would it rejoice that these prophecies should now be duly pondered by all the members of the Church of Rome! How thankful would it be that the words of the Apostle, who was miraculously rescued from the fiery furnace at Rome, to see these Visions, should have power, by God's grace, to pluck them as brands from the fire. Let us all pray, pray earnestly, to God that this may indeed be so! 1 Especially too, as years roll on, and as the judgments reserved for Babylon draw nearer and nearer, and as, it may be, in the events of our own day, we feel the tremblings of the earthquake which will engulph her, and behold the flashing forth of the fire which will consume her, true Christian Charity will put on Angel's wings, and will hasten with a Seraph's step; and will be like the heavenly Messengers despatched by God to Lot in Sodom; and will lay hold on the hands of those who linger, and will urge them forth from the door, and will chide their delay, and will exclaim,-Arise! what dost thou here? Take all that thou hast, lest thou be consumed in the iniquity of this city3. And what, therefore, shall we say of those, our beloved friends, our own brothers and sisters in Christ, who have been nurtured with the same milk of the Gospel at the breast of the same Mother with ourselves; who have breathed the same prayers; who 1 Tertullian de Præscr. Hæret. c. 36. 3 Gen. xix. 12-16. have knelt before the same altars, and have walked with us side by side in the courts of our own Jerusalem; and have been beguiled by seductive arts; and have been carried away captive-alas! willingly captive-to Babylon; some of whom, we doubt not, when they awake from the dream in which they are entranced, and recover from the first paroxysms of perversion, and when they calmly compare their present state with the past, rue secretly the sad change, and, by the waters of Babylon sit down and weep, when they remember thee, O Sion! 1 What, my brethren, shall we say of them? It may be, that we ourselves might have prevented their fall. It may be, that we have even hastened it by our coldness and carelessness. Shall we do nothing for their recovery? shall we not remember them in our prayers? shall we not endeavour to restore them in the spirit of meekness? Shall we not, even with tears, implore them to listen-not to us, but to their Everlasting Saviour, their Almighty King and Judge, speaking in the Apocalypse by the mouth of the Evangelist St. John? Shall we not point to the cup of wrath in God's right hand, ready to be poured out upon them? Shall we not say, in the words of the Prophet,-Arise ye and depart, for this is not your rest; because it is polluted, it shall destroy you, even with a sore destruction3. 1 Psalm cxxxvii. 1. 3 Micah ii. 10. 2 Gal. vi. 1. The Book of REVELATION, thus viewed, as it ought to be, is a divine Warning of the peril and unhappiness of all who are enthralled by Rome. And its prophetic and comminatory uses ought to be pointed out by all Christian Ministers, and to be acknowledged by all Christian congregations. They, whether Clergy or People, forfeit a great blessing and incur great danger, who neglect these divinely-appointed uses of the Apocalypse, particularly in the present age, when the Church of Rome is employed with more than her usual activity in spreading her snares around us, to make victims of her deceits, prisoners of her power, slaves of her will, and partners of her doom. Still further, and much more: A Minister of the Gospel, when led in the discharge of his duty to treat specially of the Apocalypse, would be betraying his sacred trust, if he did not call the attention of his hearers to these prophecies which occupy so large a portion of this Sacred Book; and which, for reasons that he will state publicly, he is fully persuaded have been fulfilled, or are in course of fulfilment, in the Church of Rome. He would be guilty of the heinous sin of handling the word of God deceitfully'; and, in St. Paul's language, he would not be pure of the blood of the souls of his hearers, as not declaring to them the whole counsel of God 2. He would be chargeable with 1 2 Cor. iv 2. 2 Acts xx. 26, 27. taking away from the words of St. John's prophecy; and so would be in peril of having his own name blotted out from the book of life', if he failed to lift up his voice, and to blow the trumpet of the Gospel with no uncertain sound 2, and to proclaim publicly and solemnly, in accents which cannot be mistaken, that the BABYLON of the APOCALYPSE is no other than the CHURCH of ROME. In discharging this responsible duty, he must, however, crave not to be misunderstood. I. Having a deep sense of the danger of those who dwell in Babylon, he will never venture to affirm that none who have dwelt there could be saved. The Apocalypse itself forbids him. On the very eve of its destruction the voice from heaven says, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues. And so, we doubt not, God ever has had, and now has, some people in Babylon. Some, doubtless, there were in former times in our own land who had not the blessed privilege which we enjoy of hearing the voice, Come out of her. They had not the warnings of the Gospel: to them it was almost a sealed book. And this, too, is even yet the case with many in foreign lands. And, since responsibilities vary with privileges, and God judgeth men according to what they have, and 1 Rev. xxii. 19. 3 Rev. xviii. 4. 2 1 Cor. xiv. 8. not according to what they have not', therefore Christian Love, which hopeth all things, will think charitably, and, if it speak at all, will not speak harshly of them 3. All this we readily allow. But then we must not shrink from asking, What will be the lot of those who hear the voice, Come out of her, and yet do not obey it? And what will be their portion, who, when the voice says, Come out of her, go in to Babylon, and dwell there? II. Again: the Minister of the Gospel, to whose case we have referred, is obliged, for fear of misrepresentation, to say, that he readily acknowledges, and openly professes, that Christianity does not consist in hatred of Rome. We are not of those, who, in the words of an eminent Writer," consider the Christian Religion no otherwise than as it abhors and reviles Popery, and who value those men most, who do it most furiously." No; the Gospel is a divine Message of Peace on earth, and good will towards men 3. The banner over us is Love". No one is safe because 1 Luke xii. 48. 2 Cor. viii. 12. 21 Cor. xiii. 7. 3 Compare the wise and charitable sentiments of St. Cyprian, Epist. Ixiii. Si quis de antecessoribus nostris vel ignoranter vel simpliciter non observavit et tenuit quod nos DOMINUS facere exemplo suo et magisterio docuit, potest simplicitati ejus de indulgentiâ Domini venia concedi; nobis verò non poterit ignosci, qui nunc a Domino admoniti et instructi sumus. 4 Lord Clarendon, Hist. Rebell. i. 88, p. 38, ed. Oxf. 1839. |