The Glorious Reformation

by

S. S. SCHMUCKER, D. D.

Discourse in Commemoration of the Glorious Reformation of the Sixteenth Century;

delivered before the Evangelical Lutheran Synod of West Pennsylvania, by the Rev. S. S.
Schmucker, D.D., Professor of Theology in the Theological Seminary at Gettysburg; pp. 131. 18
mo. Published by Gould and Newman. 1838.
The learned author begins with a brief view of the reign of Popery, before the dawn of the
Reformation. And surely, were our fellow citizens better acquainted with this painful history of
the Dark Ages of idolatry, superstition, despotism, and ferocious cruelty, which may be justly
called the ages of legalized murder and rapinc by priests, they would not show so much loving-
kindness to this system, perpetuated to this day, in popery. Our author, next, gives a brief and
eloquent history of the rise, spread, and triumph of the blessed Reformation. The way being thus
prepared, he presents to us, the prominent features of this glorious work, and its blessed results.
First. It gives us free access to the uncorrupted fountains of truth and duty--God’s Holy
Word, as the only infallible standard of faith and practice.
Second. It has delivered the church from a multitude of doctrinal and practical
corruptions.
Third. It has given us liberty of conscience, and freedom from religious persecution.
Fourth. It has delivered the civil government of the countries which had embraced it,
from papal tyranny, and it has given a new impulse to civil liberty, which has been felt in every
country of Europe.
Each of these grand leading topics is discussed with the well known ability of Professor
Schmucker. He is clear and luminous, and accurate in his details. He speaks with earnestness, as
one ought to speak, who feels the vast importance of his subject; in its bearings on the present
welfare, and the eternal salvation of souls. He reprobates the horrid evils of Popery, like a true
son of Luther, and the Lutheran Church.
But, in no instance do we find him violating decorum and charity. He writes as a
gentleman, a scholar, and a Christian.
This able work giving an admirable view of the Roman controversy, in a condensed for,
will, we confidently trust, be extensively read.--Pr. Vindicator.
The author has treated the subject comprehensively, and felicitously. After a rapid sketch
of the ever memorable event, which he commemorates, he singles out some of the prominent
features of the Reformation, which tend to illustrate its value. These points the author has
illustrated with force, and in a manner calculated to impress the reader with the value of those
temporal and spiritual privileges, which he enjoys, as the fruits of the Reformation.--The
Presbyterian.
This is an able discourse, and in our opinion well adapted for general circulation, and
deserves a place in Sunday-school and other Christian libraries. The era of which it treats, is rich
in instruction--and we hail as an omen of good, every successful effort to call attention to it.--
Southern Relig. Telegraph.
This little volume has been several months before the public. It is written in a vigorous
lucid style, and fully sustains the high reputation of that gifted author.--Philadelphia Observer.
The deservedly high reputation of the author is too well known in the church to need any
commendation at our hands. We will only remark, that the subject if happily treated, and with all
the force and comprehensiveness, characteristic of the former productions of the same pen. The
religious public generally will, no doubt, feel anxious to peruse this work, and we take pleasure,
in expressing the confident belief, that it will abundantly compensate all its purchases and
readers. It ought to be circulated throughout the land, and as it is written in a mild and
argumentative style, we would earnestly recommend it to Roman Catholics as well as
Protestants.--Lutheran Observer.
 PREFACE

The following discourse was prepared by appointment of the Ev. Lutheran Synod of West
Pennsylvania, in accordance with a resolution of that body, loudly called for by the signs of the
times, recommending that a discourse on the Reformation be annually delivered by each member
of Synod before the people of his charge, and resolving that one should annually be delivered
before the Synod, on the same topic.
In relinquishing his manuscript to the Synod for publication, the writer acted under the
conviction, that the real character of popery, according to the theory of its unalterable canons,
which are carried into execution wherever papists have entire power, is but imperfectly known
by our American citizens. He regrets, that in presenting the features of this interesting subject, he
was unavoidably led to refer to the corruptions of a church, some of whose members are found in
our own community, with whom he and his brethren are in daily habits of friendly intercourse.
This feeling is the more sensibly experienced, as he believes the great body of our native
Catholics to be as true friends to our country as the mass of our citizens generally; and believes
them not only innocent of any design against our liberties, but even unacquainted with the long
catalogue of incidents in the history of their church, by which the popes and priests have for
twelve centuries past proved themselves the enemies of human liberty, civil and religious;
unacquainted, generally, with those dangerous principles in the canons and decrees of their
church, by which their priesthood were actuated in their former persecutions, and in conformity
with which they may reasonably be expected to destroy the present liberties of both Protestants
and Catholics, unless the eyes of the community are opened in time. Yet, as he will make no
statements unsustained by good authority, he cannot be responsible, if it shall appear that popery
is a corruption of true apostolical Christianity; that the Romish priests have generally been
enemies to the liberty of their own members, as well as of Protestants; and that the Roman
Catholic church at this day, and in our own country, avows principles hostile to the rights of man
and the liberties of the land, to which our Catholic fellow citizens have unconsciously assented
whenever they professed indefinitely, to believe as Holy mother church believes. Our Catholic
friends ought rather to unite with us in the denunciation of principles, which are alike repugnant
to their feelings of natural right, inconsistent with the future security of their own liberties, as
well as ours, and adverse to the declarations of God’s holy word.

S.S. Schmucker.
Theol. Seminary, Gettysburg, Oct. 13, 1837.
 DISCOURSE, &c.

When, in the course of human events, we behold a people emerge from slavery, and
"assume, among the powers of earth, the separate and equal station, to which the laws of nature
and of nature’s God entitle them," the sight is one of no ordinary interest; for slavery is odious,
the civil rights and privileges of a nation are valuable, and new scope is given for the
development of mind in the prosecution of moral, social and political principles. But, my
brethren, should we behold a revolution, in which the yoke of bondage is thrown off, not by one
people, but in rapid succession, by a whole family of nations, and that yoke not only one of civil,
but also of religious bondage, the spectacle would rise to incalculably greater interest; because
the effects are far more extensive, the principles involved far more elevated, and the privileges
conferred such as appertain, not only to the temporal, but also to the eternal interests of men.
Such was the glorious Reformation of the sixteenth century, effected by God himself, not
miraculously, but in accordance with the analogies of his Providence, through a band of intrepid,
noble-minded, yet imperfect men. The fruits, both civil and religious, of this Revolution, we, in
these United States, most richly enjoy; but its origin and incidents, we are prone too often to
forget, and too seldom to inculcate on the popular mind.
’Tis littel more than three hundred years, since Luther,1 confessedly the most prominent of
these mortal heroes, the chieftain of this Spartan band, was born; and about six weeks afterwards
his illustrious coadjutor, Zuingle, 2 first saw the light. At that time all the civilized nations of
Europe--Germany, France, England, Denmark, Sweden, Spain, Portugal, Italy, &c. &c., however
diverse their languages, and habits, and political interests and institutions, were consolidated into
one religious despotism, having one man, the pope at Rome, the pretended vicegerent of Christ
on earth, at his head! Papal Rome was then the mistress of the earth, in a far more important
sense than in the days of her pagan glory, when she swayed the sceptre of political dominion, but
suffered her vanquished foes to worship their own gods. Then she controlled civil interests and
outward acts, now she gave laws to the intellect of half the known world, regulated their social
intercourse, prescribed their religious duties, and made her power felt in the inmost recesses of
her soul. The pretended successor of St. Peter, still claimed the right
"Of raising monarch to their thrones,
Or sinking them with equal ease!"
Forgetting that "no man can forgive sins but God only," 3 he sacrilegiously pretended that
like "the Son of man, he had power on earth, to forgive sins."4 And when thwarted in his
purpose, he claimed the right of placing whole nations under papal interdict, and thus as he
pretended, and an ignorant, superstitious people believed, of closing the gates of heaven against
them!

1
Luther was born Nov. 10th, 1483
2
Zuingle was born Jan. 1st, 1484.
3
Mark 2:7 Luke 5:21 Ephes. 4:32 Psalm 130:4 Isaiah 43:25 44:22 Jer. 50:20
4
Matth. 9:6
 Such was the galling yoke of spiritual tyranny under which the civilized world was
groaning, when He, who purchased the church with his own blood, and in prophetic vision
revealed to John, the downfall of Babylon, the mother of harlots, sent deliverance. Now, how is
she fallen! Stript of her most valuable dominions, and wooed with little ardour by her flatterers
that remain! Now she is seen begging favour at the feet of monarchs, who once trembled at her
nod, and seeking by a desperate effort in this new world, to retrieve the losses and recover from
the shocks inflicted on her by the still lingering effects of the Reformation in the old. That
Reformation stands unique on the tablets of universal history; there has been no other equal to it,
and there cannot be. For the papal hierarchy will never regain such a colossal magnitude, nor
such despotic sway over the civilized world; and the nations of Europe will never again bow to
such an iron yoke. That marvellous and wide-spread revolution in the church stands
authenticated as the peculiar work of God, and exhibits the most brilliant displays of his
providential guidance, as well as verifications of the promise: "Lo, I am with you always, even to
the end of the world."

The Period for This Event Was Wisely Chosen by the Head of the Church.

As changes in the character of individuals and of nations are by the laws of mind
generally gradual; so the meridian light of the Reformation did not immediately burst in upon the
midnight gloom of the dark ages. The two centuries preceding the Reformation may be regarded
as the dawn of that glorious day, as preparatory and introductory to it. In Prague, the capital of
Bohemia, not more than about seventy miles from Wittenberg, Conrad Stickna,5 and John
Milicz,6 had publicly inveighed against the corruption of both priests and people, and especially
against the mendicant friars, a century and a half before the Reformation of Luther; and Mattias
von Janow, the confessor of Charles IV., had even gone so far in several instances as to
administer the holy supper in both kinds, although he was soon compelled to recant. Wicklife in
England, and Peter d’Ailly, Chancellor of the University at Paris, bore similar testimony against
Romish corruption.
In the century immediately preceding the Reformation, Huss and Jerome arose at
witnesses for the truth under very favourable circumstances. They dwelt in the same city where
Stickna and Milicz had taught before them. And the University of Prague, in which they were
professors, was at that time the most celebrated in all Europe, except that in Paris, and was
frequented by thousands of young men from every part of Germany. John Gerson also
distinguished himself as an advocate for reform. Accordingly a partial Reformation had
commenced in Bohemia. A liturgy in the vernacular tongue was there extensively used, and the
council convened at Basil, in 1433, even sanctioned its use, and allowed the Bohemians to
administer the cup to the laity. Nor were the views of these Reformers entirely superficial. If we
concentrate the different rays of their light, they will amount to a distinct preparative to the
glorious Reformation which followed. The positions maintained by the Hussites and Taborites of

5
Obiit. A.D. 1369.
6
A.D. 1374 obiit.
that century, were the unrestricted preaching of God’s word; the restoration of the cup to the
laity; that the priesthood should be divested of its secular power and wealth; the introduction of a
more rigid and scriptural church discipline; the abolition of monasteries, the images in worship;
the rejection of the doctrine of Purgatory, and of Auricular Confession. This light, though
circumscribed in its influence, being confined to Bohemia, served, in connexion with scattered
rays in other countries, to prepare the Catholic world for the meridian splendour of the
Reformation, and doubtless assisted even Luther himself in investigating the foundations of
Papacy.
Such was the state of things when Martin Luther was born, Nov. 10, 1483, a year which
witnessed alike the unabated pretensions, and the waning power of Romanism, in the unexecuted
papal bull and interdict against the Republic of Venice; and in the memorable Auto de Fe, at
Seville in Spain, which soon succeeded, at which a number of individuals who rejected some of
the Romish errors, were publicly committed to the flames by the misnamed holy Inquisition.
Thus we see, that the fearful and wide-spreading machinery of Papal despotism, had indeed been
not a little impaired by the friction of ages, and some of its wheels no longer revolved in
effective concert with the whole; but it remained for the monk of Wittenberg, placing his lever
on the fulcrum of the Bible, to ungear the whole machine, and shatter a large portion of it to
atoms!
The period from Luther’s birth till the public commencement of the Reformation on the
31st of October, 1517, was rich in events preparatory to the great conflict. The irreligious and
profligate character of the popes was well calculated still farther to impair the moral energy of
the whole ecclesiastical machinery; for though unconverted men will be satisfied with
unconverted ministers, there is a general sense of moral propriety pervading our race, which
demands of the priests of our holy religion exemption from flagrant immorality. But the popes of
this period were a disgrace to humanity. Innocent Viii. and in a still more flagrant manner,
Alexander VI. who was himself the illegitimate son of Pope Calixtus III. squandered the papal
treasures on the offspring of their licentiousness. Alexander VI. is styled by an eminent historian
"a monster of a man, inferior to no one of the most abandoned tyrants of antiquity."7 And Julius
II. was a restless, ambitious soldier, who, though the pretended vicegerent of the Prince of Peace,
involved in war successively, the Venetians, the Swiss, the Spaniards, and the French. If such
was the character of the Holy Fathers themselves, there can be nothing surprising in the
corruption of the great body of the priests and people, and nothing dubious in the alleged
necessity of a reformation both in the head and members of the Romish church. Indeed, so
glaring was this necessity, that it had been long acknowledged by priests, and councils, and
emperors, and was not directly denied by the popes themselves. As early as 1409, the council of
Pisa decreed a Reformation of the church in her head and members; and let it be remembered,
that this was a general council, attended by twenty-four cardinals, a great many bishops,
archbishops, and other prelates, three hundred doctors of divinity and of canon law, and
representatives of thirteen universities. The same necessity was reiterated by three or four
subsequent councils in this century, but the work itself was as often defeated by the intrigue of
the popes, who did not relish the salutary discipline, aimed at their infallible holinesses!

7
Murdock’s Mosheim, vol. iii. p. 9.
 Nor should we forget to enumerate, among the preparatives of the Reformation, the
revival of learning in the West, the increased facility of influencing the intellect of Europe by the
recently invented art of printing, and the emigration of many of the Greek literati, after the
capture of Constantinopole by Mohamed II. in 1453, and the downfall of the Greek empire. The
light of science and literature is ever hostile to superstition and intellectual bondage.Numerous
writers had thus sprung up, who constituted a liberal party, 8 and were strenuously opposed by the
friends of ignorance and superstition. They ridiculed the vices and ignorance of the church and
priesthood, pouring into their moral wounds the most mordacious salt of satire; but they were
destitute of that moral principle necessary to bear them through the perils and privations of the
Reformation, and, like their leader Erasmus, turned traitors to the cause in the day of fiery trial.
Nor was this surprising. For, although the popular reverence for the papal hierarchy had much
abated, the mightiest monarchs of Europe regarded the popes as formidable enemies, on account
of their influence on the oath of allegiance of every Catholic subject. The few individuals who
had attempted to carry forward the standard of reform, were unceremoniously crushed beneath
the thunderbolts of the Vatican. The blood of Huss and Jerome yet proclaimed aloud the
tendencies of the holy mother towards reformers, and the inquisitorial agonies and dying groans
of the pious, but enthusiastic Savonarola, 9 of whom Luther remarked that "Christ had canonized
him," though papists burned him;10 served as a beacon to deter others from the paths of reform.
Amid these circumstances it was, that God, in his own time, raised up an illustrious band
of reformers in the very heart of the church, who, endowed with the extraordinary power called
for by the occasion, declared open war against her manifold corruptions. Germany was the
theatre on which this great conflict was commenced, and Luther the first of the warriors who
took the field. God had by the special teachings of his Providence and Spirit, tutored him for the
work, and on the 31st October, 1517, after Tetzel, a Dominican friar, had been vending the papal
indulgences, in the vicinity of Wittenberg, with the most barefaced impudence, Luther in the fear

8
To this party belonged Reuchlin, Erasmus, Parkheimer, Herman von Bush, Ulrich von Hutten, and all the
more enlightened minds of the age.
9
"Jerome Savonarola was born at Ferrara, Oct. 12, 1452; religiously educated, and early distinguished for
genius and learning. His father intended him for his own profession, that of physic; but he disliked it; and, unknown
to his parents, became a Dominican monk, A.D. 1474. For a time, he taught philosophy and metaphsics; and then
was made a preacher and confessor. He soon laid aside the hearing of confessions, and devoted himself wholly to
preaching, in which he was remarkably interesting and successful. In 1489, he went to Florence, where his
preaching produced quite a reformation of morals. He attacked vice, infidelity, and false religion, with the utmost
freedom, sparing no age or sex, and no condition of men, monks, priests, popes, princes, or common citizens. His
influence was almost boundless. But Florence was split into political factions; and Savonarola did not avoid the
danger. He was ardent, eloquent, and so enthusiastic, as almost to believe, and actually to represent what he taught,
as being communicated to him by revelation. The adverse faction accused him to the pope, who summoned him to
Rome. Savonarola would not go; and was ordered to cease preaching. A Franciscan inquisitor was sent to confront
him. The people protected him. But at length, vacillating about putting his cause to the test of a fire ordeal, he lost
his popularity in a measure. His enemies seized him by force, put him to the rack, and extorted from him some
concessions, which they interpreted as confessions of guilt; and then strangled him, burned his body, and threw the
ashes into the river. Thus he died, May 23, 1498.--His character has been assailed and defended, most elaborately,
and by numerous persons both Catholics and Protestants. His writings were almost all in Italian. They consist of
more than three hundred sermons, about fifty tracts and treatises, and a considerable number of letters; all displaying
genius and piety, and some of them superior intellect."
10
Ammon’s Geshichte de Homiletik, vol. i. p. 183.
of God, raised the standard of Reformation, by affixing to the church-door, his ninety-five theses
against indulgences. From that day the commencement of the Reformation is usually dated, the
day, which has ordinarily been celebrated in commemoration of that glorious event. Having thus
placed himself in opposition to the holy mother church, without entertaining the least idea of the
extent and importance of the work which God designed to accomplish by him, Luther devoted
himself with increased ardour to the continued study of that sacred volume, a copy of which had
providentially fallen into his hands ten years before. The change in his own views was gradual,
and he was simultaneously as well the subject as the agent of the Reformation. In the preface to
his works, written eighteen years after this time, he remarks: "Let all who read my books
remember that I am one of those, who, as St. Augustine says, improved myself by writing and by
teaching others, and belong not to those who in the twinkling of an eye were transformed from
nothing into learned doctors." 11 And who does not behold the hand of Providence in this? As his
publications were, successively, one but a step in advance of the other, his former readers could
the more easily enter into the spirit of each, and bear the gradations of light successively
revealed. This circumstance, at the same time, accounts for the fact, that many of his earlier
productions contain doctrines which he abandoned in the latter part of his life.
The successive incidents of the great ecclesiastical revolution, which grew out of this
small commencement, we cannot stop to detail. Suffice it to say, that in less than two weeks,
Luther’s Theses had traversed nearly all Germany; the attention of the greater part of Europe was
soon arrested, and remained fixed on this conflict. For thirteen years was the work of reform
carried forward, until all the prominent corruptions of Romanism were successively exposed, and
the Reformation attained some maturity in Germany, as exhibited in the Confession presented to
the Diet at Augsburg in 1530. But the conflict was not yet at an end. Various and disastrous were
the persecutions and trials, which the Protestant princes and their people, who avowed those
doctrines, had to endure from the intolerance of the Pope, and of the Emperor at his instigation,
for twenty-five years more, until the 25th of September, 1555, nine years after Luther’s death,
when the pacification of Augsburg for the first time gave imperial permission to the Protestants,
to worship God after the dictates of their own consciences.
But no sooner had the Reformation commenced in Germany, than it began to spread in
other countries, with electric rapidity, and the intellect of all Europe felt the shock. Two years
after Luther published his Theses, Ulrick Zwingle, one of the most learned and distinguished
reformers, whose personal views of Papal corruptions had even been in advance of Luther’s, also
began the work of public reformation, at Zurich in Switzerland, which he prosecuted with great
ability and success, until 1531, when he lost his life in a battle between the Swiss Protestants and
the Catholics who invaded their country. Into Sweden the Reformation was introduced by Olaus
Petri, a disciple of Luther, powerfully seconded by Gustavus Vasa, from 1523 to 1527. In
Denmark also, the power of the papal hierarchy was destroyed at an early day. About the same
time numerous advocates of Luther’s doctrines were found in Spain, Hungary, Bohemia, Poland,
Britain and the Netherlands. In England papacy received a fatal blow in 1533, from Henry VIII.,
who had before so zealously defended the holy mother church against Luther, as to acquire the
title of "Defender of the Faith," still retained by his successors. Into Scotland the Reformed
religion was introduced mainly by the inflexible and distinguished servant of God, John Knox,

11
Seckendorf, p. 89
about the year 1559. Nor can we pass unnoticed among the honoured instruments of divine
providence, John Calvin, who, though not the means of originally introducing the Reformation
into any country, exerted a most extensive influence on all the Reformed churches of Europe,
and contributed more than any other man, to confer order, maturity and stability on them all.
Commencing his public labours in Geneva, in 1536, about twenty years after Luther arose, he
continued, for thirty years, by his correspondence and publications, to advance the cause of
Reformation throughout different portions of Europe; so that for learning, influence and
usefulness, he may be classed at the side of Luther himself.
But instead of detailing the circumstances of this glorious work of God, to which we owe
our liberty, civil and religious, let us contemplate a few features by which this Reformation is
distinguished, that a more distinct impression of its value may rest upon our minds.
I. The first feature to which we will advert, is that it gave us free access to the
uncorrupted fountain of truth and duty, God’s holy word, as the only infallible rule of faith and
practice to us.
Well knowing the treachery of human memory, God, even under the Old Testament
dispensation, inscribed the decalogue on tablets of stone, and Moses his inspired servant, made a
record of his other instructions, which were to be publicly read in the stated worship of the
people from generation to generation, and to be inculcated on their children in the house and by
the way. In like manner the inspired apostles, whom the Saviour had commissioned to publish
the gospel to all nations, knowing that the holy religion of the Saviour was designed for all
generations, reduced its facts and doctrines to writing. The design of this act would be evident
from the nature of the case, but several of the inspired penmen have also distinctly expressed it.
"These things," says St. John, "are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son
of God, and that believing ye might have life through his name."12 Before the New Testament
books were written, the Saviour commanded to "search the scriptures" of the Old Testament, and
not the traditions or oral reports, which he condemned as tending to make void the sacred word.
Paul says: "All scripture, that is, the sacred writings, are given by inspiration of God, and are
profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: that the man
of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works." This Paul said in the year
A.D. 65, at which time all the books of the New Testament had been published, except the
writings of John, the epistle of Jude and 2 Peter. And although there was an order of men
appointed to publish the gospel to all creatures; these men were required to study the scriptures, 13
and teach according to them.14 Christians were taught to beware of false teachers,15 to search the
scriptures daily to ascertain whether these things were so,"16 and if even an angel from heaven
should come publishing any other gospel than that taught by the apostles, he should be
accursed.17 But instead of adhering to the word of God as the only infallible rule of faith and

12
John 20: 31, and also Paul.
13
1 Tim. 4: 15.
14
Gal. 1:8
15
2 Pet. 2: 1,2.
16
Acts 17: 11.
17
Gal. 1:8. Rev. 22:18, 19. John 5: 39. I Thes. 5:27 Eph. 6:17.
practice, the Church of Rome had, for several centuries prior to the Reformation, elevated
tradition, and the decrees of councils and popes, to an equality with God’s word. Their reason for
this unhallowed conduct may easily be inferred from the confession then made, and recently
reiterated by a papal writer18 in this country, that the doctrines and rites of their church could not
be proved from the scriptures alone. The earliest records of these unauthorized additions to
Christianity were of course not found in the pages of the Bible, but in writers of the age in which
those unscriptural doctrines were added to their creed; or, in the canons of the councils who first
approved them. The authority of these writers and councils were therefore magnified at the
expense of God’s word, during centuries before the Reformation, whenever any necessity roused
them from their slumber of licentiousness and ignorance to attempt the proof of their corrupt
system. But so far as we have been able to learn, no council before that of Trent, a few years after
the Reformation, had even formally decreed the entire equality of human traditions and decrees
of councils with God’s holy word. Yet the Bible itself had for centuries been almost an unknown
book. Select portions only were used in worship, and thousands of ministers lived and died
without having seen a copy of the entire scriptures. When Luther himself providentially found
one in the library of the convent, he was surprised to perceive that the few passages read in the
service, did not contain the whole scriptures!! Pelican, one of the reformers, declares, that at the
time of the Reformation, a Greek Testament could not be purchased in all Germany for any price!
Scarcely any ministers of the age had a critical knowledge of the Bible, and when Luther arose,
there was not an individual in the papal world, not even in all the University of Paris, who could
confront him on the ground of scripture! But the Reformation and the Bible went hand in hand. It
was by the Bible that God commenced the reformation in the heart of Luther in the convent, and
by translation of the Bible into the vernacular tongues, did Luther and the other blessed
instruments of God propagate the great work throughout Europe. This was so well understood by
the Romanists themselves, that as Sarpi, their own historian, informs us, one of the reasons urged
at the council of Trent for interdicting the Bible to the laity was, "that the Lutherans had
succeeded only with those, who had been accustomed to read the Scriptures." 19 And when
compelled by the progressive illumination of the age to make some appeal to the "law and the
testimony," one of the arguments assigned by that council for adopting the corrupt Latin
translation instead of the original, was, "unless the Vulgate were declared to be divine in every
part, immense advantages would be yielded to the Lutherans, and innumerable heresies, (as they
styled the views of the Reformers,) would arise to trouble the (Romish) church."20 Accordingly
the only Bible to which our Catholic friends have access even at this day, by consent of their
spiritual guides, is this corrupted translation, or translations of this translation, which after having
been carefully corrected, and pronounced immaculate by pope Sixtus V. in 1590, was two years
subsequently altered in about 2000 places by pope Clement VIII. the changes in some cases
affecting whole verses, and in many others giving a decidedly contradictory signification. 21 This
translation moreover adds several entire books which do not belong to the word of God at all.
And if it were in the power of the Roman pontiff and his priests to banish the genuine word of

18
Mr. Hughes, in controversy with Dr. Breckinridge.
19
Sarpi, Lib. ii. S52. (Cramp 53.)
20
Ibid. p. 52, 53.
21
Cramp’s Textbook, p. 52.
God from the world, they would gladly do it. Else why are they so bitterly opposed to the
operations of Protestant Bible Societies, whose object is to place the word of God faithfully
translated from the original, and without note or comment, into every family? Else how could the
late pope Pius VII. in his reply to the inquiries of the Polish bishops, what course they should
pursue in regard to Bible societies, use such language as this: "We have been truly shocked, (says
his holiness,) at this crafty device, (namely the distribution of the word of God by these
societies,) by which the very foundations of religion are undermined. For it is evident that the
holy scriptures when circulated in the vulgar tongue, have through the temerity of men, produced
more harm than benefit. Continue, therefore, diligently to warn the people entrusted to your care,
that they fall not into the snares which are prepared for their everlasting ruin, (or in other words,
that they receive not the Bible, offered them by these societies!")22 Ought not every enlightened
Catholic to suspect either the capacity or fidelity of those religious teachers, who are afraid to let
the doctrines which they teach as the truth of God, be tested by the word of God?
How different is the conduct of Protestant ministers! How different the state of things in
Protestant churches! Since the glorious Reformation, the original scriptures are the text-book in
the studies of ministers, and are accessible to all of every profession who are versed in the
languages in which they are written. They have been faithfully translated into all the different
languages of Christendom, and into a vast multitude of heathen tongues, and distributed in
millions of copies throughout the countries of the Reformation. The Protestant minister is
confessedly the expounder of the word of God, the Protestant layman is taught to search the
scriptures like the nobler Bereans, to "see whether these things be so." The grand, the cardinal
principle of both is, "the Bible, the Bible is the religion of Protestants!" Fellow Christian, do you
triumph in the conviction that the criteria by which you judge your hopes of eternal life, are
based not on the ipse dixit of popes and councils, nor on the uncertain tradition of fallible men,
but on the infallible word of God? Remember you are indebted for this privilege to the blessed
Reformation, and let your gratitude ascend to heaven for this favour! Do you make that word the
man of your counsel, and the guide of your life; in every time of doubt or difficulty do you seek
instruction of God himself by resorting "to the law and the testimony?" Forget not that the
Reformation conferred on you this delightful privilege. Does this word enable you daily to hold
communion with those men of God, who wrote as the Holy Ghost inspired? Do you peruse the
predictions of the ancient prophets, or read the very letters which the apostles wrote to the first
churches, thus enjoying the privileges of the primitive Christians? Do you find the precious Bible
evinced a book divine by its elevating, transforming, beautifying influence on your soul? Then
forget not, that for all these high and holy privileges, your gratitude is due to the glorious
Reformation by which God delivered our fathers from papal darkness and superstition.
II. The Reformation has delivered the church from a multitude of doctrinal and practical
corruptions.
Instead of worshipping God through the pretended mediation of angels, or the Virgin
Mary, and other mortals termed saints, as is done even at this day in the Romish church, and
offering to them a species of worship, Protestants have restored to them the privilege of
worshipping God and him alone, through the divine Saviour. Pope Pius IV. whose creed is

22
Protestant, Vol. i. pp. 256-258.
embraced in the standards of the whole Romish church, employs this revolting language
expressive of the Catholic faith: "I also believe that the saints, who reign with Christ, are to be
worshipped and prayed to."23 The multitude of these pretended saints is almost such, that no man
can number them; their works of piety and their stupendous miracles are treasured up in fifty-
four folio volumes for the education of the children of the holy mother church! Some of these
saints, it is believed, never existed on earth except in the imagination of the biographers who
fabricated the legends of them. Such are Saint Longinus, who is said to have been the Roman
soldier that pierced the spear into the Saviour’s side on the cross; the gigantic St. Christopher,
who is reputed to have carried Christ across an arm of the sea;24 St. Amphibolus, who was the
only cloak of Albans, the British protomartyr!!25 Some of these saints were murderers, and
traitors,26 such as the murderers of the Henrys of France, of the Prince of Orange, and Garnet of
the gunpower plot.27 Others are by the best historians ranked among the most unprincipled, and
notoriously corrupt sinners of their age. Such, to specify but one other, was Saint Gregory VII.
named Hildebrand, of the eleventh century, who in order to raise the church above all human
authority, to separate the clergy from all those social ties by which they were united to the
people, and to convent them into a kind of standing army, whose entire interest it would be to
obey implicitly the papal mandate, forcibly introduced the oft-attempted, and commended
celibacy of the clergy, thus impiously denouncing the matrimonial relation, and separating
hundreds of husbands from their lawful wives, fathers from their children, whilst it is notorious
that he himself was living in illicit armours with Matilda, a very opulent and powerful Italian
princess.28 What worshipper of the true God can reflect without horror on the idea of paying
religious veneration to such monsters of iniquity! As well might we return to the era of Pagan
Rome, and unite in the worship of her Jupiter and Juno, her Venus, and her Mars! But blessed be
God, the Reformation has restored to us the primitive and precious doctrines of the gospel, has
taught us "that there is but one God, and one mediator between God and man, the man Christ

23
Creed of Pius IV. Art. 20 Concil. Trident. Sess. 25. de Invocat. Catechism. Rom. Part III. Ch. 2.
24
Horne on Popery, p. 16
25
Protestant, vol. i, p. 343
26
Brownlee’s Popery an Enemy, &c., 152-3
27
Of this desperate scheme of papal bigotry, Dr. Mosheim gives the following brief account:--"All the
resources of inventive genius and refined policy, all the efforts of insinuating craft and audacious rebellion, were
employed to bring back Great Britain and Ireland under the yoke of Rome. But all these attempts were without
effect. About the beginning of this century (1605) a set of desperate and execrable wretches, in whose breast the
suggestion of bigotry and hatred of the Protestant religion had suppressed the feelings of justice and humanity, were
instigated by three Jesuits, of whom Garnet, the superior of the Society in England, was the chief, to form the most
horrid plot that is known in the annals of history. The design of this conspiracy was nothing less that to destroy, at
one blow, king James I., the prince of Wales, and both houses of Parliament, by the explosion of an immense
quantity of gunpowder (thirty-six barrels!*) which they concealed for that purpose, in the vaults under the house of
Lords. The sanguinary bigots concerned in it, imagined that, as soon as this horrible deed was performed, they
would be at full liberty to restore popery to its former credit, and substitute it in place of the Protestant religion. This
odious conspiracy, which was providentially discovered, when it was rife for execution, is commonly known in
Britain under the denomination of the Gunpowder treason."--Vol. iii. p. 463-464.
*Russell’s Modern Europe, vol. ii. p. 47.
28
Mosheim, Hist. 11th Cent.
Jesus, who gave himself a ransom for all."29 Neither is there salvation in any other, for there is no
other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.30 Blessed be God, we
now know, that "if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father," who is, not the virgin
Mary, nor an angel, nor a real, or pretended saint, but is "Jesus Christ the righteous, who is the
propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but for the sins of the whole world." 31 Instead of
believing that "the good works of believers are truly and properly meritorious, and fully worthy
of eternal life;"32 the Reformation, by restoring to us the good word of God, has taught us to
despair of the filthy rags of our own righteousness, to believe that "by grace we are saved,
through faith, and that not of ourselves; it is the gift of God; not of works, lest any man should
boast."33
Instead of them mutilated and corrupted sacraments of the Romish church, the
Reformation has restored to us the primitive, simple ordinances of the gospel. The papal priests
refuse to give the cup to the laity, whilst the Saviour gave it to all, and as if foreseeing the
corruptions of after ages, added the express injunction: "drink ye all of this cup:" for he appended
no such injunction in reference to the bread. The Romish church believe that the bread and wine
in the eucharist are no longer bread and wine, but are converted by the consecration of the priest
into the real material body and blood of the Saviour, a doctrine contradicted by common sense,
refuted by the concurrent testimony of all our senses of touch, of taste, of smell, and of sight. The
Reformation has taught us to regard the ordinance not as a renewed sacrifice or mass; but as a
mnemonic ordinance to commemorate the dying love of the Saviour, and to serve as a pledge of
his spiritual presence and blessing on all worthy participants. The Romish church has also, since
the days of Peter Lombard, in the twelfth century, added five other sacraments to the two
instituted by our Lord, viz., Confirmation, (Protestants do not hold confirmation as a sacrament)
Penance, Orders, Matrimony and Extreme Unction.
Instead of vainly seeking remission of sins from priests and papal indulgences, the
Reformation has taught us that "no man can forgive sin but God only,"34 and that none but "the
Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sin."35 The Romish pope had not only attempted to
wrest this prerogative from the God of heaven;36 but had actually converted his pretended power
into an ordinary article of merchandise; had published to the papal world a tariff of human
crimes, affixing to each the price for which it would certainly be pardoned, or rather, as it may be
styled, the expense at which it might be committed!! This power of selling indulgences was not
even claimed by the popes prior to the twelfth century, much less was it granted them by the

29
1Tim. 2:5,6
30
Acts 4: 12.
31
1 John 2: 1,2.
32
Con. Trid. Sess. 6 chap. 16 Can. 32.
33
Ephes. 2: 8,9.
34
Mark 2: 7.
35
Luke 5: 21.
36
The decree of the Council of Trent explicitly decides, that priests forgive sins judicially and not
declaratively.
Saviour. It was doubtless and still is one of the most fearful, soul-destroying corruptions of
Christianity ever perpetrated on earth. It made it the interest of pope and priest, that men should
commit crimes frequently and continually. The more vicious and corrupt the people, the greater
the profits of the priests. It is obvious that in the hands of a priesthood sufficiently ignorant of
God’s word, sufficiently licentious, and destitute of spirituality to practise such a system, it must
have a powerful tendency to obliterate from the popular mind all just sense of the guilt of sin, all
conviction of what rendered the psalmist’s transgressions most painful to him, "against thee, thee
only have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight."
Let it be imagined that this soul-destroying practice belonged only to the dark ages. Even
at this day as travellers inform us, advertisements are put up in different Catholic countries of
Europe, directing the victim of priestly deception whither to bear his money in order to barter it
for indulgences!! No longer than the 24th of May, 1824, did Pope Leo XII. himself issue a bull,
pledging, "the most plenary, and complete indulgence, remission, and pardon of all their sins," to
such as during the ensuing year of Jubilee, would visit the churches of Rome and perform the
prescribed ceremonies there!!
Instead of a professed celibacy of the priests and nuns, accompanied by the most
appalling scenes of licentiousness and moral pollution, the Reformation, through the Scriptures,
has again taught the church, that marriage is an ordinance of God, "is honourable in all," both
priests and nuns, and is favourable in its tendency to chastity and every moral virtue. When we
hear the Apostle Paul inculcating that a bishop, or minister, should be blameless, the husband of
one wife; 37 when we remember too that the apostle Peter, whom the Romanists are prone to cite
as the first pope, was a married man;38 it is amazing that a church professing to follow the
instructions of Christ and his apostles, could so directly in the face of the Scriptures, denounce
what God enjoined, and even enact laws of absolute prohibition against those of the priesthood,
who wished to honour the institution which God appointed. But in reality the sacred volume had
for ages before the Reformation been virtually suppressed, and the corrupt system of popery had
gradually grown up whilst the Bible was really unknown to the priests and withheld from the
people. Attempts were made in the earlier ages of Christianity, long before the existence of the
papal hierarchy, to enjoin celibacy on the priesthood. The council of Nice, however, A.D. 335,
through the influence of a celebrated Christian sufferer, the one-eyed Paphnutius, 39 rejected the
growing error. But that memorable century had not been closed when the bishop of Rome,
Siricius (A. D. 385) and soon after several Western Synods, enjoined it with some success. The
principal circumstance which introduced celibacy among the ministry at that time was, that it
became customary to elect monks to the pastoral charge of churches, so that the monastic life
began to be regarded as preparation for the ministry, and as monks had vowed celibacy, the
matrimonial state was discouraged among the clergy, but could not be generally suppressed even
in the Latin church, until the time of Gregory VII. in the 11th century.

37
I Tim. 3:2; see also Titus 1:8.
38
Matt. 8: 14. Luke 4: 38.
39
Socratis Histor. Lib. i. chap. 8. This celebrated man had one of his eyes bored out in the persecutions,
and so much was he esteemed and beloved by the emperor Constantine, that he is said often to have kissed the
extinguished eye.
 The natural consequence of this perversion of God’s appointed laws, soon became
manifest in the appalling scenes of corruption and licentiousness, in which, according to
contemporaneous Catholic writers, monks and nuns, priests, bishops and popes were alike
implicated!
40
[At an early day after the introduction of celibacy it became customary for the priests to
keep single females in their houses as professed religious sisters. 41 To suppress the disorders thus
introduced by these pretended friends of celibacy, it was found necessary to prohibit the priests
from having any females in their houses, except their own mothers and sisters. But horrible to
relate, from a decree of the Council. Moguntiae, A. D. 888, we learn that some of them had
children by their own sisters!42 By a canon of the Concil. AEnhamense, A.D. 1009, it is expressly
asserted, that some of them had not only one, but even two and more women living with them;
that their voluptuous indulgences constituted their principal object of pursuit in life; and that they
did not blush to be engaged with prostitutes, even more publicly, more ostentatiously, more
lasciviously, and more perseveringly than the most unprincipled vagrants "among the laity."43
Hundreds of thousands of young females were enticed into their nunneries under pretence of
spending their life in religious seclusion. These nunneries were almost invariably in the
immediate vicinity of the institutions of the priests: and in different instances, where these
establishments were town down, subterranean passages were discovered conducting from the one
to the other!! Clemangis, a distinguished French Catholic, who studied at Paris under the learned
Gerson, and lived about fifty years before the time of Luther, gives such a description of the
nunneries as cannot be repeated at large before this audience. After enumerating various
particulars, he adds, "What else are these nunneries than houses of prostitution? so that in our
day for a female to take the veil, is the same as publicly to offer herself for prostitution."44
Geo. Cassander, a Catholic writer, born a few years before the Reformation, testifies "that
scarcely one could be found in a hundred of the priests who was not guilty of illicit commerce
with females."45 Many of the popes were among the most licentious and corrupt men to be found
in the annuals of human debauchery,46 and Pope Paul III. even licensed brothels, for a regular
sum of money.47]
Such according to the testimony of Romanish writers themselves, was the condition of
the church prior to the Reformation! What gratitude is not due from every friend of virtue or

40
The paragraph included in [] was omitted in the delivery.
41
The Mulicres subintroductae. See Gieseler, vol. i, and Mosheim, vol.i.
42
Canon 10, Mansi xviii. p. 67. See Gieseler’s Hist. vol. ii. p. 112.
43
Gieseler’s History, Amer. ed., 1836. Vol. ii. p. 112. Omnes Dei ministros, &c. See also, pp. 114, 276.
44
M’Gavin’s Protestant, Vol. ii. p. 718.
45
Protestant, Vol. ii. p. 718; also Murdock’s Mosheim, Vol. ii. p. 71
46
Examples of such popes may be found in M’Gavin’s Protestant, Vol. ii. pp. 27, 28.
47
"In the third year of his papacy, Paul III. granted a bull for publicly licensing brothels, and gave an
indulgence for the commission of lewdness, provided the man paid a certain fine to the holy see, and the woman a
yearly sum for her license, and entered her name into the public register. In the days of this pope, there are said to
have been 45,000 such women in Rome."--Protestant, vol. i. p. 141.
religion, that these corruptions have been banished from at least a large portion of the Christian
world. What gratitude is due from every father and mother, that our eyes have been opened upon
the corruption of these nunneries, that our daughters are no longer sent thither to be sacrificed to
licentious priests! With what gratitude should we cherish the recollection of the glorious
Reformation! and how faithfully should we labour by the dissemination of the word of God and
of the spirit of piety among our fellow citizens of all descriptions to resist the progress of popery
amongst us!
But may we not in charity doubt the justice of the inference from the character of the
Romish institutions and priesthood of former ages, to those of the present day? Has not the
Romish church itself been reformed by the streams of light thrown around her by the
Reformation? With sincere delight and with gratitude to God would we adopt this opinion in al
its latitude, if truth permitted us. Some effect the Reformation has doubtless exerted on the
Roman Catholic church. In Protestant countries and especially in our own land, the native
Catholic laymen are in general as moral as the mass of the community around them, and their
priests generally observe external propriety of deportment. But that their monasteries and
nunneries in Catholic countries are still nearly as corrupt as ever, and that the celibacy of the
monks and priests leads to the same licentiousness of practice; is evident from undeniable
authority, from the testimony of Romanists themselves!! Scipio de Ricci, a bigoted Roman
bishop, but a good man, being employed by the Duke of Tuscany to reform the nunneries in that
territory, visited these institutions, and presented to the pope the most revolting picture of these
sinks of corruption.48 The character of these establishments in South America and the Spanish

48
"The vicar of Prato, Lorenzo Pally, being interrogated (by Ricci) answered that the nuns believed neither
the sacraments of the church, nor the eternity of another life; that they denied certain criminal actions to be sins, and
especially those of the flesh."--"The disorders discovered at Prato, were only the sequel of those which the
government had rooted out of the convents of Pistoria. In two letters of Flavia Peraccini, Prioress of Catherine of
Pistoria, to comparini, rector of the episcopal seminary in the same city, the nun relates what passed before her eyes
in her own convent, what had passed there before she wrote, and what still continued to take place in other convents,
particularly at Prato."
"It would require both time and memory, (she says) to recollect what has occurred during the twenty-four
years that I have had to do with monks, and all that I have heard tell of them. Of those who are gone to the other
world, I shall say nothing; of those who are still alive, and have a little decency of conduct, there are very many."--
"With the exception of three or four, all that I ever knew, alive or dead, are of the same character; they have all the
same maxims and the same conduct. They are on more intimate terms with the nuns than if they were married to
them."
"It is the custom now, that, when they come to visit any sick sister, they sup with the nuns, they sing,
dance, play and sleep in the convent. It is a maxim of theirs, that God has forbidden hatred but not love; and that the
man is made for the woman, and the woman for the man. They teach us to amuse ourselves, saying, that Paul said
the same, who wrought with his own hands. They deceive the innocent, and even those that are most circumspect;
and it would need a miracle to converse with them and not fall. The priests are the husbands of the nuns, and the lay
brothers of the lay sisters. In the chamber of one of those I have mentioned, a man was one day found; he fled; but
very soon after they gave him to us as confessor extraordinary!"--"The monks have never done any thing to me
personally to make me dislike them; but I will say that so iniquitous a race as the monks nowhere exists. Bad as the
seculars are, they do not at all come up to them; and the art of the monks with the world and their superiors baffles
description."--
"When they gave us the holy water every year, they threw every thing, even the beds, into disorder. What a
racket they used to make! One time they washed father Manni’s face and dressed him like a nun. In short, it was a
perpetual scene of amusements, comedies and conversation forever. Every monk who passed by on his way to the
West Indies is equally notorious:49 and God in his inscrutable providence has within late years
granted us by the testimony of other witnesses besides Maria Monk, the most appalling

chapter, they found some means of showing into the convent, and entreated a sick sister to confess herself.
Everlasting scandal about husbands--of those who had stolen the mistress of such a one; how others had avenged
themselves in the chapter; and how they would not have forgiven even in death."--"Do not suppose, (she says) that
this is the case in our convent alone. It is just the same in Lucia, at Prato, at Pisa, at Perugia; and I have heard things
that would astonish you. Every where it is the same, every where the same disorders, every where the same abuses
prevail." Let the reader remember, that this is the testimony given by inmates of the nunneries, given to the Romish
bishop, and sent by him to the pope with the prayer for reform! No Protestant had any hand in it. But instead of
effecting reform, De Ricci was persecuted and disgraced for publishing the truth to the world!!! See The Secrets of
Nunneries Disclosed, compiled from the autograph manuscripts of Scipio de Ricci, Roman Catholic bishop of
Pistoria and Prato, by Mr. De. Potter. Edited by Thomas Roscoe, Abridged, pp. 91--94. Published by D. Appleton &
Co. No. 200 Broadway, New York, 1834.
49
According to St. Ligori, who was the author of the most modern system of theology published by the
papists, and was canonized by Pope Pius VII. in 1816, the council of Trent made regular and standing provision for
mulcting those priests who keep concubines!! "A bishop, (he says) however poor he may be, cannot appropriate to
himself pecuniary fines without the license of the apostolic see. But he ought to apply them to pious uses. Much less
can he apply those fines to any thing else but pious uses, which the council of Trent has laid upon non-resident
clergymen, or upon those clergymen who keep concubines." Ligori, Ep. Doc, Mor. p. 444, as translated by Mr.
Smith, late a popish priest, in his Synopsis of Moral Theology, taken from Ligori, published in New York, in 1836.
"How shameful a thing, (says Mr. Smith) that the apostolic see, as they call it, that is, the Pope of Rome,
should enrich his coffers by the fines which he receives from profligacy of his clergy! If they keep concubines, they
must pay a fine for it, but it they marry, they must be excommunicated! This accounts at once for the custom in
Spain, and other countries, and especially on the island of Cuba, and in South America; where almost every priest
has concubines, who are known by the name of nieces.--The ’Narrative of Rosamond,’ who was once herself one of
these concubines, in the island of Cuba, portrays the general licentiousness of the Popish clergy in colours so
shocking, that the picture cannot be looked at without a blush. Here we see the doctrine fully exemplified by
practice. This keeping of concubines is a thing so common in the Popish West India Islands, and in South America,
that it is rarely noticed." See Smith’s Synopsis of Ligori, p. 296, 297.
St. Ligori himself asserts a fact which, as Mr. Smith justly observes, strongly corroborates the Revelations
of Maria Monk; namely, that refactory, incorrigible nuns are punished by imprisonment for life. "A nun (says he)
who is guilty of a grievous or pernicious crime, and who appears to be notoriously incorrigible is to be confined in
perpetual imprisonment." But they are not expelled as some monks are. The reason is obvious. Nuns, if expelled,
would reveal the licentious and brutal treatment they have received from the priests, whilst the latter would be
careful not to inform on themselves. Smith’s Synopsis of Ligori’s Moral Theology, p. 231, 232. Now let it be
remembered, that the writings of Ligori were approved by Pope Pius VII. and by the Sacred Congregation of Rites
so late as 1816: and that, as Dr. Varela, the priest of New York asserted three years ago, are in the hands of almost
every priest, and therefore also of those at Montreal; and there will be nothing incredible in the following narrative
of Maria Monk. St. Ligori himself testifies, that nuns are thus imprisoned for life. Maria Monk, p. 138--142, 2d edit.
says,
"I continued to visit the cellar frequently, to carry up coal for the fires, without any thing more than a
general impression that there were two nuns somewhere imprisoned in it. One day while there on my usual errand, I
saw a nun standing on the right of the cellar, in front of one of the cell doors I had before observed; she was
apparently engaged with something within. This attracted my attention. The door appeared to close in a small recess,
and was fastened with a stout iron bolt on the outside, the end of which was secured by being let into a hole in the
stone-work, which rose and formed an arch over head. Above the bolt was a small window supplied with a fine
grating, which swung open, a small bolt having been removed from it, on the outside. The nun I observed seemed
to be whispering with some person within, through the little window: but I hastened to get my coal, and left the
cellar, presuming that was the prison. When I visited the place again, being alone, I ventured to the spot, determined
to learn the truth, presuming the imprisoned nuns of whom the Superior had told me on my admission, were
disclosures of midnight scenes of debauchery, of deception, of cruelty, which are transacted in a
nunnery on the borders of our own country, as if to warn the citizens of this republic in time to

confined there. I spoke at the window where I had seen the nun standing, and heard a voice reply in a whisper. The
aperture was so small, and the place so dark, that I could see nobody; but I learnt that a poor wretch was confined
there a prisoner. I feared that I might be discovered, and after a few words, which I thought could do no harm, I
withdrew.
"My curiosity now was alive, to learn every thing I could about so mysterious a subject. I made a few
inquiries of Saint Xavier, who only informed me that they were punished for refusing to obey the Superior, Bishop,
and Priests. I afterwards found that the other nuns were acquainted with the fact I had just discovered. All I could
learn, however, was, that the prisoner in the cell whom I had spoken with, and another in the cell just beyond, had
been confined there several years without having been taken out; but their names, connections, offences, and every
thing else relating to them, I could never learn, and am still as ignorant as ever. Some conjectured that they had
refused to comply with some of the rules of the convent, or requisitions of the Superior: others, that they were
heiresses whose property was desired for the convent, and who would not consent to sign deeds of it. Some of the
nuns informed me, that the severest of their sufferings arose from fear of supernatural beings.
"I often spoke with one of them in passing near their cells, when on errands in the cellar, but never
ventured to stop long, or to press my inquiries very far. Besides, I found her reserved, and little disposed to converse
freely, a thing I could not wonder at when I considered her situation, and the characters of persons around her. She
spoke like a woman in feeble health, and of broken spirits. I occasionally saw other nuns speaking to them,
particularly at meal-times, when they were regularly furnished with food, which was such as we ourselves ate.
"Their cells were occasionally cleaned, and then the doors were opened. I never looked into them, but was
informed that the ground was their only floor. I presumed that they were furnished with straw to lie upon, as I
always saw a quantity of old straw scattered about that part of the cellar, after the cells had been cleansed. I once
inquired of one of them, whether they could converse together, and she replied that they could, through a small
opening between their cells, which I could not see.
"I once inquired of the one I spoke with in passing, whether she wanted any thing, and she replied, ’Tell
Jane Ray I want to see her a moment if she can slip away.’ When I went up I took an opportunity to deliver my
message to Jane, who concerted with me a signal to be used in future, in case a similar request should be made
through me. This was a sly wink at her with one eye, accompanied with a slight toss of my head. She then sought an
opportunity to visit the cellar, and was soon able to hold an interview with the poor prisoners, without being noticed
by any one but myself. I afterward learnt that mad Jan Ray was not so mad, but she could feel for those miserable
beings, and carry thorough measures for their comfort. She would often visit them with sympathizing words, and,
when necessary, conceal part of her food while at the table, and secretly convey it into their dungeons. Sometimes
we would combine for such an object; and I have repeatedly aided her in thus obtaining a larger supply of food than
they had been able to obtain from others.
"I frequently thought of the two nuns confined in the cells, and occasionally heard something said about
them, but very little. Whenever I visited the cellar, and thought it safe, I went up to the first of them, and spoke a
word or two, and usually got some brief reply, without ascertaining that any particular change took place with either
of them. The one with whom alone I ever conversed, spoke English perfectly well, and French I thought as well. I
supposed she must have been well educated, for I could not tell which was her native language. I remember that she
frequently used these words when I wished to say more to her, and with which alone showed that she was constantly
afraid of punishment: ’Oh, there’s somebody coming--do go away!’ I have been told that the other prisoner also
spoke English.
"It was impossible for me to form any certain opinion about the size or appearance of those two miserable
creatures, for their cells were perfectly dark, and I never caught the slightest glimpse even of their faces. It is
probable they were women not above the middle size, and my reason for this presumption is the following: I was
sometimes appointed to lay out the clean clothes for all the nuns in the Convent on Saturday evening, and was
always directed to lay by two suits for the prisoners. Particular orders were given to select the largest sized garments
for several tall nuns; but nothing of the kind was ever said in relation to the clothes of those in the cells."
guard against the inroads of the destroyer. Indeed, incredible as it might seem, from the questions
which females are required to answer according to their own published directory, it is evident
that even in these United States, the intercourse of the priests and females at the confessional is
such as no virtuous father or husband ought to permit, such as no wife or daughter ought to hear
without feeling insulted. 50 They are too obscene to be publicly repeated before a promiscuous

50
The ensuing "examination of conscience," as it is termed, is extracted from the Catholic’s Manual, a
volume issued by John Power, the popish vicar general of New York, pp. 289, 290, 291. Persons going to
confession, are required to state whether they have committed the following sins, viz.--"Sins against ourselves by
impurity. 1. In thoughts: in wilfully dwelling upon or taking pleasure in unchaste thoughts. It must be mentioned
how long, whether with desires of committing evil; whether they caused irregular motions, and in a holy place--and
whether the objects of sinful desires were single or married persons, or persons consecrated to God, (that is, the
priest himself!) 2. In words. Speaking obsecenly, listening with pleasure to such vile language, singing unchaste
songs, giving toasts and sentiments contrary to modesty. 3. In looks. Viewing immodest objects; reading bad books;
keeping indecent pictures; frequenting plays, and tempting others to sin by dissolute glances, gestures, and
immodesty in dress or behaviour. 4. In actions. Defiling the sanctity of marriage by shameful liberties contrary to
nature; in touching ourselves or others immodestly, or permitting such base liberties. Certain sins of a lonely and
abominable nature. What were the consequences of these sinful impurities? explain every thing--the number of these
bad actions, the length of time continued in the habit, and with whom we sinned."--Protestant, Vol. ii. p. 726,
Hartford ed. of 1833.’
Of similar obscene character, though not quite so much in detail, are the questions published in
Philadelphia, under the sanction of Mr. Kenrick, the Roman prelate of that city, in the Key of Paradise, p. 115.
Those in the "Pious Guide to Prayer," &c., used in Maryland, and published at Georgetown, 1825, fourth edition, p.
145 to 148, embrace all the above questions, with additional intervening reflections.
Equally if not more indecent are the questions contained in a German work, republished in Baltimore, in
1830, and used at least by some German Catholics, to the writer’s certain knowledge, in this country. It has the
sanction of several Romish dignitaries in Europe, and on the title-page the impress "mit Erlaubnisz de Obern,"
(sanctioned by the higher authorities.) This work, entitled, "Elsasisches Missionsbuchlein," by a priest of the society
of Jesuits, &c. &c., contains a mirror for the confessional (Beichtspiegel,) and among many other questions similar
to those of the New York directory, has the following:
"If you are married, you must state, in open-hearted confession, everything (touching this commandment,
adultery, &c.) which you committed in single life; then also what sins you committed after your marriage, either
with others or with your companion, inasmuch as not all things are allowed even to married persons. Do not forget
to mention what may have taken place between the time of your engagement and your actual marriage; inasmuch as
any thing impure committed at that time is yet a moral sin."
"I have indulged in a criminal attachment.--Add how long."
"I have been with persons of the other sex during the night--How often," &c.
"I gave occasion to unchaste dreams--How often," &c.
"I have committed sins of impurity on my own person--How often," &c.
"I gave unchaste kisses, or willingly received them--How often," &c.
"I touched others unchastely, or permitted them to take such liberties with me--How often," &c.
"I have sinned with persons of the other sex, by unchaste acts--How often," &c.
"I have sinned against beasts, by licentious glances, or in other way--How often, &c.
Such are the awfully obscene questions which are circulated by Romish priests among the people of every
rank and age; and about which, according to their own system, they must habitually converse with females, of every
age, above twelve years!! Can any man doubt the debasing and demoralizing tendency of making such questions
familiar to the minds of all sexes and ages, and of requiring females, on pain of perdition, statedly to talk with their
assembly. What an invaluable service have not the blessed reformers rendered to the cause of
religion, of moral purity, of conjugal security, of social happiness, by banishing these corrupting
doctrines and institutions, by removing the obscene and filthy practice of auricular confession to
the priest,51 and by restoring to us and our families the pure and elevating doctrines of the gospel

priests about them? The writer has had serious doubts of the propriety of presenting these questions to his Protestant
readers even in a note; and nothing could induce him to do it, but the extreme reluctance of the Protestant
community to believe any mere abstract statements of the licentious character and tendency of the Romish religion.
Surely, when the proofs are taken from their own manuals of worship, published by themselves, in our own country,
by their own bishops, and used in our own neighbourhood, in their worship, it cannot any longer be said, that these
charges are slanderous, or are applicable only to former ages or other countries.
But even these questions are not all. Will it be believed, that five times as many more, on this same filthy
subject, many of them far more particular and obscene than these, are given as instruction to priests, in the Theology
of Peter Dens, one of the latest systems of Papal theology, republished at Dublin, in 1832, with the sanction of the
present Archbishop Murray? It is now the text-book at the Theol. Seminary at Maynooth, and has probably been
studied by all the Irish priests, who have come amongst us. If any man should dispute the fact, we can show him the
work!
51
We subjoin the following melancholy and humiliating statements from an authentic and highly
interesting work, written by a converted French priest, now in this country, translated by Mr. S. F. B. Morse,
Professor in the New York University, entitled, Confessions of a French Catholic Priest, p. 103, &c.
"Three great principles and tenets are the essence of confession. The first is, that the confessor is as God
himself, whose place he holds; the second is, that nothing must be hid from the confessor, because God knows all,
and his vicegerent must also know all; the third is, that a blind and most absolute obedience is owed to the confessor
as to God himself. Hence it is easy to see that Popery, by an abominable substitution, makes a man disappear as
much as possible, and puts God himself in the place of man. This idea, once deeply impressed in the minds of boys,
from their childhood, strengthened all the tenets of the Catholic church in the confessional, in the catechism, in
discourses, in books of piety, &c., it is not astonishing that such respect, veneration and obedience are paid to the
confessor. The Protestant who reads the history of my country, will cease to gaze with surprise at those facts
(incredible, perhaps to him) of a confessor who orders his penitent to kill another man by the command of the Lord.
When a confessor ordered the fanatic and deluded Clement to kill his king, Henry III., the order was from God.
When Damiens stabbed Louis XV., the order was from God. When the confessor of Louis XIV. ordered him to
revoke the edict of Nantes, the order was from God.
"But it would be quite useless to give any more particular examples, since, according to the true spirit of
confession, there is not a single crime which, looked at in the light of theology, cannot, must not, be advised and
ordered by the confessor; above all, for the advantage of the Catholic church. When a man acts for this end, he
cannot sin; for, as it is said among priests, ’the end sanctifies the means.’ This is the key-stone to the Romish edifice;
and the priest, feeling his human weakness, has called the name of God to his help, to strengthen his feebleness, to
authorise his errors, to sanctify his crimes.--I have confessed priests and laymen of every description, a bishop
(once,) superiors, curates, persons high and low, women, girls, boys. I am, therefore, fitted to speak of the
confessional.
"The confession of men is a matter of high importance in political matters, to impress their minds with
slavish ideas. As for other matters, confessors endeavour to give a high opinion of their own holiness to fathers and
husbands, that they may be induced to send to the confessional, without any fear, their wives and daughters.
Because, doubtless, should fathers and husbands know what passes at the confession-box between the holy man and
their wives and daughters, they never would permit them again to go to those schools of vice. But priests command
most carefully to women never to speak of their confession to men, and they inquire severely about that in every
confession.
"The confession of the female sex is the great triumph, the most splendid theatre of priests. Here is
completed the work which is but begun through all their intercourse with women; for all our relations with them
begin from their birth and continue till their death. In their baptism we sprinkle their heads with holy water, at their
and the simple and holy practices of the primitive churches! The Reformation has restored to us
God’s own word, which teaches us the sanctity of the marriage relation, teaches females as well
as males to confess their sins not to the priest but to Him, who alone can pardon them, to God;
which inculcates a standard of moral purity, and of female delicacy, such as would make a
Protestant lady shrink with detestation from such questions, as according to their own directory,
even every American Catholic female must converse about to her priest at confession.
III. The Reformation has given us liberty of conscience, and freedom from religious
persecution.

death, their grave; and the space comprised between these two epochs is filled by a thousand ecclesiastical duties.
The more I think of this matter, the more I remember this sentence--’Priests, in taking the vows of renouncing
marriage, engage themselves to take the wives of others.’
"As soon as the young girl, for I speak peculiarly of their confession, enters the confessional, ’Bless me,
father,’ she says, kneeling and crossing herself, ’for I have sinned;’ and the priest mumbles, ’Dominus sit in ore tuo it
in corde tro, ut confitearis onmia peccata tua,’--’The Lord be in your heart and lips, that you may confess all your
sins.’ If she is an ugly, common country girl or woman, she is soon despatched; but, on the contrary, if she is pretty
and fair, the holy father puts himself at ease, he examines her in the most secret recesses of her soul, he unfolds her
mind in every sense, in every manner, upon every matter. This is the way which Theology recommends us to follow
in our interrogations: ’Daughter, have you had bad thoughts? On what subject? how often?’ &c. ’Have you had bad
desires; what desires? Have you committed bad actions; with whom; what actions?’ &c. I am obliged to stop. Many
times the poor ashamed girl does not dare answer the questions, they are so indecent. In that case the holy man,
ceasing his interrogations, says to her, ’Listen, daughter, to the true doctrine of the church; you must confess the
truth, all the truth, to your spiritual father. Do you not know that I am in the place of God, they you cannot deceive
him? Speak then; reveal your heart to me as God knows it; you will be very glad when you will have discharged this
burden from your mind. Will you not?’--’Yes.’--’Begin, I will help you;’ and then begins such a diabolical
explanation as is not to be found but in houses of infamy, I suppose, or in our theological books. This is so well
known, that I have often heard of wicked young men saying to each other, ’Come, let us go to confession, and the
curate will teach us a great many corrupt things which we never knew;’ and many young girls have told me in
confession, that in order to become acquainted with details on those matters pleasing to their corrupt nature, they
went purposely to the confessional to speak about it with their spiritual father. Sometimes I have heard the
confession of young girls not above sixteen years of age, who explained to me such disgusting things with a
precision, a propriety (or rather impropriety) of terms, that when I asked them where they had gathered all this
strange learning, they seemed as much astonished at my question as I was at their confession; and said to me: ’Why,
father, our former confessor taught us all this, and commanded us never to omit these details, otherwise we should
be dammed.’ I replied to them: ’I pray you never use such terms again, they are unworthy of a Christian mouth, you
have misunderstood your confessor.’ I heard afterwards that these misguided persons left my confessional, because
they said I was an ignorant confessor, who did not confess like others, and who did not cause them to say all."
"After so many instructions, the young girl is well indoctrinated, well fitted to answer either the questions
or the purposes of the priest. This poison diffused in her heart soon infects her whole mind and destroys her purity.
It is precisely at such a point of time that her cruel foe waits for her. When he sees that she is made vicious and
corrupt by the teachings of the confessional, he is sure of his success."
[The modes by which the priest persuades his victim that she is without sin in doing whatever he
commands, since he is responsible, and since he absolve her from it, and other means of deceiving at the
confessional, are then too graphically related to be publicly told; and I have thought it best; says the translator,
Professor Morse, with the consent of the author, to suppress all but the closing facts.]
"The truth is, that some cunning priests have a seraglio like that of the Sultan, and it is by no means an easy
task for him to conceal his favourites from each other, because he says to each that she is his only mistress. It would
be easy for me to enlarge on this point, and to give other details, but these I hope will suffice; perhaps they are
already too many."--p. 106. 112.
 Prior to the Reformation the corruption and tyranny and usurpations of the Romish
church had risen to such a height, that the people were not only denied access to the word of their
God; but they were even taught not to think for themselves at all in matters of religion, to
surrender their judgment implicitly to the priests, and believe as holy mother church believes.
The principle on which every true Romanist is required to act, is thus expressed by pope Pius in
his Creed: "I also profess and undoubtedly receive all other things delivered, defined and
declared by the sacred canons, and general councils, and particularly by the holy council of
Trent; an likewise I also condemn, reject and anathematize all things contrary thereto and all
heresies whatsoever, condemned, rejected, and anathematized by the church." 52 The laity are
therefore not permitted to imitate the noble Bereans, who searched the Scriptures daily; they are
even prohibited to a certain extent by their own priests from obeying the precept of the Saviour;
Search the Scriptures, for in them ye think ye have eternal life, and they are they which testify of
me. Nay even in our midst, Romanists are not permitted to read the miscellaneous literature of
their age and nation. The freedom of the press is suppressed in every country on earth, where
popery has power to control it. Nor could any other event be expected in our own country, if
Romanists should gain the ascendency; for this is one of the acknowledged, unaltered, and
unalterable principles of their church. Here let our newspaper editors learn what awaits them, if
they do not in time impartially examine the true politico-religious character of Romanism, and
duly instruct the popular mind on this subject. Its very essence is an admixture of civil and
religious despotism, and the certain ultimate result of its preponderance must be a union of
church and state on anti-republican principles. Listen to the testimony of the papist themselves.
"The pope and emperor ought to be implicitly obeyed; the heretic’s books burned, and the
printers and sellers of them duly punished. There is no other way to suppress and extinguish the
pernicious sect of Protestants." Thus said the legate of Pope Adrian VI. to the diet of Nuremberg.
A decree of the Lateran council held in 1515, determines in substance, "that no book shall be
printed without the bishop’s license; that those who transgressed this decree shall forfeit the
whole impression, which shall be publicly burned; pay a fine of one hundred ducats; be
suspended from his business for one year, and be excommunicated; that is, given over to the
devil, soul and body in God’s name and the saints!" The celebrated council of Trent whose
decrees are acknowledged by all Catholics, decided that "being desirous of setting bounds to the
printers, who with unlimited boldness, supposing themselves at liberty to do as they please, print
editions of the Holy Bible with notes and expositions, taken indifferently from any writer,
without the permission of their ecclesiastical superiors, &c. Neither shall any one hereafter sell
such books, or even retain them in his possession, unless they have been first examined and
approved by the ordinary, under penalty of anathema, and the pecuniary fine adjudged by the last
council of Lateran" (that above mentioned.53) And with a candour truly commendable, which
puts to shame those Protestants who insist on believing modern popery to be different from that
of former ages, Pope Gregory XVI. in 1832, explicitly says in his Circular letter, "Huc spectat,
&c. To this point tends that most vile, detestable, and never to be sufficiently execrated liberty of
booksellers, namely of publishing writings of whatever kind they please, a liberty which some
persons Dare, with such violence of language to demand and promote.--Clement XIII. our

52
Camp’s Textbook, p. 389.
53
Cramp’s Textbook of Popery, p. 56.
predecessor of happy memory, in his circular on the suppression of noxious books (i.e. Protestant
books) pronounces: "We must contend with energy such as the subject requires; and with all our
might exterminate the deadly mischief of so many books; for the matter of error will never be
effectually removed, unless the guilty elements of depravity be consumed in the fire." "The
apostolic see has through all ages ever striven to condemn suspected and noxious (i. e.
Protestant) books, and to wrest them forcibly out of men’s hands; it is most clear how rash, false,
and injurious to our apostolic see, and fruitful of enormous evils to the Christian (papal) public is
the doctrine of those, who not only reject the censorship of books, as too severe and burdensome,
but even proceed to such a length of wickedness as to assert, that it is contrary to the principles
of equal justice, and dare to deny to the church the right of enacting and employing it," 54 pp. 13,
14, 15. Accordingly a rigid censorship of the press is established and an Index Expurgatorius is
published from time to time at Rome, and throughout papal countries, containing a list of books
printed in Protestant lands, which no Catholic may read on pain of excommunication.55 In this
catalogue are included not only the prominent Protestant Reformers: but even such miscellaneous
writers as Locke, Young, Lavater, Bacon and Addison! A strange method of this of obeying the
inspired precept to prove all things and hold fast that which is good! 56 A strange system of liberty
of thought and freedom of discussion to be engrafted on our republican institutions!
Nor are these restrictions mere idle statutes. They are written in the blood of millions of
our brethren, who sought to serve God according to the dictates of their conscience, and when
interdicted had the moral heroism to obey God rather than man. The infernal inquisition, as it is
aptly, and by common consent styled, was expressly instituted to execute with fearful rigour the
tender mercies of mother church on all who dare to think or speak for themselves. How faithfully
this trust has been executed is attested, alas! but too fully by the ensanguined annals of the
Christian world! What tyro in history has not found his heart sickening at the melancholy scenes
of torture too horrible for human nature to endure! The Catholic church openly confesses to
believe it her duty to compel all others to adopt her faith. Pope Pius in his bull of confirmation,
orders "all the faithful to receive and inviolably to observe the decrees of the council of Trent;
enjoining archbishops, bishops, &c. to procure that observance from those under them, and in
order thereto, if necessary, to call in the aid of the secular arm, &c.57
Cardinal Bellarmine, one of the acknowledged standard authors of the Romish church,
says, "Experience teaches that there is no other remedy for the evil, but to put heretics
(Protestants) to death; for the (Romish) church proceeded gradually and tried every remedy: at
first she merely excommunicated them; afterwards she added a fine; then she banished them; and
finally she was constrained to put them to death."58 The general council of the Lateran, whose

54
See the very valuable work of Dr. Brownlee, "Popery an Enemy to Civil and Religious Liberty," p. 119,
120. This work ought to be read by every American statesman, and every true friend of American liberty. Its author
may justly be regarded as one of the ablest, most learned, and indefatigable champions of Protestantism, which the
present age has produced.
55
Cramp’s Textbook, p. 378.
56
1Thess. 5: 21.
57
Cramp, p. 385.
58
Bellarm. de Laicis, Lib. iii. c. 51. See Smith’s Synopsis of St. Ligori, p. 406.
canon is at this day in force, decreed: "Let the secular powers be compelled, if necessary, to
exterminate to their utmost power all heretics (Protestants) denoted by the church."59 The present
textbook of instruction in the Maynooth popish College in Ireland, already referred to, which has
doubtless been studied by many priests now in the Untied States, expressly inculcates: That
baptized unbelievers, such as heretics (Protestants) and apostates usually are, and also baptized
schismatics, may be compelled to return to the Catholic (Popish) faith, and to the unity of the
church, by the inflicting bodily punishments.60 "The church judges and punishes heretics
(Protestant) because although they are out of the church, they being baptized, are subject to the
(Romish) church?"61 Nor is this inhuman doctrine, so dangerous to the liberties of every
Protestant, inculcated merely on the priests, or kept as a secret among them. In order to carry on
persecution, the mass of the people must be, at least in some degree, prepared for it. Therefore,
the only copies of the scripture which are permitted to be read by the people, the Douay Bible
and the Rhemish Testament, have so falsified the sacred volume, as to make it teach the same
doctrine and breathe the same spirit of hatred and blood, against Protestants. Thus the latter has
the following comments:
Matt. 3. "Heretics may be punished and suppressed, and may, and ought by public
authority, either spiritual or temporal, to be chastised or executed."
Gal. 1: 8. "Catholics should not spare their own parents, if they are heretics."
Heb. 5: 7. "The translators of the Protestant Bible ought to be abhorred to the depths of
hell."
Rev. 17: 6. Drunken with the blood of saints. "Protestants (says the comment) foolishly
expound this of Rome, for that there they put heretics to death, and allow of their punishment in
other countries; but their blood is not called the blood of saints, no more than the blood of
thieves, man-killers, and other malefactors, for the shedding of which, by order of justice, no
commonwealth shall answer."62
No wonder, that in Roman Catholic countries, where the priests had full opportunity to
inculcate this exterminating spirit on the people, the latter were willing to execute the horrid
persecutions against Protestants, which stain the annals of Europe. Yet we do not believe that the
mass of American Catholics have imbibed the inhuman, persecuting spirit breathed by their
Bible. We believe they are more humane and charitable than the priests wish them to be, if
Romanism had the ascendence among us.63

59
Ibid.
60
Petri Dens Theologia, &c. vol. ii. p. 80 of the edition of 1832.
61
Do. p. 114.
62
Protest. vol. ii. 752. ii. 114.
63
It is indeed true that numerous threats of personal violence and murder, have been uttered against
prominent individuals in our land, who felt it a duty to apprize the community of the real principles of Romanism,
such as the Rev. Dr. Brownlee, Rev. B. Kurtz, Rev. R. Breckinridge and others. But beyond threats nothing has
been attempted; and Romish priests well known, that the eyes of the community are fixed on the individuals, whose
fidelity to their country has exposed them to papal odium, and that millions stand prepared for their defence.
 In full accordance with the above settled and avowed persecuting principles of popery,
the infernal inquisition has been put and kept in operation, whenever the pope and priests could
accomplish their ends. I know, the Jesuit, bishop England, in his Sermon before Congress,
repeated the usual evasion, that the inquisition is a civil and not an ecclesiastical tribunal. But
this is all a piece of subterfuge. It is true that the horrors of the inquisition can be carried into full
execution only where the civil government has become connected with the Romish church, and
in such countries where the government sanctions the inquisition, it is, we believe, customary,
that a civil officer is appointed to execute the sentence of the inquisition on the hapless victim of
their power. But the whole trial is conducted, and sentence passed, by ecclesiastical officers.
None but priests can be inquisitors, and the tortures in the inquisition itself are, in every sense,
under their entire control, and applied, exclusively by their command and in their presence, and
by their minions. As well might it be said that our country courts are not civil but religious
tribunals, because the hangman who executes the sentence pronounced by them, is a Lutheran or
Calvinist, a Methodist, or perchance a Romanist! No case, if we mistake not, has ever occurred in
the history of the inquisition, in the millions of victims sacrificed by this bloody tribunal, in
which the civil officer has dared to refuse to execute the sentence of the inquisitors; for he well
knew that his own bones would pay the price of his temerity! The inquisition therefore
undoubtedly remains what it always has been, an ecclesiastical tribunal, the engine of an
intolerant, persecuting church to inflict tortures the most inhuman and savage, on all who dare to
exercise their natural and unalienable right, of judging for themselves in matters of religion, and
obeying God rather than man! The inquisition gradually grew out of the duty enjoined on the
bishops by Pope Lucius III. A.D. 1184, to visit each his diocess, at least once or twice a year, for
the purpose of searching for heretics. Pope Innocent III. by his bull of 1207, sent his inquisitors
against the Waldenses,64 and the fourth Lateran council in 1215, in order that this bloody work
might be prosecuted without any interruption, converted this inquisitorial power of the bishops
into a standing inquisition, which establishment was further matured at the council of Toulouse,
1229. In the year 1232-3, pope Gregory IX. appointed the Dominicans perpetual inquisitors in
the name of the pope.65 In 1261, pope Urban IV. issued a brief, ordering that in all cases where
bishops had commenced process against any persons accused before the inquisition, the decision
of the inquisitors should have precedence, and the execution of the punishments denounced by
them not be hindered. In 1325 pope John XXII. forbade the formation of treaties with heretics,
pronounced those already made not binding, and directed the inquisitors to arrest all persons
charged with favouring or harbouring heretical persons. 66 Pope Paul III. in 1542, issued a bull for
the express purpose of fortifying and giving increased efficacy to this infernal tribunal. He,
amongst other things, decreed, that no persons, of any rank or pursuit, shall be exempt from this
tribunal, on pretence of having received any such license of privilege of exemption from the
papal chair. He says expressly "that the powers of the inquisitors shall now and hereafter extend
to all persons suspected of heresy, &c.--

64
Eisenschmidt’s Romisches Bullarium, vol. i. p. 31.
65
See Grieseler’s Hist. vol. ii. p. 388. Note 18. "Adjicimus insuper," &c.
66
Eisenschmidt’s Bullarium Romanum vol. i. p. 164.
 That no civil authorities shall dare to prevent the inquisitors from executing their
functions, &c.67 In another bull issued A. D. 1542, this pontiff established a General
congregation of the Inquisition, with power to arrest and even imprison (carceribus mancipandi)
suspected persons of any and of every rank, to prosecute their trial to a final decision, when the
canonical punishments shall be inflicted, and the property of those condemned to death, be
disposed of.68
And finally, he, in advance, pronounces all their decisions valid, demands inviolable
obedience to them, and pronounces every attempt of the civil authorities to interfere with the
powers of the inquisitors null and void." 69
And the council of Trent, the last general council of the Romish church, four members of
which had themselves been inquisitors,70 expressed great interest in behalf of the inquisition. 71 In
view of all these facts, the ecclesiastical character of the inquisition ought never again to be
denied. The popes and Romish church have continued 72 to this day to favour and preserve this
tribunal wherever they could, and even in these United States, bishop England attempted, in a
lecture at Baltimore, to vindicate and eulogize this satanic institution.73 According to Llorente,
this fearful tribunal cost Spain alone 2,000,000 of lives, and the amount of torments suffered by
these, and the other victims of papal persecution, was probably greater than that of all the
generations that ever lived and died in God’s appointed way, by natural death. A glance at the
nature of these tortures will illustrate our idea. One mode of torture is by the pendulum. "The
condemned," says Llorente, "is fastened in a groove upon a table upon his back; suspended
above him is a pendulum, the lower edge of which is sharp, and it is so constructed as to become
longer at every stroke. The wretch sees this implement of destruction swinging to and fro above
him, and every moment the keen edge approaching nearer and nearer: at length it cuts the skin of
his nose, and gradually cuts deeper and deeper, till life is extinct." This punishment is yet in use
in this secret tribunal; for one of the prisoners released when the Cortes of Madrid threw open the
inquisition in 1820, had actually been condemned to it, and was to have been executed on the
ensuing day! Another mode of torture consists in hoisting the victim to the ceiling by several thin
cords tied to his wrists upon his back, whilst a weight of 100lbs. is attached to his feet. He is then
suddenly suffered to drop, yet not so low as to let the weight touch the floor. His fall is so sudden
and the shock so great as to dislocate his shoulders and often to break his bones!! A third torture
"consisted of an instrument something like a smith’s anvil, fixed in the middle of the floor, with a
spike on the top. Ropes are attached to each corner of the room, to which the criminal’s legs and
arms are tied, and he is drawn up a little and then let down with his back bone exactly on the
spike of iron, upon which his whole weight rests. A fourth torture, being what is termed a slight

67
Id. vol. ii. p. 1, 2, 3, and B. Magnum, T. i. p. 751. const. 80. ed. Lux.
68
Idem. vol. ii. p. 4.
69
Id. p. 5. and Bull. m. Tom. i. p. 762.
70
Mendham’s council of Trent, p. 190.
71
Mendham’s council of Trent, pp. 189, 190.
72
Dr. Brownlee, Popery an Enemy, &c. p. 105, &c.
73
See Smith’s Synopsis of St. Ligori, p. 313, 315.
one, they apply only to women. Matches of tow and pitch are wrapped round their hands, and
then set on fire and suffered to burn until the flesh is consumed. 74 A fifth is the torture by fire.
"The prisoner is placed with his naked legs in the stocks. The soles of his feet are then well
greased with lard (or other penetrating and inflammable substances)75 and a blazing chafing-dish
applied to them, by the heat of which they become perfectly fried. When his shrieks and
lamentations were greatest, a board was placed between his feet and the fire for a while; and then
taken away again, if his tormentors were not satisfied. Another mode of torture was the dry pan;
in which the victim was literally roasted to death by a slow fire." Another method is thus
described by Gavin, who had been a priest at Saragossa in Spain, as certified by Earl Stanhope,
who had known him there. Gavin escaped from that country, renounced popery, received orders
in the Protestant Eppiscopal church in London, and published his Masterkey to Popery, in which
we find the following statement: "In a large room she (the guide) showed me (the witness) a thick
wheel covered on both sides with thick boards, and opening a little window in the centre of it,
desired me to look with a candle on the inside, and I saw all the circumference of the wheel set
with sharp razors. This instrument is designed for those that speak against the pope and the holy
fathers. They are put within the wheel, and the door being locked, the executioner turns the
wheel till the person is dead."76 A very frequent mode of torture is by water. The sufferer is tied
down on a bench, so tightly that the cords cut his arms and legs to the bones. His nostrils are
closed, and a filter inserted into his mouth, through which a large quantity of water is gradually
poured. The wretched victim is compelled at every breath to swallow a mouthful of water, until
at length his stomach and breast are intensely swelled, and he at last either expires amid his
indescribable sufferings, or a short reprieve is given, only to enable him to endure another
torturing!77 And the last torture we shall mention is by an infernal engine in the form of a female,
the Virgin Mary. When the inquisition was thrown open in Spain by Napoleon, such an
instrument was found in the cell. The familiar was ordered to manoeuvre it. He did so. It raised
its arms, beneath its robes was a metal breast-plate filled with needles, spikes and lancets! A
knapsack was thrown into its arms, it gradually closed them and pierced the knapsack with a
hundred deep cuts, all of which would have pierced, and often did pierce the living victim!! But
it is enough. Humanity sickens at the thought, that man could ever be so estranged from his
brother, as thus to become his "darkest, deadliest foe."
"When (says Stockdale)78 the accused was condemned to the torture, they conducted him
to the place destined for its application, which was called the place of torment. It was a
subterraneous vault, the descent to which was by a great number of winding passages, in order
that the shrieks of the unhappy sufferers should not be heard. 79 In this place there were no seats,

74
History of the Inquisition, with an Introduction by the Rev. Cyrus Mason, New York, 1835.
75
Stockdale’s History of the Inquisition, p. 191, of the London 4 to. ed. 1810.
76
Gavin’s Masterkey to Popery, p. 235, Hagerstown ed.
77
Dr. Brownlee’s Letters in the Roman Catholic controversy, p. 337.
78
History of Inquisition, pp. 191, 192.
79
That there are deep subterraneous vaults under the cathedral at Baltimore, is affirmed by Rev. R. J.
Breckinridge, and sustained by highly probable evidence.--Lit. And Relig. Magazine, Vol. i. p. 361--362. Similar
cells are said to exist beneath the cathedrals in Pittsburg and elsewhere.
but such as were destined for the inquisitors, who were always present at the infliction of the
torture. It was lighted only by two gloomy lamps, whose dim and mournful light served but to
show to the criminal the instruments of his torment. Here it was, unseen by any eye save that of
God, that these fiends in human shape inflicted on their defenceless victims tortures which
humanity shudders to contemplate, and which, if aught on earth can do so, present not an unapt
emblem of the torments of hell! What American, that has the heart of a man, of a husband, or a
father, will not be aroused to a watchfulness and effort, lest even his children after him might fall
into the hands of such unfeeling executioners?
In addition to this regular, systematic process, the Romish church has been guilty of
numerous, extensive, and sometimes national persecutions, in which hundreds of thousands of
our Protestant brethren were butchered in cold blood. Need I point you to the bloody tragedy of
St. Bartholomew’s eve, 80 in 1572, when at the nod of the Pope a hundred thousand of the best
people of France were massacred in cold blood by order of their own priest-ridden king, Charles
IX.? Need I speak to you of the treacherous revocation of the edict of Nantes, by approbation and
applause of the Roman pontiff, in violation of all law, human and divine, by which half a million
or more of the best citizens of France, because they would not renounce their religion, were
compelled to flee from papal persecution and death, and, stripped of all their earthly goods, to
seek shelter in foreign lands? Need I direct your attention to the millions of Waldenses and
Albigenses who were butchered in cold blood by the minions of the pope! Need I speak to you to
the thirty years’ war in Germany, which was mainly instigated by the Jesuits, in order to deprive
the Protestants of the right of free religious worship, secured to them by the treaty of Augsburg?
Or of the Irish rebellion,81 of the inhuman butchery of about fifteen millions of Indians in South

80
"To lull the Protestants into security, the court now enforced the terms of the treaty (of toleration for the
Protestants) with much apparent zeal, proposed a marriage between the young king of Navarre (a Protestant) and the
king’s sister, and thus at length drew Coligni, the king of Navarre, and the prince of Conde, (and a number of other
Protestant leaders) to appear at court. All this was preparatory to the assassination of the Protestants, by order of the
king and queen mother, on Bartholomew’s eve, Aug. 22d, 1572. The bloody scene began at midnight, at the signal
of tolling the great bell of the palace, and continued three days at Paris. Coligni was the first victim. With him 500
noblemen and about 6,000 other Protestants were butchered in Paris alone. Orders were despatched to all parts of
the empire for a similar massacre every where." "From the city of Paris the massacre spread throughout the whole
kingdom. In the city of Maeux, they threw above 200 into prison, and after they had ravished and killed a great
number of women, and plundered the houses of Protestants," they deliberately murdered, one by one, all whom they
had imprisoned. The number of Protestants thus butchered throughout France, in the thirty days during which this
massacre was continued, cannot be accurately ascertained, and is estimated at from 30,000 to 100,000!!! When the
pope’s legate sent the news to Rome, the holy father and his cardinals repaired to the church, and publicly gave
thanks to God for the glorious news, the cannon were discharged, and a jubilee proclaimed throughout the Christian
world!!!--Murdock’s Mos. Vol. iii, p. 197. Convers. Lexicon, Vol. i. p. 827--829.
81
The celebrated historian Hume, gives the following description of the suffering Protestants in Ireland, in
the great massacre which began in 1641, in the reign of Charles 1.
"The rebellion which had been upwards of fourteen years threatened in Ireland, and which had been
repressed only by the vigour of the earl of Stafford’s government, broke out at this time with incredible fury. On this
fatal day, the Irish, everywhere intermingled with the English, needed but a hint from their leaders and priests to
begin hostilities against a people whom they hated on account of their religion, and envied for their riches and
prosperity. The houses, cattle, and goods of the unwary English were first seized. Those who herd of the
commotions in their neighbourhood, instead of deserting their habitations, and assembling together for mutual
protection, remained at home, in hopes of defending their property, and fell thus separately into the hands of their
enemies. After rapacity had fully exerted itself, cruelty, and that the most barbarous that ever in any nation was
America, Mexico and Cuba, by the Spanish papists? In short, it is calculated by authentic
historians, that papal Rome has shed the blood of sixty-eight millions of the human race in order
to establish her unfounded claims to religious dominion. 82
What language then can express the gratitude due from Protestants to the Reformation,
which has secured them the privilege of worshipping God according to the dictates of their own
conscience without danger of being roasted at the fire, or having their bones broken on the rack!
The first principle which guided the Reformers was, that no authority on earth could justly
require them to act contrary to the dictates of their conscience, and they did not hesitate to tell the
Emperor to his face, in the XVIth Article of the Confession presented to him at Augsburg, that if
ever their civil rulers commanded them to do aught contrary to their convictions of duty, they
were bound "to obey God rather than men." Luther himself, the very earliest of the Reformers,
denounced religious persecution in the most decided terms. "Do you say, the civil government
should indeed not force men to believe, but only interfere, in order that the people be not led
astray by false doctrine? and how could heretics otherwise be put down? I answer, to counteract
heresy is the business of ministers, not of the civil rulers. Here a different course must be
pursued, and other weapons than the sword must fight these battles. The word of God must here
contend; if this proves unavailing, neither can civil governments remedy the evil, though they
should deluge the earth with blood. Heresy is an intellectual thing, that cannot be hewn by the
sword, nor burned with fire, nor drowned with water. The word of God alone can subdue it; as
Paul says, ’The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling
down of the strong holds,’ &c. 2Cor. 10: 4, 5."83 It is indeed true, that even the Protestant
churches did not at once throw off every vestige of Popish intolerance, but the cases of
persecution by them were few and comparatively mild, and soon passed away. No Protestant
church ever embraced the Romish doctrine, that it is a duty by fire and sword to compel others to
adopt our views. When Protestants did persecute, it was in opposition to their own principles; but
when Romanists put Protestants to death, they only do what their creed requires, what their
books distinctly tell us they believe it their duty to do, whenever they have the predominant
power in their hands.

known or heard of, began its operations. A universal massacre commenced of the English, (Protestants) now
defenceless, and passively resigned to their inhuman foes; no age, no sex, on condition was spared. The wife,
weeping for her butchered husband, and embracing her helpless children, was pierced with them, and perished by
the same stroke; the old, the young, the vigorous, the infirm, underwent the like fate, and were confounded in one
common ruin. In vain did flight save from the first assault; destruction was everywhere let loose, and met the hunted
victims at every turn. In vain was recourse had to relations, to companions, to friends; all connexions were
dissolved, and death was dealt by that hand from protection was implored and expected. Without provocation,
without opposition, the astonished English, (Protestants) being in profound peace, and full security, were massacred
by their nearest neighbours, with whom they had long upheld a continued intercourse of kindness and good offices.
But death was the lightest punishment inflicted by those enraged rebels; all the tortures which wanton cruelty could
devise, all the lingering pains of body, and anguish of mind, the agonies of despair, could not satiate revenge excited
without injury, and cruelty derived from no cause. To enter into particulars would shock the least delicate humanity;
such enormities, though attested by undoubted evidence, would appear almost incredible."
82
Dr. Brownlee’s Popery an enemy to civil liberty, p. 105.
83
Luther’s Werke. Walch’s edition, vol. 10, p. 461.
 V. The last feature of the Reformation to which we shall advert is, that it has delivered
the civil government of the countries which embraced it, from papal tyranny, and has given a
new impulse to civil liberty, which has been felt throughout the Christian world.
Since the relative tendencies of Protestantism and Popery have been fully developed and
attentively studied, no fact in the philosophy of history is more fully established than that the
former is intimately allied to civil liberty; and the latter to civil despotism. Ecclesiastical
government, like that which pertains to the state, may be divided into government of the will or
authority, and government of law or reason. The several Protestant churches are confessedly
governed by fixed principles of reason and scripture. They have adopted the word of God as their
ultimate book of facts and principles in morals, by which they profess to be guided, to which
they refer in all doubtful or disputed cases. This book they freely circulate among the
community, that all may study the subject, become qualified to judge for themselves, and
exercise their civil influence in defence of their rights. Romanism demands absolute,
unconditional submission to the decisions of mother church; discourages all effort in the
community to judge for themselves; yea, prohibits the general reading of God’s word; interdicts
altogether the writings of those who impugn the position of the church, and condemns as mortal
sins every attempt to vindicate the unalienable rights of the people. Nay, it even conceals from its
own laymen those decrees of councils and bulls of popes, which are most dangerous to their own
liberties and those of their Protestant brethren, although it requires them all from Sabbath to
Sabbath to repeat their belief in them. Thus creating a habit of instinctive submission to certain
unknown doctrines or principles of their church, and preparing at least the less enlightened
eventually to execute purposes of cruelty and injustice, from which, if honestly dealt with, they
would shrink with horror. To what flagrant violations of the civil rights of governments and
people, these principles of popery led in the course of her history, is also but too indelibly
impressed on the annals of Europe and South America and even Asia! How much, how
incalculably much the Protestant nations have gained by the Reformation, is demonstrated by
their manifest and striking superiority to t heir Catholic neighbours in every thing relating to civil
rights and liberty, to internal improvements, to domestic purity and happiness, to literacy activity
and enterprise and to scientific investigations. But that we may do no injustice to the Romish
church, we shall let her own standard writings illustrate the facts in her history, and as her
principles professedly change not, the investigation will be fairly applicable to prospective
Romanism in our own country. The established principles of Popery which have hitherto led to
her encroachments on civil liberty, and must also do so in our country as soon as she prevails, are
the following:--
1. The popes actually do claim at this day jurisdiction over the highest civil governments
of the world. Listen to language of pope Pius VII., in his bull of excommunication against
Napoleon in 1809: "Let them once and again understand, that by the law of Christ their
sovereignty (the French empire) is subject to our throne; for we also exercise a sovereignty; we
add also, a more noble sovereignty; unless it were just that the spirit should yield to the flesh; and
celestial things to terrestrial."84 Hear again the language of the present pope Gregory XVI. but
three years ago. His priests in Portugal were in rebellion against the government, the government
drove off the pope’s nuncio, and confiscated the property of the rebellious priests. The pope

84
M’Gavin’s Protestant, ch. 106, 107, vol. ii.
denounces them "for rashly arrogating power over the church," and adds: "We do explicitly
declare, that we do absolutely reprobate all the decrees of the government of Lisbon made to the
detriment of the church and her priests, and declare them null and of no effect." Hear finally the
claims of Pius VII. in 1808, to his agents in Poland: the laws of the church do not recognize any
civil privileges as belonging to persons not Catholic; that their marriages are not valid; that they
can live only in concubinage; that their children being bastards are incapacitated to inherit; that
the Catholics themselves are not validly married, unless they are united according to the rules
prescribed by the court of Rome; and that when they are married according to these rules, their
marriage is valid even if they, in other respects, infringed all the laws of their country.85 Here,
then, if there is any meaning in language, the popes explicitly and honestly tell us, that they do
claim authority over the existing civil governments of the land, and claim and exercise the power
of abrogating the civil laws, made by the government. They do not even rest claim on the fact,
that the French and Portuguese had professed the Romish religion: because as Dens’ Theology,
the present popish textbook in Maynooth College, where bishop England and multitudes of our
Irish priests were educated, informs us, "Though they (the Protestants) and not of the (Romish)
church, they (the protestants) being baptised, are subject to the (Romish) church"!!! So that the
same claim to the control of our government may be expected to be asserted by the pope, so
soon as he finds his Catholics strong enough to sustain him.
2. Again, the popes undertake to depose civil rulers and to absolve the people from their
allegiance to their own civil governments, even if they had formerly pledged that allegiance by
an oath.
The third Lateran council prescribes to all good Catholics, "That oaths which contravene
the utility of the church, and the constitutions of the holy fathers, are not to be called oaths, but
rather perjuries."86
The fourth council of the Lateran is still more explicit in its decrees. Having first
commanded that "the secular powers, whatever office they execute, be admonished, persuaded,
and if necessary compelled by ecclesiastical censure, that as they desire to be reputed and
accounted faithful, so they would publicly take an oath for the defence of the (Romish) faith,
according to their power to destroy all heretics marked by the church, out of the lands of their
jurisdiction."--The council then proceeds to prescribe the remedy of the church, in case any civil
ruler should refuse to exterminate his subjects at the bidding of the papal minions. "But if the
temporal prince, being admonished and required, shall neglect to purge his land from this
heretical filthiness, He Shall Be excommunicated by the bishops of the province, and if he shall
refuse to give satisfaction within a year, let it be signified to the pope, that he may forthwith
pronounce his vassals Absolved From Their Allegiance (for not murdering their Protestant
neighbours!!!) and expose his land to be possessed by Catholics, who having destroyed the
heretics, may possess it without contradiction, &c."87 To the decrees of these councils among
others, every pope binds himself to adhere, in the following words: "I also without doubt receive
and profess all other things, delivered, defined and declared by the sacred canons and general

85
Quarterly Register, Vol. iii. p. 89; and Beecher’s Plea, p. 173.
86
Labbei Concilia, Tom. x. p. 1522.
87
Labbei Concilia, Tom. xi. Part i. p. 148, can. 3, and Horne on Romanism, p. 30.
councils, and especially by the holy council of Trent; and all things contrary to them, with all
heresies rejected and cursed by the church, I likewise condemn, reject and curse."88 And even the
late pope Pius VII. explicitly says: "It is a rule of canon law, that the subjects of a prince
manifestly heretical (Protestant) are released from all obligation to him, are dispensed from all
allegiance and all homage!!!" This is the theory of the Romish church, set forth in terms too
explicit to be misunderstood. The popes, therefore, down to the present incumbent, do evidently
claim the right and avow it as their obligation to denounce Protestant rulers, and to absolve their
subjects from all civil allegiance to them.
That the popes have not been remiss in the discharge of the duty enjoined on them by the
canons, whenever they possessed the requisite power, is testified only too abundantly by the
history of papal countries.
Saint Gregory VII. twice anathematized and deposed the Emperor Henry IV. In 1116 the
Emperor Henry V. was deposed by Paschal II.; John, King of England, by Innocent III. in 1210,
and Raymond, Count of Thoulouse, by the same pontiff, in 1215; the Emperor Frederick II. by
Innocent IV. in 1245; Peter, King of Arragon, by Martin IV. in 1283; Matthew, Duke of Milan,
in 1322, and Lewis of Bavaria, in 1324, by John XXII.; Barnabas, Duke of Milan, by Urban V. in
1363; Alphonso, King of Arragon, in 1425, by Martin V.; the king of Navarre, by Julius II. in
1512, Henry VIII. King of England, by Paul III. in 1538; Henry III. of France, in 1583, by Sixtus
V.; who, on hearing of this monarch’s assassination by friar Jacques Clement, declared that the
murderer’s fervent zeal toward God surpassed that of Judith and Eleazar, and that the
assassination was effected by Providence! In 1591, Gregory XIV. and in the following year the
uncanonically elected Pope, Clement VII., issued bulls of deposition against Henry IV. King of
France, whose life was first attempted by John Chastel, a Jesuit, then by a monk, and finally, he
was stabbed by Ravaillac. In 1569 saint Pius V. deposed Queen Elizabeth, whose Romanist
subjects he stimulated to rebel against her, and furnished some of them with money to aid their
nefarious attempts; and bulls of deposition were fulminated against that illustrious Queen, by
Gregory XIII. in 1580, Sixtus V. in 1587, and Clement VIII. in 1600. Sixtus V. in his bull, styled
her an usurper, a heretic, and an excommunicate; gave her throne to Philip II. of Spain, and
commanded the English to join the Spaniards in dethroning her. Clement VIII. in 1600, issued a
bull to prevent James I. ascending the throne of England, declaring that "when it should happen
that that miserable woman [Queen Elizabeth] should die, they [her subjects] should admit none to
the crown, though ever so nearly allied to it by blood, except they would not only tolerate the
[Roman] Catholic religion, but promote it to the utmost of their power, and would, according to
ancient custom, undertake upon oath to preform the same." In 1643, Urban VIII. issued a bull of
deposition against Charles I. in Ireland; where two years before not fewer than 100,000
Protestants were massacred, and to those who had joined the rebellion of 1641, the same holy
pontiff granted a plenary indulgence. In 1729 Benedict XIII. at the instance of the Romanist Irish
prelates, issued a bull to dethrone George II. King of England, with an indulgence for raising
money to support the Pretender. In 1768, Clement XIII. published a brief, on occasion of certain
edicts issued by the Duke of Parma and Placentia, in his own dominions; wherein the pontiff, in
the plentitude of his usurped authority, abrogated, repealed, and annulled, as being prejudicial to
the liberty, immunity, and jurisdiction of the church, whatever the Duke had ordered in his edicts,

88
Pope Pius’ VIIth Creed.
and forbade his subjects to obey their sovereign; further depriving all, who had either published
or obeyed the edicts, of all their privileges, and incapacitating them from receiving absolution,
until they should fully and entirely have restored matters to their former condition, or should
have made suitable satisfaction to the church, and to the holy see. In 1800, the late pope Pius VII.
announced his election to the pontificate to Louis XVIII. as the lawful King of France; and in the
following year he exhibited a most edifying instance of papal duplicity, when it suited his
interest, by entering into a concordat with Bonaparte, in which, besides suppressing 146
episcopal and metropolitan sees, and dismissing their bishops and metropolitans without any
form of judicature, he absolved all Frenchmen from their oaths of allegiance to their legitimate
sovereign, and authorized an oath of allegiance to the First consul: and when Louis XVIII. sent
his ambassador to Rome to present his credentials, the pontiff refused to receive him. With
marvellous infallibility, however, not quite eight years after, the same pontiff issued a bull (in
June, 1809,) excommunicating Bonaparte and all who adhered to him in his invasion of the papal
states; in which bull he makes the same extravagant pretensions to supreme power which had
been put forth by Saint Gregory VIIl., Innocent III. and other pontiffs. 89
But it may be asked, why have not the popes exercised this right against our own
government, if they are in sober earnest in claiming its possession? To this interrogation we will
permit pope Pius himself to furnish a very satisfactory reply. "To be sure," he says, "we have
fallen into such calamitous times, that it is not possible for the spouse of Jesus Christ to practise,
nor expedient for her to recall her holy maxims of just rigour against the enemies of the faith. But
although she cannot exercise her right of deposing heretics (Protestants) from their principalities,
and declaring them deprived of their property," &c. The reason, it seems, why the popes do not
dethrone Protestant rulers as they formerly did, is not a change in their principles, but a want of
power to execute their wishes, an unwillingness on the part of the Protestant subjects to obey the
lordly dictates of the pontiffs!! Hence the only course left for the holy father, is first to convert
enough of these heretical subjects to the Romish church, and train them to implicit obedience to
the priests, so that in due time they will be prepared to execute the pontifical mandate to
"dethrone their heretical rulers," and extirpate their heretical fellow citizens.
3. The third principle of Popery which has led to infringement of civil liberties of
Protestants is, that Romish ecclesiastics, priests, monks, and nuns claim exemption from the civil
jurisdiction of the governments under which they live.
The bull of Pope Paul V. termed "In coena Domini," of "At the supper of the Lord," in its
fourteenth section, "excommunicates all persons, both ecclesiastical and secular, who appeal
from the execution of the pontifical briefs, indulgences, or any other of their decrees--and all
those who have recourse to secular courts for redress from Roman jurisdiction--and all those who
hinder or forbid the publication and execution of those letters and decrees; and all those who
molest, imprison, terrify or threaten those who execute the commands of the Roman court."90

89
See Horne on Romanism, pp. 31, 32, 33.
90
M’Gavin’s Protestant, Vol. ii. p. 690, 691.
 Section sixteenth, of the same bull, "curses all those who draw ecclesiastical persons,
convents, &c., before their tribunal, against the rules of the canon law." 91
And section twenty, of the same instrument, completes the work. It anathematizes and
excommunicates all and every the magistrates, judges, notaries, &c., who intrude themselves in
capital or criminal causes against ecclesiastical persons, by processing, apprehending or
banishing them, or pronouncing or executing any sentences against them, without the special,
particular, and express license of this holy apostolic see: and also all those who extend such
licenses to persons or cases not expressed, or any other way abuse them, although the offenders
should be counsellors, senators, chancellors, or entitled by any other "names."92 The twenty-
eighth section enjoins it on all prelates, bishops, priests, &c., absolutely to publish this arrogant
bull at least once a year in their churches. Whether this bull is regularly published in this country
we know not. Possibly the pope, who can and often has suited his religion to the times, has given
a secret dispensation for a season in this republican country; if not, it is now published, though
probably in Latin, that it may not excite public attention. In Roman Catholic countries it is
faithfully published and acted on: and even "though the late Grand Duke Leopold, of Tuscany,
frequently commanded the entire suppression of it in his territories, that paper was, not
withstanding, affixed by the priests to the confessionals and sacristies; while others had the
hardihood to publish it from the pulpit or the altar on the day specified by the pope." 93
4. The fourth principle which makes them dangerous to civil government is, that their
priests, &c., are under such oaths to the pope and his kingdom, as render them necessarily
unfaithful to the civil liberties of any country.
The oath taken by priests is as follows: "Omnia a sacris canonibus," &c. "All things
defined by canons and general councils, and especially by the Synod of Trent, I undoubtedly
receive and profess. And all things contrary to them I reject and anathematize; and from my
dependents and others who are under my care, as far as possible, I will withhold. And this
Catholic faith I will teach and enforce upon them." The cananical oath, which every prelate takes
at his consecration, runs thus: "Ego ab hac hora," &c. "From this hour forward I will be faithful
and obedient to my Lord the pope, and his successors. The counsels with which they trust me, I
will not disclose to any man, to the injury of the pope and his successors. I will assist them to

91
Id., Vol. ii. p. 691
92
M’Gavin’s Protestant, Vol. ii. p. 691. St. Ligori, the latest authority, quoted by Dr. Varela, in New York,
affirms the same dangerous doctrine. "It is certain, (he says) that ecclesiastics are not subject to the civil war, either
by canonical or civil right. They re bound, however, in conscience, by the civil laws which are not repugnant to their
station. The civil law has no power to compel them, but it can give them directions, in order that they may conform
to the community."--De Privileg. N. 18. "The clergy, (he continues) are exempt from punishment by the civil law."--
Id., N. 19. See Smith’s Ligori, a work that deserves to be in the hands of every American citizen, p. 207.
That Catholic priests do not feel bound to speak the truth in some cases, even when on oath, is explicitly
asserted by this same saint, whose works were sanctioned by the Pope and Congregation of Rites at Rome in 1816.
"A confessor may affirm even with an oath, that he knows nothing about a sin which he has heard in confession,
meaning thereby, that he does not know it as a man, but not that he does not know it as a minister of Christ." "A
culprit or a witness who is interrogated by a judge unlawfully, can swear that he is ignorant, when in truth he
knows."--Id. N. 153--154. Smith’s Synopsis of Ligori, p. 160.
93
M’Gavin’s Protestant, Vol. ii. p. 697.
retain and defend the popedom and the royalties of Peter against all men. I will carefully
conserve, defend and promote the rights, honours, privileges, and authority of the pope. I will not
be in any council, pact or treaty, in which any thing prejudicial to the person, rights, or power of
the pope is contrived; and if I shall know any such things, I will hinder them to the utmost of my
power, and with all possible speed I will signify them to the pope. To the utmost of my power I
will observe the pope’s commands, and make others observe them. I will impugn and persecute
all heretics, (Protestants,) and rebels to my lord the pope."94
Now when it is recollected that the power claimed by the popes is as much political as
religious; that he claims control over all civil governments, as has been already proved to you
both by papal bulls and canons of councils, is it not difficult to evade the inference, that persons
who have taken this oath to support all the power and "royalties" of the pope, cannot be true to
the political interests of our own country and government, which are so diametrically opposed to
those of popery?
Of a character still more glaringly treasonable is the form of a "Jesuit’s oath of secrecy, as
it remains on record at Paris, among the Society of Jesus."95 In order, it would seem, to keep the
whole body of ecclesiastics detached from the interests of civil governments, to make them an
ecclesiastical and civil standing army, true only to the interests of the popes, the 43d canon of the
Council of Lateran, under Innocent III., actually forbids the Romish priests from taking the oath
of allegiance to the civil government: "Saci auctoritate Concilii prohibemus," &c. "By the sacred
authority of this Council, we declare, that it is unlawful for secular princes to require an oath of
fidelity and allegiance of their clergy; and peremptorily forbid all priests from taking any such

94
Pontifical. Romanor. de Consecrat. Elect. in Episcopum, p. 57, and M’Gavin, Vol. ii. p. 694.
95
The Jesuits’ Oath.--I, A.B., now in the presence of Almighty God, the blessed Virgin Mary, the blessed
Michael the archangel, the blessed St. John Baptist, the holy apostles St. Peter and St Paul, and the saints and sacred
hosts of heaven, and to you my ghostly father, do declare from my heart, without mental reservation, that his
holiness Pope Urban is Christ’s vicar general, and is the true and only head of the Catholic or universal church
throughout the earth; and that by the virtue of the keys of binding and loosing given to his holiness by my Saviour
Jesus Christ, he hath power to depose heretical kings, princes, states, commonwealths, and governments, all being
illegal, without his sacred confirmation, and that they may safely be destroyed; therefore, to the utmost of my power
I shall and will defend this doctrine, and his holiness’s rights and customs against all usurpers of the heretical (or
Protestant) authority whatsoever: especially against the now pretended authority and Church of England, and all
adherents, in regard that they and she be usurpal and heretical, opposing the sacred mother Church of Rome. I do
renounce and disown any allegiance as due to any heretical king, prince, or state, named Protestants, or obedience to
any of their inferior magistrates or officers. I do further declare, that the doctrine of the Church of England, of the
Calvinists, Huguenots, and of other of the name Protestants, to be damnable, and they themselves are damned, and
to be damned, that will not forsake the same. I do further declare, that I will help, assist, and advise all, or any of his
holiness’s agents in any place, wherever I shall be, in England, Scotland, and Ireland, or in any other territory or
kingdom I shall come to; and do my utmost to extirpate the heretical Protestants’ doctrine, and to destroy all their
pretended powers, regal or otherwise. I do further promise and declare, that notwithstanding i am dispensed with to
assume any religion heretical for the propagating of the mother church’s interest, to keep secret and private all her
agents’ counsels from time to time, as they intrust me, and not to divulge, directly or indirectly, by word, writing, or
circumstances whatsoever: but to execute all that shall be proposed, given in charge, or discovered unto me, by you
my ghostly father, or by any of this sacred convent. All which I, A.B., do swear by the blessed Trinity, and blessed
sacrament, which I now am to receive, to perform, and on my part to keep inviolably: And do call all the heavenly
and glorious host of heaven to witness these my real intentions to keep this my oath. In testimony hereof, I take this
most holy and blessed sacrament of the eucharist; and witness the same further with my hand and seal in the face of
this holy convent, this---day of---An. Dom. &c. M’Gavin’s Protestant, Vol. ii. p. 256.
oath if it be required." According to this canon, no Romish priest can be naturalized as a citizen
of our republic. It is a curious topic of inquiry, whether Romish priests do generally become
naturalized or not. Would it not be an interesting and important circumstance, if the inquiry
should establish the fact, that of the whole mass of foreign priests, not one has become a
naturalized citizen of our country? We do not assert the fact, yet we should not be surprised if it
is found true. We have never ourselves heard of a case of such naturalization.
Thus have we presented to you some of the anti-republican principles of popery, derived
not from doubtful sources, not from the fabrications of Protestants,but from the bulls and canons
of the Romanists themselves, all which the priests are by oath bound to observe. Prior to the
Reformation these principles were fully acted out in Europe; and since that time they are still
observed in all Catholic countries, except where the civil governments, even though Catholic,
have not fully submitted. In our own country the priests can accomplish their objects only be
degrees. Yet do we not perceive symptoms of their progress? Is it not a fact, that even at this day
there are some popish nunneries, &c., in our country, into the interior of which no civil officer is
ever admitted?96 Does not this look like a gradual assertion of the claim to exemption from civil

96
The following documents in relation to the Convent in Baltimore, are taken from the Baltimore Literary
and Religious Magazine, edited by the Rev. R.J. Breckinridge. The witnesses are credible and respectable persons,
and no explanation has yet been given of the mysterious circumstance to which they relate. If such cries had been
heard in any other institution, would the civil authorities not have examined into the matter?
STATEMENT
We whose names are subscribed hereto, declare and certify, that on or about the -- day of --- 183-, about
nine o’clock at night, as we were returning home from a meeting in the Methodist Protestant Church, at the corner of
Pitt and Aisquith street, and when opposite the Carmelite Convent and school in Aisquith street, our attention was
suddenly arrested by a loud scream issuing from the upper story of the convent. The sound was that of a female
voice indicating great distress--we stopped and heard a second scream, and then a third, in quick succession,
accompanied with the cry of Help! Help! Oh, Lord! Help! with the appearance of great effort. After this there was
nothing more heard by us during the space of ten or fifteen minutes--we remained about that time on the pavement
opposite the building from which the cries came.
When the cries were first heard, no light was visible in the fourth story, from which the cries seemed to
issue. After the cries, lights appeared in the second and third stories--seeming to pass rapidly from place to place,
indicating haste and confusion. Finally, all the lights disappeared from the second and third stories, and the house
became quiet.
No one passed along the street where we stood, while we stood there. But one of our party was a man, and
he advanced in life--all the remainder of us were women. The watch was not yet set, as some of us heard 9 o’clock
cried before we got home.
Many of us have freely spoken of these things since their occurrence, and now, at the request of Messrs. B.
and C. and M. we give this statement--which we solemnly declare to be true--and sign it with our names.
John Brushcup,
Lavina Brown,
Sophronia Brushcup,
Hannah Leach,
Sarah E. Baker,
Elizabeth Polk.
control enjoined by their bulls and canons? The hostility of their leaders to our political
institutions has even been openly professed, and therefore cannot well be denied by them, nor
doubted by the most charitable Protestants. Bishop Flaget of Kentucky complains in his letters to
his superiors in Europe, that the conversion of the Indians to Romanism is principally retarded by
their intercourse with the whites, "which," he adds, "cannot be hindered as long as this Republic
shall subsist." Mr. Baraga, another Austrian Jesuit, laments "the evils of a free government," and
of "This Too Free government!!" When therefore we reflect, that republican institutions are alike
hostile to the ecclesiastical despotism of Rome, and the civil despotism of Austria and Europe
generally, nothing can be more evident than that the downfall of our government would advance
the interests of both ecclesiastical and political monarchists, and is naturally desired by them,
even if they had not themselves confessed the fact. The monarchists and statesmen of Europe
well know the fruitlessness of an attempt to destroy our republic by open invasion. The only
mode or reaching us is by indirect action. What pretext could be more specious than that of
religion? And as Popery, which is a system of politico-religious despotism, is well understood to
be hostile to liberty in every form, the enemies of human rights must rejoice in its extension,
however indifferent they may be to every thing like true religion. When, under these
circumstances, we see hundreds of societies organized in Catholic Europe, and patronized by the
first politicians and monarchists of Austria, to propagate popery in America, their motive may be

Baltimore, March 13th, 1835.

CERTIFICATE OF THE MINISTER
This is to certify that John Brushcup, Hannah Leach, Sophronia Brushcup, Lavinia Brown, and Sarah E.
Baker, are acceptable members of the Methodist Protestant Church, of Pitt street station.
(Signed)
William Colier, Superintendent.
We take leave then (says the editor of the Magazine) to say in conclusion:--1. This whole subject must be
perfectly familiar to the Superior of the Convent, and to the priest who resides there as Confessor to the
establishment, and we demand of them an explicit and satisfactory account of this affair; in default of receiving
which, we shall put upon their silence the only construction it can bear.
2. The Archbishop of this diocess ought to know that such transactions are perpetrated in this
establishment. And if all his American feelings are not swallowed up in his vows and duties to the head of the Holy
Roman state, we expect and call upon him to ferret out this transaction and relieve the public mind, by a full
statement of the affair.
3. To aid him in his humane labours, we have to say, that we are well assured that two females have died
within six months in the Carmelite Convent; and if he will furnish us with the date of their deaths, then we will
furnish him with the date the terrible affair to which we now call his paternal notice."
And yet, in regard to entering into these abodes of uncleanness and cruelty, Catholic priests, according to
the doctrine of their own sainted Ligori, feel it a duty to encourage children not to consult their own parents, the
natural protectors whom God has given them. "Children (says Ligori) who wish to enter into the religious state (that
is, to become monks or nuns) are not bound, neither is it expedient for them, to consult their parents. Children
should be very cautious in respect to their vocation to a religious life, not to consult their parents (!!!); for it is said,
’make thy case known to thy friend,’ because one’s carnal relations are not friends in this affair, but enemies,
according to what the Lord has said-- ’A man’s enemies are those of his own household.’ From all this, the
conclusion is, that children who enter into the religious state without consulting their parents, do not sin, but,
generally speaking, they greatly err, if they let them know any thing about their vocation."--Smith’s Synopsis of
Ligori, p. 231.
easily conjectured. When we learn, too, that this motive is the current topic of conversation in the
higher circles of Europe, and that the few friends of human liberty there feel an anxious
apprehension from the machinations of Roman priests; when even the venerable patriot Lafayette
was constrained to exclaim to different American citizens, "If the liberties of your country are
destroyed, it can only be by the popish clergy;"97 it becomes us to lend respectful attention to this
subject, and in a suitable, Christian manner, endeavour to resist the encroachments of the enemy.
Here we are met by the objection, that papists, when interrogated, deny every intention
hostile to our liberties, and ought they not to be believed? We answer, the mass of common
papists we have already exonerated from the charge of being privy to such designs. The secret
has not been confided to them. They are only taught implicitly to obey the priest and pope and
councils, at the hazard of eternal ruin, and thus, in due time, as common soldiers, to obey their
commanders. But, some of their leading bishops and priests have denied all such design. True,
but these are well acquainted with the decree of the council of Constance, that no faith need be
kept with heretics, in virtue of which poor Huss, though in possession of a letter of safe conduct
from Emperor Sigismund himself, was committed to the flames. They well know also that this
canon with respect to not keeping faith with heretics was distinctly recognized by the council of
Trent, the last general council that has been held; and that it is therefore still in force. 98 Now
supposing these priests even to be conscientious men, as they believe and obey those canons,
they can state any thing, and deny any thing, even with an oath, as the papal bull declares, and
their oath itself is not binding if the violation of it advances the interests of the church! So long,
therefore, as these canons remain unaltered, and priests continue by an oath to bind themselves to
obey them, they cannot reasonably expect intelligent Protestants to believe their disclaimer. At

97
"The very last interview (says Professor Morse) which I had with Lafayette on the morning of my
departure from Paris, full of his usual concern for America, he made use of the same warning; and in a letter which I
received from him but a few days after at Havre, he alludes to the whole subject, with the hope expressed that I
would make known the real state of things in Europe to my countrymen: at the same time charging it upon me as a
sacred duty as an American, to acquaint them with the fears which were entertained by the friends of republican
liberty, in regard to our country."--Preface to Professor Morse’s edition of "Confessions of a French Catholic Priest,"
&c. p. ix.
98
M’Gavin’s Protestant, vol. i. p. 203, 204. History abundantly testifies how faithfully the decree of that
Council has been observed. Not to insist upon the numerous plots and conspiracies against the reformed religion in
Great Britain, from its establishment to the memorable gunpowder conspiracy, and the Irish conspiracy in 1729;
witness the martyrdom of John Huss, who, though he had a safe conduct from the emperor Sigismund, guaranteeing
his free access to the Council of Constance, and his free return from it, was nevertheless imprisoned there; and, after
a process on a charge of heresy, was condemned and burnt to death, in violation of every law, human and divine.
Witness the massacre of St. Bartholomew. Witness also the massacre of 1641, in Ireland, where (as in France, sixty-
nine years before) no ties of nature or of friendship could prevent papists from embruing their hands in the blood of
their nearest Protestant relations. To these instances may be added the unprincipled revocation of the sacred and
irrevocable edict of Nantes, by Louis XIV., against the faith of the most solemn treaties. Once more, in 1712, when
by virtue of the treaty of Alt-Rastadt certain places were to be surrendered to some Protestant princes, Pope Clement
XI. in a letter to the emperor Charles VI. denounced the Protestants as "an execrable sect," and in the plenitude of
his pretended supremacy declared that every thing, which either was or could be construed or esteemed to be in any
way obstructive of, or in the least degree prejudicial to the Romish faith or worship, or to the authority, jurisdiction,
or any rights of the church whatsoever, "to be, and to have been, and perpetually to remain hereafter null, unjust,
reprobated, void, and evacuated of all force from the beginning; and that no person is bound to the observance of
them, although the same have been repeated, ratified, or secured by oath."--Digest of Evidence on the State of
Ireland, Part ii. p. 243. Horne on Romanism, p. 35.
the time of the American revolution, the several Protestant churches, whose creeds contained a
profession of allegiance to kings, &c., or other principles inconsistent with our republican
institutions, expunged the objectionable articles, and threw off all foreign allegiance. But
Catholics have never done so. Let them do this; let them openly renounce allegiance to all
foreign potentates, and reject those canons of councils and bulls of the popes, which are hostile
to our liberties; and they will secure the confidence of their fellow citizens: we shall be among
the first to do them justice. In the mean time we must regard as the special work of God that
glorious Reformation, which opened the eyes of Europe on the corruptions and arrogant claims
of popery; which taught princes to vindicate their rights against the encroachments of the
pretended vicar of Him who had "no kingdom of this world." Let us cherish the recollection of
that wondrous work of God, which restored to the people the blessed Bible, that principal
instrument of the Reformation, and rendered accessible to all, the pure and unerring plan of
salvation taught by the Saviour and his apostles. In view of all the facts of the case, let the patriot
and the Christian seriously inquire, whether the subject of progressive Romanism amongst us is
not worthy of their attention; whether love to their wives and children does not call upon them to
guard against even the distant dangers of papal cruelty and superstition? Let them not regard with
indifference the rapid increase of those foreign emissaries among us, who still retain their
allegiance to a foreign power. Let them not regard as uncharitable those who re-echo the alarm
which the apostle of liberty, Lafayette, first sounded in our ears. That order of men especially,
now spreading over our land, the disciples of Loyola, who have proved so formidable to the
strong arm of civil government in Europe, as to have been suppressed or banished at thirty
different times, should not be regarded as a contemptible foe, or as unworthy of being attentively
watched. Indeed nothing but want of acquaintance with their history, can lead any friend of
liberty to view them with indifference. Let civilians and statesmen investigate, not the religious
doctrines, but the political principles and political canons of popery, for popery is not less a
political99 than a religious system. The priests and Jesuits form a standing army of foreign

99
The writer would earnestly invite the attention of his fellow citizens to the following extract from a
highly interesting recent work, entitled, "Confessions of a French Catholic Priest; to which are added, Warnings to
the People of the United States." This priest is now in New York, and the translator, S.F.B. Morse, of the New York
University, vouches for the character of the author and credibility of his statements. The scenes here revealed by one
who was himself an actor in them, but whose awakened conscience prompted him to abandon such a corrupt
association, will enable politicians to appreciate the solemn prediction of the great Lafayette, that if American
liberty is destroyed it will be by Catholic priests. In reference to our own country, we would merely say, What
intelligent politician does not know that, in some places, the Romanists already hold the balance at our elections,
and that whenever a papist is a candidate, or any thing can be gained to their cause, or either party is thought more
favorable to the papists as such, they move in a body under the direction of the priest, with a unanimity utterly
unknown in any Protestant sect? Their priesthood is a compactly organized legion, spread over the length and
breadth of our land, each of whom can control almost every Catholic vote in his parish. All these priests are moved
by eleven bishops, and by the archbishop and the pope’s legate, Bishop England, the head of the Jesuitic order in
this country. And all these, down to the lowest priest, are under an oath of allegiance to the pope, who is a political
as well as religious prince, while, if we mistake not, few if any of them (the great majority of them are foreigners)
have taken the oath of naturalization and sworn allegiance to our own government. Would it not be prudent, in the
present circumstances of our country, to require by law all foreign priests and ministers of any and every
denomination, Protestant and Catholic, before they can exercise their professional functions in this country, to
become naturalized, and thus take the oath of allegiance to our own government? Let the reader peruse the
following extract from the warning of the converted priest, and then answer my question:--
 "Americans of every age, of every rank, magistrates and citizens, rich and poor, clergy and laity, by all that
is dearest to you, let a single feeling animate you; unite your ranks as in the day of battle, and if your foe attempts to
introduce himself here, to creep in among you, let him meet every where an impenetrable wall; if he proposes to you
to exchange the simple and pure faith of your fathers for his fanaticisms and superstitions, your liberty for his
thraldom, answer as you would answer if any tyrant should propose to you to surrender your national flag and betray
your country.
"Such is the duty of every American, however you may be divided. Some ambitious men, I am informed,
are to be found among you, hungry for power, who do not blush to make use of Catholics to compass their ends at
the elections. Do those men belong to that American people whose fidelity, union, and devotion, sixty years ago,
astonished Europe, and commanded the admiration of the world? In the days of your immortal struggle you had but
one Arnold to betray the noble cause, and his name is dishonoured for ever; and now, Americans, forgetful of their
origin, of their duty and country, forgetful of the patriotism of their fathers, of the blood which flows in their veins,
buy and beg the very voices of their enemies, of Roman Catholic priests. This only fact is an awful symptom, and
proves but too truly that my fears are well founded.
"But perhaps those misguided, ambitious men do not know the enemy with whom they would join
themselves. Let them open their eyes then, and learn what true Catholics, and especially what priests have lately
done in the elections of France. The history of past events is a lesson for the present day. When Louis XVIII. in
1819 granted his charter, which gave some rights to the French, all the true Catholics, and the clergy above all,
chafed by this recognition of the people’s rights, left no means untried to violate and distort it, till they destroyed it
by the ordinances of July, 1830. During this long struggle of fifteen years, between Absolutism and Liberalism, my
fellow priests used all their power to revive their party, especially on the great day of elections. Then our bishops,
(creatures of the king,) sent us their circulars, in order to warn our zeal and ardour.
"And we, the faithful slaves of our spiritual Superiors, used all our influence--made public prayers for good
elections; we preached in the pulpit to our parishioners, in the catechism to the boys, in the confessional to every
body, that Liberalism (or the party of Liberty) was a guilty heresy; it was a mortal sin to give one’s voice for this
party, and we tried by every means to dishonour and tarnish its adherents.* The throne and the altar was a watch-
word, was the enjoined text of all our discourses. We required in confession rigorously from the electors, the name
and opinion of their candidates, obliged them to vote according to our direction, under pain of refusal of
absolution.+ If electors themselves did not come to the confession, we had their wives and daughters; and we
recommended to them that they should employ all their influence to make their fathers and husbands of our party.
"The government, which relied upon our zeal, which knew that its interests were ours, instituted many
societies of itinerant missionaries. They went from city to city, from village to village, to revive the ashes of
Catholicism and preach servitude. They formed brotherhoods and associations of both sexes, in which they enlisted
the most devoted knights of their religion and royalism, the most ardent foes of liberty. And (striking circumstance,
the best proof of the truth of my observations) all the deputies named by the country electors were enemies of liberty
and of the press, because those country electors were under the influence of curates; while in the cities the electors,
more free and learned, chose deputies how were friends of freedom.
"But when our party# saw that all its exertions were vain and useless, it introduced into the court of Charles
X., about 1826, a secret ecclesiastic council, composed of the cardinals De la Fare and De Latil, archbishops of
Rouen and Rheims, the archbishop of Paris, M. De Guelen, and some pious laymen, worthy of their holy society.
This council, called the Camarilla, directed all the acts of government; forced the public functionaries to go to
confession; required from all the candidates to public situations an attestation of Catholic and Royalist principles
delivered by the curate; pressed the unhappy Charles X. to name his stupid ministry of the 8th of August, 1829; and
at length, to issue the fatal ordinances of July, 1830. Thus has the Popish clergy lengthened the struggle for liberty,
and compromised the well-being of thirty-three millions of Frenchmen; thus it has divided them into two camps of
mortal enemies; thus, at last, has it ingloriously crowned the long story of its cruelty and oppression in my
unfortunate country.
"Since the accession of Louis Philip, the priests have kindled again the flames of civil war. They have
sprinkled again with holy water the guns and pick-axes of the poor and slavish peasants of La Vendee $ and
Britagny, to raise them against the popular throne. But this new crime has ended, after some bloody fights, in
allegiance in our midst. Unconnected with our population by the ties of domestic life, they live
subservient to the interests of their alien master, and fight his battles. They are servants of the
state as well as of the altar. Above all, let politicians, statesmen, and Christians of every
denomination unite in circulating the unadulterated word of God, without note or comment,
either Papal or Protestant, among our Catholic fellow citizens, and in persuading them to search
the scriptures and think for themselves. Let efforts be made to bring their children under the
influence of Sabbath-school instruction. Let all, both young and old, be treated in the spirit of
true Christian benevolence, and we doubt not, that under God, much can be accomplished for the
preservation of our liberties, and the glory of our Divine Master.

bringing on La Vendee an army of thirty thousand soldiers, who at the present time, crush this province, the tool of
its priests; and the clergy, seeing that Philip becomes from day to day as despotic as his predecessors, rallies itself
round him, and unites once more the throne and the altar. Such as these are the men with whom you ally yourselves,
Americans; whose suffrages you beg, whose assistance you ask, in your elections: these are the men with whom you
would divide the future destinies of your country. I wish you would but look at the history of Popery, and examine
and see if ever a Catholic country has been happy."--p. 245-249.
See also, on the political bearings of Popery, Dr. Breckinridge’s Discussion with Mr. Hughes, passim.
*A singular proof of the natural hatred of the priests for liberty, is, that Lafayette is represented by them as
a very bad man. In order to judge of this hero’s character, it was necessary for me to come to America.
+In 1833, the author assisted at the administration of the last sacrament to a dying country gentleman. The
origin of his fortune was questionable, and he was a member of the Liberal party. His priest enjoined him, in order
to legitimate his riches, to make them donations to the church; but as for his vote, the priest compelled him to call
in his family, to beg pardon, for the scandal of having given his vote to a Liberal man, and to beseech his eldest son
not to follow his example.
#
As I was only a secondary wheel of this infernal machinery, I knew not all its secrets; but these few
revelations are true to the letter.
$
Every body knows that La Vendee has been devastated by sword and flames, and unpeopled, in its wars
excited by its priest against the republic in 1793--4. They attempted in 1830 to renew the same horrors, but Philip
has employed the most rigorous and oppressive measures to prevent it.