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From Here to Forever
The Thunder of Anathema
The anathemas of the pope thundered against Geneva. How was
this little city to resist the powerful hierarchy that had forced kings
and emperors to submission?
The first triumphs of the Reformation past, Rome summoned
new forces to accomplish its destruction. The order of the Jesuits
was created, the most cruel, unscrupulous, and powerful of all the
champions of popery. Dead to the claims of natural affection, and
conscience wholly silenced, they knew no rule, no tie, but that of
their order.
The gospel of Christ had enabled its adherents to endure suffer-
ing, undismayed by cold, hunger, toil, and poverty, to uphold truth
in face of the rack, the dungeon, and the stake. Jesuitism inspired its
followers with a fanaticism that enabled them to endure like dangers,
and to oppose to the power of truth all the weapons of deception.
There was no crime too great to commit, no deception too base
to practice, no disguise too difficult for them to assume. It was
their studied aim to overthrow Protestantism and reestablish papal
supremacy.
They wore a garb of sanctity, visiting prisons and hospitals,
ministering to the sick and the poor, and bearing the sacred name
of Jesus, who went about doing good. But under this blameless
exterior, criminal and deadly purposes were often concealed.
It was a fundamental principle of the order that the end justifies
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the means. Lying, theft, perjury, assassination, were commendable
when they served the interests of the church. Under disguise the
Jesuits worked their way into offices of state, climbing up to be the
counselors of kings and shaping the policy of nations. They became
servants to act as spies upon their masters. They established colleges
for princes and nobles, and schools for the common people. The
children of Protestant parents were drawn into an observance of
popish rites. Thus the liberty for which the fathers had toiled and
bled was betrayed by the sons. Wherever the Jesuits went, there
followed a revival of popery.
To give them greater power, a bull was issued reestablishing the
Inquisition. This terrible tribunal was again set up by popish rulers,
and atrocities too terrible to bear the light of day were repeated in its