We come now to examine the frame of a city—that great city, the city of confusion. Its measurement is so fully given—it is so accurately described, with its towns and villages—that the candid and unprejudiced inquirer after truth need not fail to identify her. To aid us in our inquiries, this mystical city is also symbolized as a family, a mother and her daughters, all formally married, and professing fidelity, to the best of husbands, only as a screen to cover a life of lewdness. The mother, as a representative of the whole family, holds a golden cup in her hand, emblematical of purity, but “full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication.” Rev. xvii, 1–6.
Babylon is a professor of religion, but false, apostate, and corrupt. In Rev. xii, the true church in her purity is represented by a woman. She is clothed with the sun, and the moon is under her feet—clad in the armor of light, and raised above sublunary things. In chap. xvii, in the wilderness state of the true church, the apostate is represented by a woman sitting upon a wild beast of earth, arrayed in all the insignia of earthly pomp and power, and drunken with the blood of saints. Who cannot see in this description the features of the apostate church controlling the civil power of the divided empire of Rome, symbolized by a beast with seven heads and ten horns, and through the aid of kings, with whom she commits lewdness, persecuting to death the saints of God? This is so evident that none but a Romanist will deny it. Consequently, all Protestants, who have any position on prophecy, are agreed that the harlot is the corrupt, apostate, worldly, persecuting church of Rome. We believe this; and we believe more. When any other church, professing to be a church of Christ, exhibits the same characteristics—worldliness, corruption of the doctrines of Christ, and seeking the aid of civil law to enforce her self-imposed rites and observances—she proves herself false to Christ, her professed husband, commits lewdness with earthly rulers, and identifies herself as a portion of that great city which “made all nations drink of the wine of its raging fornication.”
We do not, as some fanatics have done, apply the term Babylon to every organized church in existence, as though church organization was the sin of Babylon; but all those who bear the features of the “mother,” and follow in her footsteps of corruption, apostasy, and unlawful connection with political governments, may justly claim a place in the family. It is not yet understood by all, that the self-styled orthodox churches of our land, are, at this moment, wooing the State, and seeking the aid of more stringent civil law to enforce their unscriptural and anti-scriptural doctrines. Let all look well to it. It was a trait of the mother, to supply her lack of Bible testimony, by calling on the State to enforce her dogmas by civil laws and penalties. The contrary is in this family from other women, in that they do the wooing, offering gifts and rewards. Eze. xvi, 33, 34. The State, in this country, has been backward to reciprocate the advances of the church; but politicians are becoming too corrupt much longer to repel her advances and reject her enticements.
The combined symbol, of a city and a woman, is the chosen representative of a church, or the professed people of God, in the Scriptures. Zion, or Jerusalem above, the antitype of the earthly, is the mother of all true believers. Gal. iv, 26. The false church, professedly allied to Christ, but really united to the world—having the form of godliness, but denying the power—is symbolized as Babylon the great, the mother of harlots. When the chosen people of God, the Jews, apostatized from him, and joined themselves to the surrounding nations, and worshiped their gods, they are symbolized by their city, Jerusalem, as a lewd woman, playing the harlot with many lovers. See Eze. xvi; Jer. ii, 20; iii, 1. And in view of this, Isaiah exclaims, “How is the faithful city become an harlot.” Chap. i.
From evidences like these, it is certain that the Babylon of the Apocalypse is the symbol of the apostate, false, and corrupt church, professedly Christian. And she is not a unit. Her name, Babylon, confusion, derived from the confusion of tongues at the building of the tower of Babel, which resulted in scattering abroad the builders, and the founding of various nations and tongues, is the most fitting appellation to signify the divided, discordant, confused state of the various churches professing Christianity of different nations, some of them closely wedded to the civil governments of their several states and nations, and others desiring to be; for “all nations” have drank of her wine, whether Catholic, Greek, or Protestant, and “the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication.”
Babylon is the apostate church; professedly Christian, but really anti-Christian. The beloved disciple was familiar with the martyrdom of the church at the hand of Pagans. He was himself in banishment for the word of God, and for the testimony of Jesus Christ. But when he saw in a vision of the future, a power professing to be the church of Christ, reigning over, and directing, the movements of the kings of the earth, and “drunken with the blood of the saints and martyrs of Jesus,” which she had caused to be shed, he “wondered with great amazement.”
Her fornication is her unlawful intercourse with the wicked powers of earth, attained by mingling truth with error—the doctrines of Christ with the doctrines of men and devils.” “Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.” James iv, 4. The wine of her “raging whoredom” consists of these false doctrines and principles of action, which have been diffused among all the nations, especially the lust of civil power, which, when attained by an apostate church (and it is sought for by no other), never fails to lead to oppression and persecution. Hence, when the Reformation began to expose the corrupt doctrines and practices of the Roman harlot, exhibiting her in her true character, unprincipled and ambitious kings, queens, and princes, and bishops and priests, drunken with the wine of the mother, and eager for civil power and control, stood ready to unite in casting off the galling yoke of the Roman papacy, at the same time establishing law-religion at home, which enabled them to persecute Papists and others who dissented from their mongrel creeds. The Reformation was right; but these made a wrong use of it. “As is the mother, so is her daughter.” From the oppression and persecution of these, our forefathers sought an asylum in the wilds of America. But all nations have tasted this wine; hence our nation is not exempt. Its intoxicating qualities have been seen here, in the persecution of Baptists and Quakers. Future developments will speak for themselves.