——— MISSING PAGES —— 553-554 ———
His conscience would not permit him to call upon me. I had just renounced the Pope of Rome as the beast spoken of in the scriptures. I was a heretic, and no good Popish Christian was permitted even to pay me my just debts. He passed on, and what, think you, Americans, were the fruits of his mission? He prevailed upon the eldest daughter of the respectable gentleman to whom he was introduced, to go to confession to him, and the next I heard of him was, that he had been seen passing at full speed, in a light sulky, through the village where I kept my office; and what, think you, was the cause of this speed? what drove him in such haste from his parochial residence? Do you not know reader? can you not anticipate? Has not the insight which I have given you into the immorality of Popish priests, already suggested to you that this individual was a fugitive from some crime, and that its avenger was in pursuit of him? It was so, reader.
This Reverend Popish wretch seduced the eldest daughter of his benefactor, and the father, becoming aware of the fact, armed himself with a case of pistols and determined to shoot the seducer. But there was in the house a good Catholic servant, who advised the seducer to fly. He did so, in the manner I have stated, with the insulted father in full pursuit of him; but the fugitive was in time to take steam and thus eluded his pursuer. He soon arrived in Charleston, the Right Reverend Bishop understood his case, advised him to go to confession, absolved him from his sin, and having washed him white and immaculate as a snow-drop, sent him on to New York to preach morality to the Gothamites, who enjoy the superlative beatitude of being under the spiritual jurisdiction of Bishop Hughes.
But this is only the beginning of the tale, and distasteful as it must be to you, Right Reverend guardians of the morality of the Popish Church, you must sit still awhile. I am well aware of your impatience: you dislike control of any kind; so do all people of rude manners, narrow intellects, and sour tempers, such as all Popish bishops, with whom I have been acquainted, possess. One single happy recollection of the past, a single grateful feeling, has never elevated nor sweetened the life of a Popish bishop, as far as I have ever known; and it is perhaps requiring too much of you, my beloved brethren,—brethren you know we are, in spite of what heretics can do,—to ask you to sit down patiently and hear me out You will have to do it though, and I trust it may be for your benefit hereafter.
As soon as your erring brother disgraced and debauched the daughter of an American citizen, and obtained remission for so doing from his ghostly father, in the confessional, his victim, after a little time, having given birth to a fine boy, goes to confession herself and sends her child of sin to the Sisters of Charity residing in ————, to be taken care of as 'nullius filius!.' As soon as this child was able to walk, a Roman Catholic lady, who knew the whole transaction, adopted the child as her own; and states now, as she has done all along, to her acquaintances, that it was a poor unknown orphan whom she found in the streets, without father or mother to claim it. But the very gist of the story is to come yet. The real mother of the child soon after removed to the city of————, told the whole transaction in confession, to the Roman Catholic Bishop of————, who, knowing that she had a handsome property, introduced her to a highly respectable Protestant gentleman, who soon after married her. Nor is this all the kind Bishop has done. He soon after introduced to this gentleman the sister of charity who had provided for the illicit offspring of this priest, concealing its parentage and representing it as having no father nor mother living. The gentleman was pleased with the boy,' and the holy Bishop finally prevailed upon him and his wife to adopt the child as their own. Here is a pretty specimen of Jesuitism! The boy is the child of a priest, the wife is the mother of the child, and the husband is the dupe of the Bishop, adopting as his own child that of a priest by his own wife. Here is a pretty specimen of a Jesuit web. Would that I had the talent of a Eugene Sue to unravel it and stretch it from one end of this country to the other. Look at the affair yourselves, Americans; examine it in all its atrocious bearings, from beginning to end, and say if you have ever heard or read of a more brutal outrage upon morality and domestic happiness. A Popish bishop sends one of his priests on a mission, with the ostensible view of converting American citizens from the evil of their ways, and the errors of their Protestant doctrines. Americans receive him hospitably; he selects from among them one of their most fascinating daughters; seduces her in the confessional, the Infallible Church makes provision for the illicit offspring of the seduction; the crime and the consequence are both concealed by the bishop. He induces a respectable man to marry this prostitute, and contrives, by the secret machinery of Popery, to dupe him still farther, by prevailing on him to adopt the offspring of his prostituted wife as his own son; and the whole of this is effected, at least so far as the adoption of the child is concerned, through the instrumentality of a sister of charity now living and residing in the city of————. The mother knew at the time, that the child whom her deceived husband adopted as a destitute orphan was her own. The husband is now living, a worthy and respectable man, and the scoundrel priest, who brought sorrow into the house of his father-in-law and sent him prematurely to his grave, has been frequently a guest at his table.
Do Bishops Hughes and Fenwick desire the names of the parties to this tragic and villanous outrage upon American credulity? They are known to me personally. The seduction took place about eighteen years ago, and the Reverend Popish seducer has been, not long since, and perhaps is now, located somewhere in the vicinity of Worcester, Mass.
Dolts, double dolts, as the Jesuit Rodin, of Eugene Sue notoriety, observed of all who are the dupes of Papists,—how long will you permit yourselves to be the dupes of Popish priests and Jesuits? You are now building a college—aye, a Jesuit college—in the very centre of New England,—Worcester, Mass. You do not wish, I presume, that the race of Jesuits should be extinct amongst you; and if you cannot obtain them otherwise than by importation, you are naturally fearful that such may be the case; hence it is, perhaps, that you are liberally contributing your money to build colleges for the education of priests, and schools for sisters of Charity. Your great anxiety for encouraging domestic manufactures might have influenced you in this respect, and you may rest assured—or even take my word for it—that as long as you have Popish colleges and Popish nunneries side by side, your semi-annual dividends of Jesuits and nuns, amongst the States of the Union, will be entirely satisfactory to you. But, to be serious, if Popery be studied as it should be by Americans, it will prove a useful lesson to the rising generation.
For twenty years this country has been more imposed upon than any other, for the same length of time, by Popish priestcraft; so much so that the people are now become accustomed to the repetition of their enormous frauds, and are no longer surprised at them. I confess that it is the gross impostures which I saw practised upon Americans, that first prompted me to expose them. I have tried, and am now trying, to give some rational account of the extraordinary phemomenon that Popery should predominate among a people almost proverbial for their intelligence and inquiring disposition. I thought, and do now think, that nothing can be more acceptable and valuable to Americans, than a well-authenticated statement of some of the practices adopted by Papists to impose upon the Protestants of this country; nor did I see any other manner of removing the almost national insanity of our citizens, in relation to the Romish Church, than by laying before them facts and acts, to many of which I have been myself an eye-witness. How American Protestants could continue for any length of time—even for a month or week—ignorant of the schemes of the Church of Rome, or her de* signs for the overthrow of this republic, has often been to me a matter of no little surprise; it can only be accounted for by a supposition almost as extravagant, viz., that Popery has never been properly studied by Americans. I have proposed all along, and I now repeat the proposal to Americans, to accompany me in the study of Popery. If the Romish Church be studied as it ought to be, by the young and the old of our citizens, it will prove a useful lesson to the present and coming generations,—but that lesson must be studied well. It must not be run over carelessly; its elements must be examined in order to understand the whole machinery of Popery; the whole plan of it must be remodelled; and in order to effect this, it must be taken to pieces, and every piece carefully and separately examined. It has been long hidden from the public eye; it has been along time considered a treasure exclusively belonging to the Popish priests. They have buried it for safe keeping in the dark and dreary vaults of corrupt Rome. These vaults must be opened, the gilded columns with which they are surrounded must be torn down, and all must be laid bare to the naked eye. The divine laws or systems of morality, intended for the government of man, should be always open to his inspection, and nothing short of the steady effort of our people can effect this or rescue ourselves or our country from the evils with which we are now threatened by the machinations of the Popish Church. The crimes and immoralities of Romish priests have long been crying to heaven for vengeance; they now cry for it from every quarter of the globe. I have said that they have been crying for vengeance, for centuries back. I have proved the fact to the satisfaction of any man who is not wilfully blind to truth. But I shall not rest here; I will give you other proofs. Cardinal Campaggio, who was sent to England to arrange the divorce of Queen Catharine, informs us—every English historian knows this fact—"that a priest, who marries, commits a greater sin than if he kept many concubines." Here is a specimen of pure Popish morality, promulgated by a Cardinal, a man next in office to the Pope himself with the full sanction of the said Pope, and the whole conclave of Cardinals of which he was a member; and yet the religion of this man, and that of Bishop Hughes, and Bishop Fenwick, is the very religion which Americans are now endeavoring to introduce into this country, and fasten upon the souls and consciences of our people.