55. But the Babylon mentioned in the book of Revelation is the present-day Babylon, which began after the Lord's coming; it is well known that it exists among the Roman Catholics. It is more dangerous and dreadful than the one before the Lord's coming, because it profanes the church's interior forms of good and truth, which the Lord revealed to the world when He revealed Himself. How dangerous and inwardly wicked it is can be summarily established from what now follows.

[2] The Roman Catholics acknowledge and worship the Lord without having any power to save. They totally divide His Divine from His human, and transfer to themselves His Divine power, which belonged to His human. ¹ For they forgive sins, grant entry to heaven, cast into hell, and save whomsoever they wish, putting a price on salvation and so claiming for themselves the prerogatives which belong to God's power alone. By exercising that power, it follows that they make themselves into gods, each in his own rank down to the lowest, by deriving it from their chief, whom they call the Vicar of Christ. Thus they look on themselves as the Lord and worship Him not for His sake, but for their own.

[3] They not only adulterate and falsify the Word, but even deprive the people of it, so that not a glimmer of the truth reaches them. Nor is this enough for them, they actually reduce it to nothing by accepting the decrees of Rome as containing a Divine element superior to that in the Word. By so doing they bar the way to heaven for all; for the way to heaven is the acknowledgment of the Lord and faith in Him and love to Him, and it is the Word which teaches the way. As a result, without the Lord acting by means of the Word, salvation is impossible. They devote their best efforts to quenching the light of heaven which comes from Divine truth, putting in its place ignorance, the more welcome to them the denser it is. They quench the light of heaven by preventing people reading the Word, and books containing teachings from the Word; and by establishing worship in the form of masses in a language simple people do not understand, and lacking any Divine truth. Moreover, they fill their world with false ideas, which are utter darkness, absorbing and scattering the light. They also persuade the common people that it is their faith that gives them life, that is, someone else's faith, not their own.

[4] In addition, they make all worship a matter of outward holiness, with no inward holiness; this they make empty, because it is devoid of the knowledge of good and truth. Yet Divine worship can only be outward to the extent that it is inward, for the outward comes from the inward. Besides this they bring in idolatrous practices of many kinds. They create saints in large numbers, and watch tolerantly while they are adored and have prayers addressed to them almost as if they were gods. They set up statues of them on every side, boast of their numerous miracles, making them patrons of their towns, churches and monasteries, and taking their bones - such utter trash - out of their graves and turning them into holy relies. By such means they divert the minds of all from the worship of God to the worship of human beings.

[5] Moreover, they have employed much skill in preventing anyone being brought out of that murky darkness into light, from the worship of idols to the worship of God. They have built numbers of monasteries to supply spies and guardians whom they post everywhere. They extort heartfelt confessions, even of thoughts and intentions, and if they do not succeed they frighten people's minds with hell-fire and the torments of purgatory. Those who dare to utter a word against the Papal throne and their power they shut up in a repulsive prison, called that of the Inquisition.

[6] Their only purpose in all these acts is to possess the world and its treasures, and to indulge their fancy making themselves supreme and all the rest their slaves. But such rule is not that of heaven over hell, but of hell over heaven, for the stronger the love of power grows in a person, especially if he belongs to a church, the more hell reigns in him. This is the reigning love of hell and makes it hell (see HEAVEN AND HELL 551-565). These facts can establish that what we have there is no church, but a Babylon; for a church is where the Lord Himself is worshipped and the Word is read.

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