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expressed it, for the Antichrist?' At the very beginning of his career, who were the first solemn asserters before their prince and people, of the Pope being God's Vicar? The Romish Clergy in Council.2 And what was the language of the Monks, almost as early, respecting him? "The monks," says Mosheim on the 7th Century," who from their supposed sanctity had the greatest influence with the multitude, held up the Pope to their veneration even as a God."3 Again, in the middle age, who were the patrons and administrators of the Canon Law, which similarly deified the Pope, but the Clergy, alike secular and regular? And similarly in the 16th century, and afterwards, the Jesuits ?5-It is the testimony of almost all the ecclesiastical history of Western Christendom, that the Papal Hierarchy and Clergy did for the most part unite in this predicted object, to make the Roman earth and its inhabitants worship him whom the first Beast or its governing Head symbolized; i. e. the PAPAL ANTICHRIST, ruling over PAPAL CHRISTENdom.—So in the general. A particular and most notable illustration of the same use of their influence is to follow in the next Chapter.

1 See p. 164, Note, suprà.

2 See p. 133 suprà.

Mosh. vii. 2. 2. 3; "Monachi non secus ac Deum Romanum Pontificem imperitæ multitudini commendabant." As an early example, see the famous Wilfrid's language about the Pope, given Note 4, p. 171 suprà. For a specimen of the middle age, hear St. Bernard. "Tu princeps episcoporum, tu hæres apostolorum, tu primatu Abel, gubernatu Noe, patriarchatu Abraham, ordine Melchisedech, dignitate Aaron, auctoritate Moyses, judicatu Samuel, potestate Petrus, unctione Christus." De Consid. ii. 8.-Or again hear the later orator of the 4th Session of the 5th Lateran Council (one whom I have before cited, Vol. ii. p. 79;) "Tu denique alter Deus in terris." Hard. ix. 1651.-Did not the second Beast direct the Roman earth to the worship of the first Beast?

4 See p. 152, Note

suprà.

5 See Mosheim xvii. § 2. 1. 1. 34. "The Jesuits," says he, "have turned the Roman Pontiff into a terrestrial Deity, and put him almost on an equal footing with the divine Saviour :"-Adding: "It may be easily proved that the Jesuits did no more in this than to propagate the doctrines as they found them to have been before the Reformation." See for a practical exemplification the case of

Tetzel, described Vol. ii. p. 66.

CHAPTER VII.

THE IMAGE OF THE BEAST.

"AND he deceiveth them that dwell on the earth, by (means of) those miracles which it was given him to do before the Beast :'-saying to them that dwell on the earth that they should make an Image to (or for) the Beast which had the wound by a sword, and did live. And it was given him to give breath2 unto the Image of the Beast: so that the Image of the Beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the Image of the Beast should be killed."-Apoc.

xiii. 14, 15.

From the difficulties and ill success of commentators in the explanation of the IMAGE OF THE BEAST here spoken of, it has been called by Vitringa (and the statement been repeated by other expositors) the Crux Commentatorum. To the solution now to be offered the

& εδόθη αυτῷ ποιησαι ενώπιον του θηρίου.

2

πνευμα.

1 σημεία 3 Woodhouse notes this from Vitringa. And certainly the unsatisfactoriness of all previous solutions that I have seen of the Beast's Image seems to me very obvious.

With that of Bossuet, or other Romanists,* who make the first or ten-horned Beast to signify the Pagan persecuting Roman Empire and Emperors, I have of course little concern; being convinced, (and this, I trust it has been shown, on the clearest evidence,) that that Beast is Rome Papal, not Rome Pagan. Nor indeed, even were we to waive all such preliminary objection, would they be able to make out, on this their hypothesis, any satisfactory explanation of the symbol before us.†

As to Protestant Commentators that concur (though with minor differences) in viewing the first Beast as the Papal Antichristian Empire, some, as Pareus and Fuber, explain the Beast's Image of the images of saints set up in Papal churches for worship: it being so called, says Mr. Faber, not as depicting the Beast, but as his property. But is such a representative figuration likely, or

* A few Protestant Commentators, as Dr. Keith, take the same view of the first Beast. Dr. K. himself seems to have been partly led to this view by the singular oversight of construing the word before, (" exerciseth all the power of the first Beast before him,") of which the Greek is evanov, to signify before in respect of time.

E. g. to explain the statement of the Image of the Beast being made to speak, &c., the Bishop of Meaux makes it signify the images of the Gods, not that of the Pagan Emperors, who in his view were meant by the Beast.

same objections will, I believe, in no wise apply.-It seems clear to me, as to Vitringa, that as the two Beasts are symbolic, and not to be literally interpreted, there must also attach a figurative, not literal interpretation to the Image of the Beast. And I purpose to explain it, thus figuratively, of the PAPAL GENERAL COUNCILS of Western Europe:' not doubting to shew fully and

suitable? Or is the appellation fitting; and that the representative of the pictured Saints and Virgins throughout Christendom should bear the title of the Beast's Image? Further, could it be said that the Pope and papal Clergy, which these Expositors in common with myself suppose to have been symbolized by the second Beast, either induced the people to fabricate it, or that they caused any representative saints' image to speak to the effect that the rejecters of their worship should be put to death?

On the other hand, Mede, Lowman, Bishop Newton, Scott, and others, explain it of the Pope, as being made the idol of the Romish Church, and an object of worship to Christendom. "Quem creant," they say, borrowing the legend of the famous medal struck by Martin V on his election, "adorant." But how can the Pope be the Image of the first Beast, when he is explained by them to be (if not the Head of both Beasts) at least the Head of the second Beast?

To Mr. Cuninghame's solution,—who, with Dr. Cressener agreeing, explains it of the corrupt Roman Church,-it seems similarly a sufficient objection that it makes the Image of the Beast to signify the same thing precisely as the symbolic Harlot Mother and Babylon the Great, described in the xviith Chapter. Besides how is this an Image of Papal Christendom?-To Vitringa's solution, who explains it of the Inquisition, there is the similar answer,-that the Inquisition could not properly be represented as an Image of Papal Anti-Christendom, or of the Papal Antichrist.

Osiander makes it the Pope's word and doctrine. "Sicut imago Dei est verbum Dei, ita imago Papatûs est verbum et doctrina Papæ. Sedet enim in templo Dei, ostendens seipsum tanquam Deum. Quare et in hoc Deum imitatur quòd verbum et doctrinam è suo cerebro gignit ad imaginem suam. Cùm igitur doctrina Papatûs, quem ipsi pseudo-doctores docent, duplex sit, scilicet fidei et morum, necessario compilati sunt duo libri, scil. Liber Sententiarum et Liber Decretalium, qui sunt ipsissima imago Papatus."-But how were the people of Christendom the makers of this image?

"What the image of the Beast is, distinct from the Beast itself, I confess I know not."-So Doddridge, quoted by Mr. Bicheno, in his Signs of the Times, p.36. With regard to Patristic Commentators I may just mention that both Augusline and Primasius explain the Beast's Image of the hypocritical semblance of religion in the antichristian body, (" illa impia civitas et populus infidelium,") signified by the ten horned Beast. Imago ejus simulatio eorum qui fidem profitentur, et infideliter vivunt."

1 This solution was first given by me in a Pamphlet on the Image of the Beast, printed in 1837; and of which the present Chapter is the substance, though remodelled and somewhat altered in detail.-At the time of giving it to the Printer I was not aware of the solution having occurred before to any other Author; but was surprized to find that he had at the very time, nearly ready for publication, a Treatise on the Image by the Rev. F. Fysh, grounded on the same general view as my own. I also learned afterwards from Vitringa, that the learned Cocceius had long before suggested the ecclesia representativa as the thing signified. But whether by this he may have meant the Church represented in Councils, I know not; not having the opportunity of reference to his works.

It may be right to add that I have made a point of not reading Mr. Fysh's Treatise; so that the two testimonies may be considered altogether independent.

satisfactorily respecting them the two points following, points which involve evidently all that is required: viz. 1st, that these Papal Councils answered completely to the symbol of an IMAGE of the ten-horned Apocalyptic Wild Beast, that is, of the Papal Antichristendom and Antichrist: 2ndly, that the Papal Hierarchy and Clergy acted out, in and with regard to them, whatsoever the two-horned lamb-personating Beast (or false Prophet) is here said to have done in, and with regard to, the Image of the Beast.

1st. The PAPAL GENERAL COUNCILS of WESTERN EUROPE answer to the symbol of an IMAGE OF THE TEN-HORNED BEAST; i. e. of PAPAL ANTI-CHRISTENDOM AND THE PAPAL ANTICHRIST.

This follows immediately, as we shall presently see, from the representative nature of these Church Councils. For, let us consider for a moment their original character and constitution. The account is thus given by Gibbon. "Towards the end of the 2nd century, the churches of Greece and Asia adopted the useful institution of Provincial Synods. They may justly be supposed to have borrowed the model of a representative Council from the celebrated examples of their own country,-the Amphictyons, the Achæan league, or the assemblies of the Ionian cities. It was soon established as a custom and a law, that the Bishops of the independent churches should meet in the capital of the province at the stated periods of spring and autumn. These deliberations were assisted by the advice of a few distinguished presbyters, and moderated by the presence of a listening multitude. Their Decrees, which were called Canons, regulated every important controversy of faith and discipline."-The conjunction of presbyters with bishops," in the Provincial Councils of which Gibbon speaks, rendered them the more fully and fitly a representation of the clerical or sacred class: and the then popular election of the Bishops,3

1 Gibb. ii. 324.

2 See Bingham, ii. 19. 12.

3 See on this Mosheim, ii. 2. 2. 1, and Waddington, Hist. of Church, p. 23.

-yet more than the attendance of " the listening multitude," of the lay members of the Church also. So that, on the scale of the province or diocese, the Council constituted, as Tertullian long before Gibbon called it, the very representation of the whole constituent Christian body; "ipsa representatio totius nominis Christiani.”2 -After the establishment of Christianity by Constantine there were assembled, on a vastly larger scale, General Councils, formed of Bishops, similarly elected,3 from all the provinces of the Empire, still with certain Presbyters conjoined ; and which thus similarly constituted a virtual representation of the Catholic or Universal Christian Church and body,5 habitant in the Roman world.-Of these there were held seven or eight in the Eastern Empire, in the course of the 4th and four following centuries, before the final and total separation of the Greek and Latin Churches; all under the sanction and protection of the Greek or Eastern Emperors. And there were held twelve afterwards in Western Christendom, in the course of the four centuries intervening from A. D. 1123 to 1545; all under the sanction and presidency of the

1 Gibbon refers to the Council of Carthage at which there attended "maxima pars plebis." 2 De Jejun. Cap. xiii. Daubuz, 330. 3 It was not till the 5th or 6th century, I believe, that this popular character of the election of bishops was changed. Those of Ambrose, Martin of Tours, and Paulinus, are well known examples of the custom remaining in force in the 4th century. In the 6th, 7th, and 8th, the Kings of the West took the election of Bishops very much into their own hands. See Waddington, pp. 160, 161.

4 Bingham, ii. 19. 13.-Dean Waddington says, p. 216, that in the General Councils of the 4th and 5th centuries, bishops alone attended; and no presbyters, except as representatives of absent bishops. But I think this is said somewhat too absolutely. In the subscriptions to the General Councils of Constantinople, of Chalcedon, and the 2nd of Nice, there appear a few presbyters' names without notification of their being deputies of bishops. This is observed by Bingham.In a General Council the bishops thus sometimes in subscription marked their representative character, ύπερ εμαυτου και της ὑπ' εμε Συνόδου. So in the 6th Council. Hard. iii. 1441.

5 "The term catholic was applied to the Church, as comprising the whole body of believers throughout the world, as early as the middle of the 2nd century, and perhaps much earlier." Burton's Hist. of Church, p. 424. So Mosheim, speaking of the first Council of Nice. The word church, let it be observed, was not then restricted to mean the clergy, or church-officers, only.

6 Viz. the Councils of Nice, A. D. 325, Constantinople 381, Ephesus 431, Chalcedon 451, 2nd and 3rd of Constantinople 556 and 681, 2nd of Nice 787, 4th of Constantinople, A. D. 870.

7 Viz. the four Lateran General Councils, A. D. 1123, 1139, 1179, 1215 respectively; two of Lyons, A. D. 1245, 1274; that of Vienne 1311, of Pisa 1409,

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