The Great Controversy The Great Controversy | Page 565
Have these persons forgotten the claim of infallibility put forth
for eight hundred years by this haughty power? So far from being
relinquished, this claim was affirmed in the nineteenth century with
greater positiveness than ever before. As Rome asserts that the “church
never erred; nor will it, according to the Scriptures, ever err” (John
L. von Mosheim, Institutes of Ecclesiastical History, book 3, century II,
part 2, chapter 2, section 9, note 17), how can she renounce the principles
which governed her course in past ages?
The papal church will never relinquish her claim to infallibility. All
that she has done in her persecution of those who reject her dogmas she
holds to be right; and would she not repeat the same acts, should the
opportunity be presented? Let the restraints now imposed by secular
governments be removed and Rome be reinstated in her former power,
and there would speedily be a revival of her tyranny and persecution.
A well-known writer speaks thus of the attitude of the papal
hierarchy as regards freedom of conscience, and of the perils which
especially threaten the United States from the success of her policy:
“There are many who are disposed to attribute any fear of Roman
Catholicism in the United States to bigotry or childishness. Such see
nothing in the character and attitude of Romanism that is hostile to our
free institutions, or find nothing portentous in its growth. Let us, then,
first compare some of the fundamental principles of our government with
those of the Catholic Church.
“The Constitution of the United States guarantees liberty of
conscience. Nothing is dearer or more fundamental. Pope Pius IX, in his
Encyclical Letter of August 15, 1854, said: ‘The absurd and erroneous
doctrines or ravings in defense of liberty of conscience are a most
pestilential error—a pest, of all others, most to be dreaded in a state.’ The
same pope, in his Encyclical Letter of December 8, 1864, anathematized
‘those who assert the liberty of conscience and of religious
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