Popery! As It Was and as It Is. Also, Auricular Confession; And Popish Nunneries

by William Hogan

These men, under pretence of being democrats are attacking your liberties with the club of Hercules. They are acquiring gigantic force. You have recently witnessed the truth of this assertion; they fancied they had strength enough to cut you down as the legate of Pope Innocent did the Albigenses in the twelfth century. They bid defiance to reason, argument, and the lew of your land; and it grieves me to see every thing yielding to their power, as chaff before the wind. But Providence interposed, and these miserable dupes of Romish priests received a check, which, if followed up, will have a salutary effect in future. But, I pray you, be on your guard; watch the movements of Papists among you: have no confidence in them; have as little as possible to do with them. Trust them in nothing which may either directly or indirectly involve their religion. I most solemnly appeal to our national and state legislatures, to exclude them from every office of honor, profit, or trust, while they have any connection whatever, spiritual or temporal, with the Pope of Rome. Believe them not, when they tell you that their allegiance to the Pope is only spiritual. I understand what they mean by spiritual allegiance.

From what has been stated, it is clear that no modification had taken place in Popish pretensions during the thirteenth century, neither had the church relaxed one iota in her persecutions of heretics. On the contrary, her cruelties increased-the declarations of Popish priests to the contrary notwithstanding.

Let us now see what has been the conduct of the Popish church towards heretics, from the latter end of the thirteenth century to the conclusion of the fourteenth.

How was the illustrious John Wickliffe, professor of divinity in Oxford, treated by the church of Rome, during the reign of Boniface IX. But let us first see what the crimes of Wickliffe were, for which he had been so severely punished by the holy Roman church. The illustrious and good Wickliffe, the founder of the Reformation, whose very name every Christian venerates, maintained, 1st, That the Scriptures contain all truths necessary to salvation; 2d, That in the Scriptures only, is to be found, a perfect rule of Christian practice; 3d, He denied the authority of the Pope in temporal matters; 4th, He maintained that the Pope was the Man of Sin, the son of perdition, to which St. Paul alluded, "sitting as God in the temple of God." As soon as the opinions of Wickliffe were ascertained, Gregory XL, the ruling Pope, addressed a Bull to the primate of England, ordering him to have Wickliffe arrested and imprisoned, until he received further instructions.

The popularity of Wickliffe was such, that this step was considered dangerous; and we find that nothing further was done to this eminently pious man, than banishing him from the university of Oxford into private life, where he died in peace, and went to his grave with the blessings of the good and the virtuous. But this did not satisfy the Pope, nor the infallible church. O, no. The holy mother never forgives a heretic, dead or alive. As soon as Wickliffe departed this life, in the sixty-first year of his age, the church and Papists exhibited the wildest symptoms of joy. One of their writers, in giving an account of his death, uses the following language: "On the day of St. Thomas, the martyr, that limb of the devil, enemy of the church, deceiver of the people, idol of heretics, mirror of hypocrites, author of schism, sower of hatred, and inventor of lies, John Wickliffe, was, by the immediate judgment of God, suddenly struck with a palsy, which seized all the members of his body, when he was ready to vomit forth his blasphemies against the blessed St. Thomas, in a sermon which he had prepared to preach that day!"

But holy mother was not yet satisfied. She had not the felicity of hanging Wickliffe; her ears were not delighted with his groans upon the rack; she did not hear his flesh hissing amid the flames of the faggot, nor his bones breaking upon the wheel; she must, however, have all the revenge left to satiate her malice. Thirty years after the death of Wickliffe, the infallible council of Constance, at which the Pope presided, passed an order that the body and bones of John Wickliffe, if they might be known and discerned from the bodies of faithful people—Papists—should be taken from the ground and thrown far away from the burial of any church, according to the canon laws and decrees.

This decree was not put in execution for thirteen years afterwards. His grave was then opened and his body disinterred with great solemnity, and in the presence of the Catholic bishop of Lincoln, it was publicly burned, and the ashes thrown into a neighboring rivulet. But the indignities offered to Wickliffe, while living, and after his death, were not sufficient to appease the malice of Papists. Blood, and blood alone, could satiate their thirst for revenge. His followers were hunted up and mercilessly put to death. Among the first of his followers, who suffered, was Lord Cobham, a nobleman, distinguished for his valor, devotion to his country, and true piety. His character was without blemish, and his morals and patriotism undoubted; but he was a heretic; he was among the followers of Wickliffe; he believed in the Holy Scriptures. This was crime enough, and for this he was excommunicated. Cobham appealed to the Pope, but the appeal was refused: he was cited again; he was offered absolution, if he would sue for it, and submit to the Popish church. This he refused; the consequence was, he was thrown into prison, from which he escaped and was not retaken for nearly four years, he was, however, finally captured after a most heroic resistance.

He might have escaped again, being an overmatch for his captor, had not a pious Roman Catholic woman, while he was nobly defending himself, taken up a stool, and with a desperate blow, broken both his legs. In this condition he was recommitted to prison until he was sentenced to death for his heresy. The sentence was, "that he should be drawn from his place of confinement through the city of London, to Temple Bar, there to be hanged, and burned hanging." The historian Bale gives a most affecting account of his execution.

"On the day appointed," says Bale, "he was brought out of the Tower with his arms bound behind him, having a very cheerful countenance. Then he was laid upon a hurdle as though he had been a most heinous traitor to the crown, and so drawn forth into St. Giles's field, where they had set up a new gallows. When he arrived at the place of execution, and taken from the hurdle, he fell down devoutly on his knees, and prayed God to forgive his enemies. Then he stood up and beheld the multitude, exhorting them, in the most godly manner, to follow the laws of God, written in the Scriptures, and to beware of such teachers as they see contrary to Christ, in their conversation and living, with many other special councils. Then was he hanged up there, by the middle, in chains of iron, and so consumed alive in the fire, praising the name of the Lord, so long as life lasted. In the end he commended his soul into the hands of God, and so, most Christianly, departed home, his body being resolved to ashes."

Thus was a nobleman, and a noble Christian, most barbarously put to death for believing that the Bible contained God's truth; and therein differing from the Roman church, which teaches that the traditions of the fathers, and dreams of monks, are of equal authority.