Popery! As It Was and as It Is. Also, Auricular Confession; And Popish Nunneries. William Hogan
them. He must know, from experience, that they will stop at no falsehood where the good of the church is concerned; he must know that they will scruple at no forgery when they desire to establish any point of doctrine, fundamental or not fundamental, which is taught by their church; he must be aware that it is a standing rule with Popish priests, in all their controversies with Protestants, to admit nothing and deny every thing, and that, if still driven into difficulty, they will still have recourse to the archives of the church, where they keep piles of decretals, canons, rescripts, bulls, excommunications, interdicts, &c, ready for all such emergencies; some of them dated from three hundred to a thousand years before they were written or even thought of; showing more clearly, perhaps, than anything else, the extreme ignorance of mankind between the third and ninth centuries, when most of these forgeries were palmed upon the world. With the aid of these miserable forgeries, they attempt to prove, among other things, that the divine right of the Pope to the sovereignty of this world was acknowledged by the fathers of the church, in the earliest days of Christianity.
There are to be found now, in the Vatican at Rome, canons and decretals which go to show that the Pope was considered "equal to God," as early as the third century. More of these impious forgeries attempt to show that some of the most pious fathers of the church, in the days of her unquestioned sanctity and piety, acknowledged "Mary, the mother of Jesus, to be equal to God the Son, and deserved supreme adoration." With these forged instruments, they attempt to show that the primitive Christians believed in the real and actual presence of the whole body and blood of Christ, in the wafer which they call the Eucharist.
Monstrous, horrible, and impious, as these absurdities are, I once believed them myself. So much for the prejudices of education.
The object of the following pages is to show, first, the origin of Papal power; secondly, to call the attention of Americans to its rapid growth in many of the nations of the earth; and, thirdly, to put my fellow citizens on their guard against giving it any countenance or support within the limits of the United States.
ORIGIN OF THE TEMPORAL POWER OF THE POPE.
We have no authentic evidence that the bishops or presbyters of the primitive Christian church laid claims to temporal power, much less to universal sovereignty, such as Popes have arrogated to themselves, in subsequent times, even down to the present day. Constantine, as we are informed by the best authorities, was the first to unite civil and ecclesiastical power. He introduced Christianity among the Romans by civil authority. This occurred between the years 272 and 337; but never during his reign, nor before it, was there an instance of a bishop or presbyter of the church aspiring to temporal jurisdiction. They were poor and persecuted; they were meek and humble; they were well content with the privilege of worshipping God in peace. The instructions of their divine Master were fresh in their minds—they almost still rung in their ears. They felt that they were sent into the world with special instructions to "preach the gospel to every creature." Their heavenly Master told them that his "kingdom was not of this world." They felt the full force of that high and holy admonition, "Render to Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's, and to God the things that are God's." They cheerfully submitted to the civil authorities. They claimed not the right of giving away kingdoms, crowning emperors, deposing princes, and absolving their subjects from their oaths of allegiance. These pure Christians and devout men asked for no distinctions, but those of virtue and zeal in the cause of Christ; they sought for no wealth but that of Heaven; they desired no crown but that of glory; they sought no tiara save that of martyrdom; they were surrounded by no court but that of the poor; no college of cardinals waited on their pleasure; there were no nuncios sent from their court; no foreign ambassadors passed between them and the powers of this earth. The only court with which they had business to transact, and in which their treasures were laid up, was the court of Heaven; and their only ambassadors at that court were the angels of heaven, sent forth to minister unto them. But this state of things did not last long. As a modern writer beautifully expresses it, "the trail of the serpent is over us all." The Emperor Constantine, seeing the poverty of the primitive church—her vast and progressive increase in numbers and the consequent demand upon her charities—granted to her bishops permission to hold property, real and personal. This concession on the part of Constantine, simple and trifling as it seemed to be; this commingling of the things of heaven and earth, was unnatural. It contained within itself the principles of dissolution, or rather of entire destruction; and became, in time, the source from which have sprung most of the wars, massacres, and bloody strifes, that have desolated and divided into fragmentary sections, the richest, the fairest, and the finest portions of the globe, during the last fifteen hundred years; and will continue to do so, unto the end of time, unless the advance of civilization, and the great progress which the human mind has made in ethics, morals, and metaphysics, on this continent, puts an immediate check to Popish interference with the policy of our country.
Could we suppose an individual, who knew nothing of ancient times; who was an entire stranger to the darkness which pervaded Europe during the middle ages; who had no acquaintance with the pretensions, arrogance and insolence of Roman pontiffs; who knew no other constitution and no other laws but those of our own country; he could not but feel surprised at being first told, that there now lived in Rome, an upstart ecclesiastic, called a Pope, who has the hardihood to assert that he is Sovereign Lord, and that too by divine right, of these United States, as well as of all other kingdoms of this world. He goes even further, and contends that his predecessors had similar divine rights, and that all the citizens and inhabitants of this country owed allegiance to him personally, and to no one else, unless delegated by him to receive it. But strange as this may appear, it is no less true, as I will show from authorities, which cannot be questioned, by those who claim such extravagant immunities.
The Pope of Rome predicates his claim to universal sovereignty upon the power of loosing and binding on earth and in heaven; which, in the exuberance of their fancy, Roman Catholic writers contend was given to St. Peter. Their next step is to prove, that this supremacy was acknowledged by the primitive fathers of the church, and consequently their rights and claims are beyond dispute. But before I proceed to give any of the authorities, upon which Roman Catholic writers rest the antiquity of the recognition of their Pope's temporal power, it may not be amiss to inform the reader that the very first on which they rely is one of the most unblushing forgeries on record; and is dated about six hundred years previous to the time at which it purports to have been written. It is taken from the words of a conveyance of certain temporal concessions, said to be made by the Emperor Constantine to Pope Sylvester, some time between the second and third centuries. It is in the following words:
"We attribute to the chair of St. Peter all imperial dignity, glory, and power. We give to Pope Sylvester, and to his successors, our palace of Lateran, one of the finest palaces on earth; we give him our crown, our mitre, our diadem, and all our imperial vestments; we resign to him all our imperial dignity. We give the Holy Pontiff, as a free gift, the city of Rome, and all the western cities of Italy, as well as the western cities of other countries. To make room for him, we abdicate our sovereignty over all these provinces, and we withdraw from Rome, transferring the seat of our empire to Byzantium; since it is not just that a terrestrial emperor shall retain any power where God has placed the head of the church."
It would be a waste of time to show that no such donation as the above ever existed. No mention is made of it in any history of the Popes that has ever been written, or in any other document which had reference to them during the reign of Constantine. It is a forgery so shallow, unreal, and unsubstantial, that there is no well-educated historian, and never has been one, who gave it any credence. The historian Flewry pronounces it a falsehood; and he, being a Roman Catholic, must be considered good authority upon all matters relating to the holy church. The quotation, however, from this supposed deed of concession, by Constantine to Pope Sylvester, is not without instruction to the citizens of this country. It should arouse them to a sense of the dangers which are hovering over them. It should remind them that every thing is perishable. The fairest flower must fade; the loveliest lily must wither; the laughing rose must droop; even