The first step stone to modern christianity was laid on the smoking ruins of primitive christianity. The christian enemies to new revelations and miracles, actually waded through the blood of apostles and prophets, in order to establish the system of anti-revelation. And did their descendants and abettors realise the bloody and accursed origin of that system that wars against new regulations and prophets, and angels, many of them would shudder at their blind zeal and self-righteousness! God winks at the conduct of the latter, because they know not what they do; but He commands all men every where to repent, else He will hold them guilty of all the blood that has been shed from the days of righteous Abel till now. God is my witness that I speak the truth in Christ Jesus and lie not. The history of modern christianity, from the day when the first martyr fell under its bloody hatred, is a history of contention, persecution, and massacre, that causes all heaven to weep. Rivers of blood have flowed in its wake. Crimination and re-crimination from the pulpit and the press, have agitated the people, from the throne down to the otherwise peaceful cottage. The battle field has been soaked with the blood of its victims, and it is difficult to tell whether Catholic or Protestant domination can count the most victims, except as one may have held a longer and stronger ascendency than the other. The first two or three centuries were bloody beyond description. All denominations recoil at the history of their pedigree during this early and bloody period. The links in the chain of supposed apostolic succession are so bloody, that even the "dark ages" cannot conceal their crimson hue. The period when this famous chain of succession has not been coloured with human gore, is short. The records of the suffering Waldenses, in the valleys of Piedmont, will always tell a tale of wo, at which humanity must blush. The history of the protestant reformation in Germany and England, including the massacre of sixty thousand protestants in France, at one time, is a serious comment on the pseudo apostolic line of priesthood. But when protestantism came into power, under Henry and Elizabeth, it proved to a demonstration that the protestants had the same priesthood handed down through seas of human gore; excommunicating, torturing and killing catholic heretics in like manner as the catholics had previously done to others.[A]