MONOGAMY IS ROMANISM STILL
Take monogamy as it is to-day, in Protestant countries, and we see that the old Roman leaven is still in it. Christianity has not reformed and purified that system so much as that has corrupted Christianity. Most of us in these countries are accustomed to congratulate ourselves upon our happy escape from the bondage and the bigotry of the Papal Church. But we are mistaken. We have not escaped. Rome binds us in stronger shackles than the iron chains of the holy Inquisition. Her shackles are upon our consciences: they are intertwined with every fibre of our social life. Much of her intolerant spirit, many of her questionable doctrines and practices, and her traditional forms and ceremonies, are still common to the nominally Christian world. In respect to a few of them, we have discovered that they are unscriptural, and unsupported by divine authority, and are therefore of no binding obligation; but, by many other traditional doctrines and practices of that hierarchy, we are unconsciously, and therefore so much the more securely fettered. We boast of our Christian freedom, while we are, in fact, but little better than slaves; for if we are nominally free, yet we are bound by an apprenticeship to Rome more degrading than our former slavery itself: and our boasted emancipation is but a miserable farce. We are too servile and timid in our interpretation of the Bible, and in our examination of the divine and natural laws. We hesitate to follow the simple truth to its legitimate and logical conclusions. We stand aghast at the radical changes which severe truth requires in our religious and social systems. We shrink from exploring the profound labyrinths to which truth attempts in vain to lead us; while we look anxiously around for clews and leading-strings by which to trace our way. We dare not go forward without example and authority; and authority and example are reconducting us to Rome.