By this very remarkable symbol, which I think it may be well to consider first in this Chapter, there seems evidently intended some most extraordinarily rapid, wide-spread, and influential diffusion, throughout the whole Roman, or perhaps rather the whole habitable world,' of three several unclean or unholy principles, suited in character to the Dragon, Beast, and False Prophet, from whom respectively they appeared to emanate : but all alike directed and speeded on their course by spirits of hell; and all alike, in respect of the earthly agencies employed to propagate them, resembling frogs, the well-known type of vain loquacious talkers and agitators, deluding and seducing the minds of men.3-Now by the Dragon we know to have been meant (for the Angel tells us so) that old Serpent the Devil; in earlier days enthroned (in place of the heavenly rightful monarch) in the Paganism of ancient Rome: and thus, in a vision picturing it as at the opening of the fourth century, represented with the covering skin, characteristic of that Pagan Empire, of a seven-headed ten-horned Dragon of which covering however, from after the time when he delivered up his seven-hilled throne and power to the Beast, we may probably suppose him to have appeared divested. Again, by the Beast, or rather

:

its literal English rendering war; which does not to the word battle, given in our authorized translation.

1 From after the opening of the prefigurative visions in chapter vi. of the Apocalyptic Book, the word constantly, if not exclusively, used for the Roman earth is 7. The word oukovμevn is only used here, and in xii. 9, where the Dragon is described as deceiving tηv oikovμevny óλŋy —It was also used in chap. iii. 10, of a trial which was to fall eπi τns oikovμevns dλns. But this, whatever the meaning, was before the opening of the prophetic part of the Book.

2 This is well illustrated both by what St. John says of lying spirits, that had gone forth in his day; the reference being to certain antichristian and false theological doctrines and principles of the time, of which earthly teachers were the visible propagators, but evil spirits the real ones: and by the vision of Micaiah, in which it appeared that a lying spirit had gone forth, and spoken by the mouth of the lying prophets of King Ahab, to draw him to the battle of Ramoth Gilead. See 1 John iv. 1, &c, and 1 Kings xxii.

3 Daubuz cites the two following references to the symbol from ancient writers in illustration: 1st. Cicero ad Attic. xv. 15, saying Ranæ þŋτopevoval, of certain vain prating demagogues of the day: 2. Artemidorus ii. 15, who expounds the figure thus ; Βατραχοι δε ανδρας γοητας και βωμολοχους προσημαινουσι· “Frogs signify impostors and flatterers."-To understand the force of the emblem, a person should have heard the frogs of southern Europe.

4 Compare Apoc. xii. 17, xiii. 2.-So, when again spoken of as seized and

(according to the Angel's definition of the thing intended. in his description ') the Beast's eighth ruling head, we saw, on I think irrefragable evidence, that the Popes of Rome were meant, from and after the time of their occupying the Dragon's throne and empire in Western Christendom and, once more, by the two-horned lamblike Beast, or False Prophet, the apostate Hierarchy and Clergy of the Patriarchate of Western Europe, from and after the time of its subjection and official attachment to the Romish Popedom."-What then (if this be correct) the three spirits, or principles, that may be considered most fitly characteristic of these three several actors on the scene ;-I mean the Devil abstractedly, the Papal Antichrist of Rome, and the Clerical corporate Body of the apostate Romish Church? To myself, with reference to the two first, the answer seems simple and obvious:-viz. that the one from the Dragon's mouth is the principle of infidelity, with its proper accompaniments of blasphemy and proud rebelliousness of spirit against rightful authority, alike divine and human;

By which sin fell the angels: "3—and the one from the Beast the pure direct principle of Popery, based on its fundamental antichristian dogma of the Roman Pope's being Christ's Vicegerent on earth. Nor again can I hesitate as to the third spirit intended. For, although at first sight there might seem some difficulty in assigning to it a sufficiently distinct character from the second, seeing that the two-horned Beast was before described

bound by the Angel, Apoc. xx. 2, I should incline to suppose that he did not appear with his old covering of the dragon-skin.

1 Apoc. xvii. 11. See Vol. iii. Note 3 p. 93.

2 It may be worth the reader's while again to consider, and satisfy himself on the exposition given to this effect, Part iv, Chap. vi.

* Compare 1 Tim. iii. 6, "Lest, being lifted up by pride, he fall into the condemnation of the devil;" and the notices of the fall of the lost spirits from their once high estate, given 2 Peter ii. 4, Jude 6.-So our Homily against Rebellion represents Satan as its first author; and connects the sin of rebellion against men with that of rebellion against God. "The first author of which rebellion was Lucifer, first God's most excellent creature and most bounden subject; who, by rebelling against the majesty of God, of the brightest and most glorious angel is become the blackest and most foul fiend and devil.--Here you may see the first author and founder of rebellion; here the grand captain and father of rebels.”— See the illustration given Note p. 32, infrà.

1

as very much the organ, agent, and instrument, as well as chief supporter, of the Beast, its principal, yet I think that the new name now given to this agent on the prophetic scene itself suggests clearly enough the solution of the difficulty. For "the False Prophet" is the generic appellation of an apostate Priesthood' in the professing Church; and of an apostate Priesthood, what the most characteristic spirit but that that o. priestcraft? A spirit this which is distinct from and independent of that of direct Popery, though naturally its ally. Its essential acting in any Priesthood is traced in their exalting themselves and the church of their ministrations, with its rites, sacraments, authority, dogmas, and traditions,-to the disparagement and even supercession of Christ's own word, work, and Spirit, in the things of salvation. It was thus in effect that it acted in the 4th and 5th centuries, long before its organization under the particular form of the twohorned lamb-like Beast of Apoc. xiii. But it thereby all the while prepared the way for a sacerdotal earthly Antichrist in Christ's place; then acted naturally afterwards, under the particular organization that I spoke of, in devoting itself as his chief support. And what then more natural, than that after the loosening of the strong binding ties of the Papal authority by the events of the French Revolution, it might very possibly rise up and act again, with a measure of distinctness and independence, though still Romanist in its tendencies, on the theatre of Christendom?

Such, I say, if the Dragon, Beast, and False Prophet mean what I think it is proved that they mean,— appear to me to be the three principles or spirits in

1 So Vitringa, p. 1117; "Doctores illi falsi qui, in ipsâ Evangelii clarissimâ luce, non destiterint suâ eruditione, eloquentiâ, et auctoritate falsæ doctrinæ religionis patrocinari, et plebes credulas detinere in perniciosis erroribus."

See Vol. i. pp. 384-386.

3 See Vol. iii. p. 164-172.

4 A different view of the Dragon, Beast, or False Prophet, will of course involve a different view of the spirits that proceed from them.-For example, they who explain the Beast of the Secular Empire of Western Christendom cannot explain the spirit that issues from its mouth of Popery. What however it may be, this class of commentators is not agreed. Mr. Cuninghame (who, by the way,

2

tended :- spirits in regard of which the prophecy intimates that they would act with unity of effect, if not of purpose; viz. so as to gather the powers of the world, (just as Ahab was seduced by a lying spirit to Ramoth Gilead,) whether altogether as antagonists against Christ and his cause, or in part as antagonists, in part spectators only, to the coming great day of conflict.And if these be the spirits intended,-spirits to go forth, let it never be forgotten, after a certain progress made in the drying up under the sixth Vial of the Turkman flood from the Euphrates,-can we well mistake in believing that within the last ten or fifteen years, the precise period marked out in the prophecy, there has been an outgoing of that which has remarkably answered to them?

Let our retrospective sketch commence from about the year 1830; at which time, it may be remembered, the predicted drying up of the mystic Euphrates had exhibited itself alike in Greece, in the trans-Danubian Turkish provinces, and in Algiers. I commence from that epoch, although the risings of each of the three spirits might indeed be dated somewhat earlier, because

explains the draconic spirit as I do) says that the Spirit from the Beast is despotism, Mr. Bickersteth that it is lawlessness.

I trust the reader has long since made up his mind on the palpable incorrectness of this explanation of the Beast. The Beast was to last 1260 years in acknowledged supremacy: whereas the Holy Roman Empire from A.D. 800, the date of its establishment by Charlemagne, to 1806, the date of its termination, lasted at the utmost but 1006 years, and in the course of that period suffered an interregnum of above seventy years. Further, the Beast was to be the object of wonder and worship to all the inhabitants of the Roman earth; whereas during none of these 1006 years had the secular empire the worship of Western Christendom (though the Popes were the object of it strikingly); and during the greater part of its duration, it was not even the most eminent or powerful of the ten kingdoms.-Yet again, neither was the Frankik or Germanic empire the Beast's eighth head, nor was its throne on the seven hills. See the last paragraph in Vol. iii. Note 1, p. 160; and my observations ibid. p. 103. 1 1 Kings xxii. 2 The kings gathered by the three spirits were to be the kings of the whole Oikovμevn; those engaged in conflict with the Lamb, the kings of the yn. If therefore the first term to be considered to have a larger meaning than the other, (See Note, p. 25 suprà) there may be some such distinction as that suggested in the text.

His three spirits are, 1st, Atheism, or Anarchy and Infidelity, 2nd, Despotism, 3rd, Popery :-Mr. Bickersteth's three are, 1st, Infidelity, 2nd, Lawlessness, 3rd, Popery.

about that time there occurred certain momentous political changes in France and England, the two most influential powers of Western Christendom,-in France that of its second democratic Revolution,' in England those of the Roman Catholic Emancipation Act 2 and the Reform Bill,3-whereby the issuing forth of the three unclean spirits (already spawned) in that new relationship to each other of which I shall presently have to speak as indicated by the Apocalyptic prophecy, was eminently accelerated and helped forward.-And in our sketch let us more especially mark their actings in our own country: not merely because it is that about which we must ever nationally feel the greatest interest; but yet more because, it being the chief asylum of true religion, and central point whence the actings for the evangelization of the world had for some time previous been proceeding, we might almost à priori have expected that the Dragon would mark it out as, above all other countries, that in which it would need that he should exert his deepest subtlety and mightiest energies.

1. Thus then as to the first spirit,—that of democratic infidel lawlessness and rebellion,-when it had crossed the channel, after overthrowing the Bourbons in France, and the Dutch dynasty in Belgium, can we forget its sudden furious outbreak, as exhibited at the mooting and during the progress of the Reform Bill ?-How the public mind in England was agitated and blindly impelled by it, almost like the herd that the legion of spirits impelled into the Lake of Gennesareth; and rank and property, church and state, alike endangered by it, till the Premier himself, the ostensible. author of the Bill, quailed and fell before the tempest: -how the too frequent conjunction of the radical and the infidel (the joint characteristics, as I conceive, of the spirit from the Dragon) was both within Parliament and without it, under the falsely assumed appellative of libe

1 1 A.D. 1830.

2 A.D. 1829.

3 A.D. 1832.