The Great Controversy The Great Controversy | Page 275

was trampled underfoot. The institutions of the Bible were abolished.
The weekly rest day was set aside, and in its stead every tenth day was
devoted to reveling and blasphemy. Baptism and the Communion were
prohibited. And announcements posted conspicuously over the burial
places declared death to be an eternal sleep.
The fear of God was said to be so far from the beginning of wisdom
that it was the beginning of folly. All religious worship was prohibited,
except that of liberty and the country. The “constitutional bishop of Paris
was brought forward to play the principal part in the most impudent and
scandalous farce ever acted in the face of a national representation.... He
was brought forward in full procession, to declare to the Convention that
the religion which he had taught so many years was, in every respect, a
piece of priestcraft, which had no foundation either in history or sacred
truth. He disowned, in solemn and explicit terms, the existence of the
Deity to whose worship he had been consecrated, and devoted himself
in future to the homage of liberty, equality, virtue, and morality. He
then laid on the table his episcopal decorations, and received a fraternal
embrace from the president of the Convention. Several apostate priests
followed the example of this prelate.”—Scott, vol. 1, ch. 17.
“And they that dwell upon the earth shall rejoice over them, and make
merry, and shall send gifts one to another; because these two prophets
tormented them that dwelt on the earth.” Infidel France had silenced the
reproving voice of God’s two witnesses. The word of truth lay dead
in her streets, and those who hated the restrictions and requirements
of God’s law were jubilant. Men publicly defied the King of heaven.
Like the sinners of old, they cried: “How doth God know? and is there
knowledge in the Most High?” Psalm 73:11.
With blasphemous boldness almost beyond belief, one of the priests
of the new order said: “God, if You exist, avenge Your injured name. I
bid You defiance! You remain silent; You dare not launch Your thunders.
Who after this will

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