another Sermon he thus describes the desolations:  Destructae urbes, eversa sunt castra, depopulati agri, in solitudinem terra redacta est.  Nullus in agris incola, pene nullus in urbibus habitator remansit.  Et tamen ipsae parvae generis humani reliquiae adhuc quotidie & sine cessatione feriuntur, & finem non habent flagella coelestis justitiae.  Ipsa autem quae aliquando mundi Domina esse videbatur, qualis remansit Roma conspicimus innumeris doloribus multipliciter attrita, defolatione civium, impressione hostium, frequentia ruinarum.—­Ecce jam de illa omnes hujus faeculi potentes ablati sunt.—­Ecce populi defecerunt.—­Ubi enim Senatus?  Ubi jam populus?  Contabuerunt ossa, consumptae sunt carnes.  Omnis enim saecularium dignitatum ordo extinctus est, & tamen ipsos vos paucos qui remansimus, adhuc quotidie gladii, adhuc quotidie innumerae tribulationes premunt.—­Vacua jam ardet Roma.  Quid autem ista de hominibus dicimus?  Cum ruinis crebrescentibus ipsa quoque destrui aedificia videmus.  Postquam defecerunt homines etiam parietes cadunt.  Jam ecce desolata, ecce contrita, ecce gemitibus oppressa est, &c.  All this was spoken by Gregory to the people of Rome, who were witnesses of the truth of it.  Thus by the plagues of the four winds, the Empire of the Greeks was shaken, and the Empire of the Latins fell; and Rome remained nothing more than the capital of a poor dukedom, subordinate to Ravenna, the seat of the Exarchs.

The fifth trumpet sounded to the wars, which the King of the South, as he is called by Daniel, made in the time of the end, in pushing at the King who did according to his will.  This plague began with the opening of the bottomless pit, which denotes the letting out of a false religion:  the smoke which came out of the pit, signifying the multitude which embraced that religion; and the locusts which came out of the smoke, the armies which came out of that multitude.  This pit was opened, to let out smoke and locusts into the regions of the four monarchies, or some of them. The King of these locusts was the Angel of the bottomless pit, being chief governor as well in religious as civil affairs, such as was the Caliph of the Saracens.  Swarms of locusts often arise in Arabia faelix, and from thence infest the neighbouring nations:  and so are a very fit type of the numerous armies of Arabians invading the Romans.  They began to invade them A.C. 634, and to reign at Damascus A.C. 637.  They built Bagdad A.C. 766, and reigned over Persia, Syria, Arabia, Egypt, Africa and Spain.  They afterwards lost Africa to Mahades, A.C. 910; Media, Hircania, Chorasan, and all Persia, to the Dailamites, between the years 927 and 935; Mesopotamia and Miafarekin to Nasiruddaulas, A.C. 930; Syria and