Character and Aims of the Papacy
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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 Romish 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. 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, heartsickening form. To secure the favor of
Heaven, penitents violated the laws of God by violating the laws of
nature. They were taught to sunder every tie 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.
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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
these heavy burdens. All that he asks is a broken and contrite heart, a
humble, obedient spirit.