Through the instrumentality of this execrable system of espionage, the pope becomes acquainted with the character, intentions, and acts of every important private and public personage; with the nature and object of every secret society; with the private intentions of every government; with the incipiency and progress of every seditious and treasonable project; and is prepared at all times, by the accuracy and comprehensiveness of his information, to instruct his generals in the actual state of affairs existing in any part of the world, and to direct their conduct in the advancement of his interest, by the most prudent and enlightened council.
SECTION TWO.
The Pope's Direct Authority—His Opposition to Marriage—To
Slavery—His Claim to Temporal Power on the forged Decretal
Letter of Constantine—On the Fictitious Gift of Pepin—On
the Pretended Donation of Charlemagne—on the Disputed
Bequest of Matildaf Duchess of Tuscany—The Title of Pope a
Usurpation—The Papal Artful Policy—The State of Italy
under the Papal Government.
We have now sketched the pope's temporal monarchy, which has its seat in Rome, and its subjects in every part of the world. He claims to be invested by divine right with supreme sovereignty over earth, heaven and hell. To question the legitimacy of this claim is condemned, and has been punished as blasphemous by his authority. Joseph Wolf, of Halle, a Jew who had been converted to the Catholic faith, was, while studying divinity at the Seminarium Romanum, imprisoned for blasphemy for having expressed a doubt of the pope's infallibility. Fra Paola, who had expressed in a private letter that so far from coveting the dignities of Rome he held them in abomination, and who had advocated liberty in a dispute which had occurred between the pope and the Venitian government, was summoned to Rome to answer for his criminal assertions and conduct; and though acquitted of the allegations preferred against him, narrowly escaped the assassin's dagger.
But the "More than God," the Pope, is a very jealous "more than God." He allows no master to stand between him and his subjects. His authority over mind and body must be direct, and all influences or institutions that obstruct it must be annihilated.. Hence Cardinal Ballarmine, the distinguished papal controversialist, who was so devout a Catholic that when he died he bequeathed one half of his soul to Jesus Christ and the other half to the Virgin Mary, provoked the censure of the holy father by asserting in a publication that the pope's influence in temporal matters was not direct but indirect. As husbands obstruct the direct influence of popes on wives, parents on children, and friends on friends, he would nullify the conjugal, parental, filial and social relations. Hence in a canon of the Council of Trent, he pronounces a curse on all who say that marriage is preferable to celibacy. Should the prompting of the social instincts be too strong to be repressed by the terrors of canonical anathemas, and should they in natural indifference to them still create the bonds, connections, and institutions of friendship and families, he has a clerical machinery skilfully adapted to moderate their influences and reciprocities, and to maintain the predominence of his direct authority. Michelet, the philosophical historian and celebrated controversialist, in a work entitled "Priests, Women and Children," has explained the ingenious method by which this object is effected. By separating as much as possible the husband from the wife, and the children from their parents, the direct papal influence, through the priest, is exerted on the isolated husband abroad, on the lonely wife at home, and the defenceless children in nunnery schools and Catholic asylums. Examples of a similar policy are portrayed by Eugene Sue, a Catholic, in his "Wandering Jew." The logical consequence of the dogma of the pope's direct authority has, in fact, made the Catholic church a "free love" institution. Chastity and marriage she tolerates because she cannot do otherwise; but in the lives of her monks, her priests, her popes, and her saints, she as practically ignores as she consistently hates them.
The jealous claim of the pope to a direct influence on the mind of his subjects, has unavoidably made the church an inveterate enemy of human slavery. The pope hates slavery, not because he wishes men free, but because he wishes to exercise a direct authority over their minds. The master nullifies the pope's influence on the slave, and therefore he wishes him removed. No influence is equal to that of a master. The whip he holds over the back of his slave, and the power he has over his life, annihilates all other influences. Hence the Catholic church has always been opposed to slavery. Guizot remarks, respecting feudal slavery: "It cannot be denied, however, that the church has used its influence to restrain it; the clergy in general, and especially several popes, enforced the manumission of slaves as a duty incumbent on laymen, and loudly enveighed against keeping Christians in bondage."—(Gen. Hist., Lect. VI., p. 132). Pope Pius II., in 1462, in a letter addressed to the bishops of Eubi; Pope Paul III., in 1537, in his apostolic letter to the cardinal bishops of Toledo; Pope Urban VII., in 1590, in an apostolic letter to the Collector Jurium of the apostolic churches of Portugal; Pope Benedict XIV., in 1731, in his apostolic letter to the clergy of Brazil; and Pope Pius VII., in his official address to his clergy, all denounced the traffic in blacks, and demanded that every species of slavery should cease among Christians. Pope Gregory, in his apostolic letter of 1839 says: "We, then, by virtue of our apostolic authority, censure all the aforesaid practices as unworthy the Christian name, and by that same authority we strictly prohibit and interdict any ecclesiastic or layman from presuming to uphold, under any pretext or color whatever, that same traffic in blacks, as if it were lawful in its nature, or otherwise to preach, or in any way whatever publicly or privately to teach in opposition to these things which we have made the subject of our admonition in this our apostolic letter." We are aware that African slavery owes its origin to a Catholic priest, who, perceiving that the demand for laborers in the West India was likely to subject the Indians to bondage, suggested as a less wrong that negroes should be purchased of the Portuguese settlements in Africa, and held as slaves for life; but whatever were his private opinions respecting the propriety of African slavery, his church has never recognized it as legal.
The perversion of public opinion by the Catholic church, and the practical beguilement of her warmest friends, effected by the consummate craft with which she plots to achieve her objects, have presented fresh evidence to the world in the singular fact, that while she is radically the most efficient abolition society that ever was projected, and that while in her official mandates to the clergy she has invariably denounced the traffic in human beings as infamous, yet has she commanded the homage of the American slave-holder for her friendly disposition towards the Southern institution; and induced her members, while using them as instruments in the accomplishment of her projects for the abolishment of slavery, to hate, denounce, and to anathematize the North for its abolition proclivities.
But there were other considerations which probably stimulated the humanity of the church in her labors for the abolition of slavery. The condition of the slave precludes the possibility of his serving her in the capacity of a spy on the opinions and conduct of his master; and as he received no wages she could not assess him for her benefit. The perfection of the pope's system of espionage, and the augmentation of his revenue, were both connected with the slave's disenthralment. These advantages could not be undesirable to the church, and the avidity with which she has improved them, shows how clearly she foresaw them. Through accident or Jesuistical craft, it has happened, that colored servants have been supplanted to an incredible extent by white Catholic servants, who as serviceable spies far excel them. I regret not the abolishment of the revolting traffic in human beings, nor do I censure the Catholic church for the important aid she rendered in its achievement; but I hope American freemen will not want the vigilance to prevent her from improving the new condition of things, so much to her advantage as to endanger the liberty of the country.
But the "Lord God, the Pope," who claims by divine right to be lord paramount of the world, has unwarily invalidated his title even to the "patrimony of St. Peter," by an attempt to establish it by forged decretal letters. Forgeries are criminal acts, and punished by all nations as high misdemeanors. They are prejudicial to the ground of action of a claimant, and as evident proof of an intent to swindle, as they are of a base and contemptible origin. When successful, they may overhang the mind for a while, as clouds in a dead still atmosphere do the earth; but at the slightest breeze they are dissipated, and the superstructure based upon them, though gorgeous as the setting sun, will, like its area! enchantment, break up and dissolve away. Yet of such base and flimsy material are the pope's claim to temporal power constructed. Innumerable bulls, decretals, receipts, briefs, canons, letters, interdicts, and other documents, have been forged, altered and interpolated by the holy brotherhood, to furnish a legal basis for the pope's temporal power. These documents were prepared between the third and ninth centuries, and carefully treasured up in the papal archives, ready for use as occasion might require. One of the boldest of these pious forgeries is the decretal letter attributed to Constantine the Great, forged probably by Benedict of Mentz, in the ninth century. It reads as follows: