ked to the pope, and to the priests and prelates
to whom he delegated authority. They were taught that the pope was their
earthly mediator, and that none could approach God except through him; and
further, that he stood in the place of God to them, and was therefore to
be implicitly obeyed. A deviation from his requirements was sufficient
cause for the severest punishment to be visited upon the bodies and souls
of the offenders. Thus the minds of the people were turned away from God
to fallible, erring, and cruel men, nay, more, to the prince of darkness
himself, who exercised his power through them. Sin was disguised in a garb
of sanctity. When the Scriptures are suppressed, and man comes to regard
himself as supreme, we need look only for fraud, deception, and debasing
iniquity. With the elevation of human laws and traditions, was manifest
the corruption that ever results from setting aside the law of God.

Those were days of peril for the church of Christ. The faithful
standard-bearers were few indeed. Though the truth was not left without
witnesses, yet at times it seemed that error and superstition would wholly
prevail, and true religion would be banished from the earth. The gospel
was lost sight of, but the forms of religion were multiplied, and the
people were burdened with rigorous exactions.

They were taught not only to look to the pope as their mediator, but to
trust to works of their own to atone for sin. Long pilgrimages, acts of
penance, the worship of relics, the erection of churches, shrines, and
altars, the payment of large sums to the church,--these and many similar
acts were enjoined to appease the wrath of God or to secure His favor; as
if God were like men, to be angered at trifles, or pacified by gifts or
acts of penance!

Notwithstanding that vice prevailed, even among the leaders of the Roman
Church, her influence seemed steadily to increase. About the close of the
eighth century, papists put forth the claim that in the first ages of the
church the bishops of Rome had possessed the same spiritual power which
they now assumed. To establish this claim, some means must be employed to
give it a show of authority; and this was readily suggested by the father
of lies. Ancient writings were forged by monks. Decrees of councils before
unheard of, were discovered, establishing the universal supremacy of the
pope from the earliest times. And a church that had rejected the truth,
greedily accepted these de