Dedication.
TO COLONEL EDWIN A. SHERMAN.
Allow me to mention your name the first among the many to whom I
dedicate this book.
I owe this to you as a token of gratitude for your help in my researches
after the true murderers of our martyred President Abraham Lincoln.
I found you as wise and honorable in your counsels as our country
found you brave on the battlefields of Liberty.
TO THE ORANGEMEN OF THE UNITED STATES, CANADA,
GREAT BRITAIN, AUSTRALIA, TASMANIA
AND NEW ZEALAND,[1]
this book is also dedicated by the humblest of their-brethren.
Orangemen! Read this book: you will not only understand Romanism
as you never did, but you will find many new reasons to be, more than
ever, vigilant, fearless and devoted, even to death, in the discharge of the
sacred duties imposed upon you by your love for your country, your brethren
and your God.
TO THE HONEST AND LIBERTY-LOVING PEOPLE OF THE
UNITED STATES,
I also dedicate this book.
Americans! You are sleeping on a volcano, and you do not suspect it!
You are pressing on your bosom a viper which will bite you to death, and
you do not know it.
Read this book, and you will see that Rome is the sworn, the most implacable,
the absolutely irreconcilable and deadly enemy of your schools,
your institutions, your so dearly bought rights and liberties.
Read this book, and you will not only understand that it is to Rome
you owe the rivers of blood and the unspeakable horrors of the last civil
war: but you will learn that Romanism and Liberty can not live on the
same ground. This has been declared by the Popes, hundreds of times.
Read this book: And you will not only see that Abraham Lincoln was
murdered by Rome, but you will learn that Romanism, under the mask of
religion, is nothing but a permanent political conspiracy against all the
most sacred rights of man and the most holy laws of God.
In those pages you will not learn to hate the Roman Catholics. No!
But you will learn to be more than ever watchful in guarding the precious
treasures of Freedom bestowed upon you by your fathers. You will learn
never to let them fall into the hands of those who, with the sacred name or
Liberty on their lips, and the mask of Liberty on their faces, are sworn to
destroy all Liberty.
TO ALL THE FAITHFUL MINISTERS OF THE GOSPEL,
I also, dedicate this book.
Venerable Ministers of the Gospel! Rome is the great danger ahead
for the Church of Christ, and you do not understand it enough.
The atmosphere of light, honesty, truth and holiness in which you arborn,
and which you have breathed since your infancy, makes it almost impossible
for you to realize the dark mysteries of idolatry, immorality, degrading
slavery, hatred of the Word of God, concealed behind the walls of that
modern Babylon. You are too honest to suspect them; and your precious
time is too much taken up by the sacred duties of your ministry, to study the
long labyrinth of argumentations which form the bulk of the greater number
of controversial books. Besides that, the majority of the books of controversy
against Rome are of such a dry character that, though many begin
to read them, very few have the courage to go to the end. The consequence
is an ignorance of Romanism which becomes more and more deplorable
and fatal, every day.
It is ignorance which paves the way to the triumph of Rome, in
a near future, if there is not a complete change in your views, on that
subject.
It is that ignorance which paralyzes the arm of the Church of Christ, and
makes the glorious word "Protestant" senseless, almost a dead and ridiculous
word. For who does really protest against Rome, to-day? where are
those who sound the trumpet of alarm?
When Rome is striking you to the heart by cursing your schools and
wrenching the Bible from the hands of your children; when she is not only
battering your doors, but scaling your walls and storming your citadels,
how few dare go to the breach and repulse the audacious and sacrilegious
foe?
Why so? Because modern Protestants have not only forgotten what
Rome was, what she is, and what she will forever be: the most irreconcilable
and powerful enemy of the Gospel of Christ; but they consider her
almost a branch of the church whose corner-stone is Christ.
Faithful ministers of the Gospel! I present you this book that you may
know that the monster Church of Rome, who shed the blood of your forefathers,
is still at work, to-day, at your very door, to enchain your people to
the feet of her idols. Read it, and for the first time, you will see the inside
life of Popery with the exactness of Photography. From the supreme
art with which the mind of the young and timid child is fettered, enchained
and paralyzed, to the unspeakable degradation of the priest under
the iron heel of the bishop, everything will be revealed to you as it has
never been before.
The superstitions, the ridiculous and humiliating practices, the secret
and mental agonies of the monks, the nuns and the priests, will be shown to
you as they were never shown before. In this book, the sophisms and errors
of Romanism are discussed and refuted with a clearness, simplicity and
evidence which my twenty-five years of priesthood only could teach me. It
is not in boasting that I say this. There can be no boasting in me for having
been so many years an abject slave of the Pope. The book I offer you
is an arsenal filled with the best weapons you ever had to fight, and, with the
help of God, conquer the foe.
The learned and zealous champion of Protestantism in Great Britain
Rev. D. Badenoch, who has revised the manuscript, wrote to a friend: "I
do not think there is a Protestant work more thrilling in interest and more
important at the present time. It is not only full of incidents, but also of
arguments, on the side of truth with all classes of Romanists, from the
bishops to the parish priests. I know of no work which gives so graphically
the springs of Roman Catholic life, and at the same time, meets the
plausible objections to Protestantism in Roman Catholic circles. I wish
with all my heart that this work would be published in Great Britain."
The venerable, learned and so well known Rev. Dr. Kemp, Principal
of the Young Ladies' College of Ottawa, Canada, only a few days before his
premature death, wrote: "Mr. Chinqiuy has submitted every chapter of his
`Fifty Years in the Church of Rome' to me: I have read it with care and
with the deepest interest; and I commend it to the public favor in the highest
terms. It is the only book I know that gives anything like a full and
authentic account of the inner workings of Popery on this continent, and so
effectively unmasks its pretence to sanctity. Besides the moft interesting
biographical incidents, it contains incisive refutations of the most plausible
assumptions and deadly errors of the Romish Church. It is well fitted to
awaken Protestants to the insidious designs of the arch-enemy of their
faith and liberties, and to arouse them to a decisive opposition. It is written
in a kindly and Christian spirit, does not indulge in denunciations, and,
while speaking in truth, it does so in love Its style is lively and its English
good, with only a delicate flavor of the author's native French."
TO THE BISHOPS, PRIESTS AND PEOPLE OF ROME,
this book is also dedicated.
In the name of your immortal souls, I ask you, Roman Catholics, to
read this book.
By the mercy of God, you will find, in its pages, how you are cruelly
deceived by your vain and lying traditions.
You will see that it is not through your ceremonies, masses, confessions,
purgatory, indulgences, fastings, etc., you are saved. You have nothing to
do but to believe, repent and love.
Salvation is a gift! Eternal life is a gift! Forgiveness of sin is a gift!
Christ is a gift!
Read this book, presented by the most devoted of your friends, and, by
the mercy of God, you will see the errors of your ways—you will look to
the GIFT— you will accept it—and in its possession you will feel rich and
happy for time and eternity.
