there is for imagining that all government within the precincts of the Roman empire is utterly to be at an end. It seems more reasonable to suppose, that a happy evangelical order of things will suc ceed to the present distracted Popish state of the Roman world. Such being the case, the death of the beast must evidently mean, not the annihilation of all lawful Christian government, not a Jacobinical subversion of the powers that be upon the lawless principles of the frantic fifth-monarchy men in the sixteenth century; but the utter destruction of those detestable maxims and doctrines which constitute his bestiality, which are his very life, which are interwoven even with his existence as a beast, without the profession of which he would not be a beast. This is yet further manifest from the predicted fate of the other beasts. Their lives, or bestial principles, are to be prolonged during the period of the Millennium; though their dominion, or power of injuring the Church is to be taken away: while the Roman beast is to be slain; his principles are to be utterly destroyed, never more to revive; and with the destruction of those principles the dominion of his little horn is to be finally taken away; for all, both governors and governed, will form one congregation of faithful worshippers, one great empire of the saints of the Most High*. Accordingly we find, that the beasts whose lives were prolonged, in other words, the

nations which shall adhere to the vanities of the Gentiles, make a grand attack at the close of the Millennium upon the Church: but, their dominion being now taken away, they entirely fail of success, and are consigned to the same punishment as those that professed and taught the apostate principles of the Roman beast *—The conclusion to be drawn from the preceding view of Daniel's prophecy is this. Since the final death of the Roman beast, there mentioned, means the destruction of his principles, and since the prolongation of the lives of the other beasts means the prolonged existence of their principles; the first death of the Roman beast under his sixth head, mentioned by St. John, must mean (arguing at least from analogy) the destruction of his idolatrous tyranny by the sword of the Spirit, while his revival by the healing of his deadly wound must in a similar manner signify the renewed existence of his idolatrous tyranny. This interpretation is yet further confirmed by the declaration, that the beast in his revived or papally-idolatrous state, and under his last head, should go into perdition, or be utterly destroyed. "A beast, in the prophetic style, as we before observed, is a "tyrannical idolatrous empire: and the Roman

empire was idolatrous under the heathen Empe"C rors; and then ceased to be so for some time "under the Christian Emperors; and then be“eame idolatrous again under the Roman Pontiffs,

* Rev. xx. 8, 9, 10.

<<< and

" and so hath continued ever since. It is the

same idolatrous power revived again, but only "in another form; and all the corrupt part of "mankind, whose names are not inrolled as good " citizens in the registers of heaven, are pleased "at the revival of it: but in this last form it shall go into perdition; it shall not, as it did before, "cease for a time, and revive again, but shall be "destroyed for ever*."

:

I have made this citation with great pleasure from the writings of Bp. Newton, as containing what I believe to be the true explanation of the existence, the non-existence, and the re-existence of the Roman beast. All that his Lordship has said upon, this subject, is excellent, and immediately to the purpose my wonder therefore is, that, after having adopted so judicious and consistent a mode of exposition, he should so completely have departed from it in what he says relative, to the death and revival of the beast under his sixth head. In explaining this part of the prophecy, instead of strictly maintaining the analogy of symbolical language and adhering to the plan of exposition which he himself lays down, he suddenly adopts an entirely new system, and supposes the death of the

beast under his sixth head to mean the subversion of the Western empire, and his revival to mean the rise of the Carlovingian empire. "The sixth head," says he, "was as it were wounded to

* Bp. Newton's Dissert. on Rev. xvii.

P 3

"death,

"death, when the Roman empire was overturned " by the northern nations, and an end was put to "the very name of Emperor in Momyllus Au"gustulus or rather, as the government of the "Gothic kings was much the same as that of the

Emperors, with only a change of the name, this "head was more effectually wounded to death, when Rome was reduced to a poor dukedom, " and made tributary to the Exarchate of Ra"venna-But not only one of his heads was as it "were wounded to death, but his deadly wound

was healed. If it was the sixth head which was "wounded, that wound could not be healed by "the rising of the seventh head, as interpreters "commonly conceive: the same head, which was "wounded, must be healed: and this was effected "by the Pope and people of Rome revolting from "the Exarch of Ravenna, and proclaiming Charles "the great Augustus and Emperor of the Romans. "Here the wounded imperial head was healed "again, and hath subsisted ever since*." This scheme, independent of its manifest violation of that plan of symbolical exposition which the Bishop himself had so justly laid down respecting the existence, the non-existence, and the re-existence, of the beast, is certainly unsupported by history. According to the prophecy, the sixth head, in some sense or another, was to be wounded to death or slain by a sword, and was afterwards to revive.

*Dissert. on Rev. xiii.

But,

1

But, according to the Bishop's explanation, the sixth head was most assuredly not slain in the sense in which he understands the expression. The western branch of the sixth or imperial head was indeed subverted by Odoacer and his mercenaries; but the sixth head itself was not slain (supposing the phrase wounded to death by a sword to mean political subversion), till many ages after. It still subsisted in the person of the Constantinopolitan Emperor; and was not finally slain, or wounded to death (supposing with the Bishop that the phrase means political subversion), till the days of the Turkish horsemen under the second woe. And when at length it was thus finally slain by the arms of the Turks, it has never since revived, nor is it likely to revive. Hence it is manifest, that we must seek for some other mode of explaining the death and revival of the sixth head and I know not any events in its history, which will satisfactorily explain those circumstances in a manner agreeable both to the language of symbols, and to the collateral prediction that the beast should be, should not be, and should be again, except its dying in the quality of a head of the beast by embracing Christianity, and its reviving in the same quality by its relapsing into an idolatrous tyranny the same in nature though not in name as its former idolatróus tyranny while in a pagan state.

The scheme of Mr. Whitaker scems to me to depart yet more widely from symbolical analogy, and to be still less tenable than that of Bp. Newton. Notwith

P 4