THE HISTORY OF ROMANISM

“The History of Romanism”
By John Dowling, 1871

From the first chapter of Dowling’s great work

POPERY IN EMBRYO – From the Earliest Corruptions of Christianity to the Papal Supremacy, A.D. 606

1. The blessed founder of Christianity chose to make his advent among the lowly and the despised. This was agreeable to the spirit of that Holy Religion which He came to establish. There was a time when a multitude of His followers, astonished and convinced by the omnipotence displayed in his wondrous miracles, were disposed to “take him by force to make him a king,” but so far from encouraging their design, the inspired historian tells us “that he departed again, into a mountain himself alone.” (John vi., 15.) In reply to the inquiries of the Roman governor, He uttered those memorable words, “MY KINGDOM IS NOT OF THIS WORLD,” and His whole conduct from the manger to the cross, and from the cross to the mount of ascension, was in strict accordance with this characteristic maxim of genuine Christianity.

2. In selecting those whom He would send forth as the apostles of His faith, He went, not to the mansions of the great or to the palaces of kings, but to the humble walks of life, and chose from the poor of this world, those who, in prosecuting their mission, were destined, like their Divine Master, to be despised and rejected of men. In performing the work which their Lord had given them to do, the lowly but zealous fisherman of Galilee, and the courageous tent-maker of Tarsus, with their faithful fellow-laborers, despising all earthly honors and worldly aggrandizement, were content to lay every laurel at the foot of Christ’s cross, and to “count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, their Lord,” for whom they had “suffered the loss of all things.” (Philippians,iii., 8.)

3. A few centuries afterward, we find the professed successor of Peter the fisherman, dwelling in a magnificent palace, attended by troops of soldiers ready to avenge the slightest insult offered to his dignity, surrounded by all the ensigns of worldly greatness, with more than regal splendor, proudly claiming to be the sovereign ruler of the universal church, the Vicegerent of God upon earth, whose decision is infallible and whose will is law. The contrast between these two pictures of Primitive Christianity in the first century, and Papal Christianity in the seventh or eighth, is so amazing, that we are irresistibly led to the inquiry, can they be the same? If one is a faithful picture of Christianity, can it be possible that the other is worthy of the name?

Leaving the reader to answer this question for himself, after accompanying us in the present history, we proceed to remark that this transformation cannot be supposed to have taken place all at once. The change from the lowliness of the one to the lordliness of the other, required ages to complete, and it was not till the lapse of more than five centuries from the death of the last of the apostles that the transformation was entire.

4. The apostle Paul tells us that even in his day “the mystery of iniquity” had begun to work, and had it not been for the purifying influence of the fires of persecution kindled by the emperors of pagan Rome, the advance of ecclesiastical corruption and spiritual despotism would probably have been far more rapid than it was -- and at an earlier period “the man of sin” have been “revealed,” even that “son of perdition, who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God or that is worshipped ; so that he as God, sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God.”

For three centuries after the ascension of Christ, His disciples were exposed, with but few and brief intermissions, to a succession of cruel and bitter persecutions and sufferings. The pampered wild beasts, kept for the amusement of the Roman populace, fattened upon the bodies of the martyrs of Jesus in the amphitheatres of Rome or of other cities of the empire, and hundreds of fires were fed by the living frames of those who “loved not their lives unto the death.” “They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword; they wandered about in sheep skins and goat skins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented (of whom the world was not worthy); they wandered in deserts and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth.”

Under such a state of things, there was of course but little inducement to the worldly minded and ambitious, to seek admission to the church; and if during a season of relaxation some such might creep within its pale, it required only the mandate of another emperor to kindle anew the fires of persecution in order to separate the dross from the gold.  This opposition of the powers and potentates of the earth, constituted the most effectual barrier against the speedier progress of corruption in the church, and according to the prediction of St. Paul, before “the man of sin” could be revealed it was necessary that this let or hindrance should be removed.  It can scarcely be doubted that the apostle referred to the continuance of persecuting pagan Rome, when he said, “and now ye know what withholdeth, that he might be revealed in his time, for the mystery of iniquity doth already work, only he who now letteth will let until he be taken out of the way; AND THEN SHALL THAT WICKED BE REVEALED.”

5. It is an important fact that Popery is plainly a subject of prophetic prediction in the Sacred Scriptures, and though the almost entire subversion of true Christianity, which occurred in the course of only a few centuries, might otherwise have a tendency to stagger our faith in its divine origin, yet when it is remembered that this great antichristian Apostasy or “falling away” happened in exact accordance with “the scriptures of truth,” the fact serves to strengthen rather than to shake our faith in the divinity of our holy religion.

Not long ago, the remark was made by a Roman Catholic, “The Bible cannot be true without Holy Mother of Rome.” He meant to say that the Pope gives it all its evidence and authority. “Very true,” said a Protestant: “for as the Holy Bible has predicted the rise, power, and calamities of Popery -- if these predictions had not been fully manifested in the actual existence and tremendous evils of Popery, the Bible would have wanted the fulfillment of its prophecies, and therefore would not have been true!”  The same thought was recently suggested in an eloquent discourse by Professor Gaussen, of Geneva, before his Theological class. “In pointing to the Pope,” said he, “we point to a miracle which calls upon us to believe the Bible!” Considered in this view, the obduracy of the Romanists, like the obduracy of the Jews, wonderfully instructs the church, because it has been foretold; and thus it is that the scandals of Rome are transformed into an eloquent argument. The sovereign pontiff and the Romish hierarchy become, in this way, admirable supports of the truth.”