E the shepherd. These pious barbarians are kindled into rage they thirst to avenge the persecution of the East. Abandon your rash and fatal enterprize; reflect, tremble, and repent. If you persist, we are innocent of the blood that will be spilt in the contest: may it fall on your own head." The truth of this declaration the Emperor soon experienced to his cost. "The first assault of Leo against the images of Constantinople had been witnessed by a crowd of strangers from Italy and the West, who related with grief and indignation the sacrilege of the Emperor. But, on the reception of his proscriptive edict, they trembled for their domestic deities. The images of Christ and the Virgin, of the angels, martyrs, and saints, were abolished in all the churches of Italy; and a strong alternative was proposed to the Roman Pontiff, the royal favour as the price of his compliance, degradation and exile as the penalty of his disobedience. Neither zeal nor policy allowed him to hesitate. Without depending on prayers or miracles, he boldly armed against the public enemy; and his pastoral letters admonished the Italians of their danger and their duty. At this signal, Ravenna, Venice, and the cities of the Exarchate and Pentapolis, adhered to the cause of religion; their military force by sea and land consisted, for the most part, of the natives; and the spirit of patriotism and zeal was transfused into the mercenary strangers. The Italians swore to live and die in the defence of the Pope and the holy images; the Roman people were devoted to their father; and even the Lombards were ambitious to share the merit and advantage of this holy war." The issue of the struggle was the ruin of the Emperor's affairs in Italy, and the complete triumph of the catholic idolaters. Nor was a miracle wanting, in this grand contest, to decide the orthodoxy of image-worship. To restore his dominion in Italy, Leo invaded the Exarchate, and prepared to lay siege to Ravenna. Upon this occasion, "the women and clergy, in sackcloth and ashes, lay prostrate in prayer; the men were in arms for the defence of their country; and the event of a battle was preferred to the slow miseries of a siege. In a hard fought day, as the two armies alternately yielded and advanced, a phantom was

seen, a voice was heard, and Ravenna was victorious by the assurance of victory. The strangers retreated to their ships, but the populous sea-coast poured forth a multitude of boats; the waters of the Po were so deeply infected with blood, that during six years the public prejudice abstained from the fish of the river; and the institution of an annual feast perpetuated the worship of images, and the abhorrence of the Greek tyrant. Amidst the triumph of the catholic arms, the Roman Pontiff convened a synod of ninety three bishops against the heresy of the Iconoclasts; and with their consent pronounced a general excommunication against all, who by word or deed should attack the tradition of the fathers and the images of the saints."*

It is further said, that the second beast had power to give life to the image, so that the image should speak, and cause the death of those who refused to worship it. We have already noticed some marvellous instances of the speaking and moving statues of the Virgin; and I doubt not but that they did appear to the deluded populace both to speak and to move. The prophecy teaches us, that it was the ecclesiastical beast that enabled them to perform these functions of rational and animal life; and the event has abundantly proved the truth of the prediction. The ridiculous puppets, which were held forth as gods to the blind adoration of the secular beast, were so contrived with internal springs as to be easily worked by a concealed operator; whose voice at proper intervals seemed to issue from the mouth of the miraculous image. At the Reformation, nothing tended so much to wean the people from their attachment to idolatrous superstition as the public exposure of these contemptible tricks of the Popish ecclesiastics. "For their images," says Bp. Burnet, "some of them were brought to London, and were there at St. Paul's cross, in the sight of the people, broken; that they might be fully convinced

* Hist. of Decline and Fall, Vol. ix. p. 112–141.

I strongly suspect, that the inimitable Cervantes had some such images as these in his eye, when he wrote his account of the wonderful inchanted bead. Be this as it may, nothing can afford a better explanation of the talking images of the Papists. See Don Quixote, Part II. chap. 62.

of the juggling impostures of the monks: and, in particular, the crucifix of Boxley in Kent, commonly called the Rood of grace; to which many pilgrimages had been made, because it was observed sometimes to bow, and to lift itself up, to shake, and to stir head, hands, and feet, and to roll the eyes, move the lips, and to bend the brows: all which were looked on by the abused multitude as the effects of a divine power. * These were now publicly discovered to have been cheats: for the springs were shewed, by which all these motions were made. Upon which John Hilsey, then Bishop of Rochester, made a sermon, and broke the rood in pieces. There was also another famous imposturè discovered at Hales in Gloucestershire, where the blood of Christ was shewed in a vial of crystal, which the people sometimes saw, but sometimes they could not see it: so that they were made believe, that they were not capable of so signal a favour, as long as they were in mortal sin; and so continued to make presents, till they had bribed heaven to give them a sight of so blessed a relic. This was now discovered to be the blood of a duck, which they renewed every week: and the one side of the vial was so thick, that there was no seeing through it; but the other was clear and transparent and it was so placed near the altar that one in a secret place behind could turn either side of it outward. So that, when they had drained the pilgrims that came. thither of all they had brought with them, then they afforded them the favour of turning the clear side outward; who upon that went home very well satisfied with their journey, and the expence they had been at."*

To these idols, thus impiously set up to be the gods of the Christian church, it may probably be said with truth, that no fewer human victims have been immolated than to the demons of Paganism. One special mark of heresy was a refusal to worship images; and that refusal, like

* Similar vile mummeries have actually been exhibited even in the present generation, when one might have thought that well-deserved ridicule, if not religious principle, would have effectually put an end to them. In the year 1796 varicus miraculous appearances are asserted to have been observed at Rome: pictures of madonnas opened and shut their eyes; images of saints altered their position; and crucifixes moved their eyelids! Zouch on Prophecy, p. 180.

+ Hist. of Reform. Vol. 1. p. 243, cited by Whitaker and Zouch.

the similar refusal of the primitive Christians to adore the idols of the Gentiles, never failed to subject the martyrs under Popery, those second men of understanding mentioned by Daniel,* to the horrors of the most dreadful of deaths. While every impurity and abomination both in practice and doctrine was tolerated and sanctioned by the adulterous church of Rome; those holy and godly men, whose sole crime was a determined rejection of the poisoned cup of the mystic harlot, were inhumanly persecuted and tormented. "Blessed however are the dead which die in the Lord, for they rest from their labours, and their works do follow them."

In this interpretation of the image I have followed Dr. Zouch, infinitely preferring it to that proposed by Bp. Newton. His Lordship, from an idea that this image was to be some power which should be a sort of representation or effigies of the wounded imperial head of the secular beast, endeavours to prove that it is the Pope; who, says he, "is the most perfect likeness and resemblance of the ancient Roman Emperors." Now, whatever degree of similarity there may be between the Emperors and the Popes, I can find no warrant in the plain letter of the text for such an exposition of the prophecy relative to the image. As I have already observed, the making an image to or for that beast whose head was wounded with the sword (a periphrastic mode of pointing out the secular beast, in order that we may certainly know what beast is here intended by the Apostle) scarcely mean the setting up a representation of the beast. And, that such is not the meaning of the passage, will, I think, undeniably appear, if we consider the strange confusion which this interpretation if admitted must neces sarily introduce. Bp. Newton supposes, that the last head of the secular beast is the Pope, and that the twohorned beast is the Romish hierarchy. If then the twohorned beast be the Romish hierarchy, the head of that beast must undoubtedly be the Pope; for the Romish

* Dan. xi. 35.

can

See Bp. Newton's account of the Witnesses. One of the crimes, for which those convicted of heresy were condemned, is almost invariably a refusal to pray to dead saints, angels, and their images.

kierarchy has no other head except the Pope. In this case therefore, the head of the first beast, and the head of the second beast, will both equally be the Pope and yet, according to the Bishop's scheme, the image is the Pope likewise: consequently the image of the beast is at once the same as the head of the ecclesiastical beast, and as the secular beast under its last head, for St. John identifies the last head with the whole secular beast. His Lordship himself indeed does not make this assertion totidem verbis, though he assuredly makes it in fact; but Mr. Mede, whose scheme is the same, expressly and unreservedly maintains the identity of the image and of the secular beast under his last head. To confute this opinion, it seems to me to be only necessary, that any unprejudiced person should attentively read those passages of the Apocalypse, in which the two beasts and the image of the first beast are mentioned together; for such a person must, I apprehend, be convinced, that, whatever they may be designed to symbolize, the heads of the two beasts and the image cannot all symbolize the same thing. The expression the beast and his image, which perpetually occurs in the Apocalypse,† obviously implies, that the beast is one thing, and that the image is another. To suppose otherwise makes the prophet use a most singular kind of tautology: for, if the first beast and his image be the same, both equally symbolizing the Pope, then the expression the beast and his image is precisely equivalent to the Pope and the Pope. So again: the two beasts and the image are all described at large in one chapter; and the second beast is plainly distinguished from the first, both by the general tenor of the description, and by its being styled another beast can we then reasonably suppose, that these two different beasts have a head in common, and that that head is the very same as a certain image which the second beast causes to be made to the first beast. Nay more the first beast, his image, and the second beast under the name of the false prophet, are all mentioned together in a single verse. "And the beast was taken,

"Bestia Romana capitis novissimi est imago bestia sexto capite mactata.” Comment. Apoc. in best. bicorn. See Rev. xiv. 9, 11. xvi. 2, xix. 20.

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