Page:Mahometanism in its relation to prophecy - or, an inquiry into the prophecies concerning antichrist, with some reference to their bearing on the events of the present day (IA mahometanisminit00philrich).pdf/262

 secuting the Catholic Church; and when it says that in that earthquake "names of men seven thousand were slain," we must not understand that number to be literal, but to symbolize a countless multitude, who will perish in the great catastrophe. I ought here to say, that the tenth part of the city may also refer not to any one of the ten kingdoms in particular, but to a tenth part of the whole city, taken as a whole, that is, to a tithing of civilized men, wherever they are settled under a secular government, and, if so, I should apply it to the governing powers everywhere; in this view of it, the fall of a tenth part of the city would symbolize the destruction of all existing thrones and governments all over the world; and this interpretation I prefer, because it agrees better with Daniel's prophecy, when he interpreted Nabuchodonozor's dream, and described the total destruction of the metallic statue, and also because it coincides with St. John's own description of the total destruction of the mystic Babylon, in the eighteenth chapter of this same Apocalypse. Now, no one can read that description, and think for a moment that it refers to any one single city, because it describes all mankind as involved in the ruin that comes upon Babylon, and all equally bewailing and lamenting over it.