CATHOLICS TORTURE
“Dignitaries of the church studied, under Satan their master, to invent means to cause the greatest possible torture and not end the life of the 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 ” (1) Such was the fate of those who opposed the church of Rome. If given opportunity in the U.S. she would do the same today against “heretics.” Her boast is that she never changes. The rector of the Catholic Institute of Paris, H.M.A. Baudrillart, revealed the attitude of the church and her leaders toward persecution.
“When confronted with heresy,” he said, “she does not content herself with persuasion, arguments of an intellectual and moral order appear to her insufficient, and, she has recourse to force, to corporal punishment, to torture.” (2
THE BIBLE FORBIDDEN – THEN TORTURE
In the Council of Toulouse, the church leaders ruled: “We prohibit laymen possessing copies of the Old and New Testament . . . We forbid them most severely to have the above books in the popular vernacular.” “The lords of the districts shall carefully seek out the heretics in dwellings, hovels, and forests, and even their underground retreats shall be entirely wiped out.” Concil Tolosanum, Pope Gregory IX, Anno. Chr. 1229.
The church Council of Tarragona ruled that: “No one may possess the books of the Old and New Testaments in the Romance language, and if anyone possesses them he must turn them over to the local bishop within eight days after the promulgation of this decree, so that they may be burned.” D. Lortsch, Histoire de la Bible en France, 1910, p.14.
After the Bible societies were formed they were classed with Communism in an amazing decree. On December 8, l866, Pope Pius IX, in his encyclical Quanta Cura issued the following statement: “Socialism, Communism, clandestine societies, Bible societies . . . pests of this sort must be destroyed by all means.”
WAR AGAINST CHRIST FOLLOWERS – THE REAL SAINTS
“WAR WITH THE SAINTS”
“Under these bloody maxims, those persecutions were carried on, from the eleventh and twelfth centuries almost to the present day, (written in 1845), which stand out on the page of history. After the signal of open martyrdom had been given in the canons of Orleans, these followed the extirpation of the Albigenses under the form of a crusade, the establishment of the Inquisition, the cruel attempts to extinguish the Waldenses, the martyrdoms of the Lollards, the cruel wars to exterminate the Bohemians, the burning of Huss and Jerome, and multitudes of other confessors . . . the extinction by fire and sword of the Reformation in Spain and Italy, by fraud and open persecution in Poland, and the massacre of Bartholomew, . . . besides the slow and secret murders of the holy tribunal of the Inquisition.” T.R. Birks, M.A. The First Two Visions of Daniel, (London: 1845) pg. 258, 259.
“The number of the victims of the Inquisition in Spain, is given in ‘The History of the Inquisition in Spain,’ by Llorente, (formerly secretary of the Inquisition), pgs. 206-208. This authority acknowledged that more than 300,000 suffered persecution in Spain alone, of whom 31,912 died in the flames. Millions more were slain for their faith throughout Europe.” Printed in Bible Readings For the Home, (Washington: Review & Herald Pub. Assoc., 1942) p. 221.
“The church has persecuted. Only a tyro in church history will deny that . . . one hundred and fifty years after Constantine, the Donatists were persecuted and sometimes put to death . . . . Protestants were persecuted in France and Spain with the full approval of the church authorities . . . . When she thinks it good to use physical force, she will use it.” The Western Watchmen (Roman Catholic), of St. Louis.
HOW THE WAR IS FOUGHT – BY WINNING SMALL BATTLES