The hope of future life is looked upon as a vain illusion—what is being told of hell as a mere fable. * * * Love of truth is considered eccentricity; chastity, prudishness. Licentiousness is considered broadness of soul, whilst prostitution here leads to fame and prestige. The more vice one accumulates, the greater the glory. Virtue is considered ridiculous. * * *
I shall not speak of violation, rape, adultery and incest. They are trifles at the Pontifical Court.
I shall not relate that the husbands whose wives have been abducted, are forced to silence and exile. * * * I shall not dwell upon the cruel insult by which the outraged husbands are being compelled to receive in their houses their wives who had been prostituted, especially when they carry in their wombs the fruit of the criminal love."
Great God! What a picture of the Papal Court!
Petrarch adds, "The people are quite aware of everything I know myself."
The people knew; the people murmured: the people were helpless. Adultery had interwoven itself into the very fabric of religion; and the people saw no way to attack the adulterers without being accused of heresy and delivered to the terrible Inquisition.
Luther had not yet come. When he did come, the adulterers said that he was not only a heretic, but a drunkard and a libertine!
William Hogan was born in Ireland, and was educated for the priesthood at Maynooth College. Coming to America to follow his calling, he was so shocked by what he learned, in the Confessional and otherwise, that he abandoned popery in utter disgust.
When he landed on our shores, he brought with him letters of introduction to DeWitt Clinton of New York. So favorably was he received that he was elected Chaplain of the New York legislature, unanimously. Therefore, he was not a man with a grievance. Every selfish instinct warned him to remain in the service of popery. It was his native honesty and his horror of imposture that caused him to rebel. Afterwards, he published books which reached an immense circulation prior to the Civil War, but which were forgotten in that shock of armies. They are now seldom seen even in the catalogues of Old Book stores.
To that splendid gentleman, Dr. John N. Taylor, of Crawfordville, Indiana, I was indebted for a copy of the edition of 1856. The volume contains Hogan's book on "Popery," and also his "Auricular Confession and Popish Nunneries."