Christ had designed to conquer by purely Spiritual and Moral means. Conversion was voluntary. But now the military Spirit of Imperial Rome had entered the Church. By forced conversions the Church claimed to have conquered the Roman empire, but in reality the Roman empire had conquered the Church, by making the Church over into the image of the Roman empire.
The Church had changed its nature, had entered its great apostasy, had become a political institution in the Spirit and pattern of Imperial Rome. The Imperial Church of the 4th and 5th centuries had become an entirely different institution from the persecuted church of the first three centuries.
The Church was founded in the Roman empire, and gradually developed a form of government like the political world in which it existed, becoming a vast autocratic institution ruled from the top.
Protestantism was an effort to restore primitive Christianity.
Protestantism didn’t succeed in restoring primitive Christianity. Instead, it created a new religion.
That was the first thing I learned when I started studying the Apostolic Fathers of the early 2nd century.
Protestantism is a NEW religion, rather relgions plural.
It’s nothing more than someone’s romantic view of what they imagined the early Church to be.
It just didn’t exist.
Well, the thread has gotten quite lengthy it appears, think I’ll throw in some parting remarks and take my leave.
One would think the herd of Roman Catholics on this thread, gleefully anticipating the fall of Western Democratic governments, including the American Republic, in order for them to have a return to their former glory, the Papist-Monarchy system, would realize they are not the only game in town.
There is a long list lusting for the same thing. UN one worlders, for instance. And one world Socialist-Communists. New Agers. Judaism, which believes they are predestined to rule the world, all that’s lacking is the appearance of their Messiah. Islam, of course.
And Masonic-Illuminati types - who were behind the French Revolution. Well documented in the works of Nesta Webster, Professor Robison, Abbe Barruel, and Clarence Kelley (Conspiracy against God and Man). The latter a Catholic priest.
The same French Revolution which made Catholics their chief targets, murdering every priest and nun, every devout Catholic they could get their hands on. France being a Catholic country, it was a target rich environment. And we know what they did to the Royalists. And we know what kind of communist type system they spawned in the world.
Yet we have this herd of naïve Catholics on this thread, thinking the French Revolution types, the Socialists and Communists, the OWS types, are going to allow a return to the old Papist Monarchial system? I rather think not.
The atrocities that took place in the French Revolution, in a thoroughly Catholic country no less, will look like child’s play compared to what they are going to do to these naïve Catholics on this thread.
Go ahead, join in with the lawless types clamoring for the fall of America and the West, the rest of us who truly love this country are going to watch with interest how your little endeavor is going to come out.
It’ll be interesting to see who comes out on top between you and the rest of the aforementioned totalitarian types. I’m sure you think you will, methinks there is a guillotine in your future.