Our Day: In the Light of ProphecySpicer, William Ambrose
Religion
Our Day: In the Light of Prophecy
Spicer, William Ambrose
Bible -- Prophecies
"The church has persecuted.... Protestants were persecuted in
France and Spain with the full approval of the church
authorities. We have always defended the persecution of the
Huguenots, and the Spanish Inquisition. Wherever and whenever
there is honest Catholicity, there will be a clear distinction
drawn between truth and error, and Catholicity and all forms of
error. When she thinks it good to use physical force, she will
use it."
Prof. Alfred Baudrillart, rector of the Catholic Institute of Paris,
says:
"The Catholic Church is a respecter of conscience and of
liberty.... She has, and she loudly proclaims that she has, a
'horror of blood.' Nevertheless, when confronted by heresy, she
does not content herself with persuasion; arguments of an
intellectual and moral order appear to her insufficient, and
she has recourse to force, to corporal punishment, to torture.
She creates tribunals like those of the Inquisition, she calls
the laws of the state to her aid, if necessary she encourages a
crusade, or a religious war, and all her 'horror of blood'
practically culminates into urging the secular power to shed
it, which proceeding is almost more odious--for it is less
frank--than shedding it herself. Especially did she act thus in
the sixteenth century with regard to Protestants. Not content
to reform morally, to preach by example, to convert people by
eloquent and holy missionaries, she lit in Italy, in the Low
Countries, and above all in Spain, the funeral piles of the
Inquisition. In France under Francis I and Henry II, in England
under Mary Tudor, she tortured the heretics, whilst both in
France and Germany during the second half of the sixteenth and
the first half of the seventeenth century if she did not
actually begin, at any rate she encouraged and actively aided,
the religious wars."--_"The Catholic Church, the Renaissance
and Protestantism" (London, Kegan Paul, Trench, Truebner & Co.,
Ltd., 1908), pp. 182, 183._
She has done it--the Church of Rome has worn out the saints of the Most
High. The prophet in vision saw an ecclesiastical kingly power rise
among the kingdoms of the divided Roman Empire. Its look was more stout
than its fellows, and the prophet heard it speaking "very great things,"
and saw it wearing out the saints of the Most High through the long
centuries.
[Illustration: THE SHAME OF RELIGIOUS WARS
Christ viewing the battle fields of history, where millions of His
followers have been slain in His name.]
"Guilty!" is the clear verdict of history, against the Church of Rome on
these two counts of the prophetic indictment.
"And Think to Change Times and Laws"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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