p. 144 | Morals of Nations

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · May 3, 1877

Morals of Nations.

THE NEW YORK Tablet, a Catholic paper, says:—

“The countries where Protestantism is most rampant—such as Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Germany, Wales and Scotland—are the most viciously depraved countries in the world. That one in the world where Catholics are five to one of the inhabitants is the freest from crime, and the most virtuous on earth—Catholic Ireland. And, what is perhaps even more significant, when Catholics are immoral, it is against the reproaches of an uneasy conscience; but the conscience of Protestants is a partner of their guilt. The very religion they have chosen, instead of submitting to, is a servile parasite who offers no resistance to the demands of the flesh.”

In reply to these boastful assertions the Christian Statesman gives an array of figures compiled by Rev. Robert Seymour by which it very clearly shows the absurdity of the above paragraph:—

“The number of murders, in proportion to the population, for a given period, was in Roman Catholic Ireland, 19 to the million; R. C. Belgium, 18; R. C. France, 31; R. C. Austria, 36; R. C. Bavaria, 68; R. C. Sardinia, 20; R. C. Lombardy, 45; R. C. Tuscany, 56; the Papal States, 113; R. C. Sicily, 90; R. C. Naples, 174; Protestant England, 4!”

“Among the reasons for this prodigious excess of murders under the influence of Romish teaching, Mr. Seymour specifies the doctrines of Purgatory and indulgences. One brought up under Protestantism may be powerfully restrained from the crime of murder by the thought that he might thus plunge a man, with all his sins upon him, into hopeless perdition, while the Romanist believes that his victim, if a Romanist, is only hurried into Purgatory, from which a certain number of masses may release him. Then, the Romish murderer himself may be speedily released from all peril through his crime, by an indulgence, to be bought and paid for; and, although the efficacy of his indulgence be theoretically coupled with repentance, yet practically the reliance on the indulgence dreadfully facilitates the perpetration of the crime. The result is, as shown by unquestionable statistics, one hundred and thirteen murders in the Papal States for every four in Protestant England!”