"as the eyes of a man."* Also, as regards the great Apocalyptic Beast, not only do we read respecting it, in the masculine singular, that "all shall worship him," and again, that it is oyooos, the eighth king, but also that its name and number is that of a man;t whence, in fact, Bede's argument for the identification of this Beast with Paul's Man of Sin,-"numerus hominis; id est, hominis peccati." So, yet again, in Mr. Meyrick's own counter case of the Apocalyptic second Beast; explained by him (however incorrectly) to be simply an individual, although under the Bestial symbol, because called also in the masculine simply the false prophet. If so, there must surely be strange inconsistency on his part, in not applying the same argument to the cases of Daniel's little horn, and the Apocalyptic great Beast; each designated, we saw, as a king, and a man.-One might appeal further, were there need, even to common Scripture phraseology, and common parlance, on this point. But there really seems to me no need.

3. In Mr. M.'s investigation of the meaning of the great Apocalyptic Beast, we cannot but observe on his most extraordinary omission of all reference to the Beast's seven heads in the symbol: one of which (the bearer upon it evidently of the ten diademed horns)§ seemed to spring out of the cicatrice (it is markedly stated) of a previous seventh head; so as to make it successionally, just as the angel explained it to be, the eighth. Had Mr. Meyrick at all attended to this, he must surely have recognized the fact of its not being a mere headless body politic that was figured by the Beast, but also the ruling head of that body politic. The same, of course, in regard of Daniel's Beasts, and their heads or horns. How the oversight can have arisen on a point so prominent, and so immensely important towards the right solution of the prophetic symbol, is to myself incomprehensible. But for it he could not, I think, have fallen into the fundamental error of the twofold distinction, and twofold classification, of the prophecies about Antichrist mentioned above.

4. In regard to Mr. Meyrick's exposition of the second and smaller Apocalyptic Beast, I must beg attention to his representation of the miracle-working power, &c. ascribed to it, as if its own peculiar power and prerogative, distinctively from that of the first or seven-headed Beast. In so concluding, he must surely have quite overlooked the statement, that this Beast "exercised indeed the power (but only the power) of the for

* Dan. vii. 24, 8.

† Apoc. xiii. 8 (according to the critical editions), 18; xvii. 11. So, too, Apoc. xvi. 10; where we read that, under the fifth vial, "the Beast's kingdom was darkened."

E.g., in Holy Scripture, Ps. lxxxix. Vol. 63.-No. 315.

22, "The son of wickedness shall not hurt him,"-2 Tim. iii. 17, "that the man of God should be perfect." And, in common parlance, such phrases as, "The king can do no wrong; 'The king never dies," &c.

2 F

§ Compare Apoc. xvii. 12, 13,

mer Beast," and that "before him :"-powers, therefore, (the miracle-working inclusive,) derived from that former Beast, exercised in subordination to him, under his supervision, and, as it is also added, with a view to his glorification. In short, as Irenæus justly stated, the second Beast is, according to the Apocalyptic representation, only the armour-bearer (poaoTOTηs), or, as other expositors have yet better expressed it, the prime minister, of the former Beast.-While, on the other hand, it is the great Beast distinctively, which by its mouth. speaking great things and blasphemies, as well as by its setting up itself for men's worship, and delegating to the lesser Beast similar but subordinate powers, can alone be fitly paralleled with the Man of Sin, showing himself as God.

So much on the subject of Mr. Meyrick's misconstruction of the sacred prophecies, considered simply in themselves, and irrespective of any particular historic application. Besides which, however, it is quite necessary that I add some remarks with reference to his historic explanations, in order to a completer view and estimate of his exposition of the prophecies on Antichrist. And, as it seems desirable to place this in contrast with the Protestant Pope-referring explanation of them, begun long since by the fathers of the Reformation, improved and made more particular as time went on by sundry of their followers, and, as I trust, advanced towards completion by myself, (I must beg pardon, under the necessities of the case, for being so far egotistical,) it will be well, I think, just to state, first and preliminarily, the judgment pronounced by Mr. Meyrick on this the Protestant explanation.

It is in his sketch of the second of the four classes into

which he divides prophetic expositions on this great subject,* that this will chiefly be found. Beginning here with the

not founded till A.D 762, shows him to
have written above a century later.
Bale Mr. M. dates A.D. 1491; the true
date being about A.D. 1545, shortly (as
the book itself implies) before the death
of Henry the Eighth. I have already
noticed his mistake of the fierce-coun
tenanced king of Dan. viii. 23, for the
vile person of Dan. xi. 21, explained
primarily by Jerome of Antiochus
Epiphanes :-
:-a mistake found too in
C. Maitland. Mr. Meyrick has also
dipped into my own book, and pro-
fessedly taken here and there some-
thing from it. But I presume that he
cannot really have acquainted himself
with the Commentary. Otherwise he
must have seen that its evidence was
not such as to be cursorily set aside by
any real lover of the truth;-a fact
which will have its illustration presently,

:

Waldenses, as among its first exponents, he passes on to the Wycliffites and Hussites, and then to Luther and the fathers of the English Reformation: specifying Cranmer, Latimer, Ridley, Hooper, Jewell, and others of the sixteenth century; though most strangely afterwards, in direct contradiction to himself, as well as to historic fact, declaring that "the idea of the Pope being Antichrist was not the idea of the English Reformation." After which, continues Mr. Meyrick, the theologians of the seventeenth century did not at once repudiate the theory referring to Andrewes in illustration; though not, as he might have done, to Hooker also. Yet, he adds, "as the English Church's struggle came to be with Puritanism in the place of Popery," its theological writers "less and less dwelt upon it." And then he thus concludes. "From this time [i.e., I infer, from about the time of Charles the First's troubles, say A.D. 1640,] the Papal Antichrist theory is not to be found in any theologians of name in the English Church."... "The more, however, that the sober and learned divines of the seventeenth century gave up this application of the term, the more violently was it insisted on by men of little charity and contracted views. A string of writers followed each other in succession, who added nothing to the interpretation of prophecy ;† but found, each one, the creations of his own brain in the sacred book of the Revelation: grouping history, in any arbitrary manner that they chose, around the central figure of the Papal Antichrist."

I know not whether Mr. Meyrick intends to include me, mentioned as I am by name higher up in his list, in this pitiful category. If so, however, it will, I think, be judged by your readers that I am not quite so much, after all, an object for

Let me cite here, in contrast, Bishop Warburton's statement. "On this principle (viz., "that the Man of Sin, or Antichrist, could be no other than the man that fills the Papal chair") was the Reformation begun and carried on: on this the great separation from the Church of Rome conceived and perfected. . . . On the principle that the Church of Rome is Antichrist's, the Reformers had not only a right, but lay under the obligation of a command, to come out of the spiritual Babylon." Elsewhere he says:" I have ever thought the prophecies relating to Antichrist, in the Old and New Testaments, (i.e., as fulfilled in the Roman Popes and Papacy,) the most convincing proof of the truth of the Christian religion that any moral matter is capable of receiving." Warburton, Works, vol. x. p. 178, vol. xi. p. 347.

† How different from Sir I. Newton's

statement in his prophetic work, written
some few years before his death, but not
published till six years after that event,
viz., in the year 1733. Among the
interpreters of the last age," says he,
"there is scarce one of note who hath not
made some discovery worth knowing:
whence I seem to gather, that God is
about to open these mysteries."
"But

not," he added, "can we expect this, till
the revolution indicated at the sounding
of the seventh Apocalyptic Trumpet;
under which (as the angel swore) the
mystery of God would be completed":-
a revolution almost universally explained,
by the Protestant historic school of inter-
preters, to be the great French Revolution.

p. 72. Mr. M. adds, p. 76, "There is hardly a feature in the Papal system which is similar in its lineaments to the portrait of Antichrist as drawn by St. John." (!!) Compare pp. 207, 215, 216, suprà and infrà.

pity; when considering that I have for companions expositors like Mede and Vitringa of the 17th century, Sir I. Newton and bishops Butler and Warburton of the 18th, and John Davison, bishop Van Mildert, and archbishop Sumner, of the 19th, among many others more or less of eminence. However, it is not on the authority of any names, eminent though they be, that I would wish either myself or my readers to rest; but on evidence of plain fact, as judged of by sound common sense. Accordingly, I shall conclude my review of Mr. Meyrick's article by presenting briefly, side by side in contrast, as compared with indubitable historic facts, a sketch of his exposition of Apoc. xii-xiii, in apposition with St. Paul's prophecy of the Apostasy and the Antichrist, on the one hand; and, on the other, one of that Protestant exposition, which he so scornfully repudiates, as given, of course, in my own last improved version of it.-Let me say that I have Messrs. Lightfoot and Bullock in view, as well as Mr. M., in presenting it.

That the comparison may be not unfitly instituted appears from the circumstance, that we each consider the figuration of the Woman in Apoc. xii. to have reference to the Church during some part of the period between St. John's time and the time of the completed dissolution into ten of the old Roman empire a dissolution implied, as then an accomplished fact, in the symbolization of the ten-horned Beast at the opening of Apoc. xiii.; and therewith, coincidently, the removal of what we both explain as St. Paul's hinted obstacle to the manifestation of the consummated apostasy, or of Antichrist.*

Though really, as to harmonizing this part of the Apocalyptic prophecy with the corresponding part of St. Paul's, albeit a part of his main professed object, we have before seen that thero is in Mr. M.'s article next to nothing like it. The travailing Woman of Apoc. xii. he just explains as the Church bringing forth children to Christ; whether through the whole period between St. Paul's writing to the Thessalonians and the fall of the Roman empire, or any particular part of that period, does not appear; and the same as to the time of Satan's figured persecution of the Woman, under form of a seven-headed Dragon. At length, as there approaches in the prophecy the fated sign of the empire's dissolution, (Mr. M. passes over its intermediate figurations unnoticed,) she appears, according to him, split into the two symbols of the Woman in the wilderness, and the seven-headed ten-horned Beast rising from the sea; both alike parts of one and the same Church, [!]† but considered respectively in the two aspects of the faithful and the apostatized or faithless the faithful being further indicated as the Woman's children, (summed up elsewhere, as we both agree, in the two

:

* See p. 203, Note † suprà.

+ See p. 204 suprà.

emblematic sackcloth-robed Witnesses,)* as well as the Woman herself. Such, I believe, is here pretty much the sum total of Mr. Meyrick's Apocalyptic explanations and harmonizings.

Now for the old, though improved, Protestant explanation. And, since the seven-headed Dragon means Satan evidently as inspiring, and acting through, the Roman imperial heathenism against the Woman, or Church, its figured restriction to power in but one-third of the heaven of political elevation, its badge of imperial rule being on seven heads (not six), with implication of the 7th short-lived ruling head, predicted as to come next after the 6th of St. John's own time,† having risen up at the epoch intended by the vision, and the badge figured being not the old Roman laurel crown, but the Asiatic diadem,-there is judged to be indicated thereby some particular era, answering on this head to the three notable tests above specified.-Again, as regards the Woman, designative in some way, as all agree, of the Church, her figured appearance in the same heaven of political elevation as the Dragon, and with chief influence apparently in the other two-thirds of its expanse,-its dodecanal crown, as of apostolic character and universality,-its travailing to bring forth (not children generally, but) one special male child, which was caught up after birth, in spite of the Dragon's machinations, to what is called God's throne, and as destined, after a while, to rule the heathen with a rod of iron,-all this points likewise to a particular era in the Church's history, and furnishes four or five additional testings whereby to fix it.

Try, now, the year A.D. 323,-the epoch of the last war of Roman imperial heathenism against the Christian Church; and see whether the prophecy and the history of that epoch do not strikingly, and on every point, agree.

(1.) At that time then the Roman empire was under the new imperial quadripartite headship instituted by Diocletian, being the seventh, or next after the sixth, of St. John's days: a headship shortlived, as predicted; since it fell, after only some thirty years' duration, on the final victories of Constantine. (2.) The new imperial badge was the diadem.‡ (3.) Licinius, the fighter of the last battle of Roman heathenism against Christianity, was but emperor of the Eastern third.-So as to the Dragon. Next, as to the Christian Church. (1.) It was at that epoch then both universal, and, in professed doctrine, pure and apostolic; as notably shown in the famous Nicene General Council,

Apoc. xii. 17. Says Mr. M., p. 76; "The two Witnesses seem to represent all the faithful among the faithless during the three-and-a-half times."

† Apoc. xvii. 10; "Five are fallen; one is; the other (or seventh) is not yet come; and, when he cometh, he must continue a short space."

So Gibbon. "Diocletian introduces a new form of government, and assumes the diadem."I have given coins, in the Appendix to my third volume, of Licinius diademed. The change constitutes a notable Roman numismatic epoch.