Valuable Books | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Oct 1888

FromThe American Sentinel, Vol. 3, No. 10.

Valuable Books.

PROTESTANT theocratical ideas, or ideas favoring the union of Religion and the State, are gaining ground in this nation with dangerous rapidity. The bold encroachments of the Catholic Church, and the hardly less bold encroachments of the Protestant churches, upon the civil power in this country, are both movements which deserve the most careful watching. Books which throw light upon these questions make most important reading just now. It is therefore with pleasure that we call special attention to three books which should be diligently studied by all. The first is,

“THE PAPACY AND THE CIVIL POWER.”

This is a book written by Hon. R. W. Thompson, Secretary of the Navy under President Hayes’ administration. It consists of twenty-three chapters, on the claims, the teachings, and the history of the Papacy in its relation to the civil power, with an appendix containing “The Bishop’s Oath,” “The Third Article of the Pastoral Letter of the Second National Council of Baltimore,” “The Encyclical Letter of Pope Pius IX.,” and “The Syllabus of Pope Pius IX.” We have not space now for extracts; we can only say here that it is a perfect mine of invaluable information in regard to the meddling of the Papacy with the civil power, from the time of Constantine to this day, both in Europe and our own country. It has 750 well-printed pages, and is sold for $3.00, post-paid. Not a family in the land should be without it. Send for a copy, and read it, and you will say so too.

The next is,

“THE EMANCIPATION OF MASSACHUSETTS.”

This is a sketch of the establishment and working of the Puritan theocracy in Massachusetts, and her emancipation from it. It gives some—enough certainly—of the naked facts in regard to the cruel oppressions practiced by those who, to use Doctor Schaff’s expression, “came from Europe to seek freedom for themselves, and then inconsistently denied it to others, from fear of losing the monopoly.” Here, from original documents, is set down the record of some of the hideous enormities inflicted upon the Baptists, the Quakers, the witches, and other dissenters from the established religion, by the ruling preachers, to whom, says Bancroft, “in their self-righteousness, it never occurred that vanity and love of power had blinded their judgment.” From two or three statements it would seem that the author of the book is a skeptic, but that does not lessen the value of the facts which he sets forth. And just now, when the National Reform Association, aided by the Prohibition party and the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, is about to restore such a rule and make it national, and while a constitutional amendment to that effect is pending in the national Legislature, the important lesson to be derived from these facts should be fastened upon the mind of every person in the nation—the lesson that no ecclesiastics can ever safely be intrusted with the control of the civil power. The book has 382 pages, and will be sent post-paid for $1.50.

The third of these books is,

“CHURCH AND STATE IN THE UNITED STATES.”

This book is an enlargement of the inaugural address delivered by Philip Schaff at his induction into the professorship of church history in Union Theological Seminary, New York City. It states sound principles in regard to religious liberty, and the rights of conscience. It gives much valuable information upon the subject of the national and the State constitutions, and upon religious liberty in the countries of modern Europe. In discussing “The Nation and Christianity,” and “The Connecting Links between Church and State,” the author is inconsistent with the genuine principles which he lays down in the beginning of the book. Here he inculcates the idea that there is already in this nation a union of Church and State, while the object of the book at the beginning is to maintain the propriety of a separation between the Church and the State. The doctor, like thousands of others, is led into this inconsistency by the demand for Sunday laws. Anybody who studies the first parts of the book will have no difficulty in detecting the inconsistency of this part, nor will he find any difficulty in relegating it to that “limbo large and broad” to which it belongs. Yet even this part, inconsistent as it is, is not wholly without value, for it, with the judicial decisions accompanying it, serves most admirably to display the miserable sophistry under which even State Supreme Courts are willing to cloak Church and State ideas, and give Papal principles the sanction of the final judicial decisions in the highest courts of States, particularly New York and Pennsylvania. The book has 161 large pages, and will be sent post-paid for $1.50.

All these books are for sale by Pacific Press, Oakland, California. Address accordingly.