irreclaimable, giving publicity to his deep convictions in a treatise _De Captivitate Babylonica_,--"The Captivity of Babylon." In the 18th chapter of this book, he discovered that Babylon is doomed to destruction. He considered the church of Rome as answering to the prophetic symbol, and of course not to be reformed. It was an obvious inference--he ought to obey Christ rather than the Pope,--"Come out of her, my people."--This call was indeed a sufficient warrant to separate from the Church of Rome; and, acting on it, protestant churches have ever since been organized: but the type or symbol, Babylon, was unwarrantably restricted in import, as representing only the Church of Rome. And it is to be deplored that most protestant expositors continue to limit the inspired symbol in the same way till the present time. The literal Babylon, a name common to the ancient city and empire by the river Euphrates, was in no sense a church; and it would be anomalous and incongruous to select either city or empire as an _emblem of a church_! There is, however, in the Apocalypse a combining or blending of symbols in order clearly and fully to represent a complex moral person. This has been already exemplified in ch. xiii. 2, where the prominent features of Daniel's first _three_ beasts, (ch. vii. 4-6,) are combined in John's _first_ beast of the sea. Just so in this instance. The idolatrous and tyrannical Roman empire, in alliance with an apostate church, constitutes mystical Babylon. History demonstrates the fact of their coalition. The great red dragon, the devil, operates through both during the allotted period of 1260 years against the witnesses of Christ. Sometimes, indeed, the nominal church is the more active and visible instrument, and at other times the state, in opposing Mediatory authority; and thus Babylon, or one of her streets, which is the equivalent of a horn of the beast, becomes prominent. This second angel confidently proclaims,--"Babylon is fallen, is fallen." So said Isaiah of literal Babylon long before the event; (ch. xxi. 9,) and so said Jeremiah, (ch. li. 8,) to whose predictions John obviously alludes. All these three prophets speak in present time of a future event, simply because of the settled and unalterable purpose of God, acting not formally as a sovereign, but as a judge. The multiplied and aggravated crimes of Babylon, literal or mystical Babylon, are the just grounds of her deserved and awful doom. From ancient times God has declared by his prophets the things that are not yet done. (Isa. xlvi. 10.) His counsel stands and he doeth all his pleasure.