ast--Catholicism. That
the papacy is symbolized in chapter 17 by the corrupt whore sitting
on the ten-horned beast, is too plain to need any particular
demonstration. The other division of the apostasy is included under
the term "harlots," the daughters of the "mother" church. In our
interpretation of chapter 14 we showed that the angel clearly
applied the term Babylon to the worshipers of the second
beast--Protestantism--as well as to those of the first beast.
Therefore we must regard Babylon as a general term denoting the whole
city of religious confusion, the mother and her harlot daughters being
simply specific divisions.

[Sidenote: Testimony of commentators]

Many commentators, even Protestant commentators, have been frank
enough to admit the real application and force of these symbols of
Revelation as applying to both Catholicism and Protestantism. Auberlen
asserts that "'harlot' means, in the Old and New Testaments, the
apostate church of God."--Prophecies of Daniel and the Revelation,
p. 278. Again, he says, "Not simply Rome, but Christendom as a whole,
even as Israel as a whole, has become a harlot. The true believers are
hidden and dispersed."--Ibid., p. 290. While it may not be exactly in
accordance with the Scriptures to speak of the true church of God as
being apostate, yet in a sense it is true, for a large part of those
who originally constituted the church of God actually did apostatize,
until a false church assumed almost universal sway and divers forms
of error prevailed, practically eclipsing, for a long period, the true
church of God on earth. Auberlen stated his conclusion in these words:
"Notwithstanding the universal character of the harlot, it remains
true that the Roman and Greek churches are in a more peculiar sense
the harlot than the Evangelical Protestant."--P. 294.

In the well-known Commentary by Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown, the Rev.
A.R. Fausset, writing on Rev. 17:2, says of the harlot: "It can not be
Pagan Rome but Papal Rome, if a particular seat of error be meant,
but I am inclined to think that the judgment (chap. 18:2) and the
spiritual fornication (chap. 18:3), though finding their culmination
in Rome, are not restricted to it, but comprise the whole apostate
church--Roman, Greek, and even Protestant, so far as it has been
seduced from its 'first love' to Christ, the heavenly Bridegroom, and
given its affections to worldly pomps and idols."

William Kincaid, in Bible Doctrin