Lessons Learnt in Italy and the Riviera (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos or missing text. Not indexed. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1882. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... CHAP. VIII. THE ROME OF THE POPES. "And the woman which thou sawest is that great city, which reigneth over the kings of the earth."--Revelation xvii. 18. THE woman is a city. That is one point settled for us in what else might be an impenetrable prophetic mystery. The city is " the seven heads and ten horns" which are seven mountains and ten kingdoms. That localises the description to the city of the seven hills, whose empire covers many kingdoms. This is another point settled for us. Further, the woman is not the city in its pristine glory. The beast "was and is not (Rev. xvii. 8) and yet is." He was even then going " into perdition," or, (xiii. 3) " as it were wounded to death and his deadly wound was healed." And another beast arose that had power to conjure with his name, so that, when the beast himself was weakened or even gone, his image might be strengthened and be worshipped. The vision appears in two forms. In chap. xiii. the second power, a spiritual power evidently, is represented as a second beast. In chap. xvii. the same power is represented as a woman arrayed in scarlet, sitting on a scarlet-covered beast. There is mystery about her, there is blasphemy about her, there is cruelty about her. She is " drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus." She is, as Mr. Guinness well shows, contrasted with another woman, another city, the New Jerusalem, the Bride united to the Lamb, as she, the harlot, is strangely united to the kings of the world and committed to the thraldom of the beast. The city, surely, is Rome; the wound, Rome's destruction by the barbarians; and the woman, the power that rose out of the imperial ashes, the mystery and mother of abominations of the earth; in a word, the woman of Rev. xvii., t...