Era of Spiritual Darkness
45
the priests and prelates to whom he delegated authority. They were
taught that the pope was their earthly mediator and that none could
approach God except through him; and, further, that he stood in the
place of God to them and was therefore to be implicitly obeyed. A
deviation from his requirements was sufficient cause for the severest
punishment to be visited upon the bodies and souls of the offenders.
Thus the minds of the people were turned away from God to fallible,
erring, and cruel men, nay, more, to the prince of darkness himself,
who exercised his power through them. Sin was disguised in a garb
of sanctity. When the Scriptures are suppressed, and man comes to
regard himself as supreme, we need look only for fraud, deception,
and debasing iniquity. With the elevation of human laws and traditions
was manifest the corruption that ever results from setting aside the law
of God.
Those were days of peril for the church of Christ. The faithful
standard-bearers were few indeed. Though the truth was not left
without witnesses, yet at times it seemed that error and superstition
would wholly prevail, and true religion would be banished from the
earth. The gospel was lost sight of, but the forms of religion were
multiplied, and the people were burdened with rigorous exactions.
They were taught not only to look to the pope as their mediator, but
to trust to works of their own to atone for sin. Long pilgrimages, acts
of penance, the worship of relics, the erection of churches, shrines,
[56]
and altars, the payment of large sums to the church—these and many
similar acts were enjoined to appease the wrath of God or to secure
His favor; as if God were like men, to be angered at trifles, or pacified
by gifts or acts of penance!
Notwithstanding that vice prevailed, even among the leaders of
the Roman Church, her influence seemed steadily to increase. About
the close of the eighth century, papists put forth the claim that in the
first ages of the church the bishops of Rome had possessed the same
spiritual power which they now assumed. To establish this claim, some
means must be employed to give it a show of authority; and this was
readily suggested by the father of lies. Ancient writings were forged
by monks. Decrees of councils before unheard of were discovered,
establishing the universal supremacy of the pope from the earliest
times. And a church that had rejected the truth greedily accepted these
deceptions. (See Appendix.)