Page:The Last Judgement and Second Coming of the Lord Illustrated.djvu/294

 Lord foretold would be the occasion for His second coming had really transpired: that there was no stone of the temple—no truth of the Church—which had not been thrown down. The Church maintained a profession indeed, because of the worldly interests that had clustered around it: "For wheresoever the carcase is, there will the eagles be gathered together;" but it had ceased to be a spiritual institution. Heaven had become dim and distant in their eyes, and the world was regarded as the only reality. Great numbers of the clergy were indifferent spectators of the vices of the people, and sought relaxation in the coarsest pleasures. The courts of Europe were seats of sensuality in every form: most of the kings were infidels; the national governments were political corruptions; statesmen were place-hunters, drunkards, and gamblers; these vices were not confined to the men; women participated in this deplorable profligacy. Libertinism and profane swearing were esteemed the indication of manhood and the characteristics of gentlemen; and a wide-spread infidelity, both within the Church and without it, finally displayed itself in France, by the public renunciation of Christianity, the abolition of the Sabbath, and the exalting of what was called Reason, as a god. The Archbishop of Paris, followed by his clergy, carried the Scriptures, and other works connected with Divine worship, and burnt them in the public market-place. These were only the miserable results of a spiritual iniquity that had long been festering. But space will not permit us to dwell upon the decay of all that was good and true in religion, life, and manners, which then prevailed. It is written in history, and distinctly spoken of by authorities which no one can dispute. Bishop Burnet, in a pastoral charge, in 1713, said, "I see the imminent