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human monster, Simon de Mountford,* whom the Pope designated "The active and dexterous soldier of Jesus Christ, and the invincible defender of the Catholic faith," hundreds of thousands most miserably and inhumanly perished. So dreadful, indeed, are the circumstances connected with the slaughter of those "witnesses for the truth," that the very narration of them would harrow up the soul, and melt the most obdurate and adamantine breast. Human nature, one should suppose, in its highest possible state of depravity and guilt, could not devise or perpetrate deeds so diabolical and dark as those committed by the hired emissaries of the Pope.† My mind recoils from the contemplation of them

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The crusaders, or "pilgrims," as such savages were denominatedemployed for the total extirpation and annihilation of those devoted professors of Gospel truth-put to death in various ways 2,000,000 of persons, according to their own vaunted testimony,‡ of every age and condition; nor did the venerable and hoary-headed parent, or the smiling infant on its mother's breast, escape their fell barbarity. city of Beziers alone, in one day, was deluged with the blood of 67,000 beings, comprising 7,000 Roman Catholics. And when the Popish party entreated the Pope's legate to spare the town, this monster swore in a rage, that, if the city did not surrender, all should meet with one common fate! Accordingly, Rome's ruthless warriors wielded the weapons she had intrusted them with in a manner suitable to her wishes-devastation, ruin, and blood tracked the course they pursued. Even amidst the direful scene of action-and the clang of arms-and the agonising shrieks and groans of the wounded and dying-was to be observed the Pope's representative encouraging on the blood-hounds (who needed not any reiterated command) in the hellish work in which they were engaged. And in order to shed a degree of solemnity on the scene, he exalted a crucifix in his hand and cried out-"Kill all, and God will know his own!!!"

I here subjoin an extract from the decree of Pope Gregory IX., against those unoffending, Christian people. It was addressed to the inquisitor-general and the local inquisitors :

"Since, according to the office enjoined on us, we are bound to root out all offences from the kingdom of God, and, as much as in us lies, to oppose such beasts (meaning the Waldenses), we deliver into your hands the sword of the word of God, which, according to the words of the prophet Jeremiah, ye ought not to keep back from blood; but, inspired with a zeal for the Catholic faith, like Phinehas, make diligent inquisition concerning these pestilent wretches, their believers,

* He finished his career by his head being opened with a stone let fall upon him by a woman.

The Duke of Alva, another minion of the Papacy, destroyed, in the low countries during the reign of Philip II., 36,000 persons by the hands of the common executioner, in the short space of nine years. The learned commentator, Grotius, computes the number of his murders at 100,000!!!

Calv. Minor, 129.

receivers, and abettors, and proceed against those who shall be found guilty, according to the canonical sanction, and our statutes, which we have lately published, to confound heretical pravity, calling in against them, if need be, the assistance of the secular arm!"

"

The following letter of the Archbishop of Aix, Arles, and Narbonne, to the Inquisitors, might be deemed interesting, as illustrative of the sufferings of those persecuted people :—“ It has come to our knowledge that you have seized so great a number of the Waldenses, that so far from being able to supply them with the necessaries of life, you cannot even procure the stones and mortar requisite to build prisons for them! We counsel you, therefore, to abate a little these arrests, until the Pope be informed of the number of captures you have made, and let him command what he chooses to be done.”†

Further, Bzovius, in his “ Annals of the Thirteenth Century," alluding to the Albigensian war, thus writes :—

"Lavavre being taken, Aymeric, the Lord of Mountroyal, who held the camp with a garrison, was hanged. Eighty others who fell from the gibbet, were slain by the crusaders, who were impatient of the delay, by the orders of Simon, and innumerable heretics were burnt. In the same year the crusaders obtained possession of another great city by the divine aid, situated near Toulouse, called from the event, the beautiful valley;' in which, when after an examination of the people, all promised to return to the faith, 450 of them, hardened by the devil, persisted in their obstinacy, of whom 400 were burned, and the rest were hanged. The same was done in the other towns and castles, these wretches willingly exposing themselves to death."

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Such is the testimony of a Roman Catholic writer of great distinction, and the acknowledged author of the continuation of the "Ecclesiastical Annals" of Cardinal Baronius. Well, indeed, might Milton, on surveying the butchery of the saints of the Most High, by Papal emissaries, exclaim,—

Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones
Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold;
Ev'n they who kept thy truth so pure of old,
When all our fathers worshipp'd stocks and stones,
Forget not; in thy book record their groans
Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold,
Slain by the bloody Piedmontese, that roll'd
Mother with infant down the rocks; their moans
The vales redoubled to the hills, and they
To heaven. Their martyr'd blood and ashes sow
O'er all the Italian fields, where still doth sway
The triple tyrant; that from these may grow
A hundred-fold, who, having learned thy way,
Early may flee the Babylonian woe.

(To be continued.)

* The same unchanged and unchangeable spirit of Popery is manifested in the Bull of Pope Leo X. to the German princes, in which he exhorted them" to use the sword of fire to exterminate Luther and those who followed his doctrine !!” † Epochs of the Church of Lyons, pp. 31, 32.

THE PERSECUTING AND SANGUINARY SPIRIT OF THE

CHURCH OF ROME.

In the year 1816 an edition of the Rhemish Testament (to which was appended notes of the most unchristian character) was published under the express approbation, as stated in the title-page, of "The Most Rev. Doctor Troy, R.C.A.D.:" which, on being detected and exposed by the "British Critic," was, in consequence, disowned and denounced even by the same Dr. Troy, as well as by Mr. D. O'Connell, who declared that "he owed it to his religion as a Catholic and a Christian, to his country as an Irishman, to his feelings as a human being, to utterly denounce the damnable doctrines contained in the notes of the Rhemish Testament." But at the very time these denunciations were taking place there was another edition in the press containing the self-same notes, under the patronage of three Romish archbishops, (one of whom was Dr. Troy,) nine bishops, and many of the priesthood of Ireland. And which edition was printed, as the prospectus declares, for "subscribers only," and that " Proper people will be appointed in each town throughout Ireland to leave the numbers and parts as soon as published at the respective house of each subscriber."

This edition of 1818 was discovered and brought forward by Mr. M'Ghee in 1836, when Mr. D. O'Connell was invited by the Committee of the Protestant Association to meet the case before a public Meeting. From doing so he shrunk back.

Of these awful notes the following may serve as a specimen :

I. "Our Protestants shall find all definitions and marks of an heretic to fall upon themselves." (Note on Tit. iii. 10.)

II." The Church of God calling the Protestants' doctrine, heresy in the worst part that can be, and of the worst sort that ever was, doth right and most justly." (Note on Acts xxviii. 22.)

III. "In worldly conversation and secular acts of our life, we must avoid them [heretics] as much as we may; but in matters of religion, in praying, reading their books, hearing their sermons, presence at their service, partaking of their sacraments, and all other communicating with them in spiritual things, it is a great damnable sin to deal with them." (2 Epist. John, ver. 10.)

IV. "Therefore neither heretics' sermons must be heard; no, not though they preach the truth; so is it of their prayer and service, which being never so good in itself is not acceptable to God out of their mouths; yea, it is no better than the howling of wolves." (Mark iii. 12.)

V. "The new-pretended Church-service of England," its members being "in schism and heresy, is not only unprofitable, but also damnable." (Acts x. 9.)

VÍ. "If the Temple" [of the Jews] "was then, a den of thieves because of profane and secular merchandise; how much more now, when the house appointed for the holy sacrifice and sacrament of the body of Christ is made a den for the ministers of Calvin's breed." (Mark xi. 17.)`

VII. "The speeches, preachings, and writings of heretics be pestiferous, contagious, and creeping like a cancer, therefore Christian men must never hear their sermons, nor read their books, for such men have a popular way of talk, whereby the unlearned, and especially women laden with sin, are easily beguiled. Nothing is so easy (saith St. Jerome) as with voluble and rolling tongue to deceive the rude people, which admire whatever they understand not." (2 Tim. ii. 17.)

VIII. "A Christian man is bound to burn or deface all wicked books, of what sort soever, specially heretical books." (Acts xix. 19.)

IX. "We see plainly that they” [our English translators] "have no conscience, indifferency, nor other purpose, but to make the poor readers believe that their opinions be God's own word, and to draw the Scriptures to sound after the fantasy of their heresies. But if the good reader knew, for what point of doctrine they have thus framed their translation, they would abhor them to the DEPTH OF HEll. (Heb. v. 3.)

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X. "Heretics allege Scripture, as here the devil doth, in the false sense.” (Matt. iv. 6.)

XI. "To say that Judas, or an heretic, evidently known to die obstinately in heresy, is damned, IS NOT FORBIDDEN.' (Matt. vii. 1.)

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XII. "Heretics, because they will not hear the Church, be no better nor no otherwise to be esteemed of Catholics, than heathen men and publicans were esteemed among the Jews." (Matt. xviii. 17.)

XIII. "Heretics may be excommunicated, and so made as an heathen or publican was to the Jews, by the discipline of the Church, casting him out of the fellowship of Catholics: which excommunication is a greater punishment than if he were executed by sword, fire, and wild beasts." (Matt. xviii. 17.)

XIV. "St. Augustin also referreth this compelling to the penal laws which Catholic princes DO JUSTLY USE against heretics and schismatics, proving that they who are by their former profession in baptism subject to the Catholic Church, and are departed from the same after sects, may and OUGHT TO BE COMPELLED into the unity and society of the universal Church again. . . . In this sense, by the third part of the parable, such are invited as the Church of God hath power over, because they promised in baptism, and therefore are to be revoked not only by gentle means but by just punishment also.” (Luke xiv. 23.)

XV. "Not ustice nor all rigorous punishment of sinners is here forbidden, nor the Church or Christian princes blamed FOR PUTTING HERETICS TO DEATH: but that none of these should be done for desire of our particular revenge, or without discretion, and regard to their amendment, and example to others.' (Luke ix. 55.)

XVI. "The Protestants foolishly expound it of Rome, for that there they put heretics to death, and allow of their punishment in other countries; but their blood is not called the blood of saints, no more than the blood of thieves, man-killers, and other malefactors, for the shedding of which, by order of justice, no commonwealth shall answer.' (Rev. xvii. 6.)

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XVII. "You may see hereby, that the spiritual power of bishops is not only preaching the Gospel, and so by persuasion and exhortation only (as some heretics hold) to remit or retain sins, but that it hath authority to punish, judge, and condemn heretics and other like rebels." (2 Cor. x. 6.)

XVIII. "WHERE ILL MEN (BE THEY HERETICS OR OTHER MALEFACTORS) MAY BE PUNISHED OR SUPPRESSED WITHOUT. DISTURBANCE AND HAZARD OF THE GOOD; THEY MAY AND OUGHT, BY PUBLIC AUTHORITY, EITHER SPIRITUAL Or TEMPORAL, TO BE CHASTISED OR EXECUTED." (Matt. xiii. 29, 30.) XIX. St. Jerome useth this place to prove that the zeal of Catholic men ought to be so great toward all heretics, and their doctrines, that they should give them THE ANATHEMA," [the curse or execration,] "though they were never so dear unto them." (Galatians i. 8.)

XX. "He warneth bishops to be zealous and stout against false prophets and heretics of what sort soever, by alluding covertly to the example of holy Elias, that in zeal killed 450 false prophets of Jezebel, and spared not Ahab nor Jezebel themselves.' (Rev. ii. 20.)

Such! are the pernicious, intolerant, persecuting principles of Popery in the 19th century. These are no fictions of the dark ages,no tales of the "bloody Mary," no records of the fagot and the stake; they are the dogmas of the Romish Hierarchy, promulgated in the present time; notes taken from a version of the Holy Scriptures,

originally prepared in the sixteenth century, but revised for the Irish Papists of the present day, and published in Ireland under the sanction of the highest authorities of the Romish body.*

Can we wonder at the wretched state of Ireland? Do we not well to tremble for England? Englishmen ! pause, think, and ask yourselves, is it not time to unite as one man to resist the circulation of such principles in our free Protestant land?

MONTMORENCY.-A ROMAN CATHOLIC TALE.

(Continued from p. 106.)
CHAPTER IV.

We have said that Clara seemed to enter with ardour into gaiety and amusement, but the truth was that she strove to drown in bustle and excitement those feelings that rushed with painful force on her mind, when left to calm reflection, for Clara had tasted no real peace since she resigned her Testament, she had indeed partially contrived to silence the voice of conscience and stifle the uneasy convictions that at first arose as she remembered the past, and contrasted it with the present; she had made many an effort to drown this faithful monitor, but though it spoke more faintly, its whispers sometimes caused her anguish. It has been said by a pious writer, no case except that of confirmed impenitence is so pitiable as the case of a backslider; conscience is too much awake to allow them to enjoy the pleasures of the world, and religion too much neglected to yield them any comfort. And Clara found this true; she had been partially enlightened, she could not fully believe in the errors of Romanism, yet to please her brother she had resigned her Testament, and against conviction, returned to her former darkness; thus religion gave her no peace, and she made an effort (ah, an effort that had not forbearing love prevented, must have ended in her ruin) to find false peace in forgetfulness of eternity, amidst the passing vanities of a fleeting world; yet as we before observed, the good seed was not lost-it was hidden, but still existed, and He who had thoughts of mercy towards her, overruled the designs of her spiritual foes, so that the very place to which she was sent, for the purpose of further quenching good impressions, proved to be the very place where these impressions should revive and deepen.

A few days after the arrival of Clara and her brother, the little party were assembled in the same room, intending to pass the evening at home, when Mrs. Cleves, seeing Frances about to leave the room, asked if she were going out, as the sun had already set. "I have not yet visited all my pensioners," replied she, "I was too much fatigued in the morning, and dreading the sultry heat of the day, purposely waited for the cool of the evening."

"Do let me dissuade you, the vapours are rising after the intense

* See Nos. iv. v. and vi. of the Pamphlet Series.

VOL. IX.-May, 1847.

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New Series, No. 17.

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