constituted authority that held supremacy on those seven hills. The which notable fact appeared thus. Kings, consuls, dictators, decemvirs, and military tribunes made up the first five, reaching to the time of Augustus; and the Imperial regime then introduced, agreeably with the Angel's notice of it as the ruling head in St. John's time, the sixth. Then the seventh,-a head which was to come afterwards and to continue but a short time,3— was shown to be the short-lived imperial tetrarchical form of government introduced by Diocletian: this being the next new form according to Gibbon; and answering to the Apocalyptic type, not merely in the two above-noted points, but also in respect of two other most notable characteristics as follows. The first was that of being the last ruling Pagan government established in Rome, and the same that fought the imperial battle with Christianity: just as the Apocalyptic Dragon, the Beast's precursor, and symbol of Rome's Pagan rulers, fought the battle against the sun-clothed travailing woman in vision under his last or seventh head, for he had but seven heads in all: (a head identical evidently with the Beast's original seventh, which already on his first emergence appeared as that which had been cut down by a sword :-the second that of having the diadem for a badge, a badge assumed by Diocletian, in contravention of all the old Roman habits and feelings; which selfsame badge the pictured Dragon wore in his conflict with the woman, and until his dejection from the symbolic heaven, presently following. After which,-this seventh head having been "wounded to death" by the Christian imperial sword, and a local interregnum, if I may so speak, having followed of some two centuries, during which, most remarkably, the ruling Christian power forsook, even as if it shunned, the seven-hilled city for the capital of its residency, after this, I say, an eighth head appeared on that same locality, in the Bishops or Popes of Rome: it being under 1 According to the enumeration, it is to be remembered, of Tacitus. 4 Ib. 104-106. Ib. 110. them (as Papal writers themselves represent it) that Rome again rose to supremacy, had its deadly wound healed, and became thenceforward a second time mistress of the western world.' So, I say, was the second point of parallel proved between the Popes and the Apocalyptic Beast.-3. The Popes received in the sixth century the allegiance of the ten Romano-Gothic kingdoms that had then risen in Western Europe, as their acknowledged spiritual head; just as the Beast's eighth, or new seventh head, had ten kingly horns growing out of it.2— 4. The Popes had even at that early time assumed the extraordinary title, and asserted pretensions to the extraordinary authority of, CHRIST'S VICAR: 3 a title and character so precisely accordant with that of the predicted ANTICHRIST, (whose empire, it is allowed on all hands, the Apocalyptic Beast's signified,) that even men's imagination itself has failed of suggesting any other equally so.-5. Their character answered to the Beast's, in respect both of their speaking great things (great such as no mortal man ever before presumed to speak) and blasphemies and also of their oppressing, conquering, and destroying Christ's true saints.-6. With regard to the time of their religious supremacy, it continued established in Western Christendom, from its rise in the 6th century, before mentioned, to the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789, a period of just 1260 years: the very same that was declared to attach to the supremacy of the Beast in vision. Besides all which evidence, there was the subsidiary proof of the Papal Antichrist having for his main-prop the allegiance of the long apostatized Western Clergy, regular and secular; just as the Beast had the two-horned lamb-like Beast, or False Prophet, for its chief supporter; and of their jointly recurring to the artifice 2 Ib. 114. &c. 3 Ib. 124-133. 1 Ib. 112, 113. 4 See my observations on the word Antichrist's two peculiar meanings, Vol. i. pp. 67, 68; and also in the Appendix to this Volume my notice of the inappropriateness of the Infidel Antichrist imagined by some modern commentators. 5 Vol. iii. 147, &c. 6 The fact of a day meaning a year in these prophetic periods I believe to have been com; letely proved in Part iv. Chap. ix. § 1. 1 of representative General Councils of the Popedom, to strengthen it; just as the Beast and False Prophet to the Beast's Image :-to which symbolic Image these General Councils were shown to answer, in all the six or seven particulars predicated of it in the prophecy; as also the Papal Clergy to the four or five predicated of the Lambpersonating Beast, or False Prophet. Finally, there was the evidence of the name Lateinos (the Latin man) -that which contains the enigmatic numeral 666, and was suggested by Irenæus as very probably the Beast's name intended in the prophecy,-being the very most appropriate appellative of these Popes of the Latin empire; and a name, in solution of the Apocalyptic enigma, altogether as unobjectionable, it was shown, as appropriate.3 By this description of the Beast and Beast's kingdom and people, and a brief counter-sketch of the Lamb and his kingdom and people,—especially with reference to some joyful epoch, ecclesiastical and political, in their history, during the Beast's reign, just such as occurred at the Reformation, as well as to a period of religious lukewarmness and want of understanding, on the part of many of its professed supporters, following it, such as in the new Protestant churches too soon had its fulfilment,*—we were brought down nearly to that epoch of the seventh Trumpet's sounding, at which the former prophetic series some little time before, had broken off; and by the vision next immediately following, viz. of an Angel flying through heaven with the gospel to preach to every nation and people, into its very ara :-one principal characteristic of the seventh Trumpet being that of a Trumpet of coming jubilee to the world, when the temple of his true Church would be wide opened to it; and one principal vision, connected with the period of its judgment-vials outpouring on apostate Europe, that of harpers of the same class as the Lamb's followers, 'See Part iv. Ch. vii. 2 See Part iv. Ch. vi. 4 lb. Ch. x. preserved and detached from the apostacy, singing songs of missionary spirit and jubilean anticipations.' As to the evidence on which we explained the earthquake of this Trumpet, and judgments of its first five Vials, of the French Revolution and desolating European wars that arose therefrom, it will be yet fresh in the reader's remembrance. Suffice it therefore to suggest how those judgments were shown to have fallen geographically on the land, sea, old boundary rivers, symbolic sun, and seven-hilled throne of Anti-Christendom, (very much as on corresponding localities under the corresponding Trumpets,) alike in the order of the prefigurative Vials, and with that kind of infliction that they respectively indicated: moreover how we were thereby brought down in European history to the very eve of the drying up of the Turkman dominion, which commenced A.D. 1820, in Europe; an event which so strikingly answers to the sixth Vial's symbol, (the drying up of the flood from the Euphrates,) as almost, even independent of the context, to force itself on the mind as that prophecy's fulfilment.2-Besides which, the whole æra was shown to have been one of revival of religion in Protestant Christendom, or at least Protestant England, resulting in an outburst of evangelic missions unprecedented in history; just such (I beg attention to this palpable coincidence) as we saw a moment since was also prefigured in the Apocalyptic prophecy as an accompaniment of the æra of the seventh Trumpet, and its constituent Vials. So ends our review of evidence. And I trust the reader's conclusion, after testing each link of the chain, will like my own be this: that, continuously from St. John's time to the present, the chain is unbroken; that the Apocalyptic visions are proved, in a double line of prophecy, to have depicted with the most wonderful accuracy the chief events, secular and ecclesiastical, in the history of Christendom; and that our position in 1 Apoc. xi. 19, xv, 2-5. See Part v. Ch. vii. 2 See Part v. Ch. vi. § 2. the prophecy began from the year 1820 to be under the sixth Apocalyptic Vial, and its primary symbol of the drying up of the Euphrates, in the one series; as we were also then, and had been for some thirty years previous, under that of the Angel flying abroad with the everlasting gospel, in the other.-The only question at this point seems to be, whether we may not in the course of the last ten or fifteen years have advanced a step further: viz. in the last-mentioned series to the vision of the second Angel crying against Babylon; in the former to the notice, next following that respecting Euphrates, which describes three unclean spirits like frogs as appearing to issue out of the mouths of the Dragon, Beast, and False Prophet, towards the close of the same sixth Vial; to the effect of gathering together the kings and people of the whole world to the war of the great day of God Almighty.-The consideration of this point, with a view to the more exact fixing of our precise present position in the prophecy, will be the fit sequel of the present chapter; and fit preparation for looking into the future, in those that follow. CHAPTER II. PRESENT POSITION OF CHRISTENDOM UNDER THE THREE FROGS OF APOC. XVI, AND THE SECOND OF THE THREE ANGELS FLYING IN MID-HEAVEN OF APOC. XIV. 1. THE THREE FROGS. "And I saw come out of the mouth of the Dragon, and out of the mouth of the Beast, and out of the mouth of the False Prophet, three unclean spirits like frogs for they are spirits of Dæmons, working miracles, (or signs') which go forth to the kings of the whole world,2 to gather them together to the war3 of the great day of God Almighty." Apoc. xvi. 13, 14. * So Scholz and Tregelles ; reading simply βασιλεις της οικουμένης όλης. 3 εις τον πολεμον. The idea of continuity may attach to this word πολεμοs, or |