99 THE UNITED STATES IN PROPHECY.
dom, but that it may suppress and obscure them.
The name of this monster is Popery; and it has fixed
its rapacious and bloodthirsty eyes on this land, de-
termined to make it its helpless prey. “It already
decides the election in some of our largest cities. It
controls the revenues of the most populous State in
the Union, and appropriates annually hundreds of
thousands of dollars raised from Protestant taxes to
the support of its own ecclesiastical organizations,
and to the furtherance of its own religious and po-
litical ends. It has attained such a degree of in-
fluence that it is only by a mighty effort of Protest-
ant patriotism that any measures against which the
Romish element combines its strength can now be
carried. And corrupt and unscrupulous politicians
stand ready to concede its demands, in order to
secure its support for the advancement of their
own ambitious aims. Rome is in the field, with the
basest and most fatal intentions, and with the most,
watchful and tireless energy. It is destined to play
an important part in our future troubles: for this is
the very beast which the two-horned beast is to
cause the earth and them that dwell therein to wor-
ship and before whose eyes it is to perform its won-
lers.
And in our own better Protestant churches there
is that which threatens to lead to most serious evils.
On this point one of their own popular ministers,
who is well qualified to speak, may testify. A ser-
mon by Charles Beecher contains the following state-
ments: —
“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 the spawn of the
dragon. They shrink from an y rude word against creeds
with the same sensitiveness with which those holy fa-
thers would have shrunk from a rude word against the
THE DRAGON VOICE. 93
“rising veneration of saints and martyrs which they were
fostering The Protestant evangelical denomina-
tions 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. . . . And is not the Protestant church apos-
tate? Oh! remember, the final form of apostasy shall
rise, not by crosses, processions, baubles. We understand
all that. Apostasy never comes on the outside. It de-
velops. 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; yea, who may even be-
lieve 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 ?
+ . . Will it be said that our fears are imaginary? Imn-
aginary | Did not the Rev. John M. Duncan, in the
years 1825-6, or thereabouts, sincerely believe the Bi-
ble? Did he not even believe substantially the Confes-
sion of Faith? And was he not, for daring to say what
the Westminster Assembly said, that to require the re-
ception of that creed as a test of ministerial qualification
was an unwarrantable imposition, brought to trial, con-
demned, excommunicated, and his pulpit declared va-
cant? 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.
“0h, woful day! Oh, unhappy church of Christ, fast
~ rushing round and round the fatal circle of absorbing
ruin! . . . Daily does every one see that things are go-
ing 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 the coming conflict which is to con-
vulse Christendom to her center are beginning to be felt.
M 3 q aryes : 3
The deep heavings begin to swell beneath us. © All the
old signs fail” «God answers no more by Urim anc
- N ) '., .
Thummim, nor by dream, nor by prophet.” Men's hearts