An Index of Prohibited Books

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AN INDEX

OF

PROHIBITED BOOKS,

BY COMMAND OF THE PRESENT POPE,

GREGORY XVI.

in 1835;

BEING THE LATEST SPECIMEN OF

THE LITERARY POLICY OF THE CHURCH OF ROME.

BY THE REV. JOSEPH MENDHAM, M.A. M.E.H S. Author of Literary Policy of the Church of Rome, Life of Pius V., Memoirs of the Council of Trent, Index Sixti V., Spiritual Venality of Home, &c.

Oratorio. Pulchra Laverna, Da mihi fallere, da justum sanctumque videri; Noctem peccatis, et fraudibus objice nubem. Hor. Ep. 16.

LONDON : , 37 PATERNOSTER ROW.

MDCCCXL.

to

gregory xvi.

supreme legislator of the papal world,

who in 1835

obliged and bound his subjects,

as well foreign as domestic,

with a new promulgation of his will,

in an index of prohibited books,

published with the express and entire

sanction of his authority—

this attempt to extend the celebrity

of so valuable a boon,

and to do it more justice than has

been done by the

secretary of his sacred congregation—

is pertinently and gratefully

inscribed by

the author

Part 1 - Preface

PREFACE.

The prospects of Protestant Christianity are improving. Light and vitality are beginning to infuse themselves into a mass, to which they had too much and too long been strangers. The genuine friends of true religion are rousing to something like preparation for a contest which they see to be unavoidable and at no great distance; and the doubtful or treacherous are doing them the favour and benefit of going over, more or less openly, to the ranks to which they really belong. Too long had Protestants been deceived and cajoled by the original enemy. They believed professions and demonstrations, because they trusted in the low honour which yet remains, and is one of the last good things to be abandoned, in simple human nature, corrupt as it is. They became the dupes of impostors, because they could not believe it to be in that nature, that individuals, professing what is called Christianity, could practise gross and deliberate deception, and could cherish a heart of settled and destructive hostility, while lips and pens exhausted the powers of language to express the fervour of their good will and gratitude. The bitter and the sweet came from the same fountain, and continued most harmoniously to flow in a collateral course: but the one was sincere, the other hypocritical—the one meant to be seen, the other to be concealed. This is now no longer a secret. The faction has gained its end; and there is now hardly an interest in keeping up the imposition. The disciplina arcani has had its run and its reward, and is now abandoned.

But the victors will find, that they have purchased their success full dear. A reckoning will come; and the very arms by which they prevailed shall come to be the most effectual for their destruction.

What they believe, because they have seen, will not be lost upon British Christians. They will have learned a lesson at last by which they will profit. They now perceive how they are to be guarded against, and treat, a foe of the worst will, the most intense and most fraudulent, that this world of sin and malice ever produced. Their natural protectors having betrayed them, and let in the Romish wolf among them, they are taught, if any thing can teach them, that it will not do to go on sleep , and flatter themselves that the wolf will do so too. The time is come that they must bestir themselves in some appropriate and effectual way; and, having found, that when the iron chains of civil restraint were so lovingly replaced by the chains of cherry-stones, which the dealers in securities had provided, the case was not much mended, they will feel it necessary to gird themselves to a new kind of warfare more within their own power; and by attacking the very citadel of Popery, and exposing its essential iniquity, in principle and practice, they may confidently hope to cover it with an infamy, which, with all its impudence, it shall be able to face no longer.

The means are furnished by the Impostor herself, much of it indeed very involuntarily. The volumes of Peter Dens no longer enjoy the concealment of exclusive sacerdotal circulation. Their pages, with their sanction, are thrown open to the profane eyes of heretics; and those heretics can read, and understand, and publish. The public is acquainted with the disclosure, the denial, and, when interest dictated, the re-acknowledgment, of these books. Their authority, their destined use, has been divulged. They are a mine, which has yielded much, but which is yet unexhausted. The rolls have been opened, and must still continue so. They will afford text for abundant future comment. It will not serve to put off their contents, as the opinions of a private doctor, or, according to the suggestion of some weak or designing advocate, a kind of Paley's Philosophy: the main contents are, the most approved doctrines of the most approved doctors of the Roman Church. The main contents are, the solemn, ex cathedra Constitutions of the heads of the Italian Church. Nor can they be set aside, or neutralised by being called foreign: they are naturalised and made of force in Ireland and England by non-reclamation, as well as by more formal recognition. I can barely glance, additionally, at the Conferences, to be regulated by Dens, at the Maynooth Class-Books, at the Diocesan Statutes, at the Bible of Rheims and Douay, with their Annotations, and all the mendacious knavery connected with them. But the subject is before the public, and I trust it will unceasingly be so, till the proper effect is produced.

I am not so much concerned with these engines

of imposture, about to turn upon their employers, as with those of the Indexes of prohibited books, which are capable of the same retro-action. These, in the first instance, and as long as they could be continued so, were a work of darkness. But the unwelcome light broke in, and made them manifest,

and in some respects harmless. In fact, the tide is now turning; and the damnatory and prescriptive provisions of Rome, for the security of her own heterodox and immoral literature, is one of the best weapons put in the hands of her opponents for its exposure and ultimate demolition. For these

documents teach, and infallibly teach, not only what the Church of Rome condemns, but, by her omissions, where knowledge was unavoidable, what she approves. And then, setting aside as unworthy of notice her insolent and brute condemnation of what by its light condemns her darkness, think of

the wagon-load of Papal trumpery, as well as profligacy both in morals and theology, which this foreign monopolist of orthodoxy, virtually, that is, really, approves and recommends. An enumeration of a few only of the books which she

condemns, and of a few only of the books which she thus approves, is sufficient to convince a child, that the self-nominated mistress of all churches is unworthy of being a scholar of the meanest. Her worst enemies need not desire more effectual ex

of her disgraceful nakedness than are afforded by the pages of her own Catalogues of condemned books in redundant quantity.

Were not an infatuation operating in the case, we might wonder that the more honest and better educated, even of her own communion, are not

shocked and alienated by the injustice, the variation, the trickery, and dishonesty discoverable in almost every literary sentence of their supreme head, when he assumes to sit as judge upon moral and religious doctrine and learning; and that they do not at once give him up as the sovereign arbiter of their faith, who, in order to keep good his title to philosophic orthodoxy, is obliged to expunge a solemn decision of his own of two centuries' standing.

There is plainly an infatuation in the case;

and they who imagine that the infatuation is weak, or little formidable, have much to learn of human nature. Well adorned and well managed, Popery has something in the more plausible faculties and tendencies of the soul of man exactly adapted, and responsive, to its main attractions and solicitations. When, indeed, surveyed in its true deformity, it has every thing to repel a sound understanding and really holy feeling. But it has coverings and ornaments which its native sagacity prompts, and enables it to throw over its repulsive features; and nothing more is necessary than a due calculation of human folly and human corruption to account at once for the progress of such a mockery of Christianity as is the Papal system; and really to wonder, that its progress is not tenfold greater than it is. But though falsehood is mighty, truth and holiness are oftentimes mightier, even in their effects on such intractable matter as the human soul. But falsehood still, with that intractability to good which is all in its favour, is deplorably mighty. To advert only to the more specious, and, distinctly from their application, innocent propensities of humanity—what costly and energetic appeals are made to the various senses, particularly to the vague but mighty instinct of natural devotion!—what gorgeous and imposing apparel in the ministering priesthood!—what profusion of superb ceremonies!—what splendour of precious stones and metals in the sacred vessels!—what spiritual intoxication of melody and harmony, both vocal and instrumental!—what scientific and successful management of light and position!—in short, what a masterly performance of the whole external, sensual, and sensualising exhibition, where eye and ear have every imaginable gratification allotted to them! So that the simple victims of the enchantment, instead of a saving religion, which will bring them to heaven, and fit them for it, find, to their endless disappointment, unless escaped from, that they have embraced, and mocked themselves with, a brilliant but noxious phantasm—an inflated inanity—a religion of sound and sentimentality—made up of chants and anthems; of copes, tunicles, albes, chasibles, and stoles; of the diversified luxuries of masonry and sculpture, arches, vaulted roofs, picturesque windows, carved and embossed; not to add, grotesque and satirical ornaments of all sorts, with shrines, monuments, tapers, and every ornament devisable by human ingenuity— and last, not least, of the "dim religious light," so apt and expressive an emblem of the superstition which it is meant to recommend, even in its most favourable form. This is the real material, though the formal may, and must, vary—a circumstance which presents the only admissible mitigation in the affair; and it is admitted, as far as it extends, with joy.

Either simply and officiously, or insidiously, some individuals are fond of pushing forward this sentiment, as if it were a discovery, or denied. It is far from either. With every charity to such names as the familiar ones of Pascal, Fénélon, Flechier, and others, be it known, that they were all distinguished, not only by bigoted intolerance against presumed heretics, but by mutual condemnations, and by the condemnation of what was good in them by their own Church, which is thus quit of all the benefit which she might derive, and is perversely made to derive, from their Christian excellence, for which they were indebted, not to their Church, but to that unextinguished Christianity, which their Church denounced and persecuted, and does so still. All the three who are named were respective persecutors, bigots, and enemies to the free circulation of the Scriptures: and they were all material idolaters. We believe, however, that a God of mercy regards circumstances; and that offences in the midst of darkness, and offences in the midst of light, will be visited by him in a very different manner.

Every sincere and feeling Christian catches with eagerness at the supposition of so happy an inconsistency as that presented in the instances just produced. He cannot but detest fundamental error and corruption introduced into, and, as far as it prevails, poisoning, the religion which is all his hope, all his honour—all the hope, and honour, and happiness of his fellow-sinners, if, and when, converted. He considers Popery as none the better for being the corruption of the best. He would rather see a noisome reptile on a dunghill than in a room of state; and poison is not the more acceptable for being presented in a golden chalice. But the subjects of Papal antichrist are yet fellow-creatures; they are yet spiritual, immortal, and accountable creatures; they may yet escape from their spiritual delusion and thraldom. For such, no Protestant Christian exists, who does not entertain the sincerest and most fervent charity. He feels for them precisely as St. Paul did for his countrymen, similarly circumstanced, though they were no idolaters, not even materially, much less formally. Our hearts' desire for every subject of erring Rome is, that he may be converted and be saved.

There is a class—I fear a large one—of which we must think and speak in a far different strain. They are not the deluded, but those who silently and basely acquiesce in the delusion, knowing it to be such; or, not simply acquiescing in it, but promoting it with the same knowledge. I will not say, but I believe, this to be the case with many of the clergy, nobility, and higher orders. It is, indeed, impossible that some of the men of education among them must not be sensible of the utter nullity of so palpable a fable as Popery. Exclusion of all other objects may go a great way to bend the mind to an acceptance of such a system as true; but common sense will find, or make, chinks to enter, whatever pains may be taken to exclude it. And what does all this exclusion, and the effort to produce it, mean? What mean prohibitory and expurgatory Indexes? Why may not the accused at least be heard? Is there fear, that if they are heard, by the might of truth they must prevail? I believe this to be both the fact and the motive; and I believe every tolerably enlightened Papal priest to believe the same. But in what an awful predicament does this place them! May they reflect and repent in time!

In opposition to the view here, and generally given, it is alleged, that many individual Romanists have in past time borne, and in the present bear, a high reputation, not only for piety, but likewise, and particularly, for humanity; and that it is eminent injustice to deny them this praise. Nor is it

denied. We have neither desire nor temptation to do it. Wherever, from circumstances, their peculiar faith fails, or is feeble, in its operation upon them, the principles of simple and independent Christianity are at liberty to act and produce their genuine effects in proportion to their force and purity. But it is past denial, that wherever the Church, that is, of Rome, commands, every true son of that Church must and will obey, whatever repugnance his natural conscience, or natural humanity, may feel and oppose; and there is not a nation where Christianity has been exposed to the superior power of Popery, whose history in such times has not been written in letters of blood; and in this nation, in particular, the Italian usurper and his instruments will have an awful account to settle for the barbarities perpetrated by them under the name and pretence of religion. That these agents of religious cruelty may, aloof from their intolerant creed, have possessed every valuable and even amiable qualification, only serves to aggravate the charge against a misnamed religion, which no human virtue has power to arrest in her inhuman course, and which, in that course, can even convert the benevolent into savages. The concluding reflection of Bishop Mant in his valuable History of the Church of Ireland, on the character of Mary I. of England, is just and important. Having suggested the sincerity of her zeal as the cause of her cruelty, he adds, "But the more her evil deeds are extenuated, by the supposition of the sincerity of her zeal, the more deep and dark is the brand of ignominy stamped upon that form of Christianity which actuated her in so nefarious a career."

It may seem almost superfluous to observe, but it is important to consider, that the charge against Rome for her literary proscriptions does not attach to the simple act of censure or condemnation, but to the objects, quality, and character, of the censure or condemnation. For there is not a determination on the subject more just or applicable than that of the poet, —

Si mala condiderit in quern quis carmina, jus est Judiciumque. H. Esto, si quis mala; sed bona si quis, &c. Hor. Sat. II. 1.

And to one affecting Academic sagacity, who should insist or insinuate, that the determination is indecisive, it may be enough to say, that there are many points on which suspense is allowable and even unavoidable, and there are likewise others, not a few, which are about as certain, as that darkness is not light. Apart from books of impiety, obscenity, magic, &c. which, for form's sake, and for policy's sake, are condemned, and which are readily given up by all, let any one call to mind the other objects of reprobation, which are almost exclusively books of evangelical piety, and emphatically translations of the Scriptures, most hypocritically denounced as unfaithful; and which, where particular passages are specified (as in the single Expurgatory of Rome, or the numerous ones of Catholic Spain,) are for the most part the main and saving truths of the Gospel, particularly justification by faith in Christ alone—and then let him say, whether these are not decisive and burning proofs of guilt.

Although the present work may be justly and advantageously considered as a sequel to the Literary Policy, it is perfectly distinct and independent; and, without troubling himself with any thing which has preceded on the subject, the reader may here learn, what may be regarded as the present Pope's Profession of his own and his Church's Literary Faith, particularly as embracing what he considers as his proper and exclusive province, Theology. His Holiness has furnished facts, which it will remain for time to discover, with what prudence they have been made public. He has certainly, whether inerrably or not, calculated pretty freely upon the indifference or stolidity of Protestants.

The very scarce Roman Catalogue of Prohibited Books printed at Venice in 1554, and here reprinted, will be valued, I doubt not, by students of the higher class. I am happy in this labour, contracted as it is, to follow the example of my estimable friend, the Rev. Richard Gibbings, of Trinity College, Dublin, to whom the public and myself are indebted, not only for an elaborately exact reprint and facsimile of the rare Expurgatory of Brasichellen, but also for a Preface highly creditable to his learning, research, and judgment, and from which I have derived more important information than I was aware was extant. I may be allowed here to allude likewise to my own rescue of the Index of a vigorous pontiff, Sixtus V., from intended and well-provided-for destruction and oblivion. It is seldom, indeed, that guilt of any kind, and particularly fraud, gains so much by its primary success, as not to be wofully overbalanced and punished by the effects of its subsequent detection, when that takes place, which may generally be reckoned upon.

As a striking and instructing illustration of the familiar confidence with which the disciples of Rome put forward their most extravagant and baseless pretensions, as well as of the cool insensibility with which they receive the most palpable exposure of their literary dishonesty, I will present the reader with a quotation from a work not in every hand, and one of considerable ability and importance—"Roman Forgeries, or a true account of False Records, discovering the Impostures and Counterfeit Antiquities of the Church of Rome. By a Faithful Son of the Church of England [Thomas Traherne], London, 1673."

At the end of his Advertisement to the Reader, this author introduces, as an incident which befell him while in pursuit of his favourite studies, that which follows: these are his words—"One evening, as I came out of the Bodleian Library, which is the glory of Oxford and this nation, at the stairs' foot I was saluted by a person that has deserved well both of scholars and learning, who, being an intimate friend of mine, told me there was a gentleman, his cousin, pointing to a grave person in the Quadrangle, a man that had spent many thousand pounds in promoting Popery; and that he had a desire to speak with me. The gentleman came up to us of his own accord. We agreed for the greater liberty and privacy to walk abroad into the New Parks. He was a notable man, of an eloquent tongue, and competent reading; bold, forward, talkative enough. He told me, that the Church of Rome had Eleven Millions of Martyrs, Seventeen Œcumenical Councils, above a Hundred Provincial Councils, all the Doctors, all the Fathers, Unity, Antiquity, Consent, &c. I desired him to name me One of his Eleven Million of Martyrs, excepting those who died for treason in Queen Elizabeth's and King James's days. For the martyrs of the primitive times were martyrs of the Catholic, but not of the Roman Church, they only being martyrs of the Roman Church that die for Transubstantiation, the Pope's Supremacy, the doctrine of Merits, Purgatory, and the like. So many he told me they had, but I could not get him to name one. As for his Councils, Antiquities, and Fathers, I asked him what he would say, if I could clearly prove that the Church of Rome was guilty of forging them, so far, that they had published Canons in the Apostles' names, and invented Councils that never were; forged Letters of Fathers, and Decretal Epistles, in the name of the first bishops and martyrs of Rome, made five, six, seven hundred years after they were dead, to the utter disguising and defacing of Antiquity for the first four hundred years after our Saviour? 'Tush! these are nothing but lies,' quoth he, 'whereby the Protestants endeavour to disgrace the Papists.' 'Sir,' answered I, you are a scholar, and have heard of Isidore Mercator, James Merlin, Peter Crabbe, Laurentius Surius, Severinus Binius, Labbé and Cossart, and the Collectio Regia, books of vast bulk and price, as well as of great majesty and magnificence. You met me this evening at the library door: if you please to meet me there tomorrow morning at eight of the clock, I will take you in; and we will go from class to class, from book to book; and there I will shew you in your own authors, that you publish such instruments for good records; and then prove, that those instruments are downright frauds and forgeries, though cited by you upon all occasions.' He would not come; but made this strange reply: — What if they be forgeries? what hurt is that to the Church of Rome? "No!' (cried I, amazed.) Is it no hurt to the Church of Rome to be found guilty of forging Canons in the Apostles' names, and Epistles in the Fathers' names, which they never made? Is it nothing in Rome to be guilty of counterfeiting Decrees, and Councils, and Records of Antiquity? I have done with you.' Whereupon I turned from him as an obdurate person."

I cannot forbear an observation upon the correct distinction of Traherne, that they only can be claimed as Rome's martyrs, who suffered for Transubstantiation, the Pope's Supremacy, Merits, Purgatory, and the like. These only, and most truly, are Rome's, or her Sovereign's martyrs.

On the subject of such martyrs, there is a fine apostrophe in the highly interesting and strangely overlooked work of the celebrated Dr. Donne, the Pseudo-martyr, in defence of James the First's Oath of Allegiance, but embracing allied topics of much originality and moment. In the "Preface to the Priests and Jesuits, and to their Disciples in this kingdom," towards the close, he breaks out—"I call to witness against you those whose testimony God himself hath accepted. Speak then and testify, O you glorious and triumphant Army of Martyrs, who enjoy now a permanent triumph in heaven, which knew the voice of your Shepherd, and stayed still he called, and went then with all alacrity—Is there any man received into your blessed legion, by title of such a death, as Sedition, Scandal, or any human respect occasioned? O no; for they which are in possession of that Laurel are such as have washed their garments, not in their own blood only, (for so they might still remain red and stained,) but in the blood of the Lamb which changes them to white."

The martyrs here most justly dis-canonized are so truly his Holiness's martyrs, that he is entitled to the full and sole credit of their murder—himself being the real murderer. For this just and unanswerable view of the affair I refer to Dr. C. O'Conor's Columbanus, No. VI. pp. 108 and following, under the head—" § VI. Historical narrative of eleven Priests confined in Newgate for not renouncing the Pope's pretended Deposing Power" They were all but two executed. The whole is amply worthy of every Romanist's serious consideration. The charge against the head of his Church at the time, and every other head in similar circumstances, is awful and irresistible. It is as plain as any demonstrable proposition can be, that the objection against James's oath of allegiance was not this or that alleged scruple, but the fact, that the oath compassed its intention, and obliged the taker to a real allegiance to his true and natural sovereign, independently of his pretended spiritual, who could easily draw any thing, however temporal, under his spirituality, by means of indirectè, and in ordine ad spiritualia. After enumerating the eleven sufferers with the cause of their suffering, Dr. O'Conor observes,—"Let us now consider who, in the eye of unprejudiced reason, was the persecutor and executioner of those unfortunate men, James or the Pope?—The evidence of facts is irresistible. The question bears not one moment's examination, Qui facit per alium facit per se."

On precisely the same principle, and with the same demonstration, the blood of those who suffered for their Papal treason and rebellion in the reign of our Queen Elizabeth, in consequence of the damnatory bull of Pius V., repeated or unrepealed by Gregory XIII., Sixtus V., Urban VII., Gregory XIV., Innocent IX., and Clement VIII., will be required at the hands of those sovereign lords, their real murderers, at the day of just retribution, when neither bribery, nor force, nor fraud, will be of any avail.

Sutton Coldfield,

September 15, 1840.