BY ALEXANDER ROBERTSON, D.D.
(Continued from Page 46.)
THE seventh chapter of this valuable book treats of “Confession,” and its subordinate title is a very expressive one, “The Deification of Sin.” Dr. Robertson homologates to the very letter the testimony of Dr. Chiniquy that “the Confessional-box is for the greatest part of the confessors and female penitents a real pit of perdition, into which they promiscuously fall and perish.” He refers again to the Moral Theology of Liguori, “the text-book in the training of priests as father-confessors,” which is so vile in character that no one in Italy, Germany, or England dare attempt to publish it in the common tongue without risk of immediate prosecution by the civil law. And yet this book and its author have been signally honoured in the Romish Church. Pope after Pope, down to the present Leo XIII., has blessed Liguori and his writings, and commended them in the highest terms. Dr. Robertson further shows that the Confessional has been employed not only to foster the basest immorality, but also to further political ends. Roman Catholic politicians have unfolded secrets to the priests at confession. “It was so,” he says, “in Venice and Austria,” and “it has often been rumoured that the secrets from time to time of European Cabinets, not excluding that of England, have been known in the Vatican.” It appears, however, that now “this pit of perdition and engine of Papal despotism is practically at an end” in Italy. No wonder that our author expresses the profoundest astonishment that men, both clerical and lay, of high standing in England are at present introducing this abominable and destructive institution into the Church.
Dr. Robertson devotes his eighth chapter to “Monasticism,” which he fitly describes as a national peril. Monasteries were such plague-spots in the sixteenth century that our forefathers in Parliament instituted an inquiry into the state of these institutions, the report of which was called by the suggestive name of the Black Book. “In 1539 the whole monastic system was swept away.” England to-day is quite apathetic on the subject, and monasteries and convents are by a false charity allowed to increase and flourish without any inspection whatsoever. On the other hand, Continental nations, such as Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, and France, exert a complete supervision over these houses, and place them under well-defined restrictions. In Italy, monasteries as such are entirely suppressed, but the Papists, with their usual deception, evade the law, and register many of these places as private houses, and so, lamentable to say, there are in Rome to-day at least three hundred and sixty-two of these pernicious institutions. Dr. Robertson believes that all the rich Roman Catholic families in England and the United States have had a hand in setting up these monasteries.
A very interesting chapter is the ninth, in which he writes of Saints’ Days and the Lord’s Day. He shows to what absurd and ridiculous extremes the practice of saint-worship has gone. The Papists are adepts at preserving—yes, and manufacturing—bodies of the saints. They call into existence the bones of saints at their will. For example, several of the Apostles have more than one body; Peter has three, one at Rome, one at Constantinople, and one at Cluny; Andrew has five bodies, while James the Greater has seven. There are besides additional fragments of these Apostles—heads and such like—scattered in various places. Could anything under the sun be more absurd and idiotic? Romanism is the eclipse of reason. In a similar manner they have remains and relics of their own peculiar saints—St. Barbara, St. Anthony, St. Lawrence, and all the rest. Now the Church rigorously insists upon the observance of all its saints’ days, while it cares little or nothing about the observance of the Lord’s Day. In fact, these numerous saints’ days, five hundred or so in the year, swamp the Sabbath altogether. The devout Papist breaks the fourth commandment at both ends; he does not work on the six days, nor does he rest on the seventh. This feature of Romanism has done much to rouse the Italian people against the whole system, and it is most gratifying to learn that a strong tide of public opinion has arisen in favour of the restoration of the Sabbath and its rest. In fact, the Government has now taken up the matter. “For some time its officials and employees in public offices and in public works, and especially in the post and telegraph departments, who have to work during part of each Sunday, if not throughout the entire day, have been agitating for Sunday rest. In response to them and the general feeling of the country, on the 24th of April, 1902, both Chambers accepted a proposal to take into consideration the desirability of passing a law for the compulsory closing of all places of business and of all shops, public and private, throughout the whole land on la Domenica, the Lord’s Day. This action of both Chambers gave unbounded satisfaction to the people everywhere, and meetings were soon afterwards held in all the chief cities and towns in Italy, at which speeches were made in favour of the Government proposal, and resolutions were passed praying them to frame and pass the Sunday Compulsory Closing Law as soon as possible.” Dr. Robertson looks forward hopefully to the speedy overthrow of the sloth-producing saints’ days, and the speedy restoration of the holy Day of Rest in Italy. “But what,” he exclaims, “of Christian England?” There he observes the two evils mentioned being assiduously promoted, the multiplication of saints’ days and the desecration of the Lord’s Day. “And promoted by whom? By the enemies of England and humanity—Jesuits, Roman Catholics, and the papistical section of Ritualists who dishonestly remain in the Church of England, and who are all working, singly and unitedly, to bring back England under the Papal yoke. It is the interest of such people alone to promote these objects.” He concludes this chapter by quotations from the testimonies of recently-deceased distinguished Englishmen in favour of the Lord’s Day.
The subject of the tenth chapter is “The Bible,” with the apt sub title, “The People’s Friend, the Church’s Foe.” The apostate Church of Rome has ever been the enemy of the Word of God. At the time of the invention of printing in the 15th century every press in Europe was engaged in printing the Bible with “one solitary exception, the Pope’s press at Subiaco, near Rome.” Since this period, the Papal antagonism to the Bible has continued ever the same. The Popes have constantly vilified Bible societies. Of course, it will be answered that this is because these are Protestant; but “the opposition is against the Bible—Roman Catholic or Protestant—pure and simple.” This assertion may be fully vindicated also in the teeth of the policy of the present Pope, who professes, in an Encyclical issued in 1893, his great reverence for the Bible, and his desire that it should be read and studied. Dr. Robertson says, “All in Italy knew at the time the Encyclical was insincere, and immediately on its issue secret instructions were given to the priests to do all in their power to prevent the sale of the Bible and also its distribution gratis among the people by travellers. . . . It was in the autumn following the publication of the Biblical Encyclical that I saw what I had never seen before in Italy. New Testaments and portions of Scripture, chiefly the Gospels, which had been given to peasants in their homes and in the fields, collected and burned in front of the village church.” Our author also regards the recent Biblical Commission sanctioned by the Pope as a mere blind. The crafty Pontiff wants to appear very orthodox in view of the progress of infidel criticism in Protestant Churches. There is a society at present at Rome called the St. Jerome Society, which issues portions of the Scripture. Some good may come out of it, but its anti-Protestant attitude and interpretations of texts are not favourable to the truth. Students in Popish seminaries are not taught the Bible, nor are their missionaries instructed in it. “The ignorance of the Roman Catholic clergy of the Bible is only equalled by their hostility to it.” They unhesitatingly describe it as a bad and poisonous book. The common priest knows little or nothing of it. Our author further informs us that not even do “the higher clergy” know much more; “I have been told by one of themselves that the canons of St. Peter’s cannot turn up a passage in the Bible. I do not at all feel sure that the Pope himself could!” The reason of all this ignorance and hostility is the simple fact that the ascendancy of the Bible would be the overthrow of the whole system from the Pope downwards. It is encouraging to learn that the circulation of the Bible in Italy has been greatly encouraged and helped by the secular press, and that it is not now regarded by Italians as a foreign book, but as the heritage of their own and all other nations.
The eleventh chapter, on “Mariolatry,” is a fearful exhibition of the gross idolatry and debasing superstition that prevails in the Roman Church. Mary is put in the place of God and of Christ, and worship is chiefly directed to her. The Loreto Litany addresses her under, among others, the following most extravagant and blasphemous titles:—Most Holy Mary; Most Holy Generator of God; Mother of Divine Grace; Gate of Heaven; and Morning Star. No Pope has done more than the present to advance the worship of Mary in the Church. It is also noted that Bonaventura’s version of the Psalms, which blasphemously inserts the name of Mary “in the first verse of every Psalm when the word Lord occurs,” and when it does not, is in use to-day. Dr. Robertson remarks, “If there is one book of the Bible dear to Christians the world over, if there is one book more than another which they read daily, drawing out of its marvellous treasure-house ‘things new and old’ for their comfort and guidance and strengthening in all possible circumstances, it is the Book of Psalms. . . . And it is precisely this book, the heritage of the individual Christian and the Church, which the Papal Church has degraded and destroyed.” He concludes this chapter with another strange feature of this Mariolatry. Not only has the Romish Church made Mary a new Divinity, but it has actually multiplied its Marys. There are images of the Virgin scattered throughout the towns and villages where Romanism reigns, and these images or Madonnas are worshipped as if they represented entirely distinct personalities. Every place has its own Mary, who is supposed able to meet some particular need or other. There are My Lady of Health, of Perpetual Succour, of Snow, of a Cough, of Miracles, of Baked Bread, of the Wash Tub, of Money, and what not—Madonnas as numerous as there are days in the year. And what is the chief end of all this superstitious rubbish? It is money. The Madonna must be propitiated with gifts, and these gifts are a happy device for replenishing the coffers of the Church. Dr. Robertson well says, “No one more than Mary herself would resent the dishonour done to her Lord and ours through this Mariolatry, and the dishonour done to herself in degrading her to the level of a pagan Diana.”
The last chapter deals with the subject of Education. The Papal Church, as she forbids the use of reason, so she is the determined foe of education. The Reformation, just as it brought light for the salvation of men’s souls, was also instrumental in illuminating their understandings and in supplying them with a sound education and love for knowledge. In Italy, however, “where the Reformation was effectively stamped out by ‘rope and stake’ (a quarter of a million people . . . having been simply butchered by the Papacy), there was virtually no education” until the Pope’s temporal power was overthrown in 1870. Schools and universities were before then ruled by the priests, and the destruction of thought and talent was their motto. The Italian Government appointed a commission of inquiry, and scholastic institutions of all classes were found to be in a deplorable condition of ignorance and illiteracy. The priests were plainly recognised to be the enemies of education, and the first action of the Government was to begin the work of turning out “the priests and nuns, bag and baggage.” There is at the present moment “hardly a priest-teacher in any national school in the land.” “Church books of all kinds are not only banished from all the national schools, but the State does what it can to prevent them falling into the hands of children.” Education is now in Italy in a most satisfactory and promising condition. Dr. Robertson closes his well-written book by calling attention to Italy as an “object lesson” to England, and he declares in impressive terms his conviction that “England is false to herself and false to the trust imposed upon her by God, in leaving the education of her Roman Catholic subjects in the hands of the priests. She grievously wrongs both herself and them.” He foresees a coming struggle with the Papacy in this country, and warns us to be prepared for it, “remembering constantly, realising vividly, that the enemy we have to encounter is a deadly one, that the issue at stake is a matter of life and death in regard to everything that is essential to the freedom and purity, the progress and felicity, of the individual and of the nation. As we see, therefore, the forces of the Papacy marshalling themselves for the combat, let the words with which the Scottish chieftain, old Sir Andrew Agnew of Lochnaw, animated his followers as he saw the enemy approaching, animate us—’There they are, lads, and if ye dinna ding them, they’ll ding you.'”
We should not omit to note with pleasure that Dr. Robertson expresses his disapproval of what is known as the Catholic Emancipation Act, passed in this country in 1829, and approved of by too many Protestants under the influence of a blind charity. We earnestly hope that this excellent book will have a wide circulation, and that the Most High will accompany it with a rich blessing, to the awakening and enlightening of many as to the dreadful evils of Romanism.