The Southern Sentinel and Herald of Liberty Articles (1895-1897)

The Southern Sentinel and Herald of Liberty, Vol. 2 (1895-96)

June 1895

"Purifying Politics" The Southern Sentinel and Herald of Liberty 2, 6 , pp. 8-10.

A. T. JONES

SPEAKING of an amendment to the Constitution that should purify American politics by giving the religion of Jesus Christ a place in the Government, Dr. McAllister says: -

"Finally, the proposed Amendment will draw to the administration of the Government such men as the law of God requires, - not the reckless, the unprincipled, the profane but able men, who fear God and hate covetousness." - Christian Statesman, Dec. 27, 1888.

This thing has been tried several times, and always with the same result, namely, to make corruption more corrupt. Given, human nature what it is, and make profession of religion a qualification for governmental favor, or political preference, and the inevitable result will always be that thousands will profess the required

9

religion expressly to obtain political preferment, and for no other reason; and so to dishonest ambition is added deliberate hypocrisy.

CONSTANTINE'S EXAMPLE

The first to employ this method was he to whom can be traced almost every ill that Christianity has suffered (this last one being by no means the least), - Constantine. He made the bishop of Rome a prince of the empire, and clothed the inferior bishops with such power that they not only ruled as princes, but imitated the princes in pride, luxury, worldly pomp, and hateful haughtiness, - imitated the princes in these, and imitated the emperor in persecuting with relentless vigor all who differed with them in faith. And the bishop of Rome, above all in rank, held the supremacy also in pride, arrogance, and profusion of luxury, to such a degree that one of most eminent of the heathen writers exclaimed, either in envy or indignation, "Make me bishop of Rome and I will be a Christian."

Nor were the governmental favors of Constantine confined to the bishops; they extended to all orders; and by the promise of a white garment, and twenty pieces of gold to every convert, there was secured in a single year the baptism of no fewer than twelve thousand men, besides a proportionate number of women and children. See Gibbon, "Decline and Fall of Rome," chap. 20, par. 17. And the inevitable consequence was that "formalism succeeded faith, and religion fled from a station among the rulers of Christendom to shelter in her native scenes among the suffering and the poor." Was politics purified there? No! religion was corrupted and faith debased; and amidst and by it all, were taken the widest and most rapid strides of the Church of Rome toward that fearful height of power and depth of degradation which was the astonishment and the shame of the world.

A LESSON FROM LOUIS XIV

Another notable instance was Louis XIV. of France. The early part of his reign was a time of much license; "but in his old age he became religious; and he determined that his subjects should be religious too. He shrugged his shoulders and knitted his brows if he observed at his levee, or near his dinner table; any gentleman who neglected the duties enjoined by the church. He rewarded piety with blue ribands, pensions, invitations to MarlÈ, governments, and regiments. Forthwith Versailles became in everything but dress, a convent. The pulpits and confessionals were surrounded by swords and embroidery. The marshals were much in prayer; and there was hardly one among the dukes and peers who did not carry good little books in his pocket, fast during lent, and communicate at Easter. Madame de Maintenon, who had a great share in the blessed work, boasted that devotion had become quite the fashion."

And was politics purified? - With a vengeance! We read on: "A fashion indeed it was; and like a fashion it passed away. No sooner had the old king been carried to St. Denis than the whole court unmasked. Every man hastened to indemnify himself, by the excess of licentiousness and impudence, for years of mortification. The same persons who, a few months before, with meek voices and demure looks, had consulted divines about the state of their souls, now surrounded the midnight table, where, amidst the bounding champagne corks, a drunken prince, enthroned between Dubois and Madame de Parabere, hiccoughed out atheistical

10

arguments and obscene jests. The early part of the reign of Louis XIV. had been a time of license; but the most dissolute men of that generation would have blushed at the orgies Regency." - Macaulay's Essay on Leigh Hunt.

THE PURITAN PARLIAMENT

But undoubtedly the most notable instance of all is that of the Puritan rule, of the Commonwealth of England. "It was solemnly resolved by Parliament "that no person shall be employed but such as the House shall be satisfied of his real godliness." The pious assembly had a Bible lying on the table for reference. . . . To know whether a man was really godly was impossible. But it was easy to know whether he had a plain dress, lank hair, no starch in his linen, no gay furniture in his house; whether he talked through his nose, and showed the whites of his eyes; whether he named his children Assurance, Tribulation, and Maher-shalal-hash-baz; whether he avoided Spring Garden when in town, and abstained from hunting and hawking when in the country; whether he expounded hard scriptures to his troops of dragoons, and talked in a committee of ways and means about seeking the Lord. These were tests which could easily be applied. The misfortune was that they proved nothing. Such as they were, they were employed by the dominant party. And the consequence was that a crowd of impostors, in every walk of life, began to mimic and to caricature what were then regarded as the outward signs of sanctity." - Ibid. Thus has it ever been, and thus will it ever be, where Governments, as such, attempt to propagate a religion.

LESSONS OF THE FIRST CENTURIES

Yet in the very face of these plainest dictates of pure reason, and these most forcible lessons of history, and in utter defiance of all the teaching of universal history itself, men, with that persistence which is born of the blindness of bigoted zeal, are working, and will continue to work, with might and main, to bring upon this dear land all this fearful train of disorders. Their movement reminds us of nothing so much as of these quack medicines that are so abundant, warranted to cure every ill that is known to the human body; while at the same time they will create a thousand ills that the human system has never known before. As with these, so with this movement to purify politics say making religious qualification a test for holding office; it is warranted to cure all the ills of the body politic, while, as anyone with half an eye can see, it bears in its hands a perfect Pandora's box, wide open, to inflict its innumerable evils upon our country. And, as they will learn when it is too late, they will have no power to retain even hope. She herself will have flown away, and nothing remain but utter, irretrievable, awful ruin.

"The Pope's Letter to the English People" The Southern Sentinel and Herald of Liberty 2, 6 , pp. 12-15.

POPE LEO XIII. has written a letter to "the English people who seek the kingdom of Christ in the unity of the faith." All professed Christians seek the unity of the faith, and therefore the pope addresses all the professed Christians of England.

This is not the first time the Papacy has attempted to persuade the English people to return to the "unity of the [Roman Catholic] faith." A notable attempt was made just three hundred and seven years ago.

In May, 1588, the Papacy sent one hundred and fifty messengers to England to argue with the English people and persuade them to return to the Roman Catholic faith. Twelve of these messengers were named after the twelve apostles, and others were named after the "saints."

While these messengers were apostolic in name, and were commissioned by the professed vicar of Christ, Pope Sixtus V., they were not apostolic men armed only with the "sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God," but instead they were huge battle ships, armed and equipped with 2,088 galley slaves, 8,000 sailors, 20,000 soldiers, 2,650 cannon, 123,790 rounds of shot, and 517,500 pounds of powder. ¹1

Beside being equipped with these ordinary death-dealing arguments of war, these papal messengers, which history calls the "Spanish Armada," and which Roman Catholics were pleased to call the "Invincible Armada," were equipped with still other papal arguments which were to be used to restore the unity of the faith in special cases, wherein the ordinary war arguments failed. These special arguments were the torture instruments ²2 of the "Holy Office of the Inquisition;" and to insure the effective application of these arguments, Don Martin Allacon, Administrator and Vicar-General of the "Holy Office," accompanied these satanic instruments of cruelty.

However, this Armada argument was but one in a series of papal measures intended to persuade the English people to return to their allegiance to the pope. Before sending the Armada, and with a view to weakening the loyalty of the English people to the queen of England as a preparation for it, the pope hurled a bull of excommunication against the queen, from which the following is extracted: -

"We do, out of the fullness of our apostolic power, declare the aforesaid Elizabeth, being a heretic, and a favorer of heretics, and her adherents in the matter aforesaid, to have incurred the sentence of anathema, and to be cut off from the unity of the body of Christ. And, moreover, we do declare her to be deprived of her pretended title to the kingdom aforesaid, and of all dominion, dignity, and privilege whatsoever. . . . And we do command and interdict all and every the noblemen, subjects, people, and others aforesaid, that they presume not to obey her or her monitions, mandates, and laws; and those that shall do the contrary, we do strike with the like sentence of anathema. ³3

This excommunication was followed by

13

papal attempts to assassinate the queen, and then came the pope-blessed "Invincible Armada," which was heroically fought and finally defeated and driven off by the much inferior navy of England. One of the stratagems used by the English to save themselves from the choice of a terrible death or unity with Rome. On the night of August 7, the English loaded eight ships with combustible material, smeared their masts with tar, sailed them near the Spanish fleet and then set them on fire, with the hoped-for result that the Spaniards took flight and sailed away, after which the English ships and a terrible storm completed their defeat and almost complete destruction.

WHY PRESENT TACTICS DIFFER

This is a brief description of the failure of an old papal method of securing the unity of the faith. But why does not Pope Leo XIII. now use the methods of his "infallible" predecessor, Pope Sixtus V.? Why don't he send an Armada instead of an "Apostolic Letter"? It cannot be because the papacy has discarded these antichristian methods, for this is impossible, since Pope Leo X. "infallibly" condemned Luther's proposition that "to burn heretics is contrary to the will of the Holy Ghost," thus "infallibly" sanctioning the practice of burning heretics. Again, Pope Pius IX., the immediate predecessor of the present pope, as late as 1851, "infallibly" condemned the proposition, "The church has not the power of availing herself of force or any direct or indirect temporal power."

No; the papacy has not disavowed and cannot disavow the methods used in the Middle Ages to secure the "unity of the faith," without destroying the doctrine of "infallibility" which is has "infallibly" proclaimed.

Why is it then that Leo XIII. now

14

speaks to the English people with "the deep tones of sympathetic feeling" ⁴4 instead of with the deep-toned roar of Spanish cannon?

Since it cannot be because of a change in the papacy it must be because of a change in circumstances. Here lies the truth. When the Spanish Armada attempted the destruction of Protestantism in England, the papacy controlled the greater part of Western Europe. Spain was a great naval power, while England was much inferior in naval resources, with only about four million people. To-day the Papacy is shown of its temporal power, Spain though still Roman Catholic has lost its naval prestige, while England is the strongest naval power in the world.

THE OLD PRINCIPLE STILL ACTIVE

That Rome would do the same now as she did in the sixteenth century is also made evident by present papal practices in Catholic countries. In Roman Catholic South America Protestant missionaries are persecuted. And when the Methodist ministers of Chicago petitioned Satolli a few months ago to petition the pope to secure religious liberty for Protestant missionaries in that country, Satolli coolly replied by sending them a copy of the pope's letter calling the governments and people of the world back into the Roman Catholic Church, thus in reality saying, "You can have religious freedom in Catholic South America only by joining the Catholic Church."

Again, Protestant missionaries have been mobbed and driven from the Caroline Islands by Roman Catholics; and only a few weeks ago, Roman Catholic Spain peremptorily denied the request of the Government of the United States that American missionaries be allowed to return to the Caroline Islands.

And almost simultaneously with the pope's letter to England, he sent one to Hungary commending the organization of a distinct Roman Catholic political party with the object of securing the repeal of liberal measures recently passed in that country, placing all religious denominations on an equal footing before the law. But the pope, acting in that country in accordance with his recent encyclical to America, demands "in addition to liberty, the favor of the laws and the patronage of the public authority."

For these and other reasons that might be cited, the English people ought not to be deceived by this letter which the New York Sun's Rome correspondent, himself a Roman Catholic says is written "with delicate tact, in the most flattering tone," and "drawn at long sight" with "infinite ecclesiastical ambition." It is the papal policy to use force when in power, and flattery when seeking power; and it is astonishing that so many Protestants are so credulous and short sighted as not to see in the flattery and the "deep-toned sympathy" of the pope, a deep-laid plot "drawn at long sight," to regain the supremacy of the world.

And it is only a false charity that would silence the cry of warning because the plottings of the pope for the world' supremacy are carried on with "delicate tact" instead of defiant temerity; with the "flattering tone," instead of the "Invincible Armada."

May God save the Protestants of England and the world from being deceived

15

by this siren song and flattering tone of the pope into compromising with Rome. And may the same God save Roman Catholics themselves from the tyranny which will follow the triumph of their own system. To this end we labor and pray. - American Sentinel.

January - March 1896

"Adhering to Principle" The Southern Sentinel and Herald of Liberty 2, 3 , pp. 73, 74.

IT always costs something to consistently adhere to principle.

The time-server and faint-hearted will always find times when it would seem to be easier, and even better, to compromise principle and lower the standard.

This is emphatically true in the advocacy of the separation of church and state. The logic of one's position often leads him beyond what he saw in the beginning, and the tendency is to falter. But to falter is to suffer defeat.

The principles of religious liberty apply not only to the Christian, but to the unbeliever as well. If God ordained freedom to believe, he just as truly ordained freedom not to believe. If He reserved to Himself judgment in spiritual things in heathen lands, He did the same in so-called Christian countries; for the words, "The powers that be are ordained of God," were spoken when Rome ruled the world. Whatever legitimate authority any civil government has now, Rome had then.

But we find the disciples of Christ ignoring the laws of Rome that were designed to control men in matters of religious faith and practice. They fearlessly preached the gospel even when directly forbidden by the magistrates to do so. They were, therefore, violators of the civil law of a God-ordained government.

But neither Rome nor any other human civil government was ever ordained of God to control men in religious matters. The key to the whole apparent difficulty is found in the words of our Lord: "Render unto Cesar the things which are Cesar's; and unto God the things that

74

are God's." This forever separates between civil and spiritual things, and marks clearly the limits of civil authority. Within this sphere civil government is God-ordained; beyond it, any human government is only usurpation. Therefore the Christian who claims freedom of conscience for himself, must unhesitatingly award the same to every other man, however much his feelings may be hurt, or his religious prejudices outraged. - A. T. Jones.

BUT it costs in more ways than one to adhere to principle in the matter of the separation of Church and State. Baptists and Seventh-day Adventists have put themselves on record as desiring to be consistent in the matter of paying taxes on their church property. And the Baptists were among the first to protect against the appropriation of public money for the support of sectarian Indian schools. It is true that in one instance in Indian territory Baptists did violate the principle, but they dissolved the iniquitous partnership of their own volition before public attention was called to the fact that it existed, and have since consistently held themselves aloof from such entanglements. Adventists have never transgressed in this matter.

IN the matter of Sunday laws, Baptists have not been consistent, but Adventists have. The latter have opposed such laws not only for themselves but for all men. They have refused to accept exemption clauses on the ground that they could not consent to the right of the State to require anybody to keep Sunday. Had they compromised in this matter they might have accomplished much in the modification of Sunday statutes, but would have done nothing for real soul-liberty. They might have kept out of prisons and chain-gangs but they could not have been the means of delivering souls from the bondage of Satan. They might even now go into partnership with civil governments, but in so doing they would deny their principles. And in the words of the historian of the Reformation: "It is impossible for a society to prosper, if it be unfaithful to the principles it lays down. Having abandoned what constitutes its life, it can find naught but death."

DOUBTLESS, every temptation possible will be thrown in the way of consistent defenders of religious liberty to get them to prove untrue to their principles. Satan leaves no stone unturned to accomplish his purposes. He will frighten the timid, cajole whom he can, and retreat only when he must. It is a time for every lover of soul-liberty, every consistent defender of total separation of Church and State, to be alert. Let Seventh-day Adventists especially, who know what it is to suffer for the truth's sake, set their faces like a flint against everything "tending toward a union of Church and State either in name or in fact." It is a time to "be strong and very courageous."

The Southern Sentinel and Herald of Liberty, Vol. 3 (1897)

January - March 1897

"Christian Profession and Anti-Christian Practice" The Southern Sentinel and Herald of Liberty 3, 1 , pp. 31-33.

THERE are multitudes of people who profess to be Christians.

The vast majority of this multitude are diligently endeavouring to secure legislation enforcing their religious views upon all the people.

They desire and require that religion shall dominate politics, shape the laws, and control the state: they want a union of religion and the state.

In truth they want a religious state; an earthly, political, kingdom of God; with "Christ reigning as King" and throughout the nation, through themselves as His representatives.

All this is seriously proposed by people who seriously profess to be Christians.

What, then, is it to be a Christian? What is Christianity anyhow?

In the Scriptures it is written that

32

Christ left us "an example that we should follow His steps;" and that "He that saith that he keepeth His commandments ought himself also so to walk even as He walked."

It is Christianity to follow His steps alone, to walk only as He walked. For again it is written, "As My Father sent Me, even so send I you;" "as He is, so are we in this world;" and we are "in Christ's stead."

What steps, then, did Christ take toward the domination of the politics of His day? What steps did He ever take to gain control of the government, or to dictate in the affairs of the state? - Just none at all. Everybody knows that He never in any way gave the slightest indication of any such thing.

This, too, in spite of many solicitations of different kinds. He was not only more than once openly invited to do so; but it was the longing expectation of the whole people to whom He came. So strongly was this implanted that they were willing to take Him by force and set Him at the head of the government.

Yet never by a word, a look, or any sign whatever, would He countenance any such thing. On the contrary He openly repudiated every suggestion of the kind; and withdrew Himself from the people who were bent on having it so, and went away by Himself alone and prayed for the people that they might have better views of Himself and of His mission to the world.

Was this because politics was so pure, laws so just, and government so altogether correct, that there was no call for any readjustment, no room for any reforms? Was there at that time no need of careful watching to see that none but good men should hold office?

Were such as these the reasons why Christ had nothing to do with politics, nor with affairs of government in any way? Not by any manner of means. Corruption in politics and in office was never more rife than at that very time, and in Judea. Then as it was altogether from choice, and not at all from lack of necessity or opportunity that Jesus had nothing whatever to do with politics nor any of the affairs of the government, wherein do the churches, leagues and societies of to-day follow His steps in their persistent intermeddling in these very things? And when they do not walk as he walked, wherein are they Christians?

It was His steady refusal to countenance the political aspirations of the people, which, more than anything else, caused the scribes, the Pharisees, the lawyers, the priests, and the Herodians, to reject and persecute Him. These were the church-leaders of that time, and correspond to the sects, leagues, unions, and endeavour societies of the present day.

It was to the Pharisees with the Herodians that He announced the everlasting principle of the separation of religion and the state, in the words, "Render unto Cesar the things that are Cesar's, and unto God the things which are God's." And when the whole combination together had made against Him the false charge that He would make Himself a king, He answered them and all other combinations for all time, "My kingdom is not

34

of this world:" "My kingdom is not from hence."

Such was ever His word and His attitude. Such has been His will concerning His church, from the foundation of the world. He is "the same yesterday, and to-day, and forever;" and it was impossible that, when He came into the world, He should walk contrary to all the instructions that He Himself had given before He came into the world.

And now to all the church combinations, leagues, unions, and endeavor societies, that are afflicting the politics, shaping the laws, and directing the government of the country, He pointedly exclaims, "Why call ye me Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?"

Why do you call Him Lord, and then do your own will? Why do you profess to hold His word in reverence, and then utterly disregard that which from beginning to end is one of the great vital principles of that word? Why do you bear the name of Christ, while in this great matter you walk directly opposite to the way in which He walked?

Surely nothing can explain this contradiction between profession and practice, but worldly ambition that can never learn anything, and religious bigotry that is never content without power.
A. T. JONES.

¹ See American Encyclopedia, article, "Armada;" also History of Protestantism, by Wylie, Vol. 3, chap. 17.

² Some of these torture instruments captured from the defeated Armada can be seen in the British Museum.

³ History of Protestantism, Vol. 3, chap. 16.

⁴ This expression is used by the New York Sun's Romans Catholic correspondent, writing from Rome in that paper of May 5, in praise of the pope's letter to the English people.