Note 135 — SERMON VII. PROPHECIES CONCERNING ANTICHRIST. 1 Ep. John ii. 18.

Epistolarum sine titulo Liber. Ep. xvi. p. 130. Basil. 1581.—Many strokes in this epistle are, to the last degree, severe and caustic. Addressing himself to Rome, “Illa equidem ipsa es, says he, quam in spiritu sacer vidit Evangelista.—Populi et gentes et linguæ, aquæ sunt super quas meretrix sedes; recognosce habitum. Mulier circumdata purpurâ, et coccino, et inaurata auro, et lapide pretioso, et margaritis, habens poculum aureum in manu suâ, plenum abominatione et immunditiâ fornicationis ejus.—Audi reliqua. Et vidi (inquit) mulierem ebriam de sanguine sanctorum, et de sanguine martyrum Jesu. Quid siles?”—And so goes on to apply the prophecies of the Revelation to the church of Rome, in terms that furnish out a good comment on the famous verse in one of his poems—

Numberless passages in the writings of Petrarch speak of Rome, under the name of Babylon. But an equal stress is not to be laid on all of these. It should be remembered, that the Popes, in Petrarch’s time, resided at Avignon; greatly to the disparagement of themselves, as he thought, and especially of Rome; of which this singular man was little less than idolatrous. The situation of the place, surrounded by waters, and his splenetic concern for the exiled Church (for under this idea, he painted to himself the Pope’s migration to the banks of Avignon) brought to his mind the condition of the Jewish church in the Babylonian captivity. And this parallel was all, perhaps, that he meant to insinuate in most of those passages. But, when he applies the prophecies to Rome, as to the Apocalyptic Babylon (as he clearly does in the epistle under consideration) his meaning is not equivocal: and we do him but justice to give him an honourable place among the Testes Veritatis.