When the lights that Christ kindled on earth to lead mankind in the only true way were put out by the hands of murderous men, darkness overspread the world, and "gross darkness covered the people." Errors multiplied. Heresies sprang up like rank weeds. The Spirit of Christ gradually withdrew. And when what was left of the form of Christianity became allied to the softened paganism of the Romish empire, the angels looked down from afar upon another triumph of the arch adversary, who rules as prince of this world, and reigns in the hearts of the children of disobedience. The Papal church, seated upon the Romish State, was fitly prefigured by the woman upon the beast. The Church of Christ was gone, without even a shadow of its presence to be seen upon the earth. All nations were blinded and intoxicated by the mystery and abominations, the heresies and perversions, the pomps and vanities of this spurious ecclesiastical system, with its popes and cardinals in the place of apostles and prophets, its priestcraft in the place of the Priesthood, and its force, bloodshed, cruelty and lust in the place of the love, liberty, peace and charity of the departed Church of the Redeemer. After a time came the reformation. Protestants against the tyranny, falsehood and gross villainies of this blasphemous hierarchy sounded aloud the story of her abominations and shook all Christendom with the force of their eloquence. Anathematized and excommunicated from the mother church, they established new churches, discarding many errors but retaining as many more. Still further "reformations" were inaugurated, originating more churches, and thus sects produced sects, and as religious liberty increased so religious systems multiplied, until the term Christianity covered an incongruous mass of discordant elements, representing all shades of human opinion, without a single authoritative voice deputed of heaven to harmonize and bring them into order. For, though immense good accrued to the world through the exposure of error and the unfolding of truth, which were the consequence of the reformation and its successive developments, and though many excellent mea spent their lives and suffered cruel deaths for principles of righteousness, yet there was no direct communication established between them and the heavens, and that authority by which the apostles administered for and in behalf of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost was still unrestored to man. There was no inspired prophet, no gifted seer, no appointed revelator through whom the will of God could be made known. Therefore, the ordinances of the gospel could not be administered acceptably to God, and all such ceremonies as were established among the various sects were of necessity void and without virtue in heaven.