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Prophetic Expositions, vol. 1

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    II. THE CONDITION OF THE PAPAL POWER AFTER HIS DOMINION WAS TAKEN AWAY

    To consume and destroy unto the end.” The great error of most expositors, in calculating “the time, times, and dividing of a time,” and explaining the prophecy, seems to have been, in supposing that popery would cease to exist after the close of that period; whereas, the prophecy gives us most clearly to understand that it was to exist after that period, and undergo a consuming process, even from its fall “to the end.” This consuming process has been realized in its history.PREX1 89.4

    1. One of the fundamental principles of popery was the suppression of the Scriptures. But since 1798, the word of God has been translated into more than one hundred and fifty different languages in which it was never before published; and is now scattered among nearly all nations, in their own languages. This work of Bible distribution is not confined to Protestant communities alone: it has gone among Jews, Mahomedans, Pagans, Greeks, Catholics, and, finally, infidels. Yes, Catholic-infidel France, is receiving the blessed volume of truth. According to the report of the Bible Society, there were distributed in France, last year, 250,000 copies of the holy Scriptures; and also that eighty, out of one hundred and fifty colporters or Bible distributers were but a short time since, Roman Catholics. The very fact of the universal spread of the word of God is one of the heaviest blows that the papal superstition could receive. Under such a stroke it can but writhe and languish.PREX1 89.5

    2. The Inquisition has been abolished since that period. The light of the 19th century will not tolerate such an engine of torture.PREX1 90.1

    3. Monastic institutions in some of the darkest papal countries of Europe have been abolished.PREX1 90.2

    4. Protestants are tolerated in all papal countries. Even in the city of Rome, the church of England has had a place of worship, and regular services each Sabbath for some thirty years.PREX1 90.3

    5. The pope acknowledges his own weakness and want of power to suppress heresy. He feels the smart of his mortal wound and the weakness of his broken arm, as the following extract from his Encyllical Letter of September, 1840, will abundantly show.-[Signs of the Times, Feb. 15, 1841.]PREX1 90.4

    He says, “Indeed, are we not compelled to see the most crafty enemies of the truth ranging far and wide with impunity?” Again;—“We refer you to facts, venerable brethren, which not and are known to you, but of which you are witnesses; even you, who, though you mourn, and, as your pastoral duty requires, are by no means silent, are yet compelled to tolerate in your dioceses these aforesaid propagators of heresy and infidelity.” “Hence, it is easy to conceive the state of anguish into which our soul is plunged day and night,” etc.PREX1 90.5

    Once, the Holy Inquisition could quickly check the audacity of heretics and infidels, and the pope and his priesthood were not “compelled to tolerate” them in their “dioceses;” but now they have no alternative but to submit.PREX1 91.1

    6. Another heavy stroke in the consumption of that little horn, is, the recent quarrel between him and the Spanish government. That government, provoked at the audacity of the pope, has issued an act, declaring the supremacy of the Roman pontiff to be at once and forever abolished in the kingdom of Spain. Can we ask for a more explicit fulfilment of prophecy than we have of the consumption of popery from 1798 until now?PREX1 91.2

    True, the pope is making gigantic efforts for the propagation of his system, but it is all done by Jesuitical trickery, not by the authority he once derived from Justinian to correct heretics, by decision and right judgment of his venerable see.PREX1 91.3