The Two Babylons

kindness with which the four years' correspondence between us was conducted on his part,--a correspondence in which he always treated me with as much confidence as if I had been his friend and brother,--I cannot but feel warm and tender emotions, mingling with the thoughts that spring up in my bosom. Friendship such as his was no ordinary friendship. His memory, therefore, must be ever dear to me; the remembrance of his kindness ever fragrant.

Unexpected was the stroke--now, alas! near three years ago--by which our correspondence was brought to an end; but painful though that stroke was, and solemnising, there was no gloom attending it. The "hope full of immortality" cheered his dying bed. For years back he had found the emptiness of the world, and had begun to seek the better part. His religion was no sentimental religion; his fear of God was not taught by the commandment of men. His faith was drawn directly from the inspired fountain of Divine truth. From the time that the claims of God to the homage of his heart had laid hold on him, the Word of God became his grand study, and few men have I ever known who held with a more firm and tenacious grasp the great truth that the Word of God, and that Word alone, is the light and rule for the guidance of Christians; and that every departure from that Word, alike on the part of Churches and individuals, implies, as he himself expressed it, "going off the rails," and consequently danger of the highest kind. As his religion was Scriptural, so it was spiritual. In one of his earliest letters to me, he avowed that the bond of "spiritual religion" was that by which he felt himself specially bound to those whose character and spirit showed them to be the true sheep of Christ's pasture; and in accepting the dedication of my work, he particularly stated, that the interest that he took in it was not as a mere matter of literary curiosity, but as being "fitted to teach great truths, which the world is not very willing to learn." This, in the connection in which he wrote, evidently had special reference to the great doctrine of "regeneration." His mind was deeply penetrated with a sense of the majesty of God, and the "awfulness" of our relations to Him, in consequence of the sin that has entered the world, and has infected the whole human race, and therefore he vividly realised the indispensably necessity of Mediation and Atonement, to give hope to sinful man in prospect of the grand account.

The origin of that earnestness and attachment to spiritual religion which he manifested in his last years, was, as I was assured by a relative now also gone to his reward, the perusal of the tract entitled "Sin no Trifle." Deep was the impression that tract had made. He read it, and re-red it, and continually carried it about with him. till it was entirely worn away. Under the impressions springing from such views of sin, he said to an intimate friend, when in the enjoyment of health and vigour, "It is easy to die the death of a gentleman, but that will not do." His death was not the death of a mere gentleman. It was evidently the death of a Christian.

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The circumstances in which he was removed were fitted to be peculiarly affecting to me. In reply to a letter--the last which I received from him--in which he expressed deep interest in the spread of vital religion, I was led, in pursuance of the theme to which he himself had specially referred, to dwell more than ever before on the necessity not merely of having hope towards God, but having the question of personal acceptance decisively settled, and the consequent habitual possession of the "joy of salvation," and as one special reason for this, referred to the fact, that all would be needed in a dying hour. "And who can tell," I added, "how suddenly those who are surrounded with all the comforts of life may be removed from the midst of them?" In illustration of this, I referred to the affecting case of one whom I had known well, just a short while before, lost along with his family in the Royal Charter. Having made a large fortune in Australia, he was returning home, and when on the point of setting foot on his native shores, with the prospect of spending his days in ease and affluence, suddenly father and mother, son and daughter, were all engulfed in a watery grave. My letter concluded with these words: "In view of such a solemnising event, well may we say, What is man? But oh, man is great, if he walks with God, and the divine words are fulfilled in his experience, 'God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.' That this may be more and more the experience of your Lordship, is my earnest desire." When I wrote this I had not the least suspicion that I was writing to a dying man. But so it proved to be. Only a few days after he received this, he was smitten with his death-sickness. From his dying bed he sent me a kindly memorial of his affectionate remembrance, and in his painful illness he manifested the supporting power of faith, when faith has respect to the truth as it is in Jesus, and appropriates Him as a personal and Almighty Saviour.

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The Two Babylons - THE TWO BABYLONS.

"And upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH." --Rev. xvii. 5.

The Two Babylons - INTRODUCTION.

There is this great difference between the works of men and the works of God, that the same minute and searching investigation, which displays the defects and imperfections of the one, brings out also the beauties of the other. If the most finely polished needle on which the art of man has been expended be subjected to a microscope, many inequalities, much roughness and clumsiness, will be seen. But if the microscope be brought to bear on the flowers of the field, no such result appears. Instead of their beauty diminishing, new beauties and still more delicate, and have escaped the naked eye, are forthwith discovered; beauties that make us appreciate, in a way which otherwise we could have had little conception of, the full force of the Lord's saying, "Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: and yet I say unto you, That even Solomon, in all his glory, was not arrayed like one of these." The same law appears also in comparing the Word of God and the most finished productions of men. There are spots and blemishes in the most admired productions of human genius. But the more the Scriptures are searched, the more minutely they are studied, the more their perfection appears; new beauties are brought into light every day; and the discoveries of science, the researches of the learned, and the labours of infidels, all alike conspire to illustrate the wonderful harmony of all the parts, and the Divine beauty that clothes the whole.

If this be the case with Scripture in general, it is especially the case with prophetic Scripture. As every spoke in the wheel of Providence revolves, the prophetic symbols start into still more bold and beautiful relief. This is very strikingly the case with the prophetic language that forms the groundwork and corner-stone of the present work. There never has been any difficulty in the mind of any enlightened Protestant in identifying the woman "sitting on seven mountains," and having on her forehead the name written, "Mystery, Babylon the Great," with the

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Roman apostacy. "No other city in the world has ever been celebrated, as the city of Rome has, for its situation on seven hills. Pagan poets and orators, who had no thought of elucidating prophecy, have alike characterised it as 'the seven hilled city.'" Thus Virgil refers to it: "Rome has both become the most beautiful (city) in the world, and alone has surrounded for herself seven heights with a wall." Propertius, in the same strain, speaks of it (only adding another trait, which completes the Apocalyptic picture) as "The lofty city on seven hills, which governs the whole world." Its "governing the whole world" is just the counterpart of the Divine statement--"which reigneth over the kings of the earth" (Rev. xvii. 18) To call Rome the city "of the seven hills" was by its citizens held to be as descriptive as to call it by its own proper name. Hence Horace speaks of it by reference to its seven hills alone, when he addresses, "The gods who have set their affections on the seven hills." Martial, in like manner, speaks of "The seven dominating mountains." In times long subsequent, the same kind of language was in current use; for when Symmachus, the prefect of the city, and the last acting Pagan Pontifex Maximus, as the Imperial substitute, introduces by letter one friend of his to another, he calls him "D septem montibus virum"--"a man from the seven mountains," meaning thereby, as the commentators interpret it, "Civem Romanum," "A Roman Citizen." Now, while this characteristic of Rome has ever been well marked and defined, it has always been easy to show, that the Church which has its seat and headquarters on the seven hills of Rome might most appropriately be called "Babylon," inasmuch as it is the chief seat of idolatry under the New Testament, as the ancient Babylon was the chief seat of idolatry under the Old. But recent discoveries in Assyria, taken in connection with the previously well-known but ill-understood history and mythology of the ancient world, demonstrate that there is a vast deal more significance in the name Babylon the Great than this. It has been known all along that Popery was baptised Paganism; but God is now making it manifest, that the Paganism which Rome has baptised is, in all its essential elements, the very Paganism which prevailed in the ancient literal Babylon, when Jehovah opened before Cyrus the two-leaved gates of brass, and cut in sunder the bars of iron.

That new and unexpected light, in some way or other, should be cast, about this very period, on the Church of the grand Apostacy, the very language and symbols of the Apocalypse might have prepared us to anticipate. In the Apocalypse might have prepared us to anticipate. In the Apocalyptic visions, it is just before the judgment upon her that, for the first time, John sees the

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Apostate Church with the name Babylon the Great "written upon her forehead" (Rev. xvii.5). What means the writing of that name "on the forehead"? Does it not naturally indicate that, just before judgment overtakes, her real character was to be so thoroughly developed, that everyone who has eyes to see, who has the least spiritual discernment, would be compelled, as it were, on ocular demonstration, to recognise the wonderful fitness of the title which the Spirit of God had affixed to her. Her judgment is now evidently hastening on; and just as it approaches, the Providence of God, conspiring with the Word of God, by light pouring in from all quarters, makes it more and more evident that Rome is in very deed the Babylon of the Apocalypse; that the essential character of her system, the grand objects of her worship, her festivals, her doctrine and discipline, her rites and ceremonies, her priesthood and their orders, have all been derived from ancient Babylon; and, finally, that the Pope himself is truly and properly the lineal representative of Belshazzar. In the warfare that has been waged against the domineering pretensions of Rome , it has too often been counted enough merely to meet and set aside her presumptuous boast, that she is the mother and mistress of all churches--the one Catholic Church, out of whose pale there is no salvation. If ever there was excuse for such a mode of dealing with her, that excuse will hold no longer. If the position I have laid down can be maintained, she must be stripped of the name of a Christian Church altogether; for if it was a Church of Christ that was convened on that night, when the pontiff-king of Babylon, in the midst of his thousand lords, "praised the gods of gold, and of solver, and of wood, and of stone" (Dan. v.4), then the Church of Rome is entitled to the name of a Christian Church; but not otherwise. This to some, no doubt, will appear a very startling position; but it is one which it is the object of this work to establish; and let the reader judge for himself, whether I do not bring ample evidence to substantiate my position.

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The Two Babylons - CHAPTER I.

DISTINCTIVE CHARACTER OF THE TWO SYSTEMS.

In leading proof of the Babylonian character of the Papal Church the first point to which I solicit the reader's attention, is the character of Mystery which attaches alike to the modern Roman and the ancient Babylonian systems. The gigantic system of moral corruption and idolatry described in this passage under the emblem of a woman with a "GOLDEN CUP IN HER HAND" (Rev.xvii.4), "making all nations DRUNK with the wine of her fornication" (Rev. xvii. 2; xviii. 3), is divinely called "MYSTERY, Babylon the Great" (Rev. xvii. 5). That Paul's "MYSTERY of iniquity," as described in 2 Thess. ii. 7, has its counterpart in the Church of Rome, no man of candid mind, who has carefully examined the subject, can easily doubt. Such was the impression made by that account on the mind of the great Sir Matthew Hale, no mean judge of evidence, that he used to say, that if the apostolic description were inserted in the public "Hue and Cry" any constable in the realm would be warranted in seizing, wherever he found him, the Bishop of Rome as the head of that "MYSTERY of iniquity." Now, as the system here described is equally characterised by the name of "MYSTERY," it may be presumed that both passages refer to the same system. But the language applied to the New Testament Babylon, as the reader cannot fail to see, naturally leads us back to the Babylon of the ancient world. As the Apocalyptic woman has in her hand a CUP, wherewith she intoxicates the nations, so was it with the Babylon of old. Of that Babylon, while in all its glory, the Lord thus spake, in denouncing its doom by the prophet Jeremiah: "Babylon hath been a GOLDEN CUP in the Lord's hand, that made all the earth drunken: the nations have drunken of her wine; therefore the nations are mad" (Jer. li. 7). Why this exact similarity of language in regard to the two systems? The natural inference surely is, that the one stands to the other in the relation of type and antitype. Now, as the Babylon of the Apocalypse is characterised by the name of "MYSTERY," so the grand distinguishing feature of the ancient Babylonian system was the Chaldean "MYSTERIES," that formed so essential a part of that system. And to these mysteries, the very language of the Hebrew prophet, symbolical though of course it is, distinctly alludes, when he speaks of Babylon as a "golden CUP." To drink of "mysterious beverages," says Salverte, was indispensable on the part of all who sought