stituted for
the One who has said, "Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy
laden, and I will give you rest."(1003)

It is Satan's constant effort to misrepresent the character of God, the
nature of sin, and the real issues at stake in the great controversy. His
sophistry lessens the obligation of the divine law, and gives men license
to sin. At the same time he causes them to cherish false conceptions of
God, so that they regard Him with fear and hate, rather than with love.
The cruelty inherent in his own character is attributed to the Creator; it
is embodied in systems of religion, and expressed in modes of worship.
Thus the minds of men are blinded, and Satan secures them as his agents to
war against God. By perverted conceptions of the divine attributes,
heathen nations were led to believe human sacrifices necessary to secure
the favor of Deity; and horrible cruelties have been perpetrated under the
various forms of idolatry.

The Roman Catholic Church, uniting the forms of paganism and Christianity,
and, like paganism, misrepresenting the character of God, has resorted to
practices no less cruel and revolting. In the days of Rome's supremacy,
there were instruments of torture to compel assent to her doctrines. There
was the stake for those who would not concede to her claims. There were
massacres on a scale that will never be known until revealed in the
judgment. Dignitaries of the church studied, under Satan their master, to
invent means to cause the greatest possible torture, and not end the life
of their victim. In many cases the infernal process was repeated to the
utmost limit of human endurance, until nature gave up the struggle, and
the sufferer hailed death as a sweet release.

Such was the fate of Rome's opponents. For her adherents she had the
discipline of the scourge, of famishing hunger, of bodily austerities in
every conceivable, heart-sickening form. To secure the favor of Heaven,
penitents violated the laws of God by violating the laws of nature. They
were taught to sunder the ties which He has formed to bless and gladden
man's earthly sojourn. The churchyard contains millions of victims, who
spent their lives in vain endeavors to subdue their natural affections, to
repress, as offensive to God, every thought and feeling of sympathy with
their fellow-creatures.

If we desire to understand the determined cruelty of Satan, manifested for
hundreds of years, not among those who never heard of