Untitled article

Pacific Press Publishing Company · New York · December 8, 1892

FromThe American Sentinel, Vol. 7, No. 48

Nor only is this evident from what has already been said, but this same thing has been worked out once in history, for the instruction of all people and nations, showing clearly enough just what the result must be. In the original apostasy, the Church succeeded in joining herself to the State, promising like this to save the State. The means then employed by Constantine and the bishops, in establishing the “Christian” religion and making that a “Christian State” were the same as now employed here, and were such as to win only hypocrites. This was bad enough in itself, yet the hypocrisy was voluntary; but when through the agency of the Sunday laws the Church then, as now, secured control of the civil power to compel all who were not church-members to act as though they were, hypocrisy was made compulsory; and everybody who was not voluntarily a church-member and a hypocrite, was compelled either to be a hypocrite, anyhow, or a rebel. And as in addition to this, all were required to change or revise their faith according as the majority in the councils changed and decreed; all moral and spiritual integrity was destroyed. Hypocrisy became a habit; dissimulation and fraud became a necessity of life; and the very moral fiber of men and society was vitiated.