here made a change in the dating of months,
or days. Abib was the beginning of months,
and was the first month of the year. The be-
ginning of the year was changed. Who can
identify the year that Israel left Egypt?”
This or similar objections to the seventh-
day Sabbath are frequently heard when the
claims of the seventh day are presented. The
original seventh day on which God rested after
creation has lost its identity, these objectors
say, so it is foolishness to think to keep the
creation Sabbath by observing the seventh day
of the present weekly division of time.
We reply :—
I. God set apart a particular day at creation,
and by resting upon and blessing that day made
that particular day and no other the Sabbath
day. Only that particular day could be the
Sabbath (or rest-day) of the Lord, because
he did not rest on any other day. He sancti-
fied the Sabbath, which means to set it apart
to a sacred use. He made the Sabbath for
man. Hence if that particular day has lost
its identity, God has made a failure of in-
stituting a Sabbath for mankind. We are not
ready to admit that God has ever made a fail-
ure in anything.
2. God said that Abraham obeyed his voice
and kept his commandments. Gen. 26:5.
Abraham must therefore have kept the Sab-
bath, and the Sabbath must have been known
to him and his descendants.
3. God himself pointed out the Sabbath day
after the Israelites left Egypt, before they
reached Sinai. Ex. 16:4, 5, 22, 23. There-
fore the Israelites had the knowledge of the
original seventh-day Sabbath from that time
forward, if God knew which day of the week
it was.
4. The holy women who came to anoint the
body of Jesus on the day of his resurrection
had on the previous day “rested the Sabbath
day, according to the commandment.” Luke
23:56. Thus it is certain that the true sev-
enth day was known at the time of the cruci-
fixion,
5. There is no question but that this same
seventh-day Sabbath has been observed by the
Jews, and by some Christian churches as well,
from that time down to the present, nor has
there been any trouble in identifying the first
day of the week.
6. Changes in the calendar affecting the be-
ginning of months and of the year, do not in
the least affect the division of time into weeks.
Julius Caesar reformed the calendar, and Pope
Gregory did likewise, and the Gregorian cal-
endar is now in use in most countries; but
in Russia the old style calendar still prevails,
so that the new year begins in that country
about two weeks later than in other countries;
but the seventh day of the week is the same in
Russia as in other parts of the world. The
weekly division of time is absolutely the same
throughout the world.
Thus the objection that the original creation
Sabbath day cannot now be identified falls
to the ground, and constitutes no reason what-
ever for failing to observe the Sabbath day
“according to the commandment.”
L. A. S.
THE WATCHMAN
745
fe ¥
-
THE RUIN OF THE PAPAL EMPIRE
¥
(Concluded.)
VEN to the kings of the earth the pa-
pacy had become a byword and a hiss-
ing. Thus King Edgar of England,
addressing the assembled bishops of
his kingdom, declared: “ We see in Rome but
debauchery, dissolution, drunkenness, and im-
purity; the houses of the priests have become
the shameful retreats of prostitutes, jugglers,
and Sodomites; they gamble by night and day
in the residence of the pope. Bacchanalian
songs, lascivious dances, and the debauchery
of a Messalina, have taken the place of fast-
ing and prayers.” 1
In the year 9o4 began the reign of Pope
Sergius III. Of him, Cardinal Baronius says
that “he was the slave of every vice, and was
the most wicked of men.” But more than
this; it was during his reign of seven years,
and by him that the papacy was delivered to
the influence and power of three licentious
women and their paramours. For then be-
gan that time never to be forgotten, the reign
in Rome of “the celebrated Theodora and
her two daughters Marozia and Theodora.
They were of a senatorial family, and no less
famous for their beauty, their wit, and ad-
dress, than infamous for the scandalous lives
they led. Theodora, and afterward her
daughter Marozia, were the mistresses of
Adelbert, Duke of Tuscany. Adelbert seized
the castle of St. Angelo, in the city of Rome,
and gave it to Theodora and her daughters,
who, supported by the Marquis and his party,
governed Rome without control, and disposed
of the holy see to whom they pleased. To
Adelbert was born a son by Marozia, named
Alberic; but she nevertheless lived scandal-
ously with the pope, and gave to his Holiness
a son called John, whom we shall soon see
raised to the papal chair by the interest of his
mother.” 2
To her son John, Theodora first gave the
archbishopric of Ravenna, and later trans-
lated him to Rome, where he became pope
through her power in A. n. 914. He organized
an army to make war on the Saracens, and
the world was astonished and edified at the
appearance of this warlike pontiff marching
at the head of his troops. “By the love of
Theodora, as was said, he had maintained
himself in the papacy for fourteen years; by
the intrigues and hatred of her daughter
Marozia he was overthrown. She surprised
him in the Lateran Palace; killed his brother
Peter before his face; threw him into prison,
where he soon died, smothered, as was as-
serted, with a pillow.” 3
After a short interval Marozia made her
own son pope under the title of John XI,
A. Dn. 931. But his brother Alberic cast both
1Quoted by De Cormenin, “History of the Popes,”
Benedict IV.
2 Bower, “Lives of the Popes,” Sergius III, par. 1.
Also DeCormenin, under Sergius III.
3 Draper, “Intellectual Development of Europe,”
chap. 12, par. 55.
him and his mother into prison, and then made
his own son pope. This young man was only
nineteen years of age when he assumed the
pontificate, the amorous Marozia having now
given a son and a grandson to the papacy. He
took the title of John XII. His reign was
characterized by such shocking immoralities
that the Emperor Otho I was compelled to
interfere,
“A synod was summoned for his trial in the
Church of St. Peter, before which it appeared
that John had received bribes for the con-
secration of bishops, that he had ordained one
who was but ten years old, and had performed
that ceremony over another in a stable; he
was charged with infamous conduct with one
of his father’s concubines, and with so many
adulteries that the Lateran Palace had be-
come a brothel; he put out the eyes of one
ecclesiastic and committed mayhem upon an-
other, both dying in consequence of their in-
juries; he was given to drunkenness, gam-
bling, and the invocation of Jupiter and Venus.
When cited to appear before the council, he
sent word that ‘he had gone out hunting :’
and to the fathers who remonstrated with him,
he threateningly remarked ‘that Judas, as well
as the other disciples, received from his Mas-
ter the power of binding and loosing, but that
as soon as he proved a traitor to the common
cause, the only power he retained was that of
binding his own neck. Thereupon he was
deposed, and Leo VIII elected in his stead,
A. D. 063; hut subsequently getting the upper
hand, he seized his antagonists, cut off the
hand of one, and the nose, finger, tongue of
others. His life was eventually brought to
an end by the vengeance of a man whose wife
he had seduced.” 4
After such details it is almost needless to
allude to the annals of succeeding popes: to
relate that John XIII was strangled in prison;
that Boniface VII imprisoned Benedict VII,
and killed him by starvation; that John XIV
was secretly put to death in the dungeons of
the Castle of St. Angelo; that the corpse of
Boniface was dragged by the populace through
the streets. The sentiment of reverence for
the sovereign pontiff, nay, even of respect,
had become extinct in Rome; throughout Eu-
rope the clergy were so shocked at the state
of things, that, in their indignation, they be-
gan to look with approbation on the intention
of the Emperor Otho to take from the Italians
their privilege of appointing the successor of
St. Peter, and confine it to his own family,
But his kinsman, Gregory V, whom he placed
on the pontifical throne, was very soon com-
pelled by the Romans to fly; his excommuni-
cations and religious thunders were turned
into derision by them; they were too well ac-
quainted with the true nature of those ter-
rors. They were living behind the scenes.
+]d.