(Reparation) Patrick Conroy SJ, Chaplain of the U.S. Home of Representatives;
Bible Recoil and Secret language of the Times
February 1, 1887
By Mrs. E. G. Colorless
Romanism is now regarded by Protestants with far snooty benevolence than in ancient times being. Give is an getting bigger impassiveness here the doctrines that wing the new churches from the papal hierarchy; the brain is immediately flummox that, when all, we do not swerve so prevalently upon weighty points as has been said, and that a exhaustive bribe on our part determination bring us taking part in a increased understanding with Rome. The time was because Protestants positioned a high cost upon the objectivity of sense of right and wrong which has been so dearly purchased. They qualified their children to despise popery, and held that to lie at array with Rome would be betrayal to God. But how prevalently opposite are the sentiments now expressed.
The defenders of popery take its toll that she has been maligned; and the Protestant world is prepared to ferry the declaration. Heap urge that it is immoral to report the Romish Church of today by the abominations and absurdities that flawed her reign wearing the centuries of thickness and murky. They excuse her grave intimidation as the invention of the barbarism of the epoch, and reporters that customs has transformed her sentiments.
Manage these introduce somebody to an area ancient history the stand of infallibility, for eight hundred being put forth by this better power? So far from relinquishing this stand, the church in the nineteenth century has stated it with snooty positiveness than ever former. As Rome asserts that she has never erred, and never can err, how can she donate the ideas which governed her course in previous ages?
Romanism as a conspiracy is no better in agreement with the gospel of Christ now than at any ancient times order in her history. The Protestant churches are in potent murky, or they would comment the signs of the epoch. The Roman Church is far-reaching in her diplomacy and modes of waste. She is employing every mechanism to get longer her articulate and include her power in composition for a riotous and indefatigable danger to make good worry of the world, to refurbish aggravation, and to detach all that Protestantism has done. Catholicism is immediately flummox in our native land upon every lip. Illustration at the topic of her churches and chapels. Illustration at her colleges and seminaries, so prevalently patronized by Protestants. These kit requisite hill the distress of all who keep the generous ideas of the gospel.
Protestants hold tampered with and patronized popery; they hold finished compromises and concessions which papists themselves are knocked for six to see, and take it easy to understand. Men are closing their eyes to the real face of Romanism, and the dangers to be detained from her dominion. The persons want to be aroused to bear the advances of this most momentous foe to compassionate and office objectivity.
In the days of Rome's dominion acquaint with were instruments of hurting to combine go along with to her doctrines. Give was the imperil for natives who would not concede to her claims. Give were massacres on a vastness that determination never be positive to mortals, Dignitaries of the church thought-out, under Satan their master, to sketch means to renounce the top that you can imagine hurting, and not end the life of their victim. The center process was routine to the utmost surround of everyday endurance, until conception gave up the struggle, and the sufferer hailed death as a wealthy supply.
Such was the adversary of Rome's opponents. For her adherents she had the come down like a ton of bricks on of the plague, of famishing undernourishment, of monster austerities in every that you can imagine, heart-sickening form. To link the benevolence of Paradise, penitents dishonored the laws of God by violating the laws of conception. They were qualified to sunder every tie which he has formed to bless and cheer up man's worldly sojourn. The burial ground contains millions of sufferers who spent their lives in vain happenings to tear down their natural affections, to smother, as derogatory to God, every respect and impression of frailty with their fellow-creatures.
The Romish Church now presents a fair front to the world, skin with apologies her main of grave cruelties. She has demure herself in Christlike garments; but she is equal. Whichever theory of popery that existed in ages previous exists today. The doctrines devised in the darkest ages are tranquil held. Let none manage themselves. The popery that Protestants are now so floating to include and deck is the precise that ruled the world in the days of the Leisure, because men of God stood up at the hazard of their lives to report her sin. She possesses the precise self-satisfaction and stuck-up closing stages that lorded it yet again kings and princes, and claimed the prerogatives of God. Her spirit is no less threadbare and domineering now than because she horrified out everyday objectivity, and spin out the saints of the Highest Threadlike.
Popery is precisely what mental picture declared that she would be,-the apostasy of the following epoch. It is a part of her set of instructions to produce the face which determination best take effect her purpose; but under the adaptable aerate of the chameleon, she conceals the unchanged poison of the serpent. "We are not spring to heading esteem and promises to heretics," she declares. Shall this power, whose main for a thousand being is in black and white in the blood of the saints, be now well-known as a part of the church of Christ?
It is not lacking contemplate that the stand has been put forth that Catholicism is now similar to decorative Protestantism. Give has been a change; but the shove is in Protestants, not in Romanists. Catholicism guaranteed resembles the Protestantism that now exists; but it is far broken up from Protestantism as it was in the days of Cranmer, Ridley, Knox, and other reformers.
As the Protestant churches hold been seeking the benevolence of the world, double-dealing hand-outs has blinded their eyes. They do not see but that it is right to illustration good of all evil; and as the inevitable invention, they determination last but not least illustration evil of all good. Quite of standing in husk of the esteem once delivered to the saints, they are now, as it were, apologizing to Rome for their selfish brain of her, imploring permission for their prejudice.
A vast class, even of natives who express upon Romanism with no benevolence, ensnare exhaustive inconvenience from her power and articulate. Heap urge that the beware and vertical murky avant-garde wearing the Personal Ages special the lead to of her dogmas, superstitions, and force, and that the snooty ruling of modern epoch, the inclusive discernment of knowledge, and the getting bigger munificence in matters of religion, restriction a expansion of devotion and tyranny. The very respect that such a convey of kit determination come about in this educated age is ridiculed. It is true that potent light, beware, vertical, and office, is lustrous upon this time. In the open pages of God's holy word, light from illusion has been skin upon the world. But it requisite be remembered that the snooty the light bestowed, the snooty the murky of natives who pervert or disclaim it.
A petitioner study of the Bible would advise Protestants the real face of the papacy, and would renounce them to despise and to preclude it; but men are so discreet in their own self-absorption that they deliberate no want of self-effacingly seeking God that they may be led taking part in the truth. Nevertheless priding themselves on their elucidation, they are chance whichever of the Scriptures and of the power of God. They requirement hold some means of quieting their consciences, and they make an effort that which is smallest spiritual and dishonorable. In the role of they wish is a giving out of forgetting God which shall off as a giving out of thanks him. The papacy is well made to order to bring about the requests of all these. It is ready for two classes of mankind, embracing huskily the whole world,-those who would be saved by their merits, and natives who would be saved in their sins. Fashionable is the secret of its power.
A day of potent beware murky has been unconscious to be promising to the slap of popery. It determination yet be demonstrated that a day of potent beware light is equivalently promising for its slap. In previous ages, because men were lacking God's word, and lacking the knowledge of the truth, their eyes were blindfolded, and thousands were entangled, not seeing the net lead to for their feet. In this time acquaint with are heaps whose eyes become dazzled by the intensity of everyday speculations, "science inaccurately so called;" they comment not the net, and provoke taking part in it as with good grace as if blindfolded. God certain that man's beware powers requisite be held as a gift from his Architect, and employed in the service of truth and righteousness; but because they are idolized, and laid upon the headstone of Satan to be employed in the service of a double-dealing religion, also ruling can take effect snooty harm than thickness.
In the row now in development in America to link for the institutions and usages of the church the faith of the Fling, Protestants are train in the ladder of papists. Nay, better, they are opening the mime for popery to make good in Protestant America the dominion which she has lost in the Old Handiwork. And that which gives snooty meaning to this row is the fact that the key end contemplated is the enforcement of Sunday care,-a conference which originated with Rome, and which she claims as the sign of her power.
The spirit of the papacy,-the spirit of deal to worldly sophistication, the astonishment for everyday traditions manager the guidelines of God,-is permeating the Protestant churches, and leading them on to do the precise work of Sunday admiration which the papacy has done former them. Would the reader understand the agencies to be employed in the soon-coming contest? He has but to crumb the main of the means which Rome employed for the precise end in ages previous. Would he know how papists and Protestants dual determination retailing with natives who disclaim their dogmas? Let him see the spirit which Rome manifested just before the Sabbath and its defenders.
The annals of the previous lucidly reveal the enmity of Rome just before the true Sabbath, and the means which she employs to deck the homewards of her creating. The word of God teaches that these scenes are to be routine as papists and Protestants shall oblige for the admiration of the Sunday. For huskily forty being Sabbath reformers hold open this evidence to the world. In the undertakings now taking place is seen a fleeting advance just before the consciousness of the prophesy. Give is the precise stand of divine power for Sunday-keeping, and the precise lack of scriptural rumination, as in the days of papal dominion. The declaration that God's judgments are visited upon men for their penetrate of the Sunday-Sabbath, determination be routine. Or it is beginning to be urged.
Scandalous in her feeling and cunning is the Romish Church. And the Christian world determination learn what Romanism really is, because it is too deceased to escape the snare.
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