Confessions of a French Catholic Priest; To Which Are Added Warnings to the People of the United States by the Same Author

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1837. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... 225 WARNINGS Of a French Catholic Priest to the American People, against the Modern Crusade. Americans, American liberty can be destroyed only by the Popish clergy said Lafayette. His genius had a glimpse of truth through the veils and deep mysteries in which this dangerous body is wrapped, the instrument and support of despotism, the natural enemy of all freedom. Among all the warnings given you since the day in which you achieved so gloriously your independence, no one is so well founded and so important as Lafayette's, the hero whose patriotism is dear to every American. But Lafayette was not a priest. A stranger to thej artifices and duplicities of the Popish clergy, he had not penetrated into its interior, into its tortuous windings; he had never been initiated into its secrets, and especially into its designs against the religion and independence of the United States. I have been a Roman Catholic priest too long a time, time which I wish I was able to blot out of my life; I have been a Popish priest, and I therefore know the interior character of that body of which a stranger perceives only the surface. In reading the profound reflection of the hero of both worlds, in remembering what I was, what I did, while the slave of my bishop, I thought that my revelations might be useful to mankind. The confession I undertake, I avow it, will be a painful one to my self-love; for is it not hard for a man to reveal and to publish his own failings and errors? to disclose the foolish and criminal designs of a body to which he has belonged? But grave reasons, reasons of gratitude, have silenced this natural repugnance. When some time ago I came to seek a shelter under the standard of your liberty; poor, persecuted by the ecclesiastic despotism of France as I ...