2.—Second General Division of the Seven Sealed Scroll
The Seventh Seal, Seven Trumpets, and the Six Vials to the appearing of Christ “as a thief;” exhibiting the development of the Ten Horns of Daniel’s Fourth Beast in the wounding of the Sixth Head and the establishment of the Seventh;a the subversion of the Greek Catholic Dynasty of Constantinople;b the rising of Daniel’s eleventh Episcopal Horn, or Eighth Head, that speaks blasphemies, and “as a Dragon;”c the war of the Saints and Witnesses with this power; their subjugation, death, resurrection, and ascension to the heaven at the ending of the Sixth Trumpet;d judgments upon their enemies, the Horns, Eighth Head, and Image;e and the preparation of their way.f
Time of Events
From A.D. 324 to the the Fall Seasons of A.D. 1864-’8, or thereabout.
Summary of Chapter XIII
The Apostle John, standing upon the Sand of the Sea, beholds a Beast ascending out of the sea, even that beast he alluded to in p. 152 Ch. xi. 7, as the destroyer of the Witnesses. Like the Dragon, it had Seven Heads and Ten Horns; and its power, throne, and great authority, it acquired from the Dragon. Thus it divided the Habitable with the Dragon; so that the inhabitants thereof worship the Dragon and the Beast. Upon the Seven Heads he saw a Name of Blasphemy, to which was given a Mouth like a Lion, with which he gave utterance to the great things and blasphemies he conceived. He sees them in continuance forty and two months, in the course of which long period they make war upon the saints and at length overcome them.
After the ascending of this beast from the sea, John beholds another beast ascending out of the earth, having Two Horns and speaking as a Dragon. After his ascent, he sees this beast in contemporaneous existence with the other; and of like constitution with the wounded head of the Ten-Horned Beast. John also saw an IMAGE of the Wounded Head, which the Two-Horned Beast caused to be set up; and to which all on the earth of every degree were subjected.
The Name of the Beast symbolically revealed.
Translation
Apoc. xiii.
1. And I stood upon the Sand of the Sea, and I saw ascending out of the Sea a Beast, having Seven Heads and Ten Horns: and upon his horns Ten Diadems, and upon his heads a NAME OF BLASPHEMY.
2. And the beast which I saw was like to a Leopard, and his feet as of a Bear, and his Mouth as the mouth of a Lion: and the Dragon yielded to him his power and his throne, and extensive authority.
3. And I saw one of his heads as if wounded to death: and the plague of his death was healed; and there was wondering in the whole earth after the beast. 4. And they worshiped the Dragon which yielded dominion to the Beast; and they worshiped the Beast, saying, Who is like to the Beast? Who is able to make war with him?
5. 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. 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.
7. And it was given to him to make war with the Holy Ones, and p. 153 to overcome them: and there was given to him dominion over every tribe and tongue and nation. 8. And all the dwellers upon the 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.
9. If any one have an ear, let him hear. 10. 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.
11. And I saw another Beast ascending out of the Earth; and he had Two Horns like to a Lamb, and he spake as a Dragon. And all the dominion of the former beast 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.
13. And he performs great signs, so that he even causeth fire to descend out of the heaven into the earth in sight of the men. 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.
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, that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed.
16. And he causeth all, the small and the 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; 17. and that no one be able to buy or to sell, but he having the mark, or the Name of the Beast, or the Number of his Name.
18. Here is wisdom. Let him that hath the understanding, count the Number of the Beast: for it is a Man’s Number, and his number is Six Hundred and Sixty-six.
1. Preliminary Remarks
In the first year of Belshatzar, the prophet Daniel saw in a vision of the night, Four Beasts. The first resembled a Lion; the second, a Bear; the third, a Leopard; but the fourth was like-nothing seen among beasts. “It was diverse from all the beasts that were before it,” which signifies, according to the interpretation given in Ch. vii. 23, “diverse from all kingdoms.”
The vision was communicated to him with special reference to this incongruous fourth beast. It had a head, and upon his head Eleven p. 154 Horns, and claws of brass, and teeth of iron. Daniel saw it arise in a stormy period out of the Great Sea; and he perceived that it continued until the Ancient of Days came, when, judgment having been given to the Holy Ones, or Saints of the Most High Ones, they destroyed it with fire and sword.
This simple statement of facts identifies the Fourth Beast of Daniel with the Scarlet-colored Beast of John in Apoc. xvii, 3, 11. The light shed upon the subject in these texts, reveals that the head seen by Daniel was the Sixto-Octavian, or the last; and gives us to understand what was concealed from the prophet, that the nameless beast he saw had Eight Heads. John’s Scarlet Beast “goeth into perdition.” Daniel saw this consummation; and John saw the perdition inflicted by the same agents—by the Lamb, and his called and chosen, and faithful companions—the Saints—Ch. xvii. 14.
Now, a beast with an eighth head and ten horns, contemporary with the advent of the Ancient of Days, implies its previous existence, either under seven heads coëvally extant, or under seven heads successively existing. The revelator disposes of this alternative by telling John that five of the heads had fallen, that the sixth was in being in his day, and that the seventh had not then as yet come. Hence this succession of heads, and development of horns upon the imperial head, implies the subjection of the Fourth Beast to successive revolutionary changes. Daniel saw one revolution connected with its horns, in which an Eleventh Horn, with Eyes and Mouth, came up upon the head after the ten horns, of which it rooted up three; but in regard to the head he saw nothing.
Thus, there is a great lack of particulars in Daniel’s vision, which the Deity “reserved in his own power,” as not important to be made known at that time. He gave Daniel a general outline of “the matter,” in symbol and its description; but he deferred the details, or a more particular representation, until he should give them to “the Son of Man” in actual manifestation. When the Son had received them of the Father, he sent his messenger and signified them to John in Patmos. Among the signs exhibited were the great fiery-red Dragon, the Catholic Dragon, the Beast of the Sea, the Name of Blasphemy, the Beast of the Earth, the Image of the Beast, and the Woman-Bearing Scarlet Beast. All these apocalyptic signs are contained in Daniel’s Fourth Beast. They are a symbolical analysis of this beast, which they exhibit in its chronological, geographical, and constitutional relations at different periods of its long and eventful, or its “dreadful and terrible,” career.
Thus, Daniel’s Fourth Beast commences its career with the Foundation of Rome, B. C. 753, and does not finish it until after the advent p. 155 of Christ and the resurrection, of which long period 2,621 years are now in the past. It was predestined to “devour the whole earth, and to tread it down, and to break it in pieces”—Dan. vii. 23. This is the extent of what is styled in Apoc. xvi. 14, “the earth and the whole habitable”—its territorial dominion in its amplest extent; and comprehending the countries represented by the dynastic sovereignties of the gold, the silver, the brass, the iron, and the clay, of Nebuchadnezzar’s Image. This is the whole earth, and exhibits the reason why Britain, France, and Russia, elements of Daniel’s Fourth Beast, have been so much occupied of late in China, Cochin-China, India, Mexico, Algiers, and Central Asia. These countries added to Europe, Turkey, and America, are “the whole earth” subdued to the authority of the Fourth Beast.
But, besides Daniel’s Four Beasts, and their appendages, the prophet saw a class of people, for whose sake all things consist—2 Cor. iv. 15. These he styles, “the Saints of the Most High Ones.” They are the Seed of the Woman, against which the Fourth Beast in many centuries of his career, would have great and deadly “enmity;” for all the elements of said beast are “the Serpent” and his seed; or, in the words of Christ, “the Devil and his angels”—Matt. xxv. 41; Gen. iii. 15. He was to make war upon them, and to prevail against them till the end of “a time, times, and the dividing of a time,” when the Ancient of Days would come, and join them in the execution of judgment unto the utter and complete destruction of their enemy.
Now this, in the estimation of Deity, is an all important matter; and all worthy of ample illustration for the support and strengthening of “the faith and patience” of the sufferers in so long and sanguinary a conflict with the beast. Hence the signs apocalyptically exhibited to John. This one, especially, which he calls attention to as “the Beast ascending out of the Sea;” for, like Daniel’s beast, it makes war upon them, and overcomes them; yea, and kills their allies, the witnesses—Apoc. xi. 7; xiii. 7: but then, there is hope in their end. For, as this great sea monster “gathereth them into a captivity and killeth them with the sword”—fills his prisons with them and puts them to death; so the serpent-seed he represents are to receive measure for measure, heaped up and shaken down: or, as Daniel expresseth it, “he shall be slain, and his body destroyed, and given to the burning flame.” “Here is the patience and faith of the Saints.”
But the saints were not to be scattered over “the whole earth,” or fourth-beast habitable in its amplest signification; but, for two distinct, and partly parallel periods of 1260 years, to be fed and nourished p. 156 in the Two Wings of the Great Eagle. Because of the Serpent’s relations to them in the wilderness, or Court of the Gentiles, in their long antagonism, it was deemed necessary for the illustration of the times, to exhibit the Fourth Beast analytically. And this is the analysis with reference to him in his conflicts with the saints. The Fourth Beast made war upon them from the crucifixion of the Captain of their salvation, until A. D. 324. Daniel did not see this war in his vision; but John saw it; and predicted that the saints would come out of the conflict victorious. This victory we have seen celebrated in the twelfth chapter, tenth and eleventh verses. In this relation the fourth beast appears as “the Great Fiery-Red Dragon.” While this constitution of power obtained, its jurisdiction extended over “the whole habitable,” but not over “the whole earth,” as when the Ancient of Days comes. Had this particular been revealed to Daniel, it might have been in these words, “And the Great Fiery-Red Dragon made war upon the Saints; but the Saints overcame him, and cast him out of the heaven.” But the Spirit condescended to be more specific; and instead of this brief and summary statement, represented the stages of the conflict ultimating in that result, in the prophetic symbols of the first six seals.
But the Fourth Beast, though vanquished in this war of two hundred and ninety-one years, was not subdued: for afterwards, as we have seen, he put on a new uniform, and in all the sanctimonials of Laodiceanism, “he went away to make war with the Remnants of the Woman’s Seed.” He was the Fourth Beast in catholic uniform; and although he inflicted great cruelties upon the saints, he did not overcome them, nor have they as yet conquered him.
But Daniel saw the saints conquered by the Fourth Beast. That is true in part. He saw them conquered by a horn of the fourth beast, styled “a Little Horn that had eyes, like the eyes of a man, and a Mouth that spake very great things, whose look was more stout than his fellows.” This Little-Horn power subdued them, and prevails against them until the Ancient of Days come. Representative of this prevalence, we have the symbols of this thirteenth chapter. The Beast of the Sea, like the Catholic Dragon, who, since the cession of his throne, has assumed the uniform of Mohammed, is the enemy of the saints; and for the very obvious reason, that the Mouth of the Sea-Monster is the veritable Mouth of Daniel’s Little Horn whose “very great things” John characterizes as “blasphemy concerning the Deity to have blasphemed his Name, and his tabernacle, and those tabernacling in the heaven.” And for the same reason the Beast of the Earth is their enemy; for the Speaking Image he sets up is the embodiment of the same Mouth which commands all to be killed who p. 157 will not worship it. This command brings it into collision with the Saints, who worship no power but the Deity in manifestation. Hence war ensues between them and the beasts. This is the war Daniel saw; and both he and John testify that the Saints were prevailed against; while John goes further and explains the prevalence by saying their allies, the Two Witnesses, were killed.
In this thirteenth chapter, we have presented to us Daniel’s Fourth Beast under the analytic symbols of the Dragon, the Beast of the Sea, the Beast of the Earth, and the Image of the Beast. 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,” and the Roman Senate expired, the throne of the Dragon was confined to Constantinople exclusively. The jurisdiction the Dragon-Power was able to reserve extended over all the habitable Eastward of a line following the Rhine up to its point of nearest proximity to the source of the Danube, that is, half way between Strasburg and Basle; thence down the Danube to Belgrade; and thence southwardly to Dyrrachium, now called Durazzo, and across the Adriatic and Mediterranean to the Syrtis Major and the great Desert of Africa. All to the eastward of this line was the Constantinopolitan Dragon, or Greek division of the Great Roman Eagle, and comprehended MŒSIA, or Bosnia, Servia, and Bulgaria: THRACE, or Roumelia; Macedonia, Greece, ASIA MINOR, Armenia, Mesopotamia, Syria, and Egypt. This was a great diminution of the original Dragon dominion; still it was ample, and sovereign over rich and fertile regions.
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 Rhætia, 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.
The beast, which John styles “another Beast,” and which he says “ascended out of the earth,” came up among the Horns of the Sea Beast, and after they had made their appearance—Dan. vii. 8, 24. The Beast of the Earth was to be “diverse” from the Beast of the Sea, and to subdue three of its horns. These three horn-territories were so much of the Dragon Fourth Beast habitable taken from the p. 158 Beast of the Sea; and conferred upon it the Roman characteristic. 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 worshipers; 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-LA-CHAPELLE, 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.
As, then, the moon hath her different phases, called new, half, gibbous, and full, nevertheless the same moon; so also Daniel’s Fourth Beast hath his phases, which are different constitutional manifestations, yet the beast remains the same to the end of his “dreadful and terrible” career. He has nearly passed through his Sea-Beast and Earth-Beast phases; that is, in certain relations: but there yet awaits him a vast extension, and a constitutional development of thirty years duration which will be final. In this future and last phase of his existence, he will stand before the nations in his most dreadful and terrible aspect, scarlet of body with sin and blood, with his SIXTO-OCTAVIAN HEAD diademed with Ten Horns, and a Drunken Harlot sitting upon his back. Thus panoplied with the Mystery of Iniquity in Church and State, he will have consummated the mission revealed to Daniel, in the full discharge of which, he was to “devour the whole earth, and tread it down, and break it in pieces.” Having accomplished this, “he goeth into perdition,” where in the popular abyss, he is bound for a thousand years—Apoc. xvii. 11; xx. 1-3.
2. The Prophetic Stand-Point of the Vision
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.” I take it therefore that there is a sense in which John’s standing is equivalent to storminess of the situation. Any one who has stood upon the sea shore, especially if rocky, will know that the situation is not characterized by silence, or the absence of noise. On the contrary, the roar of the waters is incessant. If the sea were quiescent as a pond, then to stand upon its beach would be to experience the p. 159 silence and solitude of the boundless prairie. Such a standing for observation of phenomena would be symbolical of times of tranquillity and peace. But this could not be the nature of John’s standing; for no such politico-ecclesiastical organizations could ascend into a position to command, or rather, to divide the command of, the world in halcyon days undisturbed by the storms of war and conquest. 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,” εν ὅλη τῆ γη. 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.” Such a roaring of the waters implies a tumult of the sea from the strife of words. 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. No ship could live in such a storm.
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.” This leads me to remark as to the time of his standing. He stood there while the Four Winds continued the storm. 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 trumpets, which in my Tabular Analysis, Vol. ii. p. 101, are styled, “Wind Trumpets.” And from this tabular exposition I would transfer the “note” at the foot of the next page, as appropriate to the place. It reads thus:—“‘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.” The time of this stormy period is indicated on p. 103 of that volume, as “from A. D. 395 to A. D. 554-’59, the epoch, or beginning, of the darkened day and night in the third of them, being equal to a period of 159-’64 years.” The reader will please compare what is written here concerning the “time of events,” and correct what he finds on p. 103 under this caption, by this erratum.
Now the time represented by John’s standing on the sand, was all the time of the sounding of the four wind-trumpets, to the end of p. 160 the darkened day and night in their third part. This was a long period; but defined by the work done as revealed in this chapter 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 four hundred and five years are composed of 164, from the beginning of the first trumpet to the darkening of Rome’s day in the epoch of the Pragmatic Sanction, or settlement of Italian affairs, by Justinian, A. D. 554-’9. “Under the Exarchs of Ravenna,” says Gibbon, “Rome was degraded to the second rank.” Rome had hitherto been imperial or regal, under the Sixth and Seventh Heads of the Dragon; but she was now, as the consequence of the blowing of the four wind-trumpets, neither the one nor the other; but a city which had “reigned over the kings of the earth” (Apoc. xvii. 18), now degraded to a rank in which she exercised no sovereignty at all. She was therefore now in a state of eclipse both in respect of the luminaries of her day and night; for “the day shone not for a third part of it, and the night likewise”—Apoc. viii. 8, 12. The reader will please connect, by reference, what I am now writing with what appears in Vol. ii. pp. 437-445. The phrase “the third part of the day,” and “the third part of the night,” implies a whole day, and a whole night, each equal to the third part three times repeated. With the Jews, a day and a night were each twelve hours long; so that “a third part of” a day would be four hours; and “a third part of” a night, also four hours; in all eight hours. Now there is a certain class of Laodicean speculators in apocalyptic mysteries, who style themselves “Literalists,” and who would have us to believe that day and night signify nothing more than what is ordinarily meant by these terms! So that they would reduce us to the absurdity of believing, that the events of the four trumpets culminated in the darkening of the natural sun, moon, stars, day and night, for the short period of only eight literal hours! But this folly is too ridiculous for an argument against it, or for a serious refutation. The “day” and the “night” must be proportional to the subject treated of. 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 αιων, or æon, of their duration. The æon 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 p. 161 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 these 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: this then was the period of his standing—he stood while they were ascending. The latter Beast was developed imperially, with Rome for its tempospiritual 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.
3. The Sand of the Sea
But John in his symbolic standing “stood upon the Sand of the Sea.” There must be some meaning in this standing upon the sand. In the tenth chapter the “mighty angel” stands upon the earth and sea; and in the fifteenth, John’s brethren, and John himself, therefore, are seen standing upon the transparent sea, no longer mingled with fire; evincing that they had gotten the victory over the Ten Horned Beast, and the Image of the Sixth Head of the Beast, which had ascended out of the stormy sea while John stood upon the sand thereof. But here 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.
Jeremiah says, that the Deity placed the sand for a bound of the sea —ch. v. 22. This is true in a natural sense; when, therefore, the p. 162 sand of the sea is introduced into symbolical prophetic writing, it 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. Thus Hosea predicts the multitude into which Israel shall be developed in the day of their glory under this figure, saying in ch. i. 10, “the number of the children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured nor numbered”: and sand also in the sense of multitude we find used apocalyptically in chap. xx. 8, where the hosts of the post-millennial Gog and Magog, or Dragon released from confinement in the abyss, are compared to the Sand of the Sea.
Now John was “a man wondered at,” a man of sign, or as we say in our vernacular, a representative man; and his actions and postures, like Daniel’s and Ezekiel’s, were dramatic. Hence John upon the sand represented that portion of “the great multitude which no man can number” (Apoc. vii. 9) existing contemporaneously with the ascending of the beasts out of the sea; and who refused to worship the Image of the Beast, and would not receive his mark, nor the number of his name—ch. xiii. 15; xv. 2. 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, who was compelled by the four wind-trumpet powers to “yield his power, throne and an extensive dominion” to the Ten Horns. The judgments of the four wind-trumpets were not sent against the servants of the Deity, sealed in their foreheads with the Father’s name (chap. vii. 3, xiv. 1) whom John represented; but upon the catholic worshipers of daimonia and idols—ch. ix. 20. 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 to establish kingdoms for themselves. The saints and witnesses being at war with the Dragon (ch. xii. 17), his enemies, “the barbarians,” would naturally be their friends; so that, 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.
4. The Sea
In the Hebrew tongue any collection of waters is termed seas, as in Gen. i. 10, “The gathering together of the waters, he called seas.” The word before us in the original is θαλασσα, on which the lexicon says, “when Homer uses it of a particular sea, he means the Mediterranean, p. 163 for he calls the outer sea Ωκεανος, Ocean, and holds it to be a river. Herodotus calls the Mediterranean the inside sea; and the Ocean, the outside sea; the Latins called it MARE NOSTRUM, “Our Sea.” as it is geographically and apocalyptically. What Matthew in ch. viii. 20, calls thalassa, Luke in ch. viii. 23, terms Λιμνη, a lake, or, an inland sea.
“Many waters,” says Daubuz, “upon the account of their noise, number, and disorder, and confusion of their waves, are the symbol of peoples, multitudes, nations, and tongues. The symbol is so explained in Rev. xvii. 15. And in Jer. xlvii. 2, waters signify an army, or multitude of men. The comparison of the noise of a multitude to the noise of mighty or many waters, is used by Isai. in ch. xvii. 12, 13, much after the same manner as Homer compares the noise of a multitude to the noise of the waves of a sea in a storm.”
“SEA, clear and serene, denotes an orderly collection of people, in a quiet and peacable 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.”
“The resemblance between the noise of an enraged sea, and the noise of an army, or multitude in commotion is obvious, and frequently taken notice of by the prophets.”
Daubuz truly remarks, that “the accomplishment of a prophecy must be considered, and consequently applied according to the signification of the terms by which it is expressed. This signification is either symbolical or literal. But it happens sometimes that there are occasions in which the event appears to be suitable to both these. The first signification, if the terms are in their nature symbolical, is the principle in the intention; the second, if joined with the other, is only concurrent. If both suit the terms, the first (or symbolical) must always have the preference, as being the more noble, and worthy of the Holy Spirit’s care to foretell it; and then we may give way to the latter, where it will concur. The principal event is that which answers fully to the majesty and first intention of the symbols; in which God does, as it were, speak in his own dialect, and so is always of greater extent, and more comprehensive than any other. The secondary event of a symbolical prediction is, when such an event, being also concomitant with the other, answers more nearly to the literal signification of the terms in which the symbolical prediction is expressed; and, as it were, alters the nature of the symbols, as if they were literal characters of the things meant by them. An example will set this in a clear light. The prophet Nahum predicts p. 164 the overthrow of Nineveh in these words: ‘with an overrunning flood he will make an utter end of the place thereof’—ch. i. 8. An overrunning flood is the symbol of desolation by a victorious enemy. The accomplishment, however, showed the signification to be twofold, that is, symbolical and also literal. Diodorus informs us, that in the third year of the siege, the river being swollen with continual rains overflowed part of the city, and broke down the wall for twenty furlongs; and the enemy entered the breach that the waters had made, and took the city.”
According to the same principles, the Sand of the Sea, and the Sea itself may be rightly viewed in the chapter before us. 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 plainly 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 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.
Now, what Daniel beheld arising out of the sea as the results of the storms of war upon it, John also saw in part from his Patmian stand-point ascending from the same sea and in the same sense. He 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 p. 165 earth enclosing the Latin Sea, of which he has presented us with a symbolical description in the chapter we have in hand.
5. The Bottomless Pit
“The Beast that ascendeth out of the Bottomless Pit—ch. xi. 7.
In the apocalypse there are the earth, the sea, the sand of the sea, the abyss, and the pit of the abyss. All these terms have their own special signification where they occur. 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. xi. 7 and chapter xiii. 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. In elucidation of this inquiry, then, I remark in addition to what has already been written in Vol. ii. p. 454, that, though in the Septuagint and certain texts of the New Testament, abyss, or αβυσσος, is identical with the sea and deep, yet symbolically and apocalyptically, sea and deep do not represent all that is intended to be conveyed by the word.
Ἀβυσσος is derived from a priv. and βυσσος, 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 their earth and sea. They were an unorganized confused multitude—an abyss of which no conqueror or legislator had been able to reach the bottom.
But how changed this country of the abyss since John stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw arise out of the Latin Sea and the Earth, the Beasts of the Sea and Earth! Since then the Abyss p. 166 has been fathomed, and no longer irrupts its wild barbaric hordes in destructive inundations, whereby suddenly and without warning, cities and rural districts are plundered and reduced to smoking ruins. 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.
But, very different to this is the speculation culled from “Horsley’s Sermon on the Descent of our Lord into Hell.” He says, “the abyss is where the wicked spirits are reserved in chains unto the great day. This abyss is situated in the central regions of the earth, and therefore is below the sea. It is therefore not impossible that in the ascent of the Beast (Rev. xiii. 1; xvii. 8) two different ideas may be combined. He might be decribed as arising out of the sea in reference to his secular and political resurrection; and as ascending out of the abyss, or region of condemned spirits, with relation to his spiritual removal. Moreover, even if he ascended from Hades, the sea might be the medium of his ascent; and there is a peculiar fitness in its being so represented, to denote his arising out of the commotions and struggles of the nations, the symbolical sea.”
“According to the Jews,” says Daubuz, “the abyss was a place under the earth, in the most internal parts of it, and was thought to be a great receptacle of waters as a reservatory to furnish all the Springs or rivers. And this opinion was not only held by the Egyptians, Homer, and Plato, but also by some of the modern philosophers. And Seneca seems to be of the same opinion. And in this sense, the abyss symbolically signifies a hidden multitude of confused men.”
p. 1676. The Beast
“A Beast,” says Daubuz, “is the symbol of a tyrannical, usurping power or monarchy, that destroys its neighbors or subjects, and preys upon all about it, and persecutes the church of God.
“The four beasts in Dan. vii. 3, are explained in ver. 7, of four kings or kingdoms, as the word king is interpreted, ver. 23.
“In several other places of scripture wild beasts are the symbol of tyrannical powers; as in Ezek. xxxiv. 28, and Jer. xii. 9, where the beasts of the field are explained by the Targum, of the kings of the heathen and their armies.
“Among profane authors, the comparison of cruel governors to savage beasts, is obvious. And Horace calls the Roman People a many-headed beast—Lib. i., Ep. i. ver. 76. And as for the Oneirocritics, wild beasts are generally the symbols of enemies, whose malice and power is to be judged of in proportion to the nature and magnitude of the wild beasts they are represented by. ‘As a roaring lion and a ranging bear; so is a wicked ruler over the poor people’”—Prov. xxviii. 15.
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. xi. 7: and the same thing is affirmed of the beast of the sea in ch. xiii. 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 general description of this symbolized dominion is, that it has “seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten diadems, and upon his heads the Name of Blasphemy.” These are few words, but they comprehend much of an interesting and important character. I shall take them in their order, and proceed to treat therefore of
7. 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. For as the power abstractedly is not considered, so neither the persons p. 168 abstracted from their power; but both in concreto, make up this head politic. And, therefore, if the supreme power be in many, those many are the head, and not the less one head for consisting of many persons, no more than the body is less one body for consisting of many persons.”—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. This diversity, of course, is significative of some peculiarity, and has to be explained when we come to the further consideration of the horns.
The reader will please to turn to what has been written concerning the heads of the Dragon in the previous chapter. What is found there is equally applicable to the heads of the Sea Beast, and need not, therefore, be repeated here. Leaving the heads, then, for the present, I proceed to a further exposition of the horns.
8. The Ten Diademed Horns of the Beast
“Horns are the symbols of power, exerted by strength of arms; because such beasts as have horns make use of them as their arms.
“As the symbol of strength they are used in Ps. xviii. 2. They are also used to denote the regal power; and when they are distinguished by number, they signify so many monarchies. Thus horn signifies a monarchy in Jer. xlviii. 25; and in Zech. i. 18, the Four Horns are the four great monarchies which had each of them subdued the Jews. See also Dan. viii. 20-22.
“The Horn of David in Ps. cxxxii. 18, is explained by the Targum of a glorious king to arise out of the house of David.
“It appears from Valerius Maximus, that the ancient Romans understood horns as the symbol of regal government; and the images of the gods, kings and heroes, among the heathen, were adorned with horns as a mark of their royalty and power.
“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. viii.”—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 p. 169 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. xvii. 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. vii. 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 of 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 overcome 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. xvii. 14.
The geographical extent of the Roman Habitable upon which the barbaric tribes of the abyss established themselves with Feudal Sovereignty, was the Mediterranean West. They have to be enumerated by the names they bore in the period when they were engaged in the work of establishing themselves upon that territory. The symbol, as we shall see, requires at least eleven abyssal tribes—ten for the horns, and one or more for the Seventh Head. The following is the list that seems to me authorized by history: 1. Huns; 2. Vandals; 3. Visigoths; 4. Burgundians; 5. Gepidæ; 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.
“The emergence of the wild beast of the sea,” says Mr. Lord, “is not to be regarded as having been accomplished in a moment, or a brief space, but as having occupied such a period as would naturally be required for the invasion of the empire (of the Catholic Dragon) by many separate tribes migrating from vast distances, engaging in p. 170 numerous wars, and, finally, after victory, establishing new and independent governments. Nor are the chiefs who rule them after the conquest of parts of the empire, to be considered as having assumed that relation in which they are symbolized by the horns while they remained, as in France for a long period, in subordination to Rome. They emerged from the sea as dynasties, when, by concession or victory, they became rulers of portions of the empire in independence of that power. The institutions of the horns, therefore, took place at different periods, and they were those that subsisted when the conquest of the (Western) empire was completed and the imperial power extinguished”—A. D. 476.
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.
1. The HUNS, irrupting from the Scythian region of the Alps, crossed the Volga, the Don, the Dnieper, the Dniester, and planted themselves in the vicinity of the Danube, and, therefore, styled Hungary, A. D. 370. Under Attila, A. D. 451, they descended into Thrace, about thirty miles from Constantinople; then turning westward into Macedonia, he wheeled north into Pannonia, a part of Hungary; and thence, passing through Noricum, a part of Austria and Bavaria, crossed the Danube and the Rhine near their sources, and pursued his march through Belgium almost to the English Channel. He then crossed the Seine, and descended to the Loire, whence he turned eastward, recrossing the Seine, the Rhine and the Danube near their sources; thence he descended into Lombardy, from which, repassing through Noricum and Pannonia, he again crossed the Danube, where he died at his seat of government. This was the course of the Great Blazing Star of the third wind-trumpet, the remains of whose dominion exists in the Horn-Kingdom of Hungary.
2. The VANDALS descended from the Swedish section of the abyss, and entered Gaul, A. D. 406. They soon passed into Spain, and after occupying a part of that Mediterranean province nearly twenty years, A. D. 427, crossed into Roman Africa, wrested it from the Catholic Dragon, set up an independent kingdom under GENSERIC, and ruled it until A. D. 533. The kingdom was founded under the sounding of the second wind-trumpet, when a Great Mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea.
3. The VISIGOTHS, or Western Goths, came originally from Sweden with the Ostrogoths, or Eastern Goths. The Visigoths, as the “hail p. 171 and fire mingled with blood” of the first trumpet, after their separation from the Ostrogoths, who encamped between the Dnieper and the Dniester, descended upon Greece under the leadership of ALARIC, and afterwards, having ravaged Illyria, Lombardy and Italy, laid siege to Rome. In A. D. 408, they passed from Italy into the south of France, and maintained a kingdom there till A. D. 506, when, being driven by the Franks into Spain, they wrested a part of it, Gallicia, from the Suevi, and in A. D. 585, extended their sway over the whole peninsula.
4. The BURGUNDIANS issued from the Germania region of the abyss east of the Vistula. They established themselves in Belgic Gaul A. D. 407. After a few years they obtained possession of Savoy, and subsequently of Gaul on the Rhone, and maintained a separate kingdom till A. D. 524, when they were conquered by the Franks. On the division of the Frank kingdom, it again became a separate state, and continued such most of the time for several centuries.
5. The GEPIDÆ migrated from the Scandinavian country west of the Baltic, now called Sweden. They crossed the sea and proceeded southeasterly across the Dnieper, and encamped between that river and the Don. From thence they passed westward into Hungary, and thence radiated to Illyria, now styled Dalmatia, in which they established themselves on the Adriatic Bay of the Mediterranean, after the death of Attila in A. D. 453. Ardaric, the king of the Gepidæ, erected his throne in the palace of Attila, whence he exercised royal authority over the old country of Dacia, from the Carpathian hills to the Black Sea. The kingdom of the Gepidæ continued until A. D. 566, when it was destroyed by the Lombards.
6. The LOMBARDS migrated originally from Scandinavia, ascending thence nearly due south to the Danube. On the dissolution of the empire of Attila, A. D. 455, whose standard they followed, they took possession of a portion of Pannonia, a part of Hungary. Subsequently to the conquest of the Gepidæ, they extended their possessions as far as Bavaria, A. D. 568; they invaded and conquered Italy, where they maintained themselves till near the close of the eighth century, when they were “plucked up by the roots”—Dan. vii. 8.
7. The FRANKS is a name assumed by a confederacy of German tribes, inhabiting that section of the abyss lying between the Lower Rhine and the Weser. It signifies the Freemen. In Gibbon’s day, their original territory was in part enclosed within the Circle of Westphalia, the Landgravate of Hesse, and the Duchies of Brunswick and Lunenburg, now absorbed by the Prussians in their transitory confederation of Northern Germany. In their inaccessible p. 172 morasses, redolent of mud, water, and frogs, they used to shake defiance at the Roman arms. When the time arrived for the ascending of the Diademed Horns out of the sea, they instinctively obeyed the summons of the First Trumpet, and in A. D. 407, entered Gaul, and within a few years established a kingdom upon the Rhine, which they continued to maintain and advance, until in the sixth century it extended over the whole territory embraced in modern France.
8. The Suevi filled the interior Germanian countries of the abyss from the banks of the Oder to those of the Danube. A short time before the sounding of the first trumpet, they united with the Alemanni. They passed through Gaul, conquered Gallicia in Spain, and maintained themselves there as a Diademed Horn of the Sea till A. D. 585, a space of one hundred and seventy-seven years.
9. The Alans migrated from the Asiatic Sarmatia, lying between the Black and Caspian Seas. They passed from this section of the abyss into Germania, being joined on their march by the Vandals, who had previously descended from Scandinavia, and had halted in European Sarmatia, between the Dnieper and the Don. In Germany their forces were still further increased by the accession of the Suevi. Thus strengthened, the Alans, who did not remain in Gaul with the Vandals and Sueves, crossed the Pyrenees into Spain, where they divided; the Suevi settling in Gallicia, the Alans in Portugal, and the Vandals in Vandalitia. After sustaining a separate government eight or nine years, they were incorporated by conquest with the Vandals and Sueves, and passed with the Vandals under Genseric into Africa. Another body of Alans had settled between the Rhine, the Seine, and the Loire. They repulsed Attila from Orleans, their capital, on his invasion of Gaul, A. D. 451, and were stationed in the centre of the army by which he was defeated at the great battle of Chalons. On his invasion of their territory, A. D. 453, they were supported by the Goths, and gained another victory. A. D. 464, they invaded Italy, and laid Liguria, the southern part of Sardinia, waste. Clovis, king of the Franks, extended his conquests over their territory as far as the Loire, A. D. 485, but they continued to subsist as a separate people till A. D. 507, or thereabouts, when they were conquered by the Franks.
10. The Bavarians. The present Bavaria in the time of the Romans formed part of the Dragon empire, known as Vindelicia and Noricum. Besides South Bavaria, Vindelicia also embraced the southeastern part of the kingdom of Wurtemberg; while Noricum comprehended the Archduchy of Austria, Styria, Carinthia, and part of Carniola. The Jesuit Gordon in his Opus Chronologicum, referring to A. D. 511, says, “Theodon, the first king of Bavaria, dies.” We p. 173 are not informed how long he had reigned; but Mr. Elliot thinks we may date it as before A. D. 493. The Bavarian Horn is noticed by Gibbon as forming one of the boundaries of the Ostrogothic kingdom of Italy under Theodoric: “He reduced,” says he, “the unprofitable countries Rhœtia (the Tyrol), Noricum, Dalmatia, and Pannonia, from the source of the Danube and the territory of the Bavarians.” And again he says, “the Lombard kingdom extended east, north, and west, as far as the confines of the Avars, the Bavarians, and the Franks of Austrasia and Burgundy;” and Müller: “the Bavarians had now (that is, about the end of the sixth century) given name to Noricum.”
Such, then, is my list of the ten notable abyssal horns of the sea. Though separate dynasties, they are very properly united in a single symbol, and exhibited as one great combination of tyrannical states, from the identity of their origin in the abyss, the oneness of their policy (ch. xvii. 13), and the similarity of these rulers. This European Commonwealth was composed of monarchies that were all feudatories of the Dragon; for Gibbon shows, that they all adopted, in a great degree, the laws of the ancient empire as their common law. They all came at length to submit themselves to the Papal Yoke; a power which was rising with them out of the sea, whose system of falsehood they coöperated in imposing upon their subjects at all hazards. They may truly be styled the Papal Horns; for their history has proved them to have been, in all their past career, the blind instruments of “THE NAME OF BLASPHEMY” that sits upon the Seven Heads.
In the foregoing enumeration of the horns of the sea, I have made no mention of the Saxons and Danes, who issued forth from the Scandinavian and Germanian abyss against the Dragon province of Britannia. In all the lists of the horns I have seen, the Saxons have been made to figure as one; and, consequently, the Anglo-Saxons of Britain, now styled England, have been set down as one of the horns of the beast. But this classification of England with the horns cannot be admitted. It is true that the Saxons and Angles issuing from Holstein and Schleswig, A. D. 449, conquered Britannia. But, instead of constituting themselves one horn, they founded seven kingdoms, styled Kent, Essex, Sussex, Wessex, East Anglia, Mercia, and Northumberland. These were called the Saxon Heptarchy; and were as distinct and independent kingdoms as any of their ten contemporaries upon the Continent.
Another objection to England being numbered with the ten, is, that she is not a country of the Great-Sea world. The ten horns were to ascend out of the Mediterranean upon which Daniel saw the p. 174 tempest raging. Gaul, Spain, Italy, Illyria, Africa, and Dacia, are political sections of a terrene, whose waters, directly or indirectly, mostly discharge themselves into the Mediterranean. But the British Isles afar off have no relation to it at all. As Origen says in Hom. 6, A. D. 230, “The Britons are divided from our world.” They are no part of the Sea Monster’s interior maritime territory. Even in modern times they are three kingdoms, not a single horn only; and those three horns, the horn of England, the horn of Scotland, and the horn of Ireland, are more imperial than regal, and more Oriental than European.
Another objection to Britain being numbered among the ten horns is, that though, indeed, she is ruled ecclesiastically by a name of blasphemy, her constitution is, in word and deed, opposed to “the Name of Blasphemy” upon the heads of the beast. The ten horns all worship this Name, and recognize it as their Holy Father; and maintain ambassadors at his court; and exercise their influence to uphold him in glory and power, that his supposed relations with the heavenly world may, by his favor and blessing, be caused to redound to their spiritual and temporal prosperity. He is their Mouth in all spiritual utterances, “speaking great things and blasphemies concerning the Deity, his Name, his Tabernacle, and them that dwell in the heaven”—ch. xiii. 5, 6. But, blasphemous as Britain is in her constitutional ecclesiasticism, she protests against, and repudiates, the Chief Blasphemer of the world. She does not belong to the politico-ecclesiastical system, or body politic, of which he is the Mouth. She sends no ambassador to the Court of Rome; and though there may be spiritual imbeciles who have real, and crafty politicians who have feigned, reverence for the Roman God, and the mummery of his superstition, the heart of the British peoples is hardened against them with the impenetrability of adament. This hostility is known and understood at Rome, where the will, but not the power, has always existed to reduce Britain to subjection to the so-called “Holy See.” In witness of this, there is the Spanish Armada equipped and sent against England in the days of Elizabeth, at the instigation of the Court of Rome, that by the thumbscrew arguments of the Inquisition, the British nation might be brought within the pale of the Mediterranean Sea Monster, beyond which no heretical soul can be saved!
No, the United Kingdom of England, Scotland and Ireland, was never one of the ten horns. The taint of imperiality, as it were, was indelibly infixed in British soil by the Dragon. The Saxons and Angles from the abyss did not expel him. The Dragon withdrew, and told the Britons to defend themselves. Invaded by the p. 175 Picts and Scots, they invited the Saxons and Angles to come over and help them. The Celts were repelled; but when the war was over, the Saxons refused to leave, and made the heptarchial settlement for themselves. Nearly fourteen centuries have passed since these events; and the Dragons carved in relief upon the interior of the House of Lords, are now the appropriate symbol of British power. The real ruler at Constantinople, the throne of the Dragon, is Britain, who claims “the Sick Man” there, as her “ancient and faithful ally.” Her interests are intimately associated with the destiny of the Turkish empire, more especially with that part of it termed Syria and Egypt. If the British power in any way be an element of the beast, it can only be in connexion with its body, which is “like unto a Leopard.” As the power indicated by the words, “Sheba and Dedan, and the Merchants of Tarshish and the young lions thereof,” in Ezek. xxxviii. 13, she becomes identified with Daniel’s third beast, the four-winged and four-headed leopard, which is to have its dominion taken away when the Ancient of Days comes; but which, before it loses its dominion thus, is to come into collision with “the feet of the Bear.”