During the late 1800s, Charles Chiniquy authored a book titled, Fifty Years in the Church of Rome. Here are a couple of Internet links to his book. The first link is to one of several sites on the Internet where an electronic copy of a full version (FV) of his book may be accessed free of charge:
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/51634
This second link is to an Internet site where a paperback copy of an abridged version (AV) of Chiniquy’s book may be purchased:
https://www.chick.com/products/item?stk=180&ue=d
In his book, Chiniquy highlights a unique friendship he had with Abraham Lincoln. This special relationship began several years before Lincoln became the sixteenth president of the United States of America and continued to the time of the President’s death early in his second term in office.
Some excerpts from Chiniquy’s memoirs about his relationship with Lincoln are included below. These quotes provide richly personal, firsthand insights into the character and manner of the President. They also form the backdrop for a warning the author felt compelled to bring to all Americans with the publication of his book. Signs of the seriousness of the threat that prompted this warning materialized during the presidency of Lincoln in the form of the American Civil War and finally in his assassination.
Looking to the future, Chiniquy could see a time when the secret Catholic organization that was responsible for the assassination of President Lincoln would eventually pose a grave threat to the overall liberties of all Americans. To set the stage for presenting Chiniquy’s warning to America, the discussion below begins with some of the author’s recollections of Lincoln.
Then, after introducing his views on Lincoln, the discussion transitions to Chiniquy’s warning to the people of America by way of a list of some of the author’s reasons for issuing his warning. The items in this list are not merely theoretical or philosophical in nature. Rather, they are real threats to Americans that Chiniquy learned about and observed during his training in Roman Catholic schools and through his tenure of service to his church as one of its priests, first in Canada and later in the U.S.
Part 1: Charles Chiniquy’s Views of Abraham Lincoln
The unique relationship that was forged between Charles Chiniquy and Abraham Lincoln began in the early 1850s when Lincoln served as a defense attorney for Chiniquy in an Illinois State court of law. During the course of the trial, Lincoln was able to prove that all charges which had been brought against Chiniquy were false, resulting in Chiniquy’s acquittal. As he explains, this result did not set well with certain people within the Church of Rome.
To demonstrate the close friendship that had formed between these two men, selected excerpts from the book Fifty Years in the Church of Rome are quoted below. These quotes provide both insights into the relationship between Chiniquy and Lincoln and various amiable personality traits of Lincoln.
From Chapter 56(FV) – abridged in 51(AV):
(https://www.gutenberg.org/files/51634/51634-h/51634-h.htm#Chap_56)
He was a giant in stature; but I found him still more a giant in the noble qualities of his mind and heart. It was impossible to converse five minutes with him without loving him. There was such an expression of kindness and honesty in that face, and such an attractive magnetism in the man; that, after a few moments’ conversation, one felt as tied to him by all the noblest affections of the heart.
He … asked me how I had been induced to desire his services. I answered by giving him the story of that unknown friend who had advised me to have Mr. Abraham Lincoln for one of my lawyers, for the reason that “he was the best lawyer and the most honest man in Illinois.” He smiled at my answer, with that inimitable and unique smile, which we may call the “Lincoln smile,” and replied: “That unknown friend would surely have been more correct had he told you that Abraham Lincoln was the ugliest lawyer of the country!” And he laughed outright.
I never heard anything like the eloquence of Abraham Lincoln, when he demolished the testimonies … against me.
From Chapter 61(FV) – abridged in 56(AV):
(https://www.gutenberg.org/files/51634/51634-h/51634-h.htm#Chap_61)
Every time I met President Lincoln, I wondered how such elevation of thought and such childish simplicity could be found in the same man. After my interviews with him, many times, I said to myself: “How can this rail-splitter have so easily raised himself to the highest range of human thought and philosophy?”
The secret of this was, that Lincoln had spent a great part of his life at the school of Christ, and that he had meditated his sublime teachings to an extent unsuspected by the world. I found in him, the most perfect type of Christianity I ever met. Professedly, he was neither a strict Presbyterian, nor a Baptist, or a Methodist; but he was the embodiment of all which is more perfect and Christian in them. His religion was the very essence of what God wants in man. It was from Christ himself, he had learned to love his God and his neighbor, as it was from Christ he had learned the dignity and the value of man. “Ye are all brethren, the children of God,” was his great motto.
It was from the Gospel that he had learned his principles of equality, fraternity and liberty, as it was from the Gospel he had learned that sublime, childish simplicity, which, alone, and forever, won the admiration and affection of all those who approached him. …
Part 2: Warning Signs
In Chapter 58(FV) – abridged in 53(AV) – of Fifty Years in the Church of Rome, Charles Chiniquy provides us with some important details that relate to his warning to America. They come from his conversation with Abraham Lincoln when negotiating his legal fees upon being acquitted. As you will read, both men appear to have been alert to a potential danger that was present in the courtroom that day.
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/51634/51634-h/51634-h.htm#Chap_58
“Dear Mr. Lincoln,” I answered, “allow me to tell you that the joy I should naturally feel for such a victory is destroyed in my mind by the fear of what it may cost you. There were then in the crowd not less than ten or twelve Jesuits from Chicago and St. Louis, who came to hear my sentence of condemnation to the penitentiary. But it was on their heads that you have brought the thunders of heaven and earth! Nothing can be compared to the expression of their rage against you, when you not only wrenched me from their cruel hands, but you were making the walls of the court-house tremble under the awful and superhumanly eloquent denunciation of their infamy, diabolical malice, and total want of Christian and human principle, in the plot they had formed for my destruction. What troubles my soul just now and draws my tears, is that it seems to me that I have read your sentence of death in their fiendish eyes. How many other noble victims have already fallen at their feet!
He tried to divert my mind, at first, with a joke, “Sign this [the receipt for his legal fees],” said he, “it will be my warrant of death.”
But after I had signed, he became more solemn, and said, “I know that Jesuits never forget nor forsake. But man must not care how and where he dies, provided he dies at the post of honour and duty,” and he left me.
Lincoln’s final statement – “But man must not care how and where he dies, provided he dies at the post of honour and duty” – provides us with rather clear insights into Lincoln’s character and his resolve to be ready to stand for honesty and truth no matter what the taking of such a stand may cost him.
But why exactly would Lincoln’s life be in danger for defending Chiniquy? We learn more of this concern in the next chapter of his book, Chapter 59(FV) – abridged in 54(AV).
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/51634/51634-h/51634-h.htm#Chap_59
After Lincoln became President, Chiniquy recounts how he and his former lawyer spoke of the potential dangers to the President by way of assassination. It was not merely a personal matter but one that embodied a grave threat to these United States and all its citizens. Why? By declaring their liberty to live free under a republican form of government, as outlined in its original Constitution, the citizens of this country were living contrary to the teachings of the Church of Rome. Therefore, the Church’s secret societies were (and are) taking steps to remedy this matter as directed by their leaders.
To bring attention to this covert activity, Chiniquy dedicated portions of his book to warn the American people of “the most implacable enemy of this Republic.” Here is a portion of what he wrote, as it is found in Chapter 59(FV) – abridged in 54(AV). It is important to keep in mind that he wrote these words back in the late 1800s.
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/51634/51634-h/51634-h.htm#Chap_59
In order to more easily drill the Roman Catholics and prepare them for the irrepressible struggle, the Jesuits have organized them into a great number of secret societies, the principal of which are: Ancient Order of Hibernians, Irish American Society, Knights of St. Patrick, St. Patrick’s Cadets, St. Patrick Mutual Alliance, Apostles of Liberty, Benevolent Sons of the Emerald Isle, Knights of St. Peter, Knights of the Red Branch, Knights of the Columskill, The Sacred Heart, etc., etc.
Almost all these secret associations are military ones. They have their headquarters at San Francisco; but their rank and file are scattered all over the United States. They number 700,000 soldiers, who, under the name of United States Volunteer Militia, are officered by some of the most skillful generals and officers of this Republic.
Another fact, to which the American Protestants do not sufficiently pay attention, is that the Jesuits have been shrewd enough to have a vast majority of Roman Catholic generals and officers, to command the army and man the navy of the United States.
Long before I was ordained a priest, I knew that my church was the most implacable enemy of this Republic. My professors of philosophy, history, and theology had been unanimous in telling me that the principles and laws of the Church of Rome were absolutely antagonistic to the laws and principles which are the foundation-stones of the Constitution of the United States.
1st. The most sacred principle of the United States Constitution is the equality of every citizen before the law. But the fundamental principle of the Church of Rome is the denial of that equality.
2nd. Liberty of conscience is proclaimed by the United States, a most sacred principle which every citizen must uphold, even at the price of his blood. But liberty of conscience is declared by all the Popes and Councils of Rome, a most godless, unholy, and diabolical thing, which every good Catholic must abhor and destroy at any cost.
3rd. The American Constitution assures the absolute independence of the civil from the ecclesiastical or church power; but the Church of Rome declares, through all her Pontiffs and Councils, that such independence is an impiety and a revolt against God.
4th. The American Constitution leaves every man free to serve God according to the dictates of his conscience; but the Church of Rome declares that no man has ever had such a right, and that the Pope alone can know and say what man must believe and do.
5th. The Constitution of the United States denies the right in any body to punish any other for differing from him in religion. But the Church of Rome says that she has a right to punish with the confiscation of their goods, or the penalty of death, those who differ in faith from the Pope.
6th. The United States have established schools all over their immense territories, where they invite the people to send their children, that they may cultivate their intelligence and become good and useful citizens. But the Church of Rome has publicly cursed all those schools, and forbidden their children to attend them, under pain of excommunication in this world and damnation in the next.
7th. The Constitution of the United States is based on the principle that the people are the primary source of all civil power. But hundreds of times, the Church of Rome has proclaimed that this principle is impious and heretical. She says that “all government must rest upon the foundation of the Catholic faith; with the Pope alone as the legitimate and infallible source and interpreter of the law.”
I could cite many other things, proving that the Church of Rome is an absolute and irreconcilable enemy of the United States; but it would be too long. These are sufficient to show to the American people that Rome is a viper, which they feed and press upon their bosom. Sooner or later that viper will bite to death and kill this Republic. This was foretold by Lafayette, and is now promulgated by the greatest thinkers of our time. The greatest inventor, or rather the immortal father of electric telegraphy, Samuel Morse, found it out when in Rome, and published it in 1834, in his remarkable work, “Conspiracies against the Liberties of the United States.”
Are we not seeing the manifestation of these teachings of the Church of Rome today within the United States and abroad, just as described by the author? What is being played out in the government and court system of America today, as foretold by Chiniquy in the late 1800s, are actions that have been taken against the liberties of the citizens of these United States. They have advanced so dramatically that the Supreme Court is now dominated by Roman Catholics who owe their allegiance to the Vatican.
Part 3: The Warning
With the foregoing background information in mind, please prayerfully consider the warning that Charles Chiniquy addressed to all Americans in the dedication of his book, Fifty Years in the Church of Rome:
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/51634/51634-h/51634-h.htm#Page_3
To the Honest and Liberty-Loving People of these 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 of Liberty on their lips, and the mask of Liberty on their faces, are sworn to destroy all Liberty.
As Chiniquy urges, please prayerfully read his book. If you do not feel you have time now to read the entire book, please at least read Chapter 59(FV) – abridged in 54(AV). It will answer many questions about what we are now seeing take place in our government, especially in the court system of these United States. Then, seek God for direction on how you should respond to Chiniquy’s warning.
When considering this warning, remember also the words of Jesus as recorded in Matthew 24:26 (KJV). There, our Lord and Savior testifies that He is not in secret chambers. This includes those of all secret societies, especially in those of the Jesuits and in those of the many secret societies they regulate. To be wise, then, we must watch and pray always (Luke 21:36). We must remember to ask, seek, and knock for the wisdom that is from above (Matthew 7:7,8 & James 1:5 with Proverbs 4:5-7 & James 3:11-18).
As always, my prayer is that God will truly bless and keep each of you in wisdom’s path. I am especially praying that He will protect and defend all the citizens of these United States of America with His Spirit. For it is only where the Spirit of the Lord is that there is true liberty (II Corinthians 3:17).
Respectfully and prayerfully,
Dwight Burford
