XI.] its Antichristian character. 351 people and Church of God, as distinguished from the Gentile nations-the East as distinguished from the West. And this point in the description may be designed, perhaps, to mark the growth of error in Eastern Christendom, which became subsidiary and ministrative to that complex form of secular and spiritual dominion combined, which arose out of the violence and commotions of Western Europe. The power here represented as the beast out of the land, is elsewhere designated as "the false prophet';" his character as an Antichrist being marked by the "two horns like a lamb," while yet "he spake as a dragon." And he is described as working the signs of a false prophet. "He doeth great wonders, so that he maketh fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men, and deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by the means of those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast; saying to them that dwell on the earth, that they should make an image to the beast, which had the wound by the sword and did live'.' We can hardly fail to identify the power here described, or that to which it ministered, with St. Paul's delineation, in his Second Epistle to the Thessalonians, of him "whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved; for which cause God" would "send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie." The manifestation of that wicked one foretold by the Apostle was to be hindered for a time by a certain withholding 8 Cf. sup. pp. 271, 272. 9 Chap. xix. 20. 1 Vv. 13, 14. 2 2 Thess. ii. 9-11. 352 Image of Roman Empire [LECT. power; obscurely referred to, but known, as it would seem, by those to whom he wrote, and which was generally supposed in early times, as I have before had occasion to observe, to be the then existing Empire of Rome. It was, moreover, the general belief in the primitive ages, "that before the appearance of Antichrist the Roman Empire was to be dissolved, and broken up into ten different parts; yet by his contrivance was to be reunited, and restored to its pristine integrity under him." And looking to the actual history, when we find that, after such division of the Roman Empire by the barbarian nations, that empire, or its image at least, was in a strange manner restored, or revived, by the immediate agency of a power bearing on it such marks as those which distinguish the Papal see, there is, I think, no interpretation so probable of a difficult point in the vision before us, as that which would recognize at least its precursive and partial fulfilment, in an event so important in its influence on the fortunes of modern Europe, and occupying accordingly so prominent a place in the view of secular history. "The conferring of the imperial crown on Charlemagne," the Romanist writer before quoted will tell us, "was that which deserved to be ranked as the characteristic event, not only of the royal visit of the king of the πανοῦργος ὢν ὥσπερ θεραπεύσει αὐτὴν καὶ ἀνανεώσει. τοῦτο γάρ ἐστι τὸ εἰρημένον ὑπὸ τοῦ προφήτου, ὅτι δώσει πνεῦμα τῇ εἰκόνι, καὶ λαλήσει ἡ εἰκὼν τοῦ θηρίου [v. 15]. ἐνεργήσει γὰρ καὶ ἰσχύσει πάλιν διὰ τὸν ὑπ ̓ αὐτοῦ ὁριζόμενον νόμον. Op. ed. Fabric. p. 24. XI.] revived in Western Europe. 353 Franks to Rome, in the year 800, but “of the age itself." "Up to that instant nothing but chaos," he says, "had prevailed among the tribes that had overturned pagan Rome and its empire." "Europe, or rather its embryo, was struggling, nevertheless, and travailing, though with abortive efforts, to emerge from this state. . . . The fragments of those mighty structures, aqueducts, towns, bridges, highways, the ruins of marble cities, villas, and temples, -amongst which they pastured their flocks and herds, disposed their ambuscades in war, or pursued the pleasures of the chase, all these memorials were haunted, even for them, with certain vague imaginings, perhaps of admiration and wonder, concerning the order of things to which they had belonged. The same might be said of the relics of Roman society, and of its shattered institutions. The very name of the empire, the recollections of this grand and glorious society, agitated the memories of men. ... Even the conquerors, themselves, were attached to similar reminiscences by their most darling passions. The image of its greatness," the same writer continues, "was often brought before their excited imaginations, while they listened to the bards, who were wont to celebrate, amidst the carousal, the achievements and the prowess of their sires, who had figured in its wars, in its triumphs, but, above all, in its destruction. The consequence was inevitable. By thus frequently contemplating the image of this august order of things,"-I am still continuing the quotation," their understandings, rude as they were, could not fail to be struck with the glaring defects and inferiority of their own condition. They became sensible, that, belonging to the empire among the ruins of which they found them A a 354 Empire of the West revived. [LECT. selves, there was a something which they had need to imitate, to reproduce. Hence the effect of that stroke of policy which revived the Empire of the West. On the barbarian world its effect was magical. Those dull instincts and imaginings, so abortive hitherto, and so wide of any definite aim, became, on the instant, so many powerful and concordant rudiments of stability. The idea, the project, that had been harassing the breasts of all, like a nightmare vision, but which no one had power to realize, was recognized and hailed by all with acclamations, the moment it was presented to them, in the person of their mighty hero, 'crowned of God, the great and pacific emperor of the Romans.' "From that hour," says the same writer, "the barbarian tribes acquired a new relation,-one that attached them all, simultaneously, to a grand idea of general and permanent association. This," he observes, "was the beginning of modern Europe;" and "such were the advantages which the Providence, that had already turned to so much account whatever belonged to the pagan empire of Rome, knew how to derive from its very name, and the shadow of its former greatness 5." Doubtless, indeed, every tongue of man must own that the whole course of events in the world's history, in its relation to the Church of God, has been overruled and ordered, in a marvellous manner, throughout, by His Allwise and Almighty Providence, and most signally in the present instance; but the visions of Prophecy, which so wonderfully teach this lesson, have at the same time assigned to the different agencies which have been the unconscious instruments of that 5 "Rome as it was under Paganism," &c., vol. ii. pp. 320, 325-7. XI.] Persecuting power. 355 Divine Providence, a place in the great drama, and stamped upon them a character, far different, oftentimes, from that which human discernment might have given them; and have exhibited, behind the veil of earthly things, principles and agents of the world unseen. And, be it recollected, it was the question of the worship of images in the Christian Church, as is observed by the historian of Rome's Decline and Fall, that "produced the revolt of Italy, the temporal power of the Popes, and the restoration of the Roman Empire in the West 6." The relations between the spiritual and temporal powers, bound together as they were so strangely, and interwoven so closely, in the system of Papal Europe, may perhaps be traced in the further description of the agency revealed in the vision. "And he had power to give life"-or more literally "breath-to the image of the beast, 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. And he caused all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads and that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name 8 99 The persecuting character of the Church of Rome is, unhappily, too notorious to need pointing out: and, though she wielded not the sword with her own hand, nor gave directly from herself the command for the execution of her sentence; yet would she give her victims over to the secular power, and make kings and princes inflict the punishment which she pronounced Gibbon, chap. 49, init. 7 πνεῦμα. 8 Rev. xiii. 15-17. |