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To: Sir Francis Dashwood
Good men and bad men both use faith to their own ends.
Faith is a very powerful tool, both used and abused.
Institutionalized anything starts to lose direction eventually.
Religious people need to recognize the difference between faith and religion.
49 posted on 03/06/2003 4:59:24 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
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To: Cincinatus' Wife
My criticism is of the Pope as a man and of his office of the Papacy. The Pope has misused his office and is offering injury to Christendom by taking up the cause of a confederacy of deceivers...

Consider this, from Hobbes' Leviathan, in 1668:

Part III. Of a Christian Commonwealth.

Chap. xxxviii. Of Eternal Life, Hell, Salvation, and Redemption.

[12] And first, for the tormentors, we have their nature and properties exactly and properly delivered by the names of the Enemy (or Satan), the Accuser (or Diabolus), the Destroyer (or Abaddon). Which significant names (Satan, Devil, Abaddon) set not forth to us any individual person, as proper names do, but only an office or quality, and are therefore appellatives, which ought not to have been left untranslated (as they are in the Latin and modern Bibles), because thereby they seem to be the proper names of demons, and men are the more easily seduced to believe the doctrine of devils, which at that time was the religion of the Gentiles, and contrary to that of Moses, and of Christ.

[13] And because by the Enemy, the Accuser, and Destroyer, is meant the enemy of them that shall be in the kingdom of God, therefore if the kingdom of God after the resurrection be upon the earth (as in the former Chapter I have shewn by Scripture it seems to be), the Enemy and his kingdom must be on earth also. For so also was it in the time before the Jews had deposed God. For God's kingdom was in Israel, and the nations round about were the kingdoms of the Enemy; and consequently, by Satan is meant any earthly enemy of the Church.

Part IV. Of the Kingdom of Darkness

Chap. xlvii. Of the Benefit that proceedeth from such Darkness

Besides these sovereign powers, divine and human, of which I have hitherto discoursed, there is mention in Scripture of another power, namely, that of "the rulers of the darkness of this world," [Ephesians, 6. 12] "the kingdom of Satan," [Matthew, 12. 26] and "the principality of Beelzebub over demons," [Ibid., 9. 34] that is to say, over phantasms that appear in the air: for which cause Satan is also called "the prince of the power of the air";[Ephesians, 2. 2] and, because he ruleth in the darkness of this world, "the prince of this world":[John, 16. 11] and in consequence hereunto, they who are under his dominion, in opposition to the faithful, who are the "children of the light," are called the "children of darkness." For seeing Beelzebub is prince of phantasms, inhabitants of his dominion of air and darkness, the children of darkness, and these demons, phantasms, or spirits of illusion, signify allegorically the same thing. This considered, the kingdom of darkness, as it is set forth in these and other places of the Scripture, is nothing else but a confederacy of deceivers that, to obtain dominion over men in this present world, endeavour, by dark and erroneous doctrines, to extinguish in them the light, both of nature and of the gospel; and so to disprepare them for the kingdom of God to come.


100 posted on 03/06/2003 7:47:43 PM PST by Sir Francis Dashwood (LET'S ROLL!)
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To: Cincinatus' Wife
"While Bush has signaled that he is prepared to confront Saddam Hussein even without the Security Council's approval, Laghi said that the Vatican believes a just war can be waged only with the United Nations' endorsement."

A confederacy of decievers.

102 posted on 03/06/2003 7:55:15 PM PST by Sir Francis Dashwood (LET'S ROLL!)
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