comfort your hearts and establish you in every good work and word.
"This height, however, of spiritual and civil tyranny united, the bishops of Rome did not attain till, as the apostle foretold, that which restrained was taken out of the way; or, till an end was put to the authority of the Roman emperors in the west, by the inroads of the barbarous nations; and, more especially, till the western empire was broken into the ten kingdoms, prefigured in Daniel's vision by the ten horns of the fourth beast; for then it was that the bishops of Rome made themselves the sovereigns of Rome and of its territory, and so became the little horn which Daniel beheld coming up among the ten horns, and which had the eyes of a man, and a mouth speaking great things; to show that its dominion was founded on the deepest policy, and that its strength consisted in the bulls, excommunications, and anathemas, which, with intolerable audacity, it uttered against all who opposed its usurpations. And in process of time, the bishops of Rome having got possession of three of the kingdoms into which the western empire was broken, signified by three of the horns of Daniel's fourth beast being plucked up by the roots before the little horn, they call themselves the vicars of Christ, on pretense that Christ had transferred his whole authority to them. They also thought to change times and laws, as Daniel foretold; for, as the vicars of Christ, they assumed the power of saving and damning men at their own pleasure; and altered the terms of salvation, making it depend, not on faith and holiness, but on the superstitious practices which they had established; and sold the pardon of sins past, and even the liberty of sinning for the future, for money. Moreover, they openly made war with the saints who resisted their corrupt doctrines and practices, and prevailed against them, and wore out the saints of the Most High; for, by the cruel and bloody persecutions which they obliged the princes who acknowledged their authority to carry on against those who adhered to the pure doctrines and worship of Christ, they destroyed incredible numbers of them. Nay, by the terror of their excommunications and interdicts, they forced even the most powerful sovereigns to bend to their yoke: thus with their mouth did they speak very great things. At length they assumed the right of conferring kingdoms and of deposing princes, and actually deposed some, with the help of the potentates of their communion, who put their mandates in execution. Lastly, to render this exercise of their tyranny the more effectual, they arrogated the power of loosing subjects from their oaths of allegiance; whereby they made void the most sacred of all moral obligations, the obligation of allegiance. But this impious scheme of false doctrine, and the spiritual tyranny built upon it, agreeably to the predictions of the Prophet Daniel and of the Apostle Paul, began at the Reformation to be consumed by the breath of the Lord's mouth; that is, by the Scriptures put into the hands of the laity, and by the preaching of true doctrine out of the Scriptures.