The license and indulgence permitted--even arranged for, in the first instance--by the apostate church with a view to the more perfect enslavement of the world's worshippers, had brought forth a full harvest of evil. The effect of license is disorder, and presently anarchy. For three-years-and-a-half the apostate church had grown in assumption and in all abominations, and the effects of the license permitted, and _fearfully abused_, had produced a condition of things which became such an intolerable burden, that the time had become ripe for the authority in all this, to be destroyed. The apostate church was the cause and the authority for all the excess of evil of the times, hence the ten-kingdomed confederacy which had at first buttressed the impious system, now, by united action, destroyed it. "_And the ten horns which thou sawest, and the Beast, these shall hate the harlot, and shall make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and shall BURN HER UTTERLY WITH FIRE. For God did put in their hearts to do His mind, AND TO COME TO ONE MIND, and to give their Kingdom unto the Beast, until the words of God shall be accomplished._" (Rev. 17:16-17) "Man is a religious animal!" And Lucien Apleon, endowed with special wisdom of his father and Master--the Devil--recognized this necessity for a religion from the outset of his career. The Devil has always recognized religion, encouraged it, and has even instigated it in a hundred forms, during the last 6,000 years. Only every effort of his Satanic power and force has been directed towards the luring of the religious soul _away from God_. The Devil is a Ritualist! He loves to entangle souls in a ritual, and the more sensuous the ritual, the better he is pleased, because such sensuousness and ritualism ministers to the "flesh," and while men and women's religion is fleshly, it cannot be spiritual. And the FATHER seeketh spiritual worshippers, "for they that worship Him, must worship Him in Spirit and in Truth." Then, too, Satan knows that all religiousness that is of the "flesh," tends to make its devotees anxious for the development of a good-self within them, while true, spiritual life _in Christ_, leads to the continual consciousness that "_in me, that is IN MY FLESH, dwelleth no good thing_."