Today, 06:43 AM
PART SECOND.
II. Can God have chosen Luther and Calvin to reform Religion?
— God is holy. Accordingly he could never have chosen Luther, Calvin, Henry VIII., or the like of them, for the purpose of reforming the Church.
The Protestant historian Cobbett remarks, that "Luther, Zwinglius, Calvin, etc., agreed on only one point of doctrine, and that was that all good works are useless, and certainly their lives prove that they followed the principle in earnest." (Hist. Ref. Prot., vii. 200.)
What was Luther, in spite of his popular eloquence and the powerful temper of his mind, but a bad priest? and can there be anything more disgraceful?
Calvin was also an ecclesiastic. Convicted of infamous crimes against nature, he was publicly branded by the executioner.*
Zwinglius, a curate of Einsiedlen, publicly avowed, in the presence of his bishop, that he had for many years yielded to his lust, and would now marry a woman in order to render his position lawful before the people.
All the saints of the reformation are of this stamp. The spotless purity and evangelical meekness of Henry VIII. is well known; and he is the reformer of England! That sensualist, a veritable Bluebeard, had six wives whose heads he cut off accordingly as he became tired of them. His daughter, Elizabeth, the virgin queen, carried out the work commenced by Henry VIII., and was no less renowned for the same fine qualities. The same block could receive the heads of the mistresses of the father as well as those of the paramours of the daughter.
But Calvin deserves a little more notice. It is he who introduced Protestantism into France. Galiffe, a Protestant Calvinist, has portrayed him, better than any one else, in his Notices Genealogiques (t. iii. pp. 21 etc.), published in the very heart of Geneva in 1836: "That name, famous for its criminality, raised the standard of the most ferocious intolerance, of the grossest superstitions, and most impious tenets. A terrible apostle, from whose inquisition nothing escaped. During 1558 and 1559 he caused one hundred and fourteen judgments to be given in criminal matters," etc. Mr. Galiffe styles him a drinker of blood, and supports all his assertions by the writings of Calvin himself, and by proofs drawn from the public and authentic archives of Geneva.
As for Luther, he was an apostate monk, living in concubinage with an unfrocked nun, and he has been judged by Protestant writers with merited severity. His life, after his apostasy, was that of a libertine entirely taken with the pleasures of the table, and animal pleasures, so much so that it had become a proverb, in occasions of self-indulgence, to say: To-day we shall live à la Luther. Benedict Morgenstern, a Protestant writer, records this fact.* The Table Talk of Luther can be still found in some libraries shelved among obscene books; it breathes such a cynicism, that it is impossible to quote from them. Every one knows that ignoble prayer, written in Luther's own hand, the authenticity whereof has never been disputed, and whose conclusion runs thus: "Good drinking and good eating; behold the surest means of being happy."
And they would make us believe, that men of this stamp were messengers sent by Our Lord Jesus Christ to the Christians charged with the mission of bringing the Church back to its primitive purity! — Nonsense! You might then as well believe, with the Turks, that "God is God and Mahommed is his prophet!" Good sense ought to prevail over the historical falsehoods by which they have endeavored to rehabilitate those pretended reformers.
The founder of the Catholic Church is our Lord Jesus Christ, and her apostles are Saint Peter, and Saint Paul, Saint John, and the other messengers of Faith appointed by the Founder.
The founder of Protestantism is Luther, and its apostles Calvin, Zwinglius, & Co.
There's a choice for you.
II. Can God have chosen Luther and Calvin to reform Religion?
— God is holy. Accordingly he could never have chosen Luther, Calvin, Henry VIII., or the like of them, for the purpose of reforming the Church.
The Protestant historian Cobbett remarks, that "Luther, Zwinglius, Calvin, etc., agreed on only one point of doctrine, and that was that all good works are useless, and certainly their lives prove that they followed the principle in earnest." (Hist. Ref. Prot., vii. 200.)
What was Luther, in spite of his popular eloquence and the powerful temper of his mind, but a bad priest? and can there be anything more disgraceful?
Calvin was also an ecclesiastic. Convicted of infamous crimes against nature, he was publicly branded by the executioner.*
Zwinglius, a curate of Einsiedlen, publicly avowed, in the presence of his bishop, that he had for many years yielded to his lust, and would now marry a woman in order to render his position lawful before the people.
All the saints of the reformation are of this stamp. The spotless purity and evangelical meekness of Henry VIII. is well known; and he is the reformer of England! That sensualist, a veritable Bluebeard, had six wives whose heads he cut off accordingly as he became tired of them. His daughter, Elizabeth, the virgin queen, carried out the work commenced by Henry VIII., and was no less renowned for the same fine qualities. The same block could receive the heads of the mistresses of the father as well as those of the paramours of the daughter.
But Calvin deserves a little more notice. It is he who introduced Protestantism into France. Galiffe, a Protestant Calvinist, has portrayed him, better than any one else, in his Notices Genealogiques (t. iii. pp. 21 etc.), published in the very heart of Geneva in 1836: "That name, famous for its criminality, raised the standard of the most ferocious intolerance, of the grossest superstitions, and most impious tenets. A terrible apostle, from whose inquisition nothing escaped. During 1558 and 1559 he caused one hundred and fourteen judgments to be given in criminal matters," etc. Mr. Galiffe styles him a drinker of blood, and supports all his assertions by the writings of Calvin himself, and by proofs drawn from the public and authentic archives of Geneva.
As for Luther, he was an apostate monk, living in concubinage with an unfrocked nun, and he has been judged by Protestant writers with merited severity. His life, after his apostasy, was that of a libertine entirely taken with the pleasures of the table, and animal pleasures, so much so that it had become a proverb, in occasions of self-indulgence, to say: To-day we shall live à la Luther. Benedict Morgenstern, a Protestant writer, records this fact.* The Table Talk of Luther can be still found in some libraries shelved among obscene books; it breathes such a cynicism, that it is impossible to quote from them. Every one knows that ignoble prayer, written in Luther's own hand, the authenticity whereof has never been disputed, and whose conclusion runs thus: "Good drinking and good eating; behold the surest means of being happy."
And they would make us believe, that men of this stamp were messengers sent by Our Lord Jesus Christ to the Christians charged with the mission of bringing the Church back to its primitive purity! — Nonsense! You might then as well believe, with the Turks, that "God is God and Mahommed is his prophet!" Good sense ought to prevail over the historical falsehoods by which they have endeavored to rehabilitate those pretended reformers.
The founder of the Catholic Church is our Lord Jesus Christ, and her apostles are Saint Peter, and Saint Paul, Saint John, and the other messengers of Faith appointed by the Founder.
The founder of Protestantism is Luther, and its apostles Calvin, Zwinglius, & Co.
There's a choice for you.
"So let us be confident, let us not be unprepared, let us not be outflanked, let us be wise, vigilant, fighting against those who are trying to tear the faith out of our souls and morality out of our hearts, so that we may remain Catholics, remain united to the Blessed Virgin Mary, remain united to the Roman Catholic Church, remain faithful children of the Church."- Abp. Lefebvre