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260
The Story of Redemption
vice of the pretended representatives of Him who had not where to
lay His head.
The Scriptural ordinance of the Lord’s supper had been sup-
planted by the idolatrous sacrifice of the mass. Papist priests pre-
tended, by their senseless mummery, to convert the simple bread and
wine into the actual body and blood of Christ. With blasphemous
presumption they openly claimed the power to “create their Creator.”
All Christians were required, on pain of death, to avow their faith
in this horrible, Heaven-insulting heresy. Those who refused were
given to the flames.
The noontide of the Papacy was the world’s moral midnight. The
Holy Scriptures were almost unknown, not only to the people, but
to the priests. Like the Pharisees of old, the papist leaders hated
the light which would reveal their sins. God’s law, the standard of
righteousness, having been removed, they exercised power without
limit, and practiced vice without restraint. Fraud, avarice, and profli-
gacy prevailed. Men shrank from no crime by which they could gain
wealth or position. The palaces of popes and prelates were scenes
of the vilest debauchery. Some of the reigning pontiffs were guilty
of crimes so revolting that secular rulers endeavored to depose these
dignitaries of the church as monsters too vile to be tolerated upon
the throne. For centuries there was no progress in learning, arts,
or civilization. A moral and intellectual paralysis had fallen upon
Christendom.
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