The Seventeenth, Eighteenth, and Nineteenth Chapters

To present Rome in all her bravery, before her ruin, c. xvii. is added; and c. xviii. sings a solemn, stately, and triumphant song for her destruction. Now that the Holy Ghost should make the ruin of this long-reigning city such a triumph above all things else in this book, imports, That the last fatal period of the fourth monarchy, (with Rome fouits seat, and the beast for its last head,) is here reckoned as good as at an end; though he may yet make troublesome resistance after the sixth vial, but not reign any more;

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626 SEVENTEENTH EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CHAPTERS [REV.

else the Holy Ghost would have reserved himself till after the seventh vial, and not have raised the shout of triumph before an assured victory. But another manner of triumph is to come, more high and glorious, for the marriage of the Lamb; when Rome and the beast will be forgotten; and therefore God ordained it to be performed at the funeral of the great whore: and two chapters being spent in setting forth the pageants of the church’s triumph over Rome, surely here ends her great kingdom, and here begins the church’s preparation for the Lamb’s marriage in c. xix. Now c. xvii. 18, shews the whore to be Rome, for Rome is “that great city which reigned over the kings of the earth;” and thus c. xvii. and xviii. are but a more full setting forth of the fifth, that most eminent and fatal of the vials upon the beast: instead therefore of spending time in explicating those chapters, I shall hasten to the exposition of the supplemental c. xi. mainly intended by me as con aining the state of the church in these and the approaching times; and I join it next to the vials, because these vials serve directly to expound it; and mentioning the first four vials, it goes on to shew what shall befal the churches of the Reformation under the fourth vial, and before the fifth, ending its appointed months and years. And as c. xiv. shewed the condition of the church within itself, to the times of the fourth vial; so c. xi. begins where c. xiv. ends: hence the supplement of the story of the church’s various and chequered condition is to be fetched, as will appear in the opening of it.