Monster that thou sawest, was and is not, and shall ascend out of the abyss, and go into perdition.” Again, mention is made of “the Beast that was, and is not, and yet is.” Again, we are expressly told that the ten kings and the empire shall rise together; the kings appearing at the time of the monster’s resurrection, not in its languid and torpid state. “The ten kings ...... have received no kingdom as yet, but receive power as kings one hour with the beast.” It then, the Roman power is still prostrate, the ten kings have not come; and if the ten kings have not come, the destined destroyers of the woman, the full judgments upon Rome, have not yet come.
Thus the full measure of judgment has not fallen upon Rome; yet her sufferings, and the sufferings of her empire, have been very severe. St. Peter seems to predict them, in his First Epistle, as then impending. He seems to imply, that CHRIST’S visitation, which was then just occurring, was no local or momentary vengeance upon one people or city, but a solemn and extended judgment of the whole earth, though beginning at Jerusalem. “The time is come,” he says, “when judgment must begin at the house of GOD (at the sacred city); and, if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the Gospel of GOD? And if the righteous scarcely be saved” (i. e. the remnant who should go forth of Zion, according to the prophecy, that chosen seed in the Jewish Church which received CHRIST when He came, and took the new name of Christians, and shot forth and grew far and wide into a fresh Church, or, in other words, the elect whom our SAVIOUR speaks of as being involved in all the troubles and judgments of the devoted people, yet carried safely through); “if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear,” the inhabitants of the world at large?
Here is intimation of the presence of a fearful scourge, which was then going over all the ungodly world, beginning at apostate Jerusalem, and punishing it. Such was the case: vengeance first fell upon the once holy city, which was destroyed by the Romans: it proceeded next against the executioners themselves. The empire was disorganized, and broken to pieces with dissensions and insurrections,
