THE Thames Advertiser. WEDNESDAY, AUG. 5, 1874.

Thames Advertiser, Volume VII, Issue 1883, 5 August 1874, Page 2

THE Thames Advertiser. WEDNESDAY, AUG. 5, 1874.

No page iu our present history will afford to future generations a greater theme for contempt and astonishment than the attitude which the Roman Catholic hierarchy maintains against secret societies, and Masonry in particular, Dr Redwood, of Wellington, and the Bishop of Eio Grande have delivered themselves of a torrent of obscene blasphemy, which however admissible in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries is objectionable in the nineteenth. The day has for ever passed away when the insane curses of a prelate were effectual in binding in worse than slavery the consciences and freedom of intelligent men; they are more calculated to invite inquiry and discussion, and when these crucial tests are applied these impotent male-, dictions are treated with the scorn they merit, and instead of crushing the imaginary opposition which these societies of men are said to offer to the temporal and spiritual authority of the Pope, they will have the effect of banding them together in one invincible host, not for aggression, but for protection against an implacable and unscrupulous foe. Dr Piedwood seems to forget the temporal authority of the Pope was successfully assailed, not by Masonic iutrigue, but by the people of Italy. They hailed their King as the saviour of the nation, and emancipated themselves from the fear of incurring the vengeance of Heaven through a Papal curse. The struggle was a great national effort which the exigencies of the country demanded and the intelligence of the age necessitated. It is no doubt to good Catholics a mournful spectacle to behold the aged prelate a self constituted prisoner in the halls of the Vatican, pondering over his lost greatness, knowing that a constitutional monarch reigns in his stead, and seeing the vast revenues of his church gradually being appropriated by its Parliament for the benefit of his country. Still it were better for the ancient church if, instead of intriguing with the Catholic continental Powers to raise a crusade on its behalf, and launching its anathemas against all other Christian denominations, it resolutely set its vast machinery to work in the direction indicated by the life and teaching of Christ. " Sell all that thou hast and give to the poor," "Bless them that despitefully use you/'such among many are the injunctions of the founder of the Faith of Peace to those whom he deemed worthy to beau his cross and follow him. Do the gorgeous retinue of Cardinals, Bishops, and Priests, and the vast resources and riches of the infallible Church agree with the first, and do the frantic and blasphemous curses of the furious Bishop of Rio Grande obey the second of these diviue mandates ? Assuredly not. Curiosity is one of the strongest, attributes of our nature, and without it the spirit of inquiry would lie dormant. No sooner is anything brought into notoriety than thousands flock to ascer- [ tain its nature and character, and from a similar cause the hostility of the Catholic Church to Masonry will have the effect of crowding its lodges with thousands upon thousands of candidates for admission, for is it not solemnly asserted this vast organisation is a foe to the Christian faith; its President the Devil; its mission the destruction of the Pontiff and his time-honoured Church; the utter perversion of all mankind, and the weapons selected to conduct this singular campaign, " violence, cunning, fire, sword, poison, and the dagger; godless education, falsified history, immoral literature, an audaciously lying and slanderous press, and perverted arts and sciences." If such be the case, how is it that during the lapse of centuries it has made such little progress in its infernal mission ? If the destruction of thrones and governments be its aim, why so many crowned heads and scions of the " Lord's anointed" members of its lodges? If the utter perversion _ of mankind by systematically corrupting the young, why found so many schools, to many of which scholarships are attached, and why erect so many magnificent buildings as schools and asylums for the aged and the decayed ? Surely none of these acts are worthy of Satan. Yet are they the offspring of Freemasonry. If its designs are so palpable and inimical to the welfare of the nations of the world, how is it its machinations have never been discovered in the British Isles 1 It would be more becoming in Dr. Redwood, and others who think like him, if they would refrain from making these absurd and unjustifiable attacks upon a large and influential body of honourable men. The school in which he has graduated may be one acceptable and admired in a Roman Catholic country, but we desire him to understand that in this portion of our Protestant Sovereign's dominions his opinions will be taken for what they are worth, and if he desires to cultvate an entiente cordial between Wb coreligionists and the other Christian denominations, the mendacious. and bigotted effusion which appeared in our columns is not the"way to: accomplish so desirable an end. But if he desires to invoke the spirit of hatred and 1 persecution which has left so many bloody, pages upon the history of the world,

let him not forget that the fires of Smithfield and the tragedy of the Huguenots resulted from the teachings of men imbued with a spirit such as his,