now than at any former period in her history. The Protestant churches are
in great darkness, or they would discern the signs of the times. The Roman
Church is far-reaching in her plans and modes of operation. She is
employing every device to extend her influence and increase her power in
preparation for a fierce and determined conflict to regain control of the
world, to re-establish persecution, and to undo all that Protestantism has
done. Catholicism is gaining ground upon every side. See the increasing
number of her churches and chapels in Protestant countries. Look at the
popularity of her colleges and seminaries in America, so widely patronized
by Protestants. Look at the growth of ritualism in England, and the
frequent defections to the ranks of the Catholics. These things should
awaken the anxiety of all who prize the pure principles of the gospel.
Protestants have tampered with and patronized popery; they have made
compromises and concessions which papists themselves are surprised to see,
and fail to understand. Men are closing their eyes to the real character
of Romanism, and the dangers to be apprehended from her supremacy. The
people need to be aroused to resist the advances of this most dangerous
foe to civil and religious liberty.
Many Protestants suppose that the Catholic religion is unattractive, and
that its worship is a dull, meaningless round of ceremony. Here they
mistake. While Romanism is based upon deception, it is not a coarse and
clumsy imposture. The religious service of the Roman Church is a most
impressive ceremonial. Its gorgeous display and solemn rites fascinate the
senses of the people, and silence the voice of reason and of conscience.
The eye is charmed. Magnificent churches, imposing processions, golden
altars, jeweled shrines, choice paintings, and exquisite sculpture appeal
to the love of beauty. The ear also is captivated. The music is
unsurpassed. The rich notes of the deep-toned organ, blending with the
melody of many voices as it swells through the lofty domes and pillared
aisles of her grand cathedrals, cannot fail to impress the mind with awe
and reverence.
[Interior of a church.]
This outward splendor, pomp, and ceremony, that only mocks the longings of
the sin-sick soul, is an evidence of inward corruption. The religion of
Christ needs not such attractions to recommend it. In the light shining
from the cross, true Christianity appears so pure and lovely that no
external decorations can enhance its true worth. It is the beauty of
holiness, a meek and quiet spirit, which is of value with God.
Brilliancy of style is not necessarily an index of pure, elevated thought.
High conceptions of art, delicate refinement of taste, often exist in
minds that are earthly and sensual. They are often employed by Satan to
lead men to forget the necessities of the soul, to lose sight of the
future, immortal life, to turn away from their infinite Helper, and to
live for this world alone.
A religion of externals is attractive to the unrenewed heart. The pomp and
ceremony of the Catholic worship has a seductive, bewitching power, by
which many are deceived; and they come to look upon the Roman Church as
the very gate of heaven. None but those who have planted their feet firmly
upon the foundation of truth, and whose hearts are renewed by the Spirit
of God, are proof against her influence. Thousands who have not an
experimental knowledge of Christ will be led to accept the forms of
godliness without the power. Such a religion is just what the multitudes
desire.
The church’s claim to the right to pardon, leads the Romanist to feel at
liberty to sin; and the ordinance of confession, without which her pardon
is not granted, tends also to give license to evil. He who kneels before
fallen man, and opens in confession the secret thoughts and imaginations
of his heart, is debasing his manhood, and degrading every noble instinct
of his soul. In unfolding the sins of his life to a priest,—an erring,
sinful mortal, and too often corrupted with wine and licentiousness,—his
standard of character is lowered, and he is defiled in consequence. His
thought of God is degraded to the likeness of fallen humanity; for the
priest stands as a representative of God. This degrading confession of man
to man is the secret spring from which has flowed much of the evil that is
defiling the world, and fitting it for the final destruction. Yet to him
who loves self-indulgence, it is more pleasing to confess to a
fellow-mortal than to open the soul to God. It is more palatable to human
nature to do penance than to renounce sin; it is easier to mortify the
flesh by sackcloth and nettles and galling chains than to crucify fleshly
lusts. Heavy is the yoke which the carnal heart is willing to bear rather
than bow to the yoke of Christ.
There is a striking similarity between the Church of Rome and the Jewish
Church at the time of Christ’s first advent. While the Jews secretly
trampled upon every principle of the law of God, they were outwardly
rigorous in the observance of its precepts, loading it down with exactions
and traditions that made obedience painful and burdensome. As the Jews
professed to revere the law, so do Romanists claim to reverence the cross.
They exalt the symbol of Christ’s sufferings, while in their lives they
deny Him whom it represents.
Papists place crosses upon their churches, upon their altars, and upon
their garments. Everywhere is seen the insignia of the cross. Everywhere
it is outwardly honored and exalted. But the teachings of Christ are
buried beneath a mass of senseless traditions, false interpretations, and
rigorous exactions. The Saviour’s words concerning the bigoted Jews, apply
with still greater force to the leaders of the Roman Catholic Church:
“They bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men’s
shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their
fingers.”(1002) Conscientious souls are kept in constant terror, fearing
the wrath of an offended God, while many of the dignitaries of the church
are living in luxury and sensual pleasure.
The worship of images and relics, the invocation of saints, and the
exaltation of the pope, are devices of Satan to attract the minds of the
people from God and from His Son. To accomplish their ruin, he endeavors
to turn their attention from Him through whom alone they can find
salvation. He will direct them to any object that can be substituted for
the One who has said, “Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy
laden, and I will give you rest.”(1003)
It is Satan’s constant effort to misrepresent the character of God, the
nature of sin, and the real issues at stake in the great controversy. His
sophistry lessens the obligation of the divine law, and gives men license
to sin. At the same time he causes them to cherish false conceptions of
God, so that they regard Him with fear and hate, rather than with love.
The cruelty inherent in his own character is attributed to the Creator; it
is embodied in systems of religion, and expressed in modes of worship.
Thus the minds of men are blinded, and Satan secures them as his agents to
war against God. By perverted conceptions of the divine attributes,
heathen nations were led to believe human sacrifices necessary to secure
the favor of Deity; and horrible cruelties have been perpetrated under the
various forms of idolatry.
The Roman Catholic Church, uniting the forms of paganism and Christianity,
and, like paganism, misrepresenting the character of God, has resorted to
practices no less cruel and revolting. In the days of Rome’s supremacy,
there were instruments of torture to compel assent to her doctrines. There
was the stake for those who would not concede to her claims. There were
massacres on a scale that will never be known until revealed in the
judgment. Dignitaries of the church studied, under Satan their master, to
invent means to cause the greatest possible torture, and not end the life
of their victim. In many cases the infernal process was repeated to the
utmost limit of human endurance, until nature gave up the struggle, and
the sufferer hailed death as a sweet release.
Such was the fate of Rome’s opponents. For her adherents she had the
discipline of the scourge, of famishing hunger, of bodily austerities in
every conceivable, heart-sickening form. To secure the favor of Heaven,
penitents violated the laws of God by violating the laws of nature. They
were taught to sunder the ties which He has formed to bless and gladden
man’s earthly sojourn. The churchyard contains millions of victims, who
spent their lives in vain endeavors to subdue their natural affections, to
repress, as offensive to God, every thought and feeling of sympathy with
their fellow-creatures.
If we desire to understand the determined cruelty of Satan, manifested for
hundreds of years, not among those who never heard of God, but in the very
heart and throughout the extent of Christendom, we have only to look at
the history of Romanism. Through this mammoth system of deception the
prince of evil achieves his purpose of bringing dishonor to God and
wretchedness to man. And as we see how he succeeds in disguising himself,
and accomplishing his work through the leaders of the church, we may
better understand why he has so great antipathy to the Bible. If that book
is read, the mercy and love of God will be revealed; it will be seen that
He lays upon men none of these heavy burdens. All that He asks is a broken
and contrite heart, a humble, obedient spirit.
Christ gives no example in His life for men and women to shut themselves
in monasteries in order to become fitted for heaven. He has never taught
that love and sympathy must be repressed. The Saviour’s heart overflowed
with love. The nearer man approaches to moral perfection, the keener are
his sensibilities, the more acute is his perception of sin, and the deeper
his sympathy for the afflicted. The pope claims to be the vicar of Christ;
but how does his character bear comparison with that of our Saviour? Was
Christ ever known to consign men to the prison or the rack because they
did not pay Him homage as the King of heaven? Was His voice heard
condemning to death those who did not accept Him? When He was slighted by
the people of a Samaritan village, the apostle John was filled with
indignation, and inquired, “Lord, wilt Thou that we command fire to come
down from heaven, and consume them, even as Elias did?” Jesus looked with
pity upon His disciple, and rebuked his harsh spirit, saying, “The Son of
man is not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them.”(1004) How
different from the spirit manifested by Christ is that of His professed
vicar.
The Roman Church now presents a fair front to the world, covering with
apologies her record of horrible cruelties. She has clothed herself in
Christlike garments; but she is unchanged. Every principle of the papacy
that existed in past ages exists to-day. The doctrines devised in the
darkest ages are still held. Let none deceive themselves. The papacy that
Protestants are now so ready to honor is the same that ruled the world in
the days of the Reformation, when men of God stood up, at the peril of
their lives, to expose her iniquity. She possesses the same pride and
arrogant assumption that lorded it over kings and princes, and claimed the
prerogatives of God. Her spirit is no less cruel and despotic now than
when she crushed out human liberty, and slew the saints of the Most High.
The papacy is just what prophecy declared that she would be, the apostasy
of the latter times.(1005) It is a part of her policy to assume the
character which will best accomplish her purpose; but beneath the variable
appearance of the chameleon, she conceals the invariable venom of the
serpent. “Faith ought not to be kept with heretics, nor persons suspected
of heresy,”(1006) she declares. Shall this power, whose record for a
thousand years is written in the blood of the saints, be now acknowledged
as a part of the church of Christ?
It is not without reason that the claim has been put forth in Protestant
countries, that Catholicism differs less widely from Protestantism than in
former times. There has been a change; but the change is not in the
papacy. Catholicism indeed resembles much of the Protestantism that now
exists; because Protestantism has so greatly degenerated since the days of
the Reformers.
As the Protestant churches have been seeking the favor of the world, false
charity has blinded their eyes. They do not see but that it is right to
believe good of all evil; and as the inevitable result, they will finally
believe evil of all good. Instead of standing in defense of the faith once
delivered to the saints, they are now, as it were, apologizing to Rome for
their uncharitable opinion of her, begging pardon for their bigotry.
A large class, even of those who look upon Romanism with no favor,
apprehend little danger from her power and influence. Many urge that the
intellectual and moral darkness prevailing during the Middle Ages favored
the spread of her dogmas, superstitions, and oppression, and that the
greater intelligence of modern times, the general diffusion of knowledge,
and the increasing liberality in matters of religion, forbid a revival of
intolerance and tyranny. The very thought that such a state of things will
exist in this enlightened age is ridiculed. It is true that great light,
intellectual, moral, and religious, is shining upon this generation. In
the open pages of God’s holy word, light from heaven has been shed upon
the world. But it should be remembered that the greater the light
bestowed, the greater the darkness of those who pervert or reject it.
A prayerful study of the Bible would show Protestants the real character
of the papacy, and would cause them to abhor and to shun it; but many are
so wise in their own conceit that they feel no need of humbly seeking God
that they may be led into the truth. Although priding themselves on their
enlightenment, they are ignorant both of the Scriptures and of the power
of God. They must have some means of quieting their consciences; and they
seek that which is least spiritual and humiliating. What they desire is a
method of forgetting God which shall pass as a method of remembering Him.
The papacy is well adapted to meet the wants of all these. It is prepared
for two classes of mankind, embracing nearly the whole world,—those who
would be saved by their merits, and those who would be saved in their
sins. Here is the secret of its power.
A day of great intellectual darkness has been shown to be favorable to the
success of the papacy. It will yet be demonstrated that a day of great
intellectual light is equally favorable for its success. In past ages,
when men were without God’s word, and without the knowledge of the truth,
their eyes were blindfolded, and thousands were ensnared, not seeing the
net spread for their feet. In this generation there are many whose eyes
become dazzled by the glare of human speculations, “science falsely so
called;” they discern not the net, and walk into it as readily as if
blindfolded. God designed that man’s intellectual powers should be held as
a gift from his Maker, and should be employed in the service of truth and
righteousness; but when pride and ambition are cherished, and men exalt
their own theories above the word of God, then intelligence can accomplish
greater harm than ignorance. Thus the false science of the present day,
which undermines faith in the Bible, will prove as successful in preparing
the way for the acceptance of the papacy, with its pleasing forms, as did
the withholding of knowledge in opening the way for its aggrandizement in
the Dark Ages.
In the movements now in progress in the United States to secure for the
institutions and usages of the church the support of the state,
Protestants are following in the steps of papists. Nay, more, they are
opening the door for the papacy to regain in Protestant America the
supremacy which she has lost in the Old World. And that which gives
greater significance to this movement is the fact that the principal
object contemplated is the enforcement of Sunday observance,—a custom
which originated with Rome, and which she claims as the sign of her
authority. It is the spirit of the papacy,—the spirit of conformity to
worldly customs, the veneration for human traditions above the
commandments of God,—that is permeating the Protestant churches, and
leading them on to do the same work of Sunday exaltation which the papacy
has done before them.
If the reader would understand the agencies to be employed in the
soon-coming contest, he has but to trace the record of the means which
Rome employed for the same object in ages past. If he would know how
papists and Protestants united will deal with those who reject their
dogmas, let him see the spirit which Rome manifested toward the Sabbath
and its defenders.
Royal edicts, general councils, and church ordinances sustained by secular
power, were the steps by which the pagan festival attained its position of
honor in the Christian world. The first public measure enforcing Sunday
observance was the law enacted by Constantine.(1007) This edict required
townspeople to rest on “the venerable day of the sun,” but permitted
countrymen to continue their agricultural pursuits. Though virtually a
heathen statute, it was enforced by the emperor after his nominal
acceptance of Christianity.
The royal mandate not proving a sufficient substitute for divine
authority, Eusebius, a bishop who sought the favor of princes, and who was
the special friend and flatterer of Constantine, advanced the claim that
Christ had transferred the Sabbath to Sunday. Not a single testimony of
the Scriptures was produced in proof of the new doctrine. Eusebius himself
unwittingly acknowledges its falsity, and points to the real authors of
the change. “All things,” he says, “whatever that it was duty to do on the
Sabbath, these _we_ have transferred to the Lord’s day.”(1008) But the
Sunday argument, groundless as it was, served to embolden men in trampling
upon the Sabbath of the Lord. All who desired to be honored by the world
accepted the popular festival.
As the papacy became firmly established, the work of Sunday exaltation was
continued. For a time the people engaged in agricultural labor when not
attending church, and the seventh day was still regarded as the Sabbath.
But steadily a change was effected. Those in holy office were forbidden to
pass judgment in any civil controversy on the Sunday. Soon after, all
persons, of whatever rank, were commanded to refrain from common labor, on
pain of a fine for freemen, and stripes in the case of servants. Later it
was decreed that rich men should be punished with the loss of half of
their estates; and finally, that if still obstinate they should be made
slaves. The lower classes were to suffer perpetual banishment.
Miracles also were called into requisition. Among other wonders it was
reported that as a husbandman who was about to plow his field on Sunday,
cleaned his plow with an iron, the iron stuck fast in his hand, and for
two years he carried it about with him, “to his exceeding great pain and
shame.”(1009)
Later, the pope gave directions that the parish priest should admonish the
violators of Sunday, and wish them to go to church and say their prayers,
lest they bring some great calamity on themselves and neighbors. An
ecclesiastical council brought forward the argument, since so widely
employed, even by Protestants, that because persons had been struck by
lightning while laboring on Sunday, it must be the Sabbath. “It is
apparent,” said the prelates, “how high the displeasure of God was upon
their neglect of this day.” An appeal was then made that priests and
ministers, kings and princes, and all faithful people, “use their utmost
endeavors and care that the day be restored to its honor, and, for the
credit of Christianity, more devoutly observed for the time to
come.”(1010)
The decrees of councils proving insufficient, the secular authorities were
besought to issue an edict that would strike terror to the hearts of the
people, and force them to refrain from labor on the Sunday. At a synod
held in Rome, all previous decisions were reaffirmed with greater force
and solemnity. They were also incorporated into the ecclesiastical law,
and enforced by the civil authorities throughout nearly all
Christendom.(1011)
Still the absence of scriptural authority for Sunday-keeping occasioned no
little embarrassment. The people questioned the right of their teachers to
set aside the positive declaration of Jehovah, “The seventh day is the
Sabbath of the Lord thy God,” in order to honor the day of the sun. To
supply the lack of Bible testimony, other expedients were necessary. A
zealous advocate of Sunday, who about the close of the twelfth century
visited the churches of England, was resisted by faithful witnesses for
the truth; and so fruitless were his efforts that he departed from the
country for a season, and cast about him for some means to enforce his
teachings. When he returned, the lack was supplied, and in his
after-labors he met with greater success. He brought with him a roll
purporting to be from God Himself, which contained the needed command for
Sunday observance, with awful threats to terrify the disobedient. This
precious document—as base a counterfeit as the institution it
supported—was said to have fallen from heaven, and to have been found in
Jerusalem, upon the altar of St. Simeon, in Golgotha. But in fact, the
pontifical palace at Rome was the source whence it proceeded. Frauds and
forgeries to advance the power and prosperity of the church have in all
ages been esteemed lawful by the papal hierarchy.
The roll forbade labor from the ninth hour, three o’clock, on Saturday
afternoon, till sunrise on Monday; and its authority was declared to be
confirmed by many miracles. It was reported that persons laboring beyond
the appointed hour were stricken with paralysis. A miller who attempted to
grind his corn, saw, instead of flour, a torrent of blood come forth, and
the mill-wheel stood still, notwithstanding the strong rush of the water.
A woman who placed dough in the oven, found it raw when taken out, though
the oven was very hot. Another who had dough prepared for baking at the
ninth hour, but determined to set it aside till Monday, found, the next
day, that it had been made into loaves and baked by divine power. A man
who baked bread after the ninth hour on Saturday, found, when he broke it
the next morning, that blood started therefrom. By such absurd and
superstitious fabrications did the advocates of Sunday endeavor to
establish its sacredness.(1012)
In Scotland, as in England, a greater regard for Sunday was secured by
uniting with it a portion of the ancient Sabbath. But the time required to
be kept holy varied. An edict from the king of Scotland declared that
“Saturday from twelve at noon ought to be accounted holy,” and that no
man, from that time till Monday morning, should engage in worldly
business.(1013)
But notwithstanding all the efforts to establish Sunday sacredness,
papists themselves publicly confessed the divine authority of the Sabbath,
and the human origin of the institution by which it had been supplanted.
In the sixteenth century a papal council plainly declared: “Let all
Christians remember that the seventh day was consecrated by God, and hath
been received and observed, not only by the Jews, but by all others who
pretend to worship God; though we Christians have changed their Sabbath
into the Lord’s day.”(1014) Those who were tampering with the divine law
were not ignorant of the character of their work. They were deliberately
setting themselves above God.