Notwithstanding St. John informs us, that five of the heads were fallen when he wrote, thereby plainly shutting them out from having any conpection with the prophecies which he was commissioned to deliver, Mr. Whitaker supposes that the wounded head was not the imperial but the dictatorial head; that it received its deadly wound by a sword when Julius Cesar was assassinated; that it was healed by the establishment of the papal power, which he conceives to be only the Dictatorship revived; and that thus, computing as in the days of St. John, it had been, was not, and yet shall hereafter be-The arguments which Mr. Whitaker brings in support of his opinion, I cannot but think inconclusive-It is unwarrantable to pronounce the Papacy to be the same head as the Dictatorship, merely because the power claimed by the Popes bears some resemblance to that actually possessed by the ancient Dictators. Yet this is the only proof of their identity, adduced by Mr. Whitaker*-The wounded

1

* Even if the resemblance were perfect, which it is not, for the Popes never possessed, though they might claim, the Dictatorial power; still mere resemblance will not constitute identity. "The Pope," says Bp. Newton," is the most perfect likeness "and resemblance of the ancient Roman emperors." Hence, supposing the image of the beast to mean the effigies of the beast, he supposed the Pope to be that image. Yet he never conceived, that this similarity authorized him to say, that the Pope was an Emperor, or that the Papal head was the Imperial head recopered from its deadly wound, so that the Emperorship and the Papacy constituted jointly only one head.

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head

head moreover was a form of government; consequently its deadly wound, whatever the precise nature of that wound may be, must be understood figuratively. We shall therefore wholly depart from the language of symbols, if we suppose that the death of the head means the murder of an individual dictator; to say nothing of the impossibility of shewing how the rise of Popery could heal the literal wounds of Julius Cesar-Lastly, the expression was, is not, and yet is, however commentators may think proper to interpret it, can have no relation to the particular age in which St. John flourished. It is used by the angel, not in speaking of the Roman beast* as he had already been, then was in the days of the Apostle, and was hereafter about to be; but in speaking of him in his revived state, that state in which he ascended out of the sea, that state which is contradistinguished both from his former pagan existence, and his intermediate Christian non-existence in his bestial character. Now the beast revived and ascended out of the sea at the beginning of the 1260 days, or in the year 606. Consequently in the year 606 the beast began to enter upon his new character: his deadly wound was then healed: he received life afresh and all the world wondered after him,

* We may observe moreover that this phrase is not applied to a head of the beast, as Mr. Whitaker's scheme necessarily supposes, but to the beast himself. The mere abolition of the Dictatorship did not make the Roman beast himself cease to be, in any sense of which the words are naturally capable.

as

as they had done previous to his death. He had been: he had ceased to be: and now once more was-Nothing in short, that Mr. Whitaker has said relative to this mysterious phrase, induces me to give up the interpretation of it proposed by Bp. Newton: and, had his Lordship only considered the deuth and the revival of the beast always in the same sense; had he only considered his death by the stroke of the sword to be equivalent to his non-existence, and his living again to be equivalent to his re-existence; I should have had nothing more to do than simply to transcribe his exposition of this part of the prophecy f.

Having now fully considered the death and revival of the beast under his sixth head, I shall proceed to state in a regular chronological series some of the most prominent events, which took place during the time that the beast lay dead, `and after his revival; in order that we may see, whether history will not lead us to some satisfactory explanation of the rise of his last head.

Immediately after the death of Theodosius in the year 395, the Roman empire began to be invaded by the northern barbarians: and, scarcely had their fury exhausted itself, when Rome was attacked from the south, and its strength com

* St. John seems to have first beheld the beast floundering in, the sea with one of his heads wounded to death. Afterwards he beholds him reach the land; and immediately his deadly wound is healed.

+ See Whitaker's Comment. p. 213–216.

pletely

pletely broken, by the Vandals in the year 455Thus debilitated, it still nevertheless preserved the name of an empire till the year 476, when Augustulus was deposed by Odoacer. These rude shocks greatly weakened the Roman empire considered as one grand whole, and diminished its glory: still however it continued to subsist in the East. All the events here enumerated, are predicted, as we have seen, under the four first trumpets. To the kingdom of Odoacer in Italy, succeeded the kingdom of the Ostrogoths in the year 493. This subsisted till the reign of the Eastern emperor Justinian, when it was subverted by the conquests of Bellisarius and Narses, whose arms delivered Rome and Italy from the yoke of the barbarians, and united them once more to the empire. The events, by which so great a revolution was effected, succeeded each other in the following order. Bellisarius, the celebrated lieutenant of Justinian, began his career of victory by recovering from the Goths the African province in the year 533 and 534. His next exploit was the invasion and conquest of Sicily, in the year 535. Shortly after, in the year 537, he entered Italy and reduced Naples. In 536 he made himself master of Rome, which the Goths vainly attempted to take from him. In 539, he subdued the Gothic kingdom of Italy, and took Vitiges, its sovereign, prisoner. Afterwards, during his absence, Rome was again occupied by the Goths; but, in 547, it was once more recovered by him. A third time it was taken by the Goths, in 549; and a third time, in 552,

it was regained by the eastern Romans, under the eunuch Narses. The defeat and death of the last Gothic sovereign of Italy speedily followed: but it was not long ere Narses had to contend with a fresh swarm of northern barbarians. In 553, Italy was invaded by the Franks and Alemans: in 554, they were totally defeated by Narses and the period which elapsed between the years 554 and 568, was occupied in the final settlement of Italy. That country, thus restored to its original masters*, was henceforth administered as a province of the Eastern empire, by an imperial officer, styled, the Exarch of Ravenna: "the remains "of the Gothic nation evacuated the country, " or mingled with the people: and the Franks abandoned, without a struggle, their Italian conquests t."

All these events took place during the time that the beast lay dead, or, as it is otherwise expressed, was not. Consequently, since he revived under the same sixth head that had been mortally wounded, we shall find it a fruitless labour to look during this period for the rise of any power that answers to the description given of the last head.

The Exarchate of Ravenna, though engaged in perpetual struggles with the Lombards, lasted about 170 years, in the course of which time, as

* That part of Italy however, which has since borne the name of Lombardy, was almost immediately wrested from the Eastern Emperors by Alboin and his Lombards. The history of this event has been stated in a preceding chapter.

+ Hist. of Decline and Fall, vol. vii. p. 399.

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