Mr. Whiston exhibits the image as the empire of Charlemagne. But that is to represent it as a territory with its population, instead of an organized body sustaining a resemblance to a civil and military government, and therefore of a different order. It is also to make it the same as a large part of the empire over which the ten-horned wild beast reigned; which is inconsistent with the representation, and fraught with absurdity. How can the Gothic nations be said to have made that territory or its population as subjects of the Frank or German empire? The chief part of that population became the vassals of Charlemagne by conquest, not by their own volition, or the will of the Gothic nations at large. How can it be said that the whole population of the ten kingdoms were constrained to worship that empire; or that those refusing to worship it, were put to death? Did those dwelling in it worship themselves, or their territory? Did those dwelling without its limits worship it or its inhabitants?

Vitringa regarded the tribunal of the Inquisition as the image; Bishop Newton the pope; but their want of correspondence with the symbol is sufficiently apparent.

Mr. Cuninghame regards the image as the symbol of the corrupt visible church, clergy as well as people. He proceeds, however, on the assumption that it is denominated an image to the wild beast, not because it is a resembling authoritative organization, but because it was an object of idolatrous veneration to the people of the Roman empire; which is wholly to mistake the analogy. An image is a structure resembling in form and expression that which it represents. An ecclesiastical organization, to resemble that combination of rulers, which exercised the government of the Roman empire after the accession of Constantine, must therefore be a hierarchy of a similar gradation of ranks, united under a single head. He assumes also that it was an image of the beast, because of a likeness of character as impious, idolatrous, and persecuting, which is equally to misjudge of the analogy. It is the office of a person's image to represent his bodily form and expressions of countenance, not the mere characteristics of his agency. Besides, inasmuch as, except those who refused to worship the image, the whole population, small and great, rich and poor, free and enslaved, belonged to the visible church, if the visible church were the image, who were the worshippers?

Mr. Mede exhibits the image as a symbol of the Roman empire, and as denominated an image of it, under its sixth head, because seduced again by the false prophet to idolatry; but that

is to misinterpret the wild beast as well as the image. The wild beast of two horns is a symbol of rulers, not of an empire manifestly from the crown, the throne, and the great authority ascribed to it. The image therefore must represent an analogous combination of rulers, not a mere territory or population. It is to make the image moreover that identically which it denotes, which is incongruous.

Mr. Faber exhibits the image as a mere idol, which the tenhorned wild beast worshipped. But that is to regard it as of the same species as that which it represents, and is therefore against analogy. It is absurd also if the ten-horned wild beast be as he interprets it, a symbol of the Roman empire geographically considered. What on that assumption can be meant by its worshipping the image? Can a territory exert an act of religious homage?

Mr. Elliott regards the general councils of the church of western Europe as the image; but they exhibit none of the requisite resemblances to the rulers of the Roman empire under its seventh head. They were not a single body, continued by succession and transmitting their powers from one generation to another, but were wholly separate, of distant periods, and independent of each other for existence and authority. They embraced but a part of the rulers of the church of the ten kingdoms of those several periods, not the whole; and were in that respect unlike that vast combination of persons, from the lowest to the highest, exercising office in the Roman empire, symbolized by the ten-horned wild beast under its head that received the death-wound. They had not the prerogatives of a complete government, but were merely legislative and judicial, not executive, and were subject to both an ecclesiastical and a civil head exterior to themselves.

Dr. Cressner, regarding the ten-horned wild beast as the symbol of the Roman empire, exhibits the image as the Roman Catholic church with the pope as its head, and deems its likeness to the wild beast to consist in its having a supreme head like the imperial government, and occupying the same territory as the empire, or embracing the same population. But that is to confound the teachers and rulers of the church which the image represents, with the unofficial members who are their worshippers.

The solutions which expositors have presented of the name and number of the beast, are extremely various, and exhibit generally a singular inattention to the conditions of the symbol. They seem neither to have considered that the rulers of the an

cient empire under its last head, were those whom the Latin and Gothic population of the new were induced to worship, or inquired into the reason of that homage; nor to have suspected that it was after the dragon under that seventh head that the image was modelled, or that any reason existed for the selection of the name of the race from which the rulers symbolized by that head sprung, rather than the name of the rulers and races of the modern empire. They have generally indeed neglected to discriminate between an empire and its rulers, and treated alike the ten-horned wild beast, the wild beast of two horns, and the dragon, as a symbol of a territory and its population, not of a combination and succession of persons exercising the government of a people or community of nations: and have accordingly presented names of persons, of cities, of empires, and even of classes of agents, as the counterpart of the symbol, on the mere ground that they are significant, and represent, or are associated with the requisite number. Thus Vitringa offers Adonikam, the name in Hebrew of one who returned from the Babylonian captivity because of its meaning, the Lord has risen, and the number of his family, six hundred sixty-six. Ezra chap. ii. 13. Mr. Faber presents the Greek words Βλάσφημος and 'Αποςάτης, merely denoting agents of certain characters, never appellatives of a nation or its rulers. Others have suggested the title in Greek of the Latin empire, Η Λατινη Βασιλεία: but that is a title of the empire, not of the race by whom it was founded, and from whom its rulers derived their designation, and is not in accordance therefore with the conditions of the symbol. There is no one that meets all those conditions except Aarsivos which was first suggested by Irenæus toward the close of the second century, and has been more generally deemed the true one than any other, though with but very inadequate views of the reasons which demonstrate it to be that which the Spirit of God designed, or the grounds on which it was chosen in preference to other designations.

It is notorious that the Catholic church of the papal territory in Italy, was denominated immediately after the rise of those kingdoms, the Latin church, in contradistinction from the Greek, the Syrian, and the Alexandrian, and has borne that appellative through every subsequent age to the present; and that the Latin language is the sole vehicle of its worship, its rites, its instructions, its laws, its correspondence, and the acts also of its civil government. Whoever therefore entered that church and received its baptism, united in its worship, or became the subject as a member, of any of its official agency, assumed and became distin

guished by that appellative as conspicuously and as necessarily, as those became marked by it, who drew their birth from the ancient Latins; and as the offspring of other nations derive their national appellative from their parentage. And as the Latin church extended its jurisdiction over the hierarchies of the other European kingdoms, that appellative was applied to them all. The other ancient churches were also distinguished in like manner by an appellative drawn from their race, their country, or their capital, as the Greek, the Syrian, the Judean, the Egyptian, or Alexandrian. On the other hand, the churches within the western empire, dissenting from the Latin or Catholic, were universally distinguished by different names, drawn generally from their founders, the people of whom they were formed, or some peculiar characteristic; and their worship was as universally conducted in a different language; as those of the Albigenses, the Waldenses, the Wicklifites, the Lollards, the Bohemian, the Lutheran, the Reformed, the Genevan, the English, and the Scotch.

Those who joined the Latin church, in receiving that name, received the patronymic, or appellative of the race from which the rulers of the ancient empire descended, who first adopted Christianity as the religion of the state, gave the church a national establishment, organized its teachers and rulers into a hierarchy, and forced their subjects to become its members, or subjected them to persecution and death; and were thence guilty of usurping the rights of God. And these important resemblances of its principles and agency, as well as that its shape was modelled after that civil power, were reasons undoubtedly that the nationalized Catholic hierarchies of the ten kingdoms, in their union as one under the pope, are denominated its image. And the reason that Aarsivos was chosen as the name, which those who enter that apostate church are said to receive, is that that appellative, which they receive by their union to that church and that alone, is common to it with that ancient dragon rule, and suggests its resemblance to it under its seventh head, in form, in principle, and in agency.

SECTION XXXIII.

CHAPTER XIV. 1-5.

THE HUNDRED FORTY-FOUR THOUSAND ON MOUNT ZION.

AND I looked, and behold the Lamb stood on the Mount Zion, and with him a hundred forty-four thousand, having his name and the name of his Father written on their foreheads. And I heard a voice from heaven, as a voice of many waters, and as a voice of loud thunder. And the voice which I heard, [was] as of harpers harping on their harps. And they sing as it were a new song before the throne, and before the four living creatures and the elders. And no one was able to learn the song, except the hundred forty-four thousand who were redeemed from the earth. They are they who have not been defiled with women; for they are pure. They are they who follow the Lamb wherever he may go. They have been redeemed from men, a first offering to God, and to the Lamb; and in their mouth no falsehood was found, for they are spotless.

The position from which the apostle saw this spectacle, was probably that from which he had beheld the emergence and agency of the wild beast, and therefore on the earth. The Mount Zion, on which the hundred forty-four thousand stood, was that of the heavenly tabernacle, and their station was doubtless on the glassy sea, or part answering to the court in which the worshippers stood. The song accordingly which he heard from heaven, was their song; not the song of the other redeemed, or of angels. This is apparent from the representation that it was sung before the living creatures and elders, and that no one was able to learn it, but the hundred forty-four thousand. To suppose it to have been sung by others, is to suppose they had already learned it.

That it is a new song denotes that it is uttered on a new and peculiar occasion, and for new and peculiar gifts. The peculiarity of the occasion is that it is the commencement of Christ's reign in his new relation as king of the earth, by the resurrection of a portion of his people from death in glory, and exaltation to the stations in his presence which they are thenceforth to fill; while the reason of their first resurrection and assumption to his presence is, that they are not defiled with idolatry. They have not belonged to the apostate church, nor sanctioned the blasphemous usurpations of the wild beast; but are pure worshippers