ROMANISM OUTSIDE OF ROME.
By Editor
Under the above heading, the Word and Way, a Baptist journal issued at Kansas City, Mo., gives a concise statement of the situation, closing with a most significant confession. Following is its presentation of the subject:— Protestantism—historical Protestantism, we mean—started with a millstone about its neck. All the years of its life it has been handicapped by the Romanism that has clung to it. It needs nothing so much as to rise up in protest against its own Romish tendencies and characteristics. It can never compete with Romanism until it repudiates what of Romanism it has brought forward in itself. Protestantism proper, in its several divisions, is but a more or less modified form of Romanism. The Reformers did not shake the dust of Rome from their feet and go clean away. Not by a long ways did they divest themselves of all that was Romish. They stopped midway between Rome and the truth, and built into their ecclesiastical systems much of the material which they carried with them from Rome. It is in this ground that lies between, we find nine-tenths of the ecclesiastical and theological unrest and turmoil. Here things are in a perpetual ferment. Protestantism continues to divide and subdivide. Protestantism can not survive, and build into itself that which is a survival of Romanism. It must, in time, go to pieces and apart. One part, by the law of affinity, will go to Rome, and the other part, by the same law, breaking every tie that binds it to Rome, will go to that which is Rome’s opposite. Ritualism, sacerdotalism and sacramentalism can never be satisfactorily and permanently adjusted to anything except full-fledged Episcopacy. The Church of England and the Episcopal Church of this country are but modified copies of the Church of Rome. The Methodist Church is but a modified copy of the Episcopal Church. Presbyterianism presents some decided variations from the others mentioned, but all are but different species of the genus Episcopacy. Episcopacy in all its forms, infant baptism, baptismal salvation, salvation by works, ritualism, holy days, and so on, have all been brought over from Rome. Baptists are not Protestants. It is seldom that we find the Roman-Protestant situation more clearly and concisely defined, or so frank a confession on the part of an organ of any professedly anti-Roman denomination. However, in the matter of “holy days, and so on,” which “have all been brought over from Rome,” the Baptists (excepting a small faction) hold on to the most prominent one of all, and are falling into the observance of the others, along with all the denominations mentioned in the foregoing article. The prime “holy day” of Rome, the one which she holds up as her badge of ecclesiastical authority, is Sunday. As long as the Baptist denomination continues to wear this “millstone about its neck,” its gradual adoption of Easter observance, “and so on,” is but logical. Like Protestantism, the Baptist body “can not survive and build into itself that which is a survival of Romanism.” Genuine Protestantism is “Rome’s opposite.” It breaks “every tie that binds it to Rome.” Yet, in the face of this assertion, the Word and Way says, “Baptists are not Protestants.” If it means Protestants of the compromising sort, it would be well if it were true; but so long as they hold to any of the Roman “holy days,” to Roman immortal-soulism, Roman eternal-tormentism, “and so on,” they are confessedly “between Rome and the truth,” and, “by the law of affinity,” it is only a question of time when those who continue to so hold “will go to Rome.”9Of course such Baptists, or such of any denomination, as do not “shake the dust of Rome from their feet and go clean away” are not Protestants. In time, and evidently in a very short time, there will be but two classes of religionists in the world—those who hold to Rome, and those who protest by word and deed against Rome, in whatever form. The prophet John, in the vision given to him of the last days, was shown that Rome would so far regain its lost power that all the world would wonder after, or worship, that system, excepting those whose names are written in the book of life. See Rev. 13:1-8. Not only so, but apostate Protestants will assist in the endeavor to compel all to do so. Verses 11-17.