an Ecclesiastical Power, equal to the Secular Power for the universality of its jurisdiction. Indeed what kind of power within the same bounds and territories can it possibly be, but ecclesiastical, that can be a living image of the Secular, exercising supreme authority at the same time with it, and in the same places, as this is described?' Thus prior to the dissolution of the Roman empire, the patriarchs, archbishops, and bishops, had their ranks and places every where according to the divisions of the provinces of the state; and the name of the ecclesiastical dioceses did arise from the distinction of the several civil dioceses of the empire by Constantine. And it is established by the canons of two synods, that if any city were newly raised by the emperor, the ecclesiastical dignities there should be conformed to it. So that the church and state did run parallel to one another through the whole body of the Roman empire, just like the arteries and veins in the body of man, and observed the same proportion every where to one another 18 'When Christianity,' says sir Michael Foster, 'became the established religion of the empire, and church and state became one body, considered only in different views and under different relations; the ecclesiastical and civil laws of the empire flowed from one and the same source, Imperial rescripts '.' And he caused all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hands, or in their foreheads. We must understand,' says bp. Newton, 'that it was customary among the ancients, for servants to receive the mark of their master, and soldiers of their general, and those who were devoted to any particular deity, of the particular deity to whom they were devoted.' Hence, says Dr. Lancaster, such marks became marks of servitude. Now the hand,' says he, is the symbol of action and hard labour: the forehead signifies the public profession. The whole shews, that it is re 18 Cressener's Dem. of the Pr, Appal. of the Apoc. p. 246, quired that all men give assistance to pursue the designs of the Beast and its false Prophet, or at least to make a public profession of servitude.' 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. That which does the best open the mystery of these expressions,' says Dr. Cressener, is that observation of Grotius upon this place, that it was a common fashion in St. John's time for every Heathen God to have a particular society, or fraternity belonging to him; and the way of admitting any into these fraternities was, 1. By giving them some hieroglyphic mark in their hands or forehead, which was accounted sacred to that particular God; as that of an ivy-leaf to own themselves of the fraternity of Bacchus. 2. By sealing them with the letters of the name of that God. And 3. with that number, which the Greek letters of their name did make up; for the numeral cyphers of the Greeks were the letters of the alphabet 20. Those who have the Mark of the Beast,' I am again quoting from Dr. Lancaster, may be such whose constant purpose it is to defend the worship of the Beast, being active and vigorous therein. Those who have the name of the Beast are such who are known to be slaves or followers by his name being called upon them; the imposing of a name betokening the subjection of the party named to the imposer. And therefore slaves were new named by their masters, and marked, anciently, with their masters names, that it might be publicly known whose slaves they were. Those who have the Number of the Name of the Beast may be such as are his worshippers in a private manner, and discover themselves to be so by some private mark.-To prohibit persons from buying and selling is to banish them from public society, and to exclude them from the benefit or protection of the laws. And this has been done by the false Prophet against 20 Dem. of the Pr. Appl. of the Apoc. p. 274. Thus the name of Thouth or the Egyptian Mercury was signified by the number 1218; the name of Jupiter, as Hap or the beginning of things, by the number 717: and the name of the sun, as zus good, 'vs the author of rain, by the number 608.' Bp. Newton. those who would not embrace his religion, or submit to his authority.' 'If,' says Mr. Evanson, we understand the prophet's buying and selling in the literal sense, the excommunication of heretics, that is, of those who profess not the theological tenets by law established, affords us the most convincing proof of the full completion of this part of the prophetic vision. But it is to be observed, that the language of this prophecy is almost every where figurative. And, since the apostate church is called the city Babylon, and, in the eighteenth chapter, is represented as carrying on a most extensive and gainful traffic, and her teachers are described as merchants: the causing that no man might buy or sell who wore not the badge of servitude to the religion of the civil magistrate, may, with great reason, be interpreted to signify the prohibiting all persons from giving or receiving any religious instructions, but what were conformable to that standard of belief, which the ruling powers, for the time being, decreed to be truly orthodox ".' That the influence of the two-horned Beast, the repre sentative of the antichristian priesthood, has for centuries been diminishing, that his power is now greatly decayed, and that the existing circumstances of the world threaten the downfal of every remnant of spiritual usurpation, are circumstances which may be reflected on with no small degree of pleasure, by the friend of liberty, by the advocate. of free inquiry, and the genuine lover of the gospel. After the two-horned and ten-horned Beasts have been so diffusely illustrated, the symbol of the Dragon ought not to be passed over altogether in silence; and the rather, because the passage cited from bp. Hurd, wherein he asserts it to be the symbol of the Old Roman Government in its Pagan state, stands in need of explication. With respect to the Dragon, that is mentioned in several parts of ch. xii. and xiii. what the prelate asserts is perfectly true; for there its meaning is manifestly restricted; being 21 Let. to bp. Hurd, p. 59. VOL. I. described with the emblems of the Roman Empire, as having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads 22. But it follows not, therefore, that where it stands separate from any of these emblems, it should still bear a sense equally limited. In those other chapters, ch. xvi. and xx. where the Dragon is introduced, its meaning must indeed of necessity be different; because it is there spoken of as existing at a time still future, and therefore many centuries posterior to the dissolution of the empire of Pagan Rome. The fact accordingly appears to be this, that whilst the ten-horned Beast is the representative only of the modern antichristian governments established in the Western part of the Roman Empire; the Dragon, being employed as a symbol of larger import, is put for Monarchical Tyranny in general. And that I may not be suspected of arbitrarily annexing to it this meaning, I shall refer to the testimony of three very ancient writers, Horapollo, Manetho, and Achmet, whose authority, great as it is, has not I believe been hitherto appealed to upon this subject. Of these the two former were Egyptians. The one, Horapollo, was the author of a short treatise on Hieroglyphics, which is still extant, having been translated out of the Egyptian, into the Greek, language: the other, Manetho, was a learned priest of Heliopolis, who, about the year 258 before the Christian æra, and by command of Ptolemy Philadelphus, wrote a great historic work, of which some fragments are preserved in ancient writers. We learn from Horapollo, that the figure of a serpent was a well-known hieroglyphic for a king 23: we are told by Manetho, that rk, which in the Egyptian language signifies a serpent, in the Sacred Dialect signified also a king 24: and we are informed by Achmet that. paxay, that is to say, the serpent of 22 XII. 3. Wolfius upon this verse (in his Cure Philologice thinks it worthy of remark, that, in the time of St. John, the Dragan began to be represented on the military standards of the Roman emperors. 23 Horapollinis Hieroglyphica, lib. i. cap. 59, 60, 61, 63, 64. 24 Apud Josephum contra Apionem, 1. i. c. 14. See Warburton's Legat. vol. ii. p. 141. the larger and more destructive kind, which we have thought proper to translate the dragon, was regarded, not only by the Egyptians, but likewise by the Persians and Indians, as an established emblem of a monarch25. Now it is the declaration of bp. Hurd, that the prophetic style ABOUNDS in hieroglyphic symbols, properly so called.' was As passages from Daubuz have been repeatedly cited, in the present and in the preceding chapter, and will again be cited, the reader perhaps, in the course of the work, may feel some curiosity with respect to the man, to whom the Christian world is so much indebted for fixing the meaning of the symbolic language; and as his merit was overlooked, and himself scantily provided for in his own life-time, I do on that account experience, like the writer of the subsequent account, the greater pleasure in introducing a just tribute of respect to his memory. Charles Daubuz born in the province of Guienne in France. His only surviving parent, Julia Daubuz, professing the reformed religion, was driven in 1686 from her native country by that relentless persecution, which preceded the revocation of the edict of Nantes. She, with her family, found an asylum in England. Charles her son, destined to the ministry from his earliest years, was admitted a sizer of Queen's College,' Cambridge, Jan. 10, 1689; and, about 10 years afterwards, was presented to the vicarage of Brotherton, a small village near Ferry-Bridge in the West-Riding of Yorkshire. This vicarage, of the annual value of sixty or seventy pounds, was all the preferment he ever enjoyed. To support a numerous and infant family, (for at his death he left a widow and eight children, the eldest of whom was not fourteen years old) he was under the necessity of engaging himself in the education of several gentlemen's sons 25 Achmetis Oneirocritica, p. 259. Of modern writers I shall cite two. That the dragon has the signification of a tyrant, Matthias Martinus observes in his Lexicon Philologicum et Sacrum; and that it bears this sense in scripture Peter Ravanell declares. A new edition of the Bibliotheca Sacra of this learned Frenchman was printed at Geneva in 1660., 26 Vol. II. p. 113. |