Has the reader ever seen a Popish priest in the act of making, or metamorphosing bread and water into flesh and blood? If he has not, it would be well, if not profane, to witness it; for never before has he seen such mountebank tricks. The priest, this great creator of flesh and blood out of flour and water, appears decked out in as many gewgaws as would adorn a Pagan priestess, and about twice as many as would be necessary for a Jewish rabbi. Amid the ringing of small bells, dazzling lights, genuflections, crossings, incense, and a variety of other such "tricks before high Heaven," this clerical mountebank metamorphoses this wafer into God, and exhibits it to his followers, whom he calls upon to go on their knees and adore it. This horrible practice should induce our philanthropists, who are sending vast sums abroad for the conversion of the Pagan, to pause and ask themselves, whether there is, in the whole moral wilderness of Paganism, any thing worse, or half so bad, as that idolatry which we have at our own doors!
If a being from some unknown world, and to whom this world of ours was as little known as the one from which he came was to us, should, by accident or otherwise, arrive among us, and we were to take him into a Roman Catholic church during the celebration of mass, and there tell him, that the great actor in the service was making flesh and blood out of bread and water, and could actually accomplish that feat, he would unhesitatingly award to these United States the credit of having among them some of the most accomplished jugglers in the world.
What are your Eastern fire-eaters, sword-swallowers, and dervishes, to a Popish priest? Why, it would be easier to swallow a rapier, ten feet long, or a ball of fire as large as the mountain Orizaba, than to metamorphose flour and water into the "great and holy God, who created the heavens and the earth, and all that is therein."
Let me not be accused of levity, or want of reverence to that Almighty Being, to whom I am indebted for my creation and preservation, and on whom alone, through the merits of the Saviour, my hopes of salvation are placed. My only object is, to call the attention of my fellow-citizens to the absurd and profane doctrines of Popery; and that having seen them, in their true colors, it is to be hoped they will find little favor from a thinking and reflect-ing people.
It is extremely unpleasant to my feelings, thus to expose the profanity of a religion which I once professed, and inculcated upon the minds of others; but the best atonement I can make for my unconscious offence to my God and my fellow-beings is, to acknowledge my error, and caution others against falling into the snares which an early education, received from priests and Jesuits, had precipitated me. The reader will therefore pardon me if I lay before him a few more Popish extravagances.
It is generally known, that Papists believe in the doctrines of miracles. So do I, and so do all Christians. But it is not so well known that the miracles, in which Protestants believe, differ widely from those which the Romish church teaches her followers. We believe the miracles recorded in the Holy Scriptures; to these, however, the infallible church pays little or no attention, but hands us down a catalogue of miracles, for the truth of which she herself vouches, and calls upon all to receive them as the "genuine article." It may be edifying, and if not, it can not fail to be amusing to American Protestants, to see a specimen or two of Popish miracles. I assure the reader, they are very fair ones, to my own personal knowledge, and considered as such by every true Roman Catholic in this city of Boston as well as elsewhere.
St. Hieronymus, better known by the name Jerome, who died early in the fifth century, relates the following miracle:—"After St. Hilary was banished from France to Phrygia, he met in the wilderness a huge Bactrian camel, and having seen, in a vision, that his camelship was possessed of the devil, he exorcised him, and the devil sprang out from him, running wild through the wilderness, leaving behind him a strong smell of brimstone." He tells us another miracle, with much gravity. "Paul the Hermit," says this saint, "happening to die in the wilderness, his body remained unburied, until discovered by St. Anthony. The saint being alone, and not having the means of digging a grave, nor strength enough to place in it the body of the hermit, prayed to the Virgin Mary to aid him in his difficulties. The result was, two lions, of the largest species, walked up to him, licked his hands, and told him that they would dig the grave themselves with their feet, and place the body of Paul in it. They did so; and having finished their business, went on their knees, asked the saint's blessing, and vanished in the woods."
Palladus, who lived in the fifth century, and was greatly distinguished in the Romish church, tells us of a hyena, which, in a certain wood in Greece, killed a sheep. The next day, a pious hermit, who happened to live in the neighborhood, was surprised at seeing this hyena at the-door of his cave; and on asking it what was the matter, the hyena addressed him in the following language: "Holy father, the odor of thy sanctity reached me; I killed a sheep last night, and I came to ask your absolution." The saint granted it, and the hyena departed in peace. We find in Butler's Lives of the Saints, which is for sale in almost all Roman Catholic bookstores, an account of some most extraordinary miracles, for the truth of which, the infallible church pledges her veracity. For instance; when heretics cut off the head of St. Dennis, the saint took it up, put it under his arm, and marched off some miles with it. Butler relates another extraordinary miracle, and if American Protestants presume to doubt it, they may expect a bull from the Pope of Rome.
A certain lady in Wales, named Winnefride, was addressed by a young prince, named Caradoc. But she, being a nun, could not listen to his addresses. The young prince got impatient, and finally, in a fit of rage and disappointment, he pursued her in one of her walks, and cut off her head. A saint, by the name of Beuno, hearing of this outrage, went in pursuit of Caradoc, and having come up with him, he caused the earth to open and swallow him. Upon his returning where the nun's head fell, he found that a well had opened, emitting a stream of the purest water, the drinking of which, to this day, is believed to cast out devils. When the holy St. Beuno looked at the head of the nun, he took it up and kissed it, placed it on a stump, and said mass. No sooner was the mass finished, than the beheaded nun jumped up, with her head on, as if nothing had happened.
Come forward, Americans, if you dare, and deny this miracle. The holy church vouches for its truth. St. Patrick, the great patron of Daniel O'Connell, whom his holiness the Pope calls the greatest layman living, performed some very extraordinary miracles, as we are told; among them was the following: A poor boy strayed from home, and died of starvation, or something else, and the body was nearly devoured by hogs, when St. Patrick, chancing to pass that way, discovered it in this mutilated condition. The holy saint touched it, and it instantly sprang into life, resuming its former shape and proportions. On another occasion, as we read in the Lives of the Saints, St. Patrick fed fourteen hundred people with the flesh of one cow, two wild boars, and two stags; and what is more strange than all, the same old cow was seen, on the following morning, brisk and merrily grazing on the very same field where she was killed, cooked, and eaten by the multitude.