JOHN HAIME—ALLEGED CAUSES OF WAR—THE AUTHOR AND POPERY—CONFESSION TO
MAN USELESS—PURGATORY—TRANSUBSTANTIATION—IDOLATRY—LEGENDS—PAPAL
PERSECUTIONS.
Instances of genuine conversion to the faith of the Gospel, attended by
the fruits of the Spirit, are also to be met with among what are
generally termed ‘common soldiers,’ by which are understood the private
men composing the main body of an army, by whom, as making up the
physical force employed, the brunt of actual fighting is chiefly
sustained; and it has pleased the great Head of the Church so to magnify
His grace, that many of these men, when exposed to the most imminent
peril, were enabled not only to perform their duty with coolness and
intrepidity, but to rejoice in the midst of privation and suffering. No
serious and intelligent man can forget that in the last century a most
remarkable revival of religion took place in these lands; and the
influence, it appears from authentic records, extended to the British
army.
A pious soldier, who was engaged in one of the German campaigns then in
operation, has observed, ‘The day we marched to Maestricht, I found the
love of God shed abroad in my heart, that I thought my very soul was
dissolved in tears. The day we engaged the French at Dettingen, as the
battle began, I said, “Lord, in Thee have I trusted, let me never be
confounded.” Joy overflowed my soul, and I told my comrades, “If I fall
this day I shall rest in the everlasting arms of Christ.”’ He did not
fall; and about ten months afterwards, in another written communication
directed to his pastor, he seems more happy than ever, though in
circumstances which, in ordinary cases, would have been destructive of
mental calmness. At the close of a severe action, he states, ‘As to my
own part, I stood the fire of the enemy above seven hours; then my horse
was shot under me, and I was exposed both to the enemy and our own
horse. But that did not discourage me at all; for I knew the God of
Israel was with me. I had a long way to go, the balls flying on every
side, and thousands lay dying and dead on either hand. Surely I was as
in the fiery furnace; but it never singed one hair of my head.’
Providentially, the veteran was not left to stand alone; for true
godliness is essentially communicative. He adds, ‘Going on, I met one of
our brethren with a little dish in his hand, seeking for water. He
smiled and said, he had got a sore wound in his leg. I asked him, “Have
you gotten Christ in your heart?” He answered, “I have, and have had Him
all day.”’
The name of the soldier whose remarks I have quoted was John Haime; and
he lived to be a useful member of the Church. He was favoured, while in
active military service, with the correspondence of one of the most
venerable and learned ministers of that age, the Rev. John Wesley, M.A.
A copy of one of the letters thus received from him has been preserved,
and is worthy of all acceptation, not only on account of the wisdom of
the advices it contains, but of the affectionate regard shown in the
midst, probably, of multiplied engagements, to an absent member of the
flock. ‘It is a great blessing,’ observes the writer, ‘whereof God has
already made you a partaker; but if you continue waiting upon Him, you
shall see greater things than these. This is only the beginning of the
kingdom of heaven, which He will set up in your heart. There is yet
behind, the fulness of the mind that was in Christ; “righteousness,
peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.” It is but a little thing that men
should be against you, while they know that God is on your side. If He
gives you any companion in the narrow way, it is well; and it is well,
if He does not. So much the more will He teach and strengthen you by
Himself; He will strengthen you in the secret of your heart, and, by and
by, He will raise up, as it were out of the dust, those who shall say,
“Come, and let us magnify His name together.” But, by all means, miss no
opportunity; speak, and spare not. Declare what God has done for your
soul; regard not worldly prudence; be not ashamed of Christ, or of His
word, or of His servants; speak the truth in love, even to a crooked
generation; and all things shall work together for good, until the work
of God is perfect in your soul.’
But, although grateful remembrance is made that the Almighty has
preserved my life, and though convinced that He is able to keep His
faithful people in the most trying situations, let it not be supposed
that I consider war as an immaterial occurrence, and a light evil: on
the contrary, experience has shown me that it is one of the worst and
most destructive calamities by which humanity can be visited. Saved, as
we have been in this country, from the tempests which have so repeatedly
swept the European continent, and knowing nothing of ‘the horrid alarum
of war,’ save through the medium of _Gazettes_ and hear-say evidence, we
are apt to overlook the mischief inflicted on those, upon whose peaceful
residences the unwelcome avalanche has broken.
As for several years I literally fought my way through the world, it is
natural to suppose that the reasons and results of war have frequently
attracted my notice. The alleged and ostensible objects for which one
monarch or ruler has engaged in war with another, are to punish some
slight or injury, which the nation, or its dependencies, or some one of
its allies, may have sustained; or to prevent or repel the assaults and
invasions of its neighbours. In modern times, those who think of war,
enlarge eloquently upon the law of nations, the rights of civil society,
and especially the balance of power. This latter phrase has been
exceedingly in fashion through the range of diplomatic lore; and the
conflict, maintained through a long and dreadful struggle, to give
equilibrium to the balance in question, has cost an expenditure of blood
and treasure previously unknown in the history of this hemisphere. The
truth is, that where war is determined, pretences are easily invented or
discovered; as those who are for ever in search of a hook on which to
hang a fault, seldom fail of success. Such then are the feigned or
genuine motives for war; but every man who looks beneath the surface of
political expediency, is convinced that other and more really
efficacious reasons are to be detected. Avarice, ambition, religious
bigotry, the absence of all religion, desire of dominion, thirst for
fame, private pique and animosity, with other dispositions equally
censurable, have been the actual though unmentioned causes of many of
those sanguinary contests by which the face of nature is marred and
spoiled.
Roll rapidly, ye intervening years, which are yet to interpose between
the present and a better state of things! May the time hasten, when the
ingenuity of man shall be no longer misapplied in inventions so hateful;
when earth-born malice and resentment, by which it is called into
action, are subdued; and in place thereof shall arise the spirit of
peace and amity, as a mild and holy dove, to hover over the world,
ruling in the hearts of all, and bringing into willing bonds every power
of the soul to the obedience of Christ!
But this is a digression. With regard to myself, a powerful conviction
rested at this season on my mind, that I was not in the right path; but
being shackled with the trammels of popery, which I surveyed with
increasing suspicion, I scarcely knew how to proceed. During the time I
was in Ireland, my besetments on this account were painfully
distressing. ‘If the blind lead the blind, shall they not both fall into
the ditch?’ and for some time my spiritual guides conducted me into many
a miserable quagmire of superstition and absurdity. On complaining of
uneasiness of mind, I was directed to proceed forthwith to the priest,
in order to confess and receive absolution. My misgivings, as to the
value of these services, grew stronger; but the importunity of friends
prevailed, and away I went. On arriving at the chapel, which, in fact,
was a barn, I found a crowd of persons, all waiting to be relieved of
their respective moral burdens. His reverence at length appeared; and a
haughtier figure I do not remember to have seen. On commencing the
service, which to me was an intolerable jargon, a fierce rush was made
by those without for admission. The reason for such haste did not
consist in any specially devout desire first to catch the benedictions
of the reverend gentleman. We had been informed that it was a deadly sin
to eat before confession; so that hunger had nearly driven us to
extremities; and an open door, leading to what it might, was hailed with
delight, as the promise of relief of some sort. On pressing forward, I
unfortunately broke my watch-glass, which by no means tended either to
sweeten or equalize my feelings; and after a tremendous row, which had
nearly ended in a fight, I was ushered into the presence of the priest.
‘Tell out your sins,’ said he. This was a terrific commencement; but
there was no escape. I therefore related several particulars of my past
life, not forgetting several occurrences that took place during my
campaigns abroad. He then advised a course of penance, and ordered me to
see him again, stating that on a future occasion he should administer
the Eucharist, after which all would be well. I hope he obtained a
forgiveness better than that he pretended to bestow.
I was then compelled to apply to Father K——, a deep old file, at the
parish chapel. On advancing to him he sung out for money due, as he
said, to the Church. After such an opening, I had no relish, either for
his advice or pardon. I was induced, however, to give him another trial
a few weeks afterwards; but, if possible, I fared worse. In this
instance the priest had chosen a public ale-house for his station. Some
of the audience were adding to existing sin, by excessive drinking;
others were confessing sins already committed; and a few were receiving
absolution. I left this scene with unmingled disgust; and, as might have
been expected, felt my mind depressed, as before. Just at this season I
was taken seriously ill; and having been given over by the physician,
spiritual consolation was judged needful. The old priest was accordingly
introduced; but finding on his arrival that I had declined subscribing
to the church, a solitary question was all he asked, and he retired.
This priest soon after died. The Almighty was pleased, however, to
restore me to health; but no peace of mind could I procure. Having met
with another Catholic counsellor, he stated that about seven miles from
my residence were six holy wells; and that, if after twelve months’
penance I went round those wells on my bare knees, devoutly saying an
Ave Maria and a Pater Noster, I should find relief. To increase the
number of pilgrimages to the spot, booths were erected in the vicinity,
under which provisions of various sorts were sold, not forgetting a
copious store of whisky. This intolerable abuse has, I understand, been
suppressed; and the only wonder with me is, that it ever obtained, even
among the most credulous.
After a careful inspection of popish doctrine, conducted with all the
care and perseverance I possessed, the conclusion to which I arrived
was, that the precepts and practices of Catholicism are utterly at
variance with the revealed will of God, and subversive of sound
morality. In no part of their creed is this more evident than in those
directions which allow the sale of indulgences. This scandalous impiety
first aroused the attention of Luther, and the early Reformers. The
following is the form of an indulgence, as held forth in the sixteenth
century: ‘May our Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on and absolve thee, by
the merits of His most holy passion. And I, by His authority and that of
His blessed Apostles, St. Paul and St. Peter, and of the most holy Pope
Leo X., granted unto me in these parts, do absolve thee; first, from all
ecclesiastical censures, and then from all thy sins, transgressions, and
excesses, how enormous soever they may be, even such as are cognisable
by the holy see alone; and, as far as the keys of the holy Church
extend, I remit to you all punishments which you deserve in purgatory on
their account, and I restore you to the unity of the faithful, and to
that innocence and purity which you possessed at baptism; so that when
you die, the gates of punishment shall be shut, and the gates of
paradise and delight opened; and, if you shall not die at present, this
grace shall remain in full force when you shall be at the point of
death. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy
Ghost.’ By way of comment on the preceding article, the Catholic clergy
have observed that, ‘if any man shall purchase letters of indulgence,
his soul may rest secure with regard to its salvation. The souls
confined in purgatory, so soon as the money tinkles in the chest,
instantly escape from that place of torment, and ascend into heaven. The
efficacy of indulgences is such, that the most heinous sins would be
remitted and expiated by them, and the persons be freed from punishment
and guilt. This is the unspeakable gift of God, to reconcile men to
Himself. Lo! the heavens are open; if ye enter not in now, when will ye
enter? For a little money ye may redeem the soul of your father out of
purgatory from torments. If you had but one coat, you ought to strip
yourself immediately, and sell it, in order to purchase such benefits.’
Thus, with feigned words, these jesuitical gentlemen make merchandise of
the people. The principal design is evident; and that is—to secure the
money.
Archbishop Tillotson has observed, speaking of the superiority of the
reformed religion, ‘We make no money of the mistakes of the people; nor
do we fill their heads with fears of new places of torment, to make them
empty their purses in a vainer hope to be delivered out of them; we do
not pretend to have a mighty bank and treasure of merits in the Church,
which they sell for ready money, giving them bills of exchange from the
pope on purgatory; when they who grant them have no reason to believe
they will avail them, or be accepted in the other world.’ Bad as is the
plan of purchasing heaven by money, as these deceivers teach, it is not
the worse feature in the disposal of indulgences; for among other
methods resorted to by the heads of papacy to support a rotten fabric,
indulgences for future convenience in this world, and an exemption from
punishment hereafter, were given to those who would fight for the
Church, or, in plain terms, persecute all others. Bishop Burnet states
that a jubilee was granted after the massacre at Paris, to all who had
been in that butchery; and they were commanded to go and bless God for
the success of that action. The pope sent Cardinal Urson, his legate, to
France, to thank the king for so great a service done to the Church, and
to desire him to go on, and extirpate heresy root and branch, that it
might never grow again. And as the legate passed through on his journey
to Paris, he gave a plenary indulgence to all who had been actors in the
massacre. It may not be amiss, if we state, that by a plenary indulgence
a man returns to the state he was in after baptism; and, did he die that
instant, his soul would go at once to paradise, without passing through
purgatory. On this principle, the furies who shed the blood of the
saints in France were so fully meet for the inheritance of the saints in
light, that the alembic of purgatory, through which persons less saintly
must pass, might in their happy case be omitted.
The depravity connected with the sale of this filthy article has
extended itself in other modes. In a book printed in Rome, in the year
1514, by the authority of the pope, entitled, _The Tax of the Sacred
Roman Chancery_, is to be found a table containing a list of prices for
which certain sins may with safety be committed. This book was
afterwards reprinted at Paris, Cologne, and Venice; and has since been
translated into English, under the title of _Rome, a great Custom-House
of Sin_. It informs the world for what price the pardon of heaven and
absolution might, for particular crimes, be obtained. For instance,
pardon:
£ s. d.
For stealing holy things out of a consecrated place 0 10 0
For a layman murdering a layman 0 7 6
For murdering father, mother, wife, or sister 0 10 6
For a priest keeping a concubine 0 10 6
For burning a house maliciously 0 12 0
For forging the pope’s hand 1 7 0
Besides absolutions for crimes too shocking to be mentioned, from 9s. to
£2 10s. The preceding statement requires no comment. To enlarge upon its
tendency would be to blacken the chimney. Its design, on the part of the
monkish brotherhood who invented and maintain it, is to make a penny, by
means at which a modest devil would blush; and proves, by demonstration
strong as holy writ, that the abettors of such crimes are the true
descendants of that scoundrel hierarchy, at whose decline and fall the
truly great and good will rejoice and be exceeding glad.
Before now, instances have been known in which the fraternity were
foiled with their own weapons. A certain nobleman once told Tetzelius, a
mighty preacher of indulgences, that he had a mind to commit a very
heinous sin, and desired an indulgence or present pardon for it. This
was granted for a considerable sum; and when the money was paid, the
bull was given. Some time after, this nobleman took occasion to meet
Tetzelius in a certain wood, and breaking open his chest, robbed him of
his entire stock of indulgences. When Tetzelius threatened him with all
manner of curses, the nobleman showed him the bull he had paid so dear
for; and laughing at him, observed that this was the very sin he had a
longing to commit, when he was so fully absolved.
Equally absurd, though not so malignant in its immediate result, is the
doctrine of purgatory, of which the Scriptures know nothing. The
hypothesis on which this notion is founded seems to be an opinion that
some are not quite good enough to go to heaven, and yet too good to be
sent to hell; an idea evidently borrowed from the fabled invisible
domains of heathen writers. In errors of this sort, and indeed of any
description, our resort must be ‘to the law and to the testimony;’ and
if the truths therein contained are contradicted by an angel of light,
we are not to believe him. The holy Scriptures leave no ground for the
doctrine of purgatory. ‘There are twelve hours in the day, wherein men
ought to work: work while ye have the day; for the night cometh, when no
man can work,’ When death arrives, probation ceases; the die is cast,
the destiny is fixed, and cannot be revoked or amended. St. Paul asserts
that, ‘if the earthly house of our tabernacle were dissolved, we have a
building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens,’
He also affirms, that when ‘we are absent from the body, we are present
with the Lord;’ which is impossible, unless we are to conclude that our
Lord is in purgatory. We are told, moreover, in the Gospel, that ‘the
beggar died, and was carried by angels into Abraham’s bosom;’ not into
purgatory, or the popish limbo, but into paradise, whither the thief
upon the cross also went. We find also that Moses and Elias appeared on
the mount, in glory, with our Lord and His apostles. So that they could
not have been confined in purgatory, even before the death of Christ.
The inference is, there is no such place. ‘Blessed are the dead who die
in the Lord, for they rest from their labours.’ But purgatory is not
rest; it is a species of future ordeal; and God cannot deny Himself or
contradict His promises.
Papists affect that Augustine taught the doctrine of purgatory; but this
pretext will avail little; for if it could be proved, the weight is
nothing against Scripture. There was, indeed, a time when he had some
debate in his mind upon the subject, and observed, ‘that such a matter
as a middle state for purgation might be inquired of;’ but after more
diligent investigation and thought, he says: ‘We read of heaven and of
hell, but the third place we are utterly ignorant of; yea, we find it is
not in the Scriptures. Nor will any thing help thee but what is done
while thou art here. As the last day of man’s life finds him, so the
last day of the world shall hold him. Nor is there for any body any
third place that he can possibly be in, but with the devil, who is not
with Christ.’ The scheme of purgatory, like the other legends of papacy,
was doubtless invented with a special view to the ‘main chance,’ that
is, the cash. When a Roman Catholic talks of securing bliss, he means,
making money; and it is clear that in this view the doctrine now
exploded is intimately connected with indulgences, and that they stand
or fall together. This invisible trial was never heard of till the year
600; and the first who directed prayers for the dead to be used in the
Church of Rome was Odillo, abbot of Cluny, in the year 1000.
Transubstantiation is another of the absurdities of papacy, which no man
of sane mind can comprehend, much less receive. ‘Since Christ, our
Redeemer,’ observes the Council of Trent, ‘has said that it was truly
His own body which He offered under the appearance of bread, it has
always therefore been believed in the Church of God, and is now again
declared by this holy Council,—That, by the consecration of the bread
and wine, there is effected a conversion of the whole substance of the
bread into the substance of the body of Christ our Lord, and of the
whole substance of the wine into the substance of His blood; which
conversion is fitly and properly termed by the holy Catholic Church,
Transubstantiation.’ To this proposition is annexed, in the usual spirit
of that persecuting Church, ‘If any one shall deny these statements, he
is accursed.’ This is advancing upon us with a vengeance. I see only one
alternative here for a reasonable being. We are compelled either to take
leave of our senses, or expose ourselves to eternal ruin. We are to
receive a positive, palpable contradiction as confirmed truth, that a
consecrated wafer, made of flour and water, is the real body of Christ;
that the wine, compressed from fruit, is His real blood; and what is
more, though we are sure that the bread and wine have been thus
prepared, we are nevertheless called upon to believe that they were not.
We are to believe that He who fills heaven and earth, and is immutable,
is as small as a crumb of bread or a drop of wine, and can be eaten and
drunk. In fact, we are expected to give implicit credit to
impossibilities; as if religion, instead of being a reasonable service,
was a tissue of absurdities, and a cunningly devised fable. The
conclusion is inevitable. Transubstantiation, like most other items of
popish belief, is opposed to reason and Scripture. It can have no other
than an ideal existence; and is compounded of such stuff as dreams are
made of. Hence it has been asserted, that even a century ago, several
discerning persons in the Church of Rome were grown so sensible of the
weakness of the doctrine, that they would be glad quietly to dispose of
it; but the Council of Trent, with the purblind zeal which has ever
characterized this fallen Church, have riveted it so fast to their
religion, and made it so necessary and essential a part of their belief,
that they cannot now disengage it. It is a millstone hung about the neck
of popery, that will some day sink it; and, in the opinion of many
well-informed men, it is a weight that will make the pillars of Saint
Peter’s crack, and requires more volumes to make it good than would fill
the Vatican.
Nor is the matter mended if we contemplate the worship of the Host, and
homage paid to images and pictures. Like many other of the antics of
popery, these are novelties, and were not known till 1216. Pope Adrian
the Sixth, it is said, had so much doubt of their value, that in his own
practice he used the precautionary form, ‘I adore thee if thou art
Christ;’ and judged the people should say the same. His suspicions were
well founded. As no power whatever can work a self-contradiction, so no
being can make that which is already made; but Christ was many years
before the Eucharist; therefore no power could make the eucharistic
bread to be the man Christ Jesus. Of course it ever remained a creature,
and adoration offered to it is idolatry. So of images. Referring to
these, an old writer remarks, ‘Now would anyone be pleased to consider
the pains taken in the formation of images, he would be ashamed to stand
in such fear of a thing that the hand of the artist had been so long
playing upon, to make a god. For this wooden god, taken perhaps out of
some old faggot or pile, or a piece of some forlorn stump, is hung up,
hewn, planed, and chiselled into shape; or if it be a deity of brass or
silver, it is ten to one but the pedigree is derived from a dirty
kettle, or worse than that. But if it happen to be a god of stone, then
the mallets are set to work upon him; but as he is not sensible of any
hardships endured in the preparation, it is to him of inferior moment.
Well, the image is cast, fashioned, and filed; but, pray, when does it
become divine?’ It may be soldered, put together, and set upon its legs;
but after all the article is of no value. Then comes the Catholic
priest, with his consecrating potentialities; and now, behold your God!
ye deluded worshippers. The truly enlightened Christian sees through the
folly of such practices. He knows that all divine or religious worship
is wholly due to Jehovah. If not wholly, not at all; for any reason that
would take away a part, must take away the whole. If, therefore, wholly
due to Him, then can no part thereof, however small, be given away from
Him, without injustice and impiety.
And what a bungling attempt is the usage of penance to purchase heaven!
Papists tell us, that confession to a priest is of infinite value, and
amounts to an exchange, which God allows, of the temporal punishments we
have deserved by sin, into these small penitential works. Yet, it is to
be feared, say they, that the penance enjoined is seldom sufficient to
take away all the punishment due to God’s justice on account of our
sins. The balance of the account remains unpaid, and must be settled in
purgatory. After confession, the penitent is ordered to say, ‘I beg
pardon of God, and penance and absolution from you, my ghostly father.’
The priest then gives the absolution, and adds, ‘May the passion of the
Lord Jesus Christ, the merits of the blessed Virgin Mary, and of all the
saints, and whatsoever good thou shalt do, and whatsoever evil thou
shalt suffer, be to thee unto the remission of thy sins, and the
increase of grace.’ In conformity with this piece of priestly fraud,
many poor creatures have submitted to miserable hardships; some have
worn hair shirts, having given themselves a certain number of stripes;
others have taken long and painful pilgrimages; and in Spain and Italy
these woeful travellers are frequently observed, almost naked, loaded
with chains, and groaning at every step.
But of all the proofs which may be adduced to discover the true
character of this base and fallen Church, her persecuting spirit is the
most conclusive. This has always been seen. The friends to the
Reformation were anathematized and excommunicated; and the life of
Luther was often in danger, though at last he died on the bed of peace.
Innumerable schemes were resorted to for the purpose of overthrowing the
Reformed Church, and wars were waged with that view. The invincible
Spanish Armada, as it was vainly called, had this end in view. The
Inquisition, which was established in the twelfth century, was a
dreadful weapon. Terrible persecutions were carried on in various parts
of Germany, and even in Bohemia, which continued thirty years; and the
blood of the saints was said to flow like the waters of a river. Poland,
Lithuania, and Hungary were similarly visited. In Holland and the Low
Countries the most amazing cruelties were exercised under the merciless
and unrelenting hands of the Spaniards, to whom the inhabitants of that
part of the world were then in subjection. Father Paul states, that the
Belgian martyrs amounted to fifty thousand; but Grotius observes, that
at least twice that number suffered by the hand of the executioner.
[Illustration: THE MARTYRDOM OF RIDLEY.]
In France the same diabolical spirit prevailed. After a succession of
cruelties, practised in various forms, a most violent persecution broke
out in the year 1572, in the reign of Charles the Ninth. Many of the
principal Protestants were invited to Paris, under a solemn oath of
safety, upon occasion of the marriage of the King of Navarre with the
sister of the French monarch. The queen dowager of Navarre, a zealous
Protestant, was, however, poisoned by a pair of gloves before the
marriage was solemnized. Coligni, Admiral of France, a brave and
virtuous man, was basely murdered in his own house, and then thrown out
of the window, to gratify the malice of the popish Duke of Guise. The
admiral’s head was afterwards cut off, and sent to the queen-mother; and
his body, after having been submitted to a thousand indignities, was
hung up by the feet on a gibbet. After this, the murderers ravaged the
whole city of Paris, and in the course of three days, butchered above
ten thousand persons, among whom were several of the nobility and
gentry, and others of high moral reputation. The streets and passages
resounded with the noise of those who met together for murder and
plunder; and a prodigious multitude of men, women with child, maidens,
and children, were involved in one common destruction. From the city of
Paris the massacre spread through the whole kingdom. In the city of
Meaux two hundred Protestants were thrown into prison, and after the
persecutors had ravished and killed a great number of women, and secured
piles of plunder, they executed their fury upon those in confinement.
Calling them out one by one, they were killed, like sheep appointed for
the slaughter. In Orleans they murdered above five hundred men, women,
and children, and enriched themselves with their spoil. Similar
cruelties were practised at Angers, Troyes, Bourges, La Charité, and
especially at Lyons, where above eight hundred Protestants were
inhumanly destroyed. Children were killed while hanging on their
parents’ necks; parents were torn from the embraces of their offspring,
and put to death; ropes were put about some, who were dragged inhumanly
about the streets, and thrown half dead into the rivers.
[Illustration: RIDLEY.]
What aggravated the cruelty of these scenes, and is demonstrative of the
sanguinary spirit of papacy, is, that the news of these excesses was
received at Rome with boundless satisfaction. When the letters of the
pope’s legate were read in the assembly of the cardinals, by which he
assured the pope that all was transacted by the express will and command
of the king, it was immediately decreed that the pope should march with
his cardinals to the church of St. Mark, and in the most solemn manner
give thanks to God for so great a blessing conferred on the see of Rome
and the Christian world; and that on the Monday after, solemn mass
should be celebrated in the church of Minerva, at which the pope,
Gregory the Thirteenth, and cardinals were present; and that a jubilee
should be published throughout the whole Christian world, to return
thanks to God for the extirpation of the enemies of the truth, and of
the Church in France. In the evening the cannon of the castle of St.
Angelo were fired, to testify the public joy; the whole city was
illuminated with bonfires; and no one sign of joy was omitted that was
usually made for the greatest victories obtained in favour of the Romish
Church.
But these persecutions, though black as Erebus, were far exceeded in
cruelty by those which took place in the time of Louis the Fourteenth.
The troopers and dragoons, hired for the purpose, went into the houses
of Protestants, where they destroyed the furniture, broke the
looking-glasses, wasted their corn and wine, and sold what they could
not destroy; so that in four or five days the Protestants had been
plundered of property worth a million of money. But this was only the
beginning of sorrows. They turned the dining-rooms of gentlemen into
stables for horses, and treated the owners of the houses where they
quartered with the greatest insolence and cruelty, lashing them about,
and depriving them of food. In several places the soldiers applied
red-hot irons to the hands and feet of men, and to the breasts of women.
Mothers that gave suck they bound to posts, and let their perishing
infants lie languishing in their sight, crying, and gasping for life.
Some they bound before a great fire, and, when half dead, let them go.
Amidst a thousand other till then unheard-of cruelties, they hung up men
and women by the hair, and some by their feet, on hooks in chimneys, and
smoked them with wisps of wet hay till they were suffocated. Others they
plunged repeatedly into wells; and many they bound, and then with a
funnel forced them to drink wine till the fumes destroyed their reason,
when they made them say they were Catholics. If any, to escape these
barbarities, endeavoured to save themselves by flight, they were pursued
into the fields and woods, where they were shot like wild beasts. On
these scenes the popish clergy feasted their eyes, and derived
astonishing amusement from them.
[Illustration: LATIMER.]
Nor did England escape. Though Wickliffe, the first Reformer, died
peaceably in his bed, yet such was the malice of persecuting Rome, that
his bones were ordered to be dug up, and cast on a dunghill. The remains
of that excellent man, which had rested undisturbed four-and-forty
years, were accordingly disinterred; his bones were burnt, and the ashes
cast into an adjacent brook. In the reign of Henry the Eighth, Bilney
and many Reformers were burnt; and when Queen Mary came to the throne,
persecution was let loose with ten-fold terror. Hooper and Rogers were
burned in a slow fire. Saunders was cruelly tormented at the stake a
long time before he expired. Taylor was put into a barrel of pitch, and
fire was set to it. Ferrar, Bishop of St. David’s, with seven other
illustrious persons, were sought out and burnt by the infamous Bonner,
in a few days. Sixty-seven persons were burnt in the year 1555, among
whom were the famous Protestants, Bradford, Ridley, Latimer, and
Philpot. In the following year, eighty-five persons were burnt. Ireland
has also been drenched with the blood of Protestants, nearly fifty
thousand of whom were murdered in a few days in different parts of the
kingdom, in the reign of Charles the First. What shall we say, also, of
South America? It is computed that, of the natives residing in the
extensive Spanish territory, fifteen millions were sacrificed in forty
years to the genius of Popery. In fine, it is supposed that, at
different times, not fewer than fifty millions of Protestants have been
the victims of the persecutions of the Papists, and put to death for
their religious profession. Such is mystic Babylon! ‘And I saw under the
altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the
testimony which they held: and they cried with a loud voice, saying, How
long, O Lord, holy and true, dost Thou not judge and avenge our blood on
them that dwell on the earth?’ ... ‘And in her was found the blood of
prophets, and of saints, and of all them that were slain upon the
earth.’
[Illustration]