of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience;" and in Heb. ii. 14, he is said to have the power of death," from which men can only be delivered by a Redeemer. As the head of the serpent is the seat of life, hence the overthrow of Satan's power is called "bruising or crushing the serpent's head," Gen. iii. 15. Rom. xvi. 20, has a plain reference to the same subject. And this overthrow is attributed to the Messiah, 1 John iii. 8. Among the Hebrews, Nachash or Nehash, was the name of the land serpent, and of that tribe of animals in general; the river serpent, crocodile, &c. they called tenin. Among the Latins, the water snakes were called angues; the land snakes, serpentes; and when these animals were consecrated, and in temples, dracones, from which our term dragon. And so Virgil styles them, when they are said to be hid at the feet of Pallas, Æn. 2, v. 225, "At gemini lapsu delubra ad summa dracones The Egyptians reputed the serpent to be an emblem of their god Cneph, by which word they meant the Demiurgus, or maker of all things. And the Phoenicians seem to have represented, in their mystic figures of the serpent, the power by which all things consist. See Shuckford, vol. iv. The sharep mentioned by Moses, Numb. xxi. 6, are nowhere called dragons, but are a species of serpent, which probably had that name from the heat or burning pain occasioned by their bite, or from their vivid fiery colour; for sharep signifies to burn. See also Deut. viii. 15. The Septuagint call it "the biting serpent." It is referred to in Isa. xiv. 29, "For from the root of the serpent shall come forth a basilisk, And his fruit shall be a fiery flying serpent." Isa. xxx. 6, "The burden of the beasts travelling southward, Whence come forth the lioness and the fierce lion, describing the deserts through which the Israelites passed in their journeys, and which were designed to be a barrier between them and Egypt. It is remarkable, that the seraphim, or cherubic emblems, derive their name from the same root, meaning burning spirits. The serpent or dragon is employed by the Sacred writers as the symbol of solitude and desolation; for as venomous and loathsome creatures generally hide themselves in uninhabited places, amidst ruins, reeds, and rubbish, so, where there is any mention of the ruin of a city, or the desolation of a province, the place is said to be a dwelling for dragons. Thus, Isa. xiii. 22, "And wolves shall howl to one another in their palaces, And dragons in their voluptuous pavilions." Similar to what Milton has said, Par. Lost, b. 11, 1. 750, "And in their palaces, Where luxury late reign'd, sea-monsters whelp'd, Isaiah xxxiv. 13, "And in her palaces shall spring up thorns, The nettle and the bramble, in her fortresses; Jerem. ix. 11, "And I will reduce Jerusalem into heaps, a den of dragons, And the cities of Judah will I make a desolation without inhabitant." When the opposite picture is intended, that is, a recovery from desolation, then the following language is used. Isa. xxxv. 7, "And the serab, or glowing sand, shall become a pool, And the thirsty soil bubbling springs; And in the haunts of dragons shall spring forth The grass, with the reed, and the bulrush." In Psalm cxlviii. 7, amongst other parts of creation invited to praise God, we find the following: "Praise Jehovah, ye dragons, and all deeps!" Meaning, ye great serpents, and all deep caverns, where they dwell. The Hebrew words tenim and tenout, seem sometimes to be applied to an animal of a different species, though our translators, without discrimination, have. rendered them by dragons in the following passages : Job xxx. 29; Micah i. 8; Mal. i. 3. From the noise, wailing, or whining, ascribed to it by Micah, it more probably means the jackal, or shakal, which, in the night, makes a lamentable howling noise, as Pocock, Shaw, and Bochart remark. In Jerem. li. 34, Nebuchadnezzar is compared to a dragon: "He hath swallowed us up like a dragon, he hath filled his maw; From our Eden (or Paradise) he hath cast us out;" where there seems to be an allusion to the ejection of the first human pair from the garden of God's planting. According to the Oneirocritics, the dragon is the symbol of a king that is an enemy. сс Job xxvi. 13, "By his spirit he hath garnish'd the heavens, The Septuagint read: Hath killed the rebel dragon. It is difficult to say to what this applies. The Rabbis apply it to the constellation called Draco. Parkhurst, to some sea monster. Schleusner explains it: Serpentem celeriter se fuga proripientem." Rev. xii. 3, the dragon here seems intended to represent some fierce and powerful enemy of the Christian church; and, from the description given of its seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon its head, we are led to infer that the Roman power is here meant, since to no other does this description so well apply. This dragon is said to have fought (see 7) with Michael and his angels; and in v. 9, he is said to be cast out or discomfited. The whole seems to intimate, that there should be a sharp contention between faithful Christians on the one hand, and the maintainers of error, idolatry, and wickedness on the other, represented by these two symbolical classes, which contention should at last end in a complete victory over the enemies of true religion. V. The language employed appears to allude to the fall of the rebel angels, at a period prior to the creation of the present world; but we are left so much in the dark on that subject, that the allusion is mere matter of conjecture. "who As to the beast, spoken of in Rev. xiii. 11, spake like a dragon," it is extremely difficult to give any satisfactory interpretation of what is meant by it. The opinions of commentators differ so widely from each other, and appear so little in accordance with the prophetic description, that one is compelled to leave the matter undetermined. That which seems most plausible, is the explanation given by Bishop Newton, who considers the ten-horned beast to be the Roman state in general, and the two-horned beast to be the Roman church in particular. And his "speaking like a dragon," he explains to mean, "his usurping divine titles and honours-his commanding idolatry, and his persecuting and slaying the true worshippers of God, and faithful servants of Jesus Christ." We read in the 21st chapter of the first book of Macrobius," that two serpents were carved under the images of Esculapius and Health, because they bring it to pass, that the human constitution is again renewed by their influence, as serpents are by throwing off their skins." Herodotus, likewise, in his 8th book, says, "That the ancients worshipped the gods and genii of any place under the form of serpents." Hence Persius's expression, Sat. 1, 1. 113. 66 Pinge duos angues: Pueri, sacer est locus." The serpent was adored in Egypt as the emblem of the Divine nature, not only on account of its great vigour and spirit, but of its extended age and revirescence. In Cashmere, also, there were no less than 700 places where carved figures of snakes were worshipped. In Salsette and Elephanta, almost all the deities either grasp serpents in their hands, or are environed with them, which can only be intended as a mark of their divinity. In the hieroglyphic sculp |