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bread the Papacy presents to its votaries can be proved to have been originally made of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."
