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Such was the view generally adopted by the Fathers. Whether in reference to the prophecies of Daniel, St. Paul, or St. John, they speak of the grand enemy, therein alike prefigured, not as an atheist so much, but rather as a usurper of Christ's place before the world.1 And soon the name became of all others the most famous : so that from age to age the expectation was revived and expressed of some awful usurper of Christ's place appearing; some FALSE CHRIST, PSEUDO-VICAR OF CHRIST,

ANTI-CHRIST.

So we close our analysis and parallelism of this memorable tetrad of prophecies on the great Antichrist. Nor let the reader pass on without running briefly over them retrospectively, and considering what a mass of circumstantials they present touching this intended Antichristian power: circumstantials the most singular and definite as to time, place, office, character, rule, duration, &c. All these I shall hope to show fulfilled in that Papal Power which I have already in the course of our history been induced, on no slender though less specific evidence, presumptively to suspect and hold up as the Antichrist. And certainly if its history and character be found to answer to all the particulars and circumstan

1 So the Greek Fathers generally. e. g. Irenæus v, 25; "Tentans semet ipsum Christum ostendere;" and again; "In templo Dei sedebit, seducens eos qui adorent eum, quasi ipse sit Christus:" Hippolytus; Eis wavra eέiσovodai μeλλ€¡ τα Σωτηρι &c. ("He will in every thing resemble himself to the Saviour, &c.") See my Vol. ii. p. 85. Cyril, Catech. xv; yerdws Xpioтov ÉAVTOV ATOKAλWv and again ; ὡς Χριστος έρχεται. Chrysostom on 2 Thess. ii; Avtideos tis eσtAI, KAI KEλEVσ Eι πроØKUVELV AUTOV AVTI TOV EOV* And so again Theodoret, &c.-The Latin Fathers did not enter into the proper force of the Greek compound; and thus expounded it as "adversarius Domini; " so Cyprian: or “contrarius Christo ;” so Augustine.

I add the later testimony of John Damascenus, a learned monk of the eighth century. "Antichristus, generaliter qui ea quæ Christi sunt non sentit: specialiter qui Christo regiam sedem eripere conatur; sese, non illum, Christum et Deum esse mentiens."

In the Quæst. et Respons. ad Orthodox. appended to the Cologne Edition of Justin Martyr, No. 108, p. 463, the following illustration of Chrysostom's meaning in the avтideos occurs. Ούτως εσταυρωσαν οἱ Ιωδαίοι τον Χριστον, ὡς γινώσκοντες αυτόν αντιθεον i. e, not as a profest rebel against God, but a usurper of his place, by blasphemously proclaiming himself equal to God.

tialities here set forth, the conclusion must be most sure that our solution is indeed the true one.

Having already in earlier parts of my Work traced step by step the gradual expansion of corruption within the professing Church, during the first four or five centuries, into what might be regarded as an apostacy from the faith, answering to the predicted religious preparation for Antichrist, and also the removal of that old Roman Pagan Government, which was supposed by the early Christians to be the political hindrance meant by St. Paul, as that which stood in the way of his manifestation,—it is at this chronological point that I shall proceed with my comparison of historic fact and prophecy.1

CHAPTER IV.

THE SEVEN-HEADED TEN-HORNED WILD BEAST FROM THE ABYSS AND SEA.

I Now proceed to the exposition of the two Apocalyptic visions of the Wild Beast from the abyss and sea: taking that of the 13th chapter as my basis, but interweaving the important intimations that occur in the vision of the 17th and also here and there, as occasion may require, making a reference to the other prophecies on the same subject of Daniel, St. Paul, or St. John.-The reader will have observed that in the 13th Apocalyptic chapter this anti-christian power and his actings were exhibited under a tri-form configuration: symbols being exhibited not only of the ten-horned Wild Beast, but also of a lamb-like two-horned Wild Beast, his cotemporary, and of what is called the Image of the Beast. Now it seems to me indubitable that of these it is the Beast first mentioned, or rather its ruling Head, that is the Principal ;

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(I pray the reader to satisfy himself on this point, ere he pass on :) the second Beast acting but as his chief minister or agent, and directing his efforts to make the world worship the first Beast.' And it seems equally indubitable, as I have indeed already shown, that it is this first, which, however certain expositors may have otherwise represented it, answers to Daniel's Little Horn :-the one, as the other, being said to have the great mouth that spoke blasphemies against God; the one, as the other, to have had the saints given into his hand; the one, as the other, to lord it over the ten cotemporary kingdoms, as its inferiors or subjects; the one, as the other, to have had the period assigned to it for prospering of fortytwo months, or a time, times and half a time. The fulfilment of all this it is now my business to trace in the character and history of the ROMAN POPES AND PAPAL CHRISTENDOM:-the Popes themselves answering, as I conceive, to the Beast's Head with the great mouth, and the decem-regal empire and power, subordinate to and inspired by him in Western Europe, to the Beast's body :3 -just according to the explanation that I gave of the same Wild Beast, in the vision of the Two Witnesses it being then and there mentioned anticipatively in the Apocalyptic record, as their persecutor and murderer.*

To this the primary Beast in the vision I shall con

1 xiii. 12; "He causes the earth to worship the first Beast, whose deadly wound was healed." To this decisive intimation on the point referred to I shall revert when treating of the second Beast.

The explanation of this first Beast as the secular Emperor and Empire of Western Christendom, and the second Beast as the Pope and Pontifical Empire, so as almost all the more modern expositors (e. g. Faber, Cuninghame, Bickersteth, &c.) have taken it, I conceive to have been one of the most plain, as well as most fatal, of Protestant expository errors. But occasion will occur again for noting this. 2 Apoc. xiii. 5 : εδόθη αυτῷ εξουσια ποιησαι μηνας τεσσαράκοντα δυο.. On which word, wonσai, Vitringa observes that it is taken from the Hebrew of Dan. viii. 12, 24, and xi. 7, 28; signifying, rem pro voto et placito feliciter perficere. 3 The Head is spoken of as including the body in Apoc. xvii. 11; "The Beast that was and is not, even he is the eighth (i. e. king, or head.")—So in the Prophet's explanation of the vision of the Great Image it is said, "Thou (Nebuchadnezzar) art the head of gold:" although it was also stated by him that the head of gold was one of four great empires that were successively to arise. Dan. ii. 38, 89. So again Dan. viii. 21, 22.-The distinction, as well as the union, is noted in Dan. vii. 11; "I beheld, because of the great words which the Little Horn spake, till the Beast was slain, and his body given to the burning flame." 4 Apoc. xi. 7.-See my Vol. ii. p. 379, &c.

fine myself in the present and the next chapter: reserving to a third my explanation of its subsidiary the twohorned Beast, as the PAPAL CLERGY; and to yet another my explanation of the Image of the Beast, as the PAPAL COUNCILS.

Now in entering on the consideration of that which, as I have said, is to be alone our present subject, the WILD BEAST FROM THE ABYSS AND SEA, (a sea, I may here observe, that seems from the context to mean the flood just before mentioned of invading Goths,') we are met at the very outset by the emblems of the seven heads and the ten horns. Nor can we advance satisfactorily a step further, until we have discussed and solved those striking symbols, and shewn their applicability and appropriateness to the Roman Papacy, or Papal Empire. They will each furnish matter for a separate Section : and having discussed them, we shall find our way well prepared for comparing the character and the doings of the Apocalyptic Beast with those of the Popedom.

1. THE HEADS OF THE WILD BEAST.

Now the Heads of the symbolic Beast were, it seems, seven, as represented to the Evangelist's eye in the Apocalyptic symbol; though the last of the seven was declared to be in effect in a certain sense the eighth, so as will be explained afterwards.

And to these seven heads the interpreting Angel assigned a double mystic signification.

1. They signified, he said, seven hills on which the woman carried by the Beast was seated.2-Of this the application and the point are very obvious. For the woman being designated as "the city which" then (in St. John's time evidently) 3 "ruled over the kings of the

13 Apoc. xvii. 9.

1 Greek Baλagons. See Note 2 p. 60 suprà. 3 The time present meant by the Angel, and to which, as a standard, the past and future tenses here used must be referred, can only be either the time of St.

earth," these hills could only mean the far-famed seven hills of Rome.'-And it is a characteristic as important as it is obvious for it necessarily and absolutely associates the Wild Beast of the vision, (inasmuch as it bore those seven heads, thus significant,) with the seven hills of Rome for its capital :-I repeat the remark, it binds the power symbolized, through all its various mutations, from its earliest beginning to its end, to that same seven-hilled locality; even like one adscriptum gleba, and as a thing essential to his very constitution and life.2

How precisely this characteristic answers to the Papacy,

John's seeing the vision, which is the most simple supposition, or the time of the realization in the world's history of the state of things marked out in the figuration before them; i. e. of the Beast supporting the harlot-Church of Rome. Now the latter, as I have already shown, p. 71, though not unused elsewhere in the Angel's discourse,* cannot be the time present here intended.-Which being so, Constantinople, the only other city besides Rome famed as built on seven hills, is excluded from the interpretation: it having not then acquired rule, or indeed been built.

1 I subjoin, after other interpreters, a few of the many notices of this charac teristic of the locality of Rome.

Sed quæ de septem totum circumspicit orbem
Montibus, imperii Roma Deûmque locus.
Dumque suis victrix septem de montibus orbem
Prospiciet domitum, Martia Roma leger.
Dis quibus septem placuere colles

HOR.

Septem urbs alta jugis, toti quæ præsidet orbi.

OVID.

Ib.

PROPERT.

So again, to give a Christian example, Tertullian: "I appeal to the citizens of Rome, the populace that dwell on the seven hills." Apol. 35. And again Jerom to Marcella, when urging her to quit Rome for Bethlehem: "Read what is said in the Apocalypse of the seven hills &c."

Mr. E. Clarke objects against the Papal application, that Papal Rome does not actually occupy all the old seven hills. Probably few will think much of this objection. The Romish writers certainly do not. They speak of the characteristic as still attaching to Papal Rome. I will exemplify from a Romish Saint. "In the last persecution," says St. Malachi, "Peter of Rome shall be on the throne, who shall feed his flock in many tribulations. When these are past, the City upon seven hills shall be destroyed, and the awful Judge shall judge his people." Burton's Antiq. of Rome, p. 475. On a point so notorious it is needless to multiply examples.

2 In this reference to Rome as the local seat of the Apocalyptic Beast, Little Horn, or Antichrist, all the early Fathers concurred.

* So in verse 8, if the usually received reading be retained, Onpiov å тi nv kai ουκ εστι, καιπερ εστιν. But for the kαιжEр EσTI, Griesbach and Tregelles read και παρέσται. Also in verse 11: το θηριον & ην και ουκ εστι. δ In each of these cases however it is very much as a title of the Beast that the three verbs of existence seem strung together respecting it.-A similar intermixture of the two present times will be found in Apoc. xiii. where the πроσεкʊʊηoav of the 4th verse answers to the роσкνvησоvσow of the 8th; and again in the Angel's narrative of the Witnesses, Apoc. xi. (See my Vol. ii. p. 194, Note 3.) Also in other prophecies frequently:-e. g. in Isa. liii; "Who hath believed our report ?"— "He shall grow up as a tender plant; "He is despised and rejected; "-"We

esteemed him not."

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