"Soon after my arrival in Philadelphia,... a Roman Catholic priest by the name of O. S. called on me, and showed me letters of recommendation which he had from Bishop T., of Ireland, and countersigned by the Roman Catholic bishop of New York, to Bishop England, of South Carolina....

He arrived at Charleston, and was well received by Bishop England. There lived in the parish to which this reverend confessor was appointed, a gentleman of respectability and wealth. Bishop England supplied this new missionary with letters of strong recommendation to this gentleman, advising him to place his children under his charge, a.s.suring him they would be brought up in the fear of G.o.d and love of religion.... The Rev.

Popish wretch seduced the eldest daughter of his benefactor, and the father becoming aware of the fact, armed himself with a case of pistols, and determined to shoot the seducer. But there was in the house a good Catholic servant [a spy] who advised the seducer to fly. He soon arrived in Charleston; the right reverend bishop understood his case, advised him to go to confession, and absolved him from his sins;... sent him on his way to New York.... His victim after a little time, having given birth to a fine boy, goes to confession herself, and sends the child of sin to the Sisters of Charity residing in ------, to be taken care of as a _nullius filius_. As soon as the child was able to walk a Roman Catholic lady adopted it as her own. The real mother of the child soon removed to the city of ------, told the whole transaction to the Roman Catholic bishop of ------, who knowing that she had a handsome property, introduced her to a highly respectable Protestant gentleman, who soon married her. He (the bishop ) soon after introduced the gentleman to the Sisters of Charity who had provided for the illicit offspring of the priest, concealing its parentage, and representing it as having no father living. The gentleman was pleased with the boy, and the holy Bishop finally prevailed on him and his wife to adopt it as his own." (Auric. Confess, p. 111-115).

When quite young and just emerging from childhood, I became acquainted with a Protestant family, residing in the neighborhood of my birthplace.

It consisted of a mother (a widow), and three interesting children, two sons and one daughter.... In the course of time the sons grew up, and their guardian in compliance with their wishes, and to gratify their ambition, procured them commissions in the army.... As soon as the sons left to join their respective regiments, which were then on the Continent, the mother and daughter were much alone.... There was then in the neighborhood only twenty miles from this family, a nunnery of the order of Jesuits. To this nunnery was attached a school superintended by the nuns of that order.... The mother yielded, in this case, to the malign influence of fashion;... sent her beautiful daughter, her earthly treasure, to the school of these nuns.... Soon after the daughter was sent to school, I entered the college of Manooth as a theological student, and in due time was ordained a Catholic priest.

An interval of some years pa.s.sed.... There was a large party given, at which among others I happened to be present; and there meeting with my friends and interchanging the usual courtesies on such occasions, she sportingly, as I then imagined, asked me whether I would preach her reception sermon, as she intended becoming a nun and taking the veil....

I heard no more of the affair until about two months, when I received a note from her designating the chapel in which she expected my services.... On the reception of my friend's note a cold chill crept over me, I antic.i.p.ated and trembled, and felt there must be foul play....

Having no connection with the convent in which she was immured, I did not see her for three months following. At the expiration of that time one of the lay sisters delivered me a note.... I found my young friend wished to see me on something important I of course lost no time in calling on her, and being a priest, I was immediately admitted; but never have I forgotten, never can I forget, the melancholy picture of lost beauty and fallen humanity which met my astonished gaze in the person of my once beautiful and virtuous friend.... 'I sent for you, my friend, to see you once before my death..... I am in the family-way and must die.'

He then proceeds to relate, that in the course of a conversation which ensued he learned from the nun that she had been seduced by her confessor, (which fact precluded any appeal or redress), and that the lady abbess had proposed to procure an abortion, but that an inmate had informed her that the medicine which the lady abbess would give would contain poison. He promised to renew his visit within a few days; he did so, but the foul deed was done.

Fiends! Monsters! Does not the blood curdle in every vein at such recitals? Does not man and woman blush at their dishonored nature?

Is there a G.o.d that can allow the use of his name to sanction such execrable depravity; that can look with indifference on women avowing chast.i.ty in his name in order to allure the purest of their s.e.x to destruction; or that can be insensible to the imprecations of injured innocence, profaned in holy houses? Is G.o.d a fiction, or divine retribution a dream? No! While a thunderbolt leaves a monastery or a nunnery in existence, lightning has no avenging power! While either of them exists man may well doubt the existence of retributive justice in human affairs.

But it may be said, that G.o.d has delegated to society the power to punish offences committed against its moral interests, and therefore does not himself interfere in the matter. But does society exercise its authority in the matter any more visibly than deity? Society enacts laws and prescribes penalties respecting murder, rape, brothels, false imprisonment, and irregular interments. She also investigates all alleged infractions of these laws, except when they involve the honor of monastic inst.i.tutions. But why are these dens exempted from the common law of the land? Why are they allowed to bar their doors against the authority which all others must respect? Why are they allowed to organize within a government an independent government, nullifying its jurisdiction over them? Why are not the interior of monastic inst.i.tutions constantly and thoroughly inspected, and the authority of the common law maintained over them? Is it because they are too pious to violate the law of the land? If this were so, it would do them no harm, but much good, to have the fact week after week attested by an investigating committee composed of their opponents. But is not the contrary the fact? Do they not deprive their inmates of personal liberty? Do they not imprison them in dungeons? Do they not punish them? Do they not inflict on them barbarous chastis.e.m.e.nts? Are they not sacerdotal brothels? Has not every age and country given its testimony to show that kidnapped men and women have been imprisoned for life in their cells; that there nuns have been poisoned, abortions procured, babes murdered, women outraged by priests, and every law, human or divine violated with impunity?

Are these sensational declamations? Would for the credit of human nature they were. No! They are the true records of monastic history, alleged by kings and statesmen, proved before councils, and acknowledged by monks, nuns, priests, bishops, and popes. With such an array of evidence before society, why does it allow inst.i.tutions among it where every crime _may_ be committed secretly, and with impunity? Why do not grand juries, who visit other jails, penitentiaries, and asylums, inspect also the more secret and suspicious nunneries?

We have now described the nature and consequences of the monastic vow of celibacy. This obligation is opposed to the nature, and defeats the object of the human organism. It extinguishes conjugal, filial, and parental affection. It severs the ties that bind the interests of society together. It injures both the present and the future, by abrogating their mutual connection. It strikes at the root of national greatness, by arresting the tide of population. It degrades the dignity of the community, by increasing the number of illegitimate children. It wars against marriage, the n.o.blest incentive to social refinement and civilization; the basis of woman's hope and happiness; the impulse and gratification of her pride of family, love of parental control, and desire to live in posterity. It anathematizes woman's purest aspirations, and man's holiest ties. It converts the ardor of chast.i.ty into snares for its seduction. It sanctifies prost.i.tution and adultery.

It violates the law of the land. It erects in the most magnificent parts of a city its s.p.a.cious brothels, with ma.s.sive walls, secret doors, false floors, guarded windows, grated cloisters, inaccessible to the inspection of law, but accessible at all hours of night or day by priests. Within these walls it allures beauty, virtue, and talent, and while pretending to fit them for the society of infinite purity, betrays them into the power of unprincipled priests, and imprisons them in eternal seclusion, where no groan can meet the public ear, where they can never tell the story of their wrong, nor appeal to a heart for sympathy, nor to a law for redress.

CHAPTER VIII. MONASTIC VOW OF UNCONDITIONAL OBEDIENCE

Another vow which was universally a.s.sumed by the religious orders, was the vow of unconditional obedience. By the obligation of this vow the members of the convents were subjected to the absolute authority of the superiors; the superiors to the absolute authority of the generals; the generals to the absolute authority of the pope. The authority of these holy officials strongly resembled that of the oriental despot, who, on being informed by his general that it was impossible to build the bridge over the river, as he had ordered, replied: "I inquired not of thee whether it was impossible or not; I commanded thee to build it; if thou failest thou shalt be strangled." Accordingly, at the mandate of a superior a subordinate was obliged to go on any errand, for any purpose, criminal or not, to depart on any mission, to perform any work, to undertake any enterprise, or to occupy any station that he required of him. The superior's decision was final, and from it there was no appeal.

The Jesuit's general was empowered to inflict and remit punishment at option, and to expel any member of the order without the form of charge or trial. It mattered not whether the task a.s.signed the recluse exceeded, or not, his mental or physical capacity, he was bound to obey the order immediately, and fully; to hesitate, or seem to hesitate was a crime, and by the penal code of some of the monasteries punished by the infliction of one hundred lashes.

But to reduce a human being to such an absolute servitude was no easy task. To transform an active being into a spiritless automaton; a sensitive being into a senseless machine; a rational being into an irrational brute, was not the work of a moment, but of years and discipline. In order to subdue and habituate the will to implicit and mechanical obedience, recourse had to be had to penance, to trials, to all that could stifle doubt and inquiry, debilitate the power of resistance, and degrade conscious dignity in the dust. The most menial services, the most loathsome, disgusting, and absurd offices were consequently a.s.signed to the probationists. They were required to suck the putrid sores of invalids, to remove enormous rocks, to walk unflinchingly into fiery furnaces, to cast their infants into ponds of water, to plant staffs in the ground and to water them until they should grow. They were never allowed to be alone, two were always to be together; the one a constant and conscious spy on the emotions of the other. The faithful son who could harden himself into a cold, cruel, and remorseless statue, was commended for his attainments in piety; but the unfaithful son who could not but betray some emotion, or remaining consciousness of the independence of his nature, in defiance of his circ.u.mspection, was doomed to suffer the torments of an excruciating penance.

The vow of solitude had stifled the social instincts; the vow of silence had paralyzed the powers of speech, and sealed up the lips of wisdom, knowledge and eloquence; the vow of contemplation had subjugated the intellectual faculties to the domination of fancy, and the bewilderments of ignorance; the vow of poverty had shackled the faculties of improvement and enterprise; the vow of celibacy had extinguished connubial and parental affection; and now the vow of unconditional obedience, by subjugating reason, conscience, and the executive powers to the absolute control of a superior, had completed the monk's slavery in the ruin of every n.o.ble and valuable attribute of his nature.

Atrocious as were the other vows, the last exceeded the combined atrocity of them all. It consummated the destruction of his nature. It was the grave of his manhood; the tomb in which he buried himself alive.

After its a.s.sumption his reason was not to guide him; his knowledge was not to direct him; his conscience was not to admonish him; but in defiance of them all, and even at the risk of his life, he was to tremble, and obey a spiritual despot. His perceptive faculties, his conscious independence, his love of liberty and justice, his sense of obligation and accountability, all the mental, moral, and physical powers which const.i.tute his being, were by this vow, basely surrendered to an absolute lord, to whom he became a slave in mind and body,--and forever.

The blind obedience which the pope demands to his despotic will, is antagonistical to the Jewish religion, to the Christian religion, and to Natural religion. It is a nullification of all religion; an abrogation of the authority of the deity; a usurpation of the throne of Heaven. The Jewish and the Christian religion require unconditional obedience to G.o.d alone. In their sacred books, the pope is nowhere mentioned, nor is any power referred to a.n.a.lagous to what he claims. Natural religion prescribes reason and conscience as the supreme guide of man; and reason and conscience reject the papal authority as absurd and unjust. In the Hierophant of the Elysian mysteries, in the Apostolic Successor of Buddha, in the Grand Lama, in the Egyptian and Persian High Priest we may find something a.n.a.lagous to the claims of the Pope of Rome, but nowhere else.

The unconditional obedience required by the pope is inconsistent with all ideas of merit and demerit in human conduct. If man acts not from the independent suggestion of his reason and conscience, but from the secret orders of another, he is no more deserving of commendation for useful acts, than a locomotive is for its obedience to the will of an engineer.

The unconditional obedience demanded by the pope is inconsistent with human accountability. It is an abrogation of all obligation, and all law. It a.s.sumes that the pope is above all authority; accountable to none; and that he is capable of nullifying all obligations between man and man, between government and subjects, between mankind and their creator. It obtrudes between man and his reason, and forbids him to listen to its voice. It obtrudes between man and his conscience, and forbids him to obey its dictates. It obtrudes between man and his civil obligations, and forbids him to obey the laws of his country. It leaves no sense of duty or obligation existing in the const.i.tution of man.

According to it, man is not accountable to reason, nor conscience, nor society, nor G.o.d, but to the pope alone. The pope is therefore "more than G.o.d," as one of his t.i.tles a.s.serts; and G.o.d is no G.o.d or an inferior one to him.

The unconditional obedience enforced by the pope is subversive of the rights of the world. For one man, however good or great, to require the united intelligence of the human family to submit to his arbitrary dictation, is to deny their right to an independent will, reason, conscience, or principle of action, or the privilege of exercising the powers which they have inherited with their being. It is to declare that all men are abject slaves to the pope. It is to deny that any has a right above a brute that is bridled, harnessed, or yoked, to be driven by the spurs and whips of its owner. In short, it is to crush all liberty and the rights of human nature.

A claim of absolute authority is always absurd; but the papal claim of absolute dominion over human conscience and reason, surpa.s.ses all absurdity recorded in the annals of tyranny and arrogance. Even were superiors, generals, and popes as wise and virtuous as humanity permitted, yet such a degree of power entrusted to them would be detrimental to the interests of society. Parents whose welfare and honor are so intimately interwoven with the welfare and honor of their children, often regret over the mistakes which they have committed in giving counsel. For a spiritual despot, whose nature has been religiously pruned of human sensibilities, whose mind has been contracted within the bigoted circle of spiritual ideas, whose interest is antagonistical to those of his subjects, and who owns no accountability for the proper exercise of his functions, for such an inhuman monster to be entrusted with exclusive control over the reason, conscience, and interests of another, would as inevitably complete his arrogance and tyranny as it would the misery and slavery of his subordinate. Less than such a result could not be expected from the best of superiors, generals, or monks. But when the past history of these holy men has shown that they have invariably labored for their self-aggrandizement, and that as a cla.s.s, they have been ignorant, immoral, cruel and intriguing, such power, in the hands of such men, would not only extinguish all virtue in the breast of the governed, but render them instruments of the most flagitious purposes. When by means of an ecclesiastical despotism, learning was governed by ignorance, wisdom by folly, virtue by vice, can we wonder that monks, superiors, generals and popes were the basest and most licentious of men; that the convents were rife with prost.i.tution and murder; that the papal court was the most profligate in the world; and that the most prosperous period of Catholicism was the darkest age of mankind.

But the papal claim of absolute control over reason and conscience refutes itself. It suggests a strong presumption that he is conscious that he can make no successful appeal to either reason or conscience.

Had it been otherwise would he have denied their authority? Were he confident that his pretensions are founded in truth, would he have prohibited investigation'? Is not reason the clearest guide to truth, conscience its most powerful advocate, investigation its most formidable ally? And had these n.o.ble principles been available in supporting the pretension of the pope, would he have had the stupidity to denounce them?

If it is consistent with religion to make automata of human beings, slaves of men, a machine of the world; to harness mankind in the gears of an ecclesiastical despot, that they may be driven under his lash whithersoever his pleasure or interest may require; to obliterate the faculties that distinguish men from brutes; to deny the existence of a G.o.d by abrogating his attributes, and blaspheme Omnipotence by the ridicule of a.s.suming his prerogatives; then the absolute, implicit, and unhesitating obedience enjoined on the religious orders by the Catholic Church is in accordance with its spirit and design. But if religion is morality in its highest development, humanity in its purest character, and reason in its freest exercise, then is the papal despotism not only subversive of religion, but destructive of the rights of man, of the obligations of virtue, and dangerous to the liberty and interests of the world.

CHAPTER IX. PAGAN ORIGIN OF THE MONASTIC ORDERS.--CONCLUDING REMARKS.

We have shown in the previous chapters that the monastic vows are in conflict, not only with the requirements of moral goodness, but with the dictates of reason, the principles of personal improvement, and the interests and progress of society. We have shown, also, that they were a.s.sumed not for the humble purpose of acquiring spiritual perfection, but for the ambitious purpose of obtaining riches, power, and dominion.

From these considerations, and from the fact that the monachal orders form an elementary part of the const.i.tution of the Catholic Church, we have inferred that she is rather a political than a religious inst.i.tution; and that while politics form her nature and principles, religion is a.s.sumed as an ornament and disguise.

We will now adduce a few facts tending to show that monkish orders originated, not from Christianity; that they existed in pre-historic ages; and that so far as they const.i.tute the Catholic Church, she is a heathen, and not a Christian inst.i.tution.

It is well known that the Carmelite monks claim Elijah, the prophet, as their founder. Among the ancient personages whom they a.s.sert belonged to their order, they enumerate Pythagoras, the Gallic Druids, all the prophets and holy men mentioned in the Old and New Testament, the Apostles, the Essenes, and the ancient hermits. Although amid the wrangling of the monastic orders for preeminence, this claim has rigorously been contested, yet Pope Benedict III. allowed the Carmelites to erect in the Vatican the statue of Elijah as the founder of their order. This permission, so far as the concession of the infallible father is authority, places the antiquity of the monachal order remotely beyond that of Christianity; acknowledges its inst.i.tution to have originated from Judaism; and grants that its rules and principles were adopted by ancient Pagan fraternities.

That identical inst.i.tutions have flourished in Asia from the remotest historical periods, admits not of a question. The present Sufism of Arabia is but a modified form of an ancient system of pantheistical mysticism, which taught that through the observance of ascetic practices the animal pa.s.sions could be destroyed, the soul purified and a.s.similated to G.o.d, and a beatific state attained whose tranquility nothing could disturb. The Gymnosophists, the naked philosophers of India, were an order of monks, who practised the most excruciating penance; and who, in their eagerness to become pure, sometimes burnt themselves alive. The G.o.d Fo, born in Cashmere B. C. 1027, the author of the Braminical religion, strenuously advocated monachal inst.i.tutions.

The different orders of the monks and hermits which originated from his allegorical and mystical teaching, a.s.sumed the vows of unconditional obedience and absolute poverty. The monks resided in monasteries, and the hermits in deserts. They both practised the most rigorous penance, professed to aspire after absolute purity, but in their conduct and principles they were grovelling, intriguing, profligate and ambitious.

Buddha, born B. C. 1029, two years after Fo, founded the monastic order of the Buddhists. His convents were governed by superiors who were subject to the absolute authority of the patriarch, or, as he was officially styled, the Apostolic Successor. The functions and authority of the Buddhistic superiors were similar to those of the Catholic orders; and the pretensions and dignity of the patriarch were one and the same with those of the Pope of Rome. The monks lived in monasteries, a.s.sumed the vows of obedience, poverty and celibacy, and admitted virgins to social intercourse. Jeseus Christna, born B. C. 3,500, the incarnate redeemer of the Hindoos, whose birth, life, and miracles resemble those of Jesus Christ, (see "Bible in India,") alludes in his discourses to monks and hermits as being at his time ancient, flourishing and venerated orders. The Hindoo and Mohammedan Fakirs are cla.s.ses of monks who vow obedience, poverty and celibacy, retire from the world, pa.s.s their time in silent contemplation, and acquire the veneration of the populace by the practice of absurd and cruel penance.

The Essenes, who flourished in Egypt and Palestine before the Christian era, were an organization of monks who derived their theological principles from the G.o.d Theuth, the founder of the Egyptian religious ceremonies.

From the above enumerated facts the conclusion is irresistible, that the Catholic monastic orders are neither of Christian origin, nor inconsistent with the doctrines and worship of Paganism.

A Romish missionary who visited China, observing the similarity which subsisted between the Chinese and the Catholic religion, declared that the devil must have preceded him, and converted the nation to Christianity, in order to cheat the church out of the credit of the enterprise. A more learned but less pious authority concluded from the same a.n.a.logy, that Catholicism did not convert Paganism, but that Paganism converted Catholicism.

We will now conclude our examination of the Catholic monastic orders, with a few general remarks.

The monastic vows are not only a bold abnegation of the authority of reason and conscience, but a crafty device to delude the credulous, and secretly to acquire riches, power and influence. Although they were a.s.sumed by the monks as perpetual obligations, yet they were evaded, modified, or abrogated as interest and policy suggested. The mendicant orders, which a.s.sumed the vow of perpetual and absolute poverty, artfully labored to ama.s.s fortunes; and soon betrayed a secret design of acquiring hierachal importance and supremacy. The Franciscans, who solemnly obligated themselves to remain forever poor, incessantly grasped after riches. When they had built nunneries, convents, and became the proprietors of extensive domains, they abrogated their vow of perpetual poverty, lest it should invalidate their t.i.tle to vast possessions which they held. With equal duplicity and ambition, they a.s.sumed, upon their first organization, a vow of perpetual ignorance; abjuring the acquisition of any intellectual accomplishment, and consecrating themselves strictly to the preaching of the gospel. But becoming enchanted with the magnificence of the papal crown, and wishing to wield its immense power and lucrative patronage in behalf of their order, and perceiving that literary acquirements would facilitate the accomplishment of this object, they annulled their vow of perpetual ignorance, and began to devote themselves to the acquisition of some degree of profane erudition. Having acquired immense wealth and popularity, and removed by art or bribery every obstacle to the success of their ambition, they placed on the apostolic throne, from their own order, Nicholas V., Alexander V., Sixtus IV., and Clement XIV.

The Dominicans, who were established to preach against infidels and heretics, adopted at the commencement of their career the money-making devices of the mendicant orders; but when their revenues had become so great, and their domains so extensive that they had attracted a covetous glance from the secular power, they prudently annulled the vows by which they had been acquired, lest the profane avariciousness of princes should cause their sequestration.

The Jesuits professed to have a holy abhorrence of riches, but thankfully accepted costly presents, opulent legacies, vast tracts of land, and the pecuniary means of erecting numerous stately structures.

While this pious fraternity resolved not to accept any ecclesiastical dignity, it secretly and artfully labored to acquire all the privileges of the mendicant orders, all the advantages of the secular clergy, and to make the members of its order superior to those of any other, and its general next in power and importance to the pope. By hypocrisy, intrigue, and cringing sycophancy, these unscrupulous monks obtained rights and privileges enjoyed by no other ecclesiastical corporation.

They not only obtained exemption from all civil and episcopal taxes, and from all amenability to any other power than that of the pope; but also the authority of absolving from all sins and ecclesiastical penalties; of changing the object of the vows of the laity; and of acquiring churches and domains without restriction. They were privileged also to suit their dress to circ.u.mstances, their conduct to peculiarities, their profession to the views of others; to be accommodating and complaisant while pursuing a political enterprise, and under the mask of any external appearance to prosecute in secret what might excite opposition if openly avowed. They were allowed to become actual merchants, mechanics, showmen, actors, and to adopt any profession calculated to facilitate the accomplishment of a design, and to throw off the mask whenever they thought expedient. Organized on the principles of deception, and unrestricted in their privileges, they secretly labored for their own aggrandizement, while they publicly professed to be sacrificing their interests to the salvation of mankind. They became professors of universities and tutors of schools, that they might select the brightest minds of the rising generation, and mould them to their purposes. They became the spiritual guides of females of rank and opulence, that they might avail themselves of their influence and control their wealth. They became the confessors of princes, that they might penetrate their intentions, ferret out their secrets, watch over their conduct, and enslave and govern their minds. They became the governors of colonies, in order to grasp secular revenues, and to exercise the political power in behalf of their interests. They established seminaries and boarding schools for both s.e.xes, in order to acquire dominion over the young; they sought to occupy the confessional, in order to discover all domestic and governmental secrets; and they labored to monopolize the pulpit, in order to manufacture public opinion, and influence the general tone of society in their favor.

The numerous divisions into which the religious orders were divided, and their different degrees of austerity, enabled the church to suit its policy to the corruption or purity, the ignorance or learning of the nation it sought to proselyte and govern. Under its direction the monks flattered every power they were ordered to subvert, and blushed at no sycophancy that facilitated the accomplishment of an object. Governed by unnatural vows, they sacrificed freedom, the source of natural sentiment, to credulity and blind submission The most absurd and criminal injunctions of a superior or general were obeyed without compunction or remorse. If they aspired after perfection, it was by sacrificing the virtues of life. If they strove to obtain personal purity, it was by violating the laws of their being. They sought to atone for offences by scourging their backs, ironing their limbs, chaining themselves to rocks, pa.s.sing their lives in caves, in days without food, in nights without sleep, in years without speaking; subsisting without money, propagating without women, acquiring the respect of the world they despised, the riches they contemned, and the dignity they abjured. They were a palpable deception, yet an object of universal veneration. By cunning and obsequiousness they sought and obtained power; by duplicity and fraud they ama.s.sed fortunes; by luxury and tyranny they oppressed the world. Every species of absurdity, art, hypocrisy, avarice, ambition and despotism, under the guise of sanct.i.ty was embodied in their organization, and ill.u.s.trated in their conduct.

The doctrines which they taught were often as pernicious as their professions were false, and their conduct crafty. As the accommodating morality of their religion allowed them to adopt any profession, or any mode of life that would favor the success of a design, so the license of their sophistry enabled them to construe the maxims of virtue according to any standard that would justify the conduct dictated by their interest or sycophancy. By the pliancy of their moral code they consecrated the basest means to pious ends. By the subterfuge of perplexing interpretations, mental reservations, and an artful ambiguity of language, they excused and sanctioned perjury and every other crime.

They taught that offences were justified, if, when committed, the criminal thought differently from what he said or done; and that a mental reservation nullified the obligation of any promise, of any contract, or of any treaty. The perversions of the maxims of virtue by which they sought to justify the crimes of others, they applied to their own conduct in the broadest sense. In 1809, when the papal archives were brought to France, the startling fact became public that the holy fathers had been in the habit of availing themselves of pious subterfuges. It then appeared that while they had made contracts, and issued bulls in conformity with the demands of temporal princes, they had at the same time nullified, by virtue of mental reservations, such of them as were obnoxious.

The absurdities and perniciousness of their moral code were not exceeded by those of their penal code. According to the doctrines of Catholicity the guilt of every crime may be expiated by the performance of penance.

To regulate the priest in prescribing this mode of punishment, the church furnished him with an ecclesiastical body of laws, which he as carefully as prudently concealed from the eyes of the intelligent. All priests were enabled, by the use of this code, to understand the true orthodox degree of punishment which had been authoratively decided should be inflicted on penitents, for the commission of any offence of word, thought or deed; and a uniformity in the administration of penal prescriptions was maintained, which harmonized with the divine inspiration by which the confessor pretended to be guided in the matter.

Fasts, prayers, self-torture, abstinence from business, were, by the authority of the ecclesiastical code, declared to be the divinely appointed methods of expiating the guilt of rape, of fornication, of adultery, of robbery, of murder, and of every degree and species of crime. These offences being very henious in their nature, and very frequently committed by those who believed in the ability of the church to absolve them from their guilt, and time being required for the performance of the atoning penance, it is easy to see that an ordinary Catholic sinner was in eminent danger of incurring a debt which would require several centuries of penance to liquidate. Here was a dilemma.

Long fasting would starve him; long abstinence from business would empoverish him; and either expedient would prevent him from being a source of revenue to the church; and, in fact, defeat the object of the holy sacrament of penance. To obviate this difficulty the ingenious method of indulgences was adopted. By this happy expedient provision was made for the relief of all criminals at stipulated prices, graduated according to their pecuniary circ.u.mstances. A penance imposed on a rich sinner for one year's indulgence in the commission of a particular offence, was, by this crafty device, allowed to be cancelled by the payment of twenty shillings to the priest; and if the sinner was poor, by the payment of nine shillings. Yet even by this indulgence and charitable discrimination, as every separate offence required the atonement of a separate penance, few sinners escaped incurring less than a debt of three hundred years, or of two hundred pounds sterling. The liquidation of such an obligation during the dark ages would consume a small fortune; but the expansive benevolence of the church, touched at the sorrows of her contrite members, graciously accepted their land after she had exhausted their purse.

As crime had its degrees of turpitude, the ecclesiastical code prescribed degrees of severity in punishing it. Whoever could not pay with their purse had to pay with their body. Three thousand lashes, and the repet.i.tion of a portion of the Psalter, were prescribed as an indispensable satisfaction for any crime whose penance required a year to discharge; and fifteen thousand lashes and the repet.i.tion of the whole Psalter, for any crime whose penance required five years to discharge. A year's penance was taxed at three thousand lashes, a century's at three hundred thousand lashes, and five centuries at fifteen hundred thousand lashes. 13

These scourgings were always sanctified by the repet.i.tion of psalms. As vicarious flagellation did not impair the revenues of the church, it was not objected to; and a sinner would often expiate his guilt by vigorously laying the stripes it demanded on the back of an accommodating friend. The skill and hardihood of St, Dominic was able to discharge the penitential lashes of a century in six days; and his pious example was attempted to be imitated even by ladies of fashion and quality.

The monasteries were ambiguous, oppressive corporations. If they have at times preserved the literary treasures of the ancients, they have impaired their authority by numerous corruptions and interpolations. If they have sometimes established inst.i.tutions for the education of youth, they have generally usurped the fortunes of their patrons. If they have ever been places of refuge for the proscribed, they have always been the means of oppressing industry, and restricting freedom. If they have been schools for the correction of error, and improvement in virtue, yet the absurdities and immoralities taught within their sanctuaries, and the crimes notoriously practised therein, have inflicted deeper injury on the cause of truth, and on the interest of public morals, than can be atoned for by any usefulness or virtue which they could possess, or can pretend to claim. Their virtues were accidents; their vices natural offsprings. They were financial inst.i.tutions. The labor performed by their inmates as a penance, was made a lucrative source of revenue.