p. 322 | WHAT ROMANISM IS DOING by Wm. Penniman

Seventh-Day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Thursday, May 20, 1880

FromThe Review and Herald, Vol. 55, No. 21

WHAT ROMANISM IS DOING.

By Wm. Penniman

BY WM. PENNIMAN.

The officials of the Romish church and all its adherents are exerting their power and influence to suppress freedom of speech and press, and to destroy free schools and civil and religious liberty. The war-cry of “godless schools” is still sounding through the length and breadth of our land. The object of this cry is to obtain as much as possible of the school funds for sectarian purposes, in direct opposition to statute law. With Jesuit vigilance and skill, they are seeking to accomplish by fraud, stratagem, or an underhanded policy, what they could not do in any other way. Roman Catholics have been put on School Boards and into official positions for the very purpose of increasing their power; and when once they get the power into their own hands, woe to dissenters.

“Facts are stubborn things,” and our object is to give a few in respect to what Romanists have done and are now doing. We give an extract, from one of a series of volumes entitled, “Familiar Explanation of Christian Doctrine, Adapted for the Family and more Advanced Students in Catholic Schools and Colleges,” approved by Archbishop Bagley, of Baltimore. In Lesson 12, which treats of “no salvation outside of the Roman Catholic Church,” the following questions and answers are given:—

“Q. Since the Roman Catholic Church alone is the true church of Jesus Christ, can any one who dies outside of the church be saved?

“A. He cannot.

“Q. Did Jesus Christ himself assure us most solemnly, and in plain words, that no one can be saved out of the Roman Catholic Church?

“A. They all, without exception, pronounce them infallibly lost forever.

“Q. Are there any other reasons to show that heretics, or Protestants, who die out of the Roman Catholic Church, are not saved?

“A. There are several. They cannot be saved, because 1. They have no divine faith; 2. They make a liar of Jesus Christ, of the Holy Ghost, and of the apostles; 3. They have no faith in Christ; 4. They fell away from the true church of Christ; 5. They are too proud to submit to the pope, the Vicar of Christ; 6. They cannot perform any good works whereby they can obtain Heaven; 7. They do not receive the body and blood of Christ; 8. They die in their sins; 9. They ridicule and blaspheme the mother of God and his saints; 10. They slander the spouse of Jesus Christ, the Catholic Church.”

On page 97 we find the following:—

“Q. Now do you think God the Father will admit into Heaven those who thus make liars of his Son Jesus Christ, of the Holy Ghost, and of the apostles?

“A. No; he will let them have their portion with Lucifer in hell, who first rebelled against Christ, and who is the father of liars.

“Q. Have Protestants any faith in Christ?

“A. They never had.

“Q. Why not?

“A. Because there never lived such a Christ as they imagine and believe in.

“Q. In what kind of a Christ do they believe?

“A. In such a one of whom they can make a liar,” etc. etc.

“Q. Will such a faith in such a Christ save Protestants?

“A. No sensible man will assert such an absurdity.

“Q. What will Christ say to them on the day of Judgment?

“A. I know you not, because you never knew me.

Again, on page 104 we read:—

“Q. Are Protestants willing to confess their sins to a Catholic bishop or priest, who alone has power from Christ to forgive sins? ‘Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them.’

“A. No; for they generally have an utter aversion to confession, and therefore their sins will not be forgiven throughout all eternity.

“Q. What follows from this?

“A. That they die in their sins, and are damned.”

Strange as it may appear, many Protestants are sending their children to such schools. These are their so-called godly schools, and Protestant American youth must go to them to acquire a refined and finished education. The great mass of Protestants are perfectly indifferent to the rising power of Romanism in our country; but the student of prophecy does not look on with indifference, for he knows that this power must continue till it is destroyed by the brightness of Christ’s coming.