and death.  What would be an image of the papacy?  Another ecclesiastical establishment clothed with similar power.  How could such an image be formed in this country?  Let the Protestant churches in our land be clothed with power to define and punish heresy, to enforce their dogmas under the pains and penalties of the civil law, and should we not have an exact representation of the papacy during the days of its supremacy?

It may be objected that whereas the papal church was comparatively a unit, and hence could act in harmony in all its departments in enforcing its dogmas, the Protestant church is so divided as to be unable to agree in regard to what doctrines shall be made imperative on the people.  We answer, there are certain points which they hold in common, and which are sufficient to form a basis of co-operation.  Chief among these may be mentioned the doctrine of the conscious state of the dead and the immortality of the soul, which is both the foundation and superstructure of spiritualism, and also the doctrine that the first day of the week is the Christian Sabbath.

It may be objected again that this view makes one of the horns, the Protestant church, finally constitute the image of the beast.  If the reader supposes that the Protestant church constitutes one of the horns of the two-horned beast, we reply that this is a conception of his own.  No such idea is here taught.  And we mention this objection only because it has been actually urged as a legitimate consequence of the positions here taken.  And then the question is asked, If the Protestant church constitutes one horn, may not the Catholic church constitute the other?  Under the shadow of that hypothetical “if,” perhaps it might.  But neither the one nor the other performs such an office.  In chapter six of this work, it was shown that the two great principles of Republicanism and Protestantism were the proper objects to be symbolized by these two lamb-like horns.  But there is the plainest distinction between Protestantism as an embodiment of the great principle of religions liberty, and the different religious bodies that have grown up under its fostering influence; just as plain as there is between Republicanism, or civil liberty, and the individual who lives in the enjoyment of such liberty.  The supposition, therefore, that the Protestant church is to furnish the material for the image, involves no violation of the symbolic harmony of this prophecy.

Let us look a moment at the fitness of the material.  We are not unmindful of the noble service the Protestant churches have rendered to the world, to humanity, and to religion, by introducing and defending, so far as they have, the great principles of Protestantism.  But they have made a fatal mistake in stereotyping their doctrines into creeds, and thus taking the first steps backward toward the spiritual tyranny of Rome.  Thus the good promise they gave of a free religion and an unfettered conscience is already broken.