Popery by Jesse Hiestand

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Dec 6, 1864

Popery.

By Jesse Hiestand

Hundreds of years since, when intellectual and moral science was a wilderness an assembly of divines, as they are called, affecting to cast off popery undertook to stereotype the theology of the church and to think for all future generations.

Every uninspired attempt to frame for the church an authoritative standard of opinion which shall be regarded as an unquestionable exposition of the word of God, is not only impious in itself, but it is also a tacit assumption of the fundamental dogma of the papacy.

The assembly of divines did more than to assume the necessity of a pope to give law to the opinions of men; they assumed to create an immortal one or rather to embalm their own creed and preserve it as the pope of all generations without change or alteration. To reform the church of Rome is hopeless; but it would be better for them to have a living than a dead pope. A living dog is better than a dead lion; so a living pope is better than a dead and stereotyped confession of faith and unalterable dogmas.

Jesse Hiestand.