is, the Mahometans.) The same writer says of Constantine, whom, as a term of reproach, the patrons of idols called Copronymus, (same chapter,) "This most mischievous, unmannerly, savage man, &c. first departed from God, and his undefiled mother, and all the saints." So this paltry Greek idolater blasphemes the pious emperor. Again, Lib. xxii. c. 42, " He every where opposed the intercession of the holy virgin, and mother of God, and of all the saints, as useless, both in his writings, and unwritten declarations, through whom every favour flows down upon us, rejecting their holy relics, and rendering them hateful. If at any time he was told of any extraordinary thing to be applied to the health of souls and bodies, or according to custom to be honoured by those who live piously, he immediately threatened death against those who did thus, as acting impiously; or, at all events, proscription, exile, torments. And that scrap most acceptable to God, as it was accounted a kind of treasure to the possessors, was taken away to be rendered hateful from thenceforth." Let the reader see likewise, c. 54. So also in c. 48, " As often as any one who fell down, or was sick, uttered the usual outcry of Christians,-Help, mother of God! or was apprehended keeping vigils, &c. he was condemned as an enemy to the emperor, and was denominated immemorable.'

Nay, still under Theophilus, the last of five emperors who contended against images, it appears that the worship of saints was opposed by that hymn of Theodorus, in which the Constantinopolitan Church was accustomed every year, (O sin and sorrow,) to cherish again the memory of idolatry, at length victorious. For there the eighth ode says, "The sacred relics of the saints, and their images, that savage Lezius, together with John, (who was patriarch of Constantinople under Theophilus,) those deserters of piety impiously asserted were on no account to be venerated." What, then, did the Roman pontiff do in this case? He succours the image of the beast, in the greatest danger of being broken, and when he cannot succeed by letters and threats, he has recourse to fulminating arts. He strikes Leo the Isaurian, the leader of the Iconoclastes, with an anathema; he absolves his subjects in Italy from the oath of obedience, and deprives him of the Exarchate of Ravenna, and the rest of his dominion, as far as he is able. By which act, as he gave courage to the idolatrous faction in the east, so he opportunely terrified the kings of the west, from attempting any thing of a similar kind. By the same thunder, the Lateran Synod of 280 bishops, under Alexander the Third, ordained that the Albigenses, and their defenders, and supporters, should be blasted, and

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actually did blast them. The same thunder likewise, the great Lateran Council decreed, should be called down on the temporal lords, who, when required and admonished by the Church to purge their territories of them, neglected to do it; that is, that they should be bound by their metropolitans, and other provincial bishops, under the bond of excommunication, and if they contemptuously neglected to discharge this duty, their vassals should be denounced by the Roman pontiff, absolved from their allegiance, and their lands given up to be occupied by Catholics."

"And it was permitted him to give life to the image of the beast, that the image of the beast might both speak, and cause as many as would not worship the image of the beast to be killed."

If the image had not been endued with a vital power, the slain beast would not have revived by its fabrication. For the dragon-worshipping beast, which it was to resemble, was not an inactive beast, but was accustomed to exert himself very strenuously, and to attack those who opposed his inclination. Of the same kind, therefore, must that image be, in which he afterwards revived. Hence it is said to be given to the false prophet, not only that he should entice the Christian people to make an image of the beast, but that he should bestow life on it, by

which, and by edicts of a similar nature, he might order what was necessary for the maintenance of his dignity, and might punish those who were disobedient, and who refused to submit to his religious constitution, by the sword, or by a secular death. And indeed the whole power which the image has, as a secular idolatrous beast, of warring with the saints, he exercises only as delivered to him by the pseudo-prophetic beast. For the matter is so managed, that those whom the pseudo-prophetic beast has condemned for heresy, (as they call it) or for dishonouring the image, he gives at last to the secular beast the power of killing; of which he possesses none himself, but that dependent upon ecclesiastical judgment. And this is what they call delivering over to the secular power, every where to be met with in the histories of the bestial executions. The pseudo-prophetic beast, indeed, as he would wish it to appear, does not himself kill, but yet he delivers those condemned by his sentence to the secular power, as to an executioner, to be killed.

"And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, and free and bond (that is, of whatever rank, state, and condition) to receive from him*

* Or, "that he should give them," or, "that they should give." Greek.

a mark upon their right hand, or upon their foreheads. And that no one might buy or sell, but he that had the mark or the name of the beast, or the number of his name." What is meant by the interdiction of buying and selling, (to begin with the last in order,) I have just now shown, namely, to denote the papal excommunication, under which those who fall are excluded from the custom and commerce of citizens. So the canon of the Lateran Council under Alexander, of which mention was made a little above, issued against the Waldenses and Albigenses, prohibits expressly under an anathema, "That any one should presume to receive, or maintain them in their houses, or to carry on any business with them." And the Synod of Tours, in France, prohibits under a similar denunciation, "Where the followers of that heresy, (as they call it) were known, that any one should presume to grant them a place of refuge in their territory, or to afford them protection; but prescribes that no communication should be held with them in buying and selling."

And what? Does not the false prophet here likewise speak like a dragon? For the dragon Diocletian published a similar edict. That no one should sell or supply any thing to the Christians, unless they had first offered incense to the

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