p. 45 | The Papacy

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 1, 1867

The Papacy.

In an article on “The Pope and his Territories,” the N. Y. Tribune of Dec. 21, says:—

“We are far from believing, however, that the downfall of the Papal civil power is to be the downfall of the Roman Catholic religion. On the contrary, we have little doubt that out of her worldly losses the Church will reap spiritual profit. She has never been so glorious as when she gathered together her children in the darkness of the Catacombs, gave up her ministers to be scourged, and burned, and torn by wild beasts, labored in poverty and disgrace, and imitated the divine Master who was despised of men, and had not where to lay his head. She is nowhere so prosperous to-day as in our own country, where the State gives her no help but an equal and just toleration. There is a contamination in the atmosphere of courts which always affects religion, and the corruption of politics spreads itself even to a State Church. Relieved from the incubus of an effete and odious political system, the Roman Catholic Church may be again in the future, as she has sometimes been in the past, a leader and guide of the people in some of their noblest aspirations.”