LETTER OF
The GOSPEL TRUTH CHARLES G. FINNEY
1829
To the Editor of The Protestant
12 November 1829
[Published in The Protestant (New York), Vol. 1, No. 1 (2 January 1830). p. 2.]
In January 1830, the Rev. George Bourne (1780-1845), started a new weekly periodical in New York, The Protestant. Bourne was an Englishman who had emigrated to America early in the century. From 1825-1828 he was a Presbyterian minister in Quebec, Canada, and it was there that he became strongly anti-Catholic. With the increase in immigration, the Protestant churches were becoming increasingly alarmed at the spread of Roman Catholicism, and many evangelical and religious reformers started to become active in crusading against the Catholic Church. They welcomed the new periodical, and endorsements from many quarters were published in the early issues. (See Whitney R. Cross, The Burned-over District [Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1950], p. 231; and DAB.) The endorsement from Finney and other ministers of the Third Presbytery of New York was published in the first issue under the heading:
RECOMMENDATIONS.
Believing, as we do, that the hierarchy, influence, and total organization of Papal Rome, are the grossest system of imposture, impiety and despotism, under which the bodies and especially the minds of men ever groaned--that the cruel orgies of the Inquisitorial Commission constitute but a small part of the horrors of the system; that it is insidiously and mortally opposed to civil as well as religious liberty--that it constitutes the MAMMOTH ANTICHRIST of scripture prophecy, in Daniel, Paul and John--that its Propaganda, at Rome, are looking wishfully, and operating extensively on our fair territories of the United States; and that it is both the duty and the time for Bible Christians and American Freemen to combine their energies, by all moral means, and those only, to arrest the influence of a temporal prince of Italy, who wears the sword, as well as usurps the keys of an impious dynasty, from predominating here: We hail the rising promise of The Protestant, and pray that it may exert a powerfully extensive influence, "because of the truth."
Samuel H. Cox, H. G. Ludlow,
C. G. Finney, Henry White.
New-York, Nov. 12, 1829.