LJ 54, 55 - Babylon

LJ 54, 55
By Babylon are meant all who wish to have dominion by religion.
. . . It should be known that the church becomes Babylonia,
when charity and faith cease,
and the love of self begins to rule in their place;
for this love
in proportion as it is unchecked,
rushes on, aiming to dominate
not merely over all whom it can subject to itself on earth,
but even over heaven;
nor does it rest there,
but it climbs the very throne of God,
and transfers to itself His Divine power.
. . . it did this, even before the Lord's coming . . ..
. . . that Babylonia was destroyed by the Lord
when He was in the world . . ..

But Babylon treated of in the Apocalypse,
is the Babylon of this day,
which arose after the Lord's coming,
and is known to be with the Papists.
This Babylon is more pernicious and more heinous
than that which existed before the Lord's coming,
because it profanes
the interior goods and truths of the church,
which the Lord revealed to the world,
when He revealed Himself.
How pernicious, how inwardly heinous it is:
may appear from the following summary.
-- They acknowledge and adore the Lord
apart from all power of saving:
-- they entirely separate His Divine from His Human,
and transfer to themselves His Divine power,
which belonged to His Human;
-- for they remit sins; they send to heaven; they cast into hell;
-- they save whom they will; they sell salvation . . ..
-- They not only adulterate and falsify the Word,
but even take it away from the people,
lest they should enter into the smallest light of truth;
and not satisfied with this, they moreover annihilate it,
acknowledging the Divine in the decrees of Rome,
superior to the Divine in the Word;
so that they exclude all from the way to heaven;
for the acknowledgment of the Lord,
faith in Him, and love to Him,
are the way to heaven;
and the Word is what teaches the way:
so it is, that without the Lord,
by means of the Word,
there is no salvation.
. . . From this summary it may appear
that they have no church there, but Babylon;
for the church is where the Lord Himself is worshiped,
and where the Word is read.