Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture;. Brownlow William Gannaway

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СКАЧАТЬ at all; for the priest can pardon both perjury and high treason. Setting their religion aside, it is plain that, upon principles of reason, no government ought to tolerate men who cannot give any security to that government for their allegiance and peaceful behavior. But this, no Romanist can do; not only while he holds that 'no faith is to be kept with heretics,' but so long as he acknowledges either priestly absolution, or the spiritual power of the Pope.

      "If any one pleases to answer this, and set his name, I shall probably reply. But the productions of anonymous writers I do not promise to take any notice of.

"I am, sir, your humble servant,"JOHN WESLEY."City Road, January 12, 1780."

      But, sir, you know as well as any living man that the history of the Church, from the days of the first Pope down to the iniquitous reign of Pius IX., sustains Mr. Wesley in his views on this subject, and justifies the steps taken by the American party. Notwithstanding the oft-repeated profession of Catholic liberality and Romish toleration, so triumphantly paraded by you, and other interested aspirants and unprincipled demagogues, the Catholic Church has invariably shown herself to be destitute of both, whenever she had the opportunity of using them. Sir, intolerance is an element of her faith, and persecution a specimen of her piety; and no man knows it better than you do. In taking upon herself the obligation of "true obedience to the Pope," the Catholic Church imposes upon herself a task that proves beyond all doubt she cannot, under any circumstances, remain faithful to that obligation, and yet maintain "allegiance" to such a government as ours!

      Sir, I have no patience with a Protestant minister who stands forth as the apologist of Catholicism; nor have I any confidence in one who does it, provided he is a man of intelligence, as I admit you to be. The only excuse I can render for your strange and inconsistent conduct is, that you are in your dotage; that you are a violent old partisan; and that you are the tool of designing demagogues, infamous disunionists, and unmitigated repudiators. I shall not be at all surprised to hear that you have apostatized from the Methodist Church, and gone over to the Roman Catholics. I learn from the Little Rock Gazette, a Democratic paper, that but the other day, Gov. E. N. Carway, of Arkansas, a member of the Methodist Church, had actually apostatized from Methodism, and the Protestant faith, and united with the Roman Catholics. And what makes his defection from the faith of his fathers still more notorious, his organ is down upon the Protestant clergy in bitter and unrelenting denunciations! I believe that you are preparing to go over to the Roman Catholics; and to justify your change, when the time comes, you now assert, "in humiliation but in candor," you say, that the people "have ten thousand times more to fear from Methodists than from Catholics." If you believe this, you ought to leave the Methodist Church instantly, even without the formalities of a withdrawal or expulsion – even though you should be denied admittance into the Catholic Church! I deny that we have "ten thousand times more to fear" from the Devil than we have from the Catholics; and according to your argument, the Methodists are worse than the Devil! This, their most bitter revilers and enemies do not believe; and for obvious reasons. The Methodist Church has no St. Bartholomew's Day, with its rivers of blood staining her garments: she never indiscriminately slaughtered the Albigenses, or Waldenses, or Huguenots: she never established an infernal Inquisition: she never lit up the fires of Smithfield: never burned the Holy Bible, and prohibited, upon pain of eternal death, the printing and circulating of God's word; and last, but not least, she has not sought to keep the people in ignorance. Wherever Methodism has been planted, the people have become great and happy. If you please, wherever Protestantism has prevailed, the people have been prosperous and happy. But look to Old Spain, Italy, the German Confederacies, Sardinia, Naples, Austria, Belgium, Portugal, Bavaria, Baden, South America, and Mexico, where Romanism is the established religion, and the places of her influence are a hissing and a by-word in the eyes of the civilized world! Protestantism has done more for the world in the last hundred years than the Roman Catholic Church has for the eighteen hundred years!

      Sir, the Puritans, of New England; the Hollanders, of New York; the Quakers, Lutherans, and German Reformed, of Pennsylvania; the Baptists, of Rhode Island; the Episcopalians and Presbyterians, of Virginia; the Lutherans and followers of Wesley and Whitefield, of Georgia; the Huguenots and Episcopalians, of the Carolinas; and the Seceders in several of the States, who were the religious pioneers of these States, were all Protestants and Know Nothings; and if they were living, they would be ashamed of you and your teachings. They selected this wilderness country as their home, in order that they might enjoy those religious privileges from which they had been debarred in the old world, by the very Church and people you are seeking to vindicate.

      But you will say, as you have done in substance, that this is no longer the characteristic of Romanism. Why is it not? Has she ever changed for the better? When did she renounce her doctrines and practices? Never! Rome is the same tyrannical system now, where she has the power, that she ever has been, and for ever must be. Wo to this land of ours, if ever Rome gets the ascendancy here! Her creed is the same here and now, in this respect, that it has everywhere been, and must always be. It is her boast that she is always right, and knows no change. She practices her unholy inquisitorial and Jesuitical doctrines in this country, as far as she can and dare act them out. Her whole system is adverse to our republican institutions and she hesitates not to declare it. She has publicly burned our Bible in different States in this Union, and recently, in New York and Pennsylvania. Archbishop Hughes, the Head of the Catholic Church in this country, has taken an oath, administered by the Pope of Rome, of which this is a part:

      "Heretics, schismatics, and rebels to our said Lord (the Pope) or his aforesaid successors, I will, to my utmost power, persecute and wage war with."

      The Church of Rome declares all who are not its members to be heretics. It is painful, in view of all these things, to see an old Protestant minister, whose head has been withered by the frosts of seventy winters, openly in the field advocating a Church whose Bishops, Priests, and members are "drunken with the blood of saints."

      There is but one remaining feature of your singular address to Know Nothing Methodist Preachers to be replied to, and I am through. You assail the new party on the score of its secrecy, and of its concealment of its acts from the public. Had this objection come from any one but a Methodist Preacher, and a known advocate of Class-meetings being held with closed doors, I would now dispose of it without occupying as much space as I shall do in my concluding remarks!

      Notwithstanding all the secrecy in the new Order of Know Nothings has been set aside by the act of the National Council which created it; and notwithstanding our members tell all about their Councils, where and when they meet, and our orators read out and publish to the world our obligations, rules, and principles, it is still objected that ours is a secret Order, liable to be used for bad purposes; that we travel about with dark lanterns; that our proceedings are not restrained by the wholesome check of public opinion!

      Now, this, the great objection to our Order, comes from men who belong to Lodges of Free Masons and Odd Fellows, and who have taken all the binding oaths attached to the different degrees of these respective Orders! The same objection is urged against the American party, by men who belong to the Order of Sons of Temperance, who have deemed a rigid secret organization necessary to combat successfully a domestic evil! It is urged in bitterness against the Order, by demagogues and partisans, who have acted for years with the secret political conclaves of their respective parties, who have held their meetings with closed doors– kept their places of meeting a profound secret – and when they have adjourned, they have enjoined secrecy upon all present! Last, but not least, this secret feature is urged against the American organization by the vile apologists for the Catholic Church, and its corrupt Priesthood and membership, in this country. These demagogues know that the Roman Catholic Church is a secret society, directed by a talented, designing, and villainous HIERARCHY – absolutely controlled by an anti-Republican Priesthood, to a degree which has never been exercised by any political party in the known world! The Confessional is a secret tribunal, before which every member of that Church is СКАЧАТЬ