years. Rev. 12:1-17. It was also predicted that her place should be occupied by a vile harlot, arrayed in purple and scarlet, decorated with gold and precious stones, drinking to drunkenness the blood of saints and martyrs, reigning over the kings of the earth, and causing its inhabitants to be made drunk with her abominable wickedness and cruelty. — Rev. 17 : 1—18.

But this harlot was to be finally destroyed, and the pure church of God brought out of the wilderness and crowned with transcendent glories.

The pure spouse of Christ is his church, with its primitive apostolic organization and polity. The Babylonian harlot of corruption is the Papal church, so modified and altered from the divinely-constructed model of primitive times as to be the prolific mother of all possible abominations, and as entirely unlike the original, whose honors it claims, as the unprincipled and overbedecorated harlot is unlike the chaste wife and pious mother.

The Greek and other Eastern churches are in the same corruption as the Papacy, and belong to the same spiritual Babylon.

PART II.

THE POST-APOSTOLIC CHURCH; OR, THE CHURCH AFTER THE APOSTLES, FROM A. D. 100 TILL 606.

CHAPTER I.

THE GREAT EXPERIMENT: THE RISE OF DIOCESAN EPISCOPACY.

"BEWARE lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the elements of the world, and not after Christ." - Col. 2: 8.

The organization of the Christian church was the grandest experiment on the capabilities of man, and the best-conceived scheme for his improvement as an individual, and the improvement of society generally, that had ever been tried. It was simple, original, universally practicable, and of complete efficiency, if men could be inspired with its high aspirations, and permanently controlled by its principles. It was the last of a series of experiments under the direct supervision of the Almighty, and adapted to meet those difficulties which the others had failed to meet, and to accomplish fully the sublime and beneficent objects which the others had accomplished but partially.

But, humanly speaking, it must be brought to the test of experiment before its wisdom and efficiency could appear. Great pains was taken to give this momentous experiment a chance of success. The accumulated wisdom and experience of all previous ages was brought to bear upon it. It was proclaimed as the

kingdom of God and of the redeemed, and the divinely-constituted university for the education of God's children in the principles and laws of holiness and happiness.

God descended in the person of Jesus Christ, laid aside for a time his transcendent glories, and appeared in the unimposing garb of humanity, both to make expiation for our sins, and to settle the principles and order of his divine kingdom on earth.

He expounded the previous systems of Moses and the earlier patriarchs, relieving them from the perversions and misapprehensions which ages of darkness and ignorance had superinduced, and set forth his own system of holiness as essentially the same with theirs. He called all men to come to him, submit to his authority, receive his instruction, and unite in the support and promotion of his cause. Before him all met on an equal level. The monarch came down, the peasant came up; or, rather, all conditions and all ranks and orders of men were required to take their places in the dust together before their God, and pay him their united and loving homage. Obedience was encouraged by the promise of everlasting life, and disobedience discouraged by denunciations of endless woe.

The Redeemer himself was the great corner-stone of the fabric which he came to erect. It all rests on him as our divine Lord and King, shown to be so by the most certain and indubitable proofs.

Christ is first proclaimed as Lord and King, and demonstrated to be such, 1. By prophecy. 2. By his own stupendous and numerous miracles. 3. By the power which he conferred on the apostles, and others, of performing miracles. 4. By the divine purity and excellence of his doctrines.

On this rational faith in his lordship, his kingship, is erected his kingdom, the church. As a kingdom, it has its laws and officers. Its laws are the holy Scriptures, its officers are the Christian ministry, and its sole king and head is the Lord Jesus Christ.

The apostles were largely endowed with the Holy Spirit, to

enable them to superintend the progress and extension of the church after Christ's ascension, and return to the spiritual world. How far they were left to their discretion in the institutes which they adopted, and how far they enjoyed special and specific divine direction, we are not informed; but, as the Holy Spirit was promised to lead them into all truth, we cannot doubt that the promise was fulfilled, and that all their appointments were such as met the approbation of their divine Lord. The same miraculous powers which evinced the divinity of Christ, and proved by the sanction of Omnipotence the truth of his claims and teachings, evinced also the divine authority of the apostles as ministers of Christ, and officers under him, to settle the order and institutes of his kingdom. During the lives of the apostles, the church was fully established, and local churches numerously instituted. But, even then, the devil was abroad sowing tares among the wheat, and the apostles were in repeated instances put on the defensive for the maintenance of their establishments in purity and power. But, no sooner had they passed away and gone to their rest, than the work of corruption began, under the specious and deceptive title of improvement. The divine institutions had to be improved, to adapt them to the new exigences which arose. Hence a course of innovations was commenced, which were small and apparently unimportant at first, and perhaps really so but for the principle which they involved; but which grew and multiplied with the lapse of time, till, in a few brief centuries, they resulted in the great Western and Eastern apostasies; the Papacy of the West, and the Patriarchates of the East.

These apostasics retained the name and profession of Christianity, as the Jews of the time of Christ did that of disciples of Moses, and the Old Testament prophets; but they lost the spirit of their profession, no less than the Jews had done. They were Papists, Greek churchists, Nestorians, Armenian churchists, Coptic and Abyssinian churchists; but they were not Christians. They had forsaken Christ for other masters; and he had for

saken them. Genuine piety and virtue were supplanted by cruel and gloomy superstitions; knowledge and liberty, by soulcrushing spiritual despotism; and the spiritual and holy church of Christ, as seen in the apocalypse, clothed with the sun, having the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars, a kingdom of love, of purity, of peace; was transmuted into the Roman harlot, arrayed in purple and scarlet, decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, with a golden cup in her hand, but full of the most loathsome and pestiferous corruptions, and drinking to drunkenness the blood of the saints and martyrs.

To write out fully and minutely the process of this great apostasy, and to trace it step by step, in its progress, would require volumes. I shall present only the leading and most prominent particulars.

The Rise of Diocesan Episcopacy.

The first great change that appears in the church subsequent to the age of the apostles has respect to the organization and powers of the Christian ministry, the separation of bishops and presbyters as distinct orders of ministers, and their exaltation above the laity as spiritual despots, having absolute authority over the church. Nothing of this appears in the New Testament, nor did it exist under the supervision of the apostles. The apostles themselves did not claim absolute lordship over the churches in which they presided, but submitted the most important ecclesiastical questions to the decision of the entire membership, ministry and laity, sitting and acting together as a single body.

But, immediately after the death and removal of the apostles, in the second century, the organization of the ministry was attempted to be improved, by the separation of bishops and presbyters into higher and lower orders of clergy. These officers had originally been of a single order, with equal powers, but unequal in respect to their labors and services, and also in respect