Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

This stupendous event happened on the 17th of September, a day still consecrated by the Church to the perpetual commemoration of it. No Christian, therefore, may doubt it; for St. Thomas, and all other theologians, assure us, that to doubt a 'canonical fact,' is rash, scandalous, and open to the just suspicion of heresy." It seems there have been doubters of this prodigy, even among Papists; but it has been confirmed by the bulls of subsequent Popes, one of whom, Alexander IV., declared that he had with his own eyes seen and admired the stigmata; and this modern historian, writing in Paris in the middle of the nineteenth century, believes in the miracle as firmly as in any fact that ever transpired. St. Francis, moreover, was accustomed to gather congregations of doves, larks, and starlings, and address them as "dear sisters," and "little brothers," and M. Chavin de Malan informs us, "without apology as without doubt, that when Francis addressed his feathered congregation, they stretched out their necks to imbibe his precepts; that, at his bidding, the starlings ceased to chatter while he preached; that, in fulfilment of his predictions, the naughty larks died miserably; that a falcon announced to him in the mountains the hour of prayer, though with gentler voice and tardier summons when the saint was sick; that Jacoba was aroused to her devotions by her lamb with severe punctuality; that an ovicidal wolf, being rebuked by this ecclesiastical Orpheus for his carnivorous deeds, placed his paw in the hand of his monitor in pledge of his future good behaviour, and, like a wolf of honour, never more indulged himself in mutton. Yet M. Chavin de Malan is writing a learned and an eloquent history of the monastic orders! Such be thy gods, O Oxford!" M. Chavin de Malan is admirably consistent, however, for he protests against any exercise of human reasoning in examining the teachings of the Church, whether as to facts or doctrines. "The most merciless of her cruelties affects him with no indignation, the silliest of her prodigies with no shame, the basest of her superstitions with no contempt. Her veriest dotage is venerable in his eyes. Even the atrocities of Innocent III. seem, to this all-extolling eulogist, but to augment the triumphs and the glories of his reign." And as a large proportion of the history and biography of the Papacy has been written on this principle of laying reason to sleep, allowing unlimited licence to superstitious imagination, and accepting the authority of the Church for the most incredible nonsense, we may judge how little reliable, and how morally worthless, that history, on the whole, must be.

Whatever unfavourable conclusions as to the Papal system may be drawn from the considerations already mentioned, will hardly be modified by examining the quality of the history itself. We intended giving a few representative specimens of the history of the Papacy. As from a tooth, or other fragment of a skeleton, a Cuvier or an Owen can describe the form and the habits of even extinct animals, so a fragment or two of the history of the Papal system may assist us in judging of the spirit in which it has been built up, and of its true character.

"Hildebrand, or Pope Gregory VII., was the incarnation of the "Essays in Ecclesiastical Biography." By Sir J. Stephen. Vol. I., rage 136. Sir J. Stephen's "Essays." Page 143.

Papacy. He developed the system to a marvellous state of perfection. His predominant idea was to subject the world to the clergy, and the clergy to the Papacy; and with astonishing force of will he proceeded to work out his design. He had ruled the Papacy through the five Popes who preceded himself, and within a few weeks after his accession to the papal chair, this professed successor of a married apostle took steps to enforce the celibacy of the clergy. At his instance, a Council of the Lateran not only forbade the marriage of priests, but commanded every priest to put away his wife, and forbade laymen to be present at any sacred rites which wedded priests might presume to celebrate. The bitter complaints and remonstrances of the sufferers, under this ruthless tearing asunder of the most sacred ties, were utterly disregarded. Obedience to the mandate was sternly enforced, and broken hearts pined and died away in silence.

"Eight hundred years have since passed away. Amidst the wreck of laws, opinions, and institutions, this decree of Hildebrand rules the Latin Church in every land where sacrifices are still offered on her altars. Among us, but not of us, valuing their rights as citizens chiefly as instrumental to their powers as churchmen; ministers of love, to whom the heart of a husband and a father is an inscrutable mystery; teachers of duties, the most sacred of which they may not practise; compelled daily to gaze on the most polluted imagery of man's fallen heart, but denied the refuge of nature from a polluted imagination; professors of a virtue of which, from the death of righteous Abel down to the birth of the fervent Peter, no solitary example is recorded in Holy Writ; excluded from that posthumous life in remote descendants, in the devout anticipation of which the patriarchs were enabled to walk meekly, but exultingly, with their God-the sacerdotal caste yet flourishes in every Christian land, the imperishable and gloomy monument both of that far-sighted genius which thus devised the means of Papal despotism, and of that shortsighted wisdom which proposed to itself that despotism as a legitimate and laudable end.'

The man who could be thus relentless towards the shepherds of the flock, was not likely to deal very tenderly with the wolves outside. He claimed, as by Divine right, universal obedience from kings and emperors, arrogantly declaring that they held their crowns under the Roman Pontiff as the supreme earthly power; and, without scruple or hesitation, he used every means at his command to render this obedience not a shadow but a reality, exacting tribute from the submissive, and dethroning or denouncing the refractory. He denied the right of earthly kings and rulers to appoint, as they had been accustomed to do, to any spiritual dignity, and transferred to the Pope alone a patronage and an influence more than sufficient to balance, within their own dominions, all the powers of all the monarchs of Christendom. These astounding claims, and the daring means he took to enforce them, brought him into conflict with Henry, the Emperor of Germany. The Pope cites the Emperor to appear before him, to answer charges of crimes committed against the Church. Henry replies by abjuring the Pope, and, by a Synod at Worms,

Essays," p. 24.

1

attempting to depose him. Hildebrand at once proceeds to interdict Henry the government of his realm, to absolve his subjects from their allegiance, and to lay upon him the terrible bond of the Papal anathema-a practical illustration of the doctrine held by some of the fathers, that every king was one of the "sheep" whom Peter had been commanded to feed, and one of the "things" which Peter had been empowered to bind.

The spell which the Pope's anathema and interdict had thrown around Henry was no shadow. In that age of superstition it was a mysterious and resistless power, against which the paralyzed emperor struggled in vain; and at length this proud monarch of an empire is brought as an abject suppliant for his crown to the feet of the fisherman of Galilee! The strange spectacle is thus graphically sketched by Sir J. Stephen :-"It was towards the end of January. The earth was covered with snow, and the mountain streams were arrested by the keen frost of the Apennines, when, clad in a thin penitential garment of white linen, and bare of foot, Henry, the descendant of so many kings, and the ruler of so many nations, ascended slowly and alone the rocky path which led to the outer gate of the fortress of Canossa. With strange emotions of pity, of wonder, and of scorn, the assembled crowd gazed on his majestic form and noble features as, passing through the first and second gateway, he stood in the posture of humiliation before the third, which remained inexorably closed against his further progress. The rising sun found him there fasting, and there the setting sun left him, stiff with cold, faint with hunger, and devoured by shame and ill-suppressed resentment. A second day dawned, and wore tardily away, and closed, in a continuance of the same indignities, poured out on Europe at large, in the person of her chief, by the Vicar of the meek, the lowly, the compassionate Redeemer. A third day came, and, still irreverently trampling on the hereditary lord of the fairer half of the civilized world, Hildebrand once more compelled him to prolong till nightfall this profane and hollow parody on the real workings of a broken and a contrite heart."

This outrage against humanity itself aroused indignation against the Pope on all hands. "Murmurs from Henry's inveterate enemies, and his own zealous adherents, upbraided Gregory as exhibiting rather the cruelty of a tyrant than the rigour of an apostle. But the endurance of the sufferer was the only measure of the inflexibility of the tormentor; nor was it till the unhappy monarch had burst away from the scene of his mental and bodily anguish, and sought shelter in a neighbouring convent, that the Pope, yielding at length to the instances of Matilda, would admit the degraded suppliant into his presence. It was the fourth day on which he had borne the humiliating garb of an affected penitent, and in that sordid raiment he drew near on his bare feet to the more than imperial majesty of the Church, and prostrated himself in more than servile deference before the diminutive and emaciated old man, from the terrible glance of whose countenance,' we are told, 'the eye of every beholder recoiled as from the lightning.' Hunger, cold, nakedness, and shame had, for

[ocr errors]

Where Hildebrand was, at the time, the guest of Matilda, the Countess of Tuscany.

the moment, crushed the gallant spirit of the sufferer. He wept and cried for mercy, again and again renewing his entreaties, until he had reached the lowest level of abasement to which his own enfeebled heart, or the haughtiness of his great antagonist, could depress him. Then, and not till then, did the Pope condescend to revoke the anathema of the Vatican."

This insulting and arrogant spirit went a step beyond even this in the treatment of Frederic I., another Emperor of Germany, by Pope Alexander III. That distinguished prince, having been excommunicated, and threatened with an interdict, was anxious to obtain absolution; the Pope appointed him to appear for that purpose on a certain day at the Church of St. Mark, in Venice. Having presented himself, the Pope, surrounded by cardinals and bishops, refused to grant him absolution unless he should prostrate himself at his feet and implore to be pardoned. This being done, the Pope lifted up one foot, and placed it upon the neck of the emperor, ordering his attendants to sing that passage in the Psalms, "Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder, the young lion and dragon shait thou trample under feet."

"As far as

Let these specimens of Papal history be viewed in the light of Papal principles and claims. The Canon Law affirms, "The Roman Pontiff has been appointed by God over the nations and over the kingdoms." "The Pope has a superiority over the empire, and, when a vacancy occurs, succeeds to the emperor." "The Pope has a right to transfer the empire from nation to nation." "The Pope may depose the emperor." "All men, whatever be their rank, ought to bow the knee three times before him and kiss his feet." the sun surpasses the moon, so far does the Pope surpass the emperor." Such are the assumptions of the Papacy, and these assumptions have been reduced to practice, directly or indirectly, by upwards of thirty councils. It is said that Popes have punished sovereign princes with excommunication in at least sixty instances. This tender mercy has been experienced by some of our own sovereigns. A Papal bull declared the great Charter to be null and void, excommunicating the barons who signed it; and this bull has never been repealed.

As a government, the Papal one is the very worst in the civilized world; it is intolerable to its own subjects, who are eagerly awaiting its downfall on the departure of its foreign defender. What, then, would be the state of the world if the claims of the Pope to interfere with the government of other nations could be enforced? And let those who imagine that these arrogant assumptions are things. of the past, that Popery has improved with the times and become more moderate and mild, look at the following declarations from a volume of essays lately issued under the editorship of Dr. Manning, Archbishop of Westminster, and successor of Cardinal Wiseman. "The Government of England is an usurped Government, and all such governments are our foes, and the enemies of society and of God." We may judge, then, what Archbishop Manning and the Papacy would do with our Government if they had the power. It is clear

* Rogers' "Anti-Popery," pare 201.

also, that they have an earnest eye to the power. "It is time to consider how to obtain the use of the secular arm in support of the temporal power." History throws a terrible light on the meaning of this. "It will be best boldly to face the power of modern society, and to refuse any friendship or communion with it.” It is thus evident, from its latest manifesto and its highest authority, in our own country at least, that Popery is utterly without sympathy with all that we most prize in the growth and progress of humanity, and at war with those institutions of our country which have cost an incalculable amount of struggle and sacrifice, and which, as Englishmen and Protestants, we hold most dear.

ANCIENT EGYPT.

CHAPTER I.

FRAGMENTS-HISTORICAL AND CHRONOLOGICAL.

AFRICA is a strange country, and though we know but little about many of its districts, we are constantly learning more, and every addition to our knowledge only increases our wonder, and makes us ask what have its innumerable tribes been doing since the days of their father Ham. Livingstone, and Speke, and Sir W. Banks, and Grant, and Chaillu, and Sir S. W. Baker have told us many strange African stories-stories which heavily tax our powers of belief, but which the characters of the men forbid us fairly to call in question. It is the land not only of black people, but of white people, for Speke tells us he saw tribes of whites near the equator. There are races who regularly practise circumcision, and there are others who, Mr. Leon declares, are Christians, but who have lost all knowledge of God, and who have no idea of a human soul. There are the patriarchal and the despotic forms of government, and there is a country (the Mparoro) where the people have a regular republic. Africa is the country, if Chaillu may be credited, of a race of human dwarfs, and wild men, who, in their habits and mode of life, are the most deeply sunk in degradation; the country of the gorilla, a horrible beast as large as man, which makes the wild woods echo with his demonlike roar, and carries masses of muscle, which make him the terror of all other living creatures. It is the country of buffaloes, of lions, of leopards, of elephants, of enormous snakes, of hippopotami, of the rhinoceros, and of a hundred other savage and harmless brutes, which have long since been driven from their haunts in Europe. It is the country where Carthage once flourished, advanced to a wonderful civilization, and sent out Hannibal against the Republic of ancient Rome; and it is the country where, on the banks of the Nile, civilization was first cradled, which sent the first civilization to Europe, and which built pyramids and temples that have stood thousands of years, and promise to stand for thousands more.

Of all the lands on this strange continent, none is so interesting nor so important as the "land of Egypt," sometimes in the Bible called "Cham," or "Ham," and sometimes "Mizraim." From the

C

« AnteriorContinuar »