Are the United States a Subject of Prophecy?
It may here be said by some that the charges thus far brought against this government are applicable only to the civil power, and that therefore it would be hardly proper to denounce the beast as a whole as speaking like a dragon. But we think a moment's consideration will be sufficient to satisfy any one that the ecclesiastical power of our land is not exempt from the charge brought forward in the prophecy. For if the right of private judgment is allowed in matters of religion in the Protestant Church, why are such numbers expelled from her communion for no other crime than following the dictates of their own conscience—a right which Protestantism professes to guarantee to every man? Why are they expelled from their midst for looking for the Lord they love, to return again according to his glorious promise? Why does she break fellowship with them for preferring to follow what seems to them the plain commandments of God instead of what seems equally plain to be the commandments and traditions of men? In short, why are they received on the Bible and the Bible alone, and then boosted out by the imperious demands of a little book, called a creed, if they happen to differ from the established opinions? It is the creed power that is fast neutralizing the fair profession of professed Protestants. From a sermon by Chas. Beecher we make the following extracts which are to the point: "Our best, most humble, most devoted servants of Christ are fostering in their midst what will one day, not long hence, show itself to be of the spawn of the dragon. They shrink from any rude word against creeds with the same sensitiveness with which those holy fathers would have shrunk from a rude word against the rising veneration of saints and martyrs which they were fostering." "The creed system is now exerting upon the clergy of the Protestant churches a secret, unsuspected, but tremendous power against the Bible—a power of fear. Yes, while it professes to venerate and defend the Bible, it is virtually undermining it." "The religious world has what is called a public sentiment of its own, and this is formed chiefly by the great evangelical denominations. Other denominations are, owing to their paucity of numbers, less perceived. By one or the other of these denominations, the first fact is, the young candidate is to be licensed; for public sentiment has settled that an unlicensed preacher is no preacher at all. He must have license, then; all his hopes centre on that. But there is not one of these great evangelical denominations from which he can get license, unless he will subscribe the creed of that denomination. In other words, the Protestant evangelical denominations have so tied up one another's hands, and their own, that, between them all, a man cannot become a preacher at all, anywhere, without accepting some book besides the Bible. "It is true, each denomination says, 'We inflict no penalty—we only decline to receive into our ranks one who does not agree with us.' And this is so specious, it sounds so reasonable, that it might deceive the very elect; but it is the most consummate stroke of infernal craft, and doubly-distilled jesuitism. "It is like Rome, handing over the victims of the Inquisition to the civil arm, charging it to do them no harm, and then piously lauding her own lamb-like disposition. It is true, the denominations do not do the candidate any harm, they only silently leave him to his inevitable fate. "Unlicensed, without moral affinities with the minor sects, alone, before he has formed the self-sustaining habits of a man, before he has yet tried his armor, self-distrustful, generally poor, often in debt, inexperienced, he finds an invisible, intangible Power has entangled and enveloped him in complicate, writhing folds. The frown of society is upon him, public sentiment is against him—the public sentiment of good men, yea, of the best and most devoted! He is whispered to be unsound, unsafe, heretical. He is called by every sectarian name most frightful to ears evangelical, right or wrong; and yet nobody does it. He is smitten; he looks here and there, behind and before; he can see nobody. And thus he is politely, and respectfully, and silently, and invisibly crushed. He is in the religious world what a broken-down candidate is in the political, dead. "Now there never was a torture of the Inquisition more exquisitely suited to extort conformity from an agonized victim. Not the body, but the mind is on the rack. Every most noble feeling is tried to the utmost. His natural need of livelihood, his care of family and of friends, his sense of reputation, his honest ambition, his tastes, his intellectual habits, his hopes of usefulness, yea, the very inmost, sacred emotions of his devotional experience, are here taken hold of—in the dark—by an unseen, ruthless hand—and are wrung, and racked, and wrenched, to the last extreme of mental torture. And there is no eye to pity, nor arm to save. The public will not hear him. He is nobody; an outcast; a mad-man. "This, my friends, is the PENALTY, which good men, not of good motives, unconsciously, yet really, are proposing to the eyes of every candidate for the ministry—this intense spiritual martyrdom. During seven years it stares him in the face, during the whole forming time of his opinions. And for what? "For daring to say, 'I do not receive your creed as containing the system of doctrines contained in the Bible;'—and for daring to say what God has said, 'With that Bible alone, I am perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works!' For repeating and holding on upon this declaration of God, he falls a spiritual martyr. And is not that an apostasy, then, that martyrs him? And is not the Protestant church apostate? Oh! remember, the final form of the apostasy shall rise, not by Rome's aggressive march; not by the pope's long arm, outstretched to snatch our Bible; not by crosses, processions, baubles. We understand all that. Apostasy never comes on the outside. It develops. It is an apostasy that shall spring into life within us; an apostasy that shall martyr a man who believes his Bible ever so boldly; yea, who may even believe what the creed contains, but who may happen to agree with the Westminster Assembly, that, proposed as a test, it is an unwarrantable imposition! That is the apostasy we have to fear, and is it not already formed? "Accept the Bible and the book, and you may put your own private construction on both, as every one does. Accept the Bible, and put your own private construction on that—the great paw of the beast is on you. This is what I call taking the Bible out of the hands of the ministry. "Will it be said that these fears are imaginary? Imaginary? Did not the Rev. John M. Duncan, of Baltimore, in the years 1825-6, or thereabouts, sincerely believe the Bible? Did he not even believe substantially the confession of faith? And was he not, for daring to say what the Westminster Assembly said, that, to require the reception of that creed as a test of ministerial qualification, was an unwarrantable imposition, brought to trial, condemned, excommunicated, and the pulpit declared vacant? "There is nothing imaginary in the statement that the creed-power is now beginning to prohibit the Bible as really as Rome did, though in a subtler way. During the whole course of seven years' study, the Protestant candidate for the ministry sees before him an authorized statement, spiked down and stereotyped, of what he MUST find in the Bible, or be martyred. And does any one, acquainted with human nature, need be told that he studies under a tremendous pressure of motive? Is that freedom of opinion?—'the liberty wherewith Christ maketh free?' Rome would have given that. Every one of her clergy might have studied the Bible to find there the pontifical creed on pain of death. Was that liberty? "Hence I say that liberty of opinion in our Theological Seminaries is a mere form. To say nothing of the thumb-screw of criticism, by which every original mind is tortured into negative propriety, the whole boasted liberty of the student consists in a choice of chains—a choice of handcuffs—whether he will wear the Presbyterian handcuff, or the Methodist, Baptist, Episcopal or rather Evangelical handcuff. Hence it has secretly come to pass that the ministry themselves dare not study their Bibles. Large portions thereof are seldom touched. It lies useless lumber; or, if they do study and search, they dare not show their people what they find there. There is something criminal in saying anything new. It is shocking to utter words that have not the mould of age upon them. "For through the ministry the same spirit has been conducted to the people. The same penalties hang over them. The denominations are so nearly balanced, the strife for power is so keen between them, that every fancied departure from that creed is seized to make political capital as really as in any political campaign. Houses must be built; salaries must be raised. This requires wealth. Wealth requires numbers and patronage. This creates a servile dread of novelty, for every thing that another party can get hold of strikes at the gold. Therefore, the people watch their minister, and the minister is afraid of his people. For if he studies independently, if he goes outside of the book, if he slips the handcuff, the people tremble—it will not please—the opposition will seize it—we shall be unpopular—we shall not succeed. "O, wofu1 day! O, unhappy church of Christ! Fast rushing round and round the fatal circle of absorbing ruin! Thou sayest, I am rich, and increased in goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art poor, and miserable, and blind, and naked!" "Thus are the ministry of the Evangelical Protestant denominations, not only formed all the way up, under a tremendous pressure of merely human fear, but they live, and move, and breathe, in a state of things radically corrupt, and appealing every hour to every baser element of their nature to hush up the truth, and bow the knee to the power of apostasy. "Dimly does every one now and then see that things are going wrong. With sighs does every true heart confess that rottenness is somewhere, but ah! it is hopeless of reform. We all pass on, and the tide rolls down to night." "The waves of coming conflict which is to convulse Christendom to her centre, are beginning to be felt. The deep heavings begin to swell beneath us. 'All the old signs fail.' 'God answers no more by Urim and Thummim, nor by dream, nor by prophet.' Men's hearts are failing them for fear, and for looking after those things that are coming upon the earth. Thunders mutter in the distance. Winds moan across the surging bosom of the deep. All things betide the rising of that final storm of divine indignation which shall sweep away the vain refuge of lies. When the Lord shall cause his glorious voice to be heard, and shall show the lightning down his arm, with the indignation of his anger, and with the flame of a devouring fire: with scatterings, and tempest, and hailstones; in that day, what shall save us? For judgment will begin at the house of God. What shall be our defense? Put your trust in Him, whose eyes are as a flame of fire, on whose head are many crowns, who is clothed with a vesture dipped in blood, whose name is called, THE WORD OF GOD!" Sufficient has now been said on this portion of our subject. From the considerations thus far offered it is evident that this government in both of its leading principles, Republicanism and Protestantism, is false to its profession. It is a lamb only in appearance. How wonderfully has this nation thus far answered to the symbol; and what feelings should it create in our bosoms, as point after point we trace it out, and perceive the wonderful harmony. Thus another link is added to the great chains of prophecy that are leading us down to the end; another great way-mark is set up to show us our position in the world's history; another great evidence that we are right in our calculations of the approaching consummation, and that our hopes and anticipations of a glorious and immediate deliverance of all the faithful, are well founded. Ten times more credulous is he who can believe that all the signs of the times which are now transpiring around us, mean nothing, warn us of nothing, and will result in nothing, than he who in firm faith lays hold upon the promises of God, believes his word, and humbly thanks him for the evidences he has in mercy given us of the swift coming of the great day, and the space granted for preparation. Two points more we had proposed to notice in the prophecy of the Two-horned Beast; namely, the form of the government symbolized, and its acts; and this last item might also be sub-divided into numerous specifications. But as we have concluded to give place in the REVIEW to Bro. J. N. Loughborough's work on this subject which he is now by request revising, we refer our readers for further information to that forthcoming work, and will burden them no further with our remarks.