Says Mr. Simpson, in Plea for Religion: "We Protestants, too, read the declaration of the third angel against the worshipers of the beast and his image, and make ourselves easy under the awful denunciation by applying it exclusively to the church of Rome; never dreaming that they are equally applicable not only to the English, but to every church establishment in Christendom, which retains any of the marks of the beast. For though the Pope and the church of Rome is at the head of the grand twelve hundred and sixty years' delusion, yet all other churches, of whatever denomination, whether established or tolerated, which partake of the same spirit, or have instituted doctrines and ceremonies inimical to the pure and unadulterated gospel of Christ, shall sooner or later share in the fate of that immense fabric of human ordinances."
Says Mr. Hopkins: "There is no reason to consider the antichristian spirit and practices confined to that which is now called the church of Rome. The Protestant churches have much of Antichrist in them, and are far from being wholly reformed from the corruptions and wickedness, in doctrine and practice, in it. Some churches may be more pure and may have proceeded farther in a reformation than others; but where can the church be found which is thoroughly purged from her abominations? None are wholly clear from an antichristian spirit and the fruits of it.... And as the church of Rome will have a large share in the cup of indignation and wrath which will be poured out, so all the Christian world will have a distinguished portion of it: as the inhabitants of it are much more guilty than others. There is great reason to conclude that the world, particularly that part of it called Christian and Protestant, will yet make greater and more rapid advances in all kinds of moral corruption and open wickedness, till it will come to that state in which it will be fully ripe and prepared to be cut down by the sickle of divine justice and wrath."
Mr. O. Scott (Wesleyan Methodist) says: "The church is as deeply infected with a desire for worldly gain as the world. Most of the denominations of the present day might be called churches of the world, with more propriety than churches of Christ. The churches have so far gone from primitive Christianity that they need a fresh regeneration—a new kind of religion."
Said T. DeWitt Talmage: "I simply state a fact when I say that in many places the church is surrendering, and the world is conquering.... There is a mighty host in the Christian church, positively professing Christianity, who do not believe the Bible, out and out and in and in.... Oh! we have magnificient church machinery in this country; we have sixty thousand American ministers; we have costly music; we have great Sunday-schools; and yet I give you the appalling statistics that in the last twenty-five years, laying aside last year, the statistics of which I have not yet seen,—within the last twenty-five years the churches of God in this country have averaged less than two conversions a year each! There has been an average of four or five deaths in the churches. How soon, at that rate, will this world be brought to God? We gain two; we lose four. Eternal God! what will this come to?"
Bishop Roberts said: "The popular religion of this country is not the religion of the New Testament. It has some of its features but not all. It is lacking in grand fundamental elements. It answers many good purposes—restrains, refines, elevates, and gives to society a high grade of civilization; but fails to secure the great end which Christianity is designed to accomplish—the salvation of the soul. It dazzles but to blind, it promises but to deceive; it allures by worldly considerations to a heaven of purity, which no worldling can enter; it gives to its votaries, who long to eat of forbidden fruit, the assurance of impunity from the threatened evils, and leads them on by siren strains from the Paradise of purity into the broad road which ends at last in the blackness of the darkness of an eternal night of despair!"
Says the Golden Rule: "The Protestants are outdoing the Popes in splendid, extravagant folly in church building. Thousands on thousands are expended in gay and costly ornaments to gratify pride and a wicked ambition, that might and should go to redeem the perishing millions! Does the evil, the folly, and the madness of these proud, formal, fashionable worshiper, stop here? These splendid monuments of Popish pride, upon which millions are squandered in our cities, virtually exclude the poor for whom Christ died, and for whom he came especially to preach."
The report of the Michigan Yearly Conference, even as long ago as 1851, published in the True Wesleyan of Nov. 15, says: "The world, commercial, political, and ecclesiastical are alike, and are together going in the broad way that leads to death. Politics, commerce, and nominal religion, all connive at sin, reciprocally aid each other, and unite to crush the poor. Falsehood is unblushingly uttered in the forum and in the pulpit; and sins that would shock the moral sensibilities of the heathen, go unrebuked in all the great denominations of our land. These churches are like the Jewish church when the Savior exclaimed, 'Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites.'"
Robert Atkins, in a sermon preached in London, says: "The truly righteous are diminished from the earth, and no man layeth it to heart. The professors of religion of the present day, in every church, are lovers of the world, conformers to the world. Lovers of creature-comfort, and aspirers after respectability. They are called to suffer with Christ, but they shrink even from reproach. Apostasy, apostasy, APOSTASY, is engraven on the very front of every church; and did they know it, and did they feel it, there might be hope; but alas! they cry 'We are rich, and increased in goods, and stand in need of nothing.'"