come them, in turning their hearts, and converting them into his votaries. And in effect, some time after they had settled themselves in the Roman provinces, a part of them were destroyed in the wars that ensued, and the rest gradually abjured their idolatry and errors, the pagans becoming Christians, and the Arians and other heretics going over to the Catholics. Among other writers, thus speaks Orosius, an historian of that age: "Who knows but Providence thus permitted the barbarians to become masters of the Roman provinces, with a view to effect their salvation? Do not we see that the churches of Christ, both in the eastern and western parts, are filled with Huns, with Suevi, with Vandals, with Burgundians, and with divers other people, who have been converted to the faith." Such was the victory of the Lamb; for Christ is Lord of lords, and King of kings: he is a Sovereign over all kingdoms and states: he is Master of the human mind, and he can call to the faith whom he pleases. To work the conversion of those people, he employed his servants, the ministers of his Church, whom he called to that function, elected them or culled them out of the whole body of his people for that purpose, and they approved themselves faithful to their charge. Incredible indeed was the zeal exerted by the church in those times for the conversion of the above-mentioned pagans and heretics. To mention only a few instances: St. Remigius and others converted the Gauls in the fifth and sixth centuries. The Arian Visigoths in Spain were brought over to the Catholic faith about the year 600, in the reign of their king Reccared. About the same time the Saxons in Britain received the Christian doctrine from St. Austin and his companions. St. Willibrod carried the faith into Friseland; and St. Rupert and St. Boniface with his associates converted many nations of Germany in the seventh and eight centuries. 66 V. 16. And the ten horns, which thou sawest on the beast," continues the angel: "these shall hate the harlot, and shall make her desolate, and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and shall burn her with fire." Here we see the general disposition of the above-mentioned northern nations, denoted by the ten horns. They will hate the harlot, Rome, the great capital of the empire, because she has shown herself a universal domineering tyrant, and has in particular ill requited them for the important help they had lent her against her enemies. Thus stimulated with rancour and resentment, they will make her desolate, that is, they will invest her walls, they will preclude all succours both of men and provisions from her, and reduce her to the utmost state of distress. They will make her naked, by stripping her of her shining ornaments, her gaudy palaces, Egyptian obelisks, magnificent temples, theatres, triumphal arches, &c. and all her ostentatious pageantry. They will eat her flesh, by plundering her of her wealth and riches, with which she had fed herself by plundering the rest of the world. And lastly, they will burn her with fire. All which was done, as we have seen in the history above given.*-Thus was foretold by the angel, before it happened, the fate of that heathen imperial city, under the emblemn of a woman, prostituted to vice and admitting no control, because she is the empress of the world. But her jealous enemies will not rest, till they have found means to humble her pride, and to effect her ruin. They will first deprive her of every human succour and comfort, they will then strip her naked, devour her flesh, and when thus reduced to a skeleton, they will consume her by fire. That the greatest power on earth should be thus reduced and crushed by foreign barbarians, whom it had before held in contempt and neglect, may seem strange to our understanding, and not according to the standard by which we generally measure human events. But this extraordinary fact is not to be ranked in the class of common human transactions: it was conducted by another hand. V. 17. "For God hath given into their hearts, to do that which pleaseth him: that they give their kingdom to the beast, till the words of God be fulfilled." Under the divine direction, therefore, those barbarians acted in the demolition of Rome and its empire; and thus they executed what pleased him, or what he had designed. According to the decrees of his infinite wisdom and justice, the Almighty sent Nebuchodonosor to punish the guilty Jews, and Cyrus to do the same to the Babylonians. In like manner the northern nations became the instrument of his vengeance upon the Roman state for the guilt of its idolatry and persecutions. These agents had indeed no other view in what they did, than to gratify their hatred, their avarice, and other passions; and this the Almighty permitted them to compass, but for other purposes which they did not see into. But besides; in that latter period when, agreeable to the perdiction in ver. 12, they had received kingdom, that is, when they had possessed themselves of the Roman provinces, and erected them into so many * Whoever has been upon the place, has seen sufficient proof of the same, in the miserable shattered ruins of old Rome. stood by the ancient fathers and by the modern interpreters of the Catholic Church-But furthermore, V. 15. 66 And he (the angel) said to me," says St. John: "the waters which thou sawest, where the harlot sitteth, are peoples and nations and tongues." The harlot was said, v. 1, to sit upon many waters, which the angel here interprets to represent the many kingdoms, states, and countries, over which she ruled. Again, the angel tells him, that the seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sitteth, v. 9, which is to say clearly, the seven mountains on which ancient Rome was built. These hills are, the Capitoline, Palatine, Aventine, Cælius, Esqueline, Quirinal, and Viminal, some of which can scarce be deemed a part of modern Rome, as being now very little inhabited. The woman being now well known, we are next presented with a description of her person and qualities. She appears dressed in purple and scarlet, and gilt with gold and precious stones and pearls, v. 4. the imperial lady is thus decked out in the most sumptuous manner, proudly displaying the great abundance of her riches, amassed from the spoils of the whole world. Purple was the usual robe of the emperors of Rome, and her scarlet shows her stained with the blood of the martyrs. She holds in her hand a golden cup full of the abomination and filthiness of her fornication, v. 4, a common scriptural expression for the abominations of idolatry; and with these she had notoriously polluted herself. For Rome, not content with worshipping her own heathenish gods, she adopted those of all the countries and nations she subdued. She thought by this extravagant religious worship to render all the deities propitious to her, and to this she ascribed the success of her arms. "Thus it is," said the Romans, “that this city has extended her empire beyond the rising and setting sun, and beyond the bounds of the ocean, because she venerates the gods she conquers, she makes foreign deities her own, and even raises altars to those that are unknown to her." Mm. Fel. Oct. In this manner were her idolatrous abominations so multiplied, that there are said to have been 420 heathenish temples in that city. Thus writes a Roman poet. Sed quæ de septem totum circumspicit orbem Ovid. lib. 1. Trist. Rome, which from seven mountains overlooks the whole world, Is the centre of empire, and the abode of the gods." She even carried her superstition so far, lest any unknown * In the Greek text, "peoples and multitudes." god should not receive due worship, as to build a temple, which she dedicated to all the deities, calling it on that account, Pantheon, "the temple of all the gods." "This city," said St. Leo, "not knowing the Author of her elevation, while she ruled over almost all the nations of the earth, submitted to serve all their gods and she imagined herself to be the more religious, as she rejected no kind of idolatrous worship."— "Insomuch, that whatever superstitions had place in other countries, they were all carefully transplanted to Rome."Hom. I. Nat. in Ap. Petri et Pauli. In fine, such was the filthiness of her fornication, such the excess of her prostitution to idolatry, that she even deified her impious emperors, raised. statutes to them to which incense was offered, and built temples to their memories. Such was ancient Rome, the great Harlot, with whom the kings of the earth committed fornication; and they who inhabited the earth, were made drunk with the wine of her whoredom, v. 2. She was not only intoxicated herself with all the delusions of idolatry, but she offered her golden cup all round to others. The unparalleled degree of power and grandeur to which she was elevated, raised her to such a height of admiration in the eyes of all nations, that they viewed her with the utmost deference and respect, and readily embraced whatever superstition she herself followed or recommended. She had moreover the disposal of kingdoms, governments, riches, and dignities: what wonder then, if with such charms she debauched the kings and people of the earth? This same woman is farther said to carry on her forehead the following inscription: a mystery: Babylon the great, the mother of the fornications, and the abominations of the earth, v. 5. Here is a mystery, or an enigma to be unravelled, viz. Babylon the great, the mother of the fornications, and the abominations of the earth. The reader, we apprehend, is already prepared in great measure for the solving of this enigma. Babylon the great, is the great imperial city of pagan Rome. And she is the woman, as we have just above shown, who is the mother of the fornications and abominations of the earth. This is the explanation of the proposed mystery. But to make it more clear, that by Babylon the great is here meant idolatrous Rome, we appeal to the angel's words: The woman which thou sawest, is the great city, which hath kingdoms over the kings of the earth, v. 18.; which, as we have before observed, plainly points out the great ancient city of Rome, that domineered over the greatest part of the kingdoms of the then known world. The woman therefore is the image of that city, and in the inscription on her forehead she is styled Babylon the great: consequently Babylon the great, is here the same with the city of Rome. In the primitive ages this figurative name of Babylon was frequently given to heathen Rome by the Christians, on account of the resemblance of the characters of those two cities, for their idolatry, and for their oppressing, the one the Jews, the other the Christians. St. Peter dates his first letter from Babylon, 1 Pet. v. 13, that is, from Rome, as St. Jerom and Eusebius tell us. "The appellation of Babylon," said Tertullian, "is used by St. John for the city of Rome, because she resembles ancient Babylon, in the extent of her walls, in her haughtiness on account of her dominion, and in persecuting the saints." Lib. Adv. Jud. "Rome is a second Babylon," says also St. Austin, “and a daughter of the ancient Babylon," De Civit, lib. 22. c. 18. Babylon the great is therefore sufficiently distinguished: but her character is completed, and she appears in plain colours, in what follows: "And I saw," says St. John, "the woman drunk with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus," v. 6. This inhuman woman, this impious Jezabel, this cruel persecutrix, has drenched herself with so much Christian blood, which she has spilt, that she appears to be drunk with it. Who is this but idolatrous persecuting Rome? Innumerable were the martyrs she put to death, throughout the vast extent of her dominions, and even in her own bosom, the city itself. Innumerable likewise were the other saints or holy confessors, who, though not slain, were by her condemned to lose some of their limbs, and had an eye bored out, their tongues plucked away, or the sinews of a leg or a thigh cut, &c. or in fine, were put to tortures that tore away their flesh and drained their blood. We have seen the account of ten dreadful persecutions, which swept away an infinite multitude of Christians; and all these persecutions were the work of the Roman emperors, and their substitutes in the provinces. It is then apparent who the woman is, that was seen drunk with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. After the description of the woman, we are then favoured with an account of the beast that carries her, v. 7. The woman being the image of the city of Rome, the beast on which she sits, naturally represents the Roman empire. And as the woman was styled the mother of fornication or idolatry; conse |