Page:Darby - Notes on the Book of Revelations, 1839.djvu/149

 like, though all these were connected with it, and: designated her. And this is always the case,—the becoming worldly,—and by this spirit, and to gain this wealth, pandering to the passions of the kings of the earth, is just the very cause of this. But, as in old. time the blood of all righteous men was found in God’s house, then apostate,—not in the world’s or the wicked one’s outwardly; judged in Jerusalem, not in heathen Rome;—so, ever; the ecclesiastical form of wickedness takes the lead, not the worldly. The gainsaying is recorded as the gainsaying of Kore, not of Dathan and Abiram, though the earth might swallow them up too; and the beast may be judged as well as Babylon, but not presented in the same sad terms in God’s moral judgment, in the sight of men. Moral corruption is ever worse than evil power. Babylon was also the mother of harlots, and of the abominations or idolatries of the earth. The invocation of a demon under the name of Paul, was worse than under the name of Hercules or Theseus; and the uprooting of the mediation of Christ more fatal and destructive (as of the remedy itself), than that of the unity of the one true Jehovah. She was here a mystery. The apostasy of worldly power and grandeur was no mystery in the escaped remnant of Babylon, and