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No,
We Do Not Hate Catholics!
Pilgrims Covenant Church and Romanism
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| Pilgrims Covenant Church, led by her pastor, is known to be firmly against the Roman Catholic Church.
We love the souls of the Roman Catholic people; but we abhor popery,
Romish
rituals, and the Roman
church's many ungodly, unbiblical doctrines. As our Articles of Faith state,
"We hold the pope to be antichrist spoken of in 1 John 2:18, the man of sin and son of perdition spoken of in 2 Thessalonians, chapter
two. We believe the Roman Catholic Church to be none other than the woman who rides the beast spoken of in Revelation, chapter seventeen."
While our position may seem fanatical and extreme in this apostate age, we are certainly in good company. Our "fanatical" position on the pope and his church was once the norm from one end of the Christian doctrinal spectrum to the other (see below). But why should it be considered fanatical to take a biblical position concerning a counterfeit religion masquerading as the Christian Church and a man who blasphemously insists he rules on earth in the place of Jesus Christ as
His vicar?
We stand opposed to the
pope, but we care about the people he deceives. We hate Romish dogma, not the Roman Catholic people. We support the civil and constitutional rights of Roman Catholics, including their religious liberties. We acknowledge that many Catholic Americans are moral, hard-working people, and in some cases, heroic and great Americans. But this does not justify them before God and will not save their souls from
hell (An
Urgent Plea to Roman Catholics). As Christians, we have been charged to "preach the gospel to every creature" and "earnestly contend for the faith
which was once delivered unto the saints." The question should not be,
Why does PCC speak out against Romanism and popery? The question should be,
Why don't more churches and more pastors do so? And why do so many evangelicals violate the clear commands of
Scripture by engaging in ecumenical ministry with Roman
Catholics?
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| Westminster
Confession of Faith, 1646
"There is no
other head of the Church but the Lord Jesus Christ: nor can the Pope of
Rome, in any sense be head thereof; but is that Antichrist, that man of
sin and son of perdition, that exalteth himself in the church against
Christ, and all that is called God."
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The Savoy Declaration of Faith and Order
(Congregational), 1658
"There is no other Head of the
Church but the Lord Jesus Christ; nor can the Pope of Rome in any sense be
head thereof; but is that antichrist, that man of sin, and son of
perdition, that exalteth himself in the Church against Christ, and all
that is called God, whom the Lord shall destroy with the brightness of his
coming."
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The Baptist Confession of
1689
"The Lord Jesus Christ is the Head of
the Church, in whom by the appointment of the Father, all power for the
calling, institution, order, or Government of the Church, is invested in a
supreme & sovereign manner, neither can the Pope of Rome in any sense
be head thereof, but is that Antichrist, that Man of sin, and Son of
perdition, that exalteth himself in the Church against Christ, and all
that is called God; whom the Lord shall destroy with the brightness of his
coming."
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The Irish Articles of Religion
(Episcopalian/Anglican), 1615
"The
Bishop of Rome is so far from being the supreme head of the universal
Church of Christ, that his works and doctrine do plainly discover him to
be that 'man of sin' foretold in the holy Scriptures, 'whom the Lord shall
consume with the spirit of His mouth, and abolish with the brightness of
His coming.'"
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Jonathan Edwards
1703–1758, American Congregational pastor,
missionary
to American Indians, and president of the College of New Jersey
(later named Princeton) for a short time before his death
"Satan
has opposed the Reformation with cruel persecutions. The persecutions with
which the Protestants in one kingdom and another have been persecuted by
the church of Rome, have in many respects been far beyond any of the
heathen persecutions which were before Constantine the Great, and beyond
all that ever were before. So that Antichrist has proved the greatest and
cruelest enemy to the church of Christ that ever was in the world, in
this, as well as in all other respects, agreeable to the description given
of the church of Rome, Rev. 17:6, 'And I saw the woman drunken with the
blood of the saints and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus.' And,
chap. 18:24, 'And on her was found the blood of prophets, and of saints,
and of all them that were slain upon the earth.'"
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John Wesley
1703–1791, English preacher and founder of
Methodism
"The man of sin, the
son of perdition . . . in many respects, the Pope has an indisputable
claim to these titles. He is, in an emphatical sense, the man of sin, as
he increases all manner of sin above measure. And he is, too, properly
styled, the son of perdition, as he has caused the death of numberless
multitudes, both of his opposers and followers, destroyed innumerable
souls, and will himself perish everlastingly."
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John Calvin
1509–1564, French Protestant reformer, author of
Institutes
of the Christian Religion
"I deny that see to be apostolical, wherein
nought is seen but a shocking apostasy; I deny him to be the vicar
of Christ, who, in furiously persecuting the gospel, demonstrates by his
conduct that he is Antichrist; I deny him to be the successor of Peter,
who is doing his utmost to demolish every edifice that Peter built; and
I deny him to be the head of the church, who by his tyranny lacerates and
dismembers the church, after dissevering her from Christ, her true and
only Head."
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Roger
Williams
1603-1683, first Baptist pastor in America; founder
of Providence, Rhode Island
"[The pope is] the pretended Vicar of Christ on earth, who
sits as God over the Temple of God, exalting himself not only above all
that is called God, but over the souls and consciences of all his vassals,
yea over the Spirit of Christ, over the Holy Spirit, yea, and God himself
. . . speaking against the God of heaven, thinking to change times and
laws; but he is the son of perdition (II Thess. 2)."
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C. H. Spurgeon
1834–1892, Baptist pastor of the
Metropolitan Tabernacle in London
"We must have no truce, no
treaty with Rome. War! War to the knife with her! Peace there cannot be.
She cannot have peace with us—we cannot have peace with her. She hates
the true Church; and we can only say that the hatred is reciprocated. We
would not lay a hand upon her priests; we would not touch a hair of their
heads. Let them be free: but their doctrine we would destroy from the face
of the earth as the doctrine of devils. So let it perish, O God, and let
that evil thing become as the fat of lambs. Into smoke let it consume:
yea, into smoke let it consume away."
"We are
not praying against Babylon, we are not praying against the Man of Sin, we
are not praying against the real foe of Britain: it is time we started to
pray again. It is the bounden duty of every Christian to pray against
Antichrist, and as to what Antichrist is, no sane man ought to raise an
objection. If it be not popery in the Church of Rome, there is nothing in
the world that can be called by that name. If there were to be issued a
hue and cry for Antichrist, we would certainly take up the Roman Church on
suspicion, and it would certainly not be let loose again, for it so
exactly answers the description. Popery is contrary to Christ's Gospel.
It
is the Antichrist. We ought to pray against it. It should be the daily
prayer of every believer that Antichrist might be hurled like a millstone
into the flood, and for Christ, because it wounds Christ, it robs Christ
of His glory, it puts sacramental efficacy in the place of His atonement,
it lifts a piece of bread into the place of the Saviour, and a few drops
of water into the place of the Holy Ghost, and puts a mere fallible man
like ourselves up as the Vicar of Christ on earth. If we pray against it,
because it is against God, we shall love the persons though we hate their
errors; we shall love their souls though we hate and detest their dogmas;
and so the breath of our prayers will be sweetened because we turn our
faces to Christ to pray this prayer."
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Richard Baxter
1615-1691, English Puritan pastor
"We cry down the Pope as
Antichrist, for including the Church in the Romish pale, and no doubt but
it is abominable schism."
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Matthew Henry
1662-1714, Welsh-born, English nonconformist pastor and Bible commentator
"He who, being a man, a
sinful man, makes himself a god as the Pope does, who claims divine powers
and prerogatives, is unquestionably a blasphemer, and that antichrist."
"The popish religion doth,
in effect, set up a false Christ; the Pope comes, in Christ's name, as his
vicar, but invades and usurps all his offices, and so is a rival with him,
and, as such, an enemy to him, a deceiver, and an antichrist."
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Adam Clarke
1760
or 1762-1832, British Methodist preacher and Bible commentator
"The true Christian
worship is the worship of the one only God, through the one only Mediator,
the man Christ Jesus; and from this worship the Church of Rome has most
notoriously departed, by substituting other mediators, and invocating and
adoring saints and angels, nothing is apostasy, if idolatry be not. And
are not the members of the Church of Rome guilty of idolatry in the
worship of images, in the adoration of the host, in the invocation of
angels and saints, and in the oblation of prayers and praises to the
Virgin Mary, as much or more than to God blessed for ever? This is the
grand corruption of the Christian Church: this is the apostasy as it is
emphatically called, and deserves to be called; which was not only
predicted by St. Paul, but by the Prophet Daniel likewise. If the apostasy
be rightly charged upon the Church of Rome, it follows of consequence that
the man of sin is the pope; not meaning any pope in particular, but the
pope in general, as the chief head and supporter of this apostasy."
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Martin Luther
1483–1546, German reformer and Bible translator
"There
are many who think and complain that I am too fierce and keen against the
Papacy. On the contrary, I lament that I am too mild. I wish I could
breath thunderclaps against the Pope and Popery and that every word was a
thunderbolt. The kingdom of Christ is a kingdom of mercy, grace and
goodness. The kingdom of the Pope is a kingdom of lies and
damnation."
"The pope does nothing else
than pervert and abuse all that God has ordained and commanded."
"The pope is reserved for
God’s judgment, therefore only by God’s judgment he shall be
destroyed."
"But I say, the pope is an
arch heretic, for he is an adversary to my blessed Savior Christ; and
so am I to the pope, because he makes new laws and ordinances according to
his own will and pleasure, and so directly denies the everlasting
priesthood of Christ."
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John Bunyan
1628-1688, English Puritan pastor and author of
The
Pilgrim's Progress
"[The pope] hath intruded upon the prophetical office of Jesus Christ.
What else means his pretences to infallibility? And that too when he
imposes unwritten verities, abominable traditions, blasphemous rites and
ceremonies; and forbids or dispenseth with the holy commands of God: Yea,
when he enforceth these his Omrian statutes, and doth impose the works of
the house of Ahab (Micah 6:16), he doth all in the name of the Lord
Christ, when himself hath set himself in his place, and in his room.
This
is mystery Babylon, the mystery of iniquity: This is Antichrist's soul and
body, and as such, must be destroyed."
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John Knox
c.
1513–1572, Scottish Protestant reformer and minister
"The
Pope is the head of the kirk [church] Antichrist."
"Before we hold ourselves, or that you can
prove us sufficiently convicted, we must define the church, by the right
notes given to us, in God's scriptures, of the true church. We must
discern the immaculate spouse of Jesus Christ from the mother of
confusion, spiritual Babylon; lest that imprudently we embrace a harlot,
instead of the chaste spouse; yea, to speak in plain words, lest that we
submit ourselves to Satan, thinking that we submit ourselves to Jesus
Christ. For, as for your Roman kirk, as it is now corrupted, and
the authority thereof, wherein stands the hope of your victory, I no more
doubt but that it is the synagogue of Satan; and the head thereof, called
the pope, to be that man of sin, of whom the apostle speaks, than that I
doubt that Jesus Christ suffered by the procurement of the visible kirk of
Jerusalem. Yea, I offer myself, by word or writing, to prove the Roman
church this day farther degenerated from the purity which was in the days
of the apostles, than was the church of the Jews
from the ordinances given by Moses, when they consented to the innocent
death of Jesus Christ."
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J. C. Ryle
1816-1900, first
Bishop of
Liverpool, evangelical leader in the Church of England
"Beware of Romanism and beware of any
religious teaching which, wittingly or unwittingly, paves the way to it. .
. . For Christ's sake, for the sake of the Church of England, for the sake
of our country, for the sake of our children, let us not drift back to
Romish ignorance, superstition, priestcraft, and immorality. Our fathers
tried Popery long ago, for centuries, and threw it off at last with
disgust and indignation. . . . Too often, for fear of giving offence, we
neglect to show our people the real nature and evil of Popery. . . . Oh,
think twice before you cast aside the principles of the Reformation! Think
twice before you give way to the prevailing tendency to favour Popery and
go back to Rome. . . . For ever let us thank God for the Reformation! It
lighted a candle which we ought never to allow to be extinguished or to
burn dim. Surely I have a right to say that the times require of us a
renewed sense of the evils of Romanism, and of the enormous value of the
Protestant Reformation!"
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Henry
Martyn
1781-1812, Anglican chaplain to the British army in
India, missionary, and Bible translator
"Who would have thought that we should have to combat Antichrist
again at this day? I feel my spirit roused to preach against Popery with
all the zeal of Luther."
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Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones
1899–1981, Welsh pastor of Westminster Chapel, London
"We are looking at a system;
and I would not hesitate to assert that this system, known as Roman
Catholicism, is the devil's greatest masterpiece! It is such a departure
from the Christian faith and the New Testament teaching, that I would not
hesitate with the Reformers of the sixteenth century to describe it as 'apostasy.' Now let us be clear about this.
. . . that horrible
institution, that great 'whore' which calls herself 'The
Church of Rome.'"
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Nicholas Ridley
c. 1500–1555, Bishop of London, burned at
the stake under "Bloody Mary"
"The See of
Rome is the seat of Satan, and the bishop of the same, that maintaineth
the abominations thereof, is Anti Christ himself indeed: and for the same
causes this See at this day is the same that St. John calls, in his
Revelation, Babylon, or the whore of Babylon, and spiritual Sodom and
Egypt, the mother of fornications and abominations on earth."
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Thomas Cranmer
1489–1556, first Protestant Archbishop of
Canterbury, author of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer and the Forty-Two
Articles (basis of the Thirty-Nine Articles), burned
at the stake under "Bloody Mary"
"And now I come to the
great thing that troubleth my conscience more than any other thing that
ever I said or did in my life; and this is, the setting abroad things
contrary to the truth; which here I now renounce and refuse, as things
written with my hand, contrary to the truth which I thought in my heart,
and writ for fear of death, and to save my life, if it might be; and that
is, all such bills, which I have written or signed with mine own hand
since my degradation; wherein I have written many things untrue. And
forasmuch as my hand offended in writing contrary to my heart, therefore
my hand shall first be punished; for if I may come to the fire, it shall
be first burned. And as for the Pope, I refuse him as Christ's enemy and
antichrist, with all his false doctrine."
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Philip Melanchthon
1497–1560, German scholar and reformer, second only to Luther in the Lutheran
Reformation
"Since it is most certain that the
Pontiffs and monks have forbidden marriage, it is most manifest, and
without any doubt true, that the Roman Pontiff, with his whole order and
kingdom, is the very Anti Christ."
"Likewise in
2 Thessalonians 2, Paul clearly says that
the man of sin shall rule in the Church,
exalting himself against the worship of God, etc. But it is manifest that
the popes do rule in the Church, and under title of the Church in
defending idols. Wherefore I affirm that no heresy hath arisen, nor
indeed shall be, with which these descriptions of Paul can more truly and
certainly accord and agree than to this Papal kingdom."
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Cotton
Mather
1663-1728, American Congregational pastor
"The oracles of God
foretold the rising of an Antichrist in the Christian Church: and in the
Pope of Rome, all the characteristics of that Antichrist are so
marvelously answered that if any who read the Scriptures do not see it,
there is a marvelous blindness upon them."
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William Tyndale
c. 1494–1536, early Bible translator and martyr
"Though the Bishop of Rome and his
sects give Christ these names (His rightful names), yet in that they rob
Him of the effect and take the signification of His names unto themselves,
and make of Him but a hypocrite, as they themselves be, they be the right
Anti-Christs, and deny both the Father and the Son; for they deny the
witness that the Father bore unto His Son, and deprive the Son of all the
power and glory that His Father gave Him." |
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The Church of England's Second Book
of Homilies, 1562-1563, 1571
"Which the idolatrous Church [of Rome]
understandeth well enough. For she being indeed not only an harlot (as the
Scripture calleth her), but also a foul, filthy, old withered harlot (for
she is indeed of ancient years) and understanding her lack of natural and
true beauty, and great loathsomeness which of herself she hath, doth
(after the custom of such harlots) paint herself, and deck and tire
herself with gold, pearl, stone, and all kind of precious jewels, that
she, shining with the outward beauty and glory of them, may please the
foolish phantasy of fond lovers, and so entice them to spiritual
fornication with her; who, if they saw her (I will not say naked) but in
simple apparel, would abhor her, as the foulest and filthiest harlot that
ever was seen: according as appeareth by the description of the garnishing
of the great strumpet of all strumpets, 'the mother of whoredom,' set
forth by St. John in his Revelation."
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The Scottish National Covenant
(The Confession of Faith)
Subscribed at first in the year 1580
"And therefore we abhor and detest all contrary religion and
doctrine; but chiefly all kind of Papistry in general and particular
heads, even as they are now damned and confuted by the word of God and
Kirk of Scotland. But, in special, we detest and refuse the usurped
authority of that Roman Antichrist upon the scriptures of God, upon the
kirk, the civil magistrate, and consciences of men; all his tyrannous laws
made upon indifferent things against our Christian liberty; his erroneous
doctrine against the sufficiency of the written word, the perfection of
the law, the office of Christ, and his blessed evangel; his corrupted
doctrine concerning original sin, our natural inability and rebellion to
God's law, our justification by faith only, our imperfect sanctification
and obedience to the law; the nature, number, and use of the holy
sacraments; his five bastard sacraments, with all his rites, ceremonies,
and false doctrine, added to the ministration of the true sacraments
without the word of God; his cruel judgment against infants departing
without the sacrament; his absolute necessity of baptism; his blasphemous
opinion of transubstantiation, or real presence of Christ's body in the
elements, and receiving of the same by the wicked, or bodies of men; his
dispensations with solemn oaths, perjuries, and degrees of marriage
forbidden in the word; his cruelty against the innocent divorced; his
devilish mass; his blasphemous priesthood; his profane sacrifice for sins
of the dead and the quick; his canonization of men; calling upon angels or
saints departed, worshipping of imagery, relicks, and crosses; dedicating
of kirks, altars, days; vows to creatures; his purgatory, prayers for the
dead; praying or speaking in a strange language, with his processions, and
blasphemous litany, and multitude of advocates or mediators; his manifold
orders, auricular confession; his desperate and uncertain repentance; his
general and doubtsome faith; his satisfaction of men for their sins; his
justification by works, opus operatum, works of supererogation, merits,
pardons, peregrinations, and stations; his holy water, baptizing of bells,
conjuring of spirits, crossing, sayning, anointing, conjuring, hallowing
of God's good creatures, with the superstitious opinion joined therewith;
his worldly monarchy, and wicked hierarchy; his three solemn vows, with
all his shavelings of sundry sorts; his erroneous and bloody decrees made
at Trent, with all the subscribers or approvers of that cruel and bloody
band, conjured against the kirk of God. And finally, we detest all his
vain allegories, rites, signs, and traditions brought in the kirk, without
or against the word of God, and doctrine of this true reformed kirk; to
the which we join ourselves willingly, in doctrine, faith, religion,
discipline, and use of the holy sacraments, as lively members of the same
in Christ our head: promising and swearing, by the great name of the Lord
our God, that we shall
continue in the obedience of the doctrine and discipline of this kirk, and
shall defend the same, according to our vocation and power, all the days
of our lives; under the pains contained in the law, and danger both of
body and soul in the day of God's fearful judgment."
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August 11,
2006 |
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