An Index of Prohibited Books (1840)/Part 1 - Preface
PREFACE.
The prospects of Protestant Christianity are improving. Light and vitality are beginning to infuse themselves into a mass, to which they had too much and too long been strangers. The genuine friends of true religion are rousing to something like preparation for a contest which they see to be unavoidable and at no great distance; and the doubtful or treacherous are doing them the favour and benefit of going over, more or less openly, to the ranks to which they really belong. Too long had Protestants been deceived and cajoled by the original enemy. They believed professions and demonstrations, because they trusted in the low honour which yet remains, and is one of the last good things to be abandoned, in simple human nature, corrupt as it is. They became the dupes of impostors, because they could not believe it to be in that nature, that individuals, professing what is called Christianity, could practise gross and deliberate deception, and could cherish a heart of settled and destructive hostility, while lips and pens exhausted the powers of language to express the fervour of their good will and gratitude. The bitter and the sweet came from the same fountain, and continued most harmoniously to flow in a collateral course: but the one was sincere, the other hypocritical—the one meant to be seen, the other to be concealed.[1] This is now no longer a secret. The faction has gained its end; and there is now hardly an interest in keeping up the imposition. The disciplina arcani has had its run and its reward, and is now abandoned.
But the victors will find, that they have purchased their success full dear. A reckoning will come; and the very arms by which they prevailed shall come to be the most effectual for their destruction.
What they believe, because they have seen, will not be lost upon British Christians. They will have learned a lesson at last by which they will profit. They now perceive how they are to be guarded against, and treat, a foe of the worst will, the most intense and most fraudulent, that this world of sin and malice ever produced. Their natural protectors having betrayed them, and let in the Romish wolf among them, they are taught, if any thing can teach them, that it will not do to go on sleeping, and flatter themselves that the wolf will do so too. The time is come that they must bestir themselves in some appropriate and effectual way; and, having found, that when the iron chains of civil restraint were so lovingly replaced by the chains of cherry-stones, which the dealers in securities had provided, the case was not much mended, they will feel it necessary to gird themselves to a new kind of warfare more within their own power; and by attacking the very citadel of Popery, and exposing its essential iniquity, in principle and practice, they may confidently hope to cover it with an infamy, which, with all its impudence, it shall be able to face no longer.
The means are furnished by the Impostor herself, much of it indeed very involuntarily. The volumes of Peter Dens no longer enjoy the concealment of exclusive sacerdotal circulation. Their pages, with their sanction, are thrown open to the profane eyes of heretics; and those heretics can read, and understand, and publish. The public is acquainted with the disclosure, the denial, and, when interest dictated, the re-acknowledgment, of these books. Their authority, their destined use, has been divulged. They are a mine, which has yielded much, but which is yet unexhausted. The rolls have been opened, and must still continue so. They will afford text for abundant future comment. It will not serve to put off their contents, as the opinions of a private doctor, or, according to the suggestion of some weak or designing advocate, a kind of Paley's Philosophy: the main contents are, the most approved doctrines of the most approved doctors of the Roman Church. The main contents are, the solemn, ex cathedra Constitutions of the heads of the Italian Church. Nor can they be set aside, or neutralised by being called foreign: they are naturalised and made of force in Ireland and England by non-reclamation, as well as by more formal recognition.[2] I can barely glance, additionally, at the Conferences, to be regulated by Dens, at the Maynooth Class-Books,[3] at the Diocesan Statutes, at the Bible of Rheims and Douay, with their Annotations, and all the mendacious knavery connected with them. But the subject is before the public, and I trust it will unceasingly be so, till the proper effect is produced.
I am not so much concerned with these engines
of imposture, about to turn upon their employers, as with those of the Indexes of prohibited books, which are capable of the same retro-action. These, in the first instance, and as long as they could be continued so, were a work of darkness. But the unwelcome light broke in, and made them manifest, and in some respects harmless. In fact, the tide is now turning; and the damnatory and prescriptive provisions of Rome, for the security of her own heterodox and immoral literature, is one of the best weapons put in the hands of her opponents for its exposure and ultimate demolition. For these documents teach, and infallibly teach, not only what the Church of Rome condemns, but, by her omissions, where knowledge was unavoidable, what she approves. And then, setting aside as unworthy of notice her insolent and brute condemnation of what by its light condemns her darkness, think of the wagon-load of Papal trumpery, as well as profligacy both in morals and theology, which this foreign monopolist of orthodoxy, virtually, that is, really, approves and recommends. An enumeration of a few only of the books which she condemns, and of a few only of the books which she thus approves, is sufficient to convince a child, that the self-nominated mistress of all churches is unworthy of being a scholar of the meanest. Her worst enemies need not desire more effectual exposures of her disgraceful nakedness than are afforded by the pages of her own Catalogues of condemned books in redundant quantity.
Were not an infatuation operating in the case, we might wonder that the more honest and better educated, even of her own communion, are not shocked and alienated by the injustice, the variation, the trickery, and dishonesty discoverable in almost every literary sentence of their supreme head, when he assumes to sit as judge upon moral and religious doctrine and learning; and that they do not at once give him up as the sovereign arbiter of their faith, who, in order to keep good his title to philosophic orthodoxy, is obliged to expunge a solemn decision of his own of two centuries' standing.
There is plainly an infatuation in the case;[4] [5] and they who imagine that the infatuation is weak, or little formidable, have much to learn of human nature. Well adorned and well managed, Popery has something in the more plausible faculties and tendencies of the soul of man exactly adapted, and responsive, to its main attractions and solicitations. When, indeed, surveyed in its true deformity, it has every thing to repel a sound understanding and really holy feeling. But it has coverings and ornaments which its native sagacity prompts, and enables it to throw over its repulsive features; and nothing more is necessary than a due calculation of human folly and human corruption to account at once for the progress of such a mockery of Christianity as is the Papal system; and really to wonder, that its progress is not tenfold greater than it is. But though falsehood is mighty, truth and holiness are oftentimes mightier, even in their effects on such intractable matter as the human soul. But falsehood still, with that intractability to good which is all in its favour, is deplorably mighty. To advert only to the more specious, and, distinctly from their application, innocent propensities of humanity—what costly and energetic appeals are made to the various senses, particularly to the vague but mighty instinct of natural devotion!—what gorgeous and imposing apparel in the ministering priesthood!—what profusion of superb ceremonies!—what splendour of precious stones and metals in the sacred vessels!—what spiritual intoxication of melody and harmony, both vocal and instrumental!—what scientific and successful management of light and position!—in short, what a masterly performance of the whole external, sensual, and sensualising exhibition, where eye and ear have every imaginable gratification allotted to them! So that the simple victims of the enchantment, instead of a saving religion, which will bring them to heaven, and fit them for it, find, to their endless disappointment, unless escaped from, that they have embraced, and mocked themselves with, a brilliant but noxious phantasm—an inflated inanity—a religion of sound and sentimentality—made up of chants and anthems; of copes, tunicles, albes, chasibles, and stoles; of the diversified luxuries of masonry and sculpture, arches, vaulted roofs, picturesque windows, carved and embossed; not to add, grotesque and satirical ornaments of all sorts, with shrines, monuments, tapers, and every ornament devisable by human ingenuity— and last, not least, of the "dim religious light," so apt and expressive an emblem of the superstition which it is meant to recommend, even in its most favourable form. This is the real material, though the formal may, and must, vary—a circumstance which presents the only admissible mitigation in the affair; and it is admitted, as far as it extends, with joy.
Either simply and officiously, or insidiously, some individuals are fond of pushing forward this sentiment, as if it were a discovery, or denied. It is far from either. With every charity to such names as the familiar ones of Pascal, Fénélon, Flechier, and others, be it known, that they were all distinguished, not only by bigoted intolerance against presumed heretics, but by mutual condemnations, and by the condemnation of what was good in them by their own Church, which is thus quit of all the benefit which she might derive, and is perversely made to derive, from their Christian excellence, for which they were indebted, not to their Church, but to that unextinguished Christianity, which their Church denounced and persecuted, and does so still. All the three who are named were respective persecutors, bigots, and enemies to the free circulation of the Scriptures: and they were all material idolaters. We believe, however, that a God of mercy regards circumstances; and that offences in the midst of darkness, and offences in the midst of light, will be visited by him in a very different manner.
Every sincere and feeling Christian catches with eagerness at the supposition of so happy an inconsistency as that presented in the instances just produced. He cannot but detest fundamental error and corruption introduced into, and, as far as it prevails, poisoning, the religion which is all his hope, all his honour—all the hope, and honour, and happiness of his fellow-sinners, if, and when, converted. He considers Popery as none the better for being the corruption of the best. He would rather see a noisome reptile on a dunghill than in a room of state; and poison is not the more acceptable for being presented in a golden chalice. But the subjects of Papal antichrist are yet fellow-creatures; they are yet spiritual, immortal, and accountable creatures; they may yet escape from their spiritual delusion and thraldom. For such, no Protestant Christian exists, who does not entertain the sincerest and most fervent charity. He feels for them precisely as St. Paul did for his countrymen, similarly circumstanced, though they were no idolaters, not even materially, much less formally. Our hearts' desire for every subject of erring Rome is, that he may be converted and be saved.
There is a class—I fear a large one—of which we must think and speak in a far different strain. They are not the deluded, but those who silently and basely acquiesce in the delusion, knowing it to be such; or, not simply acquiescing in it, but promoting it with the same knowledge. I will not say, but I believe, this to be the case with many of the clergy, nobility, and higher orders.[6] It is, indeed, impossible that some of the men of education among them must not be sensible of the utter nullity of so palpable a fable as Popery. Exclusion of all other objects may go a great way to bend the mind to an acceptance of such a system as true; but common sense will find, or make, chinks to enter, whatever pains may be taken to exclude it. And what does all this exclusion, and the effort to produce it, mean? What mean prohibitory and expurgatory Indexes? Why may not the accused at least be heard? Is there fear, that if they are heard, by the might of truth they must prevail? I believe this to be both the fact and the motive; and I believe every tolerably enlightened Papal priest to believe the same. But in what an awful predicament does this place them! May they reflect and repent in time!
In opposition to the view here, and generally given, it is alleged, that many individual Romanists have in past time borne, and in the present bear, a high reputation, not only for piety, but likewise, and particularly, for humanity; and that it is eminent injustice to deny them this praise. Nor is it denied. We have neither desire nor temptation to do it. Wherever, from circumstances, their peculiar faith fails, or is feeble, in its operation upon them, the principles of simple and independent Christianity are at liberty to act and produce their genuine effects in proportion to their force and purity. But it is past denial, that wherever the Church, that is, of Rome, commands, every true son of that Church must and will obey, whatever repugnance his natural conscience, or natural humanity, may feel and oppose; and there is not a nation where Christianity has been exposed to the superior power of Popery, whose history in such times has not been written in letters of blood; and in this nation, in particular, the Italian usurper and his instruments will have an awful account to settle for the barbarities perpetrated by them under the name and pretence of religion. That these agents of religious cruelty may, aloof from their intolerant creed, have possessed every valuable and even amiable qualification, only serves to aggravate the charge against a misnamed religion, which no human virtue has power to arrest in her inhuman course, and which, in that course, can even convert the benevolent into savages. The concluding reflection of Bishop Mant in his valuable History of the Church of Ireland, on the character of Mary I. of England, is just and important. Having suggested the sincerity of her zeal as the cause of her cruelty, he adds, "But the more her evil deeds are extenuated, by the supposition of the sincerity of her zeal, the more deep and dark is the brand of ignominy stamped upon that form of Christianity which actuated her in so nefarious a career."[7]
It may seem almost superfluous to observe, but it is important to consider, that the charge against Rome for her literary proscriptions does not attach to the simple act of censure or condemnation, but to the objects, quality, and character, of the censure or condemnation. For there is not a determination on the subject more just or applicable than that of the poet, —
Si mala condiderit in quern quis carmina, jus est Judiciumque. H. Esto, si quis mala; sed bona si quis, &c. Hor. Sat. II. 1.
And to one affecting Academic sagacity, who should insist or insinuate, that the determination is indecisive, it may be enough to say, that there are many points on which suspense is allowable and even unavoidable, and there are likewise others, not a few, which are about as certain, as that darkness is not light. Apart from books of impiety, obscenity, magic, &c. which, for form's sake, and for policy's sake, are condemned, and which are readily given up by all, let any one call to mind the other objects of reprobation, which are almost exclusively books of evangelical piety, and emphatically translations of the Scriptures, most hypocritically denounced as unfaithful; and which, where particular passages are specified (as in the single Expurgatory of Rome, or the numerous ones of Catholic Spain,) are for the most part the main and saving truths of the Gospel, particularly justification by faith in Christ alone — and then let him say, whether these are not decisive and burning proofs of guilt.
Although the present work may be justly and advantageously considered as a sequel to the Literary Policy, it is perfectly distinct and independent; and, without troubling himself with any thing which has preceded on the subject, the reader may here learn, what may be regarded as the present Pope's Profession of his own and his Church's Literary Faith, particularly as embracing what he considers as his proper and exclusive province, Theology. His Holiness has furnished facts, which it will remain for time to discover, with what prudence they have been made public. He has certainly, whether inerrably or not, calculated pretty freely upon the indifference or stolidity of Protestants.
The very scarce Roman Catalogue of Prohibited Books printed at Venice in 1554, and here reprinted, will be valued, I doubt not, by students of the higher class. I am happy in this labour, contracted as it is, to follow the example of my estimable friend, the Rev. Richard Gibbings, of Trinity College, Dublin, to whom the public and myself are indebted, not only for an elaborately exact reprint and facsimile of the rare Expurgatory of Brasichellen, but also for a Preface highly creditable to his learning, research, and judgment, and from which I have derived more important information than I was aware was extant. I may be allowed here to allude likewise to my own rescue of the Index of a vigorous pontiff, Sixtus V., from intended and well-provided-for destruction and oblivion. It is seldom, indeed, that guilt of any kind, and particularly fraud, gains so much by its primary success, as not to be wofully overbalanced and punished by the effects of its subsequent detection, when that takes place, which may generally be reckoned upon.
As a striking and instructing illustration of the familiar confidence with which the disciples of Rome put forward their most extravagant and baseless pretensions, as well as of the cool insensibility with which they receive the most palpable exposure of their literary dishonesty, I will present the reader with a quotation from a work not in every hand, and one of considerable ability and importance— "Roman Forgeries, or a true account of False Records, discovering the Impostures and Counterfeit Antiquities of the Church of Rome. By a Faithful Son of the Church of England [Thomas Traherne], London, 1673."
At the end of his Advertisement to the Reader, this author introduces, as an incident which befell him while in pursuit of his favourite studies, that which follows: these are his words—"One evening, as I came out of the Bodleian Library, which is the glory of Oxford and this nation, at the stairs' foot I was saluted by a person that has deserved well both of scholars and learning, who, being an intimate friend of mine, told me there was a gentleman, his cousin, pointing to a grave person in the Quadrangle, a man that had spent many thousand pounds in promoting Popery; and that he had a desire to speak with me. The gentleman came up to us of his own accord. We agreed for the greater liberty and privacy to walk abroad into the New Parks. He was a notable man, of an eloquent tongue, and competent reading; bold, forward, talkative enough. He told me, that the Church of Rome had Eleven Millions of Martyrs, Seventeen Œcumenical Councils, above a Hundred Provincial Councils, all the Doctors, all the Fathers, Unity, Antiquity, Consent, &c. I desired him to name me One of his Eleven Million of Martyrs, excepting those who died for treason in Queen Elizabeth's and King James's days. For the martyrs of the primitive times were martyrs of the Catholic, but not of the Roman Church, they only being martyrs of the Roman Church that die for Transubstantiation, the Pope's Supremacy, the doctrine of Merits, Purgatory, and the like. So many he told me they had, but I could not get him to name one. As for his Councils, Antiquities, and Fathers, I asked him what he would say, if I could clearly prove that the Church of Rome was guilty of forging them, so far, that they had published Canons in the Apostles' names, and invented Councils that never were; forged Letters of Fathers, and Decretal Epistles, in the name of the first bishops and martyrs of Rome, made five, six, seven hundred years after they were dead, to the utter disguising and defacing of Antiquity for the first four hundred years after our Saviour? 'Tush! these are nothing but lies,' quoth he, 'whereby the Protestants endeavour to disgrace the Papists.' 'Sir,' answered I, you are a scholar, and have heard of Isidore Mercator, James Merlin, Peter Crabbe, Laurentius Surius, Severinus Binius, Labbé and Cossart, and the Collectio Regia, books of vast bulk and price, as well as of great majesty and magnificence. You met me this evening at the library door: if you please to meet me there tomorrow morning at eight of the clock, I will take you in; and we will go from class to class, from book to book; and there I will shew you in your own authors, that you publish such instruments for good records; and then prove, that those instruments are downright frauds and forgeries, though cited by you upon all occasions.' He would not come; but made this strange reply: — 'What if they be forgeries? what hurt is that to the Church of Rome?' "No!' (cried I, amazed.) Is it no hurt to the Church of Rome to be found guilty of forging Canons in the Apostles' names, and Epistles in the Fathers' names, which they never made? Is it nothing in Rome to be guilty of counterfeiting Decrees, and Councils, and Records of Antiquity? I have done with you.' Whereupon I turned from him as an obdurate person."
I cannot forbear an observation upon the correct distinction of Traherne, that they only can be claimed as Rome's martyrs, who suffered for Transubstantiation, the Pope's Supremacy, Merits, Purgatory, and the like. These only, and most truly, are Rome's, or her Sovereign's martyrs.
On the subject of such martyrs, there is a fine apostrophe in the highly interesting and strangely overlooked work of the celebrated Dr. Donne, the Pseudo-martyr, in defence of James the First's Oath of Allegiance, but embracing allied topics of much originality and moment. In the "Preface to the Priests and Jesuits, and to their Disciples in this kingdom," towards the close, he breaks out — "I call to witness against you those whose testimony God himself hath accepted. Speak then and testify, O you glorious and triumphant Army of Martyrs, who enjoy now a permanent triumph in heaven, which knew the voice of your Shepherd, and stayed still he called, and went then with all alacrity — Is there any man received into your blessed legion, by title of such a death, as Sedition, Scandal, or any human respect occasioned? O no; for they which are in possession of that Laurel are such as have washed their garments, not in their own blood only, (for so they might still remain red and stained,) but in the blood of the Lamb which changes them to white."[8]
The martyrs here most justly dis-canonized are so truly his Holiness's martyrs, that he is entitled to the full and sole credit of their murder — himself being the real murderer. For this just and unanswerable view of the affair I refer to Dr. C. O'Conor's Columbanus, No. VI. pp. 108 and following, under the head" § VI. Historical narrative of eleven Priests confined in Newgate for not renouncing the Pope's pretended Deposing Power" They were all but two executed. The whole is amply worthy of every Romanist's serious consideration. The charge against the head of his Church at the time, and every other head in similar circumstances, is awful and irresistible. It is as plain as any demonstrable proposition can be, that the objection against James's oath of allegiance was not this or that alleged scruple, but the fact, that the oath compassed its intention, and obliged the taker to a real allegiance to his true and natural sovereign, independently of his pretended spiritual, who could easily draw any thing, however temporal, under his spirituality, by means of indirectè, and in ordine ad spiritualia. After enumerating the eleven sufferers with the cause of their suffering, Dr. O'Conor observes," Let us now consider who, in the eye of unprejudiced reason, was the persecutor and executioner of those unfortunate men, James or the Pope? — The evidence of facts is irresistible. The question bears not one moment's examination, Qui facit per alium facit per se."
On precisely the same principle, and with the same demonstration, the blood of those who suffered for their Papal treason and rebellion in the reign of our Queen Elizabeth, in consequence of the damnatory bull of Pius V., repeated or unrepealed by Gregory XIII., Sixtus V., Urban VII., Gregory XIV., Innocent IX., and Clement VIII., will be required at the hands of those sovereign lords, their real murderers, at the day of just retribution, when neither bribery, nor force, nor fraud, will be of any avail.[9]
- ↑ See the Speech of Mr. Colquhoun at Exeter Hall, March 11, 1836, where this concurrent flow of professed loyalty and secret rebellion is irresistibly demonstrated and detailed. Standard (Newspaper) and Publications of the Protestant Association, Vol. I.
- ↑ See McGhee in all his Speeches and Works.
- ↑ The Account of the Maynooth System, by Mr. O'Beirne, just published, has left its vindication only to the most profligate of advocates. The voice of truth will at last be heard and prevail even in the Lower House (and it is low enough) of the British Legislature. Were any portion to be selected for particular attention, I should fix upon that under the head of "the Seal of Confession," pp. 124, &c. Let any honest man read the following, pp. 128-131: —
"Were a conspiracy to murder the Queen revealed to the priest in confession, it is an established principle of the Popish Church, as laid down in the Maynooth Class-book, that the horrible intention is not to be disclosed.
"In Prussia, the inviolability of the Seal of Confession is not allowed. Whenever it is necessary to prevent treason or to punish murder, the State requires the Romish priest, under severe penalties, to declare to the magistrate whatever he may have learned in confession relative to those crimes.
"What a system of instruction! What a course of education for the Roman Catholic priesthood of Ireland! How can that unhappy country be expected to break its adamantine fetters, while Maynooth College continues to be supported by the Government and the country for the propagation of treason, perjury, sedition, immorality, and vice! How long will the people of England tamely look on, and passively behold the application of the funds of the country to the support of a system of education which openly inculcates perjury and murder for the purpose of supporting the diabolical Confessional—an institution to which may be ascribed the greater part of the outrages and crimes, the murders and massacres, which have stained and are daily staining unhappy Ireland? Owing to the ease of mind necessarily experienced by the murderer in communicating his horrid deed to the priest at confession, and also the facility of obtaining absolution for his awful crime, murders have lost the greater part of their enormity in the eyes of the demoralised peasantry of Ireland. I am thoroughly convinced that the frequent occurrence of murder in Ireland is principally to be attributed to the pain of mind attendant on being the confidant of a guilty secret being removed, by communicating the secret to the priest in confession, and receiving absolution. Every one of common understanding must know what a heavy burden it is to bear the consciousness of crime—how distressing it is to he the confidant of a guilty secret; but in Ireland, owing to the Confessional, that pain is not felt. If there was no such institution as the Confessional to interpose its authority and give the troubled mind an opportunity of obtaining all the comforts of a superstitious religion, not only would murder and other heinous crimes become of less frequent occurrence, but such crimes would very often (as in this country) be openly acknowledged, and thus the ends of justice obtained. Have there not been numerous instances, in this kingdom, of murderers voluntarily surrendering themselves and confessing their guilt, owing to the dreadful weight with which the consciousness of their crime naturally oppressed them? Instances of this kind are unknown in Ireland, owing to the safety-valve of the Confessional, by which the instinctive pangs of conscience are completely removed. The priest, according to the Maynooth Class-book, acts as God in the Confessional, (sacerdos peccata confessa excipiens Christi vices ac personam gerit,) and can therefore absolve from all sin, no matter how great; nor can he ever disclose any communication made to him in confession. Nay more, were he summoned before any tribunal of the country, for example, before a judge of assize, to give evidence relative to any of the prisoners at the bar, although he knew them, by confession, to be robbers or even murderers, he is bound to swear as in ignorance of the fact that they are good and honest men, because their guilt he became acquainted with as God; but the judge can examine turn only as man, 'judex confessarium interrogare non potest nisi quatenus hominem.' Admirable system of education, and well worthy of being supported by annual Parliamentary grants of the public money!"
I could wish the reader to peruse with some attention pp. 197-208, where he will find a brilliant detection of the artifice, perhaps originally brought into complete practice by French encyclopedists, of opposing by weak argument what is maintained by stronger, for a politic demonstration and deception. The subject is, the delicate one, of the power claimed by the Popes of deposing temporal sovereigns. The bishops of Rome have never ceased meddling with kingdoms, from the reign of the infamous Hildebrand; at one time playing off sovereigns against their subjects by persecution, at another subjects against their sovereigns by rebellion, insurrection, or secret assassination, as circumstances or interest required. The Earl of Shrewsbury knows that the power of deposing monarchs, particularly heretical, is in as full claim under Gregory XVI. as under Gregory VII.; and his present holiness relies upon his beloved son, John, that by means of the pious Institute, and by every other pious and practicable means, he will do his best to bring the necks of Britons under the servile yoke, both civil and religious, which was gloriously shaken off by some of our monarchs; and when one apostate monarch attempted to reimpose it, was again dashed to the ground by the honourable and British efforts of a Talbot and others—more noble by their actions than their birth, snd throwing forward a shade of infamy upon any degenerate descendant who should thereafter betray so righteous a cause. His infallibility, in a letter which deserves to be perpetuated, should have been better advised than to talk of his first namesake's enlightening Britain. His more enlightened sons have taken care to confine the enlightening to the Saxons, or Anglo-Saxons; because they knew well enough what answer can be given à fortiori to the larger claim, and indeed to the smaller likewise.—See Soames. The Pontiff might, perhaps, be thinking of the pretty story in the beginning of the second book of Beda's History, of the British youths exposed for sale in the Roman market, whose unhappy rendition moved the punning commiseration of his predecessor. His holiness likewise was a little overseen in gratuitously suggesting to the imagination of Englishmen, who may not have forgotten the fires of Smithfield, "the torch of the Catholic faith." The Catholic, the sanctissima (as Sanders calls her), Mary, gave her subjects a fair specimen of the torch with which she meant to enlighten them. James attempted to give another. And the Italian priest, Gregory, with the aid of his beloved sons, hopes yet to apply the Catholic torch more effectually in these lands. But it is, indeed, miserable, that in this sanctuary of freedom there should be found noblemen of education taking their part in a conspiracy to renew spiritual slavery—a slavery worse than Egyptian or West Indian—in emancipated Britain, and to force or swindle upon it a creed, which it would be pure and ungracious irony to suppose that, in its peculiarity, they believe themselves.
The word swindle I use deliberately. None but sucb or an equivalent would adequately express the conduct of Papal individuals and bodies respecting the circulation of small books, particularly that unprincipled one of substituting a Popish for a Protestant tract, leaving the cover of the latter. And yet an editor of a Popish periodical had the characteristic impudence of his Church to glory in the act.—See the Birmingham Catholicon, for January 1836, p. 20. I transcribe the following from the Protestant Magazine, for January 1839. "Mode of Proselyting. (To the Editor of the Wolverhampton Chronicle.)—Sir, I beg your insertion of the following facts; they need no comment, and I shall therefore add none:—I have, connected with my church at Bilston, a society for the distribution of religious tracts in my district of the parish; these tracts are enclosed in a cover, bearing the name of the minuter of the district, and containing a few words of admonition to the readers. Last week, Mr. John Hutton, one of those who kindly perform the office of distribution, brought to my curate, the Rev. J. E. Troughton, four Romish tracts under my covers, which had been circulated as if under my direction. The St. Mary tracts had been torn out, and these Romish tracts substituted in their place. I shall send the tracts in question to your office, in the humble hope that my brethren in the neighbourhood who may chance to read this paragraph may be upon their guard against a similar ingenuity.
"I am, Sir, yours faithfully,
"J. B. Owen
"Incumbent of St. Mary, Bilston."I add another testimony to the same, and to a similar, "ingenious device," from the same periodical, for May 1840, p. 160. "Popish Frauds.—Under the covers of the tracts of Religious Societies, other tracts containing Romish doctrines and superstition are now circulated. The cover of the Family Library is in like manner imitated. An engraving similar, at first view, to that on the tracts of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge is placed on the title-page of the Catholic Institute of Great Britain. Here, then, is a society especially sanctioned by all the Vicars Apostolic of Great Britain, of which the Earl of Shrewsbury is President, and several of the Romanist noblemen and gentlemen Vice-Presidents, and of which all the Romish bishops and clergy are ex-officio members, putting forth on the face of every copy of its stereotyped tracts what looks very much like a deliberate attempt to impose on the poor uneducated persons among whom they are circulated." See, too, Record, April 6, 1840, from the Morning Herald, where it appears, that the word Catholic above Family Library is printed in small German letters—with what effect among the illiterate is plain: the intention may be fairly inferred. The fallacious, and palpably dishonest, as well as nugatory, declaration of the Papal prelates, &c. in 1826, founded on the celebrated Exposition (or rather Imposition) of Bossuet, is pushed into fresh circulation. Every informed Romanist knows that this work does not contain the honest doctrine of his Chuch, and thart it never had the approbation of the head of his Church. A thing was issued meaning to cheat the author and the world with the notion that it was given: but it was plainly eluded. Bausset, who wrote the Life of the bishop, is utterly unable, with all his efforts, to stand against palpable fact.—See Hist. i. pp. 172, &c. or Liv. iii. § xiii.—xv. He may satisfy persons, who, like "J. R." in the Gentleman's Magazine, are, or appear to be, satisfied with any thing on their own side.
The specimens of dishonesty and artifice united which I have adduced are nothing irregular or abhorrent from the Papal system. In fact they are a natural and almost an essential part. Noble lords are not indeed to be accused of knowing or sanctioning them, till they are so notorious that they cannot be unknown or denied. To treat of Bribery and Intimidation of all forms, as the subject deserves, would exceed my bounds. Let Lulworth Castle, or Stoke—Alton Towers, Tavistock, and numberless other places, speak.
A copy of the entire epistle of Gregory finds an appropriate place in the present work, as emanating from the person who published the Index which is its subject, and as exhibiting a congenial character in its direct aspect.
"Pope Gregory XVI.
"To our Beloved Son, John Earl of Shrewsbury, President of the Catholic Institute of Great Britain.
"Beloved son, health and apostolical benediction.—Whilst filled with sorrow, on account of the ever-increasing calamities of the Church of Christ, we have received such abundant cause of gladness, as has not only relieved us in the bitterness wherewith we were afflicted, but has excited in us more than ordinary joy; for we have been informed that, by the care of yourself, and other noble and pious men, the Catholic Institute was, two years ago, established in Great Britain, with the design especially of protecting the followers of our Divine faith in freedom and security, and, by the publication of works, of vindicating the spouse of the immaculate Lamb from the calumnies of the heterodox. Since, therefore, these purposes tend in the highest degree to the advantage of the English nation, you can easily understand, beloved son, the reason why such joy should have been felt by us, who have been, by Divine appointment, constituted the heirs of the name and chair of that Gregory the Great, who, by the torch of the Catholic faith, first enlightened Britain, involved in the darkness of idolatry. We are encouraged to entertain the cheering hope that the light of Divine faith will again shine with the same brightness as of old upon the minds of the British people. We desire nothing with greater earnestness than to embrace once more with paternal exultation the English nation. Wherefore, beloved son, we cannot refrain from strenuously exhorting you, and all the members of the pious Association over which you preside, to offer up fervent prayers with us to the Father of Mercies, that he would propitiously remove the lamentable darkness which still covers the minds of so many dwelling unhappily in error, and in his clemency bring the children of the Church, who have wandered from her, back to the bosom of the mother whom they have left.
"Meanwhile, to you and to all your countrymen, who belong in any way to the Catholic Institute, we most affectionately impart our Apostolical benediction.
"Given at Rome, at St. Peter's, on the 19th day of February, 1840, the tenth of our Pontificate.
"GREGORY,
"P. P. XVI."
- ↑ His holiness, it appears, has most unaccountably forgotten his "Patroness and Protectress,"—"his greatest hope, yea the entire ground of his hope"—the most blessed Virgin Mary. Perhaps eight years have improved his divinity.
- ↑ "The children of the Church," enlisted by baptism, of any kind, into the Pope's church militant, and punishable as deserters if they leave it.
- ↑ In the examination by the Committee of the Lords on the State of Ireland, of the Rev. John Burnet, then of Cork, March 16, 1825, occurs the answer—"Some gentlemen of the Catholic community, men of information, have distinctly told me so themselves"—that their profession was a point of honour. "They said, that they do not believe in the Catholic system of religion, nor in any other system of religion; but as their parents have been Catholics, they profess the religion of their parents, and adhere to that profession, because they believe the Catholics to be an oppressed people." The fact, however, is notorious, and could not be otherwise.
- ↑ Niccola Orlandino was of noble family and author of the first part of the Historia Societatis Jesu. The work was published after his death by his Continuator, Francesco Sacchino, who, in a prefatory account of the deceased, says that he was—Moribus suavibus, ingenio candido, &c. See how he speaks of Luther's death, lib. vi. § 59: Deus * * * portentum illud orbis terrarum, seminatorem malorum omnium, & hujus temporis Antichristum de medio sustulit. Piget infernum hoc monstrum suo nomine nominare. Ille, inquam, Catholicæ Religionis transfuga, desertorque Cœnobii, instaurator hæresium omnium, illud Dei & hominum odium, duodetrigesimo suæ defectionis anno, cum lautè et splendidè cœnatus esset, facetiisque de more lusisset, ea ipsa nocte, repentino morbo correptus, jugulatusque, sceleratissimam animam vomuit, gratissimam Satanæ hostiam, qui se talibus oblectat escis, unde ejus saturetur ingluvies. Such and more is the language of this sweet and candid man; and it only shews into what brutes even such men may be transformed by being nursed with the milk of the Roman Tigress. For the lying calumny itself, it is the familiar language of the faithful children of the original liar. Comtemplate Cardinal Pole in some of his candid moods, and then read his Pro Ecclesiasticæ Unitatis Defensione Lib. IV. The mite ingenium of Cardinal Allen is likewise beautifully illustrated in the Catholic effusion of the Admonition to the Nobility, &c. "This tyrant," (Queen Elizabeth)—"the infinite quantity and enormous quality of her most execrable wickedness"—"her horrible sacrifices," &c.—"Luciferian pride"—"Incestuous bastard! born in sin, of an infamous courtesan, Anne Bullen," &c. &c. Pretty language to be addressed to the Nobility of the time! Even Mr. Tierney dares not to give the whole original. On whosesoever's personal back it is to fall, whether Allen's, who gives his name to it, or the foul Parsons's, it falls ultimately upon the Papal Church.
- ↑ As concerns James's Oath of Allegiance it may be worth while to consult the account given by Charles Dodd author of the Ecclesiastical History in his Secret Policy of the Society of Jesus, &c., letter xiv. pp. 190-5, of the way in which those gems of purest Catholicity could play fast and loose with oaths and obligations, either of allegiance or rebellion; and how, by their own conduct in defiance of Papal fulminations, they justified the secular clergy, who took James's oath with the same heretical contempt of the head of the Church. The whole of Dodd's work is replete with exposures of Jesuitic immorality and knavery, as pungent and indignant as any which might be expected to flow from a Protestant pen: and it is a matter of some surprise, that the author should appear almost wholly unconscious, that no small measure of the castigation, which he deals out to individuals certainly very deserving of it, recoils upon the communion of the castigator himself. True, as is done in many similar cases, he endeavours to atone for his apparently traitorous severity by occasional sallies of superfluous bitterness against presumed heretics: but the spontaneous advantage which he has given those heretics, while he only thought of avenging a personal quarrel, is neither affected nor diminished by this circumstance. Campion, it appears, made no acruple of professing obedience to be due to Elizabeth as a lawful sovereign. The work is uncommon, and, at the present, and apparently approaching, crisis, peculiarly valuable. That this, as well as the History of the College of Douay, which gave occasion to it, as exciting the intemperate attack of a son of Ignatiusis, a production of C. Dodd, though both are anonymous, is considered as not admitting a doubt by a very competent witness in the Catholicon for 1816, Vol. IV. pp. 120, &c., signing himself K, and who, I presume, is the Rev. Mr. Kirk of Lichfield.
- ↑ As a signal specimen of the literary knavery of Rome, and of the hard game it has to play, I will give in a final note, the result of a rather minute examination which I have made in the instance to be brought forward. In my Memoirs of the Council of Trent, pp. 277-9, I had occasion to notice, after James and others, a notorious and interested corruption of a passage in Cyprian, de Unitate Ecclesiæ. This is not the specimen I now propose to introduce, but another, relative to an edition of Chrysostom's Epistle to Cæsarius, first brought to notice in the Latin translation by Peter Martyr, who found it in a library of Florence, and presented it to Archbishop Cranmer; with the dispersion of whose library it was lost: Cardinal Perron thence obtained the opportunity, which he did not suffer to escape, of questioning its existence. It was, however, discovered in the Florence Library, and printed by Emeric Bigot, with Palladius's Life of Chrysostom, which formed the first and main article, in 1680, at Paris. The doctors of the Sorbonne were not pleased with it; and before the publication, obtained the suppression and abstraction of the leaves both of the Epistle, and of the part of the preface referring to it; and indeed of some others, as we shall see. Archbishop Wake fortunately got possession of those very leaves, and published them in his Defence of his Exposition, &c. in 1686, Appendix pp. 142, &c. They had been published in the preceding year by Le Moyne. See Jenkyns's Remains of Cranmer, ii. 325, note. The genuineness of the Epistle is now, though reluctantly, admitted by the Benedictine editors of Chrysostom. I propose, however, to be a little more minute upon the subject, and lay before the reader some corroborating phenomena in the copy which I possess. The first leaf, then, containing the title-page, must have been substituted; for the contents of the volume are there enumerated, and the Epistle does not appear. The leaf after the Dedicatory Epistle must likewise be a substitution for the same reason. And here a new and positive deception commences; for the article, following the Epistle in question, has the page 225 assigned to it, though 229 is assigned to that immediately preceding. It was en règle to begin the mystification at due distance from the point of main imposition; and a mistaken number might most hopefully be thrown upon the carelessness of the printer, as has been profitably done in other cases. We now get to the Prefatio, Signat. ĩ (2). This is a substituted leaf, in the place of two leaves, or four pages — from Signat. ĩ (2) recto to ĩ (3) verso. But the curious and elucidating circumstance in my copy is this. The substituted leaves would, of course, be fresher than the rest, and would, in technical phrase, be set off on the opposite page, if, as appears to be the fact in my copy, the two were placed in contact too early. This has been the case in my copy, and must have taken place while the work lay in sheets, or before binding. Now both the sides, or pages, of the substituted leaf of the Prefatio are found set off one upon a leaf (likewise substituted) immediately preceding the Epistle under view, for a reason which will appear; the other on the fly-leaf at the end. We now proceed to the main article, the Epistle itself. It was necessary to dismiss the immediately preceding leaf, because the Epistle began on the verso of that leaf. The Epistle occupied that verso, or page, and four leaves, or eight pages besides. They are numbered, as in the Preface, in Wake's restoration, in the margin. But here was something of a difficulty: the sudden advance of the pages would betray the abstraction. A true son of Rome is seldom at a loss for resources. The page preceding the substitution is 234; the next would be 235; but the careless printer might naturally mistake the middle number and make it 245. Here is a new confusion in an unsuspicious place. Then, next to this substituted leaf is another quite new, and blank, with only a general title of what follows, with no page, and with the signature (to get on) Hh, when it should in order be Gg iii. Then we land on the next article with its due and original page 245, which was provokingly anticipated by the careless printer, and the signature Hh iii another advance. The second of the two substitutes here mentioned is set off on p. 234, and we shall find the first likewise performing the same act. For, let the reader know, another substituted leaf was necessary, which is the last, being the last of the Index; and that Index being a particular one of the first and main article, the Life by Palladius, there followed another, at the end of which was the Privilegium. That last Index would let out all. It was therefore dismissed, and with it the last leaf of the former Index, in order, with a new leaf, to get in the Privilegium at the end. This is done; the substituted page is found set off on the recto of the substituted leaf immediately following p. 234, while, at the same time, it receives the impression, of which we were in quest, of the very page, falsely numbered 245. It is seldom that fraud presents us with so many subsidiary points of detection, so minute, so accidental, and yet so decisive. This instance of disgraceful exposure, it might have been expected, would have taught Roman editors a little caution. But the instance exactly similar in the case of Baluzius's edition of Cyprian, and in which nearly the same phenomena are visible, proves that the Church of Rome, on even a moderate temptation, does not know how to act honestly. At pp. 106, 7, where Ferrari is referred to as declaring, that the reading of prohibited books, even where the prohibition is not enforced, is yet, and nevertheless, a violation of a precept of the Church, it should perhaps have been added, that such violation is in the Papal code a mortal sin, subjecting to eternal death. So Dr. James Butler, in his popular Catechism, approved by Dr. Doyle, Dublin, 1827, p. 52," Q. Do the precepts of the Church oblige under pain of mortal sin? A. Yes; He that will not hear the Church," &c. So likewise in H. T[uberville]'s Abridgement of Christian Doctrine, Permissu Superiorum, p. 66," Q. What sin is it to break any of these Church commandments? A. A mortal sin of disobedience," &c. It is the same in Dr. Doyle's edition of this work, p. 70. Dublin, Coyne, 1828.