A few years ago, when the Roman Catholic Ecumenical Council was in session, I was conversing with a man who was engaged in lecturing upon prophetic questions, and on asking him what he thought of the doings of the council, he replied, “They are trying to raise —.” This is the substance of the matter in a nutshell. Even Cardinal Manning says, “The Catholic Church is either the master-piece of Satan, or the kingdom of the Son of God.” Baxter says, “If the pope be not Antichrist, he has bad luck to be so like him.” Many agencies are at work in the world, and many of them, in the providence of God, are working out the fulfillment of the prophecies. Romanism, or the “man of sin,” is one of these agencies. There are certain evils in the world which cannot be entirely subverted, yet they can and will be held in check, till God accomplishes his great designs.
Last week we gave some facts in regard to the number of Catholic schools and pupils. We will now compare the Roman Catholic with the public schools.
John Fay, in the International Review of March, 1880, has made a comparison from which it appears that to every 10,000 inhabitants where the people are educated in Roman Catholic schools, there are 1,400 illiterate persons, 40 paupers, and 160 criminals; while in twenty-one States where the people are educated in the public schools, the proportion is, 350 illiterates, 170 paupers, and 75 criminals. In Massachusetts, among those educated in the public schools, the proportion is 71 illiterate persons, 49 paupers, and 11 criminals. He showed, also, that in the State of New York, the Roman Catholic school system turned out three and one-half times as many paupers as the public school system. He further says:—
“To an American, who has watched the progress of Roman Catholics in America, and their plans as recently developed, the idea of the Jesuits confronting the Republic as it enters its second century, with an intention that they are about to control it, will seem strange as he recalls the eventful history of that order, which has won, in turn, the detestation of all nations and the condemnation of the church of Rome. To-day the revised order appears to be at the head of the church of Rome. The dogma of infallibility is pronounced the legal result of its existence. Dr. Manning represents the Jesuits as leading the mission to England to subdue the will of the imperial race. In America we are told that they have captured our great cities; that by their agents they manipulate the press, and secure its silence; that they have revised for the American Encyclopedia a part of their history; that they have driven the Bible from the public schools, arranged the terms with party leaders, secured grants of lands and money, and annual subsidies in the shape of charities; that they have begun to assert the supremacy of the church over the State, and are preparing for greater triumphs. That there is to be a struggle, and a hard one, for the control in our Republic, between the people constituting the State, and the ecclesiastics who represent the Roman church, no rational man who understands the situation can for a moment doubt. In the light of history and reason, it seems equally clear, either that the struggle is now to be decided by maintaining against the opposition the supremacy of the State in its right of education, intellectual and moral, in its administration of justice, in the safety of elections from priestly control, and in every other legitimate exercise of sovereignty; or that if these be yielded through treachery or indifference, the struggle will be transferred to the battle field, and decided in that most terrible of conflicts, a religious war.”
Some of the doctrines of Romanism will show how this power may affect the civil and religious liberty of our country. The pope of Rome claims infallibility. This doctrine was fully established and proclaimed to the world at the Ecumenical Council of3871870; and to claim infallibility for the pope, is to claim that he cannot err in doctrine. By virtue of his universal spiritual supremacy, he claims to be a universal temporal sovereign. (Dens. and Gregory VII.) Bishops, priests, cardinals, Jesuits, and laymen are bound by solemn oaths to obey the pope of Rome. (See their oaths.) The pope has power to take away the obligation of an oath, and to absolve subjects from allegiance to a sovereign or government. (St. Thomas and Dens.) Should the pope curse the government of the United States, or declare war against it, Romanists would be absolved from their oaths, and compelled to take the side of the pope against the government. (St. Thomas, vol. 4, pp. 91–94; Golden Manual, p. 771.)
Already there are secret Roman Catholic military organizations in our country; and their object is to destroy our great Republic, and with it civil and religious liberty. Jesuits are the sworn enemies of freedom. They are the secret agents of the pope. Conscience to them is a word without meaning, and an oath cannot bind them. This order, on account of their corruption and treason, have been expelled from most countries where they have had a foothold. Now they are to be expelled from France, under the laws of the first empire, passed in 1804.
It is evident that the power of the Roman hierarchy, aided by Jesuit influence, is rapidly increasing in the United States. In politics they are a unit, and their influence in elections will be very strong. As the power of the Jesuits is diminishing in Europe, it will, no doubt, increase the more rapidly in our country. During the past thirty years they have been secretly extending the power and influence of Vaticanism in every European country; but despairing of accomplishing their objects in Europe, they are working with undiminished zeal to place, under Protestant institutions, a torpedo which shall entirely overthrow them.