The Holy Scripture - english version B.indd - Sabbat

Double Foreview of the Reformation.423employed in this predcition of them and their fellow witnesses.But we must now recall that the prophecy not only presents to whole lineof faithful witnesses as sufferers and mourners by the sackcloth emblem, butthat it predicts that at a certain stage in their historythe Roman wild beast would in some specially definiteway make war against them, conquer them, and kill them.This part of the prophecy began to receive its fulfilment at the end of the twelthcentury, when, at the third Lateran Council (A.D. 1179), the Popedom rouseditself collectively to a war of extermination against heretics. Previously to this,separate members of the system, acting alone and independently, had opposedthe truth by force and cruelty. But in the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenthcenturies, Romanism, then in the plentitude of its power, gathered itself togetherfor a great, determined, united, and persistent effort to crush out all that opposedits supremacy, and to clear, and to clear Christendom of heresy.This deadly onslaught against the saints waspredicted, as you will remember, both by Daniel and byJohn in their foreviews of the Roman antichrist. He was towear out the saints of the Most High, and prevail against them. Here the same fierceand fatal antagonism comes in as an incident in the career of the two representative"witnesses," who symbolize the succession of evangelical Churches, which keptup the testimony of Jesus during the dark ages. During the three centuries we havejust mentioned the furnace was heated seven times hotter than it was wont to beheated. Persecution raged systematically. The fourth Lateran Council, in 1215,sanctioned all former plans for the extirpartion of heresy, urged their adoptionwith renewed vigour, and subordinated secular authority to spiritual powers forthe purpose. If kings would not clear their dominions of heresy, their subject wreto be absolved from all allegiance to them. Crusades against heretics were to beorganized, and to secure the same privileges and rewards as crusades against theTurks. The Holy Scriptures were to be interdicted to the laity ; even children wereto be forced to denounce their own relatives.All sorts of methods were to be used for the detection of heretics ; bishopswere to gird themselves for the work of ferretting out and exterminating them ;and all the Franciscan and Dominican monks were to supply instruments forcarrying out this process of inquisition and blood. The Waldenses andAlbigenses were, of course, especially singled out for extermination. Acrusade was proclaimed against them, and plenary absolution promisedto all who should perish in the holy war. Never was a more mercilessspirit of murder exhibited than by these terrible crusaders against themeek and lowly and Christian-spirited Vaudois. The Inquisition - that invention ofDominic, or rather Gregory IX. - established its horrid tribunal for making inquestafter unseen, secret "heresy" ; and wherever any revival of true religion took place,or any confessors of Christ could be found, there they were hunted, if possible, todeath. Genuine disciples of Christ, under whatever name they might pass, whethercalled Petrobrussians, Catharists, Waldenses, Albigenses, Wicliffites, Lollards,Hussites, Bohemians, or any other name, it mattered not - to the torture and thestake with them if they held fast the gospel [good tidings] of Christ! Savonarola,