THE PAPACY STRENGTHENING HERSELF
By G. B. T.
Her Political Power in the United States — The Historian’s View of Her Character THAT the Roman Church is strengthening its hold in this country must be apparent to those who are observing the trend of things. Her subtle hand is seen everywhere. She controls to a great extent the plans and policies of municipalities and states throughout the nation. This great religio-political machine largely controls the elections in cities, states, and the nation itself. What political party could hope to triumph that showed itself unfriendly to the interests of that influential church? The sad part is, Protestantism is ceasing to protest. This is no time for her to fold her arms and take things easy. True to her name, she should protest against the domination and aggressions of Romanism. Rome never changes. What she was in the days of Luther she is to-day. The trenchant pen of the famous historian of the Reformation, Wylie, in a few paragraphs sets forth the true character of this ecclesiastical system in the following forceful words: “The papacy is a new Babel, in which the old redoubtable idolatries are the builders. It is a spiritual pantheon, in which the local and vagrant superstitions find again a center and a home. It is a grand mausoleum, in which the corpses of defunct paganisms, like the mummied monks of Kreutzberg, are laid out in ghastly pomp, while their disembodied spirits still live in the papacy, and govern the world from their grave. Analyze popery, and you will find all these ancient systems existing in it. The Magian philosophy flourishes anew under the monastic system; for in the conventual life of Rome we find the contemplative moods and the ascetic habits which so largely prevailed in Egypt and over all the East; and here, too, we find the fundamental principle of that philosophy, namely, that the flesh is the seat of evil, and, consequently, that it becomes a duty to weaken and mortify the body. In popery we find the predominating traits of the Grecian philosophy, more especially in the subtle casuistry of the popish schools, combined with a sensuous ritual, the celebration of which is often accompanied, as in Greece of old, with gross licentiousness. And last of all, there is palpably present in popery the polytheism of ancient Rome, in the gods and goddesses which, under the title of saints, fill up the calendar and crowd the temples of the Romish church. Here, then, all the old idolatries live over again. There is nothing new about them but the organization, which is more perfect and complete than ever. . . .” “Popery, then, we hold to be an aftergrowth of paganism, whose deadly wound, dealt by the spiritual sword of Christianity, was healed. Its oracles had been silenced, its shrines demolished, and its gods consigned to oblivion; but the deep corruption of the human race, not yet cured by the promised effusion of the Spirit upon all flesh, revived it anew, and, under a Christian mask, reared other temples in its honor, built it another pantheon, and replenished it with other gods, which, in fact, were but the ancient divinities under new names. All idolatries, in whatever age or country they have existed, are to be viewed but as successive developments of the one grand apostasy. That apostasy was commenced in Eden, and consummated at Rome. It had its rise in the plucking of the forbidden fruit; and it attained its acme in the supremacy of the bishop of Rome,—‘Christ’s vicar on earth.’ . . .” “Popery is the last, the most matured, the most subtle, the most skillfully contrived, and the most essentially diabolical form of idolatry which the world ever saw, or which, there is reason to believe, it ever will see. It is the ne plus ultra of man’s wickedness,107and the chef-d’œuvre of Satan’s cunning and malignity. It is the greatest calamity, next to the fall, which ever befell the human family. Farther away from God the world could not exist at all. The cement that holds society together, already greatly weakened, would be altogether destroyed, and the social fabric would instantly fall in ruins.” “It follows from the principles taught in this chapter, that the Church (so called) of Rome has no right to rank amongst Christian churches. She is not a church, neither is her religion the Christian religion. We are accustomed to speak of popery as a corrupt form of Christianity. We concede too much. The Church of Rome bears the same relation to the church of Christ which the hierarchy of Baal bore to the institute of Moses; and popery stands related to Christianity only in the same way in which paganism stood related to primeval revelation. Popery is not a corruption simply, but a transformation. It may be difficult to fix the time when it passed from the one into the other; but the change is incontestable. Popery is the gospel trans-substantiated into the flesh and blood of paganism, under a few of the accidents of Christianity.”—“The Papacy,” by Wylie, pages 11-14. Romanism is becoming bolder in her claims and assumptions. Stung by the exposure of her unscriptural claims and gross corruptions, she is seeking to have laws enacted by the national Congress which will exclude from the mails any books, pamphlets, and periodicals that tell the truth concerning this false system of religion. Bills which, if passed, would give the postmaster-general such power, are now pending in Congress. The liberties vouchsafed to us by our national constitution are jeopardized by this foe of liberty and progress. It is time that Protestant America awake to her dangers, lest all that we hold dearest as a nation expire in a convulsion. G. B. T.