NUMBER 75.

A View of the Romish Church, in her Heads, Theology, Canons, Miracles, and Saints; taken chiefly from her own Writers and Champi

ons.

I AM well pleased with the seasonable public zeal against the double headed tyranny with which we are threatened. I therefore here present the public with such a display of Popery, as may serve to rouse the most stupid and lukewarm Protestants, and undeceive Papists, who are kept by their priests from the true knowledge of it.

According to the Popish historians, and even by the testimony of the best and ablest Popish writers, no throne, no Pagan throne, was ever filled with such monsters of immorality as the Papal throne; monsters most detestably wicked in themselves, and the constant authors of universal wickedness, imposture, delusion, oppression, robbery, tyranny, murder, and massacre; pestilent enemies to all good men, and to whatever was good in the world.

These Popes even bear testimony against one another. Stephen VII. thought his predecessor Formosus so horrid a criminal, that he had him pulled out of his grave, and his body thrown into the Tyber. Stephen himself was strangled as a criminal equally horrible.

Baronius, that great advocate for Popery, to which he often sacrifices truth and history, declares Pope Sergius to have been the most abominable of men, living in a brothel, particularly with two celebrated harlots, mother and daughter, who governed the Pope and the Roman church, and made the most of both. By one of these harlots be had a son, who came to be Pope by the name of John XI. a Pope who lived in incest with his own mother. Her name was Marozia, a lady of uncommon fortune, mistress to two Popes, one of them her son.

John XII. professed the black art, and paid divine worship to Venus and Jupiter. He debauched ladies on the steps of the altar, and was famous for all diabolical excesses. This infernal father of christendom was deposed by a council summoned and supported by the emperor Otho. A deposition which the same keen churchman Baronius is not ashamed to censure as an act of presumption, as passing judgment upon one whom no man on earth had a right to judge. So that he was accounted a regular and genuine Pope; and if he was, why may not the worst and most accursed being be one?

Boniface VII. murdered Benedict VI. in order to succeed him; and they were commonly expelling and butchering one another. Cardinal Benno mentions one Gerard Brazet, who was appointed and paid as Poisioner-General to the holy See, and who poisoned seven or eight Popes, at the instigation of such as wanted to be Popes. These Popes were in truth such sons of perdition, that even Baronius owns "the end of the world to have been then thought at hand, as no time had produced such monsters, and so many scenes of horror."

The famous Hildebrand, Gregory VII. filled all Germany with blood, and fire, and famine; and carried every curse of human tyranny, and

diabolical pride, as far as they could go. Matthew Paris, a Papist and Ecclesiastic, calls Innocent III. a lion in cruelty, and a blood-sucker in avarice. Observe, that this was the Pope who oppressed and plundered this poor nation so long and so unmercifully, during the miserable reign of Henry III. Benedict XII. purchased a lady of condition and beauty from her family for so much ready money. She was sister to the celebrated Petrarch. Lucretia, daughter to Alexander VI. was likewise his mistress, and mistress to his son Cæsar Borgia, as also wife to another of his sons.

Pontificis Filia, Sponsa, Nurus.

Innocent VIII. left sixteen children; I need not say, all spurious; for no Pope can marry. Leo X. boasted "what treasure the church had derived from the fable of Christ." Paul III. not only lay with his daughter, but, to have her all to himself, poisoned her husband.

Can that be the church of God, which hath such heads? Does it become the champions of that church to reproach the reformation, as derived from the lewdness of Harry VIII. And can the humble and merciful Jesus own such polluted, such bloody successors? Have such carnal, such worldly, and such devilish abominations, any thing to do with religion, or spiritual characters, but to disgrace and extirpate both? If we descend from the heads of that church to her great champions and supports, the schoolmen; the extravagancies and fooleries of the latter are incredible. They are the metaphysics of the heathen philosopher Aristotle, prostituted to maintain the lying claims of churchmen: what is incredible, is explained by what is impossible; and what is impossibie. is maintained by what is unintelligible: imposture is founded upon subtleties; nonsense defended by sophistry; contradiction by names and authority; and a monstrous theology is recommended under barbarous terms. Here follow a few of the important points there discussed, "Whether it be possible for the Deity to become feminine? Whether the foreskin of our Saviour (cut off in circumcision) be yet taken in the Eucharist, where he is supposed to be swallowed whole? Whether the body of Christ comes into the elements of bread and wine by the way of deduction, or of re-production ; or if his body had been made of flint, how it could have been crucified ?"

These are some of the deep questions amongst their principal theologians, and are called divinity; as if the further from common sense, the nearer to religion; and the more mad, the more orthodox.

The Catholic canons are of a piece with the Catholic theology, shameless, immoral, and extravagant. It is a system of chimeras, extracted from the authority and writings of old Popes and doctors; the dreams and distinctions of pedants, and the decretals of designing pontiffs, set up against the civil law, reason and morality. They assert for instance, that Meum and Tuum, and the ascertaining of property, was introduced by injustice and violence; and that, according to the wisest of all the ancient sages, all things are common amongst friends, especially women: that the crimes and failings of the Pope are as excusable, as the robberies committed by the Hebrews upon the Egyptians. By the same ecclesiastical laws, and for the sake of ec

U

clesiastical men, lewdness and adultery are treated rather as levities than crimes, and stiled lucky adventures, Leve peccatum, & quod Galli vocant bonam Fortunam, gallantries.

The miracles of Rome are so numerous and impudent, so ridiculous, and so impossible, that Protestants, as well as sensible Turks and heathens, would think them invented to disgrace the Roman church, did not the Roman church avow and affirm them; none of them performed before heretics, who only want them, but only before Catholics, who want them not; never worked in public to render them uncontested, but in corners and chapels, as if on purpose to raise suspicion about them.

In the lives of the Popish saints, all published by authority, are found the following miracles gravely asserted, with a thousand others equally ridiculous: the blessed virgin visiting friars in the night: Jesus Christ playing at cards with a nun in her cell, courting nuns, and marrying nuns, bis virgin mother being the match-maker: beasts and birds adoring the host: the devil bearing testimony for the church against heretics: an oven heated with snow by St. Patrick; and a pound of honey converted into a pound of butter to please his nurse: St. Anthony preaching to the fishes, St. Francis to the beasts; and neither congregation willing to depart, till the saints had blessed them : the wet habits of friars hung upon the sun beams: the monks entertained in heaven under the blessed virgin's robes: a nun sweetening a vessel of sour wine, and her image upon an empty tub filling it with oil, and continuing it full for some months, for the use of the convent : St. Dominic forcing the devil in the shape of a monkey, to hold his candle, till Satan's fingers were burnt to the bone: a ship carrying the body of a dead saint, piloted by a raven for many leagues: the blessed virgin's successful dispute with some devils, in behalf of a lewd priest, who had been assiduous in his devotions to her.

These strange dreams full of nonsense and blasphemy, are the great proofs, that the Roman church is the true church. But these fooleries and frauds, however subversive of religion, and the genuine marks of imposture, are pardonable, in comparison of her bloody and persecuting spirit, the consequence of her cruel want of charity, the most signal Christian virtue. She damns all who are not of ber horrid communion, and murders, or would murder, all that she damns; witness her universal practice, and constant massacres, at Paris, in Ireland, her crusades against the best Christians, the daily fires of the inquisition, and the burnings in Smithfield, especially under queen Mary.

Be warned, O Protestants; continue what ye are, Christians and freemen your all is at stake, liberty, property, conscience: abhor 'he harlot, and oppose the tool of the harlot

INDEPENDENT WHIG PUBLIC LIBRASSY

An Idea of the French Government. The Spirit of Popery, how ter

rible to Protestants.

I HERE offer some further thoughts upon Popery; as also upon the French government. Ours is a government by laws theirs is a government by will. By whatever prefaces or pretences the king recommends his laws, his own will and pleasure is the last and strongest : this is his constant stile to his Parliament, which is only an assembly of the judges of the several courts of justice, all the king's immediate creatures, created by him, paid by him, and commanded by him. The general states of the realm, representing the kingdom, and resembling our Parliaments, are long since laid aside there. The king bas no other rule or limitation in raising money, formerly raised only by the states, than his humour and passions, or those of his ministers. A mean capacity, or want of capacity, royal folly, or royal frenzy, are no disqualifications. His will is still sacred, however extravagantly or stupidly exerted; and still his pleasure is his law.

Henry IV. with all his great abilities, had no more power than his weak son Lewis XIII. nor was ever half so copiously flattered. His grandson, Lewis XIV. had he studied to give proof (as indeed he needed not) how little he resembled his grandfather, could not have done it more effectually than in his revoking the Edict of Nantz: an act of such inimitable treachery, as could not be charged upon the most faithless Pagan princes; of such prodigious cruelty, as was never matched by Nero; of such amazing folly, as would have put the emperor Claudius out of countenance.

This too shews fully, how little the promises and oaths of Popish princes are to be relied on: they are rather snares and wiles, and when they are most plausible, and sound the strongest, generally infer the most danger. He had not only frequently ratified that sacred edict, which was the inviolable band of the inward peace of France, but in all his infringements of it (which might proceed from his weakness, or the subdolous advice of his ministers) he always declared, that he would preserve it inviolable.

Did not our late king James say, and promise and swear every thing, take every oath, submit to every engagement; yet the next moment violate them all openly, as if they had been words of course, by which he bad meant nothing but deceit and insults? I will be bold to add, as an alarming proof how little Protestants can trust any security or assurance from Papists, that, had king James been sincere and willing to observe his oaths and promises, his religion, or, which is the same thing, his priests, who led him by his bigotry, would not have permitted him. What was an oath to the cause of religion? And why should he, how durst he, keep an oath so pernicious to the church, and given for the security and success of heresy? Such reasoning from the keepers of his conscience, would have convinced him of the great guilt of

observing an oath to heretics, and of the great merit of breaking it. It was lawful and even politic, to take it, as by it he lulled his Protestant subjects into security; but it was absolutely necessary, and his duty, to break it, as it was injurious to his friends the Papists, and obstructed the growth of Popery.

The question is not, Whether it be a doctrine of Popery, to keep no faith with heretics? I think it a needless question: the proper question is, Whether the Papists have ever done it, at least upon principle, or longer than times and necessity forced them? History and universal experience are demonstrations, that they never did.

The edict of Nantz, the wise work of Henry the great, was an eye sore to the Papists from the beginning, though the surest and only remedy for the long and furious civil wars in France; but bigotry was too strong for public peace, for Christian charity and all human wisdom. The extirpation of Protestants, however accompanied with war and desolation, was the great point in view and the assiduous drift of Papists. The perpetual pursuit of that court (constantly bigoted after the death of Henry) was therefore to destroy that perpetual edict; for such it was in the name, tenor, and design of it. After continual breaches made in it, Lewis XIV. had the honour to finish its destruction, when he found that the bigotry, perjury, and tyranny of king James, co-operating with his own, made it safe for him to do it. Yet James was not then ashamed to contend for liberty of conscience to all sects here, on purpose to enable Popery to devour them all a black snare, worthy of that religion, but easily seen through, and frustrated with great spirit by those whom it was spread to destroy.

Queen Mary was raised to the throne by Protestants; gave them all fair words, and royal assurances; then made it the great and constant business, nay, the glory of her reign, to burn Protestants. She proved so faithless and furious a bigot, that the most bloody bigot of his time, her husband, Philip II. was, or pretended to be, ashamed of her fury, and bore his testimony against it.

The behaviour of that perjured tyrant to his subjects in the Low Countries, is another instance of the mockery of the faith of a Popish prince. He had solemnly sworn at the altar to maintain them in all their privileges (and surely religion is the tenderest of all) and immediately after manifested the same contempt for their privileges, and his own oath, as he did for their persons, and properties, seizing the one, and butchering the other, with infinite wantonness and cruelty. His defence was (pray mind his defence !) "That the Pope had absolved him from his oath to heretics."

Can Protestants possibly trust Papists, when the Papists even with good intentions, can be under no tye to Protestants? Who is it that governs them in all points of religion, but their priests? The priest may be said to give them their religion: For all that they have, or can have, is upon his word; even the books that they read, they read by his permission, and are permitted to hear no arguments but his arguments.

As the Papists are guided implicitly by their priests, so are their priests by the Pope. Can any man of common sense keep his countenance and say, that the Pope or Popish priests, are friends to this Protestant establishment, or to this Protestant royal family? The Po,