itudes. By this heresy is affirmed the
existence of a place of torment, in which the souls of such as have not
merited eternal damnation are to suffer punishment for their sins, and
from which, when freed from impurity, they are admitted to heaven.(92)

Still another fabrication was needed to enable Rome to profit by the fears
and the vices of her adherents. This was supplied by the doctrine of
indulgences. Full remission of sins, past, present, and future, and
release from all the pains and penalties incurred, were promised to all
who would enlist in the pontiff's wars to extend his temporal dominion, to
punish his enemies, or to exterminate those who dared deny his spiritual
supremacy. The people were also taught that by the payment of money to the
church they might free themselves from sin, and also release the souls of
their deceased friends who were confined in the tormenting flames. By such
means did Rome fill her coffers, and sustain the magnificence, luxury, and
vice of the pretended representatives of Him who had not where to lay His
head.(93)

The scriptural ordinance of the Lord's supper had been supplanted by the
idolatrous sacrifice of the mass. Papal priests pretended, by their
senseless mummery, to convert the simple bread and wine into the actual
"body and blood of Christ."(94) With blasphemous presumption, they openly
claimed the power of creating God, the Creator of all things. Christians
were required, on pain of death, to avow their faith in this horrible,
Heaven-insulting heresy. Multitudes who refused were given to the
flames.(95)

In the thirteenth century was established that most terrible of all the
engines of the papacy,--the Inquisition. The prince of darkness wrought
with the leaders of the papal hierarchy. In their secret councils, Satan
and his angels controlled the minds of evil men, while unseen in the midst
stood an angel of God, taking the fearful record of their iniquitous
decrees, and writing the history of deeds too horrible to appear to human
eyes. "Babylon the great" was "drunken with the blood of the saints." The
mangled forms of millions of martyrs cried to God for vengeance upon that
apostate power.

Popery had become the world's despot. Kings and emperors bowed to the
decrees of the Roman pontiff. The destinies of men, both for time and for
eternity, seemed under his control. For hundreds of years the doctrines of
Rome had been extensively and implicitly received, its rites