What is Popery?

"The Reverend Alexander Hislop, author of the famous work, “The Two Babylons,” first published in 1853, wrote:

"It has been known all along that Popery was baptized Paganism; but God is now making it manifest that the

Paganism which Rome has baptized is, in all its essential elements, the very Paganism which prevailed in the ancient literal Babylon, . . . the Providence of God, conspiring with the Word of God, by light pouring in from all quarters, makes it more and more evident that Rome is in very deed the Babylon of the Apocalypse; that the essential character of her system, the grand objects of her worship, her festivals, her doctrine and discipline, her rites and ceremonies, her priesthood and their orders, have all been derived from ancient Babylon; and, finally, that the Pope himself is truly and properly the lineal representative of Belshazzar. --her presumptuous boast, that she is the mother and mistress of all churches—the one Catholic Church, out of whose pale there is no salvation. If ever there was excuse for such a mode of dealing with her, that excuse will hold no longer. If the position I have laid down can be maintained, she must be stripped of the name of a Christian Church altogether; for if it was a Church of Christ that was convened on that night, when the pontiff-king of Babylon, in the midst of his thousand lords, 'praised the gods of gold, and of silver, and of wood, and of stone' (Daniel 5:4), then the Church of Rome is entitled to the name of a Christian Church; but not otherwise." (The Two Babylons, pp. 2–3).

Some of the points Hislop argues are that mariolatry originates in the Babylonian worship of Semiramis, and that the worship of the mother and child also originates with the Babylonian worship of Semiramis and her supposed god-child, Tammuz, that she immaculately conceived after the death of her husband, Nimrod. (In Ezekiel 8:14, we see that this Babylonish worship being embraced by some Israelite women. Then he brought me to the entrance of the north gate of the house of the Lord, and I saw women sitting there, mourning the god Tammuz.)." 

DavidRead/Fulcrum7