“Yet farther to distinguish the woman, she has her _name_ inscribed _upon her forehead_ (verse 5), in allusion to the practice of some notorious prostitutes, who had their names written in a label upon their foreheads. The inscription is so very particular, that we cannot easily mistake the person; ‘_Mystery, Babylon the great, the mother of harlots_, or rather, of fornications and abominations of the earth.’ Her name, _Mystery_, can imply no less than that she dealeth in _mysteries_; her religion is a mystery, a mystery of iniquity; and she herself is mystically and spiritually ‘Babylon the great.’ But the title of mystery is in no respect proper to ancient Rome, more than any other city; and neither is there any _mystery_ in substituting one heathen, idolatrous, and persecuting city for another; but it is indeed a mystery, that a Christian city, professing and boasting herself to be the city of God, should prove another Babylon in idolatry and cruelty to the people of God. She glories in the name of _Roman Catholic_, and well, therefore, may she be called ‘Babylon the great.’ “Infamous as the woman is for her idolatry, she is no less detestable for her cruelty, which are the two principal characteristics of the antichristian empire. ‘She is drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus,’ (ver. 6) which may indeed be applied both to pagan and to Christian Rome, for both have in their turns cruelly persecuted ‘the saints and the martyrs of Jesus;’ but the latter is more deserving of the character, as she hath far exceeded the former, both in the degree and duration of her persecutions. It is very true, that if Rome pagan hath slain her thousands of innocent Christians, Rome Christian hath slain her ten thousands; for, not to mention other outrageous slaughters and barbarities, the crusades against the Waldenses and Albigenses; the murders committed by the Duke of Alva in the Netherlands; the massacres in France and Ireland, will probably amount to above ten times the number of all the Christians slain in all the ten persecutions of the Roman emperors put together. St. John’s _admiration_ also plainly evinces that Christian Rome was intended, for it could be no matter of surprise to him that a heathen city should persecute the Christians; but that a city professedly Christian should wanton and riot in the blood of Christians, was a subject of astonishment indeed; and well might he, as it is emphatically expressed, ‘wonder with great wonder.’”