Clara Maynard; Or, The True and the False: A Tale of the Times

by William Henry Giles Kingston

“I am afraid,” he continued, “that the tutor under whom I placed my boy, by Mr Lerew’s advice, has had much to do with it. I now hear that three or four of his previous pupils have become Romanists, and others, by all accounts, are likely to go over. I object to my son’s becoming a Romanist, though I consider that the Church of Rome is the mother of all Churches, and has the advantage of antiquity on her side.”

“The mother of all abominations!” exclaimed the general to himself. “I must endeavour to set my friend right on that subject, if he holds that fundamental error.”

The general was a man of action. After taking a hurried meal, he drove on to the house of Mr Lennard. His journey to Cheltenham had been delayed, and he was now hesitating whether first to go in search of his son or to proceed there immediately. The thought at once struck the general that should he succeed in getting Clara out of the convent, he might go on to Cheltenham with her, and that if Mary was fit to be removed from the school, it would give Clara occupation to nurse her friend.

“I shall indeed be most grateful to you,” said Mr Lennard, with the tears in his eyes; “I was sorely perplexed what to do, and I specially wish that Mary should not remain longer at the school than can be helped, as from her letter it is evident that she is not only ill, but very miserable there.

“You must give me your written authority, and I will act upon it,” said the general. This was done. “Now, my friend,” he continued, “I wish to speak to you on the remark made in your letter, in which you say that you consider the Church of Rome the mother of all Churches, and that it has the advantage of antiquity. You evidently go first on the assumption that our Lord instituted a visible Church on earth, and that that Church, though corrupted, is the Church of Rome. Now I wish to draw your attention to the origin of that wonderful establishment which has for so long exerted a baneful influence over a large portion of the human race. For three centuries true Christians, though becoming less and less pure in their doctrine and form of worship, existed in Rome as a despised and subordinate class, the purity of their faith gradually decreasing as their numbers, wealth, and influence increased. At length the Emperor Constantine professed himself to be a Christian, which he did for the sake of obtaining the assistance of the Christians against his rival Licinius, who was supported by the idolaters. Constantine being victorious, and Licinius slain, the idolaters saw that they could no longer hope to be predominant. There existed in Rome from the days of Numa a college, or curia, the members of which, called pontiffs, had the entire management of all matters connected with religion. The post of head pontiff, or Pontifex Maximus, had been assumed by Julius Caesar and his successors. They had probably no real belief in the idolatrous system they supported; such secret faith as they had was centred in Astarte, the divinity of the ancient Babylonians, whose worship had been introduced at an early period into Etruria, as it had been previously into Egypt and Greece. They were, in reality, the priests of Astarte, and from them we derive our festival of Christmas, our Lady Day, and many other festivals with Christian names. It had been their principle from the first to admit any gods who had become popular, and thus were added in rapid succession the numberless gods and goddesses of the heathen mythology. At length Jesus of Nazareth was added to their pantheon. These pontiffs, on perceiving that Christianity, patronised by the Emperor, was likely to gain the day, saw that to maintain their power they must themselves pretend to belong to the new faith. This they did, and one of their number soon managed to get himself chosen the Bishop of Rome, while the other pontiffs by an easy transition formed the College of Cardinals. The title of Pontifex Maximus, being held by the Emperor, was not assumed by the bishop of Rome till the Emperor Gratian in 376 refused any longer to be addressed by that title. Having banished some of the grosser practices of idolatry, they introduced the remainder under different names, so that the pagans might readily conform to the new worship. The apostles took the place of the various gods, and the martyrs those of the inferior divinities; above them all was raised Astarte, who, now named Mary the Mother of God and Queen of Heaven, became the chief object of adoration. In truth, the established worship at Rome remained as truly idolatrous as it had ever been, while the great aim of the pontiffs was to increase their power, amass wealth, and strengthen their position. From that period they acted, as might have been expected, in direct opposition to all the principles of Christianity. Bloody struggles often took place between rivals aiming at the pontificate, while they endeavoured to destroy all those who refused to obey them. It was not till a somewhat later period, when the head pontiff set up a claim of superiority above all other bishops, that, to strengthen it, it was asserted that he was in direct apostolic succession from the apostle Peter, the pontiff who first made it being ignorant, probably, that the Christian Church at Rome was founded exclusively by Paul, and that the apostle Peter never was at Rome, he having been all his life employed in founding churches in the East. ‘By their fruits ye shall know them;’ and we have only to reflect on the lives of the popes, many of them monsters of atrocity, and the fearful acts of persecution which they encouraged and authorised, to be convinced that paganism, the invention of Satan, had usurped the name of Christianity, and that the Romish Church, as it is called, instead of being the mother of all Churches, is truly the Babylon of the Apocalypse; yet this is the system which ministers of the Church of England are endeavouring to introduce into our country, with its idolatrous rites and dogmas, and which you and many excellent men like yourself look at with a lenient eye, instead of regarding it with the abhorrence it deserves.”

“My dear friend,” said Mr Lennard, greatly astonished, “I certainly had never regarded the Church of Rome in that light; I looked upon it as the ancient Church, corrupted in the course of ages.”

“It has no true claim to be a Christian Church at all,” said the general; “it is like the cuckoo, which, hatched in the nest of the hedge-warbler, by degrees forces out the other fledglings, and usurps their place. So did paganism treat Christianity; although, fostered by God, the latter was enabled to exist, persecuted and oppressed as it was, and still to exert a benign influence in the world. On examining the tenets of many who are called heretics, we find that it was not the creed they held, but the opposition they offered to the Romish system, which was their crime, and brought down persecution on their heads. When we read of the horrible cruelties practised on the Waldenses and Albigenses, the followers of Huss in Bohemia, the true Protestants of all ages down to the time of Luther, the detestable system of the Inquisition, the treatment of the inhabitants of the Netherlands by Alva and the Spaniards, when whole hecatombs of victims were put to death at the instigation of the pope and his cardinals, the destruction of thousands and tens of thousands of Huguenots in France, the martyrdoms of the noble Protestants of Spain, the massacre of Saint Bartholomew, and the fires of Smithfield—all these diabolical acts performed with the concurrence and approval of the papal power—can we for a moment hesitate to believe that that power owes its origin, not to the Divine Head of the Church, but to that spirit of evil, Satan, the deadly foe of the human race? Can any system founded on it, however much reformed it may appear, fail to partake of the evil inherent in the original itself. It is from not seeing this that so many are led to embrace the errors—I would rather say the abominations—of Rome; while others are taught to look at them with lenient eyes, and to believe that the system itself is capable of reformation. Before true and simple faith can be established throughout the world the whole must be overthrown and hurled into the depths of the sea, as completely as have been the idols and idolatrous practices of the inhabitants of the South Sea Islands, where Christianity has been established.”

Mr Lennard leant his head on his hand. “I must think deeply of what you say; you put the whole matter in a new light to me. I have had no affection for Rome; still, I have always regarded her as a Church founded on the apostles and prophets.”

“Yet which virtually forbids its followers to study those prophets and apostles,” remarked the general. “But what I want you to do is to look into the subject for yourself. I have merely given you a hint for your guidance; by referring carefully to the Scriptures, you will find more and more light thrown on it, till you must be convinced that the view I have taken is the correct one; and would that every clergyman and layman in England might do the same! these ritualistic practices would then soon be banished from the land.”

Never in his life had poor Mr Lennard been so perplexed and troubled. He was invited to reconsider opinions which he had held, in a somewhat lax fashion it may be granted, all his life. He had to search for his son, and prevent him if possible from becoming a slave to the system he had just heard so strongly denounced, and he was painfully anxious about the health of his dear little Mary. While he was still in this unhappy state of mind, the general left him to return home. The next morning they both set off to their respective destinations, the general to Epsworth, having called for Mr Franklin on his way, and Mr Lennard to London.