And there followed another angel, saying, Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city, because she made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication.
Ver. 8. And there followed another angel] Martin Luther with his book De Captivitate Babylonia, which when Bugenhagius first read, he rashly censured for the most pestilent book that ever was written; but upon better deliberation he retracted his former sentence, and became a means to convert many others.
Of the wine of the wrath] Of the intoxicating, enraging wine, that sets men a madding after her:
" Nam Venus in vinis, ignis in igne furit. "
There is a story of Walter Mapes, sometime Archdeacon of Oxford, who relating the pope's gross simony, a concludes his narration thus, Sit tamen Domina materque nostra Roma baculus in aqua fractus: et absit credere quae vidimus. Rome had ravished this man out of his wits.
a The act or practice of buying or selling ecclesiastical preferments, benefices, or emoluments; traffic in sacred things. ŒD