zoological principle which is here laid down. By the violent slaughter of the seventh or the finally sole living head, the wild-beast sinks into death: by the healing of the deadly wound inflicted upon that finally sole living head, the wild-beast revives. The seventh form of government, which had been overturned by the sword of apparently foreign violence, is restored, nominally as an eighth form, but really as the self-same seventh form; for the wild-beast has, in truth, no more than seven heads: and then the Empire, ascending anew from the abyss or the sea, is restored to life or to political existence'.

2. Such, if I mistake not, is the zoönomical rationalè of the seven heads: we must next establish the principle of their historical appropriation.

When St. John marvels at the extraordinary as pect and the persecuting temper of the wild-beast, the hierophantic angel undertakes to explain the mystery. The seven heads, he teaches him, have a two-fold signification: they are the seven moun tains, on which the woman who rides the wildbeast is seated; and they are also seven kings, who should successively rule the body of the wild-beast as the head of any animal rules the natural body.

Now the woman, we are told, is that great city, which in the time of the Apostle reigned over the kings of the earth: in other words, the woman is Rome; for no other city answers to such a description. Hence the seven mountains, which the seven

'Compare Rev. xiii. 3, 12, 14, with xvii. 8-11.

heads primarily symbolise, are doubtless the farfamed seven hills upon which imperial Rome was founded and they are thus mentioned, I apprehend, partly for the purpose of enabling us unequivocally to identify the hieroglyphic by an universally familiar characteristic, and partly to secure us from the mistake (into which some commentators have nevertheless fallen) of seeking the seven kings or polities, which the seven heads secondarily symbolise, elsewhere than in the Roman Empire; for, if the seven heads primarily represent the seven hills of Rome, it were strangely incongruous to imagine, that the seven kings, which they secondarily represent, can be any other than seven Roman polities'.

'Yet certain writers have contended, in defiance of the obvious purport of the angel's exposition, that, as the Roman Empire swallowed up its three predecessors, some of the seven heads are the heads of the Babylonian and the Medo-Persian and the Macedonian wild-beasts. Thus, in the vision of Daniel, the Babylonian beast has one head; the Medo-Persian beast has one head; the Macedonian beast has four heads; and the Roman beast has one head. Now the sum total of these heads is seven. These, consequently, are the seven heads of the apocalyptic wild-beast, which represents the Roman Empire when it had swallowed up all the other three Empires.

To say nothing of the impossibility of making any such scheme accord with the language of the interpreting angel, which declares, that, in the time of St. John, five of the heads. had fallen, one then existed, and another was still future it is manifest, that all schemes of this description are irreconcileable with the purport of the double type. If the seven heads are primarily seven Roman mountains; the seven kings, which

But the seven heads are not only seven moùntains; they are likewise and principally seven kings: that is to say, agreeably to the Hebrew idiom, they are seven regalities or seven forms of supreme government'.

Such being the case, these seven forms must, on the one hand, politically differ, in some respects, from each other; as monarchy differs from democracy, and as democracy differs from aristocracy: for, without some political difference of constitution, there plainly could not be seven distinct forms. Yet, on the other hand, the seven forms must be homogeneous or of one species; as monarchy and democracy and aristocracy are all homogeneous forms of government, because they are all equally secular forms as opposed to a spiritual or ecclesiastical form: for, unless the prophet expressly teach us that they are NOT homogeneous, we can have no right, for the mere purpose of framing a system, gratuitously to depart from the obvious and sound principle of homogeneity 2.

they secondarily represent, must, unless analogy be completely violated, be seven Roman polities.

'See above book i. chap. 1. § II. 2. (1.)

The ground of this rule is well exemplified, by the manage

ment observable in Daniel's vision of the four beasts.

He tells us, that the Roman beast put forth ten horns, or that ten kingdoms sprang up within the limits of the Western Roman Empire: and, between these ten horns, no specific difference is stated to subsist. Hence, as all commentators practically acknowledge, ten homogeneous kingdoms must be in

On this principle, then, I contend, that all the seven heads of the Roman wild-beast must be ho mogeneous or of one species. St. John simply tells us that the hieroglyphic in question had seven heads: he gives us not the slightest hint, that any one of those heads was specifically different from its fellows. Hence, whatever be the specific nature of one head, such also must be the specific nature of the other heads. Consequently, by the vital principle of homogeneity which can never be too much insisted upon in the interpretation of prophecy, if one head be secular, all the heads must be secular; and, conversely, if one head be spiritual, all the heads must be spiritual.

3. These principles of exposition having been laid down and established, we shall now be prepared to inquire from history, what seven homogeneous forms of supreme Roman government

tended and, accordingly, their historical antitypes are allowed to be the ten secular kingdoms founded by the ten Gothic nations.

But, in the midst of the ten secular kingdoms, sprang up an eleventh little horn or kingdom: which he declares to be spe cifically different from the ten first kingdoms. Hence we are fully warranted in pronouncing, that the eleventh kingdom is spiritual or ecclesiastical, while the other ten kingdoms are all

secular.

Yet, unless the eleventh had been declared to be specifically different from the other ten, we should, under such circumstances, I think, have been compelled, by the principle of homogeneity, to pronounce the eleventh kingdom a secular kingdom like all its ten fellows.

are intended by the seven heads of the wild

beast.:

The Apostle teaches us, by the declaration of the interpreting angel, that, in his time, one of these heads was in actual existence, that five had antecedently fallen, and that another was yet future..

Now, in the time of the Apostle, the Roman Emperorship was the polity in actual existence. Hence we may be certain, that the Roman Emperorship is the head, which the Apostle characterises by the words One is, and which history teaches us to have been then the supreme form of Roman go

vernment.

But the Apostle further declares, that five other heads had antecedently fallen.

Here, in comparing his declaration with the testimony of history, we are encountered by an apparent difficulty for St. John states, that only five heads had fallen; but history, upon the first inspection of it, seems to intimate, that six supreme forms of Roman government had become extinct. These six are enumerated by Tacitus, as the Kingship, the Consulate, the Dictatorship, the Decemvirate, the Military Tribunate, and the Triumvirate: and, after he has enumerated them, he remarks, that the second Triumvirate terminated in the sole rule of Augustus, who, with the title of Prince, reduced all things under the Emperorship'. Thus it might

1 Urbem Romam, a principio, (1.) Reges habuere. Libertatem et (2.) Consulatum L. Brutus instituit. (3.) Dictaturæ ad tempus sumebantur: neque (4.) Decemviralis Potestas