earth. These ten kings, however, desolate her: the will at this time acts in them, not in the beast—they are the prominent and existing actors, that they may give their power to the beast, whose final character and end we have already seen. This goes on “until the words of God shall be fulfilled.” The woman, not the whore, is then designated as that great city which reigneth over the kings of the earth (the predominant associated power of the earth):[1] but if acting by corrupt religion, not doing so here as a false prophet, but as a city—a system in her secular, carnal and worldly and wealthy character—yet that secularity and wealth, the meretricious secularity[2] and wealth of an active, cor-
- ↑ Such as Rome, for example, before even Imperial times.
- ↑ I know that many take Babylon as merely a great worldly system. That it is a great worldly system is freely admitted; but the exclusion of the ecclesiastical character in this place seems to me a great error: it is the virus of her active will in this place, though clothed with the world. She is not viewed here as the city of the apostate king at all, though in the worldly sense, she may be the beginning of his kingdom. He comes in here as the eighth head of the beast, supplanting the woman. The kings lay her waste to give their power to him; for power, not wealth, is the last form of evil presented, and that against the Lamb, which is true, active rebellion, and more than mere apostasy. God therefore judges Babylon; and the destroyers of her wealth and importance are those who give their kingdom to the beast: thereupon and then, the war against the Lamb comes. I have no doubt the
