North Branch democrat. [volume] (Tunkhannock, Pa.) 1854-1867, 1866-08-08
3@ .TUNKHANNOCK, PA. WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 8, 1866

the habit of praising indiscriminately what
ever is done by their public men. Acting
and reacting on one another, they 90 down
together in the direction of the pit that is
bottomless; and both are found to have ga
strange alacrity at sinking"
No man can serve two masters faithfully ;
for he must hate one if he loves the other
A minister who admircs and follows such
men as those who have lately ruled and
ruincd this country, must necessarily de-
spise the character of Christ. If he 6 ori-
fes the cruelty, rapacity and falsehood of
his party leaders, he is compelled by an in
flexible law of human nature to "deny the
Lord who bought him." ....-..
The experience of fifteen centuries
proves that political preachers are the greet
curse of the world. More than half the
bloody wars which at different periods have
desolated Christendom, were produced by
their direct instigation; and wherever they
have thrust themselves into contest COM
menced by Others, they always enven ored
the strife and made it more cruel, savage
and uncompromising. The religious wars,
spcalIed, had nothing religious about them
except that they were hissed up by the
clergy. Look back and see II this be not
true,
The Arian controversy (he first great
schisn) was followed by wars in which mil
lions of lives were lost. Do you suppose
the real quarrel was for the insertion or
omission of ,flioque in that part of the
creed which describes the procession Of the
Holy Ghost? Did homoousi0n slaughter
his brother because he was homoO asian 3
No, it was not the difference of a dipthong,
but the plunder of an empire that they
fought for II was the politics of the
church, not her religion, that infuriated the
parties and converted men into demons.
The Thirty Years Var in Germany is
often supposed to have been fair stand mp
fight between the two leading forms OF
Christianity. 1t was not So The religious
difference was false pretense the politi-
cal preachers for the promotion of their
own schemes. There was not sane man
on all that continent who would have felt
himself impelIed by motives merely relig-
ious to murder his neighbors for believing
or disbelieving in transubstantation. If
proof of this were wanting, il might be
found in the fact, that long before the war
ended. the sectarian cries were abandoned,
and Catholics, as well as protestants, were
fighting on both sides.
1t is utterly impossible to believe that the
clergy of England and Scotland, if they had
not been politicians, would have thought of
waging bloody wars to settle questions of
election and reprobation, fate, fore knowl-
edge, free-will, and other points of meta
physical theology. For would they, apart
from their politics, have encouraged and
committed the other horrid crimes of which
they were guilty in the name of religion.
Can YOU think that the Irish were inva-
ded. and conquered, and oppressed, and
murdered and robbed for centuries, merely
because the English loved and believed in
the Protestant religion ? suppose you
know that those brutal atrocities were car
ried on for the purpose of giving to political
preachers in England possession of the
churches, cathedrals, glebe lands and tythes
which belonged to the Irish Catholics. The
soldier was also rewarded by confscations
and pIunder. The Church and the State
hunted in couples, and Ireland was the prey
which they ran down together.
Coming to our own coutry you find Mas
sachusetts aid Connecticut in colonial times
under the sole domination of political
preachers. Their treacherous wars upon the
Indians for purposes wholly mercenary
their enslaving of white persons, as well as
red ones, and selling them abroad, ,or ''swap-
ping them for blackamoors;' - their whip
ping, imprisoning and killing Quakers and
Baptsts, for theil conscientious opinions !;
and their base treatment of such men as
Roger Williams and his friends, will mark
their government through all time as one
ofthe cruelest and meanest that ever ex-
listed.
Political preachers have not behaved any
better since the Revolution than before
About the commencement of the present
century they were busy in their vile voca-
tion all over New England and continued
it for manv years. The wilful and deliber-
ate ISLANDERS habitually uttered from the
pulpit against Jefferson, Madison, and the
friends who supported them, were dis
grace TO human nature. The immediate
effect of this was the Yankee plot to secede
from the Union, followed by corrupt COM
binations with foreign enemy to betray the
liberties of the country. Its remoter conse.
quences are seen in the shameless rapacty
and bitter malignity which, even at this
moment, are howling for the property and
blood of an unarmed and defenseIess people
You and | both remember the political
preaching which ushered in and supported
reign of the Know-Nothings, BloodTubs,
and Plug -Ughes; when Maria Monk was
Saint and Joe Barker was Mayor of Pitts
bnrgh: when pulpits resoundcd every Sun
day with the most injurious falsehoods "a
gainst Catholics; when the public mind was
debauched by the incubation of hypocrisy
and deception; when ministers met their po-
litical allies in sworn secresy to plot against