PROFESSING PROTESTANTS AS PERSECUTORS
By Milton C. Wilcox
A Significant Prophecy for These Days
THE prophecy is the seventeenth chapter of the Revelation; and we quote it entire, that we may have it before us, and become familiar with what it says. “And there came one of the seven angels that had the seven bowls, and spake with me, saying, Come hither, I will show thee the judgment of the great harlot that sitteth upon many waters; with whom the kings of the earth committed fornication, and they that dwell in the earth were made drunken with the wine of her fornication. “And he carried me away in the Spirit into a wilderness: and I saw a woman sitting upon a scarlet-colored beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet, and decked with gold and precious stone and pearls, having in her hand a golden cup full of abominations, even the unclean things of her fornication, and upon her forehead a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF THE HARLOTS AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH. And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. And when I saw her, I wondered with a great wonder. “And the angel said unto me, Wherefore didst thou wonder? I will tell thee the mystery of the woman, and of the beast that carrieth her, which hath the seven heads and the ten horns. The beast that thou sawest was, and is not; and is about to come up out of the abyss, and to go into perdition. And they that dwell on the earth shall wonder, they whose name hath not been written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, when they behold the beast, how that he was, and is not, and shall come. “Here is the mind that hath wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sitteth: and they are seven kings; the five are fallen, the one is, the other is not yet come; and when he cometh, he must continue a little while. And the beast that was, and is not, is himself also an eighth, and is of the seven; and he goeth into perdition. “And the ten horns that thou sawest are ten kings, who have received no kingdom as yet; but they receive authority as kings, with the beast, for one hour. These have one mind, and they give their power and authority unto the beast. These shall war against the Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome them, for He is Lord of lords, and King of kings; and they also shall overcome that are with Him, called and chosen and faithful. “And he saith unto me, The waters which thou sawest, where the harlot sitteth, are peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues. And the ten horns which thou sawest, and the beast, these shall hate the harlot, and shall make her desolate and naked218and shall eat her flesh, and shall burn her utterly with fire. For God did put in their hearts to do His mind, and to come to one mind, and to give their kingdom unto the beast, until the words of God should be accomplished. And the woman whom thou sawest is the great city, which reigneth over the kings of the earth.” In the two previous articles, we have learned the meaning of the harlot, of Babylon, of the beast, of the wilderness, and of the first five heads of the beast, bringing us down to 1798. 5. What Is the Sixth Head?
The sixth head, under which the beast régime continued, is the present church-and-state governments, which followed the overthrow of the Holy Roman Empire, embodying the same general principles of church-and-state government. They were not centralized in papal Rome, but they were just as truly intolerant. Without reference to or thought of this prophecy, the change in the beast régime, or phase, but nevertheless the continuation of the beast principles, is stated so admirably by the Hon. James Bryce, historian, essayist, diplomat, and statesman, that I can do no better than to borrow his words. In speaking of the conditions that followed the overthrow of papal domination, he says: PROFESSING PROTESTANTS AS PERSECUTORS
“The principles which had led the Protestants to sever themselves from the Roman Church, should have taught them to bear with the opinions of others, and warned them from the attempt to connect agreement in doctrine or manner of worship with the necessary forms of civil government. Still less ought they to have enforced that agreement by civil penalties; for faith, upon their own showing, had no value save when it was freely given. A church which does not claim to be infallible is bound to allow that some part of the truth may possibly be with its adversaries; a church which permits or encourages human reason to apply itself to revelation has no right first to argue with people and then to punish them if they are not convinced. But whether it was that men only half saw what they had done, or that finding it hard enough to unrivet priestly fetters, they welcomed all the aid a temporal prince could give, the result was that religion, or rather religious creeds, began to be involved with politics more closely than had ever been the case before. “Through the greater part of Christendom wars of religion raged for a century or more, and down to our own days feelings of theological antipathy continue to affect the relations of the powers of Europe. In almost every country, the form of doctrine which triumphed associated itself with the state, and MAINTAINED THE DESPOTIC SYSTEM OF THE MIDDLE AGES, WHILE IT FORSOOK THE GROUNDS ON WHICH THAT SYSTEM HAD BEEN BASED. It was thus that there arose national churches, which were to be to the several Protestant countries of Europe that which the Church Catholic had been to the world at large; churches, that is to say, each of which was to be coextensive with its respective state, was to enjoy landed wealth and exclusive political privilege, and was to be armed with coercive powers against recusants. It was not altogether easy to find a set of theoretical principles on which such churches might be made to rest, for they could not, like the old church, point to the historical transmission of their doctrines; they could not claim to have in any one man or body of men an infallible organ of divine truth; they could not even fall back upon general councils, or the argument, whatever it may be worth, ‘Securus iudicat orbis terrarum.’ But in practice these difficulties were soon got over; for the dominant party in each state, if it was not infallible, was at any rate quite sure that it was right, and could attribute the resistance of other sects to nothing but moral obliquity. The will of the sovereign, as in England, or the will of the majority, as in Holland, Scandinavia, and Scotland, imposed upon each country a peculiar form of worship, and kept up the practices of medieval intolerance without their justification. Persecution, which might be at least excused in an infallible catholic and apostolic church, was peculiarly odious when practiced by those who were not catholic, who were no more apostolic than their neighbors, and who had just revolted from the most ancient and venerable authority in the name of rights which they now denied to others. If union with the visible church by participation in a material sacrament be necessary to eternal life, persecution may be held a duty, a kindness to perishing souls. But if the kingdom of heaven be in every sense a kingdom of the spirit, if saving faith be possible out of one visible body and under a diversity of external forms, persecution becomes at once a crime and a folly. Therefore the intolerance of Protestants, if the forms it took were less cruel than those practiced by the Roman Catholics, was also far less defensible.” CHANGE OF FORM BUT NOT OF PRINCIPLE
What shall we call it? Shall it be “apostate Protestantism”? The professed Protestant governments were then the leading powers in the beast territory, such as Germany, Great Britain, the Scandinavian countries, joined by France and others. This condition is the head that “IS,” not a persecutor to the same degree as the papacy, but still intolerant. It is a change in the form but not in the principle. Its weakness in persecution lies in its own contradictory principles. In its claim to Protestantism, it repudiates both Protestant and Christian principles by an organic union of religion and the state. This inconsistency has made this phase of the beast power weak as an antagonist to the gospel and freedom; and it gave place, to some extent, to those who were regarded as heretical. But it was intolerant nevertheless, and it persecuted Anabaptists, Baptists, Roman Catholics, Quakers, and others. Under that head the beast continues to exist, and will till the seventh head comes. That will be our next study. M. C. W.