I have by no means exhausted the supply of similar testimonies of Protestants now before me, but for lack of space I must conclude. In the face of these amazing facts can any one deny that Protestantism is a part of great Babylon and is in a fallen condition?
"The merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies." A certain writer on this text has said: "Who take the lead in all the extravagancies of the age? Church-members. Who load their tables with the richest and choicest viands? Church-members. Who are foremost in extravagance in dress, and all costly attire? Church-members. Who are the very personification of pride and arrogance? Church-members. Where shall we look for the very highest exhibition of the luxury, even show, and pride of life, resulting from the vanity and sin of the race? Answer, To a modern church-assembly on a pleasant Sunday." Though this writer interpreted the text literally, yet he spoke a vast amount of truth, as every one knows.
Consider, too, the wickedness carried on everywhere in sect Babylon unrebuked, with the preachers ofttimes in the lead. Shows, festivals, frolics, grab-bag parties, cake-walk lotteries, kissing-bees, etc., etc. If the apostle were here to-day and we should inform him of a modern church entertainment where a bared female foot, projecting from beneath a curtain, was sold to the highest gentleman bidder, who had the privilege of kissing its owner and taking her to supper, he would probably answer, "Have I not told you, 'Babylon is fallen'?" If his attention was called to the fact that the members of a prominent church, in a novel entertainment, displayed the likeness of a donkey, minus the tail, while the members one by one were blindfolded, and, amid the uproarous laughter of the crowd assembled, were given the detached part to see who could place it the nearest where it belonged, he would say with double emphasis, "Have I not told you, 'BABYLON THE GREAT IS FALLEN, IS FALLEN, AND IS BECOME THE HABITATION OF DEVILS, AND THE HOLD OF EVERY FOUL SPIRIT, AND A CAGE OF EVERY UNCLEAN AND HATEFUL BIRD'?" The "abominations" are by no means confined to the mother in the Revelation, but are also to be found in abundance in connection with her harlot daughters.
4. And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.
5. For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities.
6. Reward her even as she rewarded yon, and double unto her double according to her works: in the cup which she hath filled fill to her double.
7. How much she hath glorified herself, and lived deliciously, so much torment and sorrow give her: for she saith in her heart, I sit a queen, and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow.
8. Therefore shall her plagues come in one day, death, and mourning, and famine; and she shall be utterly burned with fire: for strong is the Lord God who judgeth her.
Here we have a number of important truths brought before us—first, that God had a people in Babylon who up to this time were free from her contaminations; second, that they received a positive call from heaven to "come out"; third, that all who refused to obey the heavenly command would become partakers of her sins and receive of her plagues; fourth, that those who came out were to pour the strongest judgments upon Babylon—"reward her even as she rewarded you, and double unto her double according to her works: in the cup which she hath filled, fill to her double." It is evident that the "torment and sorrow" which God's people give Babylon after their departure is not a temporal retaliation—for they never indulge in such, and the Word of God forbids it—but is altogether of a spiritual nature; hence the fierce judgment they inflict is executing the Word of truth, which brings to light all the wickedness and abominations contained therein. "Death, and mourning, and famine" only remain. This symbolizes that all spiritual life has departed, while famine and mourning are left. That such is the actual fact is shown by the following lamentation of the late Bishop R.S. Foster concerning his own sect, the Methodist Episcopal:
"The ball, the theatre, nude and lewd art, social luxuries, with all their loose moralities, are making inroads into the sacred enclosure of the church; and as a satisfaction for all this worldliness, Christians are making a great deal of Lent and Easter and Good Friday, and church ornamentations. It is the old trick of Satan. The Jewish church struck on that rock; the Romish church was wrecked on the same; and the Protestant church is fast reaching the same doom.
"Our great dangers as we see them, are assimilation to the world, neglect of the poor, substitution of the form for the fact of godliness, abandonment of discipline, a hireling ministry, an impure gospel, which summed up is a fashionable church. That Methodists should be liable to such an outcome, and that there should be signs of it in a hundred years from the 'sail-loft,' seems almost the miracle of history; but who that looks about him to-day can fail to see the fact?
"Do not Methodists, in violation of God's Word and their own discipline, dress as extravagantly and as fashionably as any other class? Do not the ladies, and even the wives and daughters of the ministry, put on 'gold and pearls and costly array'? Would not the plain dress insisted upon by John Wesley and Bishop Asbury, and worn by Hester Ann Rodgers, Lady Huntington, and many others equally distinguished, be now regarded in Methodist circles as fanaticism? Can any one going into the Methodist church in any of our chief cities distinguish the attire of the communicants from that of the theater and ball-goers? Is not worldliness seen in the music? Elaborately dressed and ornamented choirs, who in many cases make no profession of religion and are often sneering skeptics, go through a cold artistic or operatic performance, which is as much in harmony with spiritual worship as an opera or theater. Under such worldly performances spirituality is frozen to death.