not improbably be a reference to the false miracles and lying wonders of the popish clergy.

We are next informed that the second beast deceived the inhabitants of the earth, by means of the miracles or wonders which he had power to do in the presence of the first beast, saying to them, that they should make an image to the beast which had the wound of the sword, and did live. In this highly hieroglyphical language is depicted to us the entire degeneracy of the visible professing church, once so fair and lovely; but which, by listening to the false doctrines of the pope and his clergy, lost every feature of its original beauty, as the chaste spouse of Christ: and was so utterly corrupted as to become transformed into an image or representation of the beast, having in it all the distinguishing features of the bestial character-idolatry, blasphemy, and persecution.*

The pope himself and his clergy could not form the image of the beast, because a church consists of clergy and people, and cannot exist without

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"tion de la Cour de Rome. Que c'etoit au contraire le vrai moyen "de leur donner plus de credit," &c. And again, “ Que les heresies ne "s'etoient jamais dissipées par les reformations mais par les Croisades "et en excitant les princes et les peuples à les detruire: que "c'etoit par ce moyen qu' Innocent III, avoit heureusement etouffé "celle des Albigeois en Languedoc, et que ses successeurs n'eu "avoient point employé d'autres contre les Vaudois les Picards, les Pauvres de Lyon," &c.

* "Ainsi l'esprit si pur et si sublime du christianisme, à qui ne "convenait qu'une forme aussi pur et aussi simple que lui, fut successivement étouffé pendant une longue suite de siècles jusqu'au seizième, par une continuelle surcharge d'élémens étrangers qui avaient dénaturé son action, et en avaient peu-à-peu fait un corps "informe, d'où sortaient tous les maux que les erreurs et les passions “peuvent produire."-Villers, Essai, p. 22. See also Ibid. p. 2.

both. Hence it was necessary that this lamb-like beast should persuade the people to concur with him in forming or constituting the corrupt church or image of the beast. If they had not given ear to his false doctrines, the image had not been formed; but they listened to him, and were deceived, and the image was made.

The pope and his clergy had power to give life to the image of the beast, i. e. political life and authority; and let history say whether the church did not obtain political life and power by means of the popes: "That the image of the beast should both "speak, and cause that as many as would not wor

ર ship the image of the beast should be killed." The church or image spake by its mouths, the general councils and other ecclesiastical assemblies. It did not itself by its own authority put men to death, but it delivered them up to the secular power to be put to death, thus causing them to be killed. The proceedings of the council of Constance with respect to John Huss are a very remarkable illustration of this passage; after he was degraded by the council, and his soul committed to the devil, his sentence was thus pronounced: "The holy synod of Con"stance declares that John Huss ought to be given up to the secular power, and does accordingly so give him up, considering that the church of God " has no more to do with him.'

The image is not only an image of the beast, containing in itself all the features of the bestial character, but it is also an image to the beast, i.e. the object of the idolatrous veneration of the secular

* Milner's History of the Church of Christ, Cent. XV. chap. ii.

Roman empire. Accordingly the corrupt abominable church was styled by the secular powers our Holy Mother the Church. She obtained almost a paramount influence over the minds of princes, and was the object of their superstitious esteem and

veneration.

If the above explanation of the Apocalyptic image be the true one, then the image is a symbol of the same corrupt church afterwards exhibited to us as a woman, the harlot Babylon the Great; in confirmation of which idea, it will be found that wherever the image is subsequently mentioned, there Babylon is not mentioned; and on the contrary, wherever mention of Babylon is made, there the image is omitted.

As the people of the Roman empire concurred with the people and clergy in forming the image, we find it said, in like manner of Babylon, that she sitteth on many waters, by which are meant peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues.*

But it may be asked, why, if the image be the same as Babylon, two different symbols are employed by the Holy Spirit to denote the same thing? I would observe, in answer to this question, that it hath seemed good to the Spirit of God on every occasion to adhere to what may be called the proprieties of the symbolical style, and not to violate natural probabilities in the language of prophecy. In the thirteenth chapter an account is intended to be given, in symbolical language, of the share which both the clergy and people respectively had in corrupting the visible church of Christ. Now it

* Rev. xvii. 15.

would have been a violation of natural probability, and all the proprieties of the prophetical style, if it had been said that the second beast persuaded the inhabitants of the earth, that they should make or form a woman, because such an exertion of power is physically impossible. It would be an act of creation. The formation of the corrupt church is therefore with admirable propriety signified by the symbolical act of making an image.

On the other hand, when the destruction of the corrupt church is intended to be shown forth, in order to display to us all her abominations, she is introduced in the form of a bloody and abominable harlot, riding on a blasphemous wild beast. Each of the symbols, in its own place, is the fittest that could have been selected.

I have not met with the above interpretation of the image in any author whose works I have consulted. I hope therefore that it will be thoroughly sifted, and that it may stand or fall on its own merits. I have never seen any other solution of this Apocalyptical enigma which satisfied my mind, or I had not sought a new one. The following passage, however, which I have met with in a literary journal, confirms, or at least illustrates, my idea, of the Apocalyptical image in a very remarkable manner; and the more so, as the Reviewer was not at the time considering a work on prophecy: "We cannot but think," says the Reviewer, "that the spirit of popery is in a "degree to be discovered in what may be called the "high church party of every establishment, though "we grudge any men a title which seems to imply a stronger attachment to the church than we glory

"in professing. Popery is the offspring, not of young dissent, but of old establishments; not of a poor but a rich, not of an illiterate but a fastidious, not of a zealous but a worldly body. It was the "ambitious scheme of a secular priesthood to grasp "the sceptre of the world. Its doctrines, its gor

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geous rites, its penances and miracles, were all "a sort of machinery, by which men were either to "be drawn or forced into the power of the priests. "THE VISIBLE CHURCH WAS THE GREAT IMAGE TO BE "WORSHIPPED; the form was to be considered as of

a paramount and almost exclusive importance. "The Bible was to be locked up; the people to be kept in profound ignorance; for all these could readily be shaped into a ladder of steps, by which "the pope could mount to the throne of Chris"tendom."*

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* Review of Butler's Installation Sermon, British Review for 1812, p. 108.-The Reviewer of this volume in the Edinburgh Christian Instructor, having expressed a suspicion of the solidity of my interpretation of the image, I think it due to that respectable work to make some remarks upon its reasoning on this point. The Reviewer's objection seems to me to be founded on a misconception, whereby he confounds two things which are carefully to be distinguished from each other; viz. the government or ruling power of the church, and the church itself. The second beast represents the first of these objects, or the ruling power in the church, i. e. the pope and his clergy. The image is on the contrary a symbol of the whole church, iucluding both clergy and people. To illustrate this. I will suppose that the general assembly or convocation of any particular Protestant Church were changed into a permanent body, and that they were to lapse into idolatry. The Reviewer will grant that the assembly in that case would become a tyrannical idolatrous power, which might fitly be symbolized by a beast. But it does not necessarily follow that they would be successful in drawing the body of the church which they represented into the guilt of their apostasy. That church might resist all their power and solicitations, and as a body remain true to