DRIFTING ROMEWARD

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Sep 18, 1893

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 19, No. 45.

DRIFTING ROMEWARD.

WHAT PROTESTANTS SAY.

ARCHDEACON FARRAR has told us that the Church of England is drifting Romeward. More recently Dr. R. F. Horton preached to his congregation in London, Eng., on the question, "Is Protestantism Decaying?" In his reply he said:—

The answer, if we are candid, if we are determined to face the simple facts in our country, is this: In England, for a time, it certainly is, not by the accession of large numbers at present to the Papal Church, but by the progress of the Catholic principle involving the Catholic claim in the Church of England itself. In many hundreds of parish churches in England to-day almost all the practices which occasioned the Reformation are restored. Prayers are addressed, at any rate in private, to the saints. The mass is a sacrifice again. Solemn strains of the Agnus Dei fill the atmosphere as the Lamb is offered on the altar by the sacrifice of the priest. The claims of the priesthood are identical with the claims of the Catholic priests of the sixteenth century. What is more painful to some of us is this, that when brave and strong men like the Archdeacon of London and the Archdeacon of Westminster, who cherish the principles of the Reformation, attempt to rouse their church to a sense of its condition, they are denounced, not by Rome, but by England, by the papers of the English Church, as if they were traitors to religion.

But it is not in the Church of England alone, or in England, that the drift is Romeward. In free America there are the most indubitable evidences that the great Protestant churches, so called, are in the drift. Their increased observance of the Lenten season, of Easter, of Good Friday, and other various church days, have for years shown the tendency toward Rome. The decided adoption of Sunday for the Sabbath of the Lord in the place of the seventh day of the Decalogue, directly contrary to the uniform and clearest testimony of Scripture, shows that the Protestant churches have departed from the principles of Protestantism to the principles of the Papacy. Says Dowling in "History of Romanism" (book 2, chapter 1):—

"THE BIBLE, I SAY, THE BIBLE ONLY, IS THE RELIGION OF PROTESTANTS!" Nor is it of any account in the estimation of the genuine Protestant how early a doctrine originated if it is not found in the Bible. . . . "THE BIBLE, AND THE BIBLE ONLY, can admit no doctrine upon the authority of tradition." . . . He who receives a single doctrine upon the mere authority of tradition, let him be called by what name he will, by so doing steps down from the Protestant rock, passes over the line which separates Protestantism from Papacy, and can give no valid reason why he should not receive all the earlier doctrines and ceremonies of Romanism upon the same authority.

But this is just what Protestants have done in this very generation. While the Sabbath question was not agitated, it was not investigated, and the major part of the church believed that the word of God was the authority for Sunday substitution and observance; but now that the question has been and is agitated, and the church has found out that there is no ground for Sunday sacredness in God's word, she stands culpable, for, as Sir Wm. Domville says:—

Not any ecclesiastical writer of the first three centuries attributed the origin of Sunday observance either to Christ or his apostles.—Examination of the Six Texts, Supplement, pp. 6, 7.

Chambers' Encyclopedia (article "Sabbath") declares:—

By none of the fathers before the fourth century is it [the first day of the week] identified with the Sabbath; nor is the duty of observing it grounded by them either on the fourth commandment or on the precept or example of Jesus or his apostles.

Neander, the great church historian, writes:

The festival Sunday, like all other festivals, was always only a human ordinance; and it was far from the intention of the apostles to establish a divine command in this respect,—far from them, and from the early apostolic church, to transfer the laws of the Sabbath to Sunday.—Church History, Rose's Translation, p. 168.

The Augsburg Confession, drawn up by Melancthon, states:—

The observance of the Lord's day [Sunday] is founded not on any command of God, but on the authority of the church.—Cox' Sabbath Manual, part 2, sec. 10.

Lyman Abbott, editor of the Christian Union (now The Outlook), says in that paper of January 19, 1882:—

The current notion that Christ and his apostles authoritatively substituted the first day for the seventh is absolutely without any authority in the New Testament.

The Christian at Work, of January 8, 1885, declares:—

The selection of Sunday, thus changing the particular day designated in the fourth commandment, was brought about by the gradual concurrence of the early Christian church, and on this basis, and none other, does the Christian sabbath, the first day of the week, rightly rest.

Rev. Geo. S. Mott, D.D., president of the American Sabbath Union, says, "We admit there is no such [divine] command" for Sunday observance.

We might quote more. The above quotations state the simple truth. The Protestant churches have therefore stepped down from the Protestant rock, "the Bible and the Bible only," have accepted tradition, and can give no logical reason why they should not accept every other heresy of the Roman Church on the same authority.

Further, Protestants have taken the next logical step Romeward. As the early church departed from God's word and adopted for the word of God the teaching of men, she could not claim the power of God's Spirit to reach hearts and "persuade" men to accept her teaching; and, therefore, she laid hold of civil power and endeavored to force men's consciences. Out of this principle, which was a logical outgrowth of departing from the word of God, grew the Papacy and the Dark Ages. Protestantism is doing the same thing. Not having God's word for Sunday, she cannot claim or obtain his Spirit to awaken conscience and persuade hearts to observe it, and therefore she is laying hold of civil law, the power of man, to enforce the traditions of men. Thus are the Protestant churches, so called, not only drifting Romeward, but, inasmuch as they have committed themselves to these principles of Rome, they have become Romanized. It is not name which makes the character, it is principle. And "Protestantism" has adopted the principles of Romanism. By the adoption of these very principles the Protestant churches identify themselves with the great harlot Babylon. Would that they might be aroused! God's message to every honest soul is, "Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins." Rev. 18:3.