p. 9 | ROME AND PAGANISM

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Jan 4, 1905

ROME AND PAGANISM.

It can easily be shown that every departure from the faith and every unscriptural ordinance that exists in the Roman Church came from the superstitions of Paganism that were absorbed and adopted. The doctrine of transubstantiation, tho formally enunciated by Pope Innocent III. in 1215 A.D., originated in Gnostic teaching, a fact not generally known, because only recently discovered. Mr. W. St. Chad Boscawen, lecturing on some remarkable Egyptian papyri in May, 1900, observed that the Gnostics borrowed from Greek, Persian; and Syriac sources. In one of their texts occurred these words, plainly written in Greek and described as being said over a cup of wine: "This is not wine; this is the blood of Osiris." Then, over a piece of bread: "This is not bread, it is the very body of Osiris," i. e., Nimrod, the Babylonian god. Some of your readers are doubtless aware that ritualistic and popish "altars" are decorated with curious symbols and cryptic letters, such as I. H. S., A. O., a round disc, an ear of corn, palms, triangles, etc. These are invested with Christian meanings, but are derived exclusively from heathen sources, through Egyptian Gnostics principally, precisely as transubstantiation is derived. Those original sources are Babylonian. Hence Babylon comes up at the last for final judgment—she has corrupted both church and the state.—Watchword and Truth.