prediction of Paul, to make the use of the figure here fit on that account. The Thessalonian Christians knew what the hindrance was that prevented this Antichrist's development. From Irencus to Chrysostom and Jerome, they all knew that it was the imperial power ruling and residing at Rome. John's Antichrist (1 John ii. 18, 22; iv. 3; 2 John 7.) and this so often predicted enemy to Christ and His Church, are also identical. John's statement, that the spirit of Antichrist, and many Antichrists, were even then in the world; the which had reference to teachers like Simon Magus and other Gnostics, who, propounding that Jesus Christ had not come in the flesh, but only as a phantasm, and thus doing away alike with His propitiatory atonement by death, and with His fitness and sufficiency as Godman to sympathize with, and supply the wants of His disciples out of the inexhaustible treasure-house of wisdom and salvation within Him, arrogated to themselves one grand function of Christ, viz., as the divinely-appointed imparters of wisdom unto salvation, (1 Cor. i. 24,30; Col.ii.3.) In the 13th chap., the Antichristian ten-horned wild beast from the abyss and sea, and his power and actings, were exhibited under a triform configuration, symbols being exhibited not only of the ten-horned wild beast, but also of a lamb-like two-horned wild beast, his cotemporary, and of what is called the image of the beast. The firstmentioned power is the principal,-the second beast acting but as his chief minister and agent, and directing his efforts to make the world worship the first beast; the first answers to Daniel's little horn. The wild beast from the abyss and sea,— the sea symbolizing the flood of invading Goths,-presents us with the emblems of the seven heads and ten horns applicable and appropriate to the Roman Papacy, or Papal empire. The heads of the symbolic beast were seven, as represented to the Evangelist's eye in the Apocalyptic symbol, though the last of the seven was declared to be, in effect, in a certain sense, the eighth. To the seven heads, the interpreting angel assigned a double mystic signification. They signified, he said, seven hills, on which the woman carried by the beast was seated,the woman being designated as the city which, in John's time, ruled over the kings of the earth; they could only mean the far-famed seven hills of Rome. It is a characteristic that necessarily and absolutely associates the wild beast of the vision with the seven hills of Rome for its capital, through all its various mutations, from its earliest beginning to its end: so that same seven-hilled locality like one ad scriptum gleba, and as an essential part of his very constitution and life. A second as important, though less easily explicable mystery,

was declared by the angel to be symbolized by the beast's seven heads, viz., the number of different successive governing heads of bestial character; that is, of lines or classes of heathenlike governors, or, as we might say, forms of government, that Rome, and the empire thereto appertaining, which it symbolized, would be under from first to last, from its early origin to its final destruction; there being here premised, however, by the angel, one additional and very important notification, as necessary to be taken into the account in the solution of this part of the enigma,-viz., that the seventh head visible on the Apocalyptic beast was, in fact, in order of its existence, its eighth. His meaning in this will be easily discovered, in so far as the symbol itself is concerned, by reference to the statement so emphatically made and repeated respecting the beast when seen in the vision of chap. xiii., that one of his heads appeared to be wounded to death by a sword; but that his deadly wound was healed; for a fresh head had evidently sprouted up in place of the preceding one cut down,- -a new seventh in place of the old seventh; so that the last head visible on the beast, though one of the seven, was, in point of chronological succession, the eighth. It was thus, indeed, that the beast, under its new and last head, became what the angel called it,-the beast that was, and is not, and yet is; it having, by that deadly wound, been annihilated in its next former, or Draconic form; and, through the fresh-sprouted head, revived in its new, or ten-horned Bestial form. I said the next former Draconic form, because it is stated, that the dragon yielded to it (the beast,) on its emergence from the sea, his power and his seat, and great authority, (xiii. 2;) so that the transition from the Draconic state of Rome and its empire to the ten-horned Bestial, was direct, and without any other form or head intervening, according to the Apocalyptic representation, though not without the intervention of the dragon's fall and doings thereon, according to the circumstantial narrative in chap. xii. Indeed, the same is implied in the dragon's own investment with seven heads; for no legitimate exposition can fail to attach the same two-fold symbolic meaning to the dragon's seven heads, as to those of the beast from the abyss, his successor. And as these were seven in number, (not eight, in any sense, like the beasts,) it follows, that the seven earliest of the governing heads, or forms of government of the empire, or power symbolized in its totality of existence by the two conjoint emblems. I say that the seven earliest of these heads must be considered to have been attached to it in its Draconic form, the eighth alone, or new seventh, in the ten-horned Bestial; all

which precisely corresponds also with the angel's observation. The beast which thou sawest is the eighth; that is, that the eighth head and phase of the Roman empire was that of the Beast exhibited in vision. There is yet one further and most important notification made by the angel on this subject of the successive governing heads of the Roman beast,— viz., that five had fallen before the time then present, (evidently, as beforesaid, that of John's seeing the vision in Patmos :) that the sixth was then in power; that the next, or remaining one of the original septenary, was, at that time, still future ; and after coming into existence, would continue but a short space; and that then, at length, there was to come the Beast from the abyss, being the Roman power under its eighth and last head,— that under which it was to go into perdition. Livy and Tacitus give the authoritative enumeration of the first six heads,— Kings, Consuls, Dictators, Decemvirs, and Military Tribunes, as the five first constitutional heads of the Roman city and coinmonwealth; then, as the sixth, the Imperial head, commencing with Octavius, better known as Augustus Cæsar. The statements are absolute. The last head was the eighth. The same last head was one of the beast's seven. Gibbon says, Diocletian assumes the diadem, and introduces the Persian ceremonial new form of administration. Like Augustus, Diocletian may be considered as the founder of a new empire, affecting alike the official dignity of the prince governing, and the constitution and administration of the empire governed. The office of emperor was originally and properly that of general of the Roman armies, only under and after Augustus, with the civil offices of consul, pro-consul, censor, and tribune, uniformly and formally attached to the imperial person. Diocletian adopted the appellation of Dominus. In the Greek provinces, the title of King recognized as the most proper one; and that of Imperator, though still retained in the Latin provinces, yet used with a new sense attached to it,-viz., that, not of the general of the Roman armies, but the sovereign of the Roman world; further, how, according to the long-established custom of expressing official rank and power by signs, a new and appropriate badge was chosen; how the diadem, that ensign of oriental despotism, and which, as such, had been, by the republican Romans, so abominated and shunned even by the earlier emperors; how, I say, in place of the old imperial badge of the laurel crown and the military robe of purple, the Persian diadem and robe of silk and gold was assumed by Diocletian and his associated colleague; and, at the same time, instead of the former familiar mixing with fellow-citizens,

the seclusion, mystery, prostration, and adoration, which formed part of the distinctive ceremonial of the Persian court, was introduced into the Roman. As to the empire governed, the new principle introduced into the administration was that of division. The abilities of one man being deemed inadequate to the public defence, Diocletian associated three colleagues with himself, and laid down the joint administration of four princes, not as a temporary expedient, but as a fundamental law of the constitution. This division was, in a certain sense, a twofold one, there being but two chief emperors, or Augusti, distinguished by the use of diadem,-one for the East, the other for the West of the Roman world; their boundary-line bisecting Illyricum; and the two other princes called Cæsars, though independent in their respective governments, being yet considered in the light of juniors and subordinates to their respective seniors, or heads. It was understood all the while, that the empire was still one, though divided,―the civil edicts of the four emperors being inscribed with their joint names, and received in all the provinces as promulgated by their mutual councils and authority. Notwithstanding which precaution, however, the political union of the Roman world was gradually dissolved, and a principle of division introduced, which, in the course of a few years, occasioned the perpetual separation of the Eastern and Western empires. In effect, and almost as if in preparation for its eighth, or last headship, that which was the Roman empire proper now began to separate from the Greek provinces eastward, which it had temporarily annexed to itself, just like the Fourth Wild Beast of Daniel, its representative; of which, though it was said to have subdued the Third Wild Beast, its predecessor, yet a view was presented to the Prophet with especial reference to its last, or ten-horned state, pointedly separate from that Third Beast, and distinct. It is this quadripartite, or bipartite diademed headship, that, in Gibbon's high authority, I regard as the dragon's seventh head. Nor can I help observing, in the admirable, though only, indeed, habitual precision of the Apocalyptic prophecy, which many have overlooked, deceived by the continuance to the new headship, or government of the old imperial name, did yet not overlook the change; and shewed, that it did not, by affixing to the seven dragon heads, signifying Rome's seven hills, precisely that one distinctive badge which best, if not alone, might have marked it the badge, not of the crown, but the diadem. The Apocalypse itself almost explains the wounding to death of this seventh head, and subsequent rise of an eighth. The symbolic vision of the 12th chapter opened with

the closing paroxysm of the Roman dragon's persecution of the Church, under direction of his seventh and diademed headship. He was cast down by war in heaven,—by the sword of the Christian emperor, felt in four great battles. Constantine vanquished Maxentius, Licinius' victory over Maximin, and Constantine's two victories over Licinius. Though the last Pagan head of the Roman empire was wounded and struck down, life lingered round the seven hills of Rome till the time of Theodosius. Thus did Paganism, the animating spirit of the seven heads of the old Roman empire, wounded unto death, expire. The devil's rage vented itself in the desperate act of pouring forth of that mighty Gothic flood, that it might overwhelm Christianity. But there rose up new kingdoms out of the flood in the western world; and there was, in the old seven-headed locality, so fondly and so long cherished by him, whereby, as a new principle of life and power, he might yet again, though still all subserviently to himself, attach supremacy to it over the newly rising kingdoms. Like Thebes, or Babylon, or Carthage, says Gibbon, the name of Rome must have been erased from the earth, if the city had not been animated by a vital principle, which again restored her to honour and dominion. He mentions as this vital pinciple, the tradition, that two Jewish teachers, a tentmaker and a fisherman, had formerly been executed at Rome in the circus of Nero; that after five hundred years, their genuine or fictitious relics were adored as the palladium of Christian Rome, and their holy shrines, guarded by miracles and invisible terrors, resorted to by pilgrims from the East and West. About this time, 590, the bishoprick of Rome was filled by the first and greatest of the Gregory's, well fitted to make use of the miraculous sanctity and superstition of the spot. In short, that thus the bishops of Rome became a new head of empire to it; and in the rise of Papal superstition to supremacy, the deadly wound of its last Pagan head was healed. The Papal headship began earlier than Gregory, in fact, rose contemporarily with the Gothic kingdoms, and continued thenceforth their only head; and that it was their head in the distinct character of Antichrist. Augustin Steuchus, librarian to the Pope in the twelfth century, says, The empire being overthrown unless God had raised up the Pontificate, Rome, resuscitated and restored by none, would have become uninhabitable, and been a most foul habitation thenceforward of cattle; but in the Pontificate it revived, as with a second birth; its empire, in magnitude, not, indeed, equal to the old empire, but its form not very dissimilar, because all nations, from East and from West,