Revelation 17

Notes

Ver. 1. I will give you an account of her sins, and of God's righteous procedure in condemning and punishing her. The Papal state at Rome is called a Whore, because of their treacherous apostasy from Christ and his Father to idolatry and every other wickedness, while they pretend to be the spouse or church of Christ. Her sitting on many waters denotes her ruling over many nations with magnificent pomp, power, luxury, and other allurements. 2. The wine of her fornication includes all the Popish arts and allurements, honours, preferments, external pomp of habits, processions, and worship, pretended miracles, dispensations, pardons, and other specious motives by which men are drawn into her idolatrous principles and practices. 3. Her being in the wilderness may denote her tyranny over the poor afflicted followers of Christ. The scarlet-coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, and having seven heads and ten horns, is the Roman empire, as Papal, marked with imperial dignity, and with bloody and persecuting cruelty—pretending infallibility and unlimited supremacy, promoting idolatry and error, and which, after seven different forms of civil government, was divided into ten different kingdoms. 4. Her being clothed with purple and scarlet, and decked with gold, precious stones, and pearls, points out her Popes and cardinals as assuming imperial authority, and stained with the blood of saints; and the wealth, grandeur, and power of her palaces, churches, and monasteries. Her golden cup, full of abominations and filthiness of fornication, denotes her whole system of abominable errors, idolatries, and superstitions, varnished over with bold pretences to miracles, pardons, and indulgences, and to her being the only true church, and the like. 5. It is easy to observe that she is formed by the most shocking multitude of errors and crimes, invented and carried on in the most deep, secret, and unsearchable methods, even amidst the highest pretences of being the catholic and only church of Christ; and that, possessed of the most extensive jurisdiction, and notorious for idolatry, pride, luxury, and oppression, she is the parent, ringleader, supporter, and nourisher of idolatry, superstition, error, uncleanness, and every other abominable crime. 6. I was astonished at her grandeur, cruelty, and dreadful wickedness, and at the patience of God in suffering her so long to tyrannize over his beloved people. 8. The beast, or Roman empire, has, under the Popes, a form of government different from all its ancient ones, but which retains their whole authority, power, wealth, idolatry, persecuting cruelty, and other wickedness; and though this Papal form hath its origin from diabolic craft and influence, and leads men into everlasting damnation, yet it is admired and implicitly submitted to by all within its reach, except the faithful ones of God. 9, 10. The seven heads of the beast point at the seven mountains on which Rome was built, and the seven forms of its government, by kings, consuls, dictators, decemvirs, military tribunes, emperors heathen and Christian, and Gothic kings, which took place before the establishment of the Papal authority. 11. Though the Pope's civil power may, in respect of time, be called the eighth, yet, as it succeeds to the heathen imperial authority, and is an idolatrous power, it is the seventh and last idolatrous form of government, comprehending all the power and wickedness of the six preceding. 12-14. The ten horns are the ten or several kingdoms into which the western empire of Rome was divided when the Papal power was established, all of which submitted to the Popish abominations, and exerted all their power to establish them, and force men to submit to them; and under the pontifical influence, to their own ruin, violently set themselves against Christ, to oppose and subvert his doctrines, institutions, cause, interests, and people. 16, 17. In God's time these kingdoms shall withdraw their subjection and support from the Papal state, and, by wars, statutes, and the like, shall concur to destroy it; for it is only for a limited time that, by his overruling their sinful inclinations, he will, for the fulfilment of his purposes and predictions, permit them, under the instigation of Satan, to yield up their strength, riches, and authority to promote the Papal power, idolatries, superstitions, and errors. 18. The antichristian power, civil and ecclesiastical, is to be seated in the hand of Popes and cardinals, and raised to its height in the city of Rome, which is at present the residence of the Roman emperors.

Ver. 1. The seventh seal, ch. 8. 1, the seventh trumpet, ch. 11. 15, and the seventh vial, contain many more particulars in each than any of the other seals, trumpets, or vials. Of this difference one reason is obvious—the deeper interest of the church in the downfall of Antichrist, and the introduction of the kingdom of glory, than in all the rising, continuance, and downfall of the secular kingdoms of the world. C.

Ver. 3. Full of names of blasphemy. Rome having in her heathen state adopted the gods of all nations, and given them a temple in her pantheon, and blasphemously declared them entitled to worship; and having in her Papal state raised apostles, angels, and imaginary saints without number, to the dignity of mediators, and blasphemously declared them, together with images, pictures, relics, and bread and wine, entitled to that worship which is due to God alone. C.

Ver. 4. Fornication. The prophetic emblem of religion prostituted for gain, Is. 23. 17, and realized in the simoniacal sale of ecclesiastical dignities, and the most scandalous traffic in indulgences and masses, by which Papal Rome has been enriched and disgraced. C.

Ver. 6. Thousands of these 'martyrs of Jesus' fell during the Papal crusades against the Waldenses and Albigenses: multitudes during the reign of Mary in England; in the Bartholomew massacre of the Huguenots in France; in the dragonnades that followed on the revocation of the edict of Nantes; and in every page of the history of the infamous Inquisition, which, though now happily extirpated (at least for a time) in every other Papal country in Europe, still subsists in Italy, and preserves its throne in Rome. C.

Ver. 16. The ten horns . . . shall hate the whore. These ten kingdoms shall hate her, not because of her sins against God, but because of her arrogant assumption of power over kings— giving all their strength to the imperial beast, ver. 13; while, in defence of their royal prerogatives, they put forth all their wrath against the Papal woman. C.

Ver. 17. God hath put it into their hearts, by giving them judicially over to their own counsels, Ps. 81. 12; Ro. 1. 24, 26, 28. C.

Reflections.—God takes pleasure to instruct and comfort his faithful servants. And he can exactly describe the antichristian Papacy, with all its mysteriousness, or anything else, long before it exists, and can make the distresses and plagues of his church confirmations of his Word, on which she is built. Graceless church-members often run the most fearful lengths in wickedness and cruelty when left to themselves; yea, are active in seducing all around them. And multitudes, to their own temporal and eternal ruin, readily run after, and yield themselves to the worst deceivers, in the most furious opposition to Christ and his cause. But great is the mercy that he who has all power in heaven and earth takes part with his persecuted people, animates their faith and patience, emboldens them in their holy profession, and renders them faithful in adherence to himself. Quickly will he conquer all their enemies, and make the most zealous supporters of error, idolatry, and superstition to desert, hate, and oppose them, and to strip the seducers of their ill-gotten power and wealth, and punish them answerably to their crimes.