Page:The Net of Faith.pdf/407

99* many members (of the church) are the worst enemies of the law of God, and men are tortured on that account. The Emperor, the kings and the lords have exalted over the Christians this high priest, endowing him with power and domains; now in his pride he rules even over kings. In investing him they were seduced by the proud devil, and through this error they render him service: they raised a lord to the destruction of faith, and now he rules and changes and fabricates laws full of poison and pest, with which to vitiate and wound the people.

The Donation (of Constantine) is no trifling matter: today poison is running in the holy Church. When the poison was poured into the Church in the beginning, it increased and spread throughout the whole world by means of this wealthy priest, successful in the world, through his corrupt laws. The world became swollen and distended with gross iniquities. Its body became bigswoln with anger, with prodigality, profligacy, and with a lethargy caused by the loss of life in God, it sneers at all things divine and grows out of the poisons of the great harlot. Thinking of these things, Saint Paul could not have condemned him more than by saying that he was a man of lawlessness and a son of perdition. Christ Jesus the man of  See Chapter XXII,

Rev. 17:1–2.

2-Thes. 2:3.