I HAVE now finished the task I proposed to myself. Even yet
the evidence is not nearly exhausted; but, upon the evidence
which has been adduced, I appeal to the reader if I have not
proved every point which I engaged to demonstrate. Is there one,
who has candidly considered the proof that has been led, that now
doubts that Rome is the Apocalyptic Babylon? Is there one who
will venture to deny that, from the foundation to the topmost
stone, it is essentially a system of Paganism? What, then, is to
be the practical conclusion from all this?
1. Let every Christian henceforth and for
ever treat it as an outcast from the pale of Christianity.
Instead of speaking of it as a Christian Church, let it be
recognised and regarded as the Mystery of Iniquity, yea, as the
very Synagogue of Satan. With such overwhelming evidence of its
real character, it would be folly--it would be worse--it would be
treachery to the cause of Christ--to stand merely on the
defensive, to parley with its priests about the lawfulness of
Protestant orders, the validity of Protestant sacraments, or the
possibility of salvation apart from its communion. If Rome is now
to be admitted to form a portion of the Church of Christ, where
is the system of Paganism that has ever existed, or that now
exists, that could not put in an equal claim? On what grounds
could the worshipers of the original Madonna and child in the
days of old be excluded "from the commonwealth of
Israel," or shown to be "strangers to the
covenants of promise"? On what grounds could the
worshippers of Vishnu at this day be put beyond the bounds of
such wide catholicity? The ancient Babylonians held, the modern
Hindoos still hold, clear and distinct traditions of the Trinity,
the Incarnation, the Atonement. Yet, who will venture to say that
such nominal recognition of the cardinal articles of Divine
revelation could relieve the character of either the one system
or the other from the brand of the most deadly and
God-dishonouring heathenism? And also in regard to Rome. True, it
nominally admits Christian terms and Christian names; but all
that is apparently Christian in its system is more than
neutralised by the malignant Paganism that it embodies. Grand
that the bread the Papacy presents to its votaries can be proved
to have been originally made of the finest of the wheat; but what
then, if every particle of that bread is combined with prussic
acid or strychnine? Can the excellence of the bread overcome the
virus of the poison? Can there be anything but death, spiritual
and eternal death, to those who continue to feed upon the
poisoned food that it offers? Yes, here is the question, and let
it be fairly faced. Can there be salvation in a communion in
which it is declared to be a fundamental principle, that the
Madonna is "our greatest hope; yea, the SOLE GROUND OF
OUR HOPE"? * The time is come when charity to the
perishing souls of men, hoodwinked by a Pagan priesthood, abusing
the name of Christ, requires that the truth in this matter should
be clearly, loudly, unflinchingly proclaimed. The beast and the
image of the beast alike stand revealed in the face of all
Christendom; and now the tremendous threatening of the Divine
Word in regard to their worship fully applies (Rev. xiv. 9, 10): "And
the third angel followed them, saying, 'If any man worship the
beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead, or in
his hand, the same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God,
poured without mixture into the cup of His indignation; and he
shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the
holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb.'" These
words are words of awful import; and woe to the man who has
already been admitted by Elliott, contain a "chronological
prophecy," a prophecy not referring to the Dark Ages, but to
a period not far distant from the consummation, when the Gospel
should be widely diffused, and when bright light should be cast
on the character and doom of the apostate Church of Rome (ver.
6-8). They come, in the Divine chronology of events, immediately
after an angel has proclaimed, "BABYLON IS FALLEN, IS
FALLEN." We have, as it were, with our own ears heard
this predicted "Fall of Babylon" announced
from the high places of Rome itself, when the seven hills of the "Eternal
City" reverberated with the guns that proclaimed, not
merely to the citizens of the Roman republic, but to the wide
world, that "PAPACY HAD FALLEN, de facto and de jure,
from the temporal throne of the Roman State." * Now, it
is in the order of the prophecy, after this fall of Babylon, that
this fearful threatening comes. Can there, then, be a doubt that
this threatening specially and peculiarly applies to this very
time? Never till now was the real nature of the Papacy fully
revealed; never till now was the Image of the beast set up. Till
the Image of the beast was erected, till the blasphemous decree
of the Immaculate Conception was promulged, no such apostacy had
taken place, even in Rome, no such guilt had been contracted, as
now lies at the door of the great Babylon. This, then, is a
subject of infinite importance of the great Babylon. This, then,
is a subject of infinite importance to every one within the pale
of the Church of Rome-to every one also who is looking, as so
many at present are doing, towards the City of the Seven Hills.
If any one can prove that the Pope does not assume all the
prerogatives and bear substantially all the blasphemous titles of
that Babylonian beast that "had the wound by a sword,
and did live," and if it can be shown that the Madonna,
that has so recently with one consent been set up, is not in
every essential respect the same as the Chaldean "Image"
of the beast, they may indeed afford to despise the threatening
contained in these words. But if neither the one nor the other
can be proved (and I challenge the strictest scrutiny in regard
to both), then every one within the pale of the Papacy may well
tremble at such a threatening. Now, then, as never before, may
the voice Divine, and that a voice of the tenderest love, he
heard sounding from the Eternal throne to every adherent of the
Mystic Babylon, "Come out of her, My people, that ye be
not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her
plagues."
2. But if the guilt and danger of those who
adhere to the Roman Church, believing it to be the only Church
where salvation can be found, be so great, what must be the guilt
of those who, with a Protestant profession, nevertheless uphold
the doomed Babylon? The constitution of this land requires our
Queen to swear, before the crown can be put up her head, before
she can take her seat on the throne, that "she
believes" that the essential doctrines of Rome are "idolatrous."
All the Churches of Britain, endowed and unendowed, alike
with one voice declare the very same They all proclaim that the
system of Rome is a system of blasphemous idolatry....And yet the
members of these Churches can endow and uphold, with Protestant
money, the schools, the colleges, the chaplains of that
idolatrous system. If the guilt of Romanists, then, be great, the
guilt of Protestants who uphold such a system must be tenfold
greater. That guilt has been greatly accumulating during the last
three or four years. While the King of Italy, in the very States
of the Church--what but lately were the Pope's own dominions--has
been suppressing the monasteries (and in the space of two years
no less than fifty-four were suppressed, and their property
confiscated), the British Government has been acting on a policy
the very reverse, has not only been conniving at the erection of
monasteries, which are prohibited by the law of the land, but has
actually been bestowing endowment on these illegal institutions
under the name of Reformatories. It was only a short while ago,
that it was stated, on authority of the Catholic Directory, that
in the space of three years, fifty-two new convents were added to
the monastic system of Great Britain, * almost the very number
that the Italians had confiscated, yet Christian men and
Christian Churches look on with indifference. Now, if ever there
was an excuse for thinking lightly of the guilt contracted by our
national support of idolatry, that excuse will no longer avail.
The God of Providence, in India, has been demonstrating that He
is the God of Revelation. He has been proving, to an awe-struck
world, by events that made every ear to tingle, that every word
of wrath, written three thousand years ago against idolatry, is
in as full force at this day as when He desolated the covenanted
people of Israel for their idols and sold them into the hands of
their enemies. If men begin to see that it is a dangerous thing
for professing Christians to uphold the Pagan idolatry of India,
they must be blind indeed if they do not equally see that it must
be as dangerous to uphold the Pagan idolatry of Rome. Wherein
does the Paganism of Rome differ from that of Hindooism? Only in
this, that the Roman Paganism is the more complete, more
finished, more dangerous, more insidious Paganism of the two.
I am afraid, that after all that has been said, not a few will
revolt from the above comparative estimate of Popery and
undisguised Paganism. Let me, therefore, fortify my opinion by
the testimonies of two distinguished writers, well qualified to
pronounce on this subject. They will, at least, show that I am
not singular in the estimate which I have formed. The writers to
whom I refer, are Sir George Sinclair of Ulbster, and Dr. Bonar
of Kelso. Few men have studied the system of Rome more thoroughly
than Sir George, and in his Letters to the Protestants of
Scotland he has brought all the fertility of his genius, the
curiosa felicitas of his style, and the stores of his highly
cultivated mind, to bear upon the elucidation of his theme. Now,
the testimony of Sir George is this: "Romanism is a
refined system of Christianised heathenism, and chiefly differs
from its prototype in being more treacherous, more cruel, more
dangerous, more intolerant." * The mature opinion of
Dr. Bonar is the very same, and that, too, expressed with the
Cawnpore massacre particularly in view: "We are doing
for Popery at home," says he, "what we have
done for idolaters abroad, and in the end the results will be the
same; nay, worse; for Popish cruelty, and thirst for the blood of
the innocent, have been the most savage and merciless that the
earth has seen. Cawnpore, Delhi, and Bareilly, are but dust in
comparison with the demoniacal brutalities perpetrated by the
Inquisition, and by the armies of Popish fanaticism." *
These are the words of truth and soberness, that no man
acquainted with the history of modern Europe can dispute. There
is great danger of their being overlooked at this moment. It will
be a fatal error if they be. Let not the pregnant face be
overlooked, that, while the Apocalyptic history runs down to the
consummation of all things, in that Divine foreshadowing all the
other Paganisms of the world are in a manner cast into the shade
by the Paganism of Papal Rome. It is against Babylon that sits on
the seven hills that the saints are forewarned; it is for
worshipping the beast and his image pre-eminently, that "the
vials of the wrath of God, that liveth and abideth for
ever," are destined to be outpoured upon the nations.
Now, if the voice of God has been heard in the late Indian
calamities, the Protestantism of Britain will rouse itself to
sweep away at once and for ever all national support, alike from
the idolatry of Hindostan and the still more malignant idolatry
of Rome. Then, indeed, there would be a lengthening of our
tranquillity, then there would be hope that Britain would be
exalted, and that its power would rest on a firm and stable
foundation. But if we will not "here the voice, if we
receive not correction, if we refuse to return," if we
persist in maintaining, at the national charge, "that
image of jealousy provoking to jealousy," then, after
the repeated and ever-INCREASING strokes that the justice of God
has laid on us, we have very reason to fear that the calamities
that have fallen so heavily upon our countrymen in India, may
fall still more heavily upon ourselves, within our own borders at
home; for it was when "the image of jealousy" was
set up in Jerusalem by the elders of Judah, that the Lord said,
"Therefore will I also deal in fury; mine eye shall not
spare, neither will I have pity; and though they cry in mine ears
with a loud voice, yet will I not hear them." He who
let loose the Sepoys, to whose idolatrous feelings and antisocial
propensities we have pandered so much, to punish us for the
guilty homage we had paid to their idolatry, can just as easily
let loose the Papal Powers of Europe, to take vengeance upon us
for our criminal fawning upon the Papacy.
3. But, further, if the views established in
this work be correct, it is time that the Church of God were
aroused. Are the witnesses still to be slain, and has the Image
of the Beast only within the last year or two been set up, at
whose instigation the bloody work is to be done? Is this, then,
the time for indifference, for sloth, for lukewarmness in
religion? Yet, alas! how few are they who are lifting up their
voice like a trumpet, who are sounding the alarm in God's holy
mountain--who are bestirring themselves according to the
greatness of the emergency--to gather the embattled hosts of the
Lord to the coming conflict? The emissaries of Rome for years
have been labouring unceasingly night and day, in season and out
of season, in every conceivable way, to advance their Master's
cause, and largely have they succeeded. But "the
children of light" have allowed themselves to be lulled
into a fatal security; they have folded their hands; they have
got to sleep as soundly as if Rome had actually disappeared from
the face of the earth--as if Satan himself had been bound and
cast into the bottomless pit, and the pit had shut its mouth upon
him, to keep him fast for a thousand years. How long shall this
state of things continue? Oh, Church of God, awake, awake! Open
your eyes, and see if there be not dark and lowering clouds on
the horizon that indicate an approaching tempest. Search the
Scriptures for yourselves; compare them with the facts of
history, and say, if there be not reason after all to suspect
that there are sterner prospects before the saints than most seem
to wot of. If it may turn out that the views opened up in these
pages are Scriptural and well-founded, they are at least worthy
of being made the subjects of earnest and prayerful inquiry. It
never can tend to good to indulge an uninquiring and delusive
feeling of safety, when, if they be true, the only safety is to
be found in a of safety, when, if they be true, the only safety
is to be found in a timely knowledge of the danger and due
preparation, by all activity, all zeal, all spirituality of mind,
to meet it. On the supposition that peculiar dangers are at hand,
and that God in Hid prophetic Word has revealed them, His
goodness is manifest. He has made known the danger, that, being
forewarned, we may be forearmed; that, knowing our own weakness,
we may cast ourselves on His Almighty grace; that we may feel the
necessity of a fresh baptism of the Holy Ghost; that the joy of
the Lord being our strength, we may be through and decided for
the Lord, and for the Lord alone, that we may work, every one in
his own sphere, with increased energy and diligence, in the
Lord's vineyard, and save all the souls we can, while yet
opportunity lasts, and the dark predicted night has not come,
wherein no man can work. Though there be dark prospects before
us, there is no room for despondency; no ground for any one to
say that, with such prospects, effort is vain. The Lord can bless
and prosper to His own glory, the efforts of those who truly gird
themselves to fight His battles in the most hopeless
circumstances; and, at the very time when the enemy cometh in
like a flood, He can, by His Spirit, lift up a standard against
him. Nay, not only is this a possible thing, there is reason,
from the prophetic word, to believe that so it shall actually be;
that the last triumph of the Man of Sin shall not be achieved
without a glorious struggle first, on the part of those who are
leal-hearted to Zion's King. But if we would really wish to do
anything effectual in this warfare, it is indispensable that we
know, and continually keep before our eyes, the stupendous
character of that Mystery of Iniquity embodied in the Papacy that
we have to grapple with. Popery boasts of being the "old
religion;" and truly, from what we have seen, it
appears that it is ancient indeed. It can trace its lineage far
beyond the era of Christianity, back over 4000 years, to near the
period of the Flood and the building of the Tower of Babel.
During all that period its essential elements have been nearly
the same, and these elements have a peculiar adaptation to the
corruption of human nature. Most seem to thing that Popery is a
system merely to be scouted and laughed at; but the Spirit of God
everywhere characterises it in quite a different way. Every
statement in the Scripture shows that it was truly described when
it was characterised as "Satan's Masterpiece"--the
perfection of his policy for deluding and ensnaring the world. It
is not the state-craft of politicians, the wisdom of
philosophers, or the resources of human science, that can cope
with the wiles and subtleties of the Papacy. Satan, who inspires
it, has triumphed over all these again and again. Why, the very
nations where the worship of the Queen of Heaven, with all its
attendant abominations, has flourished most in all ages, have
been precisely the most civilised, the most polished, the most
distinguished for arts and sciences. Babylon, where it took its
rise, was the cradle of astronomy. Egypt, that nursed it in its
bosom, was the mother of all the arts; the Greek cities of Asia
Minor, where it found a refuge when expelled from Chaldea, were
famed for their poets and philosophers, among the former Homer
himself being numbered; and the nations of the European
Continent, where literature has long been cultivated, are now
prostrate before it. Physical force, no doubt, is at present
employed in its behalf; but the question arises, How comes it
that this system, of all others, can so prevail as to get that
physical force to obey its behests? No answer can be given but
this, that Satan, the god of this world, exerts his highest power
in its behalf. Physical force has not always been on the side of
the Chaldean worship of the Queen of Heaven. Again and again has
power been arrayed against it; but hitherto every obstacle it has
surmounted, every difficulty it has overcome. Cyrus, Xerxes, and
many of the Medo-Persian kings, banished its priests from
Babylon, and laboured to root it out of their empire; but then it
found a secure retreat in Pergamos, and "Satan's
seat" was erected there. The glory of Pergamos and the
cities of Asia Minor departed; but the worship of the Queen of
Heaven did not wane. It took a higher flight, and seated itself
on the throne of Imperial Rome. That throne was subverted. The
Arian Goths came burning with fury against the worshippers of the
Virgin Queen; but still that worship rose buoyant above all
attempts to put it down, and the Arian Goths themselves were soon
prostrate at the feet of the Babylonian goddess, seated in glory
on the seven hills of Rome. In more modern times, the temporal
powers of all the kingdoms of Europe have expelled the Jesuits,
the chief promoters of this idolatrous worship, from their
dominions. France, Spain, Portugal, Naples, Rome itself have all
adopted the same measures, and yet what do we see at this hour?
The same Jesuitism and the worship of the Virgin exalted above
almost every throne on the Continent. When we look over the
history of the last 4000 years, what a meaning in the words of
inspiration, that "the coming of the Man of Sin" is
with the energy, "the mighty power of Satan."
Now, is this the system that, year by year, has been rising into
power in our own empire? And is it for a moment to be imagined
that lukewarm, temporising, half-hearted Protestants can make any
head against such a system? No; the time is come when Gideon's
proclamation must be made throughout the camp of the Lord: "Whosoever
is fearful and afraid, let him return and depart early from Mount
Gilead." Of the old martyrs it is said, "The
overcame by the blood of the Lamb and the word of their
testimony, and they loved not their lives unto the death."
The same self-denying, the same determined spirit, is needed now
as much as ever it was. Are there none who are prepared to stand
up, and in that very spirit to gird themselves for the great
conflict that must come, before Satan shall be bound and cast
into his prison-house? Can any one believe that such an event can
take place without a tremendous struggle--that "the god
of this world" shall quietly consent to resign the
power that for thousands of years he has wielded, without
stirring up all is wrath, and putting forth all his energy and
skill to prevent such a catastrophe. Who, then, is on the Lord's
side? If there be those who, within the last few years, have been
revived and quickened--stirred up, not by mere human excitement,
but by the Almighty grace of God's Spirit, what is the gracious
design of this? Is it merely that they themselves may be
delivered from the wrath to come? No; it is that, zealous for the
glory of their Lord, they may act the parts of true witnesses,
contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints, and
maintain the honour of Christ in opposition to him who
blasphemously usurps his prerogatives. If the servants of
Antichrist are faithful to their master, and unwearied in
promoting his cause, shall it be said that the servants of Christ
are less faithful to theirs? If none else will bestir themselves,
surely to the generous hearts of the young and rising ministry of
Christ, in the kindness of their youth, and the love of their
espousals, the appeal shall not be made in vain, when the appeal
is made in the name of Him whom their souls love, that in this
grand crisis of the Church and of the world, they should "come
to the help of the Lord--the help of the Lord against the
mighty," that they should do what in them lies to
strengthen the hands and encourage the hearts of those who are
seeking to stem the tide of apostacy, and to resist the efforts
of the men who are labouring with such zeal, and with so much of
infatuated patronage on the part of "the powers that
be," to bring this land back again under the power of
the Man of Sin. To take such a part, and steadily and
perseveringly to pursue it, amid so such growing lukewarmness, it
is indispensable that the servants of Christ set their faces as a
flint. But if they have grace so to do, they shall not do so
without a rich reward at last; and in time they have the firm and
faithful promise that "as their day is, so shall their
strength be." For all who wish truly to perform their
part as good soldiers of Jesus Christ, there is the strongest and
richest encouragement. With the blood of Christ on the
conscience, with the Spirit of Christ warm and working in the
heart, with our Father's name on our forehead, and our life, as
well as our lips, consistently bearing "testimony" for
God, we shall be prepared for every event. But it is not common
grace that will do for uncommon times. If there be indeed such
prospects before us, as I have endeavoured to prove there are,
then we must live, and feel, and act as if we heard every day
resounding in our ears the words of the great Captain of our
Salvation, "To him that overcometh will I grand to sit
with Me on My throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down
with My Father on His throne. Be thou faithful unto death, and I
will give thee a crown of life."
Lastly, I appeal to every reader of this work, if it does not
contain an argument for the divinity of the Scriptures, as well
as an exposure of the impostures of Rome. Surely, if one thing
more than another be proved in the previous pages, it is this,
that the Bible is no cunningly devised fable, but that holy men
of God of old spake and wrote as they were moved by the Holy
Ghost. What can account for the marvellous unity in all the
idolatrous systems of the world, but that the facts recorded in
the early chapters of Genesis were real transactions, in which,
as all mankind were involved, so all mankind have preserved in
their various systems, distinct and undeniable memorials of them,
though those who have preserved them have long lost the true key
to their meaning? What, too, but Omniscience could have foreseen
that a system, such as that of the Papacy, could ever effect an
entrance into the Christian Church, and practise and prosper as
it has done? How could it ever have entered into the heart of
John, the solitary exile of Patmos, to imagine, that any of the
professed disciples of that Saviour whom he loved, and who said, "My
kingdom is not of this world," should gather up and
systematise all the idolatry and superstition and immorality of
the Babylon of Belshazzar, introduce it into the bosom of the
Church, and, by help of it, seat themselves on the throne of the
Caesars, and there, as the high-priests of the Queen of Heaven,
and gods upon earth, for 1200 years, rule the nations with a rod
of iron? Human foresight could never have done this; but all this
the exile of Patmos has done. His pen, then, must have been
guided by Him who sees the end from the beginning, and who
calleth the things that be not as though they were. And if the
wisdom of God now shines forth so brightly from the Divine
expression "Babylon the Great," into which
such an immensity of meaning has been condensed, ought not that
to lead us the more to reverence and adore the same wisdom that
is in reality stamped on every page of the inspired Word? Ought
it not to lead us to say with the Psalmist, "Therefore,
I esteem all Thy commandments concerning all things to be
right"? The commandments of God, to our corrupt and
perverse minds, may sometimes seem to be hard. They may require
us to do what is painful, they may require us to forego what is
pleasing to flesh and blood. But, whether we know the reason of
these commandments or no, if we only know that they come from "the
only wise God, our Saviour," we may be sure that in the
keeping of them there is great reward; we may go blindfold
wherever the Word of God may lead us, and rest in the firm
conviction that, in so doing, we are pursuing the very path of
safety and peace. Human wisdom at the beast is but a blind guide;
human policy is a meteor that dazzles and leads astray; and they
who follow it walk in darkness, and know not whither they are
going; but he "that walketh uprightly," that
walks by the rule of God's infallible Word, will ever find that "he
walketh surely," and that whatever duty he has to
perform, whatever danger he has to face, "great peace
have all they that love God's law, and nothing shall offend
them."
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