How good of the Lord, the great Head of the church, to send forth into many and distant lands the living waters of the sanctuary, when Rome, the center of Christendom, was stagnant and corrupt. At that very time, Baronius, the famous annalist of the Roman church, and whose partiality to the See of Rome is notorious, cries out, "How deformed, how frightful, was the face of the church of Rome! The holy See was fallen under the tyranny of two loose and disorderly women, who placed and displaced bishops as their humor led them, and (what I tremble to think and speak of) they placed their gallants on St. Peter's chair," etc. Referring to the same period, Arnold, bishop of Orleans, exclaims, "0 miserable Rome! thou that didst formerly hold out so many great and glorious luminaries to our ancestors, into what prodigious darkness art thou now fallen, which will render thee infamous to all succeeding ages."
While such was the state of Rome, the capital of the corruptress, Jezebel, the vital stream of eternal life from the exalted Savior, was flowing freely in the extremities of the empire. Many nations and tribes and tongues had received the gospel with the many blessings it brought to them. Doubtless it was encumbered with many superstitions; but the word of God so far, and the name of Jesus, had been introduced among them; and the Spirit of God can work wonders with that most blessed name, and that most precious word. The Savior was preached; the love of God and the work of Christ seem to have been taught with a divine unction which carried conviction to the rude barbarians. It was God's own work, and the accomplishment of His own purposes. In such a case would not Paul have said, "I therein do rejoice, yea, and will rejoice?" (Phil. 1:1818What then? notwithstanding, every way, whether in pretence, or in truth, Christ is preached; and I therein do rejoice, yea, and will rejoice. (Philippians 1:18).)