“THE ANGELICAL SOCIETY.”
(A Society for the transformation of the “immortal souls” of babies into
“guardian angels” in Sky-kingdomia.) —Editor
And now, the better to understand “Romanism as it is,” let us look at the way in which it expends its pecuniary resources in places where it is free from the control of Protestantism, and the restraints of the general spirit of the age. In the Chinese missions, Perrocheau, vicar apostolic of Su-tchuen, under date September 4th, 1848, writes to the conductors of the society for the propagation of the faith at Rome, in the following terms:
“In spite of the obstacles which the mandarins throw in the way of the conversion of the infidels, we have received as catechumens 1,280 neophytes, and baptised 888 adults in the year. God be praised. But our angelical society it is which gives us the greatest consolation. The number of the children of the infidels baptised in danger of death continues constantly to increase; this year it amounts to 84,416, about two-thirds of whom, already in possession of unutterable felicity, will love and praise God eternally. The more we receive aid from Europe, the more will this work extend its benefits. We have opened in several cities, small shops where Christian (catholic) physicians gratuitously distribute pills for young persons who are sick, and generously give attentions of all kinds to the children brought to them. This work produces marvellous effects, causes a very large number to be baptised, and singularly pleases the heathen. In order to explain the prodigious success of our angelical work, you must be informed that all China is covered with poor persons, reduced to the last degree of wretchedness, and burdened with numerous families. Their children lack everything: no food, no clothes, almost no shelter. The mothers die of hunger and cold; the infants they support perish with them. It is these nurses which give an abundant harvest to our baptisers, who seek those poor wretches in preference to others, accost them with kind words, testify a warm interest in their young families, give pills, and sometimes add alms; they are therefore regarded as angels descended from heaven, and are easily allowed to baptise the perishing little ones. Some of our physicians have often effected wonderful cures, and though their skill is small, enjoy extraordinary repute. Hippocrates was not lauded so much. Sponges are here unknown. We fell upon the idea of getting some from Macao, as more convenient than cotton for baptising. The pagans admire these sponges, and regard them as an infallible remedy. They are delighted at seeing the foreheads of their sick children laved with so marvellous an instrument. We hope that next year the number of our baptised infants will reach a hundred thousand; by-and-by it may amount to two hundred thousand a year, if you send us good support. In no other part of the world can your money achieve the salvation of so many souls. After the conversion of China, which contains more than three hundred millions of inhabitants, you may compute the multitude of little Chinese which every year ascend to heaven. In Europe, perhaps, surprise will be felt at so great a disposal of pills in China. But the astonishment will cease as soon as it is known that the Chinese have a taste for medicine just as Europeans have for tea and coffee.”
Lamentable superstition! Children sent direct to heaven by baptism procured by pills! Such is sacramentalism in its full growth. Such maudlin and degrading formalism to be represented as the religion of the Saviour of the world: and to be substituted here and in all protestant lands for the vital practical faith of Cranmer, Leighton, Jeremy Taylor, Barrow, Locke, and Howard! How little do these Romish fatuities differ from fetishism! A venerated pill, and a miraculous sponge, as means of effecting Christian conversions! Other resources of the same unworthy kind are employed. Thus in the missions of Tong-King, the Romish bishop and vicar apostolic, Retord, after reporting the baptisms, during the year 1849, of 9,649 infants of the infidels, states as among the causes of this success the following: —
“A collection is made, and a small capital acquired. This capital is employed in trade, or laid out in the purchase of a piece of land. With the income we purchase boards to make coffins, and religious and funeral tokens; then, when the children of the pagans die, the society gives them a solemn interment, with music, and a drum and a troop of little children of both sexes who follow the procession. The heathens are ravished with this pomp; so that when one of their children falls sick, they, of their own accord, intreat us to go and baptise it. There is in the mission at present a great zeal for this work: but to sustain this ardour, I must get many books, images, and chaplets made. All the objects of the kind you have sent me are used for the purpose. But they are not enough. I am getting made here many chaplets for this purpose. Nevertheless, we shall never reach the number of baptisms in China, for the people here are very fond of their children.”
The dumb show of a funeral parade a means of conversion! A drum and fife beating up for infant recruits in the army of Christ! Images in place of the primer! Chaplets over a tomb instead off the word of the living God in the heart! Yet only comparative success; for the parents “love their children” and, hence it would seem, are anxious to save them from this parade and mummery. And in China the saved souls are so numerous because parents do not love their children! In other words, they care not what becomes of them; and therefore let them fall into the hands of the Romanists. No matter, being in those hands, and being baptised by those hands, they pass at once from earth to heaven! This is sacramentalism in all its destructiveness. No! there is no qualification in the absurdity. Witness the words which follow, and which proceeded from another missionary bishop and vicar apostolic, “Miche, bishop of Dansare:”—
“When on the point of separating from these savages, I perceived a woman carelessly stretched on a mat, and near her lay an infant which was at her breast. This poor creature, about a year old, was nothing but skin and bone. A part of its body, devoured by scrofula, was a prey to putrefaction, and exhaled a fetid odour. I told the mother that I could do her child good, and begged her to take it into her arms. Then I baptised that poor little one, of its tribe the first-born for heaven. May that child, predestined for celestial bliss, when once in possession of eternal happiness, intercede with Jesus Christ in favour of his countrymen, and become the guardian angel of his nation.”
This poor, wretched, dying child “the guardian angel of his nation!” Well, he might be as fit and render services as good as many others who hold the same post in the Romish hierarchy of heaven. St. George, the guardian angel of England, should be worshipped blindfold, if he is to have worshippers at all. In this particular of guardian angels we find that pagan element which so largely enters into Romanism; and both pervades and pollutes the whole system. Repeatedly does it present itself in the instructions offered to the people in the works which lie before us. In the catechism, entitled Dottrina Cristiana breve, originally composed by Bellarmin at the command of Clement VIII., and in 1839 newly edited and published at Rome, in answer to the question, “Do you not fly for refuge to the other saints besides Mary?” this reply is given by the scholar, “I fly for aid to all the saints, and especially to the saints of my own name, and to my guardian angel.”—Journal of Sacred Literature, pp. 23-25.
The writer of the above thinks it is a lamentable superstition that sends children direct to heaven by baptism procured by pills. And so it is. It is a blasphemous superstition that sends ghosts, adult or juvenile, to heaven, direct or indirect, by baptism or rhantism procured in any way. But paidorhantist protestants admit the validity of such baptisms, and would not repeat them; for the Romish, they say, is a true church, only corrupt. Its ordinances are therefore valid. If this were denied, it would play havoc with the Christianity of the Reformers; for Luther, Melanethon, Calvin, Knox, &c., had no other than Romish baptisms to constitute them baptised. The baptism being esteemed valid, what boots it how it is procured! Whether “by pills,” or by indoctrinating the parents with superstitious notions about infant-soul-damnation to the flames of hell? The procuration is a mere question of relative absurdity. Pill-procuration, and funeral drum-and-fife parade, are harmless absurdities; and quite as rational an introduction of infant ghosts to the spirit-world as any protestant invention extant. Romanists will not admit unrhantised infants to funeral honours, and sepulture in consecrated ground; neither will the Church of England Protestants; and both classes believe in the angelisation of their “Immortal Souls!” The Chinese have faith in the pills, because they sometimes cure, but none in their religion; the “outside barbarians” think everything of this; and thereby convict themselves of less sagacity than the Celestials, in re Superstition versus Common Sense. Before ignorant pagans are consigned to eternal torment without one ray of hope, let intelligent professors off the faiths of Antichrist’s dominion, styled “Christendom” by misnomer, ask themselves how they can possibly escape.
What stupid ideas mankind have got into their heads about angels! Angels made out of infant ghosts! And the process, too, of angel manufacture, how thaumaturgical and instantaneous! The following is the receipt: —Let a priest or clergyman take a pagan or outside barbarian of eight days old, and then, dipping his hand, or a sponge, or a piece of cotton, into water, shake or squeeze the same over the face, and sign its forehead with the sign of a cross, repeating the words, “I baptise thee, &c.” After this, it may be pill-poisoned, cast into the Tiber, Thames, or Ganges, &c., or disposed of in any other way resulting in the separating of soul and body, and its immaterial spirit regenerated by the holy water, will fly on the down of an angel’s wing to glory, and expand into an angel there! And this is “the true faith of a Christian,” which qualifies for a seat in the orthodox Parliament of Britain, made up of papists, protestants, and infidels, of all shades of delinquency, to the exclusion of the more rational and conscientious sons of Israel. O, Gentilism, by whatever name expressed, how long shalt thou hoodwink the nations, and betatter the wise and prudent with thy filthy rags! That thy destruction may soon come as a whirlwind from the east, be the effectual and fervent prayer of all who love the truth, and hate hypocrisy and sin.
EDITOR.
* * *
