An Index of Prohibited Books (1840)/Part 8 - Critique I
I will add a more modern instance of the literary influence which Rome has and exercises over her subjects. The person concerned is the celebrated, and in some sense meritorious, Dodd, author of the Romish Church History of England, now being reedited by the Rev. M. A. Tierney. — The papal historian, who must be acknowledged to be a very competent judge, being, of course, in the secrets of his own communion, has described the méthode of the Jesuits (and Jesuitism is no more than Popery highly rectified) in disposing of works which they disapprove in the following manner. Those who are influenced by them, and under their direction, he observes, "are commonly forbidden either to read or purchase such books, as might contribute towards setting them right in several matters where false notions had taken possession of them to the prejudice of truth. To carry on this contrivance, their way is to buy up, commit to the flames, and use several other uncommendable methods, to hinder the spreading of such books as would give proper intelligence, in order to establish the reputation of their own writers. This, I apprehend, may be the fate of my Reply: there being no other way left to support the credit of your Specimen." — Apology for the Church Hist. &c., being a Reply to * * *, a Specimen of Amendments, &c., under the fictitious name of Clerophilus Alethes. [Constable] 1742, p. 204.
I conclude this exposure of the policy — the unlimited and all-penetrating policy — of Rome, as respects religious and even other literature, wherever her interest is concerned, with the moral, of no trifling importance, that it becomes every Christian individual to be well aware of the subtilty of his most inveterate and very powerful foe; and that it eminently behoves every Christian government to understand, and guard against, the necessary hostility and machinations of the same foe, and, as its only security, to break through and cripple its organisation; insisting that its operations shall be subject to legal inspection and effectual regulation. For it is intolerable, that, in a simply Christian state, there should be fostered, enjoying its best blessings, a corporation or faction, necessarily and illimitably of hostile interests and feelings, and of sworn enmity to its religion, and that, to the same corporation or faction should be allowed, as a divine claim, the unshackled liberty of communicating with a sovereign power in all the schemes which that power cannot fail to meditate, as well for its own advancement as for the subversion of the object of its most intense antipathy. That power well understands its own pretensions: it knows that, of Britons, as far as Papal, the souls are its own; and it can afford the carcass, or a part of it, to the temporal sovereign. This necessarily divided allegiance, and so unequally divided, was for a long time denied and ridiculed by the hired and deceived. Nicholas French, in his leeding Iphigenia, before referred to, has expressed this doctrine of his Church in a very happy way, with a mixture, somewhat Hibernian, of simplicity and cunning, "It is true the Luminare Majus, (the Pope,) Catholicks venerate more, then Luminare Minus, (the King), because Luminare Majus hath the greater light and influence; yet they doe not therfore omitt to pay due veneration to the King." Observe the word due. You may pay a person due respect by treating him with indignity. In fact, the word due will shelter any thing, and is sometimes made to insinuate and introduce more than the truth. French was a resolute promoter and apologist of rebellion. And here we may observe, that the whole secret of the grand quibble, by which Papists would make it appear that their priests in Elizabeth's reign suffered for their religion, is explained, by observing, that religion and rebellion in their case were, by the general principles of Popery and the particular bull of anathema by Pius V., so perfectly amalgamated, that from the religion might legitimately and necessarily be inferred the rebellion. It is so undeniable, that it would be childish to deny, that Elizabeth and her government used the most intense pains to avoid punishing for religion simply; so much so, that Rishton, the continuator of Sanders's libel de Schismate Angl., with perverse ingratitude, and an infatuation apparently judicial, writes, Et banc in omnes Ordines crudelitatem dicunt se non exercere propter religionem, (sicut certe putamus putantque etiam prudentes omnes, qui jam a multis annis adverterunt, iis qui rerum potiuntur in Anglia, de fide, utcunque id prætendant, nullam curam haberi, sed de statu suo solum esse solicitos,) &c. Fol. 196, edit. Colon. 1585. The imposition is now no longer necessary. And we may now comfort ourselves with one advantage at least, and no mean one, that Popery now exhibits herself as she is, and does not put us to the difficulty any longer of grappling with denials and sophistications of all sorts, but is, in open appearance, and even ostentation, the unprincipled and perjured creature, which it was before thought illiberal to charge as her character.
A government of Christianity and conscience might have had the honour of preserving the country from its present disgrace and calamity. But it seems to have been the just, though partially mysterious, design of the Most High, after due chastisement and consequent purification of the British Church, to bestow upon her the honour, of which her natural protector adjudged itself unworthy, independently and single-handed, to vanquish and put to rout her insolent assailant, and to shew the world, that the arm on which she relies can give her the desired triumph, not only in the absence of all human help, but in spite of it, and to its permanent infamy.
Rome will find, that she has to descend into a new field. In the secular one she met with a resistance paralysed by treachery and heartlessness to a truly alarming degree, and gained an easy triumph. She will now, as she has begun to feel, have to fight the battle on a spiritual ground, and with men of real power and courage, who understand their religion, and will defend it with a loyal heart to the utmost. A little more than a century ago she had to sustain a contest much of this character, and was driven from the field with utter rout and disgrace; when a noble band of sound Protestant warriors were roused to the defence of their purified Christian faith, then assailed by the combined powers of Popery, headed by the reigning sovereign, James II. It must, indeed, and with grief, be acknowledged, that a large mixture of what was merely secular, though valuable, and of what was merely intellectual, though valuable likewise, with the spiritual object and means, rendered the victory less pure and decisive that it would otherwise have been. But with no disposition to boast, of which the cause is far enough from us, it may yet be confidently asserted, to the honour of those who are now unfurling the banner of the true cross against the bearers of the false, that they are prevalently faithful, intelligent, and devoted soldiers of their Divine Sovereign and Captain, and both understand and adorn the cause in which they have enlisted themselves. Few, indeed, are now the cases in which the champion of the Protestant faith differs but little, in his fundamental belief from the subject of Rome. The points of difference are at this time well perceived and justly appreciated. They are felt to be fundamental and important, and as they are practically embraced, are cordially defended. With exceptions, which hardly deserve to be taken into the account, those who remain faithful to the Christian cause see where its distinctive nature and value lie, and are ready to sacrifice their worldly fortunes, and their lives too, in the service in which they abide. They do not disdain the secular assistance which is their due, and which they rate at its proper value, but disdaining an undue reliance upon it, their ultimate and supreme hope is reposed in Him, who has all means and all events at his command; and they trust that He will not the less own and vindicate his own cause, because it is prosecuted in simple dependence upon Him, but will, for that very reason, above any other, crown them with a signal, final, and everlasting victory. As in all human events and revolutions, He will pay so much respect to his own exquisitely beautiful machinery of united cause and effect, as to put in action for his own purposes human agents and agencies; and, by a combination the least to be expected, and the least capable of being compassed by the policy or power of man, we may live to see the day, and no distant one, when that mighty engine, which other bad causes in conjunction with Popery labour to create and wield, turned against them, and a simultaneous union of Protestant will and effort issue in a Great Movement, which shall bear down all before it, and leave the Grand Deluder of ages to the vain refuge of his own lies, his own folly, his own iniquity.