XI.]

us.

Invasion of the Barbarians.

8

66

341

It is this calamitous visitation that would seem to be described in the progress of the vision before "And the serpent cast out of his mouth water as a flood after the woman, that he might cause her to be carried away of the flood "." Floods of water are, in the language of Scripture, the constant metaphor for the invasion of hostile nations'; and in regard to the particular period referred to, it is "not unobservable," as a recent writer remarks, "how naturally this Apocalyptic figure has presented itself to historians, alike ancient and modern 1, in describing" the inroads of the Gothic barbarians. 'As to the fury of the flood," it has been observed with perfect historic truth, "it was such as, throughout the length and breadth of the empire, to sweep away all the political bulwarks before it; and thus might well have been deemed sufficient to sweep away also the Christian Church, and Christianity itself, the professed religion of the empire. In fact, the Pagan remnant at Rome and elsewhere were not without their hopes of this result; . . . and to accelerate it, they excited the enmity of the invaders "-who, it will be remembered, were themselves Pagans or Arians" against their Christian fellow-citizens 2." But, in the words of Bp. Newton," the event proved contrary to human appearance and expectation:""the earth helped the woman, and the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed up the flood which the dragon cast out of his mouth 3;"-" the barbarians," as he observes, "were rather swallowed up by the Romans, than the Romans by the barbarians; the

342

Barbarian flood swallowed up.

[LECT.

heathen conquerors, instead of imposing their own, submitted"-gradually, at least, but all alike, after no long time-"to the religion of the conquered Christians; and not only embraced their religion, but affected even the laws, the manners, the customs, the language, and the very name of Romans, so that the victors were in a manner absorbed and lost among the vanquished *." So that, by the end of the sixth century, "the Arianism of the invading flood, as well as its Paganism,-that false doctrine by which, and the secular force accompanying it, the Dragon had schemed to overwhelm the primitive Christian Creed and Church, and therein Christianity itself, was seen no more. It was absorbed, as it were, into the soil, and had disappeared. Thus far the earth helped the woman But the inveterate hostility of her spiritual adversary was not extinguished. Other methods of warfare, of violence and craft, were still to be tried: "the dragon was wroth with the woman, and went to make war with the remnant of her seed, which keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ "."

6

599

And thus is introduced, in the thirteenth chapter, the symbolic description of the powers which were now to become the instruments of Satan's warfare against the Church of Christ. In the delineation of that which is first mentioned, some points have been already noticed, as illustrating the vision of the four beasts in the book of Daniel'. From a comparison of the two passages it appeared, that by the fourth beast in Daniel's vision was to be understood the dominion of Rome, as it reappeared under the ten

5

4 Bp. Newton, Diss. xxv.

Elliott, p. 813.

6 Ver. 17.

Vid. sup. pp. 67-69.

XI.]

The wild Beast out of the Sea.

343

kingdoms which arose out of the ruins of the Pagan Empire, and found again a principle of strength and unity in the little horn of the Papal power.

66

We must now examine further this later vision of New Testament prophecy. "I stood," says St. John, upon the sand of the sea, and saw a wild beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns,"-thus far resembling the image and bearing the marks of the dragon whose instrument and agent it was, and from whom it derived its power,—“ and upon its horns ten crowns,"-a point in the description, we may observe, peculiar to this vision,-“ and upon his heads the name of blasphemy." This character is yet more deeply stamped upon that other symbol closely resembling this, the scarlet-coloured beast of which we read in the seventeenth chapter, "full of names of blasphemy;" having also "seven heads and ten horns," and ridden by the woman, the representative of the great city which, in the days when the vision was revealed to St. John, reigned over the kings of the earth,-Rome the mistress of the world. The form which St. John beheld, united in it the attributes of all the four in Daniel's vision; -"the beast which I saw was like a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority. And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed; and all the world wondered after the beast "." "The beast, like the dragon from whom he receives his power, has seven heads; which are explained to be so many mountains, or strongholds, the seats and supports of his

8

Chap. xiii. 1.

9 Vv. 2, 3.

344

The wounded Head healed.

[LECT.

oppressive dominion. The dragon, and they who held the reins of worldly power under him, had many such '." For though, in the case of Rome, the seven mountains which appear in the imagery of the seventeenth chapter seem to require a literal interpretation in reference to the seven-hilled city 2, yet in the description before us, (so far as it is unfolded at present,) uniting as it does the characteristic symbols of all the four forms of earthly dominion represented in Daniel's vision, the seven heads, it would seem, must be interpreted in the same wide extent of meaning. And it is worthy of remark that seven is the number of heads of the four beasts in Daniel's vision, regarded as a whole, as a symbol denoting universal power and tyranny. And the head which was wounded to death, but was healed of its deadly wound, and lived again, to the wonder of an admiring world, seems, in the vision of the seventeenth chapter, to be clearly identified with the Roman. It is there said of the wild beast which was ridden by the imperial city, "The beast that thou sawest was, and is not; and shall ascend out of the abyss, and go into perdition; and they that dwell on the earth shall wonder, whose names were not written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, when they behold the beast that was, and is not, and yet is +."

For the elucidation of the mystery here shadowed out, we need but listen to the language which we find the Romanist employing to set forth the strange

'Woodhouse, Annot. p. 264. He refers to his note on chap. viii. 9. Cf. sup. p. 272.

2 See Rev. xvii. 9.

The lion, the bear, the

leopard which had four heads, and the fourth beast, with its ten horns. See Dan. vii. 4-7. Chap. xvii. 8.

4

XI.]

Rome under the Goths.

345

vitality, so marvellous and glorious in his eyes, of the city and empire which had seemed once to have fallen for ever by the hands of the Goths. "True,” says a writer of that communion, speaking of the capture of Rome by Alaric at the beginning of the fifth century, "it never recovered this stroke, nor was there left any room to hope that it ever could.

The mystery that had invested this city, in causing it to be regarded by the nations as something divine, as something invincible,-as a goddess in fact, and an eternal city 5; even the magic influence produced on the world by the enormous wealth of its inhabitants, by its trophies, its architectural wonders, and the awful shadow of its renown, these were

either entirely at an end, or impaired and shaken beyond remedy. But," he continues," although the wound inflicted by the Gothic king was mortal,”— the language is used, be it observed, with no thought of the vision before us,-"so mighty was Rome, even in her last agonies, that it required the force, the brutal fury, of the most ruthless barbarians, to be exerted, in havoc, in conflagration, and every species of violence, assisted for upwards of a century by famine, pestilence, inundations, hurricanes, and earthquakes, before she was left prostrate, like an enormous skeleton without life, to be infested and preyed upon by wild beasts."

"But as if the power," he continues, "founded by Romulus and the Cæsars had been designed by

5

" ["She also (like Babylon) called herself the 'Golden City,' the Eternal City.' She vaunted that she would reign for ever." "The words ROMÆ ÆTERNÆ are found on the imperial coins of Rome. . . . The

Jupiter of Virgil speaks the national language when he says, (Æn. i. 278,) 'His ego nec metas rerum nec tempora pono; IMPERIUM SINE FINE DEDI.'" Wordsworth, p. 343.]