John Dowling—A Noble Company!

R&I – TxPAT. ***

 

Hi

 

Dedicated to:- John Dowling—A Noble Company!

In the small village of Pevensey, Sussex, England 214-years-ago on Tuesday, May 12th 1807, a son was born to the Rev. George Thomas Dowling. George Dowling the Baptist minister was unaware of the bundle of joy he cradled in his arms, would one day become a great author, Protestant scholar and a revered cleric. He would leave the nest and emigrate to America with his wife and two children to carry on his education and his priestly endeavours. His name was John Dowling (1807-1878). Probably not many American let alone any Englisce would know him or his great works. He was the author of various works, including Exposition of the Prophecies (1840), Defence of the Protestant Scriptures (1843), The History of Romanism (1845). Edited and translated a plethora of other works. 

His first Pastorates was in Catskill, New York, from 1832-1834, Newport, Rhode Island, going on in 1834-1836, back to the state of New York, New York, 1844-1852, 1856-1868, then moved to Philadelphia, 1852-1856, ending his pastorate in Newark, New Jersey. 

Dowling became a literary superstar and the best selling author in America of his day. Within months of publishing in 1845 his first edition historical work, the fifth edition was sold out. Unheard of in the day, as books were expensive, and this book The History of Romanism was very expensive at the time stated. An Epic Opus, a 700-page Chronicle of Popery (a word the book uses on several occasions). When I say 700 pages, I mean that one single folio would be equivalent to 2 pages of a great novel owing to the mass of print per page. I bought a treasured copy (1846 twelfth Edition) over 65-years-ago and has pride and place in my library with other religious and historical tomes.  

(Dowlings birth month May, is not a good month for my wife and me, it is a month filled with family tragedy, and we seem to hibernate waiting for the month to pass. That is when I get this book out and try to reread it over again when in bed before I go to sleep.  Dowling also had a family tragedy in his life, when he was visiting the Catskill alone, his wife and one of his two children died during the cholera outbreak that hit New York City in June of 1832.)

Dowling was an avid reader, a human vacuum when it came to the written word. He was a classicist as well as a historian and a Doctor of Divinity (D.D.). Also, a historian of Church history and a rare Protestant scholar on the Church of Rome. America at the time was anti-papist (sometimes very violent) and there was always a forum for Catholic and Protestant scholars to argue their case. John Dowling took on the Catholic hierarchy, whilst lesser men took on the papal footsoldiers. Today Dowling’s book is still cited with nothing or little to change historically. With one or two issues that I can see modern historians perhaps argue about. The first being number of death by Catholicism being one. On the death of the innocents caused by the Roman Church in their pursuit to cleanse the world of so-called heretics. The scholar Dowling wrote: …From the birth of Popery in 606 CE to the present time, it is estimated by careful and credible historians, that more than fifty millions of the human family, have been slaughtered for the crime of heresy by popish persecutors, an average of more than forty thousand religious murders for every year of the existence of popery….[John Dowling, (1846) History of Romanism: From the earliest corruption of Christianity To The Present Time, pp.541, 542, Edward Walker—New York]  

One would probably argue that Dowling was very modest in his calculations on the innocent deaths by the Church of Rome. One needs to remember that back in Dowling’s day they did not have computers, for the vast calculations necessary. Which was afforded to the Creationist scholar David Alan Plaisted a computer science professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Using a computer algorithm in 2006 to calculate from the inaugural of Catholicism in 381 CE to the present time as a figure as much as 160,000,000 innocent lives were taken.  

(Yet, the Catholic hierarchy denies the figure and state that heretics’ total death was no more than 5,000. They forget the Cathar/Albigensian war/crusade (1209-1229) where 1 million Cathars were exterminated over 20 years. The 3,000 Huguenot (French Calvinist Protestants). Who were slaughtered and butchered along with their leaders in Paris, known as the Bartholomew’s Day massacre in 1572? One also could add at least one million deaths of 700,000 Serb Orthodox Christians (also 60,000 Jews and 15,000 gipsies) to the total in the Croatian death camps referred to as the Vatican Holocaust of 1941-45 during WW II aka Genocide in Satellite Catholic Croatia. The Croat Catholic Ustashi hegemony over the Serb Orthodox was aided by the Catholic Great Crusaders Brotherhood (Monks), Great Crusaders Sisterhood (mainly Nuns).  

Archbishop Aloysius Viktor Stepinac (Croatian: Alojzije Viktor Stepinac 1898–1960) of Zagreb go 16 years of hard labour for his war Crimes.

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/62/123.html 

The Vatican denied their and Stepinac’s involvement and after the war made Stepinac a Cardinal Archbishop. The evidence of guilt against both parties says different!)

Dowling did not calculate from year 381 to the short reign of the first Catholic pope, Pope Boniface III 606-607. However, Boniface was chosen while in Constantinople, as papal nuncio to the Bloody Byzantine usurper Emperor Phocus (602-610), so he was not crowned until Feb. 607 and he died Nov. 607, having reigned only 10 months as the first Catholic Pope. 

Although I digressed a little on the Roman Church’s atrocities to show their denial was untrue.  This post is about John Dowling and what he saw as his righteous scholarly crusade against the Papacy and its wrongdoings as seen in a historical context.  Protestants themself cannot plead innocence in their sort history.  They are also guilty of having blood on their hands as well as bigotry and false readings of their Bible against a certain section of today’s society.  What do you say?

 

Cofion

 

 

Jero Jones

Article URL : https://breakingnewsandreligion.online/discuss/