The Sovereign Pontiff, and the Church of Rome.
By Gaussen
They Vindicate the Truth by Fulfilling the Prophecies.
A DISCOURSE DELIVERED BY PROF. GAUSSEN, AT THE RE-OPENING OF THE SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY AT GENEVA, OCTOBER 3, 1843. Eleventh mark. ITS BLASPHEMIES. Daniel says (verse 25): He shall utter blasphemies against the Most High. But where is there anything more blasphemous than the pretensions of the Roman pontiff? To call himself "the Holy Father!" "the most Holy Father!" "the Church's spouse!" "the head of the Universal Church!" (the incommunicable name of the only Son of God!) To call himself "His Holiness!" "the vicar of Jesus Christ, God's vicegerent, God on earth!" To declare himself infallible, to dare to put his decrees above even the word of God; to pretend to release men from the commands of their Creator! To maintain that he alone creates priests, who alone in their turn create their God in a bit of bread, by three Latin words, that he may be eaten by the people! to pardon sins committed against the Lord of lords! to open to men at his pleasure the gates of heaven! Are these blasphemies enough, on the part of a worm of the dust? Was there ever under heaven any power which, in this respect, is comparable to the pope? Do you find anything like it in the history of the folly and pride of man? And to assume these prerogatives, when it is known (and all the world agrees) that the priests capable of this audacity were, for the most part, for many generations, the scandal of the universe, by their luxury, their dissoluteness and their cruelties! Twelfth mark. HIS HOMICIDAL HATRED and his persecution of TRUE CHRISTIANS. Daniel tells us (verse 21): I considered that this little horn made war against the saints and overcame them: and he adds (verse 25): He shall destroy the saints of the Most High! Alas! here the voice of history responds loudly to that of prophecy. All its pages, even to the last century, when it speaks of the popes, shows you them persecuting men who would live according to the word of God, and putting them to death like sheep for the slaughter. Who may tell what passed for six hundred years in all the dungeons and autodafes of the "Holy Inquisition" that horrid tribunal, whose acts for these six hundred years were directed and regulated by the bulls of the Court of Rome? Other earthly governments have caused men to die by thousands (for the natural man has feet swift to shed blood); but the pontiff of Rome has put to death the saints. His decrees cursed and condemned to the flames every man caught reading his Bible in the vulgar tongue. And remark here that it would serve nothing to weaken the testimony of history in this designation of the Roman pontiffs to allege the cruelties committed elsewhere for the cause of religion. These cruelties are disavowed, they are condemned, they are detested now, in all other communions; but it cannot be so in that of the pope; for they are not only narrated in history, they are part of the doctrines of popery! The duty of putting heretics to death is among the infallible and irrevocable decrees of its general councils, like those of the Mass and Purgatory; and when Luther dared to say that "it was against the will of the Holy Spirit, to burn with fire men convicted of error," the court of Rome, in its bull Exsurge, placed his opinion among the number of the forty-one propositions for which it condemned Luther, and ordered, under severe penalties, that he should be seized and sent to the pope. Thirteenth mark. HIS AUDACIOUS HERESIES. This perhaps is the most striking mark of all, and in which the Roman pontiff has never had his equal. Daniel says of the little horn: a king diverse from the other ten, shall think to change times and laws. This denotes the unparalleled attempt which the pope has made upon the laws of his God; pretended to change the law in its sovereignty, in its sanction, in the extent of its promulgation, in its contents, in its morals, and in its doctrine. I say in its sovereignty; he alone on earth, proclaiming himself infallible, has dared to put his decrees and his traditions on a level and above the Scriptures. I say in its sanction; he alone on earth, has pretended to pardon the sins which the law condemns and to dispense from the duties which the law commands. I say in the extent of its promulgation; he alone on earth, for six hundred and fourteen years, (I mean to say, since the council of Trent in 1229), has forbidden the people of God to read the holy books. Never was anything like it seen in Christendom. The churches of the East, corrupt as they are, have enthroned the Scriptures in all their councils; the pope is the only priest who has dared publicly to withhold from man the law of his Judge and his God. I say in its contents; he alone on earth has added to the oracles of the Old Testament, (for example, the Maccabees, regarded as human compositions in the time of Jesus Christ). I say in its morals; read what the Jesuits propagate; read the directions given, this very year, to the confessors at Friburg, Grenoble, Strasburg, and in all popish countries; read the three hundred and twenty-six authors of the society of Jesuits, which were condemned in the last century by the tribunals of all Europe as encouraging every sort of crime, and which the parliament of Paris caused to be burnt in 1762 by the public executioner. All these abominations are allowed, recommended, sanctioned by the Roman pontiff; by his formal restoration of the order of Jesuits in 1814; by Pius VII's beatification of the Jesuit Liguori, the great advocate of the immoralities of probabilism, and by his more recent pompous canonization under the reigning pope, who thus canonized the detestable maxims exposed in vain by Pascal, two hundred years ago, and burnt in vain by the executioner of Paris, eighty years ago (on "mental reservation," on "probabilism" and on "philosophical sins"). I say, lastly, in its doctrine; since he avows, by his plenary authority, heresies most opposite to the word of God, respecting image worship, exaltation of the priests, compulsory celibacy, auricular confession, an ecclesiastical priesthood, and a sacrifice in the mass; respecting prayers to the dead, the use of an unknown tongue in worship, the adoration of Mary, relics, purgatory, the universal dominion of the pope; but especially (mark this well) by his professing precisely the four doctrines which Paul points out as the mark of the Man of Sin; 1. lying wonders; 2. the worship of demi-gods, or deified dead men, which were worshiped by the Romans and Greeks under the name of demons; 3. the doctrine of ecclesiastical celibacy; 4. the prohibition of meats. Read the words of Paul (1 Tim. 4:1, 3): "The spirit speaketh expressly (he refers to Daniel) that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils, speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their conscience seared with a hot iron, forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth." Fourteenth and last mark. THE EXACT DURATION of his persecutions against the people of God. Daniel and John declare several times that it shall be "until a time, times and a dividing of time," or twelve hundred and sixty prophetic days, which are taken, with strong reason, for so many years. Who would have believed beforehand that a priest-king so violent, so proud, so cruel, so blasphemous, so contrary to the Scriptures and so well described by them, so outrageous against nations and kings, would last twelve years? and the Holy Spirit tells us that it shall twelve hundred and sixty! and this is seen to be so! I will not attempt gentlemen, to tell you any of the calculations which have been made upon the beginning and end of this period; but I will ask you to admire this fourteenth prophetic mark of the Roman pontiff, as all the rest ought to be admired. Lastly, gentlemen, the same prophecies have also foretold its judgment and its overthrow. I do not mean to go into this subject; but I like to call it to your minds in conclusion, for your encouragement. Read the words of Daniel: "The judgment shall sit, and they take away his dominion, to consume and destroy it unto the end. And the kingdom and dominion and the greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High, whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey him." Gentlemen, this sketch of the single seventh chapter of Daniel will suffice, I trust, to let you see with what abundant evidence the Scriptures establish the doctrine which I desire to bring before you. Still brighter light beams from the prophecies of Paul and John on the same subject. I will return to them another day. But what is the conclusion from the whole? 1. That our fathers were right, when they inserted this doctrine in the confession of faith. 2. That you ought, in your turn, to study it carefully, in order to be able to preach it. 3. That it is not only a weapon of controversy, but that it contains for the pious mind great consolation. The pope here preaches Christ to us; since at the end of the reign of the Man of Sin, the Scriptures always point us to that of our Redeemer, his glorious coming, our gathering together unto him (2 Thess. 2:1), the blessed millennium and the reign of the saints. 4. That nothing is so mighty as this doctrine for directly combating Rome. Just as we lose time, if in preaching Jesus, we content ourselves with describing his virtues instead of saying: He is the Christ! So we lose much time, if in refuting the pope, we content ourselves with showing his heresies and his crimes, instead of saying, He is the Man of Sin! 5. That the preaching of this truth becomes very useful for establishing of Christians in the faith. Ordinarily, in the popish controversy, you do nothing but demolish; you overthrow, it is true, the mass, purgatory, indulgences; this is well, but this is all. Here, we preach the divinity of the Bible; for, in pointing to the pope, we point to a miracle, which calls upon us to believe the Bible! Considered in this view, the obduracy of the Romanists, like the obduracy of the Jews, wonderfully instructs the church, because it has been foretold; and thus it is that this doctrine transforms for us the scandals of Rome into an eloquent argument. The sovereign pontiff and the Romish hierarchy become, in their way admirable supports of the truth. 6. That this is doctrine suited to awaken savingly men's consciences. How many men in our day, while witnessing the abominations of Rome seek to compound with this impure system, and remain quietly in Babylon, keeping free from its heresies, and spiritualizing its idolatrous rites. This doctrine calls to them: "Break, break, all the covenant with iniquity." "Come out of Babylon, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues." Rev. 17:4. 7. That by meditating upon the truth you will strengthen yourselves for your task; you will prepare yourselves for the perilous times which are at hand; you will hear the prophetic trumpet which sounds to encourage the sacred host of God; you will arm yourselves against persecution, if necessary, for martyrdom! No ordinary struggle is this of the evangelical Christian against the power to which the Scriptures have pointed for so many ages, and which his Master will destroy by the brightness of his coming! It is related that this thought gave strength to our reformers. It sustained the courage of Wickliff; it gave boldness to Luther; and the great Knox (as well as Hamilton, his young and noble predecessor), had it always before his eyes; it rendered him intrepid, it hardened his face like a flint before the angry looks of kings, and before the wrath of the people. 8. Lastly. By preaching this doctrine, you will rejoice the people of God; you will prepare them for the coming of their Redeemer; and you will call their attention to the scenes which are at hand; for Christians are described by these expressions. "They wait for Jesus Christ;" they "love his appearing;" they say to him, "Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom;" "ye come behind in no gift (says Paul the Corinthians, 1. Epist. 1:7, 8); waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, who shall also confirm you unto the end, that ye may be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ."