Robert Atkins, in a sermon preached in London, says:  “The truly righteous are diminished from the earth, and no man layeth it to heart.  The professors of religion of the present day, in every church, are lovers of the world, conformers to the world.  Lovers of creature-comfort, and aspirers after respectability.  They are called to suffer with Christ, but they shrink even from reproach.  Apostasy, apostasy, APOSTASY, is engraven on the very front of every church; and did they know it, and did they feel it, there might be hope; but alas! they cry ’We are rich, and increased in goods, and stand in need of nothing.’”

I have by no means exhausted the supply of similar testimonies of Protestants now before me, but for lack of space I must conclude.  In the face of these amazing facts can any one deny that Protestantism is a part of great Babylon and is in a fallen condition?

“The merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies.”  A certain writer on this text has said:  “Who take the lead in all the extravagancies of the age?  Church-members.  Who load their tables with the richest and choicest viands?  Church-members.  Who are foremost in extravagance in dress, and all costly attire?  Church-members.  Who are the very personification of pride and arrogance?  Church-members.  Where shall we look for the very highest exhibition of the luxury, even show, and pride of life, resulting from the vanity and sin of the race?  Answer, To a modern church-assembly on a pleasant Sunday.”  Though this writer interpreted the text literally, yet he spoke a vast amount of truth, as every one knows.

Consider, too, the wickedness carried on everywhere in sect Babylon unrebuked, with the preachers ofttimes in the lead.  Shows, festivals, frolics, grab-bag parties, cake-walk lotteries, kissing-bees, etc., etc.  If the apostle were here to-day and we should inform him of a modern church entertainment where a bared female foot, projecting from beneath a curtain, was sold to the highest gentleman bidder, who had the privilege of kissing its owner and taking her to supper, he would probably answer, “Have I not told you, ’Babylon is fallen’?” If his attention was called to the fact that the members of a prominent church, in a novel entertainment, displayed the likeness of a donkey, minus the tail, while the members one by one were blindfolded, and, amid the uproarous laughter of the crowd assembled, were given the detached part to see who could place it the nearest where it belonged, he would say with double emphasis, “Have I not told you, ’BABYLON THE GREAT IS FALLEN, IS FALLEN, AND IS BECOME THE HABITATION OF DEVILS, AND THE HOLD OF EVERY FOUL SPIRIT, AND A CAGE OF EVERY UNCLEAN AND HATEFUL BIRD’?” The “abominations” are by no means confined to the mother in the Revelation, but are also to be found in abundance in connection with her harlot daughters.

    4.  And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of
    her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that
    ye receive not of her plagues.