During these dark ages thousands of priests, who were
by the laws of the church denied their Scriptural right of possessing a
wife (1 Cor. 7:9, etc.), lived openly with concubines; and the Council
of Toledo decreed that they should not be condemned therefor, provided
they were content with one.

But the devil produced his master-piece of iniquity in the person of
Roderic Borgia, who ascended the Papal throne in 1492 under the name of
Alexander VI. The utmost limits assigned to Papal depravity were
realized in him, so that the very name Borgia has come to be used as a
designation of any person unusually wicked. Says Waddington: "The
ecclesiastical records of fifteen centuries ... contain no name so
loathsome, no crimes so foul as his.... Not one among the many zealous
annalists of the Roman church has breathed a whisper in his praise....
He publicly cohabited with a Roman matron named Vanozia, by whom he had
five acknowledged children. Neither in his manners nor in his language
did he affect any regard for morality or decency; and one of the
earliest acts of his pontificate was, to celebrate, with scandalous
magnificence, in his own palace, the marriage of his daughter Lucretia.
On one occasion this prodigy of vice gave a splendid entertainment,
within the walls of the Vatican, to no less than fifty public
prostitutes at once, and that in the presence of his daughter Lucretia,
at which entertainment deeds of darkness were done, over which decency
must throw a veil; and yet this monster of vice was, according to Papist
... the vicar of God upon earth, and was addressed by the title of HIS
HOLINESS!!" But why stir this cesspool of filth any longer? Is not that
church of which Alexander VI. was for eleven years the crowned and
anointed head--a necessary link in the boasted chain of _holy_
apostolical succession, the pretended vicar of Christ upon earth--is it
not, I ask, fitly described by the pen of inspiration "MOTHER OF HARLOTS
AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH," as she reeled onward in the career of
ages, "drunken with the blood of the saints"?

7. And the angel said unto me, Wherefore didst thou marvel? I
will tell thee the mystery of the woman, and of the beast that
carriest her, which hath the seven heads and ten horns.

8. The beast that thou sawest was, and is not; and shall ascend
out of the bottomless pit, and go into perdition: and they that
dwell on the earth shall wonder, whose names wer