and by a decisive edict, suppressive of its sacrifices as well as temples, inflicted "a deadly wound" on surviving Paganism in the empire generally, and above all in the capital. As if the better to mark the formal constitutional deposition of the animating spirit of the old seventh draconic Head from all authority in Rome, we read that "in a full meeting of the senate the emperor proposed, according to the forms of the republic, whether the worship of Jupiter, or that of Christ, should be the religion of the Romans; and that on a regular division Jupiter was condemned and degraded by a large majority.". As to "the deadly wound" that I spoke of as inflicted by Theodosius, the reader will have marked the inverted commas that inclose the phrase; and thought probably that it was not without reason that I applied the Apocalyptic language of metaphor. But in fact the quotation, though Apocalyptic, was not made by me primarily from the Apocalypse; but from him whose unconscious destiny it has been to furnish, times almost without number, its best illustrations,-the infidel Gibbon.'

Thus did Paganism, the animating spirit of the seven heads of old Rome and its Empire, wounded unto death, expire.-Nor must I omit to add that, as if yet more fully to mark the excision of Rome in its character of the old Imperial capital, it was itself struck by the sword of the Gothic and Herulian conquerors; so as not merely to have its Pagano-religious, but even its political and

city, is introduced by the orator to plead her own cause before the tribunal of the Emperors.".." Since I do not repent, permit me to continue in the practice of my ancient rites. This religion has reduced the world under my laws." Gib. v. 98.

Perhaps in this Gibbon followed Baronius, iv. 742; "Quo religionis affectu idololatriam sæpius, ut percussum multis ictibus anguem, caput rursus extollentem, penitus extinguendam curavit Theodosius." Compare Julius Maternus, a Christian writer about the middle of the fourth century; "Amputanda sunt hæc sacratissimi Imperatores penitus, atque delenda, severissimis edictorum vestrorum legibus." And again; "Licet in quibusdam regionibus idolatriæ morientia palpitent membra, tamen in eo res est ut è Christianis omnibus terris pestiferum hoc malum funditus amputetur." ap. Lardner, iv. 170.

1 Ib. p. 116; "This last Edict of Theodosius inflicted a deadly wound on the superstition of the Pagans."-It was on this occasion that Theodosius first surmounted the globe on the Roman coins with a cross. Walsh. 117. See the engraving of the medal at p. 44 suprà.

civic life annihilated, its head as it were decollated, and wounded to death.'-And was there then that in the old seven-hilled locality, so fondly and so long cherished by the Dragon, whereby, as a new principle of life and power, he might yet again, though still all subserviently to himself, attach supremacy to it over the now newly rising Romano-Gothic kingdoms round it? that wherewith, to use the Apocalyptic metaphor, he might heal the deadly wound given by the christian sword, and make the Roman Beast live again? Even so. It is to the Historian of the Decline and Fall that I again look for an answer. "Like Thebes, or Babylon, or Carthage," he says, 3" the name of Rome must have been erased from the earth, if the city had not been animated by a vital principle, which again restored her to honor and dominion." And then he mentions, as this vital principle, the tradition that two Jewish teachers, a tentmaker and a fisherman, had formerly been executed at Rome in the circus of Nero; that after 500 years their genuine or fictitious relics were adored as the palladium of Christian Rome; and their holy shrines, guarded by miracles and invisible terrors, resorted to by pilgrims from the East and West: -that about this time the Bishoprick of Rome was filled by one of living energy, the first and greatest of the Gregorys, well fitted to make use of the miraculous sanctity and superstition of the spot: that his temporary exercise of the local sovereignty of Rome, and extension of his episcopal influence and authority into Greece, Gaul, and Spain, as well as Italy, might countenance the more lofty pretensions of succeeding Popes :-in short that thus the Bishops of Rome began to be a new Head of Empire to it; and in the rise of Papal superstition to supremacy, that the deadly wound of its last Pagan Head was healed.

1 So Jerom, on Alaric's first threatening Rome, "Roma vitam auro redimit ;" and again, on Rome's capture, spoke of the "Romani Imperii caput as truncatum;" (see my Note1 p. 369, Vol. i ;) i. e. the empire left a headless trunk. 2 Tertullian De Spectac. 7, speaks of “Roma quà dæmoniorum conventus consedit."

The civic extinction, however, of the old capital was only completed by Totilas. See my Note 2, p. 113 infrà. 3 Gibbon, Vol. viii. p. 161.

For

Such is Gibbon's account of the revival of the Imperial City of the seven hills; and of the new principle of life, and empire, and new Head, under which this revival was accomplished. Corroborating testimonies to the same fact will occur in what remains of this Chapter, and in the next: from which also it will appear that the Papal Headship began earlier than Gregory, in fact rose cotemporarily with the rise of the Gothic kingdoms: that it continued thenceforth their only Head; and that it was their Head in the distinct character of Antichrist. the present I shall content myself with citing the agreeing testimony of two learned Pontifical writers of the middle age, Augustin Steuchus and Flavio Blondus. Augustin Steuchus thus writes; "The empire having been overthrown, unless God had raised up the Pontificate, Rome, resuscitated and restored by none, would have become uninhabitable, and been a most foul habitation thenceforward of cattle.2 But in the Pontificate it revived as with a second birth: its empire in magnitude not indeed equal to the old empire, but its form not very dissimilar: because all nations, from East and from West, venerate the Pope not otherwise than they before obeyed the Emperors. The other, Blondus: "The Princes of the world now adore and worship as Perpetual Dictator, the successor not of Cæsar but of the Fisherman Peter : that is the Supreme Pontiff, the substitute of the aforementioned Emperor."

1 So Niebuhr in his History, Vol. i. p. 222: who, after noticing Rome's desolation by Totilas, speaks of its then "becoming the capital of a spiritual empire; which, after the lapse of twelve centuries, we have seen interrupted in our days." 2 Procopius says that Totilas the Goth had determined to make Rome a place for flocks and herds. In illustration I cannot but refer the reader to a most graphic description of Rome as left in ruins by the Goth Totilas, and supposed to have been visited by Belisarius, given in Dr. Miley's Rome Pagan and Papal, ii. 196. 3 "Everso Imperio, nisi Deus Pontificatum restituisset, futurum erat ut Roma, à nullo excitata et restituta, inhabitabilis post hæc, fœdissima boum at pecorum futura esset habitatio. At in Pontificatu, etsi non illa veteris Imperii magnitudo, specie certè non longè dissimilis renata est; quia gentes omnes, ab ortu et occasu, haud secus Pontificem Romanum venerantur quàm olim Imperatoribus parebant."

4 "Dictatorem perpetuum, non Cæsaris sed piscatoris Petri successorem, et Imperatoris prædicti vicarium, Pontificem summum Principes orbis adorant et colunt." Roma Instaurata, Lib. iii. Both this and the former extract are quoted by Vitringa. p. 785: also by Pareus p. 433 before him, as well as Daubuz p. 568, VOL. III.

I

I next proceed to explain the ten Horns, conformably with the above-noted explanation of the Beast's last Head.

1

It is of course a necessary preliminary to our enumeration of ten kingdoms, answering to the ten horns of the Beast, that we satisfy ourselves geographically as to the extent of Roman territory on which,-and chronologically as to the time at which,-such kingdoms ought to be sought. It is chiefly from their adapting their several lists to more or less of the territorial extent of the old Roman world, and to epochs earlier or later in the prolonged period of the flux and reflux of the Gothic waters over it, that interpreters, agreed on the main principles of their exposition, have yet in their lists more or less differed from each other. That there should have been the large measure of agreement that there has been between them, can scarce have arisen from any thing else but the notoriety and prolonged fixedness of most of the kingdoms.

With regard then to the first point it seems reasonable to me that we should seek the ten kingdoms on the terafter him.-Steuchus was Librarian to the Pope: Flavio Blondus, a celebrated Antiquary of the xvth century; from whose Roma Instaurata Bellarmin, says Vitringa, has often quoted.

It may be interesting to the Reader to compare what Blondus and Steuchus say, not merely with the prophecy itself, but also with what the ancient Father Hippolytus gathered from the sacred Prophecy, respecting the expected Antichrist as restorer of Rome :

Τετο σημαίνει ότι κατα τον Αυγουστου νομον, αφ' ου και ἡ βασιλεια Ρωμαίων συνεση, δυτω και αυτος κελεύσει και διατάξει απαντα επικυρων, δια τουτου δοξαν ἑαυτου πλείονα περιποιούμενος. Τούτο γαρ εστι το θηριον το τεταρτον δν επληγη ἡ κεφαλη και εθεραπεύθη, δια το καταλυθήναι αυτην, και ατιμασθήναι, και εις δεκα διαδηματα αναλυθηναι. Ός τότε πανουργος ων ώσπερ θεραπεύσει αυτήν, και ανανεώσει. . . . Εναργήσει γαρ, και ισχύσει, δαι τον ὑπ' αυτου ὁριζόμενον νομον. De Antichristo, § 49. Thus it was the expectation of Hippolytus that Antichrist would revive Rome and its Empire in some new form, even as Augustus remodelled and fresh founded it; and this by means of some new law or constitution, which, while revivifying Rome, was to bring glory to himself.

1 E. g. Eberhard, Bishop of Saltzburg, at the Diet of Ratisbon enumerates the Barbarian invaders of the Eastern as well as Western Empire.

2 Thus Sir I. Newton's is made with reference to the year 416, Mede's to 456, that of Dr. Allix to 486, Bishop Newton's to the 8th century, &c.

ritory not of the whole Roman empire, but of the Western only. For the separation of the Roman world into Eastern and Western,-a separation first sketched out and prepared in Diocletian's formation of the seventh Head, and one by which the latter division only was attached to the City of the seven hills as its actual capital,' I say this separation and division was effectually carried out in the interval between the first wounding of the seventh head and the rise of the eighth or Papal. Further, it was over this part only of the Roman world, that the Gothic flood swept away the old Imperial Government, and made room for new kingdoms to arise: and, yet again, over this part only that the authority of the eighth or Papal Head was properly or permanently established. I would therefore beg the Reader to trace on the Map the frontier line of the Western empire as drawn by Gibbon : beginning north from the wall of Antoninus that separated England from Scotland, then following the Rhine up to its point of nearest proximity to the Danube-source, i. e. half way between Strasburg and Basle; thence down the Danube to Belgrade ;3 and thence in a Southern course to Dyrrachium, and across the Adriatic and Mediterranean to the Syrtis Major and the great Desert of Africa :-it is to be understood that all to the Eastward of this line belonged to the Constantinopolitan or Greek division of the Empire; all Westward,- including England, France, Spain, the African Province, Italy, and the countries between the Alps and the Rhine, Danube, and Save, anciently known under the names of Rhætia, Noricum, and Pannonia, in modern times as Switzerland, half Swabia, Bavaria, Austria, and the Western part of Hungary,-to the Western or Roman division. This it is with which alone we have to do at present.

1 See Note 4, p. 110 suprà.—I say actual capital: because Rome was still considered theoretically and constitutionally the capital of the whole empire. See p. 108, Note 2.

See my Map Vol. i. p. 342, or that prefixed to Gibbon's second volume.

3 Respecting these two rivers Ambrose thus observes in his Hexameron, ii. 12; "Danubius barbarorum atque Romanorum intersecans populos, donec ponto ipse condatur; Rhenus memorandus adversùs feras gentes murus Imperii."