Arrogance of Popery by J. N. Loughborough

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Sep 23, 1875

Arrogance of Popery.

By J. N. Loughborough

PAUL’s statement concerning this power was, “He opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God.” Statements from popes, cardinals, and priests, serve to illustrate how they have sought to exalt themselves, and to arrogate powers which God never gave them.

Pope Innocent III., who was pope from A. D. 1198 to A. D. 1216, says, “As kings and princes must submit themselves to the pope’s judgment, therefore all must be judged by the pope, but he can be judged by no man. Though by his negligence or evil actions, he should draw with him innumerable souls to hell, yet no mortal may be so presumptuous as to reprove him, or to say, Why do you thus ?”

In the Decretalia — second part of the canon law — and this Decretalia each pope declares to be true, we read of the pope: “The whole world is to be taken for his diocese. He can turn a square into a circle, wrong into right, and can make something out of nothing. He can pronounce sentences and judgments in contradiction to the right of nations, to the law of God and man — sentences, however absolute, yet always just. He can free himself from the commandments of the apostles, he being their superior; even from the rules of the Old-Testament age, even from the proscriptions contained in the gospel. For the ‘will’ of the pope is the rule laid down for the administration of justice. What he does is considered by God as being well done. He sits in one consistory with God, and shares the same judicial school with Christ. The pope is God’s equal, except in sin; so that in cases where he changes his mind, it should be understood as if God himself had changed his mind. From the pope there exists no appeal to God, because he himself is God upon earth, and therefore judges like God.

“The pope has power to change times, to abrogate laws, and to dispense with all things, even the precepts of Christ.” —Decretal de Translat. Episcop.

The testimony of these decretals prepares the way for those who receive the pope’s word as infallible to explain all the contradictions that may exist between the doctrines of the Roman Catholic church and the Bible, as well as those discrepancies that may be found on comparing the sayings of different popes, and, in some instances, the yea and nay of the same pope. The explanation is on this wise: First, they claim that they have a right to differ from the Bible, because, as the pope is equal with God, he is above the Bible, and has a right to dispense with its teachings. In the second place, if the pope changes his mind, it is to be understood that it is only because “God,” (who “changeth not”) has changed. What blasphemy! A poor mortal changing the doctrines of the Bible, setting aside God’s laws, and trying to hide his iniquity by saying, “God has changed his mind.” It seems to me that this testimony in the decretals is fatal to themselves, and that it marks their church with certainty as an apostate church, and as the blasphemous little horn of Dan. 7:25.

Isaiah gives us a rule by which to try false spirits: “If they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.” Isaiah 8:20. The decretals, not only admit that the popes in many things differ from the Bible — a matter very apparent to those who compare papal doctrines with the Bible — but decretals claim a right for the popes, not only to differ from the Bible, but to even dispense with the precepts of the Bible, thus speaking contrary to its teachings, and branding themselves as false prophets.

The testimony respecting the little horn is, “He shall think to change times and laws.” Decretals declare that “the pope has power to change times and to abrogate laws.” This they have attempted to do, in changing God’s ten commandments, as appears from their catechisms, especially those published in Catholic countries. In giving the ten commandments, they either leave out the second commandment entirely, or blend it with the first as one commandment, which in either case, changes the position and number of the commandments that follow, the fourth commandment becoming the third, the fifth, the fourth, and so on; and to make out the complete number of ten commandments, they divide the tenth commandment into two, thus giving us two commandments on covetousness, as follows: Ninth commandment, “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife.” Tenth, “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s goods.” The commandments are so found in the following eight catechisms used in Ireland: Three sizes of Butler’s Catechism, Abstract of the General Catechism, edited by the Christian Brothers, Catechism for the Archdiocese of Tuam, The Most Rev. Dr. Riley’s Catechism, Catechism for First Confession, Dr Cullen’s Catechism, Archbishop of Dublin, and Pope’s Legate, in Ireland.

In the two principal catechisms of England, “Abridgement of Christian Doctrine,” and “Abstract of the Donay Catechism,” the first and second commandments are blended as the first commandment. And so it is found in most of their American Catechisms, as in the Jesuit’s Catechism of F. X. Wexinger, of Cincinnati, Ohio.

The Italian Catechism of the Very Reverend Antonio Rosmini Serbati, D. D., Founder and General of the Institute of Charity, gives the commandments of the first table of the law thus: “1. I am the Lord thy God; thou shalt not have other gods before me. 2. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain. 3. Remember thou keep holy the days appointed.” —English Translation of Serbati’s Italian Catechism, p. 33.

Serbati’s Catechism, published where and when the church could say what she pleased, not only obliterates the second commandment, but removes from the fourth commandment all idea of a Sabbath; for, in the eyes of a good papist, “the days appointed” may refer simply to those days appointed by the Romish church, as Good Friday, Holy Thursday, Ash Wednesday, &c.

Papists claim that they do not worship images, but that they have them merely to enliven their devotion for the beings that the images represent. It seems, however, that there was a great controversy over their introduction into the church, both in the fourth and eighth centuries. Epiphanius, Bishop of Salamis, at the close of the fourth century, finding a painted image of Christ in a church where he went to pray, tore it, and ordered it wrapped around a poor dead man and buried with him. Thus he showed his indignation against image worship.

A Catholic historian, De Cormenin, says of the Catholic church: “They worshiped images, even in the eighth century. . . . . This adoration, which the court of Rome encouraged constituted a true idolatry, which had been severely proscribed by the founders of Christianity and the fathers of the first ages of the Church.” —De Cormenin, vol. i., p. 206.

If they have no worship for their images, nor consider that there is any virtue in them, how is it that they treat us to the relation of so many miracles accomplished by them? The Holy Bambino at Rome, which is an image of the infant Jesus, magnificently dressed and adorned with costly jewels, is sent for by those who are sick, who can afford to pay for it, and the papists claim that many and marvelous (?) cures are accomplished by it.

Gavazzi, who was once an Italian priest, a chaplain in the Roman army, and who was exiled in 1848 for taking part in the Italian cause, says: “At Rome, in the Franciscan convent of the Aracocli, is a little baby which on Christmas eve was brought by an angel to St. Francis, of Assissi. . . . . It has powers so miraculous that the Franciscans bring it about to sick persons to heal them. . . . It is so ugly, being more like a monkey or a baboon than a baby, that we must say the angels in Heaven are very bad sculptors. . . . The pope himself often sends for ‘the little physician’ as it is called, to help him to recover his health. The devotion, especially of the Roman ladies, to this little wooden image is shown by the presents with which they have loaded it; rich dresses, gold, pearls, rubies, diamonds, and all kinds of gems. It is worshiped more intensely and publicly than the consecrated wafer. When Christ, in the sacrament, passes through the streets, many pay little or no attention; but when the angelic monkey is carried in a rich carriage, they bow and kneel, hat in hand, before it.” —Gavazzi’s New York Lectures, p 348.

The papists are not satisfied with claiming that they can change God’s times, they assert that they actually have done it. They set up the claim that they have changed the Sabbath of God’s law from the seventh day, the day on which God appointed it, to the first day of the week, the day anciently consecrated by the pagans to the sun and its worship. They claim that this change in the Sabbath institution was accomplished by the power of their church.

We will simply say here, We have seen already that they have made, or attempted to make, changes in the decalogue. The prediction concerning them was that they should “think to change [God’s] times.” We are sure, however, that their claim stands relative to the Sabbath, and that they have changed in their practice the sacrament of the Lord’s supper from the form in which Christ instituted it, so that, instead of giving to the believer the bread and wine, the priest drinks all the wine, and gives the communicant a wafer, and tells him that is the actual body and blood of Jesus Christ with soul and divinity, and that each consecrated wafer is a complete and whole Christ.

J. N. LOUGHBOROUGH.