Canonicus

“ The kindness of the Narraghansett rulers is the more creditable to their feelings, inasmuch as the former relations between them and the English colonies had been far enough from friendly. Early in 1622, their threats of hostility were so open, that the English were receiving constant intelligence of their designs from the Indians in their own alliance; and not long afterwards, Canonicus sent a herald to Plymouth, who left a bundle of arrows enclosed in a rattle-snake's skin—the customary challenge to war. ”

“ Canaan. There is something inexpressibly awful in the words respecting Canaan, and they are full of instruction respecting sin. They show what an awful thing sin is in the sight of God, and how superficial is man’s estimate of its guilt; for here is a whole race laid under a solemn curse in consequence of the sin of its head. As Adam brought a curse on the world, so Ham brought one on Canaan. The curse inflicted in that case was bondage, and the prophecy was that Canaan should be a servant of servants to both his brethren: i.e. to both Shem and Japheth. And now look at the fulfilment. ”

“ That by this account it appears that the posterity of Canaan were both numerous and rich, and very pleasantly seated; and yet Canaan was under a curse, a divine curse, and not a curse causeless. Note, Those that are under the curse of God, may yet perhaps thrive and prosper greatly in this world; for we cannot know love or hatred, the blessing or the curse, by what is before us, but by what is within us, Eccl. ”

“ The present canons treat of those who have in the persecution denied the faith, and are doing penance. And the first canon ordains, that upon those who after many torments have sacrificed to the gods, not being able by reason of frailty to persevere, and who have passed three years in penitence, other forty days should be enjoined, and that then they should be admitted into the Church. ”

“ The divine admonition to overcome the desire to sin applies to everybody. If God required of Cain that he should master his evil desires, how much more does He require it of us Christians, to whom so many graces have been given? Examine yourself and see what sin you are most inclined to, whether it be lying, or greediness, or laziness, or disobedience, or anger, or sinful curiosity, and resolve never to give way to it, but to overcome it at once. Resist the beginnings of sin. If Cain had stifled his envy in the beginning, he would not have become a fratricide! ”

“ Secondly, that the judgments of God are not always exhibited before our eyes, nor apprehended by our carnal reason. The Canaanites, having shaken off the yoke of servitude, which was divinely imposed upon them, even proceeded to grasp at empire for themselves. But although they triumph for a time, yet in the sight of God their condition is not deemed free. ”

“ Yea, this also finds a fulfilling in the spiritual Canaan, or church of God, unto which the silver trumpet of jubilee, the gospel, hath sounded a spiritual restitution of all their spiritual rights and inheritances, which either they have lost in the fall of the first man Adam, or in their particular falls, when they are captive, and sold unto sin, Rom. vii. [14,] or, lastly, in the spiritual captivity of Babel’s bondage. How sweet then is the name of a Saviour, in whom is the joyful sound of a deliverance and redemption!
Canaan’s land a type of the kingdom of God on earth and in heaven. ”

“ God's rest in Canaan -- by which is not meant that all his saints will be living there, though all that abide there will be a righteous people: the things which belong to Canaan will overspread the world; and where there are nations to be governed, there will there be saints to rule -- but this rest, I say, is the great theme of the gospel, whether preached by Moses, by Jesus, or by the apostles. The rest and the kingdom are but different terms, though substantially the same. They will both be of Canaan, and are both the subject of the promise made of God to Abraham and his seed for ever. ”

“ Canons are of no great antiquity. Gregory of Tours mentions a college of canons instituted by Baldwin, arch bishop of that city, in the 6th century. The common opinion attributes the institution of this order to Chrode- gangus, bishop of Metz, about the middle of the 8th cen- turj r . When the term Canonici is met with at an earlier date, it is employed in a more vague and generic sense, either as equivalent to the clerus or clergy at large, or as comprehending all who held any ecclesiastical office what ever, even of the humblest character, as that of a chanter, porter, &c. ”

“ When one arrives at Canaan today, he should immediately have a fine basket of the fruit of the land, and go to the church and tell preacher and people, that in the providence and mercy of God he has received a clean heart full of pure love, or in other words, he has been sanctified wholly. ”

“ Now, the Catholic Church has ranked, for at least fourteen hundred years, many books as canonical, which your Protestant Church rejects as uncanonical. In the year 397, a Catholic council was held at Carthage, at which the learned and pious St. Augustine assisted. In that council, the canon of the Scripture, was satisfactorily determined; and in that very council, many books were declared to be canonical (that is, the inspired word of God,) which your Church, has had the audacity to tell the people, are not canonical, that is, they are not to be considered the inspired word of God. ”

“ The words spoken to Cain, "Sin lieth at the door" (Gen. 4: 7) should be rendered "A sin-offering croucheth at thy door," intimating that an animal proper to be offered for atonement, and which Cain had failed to offer, was within reach. We may safely say that "Jesus Christ and Him crucified" was in the gospel or the faith known to our first parents, and that their offering pointed directly to Him, as all the types and shadows of the Mosaic law did, of which the apostles assure us. Here then in the Garden of Eden, as soon as man fell, we have a covenant of promise. ”

“ The same thing befell Christ our Lord, who was not a priest nor a king of Jerusalem before the people; and yet he was dragged by the priests and by the kings to the cross! And we all, as the apostle says, must be made conformable to Christ. And thus it is that the true Church is ever hidden and unknown, and is cast out, and its members held as heretics, and slain; while Cain alone has the glorious name and is held in estimation, and alone possesses the hope of doing great things; and therefore it is that he rushes on his brother with hostile enmity of mind and slays him. ”

“ I hear of Athanasius and Miletius, Eusebius, Arius, and numberless other heads of your sects, condemning each other,—the one party refusing to hold communion with the other, while both profess to serve the same Lord, whom you call Christ. Now look at the system of religion which has prevailed undisturbed for centuries in Rome. We have had no quarrels or disputes, and all have submitted implicitly to us, their pontiffs, the directors of their rites and ceremonies. Our men and women have been at liberty to worship the gods and goddesses they have preferred. ”

“ We should in all things be faithful to God, our heavenly Father. We should consecrate ourselves, our time, and all we have unto Him, holding ourselves ready to fulfill missions in every part of the habitable globe. If the world imagine that the killing of our brethren will have a tendency to stop the progress of the everlasting Gospel, they are much mistaken. They have tried that before. When Cain lifted up his hand and slew his brother, he thought, no doubt, that it would stop the progress of righteousness. And so with those who slew Joseph the Prophet ”

“ Looking at the Old Testament from this point of view, the extreme wing of the Pauline host, the Cainites, naturally came to regard the Patriarchs as being under [pg 304] the protection, the Prophets as being under the inspiration, of the God of the Jews, and therefore to hold them in abhorrence, as enemies of Christ and the Supreme Deity. Those, on the other hand, who were spoken of in the Old Testament as resisting God, punished by God, were true prophets, martyrs of the Supreme Deity, forerunners of the Gospel. Cain became the type of virtue ”

“ As applied to the New Testament, the word "canon" means the books which fit the Church's rule of faith, and which themselves become a rule that measures forgeries and finds them wanting. The Church set these genuine books apart as having their origin in inspiration which came from God. They were all either written by the apostles or by men who were trained by the apostles, and thus they contain a unique account of the sayings of the Lord Jesus and the teaching of those who received their commission from Him. ”

“ The Conquest of Canaan (1785) , in ten thousand lines of heroic couplets, owes its style to Pope’s Homer and much of its method and imagery to Virgil and Milton. The epic as a whole is what might be expected when the poet’s purpose is “to represent such manners as are removed from the peculiarities of any age or country, and might belong to the amiable and virtuous of any period, elevated without design, refined without ceremony, elegant without fashion, and agreeable because they are ornamented with sincerity, dignity, and religion.” ”

“ Canaan, that fruitful land, shall be turned into barrenness for the wickedness of those that dwell therein. They love the reward in the corn-floor, and are so full of the joy of harvest that they have no disposition at all to mourn for their sins; and therefore God will, for their effectual humiliation, take away from them, not only their delights and dainties, but even their necessary food (v. 2) : The floor and the wine-press shall not feed them, much less feast them; they shall either be blasted by the hand of God or plundered by the hand of man. ”

“ As the land of Canaan was secured to the seed of Abraham according to the flesh, so heaven is secured to all his spiritual seed, by a covenant, and for a possession, truly everlasting. The offer of this eternal life is made in the word, and confirmed by the sacraments, to all that are under the external administration of the covenant; and the earnest of it is given to all believers, Eph_1:14. Canaan is here said to be the land wherein Abraham was a stranger; and the heavenly Canaan is a land to which we are strangers, for it does not yet appear what we shall be. ”

“ It is well known that even far into the middle ages there was no regular process of canonization. Our present law, by which canonization takes place in Rome after a formal trial, was made by Urban VIII in 1634. [25] In earlier ages a sort of popular consent controlled by the bishop, who admitted the Saint's name to his local litany or martyrology, was enough. There are numberless instances of a person being honoured as a Saint in one place but not in another. It is therefore quite natural that the Byzantine Church should have her own Saints. ”

“ During the time of the Countess's confession Roma sat in her own room with a tremor of the heart which she had never felt before. Something personal and very intimate was creeping over her soul. She heard the indistinct murmur of the priest's voice at intervals, followed by a sibilant sound as of whispers and sobs.
The confession lasted fifteen minutes and then the priest came out of the room. "Now that your relative has made her peace with God," he said, "she must receive the Blessed Sacrament, Extreme Unction, and the Apostolic Blessing." ”

“ Such was the posterity of Cain; men, no doubt, renowned for their wisdom and greatness. And I also believe that some of them were saved by the uncovenanted mercy of God, as I have above explained. But far the greater part of them most bitterly hated and persecuted the true Church. They could not brook inferiority to the sons of Adam, the true Church; therefore they set up their own forms of worship, and introduced many other new things for the sake of suppressing the church of Adam. ”

“ The meaning of the present canon is as follows:—Those, he says, who set in the fervour of the persecution, that is, in its greatest height and most vehement heat, beheld the martyrdoms of the saints, and how eagerly they hastened to receive the celestial crown, fired with a holy emulation, gave themselves up to martyrdom, leaping as it were into the contest with much boldness, in imitation of the saints who suffered, and offered themselves readily for the confirming of the faith by their testimony ”

“ Truly it is no more than he deserves. But han't you some Scruple upon your Mind, in as much as he is not yet canoniz'd by the Authority of the Bishop of Rome?
Br. Why, pray, who canoniz'd (for that's the Word) St. Jerome? Who canoniz'd St. Paul, or the Virgin Mary? Pray tell me whose Memory is most sacred among all good Men? Those that by their eminent Piety, and the Monuments of their Learning and good Life, have entitled themselves to the Veneration of all Men; or Catherine of Sien, that was sainted by Pius the Second, in favour of the Order and the City? ”

“ That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple, and the altar.”
They have accepted the inheritance of Cain. They are the descendants of Cain. They kill brothers, execute saints, crucify prophets. And, like Cain, God has stamped upon their faces a Sign—the mysterious sign of immortality. They cannot be killed because theirs are the hands which must kill. ”