Curtius, and will be opened again hereafter, when the prophecy in Rev. xix. 20 is fulfilled. " Rome," he says, " is situated very near those parts of Italy where, before the foundation of Rome, Homer makes his Ulysses descend to hell, and where, after the foundation of Rome, without the intervention of any great distance, Virgil makes his ^Eneas do the same. But lest I should appear to wish to plead on poetical credit (although these poetical assertions may be regarded like the prediction of Caiaphas), attend to historical testimony : — In the middle of the Roman Forum, once upon a time, if we are to credit Livy and other Roman writers, the hell, which you (Papists) place in the bowels of the earth, opened its mouth, and that chasm could not be filled up with any amount of earth thrown in, until Marcus Curtius, armed, and on horseback, leapt in — in order, forsooth, that as the heaven received Enoch and Elijah alive, so hell might receive this Curtius alive, as the first fruits, by these gates of hell then opened in the middle of the Roman Forum, which will, without doubt, again be opened by Divine power, when the beast and the false prophet shall be cast alive into the lake of fire burning with sulphur, as is foretold in Rev. xix. 20."
19. Awtfw tfo/,1 / will give thee) The future tense. Christ Him self, after His glorification, received the keys economically.2 See Rev. i. 18, and German exposition of the Apocalypse. Our Lord afterwards gave the keys, which He here promised, to Peter, not alone, but first in order of time (cf. Luke v. 10) ; since Peter was the first who, after the resurrection of Christ, exercised the apostolical office ; see Acts i. 15, ii. 14. If the keys had been given exclusively to Peter, and the Bishop of Rome after him, and not to the other apostles also, even after the death of Peter, the Bishop of Rome should have acted as pastor to the other apostles. — rag y't^fc,^ the keys} Keys denote
1 The margin of Ed. 2 makes the reading aal ^uau equal in authority to