POPERY is but the church of Satan, and is a counterfeit church. We run our eye over it, and see how the form of the church of God has been copied, while the spirit is utterly extinguished and the end completely inverted. First of all, Satan's counterfeit church has its high priest, not to speak of its pontiff, who, like the great Druid of our ancestors, and the Pontifex Maximus of the Romans, stands at the top of the system. There is a body of men in the Church of Rome who profess to offer for the sins of the living and the dead, and to mediate between God and men in virtue of their powers as a priesthood. Second, this church has its great sacrifice—the mass, to wit. The worshiper is bidden look, not to the sacrifice on Calvary, but to the sacrifice on the altar, for the pardon of his sins and the salvation of his soul. Third, this church has its Bible—the traditions of the fathers, together with the canon law; the Canons of the Council of Trent occupy the place in the Church of Rome which the Scriptures do in the church of Christ. They are her rule of faith, and are held by her to be an infallible revelation of the will of God, and an infallible director of the conscience. Thus Christ as the one Priest, his death as the one all-sufficient sacrifice, and the Bible as the one infallible guide, Popery puts aside, and puts counterfeits in their room.
For an apostolic succession, which consists in the doctrine of the apostles, it substitutes a succession of matter; a long succession of official men, who alone have the power of conveying grace; a chain which has not in it, from beginning to end, one broken link; while the fact is, if history is to be believed, that all the links are broken, and one whole link there is not in it all.
Popery denies God the Father by installing the pope as the divine vicegerent of the world and infallible ruler of the conscience. It presents him sitting aloft, above magistrates and kings, with power to annul their laws, cast them down from their thrones, plant or pluck up nations, and abrogate even the precepts of the moral law. Popery writes on the papal chair: This is the seat of God, the throne of the infallible and holy One. He who sits here can pardon or retain men's sins; in other words, save or destroy their souls.
Popery denies God the Son. It robs Christ of his priestly office by assuming the power of offering efficaciously for the sins of men. It is the priest's sacrifice, not Christ's, that saves the sinner. Popery robs Christ of his prophetic office, by presenting itself as the infallible teacher of the will of God, and the only authorized expositor of the true sense of Scripture, without whose guidance we are sure to err in interpreting the Bible. It robs Christ of his office as the one Mediator and Intercessor, by making Mary and the saints intercessors with God for men. It robs Christ of his kingly office by exalting the pope to his royal seat as head of the church, and head of the world for the church. In his vesture and on his thigh the pope has a name written, "King of kings and Lord of lords."
Popery denies the Spirit of God. For the Spirit it substitutes the sacrament, by giving to the sacrament the power, by its own inherent efficacy, to regenerate the soul, and to make men holy, and heirs of heaven. It robs the Spirit of its honor as the medium through which divine blessings are communicated to the soul, and by which at last it is made perfect in holiness, by making its priesthood the only channel of communication betwixt God and men, without whose agency all grace and blessing are utterly beyond the reach of men.
Here, then, is what professes to be a church, a perfect and complete church, and yet is an out-and-out counterfeit. Every element of strength and every principle of evil that were found in the ancient idolatries lives over again in the Papacy. That same paganism whose cradle was rocked in Chaldea, whose youth was passed amid the olive groves and matchless temples of Greece, and whose manhood was reached amid the martial sounds and iron organization of Rome, has returned anew in the Papacy, bringing with it the old rites, the old festivals, the flowers, the incensings, the lustral water, the vestments, the very gods—but with new names—everything, in short. And, were an old pagan to rise from the dead, he would find himself amid his old environments, and, without a moment's doubt, would conclude that the ancient Jove was still reigning, and was being worshiped by the same rites that were practiced in his honor two thousand years ago.
To conclude, popery is an effacement of the Christian church; by the substitution of a pantheon of idols, extinguishing the great lights of revelation, it rolls back the world, and places it once more amid the ideas, the deities, and the rites of early and idolatrous ages.