The-papacy-its-history-dogmas-genius-and-prospects-wylie

ENORMITY OF DOCTRINE. 379publicly to avow this doctrine, they would be prepared alsoto abandon it, for it would manifestly be useless a momentlonger to retain it.Besides, they are not prepared to bravethe odium which the avowal of a maxim so abhorrent anddetestable would be sure to provoke. This is the very markof hell. Rome may wear this mark in her right hand,where its partial concealment is possible; but were that markto be imprinted on her forehead, she dare not hold up herface before the world, knowing that the damning evidenceof her guilt was visible to every eye. The living writersand priests of the Church of Rome areplainly inadmissibleas witnesses here. We appeal the matter to her canonsand her history,—a tribunal to which she can take no exception.At this bar do we sist her ; and here she standscondemned as the Cain of the human family,—the world'sOUTLAW.The proof,—and nothing is more capable of easy andcomplete demonstration,—is briefly as follows:—The doctrinethat no faith is to be kept with heretics, when to doso would militate against the interests of the Church, waspromulgated by the third Lateran Council, decreed by theCouncil of Constance, confirmed by the Council of Trent,and is sworn to by all priests at their ordination, when theydeclare on oath their belief of all the tenets taudit in thesacred canons and the general councils ; and it has beenpractised by the Church of Rome, both in particular cases ofgreat flagrancy, and in the general course of her actings.The proof is as clear as the charge is grave and the crimee.iormous.The third Lateran Council, which was held at Rome in1167 under the pontificate of Alexander III., and which allPapists admit to be infallible, decreed in its sixteenth canon,that " oaths made against the interest and benefit of theChurch are not so much to be considered as oaths, but asperjuries." * The fourth or great Lateran Council ab-* " Non quasi juramenta, sed quasi perjuria."