THE ENLIGHTENED CITIZENS.
"Any news this morning, squire?" said Mr. Wakely, the tavern keeper, to
his _honor_ Squire Wilson, as he entered the bar room with a cigar in
his mouth.
"Wal, nothin' except this report of the turning of old uncle Jacob
Prying, if we can give credit to such a rumor."
"I seed the priest riding past here two days since," said the tavern
man, "and his team half dead from driving. There can be little doubt of
Jac's conversion to the Romish faith. I asked that young lad Paul, who
used to stop at Prying's, and he said it was true."
"'Tis really astonishing," said Benjamin Lifford, the Quaker. "I'd have
let him die without a minister, if he did not content himself with the
inflooence of the speerit. These is how I would sarve thee, Jacob."
"I consider Mr. Prying rather simple to allow such a man as the priest
to come into his house at all," said his _honor_ Squire Wilson, the
Universalist.
"Had it been my brother," said old Elder Fussel, "I would pay no
attention to the dying request of old uncle Jacob. That would be the way
to bring him to."
"That would be cruel," said High Sheriff Walter, "seeing that Jacob
left him all his property, real and personal. Besides, this is a free
country, and I say a man ought to be allowed to embrace any religion he
has a mind to. That's my creed, at all events."
"Yes," said Mr. Ebenezer White, the Methodist class leader, "_pervided_
the creed he wanted to jine was the religion of the Bible; otherwise
not."
"Do not the Roman Catholics ground their doctrines on the Bible?" said
the sheriff. "That they do, and their Bible contains many books that
yours does not contain."
"Nonsense, sheriff!" said his enlightened _honor_. "The Papists never
read the Bible. I have a boy, Thomas Noonan,--you know him,--and he
neither will read it himself, nor listen to it read. The priest won't
allow him. No Catholic is allowed to have or read a Bible."
"You state what is not true," said a loud, emphatic voice from behind
the stove. It was the voice of Murty O'Dwyer.
"I guess, squire, you are in error there," said the sheriff. "My boy,
you know, Patrick, a very strict Catholic, every month at confession
with the priest, has a Bible with him in my house, which Bible the
priest gave him. I have read the book time and again. Nay, I heard the
priest preach out of our Bible last summer."
"Is it not astonishing," began Murty again, "that, though ye all differ
in opinion, ye agree in hating and maligning the church of Christ?
Though ye can't 'join in love,' ye know well how to 'join in hate.' Here
are unbaptized Quakers, groaning Methodists, blaspheming Presbyterians,
faithless Universalists and Unitarians, and humbug spiritual rappers;
and yet ye not only coincide in hating the pope, but ye are all
intolerant and cruel save this gentleman here," said he, pointing to Mr.
Walter. "Now, will any body tell me whence is this hatred?" said the
Irishman, pausing. "Is it grounded on knowledge or well-formed opinion?
No; for ye are all grossly ignorant of the principles and facts of
Catholicity, as ye have shown by your statements about the Bible. In
truth, it is impossible to evade the conclusion that ye hate the church
for the same cause that the devil envied and hated our first parents;
namely, because he saw them the heirs of that bliss which he and his
rebellious crew had lost."
"Take care what you say, my man; the law does not suffer any person to
disparage the Bible so," said the squire, threateningly.
"I am not afraid, sir, to speak my mind, whatever you, as the
representative of the law, may threaten. 'Tis really amazing that ye
should be so busy and troubled about Catholics, take such pains in
kidnapping Catholic children, and forcing Catholic servants to go to
listen to your disgusting prayers and bellowing preachers, when your own
children are beyond your control; go to bed like cattle, without ever
bending a knee in prayer; and if they go to 'meeting,' as it is properly
called, it is only to mock the 'old fool' who holds forth to them."
"There is some truth in what he says," added the sheriff, looking at the
squire.
"Agree among yourselves first," said the Irish peasant, "before you
commence to convert Catholics. Convert the rowdies that crowd your
village and city tavern bar rooms before you extend your zeal to those
who are in no need of it, or on whom it will be all spent in vain. Agree
about the meaning of one single text in your Bible before you hand it to
us for our study."
"We all agree it's the word of God."
"Well, the word of God cannot contradict itself, and yet the religious
system of each of you contradicts that of his neighbor. One man says
Christ is God; another denies this; and both quote Scripture in proof.
This man says bishops are necessary and divinely appointed; the next man
denies this totally. The Quaker denies what the disciple of Calvin or
Knox believes, while the Universalist ignores what the latter professes;
and now the Mormons, spiritual rappers, and Transcendentalists explode
the Bible altogether. The Catholic church, with those countless millions
of her children that constitute her body, has been reading the Bible and
studying it these nineteen hundred years, and never yet, with all her
learning, could find two opposite meanings to one single text; never
once contradicted herself."
"You don't say the Catholics are allowed the use of the Bible, do you?
or that there was any Bible in the world but the one Luther found in the
monastery hid, in the year 1517?" said the elder, who did not well hear,
as he was somewhat deaf.
"Do you seriously believe that we Catholics have not leave to use the
Bible? I tell you we have, and always had, the unquestioned right to its
proper use. Even before the art of printing was discovered by a
Catholic, and when books were scarce, a Bible, in large, plain writing,
was chained to a stand or desk in each parish church in most countries,
so that all who wished could read. I saw one of these stands, which
turned on a pivot, in an old Catholic church in Yorkshire, England,
where it remains to this day. And as regards the absurdity that Luther
found the only copy of the Bible extant in a monastery or university,
that story is refuted by the fact that there were millions of Bibles,
and countless editions of it, printed before Luther was born. Indeed, I
have just read in this Protestant paper, here, that there is a Bible in
Cincinnati, printed in 1470; that is, nearly fifty years before Luther
began to revolt."
"Why, Betsey Darcy, that jined our kirk at the late revivals, told us,
public, in the meeting house, that the priests in Ireland would not
allow any Catholic to read the Bible; and she said that was the first
one she ever saw which I handed to her," said the pious elder.
"Don't you believe her, elder," said Murty, "for I saw that same girl
handle a true Protestant Bible in Ireland, when she attempted to father
her illegitimate child on an honest man, but when she was, instead,
convicted of perjury the most gross. She has had two other fatherless
children since she came to 'free America;' and now, after having been
rejected from the humblest society of Catholics on account of her
immoralities, she, of course, takes refuge among the impeccable saints
of Presbyterianism, where she ranks high in the scale of sanctity."
"Sartin," said the sheriff; "she is a hard one, I do believe. I saw her
drunk at the donation visit of dominie Grinoble, last winter."
"Yes," said Murty, "when you get such a convert as this unfortunate
reprobate, you boast and write tracts to herald the conquest; but such
conversions as those of Spencer, Brownson, Wilberforce, Newman, Lords
Camden, or Freeling, are as nothing in your eyes. You stuff your ears
when you hear of them, cautiously keep them out of hearing of your sons
and daughters, and these glorious conversions never appear in your
shabby, lying newspapers. I do really pity the blindness of
Protestants," said he, rising and walking out of doors.
Next day after these events, the funeral of uncle Jacob took place, and
these ministers, whom, while he lived, he could not endure, and who
heartily hated him, came, when he was dead, to offer their services over
his remains. If any thing was required to show the meanness and
inconsistency of Protestantism and its teachers in this country, it is
the readiness with which they will officiate over the body of a man
dead, over whose soul, while living, they could exert not the smallest
influence. We have known several instances where Methodist and
Presbyterian hirelings, in consideration of the fee of three or five
dollars paid them, preached long sermons, and opened the gates of _their
Elysium_ to the souls of men who became converted from the sects to
which these hireling parsons belonged. Nay, in cases where the deceased
committed suicide by hanging or poisoning, we heard parsons officiate,
and promise the friends, for certain, that the soul of the suicide was
in glory, because sometime ago he happened to get religion, or join the
Sons of Temperance, or conform to some other requirement of fanaticism.
Thus, in the present case of uncle Jacob, Mr. Barker, the Methodist, and
Parson Grinoble, the Presbyterian, and Mr. Gulmore, another style of
Presbyterianism, all three vied to see who would _be hired_ to do the
last service to him whom, while alive, they all despised. Mr. Gulmore,
however, had the best luck, and accordingly mounted the pulpit to pass
sentence on the departed soul of uncle Jacob. He descanted for a
considerable time on the virtues of the deceased while young, told all
he knew of his religious experience, not forgetting the virtues of the
entire family, and what they had done for religion by circulation of
tracts, by subscription to Bible societies, by adopting and raising of
destitute orphans, and other good deeds, all tending to the honor of
Calvinism. "The only instance of any thing like want of belief that
happened for a hundred years in the family," said he, "was the seduction
of our brother to the ranks of Popery. His faith was weak, my friends,"
he continued; "but if he did not believe strongly, _we believed_, and
our faith saved him. His soul is in glory, I have no doubt. The faith of
his family and all our faith saved him. Glory be to the Lord. Amen."
The conclusion of this discourse was applied to the warning of the
faithful against the influence of the Papists; the necessity and
obligation incumbent on all to compel their Catholic servants to join
their prayer and other meetings; and, above all, to take care that all
Popish books and publications, should be excluded from their houses. "We
are fallen on dangerous times, my friends," he said; "and if the friends
of the Bible and free religion do not combine their efforts against the
common enemy, our institutions are doomed, and the glory of our country
is extinguished forever."
The reader is not to imagine that Mr. Gulmore and men of his class are
so brutally ignorant as some would imagine. When, therefore, we hear
them speak of our _institutions_ being in danger, they mean the
_institutions_ of heresy and sectarianism; namely, parsons, and their
wives and children, and countless sects and contradictions in
creed--institutions that, sure enough, are in imminent danger, and
doomed to fall before the irresistible and unerring progress of
Catholicity. But will this divinely decreed result be injurious to the
progress or prosperity of the republic? On the contrary, there can never
be a real union among the States till the minds of the people, north and
south, are united in faith and sentiment. And by the annihilation of
sectarianism and its castes, the people will be freed from a very
burdensome tax now going to the support of a large and lazy body of men,
women, and children, whose only object in existence seems to be to eat
and consume, and who, besides, by their idleness and habits, keep up a
system of detraction, jealousy, and discord among otherwise
well-disposed citizens, that, like so many cancers, are eating into the
very vitals of the public morals. Let not the American citizen,
therefore, bewail the certain decline and rapid decay of the
_institutions_ of sectarianism, but rather pray for the dawn of that
glorious approaching day when, as we are but a one people and a united
nation, we may have but one religion, and a country that will know no
sectional divisions.