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But observe the difference! The crowns which were on the red dragon's heads are now seen on the horns of the revived beast. This exactly agrees with the symbol in Daniel's vision. The fourth empire was to come to exist in a divided state. "The ten horns of this kingdom are ten kings that shall arise." The sovereignty is in the divisions of the empire severally, not in the head; and these sovereignties are but parts of one empire. On the heads, moreover, is written the name of Blasphemy. Where the succession of Roman kings, consuls, tribunes, decemvirs, emperors, were seen, there "the name of Blasphemy is written." It had also been told to Daniel, "that great words should be spoken against the Most High." But of this part of the mysterious symbol we shall see more hereafter.

"And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard;" an animal, though not of the noblest kind, fierce and subtle; and his feet were as the feet of a bear:" to the prostrate foe, or to the people subjected to his sway, his dominion would be oppressive. And his mouth like the mouth of a lion, strong to devour. Or, perhaps, the lion's mouth, attached to such an animal, denotes that his claims and threats would exceed his actual powers.

"And the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority." The great red dragon, as we are told by the angel interpreter himself, is " the old serpent, called the Devil or Satan ;" but, according to the symbol, we are to look for his visible operation in the combination of nations that form the Roman empire, and to the remains of that paganism and idolatry in the mass of the people, which had been driven from its government, when that government became Christian. He is " spirit that now worketh in them that believe not.” The

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secret influence of paganism was still extensive, and, though cast from the imperial heavens, might well claim the throne of Rome as its own, and bestow it on a new combination of powers arising out of the conflicts of its nations. The old pagan empire is not, indeed, in form restored; but the idolatrous empire of Rome again revives, though disguised by the perversion of the Christian institutions. The same diabolical spirit aids it in its restoration; and though we see not the old red dragon again avowedly on the throne, but, as it were, still hidden in the mass of the people, the new powers act agreeably to his plans; and he, though not so immediately, is effectually the great mover in this new government of the western world.

"The red dragon," therefore, and this "revived beast," are both symbols of the same Roman empire, but in different stages of its history, and under a different mode of instigation from the old serpent. In the Roman pagan government he stood forth more confessed in his proper shape; but in the revived empire, though he still possesses the body of the beast which upholds the heads and the horns, he delegates the sovereign authority to others, and, working unseen, carries on his purposes by these his deceived instruments. In the subsequent visions, therefore, when the DRAGON is mentioned as distinct from the BEAST, we are to consider the latter as referring to the fourth empire, visibly seen in its governments; and, by the former, the prince of darkness personally, but more latently, working in the mass of the people of the fourth empire. And we may remark further, that though the heathen idolatry which opposed primitive Christianity, was, by the victories of Constantine, driven from the government of Rome; it never entirely ceased to

exist in the mass of the people of the fourth empire, down to the very times of popery and the Roman Catholic dynasties. Nay, the Roman Catholic Christianity took possession of many pagan nations, and remnants of pagan nations, by a kind of half compliance with the idolatrous usages and practices of the vulgar. This is, no doubt, what is symbolized in the prophecy before us by this coalition between the dragon and the beast. Christian Rome owed its recovered dominion over the nations of the earth to the influence of idolatry!

3. "And I saw one of his heads, as it were, wounded to death, and his deadly wound was healed; and all the world wondered after the beast."

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Expositors, in the application of history to the explanation of this part of the symbol, have not all taken exactly the same view of the meaning of the prophecy. Few, however, have doubted that the head," wounded, as it were, to death," and subsequently healed," is the sixth head - the imperial government of the Cæsars. Some think that the deadly wound was given to this head, as it respected the city of Rome and the proper Roman empire, when Constantine overthrew the pagan persecutors, and removed the imperial government to Constantinople, reducing the city that had reigned over the kings of the earth to the condition of a provincial town. These authors consider this deadly wound to have been healed when the division of the empire into the east and west gave again to Rome a resident prince,* and restored to the great city her former sovereignty over the nations of her original empire. I should, how

* A. D. 864.

ever, conceive, that removing merely the residence of the head of the imperial government to Constantinople cannot answer to the symbol of the wounding that head, as it were, to death; since the successors of Cæsar still reigned over Rome and the Roman world, nor had the seat of government, for some time before the accession of Constantine, been permanently fixed at Rome. I would rather interpret the deadly wound of the victories of the Goths in Italy, which terminated the western empire, and, for a time, interrupted the government of the Cæsars on their seven-hilled city.

There is something remarkable in the language of the symbol- one of its heads, as it were, wounded to death. The deposition of the Emperor Momyllus Augustulus, * and the abolition of the imperial government in Rome, was certainly very like the entire destruction of that form of government; but yet, from the particular circumstances of the Roman empire, it was not completely so: for though, for the time, lost to Rome, there was still a support of the vitality of the imperial government in the east; and it did in fact, without having been entirely extinct, again come to exercise sovereign authority at Rome. This came to pass when the victories of the generals of the Emperor Justinian restored the city to the dominion of that prince. Then was the deadly wound which the sovereignty of the Cæsars in the imperial city had received by the sword of the Goths, "healed." The sixth head revived, and the sovereignty of the successor

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* A.D. 476.

'Belisarius entered Rome 556; it is again taken 546, but recovered the following year.

of Cæsar and Augustus continued in Rome until its revolt from the eastern empire. *

It is during this period, the revived dominion of the sixth head, that we are, in all probability, to mark the rise of the new spiritual empire of Rome, and from thence trace the consequent revelation of the "man of sin." Somewhere within this period, perhaps, the date of the one thousand two hundred and sixty years will be found to commence either under the reign of Justinian, at the beginning of the period: as the occurrence of the late revolution in Europe, after the expiration of the term of one thousand two hundred and sixty years, has caused many to suspect:-- or in the revolt of Gregory II., at its close, whom Gibbon calls "the founder of the papal monarchy."+

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Mr. Gibbon thus reviews this period of the history of the Roman city:-" Amidst the arms of the Lombards and under the despotism of the Greeks, we again inquire into the fate of Rome, which had reached, about the close of the sixth century, the lowest period of her oppression. By the removal of the seat of empire, and the successive loss of the provinces, the sources of public and private opulence were exhausted; the lofty tree, under whose shade the nations of the earth had reposed, was deprived of its leaves and branches, and the sapless trunk was left to wither in the ground; the ministers of command and messengers of victory no longer met on the Appian and Flaminian way, the hostile approach of the Lombards was often felt, and continually feared. The inhabitants of a potent and peaceful capital, who visit, without an anxious thought, the garden of the surround

* A. D. 728. † A. D. 727. Bishop Newton; Mr. Milner.

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