increased every day more and more, and seeing that the patience and
extreme misery of our people could not in any measure allay the fury and
rage of these most merciless brutes, they at length resolved by force,
as well as they could, to free themselves and their wives and children
from that barbarous usage. And although some of our ministers declared
it was not well done, yet no admonitions could keep the people from
resolving to defend themselves by arms. Hereupon it came to pass that,
several encounters falling out, there fell within a few days about
sixty of the plunderers. When news hereof was brought to the tyrant, he
commanded his men to forbear, and sent two of his noblemen that so they
might bring matters to an accommodation with our people; but when it was
perceived that all their drift was that our ministers might be cast
out and the Pope received, the people would by no means yield to it
Wherefore, when the prince came into Piedmont, and resided at Versello,
about the kalends of November, 1660, with intent to destroy all in the
valleys by fire and sword, he sent an army of about four thousand foot
and two hundred horse, under the command of the duke [count] de la
Trinite."
The writer then relates the submissions made by certain deputies whom
the Vaudois sent to the duke.
"These false brethren, in design to serve their own private ends,
persuaded the people, though almost all the ministers cried out against
it, that too easily giving credit to the most false promises of their
enemies, laying down their arms, and sending deputies to the prince to
promise obedience, they might, for sixteen thousand crowns, redeem both
themselves and their religion. As soon as all these things were yielded
to and promised by the too credulous people, through a vain hope of
obtaining peace and religion, and when our deputies arrived at Versello,
they were thence carried by the Lord de la Trinite to a certain
cloister, there to abide for two months' space, (to the end there might
be time for collecting the moneys,) and at length, casting themselves
down at the feet of the prince and of the Pope's legate, (who were both
there, attended by a great number of the nobility, and men of inferior
rank,) they were constrained to supplicate the prince first, then the
Pope's legate, that they would take pity on the people from whom they
were sent, and to promise them, by an oath, that they would be ready to
do all things that should be commanded by them.
"The prince therefore growing confident upon this most solemn promise,
immediately sent persons to command our people to receive and embrace
that horrid idol of the mass; whereupon, considering the inconstancy of
their deputies, and the deceit or rather extreme perfidiousness of
the tyrants being discovered, they plainly refused to yield that
those things should be ratified which their deputies had unadvisedly
transacted, through their own levity, not with the consent of people....
Then the tyrant, as soon as he came to understand this, was much more
inflamed than ever before with anger, or rather outrageous fury, against
our people; and, collecting a rabble of an army, he gave command to the
Lord de la Trinite to waste and destroy all by fire and sword, without
any regard of sex or age. Hereupon houses were every where set on fire,
nor is there any kind of mischief which was not acted by those most
wretched villains; by which means they forced our people, with their
wives and children, to have recourse to the more craggy places of the
mountains; a thing very lamentable to be seen. For, at the very first
assault, they were in a manner astonished, because, being spoiled both
of their arms and goods, living in extreme want of all things, they
did not see by what means they might be able to undergo so great and
troublesome a war.
"But at length, taking heart and trusting in the mercy and help of God,
of the goodness of their cause, and being confident, because of the
impiety and treachery of their adversaries, they resolved once again
to defend themselves. To this end they appointed their guards and
garrisons, fortified several places, blocked up passages, and were
wholly resolute upon this point, to die rather than they would in any
measure obey a perfidious and wicked prince in so abominable a matter.
But what need many words? Things were come to such a pass, that in
several fights above nine hundred of the enemy were slain, whereas, on
our side, hardly fifteen were wanting."
Such was the spirit of Popery during Brownson's thousand years of
remarkable intellectual and literary activity! Do you, Americans, wish
that the next thousand years of your existence as a nation should be
distinguished by a similar intellectual preeminence in mental activity
and Christian literature? But, continues Brownson, in his Review of
January, 1845, all these things were altered. What things does Brownson
mean? The universities? or the remarkable activity of Popish minds
between the sixth and sixteenth centuries? Who denies the former? No
one who is acquainted with history, or who knows that the world, a large
portion of which was then under Popish dominion, needed to be purified
from the idolatrous and disastrous doctrines of Popery. The insolence
of Brownson is assuredly unequalled. Either that, or his ignorance of
history, is unpardonable. "At the period of the English Revolution,"
says this consummate hypocrite, Brownson, "_the mass of the English
people were buried in the grossest ignorance. Even long after, when the
Wesleys first started, they talked of the ignorance even of the people
of London, as they would of the South Sea Islanders_." This, as we say
up here in New Hampshire, beats all. Was it not about this very period
that the world gave birth to the illustrious Milton? Was it not at
this period that Dryden was born? Was it not at this period that the
brightest lights of literature that ever illumined the world were
shining in all their glory? I might here give as many names of
illustrious men and illustrious minds as ever adorned humanity; men
whose lives were an honor, not only to science, but to religion, to
Christianity, and true piety. Did not Erasmus live before the English
Reformation? Was he grossly ignorant? Did not Luther live before
the Reformation? Neither of those were Papists, but they knew Papist
doctrines so well as to break loose from them and appeal to the
Christian world to rise as one man and pull down and raze to the ground
Popish universities and colleges, as calculated only to cover the world
with darkness, by substituting the legends of monks for true science,
and the decretals of Popes for the Word of God.
"From the eleventh century," says Brownson, "down to the sixteenth,
literature and science received no check." Review of 1845, Jan. No. p.
17. Hear, reader, to this modern Esau, According to him, literature
received no check from the years 1100 to 1600. This assertion is made
without any qualification or exception. Does this Brownson believe that
his readers are all a parcel of ignoramuses? It cannot be so; he must
be aware that he states an untruth, and no man who has ever read history
can think otherwise. It would be difficult, I apprehend, to meet a
school boy in the United States--I may venture the assertion, that it
would be impossible to find a child in America, over the age of ten or
twelve years,--who does not know that the illustrious Galileo was born
during that very period, and who could not tell, that his glorious
discovery of the motion of the earth, not only met with opposition
from the Church of Rome, but, that the ruling Pope countenaced his
incarceration in the dungeons of the inquisition. Did not the Romish
Church claim and enjoy the exclusive honor of striking the first blow at
a man and a mind such as the world never saw before? Did not Pope Urban
VIII., in 1623, declare and pronounce the motion of the earth to be
perverse in the highest degree? It was about this time, as a living
writer observes, that the whole Catholic Church looked upon all the
earth as a condemned world. This absurdity was rejected by Galileo. He
established an equality between heaven and earth. He showed that the
latter is subject to the same laws and floats in the same splendor as
the former; he put serenity and life in the place of mystical theory.
For this he was opposed by Popish priests, the sworn enemies of science
and literature. See, as the same writer observes, this venerable man,
Galileo,--this good man, seventy years old, on his knees, barefooted and
stripped to his shirt, before the officers of the holy inquisition;
and for what? He tells you himself, in a letter to one of his friends.
"They--the inquisitors--look upon my book as more abominable and
pernicious to the Church than the writings of Luther." Look at him! you
Brownson, thou contemptible cat's-paw of Popery, and say--if your heart
has not been seared against the truth with something hotter than the
hottest iron--whether literature and science did not receive a check, in
the persecutions which your infallible church inflicted upon this great
man? "The four hundred years which preceded the Reformation," says
Brown-son, "were ages of prodigious activity. In them we meet with
the great name of Abelard, under whom Heloisa studied philosophy." Mr.
Brownson forgot, I presume, to inform us that he also taught Heloisa
moral philosophy. In this latter science she was eminently skilful,
and left the world some evidence, at least, of her not being an inapt
scholar in the doctrines of genuine Popery. The great changeling,
Brownson, could not give more illustrative examples of the beauties of
Popery and of the advantages to be derived from a course of education
at their schools, than that of Abelard and Heloisa; but he need not have
gone so far from home for examples of this kind. There are hundreds of
them to be found in the United States. We have schools, such as that
which Abelard kept, and to which, Brownson tells us, "great flocks fled
for education." One of these schools, my readers may recollect, recently
flourished on Mount Benedict, Charlestown, Mass. Abelard, as every
reader must recollect, lived in the twelfth century--at the very period,
when, according to the great changeling--the Popish Church displayed
her remarkable activity of mind in science and literature. Abelard was a
learned doctor in the Church of Rome. He was, of course, a confessor; he
boarded in the house of a Popish canon in Paris, whose name was Fulbert.
This canon had a niece called Heloisa, whom he was anxious to send to
a fashionable school and bring up in the doctrines of the infallible
Church of Rome. Accordingly he sent Heloisa to attend the lectures of
the pious and God-like Abelard, just as many of our American mothers,
with the advice and consent of their lords and masters, send their
children in this country to be educated, to Popish seminaries, kept
by pious priests and saint-like nuns. Heloisa had not gone long to
confession, when Abelard, her confessor, seduced her and prevailed upon
the poor unthinking girl to become his mistress. In order to conceal
this atrocious conduct and finding his dupe likely to become a mother,
he sent her to a sister of his who lived at a considerable distance,
where she was delivered of a son. It is said, that to appease Fulbert,
the uncle of this victim of seduction and priestcraft, Abelard consented
to marry his victim privately; but no sooner was he married and the
anger of the uncle partially appeased, than he sent her to a monastery
or nunnery and compelled her to take a religious habit; thus adding
treachery to crime and requiting a pure and simple-minded girl's love,
by additional ingratitude and villany. But the poor girl had many
friends besides the uncle, who, seeing the cruel manner in which Abelard
treated her, determined upon revenge, and they had it They surrounded
his chamber at night, and took from his bed this man whom Brownson
would hold up to Americans as a model teacher of morality, and had him
emasculated. All this was done in the twelfth century. This was one
of the great men whom the church produced in Brownson's golden age of
Popery.
But what else could be expected of this Brownson? What else could be
expected from any man who would hold and profess such sentiments as the
following, which we find in his Review of 1840. "For our part," says
the great changeling, Brownson, "we yield to none, in our reverence
for science and religion; but we confess that we look not for the
regeneration of the race from priests and pedagogues." Very respectful
language, especially from one who has been a priest and pedagogue
himself! "They,--the priests," continues Brownson--"have had a fair
trial. They,--the priests--cannot construct the temple of God. They--the
priests--cannot conceive its plan. They--the priests--know not how to
build it They--the priests--daub with untempered mortar, and the walls
they erect tumble down if so much as a fox attempt to go up thereon. We
have no faith in priests and pedagogues," says Brownson; "they merely
cry peace, when there is no peace and there can be none." Again the same
traitor to God and religion, thus spews forth his Popish hatred to pure
Christianity. "One might as well undertake to dip the ocean dry with
a clam shell, as to undertake to cure the evils of the social state by
converting men to Christianity." "For our part," continues Brownson, in
another page of his Review, "we are disposed to seek the cause of the
inequality of the conditions of which we speak, in religion, and to
charge it to the priesthood. Rarely do we find, in any age or country, a
man feeling himself commissioned to labor for a social reform, who does
not feel that he must begin it by making war upon the priesthood. Indeed
it is felt at once, that no reform can be effected without resisting
the priests and emancipating the people from their power. Historical
research, we apprehend, will be found to justify this instinct, and
to authorize eternal hostility to the priesthood. Again, when once the
class--that is, the class of priests--has become somewhat numerous, it
labors to secure to itself distinction, and increases them. Hence the
establishment of priesthoods or sacerdotal corporations, such as the
Egyptian, the Braminical, the Ethiopian, the Jewish, the Scandinavian,
the Druidical, the Mexican and Peruvian." Fie! fie! Mr. Brownson, the
Mexicans belong to the Infallible Church, and like yourself, are strict
members thereof. "These sacerdotal corporations," continues Brownson,
"are variously organized, but everywhere organized for the purpose of
monopolizing power and profit. The real idea at the bottom of these
institutions, is only to enslave the mass of the people to the priests,
who, by pretending, honestly or not, to possess the secret of rendering
the gods propitious, are able to reduce the people to the most wretched
subjection, and keep them there, at least for a time." At page 384,
of Brownson's Review, of July, 1840, we find the following sweeping
anathema against the Christian priesthood--not in the United States
alone, but all over the world--and I would defy the most learned
historian or impatient infidel upon earth, to produce any thing more
blasphemous or more calculated to disturb the peace of man or the good
order of society. "But, having traced the inequality we complain of, to
its origin, we proceed to ask again, what is the remedy? The remedy is
first to be sought in the destruction of the priest. The bad must be
removed before the good can be introduced--conviction and repentance
precede regeneration; Christianity is the sublimest protest against the
priesthood ever uttered, either by God or man. In the person of Jesus,
both God and man protest against the priesthood. What was the mission
of Jesus but a solemn summons to judgment, and of the human race
to freedom. He--Jesus--instituted himself no priesthood, no form
of religions worship. He recognized no priest but a holy life, and
commanded the construction of no temple but that of a pure heart." Take
care, Brownson! don't let the Pope hear you. "He---Jesus--preached no
form of religion." Take heed again! Did he not preach the religion of
the Romish Church, think you? Have a care! you will commit yourself, unless
I occasionally caution you. "He--Jesus--enjoined no creed." What, sir!
not even that of the Pope of Rome? "He--Jesus--set apart no day for
religious worship." Not a single one of those numerous holy days which
the Infallible Church sanctions? "The priest is universally a tyrant,
universally the enslaver of his brethren, and therefore it is that
Christianity condemns them. Christianity could not prevent the
establishment of a hierarchy, but it prepared for its ultimate
destruction by insisting on the celibacy of the clergy." Really, friend
Brownson, I am beginning to tremble for your safety in the Popish
Church. "Again," says Brownson, in his Review of the same year, page
336, "we insist upon it"--remember, reader, that Brownson is the
mouth-piece to Popery in the United States,--"that the complete and
final destruction of the priestly order in every practical sense of
the word priest, is the first step to be taken towards elevating 'the
laboring' classes" Pray, Mr. Brownson, what shall we do with the ten
thousand Romish priests which are to be found at the present time in the
city of Mexico alone? Has the infallible Church concluded to ship them
to our western States? "Priests," says Brownson, "are necessary enemies
to freedom; all reason demonstrates this, and all history proves it."
Look out, sir! you 're committing yourself again. Where are all those
colleges you speak of as having been established between the sixth and
sixteenth centuries, and in which you say was displayed a remarkable
activity in science and literature? Nothing better than asylums or
schools, for the education of men in such sciences as were calculated to
overthrow the freedom of man. I told you so a while ago, and proved it
too. All reason demonstrates this and all history proves it.
Again, Brownson says, in the same page of his Review, "There must be
no class of men set apart and authorized, either by law or fashion, to
speak to us in the name of God, or to be the interpreters of the word of
God." Is it so, indeed, Mr. Brownson? I thought the Pope was authorized
to do so, and that he and his church were especially empowered, to the
exclusion of all, without distinction, to interpret the word of God. The
word of God, you say again, "never drops from the priest's lips." What!
do you mean to say that the word of God never drops from the Pope's
lips? Rest assured, my worthy friend, that if you repeat that again to
Bishop Fenwick, he will put you on short allowance. "The priests were
always a let and hindrance to the spread of truth." Assuredly you cannot
mean the Romish priests. You tell us, in your Review of this year,
that the four hundred years which preceded the Reformation were ages
of prodigious activity, and that during that time Abelard, St Bernard,
Albert the Great, and Thomas Aquinas, were remarkable men. All these
were priests; yet you say that priests have always been the enemies of
freedom, and a let and hindrance to the spread of truth. You thought,
the other day, that these were good men and learned men, especially
Abelard. What do you think of them, now that you have become a Roman
Catholic? You believe all of them to be saints, and you know many of
them have been canonized. We have not your opinion of them since July,
1840. Let us hear what you thought of them then. We quote from page 387
of your Quarterly of that year. You ask the following question yourself,
and you also answer it. Here are your words, viz: "What are the priests
of Christendom, as they now are? Miserable panders to the prejudices
of the age; loud in condemning sins nobody is guilty of, but miserable
cowards when it is necessary to speak out for God. They are dumb dogs;
as a body, they never preach a truth till there is no one whom it will
indict; the imbecility of an organized priesthood, and its power to
demoralize the people, is beginning to be seen; we have had enough
of Christianity" Have you, indeed, Mr. Brown-son? Well, we have not;
therein you and I differ. "Christianity," says Brownson, in the next
line, "is powerless for good, but by no means powerless for evil; it now
unmans us, and hinders the growth of God's kingdom." It is high time,
brother Fenwick, that I should wish you joy. You have an acquisition to
your church, in the great changeling Brownson, and you show a depth of
wisdom rarely to-be found now-a-days, except among Jesuits, in sending
your convert Brownson all over this country, to preach the pure and
unsullied doctrines of your Infallible Church; your apostle Brownson is
assuredly a fit man for your purposes. History does not inform us that
there is a solitary instance since the establishment of your church, of
any government having escaped its machinations; and worse than purblind
indeed must that mail be, who cannot see at a glance that the primary
object which Popish bishops have in commissioning this heartless,
unprincipled infidel Brownson to go abroad lecturing among the happy
people of this country, is to disturb the present order of society, and
finally to overthrow this government, and erect upon its ruins the Papal
throne.
This Brownson is unquestionably an object of great pity, or well-merited
contempt I could turn from the bare mention of his name with nausea
and disgust It is but a few months since that he represented the whole
system of Christianity as a gross imposition upon mankind, and our holy
religion one of the blackest impositions that ever was practised upon
our race. But now he has become a Roman Catholic. Now that he is in
the pay of the Pope and his Jesuits, like another Esau he turns round,
betraying everything that he ever professed, and pretends to discover
that in the Church of Rome are to be found all the elements of pure
Christianity; that her priests are an exception to the great body of
those priests against whom he pronounced his anathema a while ago.