CHAPTER IV FULFILMENT OF THE EVENTS PREDICTED UNDER THE SIXTH VIAL

In our chapter on the seven vials we pointed out the wonderful fulfilment of the predictions, under the sixth vial of the drying up, or wasting away of the Turkish powder which has been taking place since 1821, the year of the (jreek insurrection. The coincidence of this with the close of 2,300 years, the prophetic period in the eighth of Daniel which terminates with “the cleansing of the sanctuary,”is Fruiitrkable (Note. This work must be a typo, but I have no diea how to correct it). The eastward pushing of the Persian ram in Daniel’s vision is the earliest commencement of the 2,300 years’ period connected with the post Babylonian “treading down of the sanctuary.”This great historical event, the invasion of Greece by the Persian Monarch Xerxes took place in the year B.C. 480. In the spring of that year the Persians commenced their march through Thrace and Macedonia against Greece; in the summer took place the famous battle of Thermopylae, and in the autumn the battle of Salamis. The great prophetic cycle of twenty-three centuries reckoned from B.C. 480 terminated in A. D. I82I, 1 the date of the general revolt of the Greeks in the Morea, Wallachia, Moldavia and the islands, from Turkish rule. This was followed the same year by the capture of Tripolizza, and the liberation of the Peloponnesus. The destruction of the Turko-Egyptian fleets in the battle of Navarino took place in 1827; since which the power of the Turks over their European, African, and Asiatic territories has ebbed as steadily as the tide.

Since the Syrian massacre of 1860, the government of the Lebanon district in Palestine has been transferred from Turkish to Christian hands. The Turk still holds Jerusalem and the larger part of Palestine in his grasp, but the movement for “the cleansing of the sanctuary”from Mohammedan rule is steadily progressing, and thus the preparation for the restoration of the Jews to their own land. Contemporaneously with the drying up of the Euphratean or Turkish flood, under the sixth vial, there takes place according to Apoc.16: 13, 14, the issuing forth of “three unclean spirits like frogs,”spirits of error which go forth throughout the world to gather together the antichristian hosts to the great and final battle of Armageddon.

As this prediction points to events of the most momentous character taking place in the present day, we ask for it the special attention of our readers.

I. ISSUING FORTH OF “THE THREE FROGS .”-MEANING OF THE SYMBOL.

“And I saw (come) out of the mouth of the dragon, and out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet, three unclean spirits like frogs. For they are the spirits of demons working signs, which go forth to the kings of the whole world, to gather them together to the war of that great day of God Almighty” (Apoc. 16: 13,14).

“By this novel and very remarkable symbol,” says Elliott, “which followed next after that of the drying up of the waters of the Euphrates, but ranged still evidently under the sixth vial, there seemed signified some extraordinarily rapid, wide-spread, and influential diffusion throughout the whole Roman, or perhaps the whole habitable world, of three several unclean or unholy principles, characteristic respectively of the Apocalyptic dragon, beast, and false prophet, from whom they appeared to emanate: all being alike directed and speeded on their course by spirits of hell; and all alike, in respect of the earthly agencies employed to propagate them, resembling frogs; the well-known type of vain loquacious talkers and agitators, deluding and seducing the minds of men. Now by the dragon we know to have been meant (for the evangelist tells us so) that old serpent the devil, as in earlier days animating and acting in the paganism of ancient Rome; the covering skin in which he had been primarily depicted, in a vision figurative of the final war of heathenism against Christianity, at the opening of the fourth century, being that of a seven-headed dragon, and the seven heads said to figure Rome’s seven hills. Again, by the beast, or rather (according to the angel’s definition of the thing intended in his description) the beast’s eighth ruling head, we saw, on I think irrefragable evidence, that the Popes of Rome were meant, from and after the time of their occupying the dragon’s throne and empire in Western Christendom. Once more, by the false prophet, at least when with the further characteristic attached to it, so as in Apoc. 19: 20, of acting out its functions ‘before,’ or in subordination to, the beast (a characteristic which completely identifies it with the two-horned lambskin-covered beast of Apoc. 13), there is meant, we have seen, the apostate priesthood of the patriarchate of Western Europe, from and after the time of its subjection and official attachment to-the Romish Popedom.

“And what then, if this be correct, the three spirits, or principles, that may be considered most fitly characteristic of these three several actors on the scene:—of the devil, in that character specially in which he had agitated and spoken against Christ’s Church in the times of Pagan Rome ; of the Roman Papal Antichrist, and of the priesthood of the apostate Romish Church ? To myself, with reference to the two first, the answer seems sufficiently obvious: —viz., that the one from the dragon’s mouth is the principle of heathen-like infidelity, with its proper accompaniment of blasphemy, and perhaps too of rebelliousness against rightful authority, when opposed to it, alike divine and human (‘by which sin fell the angels’) : —and the one from the beast the pure direct principle of Popery, based on its fundamental antichristian dogma of the Roman Pope being Christ’s divinely appointed vicegerent on earth. But, on the question as to the third spirit intended, there is difficulty. For, as just defined, it seems hard to assign to the false prophet’s spirit a sufficiently distinct character from the beast’s spirit, seeing that the two-horned beast is described as the chief organ, agent, and mouthpiece, as well as supporter, of the papal beast, its principal. Yet on closer examination, the difficulty will, I think, vanish. The name here given to this agent of evil is simply that of ‘the false prophet’; without any further adjunct, expressive of its subjection to the beast, so as in Apoc.19. This seems not obscurely to suggest the solution. For ‘the false prophet’ is, by itself, the generic appellation of an apostate priesthood in the professing Church: and of an apostate priesthood what the most characteristic spirit but that of priestcraft? A spirit this of which the essence in professed Christianity, just as in heathenism, is to arrogate to its own peculiar order the distinction of being the appointed and necessary earthly mediator between men and God, the one effective deprecator of His wrath, and channel of his grace and salvation; and which is thus seen to be distinct from, and independent of, that of direct Popery; though naturally, and almost necessarily, its ally. In fact it acted thus independently ere the close of the fourth and through the fifth century, long before its organization under the particular form of the two-Jiorned lambskin- covered beast of Apoc. 13, just as the preparer of the way for a heading sacerdotal earthly Antichrist; though afterwards, under the particular organization just spoken of, devoting itself to him as his most effective instrument and supporter. Still, however, with the full retention of its own essentiality of the spirit of priestcraft.

“Such, I say,—if the dragon, beast, and false prophet mean what I think it proved they mean,—appear to me clearly to be the three principles, or spirits, intended :— spirits in regard of which the prophecy intimates that they would act with unity of effect, if not of purpose, so as to gather the powers of the world (very much as Ahab was seduced by a lying spirit to Ramoth-Gilead) in antagonism against Christ’s truth and people, introductorily to the great coming day of final conflict. And, if these be the spirits intended,—spirits to go forth, let it be remembered, after a certain progress made in the drying up under the sixth vial of the Turkman flood from the Euphrates,—it is only too obvious that within the last twenty or thirty years, the precise period marked out in the prophecy (for I will carry down my sketch, now on revising for my fifth edition, to the time present, A . D .1861), there has been an outgoing of principles and spirits of error, both in England and over the world, which have most strikingly answered to each and every one of them.”1

II. THE THREE UNCLEAN SPIRITS OF DELUSION WHICH HAVE GONE FORTH SINCE THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

The figure employed in the prophecy deserves careful consideration. It is drawn from two events in the prefig-urative history of the Jewish people; the plague of frogs in Egypt, and the drying up of the Euphrates before the capture of Babylon. As the turning of the waters to blood in Egypt was followed by the plague of frogs, so the turning of the waters to blood under the second and third vials is followed by the plague of unclean frogs under the sixth vial. In the same way as the drying up of the Euphrates by its being turned out of its channel (foretold in Jer. 51: 36) was immediately followed by the capture of Babylon, so the drying up of the antitypical Euphrates under the sixth vial is followed by the fall of “Babylon the great” under the seventh.

The connection between the drying up o’f the Euphratean flood and the issuing forth of the frogs is evident. While the river flowed in its fullness the frogs were hidden in its channel. But as the river was dried up the frogs issued from its bed and banks, and filled the air with their croak-ings. This relation between the drying up of the river, and the issuing forth of the frogs, points to a double significance in the Euphratean symbol. While the overflow of the Euphrates under the sixth trumpet connects its drying up under the sixth vial with the diminution and wasting away of the Turkish power, the drying up of the river under the sixth vial just previous to the fall of Romish Babylon under the seventh, indicates a causative connection between the two events; that the fall of the modern Babylon (like that of the ancient Babylon) is brought about by the drying up of the river which had supplied it with its wealth. This connection casts light upon recent history, and the prospects of the future, linking as it does the notable drying up of the mighty stream of papal revenues in and since the French Revolution, with the approaching destruction of the papal power, and of Romish Christendom. And further the removal of the old order of things under which the Romish church possessed unbounded wealth and supremacy in the continent of Europe has created a void into which a host of new-fangled theories, philosophies, and constitutions, social, religious, or anti-religious have rushed. Worse than the frogs of Egypt their promulgators assail not the ear of sense merely, but that of mind and spirit. They fill the press with their publications, the schools and the senate with their vociferations. Their inharmonious and jarring voices accuse, attack, affirm, deny, boast and blaspheme, without cessation. Every day adds to their number and their noise. This they say is the age of reason, and free speech. All chains are broken, all tongues loosed. Of the new order of things they are the apostles and prophets; the founders of the philosophy, the politics, the science and the religion of the future.

III. THE CROAKING OF FRENCH FROGS.

It is a curious physiological fact that frogs abound in France. It might almost be called the land of frogs. This arises from its numerous marshes. Thus the old French banners had three frogs as their device.

So noisy and troublesome are frogs in France that before the Revolution, the nobility and courtiers, when spending any time in the country, were in the habit of forcing the miserable peasants to flog the neighbouring waters all night to keep the frogs quiet. The banishment of the Huguenots, by causing large tracts to become neglected and undrained, increased the plague of fevers and frogs. And the moral history of the country has been analogous with the physical. Unhappy France has become morally a land of fevers and of frogs, and a centre from which they have spread throughout Europe, and more or less throughout-the world.

Identification of the three “unclean spirits.”While not excluding the idea put forth by Edwards and Barnes that Heathenism, Popery and Mohammedanism are referred to under this symbol, we strongly incline to the view of Elliott and others, that the “dragon,”the “beast,”and the “false prophet “chiefly represent :

1. Satan, as inspiring heathenism and infidelity—the dragon of Revelation 12.

2. The Papacy—the eighth head of the revived wild beast power of Revelation 13.

3. An apostate priesthood—such as the minister to “the beast”in Revelation 13.

As proceeding from the “mouths”of these three powers the “unclean spirits”are instruments of speech. They are “spirits,”not material forms; spirits inspiring multitudinous tongues; they are “unclean spirits,”false, ungodly, immoral; they are “frog like,”noisy, loquacious, unceasing in their vociferations; low in character while lofty in pretensions; drowning with their hoarse croakings the sound of nobler and more harmonious voices, and wearying the ear with persistent clamour.

As to the fulfilment of this remarkable symbol certainly no fact in modern history is more apparent, and none more appalling than the outburst of Rationalism, Romanism, and Ritualism which has succeeded the French Revolution. Infidelity has advanced in recent times to the utmost limit of its possible development; Romanism has assumed its highest pretensions; and Ritualism has undertaken to overthrow the Reformation, and to restore the apostate church of the middle ages. A common spirit animates these erroneous systems, which through the press have the ear of the civilized world. While divided in their doctrines they are united in their opposition to the Christianity of the New Testament. And their action is wide in its effects. It is fast transforming the philosophy, the literature, the policy, the science, and the religion, of the world.

IV. THE UNCLEAN SPIRIT FROM THE MOUTH OF THE DRAGON.

That the voice of ten millions of people, said Coleridge, “calling for the same thing is a spirit, I believe. But whether it be a spirit of heaven, or of hell, I can only know by trying the thing called for by the prescript of reason and God’s will.”

That there has gone forth from the mouth of the dragon, the early antagonist of Christianity in the days of Roman Paganism (Apoc.12) an unclean spirit of heathen-like infidelity during the period of the drying up, or wasting away of Turkish or Mohammedan power in the East, and the contemporaneous diminution, or gradual drying up of the secular privileges and resources of the Apostate Romish Church in the West, is a fact which must be evident to every observer of the course of modern history. In the sphere of politics, in science, in philosophy, in biblical criticism, in England and on the continent, an open attack has been waged against Christianity, against the word of God, and even against natural religion, unlike any attack of infidelity in preceding times. The Deism of the eighteenth century, and blasphemous Atheism of the French Revolution have given place to the materialism, pantheism, positivism, and agnosticism of modern times. In Mr. Balfour’s recent work on “The Foundations of Belief,” the creed of naturalism, which is the outcome of modern infidelity is exposed and condemned at the bar of reason, “The theory that ‘dwarfs’ and drags in the dust our estimate of the importance of man, that makes’ his very existence an accident,”his story only a passing episode ‘ in the life of one of the meanest of the planets’; that from some unknown origin, after infinite travail evolves through strife ‘ famine, disease, and mutual slaughter’ a race ‘with conscience enough to feel that it is vile, and intelligence enough to know that it is insignificant,’ and then consigns that race with all its labours, genius, devotion, sufferings, and aspirations to the pit of everlasting oblivion, to be as though it had never been—such a theory does violence to the deepest instincts of reason, and destroys the foundations of morality. ‘All that gives dignity to life, all that gives value to effort, shrinks and fades under the pitiless glare of a creed like this.’ ”

The late Herbert Spencer in a series of philosophic works designed to carry the theory of evolution to its utmost limits of development maintained that the great first cause is utterly and necessarily unknown; that God, if there be a God, is and will ever be “the unknown God”; and hence that there is no such thing as Revelation, and that all religion built upon the foundation of Revelation is worthless. On the continent, August Compete, the founder of the modern school of Positivists rejects not only religion, natural and revealed, but even philosophy; and as man is prone to worship something, proposes that he shall worship Humanity! Huxley, who calls himself an Agnostic, and was the inventor of that term, says “when the Positivist asks me to worship humanity, that is to say to adore the generalized conception of men as they ever have been, and probably ever will be—I must reply that I would just as soon bow down and worship the generalized conception of a ‘wilderness of apes.’ ”

Agnostics, he says “have no creed, and by the nature of the case cannot have any.”

The warfare in these modern days against Revelation and religion is waged not only by philosophy but also in the name of science. Charles Darwin the principal author of the theory of the development of species by the struggle for existence and survival of the fittest, confessed the completeness of his infidelity. “I do not believe,”he says, “that there ever has been any Revelation.” “Unbelief crept over me at a slow rate, but was at last complete.” Nature had ceased to speak to him of God. Though once capable of, “wonder, admiration and devotion “in the presence of the works of God, now he says not even the grandest scenes could “cause any such convictions or feelings to rise in my mind. 2 I am like a man,” he confesses, “who has become colour blind.”Ceasing to believe in a future existence he abandoned faith in religion. To him man was but an improved animal. No spirit from on high had ever been breathed into him, and all his boasted knowledge of God and of futurity was a baseless imagination, and a fading dream. Since Darwin’s day how marvellously has spread this spirit of scientific rationalism, how portentous has become its development! In Germany Hackel’s ” Pedigree of Man”has carried Darwinianism to fantastic and amazing conclusions. The ancestor of the human race was not Adam but ” Homo primigenius,”the “ape man.”Man is an automaton. The freedom of the human will is an illusion. “Every atom is gifted with sensation and a will.”All molecules have memory, which is a general function of organized matter. Every atom is provided with an “atom soul.”The effective cause of everything is the “perigenesis of the plastidules “! “The blind unconscious forces of nature, working without end or aim, are the effective natural causes of all the complex forms of animal and plant life.””German science,”says the Free thought Publishing Company, which has adopted Hackel’s work as a text-book, “is one of the glories of the world: it is time that it should lend in England that same aid to ‘free thought which in Germany has made every educated man a free thinker.”

The modern attack on Revelation from without has been accompanied by an attack from within. Inquiries have been conducted in the name of biblical criticism into the age, authorship, and history of the books of the Old and New Testament, and into the trustworthiness of the gospel narrative, whose rationalistic tendencies have been of the most marked description, and whose disastrous influence has been most widely felt. “Springing from the soil of German Rationalism and French infidelity the so called ‘higher criticism’ has ‘spared nothing sacred or otherwise, and its progress has transformed the history of the past into a nebulous mist.'”Astruc and De Wette hazarded conjectures as to the structure of the Pentateuch; Ewald, Vatke, Graf, Kuenen and other critics carried the disintegrating process still further, applying the boldest hypotheses to the destruction of the sacred text; while Wellhausen, advancing beyond the mutilation of documents, the displacement of names, events and dates, strove to convert history to legend, and to reduce the riches of Old Testament Revelation to a medley of disordered facts, fictions, and immoralities. According; to the wild theories of this lawless and arrogant critic, the Jehovah of the old Testament was a mere tribal deity; His servant Moses never prohibited the worship of images, while he sanctioned the worship of the brazen serpent; priests and prophets forged the books of the law, etc. On searching for the proofs of Wellhausen’s theory they are not forthcoming. “It is all theory based on theory, and resulting in theory.””The narrative exists simply for the construction of the theory; the theory is not materially suggested by the narrative, nor is it in anyway dependent upon it, because as soon as any incident or statement is found inconveniently rigid for the requirements of the theory it is ruled out of court as unhistorical or spurious.” The “higher criticism thus developed in Germany has been transplanted to England and America, where however it appears in less startling and repulsive forms, and animated by a more reverent spirit. Thus Canon Driver’s “Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament,”while arbitrarily cutting up the text of scripture into innumerable shreds and fragments, and as- signing their sources with a dogmatic confidence which ill becomes one who has nothing to guide his judgment but the documents which he mutilates, acknowledges some sort of inspiration, and affirms that in revealing Himself to Israel God prepared the way for the manifestation of Himself in Jesus Christ. Still so complex does the problem of texual criticism become in the hands of this critic, as to make it practically impossible to teach the Bible to any man of ordinary intelligence.”2 The attacks on the gospel narrative, the very centre of scripture, have been chiefly conducted by German and French Rationalists. Two celebrated Swabian critics, Strauss and Baur, led the attack, which was followed up by Renan in his “Vie de Jesus,”a work which has been translated into all the languages of Europe. Space forbids us to follow the theories of these sceptical critics; a single sentence is all that we can quote from the writings of Strauss, a sentence which closes a volume of 784 pages, containing the most searching and unscrupulous attack on the gospel narrative which has ever been made. The following is the summary which Strauss gives of the results of his investigation.

“The results of the inquiry which we have now brought to a close have apparently annihilated the greatest and most valuable part of that which the Christian has been wont to believe concerning his Saviour Jesus; have uprooted all the animating motives which he has gathered from his faith, and withered all his consolations. The boundless store of truth and life which for eighteen centuries has been the aliment of humanity, seems irretrievably dissipated; the most sublime levelled with the dust; God divested of His grace; man of his dignity ; and the tie between heaven and earth broken.”And as if in bitter mockery all that Strauss proposes to substitute for the religion he claims to have destroyed, is “the idea of Humanity.”Baur, Strauss and Renan have been answered, but the infidelity of Germany and France remains as a dark and settled cloud over these countries. It has spread throughout Europe; extended to America, India, and the colonies, and more or less affected the world. Bales of the works of Tom Paine, and other infidel revolutionary publications have been sent out to seduce and poison the newly awakened mind of India; the works of Spencer, Huxley and other agnostics are widely read by the English speaking students in the colleges and universities of India and Japan, and are producing their natural fruit in the growth of a philosophic scepticism which bars the entrance of Christianity. Truly in our days the spirit of infidelity has gone forth throughout the world, and gathered an uncounted host of opponents to Christianity to “the battle of that great day of God Almighty”which seems already to have begun, and is to signalize the end of the present age.

V. THE “UNCLEAN SPIRIT “FROM THE MOUTH OF THE “BEAST.”

The revival of Popery which has taken place since the French Revolution, and especially during the Pontificate of Pius IX, and his successor Leo XIII, is one of the most remarkable facts of modern history. The system seemed to have received its deathblow, but lo! it lifts its head again with higher pretensions than ever. It has restored the Jesuits who had been suppressed by Pope Clement XIV, in 1773; and under their inspiring influence the Romanism of the past has been transformed into the Popery of the present.

The modern transformation of Romanism into Popery is an event which should arrest the attention of every thoughtful mind. In the year 1850 a magazine was commenced in Rome at the instance and under the direction of the Jesuits bearing the title Catholic Civilization (Civilta Cattolica). More than a hundred volumes of this magazine were published between 1850 and 1877. The Rev. William Arthur in his work on “The Pope, the Kings, and the People,”says of this magazine, “considering the number of books, serials, and journals in different languages of which it is the inspiring force, and considering the modifications it has already succeeded in bringing about in the ideas, and even in the organization of the whole Catholic society, they can scarcely be charged with vain boasting who call it the most influential organ in the world. The Jesuit Fathers forming its editorial staff reside close to the Pope’s palace, and work under his immediate direction.”1 “To reconstitute society according to the Catholic ideal “is its avowed aim. In order to this it considers that “a salutory conspiracy, a holy crusade”is needed. That conspiracy brought about the council of the Vatican, with its decree of papal infallibility.

On the 18th of July, 1870, six archbishop princes, forty-nine cardinals, eleven patriarchs, six hundred and eighty archbishops, and bishops, twenty-eight abbots, twenty-nine generals of orders, eight hundred and three spiritual rulers, representing the Church of Rome throughout the world, solemnly decreed the blasphemous dogma that the occupant of the papal chair is, in all his decisions concerning faith and morals, infallible! “It is said that arrangements had been made to reflect a glory around the person of the Pope by means of mirrors at noon when the decree was made. But the sun shone not that day. A violent storm broke over Rome, the sky was darkened by tempest, and the voices of the council were lost in the rolling of thunder.”

The following is the decree of papal infallibility promulgated by the Vatican Council:—”We teach and define that it is a dogma divinely revealed that the Roman Pontiff when he speaks ex cathedra, that is when in the discharge of his office of pastor and doctor of all Christians, by virtue of his supreme apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine regarding faith, or morals, to be held by the Universal Church, by the D.ivine assistance promised to him in blessed Peter, is possessed of that infallibility with which the Divine Redeemer willed that His Church should be endowed for defining doctrine regarding faith and morals; and that therefore such definitions of the Roman pontiff are irreformable of themselves and not from the consent of the Church. But if any one,—which may God avert,—presume to contradict this our definition, let him be Anathema.”

“The new Vatican doctrine,”says Dollinger, “confers on the Pope the attribute of the whole fullness of power, (totam plenitudinem potestatis) over the whole Church as well as over every individual layman,—a power which is at the same time to be truly episcopal and again specifically papal, which is to include in itself all that affects faith, morals, duties of life, and discipline, and which can without any mediation whatever seize and punish, bid and forbid every one, the monarch as well as the labouring man. The wording is so carefully chosen that there remains for the bishops absolutely no other position and authority than that which belongs to papal commissaries or plenipotentiaries, as every student of history, and of the fathers will admit. The episcopate of the ancient Church is thus dissolved in its inmost being, and the Apostolic Institution to which, according to the judgment of the Church Fathers, the greatest significance and authority of the Church belongs, fades into an unsubstantial shadow.”

“In the future every Catholic Christian when asked why he believes this or that can and may give but the one answer: ‘I believe or reject it because the infallible Pope has bidden it to be believed or rejected.'”

The Vatican decree erects an “Asian despotism”over conscience and the Christian Church. The authority which it creates is independent, inasm.uch as it does not depend upon the Church, her bishops, or any living voice or power distinct from the papal personality; and “it is absolute inasmuch as it can be circumscribed by no human or ecclesiastical law.”These words are not those of an opponent of the Church of Rome, but of Cardinal Manning himself. The words are his, and his work “Petri Privilegium”was written to expound and sustain the principle they express.

“It needs but a step further,”says Janus, “to declare the Pontiff an incarnation of God.”

The Civilta Cattolica describes in the following words the exalted position of the Pontificate, regarded in the light of the Vatican decree: —

“The Pope is not a power among men to be venerated like another, but he is a power altogether divine. He is the propounder and teacher of the law of the Lord in the whole universe. He is the supreme leader of the nations, to guide them in the ways of eternal salvation; he is the common father and universal guardian of the whole human species in the name of God. The human species has been perfected in its natural qualifications by Divine revelation, and by the incarnation of the Word, and has been lifted up into a supernatural order in which alone it can find its temporal and eternal felicity. The treasures of Revelation, the treasures of truth, the treasures of righteousness, the treasures of supernatural graces upon earth, have been deposited by God in the hands of one man, who is the sole dispenser and keeper of them. The life-giving work of the Advent and Incarnation, work of wisdom, of love, of mercy, is ceaselessly continued in the ceaseless action of one man thereto ordained by Providence. This man is the Pope. This is evidently implied in his designation itself—the Vicar of Christ, for if he holds the place of Christ upon earth, that means that he continues the work of Christ in the world; and is in respect of us what Christ would be were He here below Himself visibly governing the Church. It is then no wonder if the Pope in his language shows that the care of the whole world is his; and if, forgetting his own peril he thinks only of that of the faithful nations. He sees aberrations of mind, passions of the heart, overflowing vices; he sees new wants, new aspirations; and holding out to the nations a helping hand with the tranquillity of one securely seated on the throne given him by God, he says to them, ‘Draw nigh to me, and I will trace out for you the way of truth and charity, which alone can lead to the desired happiness.’ “1

“Language like this,”says William Arthur, “is not to be smiled at when it goes to the heart of perhaps half a million of Ecclesiastics, each one of whom transmits the impression through a wide circle.”

Now let the reader ponder the following coincidence— “On the very day following the culmination of papal arrogance and self- exaltation, was declared that terrible Franco-German war in which the French Empire of Louis Napoleon—by the soldiers of which the Pope was maintained on his tottering throne—fell.The temporal sovereignty of the Pope fell with it.No sooner had the French troops been withdrawn from Rome and the French Empire collapsed than the Italian Government announced its intention of entering the Roman States, and did so. On the 2Oth of September, 1870, Rome was declared the capital of United Italy, and became the residence and the seat of the Government of Victor Emmanuel. The Times Summary for that year says:

“The most remarkable circumstance in the annexation of Rome and its territory to the kingdom of Italy is the languid indifference with which the transfer has been regarded by Catholic Christendom. A change which would once have convulsed the world, has failed to distract attention from the more absorbing spectacle of the Franco- German war. Within the same year the papacy has assumed the highest spiritual exaltation to which it could aspire, and lost the temporal sovereignty which it had held for a thousand years”

THE VOICE OF THE VICE GOD

“I am ‘the Voice,’ “said Pius IX, “for though unworthy, I am nevertheless the Vicar of Christ, and this Voice which now sounds in your ears is the Voice of Him whom I represent on earth.” “He that is with me is with God. If you are united to me who am His Vicar you are united to Christ.” Presented by the Belgian deputation in 1871 (the year following that of the Vatican decree) with a Tiara, “rich as ever it could be, ornamented with seventy-two large emeralds, as many agates’and rubies, while brilliants formed the warp of all the web,”the Pope said, “you offer me gifts, a tiara—a symbol of my threefold dignity in heaven, upon earth, and in purgatory.”Thus does the Infallible Pope interpret the meaning of the triply crowned mitre which he wears! Discoursing loftily on “the Patrimony of St. Peter,”he says, “Those who ought to guard the Patrimony of St. Peter take it away. It is true that I cannot like St. Peter launch certain thunder-‘ bolts that reduce bodies to ashes, but I can none the less launch the thunders which reduce souls to ashes; and I have done it by excommunicating all those who have perpetuated and borne a hand in the sacrilegious spoliation.”This bad tempered blasphemy is glorified as “Christo parlante.”

“Most blessed Father,”says the faculty of theology in Rome, “in obeying your Voice we are obeying our own conscience; devoted to the infallible authority of your teaching we shall ever venerate and diffuse it in expounding sacred doctrines. Let your blessedness deign to comfort us with your benediction.”And then they bow down and worship their idol, “l’idole qu’ils se sont erigee au Vatican “; as Montalembert said, “They offer up justice, truth, reason, and history in a holocaust to the idol they have set up at the Vatican.” Concerning a volume containing one hundred and one speeches of Pius IX, the Romish editor says, “Let this divine volume of the angel- ical Pio Nono be received as from the hand of an angel!”The degradation of Christ linked with this exaltation of the Pope strikingly appears in a sermon preached during the session of the Vatican Council in 1870. The discourse was under three heads: —

(1) Jesus Christ in the manger.
(2) Jesus Christ in the Eucharist.
(3) Jesus Christ at the Vatican.

And the conclusion was that Christ was “a child at Bethlehem, a ‘ host ‘on the altar, and an old man at the Vatican.””Love the person of the Pope,”said Manning, “not as an abstract principle, not as the Holy See, not as an institution, but the living breathing man who has upon him the dignity and unction of the Great High Priest. Be filially devoted to him; for the time is come when according to the prophecy he is the sign which shall be spoken against; he is set for the fall and for the rising again of nations. He is the test of the world.” In the person of Pius IX, Jesus reigns on earth, and “He must reign until He hath put all enemies under His feet.”

THE MODERN ADVANCE OF POPERY

Following the reinstitution of the Jesuits there has taken place an alarming advance of Popery throughout the world. Rome has boldly invaded Protestant lands, imposed on them its hierarchy, alike in England, America, and the Colonies; multiplied its chapels, monasteries, nunneries, colleges, and schools; entrapped thousands of the children of Protestants in its educational institutions; secured large endowments from Protestant governments; introduced ele- ments of division and distraction into the legislation of Protestant countries; multiplied Catholic reviews, magazines and newspapers; poured forth a flood of cheap religious controversial works; tracts for the masses, romances, novels, works on poetry, history, music and architecture, designed to help forward the Romanizing movement. Under the influence of this extensive propaganda conversions to the Church of Rome have become frequent, and the whole attitude of Protestant society towards that church has changed. The influence on the public press of England and America has been most marked. The self-exalting Pope of Rome, the “Man of Sin”of Pauline prophecy, is systematically glorified as “His holiness.”His doings and sayings are constantly kept in evidence. Having ceased to persecute, and adorned himself in the garments of superhuman sanctity, the Pope has been “transformed into an angel of light,”and his ministers as “the ministers of righteousness “(2 Cor. 11 : 15). History is forgotten, the antichristian character of Popery ignored, or denied: and the seductive spirit of falsehood, superstition and idolatry, which has found a home within the professing church of Christ, spreads as a leaven of evil from class to class, and from country to country, in its effort to permeate with its poison the mass of modern society.

VI. THE “UNCLEAN SPIRIT “FROM THE MOUTH OF THE FALSE PROPHET.

This spirit, as we have already recognized, is that of priestcraft, whose essential characteristic is “to arrogate to its own “order the exclusive dignity of being the earthly mediator between God and man; and necessary for the effective averting of his wrath, and communication of his favour and salvation.”

That such a spirit has gone forth since the beginning of the outpouring of the sixth vial on the Turkish Empire, and spread far and wide in Protestant lands, is a matter of common knowledge. The initial date of the modern drying up, or exhaustion of the Turkish Empire, was, as we have already seen, that of the Greek insurrection in 1821. The I4th of July, 1833, was kept ^y tne ^ ate Cardinal Newman as the date of the start of the Tractarian movement; a movement which has developed into the Ritualism of the present day, with its conspiracy to Romanize England, through Romanizing the established Protestant church of the land.

The Romeward character of the ritualistic movement is evident not only from its doctrines and practices, as the saying of masses, the adoration of the elements, the claim of the ministry to be a sacrificing priesthood, the practice of auricular confession, and the use of Popish ceremonial, but from its effort to bring about the “corporate reunion ” of the English church with the Romish, and from the number of ritualists, both lay and clerical who have joined the church of Rome. The founder of the movement, Newman, went over to the Romish church, and was made a cardinal. Ward, Faber, Hurrell Froude, Pusey, and others intimately associated with Newman in the Tractarian conspiracy, regarded Protestantism with abhorrence, and strove to restore in the English church Romish doctrines and practices cast out of it by the Reformation. In order to accomplish this the most dishonest methods were employed. When Newman was endeavouring to restore Popery he wrote against it, justifying the act by saying beneath his breath, “I am not speaking my own words “; “such (anti-Romish) views are necessary for our position.”1 Though he had long held that the Roman was the one true church, Ward retained his position as a clergyman of the Church of England, “because he believed he was bringing many of its members towards Rome.”2 He justified equivocation, saying as his son tells us “make yourself clear that you are justified in deception, and then lie like a trooper.”3 Hurrell Froude, as early as 1834 confessed that the Tractarian movement was “a conspiracy.”4

The ritualistic “Society of the Holy Cross “consists of ” bishops, priests, deacons, and candidates for Holy Orders, in the Church of England, all its members being pledged to secrecy, to the saying of masses, the adoration of the elements, the practice of auricular confession, and the use of Popish ceremonial.”5 This was the society which made itself responsible for that abominable book written for the guidance of ritualistic father confessors, and known as the priest in absolution.”6 “The Order of Corporate Reunion is even more secret and mysterious than the Society of the Holy Cross, and is more unblushingly Popish, going the length of acknowledging the Pope as the lawful head of the whole visible church on earth.”7 A high official of the order plainly said at its first synod that “as a church we must have some executive head, and as there is no other competitor, we believe the Pope to be that head.”The order “actively pursues its labours,”and has representatives “in almost every English diocese.”The Roman Catholic Standard and Ransomer, in its issue for November 22, 1894, stated that “there are now eight hundred clergymen of the Church of England who have been validly ordained by Dr. Lee and his co-bishops, of the order of corporate reunion.”8 The solemn subscriptions and even the oaths of ritualistic clergymen are no longer to be depended on. Pusey taught that the confessor “may swear with a clear conscience that he knows not what he knows only as God.”1 He owned the abuse of the con- fessional, that it was “a sad sight to see confessors giving their whole morning to young women devotees, while they dismiss men or married women who have perhaps left their household affairs with difficulty to find themselves rejected with “I am busy, go to some one else.”

THE CONFESSIONAL IN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND

In a confessional book for children “edited by a committee of clergy,”which has had a wide circulation, it is taught that little children from six and a half years old should go to confession, and they are instructed that “It is to the priest, and to the priest only, that the child must acknowledge his sins, if he desires that God should forgive him.”3 That gross immorality has arisen from the practice of auricular confession in the Church of England was shown by archdeacon Allen in the course of a debate in the Lower House of Canterbury Convocation, on July 4,1877. “A venerable and wise high churchman,”he said, “told me that in his own experience he had known of three clergymen who practiced this teaching of habitual confession as a duty, who had fallen into habits of immorality with women who had come to them for guidance.”4 The dangerous tendency of the confessional is “proved beyond the possibility of refutation by the bulls of the popes themselves against solicitant priests.”The congregation of the Inquisition at Rome was compelled in 1867 to put forth an instruction addressed to all archbishops, bishops and ordinaries complaining that the Constitution on the crime of solicitation “did not receive proper attention, and that in some places abuses had crept in, both as to requiring penitents to denounce guilty confessors, and as to the punishing of confessors guilty of solicitation”(ie: of soliciting women while in the confessional to immorality). 5 Even Dr. Pusey speaking from experience said “you may pervert this sacrament (of penance) from its legitimate end, which is to excite an exceeding horror of sin in the minds of others, into a subtle means of feeding evil passions, and sin in your own mind “; and again “be assured that this is one of the gravest faults of our day in the administration of the sacrament of penance, that it is the road by which a number of Christians go down to hell.”‘ The father confessor is often while in the confessional “the murderer of souls.”During the conference held at Fulham Palace on confession and absolution Canon Aitken said that the system of auricular confession was “full of danger. He had had two or three instances of the extreme danger of the practice recently brought before him. A friend of his who occasionally used sacramental confession told him that in conversation with a young lady something made him think that she was unhappy, and he told her so. They arranged an interview, and he found that she was living in sin with her confessor. She had been betrayed into sin by the very peril of this institution.”1 When Dr. Longley, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, held an official and public inquiry as to a confessional scandal connected with the church of St. Saviour in Leeds, he wrote, after investigating the facts to the Rev. H. F. Beckett, the Vicar, that “Mr. Rooke who was then a deacon having required a married woman, a candidate for confirmation, to go for confession to you as a priest, you received that female to confession under these circumstances, and that you put to her questions which she says made her feel very much ashamed, and greatly distressed her, and which were of such an indelicate nature that she would never tell her husband of them.” Instead of trying to place the matter before Dr. Longley in a more favourable light Mr. Beckett’s reply to the bishop seemed to make the case even darker against himself for he declared “your lordship cannot but see that Mrs. ———-‘s not mentioning what had passed between her and myself to her husband is nothing at all to the pur- pose, since no woman would, I suppose, ever tell her husband what passed in her confession.”Dr. Tait, Arch-bishop of Canterbury said before the House of Lords with reference to the ritualistic book entitled “The Priest in Absolution,””no modest person could read that book without regret; it is a disgrace to the community that such a book should be circulated under the authority of clergymen of the established Church. I cannot imagine that any right minded man could wish to have such questions (as it suggests) addressed to any member of his, family; and if he had any reason to suppose that any member of his family had been exposed to such an examination, I am sure it would be the duty of any father of a family to remonstrate with the clergyman who had put the questions, and warn him never to approach his house again.”2 Of the ritualistic “Society of the Holy Cross”Mr. Ward says, “Its filthy confessional book has never been condemned by the society as a whole, though a few of its members have written and spoken against it. “3 The bishop of Carlisle, the late Dr. Harvey Goodwin, declared that the Society of the Holy Cross has “created a scandal in the church of almost unparalleled magnitude,” and that the “only right course for wise and loyal churchmen was to wash their hands of it.”But the society continues to spread the practice of auricular confession in the Church of England, as part of the work of “levelling up”to the methods of the Church of Rome.

REAL NATURE OF THE RITUALISTIC MOVEMENT

The Rev. W. I. G. Bennett, late Vicar of Frome, in his ,plea for toleration wrote, “It is not for a chasuble or a cope, lighted tapers, or the smoke of incense, the mitre or the pastoral staff, that we are contending, but as all who think deeply on either side of the question know full well for the doctrines which lie hidden under them.”We “set the bulbs,”said Dr. Pusey, “which were to bring forth the flowers.”The real object of the movement is “the restoration of Romanism in England by means of the National Church, and the consequent overthrow of the Reformation.”The extent to which the movement has grown may be partly gathered from the published list of 9,600 clergymen of the Church of England who have already joined it, with the names of the ritualistic societies to which they belong. How long shall these traitors be suffered to carry on their conspiracy, to multiply their secret societies, to spread their poisonous leaven, to teach Romish doctrines in Protestant pulpits, to subvert the foundations of the faith, to mislead multitudes to their eternal ruin; and to do this with Protestant money, with the connivance or support of Protestant bishops, and with the authority of a Protestant king and Parliament?— Is it not written “Purge out the old leaven.””Know ye not that a little leaven “leaveneth the whole lump?”Already nearly half the clergy of the Church of England are engaged in the Rome ward movement. By their means the venerable structure of the Protestant established church is burning with incendiary fires. The bishops sleep while the building blazes, or even cast fuel on the flames.

SPREAD OF RITUALISM TO OTHER LANDS

From England ritualism has spread with disastrous eflf cts to America, the continent, India, and the colonies. Nor is the climax of the movement reached. The spirit which inspires it is destined to carry it throughout the world. Its end will not be reached till the close of the great Armageddon conflict which marks with its lurid signal the termination of the present age.