As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten; be thou zealous therefore, and repent*. Behold, I stand at

the door t.

Again; we ask, Who moved St. John to write the Apocalypse? The HOLY SPIRIT of God. If any man hath an ear, let him hear what THE SPIRIT saith unto the Churches ‡.

Assuredly, my beloved brethren, it is not uncharitable in us to declare, what the Spirit of Peace dictated to the Apostle of Love.

Nay, rather, we should be guilty of grievous sin; we should be doing what in us lies to frustrate St. John's labour of love; we should be resisting the Holy Ghost; we should be forfeiting the blessings promised in the Apocalypse to all who read and keep the words of this prophecy §, if we failed to proclaim what, by the voice of St. John, it has pleased God to reveal.

They, let us be assured, are not lovers of peace, or of their own and other men's souls, who build up a wall, and daub it with untempered morter ||; and speak smooth things, and prophesy deceits **, and say, Peace, peace, when there is no peace tt; for it is written, O son of man, if thou dost not speak to warn the wicked from his way, that wicked man shall die in

his iniquity; but his blood will I require at thy hand*. And, He that flattereth his neighbour, spreadeth a net for his feet; but, He that rebuketh a man, shall afterwards find more favour, than he that flattereth with his tongue ‡•

Still further: If the Church of Rome be indeed right in her assertion, that out of her pale there is no salvation §; if it be really true, that she cannot err, and will never fail; if she has indeed been constituted by Jesus Christ to be the unique Depository and supreme Arbitress of the Faith, then assuredly it is a very perilous thing to be separated from her, and we ought not to lose an hour before we join her communion.

But if, on the other hand, as we now affirm, and shall hereafter proceed to prove, the Apocalyptic prophecies concerning Babylon do indeed point at her, then, by uniting ourselves with Rome, we should sever ourselves from St. John; then, by communicating with her, we should rebel against the Holy Ghost.

Yes, my beloved brethren, we have received the Apocalypse from the hand of St. John, who calls it the Revelation of JESUS CHRIST ||, and the voice of the SPIRIT to the Church. We have it in our hands, and

* Ezek. xxxiii. 8.

Prov. xxviii. 23.

+ Prov. xxix. 5.

§ In the Trent Creed,-"Extra hanc fidem nemo salvus esse potest."

|| Rev. i. 1.

we point to it, and say,-Here we have a positive command from ALMIGHTY GOD not to partake of her sins, lest we also receive of her plagues *. The inspired Exile, the divine Evangelist, upon the shore of Patmos, not only addressed the Seven Churches of Asia, but he now speaks to us: he speaks to the Church of England, and to all the Churches of Christendom:-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, which is poured out 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†.

We have also a divine assurance, for ourselves, that, in not communicating in the sins of Rome, and in warning others how they venture to do so, we are obeying Christ Himself; for, Here, says St. John, is the patience of the Saints; here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus ‡.

Thus, then, we see in the Apocalypse a strong appeal to our charity. Christian love longs, above all things, for the salvation of souls. It prays and labours that they may escape God's judgments, and especially that they may be saved from such fearful woes the torments of the lake of fire §-which are denounced by God upon Babylon. How, therefore,

*Rev. xviii. 4. Rev. xiv. 12.

+ Rev. xiv. 10.

Rev. xiv. 10, 11. xix. 20.

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 t. Let us all pray, pray earnestly, to God that this may indeed be so!

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 city ‡.

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

*Tertullian de Præscr. Hæret. c. 36.

+ Zech. iii. 2.

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!

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 destruction ‡.

*Psalm cxxxvii. 1. † Gal. vi. 1.

Micah ii. 10.