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No.
On the contrary, she condemns vice in every shape, and denounces, like
another Baptist in the wilderness, the wrath of Heaven on the workers of
iniquity. Is there one of her precepts, counsels, or rules, that guards
not against sin and its occasions? According to the accusations of her
enemies themselves, who reproach her, with too much severity, of
imposing too many restrictions on the passions, is she not continually
preaching up to her followers the necessity of self-denial, humility,
purity, charity, prayer, fastings, watchings, and, above all, OF
SHUNNING THE OCCASIONS OF SIN? Hence, in the whole volume of her
history for eighteen centuries and better, we read not of one _camp
meeting_ sanctioned by her, nor that she ever authorized her ministers
to _feel "for the change of heart_" in young ladies, to proclaim the use
of "more straw" for the conversion of both sexes, or to raise funds by
the abominable practices of the "donation parties" for the support of
her institutions. And mind, these scandals the sectarian churches
sanction and carry on under the sun of heaven, by day as well as by
night, exposed to the jeers and ridicule of one another, and to the
condemnation of the Catholic church. When they are such in "the
greenwood, what would they be not in the dry"? If, like the Catholic
church, they had the world to themselves for "a thousand years and
more," what abominations would their spurious churches have not only
tolerated, but have instituted and approved? If they have produced
Mormons, Transcendentalists, Universalists, and spiritual rappers, in
the nineteenth century, what monsters would they not have produced in
the ninth?
In the "dark ages," the Catholic church saved the world, preserved
literature, civilized real barbarians, and, above all, practised, as
well as preached, a PURE MORALITY. The Protestant sects in this
enlightened age, by their novelties, by their dissensions, and, above
all, by the low standard of morals which they inculcate, threaten to
throw the world back again to the dark chaos from which Catholicity has
drawn it, and to substitute for the glory of Christianity the miserable
philosophism and superstition of the degenerate days of paganism.
In proof of these statements, we refer any candid mind to the
"spiritual rappers," "women's rights," "Mormonism," "gold hunting, and
other manias," which, within the last few years, have sprung from the
sectarian systems and their teaching,
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