The Great Controversy The Great Controversy | Page 581
Sunday-sabbath, will be repeated; already it is beginning to be urged.
And a movement to enforce Sunday observance is fast gaining ground.
Marvelous in her shrewdness and cunning is the Roman Church. She
can read what is to be. She bides her time, seeing that the Protestant
churches are paying her homage in their acceptance of the false sabbath
and that they are preparing to enforce it by the very means which she
herself employed in bygone days. Those who reject the light of truth will
yet seek the aid of this self-styled infallible power to exalt an institution
that originated with her. How readily she will come to the help of
Protestants in this work it is not difficult to conjecture. Who understands
better than the papal leaders how to deal with those who are disobedient
to the church?
The Roman Catholic Church, with all its ramifications throughout
the world, forms one vast organization under the control, and designed
to serve the interests, of the papal see. Its millions of communicants, in
every country on the globe, are instructed to hold themselves as bound in
allegiance to the pope. Whatever their nationality or their government,
they are to regard the authority of the church as above all other. Though
they may take the oath pledging their loyalty to the state, yet back of this
lies the vow of obedience to Rome, absolving them from every pledge
inimical to her interests.
History testifies of her artful and persistent efforts to insinuate herself
into the affairs of nations; and having gained a foothold, to further her
own aims, even at the ruin of princes and people. In the year 1204,
Pope Innocent III extracted f rom Peter II, king of Arragon, the following
extraordinary oath: “I, Peter, king of Arragonians, profess and promise
to be ever faithful and obedient to my lord, Pope Innocent, to his Catholic
successors, and the Roman Church, and faithfully to preserve my
kingdom in his obedience, defending the Catholic faith, and persecuting
heretical pravity.”—John Dowling, The History of Romanism, b. 5, ch.
6, sec.
580