Yet if it were what some would make it, it it were as reprobate as heathen Rome itself, what stays the judgment long ago begun? why does not the Avenging Arm, which made its first stroke ages since, deal its second and its third, till the city has fallen? why is not Rome as Sodom and Gomorrah, if there be no righteous men in it?
This then is the first remark I would make as to the fulfilment of the prophecy which is yet co come; perchance, through GOD’S mercy, it may be procrastinated even to the end, and never be fulfilled. Of this we can know nothing one way or the other.
Secondly, let it be considered, that as Babylon is a type of Rome, and of the world of sin and vanity, so Rome in turn nay be a type also, whether of some other city, or of a proud and deceiving world. The woman is said to be Babylon as well as Rome, and as she is something more than Babylon, namely, Rome, so again she may be something more than Rome, which is yet to come. Various great cities in Scripture, are made, in their ungodliness and ruin, types of the world itself. Their end is described in figures which in their fulness apply only to the end of the world; the sun and moon are said to fall, the earth to quake, and the stars to fall from heaven. As then their ruin prefigures a greater and wider judgment, so the chapters of which the text forms a part may have a further accomplishment not in Rome, but in the world itself, or some other great city to which we cannot at present apply them, or to all the great cities of the world together, and to the spirit that rules in them, their avaricious, luxurious, self dependent, irreligious spirit. And in this sense is already fulfilled a portion of the chapter before us, which does not apply to heathen Rome; I mean the description of the woman as making men drunk with her sorceries and delusions; for such, surely, nothing but an intoxication is that arrogant, ungodly, falsely liberal, and worldly spirit, which great cities spread through a country.
