The Revelation of Jesus Christ - The Herald

"The persecutions of the Christians under Pagan Rome were not worthy of comparison
with those under Papal Rome, being less frequent, more limited in extent and much less
severe. It is stated on the authority of the early Christians, that the majority of the Roman
magistrates who exercised in the provinces the authority of the emperor, or of the senate,
and in whose hands was the power of life and death, behaved like men of polished
manners and liberal education, who respected the rules of justice. They frequently
declined the odious task of persecution, dismissed charges against the Christians with
contempt, . . . or suggested to accused Christians some legal evasion. . . . How different the
persecutions of Papacy, which laid hold not only of prominent opposers but of all, and
whose persecutions lasted not for a few months only, but incessantly! . . . Kings and
princes who trembled for the security of their crowns, if they to any extent incurred the
Pope's displeasure, and whose realms might be laid under a dreaded interdict, should
they or their people refuse to render absolute obedience to the Pope's commands, were
sworn to exterminate heresy, and admonished to purify their provinces from heretical
perversity, on the pain of having their dominions wrested from them; and those barons
who neglected to aid in the work of persecution forfeited their estates. Kings and princes,
therefore, were not tardy in their efforts to comply with the mandates of the Papacy; . . . as
early as the year AD 630 the Council of Toledo compelled the King of Spain, on his
accession to the throne, to swear to tolerate no heretical subjects in the Spanish dominions.
. . . The Council of Oxford in 1160 consigned a company of Waldenses, who had emigrated
from Gascony to England, to the secular arm for punishment. Accordingly, King Henry II
ordered them, men and women, to be publicly whipped, branded on the cheek with a redhot
iron, and driven half-naked out of the city in the dead of winter; and none were
permitted to show them pity or to grant them the slightest favor. . . .
"The Waldenses and Albigenses were the most numerous bodies of Protestants against
Papacy; and when the literary awakening of the thirteenth century came, it was mainly
from these that the truth shone out, though reflected and intensified in utterance by
Wycliffe, Huss, Luther, and others. And their doctrines, backed by simplicity and
morality, shone out with greater lustre in contrast, to the pompous pride and flagrant
immoralities of the then exalted Papacy.
"Then it was that popes, councils, theologians, kings, crusaders and inquisitors combined
their fiendish powers to exterminate every opponent, and to extinguish the faintest rays of
dawning light. Pope Innocent III first sent missionaries to the districts in which the
doctrines of the Albigenses had gained foothold, to preach Romanism, work miracles, etc.;
but, finding these efforts unavailing, he proclaimed a crusade against them and offered to
all who would engage in it the pardon of all sins and an immediate passport to heaven
without passing through purgatory. With full faith in the pope's power to bestow the
promised rewards, half a million men--French, German and Italian--rallied around the
standard of the cross, for the defense of Catholicism and the extinction of heresy. Then
followed a series of battles and sieges covering a space of twenty years. The city of Beziers
was stormed and taken in 1209, and the citizens, without regard for age or sex, perished by
the sword to the number of sixty thousand, as reported by several historians. The blood of