IMAGE OF THE BEAST by John Norton Loughborough

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 22, 1861

IMAGE OF THE BEAST.

By John Norton Loughborough

(Concluded.)

On the first step taken by the church of Rome we would say: Nearly every prominent sect of the present time has her creed which they tell us is founded upon the Bible. Yet we find the sentiments of their creeds discordant, which shows of course that they are not all drawn from the fountain of truth. In regard to what the churches of our land have done in regard to creed-making we will make a few quotations from a sermon preached by Charles Beecher at the dedication of the Presbyterian Church at Ft. Wayne, Ind.:

"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 center 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."

Thus we see the first overt step of Rome has been taken by the Protestant sects of our land.

The second step of Rome has been taken, and these creeds are also made a test of fellowship, as appears from the further testimony in Beecher's discourse, which we quote because it displays the exact facts in the case:

"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 lamblike disposition. It is true, the denominations do not do the candidate any harm, they only silently leave him to his inevitable fate."

The third step of Rome is taken, and the creed is made the tribunal by which its members are tried. Did our space admit we might relate scores of instances where members have been denied a Bible trial, and when in trial by the church they have shown that their peculiar sentiments were in accordance with the Bible, they have been tried by the creed, and expelled from the society of the creed powers. A case came up in Wisconsin not many months since. A Baptist deacon, with his wife and daughters, embraced the present truth. In the winding up of the trial it seemed necessary to tell these individuals why they were set aside from the church. The clerk said, "We do not want you to think, Bro. Wright, because we expel you from the church, that we do not consider that you keep the commandments of God, for we believe you do; but your faith does not agree with the Baptist Treatise!"

That the fourth step has been taken, and those are anathematized who do not subscribe to the orthodox creeds of this time is clear from the following testimony from Beecher concerning an unlicensed minister:

"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, out 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 holily. . . . 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.

"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?"

Those who have embraced the unpopular, yet Bible doctrines of the Sabbath and near coming of the Lord, and have held fast their integrity in the midst of the rage and anathemas of a modern orthodox creed power are prepared to appreciate what we say when we tell them this is a manifestation of the fourth apostate step of modern Protestantism.

The fifth step taken by Rome was to reach forth the arm and secure the civil power. Already is the church striving for laws to enforce an almost universal tenet, Sunday-keeping, which is purely traditional, and contrary to the commandment of God relative to the Sabbath.

Several years since, Dr. Durbin, of the Christian Advocate and Journal, gave his views on this subject as follows:

"I infer therefore that the civil magistrate may not be called upon to enforce the observance of the Sabbath (Sunday) as required in the spiritual kingdom of Christ; but, when Christianity becomes the moral and spiritual life of the State, the State is bound through her magistrates to prevent the open violation of the holy Sabbath, as a measure of self-preservation. She cannot without injuring her own vitality, and incurring the divine displeasure, be recreant to her duty in this matter."

Here is another statement which appeared in the N. Y. Evangelist in 1854 relative to this matter:

"The principle that Christianity is recognized by the State as something which essentially belongs to it, gives us, we think, the true and simple basis upon which the laws relating to the observance of the Sabbath are to be enforced. The law throws its protection round the sacredness and quiet of the first day of the week, not because it recognizes it as a sacred day in itself considered, but for other reasons."

From this it seems that they are trying to shape the matter so that laws may be passed enforcing Sunday without violating the constitution, which declares that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

During the last three years special efforts have been made in some parts, especially in the State of New York, to get more stringent Sunday laws. Last spring the Tribune took a stand somewhat against this Sunday legislation, whereupon some of the opposite party thought to make it a party issue. Accordingly a question was asked to the Tribune, which called out the following answer: "We answer categorically that the Lincoln party, as such, has no opinions whatever on the Sunday question." This was taken up by the Albany Atlas and Argus of Oct. 6, which retorted against them: "Lincoln don't care if the Sabbath is violated or not." Here was an attempt to make a party issue of it, but it has not yet become such. Neither do we claim that these stringent Sunday laws will be immediately passed, but we wish to show that Protestants are desirous of taking the fifth step taken by Papacy before her persecutions of God's people. And as we shall now pass to show, the legislative powers say they shall and must take the step.

Before me lies the N. Y. Observer, of Aug. 23, 1860, which gives an account of a large and enthusiastic meeting which was held at Saratoga Springs, Aug. 12, the object of which was to consider the subject of taking effective measures to secure laws for the observance of Sunday. The Hon. Millard Fillmore, Ex-president of the United States, presided over the meeting:

"On his right sat Gov. Buckingham, of Connecticut, and Hon. J. W. Beekman, of New York, and on his left Gov. Morgan, of New York, and the Hon. Wm. C. Alexander, of New Jersey, representatives (with the honored chairman of the meeting) of the three great political parties which, in the apprehended shock of their collision, now threaten to rend the land asunder. Would that this spectacle of Christian co-operation could be witnessed on a still grander scale! But even on this limited field of observation it was a stirring sight to behold the champions of opposing interests of State relinquishing their weapons at the foot of the cross."

Here we see is a point, and probably the only point on which they all could unite. Of this large concourse of people he says:

"Probably no two men thought exactly alike on any other subject. Doubtless all did not agree as to the grounds on which public action should be taken, or as to the extent to which that action should be pushed. But I have no question, from the tone of the meeting and from casual remarks I overheard, that if it had been put to the vote it would have been resolved by acclamation that our American Christian Sabbath—the precious birthright of our national independence—must and shall be preserved.

"Mr. Cook proceeded to state what had been already done by the Sabbath Committee, and what they still proposed to do. Their success in silencing the Sunday newsboys, and closing the Sunday groggories should stimulate all the friends of good order to more vigorous, more systematic, and more persistent effort in the same direction. He paid a high and deserved compliment to the New York Press for their handsome and efficient co-operation in the good cause. He stated very pointedly and distinctly the question on which this holy war is waged. It was not whether we should have a Sabbath or not; that was settled by unanimous consent. The question is, Shall we have our own Christian, American Sabbath—the Sabbath of our childhood and of our fathers, the Sabbath of rest and holy quiet—or an imported European Sabbath? The speaker then ably contrasted the two conflicting methods of Sabbath observance, and argued vigorously against the lawless pretensions of a part of our German population. His statements were succinctly and effectively presented, and were heard with marked attention."

Ex-president Fillmore said that he "had aimed to secure the benefits of the day of rest through a long career of more than ordinary physical and mental exertion, and giving his full assent to the claims of all who desired to make it a day of worship, and to vindicate the prerogative of the civil authority. While he deemed it needful to legislate cautiously in all matters connected with public morals, and to avoid coercive measures affecting religion, the right of every citizen to a day of rest and worship could not be questioned, and laws securing that right should be enforced. He was happy to perceive that the gentlemen of the Sabbath Committee had avoided the mistakes connected with many attempts at moral reform, and their object had his entire approbation."

We look on these testimonies as a call for an image. May we all so obey the third angel's message, so keep God's commandments that we shall be prepared to stand when the trying time of the image-beast's decrees shall come. J. N. LOUGHBOROUGH. Battle Creek, Jan., 1861.