Four hundred years ago, England was suffering ecclesiastically under the grip of Papal tyranny. King and people were controlled by a system of authority so ingeniously contrived that it gave practically unlimited spiritual power over the bodies and souls of men and the wealth of the whole country.
The Pope was still the most potent Dictator in the world. His spiritual “Fifth-columnists” swarmed over the European countries, watching every political movement and reporting to Rome every fact of interest to the Papacy. The ecclesiastical “Gestapo,” moreover, were ever on the alert for any show of opposition to Mother Church. They spied upon, persecuted, imprisoned, tortured, excommunicated, or executed (frequently by burning alive) innumerable men and women whom they detected or suspected of thinking or expressing ideas which differed from the dogmas prescribed by the Roman Church.
Under the guise of a pious obligation, the Confessional, they secured information which apprised them of the most confidential plans or intentions. “The wife was compelled to utter not her own only, but also the secrets of her husband; the servant, the secrets of his master.”
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Author: R. Overton
Keywords: Purgatory, apocryphal, Inferno, Gehenna, Dante, Dante inferno, Hell, Hades, Catholicism, Catholic, Roman Catholic, Roman Catholicism, Papal, Pope, Popedom, Intermediate state, Life after death, Afterlife, After life, Sheol, Limbo, Soul sleep, immortal soul, immortality of the soul, soul, spirit, immortal spirit, eternal spirit, Tyndale, William Tyndale, protestant reformation, protestant, protestantism, protestant reformer, Reformation
Bible reference(s): Luke 16:23-28
Source: “Tyndale and His Purge of Purgatory,” The Testimony, Vol. 11, No. 121, January 1941, pp. 7-10.
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