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beast is the Papacy,* or, as he terms it, the Papal Antichrist.†

Nearly the same opinion is maintained by Mr. Galloway. He does not indeed allow, that the first beast of the Revelation is the same as the little horn of Daniel's fourth beast, for he asserts that that little horn is the revolutionary power of France : but he has written a whole dissertation for the express purpose of shewing, that the ten-horned apocalyptic beast is the Papacy.§

Bp. Newton, with much more propriety than either of these two authors, observes, that "no doubt is to be made, that this beast was designed to represent the Roman empire; for thus far both ancients, and moderns, papists and protestants, are agreed."|| Had his Lordship steadily adhered to this simple, and indeed undeniable, proposition, I should have had the happiness of being able to sanction my own views of the subject with the authority of one of our ablest commentators upon prophecy but, quitting the assertion with which he originally set out, he soon entirely diverts the attention of his reader from the great secular Roman beast (as the Bishop himself styles it) to that spiritual power which Daniel symbolizes by the little horn of the beast. He commences his discussion with saying very truly, that the beast is the Roman empire; and this beast he afterwards pronounces no less truly to be a secular beast: yet, in the course of a very few pages, he informs us, that the beast is evidently the little horn, which he had already proved with irrefragable arguments to be the Papacy. Now the beast is said by St. John to be the same as his own last head :** hence the Bishop, having

* Yet he elsewhere teaches us, that the little born is the same as the second apocalyptic beast, which he conceives to be French Infidelity. (Ibid. p. 347.) I have cited the whole passage, where this assertion is made, at the beginning of the 4th chapter of the present work.

Ibid. p. 392-and Vol. ii. p. 1—66.

This point has already been fully discussed in the 4th chapter of the present work, § Prophetic Hist. of the Church of Rome. || Dissert. on Rev. xiii.

¶ Dissert. on Rev. xiii. Mr. Mede, in a similar manner, although his opinion be the same as that of the Bishop, especially styles the first apocalyptic beast the secular beast, and the second the ecclesiastical beast. See his Comment. Apoc. in loc.

** «The beast, that was, and is not, even he is the eighth, and is of the seven." (Rev. xvii. 11.) Some suppose, that this is spoken by way of synecdoche; but I

pronounced the beast to be the little horn or the Papacy, of course pronounces the Papacy to be the last head likewise that is to say, he makes a spiritual power to be the last head of the beast and consequently the whole beast, notwithstanding he had declared that this very beast is a secular empire.

Respecting this opinion it may be observed, that, if the beast be a secular empire, it is impossible that his last head, which is identified with himself, should be a spiritual power; because, if that were the case, the beast would no longer be a secular empire, but a spiritual one. Popery indeed like Mohammedism, is symbolized, merely as an ecclesiastical kingdom, by a horn originally small and afterwards becoming so powerful as to have a look more stout than its fellows and as to influence the actions of the whole beast; nor is there any inconsistency in representing symbolically what has really happened, namely the rise of an ecclesiastical kingdom out of a secular empire: but I can form no idea how it is possible, that the papal horn should be considered as the last head of the secular beast, when that head is declared to be the same at its first rise as the whole sccular beast himself. The Pope can only be the last head of the secular beast either in his spiritual or in his secular character. He cannot in his spiritual: because the last head of the beast is to be the whole beast; and no ingenuity can shew, that an ecclesiastical kingdom, as such, is the same as a secular empire. He cannot in his secular, as sovereign of St. Peter's patrimony: both because it is unreasonable to esteem a petty temporal prince the head of a great secular empire; and because, as I have just observed, the last head was to be the whole secular beast at its first rise, which the Pope as a temporal prince never was.

know not what right we have to tamper with the plain declaration of the Apostle. (See Pol. Synop. in loc.) I consider it as a very leading part of the prophecy, and as being studiously introduced to prevent any possibility of mistake respecting the power intended by the last bead. The temporal dominion of all the six first beads, springing up as they respectively did before the division of the Empire, extended over the whole of the Empire: and we are here assured by St. John, that the temporal dominion of the last bead, notwithstanding the division of the Empire into the ten borns, shall extend over the whole of the Empire likewise. Would we then discover the last bead, we must seek for a power whose dominions have been commensurate with the whole Western Empire: for this last head, whatever it may be, is, like its six predecessors, to be the whole beast.

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I am perfectly aware, that to this objection Bp. Newton would reply, that the Pope is "the head of the state as well as of the church, the king of kings, as well as the bishop of bishops;"* that there is no contradiction in a person being at once the head both of the state and the church; and consequently that the Pope, although a spiritual character, may be justly esteemed the head of the secular beast in his capacity of "king of kings." I am aware likewise, that the canonists assert, that "there is no sovereign power but in the Pope;" and that the Popes have repeatedly maintained, that all regal authority is derived from them, as in that remarkable instance when Boniface the eighth wrote to Philip the Fair, “ We will have thee know that thou art subject to us both in temporals and spirituals." But to all such arguments as these the answer is sufficiently obvious: there is a very wide difference between only claiming and really pussessing temporal supremacy. Now the Popes have been sufficiently importunate in claiming the title and authority of "king of kings;" and, had they succeeded in establishing such a claim, I could readily have allowed that they might be, what Bp. Newton supposes them to be, the last head of the secular beast: but, if we con

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

Whitaker's Comment. p. 229-234, 256, 257.

Mr. Whitaker, who mars Bp. Newton's much more simple exposition by fancying that the Papacy is the Dictatorial bead revived, cites Dr. Barrow as asserting, that in the last Lateran council," one bishop styled the Pope prince of the world; another orator called him king of kings, and monarch of the earth; another great prelate said of him, that be bad all power above all porvers both of heaven and earth." (Whitaker's Comment. p. 256.) He likewsse cites a sermon of Pope Innocent the third as containing the following passage. "The church, who is my spouse, does not at her marriage come to me empty handed. She has bestowed a precious, an invaluable, dowry on me; an absolute power in spirituals, an extensive authority in temporals. She has given me the mitre for the ensign of my spiritual, and the crown of my temporal, jurisdiction; the mitre as priest, the crown as king; constituting me his vicar, who bears this inscription written on his thigh and his vestment, King of kings and Lord of lords." (Ibid. p. 234.) He further cites a bull of Sixtus the fifth against the king of Navarre and the Prince of Condé, wherein it is declared, that “the authority delegated to St. Peter and his successors, by the infinite power of the Eternal, is above all power of the kings of the earth; that theirs it is to inforce the observance, and to punish the infringers of it, by pulling them from their thrones, how powerful soever they be, and casting them to the earth as ministers of Satan." (Ibid. p. 229.) In all these declarations however I can discover nothing like a proof, that the Pope is bead of the state, and therefore a head of the secular beast. I learn from them most undeniably, that the Popes have repeatedly claimed a temporal, no less than a sptritual supremacy: but, before I can allow that they constitute a head of

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sult history, we shall find that the very reverse is the case the claim has often been made, but it has never been allowed by the great European powers: consequently, if it has never been allowed, but on the contrary strenuously resisted, with what propriety can we admit the scheme, which makes the Pope to be the last head of the secular beast, as being "the head of the state as well as of the church, the king of kings as well as bishop of bishops?"

When Pope Hildebrand excommunicated and deposed the Emperor Henry, that prince called an assembly, and asked their opinion respecting the pretended right of the Pope to depose an Emperor: upon which, all, both Germans and Italians, unanimously pronounced, that the Pope, instead of having power over the Emperor, owed him obedience.† So likewise, although the Emperor Frederic condescended to hold the Pope's stirrup, he first declared, that this was no mark of homage, but only a compliment paid to his holiness as the spiritual representative of Christ. The same Emperor, in order to shew his independence of the Pope, repudiated his wife by his own authority :§ and, when the Pope had

the beast, I must have it shewn to me that their claim has been allowed. Till this be done, we are only informed what the Popes have been styled by themselves and their flatterers, not what they really are and have been. Exactly the same remark applies to Mr. Sharpe's observations upon the same subject. The Pope may call himself Rector Orbis, and claim an authority over all the kings of the earth, so long as he pleases; but this alone will never prove that he is the ruler of the world, or that any such authority is allowed to him. (Append. to an Inquiry into the description of Babylon p. 11.) It is not unworthy of notice, that even the claim of temporal supremacy was not made by the Popes, till a considerable period after they had been declared supreme head of the Church. The insolent Gregory the second, throughout his whole quarrel with Leo Isauricus respecting image-worship in the year 727, though he vehemently claimed the power of excommunicating even sovereign princes, presumed not to assert that he possessed any temporal supremacy over the Emperor. In one of his epistles to Leo," the limits of civil and ecclesiastical powers are defined by the Pontiff. To the former he appropriates the body; to the latter, the soul: the sword of justice is in the hands of the magistrate: the more formidable weapon of excommunication is entrusted to the clergy; and, in the exercise of their divine commission, a zealous son will not spare his offending father: the successors of St. Peter may lawfully chastise the kings of the earth.' (Hist. of Decline and Fall, Vol. ix. p. 135.) Indeed several years afterwards, it is sufficiently manifest, that be Pope was a mere feudal vassal of Charlemagne, whom he acknowledged to be his rightful sovereign.

* At least never allowed with any continuance, and certainly never allowed by all the great powers at the same time.

Mod. Univ. Hist. Vol. xxix. p.

86.

Ibid. p. 118. § Ibid. p. 117.

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presumed to assert that he bestowed upon him the Empire as a fief of the holy see, he published a manifesto, in which he openly gave the lie to all those who should dare to say, that he held his crown of any other than God himself, declaring that he would rather resign it altogether than suffer it to be debased in his possession.* In a similar manner, when Pope Innocent the third excommunicated and deposed the Emperor Philip, the German nobility of his party complained in a letter to the Pope, that his holiness had intermeddled in the election of a king of the Romans, contrary to the rights of the German princes and the duty of his own pontificate, which originally depended upon the imperial crown.† So again, when Pope Honorius threatened to excom, municate the Emperor Frederic the second on account of his expelling from their sees some bishops who were creatures of the Pope, he was plainly informed, that the Emperors had always possessed an authority and sovereign jurisdiction over the ecclesiastical state, that his grand-father and father had maintained this jurisdiction in full force, and that he neither could nor would divest himself of it to the prejudice of the Empire and bis successors. The Emperor Albert indeed was compelled by the exigencies of the times to own, that kings and emperors received the power of the temporal sword from the Pope but afterwards, when Pope John declared the imperial dignity to be a fief of the holy see, the Emperor Louis assembled all the learned men of Germany, both of the clergy and the laity, to give their opinion of the bull which contained such a claim. These all concluded, that it was unjust, unreasonable, and contrary to the Christian religion, as tending to abolish the sovereign power of princes; and the states of the Empire requested the Emperor to take care, that the imperial dignity should not be trampled upon, nor the Germanic liberty reduced to bondage. Finding however that the Popes still from time to time renewed their pretensions, the princes of the Empire, ecclesiastical as well as secu

* Mod. Univ. Hist. Vol. xxix. p. 120, 121.
Ibid. p. 186. § Ibid. p. 257.

† Ibid.

p. 168.

| Ibid. p. 294, 295, 296.

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