Liberty of Conscience Threatened
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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 the 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
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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, mani-
fested 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