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There is no learned man but will confess he hath much profited by reading controversies , his senses awakened , and his judgment sharpened . If , then , it be profitable for him to read , why should it not , at least , be tolerable for his adversary to write . —Milton .
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PROTESTANT INTOLERANCE . ITS ANTECEDENTS . December 23 , 1850 . Sir , —Amid the detestable hubbub which now rages around us , and which is neither more nor less than an outburst of sectarian bigotry , which would proceed to burn you and me , only that it dares not , I am constantly hearing it alleged by the leading agitators against the Roman Catholic Church , that it is a persecuting Church , an intolerant and tyrannical Church , and everything else that is vile and abominable . If I look for the leaders in this new crusade
against " Popery , " I almost invariably find them to be parsons of our State Church—a Church itself dyed in . blood , whose history is one of persecution from the day on which it was set up by that profligate Henry VIII . down to the present time , when it disdains not to seize and sell the poor man ' s pots and pans , and sometimes the very bed he lies on , to raise money to wash those identical parsons * surplices and ring their church bells .
Talk of persecution , indeed ! These men ought to slink out of sight for very shame , instead of with brazen face denouncing a rival Church whose worst practices they have so abominably imitated . Look into history and its pages will tell a frightful tale of the persecution of this very Protestant Church of England , which is now , with such blatant outpouring of words , protesting upon platforms against the " persecutions of Popery . "
sent outbreak of intolerancy . They deeply suspect every public movement of the State Church , and they have good reason to do so . The Church has invariably been the bitter and uncompromising enemy of any extension of the popular liberties—the opponent of any relaxation of our formerly bloody penal code—the inveterate resisterof the abolition of slavery of all kinds . The bishops and the clergy opposed the Reform Bill with all their might , and they are now opposed as a body to any extension of the rights of citizenship among the people . The bishops in the House of
Lords opposed the abolition of negro slavery so persistently that Lord Eldon on one occasion argued that slavery must be a good thing , inasmuch as the bishops so invariably supported it ! The bishops and the clergy as a body resisted to the last the abolition of the Corn-laws : they resisted the repeal of the Test Acts and Catholic Emancipation . They were the abettors of all the long and scourging wars which have laden our country with taxes and debt . They stood out to the last in the attempt to crush the
independence of our American colonies . The bishops in like manner resisted every attempt made by Sir Samuel Romilly to ameliorate the criminal code . When the bill to abolish the punishment of death for stealing privately to the amount of five sJiillings in a shop was read a second time in the House of Lords , on May 30 , 1810 , it was rejected by a majority of 30 to 11 , and in the majority there were found the names of not fewer than seven prelates , headed by the Archbishop of Canterbury !
And it is the same now . There is not a single good popular measure you can name—not an extension of liberty or right , but finds in the State Church and the great body of the clergy the most inveterate resistance . The working classes may well suspect , therefore , the pretended tolerancy and liberality of the present movement ; and their allegations , that it is merely the love of money and the fear for their " livings" that is actuating their anti-Popery zeal , may not be altogether unfounded .
There may be something in the very closeness of their relationship that may account for the bitterness of the hatred which the younger Church now displays towards her defrauded elder sister ; and this the working-classes can see with half an eye . They know that most of the Prayer-book is stolen from the Mass ? book , —and that the tithes , titles , and ceremonies of the State Church are all borrowed from the Romish Church . Her livings , school-foundations , universities , parish churches , and cathedrals were in like manner stolen from the Catholics . The main difference is , that the head of the one church is the Pope , the head of the other the monarch of England for the time being .
The Protestant Church is , however , infinitely more expensive than the Catholic . The Church of Rome gave only one-third of her income to support the clergy , another third went to repair and build churches , and the third to the poor . But the clergy of the Protestant State Church coolly pocketed the whole , leaving the poor to be supported by a tax , the churches to be repaired , and the priests ' surplices washed by a church-rate—and this they call a " Reformation from Popery ! "
The working classes see additional cause to suspect this Church when they find it resisting the establishment of national instruction , unless such instruction be placed under its control . The clergy claim the right to instruct the whole people ! They—whose revenue in England cannot be short of eight millions a-year—insist on being entrusted with any additional funds , which may be devoted for educational purposes ; and yet , with their enormous means , which they have enjoyed so long , they allow the poorer
classes of the people to grow up in a state of savage heathenism ! With 14 , 000 beneficed clergy , and a revenue of eight millions sterling , about half of our people cannot read or write ! But this very clergy now insist that the people , if educated at all , shall be educated only through them ; and if not through them then that they shall perish in their ignorance . Again , I say , well may the working classes suspect the present intolerant outburst of these men . I remain , Sir , your most obedient servant , L . Tynman .
In the reign of Henry VIII . it put to death 59 Catholics ; in that of Queen Elizabeth it burnt and executed no fewer than 204 of the same people ; in that of King James I . it destroyed 25 ; in Charles I . ' s reign , and during the " Great Rebellion , " 23 ; and in the reign of Charles II ., 8 Catholics . This does not include the Baptists , Unitarians , and Nonconformists , thousands of whom it tortured , pined in prison , put in the pillory , branded with hot irons on the forehead and the cheeks , and ruined by fine and imprisonment ; nor of its frightful persecutions in Ireland , where almost every act of a Catholic was made penal , and when the exercise of the priestly office was made punishable by death , down even to a comparatively recent period .
Again , what says the history of Scotland to the " tolerancy" of this Protestant State Church of ours ? Are not its blackest and yet most glorious pages those in which are recorded the hideous persecutions of " Black Prelacy" —when its poor but valorous peasantry were hunted from their homes into the mountains and the wastes , and there sent up their songs of praise and their cry of prayer—when Prelacy" tested them by the rack , the gibbet , the iron boot , the thumbscrew , and every form of torture which the devil in the guise of religion could invent —where Claverhouse and Lauderdale performed their bloody work of missionaries of the English Protestant Church in Scotland—and which burnt into the hearts of that whole people as enduring a
hatred of Prelacy " as of " Popery " ? But this is not all ! The Protestant State Church has brought down its persecutions almost to our own day . Have we forgotten the Church and King Riots of recent times —the burning of Dissenters' meeting-house at Birmingham by the Churchmen , and the escape of the malefactors by the connivance of the clerical magistracy and tho Government ?* Have we forgotten the Test and Corporation Acts , which the Church through its Bishops would not consent to give up— -though the concession was at last wrung from them by the popular demands ? Have we forgotten Childs and Bnines , and John Thorogood ? Can wo ever forget Rathcormac and Ballynouter ? You are quite right , Sir , when you affirm that the ¦ working classes of England take no part in tho pre-• See Sir Samuel Hominy ' s Memoirs , vol . 1 , p . 341-3 .
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On those occasions thanksgivings were offered to heaven , and orations were spoken in their praise . Nothing beyond this simple act was practised during the three first centuries . But at a later time this lawful , if not laudable , veneration , became metamorphosed into most unwarrantable superstition . And the divine power which was said to have worked mightily in the saint" , was obscured or entirely lost sight of , in the glory with which they were invested . It was a remnant both of Judaism and Gentilism , that the souls of the martyrs hovered about their tombs , and that they could be spoken to there . Basil and other fathers favoured this notion . Indeed .
to such a height did it reach that candles were lighted , even at noonday , around the sepulchres of the dead . This practice was denounced by the Council of Elleberis . The reason assigned was , " because the spirits were not to be disquieted ! " * Finally , to such an extent was this superstition carried that those saints—real flesh-and-blood mortals like ourselves , became not merely revered as confessors , but actually invoked as gods ! Thus , in the words of the late Dr . Hamilton , f did " the age of heroes soon become that of demi-gods When the dead
received their apotheosis , worship was added to commemoration . There was a tutelary to propitiate , and a power to adore . It passed from the character of a type and laudatory festival , to a more reverent and religious ceremony . It still swelled to a higher import . For the celebration of the demi-god was felt to be derogatory from the honours required by the supernal deities . Scruples might be raised , dialects might be argued , distinctions might be taken , and some convenient reference to douleia and a latreia might ease every difficulty and still every doubt . "
Origen , and Cyprian , bishop of Carthage , were the abettors of this demi-god worship . It made little way , however , until the time of Chrysostom , A . D . 400 . During the fifth century so widely was it diffused that , on the authority of the historian Gieseler , J ' Christians were now but seldom culled upon , to address their prayers to God : the usual mode being to pray only to some saint for his intercession . " The poets of this age , taking advantage ot the licence allowed ' them on ordinary occasions , rendered adoration to the dead . What they had left undone by the magic strain of poetic numbers Gregory the Great
accomplished by his orations from the pontifical chair , as well as by the introduction of Litanies into the public service of the Church . In the following century temples were raised , and monastic edifices were erected in honour of the saints , and called after their names . At the close of the ninth century the Roman Pontiffs constituted them fit and proper objects of religious veneration , and maintained and inculcated that they were able to procure salvation for the living and repose for the dead . This superstition reached its zenith in the thirteenth century , when it had such distinguished advocates as Alexander Hales and Gabriel Biel .
How strongly opposed to this darling tenet of Romanism is the language of St . Paul , who , when some , according to the Platonic philosophy , offered to introduce the worship of angels into the Church at Colosse , thus warned them : —** Let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility and worshipping of angels .... which things havc ^ indeed , a show of wisdom in will-worship and humility , and
neglecting of the body , not in any honour to the satisfying of the flesh . " § Surely , in the words of an ancient Christian writer , ** It is extreme ignorance to ask of those who are not gods as though they were . " [ j For , as Tertullian remarks , "God is the one who alone grants . " IT Romanism promotes this very ignorance . It first enslaves , and then darkens the human mind . It neither admits the light of heaven , nor reflects it ! Rome thinks her votaries see more
clearly when ( as the Philistines did with Sampson ) she leaves them no inlets to receive the light ! The seventh article of the Creed of Popo Pius ( would that he were what his name implies !) and the twenty-fifth session of the Trentine Council , refer to and enforce Saint-worship . To such an extent is this practice carried by the laity and clergy of the Romish communion , that the Supreme Being is almost , if not altogether , excluded from their thoughts ; whilst idol-divinities ( many of whom never had any real existence ) entirely engross them . I go
fartherstrictly adhering to Shakspeare s rule , * ' Nothing extenuate , nor aught set down in malice "—I go farther , and say , that Romanists ( whether wittingly or unwittingly is not for me to aver ) positively confer on the creature that honour which God alone is entitled to receive ! True , the casuistry of the Church , with exquisite subtlety , has fixed a boundary line , beyond which fervent and passionate affections might not wander ; and the relative degrees of veneration to be given to God , the Virgin Mary , and the Saints , are characterized by the ambiguous and inexplicable phrases —( certainly hieroglyphics to themajority of tho members)—latreia , hyper douleia , and douleia . I defy
ROMANISM , ALIAS TERRORISM . Letteii II . —Saint Woitsinr . Chelsea , Dec . 0 , 1850 . Sin , —The fear-principle renders Romanism an idolatrous religion . Whatever does not draw men to God , withdraws them fr om God . Christianity effects the former ; Romanism the latter . The one clothes deity in garments of love : the other invests him with robes of terror . The one brings men " nigh " to Him : " Our Father , who art in heaven ; " the other keeps men •« afar off ; " " You cannot see my face and live ! " The principle of terrorism , so actively mischievous in the Romanist Church , places " multitude of fencing saints " around the heart of God , lest his creatures should approach and find access there .
During the reign of persecution it was customary for the early Christians to visit the tombs of the martyrs on the days set apart for their commemoration ,
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[ IN THIS DEPARTMENT , AS ALL OPINIONS , HOWEVER EXTREME , ARE ALLOWED AN EXPRESSION , THE EDITOR NECESSARILY HOLDS HIMSELF RESPONSIBLE FOR NONB . 1
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* Quoted in 13 urnet ' s " KxposiUon of tho Thirty-nino Articlua . " + Ntitfre J . iternriiB . —Olympic Clnmvs . % Hist ., vol . I ., p . 2 H 2 . ,, _ ? CoIIohs . ii . 18—« 3 . || Clem . Alex . Stromata , lib . it . sec . 7 . If Anol ., sec . ' M .
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Dec . 28 , 1850 . ] &ft £ & £ && *? + 949
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Leader (1850-1860), Dec. 28, 1850, page 949, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1863/page/13/
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