Basic HTML Version
38
The Spirit of Prophecy Volume 4
and future, and release from all the pains and penalties incurred,
were promised to all who would enlist in the pontiff’s wars to extend
his temporal dominion, to punish his enemies, or to exterminate
those who dared deny his spiritual supremacy. The people were also
taught that by the payment of money to the church they might free
themselves from sin, and also release the souls of their deceased
friends who were confined in the tormenting flames. By such means
did Rome fill her coffers, and sustain the magnificence, luxury, and
vice of the pretended representatives of Him who had not where to
lay his head.
The scriptural ordinance of the Lord’s supper had been sup-
planted by the idolatrous sacrifice of the mass. Papist priests pre-
tended, by their senseless mummery, to convert the simple bread and
wine into the actual body and blood of Christ. With blasphemous
presumption, they openly claimed the power to “create their Cre-
ator.” All Christians were required, on pain of death, to avow their
faith in this horrible, Heaven-insulting heresy. Those who refused
were given to the flames.
In the thirteenth century was established that most terrible of all
the engines of the papacy,—the Inquisition. The prince of darkness
wrought with the leaders of the papal hierarchy. In their secret
councils, Satan and his angels presided, while unseen in the midst
stood an angel of God, taking the fearful record of their iniquitous
decrees, and writing the history of deeds too horrible to appear to
human eyes. “Babylon the great” was “drunken with the blood of
[64]
the saints.” The mangled forms of millions of martyrs cried to God
for vengeance upon that apostate power.
Popery had become the world’s despot. Kings and emperors
bowed to the decrees of the Roman pontiff. The destinies of men,
both for time and for eternity, seemed under his control. For hundreds
of years the doctrines of Rome had been extensively and implicitly
received, its rites reverently performed, its festivals generally ob-
served. Its clergy were honored and liberally sustained. Never since
has the Roman Church attained to greater dignity, magnificence, and
power.
The noontide of the papacy was the world’s moral midnight. The
Holy Scriptures were almost unknown, not only to the people, but
to the priests. Like the Pharisees of old, the papist leaders hated