times;" ;" so the prophet Zechariah, (chap. viii. 23.) "Ten men shall take hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying we will go with you, for God is with you;" and so our blessed Saviour, (Luke xv. 8.) "What woman having ten pieces of silver, if she lose one of them, &c." No material force is lost by such an indefinite application of the number in the matter before us, and needless question is avoided.

To give an example of the enumerations of independent states which have been made, I refer to that which may be applied, according to Bishop Newton and most others, to times when three of them fell before the papal power, taking the ten-horned Wild-beast of Daniel to be the same as this before us, and the eleventh, or little horn of the prophet to be the two-horned Wild-beast of the evangelist in the sequel of this chapter.

In the three horns which fall before the little horn we have a land-mark; for it does not appear that more than two lists have ever been thought of: 1, The State of Rome, the Exarchate of Ravenna, and the Lombards; and 2, The Heruli, A.D. 476, the Ostrogoths, A.D. 492, and the Lombards, A.D. 774. But the latter three are decidedly inadmissible, because of its not being lawful to consider the little horn, or papacy, as having come up, or been revealed before A.D. 533, and the Heruli having then been sometime absorbed in the Ostrogoths, and having passed away. The former three must, therefore, be adopted. It is true the two first in that former list were rather lieutenancies under the emperor, than sovereignties; but when these are the only states to be found, that became subject to the papal power in actual possession, and comprehending "the patrimony of St. Peter," there seems to be no alternative. The pope, in his contest with the Emperor Leo Isauricus about the worship of images, A.D. 728, revolts with the Romans and holds them subject to himself. Pepin, King of France, A.D. 755, helps him to deliver Ravenna from the Lombards, and, instead of restoring it to the emperor or his exarch, to keep it for himself; and Charlemagne, A.D. 774, conquers Lombardy at his requisition, and invests him with a considerable part of the conquered territories. Thus the pope becomes a temporal as well as a spiritual potentate; not, indeed, one of the ten horns, but still, as before, essentially distinguishable from them all; sufficiently so, to be

• See also xiv. 22; Neh. iv. 12; Job xix. 3.

symbolized in this book as a two-horned Wild-beast, rather than as an extra horn of the ten-horned Wild-beast, as in the prophet Daniel.

To these three states, Rome, Ravenna and Lombardy, Bishop Newton adds Hungary, the Alemanni in Germany, France, Burgundy, Spain, Britain, and the Saxons in the same island, and so completes the ten. But perhaps others might be added.

In these later days we have had Spain, Portugal, France, Belgium, Bavaria, Wirtemburg, Austria, Sardinia, Naples, all in one league under political and religious Romanism.

It will be important to add the list of kingdoms as they first stood at the revival of the Wild-beast, A.D. 533: from which time they began to come into conjunction with him. They may be thus enumerated. The Franks, Alemans, Burgundians, Visigoths, Sueves, Vandals, Anglo-Saxons, Bavarians, Huns, and Lombards. The Herulian and Ostrogothic kingdom in Rome and Italy not only fell before the eighth form of the Wild-beast, but was itself previously, the seventh head; and, therefore, it had no confederate connexion with the imperial head.p

The changes admissible in the indefinite character of the term TEN will be kept in mind. As the states change, so may the actual number of them exceed or fall short of ten at different times.

It is worthy of special observation, that when the pope and the Roman state revolted, A.D. 728, and the Romans threatened to elect an emperor favourable to image-worship, and conduct him to Constantinople, the pope "delayed and prevented the election, and exhorted the Italians not to separate from the body of the Roman monarchy. The Exarch was permitted to reside within the walls of Ravenna, a captive, rather than a master; and till the imperial coronation of Charlemagne, the government of Rome and Italy was exercised in the name of the successors of Constantine." q

The continuation of the imperial sovereignty since that time history has recorded."

I call attention to these remarkable facts, in order to

P The list given by Machiavel may be seen in the discussion of the seventeenth chapter on the horns.

a Gibbon, ix. 131, 141.

This is shown and proved at length in the consideration of the seventeenth chapter.

show that the temporal dominion of the pope over Rome was of such a kind as not to set aside the Sovereignty of the Emperor, either by election or abdication. It was a leading instance of the pope's assuming to wield his power, without displacing him from the throne of Rome; the two-horned Wild-beast, exercising the power of the Deinotherion evrov AUTOU, before his face, in his presence, without dethroning him. The Viceroy did not set aside the Emperor, though he first took his power thus far into his own hands, and afterwards domineered over him and all the confederate kings.

This papal reduction of the powers into unity of sentiment with himself was, in fact, the main principle of their cohesion; and it lasted till the æra of general shaking and dissolution was set in, which has now been running its eventful course for upwards of fifty years. But more of this hereafter.s

Upon the heads of this Deinotherion it is observed, "was the name of blasphemy." Blasphemy is the assuming or giving to the creature the honour which belongeth to God, or in any way derogating from his glory. Self-deification has been the sin of all Roman religion, whether Pagan or Antichristian. And it has been gloried in by all; and by none more than the sovereign powers who have ordained it. These, as heads of the people, have exhibited it in their very appellatives DOMINUS, or sometimes DIVUS, as well as in their practical example universally; and the people have followed them; till DEA ROMA, the Eternal City, the Holy Roman Empire, are legible everywhere.t

Even if Christian individuals occur in the course of those dynasties of headship, which have been contemporary with Christianity, the almost universal succession of un

8 While I was writing this, the intelligence came to England, that, on the 29th of Dec., 1848, one hundred and one guns from the Castle of St. Angelo announced to Rome and to the world, that, after many past shakings, the temporal dominion of the pope was no more; the great bell of the Capitol, which only tolls on the death of the pope, solemnly declared the same event. The Romans had resolved on a Republic with a representative assembly, and the pope fled to Gaeta. This was done without a single kingdom of the ten being found to aid him; and the last successor of Justinian, or Charlemagne, had fallen in 1806. But the end is not yet.

t Spanheim. Dissert. tertia de præstant. et usu Numm. Aut., sect 3, vol. i. p. 138. See Bp. Newton on this place.

christian rulers, and the unaltered constitutional character of the headship, prove every head to be guilty of blasphemy, and to deserve the stigma."

"And the Wild-beast, which I saw, was like unto a leopard; and his feet were as the feet of a bear; and his mouth as the mouth of a lion; and the dragon gave him his power, and his throne, and great authority."

We are reminded by all this of the fourth Wild-beast of Daniel, which was like no other; and we are presented at the same time with a combination of his first three, the leopard, the bear, and the lion, which were emblems of the Grecian, Persian, and Babylonian empires; the fourth, as here, symbolizing the Roman. It has the rapidity and elasticity of Grecian conquest, the voracity of Persian destructiveness and luxury, and the pride and haughtiness of Babylonian domination. And the whole life, and rule, and vast authority, which the devil had originated and embodied in the foregoing Imperial state of the commonwealth, he now infused into the revived constitution of it, which was thus beginning to appear.

"And I saw one of his heads, as it had been wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed; and all the earth wondered after the Wild-beast."

The wound, apparently, had been given some time before. Its effect was nearly fatal to the Wild-beast; and he had been almost overwhelmed in the sea of Gothic invasion and dissolution. But now, he rises again, having his deadly wound healed. It had been given on his Imperial head, when Augustulus, A.D. 475, had been deposed. And then, while he was tumultuating in the sea of barbarian invasions, half alive, and half dead, a Gothic sovereignty assumed the headship, invested with the Roman appellation of patrician, and afterwards of Gothic king, by which he went

u See this subject more fully treated of in the seventeenth chapter; and let not the reader be dismayed at the Horæ Apocalypticæ denouncing the admission of professedly Christian emperors into the imperial headship, as "a violation of the propriety of things, and of all Scriptural rule and analogy, such as nothing can render credible." Part IV. chap. iv. sec. i. vol. iii. p. 110. There is no argument in mere declamation. In a similar way, Dr. Keith's interpretation of the seven thunders is set aside, not by disproving a single point in the interpretation itself, but quoting the reason Dr. Keith suggests for their not being written, and asking, "Who can believe it?" Part III. chap. iv. sec. 2. vol. ii. p. 102.

through the perilous storm. This seventh head falling in Theodatus, the wounded Imperial head, with ten horns having diadems upon them, is raised again. V A.D. 533. All the heads except this last are fallen; and this is dominant; an Imperial sovereignty having other royal sovereignties, or independent principalities, in confederacy with it. And all the world went wondering at this Roman constitution thus recovering itself; and the nations around, notwithstanding their independence, followed and adhered to it; while the incantations of Antichristian and diabolical idolatry increased their imbecility of mind, and disposed them to more obsequious amazement. They were carried away by a dazzling fascination, and lost themselves in hopeless subserviency to the dragon-hearted, emperor-headed, and pope-ridden Commonwealth, as if it were a god they worshipped. Words, which truer worshippers would address only to Jehovah, "who is like unto thee?" they refer to their great idol. And the spirit of feudal chivalry, crusades, and war against the saints, is the enthusiasm which constitutes their devotion.

The things spoken by the Wild-beast, the great things, are seen in the sovereignty and extended sway asserted in the Justinian laws, and all subsequent decrees of the empire; in the promulgation and administration of which it speaks. The assumption of the Christian name, while idolatries are retained and multiplied by law, is among the blasphemies proclaimed. Representative images, mediatorial saints, bloodless offerings of atonement, and other abominations, fostered by the secular power, were occasions of the denial to JEHOVAH-JESUS of his sovereign glory. The persecuting laws of the Justinian code, with subsequent decrees

W

On the question of diadems on the heads after they were obtained also by the horns, it is to be observed, that the imperial head at least cannot properly be supposed to have lost its diadem, as it certainly possessed its sovereignty, when the horns appeared in theirs: and the horns are said, in the seventeenth chapter, to reign as kings with the Wild-beast, μeтa тov Onplov: his diadem, therefore, remained. And, as at the beginning of the vision, the imperial head alone had sovereignty de facto, and yet the diadems were on all the heads; so now also there is no less reason for supposing them to remain on all the heads, though the imperial alone had sovereignty, when the Wild-beast arose from the sea.

w"They have burnt incense upon the mountains, and blasphemed me upon the hills." Is. lxv. 7.