01.02.04. The Bride of Antichrist

Part II Chapter IV. THE BRIDE OF ANTICHRIST

Among the presumptuous titles ascribed to the Papal Antichrist is that of “True Lord and Hus­band of the Church.” If he is such, we must find in Scripture the portraiture of his bride, that we may carefully distinguish her from the wife of the Lamb. As the most complete and graphic pic­ture of the “man of sin” is found in the second chapter of Thessalonians, so the most vivid por­trayal of the woman of sin with whom he is allied is found in the seventeenth chapter of Revelation. Here we behold her introduced under the name of “The great harlot that sitteth upon many waters,” and she is pictured as riding upon a beast with “seven heads and ten horns.” These symbols are interpreted for us by the Spirit of God, so that in our study of this mystery we have a divinely revealed clue with which to begin. “The waters which thou sawest where the harlot sitteth are peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues.” Wide dominion and far-reaching sway over the inhabitants of earth are here indicated. “The seven heads are the seven mountains on which the woman sitteth.” In poetry and in his­tory, on monuments and on coins, Rome is known as “the seven-hilled city.” Propertius thus speaks of her: — The city high on seven hills That rules the boundless earth.” The designation is so exact that there is a well-nigh unanimous consent among Romanist and Protestant interpreters alike, that the ancient imperial city on the Tiber is hereby pointed out, though the former contend that the prophecy relates to pagan Rome. “The great harlot” is a term equally clear in its significance; it being the representation of a fallen and apostatized Church. “How is the faithful city become an harlot!” (Isaiah 1:21) exclaims Jehovah in His lament over backsliding Jerusalem. “Thou hast played the harlot with many lovers,” (Jeremiah 3:1) he cries again. And once more: “Though Israel play the harlot, let not Judah offend,” (Hosea 4:15). Thus in the Scripture’s own light we discern this mis­tress to be the faithless Church who, having vio­lated her betrothment, and having ceased to look for the return of her affianced Husband, has admitted others into his place and become the par­amour of the kings of the earth. Most distinctly, then, are the character, and dominion, and resi­dence of this ecclesiastical woman defined.

If we turn now to the prophetic description of the woman’s dress, we are almost startled by its realistic character: “And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet color, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls.” Who does not know that scarlet and purple are as truly “the colors” of the papacy as the red, white and blue are of the United States? In the Ceremoniale Romanum —an ancient book of directions, —the dress and adornments with which the pope must be clad on assuming his office are minutely de­scribed. Of the different articles of attire speci­fied, five are scarlet. A vest covered with pearls, and a miter adorned with gold and precious stones are also named in the prescribed apparel. Nor need we go back to so early authority on this point. Our own eyes bear witness to these mis­tress-marks as they appear today. What a pro­fusion still of purple robes and costly jewels! When the first American Cardinal was created, the infection of “cardinal red” seized on fashion­able circles throughout the land, far and wide, ladies’ bonnets and dresses fairly blushing with it, till society seemed streaked through and through with the hues of the scarlet woman, as when a blood-clot falls into an urn of water and is diffused abroad. If any say that it is only a narrow and fanciful sectarianism that can detect such minute identity between the prophetic picture and the papal reality, they have but to be reminded that so honored a Catholic saint as Beneventura con­densed this whole apocalyptic prediction into a single pungent sentence, and applied it to the papacy of his day, when he designated her as “a wanton clad in scarlet.” And how striking it is to note that true in­stinct which leads the ritualists of our time to copy the dress-marks of Rome, just as they are reviving her pagan ceremonial and doctrine, —so strongly is the prophetic negative bound to re­produce itself in every photograph of history! 1

What is that chalice which the woman lifts aloft? “Having a golden cup in her hand, full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication.” Idolatry and spiritual apostasy are clearly sym­bolized here. Concerning ancient Babylon the prophet wrote: “Babylon hath been a golden cup in the Lord’s hand that made all the earth drunken; the nations are drunken with her wine, therefore the nations are mad,” (Jeremiah 51:7).

Euphratean Babylon was the prolific mother of idolatry, —that idolatry which Scripture clearly shows to be the liturgy of demons, —and with this she seduced God’s ancient people into spir­itual fornication. And now the Church, having become paganized by absorbing into herself the literal elements of this ancient heathenism, is photographed as mystical Babylon, in her turn enticing to idolatry and spiritual unchastity.

It is no exaggeration to say that the Eucharis­tic cup which Rome now puts to the lips of her communicants, with its mixture of miracle and magic, resembles more nearly the chalice of the ancient Chaldean “Mysteries” than it does the chaste and simple memorial cup which Christ left in the hands of His Bride, the Church; and, in view of the transformation which has taken place, what startling significance is there for Roman­izers in the apostle’s saying: “Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. Ye cannot be partakers of the Lord’s table and the table of demons”! (1 Corinthians 10:21), —startling, if indeed it be true, that the Bride of Christ, who in the beginning is described as having “turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and wait for His Son from heaven,” is become such that she is now turning men from God to serve idols, seducing them to make an image of the sacrament, before which they fall down in worship. 2

“And His name shall be in their foreheads,” is the promise given to the Bride of the Lamb. And Antichrist’s bride must maintain this par­ody, so, as the spouse of him who is “the mys­tery of iniquity,” this woman of the Apocalypse is thus presented to us: “And upon her forehead a name written,” “MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.” Need we ask who it is that arro­gates to herself the title, “Rome, Mother and Mistress?” Striking as are the parallels, even more so are the contrasts. “Jerusalem which is above, who is the mother of us all,” confesses the

Holy Church whose citizenship is in heaven; the Church which has become earthly and idola­trous is characterized as “Babylon the great, the mother of harlots.” The Bride is “arrayed in fine linen, clean and white,” which is the “righteous­ness of saints.” The Harlot is “arrayed in pur­ple and scarlet color,” which is the vesture of kings. The union of the true Church with Christ in Heaven is a “great mystery;” the union of the false Church with the rulers of this world is the counter “mystery.” As for that other cup with which the Harlot has intoxicated herself, — “I saw the woman drunken with the blood of saints and with the blood of martyrs,” —what language shall we bor­row to describe it? It has been estimated that the papacy has directly or indirectly slain fifty millions of martyrs on account of their faith, the vast majority of these being sincere Christians, whose only crime was that they would not own allegiance to Antichrist. Let charity discount the number by one-half, if it were possible, and let her suggest every conceivable palliation for the murder of the rest, and we still have the most ghastly chapter which the volume of history contains. Would that we might mingle our weep­ing with floods of repentant tears from the eyes of this cruel mother, if, forsooth, we could thereby mitigate the wrath treasured up against the day of wrath which her crimes have earned. But, alas! we find “Te Deums” [Thee, O God, we praise; Ed.], sung over Huguenot slaughters, but not one papal Miserere can we discover. Commemorative medals are still ex­tant signalizing the massacre of St. Bartholomew, but not one monumentum lacrimarum over that event is to be found in all the archives of the seven-hilled city. “And when I saw her I won­dered with great wonder,” writes the Seer; and now that history has filled in every detail of the crimson outline of prophecy, we wonder with even profounder amazement that such a demoni­acal tragedy could ever have been enacted in the name of Christianity. But we remember that the woman who did these things was “drunken.” And there is no intoxication as profound as that induced by pagan superstition tinctured with Christian blood. Even Martin Luther, while yet in the delirium tremens of popery, raged with this blood-thirst. “So intoxicated was I, and drenched in papal dogmas,” are his words, “that I would have been most ready to murder, or as­sist others in murdering, any person who should have uttered a syllable against the duty of obe­dience to the Pope.” Nay, even those who have been sobered by generations of Protestant abstinence from persecution, if they once return to the cups of the Harlot, speedily exhibit symptoms of the old appetite, as witnessed, for exam­ple, in the oft-quoted saying of Dr. Manning, now cardinal, when urging Romish aggression in England: “It is yours, right reverend fathers, to subjugate and subdue, to bend and to break the will of an imperial race.” This mystical name of “Babylon the Great” is marvelously apt on many grounds. It was lit­eral Babylon that was the most constant and inveterate persecutor of ancient Israel. So was this typical Babylon to be the most malignant persecutor of spiritual Israel, the true and uncor­rupted Church of Christ. This was enough to justify the analogy. But we believe that there is even a profounder significance in the name. Papal Babylon, as we have said above, was to re­enact the idolatries of Chaldean Babylon to such an extent that she would be the restored image and counterpart of her. How the Babylonian cultus was diffused abroad among surrounding nations, and how it reappeared in the Roman Empire, and was in turn copied and reproduced by the papacy, is a matter of history. It is too great a subject to be discussed in a single chapter. The most that we can do now is to note some marks of identification between the idola­try of the mystical city and that of the literal city. Read in Jeremiah 44:1-30 Jehovah’s terrible denunciation of the Jews in Egypt for their ob­stinate worship of “The Queen of Heaven.” This was Semiramis, or Astarte, the great Babylonian goddess. She was called “the mother of the gods,” and was “most worshipped of all the divinities.” In the corruptions of Christianity, the Virgin Mary, astonishing to tell, was gradu­ally lifted into her place, and adored under the identical titles, till today the voice of the pa­pacy is exactly that of apostate Israel: “But we will certainly do whatsoever thing goeth forth out of our own mouth to burn incense unto the queen of heaven,” (Jeremiah 44:17). Not only in­cense, but, these same Jews confessed, “we did make our cakes to worship her” (Jeremiah 44:19). Here the pedigree of the wafer is suggested; and if one will candidly trace back the descent, we challenge him to resist the conclusion that the wafer comes from the Babylonish cake, its round­ness being due to the fact that it was originally an image of the sun, and worshipped as such. Consider, also, the use, in worship, of candles, which the ritualists are now so sedulously employ­ing to light themselves back into the Dark Ages. In the apocryphal book of Baruch there is a minute and extended description of the Babylo­nish worship, with all its dark and abominable accessories. Of the gods which they set up in their temples, it is said that their “eyes be full of dust through the feet of them that come in.” And then it is added that the worshippers “light for them candles, yea, more than for themselves, whereof they cannot see one.” In the pagan wor­ship at Rome, which was confessedly borrowed largely from Assyria and Egypt, we have ac­counts of processionals, in which surpliced priests marched with wax candles in their hands, carry­ing the images of their gods; and we find a Christian writer, Lactantius, A.D. 260-330, ridi­culing the heathen custom of lighting candles to their gods, “because they are of the earth, and stand in need of lights that they may not be in darkness,” which he certainly would not have done had the practice formed any part of prim­itive Christian worship. 3 And time would fail to tell of the confessional, so closely reprodu­cing that imposed on the initiates in the ancient mysteries; and of holy water, of the eastward pos­ture, of the signing with the cross, and of cere­monies and vestments, nameless and incompre­hensible. Granting, for the sake of charity, that altars and incense were borrowed from Jewish worship, —which things, indeed, were done away in Christ, —it still remains true that the great bulk of the papal ceremonies were originally part and portion of primitive idol-worship, of which idol-worship Babylon was the chief mother and nurse. 4 The complete image, as presented in this vis­ion, is one of the most striking in all prophecy. “And I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet-colored beast,” —the apostate Church riding upon the state, supported by it, and yet controlling it. Who does not know how exactly this harmonizes with the facts; how the Church, upon her fall, saddled herself upon the empire, till, acquiring complete control, she became able to hold it in by bit and bridle of bull and concordat, compel­ling it to bear her weight and to do her will? Blasphemy and apostasy are counterparts. Anti­christ, a world-king, sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself as God. Antichurch, forfeiting her citizenship in heaven, now sitteth in the seat of kings. “Simeon and Levi are brethren: in­struments of cruelty are in their habitations. O my soul! come not into their secret.” “Upon a scarlet-colored beast,” —predictive of blood-guilti­ness, a fore-view which history has amply verified. “Grind enough of the red,” used to be the ghastly phrase of the painter David, one of the French revolutionists, as he urged on the bloody work of the guillotine. Rome secular has never been sparing of the red in carrying out the orders of Rome spiritual, whom she has faithfully served as public executioner; she has painted true to the prophetic pattern. Hence the “names of blasphemy:” which cover her. With heaven-de­fying self-exaltation she has assumed to sit in the judgment-seat of God, and to condemn His saints by millions to death, so that whereas Jehovah was wont to reprove kings for their sakes, saying, “Touch not my anointed, and do my prophets no harm,” these — the Harlot and the Hierarch—have “taken counsel together against the Lord and against His anointed,” to burn them at the stake and rend them in the Inquisition. And yet, after all, the longing is irresistible, that this fallen daughter of God—the harlot Church—might be reformed, and like that other Magdalene be found bathing the Saviour’s feet with her pen­itent tears. Nothing in history is more pathetic than that yearning of pious Catholics of the Mid­dle Ages which found expression in the prophecy of a “Papa Angelicus,” about to appear, an Angel-Pope, who should restore the defiled Church to her primitive purity, and invest her once more with the white robes of spiritual chastity. But such a conception is as contrary to possibility as it is counter to Scripture. That which has been the curse of the Church can never be its cure. An angelic man in the papal chair, if such an one could be found to sit there, would be as abhorrent in his office as he might be lovely in his person, for papacy is the essence of Antichrist, and as such can never help Christ in reforming His Church. If any demur at this, and contend that with all her errors Rome still holds enough of truth to constitute her a true Church, we must reply that she cannot be both the bride and the harlot; and to this her most eminent prelates assent, compelling us to choose between the two alternatives. Cardinal Manning says: “The Catholic Church is either the masterpiece of Satan or the Kingdom of the Son of God.” 5 We solemnly deny that she is the latter. Cardinal Newman declares: “Either the Church of Rome is the house of God or the house of Satan: there is no middle ground between them.” 6 We solemnly affirm that she is not the former. And yet the cup of the Roman sorceress, let us remember, is once more put to the lips of Protestants, who are solicited to drink it, and forget their estrangement from their “Mother Church.” How many have been drugged into communion, or at least into wanton dalliance, with her, we need not say. It is enough to utter the warning, that here fellowship is fornication. If, by the regenerating and sanctifying grace of the Spirit, we belong to the true body of Christ, we are bound to meet every overture for commu­nion with Rome with the inspired question and inspired answer of the apostle: “Shall I, then, take the members of Christ, and make them members of a harlot? God forbid,” (1 Corinthians 6:15).

Endnotes:

1 How the Anglican Church is “resuming the decorations of the harlot” appears from the following: In the services con­nected with the recent consecration of the Cathedral of Truro, the red vestments, which were abolished in the reign of Eliza­beth, were again so conspicuous that Punch photographed the scene under the heading of “Outbreak of Scarlatina at Truro.” Join with this the following Church news: “Last Sunday the rector of St. Paul’s Church wore a white stole embroidered in three shades of blue, the same done in monograms and flowers set with carbuncles and bugles; with Maltese crosses set with sapphires and diamonds; with lilies set with garnets, —the whole number of diamonds numbering forty, and of precious stones one hundred and thirty-five: estimated cost of this me­morial gift, ₤1,000. A visitor describes the Bishop of Lincoln as ‘adorned with mitre and cloth of gold, his orphreys so lavishly decorated with amethysts, pearls, topazes, and chrysolites set in silver as fairly to dazzle the beholder.’ How repulsive is all this to such as seek to maintain the simplicity that is in Christ!”

2 “If any man shall say that this holy sacrament should not be adored, nor carried about in processions, nor held up publicly to the people to adore it, or that its worshippers are idolaters, let him be accursed.” [Council of Trent].

3 Divine Institutes, b. vi. 2. Bishop Coxe, the High Church editor of the American edition of the Fathers, gives this note on this passage: “The ritual use of lights was unknown to the primitive Christians, however harmless it may be.”

4 For a profound and learned exhibition of this whole subject see Hislop’s “Two Babylon,” London, S. W. Partridge & Co.

5 Lectures on the Fourfold Sovereignty of God, London, 1871, p. 171.

6 Essays, ii. p. 116.