30. The Image of the Beast
“And he deceives the dwellers upon the earth through the wonders which it was given to him to have worked in the presence of the beast; saying to the dwellers upon the earth, to have an Image made to the beast that hath the plague of the sword, and lives. 15. And it was given to him to give spirit to the Image of the beast; that the Image of the Beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the Image of the Beast should be put to death.”
On account of the difficulties and ill success of commentators in the exposition of the Image of the Beast here spoken of, Vitringa has said, “est in hac parte prophetiæ quod interpres cruciat”—it is in this part of the prophecy that the interpreter is tormented. It would be no profit to the reader to specify their failures, for they are legion. The Image of the Beast has not only tormented them, but they have sadly tormented the image, until it has been reduced to no image at all. The commentators have commented upon one another, satisfactorily proving each other wrong; but when asked, what is the true solution of the mystery, they give no sign; so that we have to conclude, that what Doddridge confesses of himself is applicable to them all, saying, “what the Image of the Beast is, distinct from the Beast itself, I confess I know not.”
But before we approach the image these words of the text demand attention in passing, “and he deceives the dwellers upon the earth through the wonders which it was given him to work in the presence p. 326 of the beast, etc.” The word rendered “deceives” is πλανᾶ, which also signifies, to lead astray, cause to wander; metaphorically, to mislead, deceive, cause to err. Understanding from the previous section what the σημεια, wonders, or miracles, were by which the wonder-working beast was enabled to cause fire to descend from the heaven, we may thence determine the nature of the deception practised. The dwellers upon the earth were “deceived” in being led astray by clerical fraud, and episcopal and military violence; which is characterized by Paul as “the working of the Satan with all power and signs, and lying wonders, and with all the deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish”—2 Thess. ii. 9. The Beast of the Sea, or Sixth and Seventh Head, Ten Horns, and Mouth; that is, so much of it as is contemporary with apocalyptic times: the Beast of the Earth, or Little Horn and Eyes of Daniel’s vision, and the Image of the Beast—are all symbolical of “the Satan;” and were all manifested after the same kind of “working,” which Paul subdivides into all kinds of δυναμις, and σημεια, and lying τέρατα, which cover the whole ground of military, civil, and ecclesiastical violence, oppression, and fraud.
He deceives through his wonder-working in the presence of the beast. To what result does he deceive the dwellers upon the earth, or inhabitants of the territory of the Holy Germano-Roman dominion? To the making of an Image of the Beast that had the plague of the sword, and lives. In other words, in the metaphorical deception, or deceiving operation, there is a conflict of powers resulting in the development and compulsory establishment of the Image of the Beast
But, who is the instrumental deceiver and wonder-worker causing the development and establishment of the Image? The beast of the earth. True. But the beast of the earth is an aggregate of powers almost co-ordinate; such as the episcopal or ecclesiastical, and the secular imperial. Which of these orders in the state was the wonder-working deceiver? Exclusively neither. The wonder-working consisted in the bitter and sanguinary conflicts between the Crown and Mitre, the two-horned symbol of the Romish Hierarchy; the result of which was the triumph of the Mitre over the Imperial Crown; by which the Hierarchy became independent of the secular order of the dominion. This Sovereign and Imperial Hierarchy, capitalized by the Dynasty of the Popes, and known commonly as the Papacy, is the Image of the Beast.
This wonder-working of the Lamb-Horned Beast is said to be transacted “in the presence of the beast.” This phrase is equivalent to that in the thirteenth verse, “in the presence of the men”—ενωπιον των ανθρωπων: “the beast” in the one phrase being symbolical of p. 327 “the men” in the other. Here is one beast wonder-working in the presence of another beast. Did not Daniel’s Little Horn work its wonders in the midst of the Ten Horns when, coming up after them and among them, it plucked up three of them by the roots, and incorporated their peoples and annexed their territory to its own? After the same manner the Hierarchial and Imperial Orders of the Lamb-Horned, or Mitred Beast, waged their intestine conflicts in the presence of the Ten Horns of the Beast of the Sea. In 1866, we had an example in point when Prussia, Austria, and Italy, countries of the Lamb-Horned Beast, were wonder-working in internecine war, in the presence of the rest of the European Powers who stood as spectators of the strife.
The wonder-working deceit was to develope an εικων, an image or likeness. Not an original, but a resemblance to something that had previously existed. As the prophecy is a symbolical revelation of powers to be developed in the Court of the Gentiles during the 1260 years of the subjection, or down-treading of the saints, the image to be developed was the likeness of some previously existing power. It was to be an image the counterpart “to the Beast that hath (ὁ εχει in the present tense) the plague of the sword, and lives.” What beast is this? I have shown that the Sixth Head of the Beast of the Sea was that which had been smitten with a deadly plague by the Gothic Sword; I have also shown that when Charlemagne founded the Imperial Lamb-Horned dominion, that the Sixth Form or Head, was healed, or came to life again in the West; and the New Empire became the Eighth Form of Government, or Head, upon the Seven Mountains. This being consummated, it became “the Beast that lives.” The Image was to be a likeness of this living Eighth Head; in fact, a co-ordinate dynasty in the Holy Germano-Roman Habitable; an independent ecclesiastical imperial dynasty—an imperium in imperio, occupying the relative position to the Lamb-Horned Beast, that the Blasphemous Mouth does to Daniel’s Little Horn.
The wonder-working deceiving power directed the deceived to have an image made to the beast that lives. The English Version of this text is what may be styled a free translation, and reads, “And deceiveth them that dwell upon the earth by the means of those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast; saying to them that dwell upon the earth that they should make an image to the beast, which had the wound by a sword, and did live.” But the rendering I have given at the head of this section, is more literal. The word λεγων is rendered saying. The power of deception, or ability to deceive, the dwellers upon the earth is acquired, δια τα σημεια α εδοθη αυτῳ ποιησαι, through the wonders which it was given p. 328 him to have worked; hence what he said to the deceived or misdirected being the “saying” of a power, would be equivalent to an authoritative mandate, which it had the ability to enforce. The command of the power in the ascendant was ποιησαι εικονα τῳ θηριῳ, to have made an image to the beast; or, more conformable to our idiom, to have an image made to the beast. The English Version “did live,” as the rendering of εζησε, implies that the beast, to whose likeness the image was to be conformed, did live once; but was not in existence in the epoch of the creation of the image. The original word is indefinite. It leaves the time of the living undefined. The living of the beast is affirmed in the announcement of its death plague having been healed; and the absence in the premises of any intimation of subsequent death. Hence, the indefinite present and lives, και εζησε, is the best rendering of the word in the text—they were directed to make an image to the Lamb-Horned Beast then, at the time of the creation of the image, in hale and vigorous existence.
But the image was not to be a mere form of government; it was to be both living and powerful. To this end, it was given to the thaumaturgic deceiver, δουναι πνευμα τῆ εικονι του θηριου, to give spirit to the image of the beast; so that it might perform all the functions of a potent and formidable despotism. This is implied in the words, “that the image of the beast might both speak, and cause as many as would not worship the Image of the Beast that they should be put to death.” This was a terrible inspiration—a speaking image murderously hostile towards all men, of all ranks and degrees, who would not bow down obediently to its sovereign behests. Such an imperiality was “a Mouth speaking very great things against the Most High”—Dan. vii. 8, 25; a Lion-Mouth, speaking great things and blasphemies against God to blaspheme his Name and his Tabernacle, and the dwellers in the heaven—Apoc. xiii. 2, 5, 6; or, in the words of the eleventh verse, ελαλε ὡς δρακων, it spake as a Dragon; in other words, as being itself a Dragon, or imperial. This Dragonic Image was the arrogant, blaspheming, and ferocious speaking constituent, or Mouth, of the Lamb-Horn Beast of the Earth; and the great enemy that “made war against the Two Prophets, and the Saints, and overcame them”—ch. xi. 7; xiii. 7, 15. Whosoever did not receive and would not submit to its oracular utterances were anathematized by it, and scathed with its fire from the heaven, or were excommunicated and penally destroyed as Heretics beyond the protection of law, the killing of whom was declared to be no murder. This dragon-speaking image decreed their extermination, and pronounced curses against all who should protect or harbor them while alive, or when dead give them any other than the burial of a dog. It p. 329 decreed also the subordination of the secular powers to the spiritual, for the purpose of their extermination; and against them excited crusades, with the usual promise of remission of sins to the wretches who should bear its mark. Thus, pursuing its victims unto blood, which it drank in copious draughts unto lascivious intoxication (Apoc. xvii. 5, 6), it illustrated the oracle in the text, that “as many as would not worship the image of the beast, should be killed.”
31. The Image of the Beast Historically Identified
The reader will remember what has already been stated concerning the relative position of the ecclesiastical and secular powers of the Lamb-Horned Dominion, as established by Otho the First, A.D. 962. It may, however, be as well to remark again in this place, that, when Otho fixed the imperial crown in the name and nation of Germany, he established the two following maxims of public jurisprudence;
1. That the prince, who was elected in the German diet, acquired, from that instant, the subject kingdoms of Italy and Rome.
2. But that he might not legally assume the titles of emperor and Augustus, till he had received the crown from the hands of the Roman Pontiff.
By the first maxim the election of the emperor by the secular electors of the empire made him the lord of the pope; who had no more power to withhold the crown and titles from the emperor elect, than the archbishop of Canterbury, whose function it is to crown the king of England, could withhold the crown and titles from the inheritor of the British throne. In the time of Otho, the Archbishop and Patriarch of Rome was to the Germano-Roman emperor, what the archbishop of Canterbury is to the king of England, namely, at once both chief subject, and chief bishop, of the respective beasts, or dominions. The bishop of Rome was elected by the college of cardinals, with the ratifying approval of the Roman people; but he could not be legally consecrated until the emperor had graciously signified his approbation and consent. This being the ecclesiastical and civil constitution of the Lamb-Horned Beast, it is plainly to be perceived, that there was nothing in the body politic answerable to the Image of the Beast that lives.
The years preceding the time of Hildebrand were a period of long and disgraceful servitude for the so-called “Apostolic See.” In reference to this Gibbon says, “the Roman Pontiffs of the ninth and tenth centuries, were insulted, imprisoned, and murdered, by their tyrants; and such was their indigence after the loss and usurpation of the ecclesiastical patrimonies, that they could neither support the p. 330 state of a prince, nor exercise the charity of a priest.” In the course of this long series of scandal, there were two sister prostitutes named Marozia and Theodora, whose influence was founded on their wealth and beauty, and their political and amorous intrigues. Their influence was sovereign, and the most devoted of their paramours were rewarded with the Roman Mitre, to which the Tiara had not yet been added. The bastard son, the grandson, and the great grandson of Marozia “a rare genealogy” of papal holiness, were seated in the chair of St. Peter, and it was at the age of nineteen that her grandson, John XII, became the Head of the Latin Church. Drunkenness, murder, discords, and gaming dishonored his profession, and disgraced the man. His simony was undisguised; and his blasphemous invocation of Jupiter and Venus, the consummation of his impiety. He lived in public adultery with the matrons of Rome; the Lateran palace was turned into a school of prostitution; and his rapes of virgins and widows deterred the female pilgrims from visiting the alleged tomb of St. Peter, lest, in so doing, they should be violated by his pretended successor. Charges were at length urged against him in a Roman synod in the presence of Otho the Great, who degraded him A. D. 967; an evident proof that the Image of the Beast was still a power in the undeveloped future, and had the design of Otho the third been carried into effect, A. D. 998, of abandoning the ruder countries of the North, to erect his throne in Italy, and to revive the institutions of the Roman monarchy, the Image of the Beast would have appeared in the likeness of the secular imperiality of Augustulus, A. D. 479; instead of in the likeness of that of the Lamb-Horned dominion, founded by Charlemagne and Otho the First.
But though the utmost licentiousness reigned in “the Eternal City,” where six popes were deposed, two murdered, and one mutilated, the temporal power of the clergy generally was cherished and exalted by the superstition or policy of the Saxon dynasty, which blindly depended on their moderation, and fidelity to the imperial crown. The bishoprics of Germany were made equal in extent and privilege, superior in wealth and population, to the most ample states of the military order. This was an important stride towards the troublesome development of the wonder-working deceiver. As long as the emperors retained the prerogative of bestowing on every vacancy these ecclesiastical and secular benefices, their cause was maintained by the gratitude or ambition of their friends and favorites. The personal and local conflicts of the popes in the tenth century, left them no leisure, if they had possessed the capacity, to perfect the great system of temporal supremacy which was to deprive the emperors of their prerogatives pertaining to the ecclesiastical affairs of p. 331 the empire. In this age, they looked rather to a vile profit from the sale of episcopal confirmations, or of exemptions to monasteries.
The vices of the popes and their clergy were less dangerous to the secular imperialism of the beast, than their virtues, whatever they might be. All writers concur in stigmatizing the dissoluteness and indecency that prevailed among the clergy. The bishops were obtruded upon their sees, as the supreme pontiffs were upon that of Rome, by force or corruption. A child of five years old was made archbishop of Rheims; and the see of Narbonne was purchased for another at the age of ten. By this relaxation of morals the Lamb-Horned Hierarchy began to lose its hold upon the prejudices of mankind. This favored the success of “Heresy” so-called; and the increase of secular authority and power in the nomination and investiture of spiritual fiefs. This power was exercised with the grossest rapacity. If the ancient canons against simony had been enforced, the church would almost have been cleared of its ministers. Affairs continued to wax worse and worse in the eleventh century, until reform was indispensable to avert the impending ruin of the dominion.
The German emperors of the House of Saxony conferred bishoprics in general by direct nomination; while the popes were nominated for suffrage by the seven cardinal-bishops of the Roman province, and their election by the college confirmed by the emperor. But in A. D. 1047, an explicit right of nomination was conceded to Henry III, as the only means of rescuing the Roman church from the disgrace and depravity into which it had fallen. He appointed two or three popes of a very superior character to the illegitimate progeny of Marozia. This high imperial prerogative, however, was precluded from the possibility of its exercise, by the infancy of his son and successor, Henry IV, and by the factions of that minority. Pope Nicolas II, published a decree in A. D. 1059, which restored the right of nomination and election to the Cardinals of Rome; but leaving the confirmation of the pope elect to Henry, “now king and hereafter to become emperor,” and to such of his successors as should personally obtain that privilege. This decree is the foundation of that celebrated mode of election in a conclave of cardinals, which has ever since determined the Headship of the Speaking Image of the Beast. It was intended, not only to exclude the franchise of the citizens of Rome, who by their rabble-violence had forfeited their primitive right, but as far as possible to prepare the way for an absolute emancipation of the papacy from the control of the secular imperial chief of the beast of the earth; reserving only a precarious and p. 332 personal concession to the emperors, instead of their ancient legal prerogative of confirmation.
“The real author of this decree,” says Hallam, “and of all other vigorous measures adopted by the popes of that age, whether for the assertion of their independence, or the restoration of discipline, was Hildebrand, archdeacon of the church of Rome, by far the most conspicuous person of the eleventh century. Acquiring by his extraordinary qualities an unbounded ascendency over the Italian clergy, they regarded him as their chosen leader, and the hope of their common cause. He had been empowered singly to nominate a pope on the part of the Romans, after the death of Leo IX, and compelled Henry III. to acquiesce in his choice of Victor II. No man could proceed more fearlessly towards his object than Hildebrand, nor with less attention to conscientious impediments. Though the decree of Nicolas II, his own work, had expressly reserved the right of confirmation of the young king of Germany (Henry IV), yet, on the death of this pope, Hildebrand procured the election and consecration of Alexander II without waiting for any authority. During this pontificate he was considered as something greater than the pope, who acted entirely by his counsels. On Alexander’s decease, Hildebrand, long since the real head of the church, was raised with enthusiasm to its chief dignity, and assumed the name of Gregory VII.
His plans, however, not being sufficiently mature to throw off the secular yoke of the beast altogether, though he acted as pope from the day of his election, he declined to receive consecration until he had obtained the consent of the king of Germany. But this moderation was not of long continuance. The situation of Germany speedily afforded scope for the ambitious display of the wonder-working deceiving power. Henry IV., through a very bad education, was arbitrary and dissolute; the Saxons were engaged in a desperate rebellion, and secret disaffection had spread among the princes to an extent of which the pope was much better aware than the king. He began the contest between the Church and the Empire, the Mitre and the Crown, the Lamb-Horned Eyes of the Dragon-Horn, or in plain terms, between the spiritual and temporal orders of the Holy Germano-Roman dominion, by excommunicating some of Henry’s ministers on pretence of simony, and made it a ground of remonstrance that they were not instantly dismissed. His next step was to publish a new decree against lay investitures. The abolition of these was a favorite object of Gregory, and formed an essential part of his general scheme for emancipating the spiritual, and subjugating the temporol power. The ring and crosier, it was asserted by the papal advocates, were the emblems of that power which no monarch could bestow; but even if a less p. 333 offensive symbol were adopted in investitures, the dignity of the Romish Hierarchy was lowered, and its “purity” (!) contaminated, when its highest ministers were compelled to solicit the patronage or the approbation of laymen.
But interest in the question of investitures was suspended by other more extraordinary and important dissensions between the Church and the Empire. The pope, after tampering some time with the disaffected party in Germany, summoned Henry IV. to appear at Rome, and vindicate himself from the charges alleged by his subjects. Such an outrage naturally exasperated a young and passionate monarch. Assembling a number of bishops and other vassals at Worms, he procured a sentence that Gregory should no longer be obeyed as lawful pope. But the time was passed for those high prerogatives of former emperors. After A. D. 1073, the relations of dependence between Church and State were now about to be reversed; in other words, the time had come to erect the Romish Hierarchy, under its chief bishop, into a supreme independent imperial monarchy, after the model of the secular, but superior to it: or as it is apocalyptically expressed, “to have an Image made of the beast that lives.”
Gregory had no sooner received accounts of the proceedings at Worms, than he not only excommunicated Henry, but sentenced him to the loss of the kingdoms of Germany and Italy, releasing his subjects from their allegiance, and forbidding them to obey him as sovereign. This was another act initiatory of what might have seemed to be a romantic project of making himself the lord of “Christendom,” by not only dissolving the jurisdiction which kings and emperors had hitherto exercised over the various orders of the clergy, but also by subjecting to the papal authority all temporal princes, and rendering their dominions tributary to the See of Rome. This Gregory VII. undertook with great audacity. He proposed to “cause all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive the mark” of supreme papal authority, in which he and his successors, “through the wonders which” their party “had power to work in the presence of the beast,” were successful. Solomon, king of Hungary, dethroned by his brother Geysa, had fled to the emperor of Germany for protection, and renewed the homage of Hungary to the Secular Imperiality of the Lamb-Horned Beast. Gregory, who favored Geysa, exclaimed against this act of submission; and said in a letter to Solomon, “You ought to know that the kingdom of Hungary belongs to the Roman Church; and learn that you will incur the indignation of the Holy See (the Eyes of the Little Horn) if you do not acknowledge that you hold your dominions of the pope, and not of the emperor!” p. 334 This presumptuous declaration, and the neglect it met with, brought the quarrel between the Secular Horn, or empire, and the Lamb-Horned Eyes, or church, to a crisis. In his circular letters. he repeatedly asserts, that “bishops are superior to kings, and made to judge them,” expressions alike artful and presumptuous, and calculated for bringing in all the churchmen of the world to his standard. Gregory’s purpose is said to have been to engage in the bonds of fidelity and allegiance to the so-called Vicar of Christ, as King of kings and Lord of lords, all the monarchs of the earth, and to establish at Rome an annual assembly of bishops, by whom the contests that might arise between kingdoms and sovereign states were to be decided; the rights and pretences of princes to be examined; and the fate of nations and empires to be determined.
The haughty pontiff knew well what consequences would follow the flaming thunderbolts of the heaven. The German bishops came over to his party forthwith, and drew along with them many of the nobles; the brand of civil war still lay smouldering, and a bull properly directed was sufficient to set it in a blaze: and those very princes and bishops who had assisted in deposing Gregory, gave up their emperor to be tried by the pope, whom they solicited to come to Augsburg for that purpose.
Henry suddenly finding himself almost insulated in the midst of his dominions, had recourse, through panic, to a miserable expedidient. He crossed the Alps at Tyrol, accompanied only by a few domestics, with the avowed determination of submitting and seeking absolution of Gregory, his tyrannical oppressor, who was then at Canossa, on the Apennines, a fortress belonging to his faithful adherent the Countess Matilda. It was in the unusually severe winter of A. D. 1077. At the gates of this place he presented himself as a humble penitent. He alone was admitted into the outer court of the castle, where, being stripped of his robes, and wrapped in a woollen shirt and with naked feet and fasting, he was obliged to remain for three days in the month of January, while Gregory, shut up with his devout and affectionate Matilda, refused to admit him to his presence to kiss his feet. Matilda’s attachment to Gregory and hatred of the Germans were so great, that she made over all her estates to the Image of the Beast in process of creation: “and this donation,” says the historian, “is the true cause of all the wars which since that period have raged between the emperors and the popes. She possessed, in her own right, great part of Tuscany; Mantua, Parma, Reggio, Placentia, Ferrara, Modena, Verona, and almost the whole of what is now called the Patrimony of St. Peter, from Viterbo to Orvieto; together with part of Umbria, Spoleto, and the March of Ancona.”
p. 335 On the fourth day the emperor was permitted to throw himself at the feet of the pope, who condescended to grant him absolution, after he had sworn obedience to the pontiff in all things, and promised to appear at Augsburg on a certain day to learn the pope’s decision whether or no he should be restored to his kingdom, until which time he also promised not to assume the imperial insignia.
Thus while Henry got nothing but disgrace, his abject humiliation elated Gregory with great exultation, who now regarded himself, and not altogether without reason, as the lord and master of all the crowned heads of “the Earth” and “the Sea,” called “Christendom;” so that, in several of his letters, he said, it was his duty “to pull down the pride of kings.”
This extraordinary accommodation exceedingly disgusted the provinces of Italy. Their indignation at Gregory’s arrogance, happily for Henry, overbalanced their detestation of his meanness. All Lombardy took up arms against the pope, while the pope was raising all Germany against the emperor. The Germans chose Rodolph, duke of Swabia, who was crowned at Mentz. Gregory affected to be displeased that he was crowned without his order; and declared he would acknowledge as emperor and king of Germany him of the two rivals who should be most submissive to the Holy See. But as Henry would not submit, he sent a golden crown to Rodolph with the inscription upon it,
Petra dedit Petro, Petrus diadema Rodolpho;
importing that it was given by virtue of the right to confer crowns from the apostle Peter! The donation was accompanied by an anathema against Henry prophetic of the aspirations of the rising Image-power. The anathema concludes with an apostrophe to St. Peter and St. Paul, saying, “Make all men sensible, that, as you can bind and loose every thing in heaven, you can also upon earth take from, or give to, every one according to his deserts, empires, kingdoms, principalities—let the kings and princes of the age then instantly feel your power, that they may not dare to despise the orders of your church; let your justice be so speedily executed upon Henry, that nobody may doubt but that he falls by your means and not by chance.”
But Gregory’s success in his immediate designs was not answerable to his intrepidity. Henry both subdued the German rebellion and carried on the war with so much vigor in Italy, that he was crowned in Rome by the archbishop of Ravenna, whom he had caused to be elected pope by the name of Clement III., instead of Gregory, who had taken refuge in the castle of St. Angelo, whence he defied, p. 336 and again excommunicated the conqueror. In the meanwhile the castle was besieged, but the emperor being called off into Lombardy, Roger Guiscard, his Norman ally, effected his release and gave him asylum at Salerno, where he soon after died. His mantle, however, descended upon his successors, especially Urban II., and Paschal II., who strenuously persevered in the great contest for Ecclesiastical Independence, or the full development of the Image of the Beast.
Henry V. steadily refused to part with the right of investiture; and the secular or lay constituent of the Lamb-Horned Dragon was still committed in open hostility with the Papal Hierarchy of “the Earth” for fifteen years of his reign. But Henry V. being stronger in the support of his German vassals than his father, Henry IV. had been, none of the popes with whom he was engaged had the boldness to repeat the measures of Gregory VII. At length, A. D. 1122, each party grown weary of this ruinous contention, a Concordat, or treaty of agreement, was arranged between the emperor and the pope, Calixtus II., which put an end by compromise to the question of ecclesiastical investitures. By this compact the emperor resigned for ever to the rising Image-Power the investiture of the bishops of the dominion by the ring and crosier, and recognized the liberty of elections. But in return, it was agreed that elections should be made in his presence, or that of his officers; and that the new bishop should receive his temporalities from the emperor by the sceptre. By this concordat the imperial order preserved its feudal sovereignty over the estates of the Episcopal Hierarchy, which possessed nearly half the lands in Europe, in defiance of the language which had recently been held by the pontificals. In the terms of this compromise the success of the emperor and the pope seemed pretty equally balanced; but from subsequent effects it is apparent to which party the intrinsic advantages of victory belonged: the events which followed, or “the wonders it was given him to work, in the presence of the beast,” after the settlement of this great and sanguinary controversy about investitures, evinced beyond all dispute, that the See of Rome had conquered; or in other words, that the creation of the Image, or likeness to the Constantinian Sixth Head of the Beast, revived in the dominion founded by Charlemagne, was completed in the establishment of the absolute monarchy of papal Rome. Gregory VII. is universally regarded as the founder of this unlimited imperiality. “He may be called,” says Hallam, “the common enemy of all sovereigns, whose dignity as well as independence mortified his infatuated pride.” He conveniently exhibited St. Peter as a great feudal suzerain, or legitimate lord of all the countries and kingdoms of the earth. The gross and universal superstition of the Latin world admitted that the fullness of Christ’s p. 337 lordship in heaven and earth had been by Christ himself transferred to Peter, and therefore to the incarnate dæmons, the popes, who blasphemously style themselves the Vicars of Christ, and successors of that apostle. Admitting this monstrous and illogical falsehood, it was not difficult for such “dwellers upon the earth” to assent to the ambitious claims of the Roman Pontiff. The liberties of the national churches of the diademed horns of the Beast of the Sea, were as completely destroyed by papal arrogance, as those of the churches of the Lamb-Horned dominion, whose emperors had sustained the principal brunt of the war. By a papal constitution inspired by Hildebrand, no bishop in the Latin church was permitted to “buy and sell,” or exercise his functions, until he had received the confirmation of the Roman See; “a provision,” says Hallam, “of vast importance, through which, beyond perhaps any other means, Rome has sustained, and still sustains, her temporal influence, as well as her ecclesiastical supremacy.” The National Churches now found themselves subject to an undisguised and irresistible despotism, whose favorite policy it became to harass all prelates with citations to Rome. Gregory VII. obliged the metropolitans to attend in person for the pallium, or holy lambskin, in which the wolves of that Episcopal order are officially clothed; and bishops were summoned even from England and the northern kingdoms to receive the commands of their spiritual monarch, the Papal Mouth of the Dragon-Image.
From the time of Gregory VII., no pontiff of the Image-monarchy thought of awaiting the confirmation of the emperor of Germany, as in earlier ages, before he was installed in “the throne of St. Peter.” On the contrary, it was claimed that the emperor himself was to be confirmed by the pope. When Frederick Barbarossa came to receive the imperial crown at Rome, he omitted to hold the stirrup of Adrian IV., who, in his turn, refused to give him the usual kiss of peace; nor was the contest ended but by the emperor’s acquiescence, who was content to follow the precedents of his predecessors. This same Adrian in a letter reminded Frederick that he had conferred upon him the imperial crown, and was willing to bestow, if possible, greater benefits. This letter excited a great ferment among the German princes, in a congress of whom it was delivered. “From whom, then,” one of the papal legates, or ambassadors, rashly inquired, “does the emperor hold his crown, except from the pope?” This so irritated a prince of Wittelsbach, that he was with difficulty prevented from cleaving the priest’s head with his sabre. It was Adrian IV. who bestowed the kingdom of Ireland upon Henry II., King of England; and in the grant declared that all islands were the exclusive property of St. Peter, which was only an indirect assertion, p. 338 that they all belonged to the Image of the Beast, of which the popes are the absolute, omnipotent, and oracular chiefs.
But the epoch when the arrogant and usurping spirit of the Papal Image of the Beast was most strikingly displayed was the pontificate of Innocent III. In each of the three leading objects pursued by Rome, namely, independent sovereignty, supremacy over the Latin church, and control over the princes of the earth, it was the fortune of this pontiff to conquer. This is the testimony of history. He completed the iconic, or image, fabric, founded by Gregory VII., and promoted steadily by his successors. He realized that fond hope of so many of his predecessors, a dominion over Rome and the central parts of Italy—the territory of the Image of the Beast; given to the Roman See by the countess Matilda, and yielded after a long dispute by the emperor Otho IV. on his coronation at Rome by Innocent III., who bore the keys from A.D. 1198 to A.D. 1216. “This,” says Hallam, “is the proper era of that temporal sovereignty which the Bishops of Rome possess over their own city, though still prevented by various causes, for nearly three centuries, from becoming unquestioned and unlimited.”
The maxims of Gregory VII. were now matured by more than a hundred years, and the right of trampling upon the necks of kings had been received, at least among ecclesiastics, as an inherent attribute of the Image of the Beast; or the system of power based upon forgery, murder, and wonderful deceit, commonly styled THE PAPACY. “As the sun and the moon are placed in the firmament,” said Innocent III., “the greater as the light of the day, and the lesser of the night; thus are there two powers in the church; the pontifical, which as having the charge of souls, is the greater; and the royal, which is the less, and to which the bodies of men only are intrusted.” Intoxicated with these ideas which he succeeded in establishing, he deemed no quarrels of princes beyond the sphere of his jurisdiction. His foremost gratification was the display of unbounded power. His letters, especially to ecclesiastics, are full of unprovoked rudeness. As impetuous as Gregory VII., he is unwilling to owe anything to favor; he seems to anticipate denial, heats himself into anger as he proceeds, and where he commences with solicitation, seldom concludes without a menace. With such a temper and with such advantages, he was formidable beyond all his predecessors, and well qualified for the time “to speak” as the official incumbent of the Image-Mouth which “spake as a dragon;” and caused on every side the lightning of the Roman Heaven to thunder over the heads of princes. He claimed the right to confirm the election of the emperors of the Lamb-Horned dominion; and in a decretal epistle, p. 339 declares the pope’s authority to examine, confirm, anoint, crown, and consecrate the emperor elect, provided he shall be worthy; or to reject him if rendered unfit by great crimes, such as sacrilege, heresy, perjury, or persecution of the Roman church; in default of election, to supply the vacancy; or, in the event of equal suffrages, to bestow the empire upon any person at his discretion.
“The noonday of Papal dominion,” says Hallam, “extends from the pontificate of Innocent III., inclusively to that of Boniface VIII.; or, in other words, through the thirteenth century. Rome inspired during this age all the terror of her ancient name. She was once more the Mistress of the World, and kings were her vassals.” Such was the Image of the Imperial Head of the Ten-Horned Beast healed of its death-plague by Charlemagne, created by “the False Prophet,” or Roman Hierarchial constituent of the healed head, “that wrought the wonders in the presence of the beast of the earth, with which he deceived them who received the mark of the beast, and them who worshipped his image”Apoc. xix. 20. This Image-Monarchy is styled “the Kingdom of the Beast” in ch. xvi. 10; and was obnoxious to the vial-wrath of the fifth angel, by which it was filled with darkness. The judgments of this vial and those which have thus far transpired under the sixth, have reduced the image to very limited territorial and temporal dimensions. They are so inconsiderable that the Image may be said to be in the article of death; for beyond the very narrow limits of the little territory yet remaining to the pope, the papal government, however loud and fiercely it may roar, can no longer “cause as many as will not worship the image of the beast to be put to death;” nor can it cause all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark upon their right hand, or upon their foreheads; nor can it prevent men buying and selling any sort of spiritual or temporal merchandize they please. This is the condition of the image in the latter half of the nineteenth century, which may be styled the dying hour of the life imparted to it by the wonder-working Pseudoprophet of the Lamb-Horned beast. But while the Temporal Image is at death’s door, there is considerable vitality in the Pseudoprophet, or Roman Hierarchy, itself. This has been evinced in the concourse of bishops at Rome under pretence of celebrating the martyrdom of Peter in that city of fraud and abomination; or, as it is termed by the Spirit in ch. xviii. 2, “the habitation of dæmons, and the hold of every foul spirit, and cage of every unclean and hateful bird.” Of this Pseudoprophetic power, Pius IX. is officially, in 1867, the distressed and wailing mouth. How different his utterances from those of Gregory VII. and Innocent III.! When they roared princes and nations trembled; p. 340 when he tries to roar, his roar becomes a wail of “heart-rending griefs,” and they laugh, having no longer any fear of papal interdicts and curses; and continue their “machinations the most implacable” for the subversion of the authority of what he styles “the Apostolic See.” But the Pseudoprophetic Hierarchy, with all the vitality that lingers in its constitution, will never be able to galvanize the old shattered image into its ancient vigor, If it continue to exist in dilapidation, it is only tolerated until “the Hour of Judgment” be fully come to execute the sentence written concerning the beast and its wonder-working deceiver that created the image, saying, “These both were cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone”—ch. xix. 20; xx. 10.
Thus, in conclusion of this section, we have seen that after a conflict of more than four hundred years from Charlemagne to Innocent III., the ecclesiastics of all the hierarchies of Europe were united in one vast organization with the Bishop of Rome as their supreme legislative and judicial head, and a single ecclesiastical government established over the whole Roman church after the model of that of the Woman’s Man-Child of Sin, developed in the person and power of Constantine the Great. This development of the Man-Child into the fulness of the age and stature of THE MAN, or Image of the Beast, is denominated by Romanists themselves a monarchy. “All catholic doctors agree in this,” says Bellarmine, “that the ecclesiastical government committed to men by God is a monarchy.” “If the monarchial is the best form of government,” says another, “as we have shown, and it is certain that the church of God instituted by Christ its head, who is supremely wise, ought to be governed in the best manner, who can deny that its rule ought to be monarchial?”
Accordingly, the canonists, or skilled interpreters and practitioners of ecclesiastical law, are accustomed to style the Bishop of Rome a king. “The pope,” say they, “may be called a king. He is the Prince of princes, and Lord of lords. He is, as it were, a God on earth. He is above right, superior to law, superior to the canons. He can do all things against right and without right. He is greater than all the saints except Peter. Some say he is greater than an apostle, and not bound by the commands either of Peter or Paul. His sentence prevails against the judgment of the whole world. His sole will is instead of reason in the bestowment of ecclesiastical offices. He does not commit simony in selling benefices. He may deprive any one of his office without any cause. He is able to free from obligation in matters of positive right, without any cause, and they who are so released are safe in respect to God. He can take p. 341 away a possession from one church and give it to another, even without a cause; and no one can say unto him, Why dost thou so? He is not bound by treaties. The Pope and Christ make one consistory. He can make justice of injustice. He can change the substance of things, and make a thing out of nothing. He can change squares into circles”—Febronii de Statu Eccl. lib. i. c. ix. p. 527.
Such was the ICONIC MAN in the noonday of his existence, the, number of whose name is 666. Is not this the Antichrist? Could any power arise in the world more deserving of the name? Is not this Image-power, Ανομος, THE LAWLESS ONE, whose coming Paul predicted would be “after the working of the Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish?” It can be no other than “the Man of Sin, the Son of Perdition; who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called god, or Σεβασμα, an object of veneration; so that he in the temple of the god sits as a god, publicly exhibiting himself that he is a god.” And yet in view of all the record extant concerning this ICONIC MAN OF SIN, there are protestants who affirm that the papal dynasty is not the Antichrist, and that his revelation is still in the future! Can blindness be more complete than that which cannot see the Lawless One in him whose worshipers declare to be superior to law and above right? If the Antichrist have not been in full manifestation before the world for the past six hundred years, there need be no apprehension of his future advent. But, as we have seen elsewhere, Antichrist and vicar of Christ, or Vice-Christ, are synonymous expressions; so that in this vainglorious title of the papal power it stands confessed as Antichrist, the Image Man of Sin, for the worship or reprobation of mankind.
32. The Utterances of the Speaking Image
“And it was given to it to give spirit to the Image of the Beast, that the Image of the Beast might both speak, and cause as many as would not worship the Image of the Beast, that they should be put to death”—Ver. 15.
To have power to speak, and to cause to be put to death; or to decree and to enforce its decrees, was the result of spirit, πνευμα, being imparted to the Image. A monarch, or pontiff king, who made laws and issued decrees, but could not enforce them, or cause them to be executed, would be an image without spirit. That which is necessary to a monarchy for the execution of its laws and ordinances is its spirit or power; and when a king can no longer cause his will to be respected; when he decrees and threatens, and his utterances are laughed at or despised, he is a vox et prœterea nihil, a p. 342 mere voice, his spirit has departed; and he ceases to be a power in the world of powers, which respect nothing which cannot cause itself to be respected.
Such is the present condition of what remains of the Image of the Sixth, or Imperial Head of the Beast. It can order all Heretics to be roasted and exterminated, who defiantly refuse to abandon their heresy, and to worship or honor and obey it. But in none of its “catholic provinces” can its episcopal officials execute its commands. Neither they, nor the secular authorities, dare venture upon the experiment; because, like the rulers of old, “they fear the people.” All it dare attempt now is the canonization of murderers, who used to roast Jews, burn heretics, and try to exterminate protestants. This has been ostentatiously done in Rome by Pius IX. and his bishops in 1867. Their transformation of these bloodhounds of the Papacy into Romish Saint-Protectors, or Mahuzzim, demonstrates what the Image of the Beast would do even now, if its spirit or power to do or practise, had not departed; and shows that the mind of the Romish Hierarchy is to-day as hateful, stagnant and unclean as ever. But happily for mankind in the fairest countries of the earth, they can only typify their disposition towards robbery and murder by canonizing thieves and sanguinary wretches of a former age. By thus gnashing their teeth at the living, they give expression to their “heart-rending griefs” that they can no longer “cause as many as will not worship the Image of the Beast to be put to death.”
But in the days of Innocent III., the great things and blasphemies spoken by the Image, or Iconic Lion-Mouth, were something more than sound and fury signifying nothing harmful. They were terrific roarings that made all the beasts of the Roman wilderness to tremble. Lucius III. and Innocent III., by formal decrees, required heretics to be seized, condemned, and delivered by the bishops to the civil magistrates, to be capitally punished, and enjoined the princes and magistrates to execute on them the sentences denounced by the canon and civil laws. “Supported,” says the Iconic Mouth, “by the presence and energy of our beloved son Frederick, the illustrious Emperor of the Romans, by the council of our brethren, other patriarchs, archbishops also, and numerous princes, who have assembled from different parts of the world, we rise by this decree against all heretics, and by apostolical authority condemn every sect, by whatever name it is designated.
“In the first place, therefore, we subject the Cathari, the Paterini, the Poor Men of Lyons, the Passagini, and the Arnaldists (Witnesses clothed in sackcloth—ch. xi. 3), to a perpetual anathema; and as some claim authority to preach (“buy and sell” without money or p. 343 price, the divine mission of the Saints—ch. xiii. 7), although the apostle saith, ‘How can they preach except they be sent?’ all who venture to preach, either publicly or privately, without authority from the Apostolic See, or the bishop of the place, and all who dare to think and teach otherwise in respect to the sacrament of the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, or baptism, or the remission of sins, or matrimony, or the other sacraments of the church than the Holy Roman Church preaches and practices; and generally, all whom the Roman Church, or individual bishops in their dioceses, or the clergy themselves, when the seat is vacant, with the concurrence, if necessary, of the neighboring bishops, shall judge to be heretics, shall be bound with the same bond of perpetual anathema. All their harborers, and defenders, and all who yield them any patronage or favor, we consign to the same sentence.
“And as it sometimes happens that the severity of ecclesiastical discipline is condemned by those who do not understand its virtue, we ordain that clergymen who are clearly convicted of the aforesaid errors, shall be divested of the prerogatives of their order, deprived of their benefices, and delivered to the secular power to be appropriately punished, unless, immediately on the detection of their error, they voluntarily return to the Catholic faith, and consent publicly, at the will of the bishop of the diocese, to abjure their heresy, and make a proper satisfaction. But a layman, who is infected with that pest, unless abjuring the heresy and making satisfaction, he instantly flies to the orthodox faith, is to be left to the will of the secular power to suffer a vengeance in correspondence with his crime. They, moreover, who shall be found marked by the mere suspicion of the church, unless they demonstrate their innocence in a manner suited to the nature of the suspicion, and to their rank, shall be subjected to the same sentence. But they who, after having abjured their error, or cleared themselves in a trial by their bishop, shall be convicted of relapsing to the heresy they have abjured, we order to be left to the severest sentence without further hearing, and their goods appropriated to the churches which they served, according to the canons.
“We add, moreover, by the advice of the bishops, and the suggestion of the emperor and his princes, that each archbishop and bishop shall himself, or by his archdeacon, or other honest and suitable persons, once or twice a year, go through the parish in which it is reported that Heretics reside, and compel three or more men there of good reputation, or the whole population if it seem expedient, to swear that should any one know persons who are heretics, or any who hold secret assemblies, or differ in life or manners from the usage of the faithful, he will endeavor to point them out to the bishop p. 344 or archdeacon. And the bishop or archdeacon shall call the accused before him, and unless they clear themselves to his satisfaction, or should they, after having cleared themselves, relapse to their former heresy, they are to be punished according to his judgment.
“If from a superstitious objection to oaths, any of them should refuse to swear, they are on that account to be adjudged heretics, and smitten with the punishment which has been mentioned.
“We enact, moreover, that counts, barons, prefects, and consuls of cities and other places, at the admonition of the archbishops and bishops, promise under oath, that whenever they shall be required by them, they will boldly and efficiently aid the church against heretics and their accomplices, and study in good faith, according to their duty and power, to execute in the cases of which we have spoken, the ecclesiastical in the same manner as the imperial laws. And should they refuse to observe their oath, they shall be divested of their offices which they enjoy and become ineligible to others. They shall, moreover, be excommunicated, and their lands put under an interdict of the church. A city that excites resistance to these decrees, or neglects at the admonition of the bishop to punish those who resist, shall be deprived of the commerce of other cities, and divested of its episcopal rank.
“All favorers also of heretics, as condemned to perpetual infamy, we order to be debarred from the office of advocates, from giving testimony, and from all civil employments.”
Similar canons were enacted A. D. 1215, by the fourth Lateran council under Innocent III., the most famous general council of the middle ages, at which over 1000 bishops and abbots attended, and ambassadors also from most of the kingdoms, in which the Lion Mouth decrees, that should a civil lord, on being required and admonished by the church, neglect to clear his territory of this heretical nuisance, let them be bound by the metropolitan and other bishops of the province with the bond of excommunication; and should he refuse to make satisfaction within a year, let it be signified to the supreme pontiff, that he may declare his vassals to be freed from allegiance to him, expose his land to be seized by catholics, who, exterminating the Heretics, may possess it without opposition, and preserve it in the purity of the faith.
“Catholics who assume the sign of the cross (“the Mark of the Beast”) shall gird themselves to the extermination of the Heretics, shall enjoy the indulgence, and be fortified by the sacred privilege, which are conceded to those who go to the relief of the Holy Land.”
These enactments were incorporated in the decretals of Gregory IX., and became the law of the Image-State. Thus the Latin Hierarchy p. 345 decreed the ruin and sanguinary extermination of all who dissented from its superstition, and refused to pay it the honor and obedience it required.
In the epoch of the full manifestation of this ferocious power the Two Witnesses, styled in the above decrees “heretics,” had become by their influence and doctrine very formidable antagonists to the pope and his clergy. At the beginning of the thirteenth century, the provinces of Languedoc, Provence, Catalonia, and all the surrounding countries, comprising the whole of the South of France, with the Pyrenees and a part of Spain, were peopled with an industrious and intelligent race of men, addicted to commerce and the arts, but generally fostering religious views exceedingly hostile to “the great things and blasphemies” of the Leo-Dragonic Mouth of the Image, or Imperio-Babylonish Hierarchy of Rome. They were styled Albigenses from the province of Albi, in the south of France, in which they flourished in considerable numbers. In the whole of this southern district, they not only dissented, but bore a lively testimony against Romish superstition and idolatry, and the vicious lives of the clergy. The author of the Belgian Chronicle, from Cæsarius, A. D. 1208, says: “The error of the Albigenses prevailed to that degree, that it had infected as much as a thousand cities; and if it had not been repressed by the swords of the faithful, I think that it would have corrupted the whole of Europe.”
David Hume, though regarding them as enthusiasts, bears witness to their moral excellence. “Pope Innocent III.,” says he, “published a crusade against the Albigenses, a species of enthusiasts in the south of France, whom he denominated Heretics, because like all other enthusiasts, they neglected the rites of the church, and opposed the power and influence of the clergy. And these sectaries, though the most innocent and inoffensive of mankind, were exterminated with all the circumstances of extreme violence and barbarity.”
Ebrard of Bethune, who wrote A.D. 1212, says, “they call themselves Vallenses, because they ‘abide in the Valley of Tears,’” alluding to their situation as witnessing in sackcloth, in the Valleys of Piedmont. Their opinions are thus recited from an old manuscript by the Centuriators of Magdeburg.
“In articles of faith, the authority of the holy scripture is the highest, and for that reason it is the rule of judging; so that whatsoever agreeth not with the word of God, is deservedly to be rejected and avoided.
“The decrees of fathers and councils are so far to be approved, as they agree with the word of God.
“The reading and knowledge of the holy scriptures is free and necessary p. 346 for all men, the laity as well as the clergy; yea, and the writings of the apostles and prophets are to be read rather than the comments of men.
“The sacraments of the Church of Christ are two, baptism and the supper of the Lord.
“The receiving in both kinds for priests and people was instituted by Christ.
“Masses are impious; and it is insanity to say masses for the dead.
“Purgatory is an invention of men; for they who believe, come into eternal life; and they who believe not, into eternal condemnation—(credentes enim, invitam æternam venire—come, not go, as generally translated—Author).
“The invocating and worshiping of dead saints is idolatry.
“The Church of Rome is the Babylonian Harlot.
“We must not obey the Pope and the Bishops; because they are the wolves of the Church of Christ.
“The pope hath not the primacy over all the churches of Christ, neither hath he the power of both swords.
“That is the Ecclesia of Christ which heareth the sincere word of Christ, and useth the sacraments instituted by him, in what place soever it exist.
“Vows of celibacy are inventions of men, and occasions of sodomy.
“So many orders are so many characters of the Beast.
“Monkery is a stinking carcass.
“So many superstitious dedications of temples, commemorations of the dead, benedictions of animals, pilgrimages, so many forced fastings, so many superfluous festivals, those perpetual bellowings of unlearned men, and the observations of the other ceremonies, manifestly hindering the teaching and learning of the word, are diabolical inventions.
“The marriage of priests is lawful and necessary.”
The following testimonies concerning the holders of the foregoing truths, the Romanists will allow to be unexceptionable. They are the testimonies of Reinerius and Thuanus. Reinerius flourished about A. D. 1254; and his testimony is the more remarkable as he was a Dominican, and Inquisitor-General. “Among all the sects,” says he, “which still are or have been, there is not any more pernicious to the Church than that of the Leonists. And this for three reasons: The first is because it is older; for some say that it hath endured from the time of Pope Sylvester; others from the time of the apostles (doubtless, “the Saints” of ch. xiii. 7). The second reason, p. 347 because it is more general; for there is scarce any country wherein the sect is not. The third, because when all other sects beget horror in the hearers by the outrageousness of their blasphemies against God (“the Earth that helps the Woman” in her hostility to Rome) this of the Leonists hath a great show of piety; because they live justly before men, and believe all things rightly concerning God, and all the articles which are contained in the creed; only they blaspheme the church of Rome and the clergy, whom the multitude of the laity is easy to believe.”
The candid and impartial historian, Thuanus, says, “Peter Waldo, a wealthy citizen of Lyons, about the year of Christ, 1170, gave name to the Waldenses. He, leaving his house and goods, devoted himself wholly to the profession of the gospel, and took care to have the writings of the prophets and apostles translated into the vulgar tongue. When now in a little time he had many followers about him, he sent them forth as his disciples into all parts to propagate the gospel. Their fixed opinions were said to be these: that the Church of Rome, because she hath renounced the true faith of Christ, is the Babylonian Harlot (Babylonicam meretricem esse) and that Barren Tree which Christ himself hath cursed, and commanded to be rooted up; therefore we must by no means obey the pope, and the bishops who cherish his errors; that the monastic life is the sink of the church, and a hellish institution; its vows are vain, and subservient only to the filthy love of boys: the orders of the presbytery are the marks of the great beast which is commemorated in the Apocalypse; the fire of purgatory, the sacrifice of the mass, the feast of the dedications of temples, the worship of saints, and propitiations for the dead, are inventions of Satan. To these, the principal and certain heads of their doctrine others are affixed concerning marriage, the resurrection, the state of the soul after death, and concerning meats.”
From these testimonies it will be easy for the reader to discern the issue formed in the thirteenth century between the Lamb-Horned Beast and his Image, of the one part, and the Two Witnesses and the Saints of the Holy City, of the other. The spread of “Heresy” so alarmed the Ecclesiastical Power, that it determined to “cause all both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark” in token of their subjection, or be exterminated by fire and sword. Hence these decrees already cited. To carry these into effect, the first crusade was proclaimed of papal idolators against what they called Heretics, and the murderous Inquisition was first erected, the one to subdue their bodies, the other to enslave their minds. “It is enough to make the blood run cold,” says one, whose p. 348 episcopal succession from the apostles had come to him through those mendacious and sanguinary thieves and robbers, the popes, “to read of the horrid murders and devastation of this time, how many of these poor innocent Christians were sacrificed to the blind fury and malice of their enemies. It is computed, that in France alone were slain a million. The consequences of these atrocious barbarities are thus narrated by Thuanus, himself a Romanist. “Against the Waldenses,” saith he, “when exquisite punishment availed little, and the evil was exasperated by the remedy which had been unseasonably applied, and their number increased daily, at length complete armies were raised; and a war of no less weight (ch. xi. 7, and xiii. 7) than what our people had before waged against the Saracens, was decreed against them: the event of which was, that they were rather slain, put to flight, spoiled everywhere of their goods and dignities, and dispersed here and there, than that, convinced of their error, they repented. So that they who at first had defended themselves by arms (ch. xi. 5, 6) at last overcome by arms (ch. xi. 7) fled into Provence and the neighboring Alps of the French territory, and found a shelter for their life and doctrine in those places. Part withdrew into Calabria, and continued there a long while, even to the pontificate of Pius IV. Part passed into Germany, and fixed their abode among the Bohemians, and in Poland and Livonia. Others turning to the west, obtained refuge in Britain.” In short, for the details are too copious to be narrated here, the Iconic Man-Power at length succeeded in its work of carnage and death. It overcame and put to death all opposition to its authority. By the co-operation of the imperial and regal horns of Egyptian and Sodomite Europe, styled “the secular arm,” it trampled the saints of the Holy City under its impious and lawless feet; and prostrated the two sackcloth witnessing prophets in political death. But their anastasis in 1789-’92, when, exactly 1,260 years from Justinian’s decree imparting spiritual supremacy to the pope, they again stood upon their feet (εστησαν επι τους ποδας αύτων) was the death knell of the terrific Image throughout the world. Since that reign of terror the ICONIC MAN became incurably sick. The facies Hippocratica pervades his senile and idiotic countenance; and like his brother of Constantinople, is tottering on the verge of an abyss; into which when he falls, he will receive a measure, heaped up and shaken down, even “double” at the hands of his innocent and unoffending victims, such as in the day of his power, he meted out to them—ch. xiii. 10; xvii. 14; xviii. 6, 20; xv. 2. “Here is the patience of the Saints”—this is what all true and genuine saints believe and are waiting for; and such are they who keep the commandments of the Deity, and the faith of Jesus—ch. xiii. 10; xiv. 12.