Signs of the Times

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Sep 11, 1907

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 33, No. 37.

Signs of the Times

Religious Combinations

AMONG all the religious persecutions with which almost every page of modern history is stained, no victim ever suffered but for the violation of what government denominated the law of God. . . . Extensive religious combinations to effect a political object, are, in the opinion of the committee, always dangerous. . . . If admitted, it may be justly apprehended that the future measures of the government will be strongly marked, if not eventually controlled, by the same influence. All religious despotism commences by combination and influence, and, when that influence begins to operate upon the political institutions of a country, the civil power soon bends under it; and the catastrophe of other nations furnishes an awful warning of the consequence.

—United States Congress 1828-29.