A journalist being called to task for applying the name "Mother of Harlots" to Papacy, and thus implying that all Protestant sects as systems are implicated as harlot-daughters defends himself thus:
"As the individual members of the church of Christ cannot be joined to the world without being counted by the word of God as adulterers against him, so also the church as a body cannot be joined in any way to the power of the world without likewise being declared by the word of God an adulteress and a harlot.
"Let not the professed Protestant churches blame us for this application of the scripture. They themselves have acknowledged the church of Rome as their mother, and they need not blame us if we call attention to the Scripture description of the family. In the New York Evangelist of February 9, 1888, Rev. Charles W. Shields, D.D., of Princeton [R1215 : page 8] College, in proving that it would never do, in the re-union of Christendom, to forbid a doctrine of Apostolic Succession, said:—'You would exclude the Roman Catholic church, the mother of us all, the church of scholars and saints....You would exclude also the Protestant Episcopal Church, the beautiful daughter of a beautiful mother.'"