A Fallen Church

RoMAN CATHOLICs claim that Jesus Christ founded his church upon the Apostle Peter and his successors; and they base their claim upon Matthew 16: 15-19. Let us,in a spirit of fairness, examine the passage; and, if it sustains this view, we should accept it. Jesus says to the disciples: “Whom say ye (not thou) that lam?” The question is put to all of them, but Peter, ever forward to speak, replied: “Thou art the Christ, the Son cf the living God.” Jesus answered: “Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona, for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. And I say also unto thee that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.’’ This answer makes Peter for the time being the living embodiment of revealed truth. The confession Peter made was that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of God. Christ says, ‘‘ The Father hath revealed this unto thee, Peter, so that, while you stand before me making that confession, you are the embodiment of this revealed truth. And thou art Peter,” he continues, “and upon this rock” — the rock of revealed truth, of which his confession makes him the living embodiment — “I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” The revealed truth of God’s word, embodied in living witnesses, is to-day the foundation of the Church of Christ, and thus, in turn, the church, whose members embody the revealed word, the “Word” made flesh a second time, is “the pillar = and ground of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15). So Paul wrote to the Ephesians. ‘ Ye are built upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ being the chief corner-stone.” (Eph. 2: 20). Why didn’t he tell them they were built upon Peter? For the very good reason that, if he had, he would have taught them error.

The Apostles never regarded Peter as superior to them. In the Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15: 6-21) he talked as usual — he was always ready to talk — but James presided and announced the decision, showing that James was officially above Peter in that meeting.

Paul says (Gal. 2:11) ‘“When Peter was’come to Antioch, I withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed.” The fact is that Peter, in his personal character, as Mr. Schaff says, was not rock-like, but the most impulsive and unstable of all the Apostles. The “‘ gates of hell” did prevail against him, when he denied his Lord with cursing; and, if Paul is a good witness, they prevailed against him again at Antioch, when he was led by the Judaism still in him to teach fulse doctrine. It is plain, also, to one familiar with the teachings of Scripture, that the keys which Christ gave to Peter were not authority for him and his successors to lord it over God’s heritage. The Holy Spirit, whose mission it is to unlock the truth, for Jesus, says, “He will guide you into all truth,” and the truth which he reveals to his people, are the two keys which bind and loose upon earth. But the keys are no more for Peter than any other Apostle or humble child of God who embodies the truth, and is filled with the Spirit: for whatever the Word of God, embodied in human character and wielded by the Spirit, binds or looses upon earth, shall be bound or loosed in heaven. God in heaven is, of course, in harmony with God on earth; and the God on earth, whom Jesus said the Father would send into the world, is the Holy Spirit, and not the Pope of Rome.

I wonder our Roman Catholic friends do not read on just four verses further, where Jesus says, “Get thee behind me, Satan; thou art an offense unto me, for thou savorest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men.” ‘Their foundation stone has become in a very short time a rock of offence. Jesus calls Peter “Satan,” and says he embodies the spirit of the world, of whom Satan is the Prince, and, if the Pope is the personal successor of Peter, I may claim that he is the representative of Satan on earth with more reason, indeed, than Catholics have for claiming him to be the representative of Christ, for Peter was never called “Christ; Jesus did call him “Satan.”’ If they reply that Jesus called Peter “Satan,” because by his opposition to him at the time, he represented Satan, we agree; but then they must admit that Jesus called Petera “rock” of foundation, because at the time, by his confession, he represented the revealed embodied truth on which the Church of God is founded. If, however, they persist in saying that Jesus meant to call the person of Peter the foundation of his church, they are driven by the same law of exegesis to admit that he called the person of Peter “Satan,” and they are in the predicament of having the Pope a vicegerent of the Devil on earth, and a living embodiment of the spirit of the world. There is a passage, however, which gives a full photograph of ‘the Papacy, revealing every feature so clearly that there is no mistaking it. “Let no man deceive you by any means, for that day (the coming of the Lord) shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that Man of Sin be revealed, the soy of perdition; who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the Temple of God, showing himself that he is God.... For the mystery of iniquity doth already work, only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way. And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the Spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming” (2 Thess. 2: 3-8). Four things are here affirmed: 1st. — That there would come a great apostasy. 2d. — That somebody in this apostasy would claim that he was God, and try to rule on earth as God. 3d. — That this apostasy had in it the “man of sin,” the “son of perdition,” “the lawless one,” and that as “the mystery of iniquity,” it was already working in embryo. 4th. — That it was to be consumed by the Spirit of God’s mouth, and destroyed by the brightness of his coming. Some commentators, with strong English prejudices, have thought that Napoleon Bonaparte was this “man of sin,” and they think that a Bonaparte, or some one else, will get hold of the kingdoms of this world, and end things in chaotic ruin. Two things make fatally against this: (1.) It is an apostasy not yet fully revealed. The mystery had already begun its embryonic work in Paul’s day. (2.) No Bonaparte ever claimed that he was God. But the most fatal objection to it is that these words describe the Papacy as correctly as if they had been written with the light of history before the writer.

I. My first proposition, then, is that this Apostasy is the Roman Church. The Roman Church is an Apostate Church. Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world,” and when Satan offered him the kingdoms of this world, and the glory of them, he indignantly refused them. But when Satan offered glory to the church through Constantine, she accepted it, and her fall by that acceptance was as great as the fall of Jesus had been, if he had accepted Satan’s offer. The second Adam resisted the same temptations by which the first Adam fell; but the second Eve, bride of the second Adam, fell, as the first Eve did; and the words of Revelation describe her fallen as “the adulteress.”” In Rev. 17, the woman “arrayed in purple and scarlet,” sitting on “the beast with seven heads and ten horns, and drunk with the blood of saints,” is beyond doubt the Papacy. In verse 9, the “seven heads” are said to be the “seven mountains on which she sits.” Everybody knows that in all literature Rome is known as the “Seven-hilled City.” Purple and scarlet are the favorite colors of Popery. That she has been drunk with the blood of saints, no one will deny who knows her record. A careful estimate has revealed the fact that about 50 millions of people — some claim 70 millions — almost as many. as there are people in the United States — have fallen under her bloody hand. Others, beside her, to be sure, with the spirit in them which they imbibed before they came out of her communion, or taught by her example, have persecuted and killed a few, but they have repented of it, and confessed their sin, but never has the miserere been sung by the Papacy over the slaughter of heretics. If we could find any evidence of contrition, as A. J. Gordon says, we would gladly forget the past; but those in authority are still drunk enough with the blood of the saints to contend that Father Pope and Mother Church never did wrong. There are noble examples in the

Roman Church of those who, themselves suffering persecution, were willing to claim toleration for all creeds and sects, but such toleration was ever contrary to the genius of the Papacy. Many Catholics in this country, thank God, have imbibed the spirit of our open Bible and free institutions, till they are out of sympathy with the spirit of the Papacy. But the Papacy, true to its claim in this particular at least, has remained ever the same. Pope Pius IX., in 1870, denounces and anathematizes the doctrines that “the Church is subject to secular domination”’ and that it may not exercise the power of “compelling by antecedent judgments and salutary penalties those who wander, or those who are contumacious.” Such are the words of the first infallible Pope, under which the Roman Church is working to-day; and any one can see, were the power not lacking, there is authority enough in them to establish another Inquisition.

Again, this “Scarlet woman” is called “the Great Harlot.” Now a harlot was once pure. No one was ever born such, and the Church of Rome, as described by Paul, was pure and spiritual; he boasts of her faith and her good works. But she took three unlawful husbands. Contrary to her Lord’s wish, she married the

State, and the child of that union was the Inquisition and its horrors. She married Judaism, which her Lord had pronounced dead. The fruit of that union was that child of death, formalism. She married Paganism, and the progeny of that union are superstitions innumerable, with the worship of Saints and of Mary. The Papacy of to-day is comparatively young. Not until the 6th century did a Pope dare to assume the title of universal Bishop. Not until the 7th century did the Roman Emperor confer such a title on Boniface III., and not until A. p. 1215 did the Lateran Council consent to agree to the claim of the Pope’s supremacy. The climax of these assumptions was reached in 1870, when the Council at Rome declared the Pope not only supreme, but infallible. So that Popery, as it now exists, is just twenty years old. “The early churches,” says G. P. Fisher, of Yale College, in his “Outlines of Universal History,” “were little republics, at first under the supervision of the Apostles.” After a while, the large city churches began to assume watch-care and jurisdiction over the weaker churches, who applied to them for advice in emergencies. For some time this claim of supremacy was made by the church in Rome, not by its bishop or pastor. Clemens Romanus, who lived about A. D. 100, and who is said by Catholics to have been the fourth Pope from Peter, simply because he was Bishop or pastor of the Church in Rome, writes a letter from the church (not Bishop of Rome) to the Church in Corinth — a church letter, written to another church.

Ignatius, who was Bishop of the Church at Antioch in A. D. 109, while on his way to Rome at the command of Trajan to suffer martyrdom, wrote a letter to the church of Rome, addressing it as ‘““She who has the presidency in the place of the regions of the Romans;” but he defines even this church supremacy as founded “upon sentiment of church fellowship, with the additional consideration attaching to the dignity and superior advantages belonging to the Church of the Capital.”

When Constantine professed conversion, in the beginning of the fourth century, he poured wealth and power into the lap of the Roman Church, making a union of Church and State. Then began, and not till then, the embryonic organization which, after hundreds of years of development, is the Papacy of to-day. The

churches of the large cities began to have influence over sur- —

rounding churches. After a while, the strong city church claimed supremacy over the other churches, and by and by the pastor of the city churches claimed supremacy over the other pastors; and when Constantine conferred the wealth and power of the Roman Government on the church at Rome, then the Bishop of that church began to think of the supremacy to which claim has been made in later years, The expression “Son of Perdition” is suggestive. It was first applied 1o Judas Iscariot, because he was an apostate Apostle. Now it is applied by Paul to the Papacy, because it is an apostate church, so that a recent writer had more than prejudice on his side when he declared that “the Pope of Rome is the Vicar of Judas Iscariot.”.

II. My second proposition is that the Pope of Rome is referred to in the text as the one that “exalteth himself above all that is called God, and, as God, sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God.”

Now, has the Pope of Rome ever claimed that he is God? Listen! Marcellus, in an address to Leo X., said: “I come to thee as my true Lord and Husband.” ... “For thou art our Shep-EE Se 7”

herd, our Physician, our Governor — in fine, a second God on earth.”’ Leo received the blasphemy without remonstrance.

On the triumphal arch, under which Pope Alexander VI. passed, was written: “Cesar was a man; Alexander is a God.” Listen to the boast of Gregory II. to the Greek Emperor: “All the kings of the west reverence the Pope as a God on earth.” And Pope Nicholas caps the climax in these words: “If these things be said to be done not of man, but of God, what can you make me but God! And if the prelates of the church be called and counted of Constantine for Gods, I then, being above all prelates, seem by this reason to be above all Gods.” Could the words of the text, “Who opposeth himself and exalteth himself above all that is called God,” be more literally fulfilled?

The phrase, ‘‘ Temple of God,” refers, in the New Testament, to the place of God’s spiritual abode on earth. “Ye are the temple of the living God.” (2 Cor. 6: 16). Again — “Ye are built upa spiritual house.” (1 Peter 2: 5). The Pope has taken his seat in this spiritual temple, boldly asserting that he is on the very throne ‘of God. The Holy Spirit, whose right it is to occupy the temple (for Paul said — ‘‘ Ye are the temples of the Holy Ghost’) whereever this claim is admitted, is driven out, ‘for what agreement hath the temple of-God with idols?”

But is not this claim a thing of the past, a child of the dark ages? Letussee! ‘In the person of Pius IX.,” said Cardinal Manning, while Pius was still alive, ‘‘ Jesus reigns on earth, and he must reign till he hath put all enemies under his feet!” And Cardinal Manning lives to-day, and holds the same sentiments concerning Leo XIII. So does Cardinal Gibbons, who represents Jesus as saying to Peter: ‘‘Thou and thy successors shall be my visible representatives to the end of time.”

We are reminded of two scenes in the New Testament. On one occasion, Cornelius fell at the feet of Peter, and worshipped him. Did Peter receive the homage of Cornelius? Nota bit of it. He was so horror-stricken that he “took him up, saying, Stand up, I myself also am a man.” (Acts 10: 26). The other scene is in contrast with this, Herod made a speech to the people, and they shouted: ‘It is the voice of a God, and not of a man.” (Acts 12: 22). Herod received the homage, and the record says: ‘‘ The angel of God immediately smote him, because he gave not God the glory, and he was eaten of worms.” (Acts 12: 23). I ask, which most resembles the Pope of Rome? Peter, who refused to be put in the place of God, or Herod, who accepted the blasphemy?

We are told that the Pope, as a man, may commit sin, and make mistakes; it is only when he speaks to us in his official capacity that his voice must be to us the voice of God! The opposite is true. However moral the private life of the Pope, when he speaks as God on earth, he becomes “the man of sin ’ — ‘‘ the son of perdition,” “who shows himself that he is God.”

III. My third proposition is that “the lawless one’’ of the text is the Pope of Rome, and that the Papacy is ‘the mystery of iniquity,’’ whose embryonic working had begun in Paul’s day.

“Sin is the transgression of the law,” and when a man declares himself independent of all law, he breaks all law, and becomes an outlaw. And the Pope of Rome, in claiming that he is God, subject to no human law, becomes the man of transgression, the outlaw of the ages. “‘Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man, for the Lord’s sake, whether it be to the king as supreme, or unto governors.” (1 Pet. 2: 18.) Why did not Peter say “Pope” instead of “King,” as being of supreme authority? The Pope can find no warrant in Peter’s life or words for his outlawry.

“Need we try to prove that the Papacy, wherever it has had full sway, has shown itself “the mystery of iniquity?’’ How mysteriously the Massacre of St. Bartholomew took place on that 24th

of August, 1572! After the Huguenots had been invited to at-.

tend the marriage festivities of Marguerite de Medici and Henry of Navarre, the plot was laid, and for ten days it seems to have been maturing; and at night the Romanists lighted their windows, so that the soldiers could see to stab and shoot on the streets. On that day began the slaughter of 100,000 Huguenots, whose greatest crime was that they believed and preached justification by faith, and one mediator between God and man. And the Pope at Rome received this news with “unbounded joy.” Rome was illuminated in honor of the event, and Philip IJ. of Spain, was Romanist enough to smile, we are told, for the first time in his life. We come just thirty-two years afterwards, to the “Gunpowder Plot” of London (November 5, 1604). In a dark room, after‘the plot had been laid by Guy Fawkes and his Catholic confederates, one of their number, a Catholic priest named Gerard,

So

VC

—pronounced absolution, and administered the sacrament to the conspirators. And those thirty-six kegs of gunpowder were stealthily packed beneath the building in order to blow up James II. his Lords and Parliament. The Roman Catholic Church. of to-day is in the hands of the Jesuits, and the whole Jesuit order is a history of mysterious plots for the subversion of civil liberty, and the subjugation of the world to the Papacy. If one-half the things told by converted Catholic priests and escaped nuns are true, the “mystery of iniquity” still works in our very midst, behind convent walls and the secrets of the confessional. Whether true or false, the spirit of the institutions of this country, the spirit of humanity, which is the spirit of the Bible, demands that our legislators should open these jails and living tombs to inspection. If they have good in them, good can stand the light. If they have bad in them, let the iniquity be uncovered.

IV. My fourth proposition is the last : — The way to deal with the Papacy is to consume it with the spirit of God’s mouth, and wait, for its complete destruction, till the “brightness of his coming.’ The Bible, God’s word, is the “breath of his mouth.” This “breath” shall consume the Papacy. “Is not my word like a fire? saith the Lord.” We may well lay aside the torches of prejudice, and simply apply the fire of truth. For centuries it has been consuming Popery. The martyrs she burned at the stake never failed to apply the torch of truth, more consuming, though it may burn more slowly, than the fires which turned their bodies to ashes. When the art of printing was discovered, these torches were multiplied a thousand-fold by the multiplication of Bibles, until through Luther in Germany, Tyndale in England, the English translators under King James, Cary in Burmah, and hundreds of others, the fires now burn in every language and in millions of homes. Papal supremacy has already been consumed, and not a few Papal errors, even in the minds of Catholics, are more ashes than wood. The flames of truth are gathering about the Vatican itself; and on those streets where Paul once preached salvation by grace, but could not have preached for centuries on pain of death, are now proclaimed the unsearchable riches of Christ; and churches, whose members have allowed their bonds to be burnt off by the fires of God’s truth, are now praising God in sight of St. Peter’s under their own “vine and fig tree,” none daring to molest or make them

afraid. You and I are the torch-bearers of this truth, not creating, but “holding forth the word of life.” Break the pitchers of cowardice and policy, and let the light shine forth. Those, of course, whose eyes are used to the dark, and cannot stand the glare of God’s truth, will not like it, but after the Holy Spirit shall have adjusted their spiritual vision to the light, they will then rejoice as thousands do to-day. God’s word asa fire will burn. Torch-bearers, hide it “under a bushel”’ at your peril!

I close with a quotation from the fourteenth verse of the seventeenth chapter of Revelation: ‘‘ And these (the ‘scarlet woman,’ ‘the beast’ and their sympathizers) shall make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome them, for he is Lord of Jords and King of kings: and they that are with him are called, and chosen, and faithful.”’ True believers are the called and chosen. Have we been the faithful? While others exalt Pope, and church, and ordinances, it is ours to exait the “Lamb of God, who taketh away the sin of the world.” “Him hath God exalted to be Prince and Saviour.”’

‘Sinners, whose love can ne’er forget
The wormwood and the gall,

Go spread your trophies at his feet,
And crown him Lord of all!

“Let every kindred, every tribe,
On this terrestrial ball,
To him aH majesty ascribe,
And crown him Lord of all!”

“And yonder with that sacred throng,
We at his feet shall fall;
We’ll join the everlasting song;
And crown him Lord of all!”