18 And the woman which thou sawest is that great city, which reigneth over the kings of the earth.



Ver. 18. Is that great city] Rome, that radix omnium malorum, the base of all evil. This is confessed by Bellarmine, Ribera, Alcasar, and other Jesuits. The Rhemists are so straited, that they know not which way to turn them, or how to deny so clear a truth, which yet they are not willing to acknowledge. The wit of heretics will better serve them to devise a thousand shifts to elude the truth, than their pride will suffer them once to yield and acknowledge it.