“That the Church of Rome has shed more innocent blood than any other institution that has ever existed among mankind, will be questioned by no Protestant who has a competent knowledge of history. The memorials, indeed, of many of her persecutions are now so scanty, that it is impossible to form a complete conception of the multitude of her victims, and it is quite certain that no power of imagination can adequately realize their sufferings.” — “History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe,” Vol. II, p. 32. London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1910.
Utterly ridiculous. Maybe you want to blame syphilis and the bubonic plague on Catholics in order to establish that.
The Catholic Church will be left behind. That way, they can try to discredit the Rapture. The Catholic Church is nothing more than a cult.
Not a particularly accurate take on history. The world was a much more brutal place before the birth of Christ and the establishment of the Church was the start of a kinder world.
Much of the bloodshed the Church was involved in was in the defense of Christianity and Western civilization against the aggressive and atrocity driven attacks by the Islamic world and the even more brutal and genocidal attacks by the Mongol Khans.
But, in fairness to the authors, this piece of misleading garbage historical analysis was written in 1910 so it pre dated and missed out on 20th century heyday of mass murder and genocide most of which was not just anti christian, anti clerical and anti church - it was atheistic and antagonistic to religion of any type by basic nature.
Think Atheistic Communism in Russia, China, Vietnam, Spain, Cambodia, Cuba , Africa, South and Central America and many other countries. They racked up a body count of over 120 million people - many of whom were tortured to death.
And of course we have Atheistic Fascism in Germany and Japan that ran up a body count in the tens of millions.
And it is beyond dispute that the Catholic Church put a stop to brutal execution of millions of people by the Aztecs in South and Central America and converted the New World to a much more civilized existence.
Is that inspired Scripture? Or the daffy dame who started the SDA?