THE ARGUMENT FROM THE WHOLE, OR, ROME HER OWN WITNESS.
When one goes to Rome, it is not unreasonable that he should there look
for some proofs of the vaunted excellence of the Roman faith. Rome is
the seat of Christ's Vicar, and the centre of Christianity, as Romanists
maintain; and there surely, if anywhere, may he expect to find those
personal and social virtues which have ever flourished in the wake of
Christianity. To what region has she gone where barbarism and vice have
not disappeared? and in what age has she flourished in which she has not
moulded the hearts of men and the institutions of society into
conformity with the purity of her own precepts, and the benevolence of
her own spirit? She has been no teacher of villany and cruelty,--no
patron of lust,--no champion of oppression. She has known only
"whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever
things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of
good report." Her great Founder demanded that she should be tried by her
fruits; and why should Rome be unwilling to submit to this test? If the
Pope be Christ's Vicar, his deeds cannot be evil. If Romanism be
Christianity, or rather, if it alone be Christianity, as its champions
maintain, Rome must be the most Christian city on the earth, and the
Romans examples to the whole human race, of industry, of sobriety, of
the love of truth, and, in short, of whatever tends to dignify and exalt
human character. On the assumption that the Christianity of the Seven
Hills is the Christianity of the New Testament, Rome ought to be the
seat of just laws, of inflexibly upright and impartial tribunals, and of
wise, paternal, and incorruptible rulers. Is it so? Is Christ's Vicar a
model to all governors? and is the region over which he bears sway
renowned throughout the earth as the most virtuous, the most happy, and
the most prosperous region in it? Alas! the very opposite of all this is
the fact. There is not on the face of the earth a region more barren of
everything Christian, and of everything that ought to spring from
Christianity, than is the region of the Seven Hills. And not only do we
there find the absence of all that reminds us of Christianity, or that
could indicate her presence; but we find there the presence, on a most
gigantic scale, and in most intense activity, of all the elements and
forms of evil. When the infidel would select the very strongest proofs
that Christianity cannot possibly be Divine, and that its influence on
individual and national character is most disastrous, he goes to the
banks of the Tiber. The weapons which Voltaire and his compeers wielded
with such terrible effect in the end of last century were borrowed from
Rome. Now, why is this? Either Christianity is to a most extraordinary
degree destructive of all the temporal interests of man, or Romanism is
not Christianity.
The first part of the alternative cannot in reason be maintained.
Christianity, like man, was made in the image of Him who created her;
and, like her great Maker, is essentially and supremely benevolent. She
is as much the fountain of good as the sun is the fountain of light; and
the good that is in the minor institutions which exist around her comes
from her, just as the mild effulgence of the planets radiates from the
great orb of day. She cherishes man in all the extent of his diversified
faculties, and throughout the vast range of his interests, temporal and
eternal. But Romanism is as universal in her evil as Christianity is in
her good. She is as omnipotent to overthrow as Christianity is to build
up. Man, in his intellectual powers and his moral affections,--in his
social relations and his national interests,--she converts into a wreck;
and where Christianity creates an angel, Romanism produces a fiend.
Accordingly, the region where Romanism has fixed its seat is a mighty
and appalling ruin. Like some Indian divinity seated amidst the blood,
and skulls, and mangled limbs of its victims, Romanism is grimly seated
amidst the mangled remains of liberty, and civilization, and humanity.
Her throne is a graveyard,--a graveyard that covers, not the mortal
bodies of men, but the fruits and acquisitions, alas! of man's immortal
genius. Thither have gone down the labours, the achievements, the hopes,
of innumerable ages; and in this gulph they have all perished. Italy,
glorious once with the light of intelligence and of liberty on her brow,
and crowned with the laurel of conquest, is now naked and manacled. Who
converted Italy into a barbarian and a slave? The Papacy. The growth of
that foul superstition and the decay of the country have gone on by
equal stages. In the territory blessed with the pontifical government
there is--as the previous chapters show--no trade, no industry, no
justice, no patriotism; there is neither personal worth nor public
virtue; there is nothing but corruption and ruin. In fine, the Papal
States are a physical, social, political, and moral wreck; and from
whatever quarter that _religion_ has come which has created this wreck,
it is undeniable that it has not come from the New Testament. If it be
true that "a tree is known by its fruits," the tree of Romanism was
never planted by the Saviour.
With such evidence before him as Italy furnishes, can any man doubt what
the consequence would be of admitting this system into Britain? If there
be any truth in the maxim, that like causes produce like effects, the
consequences are as manifest as they are inevitable. There is a force of
genius, a versatility and buoyancy, about the Italians, which fit them
better than most to resist longer and surmount sooner the influence of a
system like the Papacy; and yet, if that system has wrought such
terrible havoc among them,--if it has put them down and keeps them
down,--where is the nation or people who may think to embrace Romanism,
and yet escape being destroyed by it? Assuredly, should it ever gain the
ascendancy in this country, it will inflict, and in far shorter time,
the same dire ruin upon us which it has inflicted on Italy.
Let no man delude himself with the idea that it is simply a _religion_
which he is admitting, and that the only change that would ensue would
be merely the substitution of a Romanist for a Protestant creed. It is a
_scheme of Government_; and its introduction would be followed by a
complete and universal change in the political constitution and
government of the country. The Romanists themselves have put this matter
beyond dispute. Why did the Papists divide _territorially_ the country?
Why did they assume _territorial_ titles? and why do they so
pertinaciously cling to these titles? Why, because their chief aim is to
erect a territorial and political system, and they wish to secure, by
fair means or foul, a pretest or basis on which they may afterwards
enforce that system by political and physical means. Have we forgotten
the famous declaration of Wiseman, that his grand end in the papal
aggression was to introduce canon law? And what is canon law? The
previous chapters show what canon law is. It is a code which, though
founded on a religious dogma, namely, that the Pope is God's Vicar, is
nevertheless mainly temporal in its character. It claims a temporal
jurisdiction; it employs temporal power in its support,--the _sbirri_,
Swiss guards, and French troops at Rome, for instance; and it visits
offences with temporal punishment,--banishment, the galleys, the
carabine, and guillotine. In its most modified form, and as viewed under
the glosses of the most dexterous of its modern commentators and
apologists, it vests the Pope in a DIRECTING POWER, according to which
he can declare _null_ all constitutions, laws, tribunals, decisions,
oaths, and causes contrary to good morals, in other words, contrary to
the interests of the Church, of which he is the sole and infallible
judge; and all resistance is punishable by deprivation of civil rights,
by confiscation of goods, by imprisonment, and, in the last resort, by
death. In short, it vests in the Pope's hands all power on earth,
whether spiritual or temporal, and puts all persons, ecclesiastical and
secular, under his foot. A more overwhelming tyranny it is impossible to
imagine; for it is a tyranny that unites the voice with the arm of
Deity. We challenge the Romanist to show how he can inaugurate his
system in Britain,--set up canon law, as he proposes,--without changing
the constitution of the country. We affirm, on the grounds we have
stated, that he cannot. This, then, is no battle merely of churches and
creeds; it is a battle between two kingdoms and two kings,--the Pope on
one side, and Queen Victoria on the other; and no one can become an
abettor of the pontiff without being thereby a traitor to the sovereign.
And with the fall of our religion and liberty will come all the
demoralizing and pauperizing effects which have followed the Papacy in
Italy. Mind will be systematically cramped and crushed; and everything
that could stimulate thought, or inspire a love for independence, or
recall the memory of a former liberty, will be proscribed. We cannot
have the Papacy and open tribunals. We cannot have the Papacy and free
trade: our factories will be closed, as well as our schools and
churches; our forges silenced, as well as our printing presses. Motion
even will be forbidden; or, should our railways be spared, they will
convey, in lack of merchandise, bulls, palls, dead men's bones, and
other such precious stuff. Our electric telegraph will be used for the
pious purpose of transmitting absolutions and pardons, and our express
trains for carrying the host to some dying penitent. The passport system
will very speedily cure our people of their propensity to travel; and,
instead of gadding about, and learning things which they ought not, they
will be told to stay at home and count their beads. The _Index_ will
effectually purge our libraries, and give us but tens where we have now
thousands. Alas for the great masters of British literature and song!
The censorship will make fine work with our periodic literature, pruning
the exuberance and taming the boldness of many a now free pen. Our
clubs, from Parliament downwards, will have their labours diminished, by
having their sphere contracted to matters only on which the Church has
not spoken; and our thinkers will be taught to think aright, by being
taught not to think at all. We must contract a liking for consecrated
wafers and holy water; and provide a confessor for ourselves, our wives,
and daughters. We must eat only fish on Friday, and keep the Church's
holidays, however we may spend the Sabbath. We must vote at the bidding
of the priest; and, above all, take ghostly direction as regards our
last will and testament. The Papacy will overhaul all our political
rights, all our social privileges, all our domestic and private affairs;
and will alter or abrogate as it may find it for our and the Church's
good. In short, it will dig a grave, in which to bury all our privileges
and rights together, rolling to that grave's mouth the great stone of
Infallibility.
Nor let us commit the error of under-estimating the foe, or of thinking,
in an age when intelligence and liberty are so diffused, that it is
impossible that we can be overcome by such a system as the Papacy. We
have not, like the early Christians, to oppose a rude, unwieldy, and
gross paganism; we are called to confront an idolatry, subtle, refined,
perfected. We encounter error wielding the artillery of truth. We
wrestle with the powers of darkness clothed in the armour of light. We
are called to combat the instincts of the wolf and tiger in the form of
the messenger of peace,--the Satanic principle in the angelic costume.
Have we considered the infinite degradation of defeat? Have we thought
of the prison-house where we will be compelled to grind for our
conqueror's sport,--the chains and stakes which await ourselves and our
posterity? And, even should our lives be spared, they will be spared to
what?--to see freedom banished, knowledge extinguished, science put
under anathema, the world rolled backwards, and the universe become a
vast whispering gallery, to re-echo only the accents of papal blasphemy.
This atrocious and perfidious system is at this hour triumphant on the
Continent of Europe. Britain only stands erect. How long she may do so
is known only to God; but of this I am assured, that if we shall be able
to keep our own, it will be, not by entering into any compromise, but by
assuming an attitude of determined defiance to the papal system. There
must be no truckling to foreign despots and foreign priests: the bold
Protestant policy of the country must be maintained. In this way alone
can we escape the immense hazards which at present threaten us. And
what a warning do the nations of the Continent hold out to us! They
teach how easily liberty may be lost, but how infinite the sacrifices it
takes to recover it. A moment's weakness may cost an age of suffering.
If we let go the liberty we at present enjoy, none of us will live to
see it regained. Look at the past history of the Papacy, and mark how it
has retained its vulpine instincts in every age, and transmitted from
father to son, and from generation to generation, its inextinguishable
hatred of man and of man's liberties. Look at it in the Low Countries,
and see it overwhelming them under an inundation of armies and
scaffolds. Look at it in Spain, and see it extinguishing, amid the fires
of innumerable _autos da fe_, the genius, the chivalry, and the power of
that great nation. Look at it in France, whose history it has converted
into an ever-recurring cycle of revolutions, massacres, and tyrannies.
Look at it in the blood-written annals of the Waldensian valleys,
against which it launched crusade after crusade, ravaging their soil
with fire and sword, and ceasing its rage only when nothing remained but
the crimson stains of its fearful cruelty. And now, after creating this
wide wreck,--after glutting the axe,--after flooding the scaffold, and
deluging the earth itself with human blood,--it turns to you, ye men of
England and Scotland! It menaces you across the narrow channel that
divides your country from the Continent, and dares to set its foul print
on your free shore! Will you permit it? Will you tamely sit still till
it has put its foot on your neck, and its fetter on your arm? Oh! if you
do, the Bruce who conquered at Bannockburn will disown you! The Knox who
achieved a yet more glorious victory will disown you! Cranmer, and all
the martyrs whose blood cries to heaven against it, while their happy
spirits look down from their thrones of light to watch the part you are
prepared to play in this great struggle, will disown you! Your children
yet unborn, whose faith you will thus surrender, and whose liberty you
will thus betray, will curse your very names. But I know you will not.
You are men, and will die as men, if die you must, nobly fighting for
your faith and your liberties. You will not wait till you are drawn out
and slaughtered as sheep, as you assuredly will be if you permit this
system to become dominant. But if you are prepared to die, rather than
to live the slaves of a detestable and ferocious tyranny like this, I
know that you shall not die; for I firmly believe, from the aspects of
Providence, and the revelations of the Divine Word, that, menacing as
the Papacy at present looks, its grave is dug, and that even now it
totters on the brink of that burning abyss into which it is destined to
be cast; and if we do but unite, and strike a blow worthy of our cause,
we shall achieve our liberties, and not only these, but the liberties of
nations that stretch their arms in chains to us, under God their last
hope, and the liberties of generations unborn, who shall arise and call
us blessed.
THE END.
EDINBURGH: PRINTED BY MILLER AND FAIRLY.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] See the Antiquity of the Waldenses treated of at length in Leger's
"Histoire de l'Eglise Vaudoise;" and Dr Gilly's "Waldensian Researches."
[2] The author would soften his strictures on this head by a reference
to the truly interesting volume on the "Ladies of the Reformation," by
his talented friend the Rev. James Anderson.
[3] I have before me a list of prices current (Prezzo Corrente Legale de
generi venduti nella piazza di Roma dal di 28 Febbraro al di 5 Marzo
1852), from which it appears, that sculpture, paintings, tallow, bones,
skins, rags, and pozzolano, comprise all the exports from the Papal
States. What a beggarly list, compared with the natural riches of the
country! In fact, vessels return oftener _without_ than _with_ lading
from that shore.
[4] It was so when the author was in Rome. The enterprising company of
Fox & Henderson have since succeeded in overcoming the pontifical
scruples, and bringing gas into the Eternal City; Cardinal Antonelli
remarking, that he would accept of _their_ light in return for the light
_he_ had sent to England.
[5] As illustrative of our subject, we may here quote what Mr Whiteside,
M.P., in his interesting volumes, "Italy in the Nineteenth Century,"
says of the estimation in which all concerned with the administration of
justice are held at Rome:--
"The profession of the law is considered by the higher classes to be a
base pursuit: no man of family would degrade himself by engaging in it.
A younger son of the poorest noble would famish rather than earn his
livelihood in an employment considered vile. The advocate is seldom if
ever admitted into high society in Rome; nor can the princes (so called)
or nobles comprehend the position of a barrister in England. They would
as soon permit a _facchino_ as an advocate to enter their palaces; and
they have been known to ask with disdain (when accidentally apprised
that a younger son of an English nobleman had embraced the profession of
the law), what could induce his family to suffer the degradation?
Priests, bishops, and cardinals, the poor nobles or their impoverished
descendants, will become,--advocates or judges, never. The solution of
this apparent inconsistency is to be found in the fact, that in most
despotic countries the profession of the law is contemptible. In Rome it
is particularly so, because no person places confidence in the
administration of the law, the salaries of the judges are small, the
remuneration of the advocate miserable, and all the great offices
grasped by the ecclesiastics. Pure justice not existing, everybody
concerned in the administration of what is substituted for it is
despised, often most unjustly, as being a participator in the
imposture."
[6] See book vii., chap. x.
[7] Monsignor Marini, who was head of the police under Gregory XVI., and
the infamous tool in all the arrests and cruelties of Lambruschini, was
made a cardinal by the present Pope. All Rome said, let the next
cardinal be the public executioner. Talent, certainly, has fair play at
Rome, when a policeman, and even the hangman, may aspire to the chair of
Peter.
[8] WHAT THE ROMAN RELIGION COSTS.
The following statistics of the wealth of the clergy in the Roman States
are taken from the American _Crusader_:--
"The clergy in the Roman States realize from the funds a clear income of
two millions two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. From the cattle
they have another income of one hundred thousand dollars; from the
canons, three hundred thousand dollars; from the public debt another
income of one million two hundred and fifty thousand dollars; from the
priests' individual estates, two hundred and fifty thousand dollars;
from the portions assigned by law to nuns, five hundred thousand
dollars; from the celebration of masses, two millions one hundred and
fifty thousand dollars; from taxes on baptisms, forty-five thousand
dollars; from the tax on the Sacrament of Confirmation, eighteen
thousand dollars; from the celebration of marriages, twenty-five
thousand dollars; from the attestations of births, nine thousand
dollars; from other attestations, such as births, marriages, deaths, &c.
&c., nine thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars; from funerals, six
hundred thousand dollars; from the gifts to begging-orders, one million
eight hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars; from the gifts for
motives of benevolence or festivities, or maintenance of altars and
lights, or for celebrating mass for the souls in purgatory, two hundred
thousand dollars; from the tithes exacted in several parts of the Roman
States according to the ancient rigour, one hundred and fifty thousand
dollars; from preaching and panegyrics, according to the regular taxes,
one hundred and fifty thousand dollars; from seminaries for entrance
taxes and other rights belonging to the students, besides the boarding,
fifteen thousand dollars; from the chancery for ecclesiastical
provisions, for matrimonial licenses, for sanatives, &c. &c., fifty
thousand dollars; from benedictions during Easter, thirty thousand
dollars; from offerings to the miraculous images of Virgin Marys and
Saints, seventy-five thousand dollars; from _triduums_ for the sick, or
for prayers, five hundred thousand dollars; from benedictions to fields,
cattle, nuptial-beds, &c. &c., nine thousand dollars.
"All these incomes, which amount to _ten million five hundred and ten
thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars_, are realized and enjoyed by
the secular and regular clergy, composed in all of sixty thousand
individuals, including nuns, without mentioning the incomes allowed them
from foreign countries, for the chancery and other cosmopolite
congregations.
"It is further to be observed, that in this calculation are not
comprised the portions which the Romans call _passatore_, which the
laity pay to the clergy; such as purchase, permutation, resignation, and
ordination taxes; patents for confessions, preaching, holy oils,
privileged altars, professors' chairs, and the like, which will make up
another amount of a million of dollars; nor those other taxes called
_pretatico_, which are paid by the Jews to the parish priest for
permission to dwell without the Jews' quarter; nor those for the ringing
of bells for dying persons, or those who are in agony; nor those which
cripples pay for receiving in Rome the visit of the wooden child of the
_celestial altar_, who must always go out in a carriage, accompanied by
friars called _minori observanti_, Franciscan friars, whose incomes they
collect and govern. The value of charitable edifices (which are not
registered, being exempt from all dative) is not comprised either; and
the same exemption is extended to churches; although all these buildings
cost the inhabitants of the State several millions of expense for
provisional possession, and displays of ceremonies and feasts which are
celebrated in them."
WHAT THE ROMAN RELIGION YIELDS.
A distinguished English gentleman, who has spent many years as a
resident or in travelling in various papal countries in Europe, in a
recent speech in London has presented some deeply interesting facts
concerning vice and crime in Papal and Protestant countries. He
possessed himself of the Government returns of every Romanist Government
on the Continent. We have condensed and will state its results.
In England, four persons for a million, on the average, are committed
for murder per year. In Ireland there are nineteen to the million. In
Belgium, a Catholic country, there are eighteen murders to the million.
In France there are thirty-one. Passing into Austria, we find
thirty-six. In Bavaria, also Catholic, sixty-eight to the million; or,
if homicides are struck out, there will be thirty. Going into Italy,
where Catholic influence is the strongest of any country on earth, and
taking first the kingdom of Sardinia, we find twenty murders to the
million. In the Venetian and Milanese provinces there is the enormous
result of forty-five to the million. In Tuscany, forty-two, though that
land is claimed as a kind of earthly paradise; and in the Papal States
not less than one hundred murders for the million of people. There are
ninety in Sicily; and in Naples the result is more appalling still,
where public documents show there are _two hundred_ murders per year to
the million of people!
The above facts are all drawn from the civil and criminal records of the
respective countries named. Now, taking the whole of these countries
together, we have seventy-five cases of murder for every million of
people. In Protestant countries,--England, for example,--we have but
four for every million. Aside from various other demoralizing influences
of Popery, the fact now to be named beyond doubt operates with great
power in cheapening human life in Catholic countries. The Protestant
criminal believes he is sending his victim, if not a Christian, at once
to a miserable eternity; and this awful consideration gives a terrible
aspect to the crime of murder. But the Papist only sends his victim to
purgatory, whence he can be rescued by the masses the priest can be
hired to say for his soul; or his own bloody hand and heart will not
hinder him from doing that office himself. We think the above facts in
regard to vice and crime in the two great departments of Christendom
worthy the most serious pondering of every friend of morality and
virtue.
[9] Martinus Scriblerus says, that "the Pope's band, though the finest
in the world, would not divert the English from burning his Holiness in
effigy on the streets of London on a Guy Fawkes' day;" nor, I may add,
the Romans from burning him in person on the streets of Rome any day,
were the French away.
[10] For much of the information contained in this chapter I am indebted
to my intelligent friend Mr Stewart.