Untitled article by Robert Robinson

Pacific Press Publishing Company · New York · August 11, 1892

FromThe American Sentinel, Vol. 7, No. 31

Only an Engine of State.

By Robert Robinson

No instance can be produced of pure Christianity attempting to subvert civil government; on the contrary, it is intrusted with a conciliating plan of universal peace between secular and sacred things by Jesus Christ. The corrupters of Christianity deprived it of this noble plea; they bartered purity for power, exchanged argument for authority, and made scandalous truck of all the truths and virtues of religion for the seals of a prince and the keys of a gaol. They invented words of inexplicable mystery, and inflicted penalties upon those who could not interpret their dreams—they cast innumerable canons, and with these destroyed the lives and liberties and properties of their peaceable brethren—they armed priests with secular power, and covered the barbarous use of it with infinite pomp—they excited princes to hate, persecute, banish, and burn, their subjects for matters of conscience—they thought lay subjects beneath their notice, kings above law, and themselves above kings. To their conduct it is owing that most great men consider religion as nothing more than an engine of State.—Robert Robinson. 1823.