Church to victory-The Church still conquering, but by the aid of 66
Cæsar, might be a Red Horse, to whose rider a great sword is given—
The Church becoming covetous might be a Black Horse, whose rider
holds a pair of scales and sells man's food at a famine price-The
Church supreme in the Roman world and killing her reformers
might be a Pale Horse, whose rider is attended by Death and
Hades-We might exhibit the martyrs resting in the intermediate
state-We might predict the Last Judgment under the image of
an earthquake-By a deep silence in heaven we might prefigure the
beginning of eternal peace-The history of the fall of Jericho sug-
gests the introduction of seven trumpets to announce the judgment
of God upon the opponents and corrupters of His Church-The
destruction of Jerusalem; the fall of ancient Rome; the devastations
of Mahomet; the darkness of the Middle Ages; the opening of the
abyss-The era of revolutions; the great apostacy, ending in the revela-
tion of Antichrist, and the final victory of Christ and His saints-We
can find many symbols for the Church as a great Hierarchy-It is the
Holy City, trodden under foot by the Gentiles; the Great City,
Sodom, Egypt, Babylon-It contains all the Saints, whom we repre-
sent as those worshipping in God's Temple, as witnesses in sackcloth,
as those with the seal of God on their foreheads—A serpent represents
Satan-For the great power of this world we may adopt Daniel's
symbol of a wild beast, who receives his throne and power from
the serpent-Imitating the Hebrew prophets, we call the Church a
woman-When pure she is the Bride of the Lamb-When cor-
rupted by the world she is the harlot of the wild beast, the Lamb's
rival-For the Pope, who is a temporal sovereign, the Vicar of
Christ, and the restorer of the Western Empire, we form a mixed
symbol, a wild beast with lamb's horns and a serpent's voice, who
makes men erect an image of the fallen empire and commands them
to worship it-The establishment of the Church in the Roman
world may be represented as a place of refuge for the woman from
the open violence of the serpent-The Church supported by the
World-power is a harlot riding upon the wild beast who receives his
throne from the serpent, and acts for him during his absence from
the scene and imprisonment-The popular support of the Church is
the river Euphrates, beside whose many waters the harlot sitteth-
The drying up of these waters symbolises the withdrawal of popular
support from the Church-The disestablishment of the Church in
Roman Christendom, is the casting off of the harlot by the wild