Masses for the Dead.—This doctrine was connected with those of Purgatory and Indulgences. By it a succession of solitary masses might be continually carried on, either to relieve the Purgatorial torments, or shorten their duration. But these masses must be paid for either in money or land. They formed the vast funds which endowed the great Romish establishments—the monasteries, &c. Operating on the fears of the dying, the Popish priesthood rapidly possessed themselves of enormous wealth, and, in England, they were calculated to be masters of one-third of the land! The statute of mortmain alone preserved the rest. This prodigious grasp was loosened at the Reformation, and the monkish institutions were deprived of the wealth gained only by superstition.
It is obvious how fatally a doctrine of this order must operate on society. If man could clear himself from the punishment of a life of profligacy by a bequest on his deathbed, his whole responsibility would be removed at once. The fear of judgment would be extinguished throughout his life; he could have no restraint but the arm of society. Masses would be his substitute for morals; and his conscience would be cleared by the acts of others, for years after he was laid in the grave. If Masses could avail, there would be no use in living virtue, to any man who was able to pay for them.
This doctrine, intolerable in the view of common sense, unjust in placing an insurmountable distinction between the rich and the poor, and wholly contradictory to the spirit of the gospel—which commands that "every man shall work out his own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God that worketh in him, both to will and to do"—was created and continued for its vast profits to the priesthood of Rome.
The celebrated Council of Trent, which, under various forms, sat from 1542 till 1563, collected all these doctrines into a system, and the subsequent act of Pius IV. gave them in the shape of a creed to the Popish world.
We are glad to find that the "Papal Aggression" has awakened the intelligent and important authority of the English bar. On all great questions of the liberties and rights of the empire, that authority is of the most decisive order; and in this spirit we welcome with peculiar gratification a pamphlet from the well-known and eloquent pen of Mr Warren.[23] He commences by this bold and manly denunciation of the Papal interference with the rights of the Church and the privileges of the crown:—
"The ascendency of the Protestant faith in this country is in danger, notwithstanding the noble movement which has been made in its defence. The position so suddenly taken by the mortal enemy of that faith, is meant to be permanent; and he is silently intrenching himself in it: regarding all that has been said by this great nation as "sound and fury, signifying—NOTHING." He is infinitely more to be feared than he wishes at present to be believed; and though the precipitancy of priestly ambition may have deranged, for a moment, the working of his policy, it is really profound and comprehensive, as its results will in due time show; and has been accommodated to the political and ecclesiastical circumstances of the country with malignant exactitude and skilfulness.
"The political power of the Papacy lies hid under its spiritual pretensions, like a venomous serpent lurking under lovely foliage and flowers. A leading object of this Letter, is to explain and illustrate that truth, in its practical application to the great question now before the country, challenging its best energies of thought and will. It would be fatally fallacious to regard the late act of the Pope as exhibiting only the spasms of weakness. The more it is considered, the greater cause will be developed for anxious but resolute action. As a pretender to the exercise of direct temporal power, the Pope seems quite impotent; but he is the visible exponent of a spiritual despotism, founded (so we Protestants believe, or have no right to be such) as clearly on falsehood and impiety, as its pretensions and purpose are at once sublime and execrable; that purpose being to extinguish, and in the name of Heaven, the liberties of mankind.
"The question then—'The Queen or the Pope?'—is a momentous one, which we have been very insolently challenged to answer. The whole matter, social, political, and religious, is gathered up into those few words; and posterity will sit in judgment on our mode of answering that question."
Mr Warren, in taking a lawyer's general view of the subject, strikingly adverts to the impudence of the Papist assertions. It is true that these assertions have now shrunk into a very small compass; that the bravado of "my Lord Cardinal" has dwindled down into a sort of supplication to be suffered to remain here on any terms; and that the "prince" has stooped into the pilgrim, gliding through the filth, vice, and poverty of the Irish colony in Westminster, or, as he terms it, the slums—an expression of extreme vulgarity, which, Mr Warren justly observes, does not belong to the English language, and which, we may as justly observe, belongs only to the meanest of the rabble.