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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