The Two Babylons
Alexander Hislop
CONCLUSION
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 worshippers 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 so 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. Grant 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presents to its votaries can be proved to have been originally made of the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 by 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
language of the late Pope Gregory, substantially endorsed by the present
Pontiff.
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
14:9,10):
"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 is found finally under the guilt which they
imply. These words, as 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 (vv 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." *
* The
Apocalypse announces two falls of Babylon. The fall referred to above is
evidently only the first. The prophecy clearly implies, that
after the first fall it rises to a greater height than before; and
therefore the necessity of the warning.
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 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, be 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 upon 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 yeas. 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 converts 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 fact
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 Hindoostan and the still
more malignant idolatry of Rome. Then, indeed, there would be a lengthening of
our tranquility, 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
"hear 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 every 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 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 His 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 thorough 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 think 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 yeas, 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, "They 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 his
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 much 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 grant 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 best is but a blind guide; human policy is a meter 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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