they reprove the idolatry of their own countrymen, the bishop of Meaux would himself acknowledge, that his objection falls to the ground.

Now such a reason offers itself to us in the EMBLEM, under which St. John chooses to represent his idolatrous society. This emblem is, Babylon; a Pagan idolatrous city; to which the idea of fornication may be colourably, and hath, in fact, been, applied, in order to express the transgression of the law of nature, in its idolatrous worship: but to such a city, adultery, could in no proper sense, be applied; because, it had never entered into any close engagement, or marriage-contract, as it were, with the God of heaven.

This being admitted, we see the reason, why Rome Christian is taxed as a whore simply, and not as an adulteress. For what had been improperly said of the type, cannot, on the principles of decorum, be transferred to the antitype. If Babylon be only a harlot, she is a harlot still, and nothing more, when she stands for Rome, whether Pagan, or Christian. The concinnity of the figure, and the just correspondence of the thing signified to the sign, demands the observance of this rule; which cannot be violated without manifest absurdity and confusion.

* Isaiah xxiii. 16,17. Nahum iii. 4.

"But why then, it is asked, was such an emblem employed? Why was not Jerusalem, or Samaria (of which adultery might be predicated) rather chosen, than Babylon, for the type, or representation of idolatrous Christian Rome ?"

The reason, again, is obvious. It was, because Babylon was the first of all idolatrous cities; and the fittest* to emblematize the enormous guilt, or to set in full light the extensive influence, of idolatrous Rome. For each, in its turn, was the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth; the former corrupting the heathen world with her fornication, and the latter, the Christian.

When therefore for this, or the like reason, Babylon was made the emblem of Christian Rome, the prophet was obliged to retain the idea of fornication, only, and not to interpose that of adultery, through the whole tenour of his application.

It may, further, be worth observing, that Pagan idolatry is, for the most part, exposed by the ancient prophets under the notion of LIES, or LYING

-For it is the land of graven images, and they are mad upon their idols, Jer. 1. 38. Again: Babylon hath been a golden cup in the Lord's hand, that made all the earth drunken: the nations have drunken of her wine, therefore the nations are mad, Jer. li. 7. Compare Rev. xviithe inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication.

VANITIES;* and very rarely, I think in no more than one or two short passages, under that of for. nication. For vague lust was so generally practised in the heathen world, and the law of nature, condemning that vice, so little known, or respected by it, that the metaphor would not have conveyed to a Pagan idolater the atrocious nature of his crime. The Mosaic law, on the other hand, interdicting fornication in the severest terms, and requiring that there should be no whore of the daughters of Israel,† the guilt of idolatry was very forcibly, as well as naturally, represented to a Jew, under that idea.

1

Accordingly, we find, that the prophets every where, and in whole pages, employ this figure, when they address themselves to Jewish idolaters. Whence it may seem, that, although there be suffi cient authorities to justify the prophet St. John in considering his emblematic Babylon under the idea of a harlot, yet he would not have prosecuted even this inferior charge of fornication so far as he has done, and in so many parts of his prophecy, if his purpose had not been to apply it to a believing, and not a Pagan city. If the mystical Babylon be Christian Rome, we see the force and propriety of this representation; which had clearly been less

* Mr. Mede. Works, p. 49.

† Deut. xxiii. 17.

apt, if Pagan Rome, according to the bishop of Meaux, had been intended by the prophet.

We see then, in both ways, why Rome is not an adultress in the Revelations; and why she is so emphatically, a harlot. The type employed forbad the former charge, though the antitype be Rome Christian: The latter charge had not been so much laboured, if the antitype had been Rome Pagan.

Thus, the edge of this acute objection is entirely taken off, and the execution, it was to make on the Protestant system, prevented.

To return, now, to the consideration of our three marks. These marks, it is said, agree to so many other powers, besides that of the Papacy, that they cannot be made the peculiar, distinctive characters of Christian Rome. And, without doubt, considered merely in themselves, they cannot. But, having already understood that the power, thus stigmatized, is a power seated in the seven-hilled city, and that too, an ecclesiastical power, one sees clearly that, if the prophecies have hitherto received their accomplishment in any degree, these marks can only be sought in Papal Rome, and must be the proper, exclusive characters of that power. I say, one sees this; but, it must be owned, not without

amazement, That a species of government, calling itself Christian, and professing to model itself on the example of the Lamb, on the pure and simple principles of the Gospel, should yet be all over stained with those specific vices, which christianity most abhors-the utmost pride of secular domination-the most relentless zeal against the rights of conscience—and, what is still more incredible, the most blasphemous idolatry. The accumulated infamy of these crimes struck the prophet, St. John, so forcibly, that, on the sight of this portentous monster, exhibited to him in the vision, he wondered, as himself expresses it, with great admiration.*

But, strange as this vision appeared to the sacred prophet, the Papal history is found to realize all the wonders of it: And, backward as we may be to interpret this vision of a church, professedly Christian, that church herself is so little scandalized at the imputation of these crimes, that she is ready to avow them all; the two first, directly and openly; and the last, when set in a certain light, and explained in her own manner. In short, she prides herself in the extent of her sway,t and the

* Rev. xvii. 6. ἐθαύμασα θαῦμα μέγα.

† Not held of the civil power, or acknowledged to be so held, but usurped upon it, and insolently directed against it ; as is well known from ecclesiastical history. The pope is not Antichrist: God forbid (says the good abbe Fleury, with a zeal becoming a mem