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tells us, (chap. vii.) "Behold, the four winds of heaven strove upon the great sea, and four beasts came up from the sea, diverse one from the other." The dominion over all nations, which numbers as a Fifth Monarchy, was plainly revealed to him, to be given to "one like the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven," and his dominion was to have no end. But of this fourth kingdom many particulars were symbolized; this especially, that the kingdom or sovereignty should come to be "divided." Thus in Nebuchadnezzar's dream: "And whereas thou sawest the feet and toes part of potter's clay, and part of iron, the kingdom shall be divided." And this was to be its last condition: "In the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, that shall never be destroyed." So in the angel's interpretation of his vision of the fourth beast to Daniel : And the ten horns out of his kingdom are ten kings that shall arise." There was also to be "another little horn," a prime mover in the war made on the saints; but, in view of the beast's destruction, at the coming of the Ancient of Days, we are to look for no power symbolized, but in union and connection with the fourth empire. Now, this circumstance of the division of the sovereignty in the empire, is shown to St. John in the vision before us; the beast from the sea had seven heads, elsewhere interpreted to be seven forms of united imperial government, connected with the "seven hills" of the Roman city; the crowns, however, on this occasion, are seen, not on the heads, but on ten horns which grow out of one of his heads-" that were in his head."

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St. John is shown another circumstance in the restoration of the western empire; And I saw one of its heads, as it were, wounded to death, and his deadly wound was healed; and all the world wondered after the beast." This, I think, leads us to the date of the emersion of this beast from the troubled waters of the west, and shows it to be the same empire that had ruled before; though not possest, directly, by the red dragon.

That head, which had been wounded and was healed, I understand to be that sixth head, which St. John is told, is in his day, after five had fallen; that is to say, the imperial or Cæsarian government, which began in Augustus Cæsar, and, to all appearance, was wounded with a deadly wound by the swords of the Goths, when their victories were consummated in the deposition of Augustulus, A. D. 476. The vitality of this government was not, however, absolutely extinct; it survived in the line of the Constantinopolitan emperors, and "the deadly wound was healed" by the victorious arms of Justinian: his general Belisarius entered Rome, the first time, A. D. 536, and by the repeated successes of the imperial arms, during seventeen years, the successor of Cæsar and Augustus per

manently re-established his government over the city of "the seven hills:" and this restored form of power may be considered as continuing till the revolt of the Romans from the Greek emperor, A. D. 728. This head, however, was to be succeeded by another sovereign head, whose characteristic is, that he "shall continue for a little while." This was effected by the rising Frankic monarchy, which, perhaps virtually before, but confessedly in the person of Charlemagne, provided a new sole head of sovereignty to the restored empire of the west, and was formally crowned at Rome, A. D. 800.

This last head of a sole monarchy of the west, however we count its duration, lasted comparatively but a little time, it scarcely survived the life of Charlemagne; it was not however destroyed, but divided between his children and the leaders of his barbarian tribes, under a merely nominal headship, and in this we have the full developement of the symbol of the crown transferred from the head-the seventh head, of course to its ten horns. The duration of this beast, we observe, is the same as that ascribed to the prophesying of the witnesses, and also to the concealment of the woman, symbol of the mother of all the faithful, though as the one holy and apostolic Church, she is lost to sight, she has a remnant of her seed still abroad in the visible society of the world, bearing their testimony to Jesus. And we observe also, that to this beast, in his corporate capacity-whatever changes and variations are afterwards shewn by other symbols in the exercise of the sovereign authority, to the beast himself is ascribed, "The mouth speaking great things, and blasphemies," &c. "the making war against the saints, and overcoming them." So that the Second Beast, and the image that he makes of him, are not to be considered as symbols of powers independent of the First Beast, but rather as parts of him, and executors of his public will, and of his hostility against the saints. These in their forms may vary, or be or not be, at any particular crisis; but the animus is the same in the beast himself-the sovereign powers or governing part of mankind in the fourth empire; "the princes of this world." And this is he that, arising from the sea, goeth into perdition-the beast of the seven heads but finally investing his sovereignty in an eighth form, not in a new head, but in horns springing from the seventh head.†

* A. D. 553.

✦ A circumstance pointed out in Daniel ii. 43, "And whereas thou sawest iron mixed with miry clay, they shall mingle themselves with the seed of men, but they shall not cleave one to another, even as iron is not mixed with clay," is strikingly illustrated by the remarks of M. de Sismondi, in his "Fall of the Roman Empire." "These kings," of the barbarian nations, "who parcelled out the western empire between them, keeping themselves aloof from all other men, were singular in having family names, and intermarrying only with each other; and we owe to them the introduction of that system of relationship between crowned heads which was

II. We are called to contemplate a SECOND BEAST, coming out of the earth, of lamb-like form, but in speech like a dragon. I have interpreted this of the apostate Church in the Latin empire-more especially of its rulers, and their system of government, for the term Church was become appropriate to its hierarchy. This ecclesiastical state in its two branches of seculars and regulars, the two horns of the lamb-like beast, from the earliest times, ever regarding, in some sense or other, the bishop of Rome, or the patriarch of the west, as the head of their two orders. This, therefore, is not a symbol of any foreign power hostile to the beast; or even as having, distinct from him, any substantive power at all. "He" only "exercises all the power of the first beast before him "—and at first at least, for his interest, "for he causeth the earth, and them that dwell therein, to worship the first beast." He is, according to another vision, THE FALSE PROPHET, that worketh miracles before him," &c.*

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Of what assistance the hierarchy of the Latin Church were in procuring submission to the restored Roman empire, the history of Europe will attest; and how, by their superstition and display of miraculous powers, or "lying wonders," they formed a common link between the different parts of the Latin empire, when "the kingdom was divided." III. The grand achievement of the second beast, however, make AN IMAGE OF" or FOR THE BEAST." This, the ecclesiastical state effected,-beyond perhaps their own wishes,-in erecting the head of their order, with his immediate jurisdiction, not only into a temporal prince and principality, as a little horn-before which, three of the original crowned horns were torn up, t—but to be a sacerdotal monarch and spiritual monarchy of the whole empire—an idol truly did it afford for all the community to worship; and a new kind of a potentate to be the overseer and father of all the kings and princes of the Latin kingdoms-exhibiting, as I think, more especially, "an image of the beast who had the wound by the sword and did live,"- -a likeness of the first beast, when his power was in its entirety, the crown on his head, and not yet transferred to the horns.

Rome, indeed, under her sovereign pontiff, was but a mere image of universal monarchy; the second beast, notwithstanding, "had power to give life to the image of the beast, so that the image of the beast should

before unknown in the world." Vol. I. p. 150. Again, "Private offences and family quarrels had, however, disturbed the mutual relations" "of the barbaric kings who had partitioned out the provinces of the Roman empire;" "the marriages of kings with the daughters of kings. began to exercise their fatal influence, by embroiling those they were intended to unite; so that the Ostrogoths, the Visigoths, and the Vandals blindly rejoiced in each other's disasters. Vol. I. 220.

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both speak and cause as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed," &c. Therefore, I reckon this image, as a third enemy, together with the civil and ecclesiastical states of the Latin empire in the war against the saints.

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The Pope was, in himself, to use the language of Mr. Gibbon, only "the feeble priest, whom they had clothed with the imperial purple ; however, "after the loss of her legions and provinces, the genius and fortune of the Popes again restored the supremacy of Rome." As Mr. Hallam observes, "while the prelates of these nations, each within his respective sphere, were prosecuting their system of encroachment upon the laity, a new scheme was secretly forming within the bosom of the Church, to enthral both that and the temporal governments of the world under an ecclesiastical monarch."

In this "idol," or "image of the beast, therefore, we may contemplate what was foreshewn in the eleventh little horn of this same beast, in Daniel. He, beyond the kings his fellows, is the representative of the bestial character; and his mouth, more than any of their's, speaks the great and blasphemous words of the beast against the Most High! They that made him may, indeed, unmake him in his sovereign capacity; and it appears, from another vision, that they would do so, and burn the eternal city with fire; but there he has sat for more than twelve hundred years, with all the instruments of a foolish shepherd," with all the habiliments of the great Antichrist, "the Antichrist that should come"the infallible teacher and oracle, though he contradicts his master; the vaunted high-priest; and prince too of the kings of the earth his fellows; in short, as VICE-GOD upon earth," and the people have loved to have it so." But "woe to the idol shepherd that leaveth the flock; the sword shall be upon his arm aud upon his right eye: his arm shall be clean dried up, and his right eye shall be utterly darkened." Zech. xi. 15, &c. I had not quoted this ancient oracle, had I not thought its true application to be here, certainly the Popes sanction a very different style of quotation from the Old Testament. In how many of their public documents has Jer. i. 10, been quoted, and with all gravity and solemnity applied to themselves!! "See, I have this day set thee over the nations, and over the kingdoms, to root out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and to throw down, to build, and to plant."

As the thirteenth chapter exhibits the state and character of these last enemies, who conduct the war against the saints, and who are the destined victims to be destroyed in the "wrath of the Lamb;" so the fourteenth chapter sets before us a symbol of that consecrated people; it represents them in their mystic number, 144,000, as already standing with the Lamb on Mount Zion. Their special redemption from the earth is mentioned.

Their blameless character and purity from the corruptions of the faith in the world below, through which they should have passed in the days of their pilgrimage, is strikingly noticed; and the approaches of their kingdom, as by the various progresses of the Almighty Sovereign it is about to be manifested on earth, are arranged in prophetic anticipation of the great day. But as this, for the most part, belongs to unfulfilled prophecy, I hasten to the following chapter, in which is represented the pouring forth of the seven vials of the seventh trumpet upon the earth, several of which, it is the opinion of many, are flowing abroad, at this present era, or have had their deadly effects upon the worshippers of the beast and of his image.

The fifteenth chapter, however, only contains the beautiful proem or prelude to these last awful judgments, that are to fill up the wrath of Almighty God; in immediate sequence with which, is the day when the "Son of man is revealed," coming with all his saints to take possession of his glorious and everlasting kingdom.

Chap. xvi. "And I heard a great voice out of the temple, saying to the seven angels, Go your ways, and pour out the vials of the wrath of God upon the earth." Their being sent forth together, through the succession of the inflicted judgments is afterwards detailed in order, leaves an impression on my mind, not very dissimilar to that which the circumstance has made on Mr. Cuninghame,-That we may expect, comparatively with the judgments of old times, a very rapid succession, perhaps, sometimes must be prepared for a simultaneous action.

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Ver. 2. And the first went and poured out his vial upon the earth; and there fell a noisome and grievous sore upon the men which had the mark of the beast; and upon them that worshipped his image." I still hold the opinion of Mr. Cuninghame, Mr. Faber, and many other writers on prophecy, that this is a symbol of that licentious, atheistical, and revolutionary mania, which, in the last part of the eighteenth century, suddenly breaking out in France, has been a noisome and deadly pestilence indeed, in all the nations of the Roman Catholic earth. *

* I do not know that there is not something distinctive to be observed between the expressions, " upon them that had the mark of the beast," and "upon them that worshipped his image,"-men of two classes of character seem to be pointed out. France, where the plague began, and put forth its greatest virulence, was not distinguished at this era, among the Roman Catholic kingdoms, as those who adored in earnest the Popes of Rome-the image of the beast; though it had in former ages been most instrumental in setting him up; but, we shall remember that in the foundation of the Frankic monarchy, we see the first rudiments formed of the real empire of the revived Roman beast; therefore the mark of the first beast, as distinguished from the worshipping of its image at that time, may be the particular brand of this still leading nation of the Roman earth.

That mark seems to be explained, of "the name of a man," which, written in Greck letters, would, by these letters, as numerals, express the number 666. Now the name of the

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