The-papacy-its-history-dogmas-genius-and-prospects-wylie

WISAPrROrRIATION OF SCRIPTURE. 201appeals to history. It requires assuredly no little courageto look history in the face, deeply indented as it is with herbloody foot-prints. She delights to recall to her own and toothers'" recollection her palmy state in the twelfth, thirteenth,and fourteenth centuries, when, by the help of fire and sword,she had succeeded in suppressing all public profession of thetruth ; and to show that the savage spirit of vengeance whichpersecuted these men to the death still lives in certain membersof the Roman Church in our day, we find the Rev.Stephen Keenan stigmatizing those confessors whom hisChurch compelled to inhabit the " dens and caves of theearth," and whom she slew with " the edge of the sword,"as " hypocrites, dastardly traitors to their religion, utterlyincapable of composing the holy, fearless body of the trueChurch of Christ."*We deny, in the first place, that the pro^nises appropriatedby the Church of Rome refer to her ; we deny, in thesecond place, that that Church is catholic in point of doctrine; we deny, in the third place, that she is catholic inpoint of time ;catholic inand we deny, in the fourth place, that she ispoint of place.First, as regards the promises applied to herself by theChurch of Rome, we deny that it is anywhere foretold inScripture that the Church, commencing with the apostolicera, would continue uninterruptedly to progress and triumph.We have several plain intimations to the contrary. We findthe apostle Paul predicting the rise of a great apostacy,-f- ofwhich a temporary and comparative catholicity was to formone of the more obvious marks.In the one prophetic bookof the New Testament it is expressly said of Antichrist,whose marks Rome, if she examine, will find written uponher forehead, " all the world wondered after the beast."|What the passages in question foretell is, that after agesof conflict and oppression, and especially after the ovcr-* Controversial Catechism, chaji. iii.t Thessalouiaus, ii. 3-10 ; 1 Tim. iv. 1-3. J Rev. xiii. 3, 4, S, 15.