We have shown in the previous chapters that the monastic vows are in
conflict, not only with the requirements of moral goodness, but with
the dictates of reason, the principles of personal improvement, and the
interests and progress of society. We have shown, also, that they were
assumed not for the humble purpose of acquiring spiritual perfection,
but for the ambitious purpose of obtaining riches, power, and dominion.
From these considerations, and from the fact that the monachal orders
form an elementary part of the constitution of the Catholic Church,
we have inferred that she is rather a political than a religious
institution; and that while politics form her nature and principles,
religion is assumed as an ornament and disguise.
We will now adduce a few facts tending to show that monkish orders
originated, not from Christianity; that they existed in pre-historic
ages; and that so far as they constitute the Catholic Church, she is a
heathen, and not a Christian institution.
It is well known that the Carmelite monks claim Elijah, the prophet, as
their founder. Among the ancient personages whom they assert belonged
to their order, they enumerate Pythagoras, the Gallic Druids, all
the prophets and holy men mentioned in the Old and New Testament,
the Apostles, the Essenes, and the ancient hermits. Although amid
the wrangling of the monastic orders for preeminence, this claim has
rigorously been contested, yet Pope Benedict III. allowed the Carmelites
to erect in the Vatican the statue of Elijah as the founder of their
order. This permission, so far as the concession of the infallible
father is authority, places the antiquity of the monachal order remotely
beyond that of Christianity; acknowledges its institution to have
originated from Judaism; and grants that its rules and principles were
adopted by ancient Pagan fraternities.
That identical institutions have flourished in Asia from the remotest
historical periods, admits not of a question. The present Sufism of
Arabia is but a modified form of an ancient system of pantheistical
mysticism, which taught that through the observance of ascetic
practices the animal passions could be destroyed, the soul purified
and assimilated to God, and a beatific state attained whose tranquility
nothing could disturb. The Gymnosophists, the naked philosophers of
India, were an order of monks, who practised the most excruciating
penance; and who, in their eagerness to become pure, sometimes burnt
themselves alive. The God Fo, born in Cashmere B. C. 1027, the author
of the Braminical religion, strenuously advocated monachal institutions.
The different orders of the monks and hermits which originated from his
allegorical and mystical teaching, assumed the vows of unconditional
obedience and absolute poverty. The monks resided in monasteries, and
the hermits in deserts. They both practised the most rigorous penance,
professed to aspire after absolute purity, but in their conduct and
principles they were grovelling, intriguing, profligate and ambitious.
Buddha, born B. C. 1029, two years after Fo, founded the monastic order
of the Buddhists. His convents were governed by superiors who were
subject to the absolute authority of the patriarch, or, as he was
officially styled, the Apostolic Successor. The functions and authority
of the Buddhistic superiors were similar to those of the Catholic
orders; and the pretensions and dignity of the patriarch were one and
the same with those of the Pope of Rome. The monks lived in monasteries,
assumed the vows of obedience, poverty and celibacy, and admitted
virgins to social intercourse. Jeseus Christna, born B. C. 3,500, the
incarnate redeemer of the Hindoos, whose birth, life, and miracles
resemble those of Jesus Christ, (see "Bible in India,") alludes in
his discourses to monks and hermits as being at his time ancient,
flourishing and venerated orders. The Hindoo and Mohammedan Fakirs are
classes of monks who vow obedience, poverty and celibacy, retire from
the world, pass their time in silent contemplation, and acquire the
veneration of the populace by the practice of absurd and cruel penance.
The Essenes, who flourished in Egypt and Palestine before the Christian
era, were an organization of monks who derived their theological
principles from the God Theuth, the founder of the Egyptian religious
ceremonies.
From the above enumerated facts the conclusion is irresistible, that
the Catholic monastic orders are neither of Christian origin, nor
inconsistent with the doctrines and worship of Paganism.
A Romish missionary who visited China, observing the similarity which
subsisted between the Chinese and the Catholic religion, declared
that the devil must have preceded him, and converted the nation to
Christianity, in order to cheat the church out of the credit of the
enterprise. A more learned but less pious authority concluded from
the same analogy, that Catholicism did not convert Paganism, but that
Paganism converted Catholicism.
We will now conclude our examination of the Catholic monastic orders,
with a few general remarks.
The monastic vows are not only a bold abnegation of the authority of
reason and conscience, but a crafty device to delude the credulous,
and secretly to acquire riches, power and influence. Although they were
assumed by the monks as perpetual obligations, yet they were evaded,
modified, or abrogated as interest and policy suggested. The mendicant
orders, which assumed the vow of perpetual and absolute poverty,
artfully labored to amass fortunes; and soon betrayed a secret design
of acquiring hierachal importance and supremacy. The Franciscans,
who solemnly obligated themselves to remain forever poor, incessantly
grasped after riches. When they had built nunneries, convents, and
became the proprietors of extensive domains, they abrogated their vow
of perpetual poverty, lest it should invalidate their title to vast
possessions which they held. With equal duplicity and ambition, they
assumed, upon their first organization, a vow of perpetual ignorance;
abjuring the acquisition of any intellectual accomplishment, and
consecrating themselves strictly to the preaching of the gospel. But
becoming enchanted with the magnificence of the papal crown, and wishing
to wield its immense power and lucrative patronage in behalf of their
order, and perceiving that literary acquirements would facilitate the
accomplishment of this object, they annulled their vow of perpetual
ignorance, and began to devote themselves to the acquisition of
some degree of profane erudition. Having acquired immense wealth and
popularity, and removed by art or bribery every obstacle to the success
of their ambition, they placed on the apostolic throne, from their
own order, Nicholas V., Alexander V., Sixtus IV., and Clement XIV.
The Dominicans, who were established to preach against infidels and
heretics, adopted at the commencement of their career the money-making
devices of the mendicant orders; but when their revenues had become so
great, and their domains so extensive that they had attracted a covetous
glance from the secular power, they prudently annulled the vows by which
they had been acquired, lest the profane avariciousness of princes
should cause their sequestration.
The Jesuits professed to have a holy abhorrence of riches, but
thankfully accepted costly presents, opulent legacies, vast tracts of
land, and the pecuniary means of erecting numerous stately structures.
While this pious fraternity resolved not to accept any ecclesiastical
dignity, it secretly and artfully labored to acquire all the privileges
of the mendicant orders, all the advantages of the secular clergy, and
to make the members of its order superior to those of any other, and
its general next in power and importance to the pope. By hypocrisy,
intrigue, and cringing sycophancy, these unscrupulous monks obtained
rights and privileges enjoyed by no other ecclesiastical corporation.
They not only obtained exemption from all civil and episcopal taxes, and
from all amenability to any other power than that of the pope; but also
the authority of absolving from all sins and ecclesiastical penalties;
of changing the object of the vows of the laity; and of acquiring
churches and domains without restriction. They were privileged also to
suit their dress to circumstances, their conduct to peculiarities, their
profession to the views of others; to be accommodating and complaisant
while pursuing a political enterprise, and under the mask of any
external appearance to prosecute in secret what might excite opposition
if openly avowed. They were allowed to become actual merchants,
mechanics, showmen, actors, and to adopt any profession calculated to
facilitate the accomplishment of a design, and to throw off the
mask whenever they thought expedient. Organized on the principles of
deception, and unrestricted in their privileges, they secretly labored
for their own aggrandizement, while they publicly professed to be
sacrificing their interests to the salvation of mankind. They became
professors of universities and tutors of schools, that they might select
the brightest minds of the rising generation, and mould them to their
purposes. They became the spiritual guides of females of rank and
opulence, that they might avail themselves of their influence and
control their wealth. They became the confessors of princes, that they
might penetrate their intentions, ferret out their secrets, watch over
their conduct, and enslave and govern their minds. They became the
governors of colonies, in order to grasp secular revenues, and to
exercise the political power in behalf of their interests. They
established seminaries and boarding schools for both sexes, in order to
acquire dominion over the young; they sought to occupy the confessional,
in order to discover all domestic and governmental secrets; and they
labored to monopolize the pulpit, in order to manufacture public
opinion, and influence the general tone of society in their favor.
The numerous divisions into which the religious orders were divided,
and their different degrees of austerity, enabled the church to suit
its policy to the corruption or purity, the ignorance or learning of the
nation it sought to proselyte and govern. Under its direction the monks
flattered every power they were ordered to subvert, and blushed at no
sycophancy that facilitated the accomplishment of an object. Governed
by unnatural vows, they sacrificed freedom, the source of natural
sentiment, to credulity and blind submission The most absurd and
criminal injunctions of a superior or general were obeyed without
compunction or remorse. If they aspired after perfection, it was by
sacrificing the virtues of life. If they strove to obtain personal
purity, it was by violating the laws of their being. They sought to
atone for offences by scourging their backs, ironing their limbs,
chaining themselves to rocks, passing their lives in caves, in days
without food, in nights without sleep, in years without speaking;
subsisting without money, propagating without women, acquiring the
respect of the world they despised, the riches they contemned, and the
dignity they abjured. They were a palpable deception, yet an object
of universal veneration. By cunning and obsequiousness they sought and
obtained power; by duplicity and fraud they amassed fortunes; by luxury
and tyranny they oppressed the world. Every species of absurdity, art,
hypocrisy, avarice, ambition and despotism, under the guise of sanctity
was embodied in their organization, and illustrated in their conduct.
The doctrines which they taught were often as pernicious as their
professions were false, and their conduct crafty. As the accommodating
morality of their religion allowed them to adopt any profession, or any
mode of life that would favor the success of a design, so the license of
their sophistry enabled them to construe the maxims of virtue according
to any standard that would justify the conduct dictated by their
interest or sycophancy. By the pliancy of their moral code they
consecrated the basest means to pious ends. By the subterfuge of
perplexing interpretations, mental reservations, and an artful ambiguity
of language, they excused and sanctioned perjury and every other crime.
They taught that offences were justified, if, when committed, the
criminal thought differently from what he said or done; and that a
mental reservation nullified the obligation of any promise, of any
contract, or of any treaty. The perversions of the maxims of virtue by
which they sought to justify the crimes of others, they applied to their
own conduct in the broadest sense. In 1809, when the papal archives
were brought to France, the startling fact became public that the
holy fathers had been in the habit of availing themselves of pious
subterfuges. It then appeared that while they had made contracts, and
issued bulls in conformity with the demands of temporal princes, they
had at the same time nullified, by virtue of mental reservations, such
of them as were obnoxious.
The absurdities and perniciousness of their moral code were not exceeded
by those of their penal code. According to the doctrines of Catholicity
the guilt of every crime may be expiated by the performance of penance.
To regulate the priest in prescribing this mode of punishment, the
church furnished him with an ecclesiastical body of laws, which he as
carefully as prudently concealed from the eyes of the intelligent. All
priests were enabled, by the use of this code, to understand the true
orthodox degree of punishment which had been authoratively decided
should be inflicted on penitents, for the commission of any offence of
word, thought or deed; and a uniformity in the administration of
penal prescriptions was maintained, which harmonized with the divine
inspiration by which the confessor pretended to be guided in the matter.
Fasts, prayers, self-torture, abstinence from business, were, by the
authority of the ecclesiastical code, declared to be the divinely
appointed methods of expiating the guilt of rape, of fornication, of
adultery, of robbery, of murder, and of every degree and species of
crime. These offences being very henious in their nature, and very
frequently committed by those who believed in the ability of the church
to absolve them from their guilt, and time being required for the
performance of the atoning penance, it is easy to see that an ordinary
Catholic sinner was in eminent danger of incurring a debt which would
require several centuries of penance to liquidate. Here was a dilemma.
Long fasting would starve him; long abstinence from business would
empoverish him; and either expedient would prevent him from being a
source of revenue to the church; and, in fact, defeat the object of
the holy sacrament of penance. To obviate this difficulty the ingenious
method of indulgences was adopted. By this happy expedient provision
was made for the relief of all criminals at stipulated prices, graduated
according to their pecuniary circumstances. A penance imposed on a
rich sinner for one year's indulgence in the commission of a particular
offence, was, by this crafty device, allowed to be cancelled by the
payment of twenty shillings to the priest; and if the sinner was poor,
by the payment of nine shillings. Yet even by this indulgence and
charitable discrimination, as every separate offence required the
atonement of a separate penance, few sinners escaped incurring less than
a debt of three hundred years, or of two hundred pounds sterling. The
liquidation of such an obligation during the dark ages would consume a
small fortune; but the expansive benevolence of the church, touched
at the sorrows of her contrite members, graciously accepted their land
after she had exhausted their purse.
As crime had its degrees of turpitude, the ecclesiastical code
prescribed degrees of severity in punishing it. Whoever could not pay
with their purse had to pay with their body. Three thousand lashes,
and the repetition of a portion of the Psalter, were prescribed as an
indispensable satisfaction for any crime whose penance required a year
to discharge; and fifteen thousand lashes and the repetition of the
whole Psalter, for any crime whose penance required five years to
discharge. A year's penance was taxed at three thousand lashes, a
century's at three hundred thousand lashes, and five centuries at
fifteen hundred thousand lashes. 13
These scourgings were always sanctified by the repetition of psalms. As
vicarious flagellation did not impair the revenues of the church, it
was not objected to; and a sinner would often expiate his guilt
by vigorously laying the stripes it demanded on the back of an
accommodating friend. The skill and hardihood of St, Dominic was able to
discharge the penitential lashes of a century in six days; and his
pious example was attempted to be imitated even by ladies of fashion and
quality.
The monasteries were ambiguous, oppressive corporations. If they have
at times preserved the literary treasures of the ancients, they have
impaired their authority by numerous corruptions and interpolations. If
they have sometimes established institutions for the education of youth,
they have generally usurped the fortunes of their patrons. If they have
ever been places of refuge for the proscribed, they have always been the
means of oppressing industry, and restricting freedom. If they have been
schools for the correction of error, and improvement in virtue, yet the
absurdities and immoralities taught within their sanctuaries, and the
crimes notoriously practised therein, have inflicted deeper injury on
the cause of truth, and on the interest of public morals, than can be
atoned for by any usefulness or virtue which they could possess, or
can pretend to claim. Their virtues were accidents; their vices natural
offsprings. They were financial institutions. The labor performed by
their inmates as a penance, was made a lucrative source of revenue.
The articles which they manufactured were represented as capable of
imparting a peculiar blessing to the purchaser, making them cheap at
any price. A simple badge of a religious order, to which were ascribed
divine virtue, and an unlimited amount of indulgences, was sold to lay
members at the price of a respectable fortune. The tutors with which
the monasteries furnished schools, the professors which they gave to
colleges, the confessors with which they supplied princes, and the
spiritual guides with which they provided the affluent of both sexes,
were benevolently granted upon the payment of exorbitant sums of money.
Gold being the source of power and luxury, it became the governing
principle of the church. For it she granted indulgences to violate the
laws of heaven and earth; threatened and repealed excommunications; and
merchandised every spiritual blessing, all the prerogatives of heaven,
and all the privileges of earth. Gold supplied the place of contrition,
atoned for the offences of criminals, released sinners from purgatory,
and opened to guilt the gates of Paradise. As it more ably than any
thing else increased the power and dominion of the church, it was a more
adorable object than the deity, a more precious savior than Christ, a
more sanctifying possession than the Holy Ghost. As all had sinned, all
had to pay; and as all were totally depraved, all had to be liberal.
The confessor was judge; and as he was interested in the amount, he was
likely to be exorbitant in the demand. The sin of total depravity,
which all had inherited from the forbidden fruit which Adam had eaten,
empowered a priest to demand of a penitent the surrender of the whole of
his fortune.
With extraordinary financial ingenuity, the church converted not only
the crimes of her members, but the virtues of her departed saints, into
a lucrative source of revenue. Happily conceiving that the saints, some
of whom had been executed as malefactors, had performed more good works
than was necessary for the salvation of their souls, she inferred that
the superabundant quantity of their goodness might be dealt out to
the destitute without detriment to the owners. With more cupidity than
reason, the church laid claim to these works of supererogation, and
began to vend them at exorbitant prices. The exhaustlessness of the
store, and the scarcity of the article among her members, made the
enterprise a very profitable speculation.
After disposing of a great portion of heaven, and finding it exceedingly
remunerative, her inveterate disposition to traffic led her to examine
the saints more carefully, and see if they had not other disposable
material for the exercise of her commercial ingenuity. She was not long
in discovering that the bones of the saints were likely to be deemed as
valuable as their virtues had been, and might prove as marketable. This
discovery induced an industrious search for their graves, and a careful
excavation of them. The bones of Samuel, the judge of Israel, which had
slept for five hundred years in Palestine, were exhumed and transported
to Rome. St. Stephen having appeared in a dream to a pious man, and
informed him where his corpse reposed, the locality was immediately
examined by bishops and priests in company with the dreamer.
Unmistakable proofs appeared as to the existence of a grave, but some
honest doubts arose as to it being the identical one in which St.
Stephen had been deposited; yet they all vanished upon opening the
coffin, for such celestial odors arose from the corpse, and such devout
reverence was manifested by the trees and rocks in the vicinity, that
the most sceptical was satisfied of the genuineness of the relics. A
saint's tomb being equal in value to a gold mine, it was natural for the
church to seek for it with great eagerness. But the deep earnestness of
her enthusiasm blunted the acuteness of her judgment. It sometimes led
her to mistake the bones of cats, of dogs, and of jackals for those of
saints; and as there is no difference between the bones of thieves
and murderers and those of saints, and as both classes have often been
regarded by law as synonymous, and interred together in the same field,
the former were frequently gathered up in mistake for the latter. But
however mortifying were such errors, they did not prove as unfortunate
as might have been expected; for until anatomy and history had rectified
them, the bones of pigs, of jackals, and of malefactors, brought as good
prices as the veritable bones of saints, were as eagerly sought after;
and what is very remarkable, performed as many and as great miracles.
We do not pretend to assert that the religious orders, even the most
objectionable of them, did not in some instances render valuable aid to
the cause of education and humanity The sanctity and disinterestedness
with which their profession was invested, though generally assumed, were
sometimes real. But the corrupt and pernicious principles which entered
into their constitution, were too self-evident to be concealed from the
eyes of mankind; and too revolting to escape the animadversion of some
of the more noble and courageous members of their fraternity. Some of
the clergy, and many of the learned men of the age boldly complained of
their base immorality. Their aversion to reform, and the worldly
policy which characterized their religious profession, sunk them in
the estimation of the enlightened and philanthropic. Their pernicious
intermeddling in political affairs, their cunning and obsequiousness,
their busy and intriguing spirit, and the powerful confederacy of their
orders, made them objects of suspicion to jurists and statesmen. The
numerous exemptions which they enjoyed under the protection of the laws,
their privileges nullifying the jurisdiction of the civil authority over
them, their overgrown power, and the base accommodation of principle to
circumstances, by which they labored to advance the pope's pretension to
supreme dominion, rendered their existence in a government a political
solecism. But notwithstanding these palpable facts, the force of habit
and of education, the deep-rooted reverence which existed in the
public mind for the spiritual guides, the superstitious dread of their
anathemas, and the servile temper which monarchical government engenders
in the minds of subjects, all conspired to conciliate Christendom to
the deep degradation inflicted on society by the monastic orders, until
their arrogant conduct towards some powerful monarch had surpassed
the limits of his forbearance. It was then that the discontent and
indignation which their outrageous conduct had created in the public
mind, but which superstition had held in check, broke forth in bold and
explicit demands for reformation. Reforms, consequently, were not only
projected, but peremptorily enforced. The temporal and spiritual powers
of the monastic orders were restricted by the abolishment of their
exemptions. Sov-reigns appropriated many of their rich estates to
education and charitable purposes; and sometimes to their own use. Even
Catholic princes obliged the monks to submit to unpleasant restrictions,
or to purchase exemption at an enormous rate. The different orders, one
after the other, were abrogated on account of some intolerable conduct.
The Jesuists were abolished in England on account of the political
plotting of its members; in Holland for having caused the assassination
of Maurice de Nassau; in Portugal for an attempt to murder Joseph I.; in
Spain, and its colonies, for conspiring against the government; in Italy
for licentiousness; and in France, as the decree expresses, because
"Their doctrine destroys the law of nature, that rule of morals which
God has inscribed on the heart of man. Their dogmas break all bounds
of civil society, authorizing theft, perjury, falsehood, the most
inordinate and criminal impiety, and generally all passions and
wickedness; teaching the nefarious principle of secret compensation,
equivocation and mental reservation; extirpating every sentiment of
humanity in their sanction of homicide and parricide; subverting the
authority of government, and, in fine, overthrowing the practice and
foundation of religion, and substituting in their stead all sorts of
superstition, with magic, blasphemy, and adultery." That their conduct
and principles are of the most execrable description, the history of all
nations affords melancholy evidence. They attempted to dethrone Queen
Elizabeth, but defeated in that, sought to murder her. They caused
the assassination of the Prince of Orange. They endeavored to poison
Maximillion I., King of Austria. They attempted to murder Henry IV.,
and Louis XV. They poisoned Pope Clement XIII., for having attempted to
abolish them, and Pope Clement XIX., for having abrogated their order,
although he did it with mental reservations. Loaded with the crimes
of ages, and the curses of nations, they were abolished with different
limitations in every part of Europe; and as they were the most powerful
of the monastic orders, the others rapidly incurred the sentence of the
same degradation. But notwithstanding all this, the Jesuistical order,
so execrable in its principles, so dangerous to public peace and morals,
and so justly reprobated by all enlightened men and governments, was
restored by Pope Pius VII., who intimated that it would reappear in the
same authority in which it fell. Again these monks are traversing the
world, arresting the progress of science, demoralizing society, and
plotting treason and rebellion in the advancement of the pope's claims
to supreme temporal and spiritual dominion, until the foundation
of independent government begins to quake; until the pillars of
constitutional liberty begin to totter; until despotism dares insult the
ears of freemen with the boldness of its prophecies; and until statesmen
and patriots turn pale as they view the portentous vapors darkling the
political horizon, which may gather into a storm, whose rain will be the
blood of nations, and whose thunder will shake governments to atoms.