Verse 15
15. Life unto the image He was not to be a dead statue, like an image of an emperor; he should speak; and he, the image, should cause the refusers of worship to be killed.
Worship the image To the pope the attributes of the Deity are ascribed, the name God is given, and the worship, due to God, is offered the papal theocracy. See note on 2 Thessalonians 2:7. The Canon also declared, “It is certain that the pope was styled God by Constantine, and it is manifest that God cannot be judged by men.” And so Pope Urban II. maintained that he was judge of all men, but that he could be judged by no man, and he was acquitted of an accusation on that ground. And, under Pope Symmachus, at the beginning of the sixth century, it was declared that the pope was judge in the place of God, and could himself be judged by none. He was above all human jurisdiction. And, at the fifth Lateran Council, the orator announced, with all acceptance, “Thou art finally a second God on earth.” See our notes on 2 Thessalonians 2:4-10.
Killed No domination ever existed on earth so bloody and so cruel, in every form of infliction, as the popedom, from its first establishment to the present hour. Religious wars waged by its instigation, massacres and exterminations, inquisitions and dragonades, tortures by rack and by burning, form the staple of the history. The Spanish inquisition, the massacre of St. Bartholomew, the Smithfield fagots, are exploits of this infernal image. Every country in western Europe is stained by this antichrist with blood. It has ruined South America. In our Protestant North America its devotees are numerous and menacing, but impotent as yet.
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