HOW WASHINGTON CAME TO BE WASHINGTON

WASHINGTON IN THE LAP OF ROME CHAPTER IV

HOW WASHINGTON CAME TO BE WASHINGTON.



This few seem to know ; the many reckon, it happened so. Such are oblivious to the fact, that before even Washington was even a dream in the minds of men, Rome had plotted to hold the continent. By Rome, we mean the power that makes Rome what she is, and what she is to be, ” the prince of the power of the air,” who has incarnated himself in Jesuitism, as Christ is incarnated in Christianity ; the power that works in darkness, and plans the suppression of the the truth and the overthrow of the rule of Christ. ” For we wrestle not,” says Paul, “against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, and against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”(Eph. 6:12) John said: “He that committeth sin is of the devil, for the devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose was the Son of God manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil. “(1 John 3:8) In this manifestation of Christ through the proclamation of the truth, lies the hope of the world. If then we charge Romanism with being cunning, subtle, and sly, the reason for the charge is supplied in the words quoted, which inform us of the cunning craftiness whereby Rome lies in wait to deceive.

THE POWER IS UNSEEN.

It is shadowy. It inhabits the air and infects it. Romanism is the malaria of the spiritual world. It stupefies the brain, deadens the heart, and sears the conscience as with a hot iron. It stands across the track of the world s life, with gifts in its hands, offering rule, supremacy, power and wealth to all who will fall down and worship her.*

They who yield have peace and praise. They who refuse must fight a desperate foe. The many do not believe this. They are blinded by ambition and fear, and they see it not. Deaf are they and they hear not the truth, and yet the truth remains. The what is, is the outgrowth of the what has been. Don t forget it. A wise, astute, cunning, comprehensive intellect has helped Romanism in the past, and is helping it now.

Washington is in the lap of Rome, because of influences which stirred the hearts of people and made them to act worse than they knew.

A few facts will make all this plain. Columbus was actuated by a desire to promote the interests of Romanism, when he traversed an unknown sea and discovered this Western World. Cortez and Pizarro went to Mexico and Peru, and captured them for the same purpose. Their lives were full of cruelty, but that did not hurt them with Rome. Lord Baltimore came to Maryland to find a refuge for persecuted” (2 Thess. 2:8,9) Romanists and named the place of retreat Mary’s land.

To escape the fangs of Romanism and priestly intolerance, the Puritans forsook their homes beyond the sea, came to New England, and on Plymouth Rock built an altar to liberty, sought on bleak New England shores freedom to worship God. They have been called narrow in their thought, and it is claimed they meant by liberty, liberty for themselves, and the right to banish all who thought differently.

Roger Williams, in the furnace fire of affliction and persecution, had the fetters of slavery to creed burned away, and came forth, through the wilderness and the sleet and snows of winter, to ” What Cheer Rock,” where he became the champion of liberty for all.

Archbishop Hughes once said : “Far be it from me to diminish, by one iota, the merit that is claimed for Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, and perhaps other states, on the score of having proclaimed religious freedom, but the Catholics of Maryland, by priority of time, had borne away the prize.” This is untrue, both as regards time and character of what purported to be religious freedom. The Roman Catholic colony sailed up the Potomac in 1634. In Maryland the boasted law was passed in 1649, two years after the doctrine of religious freedom was proclaimed in Rhode Island. Bancroft, in speaking of what was done in Maryland, says : “The controversy between the king and the parliament advanced, the overthrow of the monarchy seemed about to confer unlimited power in England upon the embittered enemies of the Romish Church ; and, as if with a foresight of impending danger, and an earnest desire to stay its approach, the Roman Catholics of Maryland, with the covert countenance of their governor and of the proprietary, determined to place upon their statute-book an act of guaranty of religious freedom, which had ever been sacred upon their soil. This is the language of the Act : And whereas the enforcing of the conscience in matters of religion had frequently fallen out to be of dangerous consequences in those commonwealths where it has been practiced, and for the more quiet and peaceable government of this province, and the better to preserve mutual love and amity among the inhabitants, no person within this province professing to believe in Jesus Christ, shall in any ways be troubled, molested, or discountenanced for his or her religion, or the free exercise thereof.” This, then, is their law poor as it is. In Rhode Island , their code of laws passed in 1647, closes with the following noble avowal of religious liberty to all: ” Otherwise than this what is herein forbidden, all men may walk as their consciences persuade them, every one in the name of God. And let the lambs of the Most High walk in this colony without molestation, in the name of Jehovah their God, for ever and ever.”

At a time when Germany was the battle-field for all Europe, in the implacable wars of religion ; when even Holland was bleeding with the anger of vengeful factions ; when France was still to go through the fearful struggle with bigotry ; when England was gasping under the despotism of intolerance ; almost half a century before William Penn became an American proprietor ; and two years before Descartes founded modern philosophy on the method of free reflection Roger Williams assisted the great doctrine of intellectual liberty. It became his glory to found a state upon that principle ; and to stamp it upon its rising institutions, in characters so deep that the impression has remained to the present day, and can never be erased without the total destruction of the work. The principles which the first sustained, amid the bickerings of a colonial faith, next asserted in the general court of Massachusetts, and then introduced into the wilds of Narragansett Bay, he soon found occasion to publish to the world, and to defend as the basis of the religious freedom of man kind ; so that, borrowing the rhetoric employed by his antagonist in derision, we may compare him to the lark, the pleasant bird of the peaceful summer, that, affecting to soar aloft, springs upward from the ground, takes his rise from pole to tree, and at last surmounting the highest hills, utters his clear chorals through the skies of morning. He was the first person in modern Christendom to assert, in its plenitude, the doctrine of the liberty of conscience, the equality of opinions before the law ; and in its defense he was the harbinger of Milton, the precursor and the superior of Jeremy Taylor. For Taylor limited his toleration to a few Christian sects ; the philanthrophy of Williams compassed the earth. Taylor favored partial reform, commended lenity, argued for forbearance, and entered a special plea in behalf of each tolerable sect : Williams would permit persecutions of no opinion, of no religion ; leaving heresy unharmed by law, and orthodoxy unprotected by the terrors of penal statutes.

Without comment, let us notice what Bancroft says of the Maryland statutes :

” The clause for liberty in Maryland,” he says, ” extended only to Christians, and was introduced by the proviso, That whatsoever person shall blaspheme God, or shall deny or reproach the Holy Trinity, or any of the three Persons thereof, shall be punished by death. Any person using any reproachful word or speeches concerning the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of our Saviour, or the holy Apostles or Evangelists, or any of them, for the first offense, were to forfeit five pounds sterling to the lord proprietary, or, in default of payment, to be publicly and severely whipped and imprisoned, as before directed ; and for the third oflfense to forfeit lands and goods, and be forever banished out of the province. ”

Cardinal Gibbons defines religious liberty to be the free right of worshipping God according to the dictates of a right conscience, and -of producing a form of religion most in accordance with his duties to God.” In other words, religious liberty is the free right of worshipping according to the commands of [Vol. 1, p. 256] the church of Eome, and of producing a form of religion in accordance with the commands of the Pope. Behind such a definition the Inquisitorial tortures of Torquemada in Spain were practised, the Waldenses and Albigenses were exterminated by fire and sword, Ridley and Latimer were burned at the stake, the fires were kindled at Smithfield for the burning of the Word of God, and the inhuman barbarities witnessed in convents and elsewhere where Rome has control, are sanctioned and endorsed. Full religious liberty means perfect liberty in our relation to God, to believe or not to believe, to worship or not to worship, as conscience may dictate. In the realm of religious liberty, suasion is the only weapon to be used. God alone is the Lord of the conscience. For this principle Roger Williams, Isaac Backus and others contended, and the doctrines they enunciated have shed a light which causes the thrones of despotism to stand out in horrid contrast with the altars of Republican hope.

After the proclamation of religious liberty came the formation of the Republic. A nation was born. A capital became a necessity. It has been said : The American capital is the only seat of Government of a first-class power which was a thought and the performance of the Government itself. It used to be called, in the Madisonian era, “the only virgin capital in the world.” {Geo, Alfred Townsend, in his Washington City, Outside and Inside} St. Petersburg was the thought of an emperor, but the capital of Russia long remained at Moscow, and 31Peter the Great said that he designed St. Petersburg to be only a window looking into Europe. Washington City was designed to be not merely a window, but a whole inhabitancy, in fee simple, for the deliberations of Congress, and they were to exercise exclusive legislation over it. So the Constitutional Convention ordained, and in less than seven weeks after the thirteenth State ratified the Constitution, the place of the Capital was designated by Congress to the Potomac River. In six months, the precise territory on the Potomac was selected under the personal eye of Washington. The home of the so-called Father of his Country was Mt. Vernon. Virginia was then the Empire State. Her population outnumbered both New York and Pennsylvania. Baltimore was then the Queen City, and Annapolis offered a safe retreat for Congress, who had been insulted in Philadelphia, and the Pennsylvanian authorities neglected to afford adequate protection. Then Congress resolved to have a place of its own.

Maryland was an early applicant for the seat of Government, and so was Michigan, Kentucky, Indiana ; but the Federal City came to Maryland and was located on the banks of the Potomac, very largely because of the munificent offer made by Virginia, and of the paramount influence of Washington. At that time Georgetown was a port of entry, and was a slave- market, and largely settled by Romanists. The Jesuit College had been established there, and priest and people were quick to see the opportunities of advancement placed within their reach. The influence of Roman Catholic Maryland has been noticeable in the “City of Magnificent Distances” from the first. Behind Maryland, and in league with Jesuit and Priests, was and is the power referred to, “The Prince of the power of the air.” This fact must be kept in mind. It explains the mysteries that envelop the city.

Does it not tell us another truth, that God is not afraid. Though Satan is potent, he is not omnipotent. Though Rome is very prudent and wise, she has not all wisdom. Up above us all is a Being who sees the end from the beginning, and though “the lot is cast into the lap, the disposal thereof is with the Lord.” Let us believe this. “He that hath a dream, let him tell a dream, and he that hath my word, let him speak my word faithfully. What is the chaff to the wheat? saith the Lord. Is not my word like a fire? saith the Lord, and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces ? ” (Jer. 23:28, 29)

It was July 16th, 1790, that President Washington approved the bill in six sections which directed the acceptance of ten miles square for the permanent seat of the Government. Georgetown had been laid out for forty years. The Jesuit mission of Maryland, began by Father Andrew White, Father John Grovernor and Father Timothy Hayes, in 1633, antedates the settlement of all the original thirteen states, except Virginia and Massachusetts.

The Jesuit College had been founded in 1789, one year before the capital was located on the Potomac. It was chartered as a University in 1815. It had been weak. In 1872, though ten Jesuit professors taught, there were but fifty-six students. The Convent of Visitation was founded in 1799. Virginia was called ” the Mother of Presidents, and the Mother of States.” She had then a population of 750,000; Pennsylvania had 434,000 ; and New York 340,000. North Carolina, with 394,000, outnumbered Massachusetts with 379,000. It was not until 1820 that any state passed Virginia ; but in 1830 New York and Pennsylvania had bidden her good bye ! ”

The Capitol was staked out the year after Frank lin died, thirty years before the death of George III., in Goethe s 52nd year and Schiller s 32nd ; sixteen years before the first steamboat, two years before Louis XII, was guillotined, when Louis Phillippi was in his 19th year, when George Stephenson was a boy of ten, the year John Wesley died, in Napoleon’s 22nd year, the year Morse was born and Mirabeau was buried, in the third year of the London Times, just after Lafayette had been the most powerful man in France, three years before the death of Edward Gibbon, while Warren Hastings was on trial, in Burke s 61st year, in Foxe’s 42nd, Pitt s 32nd, in the Popedom of Pius VII.

The laying-out of the city was taken in charge by Major L Enfant. In the survey, the little creek called the Tiber a name so significant to Romanists ; though it designates a little creek, long afterwards the eyesore of the city obtained significance in the estimation of Roman Catholics.

So much for history. Rumor has it that the Southerners voted against a Northern town, that slavery might find protection beneath the shadow of the Capitol, where she reared her Auction Block, and did her best to perpetuate her infamies. Is it not possible that Rome, the foster-parent of slavery, hoped to find in slaveholders allies and helpers to promote the interests of this twin-relic of mediaeval barbarism, which it is hoped may be removed with out a civil war and without compelling the nation to wade through a sea of blood? Victor Hugo, in his Les Miserables, describes the devil-fish. Its long, floating arms envelopes its victim, and silently bears it to the vortex of ruin. The devil-fish of Victor Hugo s imagination is matched by the skill displayed by Rome in Washington, which it seeks to hold.

Mighty as is Rome, it has been baffled and beaten elsewhere, and can be beaten again. At this hour, it looks as if an untimely surrender had been made. The truth proclaimed will awaken the people to the infamy of the deed, and they will take back what belongs to them, and Washington shall be free.

Continue to chapter 5

Contents of Washington in the Lap of Rome

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