Roman Catholic? You believe all of them to be saints, and you know many of them have been canonized. We have not your opinion of them since July, 1840. Let us hear what you thought of them then. We quote from page 387 of your Quarterly of that year. You ask the following question yourself, and you also answer it. Here are your words, viz: "What are the priests of Christendom, as they now are? Miserable panders to the prejudices of the age; loud in condemning sins nobody is guilty of, but miserable cowards when it is necessary to speak out for God. They are dumb dogs; as a body, they never preach a truth till there is no one whom it will indict; the imbecility of an organized priesthood, and its power to demoralize the people, is beginning to be seen; we have had enough of Christianity" Have you, indeed, Mr. Brown-son? Well, we have not; therein you and I differ. "Christianity," says Brownson, in the next line, "is powerless for good, but by no means powerless for evil; it now unmans us, and hinders the growth of God's kingdom." It is high time, brother Fenwick, that I should wish you joy. You have an acquisition to your church, in the great changeling Brownson, and you show a depth of wisdom rarely to-be found now-a-days, except among Jesuits, in sending your convert Brownson all over this country, to preach the pure and unsullied doctrines of your Infallible Church; your apostle Brownson is assuredly a fit man for your purposes. History does not inform us that there is a solitary instance since the establishment of your church, of any government having escaped its machinations; and worse than purblind indeed must that mail be, who cannot see at a glance that the primary object which Popish bishops have in commissioning this heartless, unprincipled infidel Brownson to go abroad lecturing among the happy people of this country, is to disturb the present order of society, and finally to overthrow this government, and erect upon its ruins the Papal throne.

This Brownson is unquestionably an object of great pity, or well-merited contempt I could turn from the bare mention of his name with nausea and disgust It is but a few months since that he represented the whole system of Christianity as a gross imposition upon mankind, and our holy religion one of the blackest impositions that ever was practised upon our race. But now he has become a Roman Catholic. Now that he is in the pay of the Pope and his Jesuits, like another Esau he turns round, betraying everything that he ever professed, and pretends to discover that in the Church of Rome are to be found all the elements of pure Christianity; that her priests are an exception to the great body of those priests against whom he pronounced his anathema a while ago.

How many months is it, Mr. Brownson, since you became a Papist, and found out that you had been all your life a victim of delusion and Protestant priestcraft? Ten, twelve, or eighteen, is it? Well, suppose it is. Is that enough to give you a thorough knowledge of Popery, and to satisfy you that the Popish Church is composed of purer materials than any of those numerous churches in which you have believed successively and alternately for the last thirty years, and from each of which you have been successively expelled and excommunicated? For, as you tell us yourself, in your Quarterly Review, so infamous and infidel were your principles, that even the Universalists could not tolerate you amongst them, and excommunicated you from their communion without one dissenting voice. So notoriously profligate and abandoned did they consider you, in mind, sentiment, thought, and language, that although their doctrine teaches them that Christ died for all, and that all are to be saved through him, they excepted you, and you alone, as far as I am aware. Wide as the range of that belief is, all-comprehensive as their charity is, and all-sufficient for the salvation of man as they believe the death of Christ to be, yet they could not believe that you were entitled to any benefit from it, and accordingly they formally excommunicated you. I can tell you, Mr. Brownson, that you have taken a false step, in your last move; you have plunged thoughtlessly into the labyrinth of Popery, without knowing any thing of its intricacies, certainly not enough to say much for or against. As yet you have scarcely been admitted behind the curtain of this vast theatre in which you have engaged to play a character. And believe me when I assure you that if you have undertaken any other part than that of a buffoon, you will be hissed off the boards before long. You may, perhaps, soon be let into the green room of the vast Popish theatre where you have made a short engagement, and there some of the machinery of Popery may be opened to your view. But mind what I tell you; when you see the hidden and concealed springs, the wheel within wheel, and the dirty workmen who set them in motion, you will behold sights and experience a stench which will strike you with an offensiveness as loathing and disgusting as if you had put your head into a common sewer. Nothing will you see there but covetous-ness, the weakest vanity, and the most unrestrained indulgence of the vilest passions--one general system of artifice and intrigue for power and opportunities for debauching females. Never before could I realize the belief that man was so entirely and totally corrupt as he is, until I was admitted as a Popish priest into the theatre and great machine-shop of Popery.

I have already given to the public some of those scenes which were witnessed by me in the Romish Church. They were new to some, and--as I expected--incredible to many Americans: but Americans--at least the well-informed amongst them--ought to know that I have related nothing new, or at least very little. My revelations have had, in point of fact and substantially, full publicity many years before my birth. The very facts I have stated had long been registered in the archives of literature, and might have been found on the shelves of the libraries of our own country. Some of them have been published by me with the sole view of scattering them amid our people in such form and at such a price as may be acceptable and accessible to all. Many of my statements might have seemed dark and cloudy, but truth and justice compel me to say that they were nothing in comparison with those which are to come. They bear no more likeness to what I shall give hereafter, than the fleeting clouds which we see floating here and there, denoting the approach of a storm, bear to the storm itself. But alas! I fear that it is perfectly useless for me to attempt to awaken the American mind to a due sense of the dangers to be apprehended from the introduction of Popery among us. The general answer which I receive to all my warnings is, "We care not for what Papists can do; we are a free people." It would be useless to reply to such childish argument as this, nor shall I attempt it; but I feel really humiliated at seeing such a people as the free citizens of the United States permitting themselves to be deluded, and the minds of their children poisoned by such doctrines as are preached by the infidel Brownson, now employed by the Pope of Rome, as the apostle of Popery in this country. It is also a source of deep regret to me to see Roman Catholics, especially the poor Irish, who owe this country more than any other people in the world, become its deadliest foes, and ready at the beck of their tyrant priests and bishops to trample under foot its glorious constitution, which guarantees to them what they never had before, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and equal rights. "_Americans shant rule us_," say this poor, misguided people, the Irish. This drives me, _nolens volens_, to a farther exposure of some of the deceptions practised upon them and upon mankind in general, by faithless Romish priests, trusting, in the mercy of Providence, that if I can show them that they are deceived in one way by their priests, it may put them on their guard in future against further deception.

I will now return to, or rather resume the consideration of, the doctrine of _auricular confession_, which formed in part the subject of the first volume of this work.