to reasonings of this sort, may apply the judgment of his eyes to the following diagram.

We cannot, indeed, examine every thing here according to line and rule, but it is wonderful how near we can approach to it. I define the circumference of the present city by the walls by which it is surrounded, for beyond them, contrary to what was formerly the case, it is not at this day inhabited; but the whole contents, whatever they may be, are included within the walls; those walls which Hadrian the First, and Leo the Fourth, pontiff, erected, as it were, by a fatal instinct, as the boundary to that which had just been made the seat of the pontifical king

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dom. For so Blondus relates, that the walls which now exist were built by Hadrian I. for 100,000 pieces of gold, collected from Tuscany. Those, as is remarked by others, Leo IV. afterwards, about the year of our Lord 850, either repaired or finished; and having added the Transtiberian or Leontine city to it, completed the city in the form and circuit in which it is now seen. And though it has much of the space included within the walls void and desert, yet since the walls are reckoned among the principal works of the city, the city itself cannot be considered as less extensive than its walls. Ampler, indeed, it might be, if, as the old one formerly was, it were extended every way beyond the walls by contiguous buildings.

That I may at length draw to a conclusion, the sum of what I have said reverts to this; that the Holy Spirit means to say, or to intimate, that so much of the Great City as remained at this earthquake, should become a ruin at the time, viz. a tenth of the city; for there was to be no more remaining up to that period. Nine parts were to fall many ages before; and we in truth have seen them fall, partly by the destructions and devastations which the barbarians brought upon it at so many different times, partly by decay from great age, and partly overthrown by lightning, as we

have pointed out under the fourth trumpet. The tenth part was reserved for the pontifical Roman fate, being constituted the head of a new empire, and the mother of Christian harlots. This part the earthquake, which is connected with the resurrection of the witnesses, will entirely demolish.

Nor was it perhaps necessary that we should interpret the Holy Spirit as having spoken so rigidly as we have done, of the tenth part of the city, according to geometrical miles. It would have been sufficient, if, as formerly, he had spoken by his influence on Isaiah, c. vi. v. 13. of the destruction of the Jewish people, "A tenth of it shall be preserved, and be brought back into the land." So here we may understand, not so strictly a tenth, as some very small part, about a tenth of the ancient amplitude of the Roman city, which should remain as the seat of the beast for the last destruction.

It is added, And there were slain in the earthquake seven thousand names of men." Here, if by names of men we understand heads. of men, or individual men, the number seems. too trifling, and not consistent with the magnitude of the slaughter, which the Holy Spirit elsewhere intimates. For in the destruction of Babylon, will there not be a far greater number slain than seven thousand men? And is it

likely that the effusion of the fifth phial on the throne of the beast should terminate by so very small a massacre of men? In order to satisfy this doubt by some other means: First, it is to be observed, that by the name of the city is here to be understood, not the citizens and inhabitants, but the buildings and walls, that is, the royal seat of the beast; and so a double destruction of Babylon is described in these prophecies; first, of Babylon as the royal city of the beast, that is to say, of the Roman city at the fifth phial; afterwards of Babylon, as to the citizens or Roman state, which consists of the Pope, with the senate of empurpled Cardinals, and the other crowd of citizens, especially of ecclesiastics, who, after Rome has been destroyed and burnt, betook themselves to a habitation in some other place, and who are to be reserved for the last phial: at whose effusion it is said, over and above other destructions of nations and states in every part of the world, in that earthquake which was far the greatest of all that had ever taken place, even "that great Babylon came in memory before God, to give unto her the cup of the wine of the fierceness of his wrath," c. xvi. v. 19; which, notwithstanding the burning and destruction of Babylon, described in the xviiith and xixth chapters, certainly precede the full extermination of the

beast, and false prophet, as is there manifest from the text. I know some unravel this knot in a different manner, by saying, that Babylon, of which mention is made in the last phial, is Constantinople, the metropolis of the Turks; but they will never persuade me, that the Holy Spirit, in the first and principal image of all, has used so remarkable a synonyme, and that we are to understand two Babylons, and not one only, and the same, though with a double reference. To come, then, to the point. It may perhaps come to pass, that the first destruction of Babylon, that is, the devastation and ruin of the city of Rome, may be effected without any immense or total slaughter of the citizens. And though "her smoke was to ascend for ever and ever," that is, she should be wholly converted into ashes, and levelled with the ground, never again to be inhabited, yet a great part of the citizens might escape from the overthrow of the city, either because they would in time consult their safety by flight, or from some other cause, which the event will make manifest.

And this is one mode by which the doubt may be satisfied about the too trifling number of those who were slain. Another is, if we should say that by "names of men" are possibly intended men of name, or renown. For a hypallage of this kind is not unfrequent in the Scriptures,