What would be an image of the papacy?
Another ecclesiastical establishment clothed with similar power.

How could such an image be formed in this country?
Let the Protestant churches in our land be clothed with power to define and punish heresy, to enforce their dogmas under the pains and penalties of the civil law, and should we not have an exact representation of the papacy during the days of its supremacy?
It may be objected that whereas the papal church was comparatively a unit, and hence could act in harmony in all its departments in enforcing its dogmas, the Protestant church is so divided as to be unable to agree in regard to what doctrines shall be made imperative on the people.

We answer, there are certain points which they hold in common, and which are sufficient to form a basis of co-operation.

Chief among these may be mentioned the doctrine of the conscious state of the dead and the immortality of the soul, which is both the foundation and superstructure of spiritualism, and also the doctrine that the first day of the week is the Christian Sabbath.
It may be objected again that this view makes one of the horns, the Protestant church, finally constitute the image of the beast.

If the reader supposes that the Protestant church constitutes one of the horns of the two-horned beast, we reply that this is a conception of his own.
No such idea is here taught.