The Decline Of The Church, Part 2

The Decline Of The Church, Part 2  

At Rome was the emporium of the world, its bishopric (the district over which the jurisdiction of a bishop extends) increased perpetually in grandeur, splendor and power. Its revenues became princely and its dependents, like those of a monarchy.

All the splendid trappings of royalty surrounded the incumbent. He sat on his throne, covered with sumptuous garments, attracting the admiration of the masses of people. It became, therefore a most seducing object of ambition.

When new bishop’s were elected, the whole city would become restless. Dissensions, tumults and men of various opinions gathered together with such behavior it would have disgraced the election of some secular worldly leader.

But, the bishop of Rome met with a sudden and serious check in his progress toward spiritual dominion. Constantine had removed the seat of the empire from Rome to Constantinople, and given the bishop of his capital a rank equal to that of any other spiritual power.

Rome, however, did not surrender the ground it had taken. These two prelates at once became rivals. A contest was carried on for ages, which resulted in the separation of the Greek and Latin churches.

The former continued to acknowledge the dominion of the bishop of Constantinople; but, from various causes, his dominion decreased; while that of Rome again soon gained amazing strength and power. Many of the bishops of Rome were men of talents and vast ambitions.

Leo 1st called the Great, who  in the fifth century, was a man of unusual genius and eloquence, and unwearied in his efforts for spiritual dominion. Gregory the Great, also, in the next age, distinguished himself in a violent contest with the bishop of Constantinople, and in extending the bounds of the See (the Pope) of Rome.

At length, in the commencement of the seventh century, the Byzantine Emperor Phocas (from 602 to 610) conferred upon Boniface 3ed, bishop of Rome, the title of ecumenical or universal bishop. This title had been seized by the bishop of Constantinople; but it was now, in this public manner, taken from him and conferred upon the bishop of Rome; and this too by one of the most repugnant tyrants that ever lived. What they had thus obtained, the Roman pontiffs used every effort to hold; and they did hold it, it being a power which no other earthly potentate possessed.

It is from this grant of Phocas that many date the establishment of the Papal power, though the most decisive marks of a man that stood against Christ, idolatry and false doctrine did not appear until a later time. But the period of her establishment was not the period of her full growth.

On the contrary, the Catholic Church was for many centuries gaining her astonishing dominion, as she had been rising to the point at which she stands today. An account of some of the great causes which contributed to her enlargement, and of the various steps by which she marched on to the summit of power, will give a general view of the ecclesiastical world from the seventh to the fourteenth century.

There existed a period before us of extreme ignorance, superstition and corruption. The world had sunk into Egyptian darkness. The cultivation of human intellect was abandoned. The incursions of the barbarous nations from the North had driven everything like literature into the halls of the monasteries. Books were unknown among the common people; and had they been know, they would have been useless, for few were acquainted with the ability to read.

The great mass of the clergy were incapable of reading the Apostle’s creed. Even the bishops in general were unable to compose anything like a sermon, and delivered to the people insipid homilies, which they had taken from the writings of Augustin and Gregory. Such an age was exceedingly favorable to artful and daring men, who continually made pretensions to authority which few had the ability to question.

It was also an age of deep superstition. Men had a short rational view of religion. They had almost wholly lost sight of the character of God, and the state of the heart, of the gospel of Christ, and of the duty which God required of man.

The doctrine of salvation by faith in Christ was almost as unknown as at Athens, in the days of Paul. The minds of men were wholly turned to an attendance on a multitude of rites and ceremonies as the sure way of gaining salvation. These, issuing from the papal throne, gave the popes an immense control over the heart and conscience.

The multitude easily learned to look up to them as standing in the place of God, and to be honored by God. And it was a circumstance extremely favorable to the ambitious design of the popes, that those vast barbarous nations, which had overspread the fair fields of Europe, had been accustomed to regard their priests with an awful superstition, and to attribute to their arch-druid little less than god-like powers.

Easily were such men made to transfer all this reverence to those who officiated at Christian altars, and to give the Roman pontiff the authority and power of the arch-druid (meaning a priest or minister of religion).

Above all, it was an age of awful corruption. In the East the Holy Spirit had, to human appearance, ceased to operate. In the West, there was, indeed, to be found some piety. God, in every age, it is believed, has had a people to serve him.

The gates of hell have never been suffered entirely to prevail against the Church of Christ. What piety there was, however, was chiefly in nations remote from Rome, and newly converted; though here and there was one to be found in the seat of the beast that had not his mark in their forehead, and who made vigorous opposition to him, and excited much trouble. The spirit of prophecy had declared that through the long night of popery, there should be two witnesses who should prophesy in sack cloth.

But in general, the civilized world, from the seventh to the fourteenth century, was sunk in the lowest depths of moral corruption. No law of God, requiring holiness and forbidding sin, was placed before men. Morality did not enter into the religion of the age. He who would practice some rite, or possess some relic, or pay a sum of money, was assured of heaven, were left to go fearless into eternity, amid the grossest vices; while no cultivation of mind or manners existed to keep them above the sensualities of brutes.

The priests and bishops were a worthless, ignorant and corrupt people. They often passed their lives in splendor of courts, or at the head of soldiers, and aspired to the honors and authority of Dukes, Marquises, and Counts. Even the Roman pontiffs, with a few exceptions, were monsters of iniquity; who sought the chair as a place of dominion, and who were perpetually guilty of the most flagitious wickedness.

In each an age of corruption, what could be expected, but that every law, human and divine, would be trampled upon, and the minds of men became enslaved by the most tremendous tyranny. Not more certain is it that the river runs into the ocean, than that licentiousness generates tyranny, while holiness results in civil and religious liberty.

Phillip LaSpino   www.seekfirstwisdom.com