p. 55 | DECRETALIA by F. GUNNER

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 9, 1867

“DECRETALIA.”

By F. GUNNER

The Roman Decretalia is an authoritative work in Roman ecclesiastical law; the decretal epistles form the second part of the canon law. Each Pope, when invested with “the succession,” declares the Papal decretals to be true; hence, though the Popes be many members of one body or system, they assume to be one mind, or embodiment of the system they represent. No words could be more appropriately chosen to represent unity of system in successive “head centers,” than the words of God by St. Paul (2 Thess. ii, 3, 4)—“That man of Sin.” Read now and carefully preserve the following determination from the “decretalia,” furnished me by a British officer:

“The Pope is considered to be the Vicar of Christ, not only upon earth, in heaven, and hell, but also over the angels and over the evil spirits. He administers at the same time jurisdiction and power over all patriarchs, a greater one than that of all angels, even so that he can place the latter under his ban.

“The whole world is to be taken for his diocese. He can turn a square into a circle, wrong into right, and can make something out of nothing. He can pronounce sentences and judgments, in contradiction to the right of nations, to the law of God and man—sentences, however absolute yet always just. He can free himself from the commands of the apostles, he being their superior; and from the rules of the Old Testament, aye, even from the prescriptions contained in the gospel. For the “will” of the Pope is the rule laid down for the administration of justice. What he does is considered by God as being well done. HE SITS IN ONE CONSISTORY WITH GOD, and shares the same judicial stool with Christ. The Pope is GOD’S EQUAL, except in sin; so that in cases where he changes his mind, it should be understood as if God himself had changed his mind. From the Pope there exists no appeal to God, because HE HIMSELF IS GOD upon earth, and therefore JUDGES LIKE GOD.”

Can a Protestant Christian seriously ponder the above authoritative canonical sentences from the Latin of the Romish Decretalia, and then innocently deny what every pope allows to be true—viz.: “That he can create,” or make “something out of nothing;” that he can contradict; i. e., deny the law of God; and so, he “opposeth and exalteth himself” above the apostles, the Old Testament and Gospel, above Bible justice, prescriptions and commands, his “Will” being the supreme dictum over all the earth! Further, he says, I sit in one consistory with God; i. e., he sits in one council-house, spiritual assembly, temple, or ecclesiastical court and college, and he declares, “I share the same judicial stool with Christ;” i. e., his feet rest where Christ sits on a stool, and he further declares “he is God’s equal, except in sin;” i. e., God is more liable to sin than a blasphemous succession of Popes, and to cap the climax, he boldly claims, what many who ought to know better, disallow, that he is “above God,” changing the mind of God, just whenever he changes his own infallible mind! and God cannot reverse his Papal decrees, or even accept an appeal!! and, oh my soul, I shudder and deeply sigh as I rewrite his awful climacteric—where he swears, it is so, “because he himself is God upon earth, and therefore judges like God”! Surely we have exposed to view him who denies Christ in works and solemn words, and who denies God in his prerogatives and in his consistory or temple on earth. Ah, dear readers! the Pope beyond all doubt is “showing himself to be the ‘head center’ of Paul’s man of sin.”

Could we go to Rome, on the city gate we should read—“Paulus III. Pontifex Optimus Maximus, in terris Deus,” the meaning of which is, Paul III., High Priest, the best, the greatest, and GOD ON EARTH. Brethren! Brethren! beware for surely the popes know how to show their real claim in the assumption of spiritual powers, far better than any of ourselves.

F. GUNNER, in Advent Herald.