The Mysteries of the Vatican; Or, Crimes of the Papacy, Tr. by E.S. (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. THE PIONEERS OF THE REFORMATION. After the general destruction of the heretics in the south of France, a deadly terror seemed to settle down upon the world. Men felt that life, property, and honour were thenceforth to be placed at the mercy of the lightest whisper of malice, and for a long period no one was found daring enough to overstep the magic circle drawn around humanity by the fiat of Rome. Though here and there a solitary thinker still garnered up in the recesses of his heart the purer doctrines of the Waldensian martyrs, though in the lonely valleys of Piedmont a few communities, unknown to the world, still held to their earlier faith, whilst outwardly conforming to the Catholic ritual; yet, on the whole, Sacer- dotium had gained a great victory, and throughout western Europe Rome might hope henceforth to absolutely dictate men's thoughts and spiritual aspirations. Of Christ, or the Christianity founded by Christ, no vestige was left visible in the world; it had been changed into a new faith?the Roman Catholic, which, like the heathenism of the Budhists, was founded wholly on supposititious miracles, relics, saints, purgatory, and indulgences. The Christians of that age could not claim equal purity for their faith with that of Islam or Judaism, for both the latter, at least, denounced idol worship; and a council, in 1361, had found it necessary to remind Christians, in a spiritual edict, there were not many gods, but only One God. The whole demon world of the north had been merged into the religion of Rome, and superstition, ignorance, and mental deterioration so increased, that many persons in their disgust adopted the faith of the Old Testament, the doctrines of Mohammed, or utterly denied Grod and immortality. Not a few sought refuge in ancient pa...