i^o. 
 
 .r 
 
 « 
 
 ■J 
 
 ipiWNi<lii#g»MfaMi»»»«Ma*Mf~ rilirThTaaSa^^ ~TT T li"' 
 
 to 
 
 ■ii«iiagfcgr"'irnT"v 
 
 i^iBMnMSaBaBajMiBalBBiBSa^ 
 
 Atrdliluishbpl 61 TipronfQ. 
 
 ■;^t4;;; 
 
 rrfiiiir>itOT|i 
 
 
DR. CHINIQUY TO SENATOR TASSE. 
 
 A TERRIBLE RESPONSE. 
 
 To the Editor of the " Witness." 
 
 Sir, — I have addressed to the Minerve a reply to its 
 slanderous attacks upon me. That paper refuses me the 
 justice to publish my vindication. I then demand of you that 
 you, who have repeated these slanders to the world, will not 
 refuse me the justice to publish my reply. 
 
 C. CHINIOUY. 
 
 To the Editor of the '' Minervey 
 
 Sir, — You expect, no doubt, that I will not let your article 
 against me, in your issue of yesterday, be left unanswered and you 
 will be satisfied. 
 
 You cannot find words vile enough to express your contempt 
 for my priestly life. Well, I must confess before God and man, 
 to-day again, what I have confessed a thousand times before the 
 disciples of the Gospel, not only on this continent of America, 
 but all over Great Britain and in the Australian colonies, that, 
 during twenty-five years, I was a priest of anti-christ, when it had 
 been my intention and the ardent desire of my heart to be the. 
 priest of Christ. 
 
 I had to learn by heart the infamous questions which the Church 
 of Rome forces every priest to learn by heart. 
 
 I was, in conscience, as all your priests are, bound to put into 
 the ears, the mind, the imagination, the heart and the souls of 
 females, questions of such nature, the immediate and direct 
 
2 
 
 tendency of which is to fill the minds, the memory and the hearts 
 of both priests and penitent with thoughts, phantoms and tempta- 
 tions of such a degrading nature that there are no words adequate 
 to express them. ■ ' • 
 
 Pagan antiquity has never known any institution more polluting 
 of the soul and body than the Roman Catholic auricular confession. 
 No, there is nothing under heaven moro corrupting than the law 
 which forces a female to tell her thoughts, desires, and most 
 secret feelings and actions to a bachelor, an unmarried man. 
 Let him be called priest or monk, it makes no difference. Your 
 priests may deny that before you ; they will never dare to deny it 
 before me. 
 
 Now, my dear sir, if you look upon me as a degraded priest, 
 because my heart, my soul, my mind, as those of all your priests, 
 were plunged into those bottomless waters of iniquity which flow 
 from the confessional, I confess guilty. I was polluted, and I 
 was polluting the souls of my female penitents just as every priest 
 has to do every day. It has required the whole blood of the great 
 victim, who died on Calvary, for you and for me, and for all the 
 S'nners, to purify me. And I pray that you and all your priests 
 who are required to live in the same pestilential atmosphere may 
 be purified through the same blood. 
 
 But now that, by the great mercy of God, I have been taken 
 away from the ways of perdition in which Ron-.e was forcing me 
 to walk v/ith all her priests, I have no fear to be confronted with 
 you or any of my other small or big slanderers. Many times, 
 since that, I have challenged my bitterest enemies to find anything 
 in my life for which an honest man must blush. 
 
 Without any boasting, I can say that there has never been any 
 priest in Canada so constantly cherished, honored and respected 
 by the priests, the bishops and the people as I was. It is a public 
 fact that I was brought in triumph from one parish to the other 
 from the remotest part of lower Canada to the shores of Lake 
 Huron. 
 
 There is not a great city, not a small town, not a cathedral in 
 the province of Quebec or Ontario, to which the bishops have not 
 
3 
 
 invited me to address the people ; and the churches, even your 
 immense Notre Dame Chureh, of Montreal, were never large 
 enough to receive the people who wanted to hear me. I do not 
 say those things in boasting, but only to show to you and your 
 readers how our dear countrymen, people, priests, and bishops, 
 were kind tome. ■ ■■ ■ ' 
 
 The power given to me to hear the confessions and to preach 
 everywhere were greater than those given to any other priest. In 
 1850, after I had been a priest seventeen years, two years after I 
 had left my parish of Kamouraska, in order to establish the tem- 
 perance society all over Canada, when my bishop of Quebec, the 
 Right Rev. Baillargeon, went to Rome, he came to meet me in 
 Longueuil and requested me to address a letter with my book on 
 temperance to the Pope, through him, that he might present it 
 himself to the sovereign pontiff — and when he had presented it he 
 wrote me a letter, which is still in my hand, and which I will be 
 much pleased to show you, if you desire to see it. In this letter 
 
 my bishop tells me these very words : 
 
 Rome, Aug. 10, 1850. 
 
 Sir and Dear Friend, — It is orily this i oth that it has been given 
 me to have a private audience with the Sovereign Pontiff. I have 
 taken that opportunity to present to him your book, with your 
 letter, which he has received, I do not say with that goodness 
 which is so eminently characteristic, but with all special marks of 
 satisfaction and of epprobation, while charging me to state to you 
 that he accords his apostolic benediction to you, and to the holy 
 work of temperance which you preach. 
 
 I esteem myself happy to have had to offer, on ydr behalf, to 
 the Vicar of Christ, a book which, after it had done so much good 
 to my countrymen, has been able to draw from his venerable 
 mouth such solemn words of approbation of the temperance 
 society, and of blessing on those who are its apostles ; and it is 
 also, for my heart, a very sweet pleasure to transmit them to you. 
 
 Your friend, 
 
 CHARLES T. BAILLARGEON. 
 
 Do you really believe that such things could have occurred from 
 my bishop if, as my slanderers say, to-day, my previous conduct 
 had been that of a vile man when I left my dear parish of 
 
4 
 
 Kamouraska, in order to spread the principles of temperance 
 all over Canada. Then, that bishop would have been the vilest 
 of men. 
 
 But you will ask me, with many of my other slanderers ; * Have 
 you not been iuterdicted in 1851 by the Bishop of Montreal, a 
 few days before you left Canada for the United States ? * 
 
 I will tell you, yes, sir ; the Bishop of Montreal pretended to 
 have suspended me then. But I will give it to you to judge if 
 that fact is not one of the most glorious of my life, and one for 
 which I must bless God for ever. For my integrity has never 
 been more clearly shown than in that circumstance. 
 
 That sham interdict, which was a nullity by itself — for its want 
 of form, of justice and of foundation, had been kept by the 
 Bishop, and for good reasons, a secret in Canada as well as in the 
 United States. By his immediate and subsequent acts the Bishop 
 had given me the evidences that he was regretting his error, and 
 was trying to repair it and make me forget it. But not long after 
 I left the Church, to my surprise, the Bishop of Montreal said that 
 he had interdicted me, and that he was inviting me to publish the 
 reasons of my interdict. It was the best opportunity that the 
 providence of God had offered me to prove my innocence and the 
 incredible excess of folly and tyranny of this Bishop of Rome. 
 Without delay, I accepted the challenge, and published through 
 the French-Canadian press the following letter, which forever 
 confounded the poor Bishop. He has never been able to reply, 
 though it was so important for his honor, and the interests of his 
 Church, that he should have replied to i^ : 
 
 „ ,, . _ St. Anne, April i8th, 1857. 
 
 To Monsetgnor Bourget. 
 
 My Lord, — In your letter of the 19th March you assure the 
 public that you have interdicted me, a few days before my leaving 
 Canada for the United States, and you invite me to give the 
 reasons of that sentence. I will satisfy you. On the 28th 
 September, 1851, i found a letter on my table from you, telling 
 me that you had suspended me from my ecclesiastical offices, on 
 account of a great crime that I had committed, and of which I 
 was accused. But the name of the accuser was not given, nor the 
 
nature of the crime. I immediately went to see you, and protest- 
 ing my innocence. I requested you to give me the name of my 
 accusers, and to allow me to be confronted by them, promising 
 that I would prove my innocence. You refused to grant my 
 request. 
 
 Then I fell on my knees, and with tears, in the name of God, 
 I requested you again to grant me to meet my accusers and prove 
 my innocence. You remained deaf to my prayer and unmoved by 
 my tears ; you repulsed me with malice and airs of tyranny which 
 I had thought impossible in you. 
 
 During the twenty-four hours after this, sentiments of an 
 inexpressible wrath crossed my mind. I tell it to you frankly, in 
 that terrible hour, I would have preferred to be at the feet of a 
 heathen priest, whose knife would have slaughtered me on his 
 altar3 to appease his infernal gods, rather than be at the feet of a 
 man who, in the name of Jesus Christ, and under the mask of the 
 gospel, should dare to commit such a cruel act. You had taken 
 away my honor — you had destroyed me with the most infamous 
 calumny — and you had refused me every means of justification. 
 You had taken under your protection the cowards who were 
 stabbing me in the dark ! 
 
 Though it is hard to repeat it, I must tell it here publicly : I 
 cursed you in that horrible day ! 
 
 With a broken heart, I went to the Jesuit College, and I showed 
 the wouuds of my bleeding soul to the noble friend who was 
 generally my confessor, the Rev. Father Schneider, the Director 
 of the College. ■ ' . " 
 
 After three days, having providentially got some reasons to 
 suspect who was the author of my destruction, I sent some one to 
 ask her to come to the College without mentioning my name. 
 
 When she was in the parlor, I said to Father Schneider : ' ^'ou 
 know the horrible iniquity of the Bishop against me — with rhe 
 lying words of a prostitute he has destroyed me ; but please come 
 and be the witness of my innocence.' 
 
 When in the presence of that unfortunate woman, I told her : 
 ' You are in the presence of God Almighty and two of his priests. 
 They will be the witnesses of what you say ! Speak the truth. 
 Say in the presence of God and of this venerable priest, if I have 
 ever been guilty of what you have accused me to the bishop.' 
 
 At these words, the unfortunate woman burst into tears ; she 
 concealed her face in her hands, and with a voice half suffocated 
 with her sobs, she answered ; ' No, sir, you are not guilty of that 
 sin ! ' 
 
6 
 
 • Confess here another truth,' I said to her, ' Is it not true that 
 you had come to confess to me more with the desire to tempt me 
 than to reconcile yourself to God ? ' 
 
 She said, ' Yes, sir, that is the truth.' Then I said again, 
 ' Continue to say the truth, and I will forgive you,' and God also 
 will forgive your iniquity. Is it not through revenge for having 
 failed in your criminal design, that you have tried to destroy me 
 by that accusation to the Bishop ? ' 
 
 ' Yes, sir, it is the only reason which has induced me to accuse 
 you falsely.' 
 
 And all what I say here, at least in srbstance, has been heard, 
 written and signed by the Right Rev. Father Schneider, one of 
 your priests, and the director of the Jesuit College. That 
 venerable priest is still living in Montreal ; let the people of 
 Canada go and interrogate him. Let the people of Canada also 
 go to the Rev. Mr. Brassard, who had also in his hands an 
 authenticated copy of that declaration. 
 
 Your Lordship gives to understand that I was disgraced by 
 that sentence, some days after when I left Canada for Illinois. 
 Allow me to give my reasons for differing from you in this matter. 
 
 There is a canon law of the Church v/hich says ; ' If a censure 
 is unjust and unfounded, let the man against whom the sentence 
 has been passed pay no attention to it. For, before God and his 
 Church, no unjust sentence can bring any injury to any one. Let 
 the one against whom such unfounded and unjust judgment has been 
 pronounced even take no step to annul it, for it is a nullity by itself.' 
 
 You know very well that the sentence you have passed against 
 me was null and void for many good reasons ; that it was founded 
 on a false testimony. Father Schneider is there ready to prove it 
 to you, if you have any doubts. 
 
 The second reason I have to believe that you had yourself 
 considered your sentence a nullity, and that I was not suspended 
 by if from my ecclesiastical dignity and honors, is founded on a 
 good testimony, I hope, — the testimony of your Lordship himself. 
 
 A few hours before my leaving Canada for the United States, 
 I went to ask your benediction, which you gave me with every 
 mark of kindness. I then asked your Lordship to tell me frankly 
 if I had to leave with the impression that I was disgraced in your 
 mind ? You gave the assurance of the contrary. 
 
 Then I told you that I wanted to have a public and irrefutable 
 testimony of your esteem. 
 
 You answered that you would be happy to give me one, and 
 you said, ' What do you want ?* '1 wish,' I said, ' to have a 
 
chalice from your hands to offer the holy sacrifice of the mass the 
 rest of my life ' You answered, ' I will do that with pleasure,' 
 and you gave orders to one of your priests to bring you a chalice 
 that you might give it to me. But that priest had not the key of 
 the box containing the sacred vases ; that key was in the hands 
 of another priest, who was absent for a few hours. 
 
 I had not the time to wait, the hour of the departure of the 
 train had come ; I told you : ' Please my lord, send that chalice 
 to the Rev. Mr, Brassard, of Longueuil, who will forward it to me 
 in a few d^ys to Chicago.* And the next day, one of your 
 secretaries went to the Rev. Mr. Brassard, gave him the chalice 
 you had promised me, which is still in my hands. And the Rev. 
 Mr, Brassard is there still living, to be the witness of what I say 
 — and to bring that fact to your memory if you have forgotten it. 
 
 Well, my lord, I do believe that a Bishop will never give a 
 chalice to a priest to say mass when he knows that that priest is 
 interdicted. And the best proof that you know very well that I 
 was not interdicted by your rash and unjust sentence is, that you 
 gave me that chalice as a token of your esteem and of my honesty, 
 etc. Respectfully, 
 
 J C. CHINIQUY. 
 
 Ten thousand copies of this terrible exposure of the depravity 
 of the Bishop were published in Montreal ! I had asked the whole 
 people of Canada to go to the Rev. Mr. Schneider, and to the 
 Rev. Mr, Brassard to know the truth. The Bishop remained 
 confounded. It was proved that he had committed against me a 
 most outrageous act of tyranny and perfidy ; and that I was per- 
 fectly innocent and honest, and that he knew it, in the very hour 
 that he tried to destroy my character, sending this wicked woman 
 to corrupt me. Probably the Bishop of Montreal had destroyed 
 the copy of the declaration of the poor girl he had employed ; and 
 think'ng that this was the only copy which I had taken of her 
 declaration of my innocence and honesty, he thought he could 
 speak of the so-called interdict, after I was a Protestant. But in 
 that he was cruelly mistaken. 
 
 By the great mercy of God, three other authenticated copies 
 had been kept, one by the Rev. Mr. Schneider himself, another by 
 the Rev. Mr, Brassard, and another by one whom it is not 
 necessary to mention — and then he had no suspicion that the 
 
■; '' , 8 
 
 revelation of his unchristian conduct, and of his determination to 
 destroy me with the false oath of a prostitute, were in the hands 
 of too many people to be denied. The Bishop of Chicago, whom 
 I met a few days after, told me what I was well aware of before : 
 ' that such a sentence was a perfect nullity in every way, and that 
 it was a disgrace only for those who are blind enough to trample 
 under their feet the laws of God and men to satisfy their bad 
 passions.' And no doubt you will be of the same mind, if you 
 are an honest man. 
 
 But to show you that the. Bishop of Montreal himself never 
 thought that his unjust sentence had any effect, and that he him- 
 self never lost his good opinion of me, I also publish for your 
 perusal the letter he gave me the day that I left Canada. These 
 are his words : — 
 
 October 13th, 1851. 
 
 I cannot but thank you for what you have done in our midst, 
 and in my gratitude towards you I wish you the most abundant 
 benedictions of heaven. Every day of my life I will remember 
 you. You will always be in my heart, and I hope that in some 
 future day the Providence of God will give me some opportunity 
 of showing to you all the gratitude I feel for you. 
 
 t IGNACE, 
 
 Bishop of Montreal. 
 
 I ask you. Will ever a bishop say to a priest, in a written 
 document, signed with his own hands, ' I cannot but thank you 
 for what you have done in our midst ' — if that priest has been an 
 immoral, a bad priest } 
 
 Does not the Bishop who writes such words acknowledge that 
 he was wrong in his previous hasty and unfavorable judgment ? 
 
 Would the intelligent editor of the Minerve, if he were the 
 Bishop of Montreal, write to a priest, ' I cannot but thank you for 
 what you have done in our midst. In my gratitude towards you I 
 pray God to pour his most abundant blessings upon you,' if he 
 knew that that priest is an immoral and wicked man. No, never ; 
 nor will you give a chalice to an interdicted priest to say mass the 
 rest of his life. 
 
Is it so that, as long as a priest is in your midst, he may be the 
 most depraved man, a public scandal, a murderer of souls, yet the 
 Bishop will like him, honor him, and overload him with every 
 kind of public and private marks of respect. But when he leaves 
 them to become a Protestant, then they pour out on him their 
 scorn and abuse ! By their own confession have they not done this 
 to me ? If I was an immoral man when a priest of Rome, how is it 
 that the bishops have known it only after I had left their church ? 
 And if I were an immoral man when in their midst, why i? it that 
 the bishops from the beginning to the end of my career, gave me 
 so many public and private marks of esteem and respect ? If they 
 had done so, are they not confessedly worse than what they call me ? 
 
 In 1838 the Bishop of Quebec gave me the important parish of 
 Beauport. In 1842 he placed me at the head of a ^till more 
 important parish of Kamouraska, 
 
 In 1849 t^^s Bishop of Montreal, in a public document, puts me 
 in the most exalted position that a priest has ever got, he calls me 
 ' the Apostle of Temperance of Canada,' and one of his best 
 priests. The same year he induces the Pope to send me a 
 magnificent crucifix. In 1850 he invites the people of Montreal 
 from his pulpit, in his cathedral, to come with the Hon. Judge 
 Mondelet, to present me a gold medal, as a public token of his 
 respect and gratitude for me. In 1851 — the day that I left 
 Canada — he writes me that what I have done in^his diocese, when 
 working under his eyes, has filled him with gratitude ! And the 
 same man, after I had left the Church of Rome, says that I was 
 an immoral priest — an interdicted and suspended priest ! — and 
 that, on the testimony of a prostitute, who afterwards declared that 
 she had made a false oath to revenge herself, because she had not 
 been able to persuade me to commit a crime with her ' 
 
 If what I declare of the infamous conduct of the Bishop had not 
 been correct, and if the recantation of that unfortunate female, in 
 the presence of the Rev. Father Schneider, had not been correct 
 also, how easy it would have been for the Bishop to confound me 
 forever, by bringing that superior of the Jesuit College as a wi'.ness 
 of my imposture 1 And how it would have been an imperative duty 
 
10 
 
 in Father Schneider, when he saw his name publicly and in the 
 public press committed with a fact so degrading to the Bishop, to 
 come forward and publish that what I had said was forgery 1 Then 
 Chiniquy would have been for ever and so easily confounded. 
 But such has not been the case. The poor Bishop had to pay 
 publicly for his infamous conduct towards me, and he was left 
 without any means of escape. If you are honest, it is not on 
 Chiniquy that you will turn your scorn ; it is on the man who, 
 forgetting all the laws of justice, of God and men, had united his 
 efforts to those of a perjured prostitute, to destroy his innocent 
 victim. And if you are not honest enough to see and understand 
 this, what have I to care about your scorn ? 
 
 Now let us say another word about the other interdict by Bishop 
 O'Regan. And I tell you boldly, that if anything can be con- 
 side'-ed an honor by any man, it is to have deserved the wrath of 
 so publicly depraved a man. Though he never interdicted me (he 
 only threatened to do it) he found fit to publish that he had done 
 it. But in his letter of Nov. 20, 1856, where he publicly gives the 
 reasons of that so-called sentence, he somewhat deranges the plan 
 you have, my dear sir, to make people believe that it ^ "as on 
 account of immorality. In that letter the Bishop says : ' His 
 obstinate want of submission — his excessively violent language and 
 conduct — obliges me to suspend him ! ' 
 
 I thank and bless God who gave me the strength to say some 
 great truths to that most immoral and tyrannical bishop. He was 
 such a wicked man that several priests, among whom I was one, 
 wrote to the Pope about his bad conduct ; and the Archbishop of 
 St. Louis, and many other bishops, having brought also seriou^ 
 complaints against that man, his diocese was taken away from his 
 hands, and he got a bishopric in • partibus infidelium,' which, you 
 know very well, means a bishopric in the moon — and the place 
 was just fit for the man. 
 
 The sentence was never served <?n me in any way. The Church 
 allowed me to pay no attention to it ; and the subsequent ex- 
 communication having been brought by three priests, who at the 
 time, were beastly drunk, and not being signed by tue Bishop nor 
 
n 
 
 any of his grand vicars or known deputies, I was bound by the 
 laws of the Church not to pay any attention to it. The Rev. Mr, 
 Desaulniers and the Rev. Moses Brassard having come, some time 
 later, from Canada to enquire about those matters and reconcile us 
 to the Bishop, declared before more than five hundred people 
 that we ' could not be blamed for having paid no attention to that 
 sentence, which was evidently and publicly against all the known 
 laws of the Church.' 
 
 But I have no bad feelings against that unfortunate man, who 
 died five years after. It is the contrary. His abominable life, his 
 vices, his complete want of principles, which forced the bishops of 
 the United States to denounce him to the Pope — who condemned 
 him at the end — have helped me much, by the mercy of God, to 
 know what the Church of Rome has been, what she is, and what 
 she will be till the grert day that God will open the eyes of her 
 poor slaves and bring them to the feet of Jesus, who will make 
 them free with his word and pure with his blood. 
 
 Read the following declaration of that same Bishop to four 
 deputies sent to him by the people of St. Anne just two days 
 before our excommunication. That declaration, signed by four 
 Roman Catholics, is under oath, before the civil tribunal of 
 Kankakee ; —it is the best refutation of your slanderous article 
 against me. 
 
 Bishop O'Regan gave the deputation a written response, which 
 was published in Canada, at the time, in the leading papers. 
 
 The Bishop was waited upon, on the 27th day of August, 1856, 
 and presented the following reply : — 
 
 1st. I suspended Mr. Chiniquy on the 19th of this month. 
 
 2nd. If Mr. Chiniquy has said mass, since, as you say, he is 
 irregular ; and the Pope alone can restore him in his ecclesiastic 
 and sacerdotal functions. 
 
 3rd. I take him away from St. Anne, despite his prayers and 
 yours, because he has not been willing to live in peace and in 
 friendship with the Revs. M. Lebel and M. Cartevel, although I 
 admit they were two bad priests, whom I have been forced to 
 expel from my diocese. 
 
12 
 
 4th. My second reason for taking Mr. Chiniquy away from 
 Ste. Anne, to send him in his new mission, south of Illinois, is to 
 stop the lawsuit Mr. Spink has instituted against him ; though I 
 cannot warrant that the lawsuit will be stopped for that. 
 
 5th. Mr. Chiniquy is one of the best priests of my diocese, and 
 I do not want to deprive myself of his services ; no accusations 
 against the morals of that gentleman have been proved before me. 
 
 6th. Mr. Chiniquy has demanded an inquest to prove his 
 innocence of certain accusations made against him, and has asked 
 me the names of his accusers to confound them ; I have refused it 
 to him. 
 
 7th. Tell Mr. Chiniquy to come and meet me — to prepare him- 
 self for his new mission, and I will give him the letters he needs, 
 to go and labor there. 
 
 Then we withdrew and presented the foregoing letter to Father 
 Chiniquy. 
 
 FRS. BECHARD, 
 J. B. L. LEMOINE, 
 BASILIQUE ALLAIR, 
 LEON MAILLOUX. 
 
 Now, my dear sir, before taking leave of you allow me a little 
 friendly advice. 
 
 When you argue wi*h a P.-otestant, even one whom you call an 
 apostate, never make a personal question of a principle, if you 
 wish to make people think that you have the right side, and that 
 the irrefutable arguments are in your favor. For the very 
 moment you give up the arguments on the question, to drag your 
 adversary on the ungentlemanly and unchristian ground of personal 
 injuries and slanders, you lose your cause in the mind of an 
 intelligent people. A man who has good reasons to support his 
 cause, and strong arguments has never recourse to those personalities 
 and hard names which you have used. 
 
 The question is not to know who has committed most sins 
 against the decalogue, but whether it is true or not that the Church 
 of Rome has forsaken the word of God, the Gospel of Christ, in 
 order to preach her lying traditions. 
 
 If you could prove that when I was a priest of Rome, I was as 
 criminal as David, and as weak as Samson ; a perjurer as Peter, 
 
13 
 
 or a blind persecutor as Paul, this will not at all prove that I have 
 not done well to'^leave the Pope in order to follow Christ. It is 
 just the contrary. The more wicked I was in the Church of 
 Rome, surrounded as I was, and as you are to-day, by the most 
 pestilential atmosphere, and having before my eyes the example 
 of a concealed, though most horrible corruption, in high quarters, 
 as well as among my equals, the more imperative was the duty for 
 me, as for you, to go out of those ways of perdition. 
 
 Do you know, my dear sir, to what I have been tempted when 
 writing this letter } The thought has come to my mind to publish, 
 not all (for it would be too terrible,) but a part of what I know of 
 the inside, and almost incredible corruption of Rome ! To give, 
 for instance, a part of the history of that Grand Vicar who was 
 guilty of an unmentionable crime, and was never interdicted ; of 
 that other dignitary whose conquests were so numerous in 
 Montreal that the ground became too hot for him, and who was 
 not interdicted but kindly invited to go to another place. The 
 history of that good bishop also who, for five years, kept a fine 
 young man in his house as his confidential friend, and who had to 
 send that faithful servant, with ;^soo, to the United States, when 
 a very interesting circumstance proved that the fine young man 
 was a fine young girl 1 ' Honi soit qui mal y pense.' I was also 
 tempted to give to the public some very interesting details from 
 the memoirs, not of poor Father Chiniquy (though he has some 
 memoirs also), but from the memoirs of one of the most respect- 
 able bishops of Rome, Bishop de Riccy, where it is often said and 
 proved ' that the nuns of Italy are the wives of priests.' Happy 
 celibataires indeed ! I had some very interesting things also which 
 you have known, no doubt, of those turee good priests in a 
 diocese not many miles from here, who made a very interesting 
 voyage with three young ladies, and were so kindly treated by the 
 Holy Church of Rome, that one of them is now hearing the con- 
 fessions of the good nuns of the City of Three Rivers, and the two 
 others are in a very exalted position in the Diocese of Montreal. 
 
 My intention, after having given yon the correct history of those 
 respectable and venerable priests of Rome, was to ask you, in a 
 
.14 
 
 friendly way, without bitterness, why the bishops should have 
 been so hard against me, when they were so kind to others ? 
 
 No living man knows better than I do the clergy. I have been 
 fifteen years travelling amongst them. I have seen the inside as 
 well as the outside of your walls. For many years I have been a 
 serious observer of men and things ; and every day, I have put 
 down in my book notes which would make many knees shake in 
 the midst of the priests of Rome. I do not say they are all wicked 
 and depraved. Thanks be to God I have found among them men 
 who would have been almost as pure as angels, if the confessional 
 had not been there as a snare to pollute their noble hearts. But 
 I have known enough to startle the world, if I had not more 
 charity for my old friends of Rome than many of them have shown 
 to me, since God in his infinite mercy has given me the light and 
 the truth as it is in Jesus. If you honor me with an answer, I 
 will be proud and happy to meet you as a gentleman on some of 
 those high grounds of historical or theological truths and errors 
 about which we differ. But give up that unmanly and unchristian 
 way (which is too much the use of Roman Catholics) of speaking 
 of the real or supposed personal sins of an opponent. We are all 
 more or less great sinners, and are far too apt to see the straw in 
 the eyes of our poor neighbor, while we do not see the beam 
 which is in our own. 
 
 Though you have been a little hard on your old countryman. 
 I feel grateful to you for having given me the opportunity of 
 explaining many things which I hope it will be good to my 
 friends to hear. ' u : ; -i ; , 
 
 Now, farewell — au revoir. Allow me to call myself your 
 fellow-sinner and your devoted brother in Christ. • ^ 
 
 "C. CHINIQUY. ■ 
 
 P.S. — In my next I will meet some of your other charges against 
 me, — C. C. 
 
15 
 
 SECOND LETTER OF DR. CHINIQUY 
 TO MR. TASSE. 
 
 To the Editor of the ' Minerve' 
 
 Many people ask me why I do not prosecute you for slander, 
 when I have such a good opportunity. I answer them that, 
 instead of damaging, you have rendered the greatest service to the 
 cause to which I have consecrated my life. , , . 
 
 From the very moment I understood Romanism as it is, I felt 
 that my duty was to warn the world against the dangers ahead 
 from it. Like the man who, some time ago, saw a railway train, 
 rushing at full speed towards a river whose bridge was just broken, 
 he took a red flag and cried to the engineer : • Stop ! stop ! There 
 is a broken bridge ahead ! ' 
 
 Too many Protestants have shut their ears to my voice. But, 
 thanks to the Mtnerve, they understand, to-day, that Romanism is 
 the broken bridge where the rights and liberties brought by 
 Christ from heaven, to save the world will perish. Yes, they 
 know that Rome, to-day, is just the same implacable enemy of the 
 rights of men, the same implacable enemy of liberty of conscience 
 as she was when she deluged Europe with the blood of millions 
 of Protestants. 
 
 'Let Chiniquy disappear from our sight!' — Mtnerve, Jan. ii. 
 
 A few days before our Saviour was put to death, he told his 
 disciples that they would be dealt with by the enemies of his 
 gospel, just as he was himself. 'The servant is not above his 
 master. If they have persecuted me they will also persecute you.' 
 (John XV.) 
 
 I knew and expected that, when I left the Pope to follow 
 Christ — and I have not been mistaken. 
 
 At the feet of Calvary, the priests of the Jews, asking his death, 
 had said : ' Away with this nnan ! * 
 
16 
 
 The priests of the Pope, through the Minerve of Jan. ii, are 
 crying, ' Let Chiniquy disappear from our sight ! ' 
 
 I consider it a great honor that the sentences are expressed 
 almost in the same words against our dear Saviour and against 
 me his unworthy servant. The prophecy is fulfilled against me 
 to-day, as it has been fulfilled thousands and thousands of times 
 against the followers of the Gospel who have preceded us. 
 
 'Away with these men! Let them depart,' said Pope Gregory 
 Xin. and Charles IX. against the disciples of the Gospel, and 
 75,000 of them were slaughtered in a few days ! 
 
 ' Away with them ! Let them disappear from our sight ! ' said 
 Louis XIV., to obey the Pope and his Jesuit confessor, Pere 
 Lachaise, and 200,000 Protestant French families were lost to our 
 fair France. More than one million of old men and women and 
 defenceless children perished when running away, during the dark 
 nights, towards the lands of exile ; more than two million of 
 Protestant French men had to choose between giving up their 
 gospel or spending the rest of their lives in the galleys or in the 
 prisons. 
 
 ' Away with them ! Let them disappear from our sight ! ' said 
 all the priests, the bishops, the Jesuits of France, and a multitude 
 of defenceless young women were torn from their houses and shut 
 up in the tower of Aigues-Mortes (which is still in existence) for 
 their whole life, when their husbands were sent to the galleys for 
 the awful crime of having been married by Protestant ministers ! 
 
 • Away with them I Let them disappear from our sight ' said 
 the Holy Catholic Apostolic Church of Rome, and bands of 
 dragoons were lodged in every house of the principal Protestants 
 of France. After having eaten and destroyed all that could be 
 eaten and destroyed in thousands and thousands of places, these 
 dragoons hung the men and women by the hair of the head, or 
 by the feet, to the roofs of the chambers (or to the racks of the 
 chimneys, and, there, smoked them with wisps of wet hay till 
 they were unable to bear it: and when they took them down, if they 
 refused again to submit to the Church, they hung them up again. 
 They threw them on great fires kindled on purpose and pulled 
 
17 
 
 them not out till they were half roasted. They tied rope under 
 their arms and plunged them again and again in wells from whence 
 they would not take them up till they had promised submission to 
 the Church. They stripped them naked and, after offering them 
 thousands of unmentionable indignities, they stuck them with pins 
 from head to feet. Theylanced them with pen-knives, and with red 
 hot pincers took them by the nose until they promised to turn 
 Romanists. They kept them from sleeping eight or ten days 
 together by relieving one another night and day to keep them 
 still waking. They plucked off the nails from the hands and 
 toes, etc. 
 
 * Away with them ! Let them disappear from our sight,' said the 
 cruel Church, and the holy inquisitors reddened Italy, Spain, 
 France, England, Netherlands, Hungary — the whole of Europe 
 with the blood of ten millions of martyrs. 
 
 My task has been made easy now by the Minerve. In my efforts 
 to open the eyes of the sleeping Protestants of America and 
 Europe to the concentrated hatred of Rome against all the great 
 principles of liberty of conscience which are written with the 
 blood of Christ in the Gospel, I will have only to say : — Read the 
 Minerve of Jan. 1 1, 1894. You will see the sentence of Rome pro- 
 nounced against Chiniquy and Papineau : ' Let them disappear 
 from our sight.' Compare these words of the present bishops and 
 priests of the Pope speaking to you through their organ, with those 
 of the deicide priests of the Jews of Jerusalem, ' Away with that 
 man I ' and tell me if it is not absolutely the same language, the 
 same want of honesty, the same diabolical hatred of all the great 
 principles of justice and equity without which the nations are 
 nothing but brutish slaves and wild savages.' 
 
 You call me a sacrilegious man because I have smashed the 
 wafer. But, please, read the second commandment of God, and 
 you will see that it is forever forbidden to take a created thing, 
 put an image upon it and change it into God. 
 
 Our Saviour, Jesus Christ, even, had not that power. It was 
 forbidden by His Father. 
 
18 
 
 When he said : ' This is my body — this is my blood,* he added, 
 • Do this in remetribrance of me.' It is only a remembrance of 
 his body, his blood. 
 
 Do you not remember that Moses took the gold calf, which 
 Aaron had turned into a god, and pulverized it and forced the Jews 
 to drink that powder mixed with their drinking water that they 
 might understand the folly of believing that a man could make a 
 god with his own hands ? Do you blame Moses for having given 
 that lesson to his people ? No. Then, you cannot blame me 
 when I did the same thing to show to our dear countrymen that 
 the priests and the bishops and the popes of Rome cannot make 
 their god with a little calce. 
 
 Do you really believe that your famous Guyhot had the power 
 lo force Jesus Christ as God and man to come down every morning 
 into his dirty hands to be dragged right and left in his vest or 
 pants pockets at his will ? No, sir, you do not believe that. Why, 
 then, do you help your priests to deceive our people on this 
 matter } , 
 
 By turning a wafer into God every morning, your Church has 
 brought back the old idolatry of paganism. 
 
 The Iroquois and other savages whom Jacques Cartier found in 
 the forests of Canada were worshipping gods made with stones, 
 wood and bones of fishes. This was surely idolatry. Your priests 
 make their god with a wafer and a glass of wine ! Is it not the 
 same idolatry ? 
 
 Now, let us come to my marriage with Miss Euphemie Allard ! 
 But, before saying a word on that interesting affair, let me tell you 
 that Mrs. Chiniquy, with my dear daughters, just as myself, have 
 been much amused with your impotent rage. 
 
 It is evident that had you the power, in a few days there would 
 be an auto- da- f6, in the public square of Montreal, where poor 
 old ex-priest Chiniquy, with his sacrilegious wife and miserable 
 daughters, would be tied to a post and burned into ashes, as your 
 Church of Rome has done thousands and thousands of times in 
 the days of her glory. 
 
19 
 
 What a delightful hour for your piety, when hearing the crack- 
 ling of my bones on your rack, before my being burnt into ashes — 
 and what a glorious day for your priests, when they would have 
 heard the agonizing cries of my wife and daughters, from the 
 midst of the flames I 
 
 But there is a glorious flag floating to the breeze over our dear 
 Canada, and on that flag we read, written with the blood of 
 millions of heroes, ' Liberty of conscience ! ' 
 
 Under its protection we do not fear you. We know you are a 
 coward, brave only when you insult a lady and a man eighty-four 
 years old. Your rage is powerless, for you know there are millions 
 of hearts beating in unison with ours, all over Canada. 
 
 Yes, you are right when you say I had made a vow never to 
 marry. But, thanks be to God, I have thrown that impious vow 
 overboard, with all the rags put on my shoulders by your apostate 
 church. 
 
 Do you really think that Herod did well to have the head of 
 John the Baptist cut off" at the demand of the daughter of the 
 infamous Herodias, because he had made a public promise to 
 give her anything she would ask him .'' No I You know very well 
 that the promise, or the oath of Herod was a nullity — it was a rash, 
 a criminal oath — and its fulfilment was still more criminal. 
 
 Now, sir — if there is a rash, foolish, and criminal vow, it is the 
 one taken by your clergy, never to marry. 
 
 That vow is in direct opposition to the first command cf God to 
 Adam and Eve, and to their children : 
 
 ' It is not good for man to be alone ' — Genesis, ii. God knew 
 well what he was saying when he made that law. He has never 
 withdrawn it. '•:'. 
 
 The vow of celibacy is of pagan origin. It is an anti-social, an 
 immoral, an anti-Christian vow. There is not a single word in 
 the holy scripture to support it. 
 
 The priests of Bacchus were tied by that vow, and the priests 
 of Buddah are obliged to take it. I know that. But Paul says 
 positively, * To avoid sin, let every man have his wife, let every 
 voman have her husband.' I. Cor. chap. ix. 
 
20 
 
 Every man is free to remain unmarried as long as he wishes. 
 But no man has a right to make a vow never to marry. The 
 moral as well as the physical powers of a man are not the same 
 every day. A man can well know what heavy burden he can 
 carry on his shoulders to-day, but he does not know if he will be 
 strong enough to carry the same burden all his life. 
 
 The imprudent and blind young man who makes that vow when 
 21 or 22 years old, as a general thing, knows nothing about the 
 nature, the difficulties, the obligations of his engagement, and this 
 ignorance makes his vow a nullity — by all the laws of God and 
 man. 
 
 Rome acts evidently the part of the devil when she encourages 
 a young man to take that vow, by offering him, as his reward, the 
 glories, honors, and privileges of her priesthood. 
 
 Read the lives of your Popes written, not by Protestants, but by 
 some of your most noted Roman Catholic historians, as Cardinal 
 Fleury, and the Cardinal Baronius, and you will learn that the 
 vows of celibacy of your Priests, Nuns, Bishops and Popes are 
 nothing else but a sacrilegious yar^^. It is from the pages of those 
 Roman Catholic historians and cardinals that we learn that 
 Marozia, lived in public concubinage with the Pope Sergius, III., 
 and that she got him raised to the so-called chair of St. Peter by 
 her influence. She had also from that Pope, a son of whom she 
 made a Pope after the death of his Most Holy (?) Father. 
 
 The same Marozia and her sister, Theodora, put on the 
 Pontifical throne another one of their loverS, under the name of 
 the Most Holy Pope (?) Anastasius III., who was soon followed 
 by John X. 
 
 It is a public fact, that that last Pope, having lost the con- 
 fidence of his concubine Marozia, was strangled by her order. 
 
 It is also a fact of public notoriety that his holy (?) follower, 
 Ler "'^I., was assassinated by her, for having given his heart to 
 another woman, still more degraded. 
 
 The son whom Marozia had by Pope Sergius, was elected Pope, 
 by the influence of his mother, under the name of John XL, 
 when not sixteen years old 1 But, having quarelled with the 
 
21 
 
 enemies of his mother, he was beaten and sent to gaol, where he 
 was poisoned and died. 
 
 In the year 936, the grandson of the prostitute Marozia, after 
 several bloody encounters with his opponents, succeeded in taking 
 possession of the Pontifical throne under the name of John XII. 
 But his vices and scandals became io intolerable, that the learned 
 and celebrated Roman Catholic Bishop of Cremorne,Luitfrand, says 
 of him : *' No honest lady dared to show herself in public : for the 
 *' Pope John had no respect either for single girls, married 
 " women, or widows ; they were sure to be defiled by him, even on 
 " the tombs of the holy apostles, Peter and Paul." 
 
 That same John XII. was instantly killed by a gentleman, who 
 found him committing the act of adultery with his wife. 
 
 It is a well-known fact that Pope Boniface VIJ had caused 
 John XIV. to be imprisoned and poisoned, and when he, soon 
 after, died, the people of Rome dragged his naked body through 
 the streets, and left it, when horribly mutilated, to be eaten by 
 dogs, if a few priests had not secretly buried him. 
 
 Study the history of the celebrated Council of Constance, called 
 to put an end to the great schism, during which three popes, and, 
 sometimes four, were, every morning, after their masses, cursing 
 each other and calling their opponents anti-christs, demons, 
 adulterers, sodomists, murderers, enemies of God and man. 
 
 As every one of them was infallible, according to the last 
 Council of the Vatican, we are bound to believe that they were 
 correct in the compliments they paid to each other. 
 
 One of those holy (.?) popes, John XXIII., having appeared 
 before the council to give an account of his conduct, he was 
 proved by thirty-seven witnesses, the greater part of whom were 
 Bishops or Priests, of having been guilty of fornication, adultery, 
 incest, sodomy, simony, theft and murder. It was proved also by 
 a legion of witnesses, that he was guilty of having seduced and 
 violated 300 nuns. His own secretary, Wiem, said that he had, 
 at Boulogne, kept a harem, where not less than 200 girls had been 
 the victims of his lubricity. 
 
22 
 
 And what could not we say of Alexander VI. ? That monster 
 who lived in public incest with his two sisters and his own 
 daughter— Lucretia, from whom he got a child. . 
 
 Pope Pius IX. was the public father of three bastards, one 
 of them from a nun. 
 
 When a priest, I had read that, but I could not believe it. But 
 when Revs. Brassard and Desaulnier arrived from Rome, they 
 told me that this was not only true, but they assured me they 
 had seen two of them. The Pope, Gregory XVI., was living in 
 almost a public concubinage with the wife of his own barber. 
 
 But, I must stop,— I have said enough to show to the editor 
 and the readers of the Mmerve, that the Popes themselves are the 
 living and infallible proof that the celibacy of Rome is a fraud 
 a diabolical institution, a snare, invented in hell, and made use of 
 in their church to better keep the priests as vile slaves at their 
 feet. These facts, which you cannot deny, prove also that your 
 popes are a fraud-your celibacy a fraud— and your church a 
 greater fraud, if possible. 
 
 Mr. Tass^ assures us that the marriage of a Roman Catholic 
 priest is an act of comedy. If that sentence is correct, must he not 
 acknowledge that his Church is ruled by comedians of the vilest 
 stamp ? 
 
 If he feels happy and at home in the company and under the 
 guidance of those comedians, he is welcome to continue to enjoy 
 their performances. For myself, I have seen enough of those 
 abominations ; I have left those comedians, in order to follow the 
 Apostles of Christ who were all married according to the testimony 
 of Paul, who says : 
 
 ' Have we not the power to eat and to drink ? Have we not the 
 power to lead about a sister, a wife as well as the other apostles, 
 and as the brethren of Christ and Cephas ? '—I, Cor. ix., 4., 5. 
 
 So long as I live the life of these apostles and the very brothers 
 of Christ, in the holy bonds of a Christian marriage, I cannot be 
 more troubled by the insults (rom the Mtnerve and the fulminations 
 of the apostate church of Rome than the traveller is by the cries of 
 the harmless frogs he meets along the road. 
 
23 
 
 You say that I have insulted the blessed Virgin Mary. This is 
 another unmitigated falsehood invented by the priests. I believe 
 with all the disciples of the Gospel that Mary, the Holy Mother 
 of Christ, according to the flesh (Rom. i., 3) is the most blessed 
 woman who has ever existed. I believe she has the highest 
 throne — and the richest crown in heaven. But I believe that 
 there is only one name which we must invoke to be saved — and that 
 name is not Mary, but Jesus (Acts iv., 12.) I believe it is a most 
 blasphemous name to give her when she is called * the Mother of 
 God.' 
 
 Our great God can have no mother. He had created Mary. 
 He has no beginning, and he will have no end. To call Mary the 
 Mother of God is to put her above God. It is a crime, a religious 
 lie. I say that the Church of Rome with all her poor slaves are 
 blaspheming and absolately giving up the gospel of Christ when 
 they call the Virgin Mary ' the only hope of sinners.' For ' Christ 
 is the only hope of sinners.' I say, with Christ himself, that he 
 is the door, the only door of heaven, and that the Church of Rome 
 with all her followers, without excepting Mr. Tass6, blaspheme 
 and deceive themselves when they say in their daily prayers ' Mary 
 is the door of heaven.' 
 
 The Minerve turns me Into ridicule for calling myself a martyr. 
 This is another unmitigated falsehood invented by the priests of 
 Rome. I never called myself a martyr. But I have said, that the 
 stones which poor, blind Roman Catholics have many times 
 thrown at me to obey their priests, were as hard as those which 
 struck Paul. I have not been struck less than twenty times with 
 stones. In Antigonish, July 10, 1873, I was struck with many 
 stones, and lost so much blood that I could hardly stand on my 
 feet, when Mr. Cameron, a merchant of the place, opened me the 
 door of his house, at the risk of his own life. One of the stones 
 which missed me struck the head of the Rev. Mr. Goodfellow, 
 Presbyterian minister of Antigonish. He fell on the ground, his 
 face in the mud. Though I was myself bleeding profusely I helped 
 him to rise up, to stand on his feet and throw himself, with me, 
 into the house of that good Samaritan. But we were besieged in 
 
24 
 
 that house from ten o'clock jn the evening till three in the morn- 
 ing by several hundred Roman Catholics, who many times 
 threatened Mr. Cameron to set fire to his house if he would not 
 give me up into their hands that thf^y might hang me at his door. 
 After breaking all the windows, several times they put ladders to 
 the walls in order to reach the upper room, where they knew the 
 doctor was giving me and the Rev. Mr. Goodfellow his care. 
 Once they came very nfar to put a rope around my neck and drag 
 me to the window. They were prevented by two young men, who 
 fought bravely to save my life. There are many witnesses still 
 living to those facts. The Presbytery of Halifax, against my 
 advice, has prosecuted some of those would-be murderers during 
 nearly a whole year. But the guilty ones have escaped the 
 chastisement of the law, through their false oaths. However, they 
 have not escaped that of God, for several of them died the most 
 deplorable deaths before the end of the year. There were five 
 priests in the midst of those poor blind people, encouraging them 
 to kill me. The Rev. Mr. Goodfellow never recovered completely 
 from the wounds he received that night. After a few years of 
 intense sufferings, he died, a real martyr. 
 
 At the end of the month of August, 1869, I was attacked by a 
 furious mob of Romanists in the streets of CharlOc^etown. It was 
 in the night, when, accompanied only by a few friends, I was 
 going to take the steamer for Pictou. Mrs. Chiniquy and one of 
 my daughters were struck as well as myself. They fainted — and in 
 the midst of a true rain of stones, when the air was filled with the 
 most horrible cries : • Kill them ! kill them 1 . . .' Bruised 
 and wounded, we took refuge in a hotel which was on our way. 
 But we were again besieged there, till the police came to our 
 rescue. 
 
 On the 6th of August, 1886, after giving an address in the 
 thriving town of Montague, Prince Edward Island, when sleeping 
 in the house of one of the elders, Mr. MacLeod, the Roman 
 Catholics attacked the house with stones which would have surely 
 killed me, if, by the providence of God, the would-be-murderera 
 had not made a mistake — by going to the room next to mine. 
 
25 
 
 As there was nobody in the bed of that room where the stones 
 were thrown, nobody was killed. The only damage was that the 
 splendid window glasses were smashed. But, at noon, when I 
 was almost alone on the deck of the steamer, some Roman 
 Catholics came to attack me. One of them gave me such a blow 
 that ore of my big teeth was broken. I fell unconscious on the 
 deck, where I lost a great deal of blood. Many people wanted 
 me to prosecute the man, whose name was W. Esmonds, who had 
 so cruelly wounded me. I refused to do it, remembering that my 
 Saviour had not prosecuted those who had struck him, but he 
 had forgiven them. 
 
 It would be too long to give the history of the other times I 
 have been stoned and bruised in Quebec, Montreal, Halifax, 
 Ottawa, etc. But this is enough to show that the Rome of to-day 
 is the same Rome which has shed the blood of millions of 
 Protestants in England, France, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, 
 Hungary, etc. 
 
 Not able, as they wish, to take away the life of Mr. Papineau 
 and mine, the priests of Rome, through their organ the Minerve, 
 try to take away our honor. And to show their impotent rage they 
 pronounce a sentence of death and proscription against us both. 
 
 'LetChiniquy disappear! {A/inerve, Jan. ii.) As regards the 
 Papineaus, there will be no longer any terms severe enough to 
 connect with their names.' {^Minerve^ Jan. 1 1.) 
 
 Yes ! the names of thieves, pirates, murderers are not strong 
 enough to express the crime Mr. Papineau has committed when he 
 left the Church of the Pope in order to connect himself with the 
 Church of Christ ; and, of course, the punishments of penitentiary 
 for life, or death, deserved for those thieves, pirates and murderers 
 are nothing compared with the chastisements which ought to be 
 inflicted on those two great criminals Chiniquy and Papineau. 
 
 Let the ministers of the gospel as well as the Protestants of 
 Canada and the United States ; let the Protestants of the whole 
 world write those sentences on the walls of their houses. 
 
 For it is as well against them all as against Papineau and 
 Chiniquy, that they were proclaimed by the Minerve. 
 
26 
 
 Romanism can be, and I hope it will be destroyed by the 
 infinite power of God. But it cannot be reformed or changed. 
 By proclaiming herself infallible, the Church of Rome says : She 
 is the same to-day as she was yesterday, and as she will be till the 
 great day when the angels of God will sing on her smoking ruins. 
 " Babylon is fallen ! Babylon is fallen ! " 
 
 I know that, here and there, some of her Priests and Bishops, 
 and even some of her Popes utter eloquent words about their love 
 for fair play — equality — liberty ! 
 
 But these words are only to throw dust into the eyes of the 
 Protestants and put them out of their guard. 
 
 Those protestations, in favor of liberty, equality, are just as the 
 perfidious friendly demonstrations of Judas, when he kissed Christ 
 and saluted him as his Master. This was done only to better 
 betray Him into the hands of the executioners. ■- . 
 
 That the readers may understand that I do not exaggerate, allow 
 me to cite some of the sentences lately proclaimed by the highest 
 authorities of the Church of Rome : — 
 
 "The Church is of necessity intolerant. Heresy she endures 
 " when and where she must, but she hates it, and directs all her 
 " energies to destroy it." 
 
 " If Catholics ever gain a sufficient numerical majority in the 
 " Country, religious freedom is at end ! So our enemies say, so we 
 •' believe." — The Shepherd of the Valley — Official Journal of the 
 Bishop of St. Louis. 
 
 " No man has the right to chose his religion. Catholicism is 
 " the most intolerant of creeds. It is intolerance itself. We 
 •' might as rationally maintain that two and two does not make 
 " four, as the theory of religious liberty. Its impiety is only 
 " equalled by its absurdity. — New York Freeman, (Official Journal 
 of Bishop Hughes, 1852,) 
 
 " The Church is instituted, as every catholic, who understands 
 " his religion, believes, to guard and defend the right of God 
 " against any and every enemy, at all times, and in all places. 
 " She, therefore, does not, and cannot accept, or in any degree favor 
 " liberty, in Protestant sense of liberty. — Catholic World, k^xW, 1870. 
 
27 
 
 '•Protestantism has no right, and it cannot have any right, 
 " where catholicity has triumphed. Therefore, we lose the breath 
 " we expend in reclaiming against bigotry and intolerance and in 
 " favor of liberty, or the right of man to be of any religion as best 
 " pleases him." — Catholic Review^ June, 1865. 
 
 " Religious liberty is merely endured until the opposite can be 
 •' carried into effect without peril to the Catholic Church." — 
 Rt. Revd. O'Connor, Bishop of Pittsburgh. 
 
 "The Catholic Church numbers one-third the American popula- 
 *' tion, and if its membership shall increase, for the next thirty 
 "years, as it has the thirty years past, in 1900 Rome will have a 
 " majority and be bound to take this country and keep it. There 
 " is, ere long, to be a state religion in this country, and that state 
 " religion is to be the Roman Catholic." 
 
 I St. " The Roman Catholic is to wield his vote for the purpose 
 " of securing Catholic ascendency in this Country." 
 
 2nd. " All legislation must be governed by the will of God, 
 "unerringly indicated by the Pope." 
 
 3rd. " Education must be controlled byCatholic authorities ; and, 
 "under education, the opinions of these individuals, and the 
 " utterances of the press are included, and many opinions are to 
 " be forbidden by the secular arm, under the authority of the 
 " Church, even to war and bloodshed." — Father Hecker, Catholic 
 World, July, 1870. 
 
 " It was proposed that all religious persuasions should be free 
 " and their worship publicly exercised. But we have rejected this 
 " article as contrary to the canons and councils of the Catholic 
 " Church."— Pope Pie VII. Enclyclical, i8o8. 
 
 " Though heretics must not be tolerated because they deserve 
 " it, we must bear with them till, by a second admonition, they 
 " may be brought back to the faith of the Church. But those, 
 " who after a second admonition, remain obstinate in their errors, 
 " must not only be excommunicated, but they must be delivered 
 " to the secular power to be exterminated." — " St. Thomas Aquina 
 Summa Thiologia," vol. 4, page 90. 
 
28 
 
 Romanism is a perpetual conspiracy against all the principles of 
 liberty, equality, and fair play which Christ has brought from 
 heaven to rule the nations and save the world. 
 
 Proscription, extermination, death, are the only three words 
 which express what the Church of Rome understand by liberty of 
 conscience. 
 
 And this is indelibly written in the pages of history with the 
 blood of ten millions of martyrs. 
 
 C.;CHINIQUY. 
 
29 
 
 DR. CHINIQUY 
 
 TO 
 
 MGR. LYNCH, ARCHBISHOP OF TORONTO. 
 
 St. Anne, Kankakee County, Illinois, 
 
 June 22, 1884. 
 To His Lordship Lynch, Archbishop of Toronto : 
 
 My Lord : — The 12th inst., I promised to answer your letter 
 of the nth, addressed to the Rev. Moderator and to the Ministers 
 of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church. I come, 
 to-day, to fulfil my promise, with the help of God. 
 
 I had accused your church to believe and say that she has 
 received from God the power to kill us poor heretics. I said 
 that if you do not slaughter us, to-day, in Canada and elsewhere, 
 it is only because you are not strong enough to do it. I said, 
 also, that where the Roman Catholics feel strong enough, they 
 do not think it a sin to beat, stone or kill us when they can do it 
 without any danger to their own precious lives. 
 
 I said that your best theologians teach that heretics do not 
 deserve to live, and that your great Saint Thomas Aquinas, whom 
 your church has lately put among " the Holy Fathers," positively 
 declares that one of the most sacred rights and duties of your 
 church is to deliver the heretics into the hands of the secular 
 powers to be exterminated. 
 
 As I expected, you have bravely denied what I said on that 
 subject. In your reply, you complain that the quotations I made 
 of St. Thomas, on that subject, are not correct. 
 
 Here is my answer to your denegations. I have the works of 
 St. Thomas just now on my table. I will copy word for word 
 what he says in Latin, and translate it into plain English, 
 respectfully asking your lordship to tell the Canadian people 
 whether or not my translation is correct : 
 
30 
 
 " Quanquam haeritici tolerandi non sunt ipso illorum demerito, 
 usque tamen ad secundam correptioneni expectandi sunt ut ad 
 sanam redeant Ecclesiasioe fidem. Qui vero,. post secundam 
 correptionem, in suo errore obs^anti permanent, non modo ex- 
 communicationis sententia, sed etiam scecularibus principibus 
 extermandi tradendi sunt." 
 
 TRANSLATION. 
 
 " Though heretics must not be tolerated because they deserved 
 it, we must bear with them till, by a second admonition, they 
 may be brought back to the faith of the Church. But those who, 
 after a second admonition, remain obstinate in their errors, 
 must not only be excommunicated, but they must be delivered to 
 the secular power to be exterminated." (St. Thomas Aquinas, 
 4th v., page 90.) 
 
 At the page 91, he says : *' Though heretics who repent must 
 always be accepted to penance as often as they have fallen, they 
 must not, in consequence of that, always be permitted to enjoy 
 the benefits of this life. . . . When they fall again, they are 
 admitted to repent. . . . 
 
 But the sentence of death must not be removed." (St. 
 Thomas, v. 4, page 91.) 
 
 Your lordship has the just reputation to be an expert man. 
 You then know that, in such solemn questions as are discussed 
 just now, the testimony of only one witness does not suffice — 
 I will then give you another testimony to prove the unpalatable 
 truths which I proclaimed in the presence of the General 
 Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of Canada, viz : That we 
 poor heretics are condemned to death, and are declared unworthy 
 to live side by side with our Roman Catholic neighbors. That 
 testimony will, no doubt, be accepted as good and sufficient by 
 the people of Canada, if not by you, since it is the testimony of 
 your own infallible church, speaking through the Council of the 
 Lateran, held in 12 15 : 
 
 " We excommunicate and anathematize every heresy that 
 exalts itself against the holy orthodox and Catholic faith, con- 
 demning all heretics, by whatever name they may be known — 
 for though their faces differ, they are tied together by their tails. 
 Such as are condemned are to be delivered over to the existing 
 
31 
 
 secular powers, to receive due punishment. If laymen, their goods 
 must be confiscated. If priests, they shall be degraded from 
 their respective orders and their property applied to the use of 
 the church in which they officiated. Secular powers of all ranks 
 and degrees are to be warned, induced, and if necessary, com- 
 pelled by ecclesiastical censures, to swear that they will exert 
 themselves to the utmost in the defense of the faith, and extirpate 
 all heretics denounced by the church who shall be found in their 
 territories. And whenever any person shall assume government, 
 whether it be spiritual or temporal, he shall be bound to abide by 
 this decree. 
 
 " If any temporal lord, after having been admonished and 
 required by the church, shall neglect to clear his territory of 
 heretical depravity, the Metropolitan and Bishop of the province 
 shall unite in excommunicating him. Should he remain con- 
 tumacious a whole year, the fact shall be signified to the Supreme 
 Pontiff, who shall declare his vassals released from their allegiance 
 from that time, and will bestow his territory on Catholics, to be 
 occupied by them, on the condition of exterminating the heretics 
 and preserving the said territory in the faith. 
 
 " Catholics who shall assume the cross for the extermination of 
 heretics, shall enjoy the same indulgences and be protected by 
 the same privileges as are granted by those who go to the help of 
 the Holy Land. We decree further, that all who may have 
 dealings with heretics, and especially such as receive, defend and 
 encourage them, shall be excommunicated. He shall not be 
 eligible to any public office. He shall not be admitted as a wit- 
 ness. He shall neither have power to bequeath his property by 
 will, nor to succeed to any inheritance. He shall not bring any 
 action against any person, but any one can bring action against 
 him. Should he be a judge, his decision shall have no force, nor 
 shall any cause be brought before him. Should he be an advocate, 
 he shall not be allowed to plead. Should he be a lawyer, no 
 instrument made by him shall be held valid, but shall be con- 
 demned with their author." 
 
 I could give you thousands of other infallible documents to 
 show the exactness of what I said of the savage, anti-social, anti- 
 Christian, and bloody laws of your Church, in all ages, against 
 the heretics, but the short limits of a letter make it impossible. 
 
32 
 
 Those proofs are fully given in my book, " Fifty Years in the 
 Church of Rome," which is now published. 
 
 I suppose you will answer me, " Have not heretics also passed 
 such bloody laws !" Yes, they have passed such cruel laws; but 
 they have borrowed them from you. 
 
 When those nations came out from the dark dungeons of 
 Popery, they could not see the light, at first, in its fulness and in 
 all its beauty. It took some time before they could cure them- 
 selves from the putrid leprosy which centuries of life inside the 
 walls of the modern Babylon had engendered everywhere. But 
 you know as well as I do that these remnants of Popery have 
 been repudiated more than a century ago by all the Christian 
 churches. Every year since it has been my privilege to be a 
 Presbyterian, I have heard a constant and unanimous protest 
 against those laws of blood and persecutions. They are kept in 
 our records only as a memorandum of the bottomless abyss into 
 which the people were living when submitted to the Pope. But 
 you know well, my lord, that all those laws of blood and death 
 have been sanctioned in your last Council of the Vatican in your 
 Church. It was declared, then, that you are forever damned if 
 you have any doubt about the rights and the duty of your Church 
 to punish the heretics by bodily punishment. 
 
 But, my lord, let us forget, for a moment, the numberless and 
 undeniable proofs which I might bring to the remembrance of 
 your lordship, to make you blush for having denied what I had 
 said about the unmanly, un-Christian principles which regulate 
 the Roman Catholic Church toward the Protestants, when you 
 have your opportunity. The providence of God has just put me 
 in possession of a fact too public to be ignored or denied even 
 by you. 
 
 You know how the Roman Catholics of Quebec have given 
 the lie, with a vengeance, to your denials. You know how more 
 than 2,000 good Roman Catholics came with sticks and stones to 
 kill me, the 17th of this month, because I had preached in a 
 Presbyterian Church on the text, "What must I do to have 
 eternal life ?" More than one hundred stones struck me, and if I 
 had not providentially had two heavy cloth overcoats, one to pro- 
 tect my shoulders and the other put around the head to weaken 
 the force and the weight of those stones, I would surely have 
 
33 
 
 been killed on the r.pot. But though I was protected by those 
 overcoats, my head and shoulders are still as a jelly and cause 
 me great suffering. A kind friend, Mr. Zotique Lefebvre, B.C.L., 
 who heroically put himself between my would-be murderers and 
 me, to protect my life at the risk of his own, came out from the 
 broken carriage with six bleeding wounds on his face. 
 
 The city of Quebec is known to be the most Roman Catholic 
 city in America, and perhaps in the whole world, without except- 
 ing Rome itself. Its population has the well earned reputation 
 to be moral, peaceful, respectable and religious, as they under- 
 stand those words among the Roman Catholics. The people 
 who stoned me were not a gathering of a low-bred mob; it was 
 composed of well-dressed men, many with gold Spectacles; it was 
 not composed of drunkards ; there was not a single drunken 
 man seen by me there ; they were not, of course, what is called 
 "liberal Catholics," for those "liberal Catholics," though born 
 in the Church of Rome, have a supreme contempt for the 
 dogmas, practices, and teachings of the priests. Those " liberal 
 Catholics " who, thanks be to God, are fast increasing, are only 
 nominally Catholics — they remain there because their fathers and 
 mothers were so ; because, also, they want to attract the people 
 to their stores, sell their pilb, or desire to be elected to such and 
 such offices by the influence of the priests. They laugh at your 
 mitre, for they know it is nothing but the old bonnets of the 
 priests of Bacchus, representing the head of a fish. Those 
 liberal Catholics are disgusted with the bloody laws and practices 
 of the Church of Rome ; they would not, for anything, molest, 
 insult, or maltreat a heretic. Those liberal Catholics are in 
 favor of liberty and conscience. But the clergy hate and fear 
 them. Had this class of liberal Catholics been numerous in 
 Quebec, I would not have have had any trouble. But Quebec 
 is, with very few exceptions, composed of true, real, sincere, 
 devoted Catholics. They believe sincerely, with you. grand St. 
 Thomas, and with your Roman Catholic Church, that heretics 
 like Chiniquy have no right to live ; that it is a good work to kill 
 them. 
 
 This riot of Quebec, seen with the light of the teachings of 
 St. Thomas, the Councils of Lateran, Constance and the Vatican, 
 show that your letter to the General Assembly of our Presby- 
 
34 
 
 terian Church is one of the greatest blunders that your lordship 
 has ever made. The dust you wanted to throw into the eyes of 
 my Presbyterian brethren is all on your face to-day, as dark, 
 hideous spots. Your friends sincerely feel for your misfoiaine. 
 
 For, my lord, there is a voice in the stones thrown at me; 
 there is a voice in the bruises which cover my shoulders and my 
 i-ead, there is a voice also in the blood shed by the friend who 
 saved my life at the peril of his own, which speaks louder and 
 oiore eloquently than you, to say that you have failed in your 
 attempt to defend your church against what I said at the General 
 Assembly. 
 
 That you may better understand this, and that you may be a 
 little more modest hereafter on that subject, I send you by the 
 hands of the Venerable Secretary of our General Assembly, the 
 Reverend Mr. Reid, D.D., one of the hundreds of stones which 
 wounded me, with a part of the handkerchief reddened with the 
 blood of Mr. Zotique Lefebvre, B.C. L., who received six wounds 
 on his face, when heroically standing by me in that hour of 
 supreme danger for my life. 
 
 Please look at that stone, look at that blood also ; they will 
 teach you a lesson which it is quite time that you and all the 
 priests to learn. They will tell you that your Church of Rome 
 is the same to-day as she was when she slaughtered the hundreds 
 of thousands of Piedmontese with the sword of France ; that 
 stone and that blood will tell you what every one knows, among 
 the disciples of the Gospel, that your church of to-day is the very 
 same church which planned the massacres of St. Bartholomew, 
 the gunpowder plot, the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and 
 the death of more than half a million of French Huguenots on 
 their way to exile. That stone and that blood will tell you that 
 your church to-day is the same as she was when she lighted the 
 five thousand auto-da-f^s, where ten millions of martyrs lost their 
 lives in all the great cities of Europe, before God raised the 
 German giant who gave it the deadly blow you know. 
 
 Please, my lord, put that stone and that blood in one of the 
 most conspicuous places of your palace, that you may look at 
 them when the devil will come again to throw you into some 
 ignominious and inextricable slough, as the one into which you 
 fell in your courageous but vain attempt to refute me. 
 
35 
 
 When that father of lies will try again to make use of your pen 
 to deny the bloody laws and bloody deeds of your church, you 
 will tell him, ** Get thee hence, Satan, for it is written in our 
 most approved book of theology, St. Thomas, that ' we must 
 exterminate all the heretics.' Get thee hence, Satan ; for you 
 will not any more induce me to call old Chiniquy insane, for 
 saying that our church is as bloody as ever; for it is written in 
 the Council of Lateran that those who arm themselves for the 
 extermination of heretics are as blessed by God as those who 
 went formally to the rescue of the Holy Land." 
 
 Yes, my lord ; keep that stone and that blood before your eyes, 
 and when I or somebody else will again warn the disciples of the 
 Gospel against the dangers ahead from Rome, you will not com- 
 promise yourself any more by writing things which are not only 
 against all the records of history, but against the public teachings 
 of all your popes, your councils and your theologians. 
 
 With that blood before your eyes, the devil will lose much of 
 his power over you and be forced to give up his old tactics of 
 making you deny, deny, deny, the most evident facts and the 
 most unimpeachable records of history. 
 
 My dear Bishop Lynch, ])efore taking leave of you this day, 
 allow me to ask a favor from your lordship. If you grant it, I 
 will retract what I have said of the anti-social and anti-Christian 
 laws and practices of your church. 
 
 Let your lordship say anathemas to the Councils of Constance 
 and Lateran for the decrees of banishment and death they 
 passed over all those who differed in religion from them. Tell 
 us, in plain and good English, that you condemn those Councils 
 for the burning of John Huss, and the blood they caused to be 
 shed all over Europe, under the pretext of religion; tell us that 
 those Councils were the greatest enemies of the Gospel, that 
 instead of being guided by the spirit of God, they were guided 
 by the spirit of Satan, when they caused so many millions of 
 men, women and children to be slaughtered for refusing to obey 
 the Pope. 
 
 And when you will have condemned the action of the depraved 
 men who composed those Councils, you will honestly and bravely 
 declare that your Thomas Aquinas, instead of being a saint, was 
 
36 
 
 a bloody monster, when he wrote that the Church of Christ is to 
 deliver the heretics to the secular power to be exterminated ! 
 
 Tell us also, that the present Pope Leo XIII. ought to be the 
 object of the execration of the whole world for having lately 
 ordered that that bloody monster's theology should be taught in 
 all the colleges, academies, seminaries and universities of the 
 Church of Rome, all over the world, as the best, truest and most 
 reliable exponent of the doctrines of the Church of Christ. 
 
 If you grant me the favor I ask, we will believe that your 
 lordship was honest when you denied what I said of the savage, 
 cruel and diabolical laws and practices of the Church of Rome 
 toward the heretics. But if you refuse to grant my request, we 
 will believe that you are still, in heart and will, submitted to those 
 laws and practices, and that you tried to deceive us, after having 
 deceived yourself, when you presented your bloodthirsty church 
 with the rose colors we find in your letter to our General 
 Assembly. 
 
 In my next, I will give you the proofs of what I said about the 
 idolatry of your church, and, with the help of God, I will refute 
 what you said to defend her practices. 
 
 Truly yours, 
 
 C. CHINIQUY.