Chapter 13 - A beast rises out of the sea with seven heads and ten crowned horns. One head had been killed but comes back to life. On his head is the name of blasphemy. The dragon gives to this beast a place, power and authority. The whole world worships the dragon and the beast. The beast is given a mouth, speaking great things, blaspheming God. He is given power to make war against the saints for 42 months, which is 1260 days.
This is a perfect representation of the situation in Rome, following the fall of the Western Empire in 476. The Goths ruled Rome and Italy until 535 AD. Between 530 and 550, the Eastern emperor, Justinian reconquered all North Africa and Italy. This was the beginning of the healing, or rebirth, of the sixth imperial head of Rome. It came to its completion under Charlemagne - the beginning of the Holy Roman Empire.
In 535, Justinian proclaimed the bishop of Rome as the primary bishop of the church, settling the controversy between the bishops of Constantinople and of Rome. This was at the time that he was beginning to reconquer Italy and Africa. This is the official beginning of the Papacy - the beginning of the dragon, the imperial power, now moved to Constantinople - of giving power to the new Roman beast that is arising from the old fallen Western Empire. Justinian represents the continuity of the dragon, which has moved to the east to Constantinople, and he, as the dragon, is beginning to build up or give power to the beast, the new Roman beast (which is not exactly new, because it is the rebirth of the old, but its new historically at this time.)
In 610, 75 years later, the famous decree of the Emperor Phocas made the Pope the supreme head of the church. The dragon had now given the beast full spiritual power in the Empire. The Papacy, as we know it, had now begun. His 42 months, or 1260 years, of persecuting power, which began at this time (610), ended in 1870, when the new kingdom of Italy took away all his lands around Rome and shut him up in the Vatican. There was a 75-year rise at the beginning and a 75-year decline at the end, as we shall see as we examine the history in detail.
Verse 8 - "And all that dwell on the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life."
Here is the great lesson for us. This is a Roman and a Catholic world, far more than the blind world realizes. The world is permeated with the corruption of Catholicism. Many of its customs and most of its festivals have Catholic roots. Those who are written in the book of life will eschew them like a deadly plague.
Verse 11 - "And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spoke as a dragon."
The previous beast (verse 1) had arisen out of the sea. When used in contrast, the sea represents the Mediterranean area and the earth the inland portions of north Europe. Soon after Phocas, around the year 600, the Arabian invasions began, and the Eastern Empire lost Africa and the Mid-East. (Africa had been reconquered by Justinian.) Thus weakened, the Eastern Empire could not hold Italy against the new invader - the Lombards, who were anti-trinitarian and anti-papal Arians.
But in the early 700's, a new champion of the Papacy arose in north Europe - the Franks. (Here is the beginning of the earth beast.) Between 750 and 800, the Franks conquered Italy and most of Europe. On Christmas day in Rome in the year 800, the Pope crowned the Frankish king Charlemagne as Roman Emperor. The deadly wound was now healed. The two-horned beast - Pope and Emperor - now began. This was thereafter the basic constitution of Europe for exactly 1000 years, until Napoleon by the vials of the 16th chapter destroyed the Holy Roman Empire in 1800 AD.
Verse 14 - The earth beast creates the image of the beast and commands all the earth to worship it upon pain of death. The Franks gave the Pope the papal state, a little kingdom of his own - all central Italy, and the Papacy became the image of an empire with all imperial pomp and pretension, claiming absolute spiritual dominion of the whole world. This chapter ends with the mark and the number of that beast for identification - 666.
Bro Growcott - Review of the Apocalypse
France became the heart of the Beast of the Sea under Charlemagne. Later Germany became the heart of the Beast of the Earth. These two have become united as one Beast in the latter days as the 'Mouth of the Beast'.
The 'Holy Roman Empire' dissolved in 1806 but prophecy requires the revival of the Beast at the time of the end. The image of the Beast Rev 14: 11 becomes the false prophet of Rev 16, where also France and Germany act in unity controlling the affairs of Europe as we have witnessed the German Franco axis at the heart of Federal Europe.
(Notes from 'the Sons of Japheth, Gomer and Magog' by Bro Roger Lewis).
1 And I stood [representatively - neutral from the storms of sea and earth conflicts] upon the Sand [ecclesial multitude] of the Sea [Meditteranean Latin kingdom and principalities], and <I> saw [a period of 405 years] <ascending out of the Sea a Beast> [ascending through Justinian AD 535 (healing of the sixth imperial head of Rome - which he retook from the Goths)], having Seven Heads and Ten Horns [10 Gothic tribes distributing kingly power over the western Roman empire -founders of the Horn-Kingdoms of the Beast], and upon his horns Ten <Diadems> [10 Kingly powers (not republics], and upon his heads < a NAME OF BLASPHEMY> [Dan 7: 8].
I stood upon the Sand of the Sea
Daniel reclined upon his bed and dreamed but John stood upon the Sand of the Sea, and saw things bearing resemblances to what he deemed sufficiently striking to establish their identity. Daniel says that It was stormy in his vision; or, as he expresses it, "the four winds of the heaven strove." But in this thirteenth chapter John says nothing about a strife of winds; but simply "I stood."
...His standing then upon the margin of the roaring waters was significant of the storminess of the times, when what he "saw" should ascend to dominion "in the whole earth," en hole te ge. He stood, and the roar he heard was
"the multitude of many peoples, making a noise like the noise of the seas; the rushing of nations, making a rushing like the rushing of mighty waters."
... This implication places John and Daniel side by side as spectators of the storm. Daniel saw the four winds lashing the sea into fury; east, west, north, and south winds, all blowing upon the same sea.
Each of Daniel's four beasts, or dominions, was brought up out of the sea by the four winds of his vision. The Fourth Beast was brought up thereby; and so was his Sea-Beast development; and John apocalyptically beheld the same four winds as he "stood upon the Sand of the Sea, and saw."
...The winds producing the roar of the sea, were "the four winds of the earth," which, in their blowing, gave voice to the first four "wind" trumpets. [1.Alaric, 2.Genseric, 3.Attila, 4.The Goths]
...The judgments of these four winds culminate in the development of the Seventh Head, which 'continues a short space'; and of the Ten Diademed Horns of the Beast that rises out of the sea; in the 'wounding as it were to death' of its Sixth Head; and in the consequent cession by the Dragon of his power, throne and dominion over the affected Third Part, which before the blowing of those winds, was a constituent of his empire". ... It was a period of 405 years. This was the time of his symbolic standing upon the Sand of the Sea, beholding the development of the Fourth Beast, in its Seventh Head, Ten Horns, and Little Horn, with Man's Eyes and a Lion's Mouth.
...The subject is the obscuration of the luminaries of a political universe of a dominion. These are things of centuries. Their day and their night, is their day-time and their night-time of ages. Hence a time is a minor cycle contained in the aeon, or aeon, of their duration.
The aeon of the Sea-Monster's Mouth is three cycles and a half, or three times and a half, or three days and a half, or 1260 years and as a cycle, or circle, is geometrically divisible into three hundred and sixty equal parts -A time or day, is a year of years, or 360 lunar years.
Rome's lights which ruled her day and night times were not eclipsed for a whole day and a whole night: but only for a third of each of these times. Had she lost her rule for a whole day and a whole night, her ruling would have been suppressed for seven hundred and twenty years, or a dual of times: but as it was, her day-time and her night-time only ceased shining two hundred and forty years, which are the sum of the thirds predicted; for the third of a day-time of three hundred and sixty years is one hundred and twenty years: and the third of a night-time of three hundred and sixty' years; is also one hundred and twenty years; and these two periods of one hundred and twenty years each added together give two hundred and forty years.
Now if these 240 years be added to A.D. 559, the epoch of Rome's degradation, it gives the sum A.D. 799; when, if my exposition of the symbolic time of the Fourth Trumpet be correct, history ought to testify Rome's restoration to the IMPERIAL DIGNITY from which she had been degraded by the will of the Catholic Dragon.
Now John informs us, that he stood and saw the ascending of the Sea-Beast and the ascending of the Earth-Beast [v11]: this then was the period of his standing - he stood while they were ascending.
The latter Beast was developed imperially, with Rome for its tempo-spiritual throne, A.D. 799. Hence John's standing upon the Sand of the Sea reaches, in its significance, to this date, or to the end of the 240 years. Add then these years to the terminal epoch of the fourth trumpet, and we have a period of 405 years - a stormy period, which changed the face of the world; and laid the foundation of a polity, which, after a lapse of more than a thousand years, is manifest in the existing constitution of MODERN EUROPE.
The Sand of the Sea
John stands not upon the earth to view the ascent of the Beast of the Earth; nor upon the sea to behold the ascent of the Beast of the Sea; but upon the sand of the sea to see the ascent of them both.
...the sand of the sea ... must be taken to represent the bound, shore, or limit, of the symbolical sea. But the sand of the sea is also the similitude for a multitude of people... Hosea ... 1:10...also in the sense of multitude we find used apocalyptically in chapter 20:8,
...Now John was "a man wondered at," a man of sign, or as we say in our vernacular, a representative man...Hence John upon the sand represented that portion of
"the great multitude which no man can number" (Apoc. 7:9)
existing contemporaneously with the ascending of the beasts out of the sea... who refused to worship the Image of the Beast...The position they occupied in the four hundred years of the ascending of the monsters of the sea and the earth, was that of neutral observers of events; whose antipathies were against their old enemy the Catholic Dragon.
The judgments of the four wind-trumpets were not sent against the servants of the Deity, ... Hence John's multitude in the Wings, or extremities, of the Great Eagle, had the sympathy of "the barbarians" who rushed in upon the Dragon's domain...while the Dragon and the barbarians were in tempestuous and stormy conflict, their multitude in the Roman Africa and the Alpine regions would hear the roar of the tempest-tossed sea, standing as it were upon the shore.
In the Hebrew tongue any collection of waters is termed seas as in Gen. 1:10, "The gathering together of the waters, he called seas."
..."SEA, clear and serene, denotes an orderly collection of people, in a quiet and peaceable state." "Sea, troubled and tumultuous, signifies a collection of men in motion and war. Either way, the waters signifying people, and the sea being a collection of waters, the sea becomes the symbol of people, gathered into one body politic, kingdom, or jurisdiction, or united in one design." - Daubuz
... The events in their accomplishment show that the signification of the Sea is both symbolical and literal. Daniel's vision of the ascendency of the Horns plalnly shows, that their manifestation was in connexion with the literal LATIN SEA, the Mediterranean.
His words are, "the four winds of the heaven strove upon THE GREAT SEA." This was the name given to the Mediterranean, or Sea in the midst of the earth, by the Hebrews. He describes the four beasts that came up out of it, as four dominions: and in the interpretation, the Sea is styled the Earth; and the beasts arising out of it, are termed kings (Ver. 17,3).
Compare the symbol in verse 3, with the signification in verse 17: thus, "Four beasts came up from the sea (upon which the winds strove); diverse one from another;" and now read the explanation,
"These great beasts which are four are four kings which shall arise out of the earth".
Now the fourth king was the "dreadful and terrible" one. He came up with his body, head, and horns Out of the Great Sea, in the sense of arising out of the countries by which the sea is almost enclosed as a lake.
Here is a blending of the symbolical and the literal; and so, that in the interpretation, the symbolical is anchored to the literal; by which I mean, that we must not go away to the Baltic, and Atlantic, and German Oceans, to find the fourth beast and his heads and horns; but must confine our investigations to those countries which in the days of the prophecy had outlets upon the Great Sea.
...John also saw... the kingdoms and empires of Modern Europe so far as their origin was Mediterranean, ascending from this sea. He stood literally upon its Patmian Shore, in a numerous cluster of its islands, which were as but the sands of its coast; and from this, as the representative of a multitude occupying the wings of this sea-region, he saw kingdoms arise from the symbolic sea inhabiting the literal maritime earth enclosing the Latin Sea.
"The Beast that ascendeth out of the Bottomless Pit" - Ch. 11:7
The sea, the sand of the sea, and the abyss styled in the Common Version, "the bottomless pit," are related to the Beast of ch. 11:7 and chapter 13:1. In the former text, it is said to ascend out of the abyss, and in the latter, out of the sea.
But, though the terms expressive of the place of origin are two different ones, there are not two different beasts, but one and the same beast only. But then, why are these two
different terms employed with reference to the same beast? There must be a reason for it.
....symbolically and apocalyptically, sea and deep do not represent all that is intended to be conveyed by the word.
Abussos is derived from a priv. and bussos, the depth, and therefore signifies, that which is not, or has not been, fathomed; hence, in general, boundless, exhaustless. The apocalyptic terms above recited are terms of extension. The sea and the earth of this chapter are coextensive with the Mediterranean and its countries to the Rhine, and Danube; these were a deep that had been politically bounded, or fathomed: but, what of that vast unmeasured, or boundless, region beyond?
That region styled in John's time, Germania, European and Asiatic Sarmatia, and Scythia, beyond the Rhine, the Danube, the Carpathian Mountains, the Dniester, the Black Sea, the Caucasian Mountains, and the Caspian Sea?
This was a wild, unsubdued wilderness stretching along the northern frontier of the Great Roman Eagle, inhabited by swarms of fierce barbarians, whom the Romans were unable to fathom, or to bring within the appreciable depths of the earth and sea. They were an unorganized confused multitude an abyss of which no conqueror or legislator had been able to reach the bottom.
...The abyss, which was "the Northern Hive" from which swarmed forth the destroying agents of the first four trumpets, sounded against the Roman Earth and Sea, is now the area of Germany from the Rhine and Danube to the Baltic, Bohemia, Poland, the Great Russian empire, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark.
In the times of the ascending of the Sea Beast, these were the ultramarine, abyssal fountains of the Great Sea; which, when broken up, roared forth their floods and tempests, and developed upon the Latin Habitable the Ten-Horn Kingdoms of Modern Europe.
Hence the reason why the same beast is attributed to different sources. He came latent, or hidden, as it were, being as yet undeveloped, from the outlying abyssal region, when the Barbarians of the North rushed in upon the sea, and the rivers, and the fountains of waters, belonging to the Catholic Dragon: and he came up above the waters of the sea when the invading hosts of the abyss effected settlements upon the Dragon-territory, and were developed into the Ten Diademed Horns of the Beast.
'As a roaring lion and a ranging bear; so is a wicked ruler over the poor people"'
Upon the principle of this proverb the beasts of the apocalypse are symbolical of wicked rulers.
They are "dreadful and terrible" to the choicest of mankind; for it is written, "the beast that ascendeth out of the abyss," said the Spirit, "will make war upon my two witnesses, and will overcome them, and kill them" (Apoc. 11:7); and the same thing is affirmed of the beast of the sea in ch. 13:7, as, "and it was given unto him to make war with the Saints, and to overcome them;" but in relation to these, which he overcomes, or treads them, as the Holy City, under foot, it does not say that he kills them as he killed the witnesses.
Truly, as a roaring lion and a ranging bear," have these apocalyptic beasts been to the poor saints and witnesses over whom they have tyrannized for ages.
The Seven Heads of the Beast
"The Head of a beast answers to the supreme power, and that whether the supreme power be in one single person or in many". Daubuz
...The Beast of the Sea has seven heads as well as the Pago-Catholic Dragon. They are the same heads, and identify the Dragon and the Beast as apocalyptically diverse constitutional developments of the same power.
The only difference of the two series of heads symbolically viewed is, that the Dragon series is diademed, while the Beast series is not. In the latter symbol the Horns, not the Heads, are diademed; but in the case of the Dragon it was the heads and not the horns.
The Ten Diademed Horns of the Beast
"Horns upon a wild beast are not only expressive of powers, but also of such powers as are tyrannical, ravenous and at enmity with God and his saints, as in Dan. 8" Daubuz.
The Horns of the Sea Monster represent Ten Kingdoms established by the Barbarians of the Abyss upon all that Mediterranean territory conquered by them from the Roman Dragon. This appears from the testimony that "the Dragon yielded to him his power, and his throne, and an extensive jurisdiction" - ver. 2. In relinquishing it to the beast, he yielded them to his appendages, the horns and mouth as well. In ch. 17:12, John was informed that the ten horns were symbolical of kingdoms:
"the ten horns which thou sawest are ten kings, which have received no kingdoms as yet;"
that is, they had received no kingdom at the time the interpreter was talking with John. Daniel gives the same record in ch. 7:23. He had said that he wished to know the truth represented by the ten horns upon the fourth beast's head; upon which it was stated to him that
"the ten horns out of this kingdom are ten kings that shall arise;"
and those in ver. 9, are styled "the thrones" which are to be "cast down" when the Ancient bf Days comes to sit in judgment upon them. And this judgment John indicates in the words: "These (Ten Horns) shall make war upon the Lamb, and the Lamb shall over-come them; for He is Lord of lords, and King of kings: and they that are with him (the Saints of the Holy City) are called chosen and faithful" (Apoc. 17:14).
...The following is the list that seems to me authorized by history: 1. Huns; 2. Vandals; 3. Visigoths; 4. Burgundians; 5. Gepidoe; 6. Lombards; 7. Franks; 8. Suevi; 9. Alans; 10. Bavarians. These were the founders of the Horn-Kingdoms of the Beast. This divided form of Mediterranean Europe has continued for ages, even to the present time; though the number of its divisions has not always, nor is it now, ten. The prophecy does not require that the number of the kingdoms should be invariable.
They were ten in the period of their foundation, and from this fact have acquired the symbolic designation of the Ten Horns. So that though their number might be reduced one-half, the power that might be established over the territory they originally occupied would, to that extent, be represented as the Ten Horns.
...On the conquest of Italy and termination of imperial authority by the deposition of Augustulus by Odoacer, the Herulian Goth, A D. 475, the barbarians of the apocalyptic abyss held possession of the whole western division of the Latin Sea, with the exception of a part of Gaul, and were distributed under ten kingly governments.Eureka 13.8.
And upon his [Beast of the Sea] Horns ten Diadems
The Horns on the Dragon had no diadems upon them; because the nations of the abyss had not then issued forth to erect kingdoms upon the Roman Habitable.... the Dragon-Horns of the sea are exhibited with diadems upon them, indicating that they were not Republics; but States, whose chief magistrates were enthroned, and diademed, and who would figure in the unmeasured Court of the Gentiles (ch. 11:2) as "the Crowned Heads of Europe."
A horn ... always represents a kingly power, or dominion. The Gothic nations of the Abyss acquiesced in the military leaders who had led them to victory, and founded States upon the Roman territory, being recognized as kings, and decorated with diadems, by the Dragon-power.
... Instead of the kingdoms of the world becoming republics, all the republics of the world will become kingdoms. This will be a great blessing to mankind, who have proved themselves incompetent for self-government upon wise and righteous principles, under any form of rule they may devise.
It is the Divine purpose to bless mankind in Abraham and his seed. This is the great gospel prophecy of the word (Gal. 3:8,9): and when the nations rejoice in peace and security under their own vines and fig-trees, they will be interested in nobler themes than the crude, unprofitable and lying vanities of those who now deceive them.
Their political interests will be supervised by kings, who will then reign "by the grace of God". It will be theirs to command of their own sovereign will and pleasure; and for all nations simply to obey without question or dispute; for then, "judgment will be given to the Saints;" who will take the kingdom and the dominion under the whole heaven, and possess them for a thousand years and more (Dan. 7:22,27,18; Apoc. 20:4,6).
Then the universal world will be "ruled in righteousness," and truly "blessed in Abraham and his seed."
Gibbon, writing of the first two kings of the Seventh Head, Odoacer and Theodoric, says of the former, that
"he abstained, during his whole reign from the use of the purple and diadem;" and of the latter, he says, that "from a tender regard to the expiring prejudices of Rome, he declined the name, purple, and diadem of the emperors;" though "he assumed the whole substance and plenitude of imperial prerogative".
This was the simple difference between the Imperial Sixth, and the Regal Seventh, heads of the Dragon and the Beast. Had Odoacer and Theodoric assumed "the name, purple and diadem of the emperors" when they reigned in Rome sovereigns of Italy, their government would have been a mere continuation of the Sixth Head.
The substance and plenitude of sovereign prerogative remained, only the form of its constitutional administration was changed. This change in the form of the supreme power, with its exclusion from Africa, Sicily , Corsica , Sardinia , Majorca , and Minorca , then possessed by the Vandalic Horn , established a marked dissimilarity between the Sixth and Seventh Heads.
And upon his Heads a Name of Blasphemy
...name not only denotes the existence, quality, or state of a person, power, or other thing, singly considered; it also denotes these things in multitudinous manifestation.
...name not only denotes the existence, quality, or state of a person, power, or other thing, singly considered; it also denotes these things in multitudinous manifestation.
...The gods of the nations were so many names, whether idols or founders of sects. In this sense, name denotes an object of worship, invocation, or reverence. Thus, in Mic. 4:5, "all people walk, every one in the name of his God; we will walk in the name of our God."
To walk in the name of any one is, first, to have said name constitutionally placed upon the walker; and, secondly, to shape the course of life according to the precepts and institutions of such name. Every one that does this is in said name; and, therefore, denominationally a part, or element, of that name.
Thus, the NOMEN LATINUM, or Latin Name, the Nomen Anglicanum, or Anglican Name, Luther, Calvin, Wesley, and a host of others, are all names of Gods in which the peoples walk. They are specially related to the Romano-Gothic Beast of the Abyss, which John testified would be gemon onomaton blasphemias, full of Names of Blasphemy (Ch. 17:3).
All the peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues, constituting the body politic of the fourth-beast system of nations, "walk every one in the name of his god," glorying in the Latin Name of Blasphemy upon the Seven Heads; the Anglican Name of Blasphemy in Canterbury, York, and Dublin; and in all the other blasphemies, to which the names of Luther, Calvin, Wesley, and others too numerous to mention, are attached.
...The Name of Blasphemy is a power; and like the Beast over which it presides is, or rather has been, in centuries of its career, a "dreadful and terrible" power. It is an EPISCOPAL NAME, because it is the embodiment of those audacious "Eyes" Daniel was so observant of in his vision. He saw a Little Horn come up among, and after, the ten.
It was not like the other horns. These had no eyes in them; nor had they any mouth .
...A power claiming to be what it is not, is a blasphemy. Thus, certain of the synagogue of Satan in the ecciesia at Smyrna claimed to be Jews, when they really were not. This false claim is styled "their blasphemy" (Apoc. 2:9): because, being false, it injured the fair fame and reputation of those in Christ who were Israelites indeed.
...The clerical orders, whose apocalyptic chief is this Name of Blasphemy, are like him, essentially a blasphemy; because they arrogate to themselves the prerogatives of Christ and his Brethren, to which they have not the remotest or slightest Scriptural pretension. Being of the world, and speaking under the impression of the world, as proved by the world hearing and hiring them, their alleged identity with the members of the Divine Family, injures the reputation thereof, which is the import of the word blaspheme.
...when self-convicted liars and hypocrites claim to be the brethren and intimates of honest and righteous men, on the principle of a man being known by the company he keeps, the reputation of those excellent, people is injured or in other words blasphemed, in the estimation of the Deity, and of those "who hold the testimony of the anointed Jesus."
...The secret of their [wilderness woman] energy was "the power of the Deity," "the testimony of the anointed Jesus" which they held, "the word of the Deity which is living and powerful," understood and lovingly and heartily believed. Their enlightened testimony filled the clerical orders of Antichrist with madness; and caused them to roar forth blasphemies against them, with terrible threatenings and slaughters. But in all the onslaught of the enemy, the Name of Yahweh in which they were entrenched, was their strong tower.
THE NAME OF YAHWEH, and the NAME OF BLASPHEMY, were the two great rival names of the situation. Between them there can be no peace or compromise.
..."Here is the mind that hath wisdom. The Seven Heads are Seven Mountains on which the Woman (or Name of Blasphemy) sitteth. And there are Seven Kings: five are fallen , and one is and the other is not yet come; and when he (the Seventh Head) cometh, he must continue a short space" - ch. 17:9,10.
In other words, the seven heads of the Beast and the Dragon, which are the same , have a two-fold signification; they represented the Seven Ruling Headships of the Fourth Beast, which down to the fall of the seventh, has existed in the Seven-Hilled City, ROME, as the capital of the dominion.
The Name of Blasphemy came to be enthroned there; not contemporarily with the Seven Ruling Headships, or Forms of Government; but after they had passed away; and when it had Rome to itself without the rival presence of the ancient Senate, or Roman emperors, as at the date of this writing Feb. 3, A.D. 1867.
...a distinct and independent head, or Form of Government, the Germano-Roman with its own audacious Eyes, and "exceeding dreadful" Mouth, with "iron teeth" (Dan. 7:19).
It sat upon the seven mountains as the spiritual overseer of the Secular Powers of Europe, who "gave their power and strength to it," that it might rule "until the words of the Deity shall be fulfilled" (Apoc. 17:13,17); it became to them a bond of union the Eyes, Mouth and Brain of the Romano-Gothic Body Politic, symbolized by this Seven Headed and Ten-Horned Monster of the Sea.
Beast of the Sea
or, the Ten Kingly Governments of Modern Europe subject to the spiritual authority of their Universal Bishop
The throne of the Dragon was Rome, so long as the Roman Senate existed there, and the Seven Heads of the Dragon were incomplete.
But when this throne was "yielded," [to the Goths] and the Roman Senate expired, the throne of the Dragon was confined to Constantinople exclusively
....The Beast of the Sea divided the Roman habitable with the Catholic Dragon of the East. They are the two limbs of Nebuchadnezzar's Image. The dominion of this Sea Monster was, as John predicted, "extensive".
It ruled all the habitable to the Westward of said line, including France, Spain, the Roman Africa, Italy, and the region between the Alps and the Rhine, Danube, and Save, anciently known under the names of Rhtia, Noricum, and Pannonia, but in our times as Switzerland, half Suabia, Bavaria, and Austria and the western part of Hungary.
In this outline I have not included England, Scotland, and Ireland, for reasons which need not be mentioned in this place.
2 And the beast which I saw was like to a leopard [Grecian], and his feet as of a Bear [Persians and Medes], and his [blasphemous] mouth as the mouth of a lion [and great iron teeth Dan 7; 19]: and the Dragon <yielded to> him his power, and his <throne>, and <extensive> authority.
The Body of the Beast
The Leopard and the Bear elements of the Ten-Horned Monster of the Sea, indicate its identity with two others than the fourth, of the four beasts of Daniel's vision.
...The Bear in this vision answers to the "Breast and the Arms of Silver"; and the Leopard to the "Belly and Thighs of Brass" - of the image-representation exhibited to Nebuchadnezzar, of WHAT SHALL BE IN THE LAST OF THE DAYS beacharith yomaiyah. In the interpretation he was told that the silver section of the image was a kingdom that would be inferior to the Babylonian, which was his; and that the brass kingdom, the third section thereof, should "bear rule over all the earth." This was equivalent to saying, that the Leopard is symbolical of a kingdom bearing rule over the whole earth.
...But the Leopard had a more extensive dominion than the Bear. This Greek kingdom was to "bear rule over all the earth." It commenced its predicted career about B.C. 330, under its "first king," Alexander surnamed "the Great." It extended from Macedonia into what is now a part of British India and styled the Punjaub: but notwithstanding it exceeded the dominion of the Bear it fell far short of "bearing rule over all the earth" - the earth, as defined by the symbol of the Great Sea.
...Daniel was given to understand that the four beasts he saw rising out of the Mediterranean Earth, would all coexist at the coming of the Ancient of days (ch. 7:12): and that, at that extraordinary time of trouble, the fourth beast body politic shall be abolished; but that the Lion, the Bear and the Leopard shall remain, only without dominion, and that for "a season and a time; or, as John expresses it, for a thousand years
This was equivalent to saying that the Bear and the Leopard, and, consequently, the Lion, national organizations, or bodies politic, should be extant at the coming of Christ "as a thief," in the Sixth Vial period. In order, therefore, to represent this truth, the Leopard, and the Bear, and the Lion, symbols are constituted elements of the Ten-Horned Sea Monster, which is to continue in political life till the advent, as appears from the testimony that
"the ten horns shall make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome them"
The body of the beast - The Latter days
In Daniel's four beasts, each succeeding beast absorbed the dominion of its predecessor; so that the Bear may be said to have devoured the Lion; and the Leopard to have swallowed the Bear; and the Ten-Horned Fourth Beast to have eaten up the Leopard; so that in the Fourth Beast would be contained the Lion, the Bear, and the Leopard, in addition to appendages peculiar to itself.
This is shown by John in his Sea Monster, who shows the Leopard he had gorged in "his body," and the Bear he had devoured in "his feet".
But it is customary to style Daniel's Fourth Beast "the Roman Empire," by which is meant the dominion exercised by Rome and Constantinople, until the latter city came to be possessed by the Turks, A.D. 1453, when it fell, or passed away. It is true, it does symbolize said Roman Empire, but it also symbolizes a vast deal more.
The Roman Empire, of which Gibbon wrote the decline and fall, has never yet embraced within its jurisdiction the hundred and twenty-seven provinces of the Medo-Persian Bear, which it is necessary it should have done that its Leopard-Body might "bear rule over all the earth," and that it might stand upon its Bear-Feet, and with these feet "break in pieces and stamp THE RESIDUE."
John's Sea Monster with the Bear-Feet and Leopard-Body, represents Daniel's Fourth Beast in its amplest development of the last of the days .
...When John's Beast of the Sea comes, in fact, to stand upon its four brazen-clawed Bear-Feet, its dominion will consist of the Russian Empire, Continental and Mediterranean Europe, Persia, Ethiopia, Libya, Togarmah, Egypt and Syria. When the throne of the Russian Autocrat is transferred to Constantinople, the Apocalyptic Bear-Feet, armed with Brazen or Greek Claws, will also be enthroned there, and be prepared for the work that remains of "stamping the residue".
This residue that yet remains to be stamped, are the "many countries" to be "overthrown," inclusive of Turkey, Egypt and part of the Glorious Land. Edom, Moab and part of Ammon, will evade the stamping process. These three countries will be "the front" of the forces of "Sheba, and Dedan, and the Merchants of Tarshish and the Young Lions thereof" - the Anglo-Indian Leopard empire of the latter days (Ezek. 38:1-6,13; 11:40-44).
The part which Britain has to enact in "the time of the end," when "the Eastern Question" is to be Scripturally resolved, clearly indicates that she is not one of the ten horns. She is not of their world, but the Oriental section of the Sea Monster's Leopard Body- a world peculiar to herself, and as distinct from them as Canada and the United States.
...From these premises, then, it will be seen that this Apocalyptic Sea-Monster is not exclusively the Romano-Gothic Ten-Horn constitution of Papal Mediterranean Europe, but symbolical likewise of the Byzantine, or Greek Empire, as indicated by the Leopard-Body and Bear-Feet; for, that the Bear is Greek as well as the Leopard, Daniel shows by testifying that the Fourth Beast "had Nails of Brass" (ch. 7:19); and in his prophecy brass is the symbol of the dominion of "the brazen-coated Greeks."
Because, therefore, this Beast of the Sea symbolized the dominions of the whole eastern and western Mediterranean world, all the "kindreds, and tongues, and nations," styled Apocalyptically "the whole earth," in subjection to them, are said to have "wandered after the beast," and to have "worshipped" both the Dragon and the Beast - Vers. 3,4.
The populations inhabiting Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt, Greece, "worshipped" the imperial power enthroned in Constantinople, and that only; while the populations of Italy, Africa, Spain, Gaul, "worshipped" the Constantinopolitan and the new Gothic powers as well. This two-fold worship of the subjects of the Franks, Burgundians, Lombards, Visigoths, Suevi, and so forth, may be familiarly illustrated by numerous modern instances.
Mouth of a lion [and great iron teeth Dan 7: 19]
Symbolism evoking the ferocity of the papal dynasty during the plenitude of its power. A terrifying entity devouring the prey - falsely called heretics, namely Christadelphians, but known by other names in ages past.
...the reigning Pope for the time being is the Mouth, or Prophet, of the Name of Blasphemy; and therefore, of "the broad church," which is the National Superstition of all the Horn-Kingdoms. The Eyes and the Mouth, then, of Daniel's Little Horn, though in his vision placed in that horn only, represent a sovereign order of ecclesiastical officials, the Papal Dynasty, which is Eyes and Mouth both to the Ten Horns and to the Beast of the earth.
...Iron is as much the symbol of the power of Rome, as brass is of that of Constantinople. If the teeth had been of brass, we must have looked to Constantinople for the Mouth; but the teeth being of iron, our attention is directed to Rome. The teeth being of iron, also connects the Mouth with the iron section of Nebuchadnezzar's image; and the iron band of the Babylonian Stump (Dan. 4:15). This metal symbolizes the fourth dominion...ch. 2:40:
...The iron symbolizes the last...phase of "the kingdom of men... whether therefore it be a log, a band, a tooth, or a toe, if they be of iron, they are all related to the Latin section of the kingdom of men.
...No; the mouth was not like the mouth of a man; "his Mouth," says the apostle, "was as the mouth of a Lion," and with "great iron teeth," according to Daniel. It was therefore not only a ROMAN MOUTH, but a BABYLONIAN MOUTH also: for the Lion is the symbol of the old Babylonian organization of the kingdom of men. Hence, his mouth was like the mouth of Daniel's first beast; his feet like his second's; and his body like that of his third. This symbolization connects Babylon with Rome.
Had the teeth been silver and the mouth like that of a leopard, the Name of Blasphemy would have been Persian and Greek; but, as given by John and Daniel, it can only be Latin and Babylonian.
The Development of the Romano-Babylonian Name of Blasphemy
In the middle of the third century, ... Cornelius figures as the Roman Mouth of that section of professors who now assumed to themselves the title of "the Holy Catholic Church."
The spirit of the Lion fully possessed him; and he spoke with all the loftiness and inflation of his prototype in Babylon. A council was convened in Rome while he was in office, which decreed the propriety of excommunicating the founder of the Novatians, who could no longer tolerate the episcopal arrogance and corruption of the times.
...He would defame and curse his rival in the fashion and phraseology peculiar to Roman Holiness, which claims universal and absolute authority over all. Cornelius though neither universal nor absolute, yet spoke as an episcopal lion's whelp who felt the spirit of future greatness moving within...
...This was the roaring of the Lion-like Mouth, A.D. 251.... sounded out against poor Novatus and his brethren, who were doing the best in their power to organize a Scriptural association...
...In tracing the development of the Name of Blasphemy, we now advance to the era of Constantine. Sixty years after the death of Cornelius, who died in exile at Civita Vecchia, A.D. 252, "the Catholic and Apostolic Church, Mother of the Faithful," was invested with the sunshine of imperialism, and constituted the religion of the State.
...The Nicene Creed having been subscribed, Constantine, the Man-Child of Sin, who presided at the council, transmitted its canons and decrees to Sylvester, who, in the thirteenth council that had been held in Rome, at which were present two hundred and seventy-five bishops, ratified them in the following Babylonian style:
'We confirm with our mouth that which has been decreed at Nice, a city of Bithynia, by the three hundred and eighteen holy bishops, for the good of the catholic and apostolic church, Mother of the faithful. We anathematize all those who shall dare to contradict the decrees of the Great and Holy Council which was assembled at Nice (A. D. 325), in the presence of that most pious and venerable prince, the emperor Constantine.'
And to this all the bishops answered, 'We consent to it.' Nebuchadnezzar himself could not have spoken more loftily and lion-like. He that dared to call in question their utterances was deemed unworthy of all blessings human and Divine; for, if Constantine be worthy of the belief, their voice was not the voice of men, but of 'the successors of the apostles, who had been established as priests and gods upon earth'
...They were the "priests and gods upon earth" pertaining to the Laodicean Apostasy; and acknowledged by the Man-Child of Sin "in his estate."
...The whole body of these priests and gods of Antichrist, was exempted by Sin's imperial Man-Child, from all service, private or public, all municipal offices, and all personal taxes and contributions, which pressed upon the laity with intolerable weight; and the duties of their clerical profession, deemed holy by the strongly deluded, was accepted as a full discharge of their obligations to the republic.
The Dragon gave to him his power and his throne
...the Seventh Head, which was Arian, did not coincide with Justinian in the acknowledgment of the Pope as the Head of all churches. The Arian Catholic churches repudiated his headship; they were therefore, being heretics, the natural enemies of Justinian and his Universal Bishop, whose policy could not be established until the Seventh Head was abolished, and the Arians suppressed.
Hence, the invasion of Italy; the sympathy of the Trinitarians in Rome with the invader; and the persecution of heretics of every variety of belief; and the location of the Dragon's Viceroy in Ravenna, instead of Rome.
The settlement of Italy by Justinian according to the Pragmatic Sanction, granted at the Pope's request, A.D. 554, by reducing Rome to the second rank, left the Apostolic Throne therein free from the overshadowing and blighting presence of a sovereign temporal authority; and thus
"the Dragon gave to him his power and his throne and an extensive jurisdiction,"
saying in the 131st of the Novels, we ordain that the Most Holy Pope of the Elder Rome be the first of all priests" even in that Rome, which in the 9th of the Novels he styles,
"the native country of the laws, the fountain of the priesthood."
The Dragon ceded to him his power, and his throne, and extensive jurisdiction
This important transfer of supreme spiritual authority was legally executed by Phocas, when he proclaimed Boniface the Third the Universal Bishop, with the right of transmitting the title, and the jurisdiction it represents, to his successors, "per secula," for ages.
It is by virtue of this decree of Phocas that Pius IX. and all his predecessors are constitutionally "PONTIFEX MAXIMUS" of Belgium, France, Spain, Portugal, Naples, Sardinia, Lombardy, Venetia, Hungary, and Bavaria - modern names representative of the original Ten Horns converted to the Nicene Trinitarianism of the Bishop of Rome.
When he exalted the Pope to this lofty position, in which he was above all possible episcopal rivalry and confirmed Justinian's acknowledgment of him, as "Head of all the churches," and consequently Judge of the Faith; in so doing, he gave the saints into the hand, or power, of the Universal Bishop, or Eyes and Mouth of Daniel's Little Horn (ch. 7:25): for all reputed "heretics" were turned over to him as their judge.
3 And I saw one of his heads [6th imperial] as <if> wounded to death; and < the plague of his death> was healed [8th imperial]: and < there was wondering in the whole earth> after the beast.
...its death was only in appearance; it was not like the five heads that had preceded it. They were killed outright, never to recover sovereignty on the Seven Hills. But not so this Sixth Headship; for, though it seemed to be politically dead to all future sovereignty in Rome, where its supremacy no longer existed, yet the time would arrive when a like form of government would be located within its walls; and IMPERIAL HEADSHIP, as an Eighth Sovereignty, once more elevate "the Eternal City" to the command of the world - in the words of Leo III., to
"a wider rule through divine religion, than by the power of earthly domination;"
or more correctly,
"through the working of the Satan, with all power, and signs, and lying wonders, and with all the deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish." The head had received a severe wound, but not a fatal one; for, says John, "the plague of its death was healed."
... In Ch. 17:10, the Revelator tells him, in speaking of the Seven Heads,
"they are seven sovereign powers; five are fallen, and one is, and the other is not yet come; and when he cometh he must continue a short space."
One is; that is, at the time he was speaking to John in Patmos. The Heads being attached to the Seven Mounts upon which Rome sits, we have only to ascertain what form of Sovereign Power obtained there while John was residing in Patmos. This is well known to have been the Imperial; which is a sovereignty headed up in one or more emperors, uniting in themselves the supreme, civil, spiritual, and military authority of the state. As five sovereign powers had fallen, this must have been the sixth, and only the sixth, because "the other," or seventh, had not then as yet come.
... the sixth, which continued a long Space in Rome, or over five hundred years; the Imperial Senate residing on the Seven Hills, and the Imperial Court of the West in Ravenna, and the Imperial Court of the East in Constantinople. This Imperial Sixth Head ruled all the Thirds of the Roman habitable; but, at the end of these centuries, the imperial authority was to be suppressed in Rome, and over the Third Part attached to the jurisdiction of that city. This was to be effected by wounding as if to death.
The blowing of the fourth wind-trumpet inflicted the wound by which it was prostrated; so that when John saw it, it had the appearance of a dead head.
4 And they worshipped the Dragon [7th regal Gothic head] which <yielded dominion to> the Beast: and they worshipped the Beast, saying, Who is like to the Beast? Who is able to make war with him?
...the Seventh Head belonged both to the Dragon and the Beast; and the Ten horns, as we have seen by their coinage, acknowledged the supremacy of the Emperor in Constantinople
...the Seventh Head belonged both to the Dragon and the Beast; and the Ten horns, as we have seen by their coinage, acknowledged the supremacy of the Emperor in Constantinople
The Roman Empire of the West was extinguished A.D. 476-479, by the conquering sword of the king of th e Heruli, Odoacer. This ruler reigned in Rome about fourteen years, when he was succeeded by the renowned Theodoric, the Ostrogoth, the Arian king of Italy.
...The conflict between Odoacer and Theodoric was severe; but at length the former capitulated, and, being removed by death,
...the royalty of Theodoric was proclaimed by the Ostrogoths, "with the tardy, reluctant, ambiguous consent of the Emperor of the East."
After this manner the Seventh Head was developed and established upon the Seven Hills; the Dragon tardily, reluctantly and ambiguously ceding to it "his power, and his throne, and extensive jurisdiction (ch. 13:2). Theodoric reigned thirty-three years, from A.D. 493 to A.D. 526. Among the barbarian Horns of the West the victory of Theodoric had spread a general alarm. But as soon as it appeared that he was satiated with conquest and desired peace, terror was changed into respect, and they submitted to a powerful mediation, which was uniformly employed for the best purposes of reconciling their quarrels and civilizing their manners.
A wife, two daughters, a sister and a niece, united the family of Theodoric with the kings of the Franks, the Burgundians, the Visigoths, the Vandals and the Thuringians, and contributed to maintain the harmony, or at least the balance, of the great western Republic of the horns.
The Healing of the Deadly Wound
The word plege, rendered wound, occurs fifteen times in the apocalypse . In five other places it is very properly rendered stripes; and sixth, Luke 10:30, it would have been better translated, laid on stripes, than "wounded" -plegas epithentes.
The judgments of the fifth and sixth trumpets, in the aggregate, are styled "plagues" Ch. 9:20; and the judgments the two prophets were able to inflict, are also styled "plagues" (Ch. 11:6). The judgments of the Seven Vials are thrice termed the seven plagues in Ch. 15; and the hail-storm that descends out of the heaven upon men, under the last vial is called a plague in Ch. 16:21. The plague of death that afflicted the Sixth Head, was a smiting plague; for, as the result of it, the sun, moon, and stars of the Roman heaven are said to have been "smitten". Hence, also, in Ch. 13:13, it is referred to as he plege tes machairas, the plague of the sword.
The war-like operations of Odoacer, king of the Heruli, against Romulus Angustulus; and those of Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths, against Odoacer, who, on the deposition of Augustulus, had become, by the title conferred upon him by Zeno, emperor of the Eastern Third, the Patrician Representative of the Sixth Head. These judgments by the sword, ultimating in the establishing of Theodoric in Rome as king of Italy, A.D. 493, made up the plague of the seeming death of the Sixth Head.
...There could, however, be no healing of "the plague of the sword," that IMPERIALISM might live and flourish again in the Seven-Hilled City, so long as the REGAL Seventh Head exercised sovereignty therein. While this reigned in conjunction with the Ten Horns, Rome's wounded imperialism was un-healed.
Who is able to make war with him?
No beast-dominion can stand before him; for, as Daniel says of the SYSTEM OF Powers represented by the Dragon and the Beast, it is "dreadful and terrible, and strong exceedingly; and it had great iron teeth; it devoured and brake in pieces, and stamped the residue with the brazen clawed feet of it" (Ch. 7: 7,19).
On the death of Theodoric, August 30, A.D. 526, the throne of the Seventh Head was occupied by his grandson, Athalaric, aged ten years, with his mother Amalasuntha as guardian and regent of the kingdom of Italy.
...The emperor Justinian, who had recently "plucked up by the roots" the Vandal Horn in Africa, beheld with joy the dissensions of the Goths in Italy, who were feebly and unworthily governed by Theodatus. He considered the opportunity as favorable for the healing of his wounded authority over Italy. He demanded therefore the abdication of the Gothic king, and the surrender of the ancient provinces of the empire.
... The deputies of the pope and clergy, of the Senate and people, invited the lieutenant of Justinian to accept their voluntary allegiance, and to enter the city whose gates would be thrown open for his reception." He readily accepted their allegiance, and made his entrance at the Asinarian gate, while the Gothic garrison departed without molestation along the Flaminian way; and the city after sixty years' servitude, was delivered from the yoke of the barbarians.
...At the emperor's command, the clergy of Rome proceeded to the choice of a new bishop; they therefore elected a deacon Vigilius, who had purchased the papal throne by a bribe of two hundred pounds of gold. From these circumstances the reader will perceive the relation in which the bishop of Rome stood to the imperial power in the first half of the sixth century. He was still subject to the civil authority though spiritual "Head of all the Churches" of the empire.
The imperial authority was now in Rome again in power, or maintained by force of arms. Had this been permanent the pope would never have become a temporal sovereign; but would have lived and died the servant of the emperors. Hence, the removal of this pressure was necessary to the setting up of an imperial episcopal image upon the seven hills. The decollation of the Seventh Head, and the reduction of Rome to a subordinate rank among cities, would accomplish this; and therefore the calamities of the times as developed in this Gothic war.
At length on Dec.17 the Goths were treacherously admitted into the city. As soon as daylight had displayed the entire victory of the Goths, Totila devoutly visited the so-called tomb of St. Peter; but while he prayed at the altar, twenty-five soldiers and sixty citizens, were put to the sword in the vestibule of the temple. The archdeacon Pelagius stood before him with "the gospel" in his hand, and exclaimed, "0 Lord, be merciful to your servant." "Pelagius," said Totila, with an insulting smile, "your pride now condescends to become a suppliant." "I am a suppliant," he prudently replied,
"God has now made us your subjects, and as your subjects we are entitled to your clemency."
At his humble prayer the lives of the Romans were spared, and the passions of the hungry soldiers restrained. But they were rewarded with the freedom of pillage. The next day he pronounced two orations, to congratulate and admonish the victorious Goths, and to reproach the Senate, as the vilest of slaves, with their perjury, folly, and ingratitude. Yet he consented to forgive their revolt. Against the city he appeared inexorable; and the world was astonished at the fatal decree, that Rome should be changed into a pasture for cattle.
The firm and temperate remonstrance of Belisarius suspended the execution; and Totila was at length persuaded to preserve Rome as the ornament of his kingdom. Having demolished one third of the walls in different parts, and stationed an army about fifteen miles from the city to observe the motions of Belisarius, he marched with the remainder of his forces into Lucania and Apulia.
The Senators were dragged in his train, and afterwards confined in the fortress of Campania; the citizens with their wives and children, and the pope and his clergy of all ranks and degrees, were dispersed in exile; and during forty days and more Rome was abandoned to desolate and dreary solitude.
And here it would be well for the reader to pause, and reflect upon this chasm of forty days in the life of "THE Mistress OF THE WORLD" -"the Woman, that Great City," which in the apostles' day, and ecclesiastically in ours, "reigneth over the regal powers of the earth" (ch. 17:18).
If the foundation of Rome be correctly stated at 753 years before the birth of Jesus Christ, the "Eternal City," so called, became a vacant space twelve hundred and ninety-nine years after. This chasm of forty days is nearly the central epoch of the city's existence. Twelve hundred and sixty years afterwards, Totila was represented by Napoleon, crowned emperor and king of Italy by the Pope.
Totila was not unlike his modern representative in some respects. He had but little respect for Rome or its bishop. He filled Rome with darkness, so that no political lights, civil or ecclesiastical, shone in it for forty days; so also, Napoleon, as the executive of the Fifth Vial, poured vengeance upon Rome; and filled the kingdom, of which it is the seat or throne, with darkness.
When Totila consented not to reduce it to a pasture for cattle, but to leave it a vacant and standing monument of the wrath of heaven, he carried off the pope with him into captivity; and 1260 years after, Napoleon degraded the city to a subordinate rank, and transferred the pope from a throne to captivity at Fontainbleau.
Thirteen hundred and twenty years (1320) have now elapsed since this notable forty days of solitude; and it is exceedingly probable that but few more years will elapse ere this renowned centre of crime, blasphemy, and everything unclean and hateful, finds itself submerged in the unfathomable depths of a solitude, whose silence will never again be broken by the trumpet, or its darkness dispelled by a glimmering of light (ch. 18:22,23).
5 And there was given unto him [the Beast; or that Politico-ecclesiastical constitution symbolized by the monster of the sea] a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies; [Dan 7: 8] and power [authority was given by the Deity, Who ordains all things - Rom. 13:1,Acts 17:26] was given unto him to continue 42 months [ the prosperous practicing is especially equivalent to the treading of the Holy City under foot of the Gentiles forty and two months (ch. 11:2)]...
..."waxed exceeding great" and "cast the truth to the ground," it is said, "it practiced and prospered;" and of the same power, it is said in another verse, "he shall destroy wonderfully, and shall prosper and practice, and shall destroy the mighty ones and the people of the Holy Ones. And through his policy also he shall cause craft to prosper in his hand; and he shall magnify in his heart, and by prosperity shall destroy many (Dan. 8:24,25, and 12). ]
No nation can permanently extend its bounds, or perpetuate any system of government, beyond the limitation of His predetermined, and prearranged, times. The forty and two months are the Divinely authorized period of the Beast's practicing; at the end of which, the European Commonwealth which it symbolizes for that period, will pass into the phase predetermined for it in Apoc. 17.
The Name of Blasphemy is the Eye and Mouth, or ecclesiastic element of the Eighth Head.
And there was given to him a Mouth speaking great things and blasphemies; and there was granted to him license to practice. Forty-Two Months.
Between, the gentle, timid, voice of a lamb, and roaring blasphemies, there is no resemblance; but, on the contrary, from the nature of the thing spoken, we would expect that the organ of utterance would be symbolized by something ferocious and terrible; and because, likewise, all pertaining to the Fourth Beast "is dreadful and terrible."
The NAME OF BLASPHEMY, then, is the embodiment of the Eyes and Mouth of Daniel's Little Horn, in their episcopal relation to the ten horns. It is the LATIN SEE, without which there was no point of union between them. When it came to be enthroned, and they came to acknowledge its authority in all their kingdoms, it became their "HOLY FATHER" and they sons in his "holy keeping," of whom, the first of the ten that recognized "HIS HOLINESS," is surnamed "the Eldest Son of the Church."
...The Mouth of the Beast is the mouth of the wicked in their politico-religious organization. It is a mouth which "speaketh vanity," and "poureth out evil things:" the words thereof
"are smoother than butter, but war is in their heart; their words are softer than oil, yet are they drawn swords." - Psa 10: 3-11
... He has puffed at his enemies; for, though but feeble in arms, he has set the most powerful of his enemies at defiance; and by his spiritual thunders reduced them to the most abject submission. The Name of Blasphemy speaking by his Lion-Mouth, declares the eternity of his rule; and that he shall "see no sorrow" from which he shall not ultimately be delivered:
"He saith in his heart, I shall not be moved; for I shall never be in adversity" (Apoc. 18:7);
and, as for cursing, deceit, fraud, mischief and vanity, his mouth is indeed full; for in the atmosphere of these he lives, and moves, and has his being. The judgments of the Deity are indeed "out of his sight" far above him. He discerns them not. This is highly characteristic of him at the present time.
Even his worshippers are hating him, and making him desolate and naked, as it has long since been predicted they would (Apoc. 17:16); yet so blind are his eyes with which he surveys the world, and so infatuate and unteachable his obdurate and beastly heart from his long surfeit and intoxication of blood (verse 6), that he can see nothing; so that, persisting in his obstinacy, the fate of the blind when they undertake to lead the blind, will come upon him in an hour when he thinks only of future glory, and he will suddenly "go into perdition," and there will be none to help.
In the Canons of the Council of Chalcedon, A.D. 450, the Bishop of Rome is styled, "Beatissimus Papa urbis Rome, qui est capu omnium ecclesiarum," i.e. the most blessed Pope of Rome, who is "THE HEAD OF ALL CHURCHES." About five years before this the western emperor, Valentinian III., and the eastern emperor, Theodosius II., unitedly published an imperial edict, or law, in which the Bishop of Rome is styled, "DIRECTOR OF UNIVERSAL CHRISTENDOM."
In this edict, the presumptuousness of resistance to the Holy See was sharply rebuked, the whole body of bishops bidden to do nothing without his approbation and the universal clergy to obey him as their ruler. "From this time (A.D. 445) says Ranke, "the power of the Roman Bishops grew up under protection of the Roman Emperor himself.
In A.D. 554, and onward for many years, the Universal Latin Bishop was subject to the Exarchs of Ravenna, the Viceroys of the Emperors of Constantinople, in all things secular; while in spirituals he was acknowledged by his lord and master to be supreme. In after ages,_ however, he became greater than he who had created him; and when he opened his mouth in the roarings of his blasphemy he made all the beasts of the field to tremble.
His heart was lifted up as the heart of Lucifer in his pride; and with a truly Babylonian Mouth, in the stoutness of his presumption, said, "I will ascend into the heavens, I will exalt my throne above the stars of AIL: I will sit also upon the Mount of the congregation in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I - will be like the Most High" (Isa. 14:12-14).
But there is a limit to human arrogance and blasphemy. The Romano-Babylonian Mouth of the Beast has long since passed the zenith of self-exaltation and presumption; and is now but the shadow of a name. The fate of the Babylonian Lucifer awaits him. He will be brought down to Sheol, to the sides of the pit; and though once the Mouth that made the world to tremble, and did shake kingdoms, he will be cast out as an abomination, and reproach of all peoples; for his dominion is the land of graven images, and they are mad upon their idols.
is it 1260 days or 1260 years? Is it a literal period, or is it symbolical of the real time? By what rule can the truth of the matter be ascertained? My answer is, that the truth is determined by the rule of facts, which are stubborn things.
This cipher is variously stated in prophecy. In Dan. 8:25 and 12:7; and in Apoc. 12:14, it is written "a time, and times, and the dividing of, or half, a time;" in Apoc. 12:6; 11:3, it is written, "a thousand two hundred and sixty days;" and in ch. 11:2 and ch. 13:5, it is written forty and two months. The aforesaid times in Daniel, together with his 1335, which is 75 years more than 1260; and the forty and two months of Apoc. 11:2 and 13:5, all terminate at the same crisis; at that, namely, of "the time of the dead."
But the "thousand two hundred and threescore days" of sackcloth witnessing (ch. 11:3) and of woman feeding (ch. 12:6,14) do not end at that time; their ending being in the epoch of A.D. 1572-'6, marked by the Papal Massacre of Bartholomew's Day, which was 1260 years after the Donatist Trials, or flight of the woman towards the wilderness; the ending of their testimony in the presence of the god of the Roman earth; and the beginning of the first war by which the Ten Horns crushed them in all their kingdoms, A.D. 1685.
6 And he opened his mouth in blasphemy <concerning the Deity> to <have> blasphemed his <NAME>, and his Tabernacle, and <those who tabernacle in the> heaven.
Two consecutive councils at Rome, held A.D. 494 and 495, recognized and accepted his [Galerius - Bishop of Rome] words as those of the VICAR OF CHRIST:
"The Holy Roman Church," says he, "is preferred to other ecclesias by no synodical canons; but it obtains the primacy by the evangelical voice of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, saying, Thou art Peter. The Roman Church is therefore the chief seat of the apostle Peter, not having spot, nor wrinkle, nor any such thing;" "having authority over the whole church for its general superintendence and government."
This same Gelasius, as if determined indelibly to affix the character of blasphemy to the Name he represented, styles the apostle,
"our Saviour the Blessed Peter,"
because of the words spoken to him,
"whatsoever thou shalt bind, etc.; so that none living are excepted from the church's authority of the keys; but only the dead."
But, in after times, not even the dead were excepted. At the close of the Council in A.D. 495, when Gelasius had finished, the assembled bishops shouted, six times repeated, "We see that thou art the VICAR OF CHRIST."
There was more in the significance of the words of those episcopal shouts than they intended. VICARIUM CHRISTI te videm us! was in effect saying,
"We see that thou art ho Antichristos, the Antichrist!"
Vicarius answers to the word anti, that is, instead, or supplies the place of another; hence, as a substantive, a deputy, a substitute, a vicegerent, locum tenens, vicar. "We see that thou art a substitute for Christ!" and a substitute for Peter! And that thou art above every thing called god or is worshipped!
Anti- Christos is the Greek for Vicarius Christi. This
"was blaspheming those who dwell in the heaven;"
it was injuring greatly the reputation of the Father and the Son among men, for an ignorant and profane Gentile, who proclaimed in council the words noster Salvator Beatissimus Petrus, "our saviour the most blessed Peter," to announce himself as their substitute and all-powerful representative upon earth. A Vicar-Christ is Anti-Christ; and though they did not mean to make that application, yet in shouting what they did, they for once proclaimed the truth to the world from the Seven Hills.
...Assuredly there can be no mistake that we have before us an Order of Men, or a Name, answerable to Daniel's "god of guardians, exalting himself, and magnifying himself above every god, and speaking marvelous things against the God of Gods;" to Paul's Man of Sin, Son of Perdition, and Lawless One;" and John's "Name of Blasphemy, and Mouth like the mouth of a lion, speaking great things blasphemies." No person, or succession of persons, could be more like Lucifer of Babylon, more arrogant, more proud, more blasphemous, or more lawless.
His Tabernacle, and those who tabernacle in the heaven
The heavenlies in Christ are two states answering to the two places of the tabernacle of Moses. One of these states is not yet manifested on earth; the other is. Hence, one may be said to be visible, and the other invisible; yet the saints, not sinners, who are quickened with him, and raised with him, sit together in both with him, and He with them... in Deity the Father, and the Lord Jesus Anointed.
The saints are all in this manifestation of Deity. Being in Jesus and the Father, they must be, in a certain sense, where Jesus and the Father are.
7 And it was given to him to make war with the <Holy Ones>, and to <vanquish> them: and <there was given to him dominion over every tribe> and tongue, and nation.
Holy Ones persecuted
Now, it is a fact, that there was a separate and distinct community of such saints, who existed in all the twelve hundred and sixty years succeeding the Donatist trials in the reign of Constantine, which transpired in the epoch A.D. 312-316.
It is also a fact, that during all that long period they were denounced as heretics, and persecuted as such, by the constituted authorities of the state; first, by the emperors for nearly three hundred years; and then by the Ten Horns, inspired by their Universal Bishop, to whose spiritual authority and Eyeship the last of them was converted, A.D. 600, and into whose hands the witnesses and saints were delivered by Justinian and Phocas; and who ceased not to make war upon them during many more centuries, until they silenced their testimony against Romish superstition and the Name of Blasphemy upon the seven hills.
This was the Beast's practicing and prospering against the saints - the practicing of the Mouth and Horns for forty and two months. Not forty and two literal days or literal months only; for such a supposition would be contrary to historic facts; but for forty and two months of literal years, extending over twelve long and tedious centuries and sixty years beside.
This, then, is the literal time symbolized by forty and two months in ch. 11:2, and ch. 13:5. The periods indicated in these two texts are parallel. The beginning of the one is the beginning of the other; consequently, they both end together.
...John [the apostle], however, in showing whence the Eyes and the Mouth of the Beast derived their power, and the use they would make of it against the saints with the historical description of the Dragon's grant, enables us to Say, with considerable assurance, that the forty and two months began in the epoch of A.D. 604-608. In all the subsequent 1260 years, the Papal Powers have practised prosperously against the Saints and Witnesses for the supremacy of Jesus against that of the Universal Bishop, unicum nomen in mundo.
They have trodden them under foot, made successful war upon them, and killed them in all the streets of the Great City - the Witnesses for 1260 years after the Justinian epoch; the Saints for 1260 years after the Phocean epoch.
According to his will - Dan 11:36
Justinian the first King to give primacy of the Roman See over Constantinople
...in the creed of Justinian," says the historian, "the guilt of murder could not be applied to the slaughter of unbelievers: and he piously labored to establish with fire and sword the unity of the Catholic faith."
Such was Justinian, the diademed representative of the Dragon from A.D. 527 to A.D. 565; and of Daniel's Little Horn King, who worked according to his will; to whom the Patriarch of Rome was greatly indebted in the establishment of his self-exaltation "over all called god or sebasma" - an object of veneration. His "policy" was that of an ecclesiastical ruler of the class typified by Constantine the great."
"Never prince," says Dupin, "did meddle so much with what concerns the affairs of the Church, nor make so many constitutions and laws upon the subject. He was persuaded that it was the duty of an emperor, and for the good of the State, to have a particular care of the church, to defend its faith, to regulate external discipline, and to employ the civil laws and the temporal power to preserve it in order and peace."
Although the Bishop of Rome had himself claimed supremacy over all other bishops of the Roman earth, including the Patriarch of Constantinople, this claim had not been imperially, or Dragonically, recognized, until the publication of a Decretal Epistle from Justinian to the Pope, dated March, A.D. 533.
"It is hence evident," says Gothofred, the editor of the Justinian Code, cited by Cunninghame, "that they who suppose Phocas to have been the first who gave imperial recognition to the primacy of the Roman See over that of Constantinople are in error: Justinian having acknowledged it before."
Dominion over every tribe - The Reign of Justinian
The deadly wound healed - the triumph of trinitarianism over arianism (One Diety)
The Seventh Head being destroyed, and the Bishop of Rome acknowledged by the Catholic Dragon of the East, as the Pontiff of the empire, the next desideratum was that he should be acknowledged by all the Horns of the West. This implied their conversion from paganism and Arianism to what Justinian styles "the right faith," and the "pure doctrine of his Holiness."
These Horns belong to the times of Imperialism, which was worshipped by them in the Western Emperor while there was one, and afterwards in the Eastern. They were the Diademed Viceroys of Rome, and Constantinople, being Masters-General and Patricians of the empire - a political relation to Imperialism which legitimized their governments in the estimation of their Roman subjects, who greatly exceeded the number of their barbarian conquerors.
The beginning and the ending of this political relationship, with but slight recognition of them in the long interval of 1335 years, are the subject of Apocalyptic symbolization. The beginning was the seed or elements of things in the period of politico-ecclesiastical organization; the ending, the ripe harvest and vintage (Apoc. 14) in the period of analysis or dissolution: so as that in some sort, the beginning was typical of the ending.
The rude-Horn Governments holding this relation to Imperialism, with the Lawyers and Clergy of their kingdoms practitioners and professors of Roman law and Roman Theology, easily accepted the legislation of Justinian in favour of the Pope and their own interests legal and ecclesiastical.
A clergy the great majority of whom were Trinitarian, and Viceregal administrations, partly pagan and partly Arian, were the constitutional elements of the situation in the sixth century. The clergy of the kingdoms recognized and sympathized with the Pope and his patrons the Emperor of the East: and operated upon the barbarian kings and governments as imperial and papal missionaries for their conversion to "the right faith," and "the pure doctrine of his Holiness," in other words, to the Roman Catholic Trinitarian Superstition.
Here, then, in this beginning were the Little Horn of the East (Dan. 8:9,12,23-25), the Catholic Dragon of Constantinople; and the Papal Eyes and Mouth, occupying the so-called Apostolic Throne upon the Seven Mountains, the Name of Blasphemy; and the Gothic Horns.
Of these, the Vandal Horn, which was Arian, and defiant both of the Pope and the Emperor, had been "plucked up by the roots" by the forces of Justinian under Belisarius. The horn of the Gepidae was transferred to the Chagan of the Avars, the representative for two hundred and thirty years of the modern kingdom of Hungary. These were hostile to the Apostolic Throne. The opposition of the rest was gradually overcome.
Clovis king of the Franks, on occasion of a victory, embraced the faith of Rome, A.D. 496; and so being the first, received the title, which has been handed down through more than thirteen centuries, to his successors the kings of France, of Eldest Son of the Church. In the sixth century the rest of the Horns gave in their adhesion to the Papal Faith. Recared was the first papal king of Spain. He reigned from A.D. 586 to A.D. 589. "The royal proselyte," says Gibbon,
"immediately saluted and consulted Pope Gregory, surnamed the Great, a learned and holy prelate, whose reign was distinguished by the conversion of heretics and infidels. The ambassadors of Recared respectfully offered upon the threshold of the Vatican his rich presents of gold and gems; they accepted, as a lucrative exchange, the hairs of St. John the Baptist, a cross which enclosed a piece of the true wood, and a key that contained some particles of iron, which had been scraped from the chains of St. Peter."
The Lombard Horn was the last of the ten to renounce Arianism, for "the pure doctrine of his Holiness" of Rome. This occurred A.D. 600, through the instigation of Gregory the Great, who encouraged his co-religionist, Theodelinda, the Queen of the Lombards, to propogate the Nicene faith among her victorious savages. "Her devout labours," says Gibbon,
"still left room for the industry and success of future missionaries; and many cities of Italy were still disputed by hostile bishops. But the cause of Arianism was gradually suppressed by the weight of interest and example, and the controversy, which Egypt had derived from the Platonic school, was terminated, after a war of three hundred years, by the final conversion of the Lombards of Italy."
Thus was the Bishop of Rome developed into "the Mouth" of the great VICEREGAL REPUBLIC OF THE WEST; and after this manner was fulfilled the oracle, saying,
"And there was given to him (the Beast of the Sea) a Mouth."
It was a mouth like the mouth of the symbol of Babylon, "the mouth of a lion."
When it spoke it roared forth thunderings and blasphemies, far more hideous than ever defiled the ears of pagan or Mohammedan - a Mouth that still gives utterance to
"blasphemies against the Deity to blaspheme his Name and his Tabernacle, and them that dwelleth in the heaven."
...if Maurice had not been moved out of the way by a revolution, the "blasphemous name" would have adhered to Constantinople as the Apostolic Throne.
But the heart of Gregory, the last of the "sainted popes," was made glad by the murder of Maurice, his wife and nine children, by a rebel and orthodox usurper named PHOCAS, who was peaceably acknowledged in the provinces of the east and west.
Gibbon describes him as a monster, of diminutive and deformed person, grossly ignorant and steeped in lust, drunkenness and brutality. Such was the abandoned villain of the baser sort, who occupied the throne of the Catholic Dragon about eight years from A.D. 602 to A.D. 610.
... Such a biophthoros drakon, life-destroying Dragon, as he was styled, the worthy rival of the Caligulas and Domitians of the first age of the empire, was a very fit and proper patron to legislate the Bishop of Rome into the Universal Bishop of the world, the All-Overseeing Eye of the Apostasy.
Gregory did not long rejoice in "the benignity of Phocas' piety," being removed by death this year. He was succeeded by Boniface III, who had no scruple about adopting the proud and "blasphemous name." His election was confirmed by Phocas (an imperial privilege which was formally abandoned A.D. 684) whom he importuned to bestow upon him the exalted title of Universal Bishop, with the privilege also of transmitting it to all his successors.
"The profligate emperor," says Jones, "to gratify the inordinate ambition of this court sycophant, deprived the bishop of Constantinople of the title which he had hitherto borne, and conferred it upon Boniface, at the same time declaring the Church of Rome to be Head of all other churches." Thus Phocas confirmed what Justinian had ordained seventy-five years before.
Justinian had given the pope his power, throne and jurisdiction; Phocas confirmed the same with the original and additional gift of the imperial title, UNIVERSAL OVERSEER; by which he attained a rank ecclesiastically superior to the emperor; and at the prospect of which Gregory professed to be greatly scandalized.
The authorities for this are Paul the Deacon, who says of Phocas, "Being entreated by Pope Boniface, he ordained that the throne of the Roman and apostolic church be the Head of All Churches; because the Constantinopolitan church declared that it was first of all churches"; and Anastasius who in his Ecclesiastical History on the A.D. 606 observes, "This (Boniface) obtained from Phocas the Prince, that the Apostolic Throne of the Blessed Apostle Peter should be the Head of all churches; because the Constantinopolitan church declared that she her self was the first of all churches."
...Papists and Protestants seem to agree in assigning the constitutional beginning of the Papacy to this epoch of the reign of Phocas.
...The Antichrist who in A.D. 312, was a babe of sin, was now, in A.D. 604-'8, a young man, and still in his growth. He was not yet of full age; nor would he be, until the Two Horned Beast should rise up out of the earth among the already existing ten horns. The development of this Lamb-Horned Beast and the Image of the Wounded Head, would consummate the healing of that head.
Make war with the Saints
...he could not kill the Saints as a body politic, exercising power and authority in the Court of the Gentiles; because, not being politicians and political partisans, they never possessed them: it is therefore stated simply, that they were vanquished or overcome by the war.
... History is copious in the narration of the sanguinary persecutions and crusades raised against them by the Pope, who promised forgiveness of sins and eternal salvation to volunteers in his wars with the saints and witnesses, all of whom he blasphemed as "emanating from the pit of the abyss."
These volunteers responded to his incentives with enthusiasm; and in reporting the execution of their mission, would say, "we have spared neither age nor sex; we have smitten every one with the edge of the sword." Besides being subject to massacre, they were at all times by the canon law deprived of all civil privileges; and it was declared "homicidas non esse qui excommunicatos trucidant," that they who butcher the excommunicated are not murderers.
8 And all <the dwellers> upon the [Mediterranean] earth shall worship him, <of whom there hath not been written the names before the foundation of the world, in the book of the Life of the Lamb that hath been slain>.
...the phrase "from the foundation of the world" in this place does not refer to the slaying of the Lamb, but to the writing of certain names in the Book of Life. This is evident from the parallel passage in ch. 17:8,
"and they that dwell on the earth shall wonder whose names were not written in the Book of Life from the foundation of the world."
This is expository of the former on this point. The Book of Life is essentially that of the Lamb slain; for there is no book registering names for eternal life, that has not been sprinkled with the blood of Jesus.
The slain Lamb's Book of Life is the Book of the Abrahamic Covenant, dedicated with the blood of Jesus, the Mediator of the New Covenant; and in this Book their names are not written who are ignorant of the promises, and, therefore, faithless of the Gospel preached to Abraham, and afterwards in the name of Jesus Christ.
...This is a promise of eternal life and of an eternal inheritance to Abraham and his Seed; for they must be made incorruptible and immortal to enable them to possess a country "for ever."
Then every one of his children was known to Him by name when he laid the foundation of the aion and kosmos (both rendered world in the English Version) in the Abrahamic Covenant. To deny it, would be to say that the Deity did not know all his works from the beginning. But he did know them; and, therefore, it is said in the verse before us of the dwellers on the earth in contrast with the dwellers in the heaven, of
"whom there has not been written from the foundation of the world the names in the book of the life of the Lamb that had been slain."
10 He that leadeth into captivity shall go into captivity: he that killeth with the sword must be killed with the sword. Here is the patience and the faith of the saints.
If any gathereth together a captivity, into captivity he goes away; if any shall kill with the sword, it behooves that he be killed with the sword. Here is the patience and faith of the saints.
...there is a power able to make war with the Beast, and to bind and slay him; for as he has made war with the Saints and Witnesses, bound them in captive chains, and conquered and killed them, so he is to be bound and killed with the sword, when judgment shall be executed upon him, by the very victims of his "exceeding dreadful and terrible" tyranny, after they shall have been raised from among the dead, and strengthened for the war.
Here is the patience and the faith of the Saints
The Saints, or true believers, have always known... They knew that the honour of executing vengeance upon the nations...was, in the wisdom and justice of the Deity, assigned to them (Psa. 149:6-9; Dan. 7:22). By this knowledge, they were energized to endure for the time-being the atrocious cruelty inflicted upon them by the great iron teeth of the Lion-Mouth. They endured in hope of this honour, and waited for it in faith.
... The waiting for and belief of these things is a characteristic of the true believers, "who dwell in the heaven," though". pilgrims and sojourners upon the earth, and trodden under foot of the Gentiles; for where their treasure is, there is their heart, or affections, also.
11 And I <saw> another Beast [holy Roman empire AD 800] <ascending> out of the Earth [central Europe - Austrian, Prusso-German, and Russian empires]; and he had Two Horns [Pope and Emperor arose AD 752-799] like <to> a lamb, and he spake as a Dragon.
The Beast of the Earth
A map of Central Europe will exhibit the Beast of the Earth with sufficient accuracy. Its acquisition of ROME conferred upon it the quality of holiness in the estimation of its worshippers; so that by them it came to be styled "THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE." It comprehended Italy, Austria, Bavaria, Hungary, and Germany to the North and Baltic seas. Its secular throne, in the beginning, was at AIX-LACHAPELLE, but afterwards at VIENNA; and its spiritual seat in ROME.
The Beast of the Earth is an extension of Daniel's Fourth Beast northwards through the forests of Germany, in which the Romans of the old world could never effect a permanent settlement.
The Beast of the Sea emerged after the collapse of the western Empire in 475 A.D. It was superseded by the Holy Roman Empire, or Beast of the earth in 800.
John saw this while standing on "the sand of the sea. " Would he see the Ten Horn dominions ascending out of the sea, and not see a more remarkable dominion than any of them rising up in the midst of them? He says, "I saw another beast;" so that while he was seeing and standing, he saw two dominions, or systems of government, the one arising from among the peoples inhabiting the countries of the west washed by the Mediterranean, the other from among those of MIDDLE EUROPE, which he styles "the earth. "
"The Earth" is an extensive inland portion of the globe, not included in the Roman empire when the Apocalypse was communicated to John in patmos. In modem times, it is represented by the terittory of the Austrian, Prusso-German, and Russian empires. Out of a portion of this region John saw the Two-Homed Beast arise; so that when it had arisen and established itself, there were contemporary with it Seven independent Horns, and its own Two Horns in the midst of the original ten.
Between what John saw, and what Daniel beheld while considering the Horns of the Fourth Beast (ch. 7:3,24), there is a remarkable identity. They both saw the rising up of the same dominion, concerning which each of them recorded particulars not specially noticed by the other.
Daniel's and John's ten horns represent the same European Powers... what Daniel styles a Little Horn, John terms a Beast with Two Horns, and speaking as being a Dragon. This diversity is instructive.
...John's description of the dominion shows that the Beast of the Earth has Two Contemporary Dynasties, both of which are Dragonic, or Imperial.
But Daniel shows the same things, only in a different way. For, that his Little Horn is imperial, a dominion ruled by emperors, he affirms in saying, that the power should subdue three of the ten horns that had existence before it. It was to rule over three conquered kingdoms besides its own: and that it was to be a double-headed imperiality; or, a dominion under two contemporary successions of potentates, he represents by the Little Horn, for one succession of secular emperors; and by the Eyes andMouth for the other succession of pontifical emperors, styled Popes.
This constitution of things makes it "diverse from the ten horns." There were no independent Eyes and Mouth for each of them. If there had been a pair of Eyes and a Mouth for each horn there would have been a Pope for each kingdom: or ten contemporary popes, as well as ten contemporary king. But this would have been confusion worse confounded than it was.
On the contrary, one pope or Papal Dynasty, was deemed sufficient for the whole ecclesiastical requirements of the worshippers of the Beast, both of the earth and sea. One pope, one emperor, seven independent, and three vassal kingdoms, south and west of the Rhine and Danube, representedby John's two Beasts, is the politico-ecclesiastical and Apocalyptical constitution of Modern Europe, from A.D. 800 to A.D. 1793.
Revolutions have often seriously disturbed this constitutional order. There have been rival contemporary popes and emperors, and more and fewer kings.
...a great revolution had been developed in the European Body Politic. The Constantinopolitan sovereignty and Exarch were no longer found in Italy; three of the Ten-Horn kingdoms had been subdued by a new power; the Bishop of Rome was exalted into a pontifical potentate with temporal jurisdiction over the so-called Patrimony of St. Peter, or "States of the Church;" and Rome was raised from her degradation and eclipse to imperial sovereignty; and, as Gibbon testifies, was afterwards
"revered by the Latins as the Metropolis of the World, and THE THRONE OF THE POPE AND EMPEROR who from the Eternal City derived their title, their honours, and the right or exercise of temporal dominion"
This New Dominion of the Two Dynasties styled "the Pope and Emperor", is John's Two-Horned Beast of the Earth; and Daniel's Little Horn with Eyes like eyes of a man, and a Mouth speaking very great things, whose look was more stout than any of the Ten. Its rise must be looked for after the Emperor of the East had lost his sovereignty in Italy.
The Constantinopolitan Exarchate of Ravenna was conquered by the Lombards , A.D. 752, which gave the preponderance in Italy to them; and placed the Bishop of Rome very much at their mercy. It was between this date and A.D. 799 that the Two-Horned Beast arose. This interval was the period in which the Bishop of Rome passed from under the sovereignty of the Emperor of the East into an alliance with the New Imperial Dominion of the West, known in history as "the Holy Roman Empire" of Middle Europe.
Eureka 13 Part 2 introduction
Before Pepin returned to France he renewed his donation to what he called St. Peter, yielding to the Catholic church represented by the Popes the Exarchate Romagna and Marca d'Ancona, with twenty-one cities therein, to be held by them for ever; the kings of France retaining the superiority as Protectors of the Romans.
Thus was the sceptre of temporal dominion added to the keys, the sovereignty to the priesthood, which was enriched by the spoils of the Lombard kings and the Roman emperors. It was a novelty among the Horns, and the beginning of the Two-Horned Beast of the Earth, and the Image of the wounded head, or of the Imperial Sixth.
"their expiring monarchy was pressed by the zeal and prudence of Pope Adrian I., the genius, the fortune, and greatness of Charlemagne the son of Pepin; these heroes of the church and state were united in public and domestic friendship, and while they trampled on the prostrate, they varnished their proceedings with the fairest colours of equity and moderation."
...Adrian sent privately to Charlemagne, not only imploring his aid, but inviting him to the conquest of Italy.
... Charlemagne... returned to the camp before Pavia, which, after a blockade of two years, was surrendered by Desiderius with the sceptre of the kingdom. Thus ended the power of the Lombards A.D. 774, after it had continued two hundred and six years.
The Vandalic Horn had been annexed to Italy by Belisarius, and Italy now became the property of Charlemagne; so that the Horn of the Vandals, and the Horn of the Lombards, both included in Italy, were two of the three horns Daniel predicted would fall before the Little Horn, with Eyes and Mouth, and be "plucked up by the roots." The third will appear in the sequel.
On the festival of Christmas, A. D. 799, as the king assisted at mass in St. Peter's temple, in the midst of the ecclesiastical ceremonies, and while he was on his knees before the altar, the Roman Pontiff advanced and put an imperial crown upon his head. As soon as the people perceived it, they cried,
"Long life and victory to Charles the most pious Augustus, crowned by the hand of God! Long life to the great and pacific Emperor of the Romans!"
The head and body of Charlemagne were consecrated by the royal unction. During the acclamations, Leo conducted him to a magnificent throne, prepared for the purpose, and as soon as he was seated, after the example of the Caesars, he was saluted or adored by the pontiff, declaring that, instead of the title of Patrician, he should hence-forth style him EMPEROR and Augustus. Leo then presented him with the imperial mantle, with which being invested, Charles returned amid the acclamations of the populace to his palace.
The pope had unquestionably no right to proclaim an emperor, but Charles the Great was worthy of the imperial ensigns; and though in a certain sense a successor to Augustus, he is justly considered as the founder of the NEW EMPIRE of the West, from the establishment of which Europe dates a new era.
That dominion was not unworthy of its title; for its founder reigned at the same time in France, Spain, Italy, Germany and HUNGARY - the last of the three horns plucked up by the roots before him; the Horns of the Vandals, the Lombards, and the Huns. After a bloody conflict of eight years the relics of the nation submitted, and the rapine of the Huns, for two hundred and fifty years, enriched the victors or decorated the temples of France and Italy.
After the plucking up of the Hungarian Horn, the New Dominion was bounded by the conflux of the Danube with the Teyss and the Save, with the unprofitable provinces of Istria, Liburnia and Dalmatia. The rest of the Ten Horns, which had degenerated into petty sovereignties, revered the power of Charlemagne, implored the honour and support of his alliance, and styled him their common parent, the sole and supreme emperor of the West.
Two-thirds of the western empire of Rome were subject to him; while the other third was still possessed by the Dragon of Constantinople, in conflict with the Saracens, whose mission was to torment, but not to kill, the body politic of the east, during two periods of five months of years each (Apoc. 9:5,10).
Like to a lamb
..the Lamb-Horned Dominion, as established by Otho the First, A.D. 962....when Otho fixed the imperial crown in the name and nation of Germany, he established the two following maxims of public jurisprudence;
1. That the prince, who was elected in the German diet, acquired, from that instant, the subject kingdoms of Italy and Rome.
2. But that he might not legally assume the titles of emperor and Augustus, till he had received the crown from the hands of the Roman Pontiff.
By the first maxim the election of the emperor by the secular electors of the empire made him the lord of the pope; who had no more power to withhold the crown and titles from the emperor elect, than the archbishop of Canterbury, whose function it is to crown the king of England, could withhold the crown and titles from the inheritor of the British throne.
In the time of Otho, the Archbishop and Patriarch of Rome was to the Germano-Roman emperor, what the archbishop of Canterbury is to the king of England, namely, at once both chief sub-ect, and chief bishop, of the respective beasts, or dominions. The bishop of Rome was elected by the college of cardinals, with the ratifying approval of the Roman people; but he could not be legally consecrated until the emperor had graciously signified his approbation and consent.
This being the ecclesiastical and civil constitution of the Lamb-Horned Beast, it is plainly to be perceived, that there was nothing in the body politic answerable to the Image of the Beast that lives [Both king and chief pontiff].
..The years preceding the time of Hildebrand were a period of long and disgraceful servitude for the so-called "Apostolic See." In reference to this Gibbon says,
"the Roman Pontiffs of the ninth and tenth centuries, were insulted, imprisoned, and murdered, by their tyrants; and such was their indigence after the loss and usurpation of the ecclesiastical patrimonies, that they could neither support the state of a prince, nor exercise the charity of a priest."
... The bishoprics of Germany were made equal in extent and privilege, superior in wealth and population, to the most ample states of the military order. This was an important stride towards the troublesome development of the wonder-working deceiver. As long as the emperors retained the prerogative of bestowing on every vacancy these ecclesiastical and secular benefices, their cause was maintained by the gratitude or ambition of their friends and favourites.
The personal and local conflicts of the popes in the tenth century, left them no leisure, if they had possessed the capacity, to perfect the great system of temporal supremacy which was to deprive the emperors of their prerogatives pertaining to the ecclesiastical affairs of the empire. In this age, they looked rather to a vile profit from the sale of episcopal confirmations, or of exemptions to monasteries.
A dominion having two horns is a sovereignty dominated by a plurality of dynastic or ruling orders, which, in their speaking or ruling, "as a dragon," are imperial.
... Every one knows the characteristics of a lamb - meek, patient, inoffensive, and unresisting under the knife of the slayer. It is the Apocalyptic symbol of Deity sacrificially manifested in the flesh, through which the lamb-like characteristics were displayed.
But it is not in this sense that we find the lamb's horns illustrative of the character of the Beast of the Earth; for the prophecy itself shows that its ruling characteristics are the very reverse of inoffensiveness and meekness; for it causes all who do not obey its mandates to be killed.
But a lamb being symbolical of "the Shepherd and Bishop of souls," comes also to represent things ecclesiastical. The true believers, or the saints, are all in the Lamb, because they are "in Christ," and constitute "his body the Ecclesia." They are, in other words, invested or clothed with the lambskin, and the horns of an animal are appendages of its skin. Hence, "horns like a lamb" would fitly symbolize a body ecclesiastical claiming to be Christian; and such a claimant might pass for Christian, if things were not affirmed of it incompatible with the principles of Christ.
A truly Christian body would not set up an Image of the wounded sixth head of the beast to be worshipped upon the pain of death. This the Beast of the Earth was to do; and since he arose, has done. We are, therefore, under the necessity of concluding that whatever ecclesiastical domination may be represented by the sheep's clothing, "pallium," or state mantle, it is not a real sheep dominion, but a counterfeit one - the Dominion of the Romish Dragon in Sheep's clothing.
Such was the dominion of which Charlemagne was the founder in the eighth, and beginning of the ninth, centuries. These were the age of the Romish Bishops, as the eleventh and twelfth centuries were of the Popes.
The Carlovingians and the Bishops were the Beast of the Earth in its primary phase. The position assumed by Charlemagne was military, civil and ecclesiastical. He was head of the church and head of the state.Eureka 13.27.
Horns like a lamb
Dr. Keith quotes from "Rome in the XIXth Century," the following:
"There is a peculiar sort of blessing given to two lambs on Jan.21, at the church of St. Agnes without the walls; from the sainted fleeces of which are manufactured, I believe, by the hands of nuns, two holy mantles called pallj, which the pope presents to the Archbishops as his principal shepherds."
This was a literal investiture with sheep's clothing, which was completed in the Mitre with its two horns, originally springing up right and left over each ear.
...Elliott also quotes from a work styled "The Church of our Fathers" in which the author in his chapter on the Mitre, observes how at the opening of the eleventh century, shortly after the Pope's complete subordination of the Western Clergy to himself, the first sproutings, as it were, of the two horns began to show themselves: and how the mitre then in England
"arose into two short points, not raised before and behind as now, but right and left over each ear."
He illustrates from figures on the font in Winchester Cathedral, as given in the Vetusta Monumenta. Bonanni remarks that the Greek Bishops do not use the mitre. It is a Latin distinctive.
Thus, the Spirit foreseeing that the Latin Episcopacy of the Western division of the Apostasy would symbolize its ecclesiastical dignity by a two-horned mitre and the fleeces of lamb, adopted them for the Apocalyptic symbol of a dominion to arise in the midst of Europe, the most striking characteristic of which would be its hierarchial and episcopal, so-called "Holy Roman," constitution.
In other words, the two episcopal Lamb's horns are to the Beast of the Earth what the "Eyes like the eyes of a man" are to Daniel's Little Horn. The eyes and the Lamb's horns represent the same constituent of the dominion - the ecclesiastical orders of abbots, bishops, archbishops, cardinals and popes; a hierarchy of "Holy Orders" so-called which still support and over-shadow the secular thrones of the Latin world.
Charles the Fat was the last emperor of Charlemagne's family. From his abdication to the establishment of Otho the First may be deemed a vacancy of seventy four years. His father Henry the Fowler, by birth a Saxon, was elected, by the suffrage of the nation, to save and institute the kingdom of Germany. Its limits were enlarged on every side by his son, the first and greatest of the Othos. In the north, he propagated the two-horned superstition by the sword, and subjected the Slavic nations of the Elbe and Oder to its authority.
He planted German colonies in the marshes of Brandenburg and Sleswig; and the king of Denmark, and the dukes of Poland and Bohemia confessed themselves his tributary vassals. At the head of a victorious army, he passed the Alps, subdued the kingdom of Italy, delivered the Pope, and finally fixed the crown of the Two-Horned Romish Episcopal Dragon in the name and nation of Germany.
...The history of the Holy Roman or German empire is the history of the Beast of the earth with two horns like a Lamb, and speaking as a Dragon.
I shall therefore conclude this section in the words of Gibbon, that in the fourteenth century
"the hereditary monarchs of Europe (the Ten Horns) confessed the preeminence of the German Caesar's rank and dignity; he was the first of the christian (catholic) princes, the temporal head of the great Republic of the West; to his person the title of majesty was long appropriated; and he disputed with the Pope the sublime prerogative of creating kings and assembling councils.
12 <And all the dominion of the former beast [Sixth Head] he exerciseth in his sight>, and <he> causeth the earth, and <the dwellers> therein, <that they worship the former beast whose plague of his death> was healed.
The Episcopal Beast Causeth the Earth To Worship The First Beast
Though the secular authority of the emperors of the Holy Roman dominion, on the accession of the Saxon line, did not extend over France, which is one of the ten horns, the episcopal authority of the dominion was dominant in all the countries of Europe. It may therefore be truly said, that the Episcopal Beast of the Earth exercised all the auhority of the first beast's horns "in its presence."
This "presence" is illustrated by Daniel's Little Horn standing contemporaneously in the midst of the Ten Horns; and besides occupying its own German territory, also standing upon that of the Vandals, Lombards, and Huns. From these considerations, it is regarded in the prophecy as the chief authority among the powers of the imperial republic of the west.
...Now, this Imperio-Episcopal, or Little Horn, power "causeth that the earth and the dwellers therein worship the first beast, the plague of whose death was healed." In other words, causeth that the tribes, and tongues, and nations referred to in the seventh verse, worship, or do homage to, the Sixth Head, or form of government, common to the Dragon and Beast of the Sea. The phase "the First Beast" is evidently elliptical; and stands for "the Sixth Head of the First Beast;" for this was the only head of the Seven that was healed, or restored to sovereignty in Rome.
The reestablishment of Imperialism upon the Seven Mountains, signalized by the coronation of Charlemagne, Emperor of the Romans, by the hand of the Chief Bishop of the New Empire, was the healing of the Sixth Head so grievously wounded by the Gothic sword. Rome was no longer in the rank to which she had been reduced by Justinian's 'Pragmatic Sanction" of A.D. 554.
This ordinance placed her among the cities of the second rank in the Graeco-Roman, or Byzantine, empire; but by her becoming the capital of the Holy Romano-Francic, and afterwards Romano-Germanic, dominion, she was restored to the imperial, or dragonic, sovereignty; and the plague of her death was healed.
This was a great revolution in the fortunes of the so-called "Eternal City." By the restoration of Western Imperialism, an Eighth Form of Government, styled in Apoc .17.8, "the beast that was, and is not, yet is," was established upon the Seven Mountains.
In the seventeenth chapter, the two-horned episcopal element of the Beast of the Earth is replaced by the Great Harlot Mother of the Churches of the Gentiles; while the secular element is expanded into the Scarlet-coloured Beast, symbolical of Ezekiel's Magogian confederacy of powers, which is the last phase of Daniel's Fourth Beast - the Eighth Head in its final manifestation, which, John says, "is of the Seven, and goeth into perdition" - a confederacy in which the European imperiality and royalties combine against Christ, and the Saints in the war of the great day of God Almighty (Apoc. 17:14; 16:14; 19:19-21).
But the development of the Sixth Head of the Beast into the Eighth, was not only the healing of the plague of death, but it signalized the termination of the third part of the day, and the third part of the night, during which the third of the sun, moon, and stars of the Roman Firmament, Heaven, or Aerial, were to be darkened, or eclipsed, by the judgment of the Fourth Wind-Trumpet (Apoc. 8:12).
This period of two hundred and forty years having elapsed, Charlemagne, the Sovereign of Rome and Italy, was no longer content with the substance of imperial authority, and the title of PATRICIAN OF ROME inherited from Pepin, which only represented the service and alliance of the Frank monarchs as Protectors of the Roman Pontiff and his church: he was ambitious of shining in the splendor of imperiality, as the coequal in the Roman Air of the Constantinopolitan emperors.
13 And he <performs> great <signs> [by fraud and battle], so that he <even causeth> fire [papal persecutions, excommunications and murders] <to descend out of the> heaven <into> the earth in sight of men [of the European "Wilderness" (ch. 17:3).]
The thirty-three campaigns of Charlemagne in the woods and forests of Germany, in which he subjugated the pagan aborigines of that country, and imposed upon them the superstition of the Roman Priesthood, were among the wonders whereby fire was caused to descend upon them out of the heaven.
The wars of Otho the First, by which the limits of his kingdom, which his father, Henry the Fowler, had transferred from the French to the Germans, were enlarged on every side; and by which the Ten-Horned Superstition was propagated northward, and forced upon the Sclavonian nations of the Elbe and Older; the marches of Brandenburg and Sleswig, Poland and Bohemia - were also "great wonders, causing fire to descend out of the heaven," in which the Two-Horned Beast of the Earth was enthroned.
The "fire" which descended was the consuming wrath of the Little Horn, ministered by this military apostle of the Dragon-speaking Beast of the Earth, Otho the First. "Fire," says Daubuz,
"with such adjuncts as betoken that it is not put for light, denotes destruction, or torment, great sickness, war and its dismal effects; and is thus used in Isa. 42.25, 66.15, Ezek .22.20 22, Zech .13.9. So Persecution is represented by fire, 1 Peter 1:7; 4:12; 1 Cor. 3:13,15. So in the Andromache of Euripides, ver. 147, dia puros, through fire, signifies through murder. And thus Sophocles calls the mischief done by the Sphinx to Thebes, 'a foreign flame of mischief'."
...These made war upon all the inhabitants of the European Wilderness who did not worship them, whether they were Slavic pagans, the Two Witnesses, or the Saints. The Slavonians and the Witnesses fought the fire of the Beast's heaven with the fire of their own power, though in the end they had to succumb; the fire of their mouth was extinguished by the prevailing of the Beast against them.
But the fire of the Two Horned Beast's heaven, which the authorities of that aerial were able to cause to flame forth with scorching and destructive effect, did not consist solely in war and its calamities. Had the Beast consisted solely and simply of a secular military power, its fire would have been restricted to its warlike operations; but it did not. It is also an ecclesiastical power; therefore its fire must be more or less of an episcopal character.
Ecclesiastical fire is the flashing and forked lightnings of episcopal wrath, thundered against kings, nations, and peoples obnoxious to its displeasure. This fire used to be consuming and terrible, and was ministered by the Two Horns like a Lamb, or the Romish Episcopacy, whose judicial fire is its anathemas, or curses, and excommunications, executed by the secular authorities in all the Horn-Kingdoms of the European Commonwealth.
These are sometimes called "the Thunders of the Vatican," whence they rolled forth, echoing through the heaven by the cooperation of the clergy. These lightnings and thunderbolts, as the Romanists themselves style them, were hurled by Pope Innocent, the Roman Jupiter Tonans, in the Council at Lyons against the emperor Frederick, A.D. 1245, to the great terror of the bystanders. "These words," says the record,
"uttered in the midst of the Council struck the hearers with terror as might the flashing thunder-bolts. When, with candles lighted and flung down, the Lord Pope and his assistant prelates flashed their lightning fire terribly against the emperor Frederick, now no longer to be called emperor, his procurators and friends burst into bitter wailing, and struck the thigh or breast. 'That day,' said one of them, 'that day of wrath, of calamity, and of woe!"'
The flinging down of lighted candles from an elevated position by the excommunicators, a mimic representation of fire from heaven, was the usual accompaniment of the solemn and great excommunication pronounced annually at the feast Cana Domini by the Pope in person, his Cardinals and his Priesthood, against all heretics from the elevated Vestibule of the Lateran Temple at Rome; and was directed to be practised by the Romish Bishops elsewhere also on certain solemn occasions.
......"Excommunication was at this epoch a terrible weapon in the hands of the sovereign Pontiff. Every one fled with horror from him who had been struck by it. The lords broke off all commerce with the king. There hardly remained any attendants with him to serve him. And these threw all the fragments of his table into the fire rather than eat them."
The mere intercourse with a proscribed person incurred the "lesser excommunication," or privation of the sacraments, and required penitence and absolution. In some places, a bier was set before the door of an excommunicated individual, and stones thrown at his windows. Every where the excommunicated were debarred of a regular burial. Their carcasses were supposed to be incapable of corruption, which was thought a privilege unfit for those who had died in so irregular a manner.
14 And <he> deceiveth <the dwellers upon> the earth < through the signs which it was given to him to perform> in the sight of the beast;<commanding the dwellers upon> the earth < to> make an IMAGE to the beast which <hath the plague of the> sword, and <lived.>
...the dominion of the popes and their clergy was founded on idolatry and their zeal for its support. This is true, and upon this basis the pope stands before the world as the "Pontifex Maximus" of Roman Idolatry, in which character he is the striking counterpart or "Image" of the pagan imperial pontiffs of the Sixth Head of the Beast.
He deceives the dwellers upon the earth
The word rendered "deceives" is plana, which also signifies, to lead astray, cause to wander; metaphorically, to mislead, deceive, cause to err. Understanding from the previous section what the semeia, wonders, or miracles, were by which the wonder-working Beast was enabled to cause fire to descend from the heaven, we may thence determine the nature of the deception practised.
The dwellers upon the earth were "deceived" in being led astray by clerical fraud, and episcopal and military violence; which is characterized by Paul as
"the working of the Satan with all power and signs, and lying wonders, and with all the deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish" (2 Thess. 2:9).
The Beast of the Sea, or Sixth and Seventh Head, Ten Horns, and Mouth; that is, so much of it as is contemporary with Apocalyptic times: the Beast of the Earth, or Little Horn and Eyes of Daniel's vision, and the Image of the Beast - are all symbolical of "the Satan;" and were all manifested after the same kind of "working," which Paul subdivides into all kinds of dunamis, and semeja, and lying terata, which cover the whole ground of military, civil, and ecclesiastical violence, oppression, and fraud.
He deceives through his wonder-working in the presence of the Beast. To what result does he deceive the dwellers upon the earth, or inhabitants of the territory of the Holy Germano-Roman dominion? To the making of an Image of the Beast that had the plague of the sword, and lives. In other words, in the metaphorical deception, or deceiving operation, there is a conflict of powers resulting in the development and compulsory establishment of the Image of the Beast.
15 <And it was given to him to give spirit to > the image of the beast, that the image of the beast <might> both speak, and <practice> [decrees, persecutions, judgements and power to torture and kill], that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed.
The Image - Worship Question
The question...concerning images, was still far from settlement, either at Rome or Constantinople, but continued to agitate the Laodicean Apostasy for many years. During the reign of Constantine Copronymus, a synod was held at Constantinople to determine the controversy. It decreed, that
"every image of whatsoever materials made and formed by the artist, should be cast out of the christian churches (as they styled their temples) as a strange and abominable thing,"
adding an "anathema upon all who should make images or pictures, or representations of God, or of Christ, or of the Virgin Mary, or of any of the saints," condemning it as
"a vain and diabolical invention"
deposing all bishops, and subjecting the monks and laity who should set up any of them, in public or private, to all the penalties of the imperial constitution. Paul I., then Roman Pontiff, sent his legate to Constantinople, to admonish the emperor to restore his beloved idols to their temples; threatening him with excommunication in case of refusal. But the Dragon chief treated his message with the contempt it richly deserved.
On Paul's decease, A.D. 768, the Lion-Mouth of the Beast was represented for one year by a bishop named Constantine, who condemned the worship of idols, for which he was tumultuously deposed, and Stephen IV., a furious defender of them, substituted in his place. He forthwith assembled a council in the Lateran, where they abrogated all Constantine's decrees, deposed all the bishops he had ordained, annulled all his baptisms and chrisms, and as some historians relate, after having beat him and used him with great indignity, made a fire in the church and burned him to death.
After this cruel disposition of this papal specimen of "holiness" and "infallibility," they annulled all the decrees of the Dragon's council, ordered the restoration of the idols, and cursed that execrable and pernicious synod, giving the absurd and blasphemous reason for the use of images -
"that if it was lawful for emperors, and those who had deserved well of their country, to have their images erected, but not lawful to set up those of God, the condition of the immortal God would be worse than that of man."
The fortunes of the demonials and idols were at length revived in the East. As soon as Irene reigned in her own name and that of her son Constantine Porphyrogenetus, she undertook the ruin of the Iconoclasts. The first step of her future persecution was a general edict for liberty of conscience; after which she convened a general council at Nice, A.D. 787, at which the legates of the Roman Pontiff Adrian, attended, and her domestic slave the Patriarch of Constantinople, who presided.
This counsel of three hundred and fifty bishops unanimously pronounced, that the worship of images is agreeable to Scripture and reason, to the fathers and councils of the church. The acts of this council are still extant; "a curious monument," says Gibbon, of
"superstition and ignorance, of falsehood and folly."
An illustration of the judgment of these bishops on the comparative merit of image-worship and morality, may be found in the reply of one to a certain monk, that
"rather than abstain from adoring Christ and his mother in their holy images, it would be better to enter every brothel, and visit every prostitute, in the city."
During the five succeeding reigns the contest was maintained with unabated rage and various success between the idolators and the breakers of idols. At length the enthusiasm of the times ran strongly against the Iconoclasts; and the emperors who stemmed the torrent were exasperated and punished by the public hatred. The final victory of the idols was achieved by Theodora, A.D. 842.
Her measures were bold and decisive. She ordered her Iconoclast Patriarch a whipping of two hundred lashes in commutation of the loss of his eyes; the bishops trembled, the monks shouted, and the demonials and idols of all metals and woods were triumphant.
Rome and Italy were jubilant; while the Latins of Germany, France, England and Spain, lagged behind in the race of superstition. They admitted the idols into their spiritual bazaars, not as objects of worship, but as memorials of faith and history.
Nevertheless, idolatry advanced with silent and insensible progress; but, as Gibbon remarks,
"a large atonement is made for their hesitation and delay, by the gross idolatry of the ages which precede the reformation, and of the countries both of Europe and America, which are still immersed in the gloom of superstition."
The Further development of the Beast of the Earth
Charlemagne's mission was precisely that which excited Gibbon's surprise. He was not employed by the Eternal Spirit against the maritime dominions. Hence, what Gibbon styles "his moderation." The Providential work before him was an operation in which the Romans with all their skill and power could never succeed. His work was the subjugation of Germany.
This is why he laboriously consumed thirty-three campaigns in the woods and morasses of Germany. These constituted "the Earth" out of which the Two-Horned Dominion was to ascend - the Middle Europe of our time. This was to be the arena of the Little Horn among the Ten.
Besides founding a dominion over the population of these woods and forests, he was to pluck up by the roots three of the Ten Horns. This enlarged his mission to the work of annexing Italy and Hungary to his Mitteleuropische Reich, or Middle European Kingdom, as the Germans style it. By the annexation of Italy, he also annexed the Roman Church with its Universal Bishop; and in so doing he inserted a pair of Eyes and a Mouth into his Horn, of which he regarded himself as the ruling brain.
Here, then, was an imperial ecclesiastical dominion, consisting of the episcopal orders and lay nobility under a secular chief, as the ruling power. This imperial constitution of the Beast of the Earth was predicted by John in the words, elalei hos drakon, he spake as being a Dragon. The reader is well aware that a dragon is the symbol, both in Heraldry and the Apocalypse, of the dominion of an emperor, not of a simple king. This new power was an emperorship among neighboring kingdoms; and the large admixture of the clerical orders with the lay nobles, over whom they preponderated in the administration of state affairs, constituted it an EPISCOPAL POWER.
Charlemagne seems to have fore-seen that the claims of the clergy, though inactive against himself, would be urged in after times, and at length overshadow his throne. He determined, therefore, to assert the independent right of monarchy and conquest.
Hence, the year before his death, A.D. 813, he summoned a parliament at Aix-la-Chapelle, where he asked every one present whether they would be pleased that he should give his son Louis, afterwards styled "the Pious," the title of Emperor, and they assenting made him his colleague in the empire. At this coronation he commanded Louis to take the crown from the altar, and with his own hands, without intervention of pope or bishop, to place it on his head, as a gift which he held from his father from God, and from the nation.
Charles the Great died A.D. 814, aged 72 years, having reigned forty-eight years, and as an emperor fourteen. His sceptre was transmitted from father to son in a lineal descent of four generations, and the ambition of the popes was reduced to the empty honour of crowning and anointing these hereditary princes who were already invested with their power and dominions.
The image of the beast
But, who is the instrumental deceiver and wonder-worker causing the development and establishment of the Image? The Beast of the Earth. True. But the Beast of the Earth is an aggregate of powers almost coordinate; such as the episcopal or ecclesiastical, and the secular imperial. Which of these orders in the state was the wonder-working deceiver? Exclusively neither.
The wonder-working consisted in the bitter and sanguinary conflicts between the Crown and Mitre, the two-horned symbol of the Romish Hierarchy; the result of which was the triumph of the Mitre over the Imperial Crown; by which the Hierarchy became in-dependent of the secular order of the dominion. This Sovereign and Imperial Hierarchy, capitalized by the Dynasty of the Popes, and known commonly as the Papacy, is the Image of the Beast.
This wonder-working of the Lamb-Horned Beast is said to be transacted "in the presence of the beast." This phrase is equivalent to that in the thirteenth verse, "in the presence of the men" - enopion ton an-thropon: "the beast" in the one phrase being symbolical of "the men" in the other.
...The wonder-working deceit was to develop an eikon, an image or likeness. Not an original, but a resemblance to something that had previously existed. As the prophecy is a symbolical revelation of powers to be developed in the Court of the Gentiles during the 1260 years of the subjection, or down-treading of the saints, the image to be developed was the likeness of some previously existing power.
It was to be an image the counterpart "to the Beast that hath (ho echei in the present tense) the plague of the sword, and lives." What beast is this?
I have shown that the Sixth Head of the Beast of the Sea was that which had been smitten with a deadly plague by the Gothic Sword; I have also shown that when Charlemagne founded the Imperial Lamb-Horned dominion, that the Sixth Form or Head, was healed, or came to life again in the West; and the New Empire became the Eighth Form of Government, or Head, upon the Seven Mountains. This being consummated, it became
"the Beast that lives."
The Image was to be a likeness of this living Eighth Head; in fact, a coordinate dynasty in the Holy Germano-Roman Habitable; an independent ecclesiastical imperial dynasty - an imperium in impeno, occupying the relative position to the Lamb-Horned Beast, that the Blasphemous Mouth does to Daniel's Little Horn.
The wonder-working deceiving power directed the deceived to have an Image made to the Beast that lives.
Should be killed
This was a terrible inspiration - a speaking Image murderously hostile towards all men, of all ranks and degrees, who would not bow down obediently to its sovereign behest. Such an imperiality was
"a Mouth speaking very great things against the Most High" - (Dan. 7:8,25);
a Lion-Mouth, speaking great things and blasphemies against God to blaspheme his Name and his Tabernacle, and the dwellers in the heaven Apoc. 13:2,5,6; or, in the words of the eleventh verse it spake as a Dragon; in other words, as being itself a Dragon, or imperial.
This Dragonic Image was the arrogant, blaspheming, and ferocious speaking constituent, or Mouth, of the Lamb-Horn Beast of the Earth; and the great enemy that
"made war against the Two Prophets, and the Saints, and overcame them" (ch. 11:7; 13:7,15).
Whosoever did not receive and would not submit to its oracular utterances were anathematized by it, and scathed with its fire from the heaven, or were excommunicated and penally destroyed as Heretics beyond the protection of law, the killing of whom was declared to be no murder.
The Image of the Beast Historically Identified
Pope Nicolas II, published a decree in A.D. 1059, which restored the right of nomination and election to the Cardinals of Rome; but leaving the confirmation of the pope elect to Henry, "now king and hereafter to become emperor," and to such of his successors as should personally obtain that privilege.
This decree is the foundation of that celebrated mode of election in a conclave of cardinals, which has ever since determined the Headship of the Speaking Image of the Beast. It was intended, not only to exclude the franchise of the citizens of Rome, who by their rabble-violence had forfeited their primitive right, but as far as possible to prepare the way for an absolute emancipation of the papacy from the control of the secular imperial chief of the Beast of the Earth; reserving only a precarious and personal concession to the emperors, instead of their ancient legal prerogative of confirmation.
... His next step was to publish a new decree against lay investitures. The abolition of these was a favorite object of Gregory, and formed an essential part of his general scheme for emancipating the spiritual, and subjugating the temporal power.
The ring and crosier, it was asserted by the papal advocates, were the emblems of that power which no monarch could bestow; but even if a less offensive symbol were adopted in investitures, the dignity of the Romish Hierarchy was lowered, and its "purity" (!) contaminated, when its highest ministers were compelled to solicit the patronage or the approbation of laymen.
But interest in the question of investitures was suspended by other more extraordinary and important dissensions between the Church and the Empire. The pope, after tampering some time with the disaffected party in Germany, summoned Henry IV. to appear at Rome, and vindicate himself from the charges alleged by his subjects. Such an outrage naturally exasperated a young and passionate monarch.
Assembling a number of bishops and other vassals at Worms, he procured a sentence that Gregory should no longer be obeyed as lawful pope. But the time was passed for those high prerogatives of former emperors. After A.D. 1073, the relations of dependence between Church and State were now about to be reversed; in other words, the time had come to erect the Romish Hierarchy, under its chief bishop, into a supreme independent imperial monarchy, after the model of the secular, but superior to it: or as it is Apocalyptically expressed, "to have an Image made of the beast that lives."
Gregory had no sooner received accounts of the proceedings at Worms, than he not only excommunicated Henry, but sentenced him to the loss of the kingdoms of Germany and Italy, releasing his subjects from their allegiance, and forbidding them to obey him as sovereign.
...Gregory's purpose is said to have been to engage in the bonds of fidelity and allegiance to the so-called Vicar of Christ, as King of kings and Lord of lords, all the monarchs of the earth, and to establish at Rome an annual assembly of bishops, by whom the contests that might arise between kingdoms and sovereign states were to be decided; the rights and pretences of princes to be examined; and the fate of nations and empires to be determined.
The haughty pontiff knew well what consequences would follow the flaming thunderbolts of the heaven. The German bishops came over to his party forthwith, and drew along with them many of the nobles; the brand of civil war still lay smouldering, and a bull properly directed was sufficient to set it in a blaze: and those very princes and bishops who had assisted in deposing Gregory, gave up their emperor to be tried by the pope, whom they solicited to come to Augsburg for that purpose.
Henry suddenly finding himself almost insulated in the midst of his dominions, had recourse, through panic, to a miserable expedient. He crossed the Alps at Tyrol, accompanied only by a few domestics, with the avowed determination of submitting and seeking absolution of Gregory...
It was in the unusually severe winter of A. D. 1077. At the gates of this place he presented himself as a humble penitent... being stripped of his robes, and wrapped in a woolen shirt and with naked feet and fasting, he was obliged to remain for three days in the month of January
...On the fourth day the emperor was permitted to throw himself at the feet of the pope, who condescended to grant him absolution, after he had sworn obedience to the pontiff in all things, and promised to appear at Augsburg on a certain day to learn the pope's decision whether or not he should be restored to his kingdom, until which time he also promised not to assume the imperial insignia.
...his abject humiliation elated Gregory with great exultation, who now regarded himself, and not altogether without reason, as the lord and master of all the crowned heads of "the Earth" and "the Sea," called "Christendom;" so that, in several of his letters, he said, it was his duty "to pull down the pride of kings."
......Urban II., and Paschal II... strenuously persevered in the great contest for Ecclesiastical Independence, or the full development of the Image of the Beast.
Henry V. steadily refused to part with the right of investiture and the secular or lay constituent of the Lamb-Horned Dragon was still committed in open hostility with the Papal Hierarchy of "the Earth" for fifteen years of his reign. But Henry V. being stronger in the support of his German vassals than his father, Henry IV. had been, none of the popes with whom he was engaged had the boldness to repeat the measures of Gregory VII.
At length, A.D. 1122, each party grown weary of this ruinous contention, a Concordat, or treaty of agreement, was arranged between the emperor and the pope, Calixtus II., which put an end by compromise to the question of ecclesiastical investitures. By this compact the emperor resigned for ever to the rising Image-Power the investiture of the bishops of the dominion by the ring and crosier, and recognized the liberty of elections. But in return, it was agreed that elections should be made in his presence, or that of his officers; and that the new bishop should receive his temporalities from the emperor by the sceptre.
By this concordat the imperial order preserved its feudal sovereignty over the estates of the Episcopal Hierarchy, which possessed nearly half the lands in Europe, in defiance of the language which had recently been held by the pontificals.
In the terms of this compromise the success of the emperor and the pope seemed pretty equally balanced; but from subsequent effects it is apparent to which party the intrinsic advantages of victory belonged: the events which followed, or
"the wonders it was given him to work, in the presence of the beast,"
after the settlement of this great and sanguinary controversy about investitures, evinced beyond all dispute, that the See of Rome had conquered; or in other words, that the creation of the Image, or likeness to the Constantinian Sixth Head of the Beast, revived in the dominion founded by Charlemagne, was completed in the establishment of the absolute monarchy of papal Rome. Gregory VII, is universally regarded as the founder of this unlimited imperiality.
...The gross and universal superstition of the Latin world admitted that the fullness of Christ's lordship in heaven and earth had been by Christ himself transferred to Peter, and therefore to the incarnate demons, the popes, who blasphemously style themselves the Vicars of Christ, and successors of that apostle.
... It was Adrian IV. who bestowed the kingdom of Ireland upon Henry II., King of England; and in the grant declared that all islands were the exclusive property of St. Peter, which was only an indirect assertion, that they all belonged to the Image of the Beast, of which the popes are the absolute, omnipotent, and oracular chiefs.
But the epoch when the arrogant and usurping spirit of the Papal Image of the Beast was most strikingly displayed was the pontificate of Innocent III. In each of the three leading objects pursued by Rome, namely, independent sovereignty, supremacy over the Latin church, and control over the princes of the earth, it was the fortune of this pontiff to conquer. This is the testimony of history. He completed the iconic, or image, fabric, founded by Gregory VII., and promoted steadily by his successors.
He realized that fond hope of so many of his predecessors, a dominion over Rome and the central parts of Italy the territory of the Image of the Beast; given to the Roman See by the countess Matilda, and yielded after long dispute by the emperor Otho IV. on his coronation at Rome by Innocent III., who bore the keys from A. D. 1198 to A.D. 1216. "This," says Hallam,
"is the proper era of that temporal sovereignty which the Bishops of Rome possess over their own city, though still prevented by various causes, for nearly three centuries, from becoming unquestioned and unlimited."
...Intoxicated with these ideas which he succeeded in establishing, he deemed no quarrels of princes beyond the sphere of his jurisdiction. His foremost gratification was the display of unbounded power. His letters, especially to ecclesiastics, are full of unprovoked rudeness.
...He claimed the right to confirm the election of the emperors of the Lamb-Horned dominion; and in a decretal epistle, declares the pope's authority to examine, confirm, anoint, crown, and consecrate the emperor elect, provided he shall be worthy; or to reject him if rendered unfit by great crimes, such as sacrilege, heresy, perjury, or persecution of the Roman church; in default of election, to supply the vacancy; or, in the event of equal suffrages, to bestow the empire upon any person at his discretion.
."The noonday of Papal dominion," ..
"extends from the pontificate of Innocent III., inclusively to that of Boniface VIII., or, in other words, through the thirteenth century. Rome inspired during this age all the terror of her ancient name. She was once more the mistress of the world, and kings were her vassals."
Such was the Image of the Imperial Head of the Ten-Horned Beast healed of its death-plague by Charlemagne, created by "the false Prophet," or Roman Hierarchial constituent of the healed head,
This Image-Monarchy is styled "the Kingdom of the Beast" in ch. 16:10
...Thus, in conclusion of this section, we have seen that after a conflict of more than four hundred years from Charlemagne to Innocent III., the ecclesiastics of all the hierarchies of Europe were united in one vast organization with the Bishop of Rome as their supreme legislative and judicial head, and a single ecclesiastical government established over the whole Roman church after the model of that of the Woman's Man-Child of Sin, developed in the person and power of Constantine the Great.
This development of the Man-Child into the fullness of the age and stature of THE MAN or Image of the Beast, is denominated by Romanists themselves a monarchy.
...Such was the ICONIC MAN in the noonday of his existence, the number of whose name is 666. Is not this the Antichrist? Could any power arise in the world more deserving of the name? Is not this Image-power, Anomos, THE LAWLESS ONE, whose coming Paul predicted would be
"after the working of the Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish?"
The Utterances of the "Speaking Image"
To have power to speak, and to cause to put to death; or to decree and to enforce its decrees, was the result of spirit, pneuma, being imparted to the Image. A monarch, or pontiff king, who made laws and issued decrees, but could not enforce them, or cause them to be executed, would be an image without spirit.
That which is necessary to a monarchy for the execution of its laws and ordinances is its spirit or power...order all Heretics to be roasted and exterminated, ... burn heretics, and try to exterminate protestants...bloodhounds of the Papacy... as hateful, stagnant and unclean as ever.
...in the days of Innocent III., the great things and blasphemies spoken of by the Image, or Iconic Lion-Mouth, were something more than sound and fury signifying nothing harmful. They were terrific roarings that made all the beasts of the Roman wilderness to tremble. Lucius III. and Innocent III., by formal decrees, required heretics to be seized, condemned, and delivered by the bishops to the civil magistrates, to be capitally punished, and enjoined the princes and magistrates to execute on them the sentences denounced by the canon and civil laws.
...all who venture to preach, either publicly or privately, without authority from the Apostolic See, or the bishop of the place, and all who dare to think and teach otherwise...than the Holy Roman Church preaches and practices...shall judge to be heretics, ... severity of ecclesiastical discipline... goods appropriated to the churches
...should any one know persons who are heretics, or any who hold secret assemblies, or differ in life or manners from the usage of the faithful, he will endeavor to point them out to the bishop or archdeacon.
..."If from a superstitious objection to oaths, any of them should refuse to swear, they are on that account to be adjudged heretics
..."We enact, moreover, that counts, barons, prefects, and consuls of cities and other places, at the admonition of the archbishops and bishops, promise under oath, that whenever they shall be required by them, they will boldly and efficiently aid the church against heretics and their accomplices
...They shall, moreover, be excommunicated, and their lands put under an interdict of the church. A city that excites resistance to these decrees, or neglects at the admonition of the bishop to punish those who resist, shall be deprived of the commerce of other cities, and divested of its episcopal rank.
"All favorers also of heretics, as condemned to perpetual infamy, we order to be debarred from the office of advocates, from giving testimony, and from all civil employments."
Similar canons were enacted A.D. 1215, by the fourth Lateran council under Innocent III., the most famous general council of the middle ages, at which over 1000 bishops and abbots attended, and ambassadors also from most of the kingdoms, in which the Lion Mouth decrees, that should a civil lord, on being required and admonished by the church, neglect to clear his territory of this heretical nuisance, let them be bound by the metropolitan and other bishops of the province with the bond of excommunication; and should he refuse to make satisfaction within a year, let it be signified to the supreme pontiff, that he may declare his vassals to be freed from allegiance to him, expose his land to be seized by Catholics, who, exterminating the Heretics, may possess it without opposition, and preserve it in the purity of the faith
..."Catholics who assume the sign of the cross ('the Mark of the Beast') shall gird themselves to the extermination of the Heretics, shall enjoy the indulgence, and be fortified by the sacred privilege, which are conceded to those who go to the relief of the Holy Land."
These enactments were incorporated in the decretals of Gregory IX., and became the law of the Image-State. Thus the Latin Hierarchy decreed the ruin and sanguinary extermination of all who dissented from its superstition, and refused to pay it the honour and obedience it required.
16 And he causeth all, <the> small and great, <and the> rich and <the> poor, <and the> free and <the> bond, <that there should be given to them> a mark <upon> their right hand, or <upon> their foreheads:
There was no class of European society unsubjected to the authority of the Lamb-Horned, or episcopal constituent of the Beast of the Earth; hence, what Ecclesiastical Power did with the concurrence of "the Secular Arm," the Beast is said to do.
"He causes" is therefore to be understood of the Lamb-Horned Beast, or Daniel's Little Horn with Eyes and Mouth.
No general imposition of a charagma, impressed sign, stamp, or mark, was enjoined upon Europeans by the authority of any of the Ten Horns.
Their subjects received it; but it was in obedience to the decrees of a foreign ecclesiastical power. This charagma was a characteristic sign; so that wherever it was observed, it would be known that the bearer was claimed by the Beast as his vassal.
The charagma is styled in ch. 19:20, to charagma tou theriou, the beast's sign or mark; because it was characteristically employed by the Latin Hierarchy before the Image was set up as an independent monarchy.
At the time the Apocalypse was given, and long both before and after, it was a common practice for slaves, soldiers, and devotees, to bear the imprint of those who claimed, or were supposed to claim, absolute control over them.
The impression was generally on the forehead or the hand, in token of servitude.
.... In Lev. 19:28, the Israelites were forbidden to imprint any marks upon themselves; for it was an idolatrous practice
...Now, the spirit, in allusion to this ancient custom and practice, predicted, that the Beast of the Earth would distinguish itself by a certain character, sign, or mark, as the symbol of its faith and power which it would impose, under the severest pains and penalties upon all recusants, upon every soul without exception under its dominion.
What the characteristic symbol would be is not revealed. It was to be a sign of its own selection; and for the universal adoption of which, it was to be terrifically zealous.
...I do object to the notion, that this triliteral  is emblematic of "the sign" imposed by the legislative enactments of the Beast upon all its subjects without exception. The sign of the Beast is not apocalyptically signified; but is simply styled to charagma, the sign or mark, and is left to history and public notoriety for its identification.
The "charagma," then, is to be considered as something apart, and distinct from the name and number of the name of the Beast. History and public notoriety show, that all the worshippers of the Clerical Hierarchy are impressed with a Sign emblematic of their spiritual profession and operation, as soldiers to their emperor, slaves to their master, and devotees to their god.
The fulfillment of this stands out palpably in the ecclesiastical institutions of the west. Boniface VIII., who ascended the throne of the Pontifical Image, A.D. 1294, declared in the decree "Unam Sanctam," that "
it is essential to the salvation of every human being that he be 'subject' to the Roman Pontiff;"
and prefixing thereto the words,
"whosoever obeys not as the scripture declares, let him die the death."
In accordance with this, both the secular priests and those of the monastic orders, took on themselves the vow of obedience, and received the Romish Sign upon their hands, in public token thereof.
This is evident from the "Pontificale Romanum" p.49, (A.D. 1627) on the Ordination of Priests.
"Tum Pontifex cum oleo catechumenorum inungit unicuique ambas manus, simul junctas, in formam crucis;"
that is, then the Bishop anoints both the hands of each of the catechumens, joined together "in the form of a cross:" and before handing them the cup and paten, or plate,
"Producit manu dextra signum crucis super manus illius quem ordinat;"
that is, he makes with the right hand "the sign of the cross upon the hand" of him whom he ordains.
...... The soldiers of the papacy enrolled for the murder and extermination of "Heretics," were to wear upon their vesture the Papal Cross, from which sign they acquired the name of "crusaders."
In the words of the fourth Lateran Council, "crucis assumpto charactere," the mark of the cross being assumed, the Pontiff-king, through his anointed priests, imposed the sign of his order upon all other classes of his subjects. All these without exception were compelled to receive it through episcopal confirmation and the clerical ordinance of infant sprinkling, or "rhantism," which the worshippers of the beast, absurdly enough, term "baptism!" - in which ordinances of the Apostasy, the sign of the cross is impressed upon the "forehead."
... These slaves of sin have great confidence in the efficacy of this sign as a defense against all sorts of invisible demoniacal influences. The sign of the cross, with the hand dipped in "holy water," is a great terror to the Devil, who is said to hate it exceedingly! They call it
"the Sign of the Holy Cross;"
as if that which brought the curse of the law upon Jesus for hanging upon it, could be holy. It would be as reasonable to say Holy Gallows, on which murderers are hanged, as Holy Cross. There is nothing holy pertaining to the Beast. Hence, its sign is like itself accursed, and significant of the perdition that awaits all who glory in it.
...The Sign of the Cross is the universal character of the Apostasy, both in its Romish and Protestant manifestations. It is erected upon their temples, or spiritual bazaars, and upon the flags of Protestant and Papal nations, as well as upon the hands and foreheads of individuals.
The Papists impress the sign on these with water and "greasy chrism" in rhantism, confirmation, and orders, as already shown; while Protestants, or anti-papal rebels, still retaining the character, less frequently parade the sign in the practice of their superstition.
They pertinaciously hold on to their institutions of the sign, rhantism, confirmation, and orders; though they do not sketch the character, charagma or mark, upon the hands or forehead in the observance of each. Millions of them think that, if the Sign received from their Roman Mother is impressed on the forehead rhantismally, it need not be repeated in confirmation or ordination; because none are admitted to these Papistical ordinances who have not been previously signed with the Sign of the Cross in what they call "baptism," but which is no baptism at all.
The correctness of this statement may be verified by reference to the Mass Book of the "Harlots" of Britain and the United States, styled "The Book of Common Prayer." Thus, when the priest pours, or sprinkles, water upon the upturned face of an infant, he falsely affirms that he baptizes it in the name of the Father, etc., and then proceeds to say,
"We receive this child into the congregation of Christ's flock, and do Sign him with the Sign of the Cross."
...The SIGN LEFT BY CHRIST
is the "One Baptism." It is the institution to which all must subject themselves as evidential of their obedience to the faith; for as Rhantism is the Sign of obedience to the Beast, so Baptism is the Sign of obedience to Christ.
Its constituents are a proper subject, sufficient water. and the action indicated in the word. A proper subject is one who has been "taught of God" (John 6:44,45).
God's teaching finds access to a man's mind by the study of the Scriptures, which are sufficient for instruction in righteousness, and the development of a man of God (2 Tim. 3:16). A man thus taught believes
"the things concerning the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ" (Acts 8:12);
and, in acquiring this faith, finds himself possessed of an enlightened mind, a love for the truth he believes, and a disposition such as Abraham possessed; in other words, he is a subject of a "faith that works by love," and "purifies the heart" (Gal. 4:6; Acts 15:9). Such an one as this, having the "one faith" and the "one hope" is the only proper subject of the "one baptism."
...Such is the sign left by Christ for the mystical washing away of sins. If there were no literal or actual washing, as in the Sign of the Beast, there could be no mystical washing away. In the Beast's sign there is no faith in the subject, no literal washing, and, consequently, no basis for a mystical or emblematical washing.
The absence of faith in the subject is substituted by the bungling conceit of putting "holy ghost" in the water, and apply it homeopathically for an emblematic washing, where there is no sign-washing at all!
Look now, gentle reader, upon this picture, then upon that. Contrast the Sign of the Beast with the Sign left by Christ, and you will easily perceive that the one is a mere invention of the drun?ken Sorceress of Babylon, authoritatively delivered to, and reverently received by, the worshippers of the Beast; while the other has the Scrip?tural impress of Christ's image and superscription evincing its Divine authority; and has been recognized by the faithful in all the ages and generations since it was delivered, as the only true sign, betokening
"the Father's name written in the foreheads of the redeemed" (Apoc.14:1,3,4)
17 And that no <one be able to> buy or sell, <but he having> the mark, or the Name of the Beast, or the Number of His name.
By a papal constitution inspired by Hildebrand [pope Gregory VII], no bishop in the Latin church was permitted to "buy and sell," or exercise his functions, until he had received the confirmation of the Roman See;
Buy and Sell
In commenting upon this, bishop Newton remarks,
"If any dissent from the stated and authorized forms, they are condemned and exetcuted as heretics; and in consequence of that they are no longer suffered 'to buy or sell;' they are interdicted from traffic and commerce, and all the benefits of civil society. So Roger Hoveden relates of William the Conqueror, that he was so dutiful to the pope that 'he would not permit any one in his power to 'buy or sell' anything, whom he found disobedient to the Apostolic Throne.'
So the canon of the council of Lateran under the pope Alexander III., made against the Waldenses and Albigenses, enjoins, upon pain of anathema, that
'no man presume to entertain or cherish them in his house or land, or exercise traffic with them.'
The synod of Tours in France, under the same pope, orders under the like intermination, that
'no man should presume to receive or assist them, no, not so much as to hold any communion with them in 'sellling or buying,' that being deprived of the comfort of humanity, they may be compelled to repent of the error of their way.'
Pope Martin V., in his bull set out after the council of Constance, commands in like manner, that
'they permit not the heretics to have houses in their districts, or enter into contracts, or carry on commerce, or enjoy the comforts of humanity with Christians.'
'In this request,' as Mede observes, 'the False Prophet 'spake as a dragon'." For the Dragon Diocletian published a like edict, that no one should sell or administer anything to the Christians, unless they had first burnt incense to the gods
...Popish excommunication's are therefore, like heathen persecutions; and how large a share the corrupted clergy, and especially the monks of former, and the Jesuits of latter times, have had in framing and enforcing such cruel interdicts, and in reducing all orders and degrees to so servile a state of subjection, no man of the least reading can want to be informed."
Now, this is all true and satisfactory as far as it goes; but it does not bring out all the truth contained in the prohibition of the text. The Scriptural use of the phrase "buy or sell" is not restricted to dealing in dry goods, groceries, and other kinds of secular daily traffic among the people. Spiritual wares are merchandise as well as silks, linen, tea and sugar.
The Spirit deals in the choicest kinds of merchandise, which He offers to the public upon the most advantageous terms. His business advertisement is conceived in the most liberal spirit, and runs thus:
"Ho! every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money: come ye, buy and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price."
...The truth, then, is the spiritual merchandise to be bought and sold without money or price.
... instead of selling "wines on the lees well refined" (Isa. 25:6); that "cheereth Elohim and men" (Judges 9:13); they introduced a poisonous and intoxicating substitute, which stole away the brains of all who purchased it.
This noxious compound, which causes ramollissement du cerveau, or softening of the brain, and rottenness of the bones, is Apocalyptically styled, Babylonian wine of fornication (ch. 17:2-5).
...Their monopoly was sustained by the corrupt governments of the world; by which they were authorized to maintain it by any measures they deemed most effectual. They were not slow to avail themselves of this permit. They accordingly decreed, that "no one should buy or sell, save he that had the sign" of their establishment.
He alone was "ordained" to sell the merchandise of the Lamb-Horned Prophet; and the worshippers of the Beast, who, by christening, were known as recognized customers, were alone permitted to buy of the ordained, or appointed, agents, what they were taught to esteem as "dainty and goodly things" (ch. 18:14).
...In this matter of selling spiritual dainties and goodly things, seeing that it is a mere mock auction fraud, the Peter Funk operators aim to pass off their worthless merchandise with as much as possible of the glitter and polish as canbe derived from the letter of Scripture, which, in their blasphemous use of it, is truly, as they say, killing.
Assuming to be the legitimate successors of the apostles, whom the Spirit appointed to sell the truth, or bread, wine, and milk, without money and without price, they appropriate the words addressed exclusively to them; and think, by a like formula and action, to be endued with their authority!
By this process, a "consecrated" craftsman undertakes to transform a "made" deacon into an "ordered" priest of great official excellency and high dignity. The formula and action of the conjuration are exhibited in the Protestant "Ordering of Priests." The deacon humbly kneels before his lord the bishop, who laying his "consecrated" hands upon him, says,
"Receive the Holy Ghost for the office and work of a Priest in the Church of God, now committed unto thee by the imposition of our hands: whose sins thou dost forgive the' are forgiven; and whose sins thou dost retain, they are retained".
From this the reader ill perceive, that the salaried sin-pardoners are not confined 10 the parent establishment. Article XXXVI. of the Anglo- American Harlot which all baby sprinklers recognize as a Christian church and orthodox says that this ordering hath nothing in it superstitions and ungodly! But the enlightened believer taught of God knows that it is nothing else than ungodly and blasphemous superstition.
Here are men, who eight times confess in their Litany, that they are "miserable sinners which is no doubt literally true, meet together in sanctimonious convention to consecrate and ordain one another "to the Order and Ministry of Priesthood," which they declare is done "by the will of our Lord Jesus Christ."
This is one of the lies of ignorance or something worse. Neither Christ nor his apostles ever commanded "miserable sinners" to do any other thing in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, than to believe the gospel of the kingdom and be immersed into that name.
"Miserable sinners," nor any other kind of sinners, can do anything else according to the will of Christ. They can only defile and blaspheme; God does not hear sinners (John 9:31), and their most sanctimonious demonstrations are to Him mere "abominations of the earth" (Apoc. 17:5): but
"the eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous, and his ears are open to their prayers; but the face of the Lord is against them that do evil" (1 Pet. 3:12; Prov. 15:8,9,26,29):
and who are greater evil-doers than the clergy of all orders and degrees, who, in the name of the Lord, filch from their customers their hard earnings for that which is not bread, and their labour for that which satisfieth not?
No evil can be greater in his sight than to sell lies, and to palm them off upon ignorant buyers as the truth of God. Their dainties and goodliest things exposed for sale in their bazaars, dedicated to Mahuzzim, or Guardian Saints Protectors, which they term churches, and houses of God, are mere trash and trumpery; and the crisis rapidly approaches, when
"these merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn; for no man buyeth their merchandise any more" (Apoc. 18:11).
18 Here is wisdom. Let him that hath <the> understanding, count [compute] the Number of the Beast [Pontiff King]: for it is <a Man's Number> and his number is [Greek] 666 [Lateinos - the Latin tongue - the basis of its name - a Latin Pontifical Kingdom - from the time of the dominion founded by Charlemagne].
The Name of the Beast and the Number of his Name.-It was a custom to indicate the names of objects of veneration, reverence or worship, such as gods, emperors, masters, &c., by the numbers of their names, that is, by the sum total of the numerical value of the letters constituting the name.
Thus Thouth, when the numbers of the letters are added up, gives 1218, which was the number of the god's name-the number by which he was enigmatically known.
The number of the power represented by the beast of Rev. 13:18, is 666, a number furnished by Lateinos, or The Latin Kingdom, the political name of the Papacy.
Eureka preface 3rd edition
Upon the Seven Heads of the Beast of the Sea is "A NAME OF BLASPHEMY" (ch. 13:1). "This is the Name of the Beast" enthroned upon the Seven Hills, which is the topographic signification of the Seven Heads (ch. 17:9).
This name belongs to the Beast and is represented by a man's number; and a man's number is significant of the man's name to which the number belongs. In other words, the name is indicative of the Man himself - the Image of the Sixth Head of the Beast, adored by the Pseudoprophet Hierarchy, by which he was created ...
The name to be ascertained, then, is the Name of
"the Man of Sin, the Son of Perdition, who opposeth and exalts himself over every one called a god, or sebasma, worshipped; so that he sitteth in the temple of the god as a god, publicly showing himself that he is a god."
This Man of Sin is not a single person; but an order of men, ruling imperiously, and imperially, in Rome - the Man-Image set up for worship there. All things have their names, and this Man-Image is no exception to the rule. What then is his Name? - the name of the power represented by the Image? It is evidently not literally revealed, or we should be able to read it plainly in the prophecy. It is like every thing else in this wonderful book. It is revealed in an enigma.
An enigma is a dark saying in which a known thing is obscurely expressed. Wise men in all ages have found satisfaction in presenting some of their choicest ideas in the form of enigma. This was characteristic of the teaching of Solomon, and of Jesus, who was wiser than he. The teaching of the Spirit has also been distinguished from the beginning by the presentation of "wisdom" in this form, which is characteristic of the Apocalypse throughout.
How easy it would have been for the Spirit to have told the servants of the Deity plainly the Name of the Man of Sin. But no:
"It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings to search out a matter:"
...a man's name, or a god's name, written in Greek, would not only indicate the man, or the god, but would represent a sum total when added up, which, when specified in letters, would not be the name itself, but the symbolic number, or enigma, of the name.
...In this case the riddle is, the sum total, or Number of the Name, being given, what is the Name of the Man of Sin; or of the Beast's Name of Blasphemy upon the Seven Heads, or Hills?
...At the time when the Apocalypse was given, the Sixth or Imperial form of government obtained in Rome. This was established by Augustus Caesar, whose native tongue was Latin. All the affairs of state were conducted in Latin; so that, until this language was superseded legislatively and executively by the Greek, it might truly be said in the words of Ireneus, "Latini sunti qui nunc regnant" - the Latins are they who now reign.
But in process of time, the supreme power passed from those of the Latin tongue to those whose vernacular was the Greek. Had Irenaeus lived in the days of Justinian, he would have said, "Grieci sunt qui nunc Romanis imperant" - the Greeks are they who now rule over the Romans. The question would not have been of race, but of language.
Was the Antichrist, or Man of Sin, to be a Greek or a Latin? Or, was the Image, endowed with the faculty of speech by the Pseudoprophet constituent of the Beast, to speak in Latin or Greek? In other words, was the Image-Man to legislate and promulgate his decrees and blasphemies in the Latin or Greek, as the language of the state?
If the language of the Image-monarchy were Greek, then Lateinos could not be the name of the Iconic-power. Its name would then be Hellen, and its enigmatical number , or 123. Thus,
it is evident, then, that the Man of Sin was not to be a Greek Power.
Now, we have seen in the course of this exposition, that the Latin Imperial Executive became extinct, when the Western Roman Empire was superseded by the Seventh Head and the Ten Gothic Horns, A.D. 493.
Three hundred and six years after, AD. 799, it was revived by Charlemagne, when the Latin language, which by decree of Pope Vitalian, A.D. 666, was made the religious tongue, began again to assert its supremacy in the state. Vitalian's was an early move towards the ecclesiastical development of the Latinity of the Name. The Centuriator Bale says,
"Vitalian sent monk-orators into England about A.D. 666, which from Christ's birth is the number of the beast, that they might confirm waverers in receiving the papistic faith, and that they might sign their own faithful with the mark of Antichrist. He commanded Latin hours, Latin songs, Latin idolatrous and devotional ceremonies, and other frivolous trumpery, rites, &c., all to be performed in the temples in the Latin tongue, according to the Greek word Lateinos, which by numeral letters fulfills the predicted number of the Beast."
About four hundred years after Charlemagne, the Latin had become fully established as the language of the Pontifical kingdom and empire of the Man of Sin; or Image of the Imperial Latin Head, revived in the Beast of the Earth. When the empire of the Caesars came to assume the form of Eastern and Western Limbs, as symbolized in Nebuchadnezzar's Image; and after the Gothic kingdoms had appeared, the Greeks appropriated to themselves the name of Romans: and bestowed upon all the kingdoms, in ecclesiastical fellowship with the See of Rome, the name of Latins.
These Western Romans were not averse to the appellation; so that thenceforward it became the recognized name of the second universal monarchy - "a new species of despotism," says Dr. Geo Campbell truly,
"never heard of, or imagined before, whose means of conquest and defence were neither swords nor spears, fortifications nor warlike engines, but definitions and canons, sophisms and imprecations; and that by such weapons, as by a kind of magic, there should actually be reared a second universal monarchy, the most formidable the world ever knew, - will, to latest ages, afford a matter of astonishment to every judicious inquirer."
This universal monarchy of the west pervaded all its kingdoms; and though they legislate in the modern languages of the nations, the officials of the Pontifical despotism, in whatever kingdom or republic they may have established themselves, use not the languages of the worshippers of the Beast; but transact all their swindling traffic in the language of Pagan Rome: and as Dr. Henry More expresses it, they Latinize in every thing.
"Mass, prayers, hymns, litanies, canons, decretals, bulls are conceived in Latin. The papal councils speak in Latin. Women themselves pray in Latin. Nor is scripture read in any other language, under popery, than Latin. Wherefore the council of Trent commanded the vulgar Latin to be the only authentic version. Nor do their doctors doubt to prefer it to the Hebrew and Greek text itself, which was written by the prophets and apostles. In short, all things are Latin; the pope having communicated his language to the people under his dominion, as the mark and character of his empire."
If Dr. More, who himself wrote in Latin, instead of saying "as the mark and character," had written "as the name of his empire," he would have been correct.
... no power upon the earth has so exclusive a claim to the name of Lateinos as the Iconic Power of the Seven Hills. All that pertains to it is Latin, and names are invented and conferred upon things in view of that most striking characteristic. The names of many modern powers are the names of the languages of their executives and dominant races; as the French power, the Spanish power, the Greek Power, the English power, and, as in the case before us, the Latin Power.
Their several languages are characteristic of each; no wonder then that the Latin, the tongue in which the Image speaks, should be selected by the Eternal Spirit as the basis of its name.
... does Lateinos solve the enigma of 666? Let us see:... the reference in the text is ... to a man... contemporary with the dominion founded by Charlemagne, which still exists in a dilapidated condition.
...Such is the wisdom enigmatically set forth by the Spirit for the computation of those of his servants, who have the understanding. No other solution of the enigma is so in harmony with historical and still existing facts.
There was no Pontiff king reigning in Rome over a kingdom professing Christianity in the days of John, Polycarp, Iremeus, and Hippolytus. But they all expected that there would be such an one; and that a dynasty would rule it, whose name in Greek would be numerically 666.
They judged that its most obvious character would cause it to be styled Latin. This they expected as the Antichrist Power, to be revealed when that which hindered its manifestation in their day was taken out of the way.
What they expected, we behold - a Latin Pontifical Kingdom, whose Pontiff - King claims to be Christ's Substitute on earth, and Successor to the Apostle of the Circumcision; the Name of Blasphemy whose pontifical throne has been for ages established on the Seven Hills; and though reigning in a country whose vernacular is the Italian, ignoring this language, and "speaking" only in that of his pagan fathers to whom he was unknown (Dan. 11:38): could any name be more appropriate to such a power than Latin, in the sense of the Latin Power, or the Antichrist? No other, I believe.