Still more intimately does Romanism spring from Bayblonish paganism. We must remember that what pagan Rome practiced was derived from Babylon. The Emperor Constantine turned the empire from the idol worship of Babylon to nominal Christianity. The more one looks into such matters, the more one is convinced of the subtility of Satan, who, finding Christianity taking root, owing to the labors of the Apostles, sought to counteract and destroy it by covering paganism with a thin veneer of Christian terms and doctrines, but paganism still at the bottom.
Sir George Sinclair, Author of Letters to Protestants of Scotland, wrote: " Romanism is a refined system of Christianized heathenism, and chiefly differs from its prototype in being more treacherous, more cruel, more dangerous, more intolerant " (First Series, p. 121).
This is the studied opinion of a writer of great ability and industry. The Author of The Two Babylons endorses this opinion. He writes: " Popery boasts of being the ' old religion ': and truly from what we have seen, it appears that it is ancient indeed. It can trace its lineage far beyond the era of Christianity, back over 4,000 years, to near the period of the Flood, and the building of the Tower of Babel " (The Two BabytIons. Hyslop, p. 287).
The late Revd. Alexander Hyslop's book is monumental, and exhibits a vast amount of careful research. His facts can be relied upon. He has patiently shown in a most convincing fashion that such items of Romish doctrine as baptismal regeneration, justification by works, penance as a satisfaction of God's justice, the unbloody sacrifice of the mass, extreme unction, purgatory, prayers for the dead, were all derived from Babylon. It is extraordinary that Rome should claim that Peter's sending the salutation of the Church at Babylon was a cryptic allusion to Rome. Perhaps there was some truth in this, but it was spirituually, and not geographically.
It is recorded of Linacre, a distinguished physician in the reign of Henry VIII, a bigoted Romanist, that on studying the New Testament for the first time, after a while he tossed the book impatiently from him, and with a great oath exclaimed, " Either this book is not true or we are not Christians." It has been truly said that in passing from the New Testament to the Roman Catholic Breviary (outside the Holy Scriptures incorporated in it), you pass from light to darkness.
Papal Rome assimilated the image worship of pagan Rome. Temples dedicated to heathen deities were taken over and rededicated to St. Peter, St. Paul, etc. Venus was changed to the Virgin Mary. The image of Christ replaced Jupiter.