The Decline Of The Church, Part 3
The Bible had, though a cunning device of Satan, been supplanted. Priests, bishops and Popes who were continually seeking control of the spiritual world, gave the preference to human compositions above the scriptures. The opinion of some renowned doctor, handed down by tradition, the decision of some council of former days, was regarded more than the word of God. Hence, the Bible grew into disuse.
It was really a dead letter, while the opinions of doctors and results of councils were submitted to, as the voice of God; a circumstance which was employed to the establishment of the most terrible dominion, for the Popes were always able to forge such opinions and decrees, and impose them upon the people as would sub-serve their purpose.
Among such forged papers, were the famous decretal epistle; which were said to have been written by the early Roman pontiffs, and which were now brought forward with great triumph. By these, the people were made to believe, that the extravagant pretensions of the Pope were no new things; but had been common, and had been submitted to in the first ages of Christianity.
The efforts made to convert Gentiles, were also subservient to the enlargement of the dominion of the Roman pontiffs. These efforts commonly originated with them, and the converts from Paganism early learned to look to them as the source of power and goodness, some of those who went to preach among the Gentiles, were, indeed, excellent men; of an entirely different character from the Popes who sent them.
Among these, may be mentioned, Willebrod, and Anglo-Saxon, who, with eleven associates, “an excellent group,” spread the Gospel in the seventh century through Bavaria, Friesland, Cimbria, and Denmark; — Boniface, who, is the next century, “an age of missionaries,” erected the standard of truth in Germany; — Villehad, called the Apostle of Saxony; — Anscarius, who in the ninth century, travelled among the Danes, Cimbrians, and Swedes, planting the Gospel with much success; — and Bernard, who in the tenth, went to Orkney islands.
Also Greek missionaries who, in the same century carried the Gospel from Greece into Russia, and prevailed on the Emperor and Empress to receive Christianity, and to proclaim their country Christian a daughter of the Greek Church.
But many, who went out under the patronage of the Roman pontiffs had no other motive but to extend the power of the Roman See; and, to affect their purpose, and often resorting to force. Christian princes also in league with Rome compelled conquered tribes to acknowledge the dominion of the Pope, the Pomeranians, Finlanders, Sclavonians, and Livonians, received baptism at the point of the spear.
But that which contributed more than anything else to increase and strengthen the Papel power, was the reigning spirit of Monachism (state of monks.) The Christian world was deluged with Monks. Like the frogs of Egypt, they came up over all the land and entered into every dwelling. All these attached themselves to the Roman See.
The Popes of Rome were careful to patronize them, that they might make them tools of their ambition. Every project of the Popes, whether right or wrong, was applauded by them, and whoever called the decisions of Rome in question, was denounced by them as enemies to God. Such power there was no resisting. These and other causes operated with continually increasing force, through sever successive centuries, to the enlargement of the dominion of the Man of Sin.
Early in the eighth century, the Roman church became idolatrous.
God an infinitely pure Spirit, has justly required man to worship him in spirit and in truth, and has solemnly forbidden him to make any image or likeness of Him, or to worship and bow down before any picture or statue representing Him or any other object. But men soon changed the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man; worshipped the Host of heaven, and unenlightened by divine truth, have been, in this way, the deluded votaries of Satan to the present period.
The Gospel waged an exterminating war against idolatry in every form; and gained the most astonishing victories throughout the vast Roman Empire. It was the mightiest conquest that was ever achieved; and ought to be seriously contemplated by the Christian community, until they are roused by the view to go forth in their strength, and subject the world to Christ. But alas, the spirit of the Gospel had now nearly departed from the earth.
Amid the gross ignorance and superstition of the age, men were fast losing sight of the great object of spiritual worship. The world was preparing for a false fire of devotion. Satan knew his time, he now cast in his seed. Men were not to be made to renounce Christianity and go back to old idolatry.
But the arts of sculpture and painting were introduced to aid in the worship of Christ and canonized saints; but in reality, it drove the Holy Spirit and Savior from the minds and hearts of men.
In Constantinople there was an image of Christ on the cross. King Leo recognized this image of Christ as an object of idolatry; so he sent an officer to pull it down. Certain women there demonstrated against the tearing down of the image, calling it a sacrilege.
The officer rejected their pleas and cut the face to pieces with his hatchet. The women enraged took his ladder down and killed him. Leo had the murderers put to death; but yet these women are honored today as martyrs in the Greek Church.
Leo had issued an edict condemning the worship of images throughout the empire. The edict produced many startling effects as rebellion broke out in every corner of the empire, and soon after, Greek possessions in Italy were severed from the empire. Leo became enraged at his losses, determined to take revenge on those who authored the events.
Removed by the church from his spiritual jurisdiction were Greece, Lllyria and Macedonia, subjecting them to the Patriarch of Constantinople; in this was created a permanent breach between the Latin and Greek churches; the year, 734 A.D.
In Rome, a passion for idolatry had begun; and no sooner had the act of defacing the statue of Christ by the officer become known; the whole city rebelled against King Leo. Pope Gregory the 2nd, sat as Pope in Rome ruling from 715 A.D. until 731 A.D., he having taken the lead in establishing image worship, and for exalting himself in the place of God. Gregory excommunicated Leo, and made an effort to have a new Emperor elected.
A civil war ensued as the Emperor issued orders to have all paintings and statues destroyed; but those in favor of image worship who lived in Rome were as active in multiplying them and bowing a knee to them as their counterparts.
Thus the Christian world was thrown into the most violent contentions; contentions that resulted in horrible crimes and assassinations. From this point forward, image worship grew popular in the Eastern churches and now only needed the sanction of an Emperor to make it universal; and these sanctions would soon came.
In 787 A.D. the second council of Nice confirmed idol worship and rendered it equally prevalent in the East, as it was in the West. And now the body of Christ had been divided; Satan had succeeded.
Some had the boldness to oppose it. A council of 300 bishops was held at Frankfort, which condemned the council of Nice, and the worship of images. Many of the British churches execrated the same. Charlemagne the ruling potentate of Europe; barely tolerated so great a departure from the purity and simplicity of the Gospel. But the poison was deep. It had infected all orders of men. Rome was now idolatrous, and many now inferred, “was antichrist.”
Many in the church plead, in vindication of image worship, as others do of Pagan idolatry, that the devoted adherents are sincere worshippers of God, and only employ these intervening statues or idols to help their devotions. But on the most favorable supposition, it is all a direct violation of the second commandment, and it will generally be found that there is an idea of sacred obligation connected with the painting, wood or stone.
It is unquestionably true, that the worship of images in the Catholic Church was used as a direct and full substitute for faith in the atoning blood of the Savior. This Scriptural way of salvation was entirely set aside, and those who would pay their daily devotions to some image or statue of Christ or a canonized saint was viewed as an heir of life. It is a striking fact, that in the catechism of the Catholic Church, the second commandment is omitted; and to make the ten, the tenth is divided into two.
Exodus 20:4-5, “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.”
Verse 5. “Thou shalt not bow (worship) down thyself to them, not serve them.” This is found in my edition of 1976 Catholic Catechism page 287.
Victorious in this contest of idols, Rome entered with a great violence into a contention with the Eastern churches, about the proceeding of the Holy Ghost; choosing to say that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, while the others contended that the Spirit proceeds from the Father, by or through the Son. About the same time, a new empire arose in the West, to which the Roman bishop adhered; and an irreparable breach resulted between the Greek and Latin churches.
In the year 755 A.D. the Pope became a temporal prince, some say he is “the little horn” this for favoring and supporting the dethronement of Childeric 3rd, king of France, and crowning Pepin. Pepin gave to the Roman see (see, meaning the seat of episcopal power; the jurisdiction of a Bishop) the dignity and administration of exarchate of Ravenna, Pentapolis, and twenty-one cities and castles.
Charlemagne, his son and successor, aimed at the empire of the West. He accomplished his purpose, went to Rome and was crowned; and, in return for services, Charlemagne ceded to the papal see, several cities and provinces, and gave it a subordinate jurisdiction over Rome and the annexed territory, enabling it to become the seat of wealth and magnificence.
But the temporal power of the Roman Pontiff was never to be compared with its spiritual. For a long time, bishops and councils endeavored to maintain some authority and influence, but they were ultimately all trodden in the dust. These men of Sin came, as Paul said he would, “after the working of Satan with all power, and signs and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish.”
The Roman Pontiff arrogated to himself god-like titles and attributes, King of kings, Universal Father, Master of the world; set himself above all laws, human and divine; by taxes and massacres, he oppressed and wore out the saints; he changed “times and laws,” appointed innumerable fasts and feasts, new modes of worship and new articles of faith, and supported himself by the most infamous frauds and barefaced pretensions to miracles.
The most powerful monarchs were powerless before him. Emperors led his horse and held his stirrup. Kings were stripped by him of their honor and power, and whole realms were deprived of every religious privilege.
For refusing to surrender to the Pope the right of investiture, the right ever claimed by the princes of Europe, of conferring the most important places in the churches and monasteries upon whom they pleased, by the ceremony of presenting the ring and crozier; –Hildebrand, Gregory 7th, a pope haughty and arrogant in the extreme, drove Henry, emperor of Germany, from his throne, and compelled him in the winter of 1077 A.D. to cross the Alps, and stand three days in the open air at the entrance of the pontiff’s palace, with his feet bare, his head uncovered, and no other garment but a course woolen cloth thrown around his naked body, and implore forgiveness and restoration to his dominions.
For sanctioning, as was imagined of the violent death of Thomas A Becket, archbishop of Canterbury, a man who had acquired by his pretended sanctity, a most amazing power, Henry 2nd king of England, was compelled by pope Alexander, to walk barefoot over three miles of flinty road, with only a coarse cloth over his shoulders, to the shrine of the murdered saint, where eighty monks, four bishops, abbots and other clergy, who were present, whipped Henry’s bare back with a knotted cord, compelled him to drink water mingled with Becket’s blood, and to give forty pound a year for tapers to burn perpetually before the martyr’s tomb. See Thomas A Becket’s history below.
For opposing him in the appointment of an archbishop of Canterbury, pope Innocent 3rd in the commencement of the 13 century, excommunicated John, king of England forbidding all persons to eat, drink, or converse with him, or do him service; absolving all his subjects from their allegiance; ordering other monarchs of Europe to kill him, and laid the whole kingdom under an interdict, so that every religious privilege was taken away.
Every church was shut; no bell was heard; no taper lighted; no divine service performed; no sacrament administered; no priest was present, and no funeral solemnity was allowed in the burial of the dead; and no place of interment disposing of a body in the earth was permitted, except for the highways.
Thus, the Popes did take to themselves supreme dominion, the whole world they claimed as their property, which they gave to whomsoever they pleased. The inhabitants of heathen countries were treated as wild beasts; parceling them out and their lands at their pleasure.
To the king of Portugal, the Pope granted all the countries East of Cape Non in Africa, and to the Spaniards all to the West of it; showing himself as God. “The nations gave their power unto the beast, and they worshipped the beast, saying, who is like unto the beast? Who is able to make war with him.”
Thomas A. Becket born in London in 1119, he became the Archbishop of Canterbury, studied theology at Oxford and Paris, and afterwards law at Bologna, and Auxerre in Burgandy. He was recommended to Henry 2nd by the Archbishop of Canterbury.
In 1162 when he was made archbishop, bit soon a remarkable change became manifest in his whole manner. He resigned the chancellorship, threw aside his luxurious and courtly habits, assumed all austere religious character, exhibited his liberality only in his “charities,” soon appeared as a zealous champion of the church against all aggressions by the king and the nobility.
Henry 2 endeavored to keep the clergy in subordination to the state; convoked the nobility with the clergy to a council in 1164, where the so-called “constitution” (or law relative to the respective powers of church and state) were adopted. To these, he declared he would never consent; but afterwards, through the efforts of others and finally the pope himself, he was induced to give his unwilling approbation.
Henry now began to perceive Becket’s notions and his antagonistic and clearly exhibited hostility against him and the clergy of a superior order, whereupon Becket tried to leave the country. The king charged Becket with a breach of allegiance to a parliament summoned at Northampton in 1164, confiscated his goods, and sequestered the revenues of his See.
In 1170 an agreement was reached, thus Becket returned to England. But he soon manifested all his former opposition to royal authority. The king became inpatient with him and expressed to his followers that they rid him of this man. The suggestion was immediately understood, and carried into effect by four barons, who departed by separate ways for England.
On the evening of December 29, 1170 they entered the cathedral, and having failed in their attempt to drag him out of the church, they slew Becket before the altar of St Benedict. Henry was compelled to make heavy concessions to avoid the ban of excommunication.
The murders, having returned to Rome as penitents were sent on a pilgrimage to Israel; and two years after his death, Becket was canonized by Pope Alexander 3rd; the anniversary of his death was set apart as the yearly festival of St. Thomas at Canterbury and plenary indulgence were granted to all pilgrims who came to his tomb: 100,000 persons visited it at once.
The most astonishing miracles were there said to be performed ages after, and a prayer was introduced into the service of his day for salvation through the merits and blood of St. Thomas A Becket. Such was the deplorable superstition of the age!
In 1220, his bones were raised from the grave in the crypt where they had been buried two days after his murder, and were by order of King Henry the 3rd, deposited in a splendid shrine, which for three centuries continued to be the object of one of the great pilgrimages of Christendom, and still lives in English literature in connection with Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales.”
At the Reformation Henry the 8th plundered the shrine, erased Becket’s name from the calendar and caused his bones to be burnt and scattered to the winds. It is extremely difficult to estimate properly the character of Becket. We do not know what his ultimate aims were, whether, as some expect, they were patriotic, as in Saxon, as opposed to Norman, or, as others believe purely sacerdotal, meaning pertaining to priests as in dignity or function.
Phillip LaSpino www.seekfirstwisdom.com