image to or for the first beast. Now it is surely putting a very great force upon language to suppose that the making an image for the beast can signify the making a reprepresentation of him. The prohibition in the decalogue relative to idolatry is couched in the following terms: "Thou shalt not "make unto thee any graven image *." Here it is manifest, that the making an image to a person's self means the making an image for his own usé and worship: it is only natural therefore to suppose, that the making an image to the beast means the making an image for the use and worship of the beast; and consequently that the image of the beast imports, not the effigies of the beast, but the image which the beast adored †.

(2.) That such is the proper interpretation of the expression will yet further appear, if we consider the context of the whole passage. It was by false miracles that the ecclesiastical beast induced the inhabitants of the earth to set up this image for the secular beast. Accordingly, as we are informed by Bp. Newton, "miracles are thought so necessary and essential, that they are reckoned among the notes of the catholic church; and they are alleged principally in support of purgatory, prayers for the dead, the worship of

"

* Exod. xx. 4.

+ Hence, to avoid all ambiguity and to give what I believe to be the true sense of the original, I have translated x 8 Bape the beast's image instead of the image of the beast.

"saints, images, and relics, and the like (as they are called) catholic dectrines *.

The difficulty consists, not so much in proving this point, as in selecting some out of the many proofs which offer themselves to our attention. "The first introduction," says Mr. Gibbon, "of

a symbolic worship was in the veneration of the cross and of relics. The saints and martyrs, "whose intercession was implored, were seated on the right hand of God; but the gracious, "and often supernatural favours, which, in the "popular belief, were showered around their tomb, conveyed an unquestionable sanction of the devout pilgrims, who visited, and touched, and kissed, these lifeless remains, the memorials of "their merits and sufferings-The scruples of rea

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son or piety were silenced by the strong evidence 66 of visions and miracles; and the pictures, which speak, and move, and bleed, must be endowed with a divine energy, and may be considered as the proper objects of religious adoration--Before the "end of the sixth century, images, made without "hands (in Greek it is a single word), were propagated in the camps and cities of the eastern empire: they were the objects of worship, and the instruments of miracles; and, in the hour of danger or tumult, their venerable presence could revive "the hope, rekindle the courage, or repress the

* Bp. Newton's Dissert. on Rev. xiii.

fary

fury of the Roman legions *."-One of the grand idols of the Romanists, as it is well known, is the Virgin Mary. "They beg of her," says Juerieu, "in express terms whatever is desired from God; "heaven, pardon of sin, grace, repentance, vic

tory of the devil. It is not enough to pray to "the virgin, you must adore her: every knee must "bow to her, adoring her as sovereigh queen of

* History of Decline and Fall. vol. ix. p. 114–120. Mr. Gibbon observes, that before the end of the sixth century images. were in very general use. This may be thought to contradict that I have said relative to the proper date of the great Apostasy. I then however observed, and I may here observe again, that superstition had for some time been gradually creeping into the Church previous to the years 606 and 607; but it is necessary to compute a prophetic series of years from a fixed, and determinate era when some overt act has been committed. This overt act is declared by the prophet to be the establishment of the Pope's supremacy, or the delivering up of the saints into his hand. Now it is observable, that, whatever approaches there might be to image-worship in the course of the sixth century, idolatry was not openly established by the authority of the Roman Pontiff till the year 607; the very year after that in which the saints had been delivered into the hand of the little horn, and, consequently from which the 1260 years are to be reckoned. Accordingly Mr. Gibbon very truly observes respecting the period of which he is speaking, "as the worship of images had never "been established by any general or positive law, its progress in "the Eastern Empire had been retarded or accelerated, by the "differences of men and manners, the local degrees of re"finement, and the personal characters of the bishops" (Ibid. p. 122.). But I have already said amply sufficient respecting the difference between individual apostasy, and authorized apostasy. The one commenced many years before the other.

men and angels. And this adoration is not to "be mere external adoration, but internal-On account of her holiness, men owe dulia to her; on account of her maternal relation, they owe "her hyperdulia; and, because she touched our "Saviour, the adoration of latria is due to her. Those, who well perform these services, though never so negligent of their duty towards God, though villains, robbers, debauchees; they canહૃદ not be damned, because they have been clients of the Virgin. This they prove by innumerable. examples of those, whom the Virgin hath by strange miracles brought back, as it were, from "the gates of hell, because they had been her "votaries. And, as an evidence how pleasing this "adoration is to the Virgin, she hath wrought.

more miracles within these last seven or eight hundred years, than God hath wrought since the "creation by Moses and the prophets, by Jesus "Christ and his apostles, and by all the saints together. Her images have spoken, they have sung, they have resisted the fire and the ham

mer, they have soared in the air like birds, they "have sweat blood, and oil and milk have run

،

from them. Some of them have been turned into

flesh; they have wept, lamented, groaned; they "have made the lame to walk, the blind to see, the "deaf to hear. They have cured all kinds of dis

cases, and trought all sorts of prodigies. For these reasons, people will go to the end of the "world to visit these consecrated images. They

kiss *fall down before them, and render them i an external worship, accompanied with a most "fervent internal devotion. They rub their chap

lets or beads, and their handkerchiefs, upon "these images; and wear about them these chap"lets and cloths, which have touched the images "of the Virgin; and believe, that they are relics "which have a virtue to preserve from all evils. "That which we have discoursed concerning the "Virgin, may be applied to saints proportionably,

"Yet I have left me seven thousand in Israel, all the knees which have not bowed unto Baal, and every mouth which "hath not kissed him" (1 Kings xix. 18.). "And now they "sin more and more, and have made them molten images of "their silver, and idols according to their own understanding, "all of it the work of the craftsmen: they say of them, let "the men that sacrifice kiss the calves:" that is the statues of Moloch and Baal (Hos. xiii. 2.). The excuse, which Papists are wont to make for their idolatry, effectually proves them to be idolaters. They deny that they worship the images; asserting, that they only kiss them, and bow down before them, in token (as the council of Trent expresses it) of their “ worshipping the saints, whose likeness images do bear." What is this but explicitly acknowledging, that they worship dead men through the medium of certain fanciful representations of them? So perfectly does the idolatry of the revived papal beast resemble the idolatry of the old pagan beast that was wounded to death by the sword of the Spirit, that the ancient heathens gave precisely the same reason for worshipping their images, that the modern Papists do for worshipping theirs. Their language was, as we learn from Arnobius, "Not that brass,

gold, silver, and the like materials of statues are gods; *but that through them the invisible gods are honoured and worshipped."