p. 1 | Pope or President by Uriah Smith

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Dec 1, 1863

Pope or President.

By Uriah Smith

As we near the end, dangers of all kinds thicken around us. We speak not merely of the Christian. So much is said of the dangers of the way to Mount Zion, and of the foes, the snares and perils that beset the weary pilgrim, that we might almost be led to think that he was the only one, and his the only path, subject to these evils. But it is not so. While the pathway of the child of God lies through the perils of earth's closing scenes, perils tenfold more fearful in their nature gather around him who has no arm of Jehovah upon which to lean. Tenfold more deplorable is his condition who has to meet these things unaided by succor from on high. And there are perils not to individuals merely, but to communities, States, governments and nations. The thrones of monarchs and the institutions of Republicanism are alike in danger. Unforeseen complications suddenly threaten them with destruction on this hand and on that, resistless and without remedy. In short, the whole world is jostling and surging and beating about, amid the shoals and breakers of those perilous times which the apostle forewarned us should be here when the last days were come. The readers of the Review will find in the following a description of a fearful agency at work in this nation, betokening anything but peace and safety to our own government. We prefer the Christian's dangers to those of any other class of people; while the Christian's hope, his shield and buckler, his rock of defense and strong tower, are far more to us, than all the retreats of refuge and arms of succor that the perishing world can vainly offer. U. S.

Pope or President.

A book with this title was published some years since, designed to correct the extreme incredulity of the American people in refusing to believe that republican institutions are imperiled by the existence of a Roman hierarchy among us. Other works, by learned and judicious ministers of various denominations, have warned us of our dangers. Their works have failed to arouse the Christian community. A political party, styled the American or Know-Nothing party, attempted to grapple with the impending evil, but ignominiously failed, chiefly on account of its undemocratic attitude, which placed it in hostility not simply to the hierarchal rule of Popery, but to all foreigners indiscriminately. The false position of this party has done a great dis-service to the cause of Protestantism, by the reaction it has naturally caused.

But the question returns, "Pope or President?" We shall have either the one or the other; we cannot have both. As the wheels of revolution move on, they reveal more and more distinctly the evidences that Romanism and Republicanism can never coalesce. We have tried the great experiment of mingling freedom and slavery in one political union, and we have seen the results. Our next experiment is with Popery. Its developments may astonish us. Popery is a greater power than slavery. Bring it fairly into collision with our government, and it will kindle fires before whose terrific glare the slaveholder's rebellion will pale. Romanism even under monarchical institutions, has filled many a country with blood; how much more fierce will be the strife when it grapples with its natural and irreconcilable enemy, republican liberty, civil and religious?

The terrible riots that have shook our city to its foundation have opened men's eyes. It is not so much what has happened that gives alarm, as what may happen. Here we have seen a whole class banded together, as by a natural instinct, in resistance to the laws. A sympathetic chord was found to vibrate from Yorkville to the battery, from Jersey City to Brooklyn. Whose were the hearts that pulsated with instant approval, and the gleaming eyes that could not conceal their impatient joyousness while the events of that dark Monday were going on? It was not the German element that warmed up at the tidings of burning mansions, flying orphans, and wanton butcheries; it was not the French, it was not the Italian. Nor would it be just to say it was the Irish; more loyal men are not to be found than many who look back to Green Erin as their birthplace. It was not Irishmen, it was only Catholic Irishmen, that were actors in these scenes of blood. Householders then discovered with horror that their servant girls had been aware of the intended outbreak for several days previous. Protestant families trembled for their lives, and now scarcely dare employ an Irish Catholic, lest the free familiar conversation of the table should be reported abroad, and the destruction of their dwellings pay the penalty. Gov. Seymour's fear that if the populace were not propitiated, the housemaids would burn down the mansions of their employers over their heads, though ridiculed in some of the papers, was by no means an unreasonable terror.

How can this sudden outburst of fury, disclosing such a perfect bond of sympathy animating thousands of hearts, be accounted for? Is there something in the nature of the Irish disposition that prepares it to turn, at an unexpected moment, in a paroxysm of fury, and smite down its friends and benefactors? No, it is not the Celtic blood, it is the influence of a false religion. There lies down deep in the soul of every devout bigoted Catholic, an instinctive, ineradicable consciousness of alienation between him and the laws, institutions, religion, and customs of this country. He can never forget that its foundations rest on Puritanism, his mortal enemy. He does not heartily become a citizen of the republic. His home feelings are not allowed to cluster around its institutions, though, to a certain extent, they may attach themselves to their soil.

There was every natural reason to expect that in such a rebellion as the present, Irishmen would deeply sympathize with the North. Having been oppressed themselves, it was natural that they should feel for the poor slave. Emancipated themselves, it was supposed they would be foremost in seeking the emancipation of others. The standards of their church were opposed to slavery. Popes had condemned it. It would be monstrous to think that when French, German, and Italian patriots were battling for the rights of man, Irish patriots should espouse the cause of despotism. But we have the facts before our eyes. Brownson, in his Catholic review, while urging his brethren to change their position and repair the harm they have done, fully acknowledges that the general charge of Catholic disloyalty to freedom is just. He says, "It is undeniable that no religious body in the country stands so generally committed to slavery and the rebellion, or as a body have shown so little sympathy with the effort of the Government to save the life and unity of the nation, as the Catholic." "Not a single Catholic journal, except one ventures to assert openly and decidedly the true Catholic doctrine in regard to slavery; and the Catholic who does not throw all his influence on the side of the pro-slavery party is read out of the pale of Catholic society, especially in this city of New York, where there are more Catholics than in all the seceded States put together." "We can scarcely find a Catholic descendant from an old American family, or even of American birth, that is not practically a pro-slavery man in his talk and in his influence." Go where we will in the loyal States, and we find nearly every Catholic we meet a southern sympathizer, an intense hater of the abolitionist, and more ready to see the Union divided or reconstructed under Jeff. Davis on slavery as its corner-stone, than to see it restored by the extinction of slavery.

These statements cannot be denied. They show beyond question that we have in our midst a large and powerful class of hereditary, traditional, civil and religious enemies to our free Protestant institutions, who are under the most perfect discipline, and swayed by their leaders as the summer foliage is swayed by the rushing wind. In the present war they have had every motive to unite heartily with us; their interests, their creed, their foreign connections have all pressed them in the direction of loyalty; their priests have ostensibly given their counsels in the same direction, and yet we find them aliens, aliens in heart, aliens in conduct, and open foes when subjected to an equal share of the public burdens.

Suppose, now, this alien element, instead of being held in check by motives to loyalty, should at some

future time find all its motives tending in an opposite direction? Imagine that instead of being at war with fellow Protestants as we are now, our enemy had been a Catholic power; that the object of the war, instead of being the extension of slavery, had been the extension of the Catholic religion; in short, that Napoleon, having fully reinstated the Catholic priesthood in Mexico and trodden out the last traces of republicanism there, should suddenly throw his victorious arms and his immense navy against this city, with the sanction of the Pope and the secret or open endorsement of Archbishop Hughes, where would our Catholic population be found then? Who can for a moment believe that we could in such a contingency rely upon them to act as the defenders of republican liberty? How long before the Freeman's Journal would reiterate the holy claims put forth in 1855: "The Pope of Rome has supreme authority over every diocese and over every square foot of surface on the globe. His rights are circumscribed only by the ends of the earth and the consummation of ages?" How long before the clamorers in behalf of a licentious press would resume the dogma taught them by the Pope: "Freedom of conscience is an absurd and dangerous maxim;" "the liberty of the press is a fatal license of which we cannot entertain too great a horror?"