denotes mankind generally, or the great mass of the people, nations, and tongues of the Western empire, swallowed up the floodthe deadly draught—or willingly received the doctrines of the Gospel, (" they kept the commandments of God, and had the testimony of Jesus Christ,") though by so doing they sacrificed their worldly peace, their property, and often life itself. We once more arrive at the same period-the termination of the 1260 years, or of the sixth trumpet. CHAPTER XIII. Recapitulation of the 1260 years. The dragon trans formed into a beast with ten horns. By its death in the first, and recovery of life in the second form. - Both changes contemporaneous. The civil and ecclesiastical power venerated, and at times worshipped. Pretensions of Rome. - Persecutor of the church for a season. — The two-horned beast, the pope and his priests. Ostentatious miracles.. Pretensions. - Partial success. – Persecuting spirit.— Number of its name. - Verses 1-3. "AND I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy. And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority. And I saw one of his heads. as it were wounded to death; and his deadly A A wound was healed: and all the world wondered after the beast." Pursuing the same principle of reviewing, in part, the ground already gone over, the vision carries us back to the dissolution of the Western empire; for it had described minutely by two symbolisations the history of the Church down to the 1260 years, and cursorily passed through that period in order to unite the whole together, and show that the same empire under two different forms of government was spoken of throughout. It now returns only to the beginning of the 1260 years, which in this chapter also is minutely detailed twice, so that this as well as the last again brings down the history to the close of the sixth trumpet. Like a person standing on the shore of a lately troublous sea, the prophet beholds the tempest-torn and blasted empire, after the storm had passed away; and the same dominion was transformed into ten kingdoms, independent of each other, as it regards their civil government, but bound together by an iron chain under one ecclesiastical head, whose seat was still, as it always had been, at Rome. This It was shown in the last chapter that paganism, though dethroned from the empire, continued for a while, in the character of a dragon, to persecute Christianity; and afterwards, when it was represented in a certain sense as annihilated, it betrayed the same spirit during 1260 years, or a time, times, and dividing of a time. apparent contradiction was removed, by supposing the metamorphosis of the pagan into the papal dragon, or its death in one form, and, as it were, its simultaneous recovery of life in another. The symbols of this chapter confirm such a conjecture. A beast, substantially the dragon, to whose seat and power it succeeded, but modified in order to represent the changes which the empire had undergone, rises up from the sea, or the tumultuous disorders of the Western empire. Pagan Rome was denoted by a monster, it being dissimilar from all kingdoms that had ever existed; the monstrosity, however, is heightened to describe the papacy, which is, at the same time, cruel as Persiaa, ambitious as Greece, and pompous and arrogant as Babylon; and whilst the dragon was simply red, which denoted the Roman scarlet or purple, the papal beast is partycoloured, for nothing can exceed the vestments of the papal Church, which are costly, diversified, and superb in the highest degree. The metamorphosis, we conjectured in the preceding chapter, is denoted here by the recovery of the beast from apparent death. "I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed." The living head was mortally wounded, we say designedly the living head, for though both monsters have seven heads, only one is active, the rest are dormant, and stand merely as signs of powers extinct, or a Dan. vii. 3-6. |