Page:One Link in the Chain of Apostolic Succesion; or, The Crimes of Alexander Borgia (1854).djvu/16

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PREFACE.
VII

which has rested upon its blood-begrimmed features so long. It has woven a net around the world that is gradually securing all things, little and great, in its meshes, and slowly drawing them into the dominion and beneath the authority of the "Mother Church." It has caused millions and millions of beings, of all ages and sexes, in all parts of the world, to have one soul, one mind, one will,—and that one subject to the wishes of the Pope, as expressed through his bishops and priests. It has originated and established the most elaborate and extensive consolidation of mind to one object that ever was or can be originated and established, unless upon the foundation of Americanism in America; and the result is, that the Roman Catholic church is the most tremendous engine of social and political power that has been brought into existence since the world began—an engine of the greatest magnitude and of the most complex order, yet one whose every portion is so carefully and systematically managed that centuries may pass away before a single vibration can come unlooked for.

And yet Americans will sleep on, as if they knew not that their rights and liberties, and privileges AS Americans, are being daily and hourly encroached upon at a rate that threatens to soon strip them of all!

Since the commencement of the present century, an almost total change has been wrought in the political condition of the world, which is mostly attributable to the spread of Catholicism over new grounds, and the strengthening of it in the old. The greater portion of this vast change has been wrought in the United States, during the last twenty-five years. The good old principles of republicanism and Protestantism that animated the heroes of the revolution have been gradually crushed out, and their places usurped by those of a decidedly opposite nature; until no political movement can be made without its being more or less influenced towards an evil end by the adherents of the Romish church, who have, as before observed, in substance,