They come, in the Divine chronology of events, immediately after an angel has proclaimed, "BABYLON IS FALLEN, IS FALLEN." We have, as it were, with our own ears heard this predicted "Fall of Babylon" announced from the high places of Rome itself, when the seven hills of the "Eternal City" reverberated with the guns that proclaimed, not merely to the citizens of the Roman republic, but to the wide world, that "PAPACY HAD FALLEN, de facto and de jure, from the temporal throne of the Roman State." *
* The Apocalypse announces two falls of Babylon. The fall referred to above is evidently only the first. The prophecy clearly implies, that after the first fall it rises to a greater height than before; and therefore the necessity of the warning. Now, it is in the order of the prophecy, after this fall of Babylon, that this fearful threatening comes. Can there, then, be a doubt that this threatening specially and peculiarly applies to this very time? Never till now was the real nature of the Papacy fully revealed; never till now was the Image of the beast set up. Till the Image of the beast was erected, till the blasphemous decree of the Immaculate Conception was promulged, no such apostacy had taken place, even in Rome, no such guilt had been contracted, as now lies at the door of the great Babylon. This, then, is a subject of infinite importance to every one within the pale of the Church of Rome--to every one also who is looking, as so many at present are doing, towards the City of the Seven Hills. If any one can prove that the Pope does not assume all the prerogatives and bear substantially all the blasphemous titles of that Babylonian beast that "had the wound by a sword, and did live," and if it can be shown that the Madonna, that has so recently with one consent been set up, is not in every essential respect the same as the Chaldean "Image" of the beast, they may indeed afford to despise the threatening contained in these words. But if neither the one nor the other can be proved (and I challenge the strictest scrutiny in regard to both), then every one within the pale of the Papacy may well tremble at such a threatening. Now, then, as never before, may the voice Divine, and that a voice of the tenderest love, be heard sounding from the Eternal throne to every adherent of the Mystic Babylon, "Come out of her, My people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues."
2. But if the guilt and danger of those who adhere to the Roman Church, believing it to be the only Church where salvation can be found, be so great, what must be the guilt of those who, with a Protestant profession, nevertheless uphold the doomed Babylon? The constitution of this land requires our Queen to swear, before the crown can be put upon her head, before she can take her seat on the throne, that "she believes" that the essential doctrines of Rome are "idolatrous." All the Churches of Britain, endowed and unendowed, alike with one voice declare the very same.