This is a reproduction of a library book that was digitized by Google as part of an ongoing effort to preserve the information in books and make it universally accessible. https://books.google.com Thepapalconspiracyexposed,andProtestantismdefended EdwardBeecher -— - Čjt Ingir II Št juml I N C A M B R IID G. E. The Be quest of CON V E R S FRANCIS, D. D. *- --- | == - T ri - PAPAL CONSPIRACY EXPOSED, w PROTESTANTISM DEFENDED, IN THE LIGHT or REASON, HISTORY, AND SCRIPTURE. BY REv. EDWARD BEECHER, D.D. - B O S T O N : PUBLISHED BY STEARNS & CO., 91 WASHINGTon STREET. CŞ 92 /. I 13 it A 1: y %. * S&ARD !/. UNNERSº º Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1854, by -- EDWARD BEECHER, In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. sterror-rred at rare ... so sºrox s t E. R. E. or rr - rot ºr D = rs - FRIENDLY CONSIDERATIONS FOR AMERICAN PROTESTANTS AND FREEMEN. God, my fellow-countrymen, has conferred on you the peculiar honor and the eminent responsibility of being jurors in behalf of the great commonwealth of humanity in a momentous case in which he himself is Judge. - The great criminal arraigned for trial before his bar is that pecu liar corporation claiming the right to be called the church of Rome. You are called on to decide whether this corporation, for treason against God and hostility to the human race, deserves the execra tion of mankind and the righteous and avenging judgment of God. In order to decide this question, you are to consider, not any plausible professions which the corporation may put forth, but the organic laws of the corporation, its avowed principles, the inevitable tendency of such laws and principles, and finally the actual results of these tendencies as imbodied in history. When you have in telligently considered these things, you will be able to decide wha this corporation is and what ought to be its doom. You are therefore called on also to decide whether this corſ ora tion has changed for the better or not since its principles were fully developed during the era or dispensation of their notorious head, Gregory VII, sometimes called Hildebrand; whether the lion's claws that it then had have been extracted, or only concealed; (3) 4 FRIENDLY CONSIDERATIONS whether its teeth have been knocked out, or only hidden till it can find another opportunity to bite and devour. On these points some of the orators of the corporation have made most beautiful and touching appeals, protesting that in these auspicious days of liberality the lion has laid aside its ancient ferocity and repented of its bloody deeds, and is ready to lie down with the lamb, and the leopard with the kid, and that a little child can lead them. You, as good men and true, are called upon to say upon your oaths whether you find that there is any evidence that this blessed trans formation has taken place. Indeed, in coming to your ultimate results, you are called on to decide a still more important question—that is to say, What is the character of this corporation for truth and fidelity to engagements? You are called on to decide whether it is ever safe to trust any af firmations or denials of this corporation, or of any of its agents, as to any matters of fact touching their own interests or involved in their own defence. You are therefore called on to decide, first, What has been the character of this corporation in these respects in ages past? And if you find that it has been infamous to the last degree, then you are to decide whether it has ever repented and brought forth works meet for repentance, so as at last to deserve to be admitted into decent, civilized, and Christian society. Not merely in ages past, but also at the present day, this corpora tion has promulgated certain bills of rights designed to define the extent of their own claims and prerogatives. These may, by way of distinction, be called the Papal bills of rights. On these you are also called to sit in judgment. The amount of them in brief is this: This Papal corporation have avowed a conscientious convic tion that God has empowered them to do all the thinking of all mankind on all points of Christian faith and practice, and that he has required all the rest of mankind to think as this corporation thinks, on pain of eternal damnation; also that God has given them FOR AMERICAN PROTESTANTS AND FREEMEN. * 5 full power over kings and all rulers, to use them as instruments in enforcing this right, by crusades, confiscations, proscriptions, and boundless slaughters. Such are their avowed and conscientious convictions on these important and interesting topics. Their ideas of their own rights of conscience correspond; that is to say, they claim the right to act out these conscientious convic tions without let or impediment. This is in brief the bill of Papal rights of conscience. Their ideas of the rights of conscience in all others are no less interesting and instructive. They liberally concede to all mankind the right to obey such laws and decisions of all sorts as they shall declare that God has promulgated through themselves, and none others in contravention of these. In short, their theory of the rights of man is in brief this: That all mankind have an inalienable right to obey the laws of the Papal corporation, and that all who refuse to obey these laws have no other rights whatever. The doctrines of this corporation on the subject of persecution are no less instructive. They are these:— Inasmuch as God has given to them the rights of conscience above stated, it is not persecution in them to carry those rights into full and perfect effect, by deposing rebellious kings and rulers, and by using such rulers as are obedient to them, in the laudable and divine work of torturing, and then butchering or burning, all rebels against Papal authority, confiscating their goods, and rendering them and their children infamous forever. For the Papal corporation to do all this is not persecution, but the exercise of just authority. On the other hand, if any man shall have the hardihood and audacity even secretly to think that this is wrong, and much more to say so, that man is a persecutor. Much more is he a persecutor if he shall dare to endeavor to create a public sentiment that shall throw infamy upon the corporation simply because they have exer cised their just rights of conscience in butchering a few millions of heretics—say, for example, about fifty millions, more or less. 1 * 6 FRIENDLY CONSIDERATIONS Still more, it would be inexcusable persecution for this nation to pass any laws to prevent them from gaining, as soon as possible, the ability to carry out their rights of conscience aforesaid in this country. In particular, if the head of the corporation shall send to this country pecuniary agents, whom he sees fit to call bishops, and to concentrate in them all the property of all the religious societies in this land who own his sway, as one means of gaining the power at which he aims, then to interpose by law to prohibit and prevent such accumulation would be a still higher grade of persecution. Above all, to expel by law from this land the sworn pecuniary agents of the foreign head of this corporation, even although they should be manifestly, and openly, and undeniably guilty of a treason able conspiracy with foreign Romish powers to subvert the consti tution and laws of these United States and of each particular state in this confederacy, would be the summit of persecution. This is self-evident; because any government that refuses to submit to the jurisdiction of this corporation has no right to exist, and therefore it is a duty to conspire to overthrow it. Indeed it is the conscientious conviction of the members of this corporation that they are called on, As soon As THEY CAN GET THE Pow ER, to rule all such govern ments with a rod of iron and to dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel. That these are the present claims of this corporation, without col oring or exaggeration, I think you will be satisfied when you shall have read the evidence adduced in this volume, which is but a small part of what could be offered. I will, however, in this place present one item more, which I re quest you to consider in connection with that in the body of this work. Pope Pius VII, whose papacy occupied nearly the first quarter of the present century, gave to his nuncio at Vienna the following instructions, in view of the claims of certain Protestant princes on his ecclesiastical property in Germany for indemnity for certain FOR AMERICAN PROTESTANTS AND FREEMEN. 7 injuries. He says, “Not only has the church succeeded to prevent heretics from possessing themselves of ecclesiastical property, but she has established the confiscation and the loss of goods as the punishment of those guilty of the crime of heresy. This punish ment, as it respects the goods of individuals, is decreed by a bull of Innocent III. ; and, in respect of principalities and fiefs, it is a rule of the canon law (Chap. Absolutos xvi, De Hareticis) that the subjects of an heretical prince are enfranchised from every duty to wards him and dispensed from all fealty and homage.