the Patmos prisoner of Domitian. That the church which the apostle watched over, should assume this form was a mystery indeed, ruling that which he was suffering under, as a poor despised follower of the crucified Jesus, and corrupting a world of which the church properly was the only true light. She was the mother of the abominations of the earth; but her sway was over the many waters, peoples, and tongues, and nations, and languages. Rome, I cannot help believing, was the centre of this system. The golden cup was in the whore’s hand, not she a golden cup in the Lord’s;—she governed and rode the ten-horned beast, that was her long general character, but not her final one: she became the prey and spoil of the kings which had their power with the beast. They gave their power not to her any longer, but to him. In another character and under another form, she doubtless guided the beast himself; but the power of the ten horns was given to him. She, not the beast, was drunk with the blood of the saints, and that, as seen sitting, in her full ease and comfort there: and this was matter of deep astonishment to the apostle, that she who connected herself in his mind with such a character and pretension, should be such. Thus far the vision: but the interpretation follows, and, as has been
