When any species of wrong-doing can wear the disguise of righteousness,
the blindest among us can see how dangerous that kind of crime may
become--how hard to prove, punish and put down.
There are immense Arabian plains where nomad robbers have practised
their profession, from a time whereof the memory of man runneth not to
the contrary; yet those plains and the nomad bands that pitch their
tents beneath the Oriental sun remain very much as they were in the days
of Abraham.
But where robbery has disguised itself _as Law_, and one class has aimed
the law-making machine at the others, saying "_Stand and deliver!_"
whole regions have become deserts, and great peoples have been blotted
out.
In fact, the highwayman, the cattle-lifter and the pickpocket have never
in the least affected the destinies of nations. The pirate and the
buccaneer have never been able to destroy the commerce of the seas,
beggar provinces, and change noble harbors into neglected pools.
It is when the robbers intrench themselves in Parliaments, Reichstags
and Congresses, and the robbery takes the form of "Law," that spoliation
becomes destructive. Bank laws and money-contraction laws beat down more
victims than armies. Protective Tariff "laws," infinitely more ruinous
than all the Lafittes and Captain Kidds, drive the American flag from
the seas, while on land they make a thousand Rockefellers, Carnegies,
Morgans, Guggenheims, McCormicks and Armours, at the same time that they
are casting millions of the despoiled out of house and home.
There are realms where religious mendicancy keeps to the primitive forms
of the beggar's bowl and pouch. It is the free-will offering.
In these countries of voluntary tributes, religious feeling has branched
into the fewest channels, has lost the least of its original force, and
maintains today its most impregnable position. But where the priestly
caste was able to intrench its mendicancy in Law, and arrogantly say to
the laity, "_Pay me one-tenth of all thou hast!_" religion was first to
well-nigh lose its beauty and its strength, and like, the Rhine, almost
disappear into the intricate morasses of subdivisions.
Ten thousand virulent disputes about tithes ushered in the diabolisms of
the French Revolution; and many of my readers will remember how Charles
Dickens, when a Parliamentary reporter, dropped his pencil in tears,
unable to go on, as Daniel O'Connell described one of the tragedies of a
tithe-riot in Ireland.
When Religion went forth as Christ sent it forth, _it demanded nothing
for the priest_. Yet, the same religion, organized into an episcopacy,
afterwards wrote the tax of one-tenth upon the statute-book, and sold
the widow's cow to pay the priest for his prayer. In those days, it must
have been a gruesome spectacle as the burly parson, a picture of
physical fullness, stood in the background, personifying Law and
Religion, while the bailiff raided the cotter's wretched premises,
pounced upon pigs and poultry, or dragged household goods off to public
sale. Yet, during centuries of outrage, pain and starvation, this sort
of robbery disguised itself with _a double domino of Law and Religion_.
Forgive me, if I digress briefly to mention how vividly I was reminded
of all this, by the thrifty, business-like manner in which Bishop P. J.
Donohue, of Wheeling, West Virginia, sold out a laboring man, S. W.
Hawley, _for rent_, in the year of our Crucified Lord, 1913.
To satisfy the debt due to this most worshipful Bishop of God, the
following personal property was seized, and advertised for sale, to-wit:
3 bed springs and 3 beds, 3 mattresses, 1 stove, 2 tables, 10 chairs, 3
pictures, 1 broom, 4 comforts, 2 blankets, 3 quilts, 4 pillows, and some
dishes.
(It was further stated that Hawley's back was broken, while working in
the coal mines.)
George Alfred Townsend, who was so well known to journalism as "Gath,"
wrote a novel which he called "The Entailed Hat." The book would have
lived gloriously, had it not been for the hat: the sternly absurd
conditions which this idea about the Entailed Hat fastened upon the
author, killed his novel.
But there was in it one passage which lingers yet in my recollection,
after the lapse of more than 30 years. There were two brothers, shrewd,
pushing, flinty Jews, who drove hard bargains, hard collections, and
filled a store-room with household plunder sold for debt, and bought in
by the Jews, to be resold at a profit. "Gath" gave tongue to each
article of this pitiful domestic furniture, torn from the homes of the
poor, and auctioned at public outcry.
The old rickety cradle spoke of the babes that had lain in it, and of
the mother-songs that had been sung over it, as the foot which moves the
world softly pedalled the wooden rockers.
The loom and the spindle had their stories to tell: the table and the
dishes spoke of the plain meals and unpretentious hospitalities of the
lowly: the chairs remembered the humble hearth and fireside, and many a
circle of bright faces they had helped to form around the cheerful glow
of the burning logs.
The silent clock, with no life of moving hands on its dust-covered face,
spoke of how the short and simple annals of the poor had been measured
by it, how it had timed the marriage and the funeral, the birth and
death; and how it had missed the toil-hardened hands that used to wind
it up, every night.
And so on--the dirge of the Household Goods!
As my eye ran over the items of the poor man's goods ordered to sale for
the most worshipful Bishop Donohue--the consecrated disciple of Christ
who didn't even have as much of a home as the foxes and the birds--I
_might_ have thought of one or two blistering passages in the glorious
old Code of Moses; I _might_ have recalled some of the bitterest of the
words of Jesus Christ, against those rich, haughty, unmerciful lordlings
who grind the faces of the poor.
But I did not: on the contrary, that passage in "Gath's" novel rose out
of the mist of 30 years, and brought back the plaintive lament of the
household goods, seized, carried away, and sold into strange hands to
pay a trifling debt. "Gath," following literary tradition, most
canonically chose _Jews_ to act as shylocks: it would never have
occurred to him that a consecrated Bishop of Jesus Christ could sell the
poor Christian's blanket off the bed, sell the bed itself, sell the
table at which the family ate, and the chairs that they sat on. Not
only the mattress on which the tired limbs of labor stretched themselves
to rest, and the pillows upon which the aching head had lain, but the
very broom which swept the floor, had to be seized to satisfy the rent
of this godly landlord, _the Bishop of a homeless Christ_!
To make this picture perfect, the family Bible ought to have been levied
on--and this Catholic Bishop ought to have bought it in. Having acquired
the Book in that manner, a natural curiosity might have prompted him to
read it.
One thing, however, the most worshipful Bishop might yet do: he might
take the proceeds of the sale of Hawley's beds, mattresses, pillows,
stove, dishes, comforts, blankets, chairs and broom--and contribute the
whole sum to Foreign Missions.
* * * * * * *
"Thou shalt not commit adultery!"
All Christians take their laws and their religion more or less from the
Jews. Who the Jews took it from, is another question. Skeptical scholars
say that they took it from the older peoples of the East, of the Nile,
the Euphrates: orthodox Christianity maintains that they took it by
revelation direct from Jehovah. Therefore, every sect in Christendom
stands committed to the proposition that God Almighty, clothed in all
His terrors, with the clouds darkening the skies, the thunders for His
heralds and the lightenings for the flaming swords that went before His
face, came down to Sinai, and wrote upon the everlasting tablets,
"_Thou shalt not commit adultery!_"
(Doway Bible: Deut. xx:14. I will hereafter use this Roman Catholic
version as the true one, thus avoiding any dispute with papists as to
the accuracy of my quotations.)
In this Doway, or Douay, a version of the Book, we are somewhat patly
told that the first thing which Adam did, after having been dispossessed
of Eden, was to know "Eve his wife, who conceived and brought forth
Cain, saying, I have gotten a man through God."
Then she brought forth Abel; and before six other verses are ended, we
learn that the brothers are at enmity because of religion, and that one
has killed the other.
How Adam and Eve were to have propagated the human race, had Eve not
listened to the snake; or whether they were to have propagated it at
all, is a mystery which our finite minds were evidently not expected to
fathom. Nevertheless, Saint Augustine made a heroic effort to answer
the riddle; and his classic theological work, "The City of God,"
contains his theory, still discreetly veiled in the original Latin,
which, being interpreted, is considerably nastier than any other English
that I ever perused in a classical theological work.
The first occupation of Adam outside of Paradise ought to have some
weight with us, as a time-honored precedent. That wicked mankind, and
Noe came out of the Ark, together with all those animals, birds,
reptiles, &c., the very first command given him was, that he and his
family should increase and multiply. Apparently, their obedience to this
command was so prompt and effective that the Lord never reproached him
or his descendants for any neglect of duty in that particular.
"And God blessed Noe and his sons: and said unto them, Increase and
multiply, and fill the earth."
It is true that Noe got drunk, soon after this; but the diligent
casuists, who follow every perilous passage in the Douay Bible with
their indefatigable notes, tell us that Noe did not commit a sin by
getting drunk, "because he knew not the strength of it," the wine.
(Thus does ignorance excuse the sinner, when the casuists need the
defense.)
And through the Mosaic Code, breathes the same spirit and purpose: it
can fairly be summed up in the phrase, _Thou shalt marry_!
Every encouragement is given to wedlock and to large families: polygamy
itself, had its _reason_, in those hot climates where puberty is reached
at so early an age, and where the child-bearing woman is so quickly aged
into unfitness for mating with the robust husband. It was partly because
the Mosaic law gave so little excuse for immorality, that adultery was
so cruelly punished. And the vigor of the Jewish type, for so many
centuries, amid so many barbarous persecutions, and in spite of such
wide geographical dispersions, is the most splendid monument to the
eternal wisdom of the command--
_Marry! Increase and multiply! Fill the earth with lawfully begotten
children! Honor the Home! Preserve your Race! Do not breed
promiscuously! DO NOT MONGRELIZE!_
In short,
"_Do not commit adultery._"
As Moses minutely regulated the patriarchal household, making the nomad
Jew's wife the queen of his tent, so Paul the Apostle carefully
instructed the model priest, admonishing him to be content with one
wife, and to be watchful over the conduct of his family, "having his
children in subjection with all chastity."
(I may add that St. Paul lays down the law in a manner that condemns the
Christian bishops who sell out their humble fellows who are unable to
pay rent and tithes.)
The priests of Assyria and of Egypt were married men. The priests of the
Jews were married men: the priests of the Romans were married men. The
Bishops, or Popes, of Rome were married men, during the first four
hundred years after Christ.
(See Dr. Angelo S. Rappoport's "Love Affairs of the Vatican," 3rd
Edition, 1912, p. 9.)
Let no one misunderstand me: I freely admit that there are exceptional
men and women who voluntarily choose the unmarried life. There have
always been such exceptions to the rule, and there probably always will
be: the reasons need not be discussed.
Those reasons do not necessarily imply a lack of virility: some men
simply prefer not to take a wife; some women just naturally fear the
loss of independence, or they never meet the King who will take no
denial, or they nobly burden their lives with duties which demand
self-sacrifice.
The six Vestals of old Rome were _voluntary_ celibates: such men as
Paul, Ben Zoma, Montaigne, Spinoza, were _voluntary_ bachelors. It might
have been far happier for John Wesley, Thomas Carlyle, and John Ruskin,
had they persisted in the single state.
But _enforced_ spinsterhood and bachelorhood, is a frightfully different
thing. To say to men and women who have taken certain "vows," that they
shall never seek happiness in marriage, never escape mental and physical
longing and anguish, because of such "vows," _is to put the selfish will
of an earthly priesthood above the will of God_.
It is impossible to conceive of a crucifixion of humanity more
unnatural, more indefensible, and more necessarily horrible in its
consequences.
_Enforced_ celibacy in normal priests, simply means adultery, hidden
behind walls and disguised _as religion_. Therefore, when adultery has
to be tolerated, as an incident to a certain form of Christianity, the
crime eludes the law, the illicit intercourse of the sexes identifies
itself with a religious system, and it becomes as impossible to control
as does the robber who gains control of the machinery of government.
When the robber is _the Law_, who is to punish the criminal? When
adultery is elevated into a system which is recognized as a religion,
who is to punish the adulterer?
Robbery enthroned in the law, and advancing its demands too far, has to
be dealt with by revolutions. Thus it was in England, when the Great
Charter was won. Thus it was in the Revolution of 1688. Thus it was in
Switzerland, in France, in the American Colonies, in Italy, in Germany,
and even in Spain and Portugal--not to mention South America, and
Mexico.
Adultery, _interwoven in a religious system_, was one of the
main-springs of the Revolution in Germany, in England, in Holland and in
the States of the libertine Popes, themselves.
The enormous popular support given to Calvin, Luther, and Knox, to Henry
VIII., to Garibaldi, to Bolivar, and to Juarez, was largely fanned and
fed by the intense wrath of the people against the pope-protected
immorality of the priests--_the adultery which could not be punished
because it was interwoven into the system of popery_.
The Popes could not punish the priests, because the Popes were equally
criminal. The system required celibacy: the system was against the law
of God: _the system gave the priest absolute power over women, and
secret access to them_. The system needed the unmarried priest, and the
system had to pay the price. _The adultery of the priest_ had to be
cloaked and tolerated, for the simple reason that it _was incidental and
inseparable_.
But who made the system? Not God, nor the Bible, nor the Apostles, nor
the early Fathers of the Primitive Church: the system was peculiarly the
work of Hildebrand, Pope Gregory VII.
It was this Pope who formulated the dogma of universal dominion.
It was Gregory who said that, "The world derives its light from two
sources, the sun and the moon, the former symbolizing the Papacy, the
latter the Civil State."
In Gregory's mind, the entire Christian world was his Empire. The
temporal Princes were his vassals, every Kingdom of Europe was his
fief, every crown, his to give and to take away. The keys of Heaven and
of Hell were in his hands; he was the Infallible representative of
Jehovah; and when he spoke, nations must shout, "_The voice of the Pope,
is the voice of God!_"
To defend such a power and advance its banners, a disciplined and
devoted soldiery was necessary: hence, the priests who could not take
wives and have children. A family would _divide their allegiance_.
Hence, also, the convent and the confessional, to furnish an outlet to
the ungovernable natural desires of full-sexed men.
During the three frozen winter days of 1077, when a barefooted Emperor
of Germany stood outside the castle-gate at Canossa, in the snow, this
Gregory VII. spent the time inside with his Mistress, the Countess
Matilda of Tuscany. When the Pope finally professed himself satisfied
with the Emperor's penitence and submission, he figuratively placed his
foot upon the Emperor's neck. The Church had conquered the Civil State.
The priest was above the King. To Cæsar nothing was left, save what the
Pope might graciously concede. The things that had been Cæsar's, _in
Christ's time_, were now the Pope's. Thus, the Fisherman not only wore
one crown, but three, the tiara. He was lord of Earth, lord of Heaven,
lord of Hell.
Under the Gregorian theory, God had become a silent partner in the
government of Creation, oppressed by the logical necessity of endorsing
every decree of the Infallible Italian priest. Jehovah was become a sort
of _Roy Faineant_: the Italian Pope was Mayor of the Palace. To vary the
illustration, the Almighty was become a King of England, and the Pope,
Prime Minister. What the Premier tells the King to say, the King says;
and then the Premier assures the world that what he has told the King to
say is, "the King's speech."
* * * * * * *
In the palace of the Popes themselves, what was the result of celibacy?
Dr. Angelo Rappoport, of Rome, Italy, says in his book, published in
1912:
"For centuries the history of the Roman Pontiffs reminds one of the most
depraved times of Athens and pagan Rome, rather than of Bethlehem and
Jerusalem.
Courtesans, famous for their talent and their beauty, their intrigues,
and their gallant love affairs, ruled the Church and disposed of the
tiara. They raised and deposed the Pontiffs, imprisoned and assassinated
them. * * * Their beds became the pedestals from which their lovers
ascended the Pontifical throne.
All these Popes were imitating the mode of life of the Saracens, to whom
they were paying tribute, and like true heroes of a seraglio, these
chiefs of Christendom died by poison or strangulation. They committed
follies worthy of Oriental despots, and vied in their debaucheries with
the Emperors of pagan Rome. Pope John XXII. ordained priests in a
stable, and swore by Bacchus and Venus." (John the 22nd Papa of that
name, began his Vicarship of God in the year 1316.)
Cardinal Baronius exclaims,
"Those infamous prostitutes ruled Rome, and their creatures and lovers
sat on the throne of St. Peter."
Bernard de Morlaix, monk of Cluny, writes in the 12th century,
"Rome is the impure city of the hunter Nimrod: piety and religion have
fled its walls.
Alas! the Pontiff, or rather the King of this odious city of Babylon,
treads under foot the sanctity of the Gospel and the morality of
Christ."
Matthew Paris, the historian of the 13th century, says:
"The holy city has become a place of infamy, whose lewdness surpass even
that of Sodom and Gomorrha."
So universal was the scandal caused by the bestial vices of the Popes
and the Italian cardinals that the Catholic Parliament of England
refused to allow Pope Innocent IV. to come to the British Court. Why?
Because, as the House of Commons roundly declared, "the Papal Court
spreads such an abominable odor that it should not be permitted in
England."
(This was the Catholic Parliament of the Catholic King, Henry III., 13th
century.)