Who are you who dare to distinguish, where the law precludes all distinction? It is God who says in the Second Commandment, "Thou shalt not make unto thyself any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them." But you have purposely taken this commandment out of your Decalogue, dividing the last into two, in order to complete the number ten.
Need I remind you of all the other inventions by which you have deceived the people; making them believe that you have found them in the Scriptures; and that they have, moreover, the suffrage of a constant tradition within the Church? The people having now learnt to read, take the Bible in their hands, and look for your doctrines in it. Where, they ask, is the precept for auricular confession, of which the Church of Rome makes an express command, and has declared it a sacrament? Not a word of it can be found in the gospel, nor the slightest allusion to it in the letters of the apostles. But perhaps it was practised by some Christians in the early ages? For the first four centuries of Christianity, it was not known even by name, and when it began to spring up, it found more opponents than followers; no one even venturing to reduce it into a precept. The people search the Bible for the famous doctrine of purgatory; and how great their surprise to find that our Lord Jesus Christ, who brought life and immortality to light, with the double eternity of rewards and punishments, has never mentioned purgatory, nor have His apostles.
You send them to read a sentence of the Book of the Maccabees, and wish Judas Maccabeus to teach the Christian people what Jesus Christ did not teach. But the people, who are not wanting in sense, ask their priests what is the value of that Book of Maccabees? The priest, if he have any conscience, is obliged to reply that it is one of the Apocryphal books; it having never been received by the Hebrews, from whom we are bound to receive faithfully the books of the Old Testament; it not being written originally in their language; never being quoted, either by Christ, or by His apostles; consequently, not received in the ancient Catholic Church, and only inserted among the sacred books by the Council of Trent; to whom it was an object to authenticate the doctrine of purgatory. So much for the Scripture proof. Now, let us go to the tradition of the ancient Catholic Church.
You will admit that, for two centuries, prayers for the dead, and still more the doctrine of purgatory, never entered men's heads. Tertullian, that imaginative mind, which saw so many other things upside-down, was the first to recommend prayers for the dead; without, however, mentioning purgatory. Towards the end of the fourth century, Augustine, another African mind, spoke more decidedly both of prayers, and of a sort of suffrages for the dead. However others choose to act, shall we rely on the authority of his discoveries? Even the purgatory of Augustine was not an existing fire, but one which is to be lighted up at the final destruction, through which then, and not previously, souls shall pass. This theory is of perhaps equal value with his theory respecting the Antipodes, whose existence that learned man denied!
The case is similar with all the other dogmas which, since the time of Gregory VII., have originated in the Church of Rome. Is the Christian Church bound to receive the wicked inventions of Honorius III., proposed and sanctioned by him in the Lateran Council (1215)? Shall she adhere to his famous dogma of transubstantiation, invented by the heretic Eutychus, unknown in the first ages, and ably contradicted by Pope Gelatius? (De Duab. Christ. Natur.) Shall she abide by the impious doctrine that the sacrifice of Christ, offered once for all, as a full satisfaction, even to the end of the world, should be renewed every day, by hundreds, by thousands, by hundreds of thousands of priests, who say that they are authorized to offer it, both for the living and the dead? Most enormous sacrilege, to which the whole Bible is opposed, and which the Apostle Paul loudly condemns in his Epistles! What elder, or bishop, in the first centuries, ever allowed himself to celebrate your mass, or the sacrifice which you call unbloody; or to make use of anything but the simple commemoration of the supper of the Lord; very far removed from that idea with which you have clothed it in the ages of error and ignorance? Is the sacrament which you now celebrate the original august mystery of the Divine food, instituted indeed in substances of bread and wine, but containing spiritually the body and blood of Christ, which are communicated to His Church, that is, to the multitude of believers, not materially and physically, as you say, but in virtue of faith? Yes! if you will but celebrate it with that simplicity with which it was celebrated by the first bishops and elders of the Catholic Church, we will come willingly to receive it at your hands. Celebrate it in all its extent, and the people will approach the eucharistic table, to eat of the Divine bread, and to drink of the Divine cup. But the people desire both the one and the other, and cannot yet understand the reason for which you have taken the cup from them.
Is it not the precept of Christ that every believer should drink of that cup, as well as eat of that bread? Was not this the practice of the primitive times of Christianity? The Greek Church has always retained that practice, and the Reformation immediately resumed it. The people have as good a right to the cup as have you priests;—even better than you, since you cannot avail yourselves of it without the Church properly so called. In taking it alone, you perform an act contrary to His institution, which is to "communicate,"—that is, to take it together, as the word itself teaches you. Yes! Only on this condition will the people remain united to you, that you be faithful in the exercise of the ministry, not altering the faith, not changing the practice, not deceiving them in anything.
They are willing to confide in you as the appointed servants of the Church, in the offices of religion. But instead of this you think of nothing but to command. The yoke of Christ, which He made easy, and His burden, which He made light, you have rendered so heavy and insupportable that the people refuse to bear them. Something very different from indulgences and benedictions is now needed to satisfy the people. In the present day fables please none but children, and lies are no longer tolerated by any. The Christian people desire from us, the ministers of its Church, the Word of Life as announced by Jesus Christ, as preached by the apostles, as written in the sacred books of our faith.
If, instead of chaplets and Agni Dei, which are deceptions, you, the bishop of Rome, were to give the Bible to the people, you would see how readily they would follow you! But it must be the Bible translated into their own language, so that they may comprehend it. Give them the Bible! Bestow on them those sacred books which Moses and the Prophets, the Evangelists and the Apostles wrote for the people, and not for the priests only! Give the people that which is their own; they have a right to it of which you cannot deprive them. It is the testament of our God, who left His people the heirs of His holy Word; in reading which, faith will be granted, and to the belief of which are attached salvation and life.
Who gave you the power to deprive the people of their privilege and highest benefit? Fear lest God end by avenging His oppressed ones, and causing a curse to fall upon you.
You venture to excommunicate the people, if they read the Bibles which a beneficent Christian society has taken pains to print in all languages, on purpose that all nations may enjoy the benefit of reading them. You condemn the charity and the religion of those good men, who, in their zeal for souls, undertake this work with much expense to themselves! O Pope Gregory, what manner of spirit are you of? As one of the bishops of Christendom, you should have a care to feed your flock; on what will you feed them if not on the pure and holy Word of God? You ought, therefore, to be well disposed towards all who take this Word from the holy originals in Hebrew, and Greek, and faithfully translate it into the vulgar tongue, so as to enable you and other bishops to administer it to your flocks. You ought yourself to accept these sacred volumes from their hands, and, accompanying them with the warmest expressions of paternal solicitude, recommend them to the reading and the study of your children. What do I say? You ought, on your own account, to print them, and not wait for others to supply you with them. You would then see the faithful in your Church apply themselves eagerly to that Divine book, and draw from it food and nourishment. But, alas! you do just the opposite. You do not print it, and you do not choose that others should print it. You never give it to the people, and you do not wish that others should give it. I will add what I hear is said,—you do not read it, and you do not wish that others should read it. And for this you allege, as your sole reason, the pretext that the people are not capable of understanding it. Sure enough, they do not understand it in Latin; but they would understand it in their own language. The Germans and the English, to whom their own Churches impart it, understand it; why should it not be understood by the French, the Italians, and the Spaniards?