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RT: "Where can I read more about this [superstition]?"

JMJ:"I was wondering if mine were the only eyebrows raised. I am sorry not to be more help, but I don't know."

I do. In fact -- here you will read an account of the superstitious, themselves, engaging in much worse than mere "whipping", as they deny someone his God given freedoms (in this case, religious freedom) and attempt to cram their own religion down his throat:

"Daniel Rambaut, of Vilario, the father of a numerous family, was apprehended, and, with several others, committed to prison, in the jail of Paysana. Here he was visited by several priests, who with continual importunities did all they could to persuade him to renounce the Protestant religion and turn papist; but this he peremptorily refused, and the priests finding his resolution, pretended to pity his numerous family, and told him that he might yet have his life, if he would subscribe to the belief of the following articles:

1. The real presence of the host.
2. Transubstantiation.
3. Purgatory.
4. The pope's infallibility.
5. That masses said for the dead will release souls from purgatory.
6. That praying to saints will procure the remission of sins.

M. Rambaut told the priests that neither his religion, his understanding, nor his conscience, would suffer him to subscribe to any of the articles, for the following reasons:

1. That to believe the real presence in the host, is a shocking union of both blasphemy and idolatry.

2. That to fancy the words of consecration perform what the papists call transubstantiation, by converting the wafer and wine into the real and identical body and blood of Christ, which was crucified, and which afterward ascended into heaven, is too gross an absurdity for even a child to believe, who was come to the least glimmering of reason; and that nothing but the most blind superstition could make the Roman Catholics put a confidence in anything so completely ridiculous.

3. That the doctrine of purgatory was more inconsistent and absurd than a fairy tale.

4. That the pope's being infallible was an impossibility, and the pope arrogantly laid claim to what could belong to God only, as a perfect being.

5. That saying Masses for the dead was ridiculous, and only meant to keep up a belief in the fable of purgatory, as the fate of all is finally decided, on the departure of the soul from the body.

6. That praying to saints for the remission of sins is misplacing adoration; as the saints themselves have occasion for an intercessor in Christ. Therefore, as God only can pardon our errors, we ought to sue to him alone for pardon.

The priests were so highly offended at M. Rambaut's answers to the articles to which they would have had him subscribe, that they determined to shake his resolution by the most cruel method imaginable:

they ordered one joint of his finger to be cut off every day until all his fingers were gone: they then proceeded in the same manner with his toes; afterward they alternately cut off, daily, a hand and a foot; but finding that he bore his sufferings with the most admirable patience, increased both in fortitude and resignation, and maintained his faith with steadfast resolution and unshaken constancy they stabbed him to the heart, and then gave his body to be devoured by the dogs." [end excerpt]

FOX'S BOOK OF MARTYRS CHAPTER VI
Persecutions Under the Papacy
http://www.webwriterscanada.com/anewyou/fbm/ch6_fbm.htm

BTW! Does it raise your eyebrows to know that the Roman Church has STILL never retracted its official denial of religious freedom and its right to use violence to force people to accept its doctrines.

In "Catholic" countries the Bible is still shunned as "dangerous.” Wherever the Church of Rome has political power, it still does all it can to keep the closed canon of Scripture away from the people. [Documented by the Hefleys in their book, By Their Blood: Christian Martyrs Of The 20th Century, (Mott Media, 1979)]