In leaving the wonders of Rome, and the city itself, we will quote an
interesting extract from Townsend’s “Tour in Italy,” in 1850. “Many
authors,” he says, “have asserted, as their interpretation of some parts
of the Apocalypse, that Rome will be destroyed by fire from heaven, or
swallowed up by earthquakes, or overwhelmed with destruction by
volcanoes, as the visible punishment of the Almighty, for its popery and
its crimes. I am unwilling, having read so many books on the
interpretation of the prophecy, to deduce any argument of this kind from
the prophecies which are unfulfilled; but I behold everywhere—in Rome,
near Rome, and through the whole region from Rome to Naples—the most
astounding proofs, not merely of the possibility, but the probability
that the whole region of central Italy will one day be destroyed by such
a catastrophe. The soil of Rome is _tufa_, with a volcanic subterranean
action still going on. At Naples the boiling sulphur is to be seen
bubbling near the surface of the earth. When I drew a stick along upon
the ground, the sulphurous smoke followed the indentation; and it would
never surprise me to hear of the utter destruction of the southern
peninsula of Italy. The entire country and district is volcanic. It is
saturated with beds of sulphur and the substrata of destruction. It
seems as certainly prepared for the flames as the wood and coal on the
hearth are prepared for the taper which shall kindle the fire to consume
them. I again read the remarks of Dr. Cumming: ‘Rome,’ he believes, ‘is
to be overthrown by judgment; not to be converted by the agency of the
gospel, nor to be exhausted by political assaults. It is literally to be
consumed by fire.’ Whether he is correct in regarding such an event as
the fulfillment of the prophecies, and the demonstration of the anger of
the Creator against the incorrigible assumption of an erring and
influential church, I know not; but the divine hand alone seems to me to
hold the element of fire in check by a miracle as great as that which
protected the cities of the plain, till the righteous Lot had made his
escape to the mountains.”