China, than the much abused symbol of the cross is of the papal Latin empire-The name then of the beast is Latinus; the number of his name is 666; and his mark, the cross.

With his description of the name of the revived beast the prophet interweaves an intimation of the extreme jealousy with which the ecclesiastical beast should regard every opposition to his authority. All, who refused to

bear the name of Latins or Romans, and to receive the mark of the cross, as badges of their communion with him, and as an acknowledgment of his supremacy, should be allowed neither to buy nor to sell.

No one can be ignorant of the tremendous interdicts and excommunications of the Pope. St. John however does more than merely speak of them in general terms; he points out the precise mode of their operation. Bp. Newton has collected a variety of instances in which the predicted tyranny of the ecclesiastical beast has received even a literal accomplishment. "If any," says

he, "dissent from the stated and authorized forms of the Latin church, they are condemned and excommunicated as heretics; and, in consequence of that, they are no longer suffered to buy or sell they are interdicted from traffic and commerce, and all the benefits of civil society. So Roger Hoveden relates of William the Conqueror, that he was so dutiful to the Pope, that he would not permit any one in his power to buy or sell any thing, whom he found disobedient to the apostolic see. So the canon of the council of Lateran under Pope Alexander the third, made against the Waldenses and Albigenses, injoins upon pain of anathema, that no man presume to entertain or cherish them in his house or land, or exercise traffic with them. The synod of Tours in France under the same Pope orders, under the like intermination, that no man should presume to receive or assist them, no not so much as to hold any communion with them in buying or selling; that, being deprived of the comfort of humanity,* they may be compelled to repent of the error of their

* Such are the convincing arguments used by Papists against those whom they are pleased to style heretics. The same pains and penalties appear to be still attached, to excommunication in Ireland, so far as the Popish priests are able to enforce them.

ways. Pope Martin the fifth, in his bull set out after the council of Constance, commands in like manner, that they permit not the heretics to have houses in their districts, or enter into contracts, or carry on commerce, or enjoy the comforts of humanity with Christians."* The sum then of the whole is this. The two apocalyptic beasts are the two contemporary Roman Empires, temporal and spiritual, each subsisting under its proper head. The last head of the one, under which it will go into perdition, is its double head, the patricio-imperial line of the Carlovingian Emperors: the sole head of the other is the line of Popes from the year 606, when the saints were formally given into the hand of the little horn, and when the period of 1260 days commenced. These two Empires mutually support each other in their joint tyrannical persecution of the witnesses; and are primarily, though unconsciously, influenced in their proceedings by the infernal serpent.

In order that the close connection of the two empires may the more evidently appear, St. John gives us a complete double, though united, symbol of them both, as they stand leagued together till their final destruction under the last vial at the termination of the 1260 years.

"And there came unto me one of the seven angels, which had the seven vials, and talked with me, saying unto me, Come hither; I will shew unto thee the judgment of the great whore, that sitteth upon many waters: with whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and the inhabiters of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication. So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness; and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand, full of abominations and filth

In the debate in the house of Lords (May 10th 1805.) on what has been insidiously termed the catholic emancipation, Lord Redesdale publicly declared, that he knew a protestant gentleman, who had saved an unfortunate man under a popish sentence of excommunication from starving in the streets.

. Bp. Newton's Dissert. on Rev. xiii.

ness of her fornication. And upon her forehead was a name, written, Mystery, Babylon the great, the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth. And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus: and, when I saw her, I wondered with great admiration."

Here again we behold the great secular Roman beast seven-headed and ten-horned, now represented as closely leagued with a mystic harlot, in the same manner as he was before connected with the two-horned beast. The reason is this a harlot is only another symbol of an apostate idolatrous church: both the woman and the second beast equally typify the spiritual empire of the Papacy. In the former symbol, Popery was described as the co-adjutor and instigator of the temporal beast: in the present symbol, it is represented in the plenitude of its power riding triumphantly upon the neck of kings, and exalting its authority far above that of its secular colleague.*

The great whore is said to sit upon many waters-These waters are explained by the angel to mean peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues. The sitting therefore of the whore upon many waters is precisely equivalent to her sitting upon the beast; for the beast symbolizes the divided Roman empire, and consequently all the waters or nations which it comprehends.

She is the whore, with whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and with whose infatuating cup all their subjects have been intoxicated-The kings of the earth are the kings within the precincts of the Roman earth or empire; and the fornication, which they have committed with the whore, is spiritual fornication, or an idolatrous apostacy from the simplicity of the Gospel. As the kings or horns of the secular beast supported with all their might the corruptions of the whore, so were their

The construction of this compound hieroglyphic furnishes another argument, in addition to those already adduced, to prove that the ten-borned beast cannot be the Papacy. The barlot is evidently a distinct power from the beast upon which she rides. But the barlut is the Papacy. Therefore the beast cannot be the Papacy likewise. It is not unworthy of observation, that the love of system has actually led some commentators to assert expressly, that the beast is the same as bis rider. “I dem Antichristus per mulierem et per bestiam spectandus producitur." Pol. Synop. in loc.

subjects made drunk with her poisonous doctrines. None escaped, but the two mystic witnesses: and their refusal to partake of the wine of her fornication was the cause of all the persecution which they endured both from the kings and from the inhabitants of the Roman earth, who had tasted of her maddening cup.

The place, where St. John beheld the whore riding upon her scarlet beast, was the wilderness-He saw the woman, once the chaste spouse of Christ, now polluted with spiritual fornication, and preferring the wilderness of error, sin, and delusion, to her former appointed place the inclosed vineyard of the Church. He saw her, so far from testifying any shame on account of her adulteries, glorying and triumphing with the brazen front of a determined strumpet in her manifold abominations. He saw her advancing yet another step in iniquity; and, instead of possessing the comparative innocence of resting satisfied with her own whoredoms alone, labouring to make proselytes to her fornications, tyrannizing over the struggling conscience of the irresolute, and "drunken with the blood of the saints and martyrs of Jesus." When he saw a church of Christ thus fallen from her high estate, thus apostate, thus corrupted, thus persecuting the faithful with even more bitterness than pagan Rome; well might he wonder with exceeding great admiration. To a primitive believer the thing would seem as it were impossible; and St. John, who doubtless like the other prophets fully understood the general meaning of his own symbolical language, was probably at a loss to conceive how his prediction could ever be accomplished in a professed church of his meek and lowly master.†

Upon the forehead of the whore was written, Mystery, Babylon the great, the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth-Hence we may conclude, that Babylon was not her real, but only her mystic, name. Accordingly, when the angel teaches St. John "the mystery of

* Isaiah v. xxvii.

St. John with the books of the ancient prophets before him could not but know, that a bariot was the type of an apostate and idolatrous church. The days of Aholah and Aholibamah were now past; Israel was no longer the church of the Lord. St. John therefore would be certain, that the scarlet whore must mean some future Christian church: hence naturally arose his great admiration. See Ezek. xvi, and xxiii.

the woman, and of the beast that carrieth her," he explicitly informs him, that "the woman, which he saw, is that great city which reigneth over the kings of the earth." This great city however can be nothing but the empire of Rome. Pagan Rome it cannot be in the days of the harlot; because pagan Rome was rather the learner than the teacher of idolatry. If then it be not pagan Rome, it must be papal Rome. This point is yet further evident from the manner, in which the angel speaks of the ten kings. He tells the prophet, that they had not received their kingdom as yet, but should receive power along with the beast in one apocalyptic season: and he adds, that they should give their power and strength to the revived beast; or, in other words, that they should be the secular beast's engines of persecution,* and should uphold with all their might the new system of idolatry, by the establishment of which the beast, that was not, ascended afresh out of the bottomless pit. The ten kings therefore, who were yet future in the days of St. John and who erected their thrones upon the ruins of the ancient empire, who first gave their power to the beast and who afterwards should hate the whore their former paramour, have manifestly been contemporary, not with pagan, but with papal, Rome: the whore therefore cannot be pagan, but must be pupal, Rome.†

Thus it appears, that this grand compound hieroglyphic of the woman and her beast represents the whole of the great city which reigneth over the kings of the earth; the woman symbolizing its spiritual empire, and her beast symbolizing its temporal empire: that is to say, this complete hieroglyphic exhibits to us at one view the two co-existing Roman empires, which the prophet had before described separately under the symbols of two friendly contemporary beasts, leagued together for the purpose of erecting both a civil and an ecclesiatical

"It was given unto him (the secular beast) to make war with the saints, and to overcome them." (Rev. xiii. 7.) This he did, at the instigation indeed of the second beast, but through the instrumentality of his own ten horns.

+ The reader will find the whole character of the harlot excellently elucidated by Bp. Newton in his Dissertation upon this part of the Apocalypse.