THE VICEGERENTS OF GOD by Percy T. Magan

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Mar 26, 1894

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 20, No. 21.

THE VICEGERENTS OF GOD

By Percy T. Magan

A REVIEW OF SUNDAY LEGISLATION IN CENTURY NINETEEN. NO. 16.

THE VICEGERENTS OF GOD.

It is one of the fundamental doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church that the Roman pontiff is the vicar of Christ upon earth. He is the head of the church, and defines the faith and the doctrines of the church. Now a man's faith can only be intelligently understood and judged by his life and his actions. If the latter are bad, his faith is a bad faith. His religion is a bad religion. I will therefore submit to the reader some incidents in the lives of some of the popes and priests of Rome, so that all who read may know something of the enormities of CHRIST'S INFALLIBLE VICARS!!! And if it can be shown that as a class for several centuries they were atrociously vile, it will most certainly logically follow that this fundamental doctrine of Rome is a false doctrine, and, hence, the religion of Rome a bad religion for any man to believe in.

Liberius, bishop of Rome, died in September, A.D. 366. The clergy and people of the city could not agree upon his successor. Two different parties elected two different aspirants for the holy office. The name of the one was Damasus; the other was called Ursinus. This double election gave rise to a dangerous schism, a kind of civil war within the walls of the city, which did not end without a great deal of bloodshed. I quote from Bower:—

By this double election the citizens of Rome saw themselves, before they were aware, involved in a civil war. The whole people were divided, some siding with Damasus, and some with Ursinus; and neither of the competitors showed the least inclination to yield to the other. No day passed without skirmishes and bloodshed. . . . The two authors I have often quoted write that both Juventus and Julian were bribed by Damasus, who, taking advantage of the absence of his competitor, armed his followers with clubs and swords, hoping thus to intimidate the friends of the exiled bishop, and bring them in the end to acknowledge him. Seven presbyters of the party of Ursinus were seized, at the request of Damasus, in order to be sent into exile, but rescued by the people of the same party, and carried in triumph to the Basilic of Liberius; which Damasus no sooner heard than, arming all his followers, both clergy and laymen, with clubs, swords, axes, etc., he marched at the head of the seditious and enraged multitude to the Basilic, which he and his partisans immediately invested, and attacked with the utmost fury. It was set on fire in several places; the doors were forced, the roof uncovered, and thence showers of tiles discharged on the people assembled there; great was the massacre; one hundred and sixty persons, men and women, were inhumanly murdered on the side of Ursinus, and a great many more wounded, some of whom died of their wounds. On the side of Damasus, not one single person was killed. This riot began on the 25th of October, 366, at eight in the morning.

Thus the above mentioned writer, Rufinus, writes in general terms that the illegal election of Ursinus, in opposition to Damasus, occasioned such a tumult, or rather civil war, among the people, some siding with the one and some with the other, that the places destined for prayer streamed with human blood.

And all of this headed by Catholic bishops fighting for holy office! How different was this to the fights in the Forum when Cæsar, Cicero, Piso, Bibulus & Co. contended for the first places in the Roman nation? They were precisely the same, and the streets of Rome ran blood in the days of Christian bishops, at their elections, as in the days of consuls, tribunes, and Cæsars.

The bloodthirstiness of these prelates was only exceeded by their luxury and extravagance. I will quote from Bower, who, himself once a papist of high station, was well qualified to speak:—

The heathen Marcellinus, after telling us that Damasus and Ursinus aspired with equal ambition to the episcopal chair, adds the famous remark, which I shall set down in his own words: "I must own," says he, "that when I reflect on the pomp attending that dignity, I do not at all wonder that those who are fond of show and parade should scold, quarrel, fight, and strain every nerve to attain it, since they are sure, if they succeed, to be enriched by the offerings of the ladies; to appear no more abroad on foot, but in stately chariots, and gorgeously attired; to keep costly and sumptuous tables, nay, and to surpass the emperors themselves in the splendor and magnificence of their entertainments."

. . . And that Damasus was fond of all that pomp, grandeur, and parade, that he had such a voluptuous life, as Ammianus here so justly censures and condemns in the bishops of Rome, is not to be doubted, since Prætextatus, a man of the first quality, honored with the greatest employments of the empire, and zealously attached to paganism, in conversing familiarly with him, used pleasantly to say, "Make me bishop of Rome and I'll immediately turn Christian."

But when ambition began to take the place of charity, the poor were forgotten, and nothing thought of but splendid equipages, numerous retinues, princely apparel, sumptuous tables, and whatever else could feed the vanity of these upstart princes [the bishops] and put them upon the level with the greatest monarchs. To such purposes were the oblations of the faithful perverted. Baronius [a Catholic historian] takes it very much amiss of Ammianus [a pagan] that he should find fault with the costly tables and entertainments of the popes, since it is manifest from St. Austin that the Christians of Rome, and no doubt the popes with the rest, kept a rigorous fast three days in the week; so that in his opinion they ought not to be blamed for rioting four days in the week, provided they fasted three.

All of this was bad enough; but things soon grew worse, till the emperors were obliged to enter upon a series of "class legislation" enactments to make the clergy behave themselves, for the persons and the properties of the people of Rome were in danger from the clergy.

In the reign of Valentinian—

the insatiable avarice of the Roman clergy, the mean and scandalous arts they were daily practicing to circumvent the orphans, plunder the widows, and rob the lawful heirs of their just inheritance, cried loudly for a reform, but were evils too strong for the curb of exhortation, admonition, or censures merely ecclesiastical; and Damasus himself was not quite free from imputations of this nature. It was therefore necessary that the secular power should interpose, in defense of the deluded laity, against the craft and rapines of the ravenous clergy. A law was accordingly enacted by the Emperor Valentinian in the year 370, addressed to Damasus, bishop of Rome, and read, on the 29th of July, in all the churches of that city, strictly forbidding the ecclesiastics and such of them as professed celibacy, meaning the monks, to visit the houses of orphans or widows, or to accept from those whom they attended under the veil of religion, anything whatsoever by way of donation, legacy, or profferment in trust. Whatever was thus given or accepted, is declared forfeited to the public treasury.

This law, taken in a literal sense, only forbids the ecclesiastics to accept of such donations as were made by the women whom they attended in spiritual matters as their guides or directors; but it was either understood and interpreted as extending to all donations from pious persons, or a new law was made at this time excluding the ecclesiastics from all such donations, as plainly appears from Jerome and Ambrose, of whom the former in one of his letters writes thus: "I am ashamed to say it, the priests of the idols, the stage-players, charioteers, are capable of inheriting estates, and receiving legacies; from this common privilege, clerks [priests] alone, and monks, are debarred by law; debarred, not under persecuting tyrants, but Christian princes. . . . From these testimonies it is manifest that, either by the above mentioned law, or some other published at this time, the ecclesiastics were restrained from receiving any donations or legacies whatever, by whomever bequeathed: and that such a law was absolutely necessary, is no less manifest from the unquestionable authority of Jerome, who lived at this very time in Rome, and describes as an eyewitness the arts that were practiced with great success by the Roman clergy to circumvent rich widows and old men. The clerks [clergy], says he, "who ought to instruct and awe the women with a grave and composed behavior, first kiss their heads, and then, stretching out their hand, as it were to bestow a blessing, slyly receive a fee for their salutation. The women, in the meantime, elated with pride in seeing themselves thus courted by the clergy, prefer the freedom of widowhood to the subjection attending the state of matrimony. Some of the clergy make it the whole business and employment of their lives to learn the names of the ladies, to find out their habitations, to study their humor. One of these [perhaps Antimus or Sophronius, two monkish harpies, of whom he speaks elsewhere] an adept in the art, rises with the sun, settles the order of his visits, acquaints himself with the shortest ways, and almost breaks into the rooms of the women before they are awake. If he sees any curious piece of household furniture, he extols, admires, and handles it; and, sighing that he too should stand in need of such trifles, in the end rather extorts it by force than obtains it by good will, the ladies being afraid to disobligate the prating old fellow that is always running from house to house." . . . To exaggerate the pretended hardship, they both [Jerome and Ambrose] observe that the pagan priests lay under no such restraints—an unseasonable observation, since it shows the difference between the pagan and Christian priesthood in a mortifying light. The former gave no occasion to such a law, their avarice wanted no such restraints; if it had, we may be sure that they met with no quarter from a Christian, nay, from an orthodox [Catholic] prince [Valentinian]; and if he had spared them, such partiality had not been tamely put up and passed over in silence, by the ecclesiastical writers of those times, namely by the two I have mentioned.

What could be worse than all of this? What could possibly show a more anarchical, licentious spirit than such deeds as these? And since the faith is to be judged and estimated by the deeds, what a fearful thing is the Roman Catholic creed! What an awfully wicked thing must this system be when such have been the crimes of its popes and priests! Well has God defined her "THE MYSTERY OF INIQUITY." The Revised Version of 2 Thess. 2:7 reads "THE MYSTERY OF LAWLESSNESS." And that is just what Papal Rome is as verily as Pagan Rome, and more so. The pontificate of Damasus was no worse than the pontificates of many other popes. Paul I. was made pope A.D. 757. When he died, some of the bishops elected his brother Constantine in his room. Other more legitimate electors, A.D. 768, elected Stephen IV. His party put Constantine's eyes out, amputated the tongue of Bishop Theodorus, threw him into a dungeon, where they left him to die of thirst. In 795 A.D. the relatives of Pope Adrian seized his successor, Pope Leo III., and attempted to put out his eyes and to tear out his tongue. Boniface VI. followed Formosus in 896 A.D. He was succeeded by Stephen VIII. This man disinterred the body of Formosus, clothed the corpse in the "papal habiliments," propped it up in a chair, tried it before a council of bishops, and, to complete the disgraceful fiasco, cut off three of the fingers, and threw the body into the Tiber. The revolting crimes of Sergius III., in connection with the far-famed courtesan Theodora, cannot be commented upon in decent print. Marozia, the daughter of Theodora, overthrew Pope John X. "She surprised him in the Lateran Palace, killed his brother Peter before his face, threw him into prison, where he soon died, smothered with a pillow." For a while this amorous woman controlled the papal see.

She made her own son pope, under name of John XI. Finally his son became pope; he was John XII. Nineteen years of age when he took the chair of St. Peter, he shocked the world to such an extent by his enormities that the emperor of Germany, Otho I., was obliged to take steps to make him behave himself. "A synod was summoned for his trial in the Church of St. Peter, before which it appeared that John had received bribes for the consecration of bishops, that he had ordained one who was but ten years old, and performed that ceremony over another in a stable." "All present" at the synod, "laymen as well as priests, cried out that he had drunk to the devil's health; that . . . he had invoked the help of Jupiter, Venus, and other demons." The bishops sent word to him to present himself before the council. Those who bore the message returned, saying they could not find him, that he had "gone out hunting." Next he sent an ultimatum to the bishops. Here it is:—

John the bishop, the servant of the servants of God, to all the bishops. We have heard tell that you wish to set up another pope; if you do this, by Almighty God, I excommunicate you, so that you may not have power to perform mass or to ordain no one.

Some venerable ecclesiastics ventured to remonstrate with him. To them he "threateningly remarked" "that Judas, as well as the other disciples, received from his Master the power of binding and loosing, but that as soon as he proved a traitor to the common cause, the only power that he retained was that of binding his own neck." At last they dismissed him from his office, Leo VIII. being elected in his stead, A.D. 963. But, the fortunes of John XII. reviving once more, he captured his rivals, chopped off the hand of one, the nose, finger, tongue of others. He finally met a violent end. Anti-pope John XVI. was so mean that the emperor Otho came down from Germany with an army, captured him, put out his eyes, cut off his nose and tongue, "and sent him through the streets mounted on an ass, with his face to the tail, and a wine bladder on his head."

But the worst of all was Benedict IX., made pontiff at the age of twelve, in 1033. A later pope, Victor III., said of him "that his life was so shameful, so foul, so execrable, that he shuddered to describe it. He ruled like a captain banditti, rather than a prelate. The people at last, unable to bear his adulteries, homicides, and abominations any longer, rose against him. In despair of maintaining his position, HE PUT UP THE PAPACY TO AUCTION." This was in 1045 A.D. Exactly 852 years before this the Roman Empire had been put up to auction by the Pretorian Guards. Therefore we may pertinently ask, How much better was the rule of the Papacy than the rule of the military monarchy? None—the crimes of the pontiffs prove them to be the most infamous set of rulers who have held sway in Europe; some of them were just as bad as the worst of the Cæsars—Nero, that monster of cruelty.

At one time there were two popes. Both were infallible, of course. Each designated the other as antichrist. Both made all Europe ring with their mutual invectives and anathemas. Rome cried out against the corruptions of Avignon; and Avignon, with equal justice, recriminated on Rome. The plain Christian people, brought up in the belief that it was a sacred duty to be in communion with the head of the church, were unable to discover, amidst conflicting testimonies and conflicting arguments, to which of the two worthless priests who were cursing and reviling each other, the headship of the church rightfully belonged.

The pope who was most nearly infallible, to our mind, was Adrian VI., elected to the pontificate in 1522. He was an austere Netherlander, a native of Utrecht, and had been a professor in the university at Louvain. The Italians always hated him; but the people of Holland were proud that their country had given one pope to the church. "Utrecht planted; Louvain watered; the emperor gave the increase," was the inscription written on the hangings suspended from the fronts of the houses. A wag wrote below the words, "And God had nothing to do with it." But we are inclined to think that God had as much to do with it, and a little more, than any of the rest of the papal elections.

Adrian wrote a book during his pontificate, in which he said, "It is certain that the pope may err in the matter of faith." We agree with Adrian, and incline toward the idea that this statement was as nearly infallible as anything a pope ever said; for the popes have proven themselves infallibly fallible.

I know of no better comment wherewith to close this biographical sketch of the popes than the words of Draper, to whose valuable research I am indebted for many facts contained in this paper:—

No one can study the development of the Italian ecclesiastical power without discovering how completely it depended on human agency, too often on human passion and intrigues; how completely wanting it was of any mark of the divine construction and care—the offspring of man, not of God, AND THEREFORE BEARING UPON IT THE LINEAMENTS OF HUMAN PASSIONS, HUMAN VIRTUES, AND HUMAN SINS.

Such is the history of the holy Roman Church, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS, AND THE MISTRESS OF THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT.