Behold once more. What is the end?

Look upward: Heaven opens its golden portals to receive the Bride.

Look downward: Earth opens its dark abyss to engulf the Harlot.

How striking * is this contrast !

And what is the result?

As the first Woman, the Bride, the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, represents the faithful Church, so the second Woman, the Harlot, the great City, Babylon, represents a faithless Church.

The question now is,- What Church?

* It is even still more striking in the original; where it is aided by an exact correspondence of syllables and accents. On one side is, Ἡ ΠΟΡΝΗ ΚΑΙ ΤΟ ΘΗΡΙΟΝ,

on the other,

Η ΝΥΜΦΗ ΚΑΙ ΤΟ 'ΑΡΝΙΟΝ.

See Rev. xxi. 2. 9. xxii. 7.

If any one can have any doubt of St. John's intention to identify the Woman on the Beast with a faithless Church, let him read the following description :καὶ ἦλθεν εἷς ἐκ τῶν ἑπτὰ ἀγγέλων τῶν ἐχόντων τὰς ἑπτὰ φιάλας, καὶ ἐλάλησε μετ ̓ ἐμοῦ λέγων, Δεῦρο δείξω σοι τὸ κρῖμα τῆς πόρνης τῆς μεγάλης Καὶ ἀπήνεγκέ με εἰς ἔρημον ἐν πνεύματι καὶ εἶδον γυναῖκα καθημένην ἐπὶ θηρίον κοκκινόν. (Rev. xvii. 1. 3.)

And then let him compare it with the words which describe the faithful Church in glory :—Καὶ ἦλθεν εἷς ἐκ τῶν ἑπτὰ ἀγγέλων τῶν ἐχόντων τὰς ἑπτὰ φιάλας, . . . καὶ ἐλάλησε μετ' ἐμοῦ λέγων, Δεῦρο δείξω σοι τὴν νύμφην τοῦ ἀρνίου τὴν γυναῖκα. Καὶ ἀπήνεγκέ με ἐν πνεύματι ἐπ ̓ ὄρος μέγα καὶ ὑψηλὸν καὶ ἔδειξε μοι τὴν πόλιν τὴν ἁγίαν Ἱερουσαλήμ. (Rev. xxi. 9, 10.)

At this point all the evidence comes in which was laid before you in the last Discourse. It was then proved that the City on seven hills-the City which reigned in St. John's age-the City called Babylon in the Apocalypse, is the City of Rome.

The answer, therefore, is: The Woman represents the faithless Church in the City of Rome.

Is this result confirmed by facts? Let us enquire. The Woman enthroned on the Beast holds a golden cup in her hand, with which she intoxicates the World.

Does this apply to the Church of Rome?

I. Almighty God has distinguished men from the brute creation by the endowments of Reason and of Conscience; and He commands men to use them, and not to give them away. But the Church of Rome requires men to sacrifice them to her will. And then she pours into their minds a delirious draught of strange doctrines, with which she makes their heads dizzy, and their eyes to swim, and their feet to stagger; and this swoon-like phrenzy she calls Faith!

II. Again: the Woman is represented as drunken with the blood of Saints. And when I saw her, says St. John, I wondered with great admiration *.

Now, if the Woman were heathen Rome, past or to come, why should St. John wonder? It is no wonderful thing that a heathen city should persecute the Christian Church. St. John had seen the blood of

*Rev. xvii. 6.

a

Christians spilt by imperial Rome. She had beheaded St. Paul, and had crucified St. Peter. He himself had been a martyr in will*, and was now an exile † by her cruelty. Therefore he could never have wondered with great admiration, if the Woman was heathen Rome. But that a Christian Church Church calling herself the "Mother of Christendom," "the spiritual Sion," "the Catholic Church" -should be drunken with the blood of the Saints, this was indeed a prodigy; and at such a spectacle as that well might St. John have wondered with great admiration.

Has, then, the Church of Rome stained herself with the blood of Christians?

Alas! has she not erected the prisons, and prepared the rack, and lighted the fires, of what she calls "the Holy Office of the Inquisition" in Italy, Spain, America, and India? Does she not at this day laud one of her canonized Popes, Pius the Fifth, in her Breviary, as an inflexible Inquisitor? Has she not engraven the massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day on her own coins §, and represented it as a work done by an Angel from heaven? Did not her Pontiff go

* Tertullian de Præscr. xxxvi. Hieron. adv. Jovin. c. xiv. Rev. i. 9. Tertullian 1.c. Origen ad Matth. p. 417. Euseb. Chron. Domit. xiv. H. E. iii. 18. Hieron. Scr. Eccl. in Joanne.

Breviar. Rom. v. Maii, ed. Ratisbon. 1840; and p. 662, ed. Paris, 1842.

§ Gregorii XIII. Numismata Pontif. p. 87, ed. Paris, 1679.

publicly to Church to return thanks to God for that savage and treacherous deed *?

What would St. John have said to this? Would he not have justly wondered with great admiration, that such acts should be done under the auspices of one who calls himself the successor of St. Peter, and the Vicar of Jesus Christ?

III. Again: the Woman is represented as enticing the Kings of the Earth to commit fornication with her; and they are said to give their power and strength to the Beast ‡, on which she sits.

This assuredly does not apply to heathen Rome. She received the gods of all Nations into her Pantheon. Even the reptile deities of Egypt found a place there. She would have opened wide her doors to Christianity, if Christianity had been content to be enshrined with Heathenism.

But these words of the Apocalypse are strikingly characteristic of Papal Rome. She has trafficked and tampered with all the Kings and Nations of the Earth.

In the words of the immortal Hooker §, "she hath fawned upon Kings and Princes, and by spiritual cozenage hath made them sell their lawful authority for empty titles." Yes, she has caressed and cajoled them with amatory gifts of flowers, pictures, and trinkets, beads and relics, crucifixes and agnus

* See Lord Clarendon's Religion and Polity, p. 427.

Rev. xvii. 2. xviii. 3. § Hooker, Serm. v. 15.

Rev. xvii. 13.

Deis, and consecrated plumes and banners. She has drenched and drugged their senses with love-potions of bewitching smiles and fascinating words; and has thus beguiled them of their faith, their courage, and their power.

Like another Delilah, she has made the Samsons of this world to sleep softly in her lap*. She has then shorn them of their strength. And she has captivated, and still captivates, the affections of their Prelates and Clergy, by entangling them in the strong and subtle meshes of Oaths of vassalage to herself, and has thus stolen the hearts of subjects from their Sovereigns, and has made Kingdoms to hang upon her lips for the loyalty of their People; and so in her dream of universal Empire she has made the World a fief of Rome.

Yes, my brethren, and such is the spell with which she still enchains Nations, that even they who are excommunicated by her, and whose heroic VirginQueen was anathematized by her as an Usurpert, and whose land is now partitioned out into Papal Dioceses, as if it were a Roman Province, and the names of whose greatest Cities are given away by her as if they were Italian villages, are fain to seek intercourse with her without requiring any retractation of the unrighteous oaths which she imposes on English subjects, or any revocation of the imprecatory ana

* Judges xvi. 19.

See the Bull Regnans in excelsis of Pius V. against Queen Elizabeth. Bullar. Rom. vii. p. 99.