cardinals on the very altar, and in the midst of the temple, of the Lord of hosts.*

Bp. Newton's Dissert. xxii. 3. The other divine titles, by which that man of sin, the apostate Bishop of Rome, suffers himself to be hailed, are Our most Holy Lord; Our Lord God the Pope; bis divine Majesty; the victorious God and man in his see of Rome; Deus optimus maximus and Vice-God; named God by the pious emperor Constantine, and adored as God by that emperor; the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world; the most boly who carrieth the most holy. (Whitaker's Comment. p. 304.) Lord Lyttelton observes of the age of Henry II. that "those times thought it no blasphemy to give to the Pope the honour of God;" and he instances it in a curious letter of the turbulent Becket Archbishop of Canterbury, wherein he implores the aid of the Pope in phrases of Scripture appropriated to God. Rise, Lord, and delay no longer; let the light of thy countenance shine upon me; save us for we perish; not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ make unto thyself a great name." (Ibid. p. 302, 303.) A singular story is told by Baronius respecting the idolatry thus paid to the person of the Bishop of Rome. In the year 1162, “when Pope Alexander made his first entrance into Montpellier, among the Christian nobility that attended him on his way in a solemn procession there was a Saracen prince or emir, who reverently came up to him, and kissed his feet, he being on horseback then knelt down before him, and bowing his head adored him as the holy and good God of the Christians. He does not tell us, that Alexander in any manner reproved him for his blasphemous error; but, on the contrary, takes notice that he shewed him extraordinary kindness: and adds, that all who saw it, were filled with great admiration, and applied to the Pope the words of the prophet David: All the kings of the earth shall worship him, and all nations shall serve him. Thus, in that age of igno rance and credulity did superstition even deify the Bishop of Rome: but it is a still more shocking impiety, that a learned cardinal, who lived in the 17th century, should relate such a fact without expressing the least disapprobation of it; nay, rather with an air of complacency and applause." (Ibid. p. 273, 274.) "Even to this day the Romanists continue the blasphemous practice of calling the Pope the Lord God, as appears from a confession of faith found in the pocket of a priest during the late rebellion in Ireland, and reported by Sir R. Musgrave." (Ibid. p. 357.) In short, the sentiments which the Romanists entertain of their idol the Pope, and the manner, in which he speaks great words by the side of the Most High, affecting an equality with God, are shewn very remarkably by a print in the Roman Breviary published by the authority of the council of Trent, and printed at Antwerp in the year 1698. In this print, which is placed opposite to p. 413. of the Breviary, "there is a representation of heaven opened to full view, in which, seated upon a cloud, appeareth the Pope with his triple crown upon his head. The Pope's head is irradiated with a triangular, not a circular, glory (expressive no doubt of the Trinity in Unity ;) the dove is hovering over the heads of him and our Saviour, but more inclined toward the Pope. The Pope sits upright upon the globe of the earth, with his feet full upon it. Our Saviour is seated upon bis right hand, pushed as it were from off the earth, whereby be is obliged to sit sideways in order to reach bis feet to it; and round our Saviour's head is only a small circular glory. Beneath, on one side, next to our Saviour in heaven, is the Virgin Mary, whom the Pope deifies upon earth, praying to her. Next to the Virgin Mary is represented St. Peter; and close by him, upon a level, is St. Paul sitting and leaning upon a sword. In the middle are little Cherubim, and behind them a palm-bearing company. On the right hand is a smaller group of palm-bearers, seeming employed in carrying messages. Beneath, on the earth, are represented warriors on the one hand, and on the other the elders of their church. In the middle standeth one bearing a palm, conversing with another before whom the triple crown is placed, deeply shaded, and only a few rays of light descend upon the top of it. This is the political representation of the idol of Rome, the Pope, in the plenitude of his power, as given to its votaries, and authorized by the council of Trent, and confirmed by several Popes of Rome." Burton's Essay on the numbers of Daniel and St. John; Supplement; p. 96, 97.

...........

6. The little horn thought to change times and lawslaws— So the Popes have perpetually changed the calender by the canonization of new saints, and have departed from the original simplicity of the Gospel by the introduction of an infinite number of superstitious laws and observances; "instituting new modes of worship, imposing new articles of faith, enjoining new rules of practice, and reversing at pleasure the laws both of God and man." They have even dared to strike the second commandment out of the decalogue, because it so plainly reproved them for their multifarious idolatry. In short, "the wisest and most impartial of the Roman catholic writers do not only acknowledge, but are even at pains to demonstrate, that from the times of Louis the meek, who died in the year 840, the ancient rules of ecclesiastical government were gradually changed in Europe by the counsels of the court of Rome, and new laws substituted in their placet."

7. The little horn was to wear out the saints of the Most High, who were to be given into his hand by a formal grant of the secular power during the space of three years and a half, or 1260 prophetic days; that is to say, during the same space of time, that the two apocalyptic witnesses were to prophesy in sackcloth, and the persecuted Church was to be nourished in the wilderness.‡Accordingly, when the Pope was constituted Universal Bishop and Supreme head of the Church by the grant of the tyrant Phocas, the saints of God were delivered into his hand and placed under his control. They were no longer, as in the primitive Church, subject, and that for conscience sake and for the real edification of their souls, only to their respective diocesans: but they were now made the spiritual vassals of the man of sin, and were in consequence of it soon reduced by him to a state of worse than Egyptian bondage. By the instrumentality of the secular beast,§ he has already, for by far the greater part of the predicted period, incessantly persecuted and worn out (so far as this present life is concerned)

* See Mosheim's Eccles. Hist. Vol. iii. p. 260-264.

↑ Zouch on Prophecy, p. 51.

Rev. xi. 3. xii. 6. § Rev. xiii. 5, 7.

those faithful servants of God, who protested against his corruptions, and refused to partake of his idolatries. These persecutions indeed, like the more ancient persecutions of Paganism, have not always been universal, nor have they always raged with equal violence; they have been moreover greatly checked by the influence of the Reformation, and by the consequent waning of the Papal power: nevertheless the witnesses are still more or less prophesying in sackcloth; they are still, throughout popish countries, in a degraded and humbled state; and in this state they will continue, in one part or other of the world, to the end of the 42 months."

8. Lastly, the little horn was to subdue or depress three out of the ten kings; or, as it appears from the corresponding action of the symbols, three of the first ten horns were to be eradicated before it-Respecting the interpretation of this part of the prophecy, I am compelled to differ both from Mr. Mede, and from Sir Isaac and Bp. Newton.

Mr. Mede, who may justly be styled the father of prophetic interpretation, supposes, that the three symbolical horns which appeared to Daniel to be plucked up by the roots before the little horn, were those whose dominions extended into Italy, and so stood in the light of the little horn. First, that of the Greeks, whose emperor Leo Isaurus for the quarrel of image worship he excommunicated, and made his subjects of Italy revolt from

The indulgences, which the French protestants have obtained under the present usurper, are evidently granted merely upon a political principle. The Capets persecuted them, and therefore Buonaparte favours them. It remains however to be seen, what he will do when he shall once have firmly established himself. His late restoration of popery as a convenient engine of state, and his total disregard of every obligation moral and religious, shew plainly that the protestants will be protected only so long as it suits his interest. In the eyes of a tyrant, a refusal to worship the image which he has set up will probably be considered as a secret mark of disaffection, though it may not be convenient for him immediately to notice this want of compliance on the part of the protestants.

-- Incedunt per ignes

Suppositos cineri doloso.

In this particular Mr. Mede seems to me to be perfectly right. The three borns were to fall "before the little born," or in bis immediate presence: hence they cannot have been plucked up any where but in Italy. Their dominions however were not merely to "extend into Italy," an expression which implies that the borns themselves were seated out of Italy; but the sovereignty itself of the three horns must have been fixed in that country.

their allegiance. Secondly, that of the Longobards, (successors to the Ostrogoths) whose kingdom he caused by the aid of the Franks to be wholly ruined and extirpated, thereby to get the exarchate of Ravenna (which since the revolt from the Greeks the Longobards were seized on) for a patrimony to St. Peter. Thirdly the kingdom of the Franks itself, continued in the empire of Germany; whose emperors from the days of Henry the fourth he excommunicated, deposed, and trampled under his feet, and never suffered to live in rest, till he had made them not only to quit their interest in the election of Popes and investiture of Bishops, but that remainder of jurisdiction also in Italy, wherewith together with the Roman name he had once infeoffed their predecessors. These were the kings, by displanting, or (as the Vulgar hath) humbling, of whom the Pope got elbow room by degrees; and advanced himself to that height of temporal majesty and absolute greatness, which made him so terrible in the world."*

Sir Isaac and Bp. Newton, though they disagree in the catalogues which they respectively give of the ten kingdoms, concur in proposing a scheme different from that of Mr. Mede so far as the three horns are concerned. They each conjecture, that the three eradicated powers were the Exarchate of Ravenna, the kingdom of the Lombards, and the state of Rome.t

Both these modes of interpretation appear to me objectionable in almost every point of view.

With regard to Mr. Mede's scheme it may be remarked, that, if by the Greeks and Franks he intends the Constantinopolitan and Carlovingian empires, neither of those monarchies ever was plucked up by the roots before the little horn; and if, on the other hand, by the Greeks and Franks he intends only the Greek and Germanic provinces in Italy, those, being mere provinces, cannot with any propriety be esteemed horns, or independent kingdoms. So that, take the scheme in what light we may, it will prove equally untenable. Whatever inroads

* Mede's Works B. iv. Epist. 24.

Observ. on Dan. p. 74, 75, 76-Dissert. xiv.

the Popes might make upon the authority of the Constantinopolitan and German emperors in the detached provinces of their respective dominions, I know not how it can be said, that by such encroachments two out of the ten horns were plucked up by the roots before them.* With regard to the scheme of Sir Isaac and Bp. Newton, the first objection that occurs is their supposition that the Exarchate of Ravenna was one of the ten horns.

The Exarchate was not, like each of the monarchies founded by the northern nations, a horn or independent kingdom; but, on the contrary, a mere dependent province of the Greek empire, governed, like its other provinces, by a deputy: hence it can no more be esteemed a horn, than any of the other Greek provinces.† The prophet simply asserts, that the Roman beast, when his empire was divided, should put forth ten horns: he does not give us the least reason to suppose, that there should be any essential difference in the political constitution of the horns. What one therefore of the ten horns was, that all the others must have been:‡ for, unless we completely violate the harmony of symbolical language, we can never allow, that some of the horns represent sovereign states, and others of them mere provinces of sovereign

states.

The next objection is, that, even allowing the Exarchate to be a horn, neither it nor the state of Rome, occur in the true list of the ten primary kingdoms. The Bishop agrees with Sir Isaac, that the Exarchate of Ravenna, the kingdom of the Lombards, and the state of Rome, are the three horns; but he censures him for his inconsist

Mr. Mede reckons up the ten kingdoms, as follows: "1. The Britons; 2. The Saxons in Britain; 3. The Franks; 4. The Burgundians in France; 5. The Visigoths in the South of France and part of Spain; 6. The Sueves and Alans in Gallicia and Portugal; 7. The Vandals in Africa; 8. The Alemanes in Germany; 9. The Ostrogoths whom the Longobards succeeded, in Pannonia, and afterwards in Italy; 10. The Greeks in the residue of the empire." In addition to the foregoing observations I shall hereafter shew, that the Eastern empire cannot be reckoned one of the borns of the beast, all of which must be sought for in the West.

"The throne of the Gothic kings," says Mr. Gibbon, was filled by the exarch of Ravenna, the representative in peace and war of the emperor of the East.”

The prophet, by declaring that the little born should be different from all the rest, necessarily leads us to conclude that the ten borns should not be different from each other.