Page:Darby - Notes on the Book of Revelations, 1839.djvu/155

 earth. These ten kings, however, desolate her: the will at this time acts in them, not in the beast—they are the prominent and existing actors, that they may give their power to the beast, whose final character and end we have already seen. This goes on “until the words of God shall be fulfilled.” The woman, not the whore, is then designated as that great city which reigneth over the kings of the earth (the predominant associated power of the earth): but if acting by corrupt religion, not doing so here as a false prophet, but as a city—a system in her secular, carnal and worldly and wealthy character—yet that secularity and wealth, the meretricious secularity and wealth of an active,