cause Pagan Rome was never burned by the Goths) has been found again, after its sacking by Genseric and Totila; Bishop Walmesley himself being judge, who exults in the fact. Therefore ancient Rome, as contradistinguished from Papal Rome, cannot be the Babylon of the Apocalypse.

2. The whole character, indeed, of the harlot forbids us to identify her with Rome Pagan.

The harlot is described, not only as being a teacher of idolatry in general, but specially as tempting the ten Gothic kingdoms to participate in her spiritual fornication'. But Rome Pagan, by readily naturalising the gods of the conquered nations, shewed herself to be a learner rather than a teacher of idolatry and, in point of historical fact, she most assuredly never induced the ten Gothic kingdoms to adopt her own peculiar superstition, because Rome had ceased to be Pagan before those ten kingdoms were erected upon the platform of the Western Empire. Therefore the harlot cannot be Rome Pagan.

The harlot is described, as flourishing synchronically with those ten horns or kingdoms, which Bishop Walmesley himself allows to be the ten Gothic kingdoms founded in the fifth and sixth centuries for they are said to give their power to the beast which she rides and afterward to hate and pillage her; which they could not do, unless they were her contemporaries. But Rome Pagan did 1 Rev. xviii. 2, 4, 5.

2 Rev. xvii. 12, 13, 16, 17.

not flourish synchronically with the ten Gothic king→ doms because Rome had ceased to be Pagan, before even the first of those kingdoms was founded. Therefore, again, the harlot cannot be Rome Pagan.

The harlot excites the exceeding great wonder of St. John, when he beholds her drunken with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the witnesses of Jesus'. But, if the harlot had been the familiar symbol of Rome Pagan, there was nothing in this circumstance which could have occasioned any great astonishment to an individual who had already beheld the persecutions set on foot by that heathen sovereignty. Therefore, lastly, the harlot cannot be Rome Pagan.

We now return, by way of winding up this part of the argument, to the original syllogism, with which we first set out; varying it only, from the hypothetical, to the positive, form.

The apocalyptic harlot, by the consent both of Papists and of Protestants, is Rome. But, if she be Rome, she must be, either Rome Pagan or Rome Papal. It has been demonstrated, however, that she cannot be the former. Therefore she must be the latter.

3. With this conclusion, every circumstance in her character will be found minutely to correspond.

(1.) The harlot is said to sit upon the many waters or to float upon the surface of the mighty abyss: where (so far as the poetical machinery

1 Rev. xvii. 6.

of the image is concerned) St. John beholds her from the wilderness of Judea, whither he had been conveyed in the spirit.

These many waters, or this aquatic congeries of the great deep, out of which, we are told, the slain beast will reascend under his eighth king, are explained by the angel to mean peoples and multitudes and nations and tongues'. Hence, the sitting of the harlot upon the many waters is virtually equivalent to her sitting upon the beast. For the beast symbolises the Roman Empire: and the many waters, though they comprehend all nations in communion with the harlot, specially typify the various Gothic tribes among which the Western Empire has been partitioned 2.

Such being the case, we have here an accurate picture of Rome Papal spiritually presiding over the several nations which jointly constitute the ecclesiastical subjects of the Papal Empire.

(2.) The harlot is the symbol of a Power, with

Rev. xvii. 15.

* The arrangement of the compound symbol of the woman and the beast furnishes an additional proof, that my principle of explaining the seventh head of the beast homogeneously with his six first heads is just and well founded. If the woman, who rides the beast, be the Papacy; it is incongruous, that the seventh head of the beast or the eighth king who is one of the seven should, according to the general scheme of our older protestant expositors, be the Papacy also. Such an interpretation entirely violates the zoological propriety of the hieroglyphic: for it makes the rider identical with a head of the animal which she herself rides.

whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and with whose infatuating cup all the inhabitants of the earth have been intoxicated.

The kings of the earth are the representatives of the ten Gothic kings, by whom the Roman earth was partitioned: the inhabitants of the earth are the subject multitudes of that Roman platform upon which the ten kingdoms were erected: and spiritual fornication, attended with drunkenness, is a sottish idolatrous apostasy from sound religion. Hence, the purport of the symbolical prophecy will be this. The ten Gothic kingdoms founded upon the territory of the Roman Empire, and all the multitudes comprehended within their limits from the prince to the peasant, will be seduced into an idolatrous apostasy from the genuine Gospel through the arts and blandishments of Papal Rome.

Upon this prediction it is superfluous to offer any remark faithful history affords the best com

ment.

(3.) The harlot, to the utter amazement of St. John, appears even brutally intoxicated with the blood of the saints and witnesses of Jesus.

As St. John, from the books of the ancient prophets, well knew, that a harlot was the type of an apostate Church'; as he further knew, that the harlot before him must be the type of an apostate Christian Church, because Israel was now no longer the Church of the Lord; and as he lastly knew,

1 See Ezek. xvi. and xxiii.

from the circumstances of the woman sitting upon the seven hills of Rome and being the great city which ruled over the kings of the earth, that she must be the Christian Church of Rome, then flourishing in evangelical simplicity, but hereafter about to lapse into apostasy and active persecution of Christ's people we may readily perceive the reason, why, at such a sight, he should have wondered with great admiration. Had the woman been the recognised symbol of Pagan Rome, the Apostle might have grieved at her cruelty, but he could not have wondered: for pagan persecution. was then too familiar to excite any amazement. But, when he saw a Church of Christ thus fallen from her high spiritual estate, thus apostate, thus corrupt, thus persecuting the faithful with even more bitterness than the very heathen themselves: well might he wonder with exceeding great admiration. To a primitive believer, the thing would appear, as it were, impossible: and St. John, who doubtless (like the other prophets) fully understood the general meaning of his own symbolical language, was probably at a loss to conceive, how in a professed Church of his meek and lowly and beneficent Master his prediction could ever be accomplished.

(4.) Upon the forehead of the harlot was written: Mystery; Babylon the great, the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth.

Though it is readily allowed by all, whether Papists or Protestants, that Babylon is not the real, but only the parabolical, name of the harlot yet