Rome’s Blood-Bath, BY J.H. Hunter (1944)

ROME’S BLOOD-BATH, BY J.H. HUNTER
(From Panton’s “The Dawn”, 1944)

“It cannot be pressed home too often or too hard that the Woman on the Seven Hills is pictured as drunk with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus (Rev.17:6), not in the Middle Ages, but in the moment of her judgment…the Papal principle that the Church must control the State, and then the State must exterminate all non-Catholics, has never fundamentally altered, and will once again operate openly. The martyrdoms Mr. Hunter depicts are but a photograph of those yet to come.” – (D.M. Panton)

“The persecutions of the Church by Pagan Rome, though terrible and long continued, have been far exceeded by those perpetrated by Rome Papal. Pagan Rome never invented or employed such an engine of persecution as the INQUISITION! Pagan Rome persecuted for three hundred years; Papal Rome for double and treble that period. None can ever count the martyrs who suffered during the ages in which Papal Rome was ‘drunken with the blood of the saints.’ Bishop Newton says: – ‘Who can make any computation, or even frame any conception of the number of pious Christians who have fallen a sacrifice to the bigotry and cruelty of Rome? Mede upon this place hath observed from good authorities that ‘in the war with the Albigenses and Waldenses, there perished of these poor creatures in France alone a million.’ From the first institution of the Jesuits to the year 1480, that is in little more than thirty years, nine hundred thousand orthodox Christians were slain. In the Netherlands alone, the Duke of Alva boasted that within a few years he had dispatched to the amount of thirty-six thousand souls, and those all by the hand of the common executioner. In the space of scarce thirty years, the Inquisition destroyed by various kinds of tortures a hundred and fifty thousand Christians. Sonders himself confesses that an innumerable multitude of Lollards and Sacramentarians were burnt throughout all Europe, who yet, he says, were not put to death by the Pope and bishops, but by the civil magistrates, which perfectly agrees with this prophecy, for of ‘the secular beast’ it is said that he should ‘make war with the saints and overcome them.’ (Newton’s ‘Dissertations on the Prophecies’, p. 160).

Jean Leger, a learned and pious Waldensian pastor, was living at the time of the massacre of Lucerna. His valuable history of the Waldenses was written within fourteen years of that terrible event – only one massacre of the Waldenses, alas! among many…The following is an account of the massacre: – ‘The length and breadth of the valley, its villages, its houses, its roads, and its rocks, were occupied by the assassins in the pay of the propaganda; and now these assassins were called upon to do their work. On Saturday, 24th April, 1655, at four o’clock in the morning, the signal for a general massacre of the Vaudois was given to the traitorous troops from the tower of the castle of La Torre. The soldiers, forewarned, had risen early, fresh with the sleep they had enjoyed under the roofs of those they were about to slaughter. The men whom, under the solemn engagement of security and protection, the Vaudios had fed and housed, were now on foot throughout the valley, converted, by the arts of Rome, from brave soldiers into cowardly assassins.’

‘Young children,’ writes Leger, ‘were torn from their mothers’ arms, dashed against the rocks, and their mangled remains cast on the road. Sick persons and old people, men and women, were burned alive in their houses, or hacked in pieces, or mutilated in horrible ways, or flayed alive, or exposed bound and dying to the sun’s noontide heat, or to ferocious animals; some were stripped naked…Women and girls, after being fearfully outraged, were impaled on pikes and so left to die, planted at angles of the road; or they were buried alive…’

This article would run to an inordinate length were we to attempt to put down even a little of the evidence of Romanist persecutions in modern days, and the Roman Catholic statements of the church’s intention. Thus in 1901 a certain Father Harney said in New Jersey in reply to a question by a Protestant: – ‘I do not doubt, if they were strong enough, that the Catholic people would hinder, even by death, if necessary, the spread of such error through the people. And I say, rightly so.’ Romanist writers from the Pope down have made it clear that the liberties we enjoy in the Protestant lands are not approved by the Church, but as was stated by Pope Leo XIII in 1888, are simply acquiesced in ‘on account of the extraordinary political conditions of to-day,’ and ‘because she judges it expedient that they should be permitted,’ but, ‘she would in happier times resume her own liberty.’ In 1931 this same encyclical was virtually reaffirmed by Pius XI.

The deeds of this Church in modern days have fully confirmed her words. In Italy, in Spain, in Eire, in South America and in the Province of Quebec there is a long record of coercion and persecution of Protestants whose fault was that they loved the Word of God and the Gospel of redeeming Grace and sought to bring others into the light of the truth.”

[Along this line, elsewhere, D.M. Panton writes]:

“The intolerance of the Church of Rome is indisputable. In June, 1888, Pope Leo XIII issued an Encyclical: ‘Justice and reason forbid the State to be godless, or to act equivalently, that is, to treat the various religions (so-called) alike and with equal rights and common privileges. One religion being necessary to be professed, the State should profess that which alone is true. And though in our abnormal times the Church usually acquiesces in certain modern liberties, she does not as approving of them, but because it is expedient to permit them till HAPPIER TIMES ALLOW HER TO EXERCISE HER OWN LIBERTY,’ (Libertas, June, 1888). Papal policy is briefly summed up in the words of the Roman Catholic publicist, Veuillot: – When you Protestants are in a majority, we claim toleration from you, as your principles allow it. When Catholics are in a majority, we deny toleration to you, as our principles require it.’ So Pope Pius X. says in this century: – ‘It is for the Church to direct all men, and each in particular according to the principles of right thinking and just living, in public and in private life, in the field of sociology and politics, as well as in that which is strictly religious.’…The blindness of Protestants who collaborate with ‘the Sword of the Spirit’ is amazing. Where Rome has power, the intolerance is absolute. The State Department at Washington, U.S.A., says concerning the Concordat between Spain and the Vatican: – ‘The accord of June 6, 1941, with the Holy see, reaffirmed four articles of the Concordat of 1851, as follows: – 1. The Roman Catholic and Apostolic religion, to the exclusion of any other, continues to be the sole religion of the Spanish nation, and is always to be maintained. 2. Instruction in all schools shall conform in all respects to the doctrines of the Roman Catholic religion.’”

Comments: In these days when it is politically correct to whitewash both Romanism and Islam, it is crucial to read articles such as the above in order to get a good dose of reality!