faithful to the commands of his colleague, immediately assumed this badge and ere long, throughout France alone, there were slain of the Reformed, according to Vitringa, ten hundred thousand men.

The childish superstition, to which the sign of the cross has been prostituted, is scarcely less notorious. On this the Rubric of the Roman Missal will be the best commentary. In consecrating the baptismal water, the priest is directed to divide it, in the form of a cross, with his extended hand, which he is immediately to wipe with a cloth. Afterwards he is again to touch the water with his hand next he is to make three crosses upon the font: and then he is to divide the water with his hand, pouring it out, cross-wise, to the four parts of the world. Having duly gone through this process, muttering all the while in such a manner as not to be heard by the byestanders, he is to change his voice, and recite a short prayer in the tone of reading. The prayer being ended, he breathes three times upon the water in the form of a cross; and then, resuming the low muttering tone of his former incantation, he drops a little wax into the water. Thrice he drops this wax into the water, and thrice he takes it out; blowing, at its last immersion, three times upon the water in the cruciform figure of the Greek letter Psi. Lastly, he mixes oil and cream with the water, moving his hand to and fro in the shape of a cross; and the consecrated commixtio, as it is termed, is thought to be then duly prepared for the administration of the sacrament of baptisın. Nor is the cross used in this absurdly superstitious manner throughout the initiatory rite of Christianity alone. Holy eggs and holy candles, holy salt and holy water, go through a somewhat similar ceremony; and are marked, in a similar manner, with the sign of the cross. Nay, even when not immediately engaged in performing the rites of his multifarious adoration, let a Papist be assailed either by natural or supernatural terrors, and he will forthwith almost mechanicaltorum injunxit, ut se cruce signarent ad hanc pestem extirpandum." (Matt. Paris. Hist. Mag. Angl. p. 241. cited by Mr. Sharpe.) This same badge of the cross will probably be again assumed in the last boly war, undertaken by the beast and the false prophet, seemingly against the protestants and the Jews. (Rev. xix. 19, 20.) Of this war more will be said hereafter.

ly commence the operation of crossing himself in various parts of his body.*

Such is the wonderful accuracy of the whole prophecy respecting both the name and the mark of the beastThough the ancient Romans called themselves Latins, yet they were better known by the appellation of Romans. When the Empire was divided, both the eastern and the western members of it still denominated themselves Romans; but, for the sake of distinction, its western branch was henceforth styled the Latin empire, and its eastern branch the Greek empire. The revived beast however, "that was, and is not, and yet is," is in a special manner, under his last head, the Latin empire: and it is the peculiar name of this identical revived beast, which (the prophet tells us) comprehends the number 666. Now the peculiar name of that beast is Latinus: and Latinus exactly contains the number 666. Can we doubt then of Latinus being the name intended by St. John?-As for the mark of the beast, which I conceive to be the cross, this mark, no less than the name Latinus, is peculiar to the beast that is, or the papal Roman empire, as contradistinguished from the beast that was, or the pagan Roman empire. The ancient Roman beast despised the cross : but the revived Roman or Latin beast made it his peculiar badge not only in religious but civil matters, introducing it into his standards, blazoning it in the armorial bearings of many of his great men,† and displaying it upon the crowns of all his ten horns; insomuch that the crescent is not more the mark of Turkey, or the dragon of

Missal. Roman, edit. Plantin, p. 273-285. Cited by Mr. Sharpe. Mrs. Bowdler thinks, that the name of blasphecy, which she supposes to mean apostacy, and which St. John beheld written upon the heads of the beast, is the mark in question. I am far from disliking her idea; and many may very probably prefer it to that, which I have adopted from Sir Isaac Newton. According to this interpretation, none are permitted to buy or sell except those who are implicated in the predicted blasphemy or apostacy with which the man of sin has tainted the Latin empire. Practical Observ. on the Rev. p. 35.

"That, which made this ordinary so considerable, and so frequently used in heraldry, was the ancient expeditions into the Holy land, and the holy war : for the pilgrims, after their pilgrimage, took the cross for their cognizance, and the ensign of that war was the cross; and therefore these expeditions were called Croissades. In these wars, the Scots carried St. Andrew's cross; the French, a cross argent; the English a cross or; the Germans, sable; the Italians, azure; the Spaniards, gules,” Guillim's Heraldry, p. 51.

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, be allowed neither to buy nor to sell.

should

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 filthi

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. xijį.

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 barlot 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.