The Revelation of Jesus Christ - The Herald

Referring to the Papacy which contained the "vital principle which again restored her to
honor and dominion," Hallam, in his History of the Middle Ages, says: "Rome inspired all
the terror of her ancient name; she was once more the mistress of the world, and kings
were her vassals."
Cardinal Manning, in his book entitled The Temporal Power of the Popes (published in 1860,
ten years before the fall of the temporal power of Papacy), thus refers to this remarkable
event connected with the rise of the Roman Catholic system:
"Now the abandonment of Rome was the liberation of the Pontiffs . . . The providence of
God permitted a succession of eruptions, Goths, Lombards, and Hungarians, to desolate
Italy, and to efface from it every vestige of the Empire. The Pontiffs found themselves
alone, the sole fountains of order, peace, law, and safety. And from the hour of this
providential liberation, when by a Divine intervention the chains fell off from the hands of
the successors of St. Peter, as once before from his own, no sovereign has ever reigned in
Rome except the Vicar of Jesus Christ."
It is also a well known fact of history that, beginning in the sixteenth century, one after
another of these kingdoms withdrew their support, and began to confiscate her landed
estates in these kingdoms, and to gradually take away her power and influence, until in
1870 she ceased altogether to be represented in the councils of these kingdoms. How
remarkable is the fulfillment of the prediction that the kings would eat her flesh, etc.!
The inevitable conclusion
It is our conviction that this Divine interpretation of itself proves the Christian character of
the Apocalypse, and confines its fulfillment to a considerable extent to the events of past
history; and that all that remains to be fulfilled of its visions are those that relate to the
destruction of the false religious systems, symbolized by the woman, Babylon, and her
harlot offspring; the destruction of the governments of earth, symbolized by the beast in its
last form; and the establishment of the Kingdom of God, on the ruins of earth's empires.
An eminent writer sums up briefly all the different items of the prophecy:
"The Holy Spirit foreseeing, no doubt, that the Church of Rome would adulterate the truth
by many gross and grievous abominations, that she would anathematise all who would
not communicate with her, and denounce them as cut off from the Body of Christ, and the
hope of everlasting salvation; foreseeing also that Rome would exercise a wide and
dominant sway for many generations, by boldly iterated assertions of unity, antiquity,
sanctity, and universality; foreseeing also that these pretensions would be supported by
the civil sword of many secular governments, among which the Roman Empire would be
divided at its dissolution, and that Rome would thus be enabled to display herself to the
world in an august attitude of imperial power and with dazzling splendor of temporal
felicity; foreseeing also that the Church of Rome would captivate the imaginations of men
by the fascinations of art allied with religion, and would ravish their senses and rivet their
admiration by gaudy colors and stately pomp and prodigal magnificence; foreseeing also
that she would beguile their credulity by miracles and mysteries, apparitions and dreams,