in the German princes, who were willing to preserve the forms of constitution, the power and vigour of which they had destroyed.-See Robertson's Introduction to his History of Charles V. Before the dissolution of the empire, in 1806, Germany "presented a complex association of principalities, more or less powerful, and more or less connected, with a nominal sovereignty in the emperor, as its supreme feudal chief." There were about three hundred princes of the empire, each sovereign in his own country, and might enter into alliances, and pursue, by all political measures, his own private interest, as other sovereigns do; for, if even an imperial war were declared, he might remain neuter, if the safety of the empire were not at stake.

Here then was an empire of a construction, without exception, the most singular and intricate that ever appeared in the world; for the emperor was only the chief of the Germanic confederation. Germany was, therefore, speaking in the figurative language of Scripture, a country abounding in hills, or containing an immense number of distinct principalities. But the different German States, (as has been before observed,) did not each possess an equal share of power and influence; some were more eminent than others. Among them there were also a few which might, with the greatest propriety, be denominated mountains, or states possessing a very high degree of political importance. But the seven mountains on which the woman sits must have their elevations above all the other eminences in the whole Latin world; consequently, they can be no

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other than the seven electorates of the German empire. These were, indeed, mountains of vast eminence; for in their sovereigns was vested the sole power of electing the head of the empire. But this was not all; for, besides the power of electing an emperor, the electors had a right to capitulate with the new head of the empire, to dictate the conditions on which he was to reign, and to depose him if he broke those conditions. They actually deposed Adolphus of Nassau in 1298, and Wenceslaus in 1400. They were sovereign and independent princes in their respective dominions, had the privilegium de non appellando illimitatum, that of making war, coining, and exercising every act of sovereignty; they formed a separate college in the diet of the empire, and had among themselves a particular covenant, or league, called Kur verein; they had precedence of all the other princes of the empire, and even ranked with kings. The head of the beast, understood in this way, is one of the finest emblems of the German constitution which can possibly be conceived; for as the Roman empire of Germany had the precedence of all the other monarchies of which the Latin empire was composed, the seven mountains very fitly denote the seven PRINCIPAL powers of what has been named the Holy Roman empire. And, also, as each electorate, by virtue of its union with the Germanic body, was more powerful than any other Roman Catholic state of Europe, not so united; so was each electorate, in the most proper sense of the word, one of the highest elevations in the Latin world. The time when the seven electorates of the empire were first instituted, is

very uncertain. The most probable opinion appears to be that which places their origin sometime in the thirteenth century. The uncertainty, however, in this respect, does not in the least weaken the evidence of the mountains being the seven electorates, but rather confirms it; for, as we have already observed, the representation of the woman sitting upon the beast, is a figure of the Latin church in the period of her greatest authority, spiritual and temporal; this we know did not take place before the commencement of the fourteenth century, a period subsequent to the institution of the seven electorates. Therefore the woman sits upon the seven mountains, or the German empire in its elective aristocratical state: she is said to sit upon them, to denote that she has the whole German empire under her direction and authority, and also that it is her chiet support and strength. Supported by Germany, she is under no apprehension of being successfully opposed by any other power: : she sits upon the seven mountains, therefore she is higher than the seven highest eminences of the Latin world; she must therefore, have the secular Latin empire under her complete subjection. But this state of eminence did not continue above two or three centuries: the visible declension of the papal power in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries occasioned partly by the removal of the papal see from Rome to Avignon, and more particularly by the great schism from 1377 to 1417, though considered one of the remote causes of the Reformation, was at first the means of merely transferring the supreme power from the pope to a general council, while the dominion of

the Latin church remained much the same. At the Council of Constance, March 30, 1415, it was decreed "that the synod being lawfully assembled in the name of the Holy Ghost, which constituted the general council, and represented the whole Catholic church militant, had its power immediately from Jesus Christ; and that every person, of whatsoever state or dignity, even the pope himself, is obliged to obey it in what concerns the faith, the extirpation of schism, and the general reformation of the church in its head and members." The council of Basil, of 1432, decreed, "that every one of whatever dignity or condition, not excepting the pope himself, who shall refuse to obey the ordinances and decrees of this general council, or any other, shall be put under penance, and punished. It is also declared that the pope has no power to dissolve the general council without the consent and decree of the assembly."-See the third Tome of Du Pin's Ecclesiastical History. But what gave the death-blow to the temporal sovereignty of the Latin church was the light of the glorious Reformation, which first broke out in Germany in 1517; and in a very few years gained its way not only over several of the great principalities of Germany, but was also made the established religion of other popish countries. Consequently, in the sixteenth century the woman no longer sat upon the seven mountains, the electorates not only having refused to be ruled by her, but some of them having also despised and abandoned her doctrines. The changes, therefore, which were made in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries in the number of the

The seven

electorates, will not affect in the least the interpretation of the seven mountains already given. electors were the archbishops of Mentz, Cologne, and Triers, the count palatine of the Rhine, the duke of Saxony, the marquis of Brandenburgh, and the king of Bohemin. But the heads of the beast have a double signification, for the angel says,

Verse 10. And there are seven kings-Before it was said, they are seven mountains; here, they are also seven kings, which is a demonstration that kingdoms are not here meant by mountains; and this is a further argument that the seven electorates are represented by seven mountains, for though the sovereigns of these states ranked with kings, they were not kihgs; that is to say, they were not absolute and sole lords of the territories they possessed, independently of the emperor; for their states formed a part of the Germanic body. But the seven heads of the beast are also seven kings; that is to say, the Latin empire has had seven supreme forms of government; for king is used in the prophetical writings for any supreme governor of a state or people, as is evident from Deut. xxxiii. 5. where Moses is called a king. Of these seven kings, or supreme forms of Latin government, the angel informs St John.

Five are fallen and one is— -It is well known that the first form of Latin government was that of kings, which continued after the death of Latinus 428 years, till the building of Rome, B. C. 758. After Numitor's decease, the Albans or Latins, instituted the form of a republic, and were governed by dictators. We have M*