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IN REPLY TO THE CHALLENGE OP 'THE CATHOLIC CITIZEN & MONTREAL TRUE WITNESS, ** Yb shall XKOW THBII BY THBIB FBTJITB." — UxXT. VII. 16, • TORONTO* SOLD AT THfi WESLEYAN BOOK ROOM, C. FLETCHER, AND T. MACLEAR «fc CO.; HAMILTON, D. MC'lELLAN J AND SOLD BY ALL BOOKSELLERS. LI) T. H. BEI^TLET^ PRINTER. f/S-// PREFACE The following extract from the Christian Guardian will explain the occasion of writing these letters : — "Our neighbour, the Catholic Citizen^ under the imposing head of " Wholesale Infanticide in England," copies from the London Times, an account of an inquest held by the Coroner for East Sussex, England, on the bodies of five infant skeletons which had been discovered under circumstances which excited suspicion that the children had been murdered. It appears that in repairing a cottage which had recently changed occupants, in the interstices th^t had been formed between the brickwork in filling up an old fireplace, these skeletons were found, and the probability was that the infants had been placed there at the time of their birth, for the purpose of concealing the shame of the parents. The Citizen, assuming what does not appear in the statement given in the Times — that the authors of these crimes were Pro- testants, and that they were only practising what is common in Protestant communitic;, thus introduces the account of this affair :— " We challenge our fr onds of ih^. Christian Guardian or the Globe to produce from amongst catholic communities a parallel to the following extract relative to Protestant England." In reply to the Christian Guardian the Citizen says a.gam:—' " In a late number of the Citizen, after showing various atrocities lately perpetrated in Protestant England, we challenged any Jour- nal to instance a like case as occurring in these days in Catholic Countries."— Catholic Citizen, March 2nd, 1854. 1 After the Citizen was prostrated the Montreal True Witness felso threw out the following challenge to the Christian Cruardiati, " We trust the Christian Guardian will not shrink from the challenge we throw out to him/'* — Montreal True Witness. The writer would not have noticed this audacious " challenge," but for the insinuation implied, that Protestantism necessarily tends to immorality, whereas Popery has the contrary tendency. When he took up his pen, he merely intended to write two or three short letters in the Christian Gtcardian to silence the infatuated challenger; however, he found the subject growing under his hands, so that he had more difiSculty in closing it than he had in Opening it. The idea of coming out in this form with the follow- ing letters, was quite foreign to him, till various friends expressed a desire to have them published. Probably there are some who may be inclined to censure the severity of temper displayed through- but the whole, but to such he has no apology to offer, because he considers, h^had ground, and produced evidence, for anything he has asserted. " Out of the eater came out meat." " The wounds of a friend are better than the kisses of an enemy .'^' He hopes the Romish readers will not mistake his feelings and their own interests ; and that they will not say in reply to the evi- dence advanced here against them, or rather against their religion. " There is no salvation out of the Catholic Church." However paradoxical it may appear he conscientiously assures them, that their temporal and eternal welfare is dear to him. The public mind is at present much taken up with the Russian war, forgetting that there are worse foes than the Russians in the midst of them, in the persons of the priestly emissaries of Rome, who are • Sec Letter viii. S/s^e^ >J the enemies of morality- and commercial prosperity ; and who will blight the industry and progress of this infant country unless Pro- testants do their duty. The writer acknowledges the benefits he has derived from the masterly volume of Dr. Dill, entitled " Ire- land's Miseries," and the unrivalled treatise of Mr. Wylie entitled " The Papacy," as may be observed from the use he has made of ' their contents throughout his letters. The letters appear now as they did in the newspaper, excepting a few words of alteration in the first two, and the necessary corrections in the others. He would call special attention to a review of Mr. Seymour's statistics on the comparative morality of Protestant and Ptomanist com- munities. This able review of Mr. Seymour's invaluable pampUet is placed after the fourth letter. m war, lidstof 10 are Toronto, January, 1855, r I. Letter I. There are now no less than three thousand years since the bul- lying and haughtiness of Goliah of Gath, who defied the armies of the living God, provoked David, then an humble stripling, to join issue with him, and to sling off a little smooth stone which fatally touched the proud front of the insolent challenger. I cannot but take the Catholic Citizen in a figurative and religious point of view, as indeed comparable to the said bully. Could I manage my sling as well as I can feel with disgust the barefacedness of the false state- ments set forth by our modern Goliah in reference to the morality df Protestants, his anti-christian cause would ^oon feel the rattling smart of its hurling swing. I believe it is already well known to the reader that the Citizen after referring to the skeletons or bones la!tely found in England, challenged the Christian Guardian^ or any other Journal to instance any such atrocities as occurring in Popish countries. We then not only accept of the challenge, but also remind our duped antagonist of the old adage of men living in glass houses, being abstinent of the first stone. Our object here is to bring forward facts of a statistical nature sufficient to astound the unprejudiced reader ; but not sufficient to convince the slaves of '•'■ Babylon the great, the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth ;" and that because, true to their character, they refuse to be ashamed, " speaking lies in hypocrisy." We have no hesita- tion in giving credit to the story of the skeletons, but we see no reason why our Popish friends should be allowed not only tQ exult over the mournful fact, but even to clear themselves of being as much infiplicated and concerned in it as Protestants are, if not more so. Not but we know that it is the nature of Popery to boast of those things of which it ought to be ashamed. None dare deny that there are many papists in England, and that these Papists are the most criminal and immoral portion of the community ; and in- deed unless they were so, it would not only be an exception, but even an unprecedented one in the history of the papacy. The tables of the prison returns clearly show that it is popery that fills our jails ; I mean by our jails, the English jails. The vast disparity between Protestant and Papist criminals may be judged of from the ; see no following facts. It appears from an official return, made 25th September 1852, there were on that day 773 prisoners in the Borough jail, Liverpool, 333 of whom were Romanists and only 19 Protestant dissenters of all denominations. Need we pro- duce a Parliamentary return of religious instruction in prisons, obtained by the Popish Mr. Lucas, towards the close of last ses- sion ; and an abstract of it was published soon after in the Tablet. The total number of prisoners in the prisons of England on the 25th day of September 1852 was 21,622. This number includes the prisoners of all denominations, inclusive of 339, whose religious denomination is not stated ; and 323 who are described as belong- ing to no Church. Of the total criminal mass which, on the day specified, filled these prisons, there are s«t down to the Church of England 16,077 ; to the Presbyterian body 496 ; to the Dissen- ters, of all classes, 1,391 ; and to the Koman Catholics 2,950. , It thus appears that the contribution made by the Popish Church to the criminal population of the country is one-seventh. A seventh part of the crime that pollutes the land, and a seventh part of the expense of punishing it, is caused by that insig- nificant sect alone. Now, what ought to be the number of Roman prisoners in these jails, granting that the religion of Rome was not less favourable to morals than Protestantism 1 This it is easy to ascertain. We shall take the population of England at its usual estimate, which is twenty one millions, and say that we would grant the Romanist population to be a quarter of a million, although it has been ascettained by the recent census, that there are only 200,000 papists in England. This would give 250 as the fair pro- portion of prisoners from that denomination. Instead of this it is within a few units of 3,000. The Romanist population of Eng- land granting the above figure, is to the Protestant population as 1 to 83, whilst the papist prisoners are to the Protestant prisoners as one to six.. Each quarter million of the Popish population yields 2,955 criminals. Each quarter million of the Protestant popula- tion, including Jews, Infidels, and the lapsed masses in general, yields 250 criminals. If England were to become a Romanist country, crime would be raised to twelve times its present amount. Where they have now but one jail twelve would scarce suffice, and where they now pay but one pound for the criminal police of their country, they would henceforward be compelled to pay twelve pounds. The dissenters of England are upwards of six millions, and there were of their people at the time of last census only 1,391 in the prisons. This shows that St. Patrick's breed is 4*8 times more -.. .A 8 immoral than the dissenters. Thus, it is clear that the dissenters, notwithstanding their deficiency on the score of the laughable links of " Apostolical Succession," are far in advance, in morals, of all those who trace their pedigree and relationship to the Apostles. The above statistics are decisive as regards the immore) ten- dency of the religion of Antichrist. The reader will be apt to inquire, what is the cause of this monstrous immorality of papists ? We reply it is their priests, whose instruction and influence are as a pestilential effluvia, or the accumulated eflects cf the Dead Sea, corrupting and poisoning every living creature within their reach and bodnds. No better fruits can be expected from the persecuting and beastly immoral tenets of her, of Rome, who is drunk with the blood of the saints. It iii»»far more likely then that the Irish min- ions of Popery in England are the perpetrators of those ' crimes, charged by the Citizen on English Protestants ; and why ? just because the Church of Rome teaches the lawfulness of murder, of falsehood, of infanticide, of homicide, of fratricide, of parricide, of matricide, of regicide ! Do not startle gentle reader, — I can prove all my statements from Rome's authorized standards. Moreover there are several priestly houses, or in other words, nunneries in England ; and if they be of the same character as we believe they are, as that nunnery in France called Provines, it would not be difficult to find bones and skeletons in their neigh- bourhood. At the time of cleansing a fish-pond which belonged to this nunnery, there were found many bones of infants, and the bodies also of some as yet unconsumed. On this occasion twenty- seven nuns of that nunnery were carried to Paris and imprisoned ; but the business was hushed up for the credit o^ the Church and her daughters. Mr. Gavin and Balaeus inform us that 6,000 heads of murdered infants, the fruits"of illicit sexual intercourse, were found in a fish-pond belonging to another nunnery, a discov- ery which induced Gregory to revoke the law of celibacy. It is a well ascertained fact now, that it is the papists of Ire- land that throng and fill the jails, poorhouses, hospitals and police-offices in England and Scotland. In a late number of the Free Press, a Popish journal, I observed that^the Irish {Papists in Glasgow set forth their claim to an equal share or voice in the ad- ministration of the poor law because as they boasted they had more inmates in these charitable houses than Protestant Scotland. Thus, it seems, Scotland must not only support Irish beggars, who are the subjects of an Italian Mountebank, but the way in which they are to do so must be suggested and laid down by these very beg* gars WhI his der easel - 1 mm- more ]Thus, io are they beg- gars, whose religion it is to curse the hand that feeds them. Wherever the Irish papist is placed he is determined to maintain his characteristic if he can, and act according to his motto, of mur- der and incendiarism, not forgetting the dagger. Just look at the case of the two Irishmen, and they cousins, engaged three years ago by a farmer in Argyleshire, where crime was almost unknown, and especially thai of murder till these men polluted that land by the one murdering the other. Bui let it be remarked here, once for all, that we are not dealing in individual cases like the Citizen, but with broad and national characteristics. Notwithstanding these statistical facts, the blush-proof heralds of Antichrist are at this very moment agitating the country, demand- ing Government to endow popish chaplains for their criminal chil- dren. Thus Popery has extraordinary powers for manufacturing criminals ; and the priests boldly cry intolerance and persecution unless Protestant En^and will give their guineas in return for these criminals. " This, hence forward is the game which the priests will play. They will compel England, by the endowment of May- nooth, to pay, in the first place, for making criminals, and they will compel her to pay over again for the pretence of turning these vil- lains into honest men. There must be more criminals to procure more endowments, and these endowments will in their turn procure more criminars. The manufacture of the two will go on most pros- perously ; criminals creating endowments and endowments creating criminals — since England pays for the manufacture of Popish priests, she has a right to pay for their work after they are made." Mr. Editor, since we are challenged to it, I trust you will give me space in your able journal to prove that Popery is a systemwhich all ex- perience has demonstrated to be ruinous beyond all others, and which accomplishes its work of destruction on the largest possible scale, and in the shortest possible time — a system which, in every other country where it has prevailed, has laid in the dust all that is great and magnanimous, and virtuous — a system which has con- verted Italy into a nation of beggar%— Spain into a country of as- sassins and anarchists, and France into a nation of socialists and revolutionists — a system which has covered Ireland with idleness and mendicancy, filth, and rags, murder and barbarity ; and which, so far as it has prevailed in Great Britain, has been the patron of every possible crime, and the grand purveyor of the jail and the scaflbld. Did you hear, Catholic Citizen, that the papists of Montreal murdered some of their Protestant brethren while in the house of a2 11 I 10 God ? Did you hear that the Irish papists of Quebec attempted to serve God and their church in a similar way 1 Is it not an un- deniable fact that they exhibit the same wicked spirit in New York, and wherever they are placed 1 And is it not equally true that you, the Editor of the Catholic Citizen would do the same here were it not that your anti-christian cause is weaker ] otherwise you are not a good papist. You, the Editor of the Citizen^ admire the acumen exhibited by the Chiardian for referring to the bulwark of your apostacy, the inquisition, in this argument, and say that " thus citing the in- quisition has as much to do with the case in point as your bringing forward the murder of the Archbishop of St. Andrews, would have in fixing the crime of murder upon thewhole Presbyterian body." Indeed, are you m earnest ? pre you so far deluded and abandoned as to see no difference in the parallel 1 " Th^e inquisition was erected by the Pope, sanctioned by Councils, has been aH along supported and governed by ecclesiastical authority, was wrought solely for eccle- siastical ends, and managed by priests and friars" — so that the spirit and genius of Popery are clearly.displayed in this hell-inven- tion, and you as well as all the other members of Babylon are identified in the present day with its diabolical atrocities. Did the Pr*^sbyterians in their assembly or synods decree or pass an act to murder the monstrous Archbishop of St. Andrews 1 You have not thC' hardihood to say that they did ; hence they are no more committed by that act than you are ; so that your reasoning and logic are as rotten as Romanism is wicked, and cannot be account- ed for in any other way than that God has, in his sovereignty, per- mitted the spirit of delusion to carry you away, because you have not received the truth in its love 1 You talk slightly of the in- quisition, and as only a specimen of the intolerance of every existing power, and would further persuade us that it is by this time put out of existence. To put on such a biazen face wiH not serve your turn. What power, or government or church would ever think or have ever thought of inventing such a den of mur- der, but your church, at the instigation of Satan. In a word, it is with principles we have to do, and I affirm and offer to prove that Popery is essentially a persecuting, intolerent,and an immoral system, whereas Protestantism is the very reverse ; and on this pointlL am prepared to meet any of your priests and .Tesuits in public discus- sion. I'will close this letter in the words. of the author of " The Papacy" : — ^"A blind, irresponsible, and infallible despotism, issuing its decrees from behind a veil which mortal dare not lift, sat en- '-■'■[' • 11- throned upoi^the rights and liberties, the conscience and the intel- lect, the-souls and the bodies of men. Such was the papacy ! A monstrous compound of spiritual and temporal power — of old idola- tries and christian forms — of secret fraud and open force — of roguery and simplicity — of perfidies, hypocrisies, and villanies of all sorts and degrees — of priests and soldiers — of knaves and fools— of monks, friars, cardinals, kings and popes — of mountebanks of every kind — hypocrites of every class, and villains of every grade — all banded together in one fearful conspiracy to defy God and ruin man/' In my next letter I will show that Ireland contributes far more criminals than Great Britain put together. A Protestant, LetterII. Before noticing the criminal statistics of unfortunate Ireland, I would briefly animadvert upon the shameless calumny set forth by the " Citizen," in reference to the Scotch Presbyterians, and the cholera. His statement was, that the Presbyterians would not visit cholera patients, even should they be of their own flock^ whereas the Popish priests visited all such patients indiscriminately. There is no occasion whatever for spending time or labor in vindi- cating the Presbyterians, or any of our Protestant ministers from such a Jesuitical falsehood. He indeed published a pretended Protestant communication, bearing on this libel, and no doubt in- tended to establish his unhallowed position. But after all, a clever Jesuit would not be long penning such a scroll ; and why not ? " The end would justify the means." The reader must not think this severe or invidious ; just look in the " Edinburgh Witness," J anuary the 1 1 th, 1854?, and you will see the following curious statement : — ^^ The Roman Catholic Directory for the new year, anxious to make a display of converts equal in length to former occasions, gathers together a curious heterogeneous collection from all parts of the world, including several that are dead. Prominent on the list stands the name of Lord Huntingtower, whose name is, no doubt, familiar to many of our readers, though not before in connection with religious movements." On the other hand we as- sure our friend that he need not be very copious or profuse in his i I fT ■M langtiage 'to show, that, the avaricious and Heaven-abandoned priests of Rome are always glad to visit the sick and dying. We are not sceptical on this point, although we are too much so as to the motives assigned by him for their doing so. Yes, Mr. " Citizen," these unrivalled impostors watch the dying, as ravens, eagles, and wolves watch weak and wandering lambs and sheep, that they may plunder and devour them. This they do and always have done to serve motives of which humanity, not to speak of Christianity, has been ashamed for the last twelve centuries. Protestant ministers visit the sick and dying with a free ofter of a free Gospel, but not to terrify knd distract their souls with the lying and heathenish bugbear of the frost and fire of purgatory — not to rob them and th^ir descendants of their property and means of subsistence — not to curse and threaten them unless they pour their gold into their lap. There is a very popular Presbyterian Dr. at present in Edin- burgh, who, not long ago, gave a half-crown to an Irish starving- woman, and called next day to satisfy himself whether it was spent in a useful way, but, to his astonishment, found her in the same famishing state. He inquired what was done with the half-crown ; she reluctantly informed him that the priest who paid her a visit that same evening took it from her. The good minister instantly marched off to the impostor's ' house, and compelled him to give back the half-crown, and he instantly bought food for the woman with the same, and left it in her house. Before laying the alarming and frightful statistics of Ireland before the public, let me once for all, assure the papists of Canada, that I am iniluenced by no other motive than that of hatred to the wicked imposture of Rome, and love to the souls and persons of the priest-ridden and destroyed people of Ireland. Let toe especially assure the priestly or priest-ridden editor or editors of the '' Citizen," that his or their attention is called to the following stubborn statistical facts. The old argument, that " they believe what the church believes, and that the church believes what they believe," and 'that " they and the church believe the same thing" will not serve the turn here j and, in fact, we never heard or saw a better argument yet from their lips or pen. We also invite the infallible priesthood to the scene, and entreat them to give up their farcical notions that the truculent priests of Rome are the successors of the Apostles — that their bastard, in- and cestuous and libidinous Popes * have been so many Gods on earth — that there is any truth in their lying legends about villainous saints, or that they possess the shirt or smock of the Virgin Mary ; but they ought rather, as the parents or patrons of Ireland's crimes, to strike their callous breasts, and hide their brazen brows, as men deservedly despised by earth and deserted by heaven. The only successful way in which Rome could ever meet facts ^nd argu- ments, was, by the inquisition, the fiery furnace, the thumb-screw, the halter, and the axe. But as they have none of these arguments in our city, we must content ourselves, in the absence of a better one, with the usual reply of " You are a bloody liar." But to come to the point at issue ; let us begin with the surprising number of troops stationed in Ireland now, for many years. The annual average of the last ten years has been upwards of 25,000 men ; and if to this military force we add 13,000 constabulary and Metropoli- tan police, we have in this small island a constant army in occupa- tion of 38,000 men ! ! And that to control 7,000,000 so-called :'i| 1 entreat riests of »rd, in- ■**■ Mr. Gavin says : — " Pope Paul III., in the third j'ear of his papacy, granted a bull for publicly licensing brothels ; and gave an indulgence for this commission of lewdness, provided the man paid a certain fine to the holy see, and the woman a yearly sum for her license, and enter- ed her name in the public register. In the days of this Pope there are said to have been 45,000 such women in Rome, and besides the amount of the annual license, which each took out for the privilege of prostitu- tion, the church received a part of their weekly income. Each brothel had an iron chest fixed into the wall, into which every man put his offering ; and three agents of the holy see went round weekly to open the chests, and divide what was in them : — One-third part went to the house, one-third to the woman and one third to the holy church. If any man choose to be wicked in a more private manner, and went to a person, or a house, unlicensed, he was, on discovery, to be excommuni- cated, or to pay seven times the price which his sin would have cost in a lawful way. Speaking of Sixtus IV., the following statement is made by Agrippa, a Papist : — Amongst all the lustful men of these latter times, tlierc was none more famous than Pope Sixtus IV., who built at Rome a public bagnio, wherein, after the exawiple of Heliogabalus, he ' kept multitudes of buxom courtezans, with whom he furnished his friends and followers, gathering by this merchandise no small advantage to his treasury : for these privileged courtezans at Rome, weekly pay every K one a Julio to the Pope, which yearly revenue amoynts many times to the sum of 20,000 ducats ; and in such request is that oilice with the prime grandees of the church that the rents of the courtezans are cast up with the patrimony of the church, for thus have I myself heard them casting up their accounts. Such an one hath two benefices, one cure of 20 ducats, a priory of 40 ducats, and three courtezans in the bagnio : that is, he is to receive their rent. ■ m [ H 14 in! professing Christians. Let us next look at the enormous number of prisons, and you will find that it is a country of jails as well as garrisons ; and that neither is sufficient for the accomplishment of its ultimate end. There are in Ireland 155 jails and bridewells ; near 700 law courts, from assizes to petty sessions ; and 10,000 persons ministering to justice, from the judge to the bailiff. In fact their chief public buildings, in addition to poorhouses, are jails and court houses ; and their most flourishing business is that of lawyers and solicitors. In 1848, we find there were near 40,000 commit- tals, almost 3,000 sentenced to transportation, and 60 sentenced to death. (Thorn's Statistics 1852, p. p. ISSy 199,291.) From the Secretary of State's return, we find, that, in 1849, there were, in England and Wales, 27,816 persons committed for trial ; in Ireland, 41,989 persons committed for trial ; or not quite twice as many in a population two thirds less. Next we take the summary of sentences from the clerk's re- turns. IRELAND, 1849. Sentenced to death - _ - ,39 Transported for life - - - " 67 Transj^orted for fourteen years - - 380 Transported for seven years - - 2,585 To be imprisoned for one year - - 284 One year and under six months - 1^,674 Six months and under - - - 13,169 Other punishments - - - 2,845 Convicted and sentenced - - - 21,043 Acquitted and discharged - - 20,946 Again, we take up the Parliamentary returns ; Session 1850, No. 639, *' Outrages, Ireland ;" obtained by Mr. Maurice John O'Connell, and extract from it the following very conclusive state- ments : — HALF-YEAR ENDING June 30, Dec. 31. June 30, Dec. 31. June 30 1848. 1849. 1850. 1. Homicides 86 85 43 90 76 2. Firing at persons 37 60 49 44 27 3. Robbery of arms 100 137 67 46 51 4. Firing at dwellings ' 65 . 30 59 81 24 5. Incendiary fires 424 326 G39 407 548 In Thorn's Statistics we find, that, in Great Britain, with thrice the population of Ireland, and this consisting of the depraved 15 manufacturing classes, there were in 1850, only 31,281 commit- tals, while there were in Ireland in the same year 33,326, or up- wards of three to one. Yet this gives no accurate idea of the proportions of actual crime in these two countries ; for conspiracy against the laws is in many parts of Ireland so perfect, that even assassinations take place in open day, within view of scores of people ; and not only do they not inform, but so screen the assas- sin that he often eludes the utmost vigilance of the police. In ten years of official experience the atrocious crime of perjury produced in England and Wales 42 commitments per gnnum ; and in the same ten years Popish Ireland, with a population one-third less produced 50 each year. The total of the periods being, for Ire- land 498,. of which 1849 gave 52, and for England 424. If there were nothing else than this crime to depend upon, the superiority of Protestant morals over the " infamy, pollution and brutality," exhibited by Irish papists, would be abundantly established. And in connection with this subject, it was found that, during the ten years, juries have suffered more than one-half of the persons accused to escape unpunished ; whereas, in all other countries which have the trial by jury, three-fourths are condemned. Lei us then assume that not more, but only the half of those accused of perjury were dismissed ; and then the entire number charged with perjury is 996 ! ! In party cases, the frequent expression even of jurors, before entering the box at all, is that '^ they will eat their boots" with hunger before they find against the prisoners ! Had we not a fair specimen of Irish jurors, judges and witnesses in the late Gavazzi trials, in Quebec and Montreal 1 It is the greatest folly that can be to put an out-and-out papist on oath ; for our part we have as much con- fidence in the talk of a somnambulist, or a dreamer, as we have in a papist on oath. We do not, by this, deny that some papists may and will speak the truth, but that is not in consequence of their re- ligion, but in spite of it. We affirm that the church of Rome enjoins equivocation or falsehood and perjury ; just hear St. Ligouri on the subject — he says ' ' It is a certain and common opinion among 'all divines that for a just cause it is lawful to use equivocation, and to confirm it with an oath." " It is a common remark in Ireland that no popish jury will con- vict a popish priest, nor Romanist witness testify against him. In the trial of Priest Timlin, one unhappy wretch being sworn, was detected putting the book to his chin, in the belief that, if he could avoid kissing it, he was not swqrn at all. Another swore, first, that he could speak no English ; then, that Mr. Jonston, who could m .11 16 lib speak no Irish, had a long conversation with hirn ahout attending the service at Ballymaliole ! ! ! The charge against the priest was established so clearly that the barrister, himself a papist, while charging the jury, adminiJitered to him the severest castigation, as- smning, as a matter of course, that he would not be convicted ; yet the jury, in the full knowledge of all the facts before they entered the box at all — for the outrage took place in the neighbourhood — at once acquitted the prisoner. Nay, what is still more instructive, this was universally expected before the trial commenced at all. " As soon as I see who the jury are," said a Popish attorney, engaged in the prosecution, to the author ; " I'll tell you whether you'll get a verdict ; and the instant they were sworn he whispered again, " you may make up your mind you'll get no verdict !" A few years ago, the following paragraph appeared in the papers, under the usual heading, " State of the Country :" " The Cashel Bench of Magistrates, — The following have been the gentlemen who, within the last few years usually attended this bench: — R. Long, father shot, himself twice fired at ; W. Murphy, father shot j S. Cooper, brother shot ; Leonard Keantigne, nephew of Mr. Scully, shot ; E. Scully, cousin of Mr. Scully, shot ; God- frey Taylor, cousin of Mr. Clarke, shot; W. Howe, shot; C. Clarke, brother shot; Nephew, Mr. Rowe, shot." Again among the cases tried by ' the special commission' in 184-7, was that of a party who went to the house of a man named Houligan, in order to shoot him. He was absent : but the ruffians instead of retiring and waiting for another opportunity, shot his wife dead in the kit- chen. A child lay dying in the room, they entered, dragged him out of bed, held him up against the wall, and, unmoved by the pleadings of terror, unsoftened by the pallor of sickness, unawed by the presence of death — they presented a pistol, and shot him dead on the spot. Listen to the statement of the Rev. Mr. Foley in reference to a poor woman who had been converted to the Protes- tant faith in Galway, who, on dying, expressed a desire to be laid by the side of her husband, who was buried about 120 miles from where she died. Her wish was carried into eifect, and she was taken on the shoulders 6f six Protestant men towards her native place. When they arrived within 30 miles of the place the priests and their minions heard of it, and annoyed the poor men very much, until they arrived at the village. The priest, however, refused to bury her by the side of her husband, or even in the parish, and she was eventually interred on the sands on the sea-shore. But here they were not satisfied, for a mob congregated together, and disin- 17 ttending iest was it, while tion, as- ted ; yet entered rhood — tractive, i at all. ittorney, whether whispered t!" e papers, e Cashel entlemen ch:— R. ', father iphew of t; God- bhot; C. II among hat of a in order terred the body, broke the coffin all to pieces, and threw it into the sea, and was about to serve the body the same way, when a party of the coast-guard service rame to the rescue, and it was at last interred in the sands, the mob being kept at a distance by the point of the bayo- net ! No wonder that popery is called Satan's master-piece ; it has far outstripped Paganism, Judaism, Mahometanism, and every other ism in demonism, barbarism, monstrosity, and wickedness. These very crimes have been very often concocted on the way from the chapel. Nay, devotion and murder have occasionally so closely followed each other, that, like the ' Thug of India, the as- sassin has prepared for the deed by repairing to the altar ; and, as Mr. Nolan has proved, often confessed to the priest the meditated crime, and thence departed to commit it ! The following is the oath taken by the Irish rebels in 1798 : — " I, A. B., do solemnly swear by our Lord Jesus Christ, who suffered for us on the cross, and by the blessed Virgin Mary, that I will burn, destroy and murder all heretics (Protestants), up to my knees in blood ; so help me God."-^S2V Richard Musgrave's History of the Rebellion, Last of all on this head of our subject, we present the following extract from the ''Morning Herald," April 10, 1851. "The proportion of crime in England, to population, is only one in 758. In Scotland it is but 1 in 800. The Ireland of Drs. Gullen, Mc- Hale, and their allies, stands at 1 in 300. And let the remarkable fact be not overlooked, that whilst the whole number convicted of offences in the six Protestant counties of the North — Antrim, Down, Londonderry, Tyrone, Fermanagh and Armagh, — with a population of 1,700,000 persons, amounted to only 2,038, the single popish county of Tipperary, with a population not exceeding 436,000, fur- nished a list of criminals amounting to 2,124." We have already proved to a demonstration that the criminality of England is particularly traceable to the Romish priesthood : but to satisfy sceptics, and shut the mouths of gain-sayers, we have thus compared the morals of Ireland, the strong hold of the papacy, to that of Protestant England, and now defy the whole fraternity to falsify our assertion, " The more Priests the more crime." And to establish our position the more validly, and trace the distinction and disparity in every possible form, I will, in my next letter, show that there is ten times more crime and mendicancy in the popish counties of Ireland than in the protestant counties. I have no pleasure, whatsoever, in holding Ireland. up to public shame, but I I'l * Dill. 18 'fi' t ;i. ; when I see the unscrupulous and unprincipled tools of the Apoca- lyptic Harlot displaying their Scriptural characteristics at the expense of truth, honour and virtue, I deem it my duty to father the wrongs, the infamy and crimes of our country, on their ghostly authors. Popish morals are not founded on the Gospel, but on Dens — ^but on Ligouri — but on Loyola — but on the teaching of the priests ; and the criminal tables, above exhibited, shew what the fruits of that/oul teaching is. What else, we say, could be expected from a church that placed the book of God in her index expurgatorius I — from a church that suppressed and obliterated the second com- mandment of the decalogue, to serve her own idolatry and mum- mery 1 — from a church that has by her confessional and nunneries converted the temple of God into a huge brothel?* from a church that has by her " indulgences" patronised every possible crime, and held out the Almighty as selling sin for gold ? — from a church that has in all ages, and in every possible way, murdered and crushed the cause of Christianity and humanity, and expelled light and science from the face of the earth till there was darkness that could be felt ] — from a church that has never been in her element unless she was red with human blood, and wildly celebrating scenes of horrid butchery and shocking treachery 1 If all this be not true, history must be false ; yea more, we appeal to their own authorized standards and thence prove our position. Before closing this letter I would refer to an advertisement in * It is with the greatest reluctance that I give place here to a few of the questions put by the priests to females in the confessional. I ex- tract them from page 211 of "The Garden of the Soul," an undisputed organ of popish do(l,rine. I give them, because the mere assertion, that there are such would not otherwise be credited. They are as follows : — " Have you been guilty of fornication, or adultery, or incest, or any sin against nature, either with a person of the same sex, or with any other creature ? How often? Have you been guilty of self-pollution ? or of immodest touches of yourself ? How often ? Have you touched others, or permitted yourself to be touched by others immodestly? or given or taken wanton kissess or embraces, or any such like liberties ? How often? Have you abused the marriage bed by any actions contrary to the order of nature, or by any pollution, or been guilty of anyirregular- ity, in order to hinder your having children ? How often ? Have you without a just cause refused the marriage debt; and what sin may have followed from it ? How often ? Have j-ou debauched, any person that was innocent before ? Have you forced any person or deluded any one by deceitful promises, &c." Such, kind reader, is the nature of the confessional, and such are the beastly questions put by beastly priests to tb«ir mock penitents. 19 the « Citizen," headed, « A Book for the People ;" « The Bible against Protestantism." It pretends also to show how their clergy prove every doctrine of the popish church from the Bible, &c. We would humbly inform the priests of Rome, that they must steal more than the second commandment before they can make good their position ; that they must pervert still more of God's book be- . fore they can father their wicked and pernicious doctrine upon it — that they must acquire still more power of " speaking lies in hypoc- risy," and must spread still thicker the mist and smoke of the " bottomless pit," before they can show the truthfulness of this statement. Indeed, the Bible to be prostituted to prove that the wretched impostors of Kome can transubstantiate a little flour and water into so many gods, and that their unfortunate vassals do actually eat God and man when they swallow that flour and water, and that if a single grain of that flour happen to go between their teeth that God is lodged there — to be prostituted to prove the awful doctrine of purgatory, and the still more awful dogma that nothing short of money can obtain the deliverance of the inmates — to prove that the heathenish purgatorian society of Toronto is influenced with love to the souls and persons of men, when they unblushingly publish to the world that they will not grant member- ship, or extend their influence to the sick or seemingly dying — to prove the infallibility of Popes, whose honid wickedness is unrival- led in the world's history ; some of whom even drank the devil's health, converted their palaces into bagnios, and in short, of whom humanity is ashamed. We say then, that it does not become the Bible-burning and Bible-hating priests of the apostate church of Rome to boast of the Bible, because it is neither their standard nor pattern, fts they themselves know too well ; so that they must manufacture another Bible before they can succeed in establishing their unapostolic doctrines. We have this far attempted to de- scribe the wickedness of a system alike dishonouring to God and injurious to the best interests of man. And let it be plainly under- stpod that the tongue of a Cicero or a Demosthenes could not give anything like an adequate idea of the fiendish nature of the " Mys- tery of Iniquity.'* We crave the attention of the reader till we shall in a future letter lay before him, and that from authorities which no papist dare deny, the persecuting and immoral nature of Popery. A Protestant. m t'-i I* u ■'i ■III: ; 20 • Letter III. * The old and well known popish complaint of the " Catholic Citizen," in his attempt, not to reply, but to misrepresent my first letter, reminds me ol' the ill-fated soldier, who, when he was lashed, always cried out, wherever he was struck, " that is not the right place." Old holy mother church after her twelve centuries of de- bauchery and tjeachery, is so decrepid anil fretful — so fiUl of pu- trilied sores — of ulcers and leprosy, the fruits of her fornication and wickedness, that she cannot suffer to be touched. We may pro- duce undoubted historical and statistical facts, as well as experience and obs3rvation, against her criminality, and that of her bastard off- spring ; but all to no purpose. She holds up her flinty forehead, always complaining that she is not struck in the right place. The flippancy of stile, vacancy of thought, miserable shuffling and evasion, dishonesty and disingeniiousness, malagnity and barefaced- ness, which characterized the alpha and omega of the silly reply of the " Citizen" to the unchallenged facts which I produced, are in- deed worthy of one who has trampled upon reason, banished shame, and sold himself, in order to support the greatest imposition ever palmed upon the human family. The Romish fraternity possesses a supernatural faculty ; yes, her infallibility can transform puppies to Popes, — men-skinncrs to cardinals^ — boxers to bishops — poachers to priests — monsters to monks — fiddlers to friars — wafers to Gods — wine to blood — villains to saints — and vice to virtue. The " Citizen" possesses this rare talent also, although on a smaller scale; he can change facts to fables — statistics to exclamations — argu- ments to sophistries — logic to buffoonery — and reason to ribaldry. Need we wonder, then, that men who deny and contradict their senses by taking bread for God and man, should contradict their reason by refusing facts and arguments. He should bear in mind that I told him at the outset, that I did not expect to convince him, and that because the Scripture says, " And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie, that they all might be damned who believe not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness." II. Thes. ii: 11, 12. We truly confess that the " CiJ;izen" might, with confidence and clean hands, give us a sermon on charity. The faction to which he belongs far outstrips Paul in the practice and developement of this prime grace, as well as in all other kindred excellencies. Paul, no doubt, was good enough for the dark times in which he lived, but he shoj mandel well, a| the kef fortune protec< holy ini was lei there i^ more e| chase ent dej bodies raised kisses less die holy m ics, to « sesses a jies to achers Gods The scale; argu- jaldry. their their mind him, shall tthey ure in :eand ichhe >f this il, no but he showed a terrible lack of gharity and humility, when he t*eprl» manded and withstood Peter to the face at Antioch, knowing very well, as he did, that he was the first Pope, and consequently had the keys of heaven and hell and purgatory on his thigh. But, un- fortunately, the Jb'ri f)ch bayonets were not present at the time to protect poor Pope Peter frOm such a gross insult, neither was the holy inquisition exactly finished ; so that the stubborn heretic Paul was left unpunished after committing such a mortal sin ; however, there is no doubt that Peter was avenged on him in purgatory, more especially as Payl was so very poor that he could not pur- chase his deliverance by gold. Paul never attained to that emin- ent degree of charity which influences her of Rome, to kill the bodies of heretics to save their souls. Neither did he (although raised up to the third heaven) attain to that Jesuitical charity which kisses a man to atford an opportunity of giving him a stab — much less did he attain to that ever to be desired charity which stimulated holy mother church to the praise-worthy acts of disinterring heret- ics, to burn their bones to ashes. The sound of charity from a fiendish papist or a luciferous Jesuit has no more affect upon us than the tears of a crocodile, or the apparent meekness of a chain- ed tiger. We are now by far too experienced to be muzzled with such roguery ; and know too well at our cost that Jesuitical frogs can preach and practice charity when such conduct tends to ad- vance their murderous crusade. This foolish journalist would per- suade his readers-, that to talk abo«t logic is good logic and sound reasoning ; and charges us with ignorance of this useful scientific art. Of course we cannot boast of our proficiency in the popish logic of thinking one thing and saying another — of proving the authority of the church by the Scriptures, and the authority of the Scriptures by the church. We have to accuse him of deficiency not only in logic, reason and shame, but even in truth ; inasmuch as he has endeavored to persuade his duped readers that I fathered the crimes of Irish Protestants on the papists,_and that I only produced or insisted upon the criminal statistics of Liverpool alone ; whereas the very reverse of this is the case, as any one may see from my letter. In another part of his paper he states that the popish pop- ulation of Ireland amounts to six millions ; which he knows very well to be untrue. In 1851, as he may see by consulting the cen- sus, the population of Ireland, including papists and protestants, was only 6,515,794? ; and we affirm, that it is, by this time orly between five and six millions ; besides, from the accession to the Protestants from their side of late, and the thousands of them that 0. fl 22 1 1 (:. arc emigrating to America and other parts of the world, we may state that the popish population of Ireland cannot far exceed three and a half millions at present. In short, the laughable reply merits the same consideration as their mendacious legends of Anthony, who sailed to St. Petersburg on a millstone to convert the Rus- sians — of St. Dunstan, who led Satan about with a pair of red-hot pincers, when he tempted him in the likeness of a fair lady — of St. Denis, who carried his head half a dozen miles after it' was separa- ted from his body — of St. Anthony — of Padua's mule, which after three days fasting, left his provender to worship the host — of St. Dominic, who turned the devil into a monkey, and made him do penance by holding a lighted candle till his fingers were burned to the sockets. The reader will excuse my dwelling so long on a subject that should be passed by in contemptuous silence ; and I now proceed to fulfil my promise of drawing a comparison between the most popish and the most protestant counties of Ireland. Of the 25,000 troops usually stationed in Ireland, scarcely 3,000 are found in Protestant Ulster ; and, except in its southern counties, even these are wholly unnecessary. Not a soldier is stationed between Belfast and Derry, a distance of 70 miles, embracing two most populous counties and various large towns. ' Of the 13,000 police, the number stationed in Ulster, in 1851, was 1,901, little more than a seventh of the force for a third of the population, and the prison statistics prove that even these are comparatively unne- cessary. Of the 33,326 committed in 1850, the number in Ulster was 5,260 — not one-sixth part. Yet, considering how many crimes escape detection in the South, from the prevailing conspi- racy against the laws, and how few in the North, from the opposite cause, even this is too large a figure to represent the proportion of actual crimes. Of twenty three executions which took place in Ireland in the years 1849 and 1850, only two occurred in Ulster — Tlumi's Statistics 1852. Moreover their landlords are scarce ever shot, or murderers sheltered, or wretches known to swear away innocent life ; while in most counties, assizes last a day or two, jails are half empty, and gibbets scarcely ever required. On the 8th of May, 1850, there were in Derry 41 Protestant, and 118 Romap Catholic prisoners, being three times as many of the latter, in proportion to the population of the county ; and on the 14th of May, in the same year, there were in Tralee jail, 572 Roman Catholic, and only 4 Protestant prisoners. In short, turn where you will, and the result is the same. You can generally tell the prevailing denomination from the apj>earances of every parish, every 23 village, and almost every house in the land. Again we find in Antrim, a Protestant county, comparatively, the per centage yvho cannot read or write, is 23 ; in Cavan one of the most popish counties, it is 51. The number of police stationed in Derry in 1850 was 106, at the expense of J65,299 ; while in popish Cavan there were 396, at the cost of ^£16,985^ — over three times the expense, and nearly four times the force. One of the richest panshes of Antrim is that of Killagan, and ■one of the poorest, that of Cushendum ; yet in the former the Pro- testants are to the papists as 6 to 1, and in the latter as 1 to 9. Let us next look at their comparative poverty and destitution. " Of JB 10,000,000 of relief sent to Ireland a#the time of the famine, scarcely iS 1,000,000 is supposed to have reached Ulster ; while that province actually contributed large sums for the relief of the South and West, and has ever since paid the rate-in-aid tax for the ^ihe end. While Ireland has lost one fifth of its inhabitants, Munster almost one fourth, and Connaught nearly one third, Ulster has not lost one sixth. To give one more sample — in the year 1848, there were, in round numbers, 3 persons receiving relief out of every 100 in protestant Ulster ; 7 in Leinster — 14 in Munster ; and 1 9 in Connaught ! Here is a graduated scale singularly cor- respondent to the protestantism of each province, and the very reverse of what we should be entitled to expect. For, besides other advantages, Leinster has long been the seat of Government, and enjoyed the benefits of the " English pale" ; not only is Mun- ster, the garden of Ireland, but its population are the oldest inhab- itants of the land ; while Ulster is a mere colony, little more than 200 years old, and composed for the most part of a few Scotch adventurers, who were doomed to struggle for years against a host of difficulties. Let us still farther contrast a few of the most Pro- testant with a few of the most popish Counties. In Antrim, the protestants are to the papists nearly as 3 to 1 ; in Down, more than 2 to 1 ; in Derry, about 1 to 1 ; and in Donegal 1 to 3 ; while in Cork, they are 1 to 16 ; Limerick, 1 to 22 ; Kerry and Waterford, 1 to 23 ; Mayo and Galway, 1 to 24. Now, mark how the light of each County, is as its protestantism, with only an exception, which establishes the rule ; Donegal being mountainous, without a single large town, while Cork and Limerick are full of populous towns, with all their educational facilities. In 1841, the proportions who could neither read nor write, were — Antrim, 23 per cent ; Down, 27, Derry, 29 ; Limerick, 55 ; Donegal, 62 ; m Mi f:''\ 1% i u ^' 1 v ; il CJdrk, 68 ; Kerry, 72 ; Waterford, 73 ; Galway, 78 ; and May6, 80. Census, 184.1." Thus in the most popish Counties, we have four-fifths of the people in total ignorance ; in the most Protestant, only one-fifth, and in all, with the above exception, the ignorance increasing as the Protestantism diminishes. We might further prove, that in all those Counties, those who can neither read nor write, are almost all papists. Instance Donegal, the only County out of its place in the above scale, and according to the report of the Rev. E. M. Clarke, Chaplain and Local Inspector, of 138 Protestants confined in Lifford Jail, in 1849, 91 or near three-fourths could read ; while of 922 popish pisoners, only 213, or not one-iburth, could redid.— Derry Standard, Peb. 21, 1850. Again — of 69 crimin- als handed in Ireland, in the 6 years ending 1850, 13 were execu- ted in Limerick alone ; only 4 were hiiiiged in Ulster, and only one in any of the other Protestant Counties. Besides, we find that, in the 4 popish Unions of Kanturk, Lestowd, Castlebar, and Ballin- robe, there were, in 1848, 12 times as many paupers relieved in proportion to their population, as in the 4 Protestant Unions of Lame, Kilkeel, Coleraine, and Newton Limavady.— 27«7??j'5 St. In the diocese of Cashel, papists are to Protestants as 28 to 1 ; and that naturally luxuriant region has long been known as the place where the demon of murder holds his court, and those assassination clubs have existed where each deed of blood is deliberately plan- ned. In 1841, the proportion of the population in each province who could neither read nor write, were — Ulster, 33 per cent, Leinster, 38 ; Munster, 52 ; Connaught, 64. — Tliom's Statistics. The following statement, by Lieutenant-General Sir Hussey Vivian, commander of the Forces in Ireland, of the crimes com- mitted during the 11 months that intervened between July 1831, and June, 1832, will give an idea of the state of matters at that time: *' In Munster, ^^ says he, "there were 7 murders reported to me ; 22 persons severely injured by stones, sticks, shots and so on j 6 stand of arms taken from houses by night robbery, and 2 by day robbery ; 4 houses destroyed by fire ; 1 head of cattle killed, and 16 houses attacked. • " In Leinster district, which includes Kilkenny, Wexford, Car- low, Queen'*s County, Wicklow, Meath, and Louth, there were 24 murders committed, 106 persons severely injured by shots and other ways j 35 stand of arms robbed from houses by night ; 14 f^ auid Mayb, ths of the one-fifth, reasing as that in all are almost ts place in jv. E. M. 's confined uld read; rth, could ►9 criinin- re execu- d only one id that, in id Ballin- elieved in Jnions of oin's Si. 1 ; and the place issination 1I7 plan- province er cent, tatistics. Hussey es com- y 1831, at that )rted to d so on ; bj day ed, and • d, Car- e were ots and ht; U stand of arltas robbed by day ; 27 acts of incendiarism ; 27 head of cattle maliciously maimed or killed, and 116 houses attacked. " In Ulster district there were 2 persons murdered, 4 persons severely hurt by shot or otherwise ; 3 stand of arms taken from houses by night ; 2 acts of incendiarism ; 3 head of cattle killed ; and no houses attacked. " In Commught district, there were 26 persons rffurdered ; 200 persons injured by shots or blows from stones, or otherwise ; 66 stand of arms taken by night, 19 by day ; 35 acts of incendiarism ; 65 head , of cattle maimed or killed, and 206 houses attacked." " Such was the calendar of crime, presented by Ireland during eleven months ; viz., 59 murders, 322 assaults, 145 robberies of arms, 68 acts of incendiarism, 96 head of cattle killed, and 338 houses attacked." The intelligent reader will not fail to mark in this return the very striking contrast between the state of crime in Protestant Ulster, and the state of crime in the other popish districts, or pro- vinces, especially Leinster and Connaught. The above, however, are not all the crimes committed in Ire- land during the said period ; but only those that came under the cognizance of the military officers, commanding detachments throughout the country. Many additional crimes and outrages, beside these were reported to the Inspector-General, Sir John Hervey, by the local police. In tlie province of Leinster alone, for example, there were in the course, not of eleven, but of four months, viz., January, February, March and April, no less than 21 murders, 218 robberies, 226 burglaries, 93 burnings, 25 cases of houghing of cattle,, 297 serious assaults, 10 riots, 7 rescues, 497 illegal notices, 13 rapes, 48 illegal meetings, 132 injuries to pro- perty, 70 thefts of cattle, 10 cases of abduction, 627 attacks upon houses and 49 cases of firing at persons with an intent to kill. — Evidence of Com?mUee on the state of Ireland. Page 83, Ques. 1359. From the latest national statistics of crime in the United States, it was ascertained that the total number of persons convicted of criminal offences for the year ending June, 1850, was about27,000 j of these 13,000 were natives, including coloured prisoners; — and 14,000 foreigners. J3y the same authority, and to the same date, it was found that the population of the United States, was composed of 17,737,505 nativers of the soil; and, 2,216,828 born in foreign countries, and 30,014 whose place of nativity coulJ not be determined. While, tlierefoiJ'e, there was about one foreigner, B m. 11 i f 26 ' i ■ to nine native whites, there is a fraction over one foreign bdrti criminal to every native, including black and white. Now a very I^ge propOTtion of the foreigners in the United States are Roman- ists, and not a few of them Irish ; so that in proportion to numbers, the statistics show that nine-tenths of all the murders, seven-tenths of the robberies, and four-fifths of the burglaries and Other crimes, are committea by Romanists, of whom Ireland contributes its full quota. And further, — -from the prison statistics of the number of convicts in courts of Special Sessions in the Cities of New York, Albany, Buffalo and Brooklyn, as reported in 1853, we learn that ^out of 5,256 criminals, 4,005 were foreigners, and of this nuniber 2,690 were natives of Ireland ; but what proportion of these were Romanists, does not appear. The analogy drawn from more defi- nite statistics, however, leads to the melancholy conclusion respect- ing the probable ratio. We have now noticed the Irish papists in their native country, in England, Scotland and America ; and we may say in a word that they disgrace the country of their birth, insult the country of their adoption, and traitorously wear the chain of a petty foreign despot, who rules them through their passions and their ignorance, and makes them scourges to humanity. The Scotchman in Ire- Ian^ conducts their banks and warehouses, while the Irishman in Scotland is found in the coal pit or the prison ; and as already shown, a large portion of the crimes of Scotland, England and America is committed by Irish papists, while a mere fraction of the crimes of Ireland is the work of Protestants. This, undeniable degradation is the work and fruits of their monstrous priests, who have frozen the springs of the Irish heart, and even forbade their people " to give the missionaries a drink of cold water," insomuch that they have sometimes, in a manner truly characteristic, evaded the stern command by giving them a drink of milk. And in reference to their cry of the heartless treatment which Ireland receives at the hands of Britain, I would just extract the following statement from the eloquent author of " Ireland's Miser- ies :" " The truth is, Ireland has been the object of the most pains- taking legislation ; and whatever have been the sins of our rulers, it would be downright wrong to deny this. More time is each session spent on Irish affairs than on all our colonial affairs together ; and more of the public treasure has been lavished on Ireland than on any other portion of the empire. Since 1800, 33 committees of Parliament and 21 Government Commissions have been appointed to inquire into the causes of our miseries, and the best 27 means of their removal ; and during that period we have received £26,000,000 sterling in mere grants and advances; JE 1,000,000 has been given to construct harbors for our commerce ; j£8,500,000 to encourage our manufactures ; .£8,000,000 to save our people from the grave of famine ; while our canals, railways, agri- culture and fisheries have all been nursed at the public expense. Nay, even our charitable institutions are largely supported by Parliamentary grants ; yet, while not a tithe of this kindness has been shown either to Ulster or Scotland, the Southern dema- gogue has, for years, harped upon British neglect." In conclusion, as the editor of the " Catholic Citizen" is apparently so very anxious to know who 1 am, 1 hereby challenge him to appear with me in public discussion, and prove his late statement that the popjsh Church " is the oldest, and the only true Apostolic Christian Church," or any of the following subjects : — traiisubstantiation, purgatory, celibacy, extreme unctiOh, Pope-su- premacy — or any other of their ridiculous and unscriptural preten- sions. A Protestant. Letter IV It seems the " Citizen" not only avails himself of the divine injunction, '' When ye are persecuted in one city flee into another," but is even determined to set us at defiance in his imaginery con- tinental fortress, Adonijah like, " where he has caught hold of the horns of the altar ;" but we confidently assure him, if in Great Britain, Ireland and America, he has been scourged with whips, that he may lay to his account to be chastised with scorpions on the Continent. Since the said places spued him out of their mouth, and proved too purgatory-like for his further abode, he may prepare himself for a furnace seven times heated on the popish Continent ; let him turn where he will, he shall find the intensity of the heat increasing in proportion as he approximates the seat of the " beast," so that he is out of the frying pan and into the fire. If we have wearied and routed him where papists are but few in number, and under the vigilance of law and justice, what success can he expect in the Sodom-like regions of her of Home, where the villain and the S8 r i. monster are rewarded and applauded, and the humane and honest are exiled, incarcerated and butchered 1 The " Citizen'" presented us with an extract from the North British Review ; to show, as he thought, the moral superiority of Popery over Protestantism in Prussia ; but we would once for all, entreat him not to imitate the Athenian fool, whose frenzied imagination made every vessel that came to port his own. Btfore the extract in question proves any- thing on his side, or in the least covers his nakedness, he must supplement it with undoubted statistical facts of the popish and protestant population ; and let him then, if he can, show that the supporters of the " mystery of iniquity" are less criminal or immoral than the Prussian Protestants. We intend, in this letter, to pur- sue him to the Continent, where Antichrist has, as far as his influ- ence extended, assassinated Christianity, murdered humanity, and buried virtue and morality. Neither are we afraid to meet him in any other region or clime excepting purgatory, where, unfortunately, heretics are not admitted. We have hitherto produced unchallenged statistical facts, and as we intend to pursue the same sure course here, we crave special attention to the following figures. In a table recently compiled^ and widely published, of the ^' morality of great cities," the two cities that stood lowest on the list, as being the least moral in Europe, were the capitaL of its two principal popisn countries, Vienna aftd Paris. In Paris, the illegitimate births were marked as being about one-half of the whole ; and Vienna was still worse. We speak not of the conventual establishments, which were the consecrated abodes of the twin vices of indolence and lewdness. Nor do we speak of the seduction and proflicacy with which the law of clerical celibacy inundated private families. We speak of the state of general society as regards the great virtue of chastity, which is confessedly far below that of Hollahd, oi Great Britain, or of any Protestant country. The Daily Netvs of April 8th, 1850, says :— " The return of births during the year 1849, furnishes sad evidence of the immorality of the Viennese. The total number of children born was 19,24<1, of these 10,360 were illegiti- mate, and only 8,881 legitimate. Munich and Paris have hitherto borne the worst character in this respect ; but this return throws them into the shade. Concubinage is the law, marriage is the ex- ception. Misery keeps eq'ial pace with vice. Between 1827 and 1847, the suicides in Paris had risen from 1,542 to 3,647. Any one who will take the trouble of watching the Paris journals will 29 s, he must find, that at present the suicides in Paris amount to seventeen per week." Again, Mr. Radout proves from the judicial statistics of France, (the most enUghtened popish country in the v/orld,) a sad down- ward course in morals. In 1827, the first year in which a return was maf' of suicides, the number was 1,542 ; in 1847 the number was 3,6*/. In 1826 the tribunals tried only 108,390 cases, and 159,7^0 prisoners ; in 1847 the number of cases had risen to 184,922, and of prisoners 239,291. The celebrated historian Macauley says, " throughout Christendom, whatever advance has been* made in knowledge, in freedom, in wealth, and in the arts of life, has been made in spite of her (church of Rome,) and has everywhere been in inverse proportion to her power. The loveliest provinces in Europe, have, under her rule, been sunk in poverty, in political servitude, and in intellectual torpor ; while Protestant countries, once proverbial for sterility and barbarism have been turned, by skill and industry, into gardens, and can boast of a long list of heroes, statesmen, philosophers and poets." The same author says, in another place ; " whoever passes in Germany from a Roman Catholic to a Protestant principality, — in Switzerland from a Roman Catholic to a Protestant Canton, — in Ireland from a Roman Catholic to a Protestant County, — finds that he passes from a lower to a higher grade of civilization. On the other side of the Atlantic, the same law prevails." Let the reader just calmly read the following picture, by Nicolini, in his history of Pious IX., and say if he would like the scene transferred to America. " Does a man eat a cutlet instead of a mackarel on a Friday ; the curate or the ruler-vicar may, and in small towns does, send him to prison. Does he take a fancy to read a book which the priests have declared he ought not to read, he may be imprisoned, and generally is, either by the Parson, Vicar, or the Inquisition. Does he love and design to marry ; if any of these reverend gentlemen happen to be smit- ten with the bright eyes of his intended, he is forbidden to visit •her, on the pretence that it may raise a scandal ; and should he disobey, he may be, and is, thrown into prison. Does an unfaith- ful wife obtain the favor of the Curate or the Vicar, the aggriev- ed husband must keep the dishonoured creature under his roof, if they so will it ; and if without their authority he separates himself from her, he is sent oflf to prison, while she remains mistress of the household," In criminal matters, the civil judge has no jurisdiction whatever over any person connected, either directly or indirectly, with the church. Thus not only Priests, Monks, Nuns, &c., but 'hi # \ ' I i PI' M X; I 1. 30 even the young urchin, who has assumed the sacerdotal garb, and received what they call the first order, are all protected from the lay tribunals. But this is not all, the very serrants of a Bishop, Prelate or Cardinal, and even their servants' wives, are not amena- ble to the lay tribunals. They may insult, rob, and murder ; but no one except the Bishop has power to punish them." — p.p. 49, 53, Next we extract the following amusing statement from the Bui- wark : — " The servants of a gentleman who were one Sabbath attending upon the confessional in a Church of Malta, when a parcel of boys in the street disturbed the congregation by their noise in {)lay. The officiating priest sent out an understrapper to silence them. " Give over, you bastards," was the saintly command. " Bastards ! a pretty thing, when most of us belong to the Priests," was the impu- dent reply of a little urchin. The man shook his head, and re- turned into the Church. As the noise continued, the priest in- quired aloud if his orders had been executed. He was answered in the affirmative, and the uncourteous reply of the street youngster was repeated in the hearing of the congregation. And what did you then say to them 1 aftked his reverence. What could J |ay ] Don't we know it to be true 1 replied the other amidst the laugh- ter of the assembled penitents." — Vol. 1, P. 69. Further the " Citizen" has called our attention to Sabbath desecration as peculiarly characteristic of continental Protestant- ism ; and we by no means deny that there is too much of it in some Protestant countries, whilst we affirm that the most relaxed of them are upon no account to be compared with any Popish country on this score. He knows very well that the fourth commandment has no more influence upon, nor weight with the papists than the second, which they have suppressed ; and consequently, they ought to be mute on the subject. We can easily establish our position, inde- pendent of the Continent. Just look at the following extract from *' Ireland's Miseries."—" At a great" Sunday Demonstration," held in Tipperary in 1847, Archdeacon Laffan ridiculed the hypocrisy of some who had sufficient conscience left to decline attending on that day. And the largest procession we ever beheld, got up to welcome O'Connell to Cork, after his victory in the State prosecu- tions, and reckoned to contain seventy thousand individuals, took place on the Lord's day, by the appointment of the Priests ; and in order to giv e the entire day to it, they announced on the previous Sabbath, that Mass, usually over at noon, would that day end at eight in the morning. We have seen a Priest in Connaught, coolly 31 superintending his labourers in the field on the Sabbath. Abc? nn- other in the ^arae Province, not only publicly advertised the auction of his crops for that day, but actually held a raffle in his chapel, after '' Sunday Mass ;" having previously distributed lottery tickets, of which the following is a copy :- " To be raffled by the Rev. Arthur O'Dwyer, at Athenry, on Sunday the 18th day of May, 1851 ; a beautiful lever watch. The proceeds of the raffle to go to the repairs of the Newcastle Chapel. Tickets one shilling each ! !" Meyrick says, *^ Sunday is in Spain, a regular day of toil. The poor man has no day of rest. All the in-door trades are carried on till the evening, or late afternoon, such as those of shoemakers, tailors, &c. Masons, carpenters, and labourers may be seen commonly engaged at work on Sunday. The amusements of Sunday are the most objectionable, and often shocking : such as the bull-fights— it is the great day for the theatre." Again look at the following sad statement of a correspondent of the Crusader :—" City of Mexico, March 4th^ 1854:— Last Sunday morning, our Lord's day, was sanctified by masses and preaching in the church j in the afternoon we had the horrid per- formance of bull-fighting. Many priests and friars were to be found among the spectators, and the bloody scene was of greater interest for the citizens and ecclesiastics, because the toreros of the day were four boys, about fifteen years old, the worthy pupils of Mr. Bernards, the most famous matador of Mexico. Before entering the arena, the scholars and the chief butcher, like " good Catholics," were blessed by a priest, provided for the occasion ; and, after making the sign^of the cross, and recommending their souls to St. Anthony, they pitched into the poor animals, and in a few moments two young bulls lay dead on the ground." Every one knows that it would be a work of supererogation to say any thing further on this subject, and therefore, I would not insult the reader by pro- ducing any of the innumerable evidences at hand, to corroborate what has already been said. We have only to look about us in Canada, where papists have their mills going on the Sabbath, where they spend that holy day in hunting, drinking, fighting, and even plotting against their neighbour's life — and then we shall see how they reverence the Sabbath. Mr. Editor, were it not that I am reluctant to stain your pages, and shock the reader, I would bring forward far more striking facts than I have hitherto, corroborative of the infernal nature of popery.* * Mr. Gavin says — " A Priest made his dying confession to myselft in which he acknowledged that for twelve years he belonged to a club I ]l I m 32 If IS fi. If the Citizen wishes more illustrations of the immoral tendency of the system he is trying to uphold, I could furnish him with the testimony of DaCosta, f a Portugese gentleman, a member of the Church of Rome ; but a respect for the feelings of your readers induces me to forbear for the present. I have now finished all that I intended to say on the Citizen's challenge, and leave to the reader to judge how far I have suc- ceeded in my undertaking. With the unfortunate Irish people I have the greatest sympathy, but none with their priests and news- paper editors ; who are the sole cause of their degradation and misery. 1 have further to acquaint the reader, that other engage- ments prevent my coming oat with the already promised letter on the principles of Romanism, in next week's paper, but I hope to be able to do so the week following, when " Catholicus" may expect a round in the passing by. I v/ould close this letter with an ex- tract from the author of the " Papacy :" — " "Wherever we find popery, there we find moral degradation, intellectual torpor, and physical discomfort and misery. It is a principle that stereotype& nations. It depopulates kingdoms, annihilates industry, destroys of priests, six in number, residing in contiguous parishes. Every one, he said, had a list of the handsomest women in his parish, and when any one had a fancy to see any of them, the priest of the parish sent for her to his OYnn hoase, under some religious pretext, and had her introduced to his biother priest. lu this way, said he, we served one- another for twelve j-jcirs past. Our manner was to persuade their hus- bands and fathers not to hinder them any spiritual comfort ; and to the ladies, to persuade them to be to our will. Thus, under the cloak of letting them go to confession, papists become accessary to the prostitu- tion of their wives and daughters." f DaCosta says — " When the bull of Paul IV., enjoining upon the Inquisitors to bring to task those priests who a^bused their female p'eni- tents in the confessional, was published in Spain ; and the Inquisitors published an edict in all the churches of Seville,, commanding such women as were thus abused to lodge their complaints within thirty days, with the Holy Tribunal, such a multitude pf women crowded the palace of the Inquisitor in Seville, against their infamous confessors, that twenty Notaries and as many Inquisitors, were appointed to minute down their several informations against them. But these being insuf- ficient to receive the depositions of somany witnei;»es, thirty days more were allowed for taking the accusations, and this lapse of time also proving inadequate, a similar ^period was granted, not onlj for a third but a fourth time. Ladies of rank had a difficult part to act on this occasion, and notwithstanding their secrecy and veils, very few of them escaped the vigilance of their husbands. But the Inquisitors doomed the whole affair to obliviou." I i commerce, corrupts government, arrests justice, undcrm los ordc breeds revolutions, extinguishes morality, and nourisht a brood 4 monstrous vices, murder, perjury, adultery, indolent > and thef . ; massacres and wars. It enfeebles and destroys the rii< e of man, and annihilates the very cement of society. Popery has been on its trial before the world these three centuries, and such are the effects which it has produced in every country under heaven where it has existed. It is truly <' the abomination that maketh desolate." The man who will not hear what the Bible has to say of popery, cannot refuse to hear what Popery has to say of itself." A Protestant. (From the Bulwark.) THE "MORAL RESULT OF THE ROMISH SYSTEM." Iq our last number we gave a brief critical notice of this most valu- able pamphlet. And we have now much pleasure in presenting our readers with the following summary of the statistics it contains, as well as the sources from which Mr. Seymour has derived them — premising merely that these are in every instance the Government statistics of each particular country, and that in his quotations from them, Mr. Seymour has made selection of two particular crimes^— viz., breaches of the Sixth and Seventh Commandments. L As to murder. — From tables laid before Parliament, and published by order of the House, in 1852, it appears that the total number o{ com- mittals for murder in England and Wales, for the ten years ending 1851, was TIB, which gives an average of less than 72 for each year — not FODR to each million of the population. Again, from a return laid on the table of the House of Commons, it appears that from July 1836 to April 1839, the total number of commit- tals for murder in Ireland was 645 — being a yearly average of 235, or THiETY-THREE murders to each million ! And it is a remarkable fact, that within the last ten years, Just since the relative proportions of the Protestant and Popish populations of Ireland have begun to change in favor of the former, Irelaad's moral condition has been getting so much better that, according to another return laid before Parliament, in 1851, the annual average of committals for murder in the previous seven years was only 130, or about nineteen to each million ! Again, from the last returns laid before^the King of Belgium, by the minister of Justice, and published in 1 852 , it appears that the yearly average of murders in that country is 84, which gives eighteen murders to the million, or four and a half times more than in England. Again, from the " Compte general de V administration de la justice crimi- nelle en France, 1851," presented by command to the Emperor by the Minister of Justice, and printed in 1853, and also from the " Statiaqvt b2 \ : I :% 'J i i 84 morale de la France,'! by M. Guerry, himself a member of the Church of Rome, which has been approved and adopted by the Royal Academy of Sciences in Paris, we find that the annual average of committals for murder in France is about 1089, which gives thibty-ojje murders to each million, or seven and a half times more than in England. Again, the criminal statistics of Austria are most carefully kept by an " Imperial commission for statistics." From the latest of these pub- lished last year, in two volumes, and entitled " Die Statiatik dea Oeste> reichischen Kaiserstaates,'' we find that the yearly average of murders la Austria, one of the most intensely Popish countries in Europe, is 1325, being thibty-six murders to each million, or nine times more than in England I Farther, the governmental returns of crimes in Bavaria, which are also regularly published, and the latest of which are entitled, " Beit- rage ztir Slatistik des Konigreichs Bayern von Hermann, Munchen, 1853/' shows that the yearly average of murders in that country is 311, which, when compared with the amount of the population, that by the census of 1849 was 4,520,751, givesabout sixty-eight murders to each millionll or seventeen times more than in England. It appears that there are no official or governmental returns from Spain or Portugal ; therefore Mr. Seymour, whose figures are drawn exclusively from such sources, is obliged to pass them by. But in order to give some proximate idea of the state of crime in that peninsula, he quotes, in passing, a French authority, who states that in Spain the murders and attempts at murder, amount on the yearly average to about 250 to each million of the population ! And now as to the Italian Stateg. — The first of these is Sardinia, which is at present so distinguished above all the rest for its progress in free institutions. And it appears by the returns of crime given from the police in Alfieri, and cited by him in Mittermaier, that in that king- dom the yearly average of murtJers is 101. So that the moment we come to a Popish country in which the struggles of the people have somewhat relaxed the Papal yoke, the proportion of murders instantly drops down to twenty in the million. The next Italian province is the Two Lombardies, where the Pope is still supreme, and accordingly the proportion of crime instantly rises again ; for by the returns of Metter- maier, tlie yearly average of murders in the Lombardies, is 225, or about forty-pive to each million of the population ! Next in order is bigoted Tuscany, in which according to the same authority, the returns of all crimes for the nine years ending 1838, give 84 murders on the yearly average, making fifty murders to each million, or twelve and a half times more than in England ! In Sicily again, the returns for several years, as given in Mittermaier, make the annual average of murders 174, which gives about ninety to each million, or tweniy-two and a half times more than in England. And fiow as to the Papal States. The Pontifical government, natur- ally anxious to enshroud in darkness the dreadful state of the country, have taken care to publish no official returns of crime. But, happily for our subject, from the statistical information which Dr. Bowring pro- cured some time since by order of the British Government for commer- msmmm 35 cial parposes, and which has been printed by order of Parliament, tho annual average of murders in the Papal States can be safely reckoned at 339, which, as the population is only 2,908,115, gives above onb HUNDRED AND THIRTEEN to each million of the population, or twenty' eight times more than in England I But it seems that Popery owns a more fearful Aceldama than this. For in theneighbouring kingdom of Naples, which is, if possible, more Popish than the Papal States them- selves, and in which, in 1848, the Pope took refuge when flying from his own subjects, the criminal calendar of one 3'ear, as given in Mitter- maier — and that the year 1832, long before the scenes of the last revo- lution — contains the awful number of 1045 murders ; which, as the population was then little over 5,000,000, makes onr hundred and SEVENTY-FOUR murders to the million, or forty-ihrtt and a half times more than in heretic England I While in the whole of Italy, where the Church of Rome is supreme, and where neither Bible nor heretic is tolerated, we gather from the same authorities that the yearly average of murders is 1968 I We ask Dr. Wiseman if he can find any thing to equal this among the Mohawks, the Cherokees, or the Caffres ; and this is the land in which there are upwards of 120,000 priests and monks and nuns I 'And yet there are still found Popish priests and newspaper editors who have the ignorance, or the audacity, or both, to raise the question of the comparative morality of Protestant and Popish countries. / For the sake of greater distinctness we now present our readers with a tabular statement of the foregoing most valuable statistics : (See next Page ) In the lives of the popish saints, all published by authority, are found the following miracles gravely asserted, with a thousand others equally ridiculous : the blessed Virgin, Mother of Christ, visiting fat, dirty, popish friars, in the night : Jesus Christ playing at cards with a nun in her cell after midnight, courting nuns, and marrying nuns, his Virgin Mother being the match-maker, beasts an'i birds adoring the host: the devil bearing testimony for the Church against heretics : an oven heated with snow by St. Patrick, protector of Ireland, and a pound of honey converted into a pound of butter to please St. Patrick's nurse : St. An- thony preaching to the pigs, St. Francis Xavier to the fishes ; and nei- ther fashionable congregation willing to depart, till the Saints had blessed them : the wet cowls of friars hung upon the sun beams ; the ' monks entertained in heaven under the blessed Virgin's robes and pet- ticoats : a nun sweetening a vessel of sour wine, and her image upon an empty tub filling it with oil, and continuing it full for some months, for the use of the convent : St. Douiinic, the fouhder of the Inquisition} forcing the devil into the shape of a monkey, to hold his candle till Mr. Satan's fingefs were burnt to the bone : Saint Francis, of Paola, sailing on his mantle over the sea, having no money to pay his passage on board a vessel : a ship carrying the body of a dead Saint, piloted by a raven for many leagues : the blessed Virgin's successful dispute with some devils, in behalf of a lewd priest, who bad been assiduous in his devotions to her. — Crusader. fl. i 415 m ¥ i 3 i ! / Place. Population. A\erage No, of murders in a year. Period for which average struclc. Proportion to each million of population. England and Wales. Census '51 17,927,609 72 The 10 yeart ending 1851. four, \ Irel'd before famine, 235 From July '36, till April 1839. Thirty-three, Iceland since famine, Census '61 6,515,794 130 For seven years ending 1851. Nineteen. Belgium, 4,337,673 (Census'46) 34 A period of ten years. Eighteen, France. 35,400,486 (Censu3'46) 1039 11 y'rs., viz, the 10 y'rs. ending 1853, and the year 1851. Thirty-one, • Austria, 26,514,466 1325 20 years. Thirty-six. Bayaria, 4,520,751 (Census'49) 311 5 years. Sixty-eight. Sardinia, 4,916,084 101 7 years Ijefore late Revolution. Twenty. Lombardy, 5,047,472 225 2 years. Forty-five. fuscany, 1,489,000 (Censu3'41) 84 9 years. Fifty-six. Sicily, 1,936,033 (Cen8U8'34) 174 Several years. Ninety. Naples, 6,066,900 1045 1 year, 1832. One hundred & seventy four. Papal States 2,908,115 (Censu8'46) 339 1 year. One hundred and thirteen. II. As to breaches of the Seventh Commandment. Mr. Seymour takes first a few of the great capitals, commencing with London. The Regis- trar General's returns to Parliament of the number of births in England and Wales for 1851, gives 78,300 for the London division, which con- tains a population of 2,362,236. Of this number 76,097 were legitimate, and 3,303 illegitimate, which shows that only four per cent, of the ¥ births in that great metropolis of the world are illegitimate ; and the returns for the previous year give the same proportion. Now, in Paris, twenty years ago, according to M. Guerry, in the Sla- tistique Morale, the proportion of illegitimate to legitimate births was 1 to 1 77-100 ; and the Prefect's returns for 18.50, published by the bureau des Longitudes, give the total number of births in Paris for that year as 29.628, of which 19,921 were legitimate, and 9,707 were illegitimate. In other words, in the capital of France, twenty years ago, 35 per cent., or more than one-third of the native population were bastards I Turning next to Belgium, the constant boast of Popery : The govern- ment returns for 1850 give the total number of births in Brussels at 5,281, of which the legitimate were 3,448, and the illegitimate 1,833, making the illegitimate births about 35 per cent., or nearly one-third of the whole ! Yet, even, this deplorable state of things is better than the condition of Popish Munich, the capital of Bavaria. By the returns for the year 1851, the total number of births in that city was 3,464, and of those, 1,762 were legitimate, and 1,702 illegitimate ! In other words, forty -eight per cent., or near one -half of the population are illegitimate I Turning next to Vienna, we find from the statistical tables prepared by the Iiflperial Commission, and published there in 1852, that the total number of births in that city in 1849 was 19,241, of which 8,881 were legitimate, and 10,360, or considerably over one-half, were illegiti- mate : and, from the same tables, it appears that the average yearly proportion of illegitimate to legitimate was, from 1830 to 1838, 44 per cent. ; from 1839 to 1847, 48 per cent. ; and, from 1848 to 1851, fifty- one per cent. In other words, in one of the most Popish capitals in Europe, we see bastardy steadily increasing for twenty-one ycars,^ until more than one-half of the births are illegitimate ! 1 ! Does the reader exclaim, Can this have any parallel in the civilized world ? Yes, it HAS a parallel — ay, and is far outdone ijj another European capital — and that is the holy city of Rome. "VVe have found that the Pope and his Cardinals have taken good care to publish no criminal returns of their country. But from the Italian statistics collected by Mittermaier, it appears that the yearly average of foundlings exposed in the city of Rome is 3,160, while the annual average of its births is 4,373 !!l This is a city containing, exclusive of priests, monks, and nuns, about 130,000 souls. And it is stated in Dr. Bowring's Report, that 73 per cent, of these wretched foundlings die in the Roman foundling establishments. One may well question if Sodom and Gomorrah ever exceeded this. And yel this is the city of the Church, containing in 1852, a Pope, many Cardinals, twenty-nine bishops, 1,280 priests, 2,092 monks, 1,698 nuns, besides numbers of ecclesiastical pupils 1 1 Nearly three-fourths, or about seventy-three percent, of all the children born at Rome are foundlings, while in Protestant London the number of illegitimate births is only four per cent 1 ! I m m H ''11 ' U > 1 * \i\ ill: :!■',. 38 The foregoing statistics are arranged in the following Table : Place. i^ondoii, Paris. Brusaels, Munich, Vienna, Rome, Year. Ibdl 1850 1830 1851 1841 1840 No. of births in ihe vear. 7S,300 20.6-28 5,281 3,464 16,08-2 19,-24l 4,373 No. of legitimate hirtlis. 76,097 10,0-21 3,4)8 1,702 8.941 8,881 No. of il- legitimate births. 3,-203 9,707 1,833 1,702 7,741 10.360 Proportion of illegitiniate. Four per cent. Thirty-three per cent, or one- tliird. Thirty-five percent., or more than one-third. Forty-eight per cent., or nearly one-half. Nearly one-half. Upwards of one-half. No. offoiindlingsex- Proportion of Foundlings (o births, posed in one year, I seventy-throe per cent., ornear- 3,160. I ly three-fourths. But this astonishing contrast in the " moral results," of Protestantism and Popery of course is not confined to the capitals of iJurope ; and, therefore, Mr. Seymour proceeds, in the next place, to trace it through a number of second and third class towns, and finds it almost every- where as remarkable. Instance the following Table, giving the per centage of illegitimate births in certain towns of Protestant £]ngland, and of Popish Austria, respectively : — Protestant Enqland. Bristol and Clifton, . about 4 per cent. Bradford, - - - - - « 8 «<• u Birmingham, - . - Brighton, - - - Chelienham, • - " 6 " (( a 11 Exeter, - - - . _ " 8 " u Liverpool, - - - Manchester and Salford, - - « 6 " u « Plymouth, - Portsea, - - - - m - " 5 " " 5 " 63 RoMAK Catholic Austiiia. Troppau, - - - Zara, _ - - - - about 26 per « 30 " cent. Innspruck, - - - Laibach, - _ - - « 22 " " 38 " Brunn, - - . _ u 42 u u Lintz, .... • « 46 « (( Prague, - - - Lemberg, - _ - Klagenfort, - - - Gratz, - . - - m m " 41 " " 47 " » 56 " « 66 «' a 419 ! In other words, the average of illegitimate births in England is little more than six per cent., while in Austria it is about forty-two per cent 1 1 Mr. Seymour next proceeds to contrast Protestant and Popish king- doms and provinces, and finds his results to be still the same. Even taking the very worst Protestant countries, he finds in Roman Catholic countries a state of matters which is still worse. For instance, in Popish Austria the illegitimate births are forty-fwe per cent., while in Protestant Prussia they are sixteen. In Protestant Norway, with a popu- lation in 1835 of 1,194,6*0, the proportion of illegitimate births is from seven to eight per cent., while in Popish Styria, with a similar amount of population, 1,006,971, it is twenty-four per cent. In Sweden, with a population of 2,983,144 in 1835, the illegitimate births are seven per cent., while in Upper and Lower Austria, with a population nearly equal, 2,244,363, they, are twenty-five per cent. I If in Protestant Saxony the per centage rises to fourteen, in Popish Carinthia it amounts to thirty- live. And while in Denmark it is less than *otestantism, would we believe engage in a similar mission at pre- sent, iiad they strength enough to warrant the undertaking. This just brings us to the point at issue, and we challenge her infallibility to prove from our authorized standards that Protestantism is per- secuting in its principles. To refer to the once so-called penal laws of Ireland' will not suffice here, inasmuch as we deny these laws to have been in the least identified with persecution ; nay, what were these laws but the natural and legitimate ofispring of popish misrule and violence ; and intended only to preserve the lives and property of peaceable christians from popish murderers and robbers, who massacred 100,000 protestants at the instigation of their wicked priests. We insist not only on the consistency of the said disabilities with the principles of civil and religious liberty ; but know you cannot. I know that sophistry itself could not conjure up the ghost of a single Papist who' was put to death for his adherence to the Popish notions of religion. And I do not advocate the perfection of the conduct nor the actions of all nominal Protestants ; for individual, nominal, and professing Protestants have been sadly deficient in their practice of civil and religious liberty. But who were these unenviable Protestants ? They were the adherents of a hierarchy, which, though Protestant in name, Avas in reality Popish in heart. Wherever a hier- archy exists persecutions will exist. But there is a wide difference be- tween a person and a principle — between Protestants and Protestantism. Protestants may persecute, but Protestantism never can. Protestantism proclaims and is the only propagator of civil and religious freedom. It raises King Jesus above popes and emperors, and the Word of God above the decrees of councils, tradition, and the writings of the fathers. It protests against all human arrangements that are despotic in church or state. You may, sir, refer me to the persecution of the English Puritans and the Scotch Covenanters by Protestant monarchs — during which 60,000 families in England, and 18,000 families in Scotland, were reduced to beggary and starvation. But, I ask, by whom was this persecution accomplished ? Was it not by a hierarchy that retained little of Protestantism but the name, and all of the spirit of Popery under a Protestant State Church garb ? Wherever persecution exists, liberty of conscience is invaded. But Protestantism knows no hier- archy — no prelate over God's heritage — no bishop but Jesus Christ, who is the only bishop of souls. While Catholicism in its nature is compulsory, and in its spirit is retrenching the rights %i others, and by its constitutional tendency is wholly imbued with the selfish, monopo- lizing spirit that leads to persecution ; Protestantism^ on the contrary, is sowing the seeds of genuine liberty every where. It has sown them on the banks of the arrowy rivers of Switzerland, in the lowlands of Scot- land, in the fens of Holland, on the banks of the classic Thames, and on New England's shoresr- It teaches one creed-»>-one practice — one discipline — one government — and that is visibly marked upon its fea- tures — A Republic of Cuubchks and a Commonwealth oii" States. m even assert that we cannot see why papists should be allowed to go at large more than any other man who plainly and publicly declares that he has sworn to take away the life of such a man, or to set such a house on fire. V/hilst we advocate boundless and universal freedom in religion ; yet, we insist upon it, that no Government, can or ought, in consistence with its own safety, to tolefate men of the popish persuasion ;* inasmuch as they have sworn and avowed to undermine its stability, and subvert its order whenever the opportunity is afforded. Let us, then, calmly and dispassionately proceed to prove and justify the ground we have thus taken ; we have so much matter at hand, that we can only avail ourselves of short extracts from each source. The bull " Ad Abolendam," drawn up in the Council of Verona, and published in the year 1184 by Pope Lucius III, says : — " We decree over and above, that Counts, Barons, Rulers, Consuls of Cities and other places, according to the admonition of the Arch- bishop and Bishop, promise upon oath that, in all the aforesaid matters (referring to the capture of heretics) they will boldly and efficiently, when called for by them, assist the church against heretics and their accomplices. But if they refuse to observe that, let them be deprived of the honour which they possess, excom- municated, and their lands put under the interdict of the church." We decree that even all the favourers of heretics, as if condemned to perpetual infamy, ought to be driven from pleading at the bar, and from giving testimony, and from all public office. " If any one invested with any religious function whatever, be apprehended in heretical error, let him be denuded of the prerogative of the whole ecclesiastical order, and be left to the will of the secular power, to be punished with merited punishment. Let a layman, however, who will be chargeable with holding any of the aforesaid pestilen- tial errors, be left to the will of the secular judge, that he may re- ceive the vengeance to the quality of his crirne," (in other words be put to death.) Hardunini Acta Conciliorum, Vol. 6, Part II, Column 1878-80. The next papal edict to which we invite attention, as illustrative of the intolerant and persecuting nature of popery is the constitu- tion " ver gentis in senium sajculi curruptelam," published by Innocent III. in the year 1199; it says: " We decree, however, that in lands subject to our temporal jurisdiction, the goods of heretics are confiscated ; and we command the same thing to be 1 i ,M m m % * Wesley. ■h\4 M r ! fi \ 1 ,' . 4A done by secular powers and princes in other lands ; willing and commanding that the said powers and princes, should they happen to be negligent, be compelled by ecclesiastical censure, without any power ot appeal to carry this our mandate into effect." For inasmuch as when parties guilty of treaspn are punished capitally their goods are according to sanctions of law confiscated, how much more ought those who erring in the faith of the Lord, offend Jesus Christ the son of God, to be cut off from our head, which is Christ, by the severity of the Church, and spoiled of their temporal goods. Since it is far more serious crime, to injure eternal, than temporal Majesty ]" " We also firmly prohibit every lay person from disputing publicly or privately regarding the catholic faith. Let such as act otherwise be bound with the halter of excommuni- cation." Given at Lateran on the 8th of the Kalends of April in the eleventh year of our Pontificate " corpus juris canonici, part II. Col. 854 Decret. Greg. IX. These are mere brief extracts from two " bulls," and although we intend to pursue the subject further in future letters, yet, we recommend to the learned reader who wishes to study the subject thoroughly to go to the Church of Rome's own repository, viz: — the " Bullarium Magnum Romanum," or the great bull book of Rome. " This storehouse of Vatican thun- der, with a list of 35 popes or gods, by each of whom one or more " bulls," were issued, inculcates, enjoins, enforces, commends, or rewards the 'punishment and extirpation of heretics. The list com- mences with Pope Lucius III. in llS'l, and comes down to Bene- dict XIV., in 1727, and comprises in all 62 papal bulls, all of which, like Saul when going to Damascus, ' breathe out threatenings and slaughter.' " A¥e now beg to give a specimen of the spirit of popery in the nineteenth century. In the year 1818, an edition of the Rhemish testament (to which was appended notes of the most unchristian character) was published under the patronage of three Archbishops, nine Bishops and many of the priesthood of Ireland. The following are a few of the notes. On Acts xix. 19, " A christian man is bound to burn or deface all wicked books, of what sort soever, specially heretical books." Note on Math. xvii. 17» "Heretics may be excommunicated, which excommunication is a greater punishment than if they were executed by sword, fire and wild beasts." Note on Luke ix. 55. " Net justice nor all vigorous punishment of sinners is here forbidden, nor the Church Princes blamed, for putting heretics to death. Note on Rev. xvii. 6. " The Protestants foolishly expound it of Rome, for that there they put heretics to death j but their blood is not I : ne or more Called the blood of saints, no more than the blood of thieves, man- killers and other malefactors, for the shedding of which hy order of justice, no commonwealth shall answer." On Matth. xiii. 29, 30. " Where all men, be they heretics of otherwise, may be punished or suppressed without disturbance of hazard to the good ; they may and ought by public authority, either spiritual or temporal, to be chased or executed." We shall do the reader, as well as ourselves, the pleasure of gracing our next letter with a few more of these excellent notes. Sir John Temple says in his history p. 70, "I beseech you charge not the naassacre of '41, the blood of 100,000 Protestants, on my countrymen, as men, but charge it upon their creed, charge it upon those very principles which ye are now endowing, and from which you may expect a harvest of blood, to follow your seed time of insanity. I say the prevalent and avowed maxims were " that Protestants were heretics not to be suffered to live any longer among Roman Catholics ; that it was no more sin to kill an English- dog J that it was a most mortal *man, a protestant — than to kill a and unpardonable sin to relieve or protect any of them. Of a heretic prince, John Mariana says : I shall never consider that man to have done wrong who, favouring the public wishes, would attempt to kill him. To put them (heretic princes) to death is not only •lawful but a laudable and glorious action. It is a glorious thing to exterminate this pestilent and mischevious race from the community of men." These, says James Kellar, may certainly be put to death by any one who has the courage and inclination to kill them. Dr. Duff's Jesuits, p. 28. The Rev. L. J. Nolan, who was many years a Priest of the Church of Rome, but is now a Protestant Minister, says: "The most awful of all considerations is this, that through the confessional, I have been frequently apprized of intended assassinations and most diabolical conspiracies ; and still, from the ungodly injunctions of secrecy in the Romish creed, lest, as Peter Dens says, the con* fessional should become odious, I dared not give the slightest inti- mation to the marked out victims of slaughter." He then proceeds to narrate a number of cases in which he was made the depository, beforehand, of the most diabolical purposes of assassination, parri- cide, &c., all of which were carried out." — Pamphlet, pp. 22--27. Fellow Protestants, we believe that some of you considered our style in the former letters severe enough, and that altogether arising from ignorance of the subject we were attempting to describe. — • For some years past many good people in this country believe that tr i i ' i ' i- ■4 .. '\) 1 1 t" . > n \l I i ■ (1 ! v.. i ! <• : ' s ' i '■ . i i ^ l^ - '• ■ ■ -.ill .^ -. popery is not now what it was. It would be well, however, for those simple-minded persons to consider, that popery is a system that never repents ; nor can it in spirit admit of the least modifica- tion or improvement. What it was, it is, and will continue to be so long as it can maintain existence. We never hear the papists themselves say, that popery has undergone any change for good or ill. What it has done it is prepared to do again ; and if it refuse in one simple instance to do the same in equal circumstances, then its pretensions to infallibility would instantly be doomed. We would then ask, how would you have us to describe a church which holds the principles we have now laid before jpu, and which we intend to expose more fully in future letters. Popery is not to be reformed ; it is doomed to destruction ; the Lord will consume that system '* by the breath of his mouth and the brightness of his coming." We shall never forget the horrid deeds of that apostate church, which raved and stormed against the enlightened and holy men who wrote and preached against her unbounded profligacy and wickedness — which carried on a systematic persecution againsf them — established • inquisitions to torture them — and silenced, im- prisoned, banished, and butchered them — which organized murder- ous fraternities to hunt them from kingdom to kingdom, and raised crusades to spread slaughter and devastation through obnoxious cities and provinces, and even commanded the whole civil an^ military forces of the nations to take vengeance upon them — which exhibited a degree of untiring perseverance, and malignant enmity against true religion and its professors, as had no parallel in the world's history. Then indeed the prophetical character of the " beast" was verified to the very letter ; " he became dreadful and terrible," " devoured and brake in pieces, and stamped the residue with his feet," " was steeped in blood himself, and kept the cup of his insatiable rider perpetually full of the blood of the saints." Fur- ther proofs of the infernal nature of Popery, and the want of prin- ciple in its supporters are forthcoming. Meanwhile, we would earnestly recommend to the Protestant inhabitants of Canada, to subscribe for and diligently peruse the New York Crusade^', a journal of superior talent and ability, and which throws more light upon " the mystery of iniquity," theoretically and practically, and attacks the foundations of infallibility more fearlessly than any other journal we have perused. The time has come when a manly and enlightened tone of Pro- testantism ought to be the chief recommendation of any journal to Protestants. A Protestant. 47 Letter VI. It is surpassingly strange and unaccountable how reluctant many of our Protestant brethren are to believe that Popery is in reality what it professes to be — the enemy of religion and morality, humanity and justice. This reluctance, no doubt, arises from a charitable but an erroneous view of human nature, as incapable of acting up to the murderous injunctions invariably enjoined upon all the slaves of the papacy, by beastly Popes disowned by humanity, and by heaven-abandoned Councils whose wickedness and crimes are unprecedented in the history of Paganism, and unrivalled in that of Mahometanism. Our Protestant brethren here would, about this time last year, have reprobated the idea that their neighbouring Papists would murder them for availing themselves, and that peace- ably, of the privilege of hearing one who in bis struggles in behalf of liberty and humanity, has commanded the respect, applause and sympathy of enlightened Christendom. Much more readily would they have dislodged themselves of the thought of what is now an undeniable fact, that these dastardly murderers would, after the clearest and strongest possible evidence of their guilt, be exculpated by the mock judges and juries who have gone through the solemn farce of the investigation of these riotous proceedings. Notwith- standing these demonstrations of the consistency of popery, in theory and practice, there are still some who attribute the whole blame to a set of brutal and ruthless Irishmen, acting independent- ly of the instructions of holy Mother Church. These futile notions are based on the Jesuitical manifestoes addressed by their popish reverences to their beloved Irish children, on the occasion of Father Gavazzi's visit to Canada, and after they had murdered their brethren. And who could inculcate more strongly the duty of charity and forbearance than the popish bishop of Toronto did on this occasion 1 And why ] Just because his own faction was not mighty enough to follow the example of their brethren in Que- bec and Montreal. What do we care for his hypocritical kindness and Jesuitism, so long as he is bound by his unchristian ordination oath to persecute and extirpate us 1 One clause of the oath is as follows :— ' All heretics, schismatics and rebels against our Lord or aforesaid successors, I will persecute and attack to the utmost of my power." — Fontificale Romano^ Antwerp Edition, p, 1627. This is the vow under which the author of the said epistle is placed ; and still he has the audacity to talk about charity. But i M m if I'n m 'i)i ■;» h J/ ' this* popish manneuvre reminds us of an old acquaintance, who once, on a market day, plotted privately with some of the assembled youth to mob an eccentric neighbour of his own, who was obnoxious to them ; and, with the view of success, he agreed with his youth- ful band to lead their intended victim to a convenient place where they might pounce upon them both, that he might thereby, as sharing a common fate, elude suspicion of being accessory to the attack. Moreover, that this might be the more apparent, he further hinted the propriety of his using remonstrance with them in behalf of his insulted brother, during the assault. The application of this case is so very plain and easy, that it is unnecessary to at- tempt anything further in the way of showing its bearing on the subject of our animadversion. The adroitness of these impostors and ambassadors of the " Man of Sin" is still further elicited, in their shifts to bamboozle the public eye, when their horrid plans and crimes are detected ; just like an expert thief, who, finding himself pursued through a crowd, cries out in order to evade and mislead his pursuers, " Catch the thief," as if he also were earnest- ly in pursuit of the robber. Thus, whenever a Gunpowder Plot is in course of completion, or a Bartholomew or an Irish Protestant Massacre in contemplation, their outcries against Protestant in- tolerance and persecution are then at the highest pitch ; and instead of any acknowledgment of their guilt, or anything like shame rest- ing on their brows, or anything like conviction touching their ilinty hearts, they always cry out, " Stop thief," (as the Citizen has done of late, in his lucubrations about persecution,) and to their satisfaction, too often find such knavery acting successfully on the untutored and unwary minds of the dupes and victims of Jesuitical imposition. We would not make any secret of the fact, that the late Mayor of Montreal only discharged his duty, his solemn and bounden duty as a popish magistrate, in giving command to murder a few heretics in Montreal. Nay, more ; the very church to which he owed this duty enjoined also that he should deny, even on oath, that he ever did it. Let it also be known — and publicly known — that the popish judges and juries who discharged and acquitted the murderers of Montreal and the would-be murderers of Quebec, in the face of facts and evidences of their guilt, did so piously and conscientiously, as a duty enjoined upon them by Holy Mother Church. The Priests in consistency with their doctrines and gos- pel, can hold out to these monsters the prospects of distinction in another world, in consequence of their labours of love. Her in- fallibility will, Joseph-like, give them a Benjamin's portion, and a 49 passport in their sacks for the purgatorian fee. She will not act like the husbandman who paid his labourers indiscriminately at the rate of a penny ; but will take care to reward doubly such as bear the heat and burden of the day, by shedding streams of heretical blood. These are well-founded statements, and challenge contra- diction. Just look at the case of the French murderer, who, when acknowledging his sins on his death-bed, was reminded that he had omitted to mention the part which he had taken in the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, upon "which he replied, " Why, that is the very ground on which I confidently rely for admission into the kingdom of heaven." A certain correspondent of the Citizeity over the signature of " Catholicus," attempted in a very popish way to reply to our first letter to the Christian Ch€ardian\ thinking, no doubt, that he would grind us to powder, by the help of the goddess Mary and Father Teetzel. He denied the accuracy of our statement in saying that the papists of Montreal murdered some of their protes- tant brethren whilst in the house of God. Very well, pseudo Catholicus, you mean, perhaps, that the murderers struggled very hard to get at them in the church, but did not succeed in doing so ^ so that they only, properly speaking, murdered them after they got them outside the building, but would have served them in a similar way inside had they only got in. Or to be more charitable, we suppose you deny it to be murder at all, because holy JMother Church denies the killing of heretics to be murder. We know that as a good papist, you dare not own it to be murder. Further, Catholicus is very indignant at us for calling that " conventicle'* the house of God. To be sure there were do idols, no images, no confessional box, no mummery, no spectres, no bells, no salt and water to bathe the forehead there ; but might it not be the house of God notwithstanding? In a word, the pagan temple or the theatre has as much right to be called a house of God as any of Rome's idolatrous buildings. We now proceed to establish our position from unchallenged documents. Pope Innocent IV.issuid \u!ih\iXii^^Ad Exttrpanda" on the 15th May, 1252. It contains thirty-eight enactments, all of which enjoin the extermination of heretics. His holiness says : — ^" We enact that the power or ruler who is ?t the head of a city or other place at present, or may for a time be so in future, shall swear absnlutely, an/l without any qualification, to adhere sacredly to, and to keep and cause to be observed by all, during the whole time of his rule, all and each, as other constitutions and laws, both canonical and civil, published against heretical pravity." • il w X \ fvil lit m 1 #f m H Tjf 60 m W n ** Those who haye been chosen in this waj^ shall have power, and shall be in duty bound, to capture male and female heretics, and to„carry oflF from them their goods, and to cause them to be carried off by others, and to see to it that these enactments be fully im- plemented, and to cause them to be brought to the Inquisitor or Inquisitors, within the jurisdiction of the diocesan Bishop." Pope Alexander III., in the year 1179, convened the third Council of Lateran. The twenty-seventh canon enacts, " That the houses and goods of heretics should be confis«ated and themselves re^ duced to slavery by their princes." " Further, we take off two years' penance from such of the faithful as shall take up |frms against them." — Innocent III. summoned the fourth LateraQ Council to meet on the 1st of November, 1215. The third canon of this Council denounces heretics with even more precision than the one already mentioned. " It goes even to the extent of com- pelling secular powers to extirpate all heretics marked by the Church of Rome, from their respective territories under pain of excommunication : and that, should they for one year persist in refusing to fulfil their obligations, the Pope may declare their * vassals absolved from their allegiance, and bestow their lands on the faithful children of the church." — Council Labbtom xi., col. 148. I have the canon in the original before me on the table, and would give it here in the Latin had I space for it. The Council of Seus enacts, — *' That those condemned for heresy are straightway to be left for secular judgment." Thomas Aquinas, of whom Rome boasts so much, in Question xi, Article 3, of heresy, says, " Those heretics who remain obsti- nate in their error after the second admonition, are not only to be delivered over by the sentence of excommunication, but to the secular powers to be exterminated." These are what the Pusey- ites would call doctrines of reserve, to be acted upon at the fitting times, and on all great and safe occasions. The Council of Con- stance, held in 1414, expressly decreed that no faith was to be kept with heretics. The words are these : — " By no law, natural or divine, is it obligatonr to keep faith with heretics, to the prejudice of the Catholic faith." This fearful doctrine the Council ratified in a manner not less fearful in the blood of John Huss ; but more about him in future. Pope Martin V., in his letter to the Duke of Lithuania, says, ** Be assured that thou sinnest mortally if thou keep faith with heretics." The famous Cardinal Bellarmine, says : ** If the heretics are stronger than we, and if there is danger if we 51 attack them in war, mdre of us may fall than of them, we ar6 to keep quiet." n The same Cardinal, in the 4th hook De Pontiff, Charge 5, says) " If the Pope should err in commanding vice, and forbidding virtue, the Church were bound to believe that vice be good and virtue bad, unless she would sin against her own conscience." Peter Dens' work on Dogmatic Theology is the chief class book in Maynooth College. And he says : " The punishments which f 3 Church decrees against heretics are confiscation of property, exile, imprisonment and death, (ii. p. 88). The Irish edition of the Douay Bible with the Rhemish notes, has the following note on Luke IX. 54<, " As the act of Elias was not reprehended, neither is the church, nor are christian princes blamed by God for putting heretics to death." Again on John x., and Heb. v. 1, we have the following : " All protestant clergy are thieves, murderers, and ministers of the devil." The famous Bull " Unam Sanctum" con- cludes thus, " We declare, define and pronounce, thatit is essential to the salvation of every human being that he be subject to the Roman Pontiff." in the Sixth Session of the fifth Lateran Coun- cil, over which Pope Leo X. presided, the bishop of Modruisium exclaimed, " Is this Jerusalem, the city of perfect beauty, the daughter of Zion, the spouse of Christ ] But weep not, daughter of Zion, for God hath raised up a Saviour for thee, the lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David, hath come and shall save thee from all thine enemies. On thee, O most blessed Leo, we have fixed our hopes as the promised Saviour." In Bailly's Moral Theology, page 191, (it is also a text book at Maynooth,) there are seven causes stated as excusing from the obligation of an oath, and five causes as taking it away altogether. In page 141, this power is declared to be expedient and necessary. The most essential and just causes of dispensations from vows are the following four : Honour of God, — Utility of the Church, — the good of the Ilepublic, — the good of society. In a word, of what use then is an oath, when the person taking or making oath, is swearing under that infernal panoply " the dispensing power of the church," and that sanctifying stimulant " the end justifies the means." Of what use is an oath when perjury is taught as a duty. Loyola says: "If authority declares that what seems to you white, is black, affirm it to be black." — (^inet^s The Jesuits, page 71. m i 62 ;h' I i I Let Us now briefly refer to what her infallibility styles, " the Science of theft without sin." The notorious rogue St. Ligouri says : " If any one on an occasion 'should steal only a moderate sum either from one or more, not intending to acquire any notable sum, neither to injure his neighbour to a great extent, by several thefts, he does not sin grievously, nor do these, taken together, constitute a mortal sin," vol. iii., p. 256. " A thief may have ren- dered sufficient satisfaction to his own weighty obligation from the presumed consent of the republic, if he make restitution to paupers or pious places (meanmg the church) which are the more needy parts of the Republic," (Ibid, page 258.) Hear the holy saint again, on lying, " It is a certain and common opinion among all divines, that for a just cause it is lawful to use equivocation in the modes propounded, and to confirm it with an oath." Less. 1, 2, c. 41, vol. ii. p. 316. " Hence it is inferred, first, that a confes- sor can declare, even upon oath, that he does not know a sin heard in confession, by meaning man, not as the minister of Christ.'* Ibid. 319. "And if any one rashly should inquire ofa confessor, whether he may have heard such a sin in confession, he can rightly answer, I have not heard it, that is to say as a man, or for il. pur- pose of making it known." — Card Cum X,ug No. 66. There were twenty-eight articles of popish faith fouh( • ^>e pockets of priest Murphy, killed at the battle of Anklone, 1798. We give the following as a specimen : 6th. " We are bound to believe that the late holy massacre was lawful and justly executed against Protestants, and that we should continue the same as long as we can do it with safety to ourselves." 7th. " We are bound to curse, ring the bells, and put out the candles four times each jtear on heretics. 10th. " No faith is to be kept with heretics, though bound by the most sacred oath, for, says our holy father, they follow damnation. 12th. " We are bound to drive heretics out of the land with fire, sword, faggot and confession. 18th. '* We are bound to belie Ve in the holy cross, holy water, holy spittles, holy earth, holy bones, holy people and beads, and that they are to be used on certain occasions. 26th. " We must baptise bells, and consecrate chapels, and no man to enter into the holy office of a priest, only he who is known to be after the harlot Joan." We would now ask the unprejudiced reader whether we have established our position that "Popery is essfentially an intolerant and persecuting system." The principles of popery are subversive of M 1 53 the implied, avowed^ and essential terms and principles of the social compact. They are unconstitutional, immoral, obscene, and aliena- tive of allegiance to the sovereign ; they render an oath no secu- rity ; are subversive of all social confidence — of all domestic hap- piness — of all national peace. No wonder that popery embraces within its arms men notorious for crimes of. the darkest hue — with these crimes purged away with money payments — it throws, by a confessional, its cloak over the dastardly and secret murderer, and encourages its followers in idolatry and wickedness, and openly re- leases them from their solemn oaths — it trades in souls and estab- lishes murderous Inquisitions for the suppression of virtue and liberty, religion and human progress. We affirm again and again, that Popery is Satan's masterpiece, and hell's most gigantic invention. Our viewl of the Montreal murders, as given here, were published in another journal in Amer- ica under our real signature, not long ago. • A Protestant. RIBAND ASSASSINS. Letter VII. • No doubt it was a bold, if not a hazardous, undertaking for falli- ble and heretical scribblers like ourselves, to accept the challenge of an infallible and apostolical journal like the Citizen. We are the more convinced of this since the Hamilton Gazette, whose editor received his apostolical authority through the imposition of the apostolic palms of Dr. Pusey, or one of his boys, and whose patron is the truly zealous and catholic Claverhouse, joined his holy brother against us, and threatened to deliver us unto Satan, that we may learn not to write heresy. The Hamilton Puseyite has, much to his credit, verified the ancient proverb that says, " birds of a feather flock together." The Citizen may yet address brother Pusey, " Thou art not far from the kingdom of heaven ; but art not yet nominally (although '•eally) entered therein." And it is as true that friend Pusey may rep'v, I am at a stand betwixt two opinions, having a desire to abandon Pusey ism and join your ranks publicly, which is far better ; but my abode, as one of your number, in the Protestant rank is far more useful to you, more especially as I can, by so do- ing, calculate on an easier access to the unwary and unsuspecting portion of the Protestant community ; and thereby prepare their heretical minds for our wafer god, and holy, (though rotten) bones. J'S !i? 5* li: ■i-i lU: ■:i: 1 I i i ii: . 1^ I :^ 1 No doubt also that a prudent regard to " equivocation and mental reservation" may have the same powerful effect upon them, as the serpent had on our first mother. Perhaps some of your readers have not fully comprehended the amount or meaning of the Citizen"* s statement, where he " assures A Protestant that he has never read his letters, a mere glance is all the attention vouchsafed to them." All that the honest Citi- zen means here is, that he did not read these letters, to own or tell that he read them. Were we witnessing the Citizen at the time of composing the above sentence, we could have seen his lips mov- ing, and he muttering to himself, I have not read those letters, that is I have not read them to acknowledge that I did so. This is in keeping with the apostolic teaching of St. Ligouri, who says : — ^** If a Priest be asked whether he heard such a sin in the confessional 1 he can reply no ; that is, he did not hear it as a man, or with the purpose of making it known." Otherwise, not only the Citizen but all his infallible brethren might inform us that* they gave a most attentive perusal to our letters, and felt the smart of them also. But yet from the " unassailableness of the proposition" discussed, and " the correc^tness of the valuable statistical evidence," they dared not reply to them in any other way than that of a flat and bare denial of the extracts given from their own authorized stand- ards. Indeed the Jesuits of Montreal have eqdeavoured by their Ligourian Logic, to intimidate the Christian Ghmrdian against our letters. This was done in a very Jesuitical manner, even pre- tending to identify Dr. Ryei*son with, or at least hold him responsi- ble for the letters of " A Protestant." As long as our letters pass unrefi'ted, and our statements stand unassailed, we expect not only Dr. Ryerson, but every Protestant in America to homologate our views and conclusions. Nor will it do for our Popish adversaries to account for, or excuse their silence by their wonted and farcical notions of superiority, and upon the flimsy pretext that we are be- neath their notice. The foolish and wicked pretences of infalli- bility and superiority claimed by the servants of Anti-Christ, have too often proved a loophole by which they have eluded not only reason and argument, but very often saved them from the jail and the scaffold. We have repeatedly listened to the advocates and champions of Popery condemning the bible on account of the im- moral and obscene hinguage it contains, and they at the very same time well aware that their Church and writers corrupted and scan- dalized both humanity and Christianity. Should any one now have courage and faithfulness to expose fills petty and iniquitious system. 55 not only Jesuitical frogs, but even weak minded and silly Pro- testants, will raise a hue and cry against him, and that under the sliadow of refinement and charity. It is neither vulgar nor base in the Jesuits to act up to their wicked, immoral and infernal principles; but it is too vulgar and uncharitable in us to expose their villany. Meanwhile, we would counsel the Hamilton Gazette to con- sider that grave remark of Bishop Butler, where he says that " it is possible for a man to be so far abandoned and left to his evil propensities,as to be incapable of a blush whilst acting the part of a vil- lain." It is also a trite remark that people who are in the habit of always speaking or writing falsehoods, will, at last, through the power and operation of habit, think that they speak and write truth- fully when they pursue the opposite course. All true protestants agree that Puseyism is based on error, dishonesty and deception, and can- not therefore be supported in any other way than by falsehood, vili- fying and misrepresenting the supporters and followers of the Gos- pel. The Puseyites care as much about Protestantism as Jehu did for the glory of Grod, and as much for religion as Judas Iscariot, whose highest motive was the bag. All the interest these cormo- rants have in religion consists in the loaves — ^* Clergy Reserves," fees and other emoluments which they reap from their imposition. They have disgraced the Anglican Church, undermined its stability, and corrupted its worship with the idolatry and mummeries of Popery. We shall be happy to amuse the reader with a sketch of the pre- sent doings of Puseyism, as soon as we finish this subject ; and the Hamilton Gazette may rest assured that neither his buffoonery nor violence, unscrupulousness, nor deep-rooted J esuitism will inti- midate us from the design. But before we take any notice of his lucubrations, he must point to the page and volume from which he may extract his proofs, as we have no faith in anything that may appear in his columns. We now proceed to give the reader a mighty illustrations of the " unassailableness of our proposition" — " The more Priests the more crime." It belongs to a class of cases which cannot be too widely known, as illustrating the social eflfects upon the peasantry of unhappy Ireland, of the conspiracy between Popery and Ribandism against property, law and order. The facts are these: Three men, Grant, Quin, and Coomy, were lately hanged at Monaghan, in Ireland, for the murder of T, Bateson, Esq., a landlord. Few scenes preceding an execution have been so fearful and unusual. All three were in the best pos- sible spirits, and bade farewell to wives children and friends, with the greatest cheerfulness on both sides. Three l^misb priests at- it-, i 1! 1 56 •i V I li tended them on the morning of the execution. The Northern Whig tells us that he saw them in prison. They were walking in a yard, having partaken of an excellent breakfast, two smoking, and all exhilirated. When pitied, Cooniey said he never felt so happy: he was sure of meeting his Saviour ! ! ! Quin said he would not accept a reprieve if it came. The snb-Sheriff said he was sorry to see men in their position. " Sorry" ! ! said one of them in a tone of surprise," why it is glad you should be. Sir." He then asked them if they had any statement to make to him in relation to the offence for which they were to die ] No, said Coomey, our Saviour said nothing when he was executed ! ! The last rites having been ad- • ministered to them in the chapel of the jail by Priests Hughes and Smith, Quin and Grant were first taken to the scafiold. Quin said, ** Hell cannot now scare us," and addressing the hangman, " He's doing the best job ever done for us." Priest Smith addressed them. " Kemember the penitent thief on the cross ; in one moment you'll be in heaven." (This shews that the murder of a Protestant is a sure passport to heaven, and secures an exemption from the pains of purgatory.) Upon which Quin exclaimed, " Mary, mother of God ! receive us : prepare heaven for us." Coomey came next with a small crucifix in his hand, " I am quite content ; I am going to my God,"said he. The T^mes says : "There are theologians in this age,who seem to think a man very little the worse for bespattering the highway with the blood and brains of an improving landlord, or a con- scientious magistrate, or, in fact, for any remarkable crime. We are not going to repeat the horrid particulars of the Bateson murder. The gentleman was a magistrate, and the three miscreants, Bryan Grant, Neal Quin, and Patrick Coomey, who murdered him, were ribandmen, and, of course, had the connivance and sympathy of the people. Justice overtook them at last. They are called " unfor- tunate men ;" they were found out and hung, which in^Ireland is a great misadventure ; but one does not see why they should not have been called " fortunate men ;" at least they seem to have felt so themselves. On their friends leaving them " the unfortunate men" shook each of the party warmly by the hand, and expressed a hope that, when he was about to die he would be as fully prepared for it as they then were themselves. As this exact amount of pre- paration is not to be obtained except by the general massacre of landlords and magistrates, we cannot^ participate in this hope. Well, on the hypothesis of their spiritual advisers it was a capital spec. We have now a royal road, or rather railroad to heaven^ and that is the free indulgence of the very worst passion that hap- 57 pens to possess you. Shoot the man whom you most hate, or com mit some other outrage more congenial to your temper, and then, in the hands of your Priest you are sure of heaven. " As the hour approached, the murderers were still more elated with the sense of their position. They were no longer content to be compared with the thieves on the cross — nothing but a higher parallel would suffice. The sub-Sheriflf having asked if they had any statement to make to him in relation to the offence for which they were to die 1 " No," said CoomeyJ " Our Saviour said nothing when he was executed." After this hideous climax of blasphemy, it is scarcely worth while to pursue the disgusting narra- tive. When a scoundrel alleges the met ' silence of our Saviour a reason for not confessing an atrocious murder, one* stops to ask whereabouts in the civilized world such a thing has taken place in the regular course of things, and under the administration of an authorized clergy. That the whole was the natural result of those ministrations seems too likely from the parting adddress of the Rev. Wm. Smith. " Remember the penitent thief on the cross. In one moment you will be in heaven. You have eternal happiness within your reach." The clergy of Ireland^ and some of this country apppear to man- age things better — for those who like it and believe it, they offer the palm of a martyr, and the crown of a saint, in return for a life of vicious indulgence and stolid indifference. The Morning Her- ald says : — ^" The fearfulness of the Monaghan scene consists in this — that neither on the part of the murderers or their Priest was the slightest indication that either of them regarded the murder as a crime to be pardoned. They . dared with the sanction of their clergymen, to compare the death they were about to suffer to the death of the Saviour/)f mankind. One of these wretches ventured even on the ,blasphemy of justifying his silence by the example of our Lord before his judges. Another of them had the fanaticism to pray that his death-struggle might be protracted," that he might suffer more for his Saviour" ; and the Priest reconciled the third to his pinioning by reminding him that " he had been nailed. ^^ These awful expressions justily us in saying that these men were brought out to the gallows in the belief that they were dying the death of martyrs. This is the first time in which, in this country, the rites of religion have been openly used to canonize the murder- er, and to consecrate assassination. That in practical effect they have been so profaned in this instance there is no doubt. These men in the eyes of the crowd " died game ;" they died true to the c2 ■I ! fill Mi 58 ■h $ .' W ■n ' ^^ » 1 J 4 ) 1 principles of the unholy confederation of blood in whose service they had committed their merciless crime ; they retracted none of its principles, they disavowed none of its precepts, they expressed no re- morse for having done its bidding, they died without blenching and without " peaching," true Ribandmen and assassins to the last. These men having brought to their impious death the consolations of religion and in fidelity to the cause of murder, they were sustained by the hopes of heaven. This spectacle we pray a christian land may never again be doomed to witness — that of a murderer '* dy- ing game" as a saint, with a priest at his right hand, and the name of J esus on his lips. One thing, however, is plain ; whatever were the secret motives of the reverend actors in this scene, no- thing could t«>nd more- to en'-'^v.rage the spirit of murder among the people, than the circulation among them of the circumstances attendant on this execution. It is not the first time that we have observed this employment of the solemn rites of the Komish Church in Ireland to diminish the terrors of a death in the contest with British law. We have not forgotten the solemn high mass offered up for the souls of those killed in the attack upon the troops at Six Mile Bridge. There is another and more terrible lesson of the same kind held out in the assurance of the glories of heaven, which the Monaghan Priests did not hesitate publicly to give to three atrocious murderers without asking from them the slightest public expression of remorse." In this infatuated land, the murder of a factor or a landlord is a thing of very frequent occurrence. Another of these tragic scenes having been committed lately, strong suspi- cions were entertained that this impious deed was perpetrated at the instance of some one or other of the Hiband lodges in the district. It was well known at the time, that many of the Papists were deeply in arrears to the owners of the land, and that measures were shortly to be adopted to eject the defaulters from the ground. The Papist priest, anxious to repel the foul stigma from his follow- ers, instituted a great out-door gathering of his dupes, and there and then denounced the charge against the papists as a wicked calumny ; and moreover declared that he had confessed the whole parish, and could now pronounce them quite innocent The Protestants, to make good their case had recourse to the landlord's rent-roll, and the result shows the debasing tendency of this system. In two estates, comprising thirteen town lands, with a mixed population of Protestants and Papists, the following extracted from the Protestant Watchm/m, is the actual state of their rent payments ; « Estate A. — Two thirds Protestant, and i 59 one-third Papist. Every Protestant but one paud up ; eve^y Pa- pist in arrears ; land on equal terms. Townland No. 2. —Popula- tion, half Protestant and half Papist. Every Protestant clear ; every Papist but two in arrears. No. 3. — Precisely the same as the former. Town'and No. 4.— Seven-eighths Protestant, and one- eighth Papist. All the Protestants but two, paid up ; every Pa- pist in arrear. Townland 5. — One fourth Protestant, and three- fourths Papists. Every Protestant clear ; every Papist in airrear. Townland 6. — Two-thirds Protestant and ^one-third Papist. Every Protestant but one clear ; every Papist in arrear. Estate B. — Townland No. 1. — This estate is held by three Protestant tenants immediately under the landlord ; they have sublet a large proportion of the acreage to Popish tenaltts, not one of whom is clear from arrears, although the middle-men have paid up the whole to the nobleman. Townland 2. — All Protestants ; all clear ; no arrears. Townland 3. — Every tenant a papist, biit one, and that one Protestant being the only tenant free from arrear. Some of the Papists on this Estate are three and four years in arrear. Townland 4. — All Protestants but one family, and all paid." These statements speak volumes for the unprinci- pled character of this apostate church ; and, as aleady proven, this is the practical working of Popery everywhere. Well may we say the more Priests the more Crime, the more assassination, brutality and poverty. The Irish Priesthood is the parent of the various murderous gangs that infest and plunder that wretched country. * They prepare the Ribandmen, through their confessional, for the holy trade of murder; and should the assassins be discovered and hanged, they despatch them to heaven, post-haste. The narrative * The Railway Bartholomew Massacre. — ^I believe, the late infernal attempt of the Papists to murder 800 Protestants in Ireland, is well knpwn to the reader. On the 13th of September last, the aforesaid nujbber of Protestants with the Earl of Enniskillen at their head^ pro- ceeded on an excursion Train (Car) from Bnniskillen to Londonderry. But on their return home in the evening the Train was thrown off the line of Railway by coming in contact with several large stones, mali- ciously placed upon the line for that purpose by Hugh Harkin, John Moran, William Hanigan, Roddy Murphy, William Harkin and Francis McMahon, The Jury in their verdict said : — " They did feloniously and wilfVilIy conspire together to place said stones on the line, with intent to upset said engines and carriages, and thereby to kill and murder those pro- ceeding by said train." This monstrosity needs no remarks, but Pro- testants would do well to reflect upon it. 60 'if'" ) 1 given here, reflects a fearful light on the moral tendencies of a sys- tem which binds the conscience, hardens the heart, and holds its victims in the spell of a perilous delusion. We repeat that all this is traceable to the priesthood. The confessional must have heard disclosures over and over again of tl^e system of agrarian murder ; but the priest screens himself from his responsibility as a British subject, under the immunity, claimed for him by his sacerdotal office from the law which binds' every honest man in the empire to make known offences contemplated or committed against the social well- being. We have been of late travelling through the Upper Province, and found that in townships where there are no more than eight Popish families, Councillors must grant the demands of St. Patrick's breed, however unreasonable, otherwise their lives and property are in dan- ger ; such is the state of things where Protestants? number thirty to one. A Protestant. TPE SCOTCH TURNCOAT ON THE HORNS OF THE DILEMMA. LetterVIII. The Gospel says, " When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places^ seeking rest, and findeth none : Then he saith, I will return into my house from whence I came out, (as the Editor of the True Witness returned to Popery, from whence his fathers came out,) and when he is come he findeth it empty, swept, and garnished. Then goeth he and taketh with himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they en- ter in and dwell there, and the last state of that man is worse than the first." No one that knows anything of the pseudo True Wit- ness, will deny that the Jesuits made that infatuated turn-coat two- fold more a child of wickedness and falsehood than themselves. " The dog is returned to his own vomit again, and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire." This notorious rene- gade endeavoured to intimidate and scare the Christian Gtiar- dian by insinuating the responsibility and identification of the Wesleyan Church with my views on Popery. " Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself." Since he himself is the unscrupulous tool and miserable slave of the priesthood, and cannot write a single sentence without submitting it to their rever- / ei ences, he thinks that respectable Protestant journals are in the same degraded position, and on the same unhallowed footing. " The editor or director of a paper is morally responsible for all that appears therein, unless he ^pressly disclaims it," exclaims the True Witness. If such be the case, what an awful responsibility he must lay under, having devoted himself so enthusiastically and fanatically to the circulation of the grossest falsehoods, to the ad- vocacy of the vilest and most villainous system ever formed, to the support of popes and cardinals, tyrants and traitors, the greatest rogues and knaves that ever went unhanged. The turn-coat further says : — " Surely the Christian Gtcardian would not ex- pect a gentleman to condescend to Lotice seriously the malignant falsehoods of his Protestant correspondent." Neither the Chris- tian Quardian, nor any other guardian, could expect any man worthy of the name of a gentleman to support or embrace the mur- derous, obscene, and traitorous principles of the " mystery of iniquity" which I have endeavoured to delineate. If it is unwor- thy of a gentleman to bring the principles of Popery truthfully before the public, and if they are so vile as to endanger the morality of the writer or reader, is it possible that a gentleman can fully act up to these degraded principles, and not be infected with their mi- asmal tendencies 1 Finding these Jesuitical manoevres unsuccessful, he goes on next to insinuate that the Christian Guardian is ashamed of his correspondent, expectmg thereb^i to sow the seeds of discord in our own camp ; but I assure him that we are on both sides too well acquainted with the infernal nature of popery, and the unprincipled conduct of its advocates, to be moved or confused with such roguery and falsehoods. I have counted the cost, and laid to my account that the Jesuits of Canada will not leave a stone unturned to get me silenced. Nay more, I believe that they will avail themselves of all the " lying wonders" with which the arch- deceiver has endowed them, and of all the devices which Satan has bequeathed to them, and in short avail themselves of all the influ- ence they command to silence the ChHstian Gimrdian, and make him give up exposing their horrid principles. This has already been attempted by a mixture of kindness and threats, insinuations and denials, assuming the lamb at one time, and the tiger at another. Be it known then to the Jesuits, that they need not try me any farther, either by kmd words or abusive language ; but if they like to come out publicly to a platform-discussion, I am prepared for them at any time. The reader is aware that I have in other letters proved, and :i m I' I I'u .1 I I * 1" \ \ j 1 1 1 i J ' I' ' that from Rome's authorized standards, popery to be a very gulf of wickedness, and a pandemonium in itself. " One wonders that the earth has borne so long a society so atrociously wicked, or that the lightnings of heaven have so long forborne to consume it. ' It is not surprising that papists have denied these abominable doctrines. It might be expected that any society that was wicked enough to adopt such principles, would be base enough to deny them. They are not prepared to brave the odium which the avowal of maxims so abhorrent and detestable would be sure to provoke. Bufc were they imprinted on her forehead, she could not hold up her face be- fore the world, knowing that the damning evidence of her guilt was visible to every eye. I appeal the matter to her canons and her history, a tribunal to which she can take no exception. At this bar do I cite her, and here she stands condemned as the Cain of the human family — the world's outlaw." The True Witness — that lucifer match that ignites the fiendish passions and nature Of the Montreal Ribandmen — in its issue of the 26th ult., says, — " Does the Christian Chiardian require additional proof of the mendacity or ignorance of his correspondent ? Here it is : — * Pro- testant' says, * Cardinal Bellarmine, in the 4th Book de Pontiff Changes, says, *• If the Pope should err in commanding vice, and forbidding virtue, the Church were bound to believe that vice be good and virtue bad, unless she would sin against her own con- science.' The Ghristian Guardian will see that the point at issue betwixt us is very simple. Did Cardinal BdjU^^rniine, in any of his works, publish such sentiments, or sentiments any way anala- gous to them 1 * * * If he did ; i£ in any of Cardinal Bellar- mine's works such sentiments can be found, we will acknowledge ourselves in error, and renounce the religion which Cardinal Bel- larmine professed. We trust the Christian Guardian will not shrink from the challenge we throw out to him." Papists are not behind in giving challenges,; but after giving them they will either act the part of Father Brownson, who refu- sed to meet his antagonist after challenging him, or the part of the Citizeny who is now " domg penance" for the late challenge he has given. Why should these unscrupulous tools talk or think of challenges ? Why should a thief challenge an honest neighbour as long as he is unmolested ? or should he be accused of his dee is, why not hold his tongue % He had nothing to do with the Chris- tian Cruardian in the question at issue. I alone am the respon- sible party, and I will silence this audacious Philistine as sure as I silenced the uncircumcised Citizen, When I gave out the ex- f gulf of that the that the It is not ines. It ough to . They f maxims \vi% were face be- guilt was i and her At this Cain of Witness — nature of ,, says,— 3f of the \ :— .* Pro- ie Pontiff vice, and ait vice be own con- point at ne, in any ray anala- ,al Bellar- tnowledge linal Bel- i will not :er giving who refu- >art of the dlenge he )r think of neighbour his dee Is, he Chi-is- le respon- sure as I it the ex- 63 tract in question, I pointed all concerned to the place in Bellar- inine's Works where it is to be found. I would not certainly in- sult the reader, or trouble myself with any further reference to it, because, forsooth, papists deny it : but just merely to show for once the alarming conduct of these pestilent and infatuated men, I will now lay before the reader Cardinal Bellarmine's words in the original : — ^" Si autem papa erraret prsecipiendo vitia, vel pro- hibendo virtutes, teneretur ecclesia^ credere vilia esse bona, et virtutes malas, nisi vellet contra conscientiam peccare." — De Pon» tiff^ lib. iv. cap. 5. This is our translation, and let the renegade give a better one :- -" If the Pope should err in commanding vices, and forbidding virtues, the Church would be bound to believe that vices were virtues, and virtues vices, unless she wished to sin against conscience." I shall now take the liherty of gracing this letter with something new from the Cardinal's excellent works. Hear the following again : — ^" Conveniunt cathalici pontificer/f. soluiriy vel cum siio particidari concUio cdiquid in re ditbia .' atuentenij sive errare potest sive non, esse ab omniJ/us fidefihi .a, obedienter audien- dumJ'^ — [Ibid. The following is the tr-inslation : " Catholics are agreed that the Pontiff alone, or i,, tiaj unction witn iiis own partic- ular council, deciding anything i i a i-oubtful matter, whether he can err or not, must be duly obeyed by all the faithful." i: ui ther, Bellarmine (De Penit. lib. Iv. c. xiii.) says, that " Papal pardons discharge us fi^ obedience to the commandment of God, which enjoins to do \IVcs worthy of repentance." Bellarmine again says: " The Pope, when he instructs the whole church in things concern- ing the faith, cannot possibly err ; and whether he be a heretic himself or not, he can by no means define anything heretical to be believed by the whole church." — Bell, de Rom. Pont. Lib. iii. chap. 2. Pope Pius II. says, " That even to speak the truth in opposition to the Pop" , would be contrary to the episcopal oath." His own words are^ ' ^,jcod etiamverum dicere contra papam; sit contra episcoporumjuramento." — [Epist. ad Mogunt.] The apostolic Cardinal Zabar affirms of the Popes, " Quod omnia pos- sint, quicquid liheretf etiam illidta, et sit plusquam Deus.^^— This is the tr arsiation : " That they could do all things they pleased, even things unlawful, and therefore more than God could do." — De Schism Sul. Serm. Srrip. p. 703. Pope Leo X. thus exclaimed to Cardinal Bembo, " Qudntas nobis divitias comparavit hcec fabula Christi !" Translation,- " What a world of money have we got by this fable of Christ." Again, Massonius, who wrote the life of 'I m M^ } iW!^ 64 Pope John IX. asserts that " A Pope cannot commit even sin without praise." Pope Sixtus IV. commanded the following dis- tich to be inscribed in a triumphal arch erected to liira : — " Oracle vocis mundi moderaris habenas, Et merito in terris disceris esse Deus." The principal things, it is said, that this god on earth did were these : he hired assassins to murder one of the Princes of the house of Medici whilst he, was at mass, and he encouraged the keeping of a great number of public houses of ill fame, in Rome, which brought the priesthood considerable Sv^ms annually. Bauny (Theol. Mor. tr. iv. q. XV. and xxii) says, " They ought not to be denied or de- layed absolution who continue in habitual sins against the laws of God, nature, and the Church, though they discover not the least hope of amendment." The notorious Stapleton asserts, " That even the divinity of Christ and of God did depend on the Pope,'' " The decrees of Councils are the oracles of the Holy Ghost." — Poolers Blow at the root oftlie Rormsh Church, chaps, it. 4* iv. Canus, who is seconded by Bellarmine, affirms, '' The decrees of Councils have as much weight as the Holy Gospel." — Ibid. I wonder was Gregory infallible when he asserted " Ego fidenter dico quod quisquis se universalem sacerdotem vocat vel vocare de- siderat, in elatione sua Antichris turn praecurrit" — " Whoever claims this universal episcopate is the forerunner of Antichrist V^ Would Mr. Turncoat inform us ] Perhaps the rea^^r is not aware that a book was published in Rome at the special coHnand of '' Our Lord God, the Pope," and Holy Mother Church, entitled, " Taxes of the Apostolic Chancery,'' in which the price of absolution from every sin, or liberty for committing every sin is fixed. The first edition of this excellent tariff came out during the pontificate of " Our God, Pope John XXII.," in the fourteenth century, Mr. Mendham proves that forty-five different editions of these works appeared. Mr. MacPhun, of Argyle Street, Glasgow, Scotland, has a copy of the original ; and I have in my possession a copy of several of the charges for every conceivable crime. Murder may be bought for so much, incest for so much, adultery for so much : but I dare not pollute the pages of this paper with such abomina- tions. All who might patronize this great market of sin might know at what price to purchase the spiritual wares there exposed. This book is the most atrocious and abominable the world ever sriw. " Herein * the Mother of Harlots and abominations of the Earth" unblushingly advertises herself to the whole world as a traf- 6dt >yen sm ring dis- iid were he house eeping of I brought ol. Mor. »d or de- j laws of the least I, « That 3 Pope," host."— ii. <5* iv. jcrees of -Ibid. I 5 fidenter Dcare de- Whoever tichristr' not aware I of "Our , « Taxes ition from The first tificate of iry, Mr. ;se works Scotland, a copy of iirder may so much : I abomina- sin might I exposed, irorld ever ons of the I as a traf- The Price of Pardon. £0 1 6 10 6 1 6 10 6 ng, queen, 10 6 10 6 1 4 1 4 12 15 6cker in murders, parricides, incests, adulteries, thefts, perjuries, blasphemies, sins, crimes, and abominations of every kind and degree.* Come hither, she says to the nations, and buy whatever * Some of the sins, however, are too abominable to be named, and I do hope, that unless where priests suggest them, they are, for the most part, unknown. The Sim. Simony, ......... Sacrilege, ......... Murder of a Layman by a Layman, .... Laying violent hands on a priest, if no blood is shed, - Thus it is more criminal to strike a priest than to kill a king, queen, or emperor ! For him that hath killed father, mother, wife, sister, in each case, ....... A priest keeping a concubine, ..... Eating flesh and whitemeat at times prohibited, - Exemption from fasting, ...--- Burning neighbour's house, ..... Changing a vow. From Anthony Egan's works, who was Confessor General in 1678. An oath thot cannot be kept without incurring everlast. ing damnation, ...... 620 Is it possible (hat the Pope and the priests given such a character of themselves ? We can pardon you, poor man, but though everlasting damnation awaits you, we will not pardon you unless jonpay £6, 2s. I No abatement. £verlasting damnation or £Q 2s. A perjury, - ^'. An oath to secure employment, such as the old oath of abjuration proper to a wealthier class. For keeping a Concubine at bed and board, and holding a benefice at the same time, .... The same or similar by a layman, .... Adultery by a layman, ...... Adultery and incest together by a layman, - . - Adulterer and adulteress, --..-. This is manifestly a saving of nearly £2. General irregularity against the seventh commandment. But for all sins past, for sins not yet committed, and for ALL SORTS of irregularities, .... A nun having very often avt intra aut extra septa monasterti — to be pardoned and rehabilitated to her office !-...-.. A priest or friar, having sinned with a woman of w^hat- uver rank or degree, whether nun, kinswoman, re- lation, marled, single, in the monastery or out of it, and to bold his livings, &c. .... 36 9 6 9 T 2 3 4 5 6 6 2 6 4 6 2 6 6 6 6 13 50 12 6 36 9 6 i 60 M i Iki ' . I ; , tf your soul lusteth after." In this book the pardon of a heretic is charged as high as £36 9s., and the marrying of one wife after murdering another, is aslciv as J6S 2s. 9d. Indulgence to eat flesh at fast-times is charged £1 -is., and the charge for setting a neighbour's house on fire is as low as 12s. As already stated, I do not wish to stain the pages of this paper ; but perhaps I may take another way of stripping Rome and laying her ghastly and hideous deformities before the public soon. Popery is known only to those who have been for years studying it attentively. It is a system that employs all labourers, and that to perform the very work in which each delights, while Rome reaps the fruit of all.— Channing says, " To him who would scourge himself into godliness, it (Church of Rome) offers a whip : for him who would starve him- self into spirituality, it provides the mendicant convents of St. Francis; for the anchorite, it prepares the death-like silence of La Trappe : to the passionate young woman, it presents the raptures of St. Theresa , and the marriage of St. Catharine with her Saviour : for the restless pilgrim, it oilers shkines, tombs, relics, and other holy places in Christian lands." '' Rome provides convents for the ascetic and the mystic ; carnivals for the gay : missions for the enthusiast, penances for the man suffer- ing from remorse ; Sisterhoods of Mercy for the benevolent : crusades for the chivalrous ; secret missions for the man whose ge- nius lies in intrigue ; the Inquisition with its racks and screws for the man who combines detestation of heresy with the love of cruelty ; indulgences for the man of wealth and pleasure ; purgatory to awe the refractory and frighten the vulgar, and a subtile theology for the casuist and the dialectician." Such is the amasing and infinite variety of machinery which Popery h.is brought to bear on the hu- man mind. Townsend in his Travels in Spain, thus describes the dependence of the people on their laughable " Saints." " Saint Anthony the Abbot secures his votaries from fire, and St. An- thony of Padua delivers them from water ; St. Barbara is the re- fuge of the timid in times of thunder and of war : St. Blass cures disorders of the throat : St. Lucia heals all diseases of the eyes : St.Nicholas is the patron of the young who desire to be married : St. Ramon is their powerful protector during pregnancy, and St. La- zaro assists them while in labour : St. Polonia preserves the teeth : St. Domingo cures the fever : and St. Roque is the Saint invoked under apprehensions of the plague." These pagans, in all diseases, and under every pressure of atniction have some saint or other to help them. Such is the religion of the Pope, The True Witness 67 closes his farcical challenge with the following sentence : — " We pause for a reply." Indeed ; " a reply" to a man whose religion it 's to lie and equivocate when the interests of the faction to which he belongs require it ; and who avows and disavows his principles in subservience to those interests ! > A Reply ;" to a man who disbe- lieves his own senses, and takes a bit of bread for his God, and who believes a Pope of twelve bastards to be infallible. " A reply ;" forsooth, because he finds it convenient to deny what he knows to be true ! ! The reader is aware that I took good care all along to refer them to RonSfe's Standards, even to the very page and volume : I would have also given the Latin, as here, were it not to save space, as my communications were generally long. " If he has any friends at Montreal to whom he would like to refer the ques- tion, we will undertake to produce any of Cardinal Bellarmine's works that may be required for the sake of verification," exclaims the Jesuitical Witness. Any friends I have in Montreal are too precious in my view, and I would not like therefore to be instru- mental in endangering their lives and property, which has already been threatened by Ribandmen and Jesuits. Besides, St. Tetzel or St. Ligouri might steal the sentences I have quoted out of the Cardinal's Works, seeing that the interest of the Church needs it ; or a winking Madonna, or even any of your priests might miracu- lously change the words or stupify the examiners at the time. Cardinal Bellarmine's works are in the library of Knox's College, Toronto, and as they are in less danger from Popish miracles, I shall take their deliverance in preference to going to Montreal. I can also produce excellent copies of Den's and Bailly's Works, and in short all Maynooth's Theological Class-b6oks j and I would like very much if the Editor of the True Witness, or any of their con- clave of priests could muster up courage to meet me in public dis- cussion, and be prepared to translate into plain English the ques- tions the infamous priests of Rome put to their females in the Con- fessional ; such as are to be found in Den's Vol. iv. p. 363 ; and also Vol. iv. p. 279-80 ; Vol. vii. p. 154 and 198-9. I would just use the phrase of the Witness himself here — " We pause for a re- ply." What is the meaning of" vir succubus," " latere," " stando" " sedendo," " retro ]" Oh, shame, shame, shame ! ! Such questions put to females ! I would just inform the so-called True Wit)iess that the coun- try of his birth is much ashamed of him for his unaccountable apostasia. Perhaps he is the only Scotchman who " wondered alter the Beast" for scores of years. It is impossible that he can \l ■ 68 swallow the mummery of Popery. He should follow the example of the Highlandman who retorted on the priest when he was forcing his transubstantiation on him, " It will not believe for me." The Scripture says indeed that the Lord " will send strong delusion" on such characters as he is, so thate^'they believe a lie"; otherwise how could the poor man prostitute his talents to support such a scandalous system ? In fine, he is now placed tightly on the horns of the (Ulemma, so that he must have recourse to the old Popish arguments, " He is a liar," " he is not worthy of any notice." These are powerful syllogisms with Papists, and especially"t?ith reckless Pop- ish Editors ; but I will take no notice of such arguments. Per- haps if I could get the True Witness into a public discusssion, I would shake the " Beast" out of him. A Protestant. I I ffif t THE TURN-COAT AGAIN. LetterIX. Our Scotch Esau, of the True Witness, who bartered his reason, sense, and shame, if he ever had any, for the " wages of iniquity," or in other words, for the transitory comforts and pleasures of back and belly, evinced the subtlety and adroitness of an experienced casuist, with the hypocrisy and recklessness of the knave, and the self-contradiction and mental aberrations of the maniac, in his late attempt to hide the satanic nature of Bellarmine's writings. If genius consists in intentions and discoveries, Mr. Essau can scarcely expect to be styled a papist of genius. He only follows that ancient and well-known practice of papists, putting the best possible dress on the religion of Lucifer, without the slightest regard to either truth or honesty. He denies some things, mollifies others, and disguises all, expecting thereby to obtain a two-fold benefit. Popery must be shown to be a holy and harmless thing, and I must be represented as making much ado about errors and corruptions, which, forsooth, have no existence except in my own brains, but, which her infallibility detests as well as I. Although popery is as unchangeable as its founder, and as infallible as its dupes maintain — although in a different sense — yet its champions disclaim at pleasure the doctrines of its sworn servants and societies. They scout at pleasure the laughable miracles of their thrice laugh* able saints, who were anciently canonized and are now worshipped 6d for these self-same miracles. They refuse even to be judged by the bulls of their god-popes — the decrees of their Councils, and the writings of their infamous theologians. Like the man who was prosecuted for a scandal raised by him on a quiet neighbour; upon being asked by the judge whether he said such things, he coolly replied, — " I have not said that> and have not said this, and what I have said I will not own.*' Papists are to be charged only with such principles and acts as they think proper at the time to avow ; hence they are both fallible and infallible, changeable and unchangeable, at one and the same time* " Through bush, through briar, , Through blood, through fire, He does wander every where, Swifter than the moon's sphere*" It is said of the Komanson an occasion of making preparations for war, ere setting out, that they burnt their houses to ashes, so as to cut off every hope of future comforts and enjoyment, unless they would obtain possession of the enemy's home, as well as to incite them to every possible bravery. So with this notorious turn-coat> he could not be what he is now, a thorough pjipist, unless he had sacrificed }iis reason, contradicted his senses, trampled upon truth and honour, refused to be ashamed, crushed and banished forever all the best feelings of humanity, and, in short, Ahab like, sold himself to work iniquity in the sight of God, darkening the mind^. embittering the feelings and bigotry of the dupes and victims of sacerdotal imposition. It is vain for any man to expect a trace of our common humanity in such wretches as the subject of animadversion, Lucas of the mendacious Tablet, McMaster of the Freeman's Journal, and the infatuated Brownson. These four traitors, and supporters of the " Mystery of iniquity," have been once Protestants, but cannot now be any other thing than downright infidels, prostituting their talents for filthy lucre. It is impossible that they can ever believe in the cheats, imposition, and fooleries of the lying wonders of popery. They are fit repre- sentatives of Judas and Simon Magus, Demas and the New Testament coppersmith. These heaven-abandoned characters are a great plague to both England and America, always instigat-* ing their brutal and savage victims to indulge in every wicked passion, and avail themselves of doing every possible mischief to their neighbouring Protestants. This is the direct commission of every priest and popish journalist — they must kill all those whom they cannot convert. m M i h*' 70 "The priests arc hatchers of every species of wickedness, and are at this moment chargeable with the murders of Irelapd and the riots of America. But more of this anon. They have made the Irish papist a disgrace to the country of his birth, a danger and horror to the country of his adoption, a scourge to humanity, and a transgressor alike of the Ir ws of God and man. But to come to the point at issue. The True Witness again repeated his intentions of abandoning the religion of the Pope, should 1 prove the genuineness of the extracts I have lately given from Bellarmine's writings. No sooner had he said this than he admitted the correctness of the extract ; his own words are, — " For," argues the Cardinal, " and it is here the disputed passage occurs." Now, if the " disputed passage" occurs here, why dispute it any further. It is not easy to dispute or reason with men whose limacy or wickednes renders them more fit for an asylum or peni- tentiary than to conduct a public journal. I have brought the monstrous volumes of Bellarmine to the Office of the Christian Giiardian this morning, and will now, once for all, present the reader with a few sentences from the same. He closes, cap. V. lib. iv., in those words, — "Nam fides catho* lica docet omnem virtutem esse bonam, omnen vitium esse malum: Si autem papa erraret praecipiendo vitia, vel prohibendo virtutes, teneretur e'cclesia credere vitia esse bona and virtutes malas, nisi vellet contra conscientiam peccare." This has been already trans- lated, so that it is only a waste of space to do so at present. Whether does the Pope really turn virtue to vice, and vice to virtue, or* whether does he call upon his children to obey his com- mands, let them be virtuous or vicious 1 He just does both, he challenges them to submission, right or wrong, because, as Bellar- mine says, " It is far easier for virtue to be vice and vice virtue, than for the pope to err." The Good Cardinal again says : — " Leges pontifices ligare in conscientiam citra contemptum and scandalum. Nam quicunq he must not complain of the reasons I assigned for not engaging friends to pay him a visit in Montreal. Whilst I am compelled to speak the truth a^inst this miserable man, I cannot but pity his state, and fee! for his infatuation. The edition of Bellarmine in use in Knox's College, is that of 1586. A Protestant. ■I' ' '■kl n i\ POPISH TAXES L E T T E R X . It was acutely remarked by Dr. Gumming that the arguments advanced by the dupes of popery in support of their anti-rational and anti-scriptUral doctrines, are generally the best and most successful that can be brought forward against themselves. Perhaps there is no argument of modern date that has been so often repeated by Papists against Protestants as the argument of '' soup'' or " soup conversions." Not only that I rebut the Popish charge of "soup conversions," but I would have the intelligent reader to consider how little influence that religion can have on the minds of men, who are willing to part with it for a little" soup." Moreover, how comes it to pass that the apostate priests of Rome refuse " soup" to the "faithful" when it may prove a preventative against heretical pravity. To say that their reverences scorn such foul play will not solve the knot, because I can prove them to be the most un- scrupulous proselytizers on whom our sun ever shone. J will give fiddlers and. fathers— 'friars and flunkies — ghosts and garments — holy days and holy water — 'hosts and hosties — images and idolatry — infalli* bility and indulgences— invocation and index-expurgatory — Icnts and limbo—litany and legendary — missal and miracles— mass and mariaa- ism — madonas and monasteries — oracles and oratories — penitents and penitentiary— penances and purgatory — pilgrimages and paternosters — paintings and primates — religious rags, rays, rosaries, and repetitions- responses and relics — sacraments and sacrifices — spectres and spells — sponsors and spittles— transubstantiation and tradition — tithes and toys ■ — vows and vigils — visions «and virginity — " Hoc pro vob«s" — haec pro nobis — " Ave Maria laud em tibi dabo" — 0, Dei Mater me miserere, Ac, Ac. " Haec pro nobis" is \ retort made by an offended certain hearer «,nd spectator of a priest tor the delusive and tantalizing exercise of the latter, from Sabbath to Sabbath, in bawling out to the starved audience, "Hoc pro vobis," when nobody but the actual bibber himself reaped any benefit from the eucharistic wine bumper — Pity the blind victims of Popery." N' gned for not A^hilst I am an, I cannot ^e, is that of TESTANT. e arguments -rational and )st successful haps there is repeated by j" or " soup irge of "soup • to consider inds of n)en> oreover, how jfuse " soup" inst heretical foul play will the most un- I will give irments — holy latry — infalli- ry — Icnts and i and mariaa< •peaiteats and jaternosters— . repetitions — 3 and spells — tithes and toys is" — haec pro miserere, &c., certain hearer sxercise of the rved audience, elf reaped any lind victims of n Qne mstance in corroboration of this. It is knovm to all that the priests 'Charge their own dupes from 2s 6d to 5s sterling for b ip- tisms. But when the popish child-coUector brings a child whose parents are Protestants, baptism is administered free. The pa- rents may be living out of wedlock, and the child'-coUector may be a prostitute ; yet, neither fee nor certificate is required. With what face, then, can the priests speak of "proselytizing" ! Do the Protestant ministers thus degrade the ordinance of baptism ? The sequel will throw some light on the characters of those teachers who impoverish their victims indirectly by their influence and directly by their imposts. " When the potato fauiled in 1847 a poor man dwdt in the neighbourhood of Westport who supported his family on five acres of land ; his all was destroyed, save a small patch of oats, which amounted to sixty sheaves. The priest came round for his "bart." The wretched man pointed iraploriagly to his wife and family^— but his reverence who was dead to every entreaty, commanded his servant to count into his cart twenty sheaves of the sixty, and then he marched off with his booty J" No wonder that it is commonly remarked in Iceland that " a priest's money never wears well." The fol!owing extract is from " Ireland's Miseries." " During the late famine when the Hindbos of Calcutta and the Copts of Alexandria were sending relief to Ireland, its own priests, in many cases, not only left the people to perish, but robbed them of the alms bestowed by heathen and Ma- hometan charity. One priest made large sums by selling holy salts io cure the potato disease, and many gave their last sixpence to purchase this specific. Others sold the relief tickets with which they were intrusted for gratuitous distribution ; while several gave them to the people on condition that the first relief procured should be brought to them, as payraflht of arrear dues," I was once in a popish district in the Highlands of Scotland where the poor people were dying of hunger. An able-bodied young man came to me one day with tears rolling down his cheeks, and be- sought me to give him a handful of meal to preserve his father^ life. Being informed that he resided witliin a few yards of the priest's house, I inquired of him how he did not apply to his priest for relief? His reply was that he (the priest) would not ^ve hka a grain of meal shou'd that same save his father's life. Even in Scotland no admittance is granted to any part of theif service with- Qut^payment. Dr. Dill says, in reference to Ireland, — *^ When « chapel is to be repaired, the gates are often shut on the Sunday 74 lu 'I i ,1 1 li^, j mortangf with sentinels stationed at them, kad tkdne allowed to enter who do not first pay, the priest perhaps first superintending the scene with cudgel in hand, and freely employing it against such as would pass without contributing. At baptisms the priest receives from 2s 6d to 5s: at weddings &om J81 to JS20: and often as much, at each funeral, for masses, for the soul of th^ departed. In these cases a plate goes round, the priest often accompanying it : if each contributor gives not according to his supposed means, he is often most liberally abused ; and so shameful are the scenes of this nature, which are frequently enacted at the very grave, that they have been called by the vulgar ' canting the corpse.' " Macklin says — ** We have the meems of proving, that a poor family on one occasion bad so far succeeded in escaping this soul-tax, that they had the coffin actually lowered into the grave, when the priest, who was in a whisky-house commanding a view of the grave yard, whistled to the smugglers, and caused |hem to lift the illicit corpse, till Rome's excise was paid. (This happened at the burial-ground of Killcarr, County Donegal.) J\|ay we not suppose this spiritual exciseman soliloquising thus, its the detected smugglers approached : ♦* When hapless mortals breathe their last — Their soals into my " craddle" cast, Are washed, and raised and washed again, (As at the " diggins" clay by men,,) By every knack both new and old, Till out they come in shining gold. Amazement, be thou mute ; and reason, hold Thy breath, as one suppressing ire, provoked By outrage from the insane or idiot. Whose loss forbids your passion — else so just, Beligion weep thy double loss : — Thy head I The stock and titled retail — of Harlot Rome ; Thy name, for this, blasphemed, till atheists Laugh their godless scorn." " In short be the service what it may, whether at the baptismal font, the hymeneal altar, the dying bed or the gloomy grave, the horseleech is there, crying " give, give."* " On every mile of the road of life there is a toll-gate, aye, and beyond it too. Their people pay for coming into the world, pay for passing through it, pay for going out of it, and pay after they leave it." Purgatory is sarcastically termed " the fire that makes their pot boil." Fishermen in Ireland who want a good luck in their fishing excursion, must send for their priest to bless their boats and nets. The blessing of a boat costs 2s, and the blessing of a 75 neans, he is het 2s 6d. Afterwards they may have as many miraculous draughts as they please. Mr. Foley was at a small Ashing village on the coast, where there were four hundred boats joined together. They (the fishermen) sent for the bishop to celebrate mass in the boats. His reverence and lordship arrived, but there was such dissension among the savages in reference to whose boat he should go into to perform the miracle, that they shed one apother's blood to a fearful extent. Popish collectors go round once a week, for the specific purpose of lifting " the pennies" from those who '^o not attend the chapel. Cases of this sort fell within my own knowledge where the " penny" had to be paid though there was no food for the famishing family, and the " penny" itself had been the gift of benevolence ! A collection of sixpence is lifted off each family at Christmas and Easter Sunday, but the priest may deny it, meaning that nothing was lifted from the Protestant families within his parish. The following list of charges was proved by the Rev. T. W. Dixon, 14th March, 1847 ; and by the Rev. Charles Bourke, parish priest of Dunfeeny, in a pamphlet in which he exposed, not the sin of making a charge, but of making an exorbitant charge. As Mr. Bourke did not abandon the Popish Church, so his state- ment ought to have the more weight with Romanists, seeing that most of them know these things to be true. The dues payable to a priest according to these most competent witnesses are the following : 1. A charge of 2s 6d on each family yearly.^ 2. A collection of corn worth Is 3d off each family yearly. 3. Collections on Christmas-day and Easter Sunday, by a rule,- 6d each time, of each house. 4. Confessions of the younger people in the parish, making an average of two in each family, or 1600 in all, 6d each at Christmas. 5. The same, 1600 confessions, at Easter, at 6d each. 6. Marriages at JEI 8s 2d each. 7. Baptisms, at 3s 4d each. (I have heard in towns the charge is 5s.) 8. Charge for anointing Is Id each time, and the average number anointed yearly 200. 9. Making offices for sick or diseased cattle at Is Id for each office ; average number 150. 10. Private masses for private intentions, price varying ! but equal to j£15 per annum. I lj.l 76 i. 1 I. (Is it not taught ths^i Is Christ .^ass is a Ch\ ist ? IIow then can the *: tbc siune yesterday, to-day and for price Vary ? ever ?) 1 1 . Legacies on deaths average forty at 10s each, including the price of a mass to remove the soul from purgatory. 12. A charge of 3s 4d for blessing every lump of clay to be put into the coffin. " Mr. Dixon has not mentioned several trifles,' which nevertheless arise to a considerable money-value in a country parish — such as offerings of butter, chickens, &c., that cows may csilve, and mares foal safely, and that the eggs under a clocking hen " may chip liv" ing." There are many practices peculiar to the priests, and in the Church of Rome, so unreasonable, so absurd and abominable, that the majority of Protestants will not believe that such thing's are really practised." Among these diabolical impositions a chief place is due to the making " olfices for sick or diseased beasts" of every description from the bird mother to the bull's mother, "i have been myself often," says Mr.Dixon, "and have known several other priests to be applied to, six times a day, to make offices for sick or dis- eased cattle." When a pig or a cow takes ill, let the priest be paid for saying a mass or two, and if the owner has faith enough, the animal is sure to recover. Nay, if you want every form of goblin kept at a respectable dis- tance, only get some " holy water" or " blessed clay" from the priest ; and there is no inhabitant of the infernal world that will not fly before you ! The following benediction, translated from the French and Latin service, is to be observed in making offices for animals suffering under contagious diseases. Being robed in a surplice and violet stole, he (the priest or curate) must go, preceded by his clerk, car- rying the holy water, to the place where the sick cattle are. Af- terwards he shall say. Our assistance in the name of the Lord, Who made the heaven and the earth. Let us pray. O God, to whom the creature disobedient to his Creator, raged in torment against the unjust, and was made more disposed to be useful to those who trusted in Thee, mercifully pour thy benediction over these animals, that they, being now useless and injurious to us, may, by thy mercy, be saved, and become salutary to us penitent and truly converted. N" 77 Afterwards he shall recite the eighth Fsalm, and then he shall add— V. Thou shalt save, O Lord, men and cattle ! R. As thou hast multiplied thy mercy. V. He blessed them, and they are multipHed ! R. And he has not diminished their cattle ! V. O Lord, heai my prayer ! R. And my pry shsdl come unto thee. Let us pray. O Lord Jesus Christ, who became man for us, and wished to be laid in a manger, and to be adored in it by thy most chaste Mother, by holy angels and pious shepherds : we beseech Thee, that by the intercession of the same Mother, of the blessed Angels, and all the Saints, thou mayest remit our sins, and command that the stalls of our cattle be peaceable and free from disease. Afterwards he sprinkles the holy water on the animals. The blessing of salt^ or of hay, or of oats, or of grass, for sick cattle, is also a very common thing. As already stated the ad- mission of the beast to the ministrations of the Gospel costs only Is Id ; and should the poor beast die, in* spite of the ' office,' it is not the priest's fault, but its own, for||rant of sufficient faith. — Maklin says — ** Suppose you anoint the owner of an ass, and at the same time " make an office for the ass," in which of the cases are you best paid, and in which do you act as the successor of St. Peter?" " You know, Sir," (addressing a priest) " that you are as well paid for the ass as for its owner — for the brute as for the man ! But as to St. Peter's example for any of these payings, and brutal- izing of Christianity and christianizing of brutes ; oh, for shame ! — name not Peter — name not Christ, but boldly say, I love money ! And the money of a pair of sick asses is better to me than both Christ and Peter. What is charged for the remission of the third part of one's sins 1 And when the third part is remitted will the > '.maining parts not bring down condemnation, and send the third- }'art pardoned soul to hell ? It may be made a little more business- like thus: — Mr. A Dr. to Mr. Love Gold. To the pardon of the third part of liis sins, January 1st, 1853^ at the rate of £22 10s for a complete pardon. ^7 10 Moreover, it is herein notified, referring to their books, that Mr. Love Gold is not accountable, like a watch-maker, who had taken T , ^ - 78 , in hand to keep the third part of a watch clean for one year, for he could measure the watch exactly ; hut if any defect is found in the pardon, it is A 's own fault in stating one sin too many or one too few ? The popish doctors have not yet decided whether the remaining two parts will as certainly bring on damnation as if the X7 10s had never been paid, for the pardon of the third part." A Protestant. 1 PURGATORY A BUGBEAR. Letter XI. In other letters, but more especially in our last, we referred to the profits the priests make by sins in this world. Not however, contented with the alms and payments of the " faithful" in this life, they pur- sue them to the other world with the intention of enriching them- selves. The proverb says, " When a man's dead his debt's paid ;" but as the poor papist is only a machine or a tool, this ancient say- ing does not apply to him. The Priesthood has mapped out the world of spirits into four m'and divisions. The lowest of these is Hell, where all who die without the pale of the popish Church are huddled together. The second division in order, is Purgatory, of which we intend to speak more at large in this letter. The third division, which is immediately above purgatory, is Lirabus Patrum, where all the souls of the saints who died from Abel to our Saviour's time, were confined till released by him at his death ; hence, this region was abolished, and heaven substituted in its place. The last division is Lirnbus Infantum^ where the souls of children dying unbaptized are consigned. Purgatory is filled with the same fires and torments as hell, only there is this all-important dift'erence, that those (consigned to it re- main there only for a limited lime. Many of our Protestants are somewhat ignorant of the theory of Purgatory ; they think, Botany ^ay-like, that it is intended, only for men of extreme wickedness. No doubt Purgatory as far as it is a place of punishment, may be called the hulks, or Botany Bay of Popery. But the reader must bear in mind, that it is only pious folks,— such as die in venial sins, — that are admitted into Purgatory. No one enters heaven with- out a plunge in it ; not even the infallible Popes. The Priests arc wiser in their generation than the children of the light ; they will hot aduiit any into Purgatory, but such as have duly and regu- 79 larly paid for their " baptism ;" their " confessions ;" their "wafer- goiis ;" their " confirmations ;" their " indulgences" and " extreme- unction." In short, none are admitted but pardoned souls, such as die in venial sins. And all who die in mortal sin are thrown into Hell. Perhaps the poor heretical reader, who has learned his Christianity from the Bible alone, will be apt to exclaim> yenial sins ! what are they 1 The Bible tellf ine that every sin deserves the wrath and curse of God for ever. Unfortunate heretic? you have not taken the Churches interpretation nf the Scriptures. Be it • known to you then, that all die in mortal sin who have not money to buy an indulgence to get their souls foiked out of Purgatory ; * yes, and all who have not paid their dues regularly to their priests in tliis world, are damned along with heretics to the infernal regions. Here you see the adroitness and satanisra of the priests in consign- ing th« ir holiest and best of folks to Purgatory ) so that none might escape the soulrtax, excepting such as die in mortal sin; whereas, none die in that sin but such as are unable or unwilling to give cash to the priests. The Church says when God has remitted the guilt and eternal punishment of sin, a temporary punishment remains due which may be borne either in this life or. the next. Withouii; this doctrine Purgatory could scarcely be maintained ; and without pur- gatory Masses and indulgences wou ' be useless ; and without the sale of those wares, — Indulgences and Masses, — the priests would starve. Our friend Cardinal BcUarmine affirms that theclr^nial of Pur- gatory is such a sin as can only be expiated amid the flames of Uell. " Indulgences" (or license to commit sin,) said Tetzel, " are the most precious and the most noble of God's gifts. This cross (his own,) lAs as much efficacy as the very cross of Jesus Christ. Come and I will give you letters, all properly sealed, by which even the sins that you intend to commit may be pardoned. I would not exchange my privileges with St. Peter in heaven ; for I liave saved more souls by my Indulgences than the Apostle by his sermons. There is no sin so great that an indulgcncj cannot remit ; and if any had offered violence to the Virgin, the mother of God, let him pay well, and all will be forgiven. Indulgences avail nat only for tlic living but for the dead ; for that repentance is not necessary ! ! Priest ! noble ! merchant ! wife ! youth ! maiden ! do you not hear your parents and other friends who are dead, crying : we are sutfering horrible torments, a trifling alms would deliver us ; you can give it r.nd you wiil not. " At the moment," continued J'ctzel " that the money rattles at the bottom of the box, the soul escapes Purgatory, and jumps liberated to heaven." (D'Aubigne.) J 80 !i I h '. St. Tetzel also declared that, if the sum given were one farthing^ less than ten shillings, it would not at all avail them. This jolly Apos-> tie went on to such a length, that a gentleman had agreed with him^ on the payment of a targe sum of money, for an Indulgence for a cer- tain crime which he intended to commit. The money being paid, he (the gentleman,) waylaid, robbed, and soundly cudgelled good Tet- xel adding, that this was the crime for which he had purchased ab- solution from him ! ! We may add that this John Tetzel, — Apos- tle, of His Holiness, — Tsas of a notoriously immoral character. He had been capitally convicted of adultery, and sentenced to be thrown headlong into the river Inn, but was pardoned by the Em- peror at the intercession of the elector Frederic. He was con- temporary with Luther, and in short his wickedness helped not a little to open the eyes of the Reformer. Mr. White, a converted Spanish priest, mentions a custom universally prevalent in Spain : *' A man whose chief employment is to be agent for the souls in purgatory, bearing a large lantern with a painted glass, represent- ing two naked persons enveloped in flames, entered the court in the evening, and addressed every one of the company in these words ; * The holy souls ! remember the holy souls /' " Mr. Gavin, another converted Spanish priest, says: — "When they (the priests) preach a sermon of the souls^ they make use of brimstone, and burn it in the pulpit, s&ying, that such flames are like those of the Are in purgatory. They make use of many pictures of the souls that are in the middle of devouring Are, lifting up their hands to heaven, as if they were crying for help and assistance. They prove their pro- positions with revelations and apparitions^ for they cannot find in the Scripture any passage to ground their audacious thoughts on, and such sermons are to the people of sense better diversion than a comedy ; for beside the wretchediiess of style and method, they tell so many sottish stories, that they have enough to laugh at after- wards for a long time." Mr. (javin says again : — " The priests and friars build in that fiery place (purgatory) apaitnients for [kings, princes, grandees^ noblemen, merchants, and tradesmen, foi ladies of quality, for gen- tlemen and tradesmen's wives, and lor poor common people. These are the eight apartments which answer to the eij^lit degrees of intense Are ; and they make the people believe that the poor people only endure the least degree ; the second, being greater, is ibr gentlewomen and trade^men's wives, and soon to the eighth de- grce> which being the greatest of all, is reserved for kings. By 81 -^ ■ ■ • this wicked doctrine they get gradually masses from all sorts and conditions ef people in proportion to their rank. But as the poor cannot give so many masses as the great, the lowest chamber in purgatory is always crowded with the reduced souls of those un- fortunately fortunate people. '' But it is a remarkable thing, that many poor silly tradesmen's wives, desirous of honour in the next world, do ask the friars whe- ther the souls of their relations can be removed from the second apartment to the third, thinking by it, that though the third degree of fire is greater than tne second, yet the souls would be better pleased in the company of ladies of quality. The friars promise to do so easily if they give the same price for a mass that ladies of quality do give. I knew a shoemaker's wife,very ignorant, proud, and fr'l of punctilios of honour, who went to a Franciscan friar, and told him that she desired to know whether her father's soul was in purgatory or not ] and in what apartment ? The friar asked how many masses she could spare for it ] She said two ; and the friar answered, your father's soul is among the beggars. Upon hearing this the poor woman began to cry, and desired the friar to put him, if possible, in the fourth apartment, and she would pay him for it : and the quantum being settled, the priest did promise to place him there the next day. So the poor woman ever sitice gives out that her father was a ricli merchant, for it was revealed to her that his soul is among the merchants in purgatory." ' " I have for souls a tender heart, None ever perish that pay well — But penceless paupers go to hell ; But if the rich will pay and save, I give salvation at the grave ; Nay, farther still, I luercy show, And I alone the secret know : — Has one been dead, say twenty years, A friend may pay the old arrears ; No sooner will the silver chink Within my box "than like a wink The soul redtom'd aloft will soar *^ To lasting bliss and endless glore." D'AnBIQNB. We must not, however, forget to mention that purgatory affords a great field for " courting." Some one m.iy soy that this is scarcely correct, because the pri(^sl3 put ladies in a sej)arate berth there. Yes, we know the priests do so, but we know also that they do it with the intention of exacting a large fee from those who d2 III! .-'■J . I . : 82 - may purchase a license for paying a visit now and again, to the apartments of ladies of quality. Mr. Gavin tells us plainly of a Spanish priest with whom he was personally acquainted, who under- took to lodge the soul of a young man in the apartments of the la- dies in purgatory, on his paying him the sum of ten pistoles. Not only that, but the MotJier of Harlots and Abominations of the earth preaches the same voluptuous and infernal doctrine in refer- ence to heaven also. She suits herself to the various tastes and abominations of both men and devils. (See upon this point Bishop Gibson's Preservative against Popery.) PPKind reader, you may think we are going far enough, but rest assured, that at present, we are writing under restraint, as we have been all along. In 1847, "La Voix Nouvelle" a Paris journal, exposed the following piece of barbarity and roguery. " The tem- pestuous catastrophe at Monville and Malormy, in France, had left some hundred wretches mutilated^ houseless, and in danger o*^ star- vation. The public charity was awakened, and in the ancient city of Rouen alone, the humane congregations of the various churches contributed in behalf of suffering humanity,no less a sum than 10,400 francs." The Rev. scoundrels of Rome, however, dexterously distributed it accordmg to the following resolution, — " Seeing that, among the victims of the above calamity, there are great numbers of dead, for whom hitherto nothing Jms been done, and that, neverthe- less, it is but sheer justice that these should partake of the charity of the faithful, and that prayers should be offered for the welfare of their souls, that thereby all the victims should benefit in exact proportion TO their wants by the succour accorded to them : in order that all the victims may profit, according to their necessities the entire sum of 10,400 francs, raised at Rouen, shall be invested in the public funds ; that one half of the interest resulting therefrom shall be employed in celebrating low and high masses, at ttu. rate of a franc and a half for each of the former, and forty francs for each of the latter. The other half to be distributed among the surviving victims, on condition that when the living ceased to need it, the whole amount should be employed as before in the celebra- tion of masses for the dead." To-day, to-day, a soul's sot free, That saving might is lodged in mo, Your ceaseless, sinless, serving priest, The holder of St. Peter's keys : V^et when I look, as now for fees, ' Some ii*y — ' He's John's prophetic HeaBt' ; • 83 But let them only pause and think, 'Tis for his paper, pen, and ink. Your patient, philanthropic priest Makes charges — the pardon still is free :— But Knox refuses this to see, And calls me < Antichristian Beast.' " It is nol my intention to animadvert on the brutal conduct of the French ecclesiastical robbers ; one would certainly expect some trace or other of our common humanity in creatures who have at least the appearance of human beings. But we must say that there is little or no humanity to be found among the priesthood as far as character is concerned ; hence they are more so in appear- ance than in reality. Perhaps some of our Protestant brethren will say that we ar6 only referring to popery in days that are past, and that it is by this time-reforming and making rapid improvements. Very well, let such as believe in the changeableness of infallibility look to the sequel, and consider seriously the doings of the Old Harlot in 1854. Are you aware, reader, that the priests established a Purgatorian Society in Protestant Toronto, in January last. Surely you will say that it is only a silly story; that they cannot be so infatuated and shameless as all that. !Not only they have formed such a society, but they have also advertised its .n\es and administration as public as their Popish organs could do. We are sorry that want of space for bids ournoticing all the regulations, but the following, which we copy from our old friend, the Catholic Citizen, may suffice to give an idea of the intentions of the Association. " Article 2. It is permissible to receive persons of every age, and of both seres, provided that they reside in the City of Toron- to, and that th^ are not labouring under any disease which is considered, fatal. Art. 3. Any individual, wishing to become a member of tht Association, shall pay, on entering, the sum of one shilling and three pencn, and a like sum every succeeding year, in the monti) of October, so that he may continue to participate in the benefits of the Association. Art. 4. The object of the Association being not only to provide a funeral for the deceased poor, but also, and above all, to relieve the suflering souls in Purgatory, &c. Art. 5. Every associate who is known to be in indigent circum- stances, having paid his annual contribution, shall be entitled to have an appropriate Funeral Service performed for him. k \' 84 Art. fi. The Funeral service, to be performed at the expense o( the Association, will consist of High Mass, if possible ; if conveni- ent, two Low Masses will be offered up for the repose of the souls of the deceased associate. Art. 8. Every year, if the funds of the Association permit, there shall be a solemn service performed, on any day appointed within the octave of All Souls, for the deceased members of the Association ; all the associates to be invited to attend. Should the funds of the Association be deficient, a Low Mass only shall be said on the occasion." The following idolatrous prayer concludes the solemn farce : — "Hail Joseph, son of David, just husband of Mary, cf whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ. Holy Joseph, father of our Lord Jesus Christ, pray for us, thy clients, now and at the hour of death." The above are only a few of the laws of this monstrous and de- testable Society. Header, look them over again and think of the humanity — Christianity is not to be looked for in that quarter — of that sacerdotal gang, who refuse their assistance to such as are fatally diseased, and only promise it to such indigent members as may pay their yearly fee. ;iacerdotal recklessness and wickedness are more predominant fiven in Upper Canada than we are aware of. Only imagine the con- duct of that priestly demon in Guelph, who, some three years ago, disinterred the body of a child, and sold it to Dr. Orton, as the child's father was not otherwise able to pay his fees to his rever- ence ; and to the honour and humanity of the Doctor be it known that after buying the body from the priest, he restored it to its pa- rents ns he got it, whithout fee or reward. Several other cases of the atrocity of the priests towards the dead arc daily coming to our ears, but Mce cannot afford to chronicle them all. The priests no doubt are so merciful and humane as to disinter iW bodies of men, and sell them, so as to have their souls out of purgatory. The Irish priests used to keep crabs dressed in velvet, so as to exhibit them as representatives of the souls in purjia- tory. When anxious relations, after paying well, would enquire of tb»'ir reverence, whether their friends were out of purgatory, they . ouid be conducted to a large room, and after the candles were extinguished, the spirits would begin to move on the floor,which mira- i'le always went to confirm that the souls went to heaven. In Spain the priests keep mice in dark rooms as representatives of the souls in purgatory, so as to dupe people who pay them well. But the most common roguery is the story about the little child Jesus, whom the 85 priests say, appears to them in the host as a sign that the soui is out of purgatory ; but, alas ! laymen cannot be privileged to see such a heavenly sight. No, no, none can see the little boy Jesus in the host but the priests. What a mystery ! We might proceed to give many silly stories of apparitions, dreams, and visions seen by nuns and monks of the boiling caldrons and ovens of purgatory, and more especially of our friend Bellarmine's account of them; but we forbear at present for want of space and time. At any rate we would have no objections to be informed how Pat behaves him- self in purgatory. A scriqus monk or winking Madonna, might, without putting themsevcs about, indulge our curiosity. If he in- dulges in his pugnacious and revengeful spirit as freely there as here we do not envy his comrades. There is little doubt that poor Paddy will take a race through the eight apartments ; and should he get a hold of St. Peters keys, in the absence of a more formid- able weapon, he will be sure to give a blue eye to some neighbour with them as he passes by. The subject of our animadversion is a step far beyond serious treatment, and it would therefore be only ridiculous, and below our intentions, to handle the wretches and rogues in discussion, but in a degree under the lash of satirical or- deal. Mr. Gavin justly remarks, — ^" In what light does this place the priesthood ] They teach tliat the friends of their flock are lying weltering in a lake of fire, from which they could deliver them by saying masses for them ; and yet they will not say these masses unless they be regularly paid for it. How can a man represent himself as such a monster, and ygt hold up his head in civilized society. What ! shall I believe that a single soul is suffering tor- ments so dreadful, that I have the means in my power of rf iieving it, and yet shall I cooly wait till I be paid before I use these means? By what process of reasoning can men be brought to believe that this is the religion given to us for our salvation by our kind and merciful Father in heaven — a religion of extortion, which gives so manifest a preference to the rich." As we may not have an opportunity of bringing before the reader, separately, the rules to be observed by the priests when manufacturing gods, we beg to give a few of them here ; and we may once for ail tell that we are translating from the Ptoman Mis- sal:—'* Mass may be defective in the matter to be consecrated, in the form to be used, and in the olficiating Mini.ster ; for if in any of these there be any defect, viz : due matter, form, with in- tention, and priestly orders in the celebration, there is no sacrament tonsiecrattd." 86 i: h ^ \ s I Dc defectibus panis — Defects in the bread. — 1st. " If the bread be not of wheat, or if of wheat, if it be mixed with such quantity of other grain, that it doth not remain wheaten bread ; or if it be in any way corrupted, it doth not make a sacrament, (or in 6ther words it doth not make a God.) De defectibus vini — Defects of the wine. — '* If the wine be quite sour or putrid, or be made of bitter or unripe grapes, or if so much water be mixed with it, as spoils the wine, no sacrament is made, (that is no God and man are made.) De defectibus Ministri — Defects of the Minister. — ** If any one intend not to consecrate, but to counterfeit ; also, if any wafers remain forgotten on the altar, or if any part of the wine or any wafer lie hidden, when he did not intend to consecrate but what he saw ; also, if he shall have before him eleven wafers, and intended to consecrate but ten only^ not determining what ten he meant, in all these cases the consecration fails because intention is required." " Should the consecrated host disappear, either by accident, or by wind, or miracle, or be swallowed by some animal, then let an- other be consecrated." " If a gnat or a spider fall into the chalice, let the priest swallow it with the blood, if he can ; but if he have a loathing, let him take it out and wash it with wine, and when mass is ended, burn it, and cast it and the washing into holy ground." " If poison fall into the cup, or what might cause vomiting, let the consecrated wine be put into another cup, and let the blood (wine) be poured on linen cloth ot* tow ; remain till it be dry, and then be burned, and then the ashes be thrown into holy ground." " If in winter the blood be frozen in the cup, put warm clothes about the cup ; if that will not do, let it be put into boiling water near the altar till it be melted, taking care that it does not get into the cup." " If any of the blood of Christ fall on the ground by negligence, it must be licked up with the tongue, the place be sufficiently scraped, and the scrapings burned ; but the ashes must be buried in holy ground." " If the priest vomit the Eucharist, (God) and the species ap- pear entire, he must piously swallow it (God) again ; but if a nausea prevent him, then let the consecrated species be cautiously separated, and put by in a holy place till they be corrupted, and after, let them be cast into holy ground ; but if the species do not appear, the vomit must be burned, and the ashes thrown into holy ground." 4 .. - . g7 Marvellous ! marvellous ! Christ can be lost by accident, or by wind ; eaten by mice and dogs, &c. He may be frozen, and re- leased by hot water ; poisoned, poured on tow, dried and buried. The priest eats him, vomits him, swallows him again, and then worships hun ! Shocking infatuation ! A Protestant. POPISH SLAl^GHTERS. Letter XII, I am not one of those who would kill people twice, or rather, who would be avenged on the carcase when the breath is departed. Such monstrosities could only be accomplished by the " faithful" sons of her infallibility, and accomplished as one of the peculiar and apocalyptic characteristics of the Old Harlot. " And (they) shall not suffer their dead bodies to be put in graves." I have already given such a thrashing to the maniac Editor of the laugh- able True Witness^ that the reader may be apt to think there is nothing now remaining of him but the dead carcase. But the breath is not entirely departed yet ; the " Beast" is still writhing and moaning, and making grimaces ; so I want to put an end to his sufferings, by despatching him at once. The Turn-coat is of an elastic, reversible, and accommodating nature ; alike service- able on wet, or sunny days ; but I mean now to rub it with all my might, and give it such a pull, as will rend and tear it to rags. I would certainly wish that the readers of the Christian Cruardian had an opportunity of seeing the attempted defence of this ghostly and impudent Journalist ; perhaps they would be inclined to excuse him on the score of lunacy. His disingcnuousness and dishonesty have been so ably exposed already, by the Christian Guardian, that I need only refer to it, and I will do so by giving a summary of the renegade's manceuv es since our controversy began. He attempted first to intimidate the Christian Guardian, and in a pious tone to reflect upon him for giving publicity to the " calum- nies" of A Protestant ; but he found the Guardian rather a stout heretic, and indeed so far astray, that nothing short of the engines of the '^ Holy Inquisition" would bring him to his senses. The common, and indeed the only 'vay, in which popish controversialists look for victory, is by disgusting and shocking their opponents with base falsehoods, unfair and dishonest statements, violence and 88 B i ' recklessness. But, when tbey meet with a determined and here- tical rebel, like A Protestant, who is not to be put to flight with scare-crows and bugbears, they pretend great tenderness and meekness, exclaiming, O ! what immoral language ! O I what an uncharitable monster ! and this will take with some simple-minded Protestants: as if it were not allowable to designate treacherous and malignant Priests, and Popish Editors, by applying to them the epithets appropriate to their crimes. Father Kroeger may Kroeger* a young German girl, and indeed, what are most of the Priests but Kroegers, and Kroegering wherever and whenever they can ; but still it is too immoral of heretics to speak of their Kroegerings. In his second attempt, he rashly said : — " Did Bellarmine in any of his works publish such sentiments, or senti- ments analogous to them ; if he did— if in any of Cardinal Bellarmine' works such sentiments can be found, we will acknowledge ourselves in error, and renounce the religion that Bellarmine professed." Surely this is very plain : he denies stoutly that " any such senti- ments, or sentiments any way analogous to them," are to be found in any of tht Cardinal's works. When the Tnie Witness penned the above, he was under the impression that I had no access to Bellarminc's works ; however, when I gave Bellarmine's words in the original, the Turn-coat instantly reverses his waterproof, and says : — "The dispute between the True Witness and A Protest- ant, was not as to the genuineness of an extract, nor as to whether certain words, or a certain passage, were or were (not,) to be round in Bellarmine's treatise De Komano Pont.; but as to whether the passage in dispute, when compared with the context, was sus- ceptible of the interpretation put upon it by A Protestant," &c. First of all, the reader will observe, that our controversy origina- ted with his denial of the extract from Bellarmine, which he now admits. But the Jesuit, whose religion enjoins upon him to lie, when the interest of the gang to which he belongs requires it, must not be non-plused ; and now it turns out, that our variance is oc- casioned by the " interpretation" I put on the Cai 'Hnal's words. Whereas, I put no " interpretation" at all upon the monster's words, but merely translated the sentences, verbatim, et literatim, and allowed the whole to speak for itself. However, the notorious pervert is not to stop here ; and so he calls upon Euclid to come * We are indebted to the N. V. Crusader for the addition of this word to our language. Priest Kroeger attempted to take unlawful lib- erties with a young German girl, whilst pardoning her sins in the (.■uuletfiiunal. 89. to his aid, and dives deeply into mathematics, to fmd out BeRar* mine's meaning. Not only that, but if I condemn Bellarmine, he must condemn the Psalmist ; the Fsalmist must suffer for the wickedness of the Cardinal. And why? Just because the rene- gade will p. ove the Psalmist to be an infidel, by quoting the words^ " there is no God," and suppressing the other half of the sentence, " The fool hath said in his heart." I question very much whether the old proverb, — montes parturiunt mus, — ever had a more laugh- able illustration : — " The mountains labour in volcanic throes, And lo I a paltry mouse that labour shows." What he calls the context of " there is no God," is by no means its context, in the general acceptation of the term ; but a part and parcel of the smtence, and without which it cannot make any sense. Surel re is a difference between the connection a com- plete sentence inay have with what goes before, and comes after it, if it will have any ; and the connection, or rather dependence the one half of a sentence must have upon its other half. " Mighty magician, there's a yrondrous spell, Where true and false were with infernal art. Close interwoven." The Witness* meaning is, if I will extract a complete sentence out of Bellarmine's writings, and one which has no connection with any other part of the book, then he will claim his right to quote the one half of a sentence from the Psalms, leaving out the other. In a word, his reference to the context, redvctio ad ahsurdum, is a gross falsehood. Lib. iv., of Cap. v., is only short altogether, and why does he not come out with it as it is, context and all. The reader will be enabled how to see how the Kroegers of Montreal ruined this much degraded Journalist. His malignity and inso- lence generally forbid any controversy with him, more especially as he is looked upon as a sort of lunatic ; but he is tame and com- pletely prostrated in this discussion ; he saw clearly that his usual violence and impertinence would not shield him, therefore he sings and preaches his martyrdom by A Protestant. All popish Journalists have no regard to truth, morality, or honour ; their re- ligion teaches them that the lie is more acceptable to God than the truth, when their interests need it. The priests and popish editors refuse to be ashamed, and generally do not believe in any God ; they sell themselves for the " wages of iniquity," an4. assist each other in keeping their dupes in ignorance ; hence they divide the spoil or booty between them, and, in private, laugh over the ere- 111 IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) // {./ ^ A 5>L A^ /- M 4^ 1= 11.25 ^■21 |25 |22 US ^ m ■it 1^ WUu U 11.6 9^ oi^ ^>. ^J*"*' Photographic .Sciences Corporalion SJ \ ^ <^ 4 ^.\ ;\ 23 WIST MAIN STRUT WnSTIR.N.Y. MSM (716) •73-4S03 '^ ■■■'A i 1 90 dulity of their wretched victims. As I have something else to ad- vance in this letter, I leave the renegade to patch and sew together his torn turncoat, hoping he will take better care of it in future, and benefit from the lessons I have given him. It was my intention for some time, to review some of Rome's barbarities, slaughters and carnage ; but the want of time forbids my entering upon that dreadful and heart-rending subject at pre- sent, with anything like detailed minuteness. And) although I take up the subject hurriedly in the sequel, I am uninfluenced by low bigotry, or personal spleen. I love Papists as much as I hate their principles, although the assertion may appear paradoxical to some persons. The Pope, then, claims to be Prince ever all people, and all kingdoms ; *' to pluck up, to destroy, to scatter, to consume, to plar.1 and to build." And, like !Nebuchadnezzar, " whom he would, he slew ; and whom he would, he kept alive ; and whom he would, he set up ; and whom he would, he put down." The his- tory of Popery is writtqfi in -blood ; it substituted the sword of steel for the sword of the Spirit. But who can describe the horrors of papal vengeance ] Who c!&n depict in suitable colours, the in- tolerant and antichristian features of the " woman drunk with the blood of the saints'?" Who can portray the savage and relentless massacres ; the exactions, imprisonments, tortures, and exiles of Popery 1 All done by her public and avowed sanction, by men, or rather demons, wearing the garb of sanctity, and pretending to be shepherds of Christ's flock ; yea more, all done in the name of God, in the name of humanity, and from love to men. The heart sickens at the detail; nor would I revive the memory of these atrocities, were it not that so far from being abuses of the system, they constitute its very essence and spirit ; and such as would be perpetrated by the Papists of our times, did they possess the power to put them in execution. Th* practice of Papists has kept pace with their principles. What is the history of Popery, but one long unvaried tale of intrigues, plots, lies, frauds, perfidies, broken vows, violated oaths and deceptions, such as could be devised by only an infernal agency, and perpetrated by monsters. Wylie says: — « Every party that has trusted her, she has in turn betrayed ; it mattered not how awful the sanctions, with which she was bound, or how numerous and sacred the pledges and guarantees of sincer- ity which she had given ; these bonds were to Rome, but as the green withes on the arms of Samson. Her wickedness is without parallel in the annals of human treachery. Perfidies which the most abandoned of Pagan Governments would have shuddered to 'i li 91 ; else to ad- ew together t in future, of Rome's time forbids Bct at pre- lough I take ced by low 1 1 hate their ical to some r all people, to consume, " whom he nd whom he The his- irord of steel le horrors of the jrs m- mk with the nd relentless tnd exiles of I, by men, or snding to be the name of The heart »ry of these the system, as would be jss the power IS kept pace but one long )roken vows, d by only an ylie says: — betrayed; it i was bound, es of sincer- but as the ss is without es which the shuddered to commit, Kome has deliberately perpetrated, and unblushingly justified." Philip Day says : — " But would (though it were vain to wish,) that all her barbarous and bloody deeds could be computed — would, I repeat, that the powers of calculation could enumerate them ! But no ! they are countless as the sands on the sea shore, — count- less as the drops which compose the ocean,— countless as the atoms which float in the immeasurable space around us ; and although no human register is stained with all the crimson deeds she has perpe- trated, yet they are not lost, — they are not forgotten. No ! they are entered in the great ' Book of Remembrance,' by the hand of the recording angel, and shall be revealed nakedly and openly, when God comes to judge the earth. Then shall the mighty cry resound, * Rejoice over her, thou heaven, and ye holy apostles and prophets, for God has avenged you on her.' " Who has not heard of the horrible murders perpetrated in France in the sixteenth century I Men, women, and children, were indiscriminately slaugh- tered : some were despatched with the sword ; others were hurl- ed from high rocks, and dashed to pieces, or hanged, or roasted over slow fires ; or thrown on the points of pikes and daggers. Sucking infants were snatched from their mothers' arms, and killed with bludgeons. Fiv^ hundred women were forced into a barn, which was then set on fire, and when any of them attempted to rush out, they were thrust back by spears and halberts, so that they were all consumed. But the most fearful monument of human wickedness which the history of the world contains, — the greatest of the crimes of Rome,— -is the Massacre of St. Barthdomew, This was the result of a design, deliberately formed for the utter destruction oi Protestantism in France. The massacre began August 24th, i .»72. The chiefs of the Protestant party were in- vited to Court caressed and loaded with honours. The Protes- tants were the sj cial objects of favour, and now shared the same privileges as the most distinguished Papists. So bright was the hellish gleam that introduced the murderous storm. In a moment, the bolt fell. At midnight, the tocsin sounded the signal of destruction and carnage, which lasted seven days. Immediately the Pope's or rather the Devil's emissaries were at their posts ; de- vastation, slaughter, and biIlow4lif blood tracked the footsteps of the assassins. The King, Charles IX., of infamous memory, en- couraged the murderers in their diabolical work, shouting out, " Kill ! kill !" The Queen gazed with delight on thousands of naked bodies, covered with wounds, and weltering in their gore. .»—»«* 92 I'-'' I- : The priests shouted, " Kill all ! the Lord will know his own !" All gloried in the deed. The Priests and Parliament applauded the King's wisdom and energy. The monster king ordered a medal to be struck, to perpetuate the memory of the event ; having on one side a representation of himself, sitting on the throne, and treading on dead bodies ; and on the reverse^ the arms of France, with the inscription,—" Pietas excitavit justitiam, — Piety excited Justice.''^ It is believed that there were from 70 to 100,000, murdered in ally at this period. Here the Roman Catholic French historian Mezeray, depicting this horrible event : — " The daylight which discovered so many crimes, which the darkness of an eternal night ought for ever to have concealed, did not soften their ardour by these objects of pity, but exasperated them still more. The populace and the most dastardly being warmed by the smell of blood, 60,000 men transported with this fury, and armed in different ways, ran about wherever example, vengeance, rage, and the desire of plunder transported them. The air Resounded with a horrible tempest of the hisses, blasphemies, and oaths of the murderers ; of the breaking open of doors and windows, of the firing of pistols and guns, of the pitiable cries of the dying, of the lamentations of the women, whom they dragged by the hair ; of the noise of carts, some loaded with the booty of the houses they pillaged, others • with the dead bodies, which they cast into the Seine ; so that in the confusion they could fiot hear each other speak in the streets, or if they distinguished certain words, they were those ; * kill, stab, throw them out of the windows.^ Some were shot on the roofs of houses, others were cast into the water, and knocked on the head with blows of iron bars or clubs ; some were killed in their beds, others in the garrets, others in cellars, wives in the arms of their husbands, husbands on the bosoms of their wives ; sons at th« feet of their fathers. They neither spared the aged, nor women great with child, nor even infants. The streets were paved with the bodies of the dead, or the dying ; the gateways were blocked up with them. There were heaps of them in the squares ; the small streets were filled with blood, which flowed in great torrents into the river." But how did Gregory XIII., the vicar of Christ, and pretended successor of St. Peter, receivelPfe news of these infernal doings 1 Did he weep over the sufferings of humanity, or execrate the mon- sters who inflicted them ? Far from it. He rejoiced in the work of blood, and went in public procession to the church of St. Lewis, to return thanks to God for so happy a result, and also offered up r\ b. solemn Mass, and had the Te Beum chanted on the occasion* Fires were kindled everywhere on the streets through joy for the destruction of the Hugonots. A Bull was also issued for a public jubilee to beheld throughout the kingdom of France, on Dec. 7th, 1572, as a day of great joy for the success of the massacre. In Spain the same deed was panegyrized in the presence of Philip II, who had a play acted before him, under the title of Triumph qf the Church Militant. Besides, the Pope caused a medal to be struck, in perpetual remembrance of so godly an action, upon the upper side of which are the words " Giegorius XIII, Pont* Max., An, I. F. P." and on the other side, — ^" Ugonotorum Strages,^' " The slaughter of the HugonotSy^ with a device representing the destroying angel with a cross in one hand and a sword in the other, and the unfortunate Protestants bleeding and agonizing at his feet. In the pal^ige of the Pope there are pictures of Admiral Coligny, where he is represented as carried to his house, wounded by*the assassin Morevil, and also as murdered in the same house, together with his son-in-law ,Teligny. The third represents the king rejoicing over the butchery. These are the tender mercies of Rome. The whole of papal Europe kept up public rejoicing on this ocsasion ; just as they are described by St. John, " And they that dwell upon the earth shall rejoice over them, and make merry, and shall send gifts one to another ; because these two prophets tormented them that dwelt on the earth." Rev. XI, 10. It is not without cause that the priests burn the Bible. Well did Traill remark, " O Rome ! Rome ! guilty apos- tate Rome ! Had I verily seen the finger af Heaven pointing to thy form, — had mine eyes visibly beheld the hand of Jehovah, o» Him who hath on his vesture and on his thigh written, ' King oi Kings, and Lord of Lords,' tracing the name * Mystery, Babylot the Great, the Mother of Harlots and abominations of the earth ' with a torch lighted in the lake that burneth with fire and brii^ stone, on the seared brow ; now with deeper more heart-dra\»? credence could I have believed it, or more fearfully shuddered *. • thine approaching doom." I expected to bring various instances \ Rome's bloody deeds before the reader ; but the blood chills in m' veins, and a melancholy seizes my mind ! However, the Inqui.4 tion cannot be silently passed over,* Who can read of the innumef able engines of torture by which myriads were tormented in £^ dungeons of that infernal tribunal, without fancying himself in H hell of the damned, and surrounded by the fiends of the bottomh pit] The Inquisition, — where millions found their innoce» H ^*: U 1 ' 94 betrayed, — their property confiscated, — their piety derided, arid their lives doomed to destruction, — and that all to satisfy the fiery zealot and tiaraed priest. " In Ireland 60,000 Protestants were massacred in cold blood. Pope Julius in seven years caused the slaughter of 200,000 Christians ; 100,000 Albigenses and Walden- ses were butchered. « In Spain 1,500,000 Jews, and 3,000,000 Moors were slaughtered. In South America and Cuba, 15,000,- 000. Llorentes says, that the Inquisition in Spain alone> murdered 2,000,000; while the butcheries of the Dutch by the Duke of Alva, of the English by the bloody Mary, of the Italians by the " Holy Inquisition," are known to us all ; there fell in the Bartholomew massacre, as already stated, about 100,000. Dr. Dill says: " While Rome is calculated to have shed in all, the blood of 68,000,000 of the human race." But it is the day of judgment alone, tl^t will declare the nun||)er who cry for vengeance against them. How many have been killed by the crusades of the middle ages 1 Human nature, one should think, in its -deepest possible state of depravity and guilt, could not devise or perpetrate deeds so diabolical and dark ; my mind recoils from the contemplation of them. Well, indeed, might Milton, on surveying the butchery of the saints of the Mt)st High, by papal emissaries, exclaim : — "Avenge, Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones, Lie scattered on tlie Alpine mountains cold ; Ev'n they who kept thy truth su pure of old. When all our fathers worship'd stocks and stones. Forget not ; — in thy book record their groans, Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold, Slain by the bloody Piedmontese, that roU'd Mother with infant down the rocks, — their moans, The vales redoubled to the hills, and they, To heaven, their martyr'd blood and ashes show, O'er all the Italian fields, where still doth stray The triple tyrant, that from these jnay grow A hundred-fold, who having learn'd the way, Early may flee the Babylonian woe." It would be the work of supererogation to dwell upon this dolefql subject, — the enmity of Rome is well known to the unprejudiced reader of history, and impartial observer of their present doings. The Bible and heretics were the only objects of the priest's hatred and vengeance ; they would burn the one as well as the other,— and how often have they done so 1 Imagine the wickedness of those who disinterred the bones of Wickliff; after lying for some scores of years in the grave, disinterred them, to have the pleasure of 1 1 95 burning tbem to ashes ! How did the priests treat Huss and Je-* pome of Prague, after the solemn promises and safe conduct that were given them ? If the inquisitors took spite to any person, they would engage spies to watch whether such an one would speak against Rome, even when he was asleep. What were and are the priests to this day, but the executioners of Christianity and human- ity — the extinguishers of virtue and morality, light and learning-^ the corrupters of the Gospel, the sowers of strife in society, and the supporters of wickedness and irreligion. It is true that the priests are not burning heretics in our country now as they used to do: they cannot now murder by the authority of the Legislature. But still they manage to kill heretics in another way — yes, they do it by the hands of the mob, which is a more private and roguish way to go to work. In Ireland our missionaries are pelted with stones, knocked down with bludgeons, and often killed by the agents of the priests. The teaching and principles of Rome lead to this ; their priests in their example and precepts encourage and enjoin it. It is the doings of the priests as sure as the massacres of the 17th century. The blood of our brethren was shed by the agents of the Priests in Montreal, last year, and it is the same wherever they can manage it. I would affectionately warn our simple minded Protestants who send their daughters to be educated in nunneries. Let mothers con- sider what may be the result of this imprudence ; let them keep their daughters from these priestly or " Kroegery" houses of plea- The " Sisters of mercy or charity" are to be avoided as sure. serpents and shunned as a plague. Let them go by their right name— sisters of cruelty- and I am not afraid of them. I dread anything in the name of kindness from a community that holds the infernal principles of Rome. It was by such intrigues they mur- dered and deceived millions of the human race. It is to be feared that this country has not thought upon this great question as it ought. In England, Ireland, Scotland and the States of America, they have organized Societies— not to murder — but to enlighten the victims of I*opery— and have various periodicals bearing exclu- sively upon this one point. And indeed the amount of living Christianity exercised in any of our various bodies of christians may be estimated according to their scriptural opposition to this God- dishonouring and soul-destroying system. Popery is not to be reform- ed but destroyed ; yet the Lord hath some of his own amongst this rubbish of superstition, for he says, "Come out from among them my people." Let Protestants give up their petty diflerences and jealousy, I ill i*ff '96 iLttd as one living society, combat the erroi^ of Popery and Puseyisnl or High ChurcMsm. Let our Protestant Ministers Hve as members of the same family, and lay that example before their flocks. Let Protestants support no public journal, or no member of Parliament but such as are thoroughly Protestant. When \te compare the Protestantism of the most of our newspapers to the Popery of the Koraish journals, we must confess great disparity on the score of iSeal. I beg now to inform the reader that this letter closes the series on " The more Priests the more Crime," and that I intend, according to promise, after some relaxation^ to write a little about the unprincipled and unprotestant doings of Puseyism ; and especially that 1 intend to say a few words about the Hamilton C^ar, alias, Solomon Pusey, Editor of the Hamilton Gazette^ and successor of St. Diotrephes &c., &c. In connection with this I would observe^ that I am of opinion that the Wesleyans of Hamilton hav6 erred, not- withstanding the solemnity of the occasion, in allowing Father Geddes to trample on their liberties, they should have quietly co^ lared him out of the grave-yard, because the Scripture says " resist the devil and he shall flee from you." I hope our Popish editors will be more sparing in their challenges in future. I will close this subject of the '' Priests and their Crimes" with the following antique lines:— ^ THE Irish Protestant boy and the romish priest* A pretty Irish boy, of mongrel breed, The fruit of Protestant and Catholic seed^ To mother's cliurch an inclination had, But father unto mass would force the lad ( Yet still the boy to church on Sunday stole^ And evidenced a wish to save hid soul. At length* one dunday moru it came to passt The faUier dragged the struggling boy to mass \ The !&enlouB papists helped to force him in. They begged tiie priest to pardon all his sin ; " No, by the mass," he said, " I cannot bless, Or pardon, till the culprit first confess •," "Well,'' said the boy, *' supposing 1 was willing. What Is your charge V> " I'll charge you but a shilling.*' ** Must all men pray> and make confession 1" •* Yes, every man of Catholic prolession." '•And who do you confess to 7" "Why, the Dean." ' •• And iloes he Charge you 1*' *• Yes, a white thirteen.** " And do the Deans confess T" " Yes, boy they do, Confess to Bishops, and pay smartly too." " Do Bishops, sir, confess, pay, and to whom 7" *• Why they confess, and pay the Pope of Rome." " Well," quoth the boy, »• all this is mighty odd— And does tiie Pope confess ?" " Oh yes, to God." •* And doe-i God charge the Pope ?" " No," auoih the Pi-ieiU » He charges nothing." " Oh ! then 6od*s the best i God's able to forgive, and always willing ; To him I shall confess, and save my sbuiing.*' A Protestant. — ia« and Puseyisrrt ve as members flocks. liet of Parliament compare the Popery of the the score of tter closes the that I intend, I a little about and especially II C^ar, alias, id successor of d observe, that ,v6 erred, not- lowing Father ve quietly col- re says " resist heir challenges • Crimes" with I PRIESTk ^/5^e ! Pl-ieiU ►ROtiSSTANt. . ii)iiit(Ka#4^-^