The Sun.
London, England, 1822-05-24 00:00:00

FOR THE SUN.

LETTER VIII.

MR. EDITOR—In my sixth and seventh Letters
exposed some of the misrepresentations of
PASTORIrsiI ; and also a few of the corruptions and
innovations which had been introduced into the
Church in the darker ages by artful and am-
bitious Pontiffs, for secular purposes, from whence
arose that Reformation which he has so grossly
and audaciously maligned ; but his arrows fall
pointless to the ground when directed against
the shield of truth ; and every man endued with
reason and common sense, even if he may not
have read any commentaries on the prophesies,
must perceive at once the extravagance, the
weakness, and the malignity of his exposition
and inferences.—The object of this letter shall
be to shew, first, his omissions, which, whatever
I may think of them, no doubt are justifiable ac-
cording to the casuistry of St. Thomas Aquinas,
Fillincius, and Sanchos,—secondly, the actual
and gross violation of truth of this " Vicar
Apostolic."
He has carefully kept from the ken of heretics
the cruel and intolerant persecution of the \Val-
denses in the vallies of Savoy and Piedmont, who
took their name from Peter Waldo, a merchant
of Lyons, the founder of the sect,—first, under
Pope Alexander 111., in the year 1179; then under
his successor, Louis 111. ; and, with some inter-
missions, nearly to the close of the 17th cen-
tury,—for no other reason than that they would
not implicitly submit their consciences to the
guidance of the Bishop of Rome, but professed
the faith first instituted by Jesus Christ, and
preached by his disciples ;—and it is worthy of
notice, that this persecution, on account of re-
jecting the tenets of Popery, and now recently
foisted into the Church, commenced nearly three
hundred years before " Luther opened the door
of hell to let out the spirit of seduction."
With equal care has he concealed the barba-
rous persecution of the Albigenses, in the ponti-
ficate of Innocent 111., in the year 1215, more
than two hundred years before the Reformation,
by torture, fire, and sword ; of whom more than
two hundred thousand were butchered in a few
months by the Pope's holy Crusaders, bearing
the emblems of the cross, and headed by the
Archbishop of Sens, the Bishops of Nevers,
Cleremont, and Auxerre ;—and not less than a
million of this inoffensive people perished, for
preferring the word of God, contained in the
Bible, as their rule of faith, to the tradition of
monks.
He has not told us of the murders of seventy
thousand of the Paulini, under the same Pontiff,
for refusing to believe all the then newly-invented
articles of faith introduced into the Latin Church.
Neither has he mentioned the persecution of the
Bohemians, in the 14th and 15th Centuries, in
the Pontificates of Urban VI, Martin V, and
Pius 11, merely because they were heretics.
Although he has given us some useful infor-
mation,. because new, about some holy Martyrs
of the Society of Jesus, who, in the reign of
Queen Elizabeth and James I. were tried, con-
victed, and executed, for conspiring against the
lives of those Sovereigns, in compliance with the
Bulls of Pius V., Gregory XIII., Sextus V., and
Clement VIII.'; yet he has been totally silent
as to the persecutions and murders in England,
during the short but bloody reign of that furious
bigot Queen Mary, in violation of her solemn
declaration in Council on her accession—" that
she would not lay any restraint whatsoever on re-
ligious liberty :" but I had forgotten that as
that promise had been made to heretics, it was
no longer binding than was necessary to, establish
her upon the throne ; and, as soon as that was
accomplished, she had that sanguinary law re-
enacted—" de Heretic° comburendo," first intro-
duced in the reign of Henry I V., who having
obtained his Crown by treason and murder,
found it necessary to conciliate the Clergy, for the
purpose of establishing himself upon the Throne ;
and he submitted implicitly to their guidance. The
consequence was, the fury of the Church was soon
levelled against the followers of Wickliffe, and
many were committed to the flames; among these the
Rev. Wm. Santre, and Viscount Cobham : for the
people of England were so galled by the rapa-
city and exactions of the Bishop of Rome, some
of which I enumerated in my sixth letter, and so
disgusted with the corruptions and innovations
in the Church, which I also mentioned in my
seventh, that they gladly listened to his doc-
trines ; among which were, " that there was no
merit in doing pilgrimage at the tomb of Thomas
A'Becket, or of St. Mary of Walsingham, nor
in adoring the crucifix, or the images of any
Saints, and that it was sufficient to confess to
God instead of Priests."
Pastorini has also carefully veiled from unhal-
lowed eyes the cruel and bloody mysteries of the
" holy inquisition," instituted in the pontificate
of Gregory IX., under the superintendance of
the Dominican Friars, who plundered, tortured,
and murdered the unhappy victims of supersti-
tious fanatacism, without remorse or without
measure. Your Readers will find in the Eitel,-
clopcedia Britannica, under the head " Act of
Faith," a horrid though interesting account of
this infernal Court, in which will be seen the
part taken by Jesuits in the tragedy. They
may also learn from Mr. Switiburrie's (a Roman
Catholic) 'four through Spain, published in the
year 1787, that in Granada, " so late as the
" year 1726, the Inquisition, with the sanction
" of Government, seized upon 360 families,
" accused of Mahornetanism, and confiscated all
" their property, to the amount of twelve mil-
" lions of crowns, of which no account was ever
" given ; and they were dispersed in different
" parts of Spain."—(Vol. 1. p. 262.)
He has, indeed, admitted that there had been
a massacre of Protestants in France on St. Bar-
tholomew's day, in the year 1572; and in Ire-
land, in the year 1641 : but, that the reader may
judge of the Jesuitical casuistry with which lie
attempts to palliate those two dreadful events,
and the audacity with which he advances such
palpable falsehoods. I shall here give the ac-
count in his own words :—" Many were the in-
" surrections and rebellions of the Calvinists in
" France in the subsequent reigns, which created
" infinite perplexity, and produced inexpressible