from that office and station in the Church, reformed by the force of their preaching, which they had obtained for a while, whether that may be joined with corporeal death or otherwise; so that the prophetic life which they had lived till that time, should from thence continue no longer, and that they should no more exercise their offices. By which, at the same time, it necessarily follows, that the columns being withdrawn, and the false prophets of the beast substituted in the place of the prophets of Christ, the whole polity of the reformed Church, as widely as this may happen, should fall to the ground. Which, whether it will come to pass sooner or later, He only knows, in whose hands are the times and

seasons.

In the mean time, lest any one should possibly be deceived, there is one thing to be accurately attended to, that this last war of the beast is not of the same kind with that which he had hitherto waged against the assembly of the saints, (of which indeed we shall speak in the history of the beast, c. xiii.) "that it was given him to make war upon the saints, and to overcome them;" but altogether of a different character. For why should that be related as peculiar to the last times of the beast, which if not from his first rise, at least from his acme, had been common to him? The war which the beast waged against the saints univer

sally, is one; that which he wages in his last state, is another; namely, with the prophets who had begun to lay aside their prophetic lamentations with their sackcloth; that is, with the heads of the Church, reformed from his party. This is still more manifest from the different event of one war from the other; the former, indeed, prosperous, the latter very unfortunate. By the former, the beast obtained power over every tribe and tongue, and nation, &c. ; by the latter he draws down upon himself a sudden and fatal destruction, as we shall see in the text. "And their dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great city, which is spiritually called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified." That city surnamed great, is Rome, so called, not so much with a view to its size, as because it was the queen of other cities, according to that saying of the angel, c. xvii., "The woman which thou sawest is that great city which hath dominion over the kings of the earth." In like manner, by the name of the great king, (by which God is called, Ps. xlviii. v. 3, and Matt. c. v. v. 25, and which title was of old peculiarly suited to the kings of the Assyrians and Persians,) is intimated the King of kings, who has power over other kings. For which reason, throughout the whole Apocalypse, by whatever name Rome is otherwise called, whether of Babylon, or of the harlot,

she is always distinguished by this title, great; as that great Babylon, that great harlot. Add that in the whole Apocalypse, this title is bestowed on no city besides, unless at last, after its fall, to the new Jerusalem, descending from heaven, in whose light from thenceforth the Gentiles should walk. Which whoever could suppose was intended here must have need of hellebore. But neither Jerusalem in the time of St. John, nor any other Jerusalem, except that, is ever to become "the great city," or the head or queen of the other cities of the world. It is added, " which is spiritually called Sodom and Egypt :" Egypt, on account of its tyranny; Sodom, on account of its fornication; that is, spiritual fornication. But here (as the reader should diligently observe) is a key to the allegory, (of which kind many occur in this book,) by which, in truth, the Holy Spirit means to intimate once for all, that whatever is any where exhibited in these visions of Egyptian plagues, or of the destruction of the Sodomites, is wholly to be interpreted πνευματικῶς, that is, mystically; since Rome, or the state of the Roman commonweal, the subject of all those plagues, was a mystical Sodom and Egypt., Then all references, too, to Egyptian plagues in the description of the trumpets and phials, as well as in this history of the witnesses; and of the destruction of the Sodomites in the judgment of

the beast, c. xix. v. 20, and c. xx. v. 10; of all which the sense is to be opened by this key. Hence it may even be demonstrated, that the subject of the trumpets is the Roman empire; because of those plagues some are Egyptian. Now to what can Egyptian plagues be applied, but to Egypt? and this by the authority of the Holy Spirit is Rome.

T

Respecting the great city, then, the meaning is plain, but what the area of the city may be, of which mention is here made, is not so easily to be known. For it seems, it cannot be taken for a street, or for what we call in Latin platea, or forum, or for any other place within a city, for the following reasons: In the first place, Christ our Lord, who is said to have been crucified in this πλarɛła, was not crucified either in any street or forum of the city of Rome, or Jerusalem, but without the gate of the latter, (Heb. c. xiii. v. 12,) in a province thereof only, by Pilate the governor. Therefore the λarɛa of the great city is not any street or broadway within the walls of either of the cities, but a place without the city. Пarɛĩa, secondly, being put in the singular number, it is very probable that it designates a thing of that kind, of which a city has one only, and not many. But there are many streets in every city; at least in every one of consequence. Thirdly, it is supposed, that the bodies of the witnesses lie where

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they were conquered in battle; but it is not usual for troops to be gathered together within the walls of a city; but if not in the enemy's land, at least in the region and provinces subject to the city. Fourthly," the people, tribes, tongues, and nations," might see "the dead bodies of those who were slain for three days and a half," and not suffer them to be buried. It seems, therefore, that they did not lie in any way or street of the great city, but were either dispersed or spread abroad throughout the provinces, to which, consequently, the signification of Tns λareias ought to be accommodated.* And if any one should say, that the army of the beast, by which the witnesses were routed and slain, might be composed of various people and tongues, and therefore might easily see the carcases of those whom they had slain, we must recur to the former; it is not customary for such armies to be gathered together within the walls of a city. For, undoubtedly, the subject is so to be explained, especially where no

* From hence, again, it appears obvious that the witnesses could not be two persons existing together at any one time, or in succession, because after death, such a description could not be applicable to their dead bodies; but rather two combined systems or modes of religious instruction, which might metaphorically be said to die and revive; that is, to be discarded for a while, and afterwards restored to just influence and authority.-R. B. C.