Not Religious Persecution by Editor

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Oct 16, 1879

Not Religious Persecution.

By Editor

THE government of Luxembourg has been so much annoyed with attacks from the Roman Catholic clergy that it proposes a law for the punishment of ministers of religion who, in writing, or in speeches, or in pastoral instruction, criticise or censure the government. That looks like intolerance, from an American standpoint; but its appearance is changed when we consider that "pastoral instruction," in Catholic countries, is of more authority than the laws, over Catholics; that a law may be counteracted, and the action of government effectually obstructed by clerical censure. The fetters of the dark ages are only partly broken where the papacy has control of the minds of the people.