_We are now_ under the ministry of this _second_ "angel." The revival effected by the first angel had greatly declined before the second made his appearance; and all persons of intelligence and spiritual discernment in our day, lament the visible decline in practical godliness, arising from indifference to divine truth. Most professing Christians, including the descendants of the martyrs, are "willingly ignorant" of the attainments and sufferings of their illustrious predecessors. The work of reformation to be accomplished by the second angel, we suppose to have been completed about the middle of the seventeenth century. Since that period his work appears from history to consist in testifying against defection from the reformation which had been reached. The "great city" is to fall "because she made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication." She is "spiritually called Sodom and Egypt," neither of which was a church any more than Babylon. These were all heathen communities, never _married_ to the Lord; therefore Babylon is not here charged as an adulteress, but with _fornication_. The nations are her paramours. Her wine is intoxicating. It deranges the intellect and stupifies the conscience. Will any reasoning prevail with a drunken man? An active politician is proverbially unscrupulous, and proof against the law of God. There is, however, "wrath" in this cup. Those who refuse to "kiss the Son" must feel the weight of his iron rod. (Ps. ii. 9, 12; lxxv. 8.)