The exclusive dominion of the Latin or Roman church was now drawing to a close. Since the pontificate of Gregory the Great, or for nearly a thousand years, she had reigned supreme. But the oppressed Teuton was now raising the arm of rebellion against the tyranny of the Roman. The warfare ended in a great secession of the Teutons, in wresting from the papacy a large portion of her dominions, and in the breaking up of Christendom, like the ship in which Paul sailed to Rome.
It has been our desire to present to the reader a fair view of the real character and ways of the church of Rome during the long period of her dominion, and he must judge whether the history warrants our interpretation of the epistle to Thyatira. Our own convictions are a thousandfold deeper at the close than they were at the commencement of the history, that we have given a true interpretation, and made a just application of the words of the Lord to the church in Thyatira. We have only Him to serve and Him to please in writing this history. For no one else would we have waded through these thousand years. The amount that we write bears little proportion to the amount that must be read in order to be satisfied as to the truthfulness of what is written. Besides, a very large proportion of papal history is wholly unfit for our pages, or to come before the eye of civilized people, far less the eye of the Christian. Her adulteries and abominations are better left on the page that was written in a ruder age, as they will surely be consigned to a place peculiarly dark in the regions of hell.
For nearly three hundred years, by means of schools, new translations, versions, printing-presses, and the intolerance of the church, the Lord had been preparing the way for the accomplishment of His purpose; and, this being done, the feeblest instrument was sufficient to bring all these agencies into full action. "When the train is properly laid, an accidental spark may cause the explosion." To effect great results by small means is the way of divine providence, that the power may be seen to be of God, and not of man. An occasion was furnished, and Luther was the prepared instrument to reap the glorious harvest of the great Reformation. But much labor was bestowed on the field by many noble hearts and hands which were not privileged to gather its fruits, at least in this world. These may have been the agents, Luther was the instrument.
During these thousand years, we have been chiefly engaged with popery and the witnesses for Christ; now it must be popery and protestantism. But if the reader would rightly understand the difference between the two, he must carefully consider what popery was down to the time of Luther's appearance.