church, in Rev. xvii. 4, " Having a golden cup in her hand," denoting the enticing means and specious pretences by which the antichristian church allures people to idolatry, particularly by sensuality, luxury, and affluence. There is an allusion to the philtres, or love potions, which lewd women used to prepare for the purposes of debauchery, and of inflaming the passions of their paramours. The cup is said to be "full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication." With this agrees the prophecy of Jeremiah, ch. li. 7, where Babylon is called " a golden cup in the hand of Jehovah;" i. e. she was a splendid instrument of vengeance ordained by God against the neighbouring nations; and as all these had suffered by her, all are represented as ready to glory over her, or to rejoice when her turn of suffering came. That a cup is the symbol of idolatry and its rites, appears also from Paul's expression in 1 Cor. x. 21, "Ye cannot drink of the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons." In the heathen sacrifices, as Macknight observes, the priests, before they poured the wine upon the victim, tasted it themselves; then carried it to the offerers, and to those who came with them, that they also might taste it, as joining in the sacrifice, and receiving benefit from it. Thus Virgil, Æn. 8, 273,

"Quare agite, O juvenes," &c.

"For these deserts, and this high virtue shewn,
Ye warlike youths, your heads with garlands crown,
Fill high the goblets with a sparkling flood,
And with deep draughts invoke our common god."

DRYDEN.

Wine, mixed with bitter ingredients, was usually given to malefactors when they were going to be put

to death. And therefore, by a metonymy of the adjunct, the mixed bitter cup of wine is the symbol of torment or death, as in Psalm lxxv. 8,

"In the hand of Jehovah there is a cup, and the wine is turbid; It is full of a mixed liquor, and he poureth out of it, Verily the dregs thereof all the ungodly of the earth shall wring them out, and drink them."

But nowhere is this image of the cup of God's wrath presented with more force and sublimity than in Isaiah li. 17, &c., where Jerusalem is represented as staggering under the effects of it, destitute of that assistance which she might expect from her own children, not one of them being able to support or lead her.

Plato has an idea something like this, which Lowth refers to in his note.

As the evil which happens to men is the effect of God's justice and severity, and the good which happens to them is the effect of his bounty and goodness, therefore, in the sacred writings, the one is represented by a cup of wrath, and the other under the symbol of a cup of salvation (Ps. cxvi. 13), and of drinking of the river of pleasures (Ps. xxxvi. 8), at the right hand of God (Ps. xvi. 11).

So Homer places two vessels at the threshold of Jupiter, one of good, the other of evil; he gives to some a potion mixed of both, to others from the evil vessel only. II. 24, line 527, &c.

"Two urns by Jove's high throne have ever stood,
The source of evil one, and one of good;
From thence the cup of mortal man he fills,
Blessings to these, to those distributes ills:
To most he mingles both: The wretch decreed
To taste the bad unmix'd, is curs'd indeed:

Pursued by wrongs, by meagre famine driven,
He wanders, outcast both of earth and heaven.
The happiest taste not happiness sincere,

But find the cordial draught is dash'd with care." When our Saviour asks James and John, whether they were able to drink of the cup which he was to drink of, Matt. xx. 22, he means, whether they had resolution and patience to undergo the like sufferings and afflictions as his Father had allotted for him. And in the like sense he prays, Matt. xxvi. 39, "O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me.”

The image of a cup as a portion, seems to have been borrowed from the ancient custom of the master of the feast appointing to each of the guests his cup, i. e. his kind and measure of liquor; as in the following passage from the Iliad, 1. 4, 261.

"For this, in banquets, when the generous bowls
Restore our blood, and raise the warriors' souls,
Though all the rest with stated rules are bound,
Unmix'd, unmeasur'd, are thy goblets crown'd."

God says to Jeremiah, ch. xxv. 15, "Take the cup of the wine of this wrath from my hand, and tender it to all the nations to drink, unto whom I shall send thee," &c., meaning thereby those heavy judgments which he was about to inflict on the objects of his displeasure. And the prophet, who announced them, is considered as acting the part of a cup-bearer, carrying the cup round to those who were appointed to drink of it, the effects of which were to appear in the intoxication, that is, in the terror and desolation that should prevail among them.

It is not to be imagined that the prophet went round in person to all the nations and kings here enumerated, but either that he did so in a vision, or else

that he actually did what is figuratively designed, that is, he publicly announced the judgments of God severally against them, as we find in chapters xlvi. to li. inclusive, and which the Seventy have introduced in this place.

Rev. xiv. 10, “The same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture, into the cup of his indignation."

It has been already remarked, that it was usual to give malefactors a cup of wine before going to execution; but sometimes a cup was given them, in which some strong poison had been infused, on purpose to cause their death. Such was the well-known mode of dispatching Socrates. Grotius thinks the words without mixture, intimate that the poisonous ingredients were infused in pure unmixed wine, to take a stronger tincture, and become a more deadly poison.

So in Zech. xii. 2,

Behold I will make Jerusalem

A cup of trembling to all the people round about."

i. e. An inebriating and stupifying potion of the strongest liquors and drugs. Jerusalem shall strike the nations with dread and astonishment.

On Habak. ii. 16, Grotius observes, that verses 15. and 16. contain an allegory. The Chaldeans gave to the neighbouring nations the cup of idolatry and deceitful alliance, and in return they received from Jehovah the cup of his fury.

Rev. xviii. 6," In the cup which she hath filled, fill to her double."

This is agreeable to the Jewish law of Retaliation

and Restitution, which in some cases enjoined double punishment or damages. See Exod. xxii. 4.

The seven vials filled with the seven last plagues, are properly bowls or cups. That this emblem was not unknown to profane authors, appears from the writings of Plautus and Aristophanes, as has been shewn by several.

We read in Jeremiah xvi. 7, of the " cup of consolations,” in allusion to the funeral customs of the Jews, which, Sir John Chardin tells us, is still observed by the oriental Christians, of sending provisions to the house of the deceased, where healths were also drunk to the survivors of the family, wishing that the dead may have been the victims for the sins of the family. The same is practised among the Moors. Of the Jewish method, we read thus in Berach, Hieros. fol. 6: "Ten cups were drunk at the house of the deceased; two before the funeral banquet, --five amidst the banquet,—and three after it was finished. Of these three last, one was intended for thanksgiving, another as an office of kindness, and the third for the consolation of the mourners. That the same custom prevailed among the Romans, is shewn by Spencer, De Leg. Hebr. 1. 4, c. 9. Something similar seems to be hinted at in the closing lines of the Iliad :

"All Troy then moves to Priam's court again,
A solemn, silent, melancholy train :
Assembled there, from pious toil they rest,
And sadly shared the last sepulchral feast."

The cup was an emblem of capital punishment, because, among the ancients, it was usual to inflict death, by presenting to the condemned a cup of