THEY FEEL IT by Uriah Smith

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 19, 1877

THEY FEEL IT.

By Uriah Smith

The humiliation which has come upon the papacy in these later years, Roman Catholics are not able to bear with any becoming grace. The prophet asserted that they should take away his dominion (the papal dominion) to consume and destroy it unto the end. We live in the time when this is being fulfilled, and the old harlot and all her followers are writhing under the infliction. This is shown by the following amiable (?) language in reference to the occupation of Rome by Victor Emanuel, taken from the address of Father Burke to the great meetings lately held in Limerick and Kilkenny, in honor of the pope’s jubilee:—

“There is a man in Rome, in the Quirinal Palace, in the pope’s own chambers, who entered into those chambers and took possession of the old pontiff’s house by breaking his word. [Hear, hear.] By forging his own name in contradiction of the signature of that treaty of September, by which he swore before God and before Europe that he would respect the pope, the pope’s office, the pope’s independence, and the papal sovereignty. [Cheers.] He came into the city of Rome where he had no right to come. He came into the city of Rome where he said he would never come. He came into the city of Rome not only as a thief, but also as a perjurer. He came into the city of Rome not only as a thief stealing in, but as a burglar—a burglar. [Hear, hear.] Instead of his picklock and crowbar he had his great cannon, thundering at the walls, and breaking down those barriers that in their solemn and almost helpless antiquity were far stronger in their representation of the barrier of right and justice against wrong and injustice, than in the mere material strength they opposed to his force.

“He came in a manner befitting him. He came in over the walls battered down in defiance of every principle that even modern civilization has acknowledged to be the governing power of nations. He came in and stole the bishop’s house—he stole his property, he plundered the churches, he robbed the monasteries, and he drove out the poor nuns upon three and four-pence a day to starve—ladies who had brought their dowries with them—and he took their fortunes and put them into his pocket, but he is not a bit the better for it to-day. But, my friends, although we sympathize with our Holy Father for that plunder, that violence, that rapine, that robbery—although we sympathize with him deeply, because the hand of the infamous, perjured burglar is at the old man’s throat, we sympathize with him far more deeply in this, that the scoundrel—for I can call him no other name—the scoundrel who took the man’s house, the ruffian who broke into the man’s city is not content with this—he must rob him of his independent intercourse with his children.”

U. S.