We find in another part of the decrees of the council of Lateran, held under Pope Innocent III., the following denunciation:—"All magistrates who interpose against priests in any criminal case, whether it be for murder or high treason, let him be excommunicated." Bear that in mind, American Protestants! If a priest murder one of you, if he commit high treason against your government, your magistrates dare not interfere, under pain of being damned. So says the infallible Roman church; and so will she act, should she ever acquire the power of doing so, in this country.
It is said by Lessius, an eminent Jesuit writer, and professor of divinity in the Roman Catholic college of Louvaine, who wrote about the year 1620, and whose authority no Roman Catholic dare doubt, under pain of eternal damnation, that "the Pope can annul and cancel every possible obligation arising from an oath." This he taught to his students in the college of Louvaine. This same doctrine has been taught in the college of Maynooth, Ireland, where I was educated myself. It is taught there at the present day. See the works of De La Hogue.
Judge you, Americans, what safety there is for your republic, while you support and sustain among you a sect numbering two millions, who are sworn to uphold such doctrines as the foregoing. The very domestics in your houses are spies for the priests. Nothing transpires under your own roofs which is not immediately known to the bishop or priest to whom your servants confess. But you may say, "The confessor will not reveal it." Here you are partly right, and partly, mistaken; and it is proper to explain the course adopted by priests in such matters as confession.
If it be the interest of the church, that what is confessed should be made public, the priest tells the party to make it known to him, "out of the confessional," and then he uses it to suit his own views; perhaps for the destruction of the reputation, or fortune, of the very man, or family, employing domestic. But it may be replied that Roman Catholics are good-natured people; that they are generous and industrious. Admitted: I will even go further; there is not a people in the world moreso. Nature has done much for them, especially those of them who are natives of Ireland; but the lack of a correct education has corrupted their hearts and imbittered their feelings; they are not to be trusted with the care or management of the animals of Protestant families.
It is not generally known, nor perhaps suspected by Protestant parents, who employ Roman Catholic domestics, in nursing and taking care of their children, that these nurses are in the habit of taking their children privately to the houses of the priests, and bishops, and there getting them baptized according to the Roman Catholic ritual: I know this as a fact, within my own knowledge. When I officiated as a Roman Catholic priest, in Philadelphia, I baptized hundreds, I may say thousands of Protestant children, without the knowledge or consent of their parents, brought to me secretly by their Roman Catholic nurses; and I should have continued to do so till this day, had not the Lord in his mercy, been pleased to visit me, and show me the wiles, treachery, infamy, corruption, and intrigue of the church, of which the circumstance of birth and education caused me to be a member. It was usual with me in Philadelphia, in St. Margaret church, of which I was pastor, to have services every morning at seven o'clock; and often when I returned home, between eight and eleven, have I found three, four, and sometimes six and eight children, whose parents were Protestants, waiting for me, in the arms of their Roman Catholic nurses to be baptized. This is a common practice in every Protestant country, where there are Roman Catholic priests; but as far as my experience goes, it prevails to a greater extent in the United States than elsewhere; and 1 should not be in the least surprised, if at this time, in the city of Boston, nearly all the infants, nursed by Roman Catholic women, are baptized by their priests and bishops. Roman Catholic women are unwilling to come in contact, even with heretic infants. They believe them damned, unless baptized by a Romish priest. There is another fact, indirectly connected with this subject, which is not generally known. It is believed by Roman Catholics, that all mothers, after their confinement, are to be churched by some Romish priest or bishop. This churching is performed by the repetition of a few prayers, in Latin, a sprinkling of holy water, and the woman who does not submit to this mummery, is believed by any Roman Catholic nurse whom she may employ, to be eternally damned, together with her child. They go so far as to say, that the very ground upon which the unchurched mother walks is accursed; that the very house in which she lives is accursed; and that all she says and does is accursed.
So firmly have the Romish priests and bishops fastened this belief upon the minds of their dupes, that at this moment in Ireland, and I may venture to say in this city of Boston, no Catholic woman will leave her bed after confinement, without being churched, lest the ground on which she walks may be accursed. Until this ceremony is performed, none of her Catholic neighbors will hold any intercourse with her. How then can Protestant mothers expect otherwise, than that Catholic nurses will have their children baptized by priests! or what security can they have that they will not, under the direction of priests, try to turn the minds of their children from the contemplation of truth, and pure gospel light, to the foul sources of Popery and superstition! Look to this, American mothers.
It may not be amiss in this connection, to lay before American Protestants, the doctrine of the Romish church upon baptism; and, lest I may be accused of setting down aught in malice, I shall do so in the words of the council of Trent.
Canons of the Council of Trent concerning Baptism.
"1. Whoever shall say that the baptism of John, had the same virtue as the baptism of Christ; let him be accursed!
"2. Whoever shall say that true and natural water is not absolutely necessary for baptism, and therefore wrests those words of our Lord Jesus Christ, as though they had been a kind of metaphor: 'Except a man be born of water, and the Holy Spirit;' let him be accursed!