SECTION IV.
If what has been already said shows the carnal policy of Rome
at the expense of truth, the circumstances attending the festival
of the Assumption show the daring wickedness and blasphemy of
that Church still more; considering that the doctrine in regard
to this festival, so far as the Papacy is concerned, was not
established in the dark ages, but three centuries after the
Reformation, amid all the boasted light of the nineteenth
century. The doctrine on which the festival of the Assumption if
founded, is this: that the Virgin Mary saw no corruption, that in
body and in soul she was carried up to heaven, and now is
invested with all power in heaven and in earth. This doctrine has
been unblushingly avowed in the face of the British public, in a
recent pastoral of the Popish Archbishop of Dublin. This doctrine
has now received the stamp of Papal Infallibility, having been
embodied in the late blasphemous decree that proclaims the "Immaculate
Conception." Now, it is impossible for the priests of
Rome to find one shred of countenance for such a doctrine in
Scripture. But, in the Babylonian system, the fable was ready
made to their hand. There it was taught that Bacchus went down to
hell, rescued his mother from the infernal powers, and carried
her with him in triumph to heaven. * This fable spread wherever
the Babylonian system spread; and, accordingly, at this day, the
Chinese celebrate, as they have done from time immemorial, a
festival in honour of a Mother, who by her son was rescued from
the power of death and the grave. The festival of the Assumption
in the Romish Church is held on the 15th of August. The Chinese
festival, founded on a similar legend, and celebrated with
lanterns and chandeliers, as shown by Sir J.F. Davis in his able
and graphic account of China, is equally celebrated in the month
of August. * Now, when the mother of the Pagan Messiah came to be
celebrated as having been thus "Assumed," then
it was that, under the name of the "Dove," *
she was worshipped as the Incarnation of the Spirit of God, with
whom she was identified. As such as she was regarded as the
source of all holiness, and the grand "PURIFIER," and,
of course, was known herself as the "Virgin"
mother, "PURE AND UNDEFILED." * Under the name
of Proserpine (with whom, though the Babylonian goddess was
originally distinct, she was identified), while celebrated, as
the mother of the first Bacchus, and known as "Pluto's
honoured wife," she is also addressed, in the
"Orphic Hymns," as "Associate of the
seasons, essence bright, All-ruling VIRGIN, bearing heavenly
light." *
Whoever wrote these hymns, the more they are examined the more
does it become evident, when they are compared with the most
ancient doctrine of Classic Greece, that their authors understood
and thoroughly adhered to the genuine theology of Paganism. To
the fact that Proserpine was currently worshipped in Pagan
Greece, though well-known to be the wife of Pluto, the god of
hell, under the name of "The Holy Virgin," we
find Pausanias, while describing the grove Carnasius, thus
bearing testimony: "This grove contains a statue of
Apollo Carneus, of Mercury carrying a ram, and of Proserpine, the
daughter of Ceres, who is called 'The HOLY VIRGIN.'" *
The purity of this "Holy Virgin" did not
consist merely in freedom from actual sin, but she was especially
distinguished for her "immaculate conception;" for
Proclus says, "She is called Core, through the purity of
her essence, and her UNDEFILED transcendency in her
GENERATIONS." * Do men stand amazed at the recent
decree? There is no real reason to wonder. It was only in
following out the Pagan doctrine previously adopted and
interwoven with the whole system of Rome to its logical
consequences, that that decree has been issued, and that the
Madonna of Rome has been formally pronounced at last, in every
sense of the term, absolutely "IMMACULATE."
Now, after all this, is it possible to doubt that the Madonna
of Rome, with the child in her arms, and the Madonna of Babylon,
are one and the same goddess? It is notorious that the Roman
Madonna is worshipped as a goddess, yea, is the supreme object of
worship. Will not, then, the Christians of Britain revolt at the
idea of longer supporting this monstrous Babylonian Paganism?
What Christian constituency could tolerate that its
representative should vote away the money of this Protestant
nation for the support of such blasphemous idolatry? * Were not
the minds of men judicially blinded, they would tremble at the
very thought of incurring the guilt that this land, by upholding
the corruption and wickedness of Rome, has for years past been
contracting. Has not the Word of God, in the most energetic and
awful terms, doomed the New Testament Babylon? And has it not
equally declared, that those who share in Babylon's sins, shall
share in Babylon's plagues? (Rev. xvii.4.)
The guilt of idolatry is by many regarded as comparatively
slight and insignificant guilt. But not so does the God of heaven
regard it. Which is the commandment of all the ten that is fenced
about with the most solemn and awful sanctions? It is the second:
"Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any
likeness of anything that is in the heaven above, or that is in
the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: thou
shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them? for I the
Lord thy God am jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers
upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them
that hate me." These words were spoken by God's own
lips, they were written by God's own finger in the tables of
stone: not for the instruction of the seed of Abraham only, but
of all the tribes and generations of mankind. No other
commandment has such a threatening attached to it as this. Now,
if God has threatened to visit the SIN OF IDOLATRY ABOVE ALL
OTHER SINS, and if we find the heavy judgments of God pressing
upon us as a nation, while this very sin is crying to heaven
against us, ought it not to be a matter of earnest inquiry, if
among all our other national sins, which are both many and great,
this may not form "the very head and front of our
offending"? What though we do not ourselves bow down to
stocks and stones? Yet if we, making a profession the very
opposite, encourage, and foster, and maintain that very idolatry
which God has so fearfully threatened with His wrath, our guilt,
instead of being the less, is only so much the greater, for it is
a sin against the light. Now, the facts are manifest to all men.
It is notorious, that in 1845 anti-Christian idolatry was
incorporated in the British Constitution, in a way in which for a
century and a-half it had not been incorporated before. It is
equally notorious, that ever since, the nation has been visited
with one succession of judgments after another. Ought we then to
regard this coincidence as merely accidental? Ought we not rather
to see in it the fulfillment of the threatening pronounced by God
in the Apocalypse? This is at this moment an intensely practical
subject. If our sin in this matter is not nationally recognised,
if it is not penitently confessed, if it is not put away from us;
if, on the contrary, we go on increasing it, if now for the first
time since the Revolution, while so manifestly dependent on the
God of battles for the success of our arms, we affront Him to His
face by sending idol priests into our camp, then, though we have
national fasts, and days of humiliation without number, they
cannot be accepted; they may procure us a temporary respite, but
we may be certain that "the Lord's anger will not be
turned away, His hand will be stretched out still." *
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