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From Here to Forever
resorted to practices no less cruel. Instruments of torture compelled
assent to her doctrines. Dignitaries of the church studied to invent
means to cause the greatest possible torture and not end the life
of those who would not concede to her claims. In many cases the
sufferer hailed death as a sweet release.
For Rome’s adherents she had the discipline of the scourge,
of hunger, of bodily austerities. To secure the favor of Heaven,
penitents were taught to sunder the ties which God has formed to
bless and gladden man’s earthly sojourn. The churchyard contains
millions of victims who spent their lives in vain endeavors to repress,
as offensive to God, every thought and feeling of sympathy with
their fellow creatures.
God lays upon men none of these heavy burdens. Christ gives
no example for men and women to shut themselves in monasteries
in order to become fitted for heaven. He has never taught that love
must be repressed.
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The pope claims to be the vicar of Christ. But was Christ ever
known to consign men to prison because they did not pay Him
homage as the King of heaven? Was His voice heard condemning to
death those who did not accept Him?
The Roman Church now presents a fair front to the world, cover-
ing with apologies her record of horrible cruelties. She has clothed
herself in Christlike garments, but she is unchanged. Every principle
of the papacy in past ages exists today. The doctrines devised in the
dark ages are still held. The papacy that Protestants now honor is
the same that ruled in the days of the Reformation, when men of
God stood up at the peril of their lives to expose her iniquity.
The papacy is just what prophecy declared that she would be, the
apostasy of the latter times. See
2 Thessalonians 2:3, 4
. Beneath the
variable appearance of the chameleon she conceals the invariable
venom of the serpent. Shall this power, whose record for a thousand
years is written in the blood of the saints, be now acknowledged as
a part of the church of Christ?
A Change in Protestantism
The claim has been put forth in Protestant countries that Catholi-
cism differs less from Protestantism than in former times. There