Courting Rome by Christian Instructor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, Cal. · Jun 24, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 24.

Courting Rome.

By Christian Instructor

REV. JOHN MILLER, in the Independent, gives an account of an interview he had with Archbishop Corrigan, which is worthy of some attention. He tells how he sought an audience with the archbishop and was most graciously received; how he told the archbishop that the Catholic Church had been misrepresented by the reformers, and how Archbishop Corrigan had detained him after he came out, and what nice things were done and said. There must be something in these statements of special significance or they would not have been sent abroad. There is a method in it that is of ill omen. The manifest design is to soften down Protestant feeling against the Roman Catholic Church. The unsuspecting readers of the Independent will feel that if the high officials are such pleasant men, and talk so gently of Protestants, it cannot be that Rome is such an apostate from truth.

But facts are stubborn things. The character of Rome is written in blood for centuries. The way is stained all along with the blood of the saints of the most high God. Men of this generation do not know the half of her crimes. Of these she has never repented, for she glories in her unchangeableness. It is quite too late in the day to make believe that she is the tender and delicate lady that cannot see a lost one without feeling compassion for his soul—that she has no blood on her skirts, and that she would not persecute and destroy the children of God as before. It is time those who love liberty and truth should open their eyes to the somewhat systematic and frequent efforts of Protestant periodicals to lessen the just hatred that exists of Romish superstition. The results are already seen in many churches, in the adoption of her rites and modes, not in full but in a way that surely detracts from the spirituality of divine worship. The whole tendency of such writing and practice is to blind the eyes to the importance of maintaining Reformation principles.—Christian Instructor.