Joseph Mendham

“ Since, therefore, these purposes tend in the highest degree to the advantage of the English nation, you can easily understand, beloved son, the reason why such joy should have been felt by us, who have been, by Divine appointment, constituted the heirs of the name and chair of that Gregory the Great, who, by the torch of the Catholic faith, first enlightened Britain, involved in the darkness of idolatry. We are encouraged to entertain the cheering hope that the light of Divine faith will again shine with the same brightness as of old upon the minds of the British people. ”

“ James attempted to give another. And the Italian priest, Gregory, with the aid of his beloved sons, hopes yet to apply the Catholic torch more effectually in these lands. But it is, indeed, miserable, that in this sanctuary of freedom there should be found noblemen of education taking their part in a conspiracy to renew spiritual slavery—a slavery worse than Egyptian or West Indian—in emancipated Britain, and to force or swindle upon it a creed, which it would be pure and ungracious irony to suppose that, in its peculiarity, they believe themselves. ”

“ And then, setting aside as unworthy of notice her insolent and brute condemnation of what by its light condemns her darkness, think of the wagon-load of Papal trumpery, as well as profligacy both in morals and theology, which this foreign monopolist of orthodoxy, virtually, that is, really, approves and recommends. An enumeration of a few only of the books which she condemns, and of a few only of the books which she thus approves, is sufficient to convince a child, that the self-nominated mistress of all churches is unworthy of being a scholar of the meanest. ”

“ The liberty which they enjoy in that respect, they owe, not to their Church which only allows it because she must, but to the true Christianity and liberality of a country, which protects them against the barbarous tyranny of the government to which they yield their principal allegiance. And let British Protestants well assure themselves, that if Popery should again spread its dark and pestilent wings over this country, no greater delay would take place than was expedient, before the Index of Rome and all its penalties would be established in full force in our land. ”

“ But it is past denial, that wherever the Church, that is, of Rome, commands, every true son of that Church must and will obey, whatever repugnance his natural conscience, or natural humanity, may feel and oppose; and there is not a nation where Christianity has been exposed to the superior power of Popery, whose history in such times has not been written in letters of blood; and in this nation, in particular, the Italian usurper and his instruments will have an awful account to settle for the barbarities perpetrated by them under the name and pretence of religion. ”

“ For it is intolerable, that, in a simply Christian state, there should be fostered, enjoying its best blessings, a corporation or faction, necessarily and illimitably of hostile interests and feelings, and of sworn enmity to its religion, and that, to the same corporation or faction should be allowed, as a divine claim, the unshackled liberty of communicating with a sovereign power in all the schemes which that power cannot fail to meditate, as well for its own advancement as for the subversion of the object of its most intense antipathy. ”

“ The genuine friends of true religion are rousing to something like preparation for a contest which they see to be unavoidable and at no great distance; and the doubtful or treacherous are doing them the favour and benefit of going over, more or less openly, to the ranks to which they really belong. Too long had Protestants been deceived and cajoled by the original enemy. They believed professions and demonstrations, because they trusted in the low honour which yet remains, and is one of the last good things to be abandoned, in simple human nature, corrupt as it is. ”

“ Whenever it is necessary to prevent treason or to punish murder, the State requires the Romish priest, under severe penalties, to declare to the magistrate whatever he may have learned in confession relative to those crimes.
"What a system of instruction! What a course of education for the Roman Catholic priesthood of Ireland! How can that unhappy country be expected to break its adamantine fetters, while Maynooth College continues to be supported by the Government and the country for the propagation of treason, perjury, sedition, immorality, and vice! ”

“ So that the simple victims of the enchantment, instead of a saving religion, which will bring them to heaven, and fit them for it, find, to their endless disappointment, unless escaped from, that they have embraced, and mocked themselves with, a brilliant but noxious phantasm—an inflated inanity—a religion of sound and sentimentality—made up of chants and anthems ”

“ They became the dupes of impostors, because they could not believe it to be in that nature, that individuals, professing what is called Christianity, could practise gross and deliberate deception, and could cherish a heart of settled and destructive hostility, while lips and pens exhausted the powers of language to express the fervour of their good will and gratitude. ”

“ But the subjects of Papal antichrist are yet fellow-creatures; they are yet spiritual, immortal, and accountable creatures; they may yet escape from their spiritual delusion and thraldom. For such, no Protestant Christian exists, who does not entertain the sincerest and most fervent charity. He feels for them precisely as St. Paul did for his countrymen, similarly circumstanced, though they were no idolaters, not even materially, much less formally. Our hearts' desire for every subject of erring Rome is, that he may be converted and be saved. ”

“ And if the subjects of Rome, residing in happy Protestant England, should think that they are out of the reach of the tyrant over sea, and that his restrictions upon their reading are null and void, be it known, as this honest fellow-religionist will tell them, that although, by the toleration of his holiness, the Bulla Cænæ and the Index with its Rules are not enforced in this country, yet those who read books condemned by the Vicegerent of Deity without license from him, or others deputed by him, are guilty of a grave offence against a precept of the Church. ”

“ And we may now comfort ourselves with one advantage at least, and no mean one, that Popery now exhibits herself as she is, and does not put us to the difficulty any longer of grappling with denials and sophistications of all sorts, but is, in open appearance, and even ostentation, the unprincipled and perjured creature, which it was before thought illiberal to charge as her character.
A government of Christianity and conscience might have had the honour of preserving the country from its present disgrace and calamity. ”

“ I conclude this exposure of the policy — the unlimited and all-penetrating policy — of Rome, as respects religious and even other literature, wherever her interest is concerned, with the moral, of no trifling importance, that it becomes every Christian individual to be well aware of the subtilty of his most inveterate and very powerful foe; and that it eminently behoves every Christian government to understand, and guard against, the necessary hostility and machinations of the same foe, and, as its only security, to break through and cripple its organisation ”

“ That these agents of religious cruelty may, aloof from their intolerant creed, have possessed every valuable and even amiable qualification, only serves to aggravate the charge against a misnamed religion, which no human virtue has power to arrest in her inhuman course, and which, in that course, can even convert the benevolent into savages. The concluding reflection of Bishop Mant in his valuable History of the Church of Ireland, on the character of Mary I. of England, is just and important. ”

“ Well adorned and well managed, Popery has something in the more plausible faculties and tendencies of the soul of man exactly adapted, and responsive, to its main attractions and solicitations. When, indeed, surveyed in its true deformity, it has every thing to repel a sound understanding and really holy feeling. ”

“ John Burnet, then of Cork, March 16, 1825, occurs the answer—"Some gentlemen of the Catholic community, men of information, have distinctly told me so themselves"—that their profession was a point of honour. "They said, that they do not believe in the Catholic system of religion, nor in any other system of religion; but as their parents have been Catholics, they profess the religion of their parents, and adhere to that profession, because they believe the Catholics to be an oppressed people." ”

“ But with no disposition to boast, of which the cause is far enough from us, it may yet be confidently asserted, to the honour of those who are now unfurling the banner of the true cross against the bearers of the false, that they are prevalently faithful, intelligent, and devoted soldiers of their Divine Sovereign and Captain, and both understand and adorn the cause in which they have enlisted themselves. Few, indeed, are now the cases in which the champion of the Protestant faith differs but little, in his fundamental belief from the subject of Rome. ”

“ But it has coverings and ornaments which its native sagacity prompts, and enables it to throw over its repulsive features; and nothing more is necessary than a due calculation of human folly and human corruption to account at once for the progress of such a mockery of Christianity as is the Papal system; and really to wonder, that its progress is not tenfold greater than it is. But though falsehood is mighty, truth and holiness are oftentimes mightier, even in their effects on such intractable matter as the human soul. ”

“ If there was no such institution as the Confessional to interpose its authority and give the troubled mind an opportunity of obtaining all the comforts of a superstitious religion, not only would murder and other heinous crimes become of less frequent occurrence, but such crimes would very often (as in this country) be openly acknowledged, and thus the ends of justice obtained. ”

“ It is, indeed, impossible that some of the men of education among them must not be sensible of the utter nullity of so palpable a fable as Popery. Exclusion of all other objects may go a great way to bend the mind to an acceptance of such a system as true ”

“ Have there not been numerous instances, in this kingdom, of murderers voluntarily surrendering themselves and confessing their guilt, owing to the dreadful weight with which the consciousness of their crime naturally oppressed them? Instances of this kind are unknown in Ireland, owing to the safety-valve of the Confessional, by which the instinctive pangs of conscience are completely removed. ”

“ Leave is granted to keep and read the books of heretics, which treat of their religion, in order to refute them.' These lines place this whole matter in its proper point of view. They evidently evince to what purpose Roman Catholics are indulged in the reading of Protestant authors. Not, it is presumed, for the sake of impartial investigation, but solely to combat and refute them. The rev. gentleman may say, then, with as much confidence as he pleases, that rational investigation is as open to Catholics as to any other set of men on the face of the earth. ”

“ Here, then, is a society especially sanctioned by all the Vicars Apostolic of Great Britain, of which the Earl of Shrewsbury is President, and several of the Romanist noblemen and gentlemen Vice-Presidents, and of which all the Romish bishops and clergy are ex-officio members, putting forth on the face of every copy of its stereotyped tracts what looks very much like a deliberate attempt to impose on the poor uneducated persons among whom they are circulated. ”

“ Owing to the ease of mind necessarily experienced by the murderer in communicating his horrid deed to the priest at confession, and also the facility of obtaining absolution for his awful crime, murders have lost the greater part of their enormity in the eyes of the demoralised peasantry of Ireland. ”

“ She will now, as she has begun to feel, have to fight the battle on a spiritual ground, and with men of real power and courage, who understand their religion, and will defend it with a loyal heart to the utmost. ”

“ It is seldom, indeed, that guilt of any kind, and particularly fraud, gains so much by its primary success, as not to be wofully overbalanced and punished by the effects of its subsequent detection, when that takes place, which may generally be reckoned upon. ”

“ Wherever, from circumstances, their peculiar faith fails, or is feeble, in its operation upon them, the principles of simple and independent Christianity are at liberty to act and produce their genuine effects in proportion to their force and purity. ”

“ Speak then and testify, O you glorious and triumphant Army of Martyrs, who enjoy now a permanent triumph in heaven, which knew the voice of your Shepherd, and stayed still he called, and went then with all alacrity — Is there any man received into your blessed legion, by title of such a death, as Sedition, Scandal, or any human respect occasioned? ”