The Blackness and Vileness of Popery.
It is to be feared that in these days of easy-going satanic religious indifference and lamentable lack of spiritual discernment many otherwise orthodox believers themselves may fall asleep with the foolish virgins as to the really dreadful and satanic nature of Popery. It will not be our fault, ‘God willing,’ if our readers ever become so deluded by the Judas kisses of Popery as to lose all sense of that salutary dread of Romanism which hitherto characterised the godly in this land. It is therefore, with sincere appreciation that we reproduce the following paragraph that appeared in the Grove Chapel, Camberwell, London, Quarterly Review for July, 1941. The Quarterly Review is the organ of the Calvinistic Independent Grove Chapel:—”True religion is at a low ebb at the present time in the land, and hence the spirit of compromise with error we now witness in the ‘united’ efforts sponsored by the Church of England, the Church of Rome, and the Free Churches under the disarming title of ‘The Sword of the Spirit.’ But let no one be deceived by this papal propaganda so ingeniously devised to trap the unwary. The Romish Church has not changed and the warning given by our founder, Mr. Joseph Irons, in 1844, can be appropriately reiterated to-day:—’I think that very few Christians are aware of the double devilish blackness and vileness of Popery now. It is putting on, in the days in which we live, especially in England, all the forms of apparent innocence, and beguiling, bewitching meekness, with all deceivableness of unrighteous, as the apostle says, so that many are duped by its false pretensions? This condition of things spiritual has been largely aided by the spreading of that popular drug, Arminianism, by which one can pick up or put down religion at will. To be an ‘almost’ Christian is like a spineless body. May the Lord Jehovah send us a revival of true religion in the land, with the virility of sound doctrine accompanied by the blessedness of a gracious personal experience!”