# Mahometanism in its Relation to Prophecy/Chapter 4

THE HISTORY OF THE MAHOMETAN EMPIRE IS THE LITERAL FULFILMENT OF THE PROPHECIES OF HOLY WRIT, RELATING TO THE KINGDOM AND DOMINION OF ANTICHRIST.
Before we exhibit to our readers the history of the Mahometan empire, as the fulfilment of the prophecies relating to the empire of Antichrist, it is necessary that we consider, for a few moments, the history of the Catholic Church, that is, of the kingdom and empire of Christ. For it is impossible to form a right view of the Antichristian empire, unless we set before our readers the parallel history of the Christian empire of the Church, inasmuch as it is in the mutual conflict between these two powers, that one of the main evidences is developed of the fulfilment of Divine prophecy.
If we turn to the twelfth chapter of the Apocalypse, we find the following words:—
"And a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars."
Now, what is meant by this symbol? In its first and limited application, I should refer it ​to the blessed Virgin Mary, the all-pure Mother of God, for she might well be compared to a woman "clothed with the sun," seeing that she was "full of the grace of God," as the angel Gabriel had declared of her, "Hail full of grace," (Luke i. 28), "the Lord is With thee;" that is, she was filled with God, and might well, therefore, be compared to a woman clothed with the sun, for the sun was an emblem of God; and the moon was said to be under the feet of Mary, because the moon symbolized the variable and empty things of this life, which our blessed Lady trod under her feet: while the crown of twelve stars, that encircled her head, signified, on the one hand, the twelve patriarchs of the people of Israel, and the twelve tribes into which that people was subdivided, and, on the other, the twelve Apostles of Jesus Christ, who were the chosen patriarchs of the Christian Church, that is, of the children of Mary, for, in the strictest sense of the term, Mary, as the Mother of Christ, is also the mother of all those who are born again in Christ, and who were all committed to her maternal keeping by Christ upon the cross in the person of John the beloved disciple. And when, in the fifth verse, the Prophet tells us, that "She brought forth a man-child, who was to rule all nations with an iron rod, and her ​Son was taken up to God, and to His throne:" it is evident that Christ our Lord, the only Son of Mary, is most distinctly referred to; but in a more extended and general sense, there can be no doubt that the Catholic Church of Christ is "the woman clothed with the sun," and so all interpreters, both ancient and modern, have with one accord interpreted this symbol. Now, applying it to the Church, she appears "in heaven," that is, in the region of God, in the region of His grace and mercy unto men, for no one but God designed this marvellous and admirable creation of His bounty and wisdom. She is "clothed with the sun," that is, with that "Sun of Righteousness" that was to rise upon the earth "with healing in His wings," as Isaias the Prophet had foretold.
Her being "clothed with the sun" denoted her infallible authority, and her unerring truth, for how can there be any darkness of error in the teaching of her who is "clothed with the sun?" This symbolical description of the Church well accords with the words of Christ when He first instituted her. "Go ye and teach all nations, and lo! I am with you always, even unto the end of the world." What Christ then promised, St. John, in the Apocalypse, beholds accomplished in the mystic symbol of the Divine vision; and that there ​might be no mistake concerning the person referred to as "the woman clothed with the sun," it is presently added, "and on her head (there was) a crown of twelve stars:" that is, of the twelve Apostles of Jesus Christ, they whom He sent to gather His Church out of all nations. Hence the true Church of Christ has always been termed the Catholic and Apostolic Church, that is, the Church of all nations (which is the signification of the title Catholic), and the Church founded by the twelve Apostles, which is the reason why we call her Apostolical. "And being with child, she cried, travailing in birth, and was in pain to be delivered." The Church's child is every child of Adam, baptized in the sacred layer of regeneration, and she might well be described as travailing with pain, when the birth of her first children cost her so many cruel persecutions, as she endured during the three first centuries of her existence. The Prophet continues, "And there was seen another sign in heaven: and behold, a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns; and on his heads seven diadems: and his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and cast them to the earth: and the dragon stood before the woman who was ready to be delivered; that when she should be delivered, he might devour her Son: and she ​brought forth a man-child, who was to rule all nations with an iron rod: and her Son was taken up to God, and to His throne." Now, who was represented by this "other sign in heaven?"—"The great red dragon?" If we take it in its first and direct application, it would evidently refer to Satan, and the ninth verse of this same chapter, puts this out of all doubt; but if we take it in a more extended sense, it would refer to Satan as working by and through mankind; in other words, it would signify the whole mass of fallen men, ruled over and directed by the devil. Taking it in this sense, I should understand the seven-headed and ten-horned dragon to symbolize the whole mass of mankind, ruled over by the enemy of God; and the seven heads of this dragon would signify the seven great kingdoms or associations of fallen men, which from the time of Noah until the end of the world were to carry out the devil's purposes in opposition to God, and to His true religion. Viewed in this light, the seven heads of the dragon would signify:—1. The Egyptian monarchy; 2. The Assyrian; 3. The Chaldean or Babylonian; 4. The Medo-Persian; 5. The Grecian; 6. The Roman; 7. The Antichristian empire of Ma​homet. While the ten horns would signify the ten kingdoms, into which the Roman empire, or sixth head of the dragon, was to be subdivided. While Mahometanism, or the dragon's seventh head, was destined eventually to absorb three of these ten horns or kingdoms, as we have already intimated, and shall still further explain in the course of this work.
But although I feel no doubt that this is the most accurate interpretation of the Apocalyptic vision, it may also be referred in a somewhat more limited sense to that power which I believe to have been the dragon's sixth head, namely, to the Roman empire: now the Roman empire was emphatically the instrument of the devil in persecuting the Church, that is, "the woman clothed with the sun," on her first appearance in the world.
Applying it, then, to the Roman empire, by the seven heads crowned with diadems I should understand either the seven principal emperors who exhibited the greatest fury in persecuting the Primitive Church, which I consider the most probable interpretation, or what some other commentators have taken it to mean, the seven forms of government that successively prevailed in the Roman state, being as follows: 1. The Kings; 2. Consuls; 3. Dictators; 4. Decemvirs; 5. Military tribunes; 6. Emperors; ​7. The senate, which co-existed with all the other heads, but, as sharing the sovereignty with them all, may well be counted for one of the mystic heads of the Roman dragon. Others have interpreted the seventh head of the Roman beast to mean the kingdom of Italy, established by Odoacer, king of the Heruli, after the deposition of Romulus Augustulus, the last emperor, in 476 A.D. But I confess I think this less likely than the other interpretation; for, whatever may be true of the different forms of government under which the Roman beast has subsisted, it is evident that in St. John's vision that beast is contemplated chiefly in its connection with the Church, as Satan's first instrument in persecuting her. Now Rome never persecuted the Church under any of her seven forms of government except the imperial; why, therefore, should her seven heads, in that sense of them, be introduced in connection with the persecutions of the early Church, when it is clear neither the kings, nor the consuls, nor the dictators, nor the decemvirs, nor the military tribunes ever persecuted the Church? for all these forms of government were passed and gone when the Church's history commenced. But it is quite clear that seven of the Roman emperors were conspicuous for their fury in persecuting the Church; for ​although, if we include Tiberius, under whom the crucifixion of our Lord Himself and the martyrdom of St. Stephen took place, there were eleven emperors who persecuted the Church, we may certainly conclude from history that there were seven who were conspicuous above all the rest of the emperors for the terrible cruelty with which they waged this infernal war; and these seven I should enumerate thus: 1. Nero; 2. Domitian; 3. Trajan; 4. Hadrian; 5. Decius; 6. Aurelian; 7. Dioclesian: and it would seem that Dioclesian was the worst of them all.
But there is another reason for interpreting in this passage the seven heads, exclusively of the emperors, and it is that they are expressly said to be diademed heads, an appellation which belongs more properly to the emperors than to any of the other governing powers, if, at least, we except that of the kings. Also by the seven diademed heads I understand the whole body of the emperors persecuting the Church under the influence of the seven deadly sins, for we must observe that the dragon, who is described as having these seven diademed heads, is primarily Satan, and it is by these seven capital sins that he governs his impious kingdom over the bodies and souls of men. Then by the ten horns I understand ​here not the ten kingdoms into which the Roman empire was ultimately subdivided, but the ten general persecutions of the Primitive Church, which are well compared to ten horns, because they aptly represent those ten furious assaults which Satan gave to the Church, by urging against her the whole physical force of the Roman empire in those ten great persecutions. But be this as it may, commentators agree that the dragon in this vision symbolizes both Satan, in his organization of mankind under seven great monarchies, and in a more special sense the pagan empire of Rome, combined and connected as it so closely was with the devil in the persecution of the Church of Christ, And when the text says that "his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and cast them to the earth," I understand by that, first, in reference to Satan, that portion of the angels whom he dragged down from heaven to become his accomplices in warring against God along with himself upon the earth by trying to defeat the designs of God upon mankind; and secondly, in reference to the persecuting action of the pagan Roman empire upon the bishops of the Catholic Church, who are elsewhere in the Apocalypse compared to stars: "The seven stars are the angels" or bishops "of the seven Churches."​—(Apocalypse i. 20.) Now it might well be said that the dragon's tail cast a third part of these stars unto the earth, for full one-third of the primitive bishops were levelled in the grave by the sword of martyrdom, urged on by the devil, and unsheathed by the Roman emperors. The vision continues: "And the dragon stood before the woman who was ready to be delivered; that when she should be delivered, he might devour her son. And she brought forth a man-child, who was to rule all nations with an iron red: and her Son was taken up to God and to His throne."
​The dragon, standing before the woman about to be delivered of her son, appears to me to signify the efforts of Satan in endeavouring to destroy the Primitive Church: and by the man-child of the woman, that was destined to rule all nations with an iron rod, I understand the Papacy, ruling over the Christian nations with the spiritual sceptre of St. Peter. And whereas this rod or staff is said to be of "iron," I understand by that term, that the chief scat of the secptre was destined one day to be in Rome, which we may remember in Nabuchodonosor's statue was symbolized by the iron. Hence David, in the Psalms, foretells of Messiah that He would rule the Gentiles "with a rod of iron."—(Psalm ii. 8, 9)—"Ask of me and I will give thee the Gentiles for thine inheritance, and the utmost parts of the earth for thy possession, Thou shalt rule them with a rod of iron, and break them in pieces like a potter's vessel." By which last words of the Psalmist I see a reference to the fact foretold to Nabu​chodenozor, where it was said that the feet of the great statue "were partly of iron and partly of potter's clay" (Dan. ii. 33, 34): "Thus thou sawest, till a stone was cut out of a mountain without hands: and it struck the statue on the feet thereof that were of iron and clay, and broke them in pieces." And it was expressly revealed to Nabuchodonozor that this iron and clay signified the fourth empire, which was afterwards revealed to Daniel as the Roman empire, eventually to be subdivided into ten kingdoms. The Church's man-child is therefore evidently the sovereign pontiff, reigning from Rome over the Gentiles, and thus governing Messiah's spiritual kingdom. And whereas this man-child was said to be "taken up to God and to His throne," that may signify, that when the dragon stood before the woman to devour her child, he was taken up to the throne of God by martyrdom, for almost all the early popes, during the great Roman persecutions, laid down their lives for the testimony of Jesus, and so were taken up to the throne of God. But we shall see later, when this man-child began to rule the nations with his iron rod, that is, with his Roman sceptre, how that event is represented by another symbol.
But we must observe here an important ​distinction, and it is that which exists between the temporal and the spiritual power vested by Almighty God in the papacy, that is, in the Holy See.
The latter, that is the spiritual power, is essential to it, that which it possesses of Divine right, by the institution of Christ Himself; the former (that is the temporal power) is accidental and dependent upon circumstances; it has been given to the Holy Sec for very great and holy purposes, and to reward the great constancy and zeal of so many holy successors of St. Peter, but it is not essential to the papacy. The popes were not always sovereigns of Rome, but they have always been the chief bishops of the Catholic Church, and they alone, amongst all other bishops, have jurisdiction over the whole Church.
It is useless here for me to attempt to prove this as a fact from Church history; it would lead me away from the subject which we are principally treating of here, and would swell this work far beyond the limits I wish to assign to it. But I would refer the reader, who would wish to investigate the truth of my assertion, to the very able treatises of my learned friend, Mr. Allies, "On the See of St. Peter as the Centre of Unity," and "On St. Peter, His Name and Office;" and still more ​to that masterly work just published by Archdeacon Robert Wilberforce, "An Inquiry into the Principles of Church Authority." In the works of these two writers all controversy on the subject of the pope has been set at rest for ever.
The popes then, from the very infancy of the Church, have always been regarded as the centre of unity and the source of spiritual authority; and inasmuch as St, Peter fixed the local residence of this authority at Rome, the capital of the Gentile world, it is true that Messiah's kingdom of the Church, gathered as it has been out of all nations, has always been ruled with the rod of iron, virgâ ferreâ, as it is termed in the Vulgate, and we have shown what we conceive to be the meaning of this remarkable term, namely, that it signifies a Roman staff, or an authority emanating from, and holding its chief seat in Rome, which city, with its empire, were figured by the iron portion of Nabuchedonozor's metallic statue. But of we pursue our investigation of the Apocalyptic vision, we find the Prophet thus continuing: "And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she had a place prepared by God, that there they should feed her a thousand two hundred and sixty days."
The flight of the woman into the wilderness ​I conceive to mean the Church's entrance into the world. For the world might well be termed a wilderness, when we consider what was its moral and physical condition before our Saviour's birth: and when the text adds, "where she had a place prepared by God," it evidently refers again to the fact of the Church having one principal primatial see and source of spiritual authority, in other words the Holy See of Rome; for if Rome be not such, no other sec at least has ever made such a claim; and it is clear from the text that some such primatial seat of spiritual dominion there was to be somewhere. The text continues, "that there they should feed her a thousand two hundred and sixty days."
This expression is very significant, and it surely indicates that there would be a very remarkable period in the Church's history, a period during which the Church was to be fed, that is to be specially nourished and enriched; and that this period was to last for the space of twelve hundred and sixty days; that is for the very same space of time that was allotted by Daniel, as we have already seen, to the dominion of the little horn, that is of Antichrist, which we have proved to be the religious system and empire of Mahomet. Now then we may begin to understand why God gave a ​temporal dominion to the popes at Rome, in other words, why He ordained that the Church should be fed, in a place prepared for her, for twelve hundred and sixty days.
Mahometanism decreed the extirpation of the Church by fire and sword, and it was to meet this armed heresy that God gave a temporal dominion to His Church. And we shall see in the sequel how this temporal dominion of the popes was the only thing that saved Christendom from being overrun by the Mahometan armies: so that, humanly speaking, unless God had given temporal dominion to the popes, Christianity would have been rooted out, and Antichrist would have extended his empire not only over the three great provinces of the Macedonian he-goat, but over the universe itself.
The Prophet then goes on to describe the conflict between St. Michael and the good angels with the dragon, or Satan, and his evil angels; and he describes this in order to explain the causes which in the invisible world prepare and bring about the results which we witness here below in this visible world; that conflict of good and evil, which has continually been at work ever since the fall of our first forefather Adam. He carries us back in this description to the remote period when Lucifer and his ​confederate angels first rebelled against God, and were cast out of heaven: and he declares that the Almighty Creator effected this by the ministry of the Archangel St. Michael: of which we will just observe how completely this statement coincides with the teaching of the Catholic Church, that God usually acts through the ministry of angels and saints; while it is at variance with the Protestant theory, which completely ignores all such ministry and action on the part of blessed spirits. St. John then goes on to tell us, in the ninth verse, what was the result of Lucifer's ejection from heaven: "He was cast unto the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him:" and the effect of this he tells by the character he gives of Satan, "who seduceth the whole earth."
In these few words the Prophet sums up the history of mankind from the time of Adam, the seduction of the whole earth. For it was, alas! a total seduction; with the single exception of the Jewish people, all mankind had been seduced into idolatry and every sort of wickedness.
But in the tenth verse a new and brighter scene dawns upon the world: "And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying: Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of His Christ." This ​refers to the coming of our blessed Redeemer, "now is come salvation." And "the kingdom of God" and "the power of His Christ" was first unfolded to mankind by the establishment of His Church, and the effect of that redemption, so proclaimed to mankind, is thus described by St. John: "For the accuser of our brethren is cast out, who accused them before our God day and night." The accusation of mankind, which had hitherto been so triumphantly pleaded by Satan, was now torn aside by our Lord Jesus Christ, who nailed it to His cross. And the first Christians showed the fruits of this redemption in their lives, for "they overcame him (Satan) by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of the testimony, and they loved not their lives unto death." It was through the merits of our Saviour's passion and death that they obtained forgiveness, as it was through the sacraments, "the word of the testimony," those mysterious forms instituted by Christ, that His precious merits were principally applied to their souls; and out of the fulness of their gratitude, and the tender outpourings of their love, they gave their lives for Jesus, who had redeemed them by the loss of His. How wonderfully and how sublimely was this exhibited by the Christians of the early Church.
​Millions and millions laid down their lives to suffer the most cruel deaths in testimony of their faith in Christ: and when the sword of the persecutor was sheathed, millions of other generous Christians renounced the pleasures of this life, and betook themselves to the deserts of Egypt, of Syria, and of Arabia, in order to consecrate themselves to the perpetual and exclusive service of Jesus, whom alone they loved, for "they loved not their lives unto death." Well might the Apostle add, m the twelfth verse, "Therefore rejoice, O ye heavens, and ye that dwell therein." For if the angels rejoice over the sinner that doeth penance, what shall not be the joy of these heavenly spirits over the just, who give their lives by martyrdom fer the love of Christ, and who consecrate themselves to His love in the most holy monastic state, renouncing the world, and the pleasures of the world.
But it was to be expected that this bright vision would seen be troubled; while the probationary state of man endures, the bright blue sky of God's serene heaven must often and often be clouded over, and storms and tempests must try the shrubs and trees even in God's sacred Eden, the Catholic Church, to prove whether they be truly and firmly rooted in Christ; and so no sooner does St. John be​hold the fruits of Divine grace, and the consequent joy of angels, but he hears the dismal cry of woe. "Woe to the earth, and to the sea." That is, "Woe to the earth," woe to that beautiful work of God's creation, this planet of ours, which the devil hates because it was to be the dwelling-place of that great mystery, the Incarnation of the Son of God. And "Woe unto the sea," that is mankind, for, as we have already seen, St. Jerome, following the instruction of the angel, interprets "the sea" to signify mankind tossed about by the winds of trial and temptation, And why is this woe uttered? "Because the devil is come down" (Apoc. xii. 12), "having great wrath, knowing that he hath but a short time." For although to us poor mortals it may seem a long time that Satan has been trying and persecuting the Church, it is but a short time in he estimation of God, when compared with eternity. And short in the estimation of Satan also, when he compares it with that miserable and never-ending future to which he looks forward, For short indeed is the space of two or three thousand years, when compared with countless millions of millions of ages, destined to usher in similar periods for all eternity, world without end.
The comparison is almost too fearful to con​template: we none of us realize it as we ought; if we did, assuredly we should be ready to endure the worst torments rather than to offend God, and so lose His grace, and our own salvation.
But the Prophet tells us, that the feeling which actuated the devil, when he thought of the comparative shortness of this time of trial, was to redouble his fury against God, and to contrive all sorts of mischief against God's work, the Catholic Church. He says, in the thirteenth verse, "And when the dragon saw he was cast unto the earth, he persecuted the woman that brought forth the man-child."
This evidently refers to the persecutions of the Primitive Church, which we know continued more or less until the conversion of Constantine the Great, And even after his conversion, the Church has been continually persecuted; but in the next verse, the Prophet tells us, that at a certain period God gave His Church a special protection against the fury of persecution. "And there were given to the woman two wings of a great eagle, that she might fly into the desert unto her place, where she is nourished for a time, and times, and half a time' from the face of the serpent."
Now, what are these wings of a great eagle? and when were they specially given unto the woman, that is, the Church?
​In order to answer the question what they are, the best way is to consider when it is that they are promised, and then to compare the history of the Church with the prediction. This will give us an infallible answer, for the history of the Church is God's own commentary upon His own prophecies.
Now, we have already seen that the dominion of the little horn, that is, of Antichrist, was to last for a time, and times, and half a time: in other words, for the very same period as that during which the wings of the eagle are given to the Church. We have shown that the little horn was indisputably Mahomet. The question then arises, was there, or was there not, coincident with the coming of Mahomet, any new privilege conferred upon the Church, as it were to meet the exigencies and difficulties of the times? What is the answer of history to this question?
Its answer is unmistakeable: there was.
And what was it? The answer is equally unmistakeable: the temporal sovereignty of the popes at Rome. So distinct, so unmistakeably clear is this answer of history to the question we have put, that Protestant authors have not hesitated to make it the basis of all their proofs that the pope was, what they erroneously talk of, the western little horn. They have shown, ​and truly shown, that the establishment of the pope's sovereignty exactly coincided with the rise of Mahometanism, which, in their theory of prophetic interpretation, they term the eastern little horn. And hence they unanimously vie with one another in drawing absurd parallels between these two little horns, which of course they are compelled to do, if there be two little horns, seeing that prophecy predicates the same things of each. But we have shown that there is but one little horn, namely, that one which Protestant commentators denominate the eastern little horn. Consequently, we affirm, that when Scripture declares that the wings of a great eagle were given to the Church, coincidently with the rise of the little horn, that prophecy was fulfilled in that new development of the Church's temporal state, which history informs us actually did take place, coincident with the coming of Mahomet, and the establishment of his apostacy and empire. Now, this new development was the establishment of the sovereignty of the popes in the Roman states: we therefore affirm, that the wings of the great eagle signify the temporal sovereignty of Rome.
The eagle, all men know, was the symbol of Roman sovereignty. The old Romans bore the eagle as their military standard, and no ​one can deny that the Roman eagle is another phrase to express "the Roman power." And the flight of the Roman eagle is used even by profane writers to symbolize the conquests of the Roman armies. When, therefore, the Prophet tells us that the wings of a great eagle were given to the Church for the very period of the little horn's dominion, and history tells us that the temporal sovereignty of Rome was at that very time given to the popes, we are surely justified in appealing to this great fact as the fulfilment of the prophecy. And as this temporal sovereignty was given to the popes, as the Prophet assures us, "for a time, and times, and half a time," to guard Holy Church "from the face of the serpent," that is, from the great efforts which the devil was to make against her during that remarkable period, and which we find from history to have been chiefly wrought by the instrumentality of Mahomet, and his religious and political empire, so the same text prepares us to expect, what history records, that, in proportion to the growth and decline of Mahometanism, the temporal power of the popes would wax and wane along with it. So that, as in the thirteenth century the Papal power was at its greatest height, that was precisely the period when Mahometanism was most formidable. It is admitted by all ​impartial historians, that but for the crusades Christendom must have fallen a victim to the victorious arms of Islamism. Now, who was it that summoned the princes of Christendom to these sacred wars? The popes; it was they who, either in person or by their delegates, preached the crusades, and called upon all Christians to take the cross, But we all know that the most effectual argument is example, and the popes, as sovereigns of the Roman states, gave that argument in arming their own people in defence of our holy religion. If they had not been sovereigns of Rome, they might have preached, but their call, humanly speaking, would not have been responded to.
As with the growth so with the decline of the temporal power of the popes, history proves its coincidence with that of Mahometanism.
Never did that impious heresy receive a more deadly blow than the one inflicted upon it by the instrumentality of the great pope St. Pius the Fifth. Islamism has never recovered from the memorable victory of Lepanto. At the moment the battle was fought, and the victory won, that great pontiff was seen to lift up his eyes to heaven, as he sat by a window in the Vatican palace at Rome, and the tears flowed, and his blessed soul was absorbed in mystic ecstasy. He beheld the glorious Mother ​of God at the right hand of her Divine Son, interceding with Him and through Him for the safety of Christendom and the success of the Christian arms; and it was given him to understand that the prayer of Mary had prevailed. Turning to his attendants, he announced to them a mighty victory over the infidels, worthy of the intercession of the Mother of God. The event justified the pope's assertion, and it was found, when the official intelligence arrived, that it was achieved at the very moment when God opened the eyes of the holy father to see what was passing in that wonderful instant before the throne of His omnipotence. Yes, in that critical hour St. Michael and his angels were fighting with the dragon, and Mary, the immaculate queen of angels, was bruising his poisonous head.
From that hour the Crescent has rapidly waned; but the wings of the eagle have also lowered their flight; and we have lived to see the day when the temporal sovereignty of the popes has been all but extinguished.
Protestants thought it was actually gone, and they congratulated one another that their old foe the pope was now no more, and they appealed with as much confidence (as Catholics might have done to a miracle) to a fanatical commentary on prophecy, written in the reign ​of Queen Anne by one Fleming, a Dutchman, a raving Calvinist, who came over to England from the fens of Holland with William the Third, and who backed up his master's hatred of the pope and Catholicism by fanciful citations of Scripture. Fleming foretold that in 1848 the papacy would be extinguished. Never shall I forget the rapture of the ultra-Protestant party, when in that very year the pope was driven from Rome; and for the moment it seemed as if the Dutchman had made a lucky guess. But two years sufficed to prove he was a false prophet, in spite of first appearances, and the eagle once more flapped its wings in the face of rampant democracy and infidelity, as it had heretofore so often done in the very teeth of the Mahometan dragon; and that the event might be more marked and fixed in men's minds, Providence decreed that the pope should be restored to his temporal sovereignty by the armies of republican and democratic France. Thus, that the Word of God might be fulfilled, a republic overthrew a republic, lest the wings of the eagle should be severed from the mystic woman, who was to be guarded by them "for a time, and times, and half a time."
The question may here be put, if it be said "that the wings of the eagle are given to the ​woman for a time, and times, and half a time," does that expression of prophecy, understood as we understand it of the temporal sovereignty of the popes, necessarily imply on this theory that this temporal sovereignty of the popes will cease at the end of the period designated as "a time, and limes, and half a time?"
Our answer to this question is emphatically that we repudiate any such inference; and, on the contrary, it is our firmest conviction that after the 1260 days, or a time, times, and half a time are ended, the papal power will assume a still greater development all over the earth. It is not the place here to state our reasons for this conviction, but it is right that we should anticipate a question that would naturally occur to the reader, while we just glance at the answer, which further on we shall give more at length.
The Prophet tells us, in the fifteenth verse, "And the serpent cast out of his mouth after the woman, water as it were a river, that he might cause her to be carried away by the river."
And in the sixteenth verse he continues: "And the earth helped the woman, and the earth opened her mouth and swallowed up the river, which the dragon cast out of his mouth."
​In these two verses, it seems to me that we have a recapitulation, or a more enlarged description, of what was stated in the thirteenth verse; and that the Prophet refers to the persecutions raised against the Church by the pagan Roman emperors, which might well be compared to a river, for by their means torrents of Christian blood were shed all over the earth; and such was the impetuosity of their fury, that had if not been for the miraculous help of God the Christian faith must have been rooted out from the world. But when the Prophet adds, "and the earth helped the woman, and swallowed up the river," it seems that he refers to the conversion of Constantine, which by placing Christianity on the throne of the Cæsars effectually swallowed up the river that had hitherto so violently assailed the Church, and it might truly be said "that the earth helped the woman;" for from this moment the riches of the earth were poured into the Church's lap. Now did the glowing prophecies of the Old Testament begin to receive their accomplishment; the gold of Ophir, the precious stones of the East, and the frankincense of Arabia, were combined in the offering of the converted earth to its Lord and Saviour; stately churches now began to be erected all over Christendom, so magnificent that they ​rivalled even the Temple of Solomon, and far surpassed the most splendid temples of Paganism. The learned Abbé Fleury, in his "Church History," has given us such a description of the glories of the Church under the Christian Roman emperors, that the reader is quite lost in wonder and admiration. But it was not only in material riches and splendour that the Church shone after Constantine's conversion, she developed her spiritual principles and her inherent sanctity with equal brilliancy. The holy counsels of Jesus Christ were now eagerly embraced, we may say, without exaggeration, by countless millions of fervent Christian virgins and youths, whose hearts glowed so brightly with the love of Jesus, that they counted all things else but as dross in comparison of His service, and the continual contemplation of His blessed life and His adorable perfections. When we read the lives of St. Anthony and the other holy fathers of the deserts, we are filled with devotion, and the coldest hearts are kindled with the love of Jesus. Ob! how great was the fervour, the humility, the devotion, and the mortification of these great servants of God! Well might the devout author of the "Imitation of Christ" exclaim, when he compared the Christian fervour of his own times with that of these golden ​days of the Church's first love: "Look upon the lively example of the holy fathers, in whom shone real perfection and the religious life, and thou wilt see how little it is and almost nothing that we do! Alas! what is our life, if it be compared with theirs! Saints and friends of Christ, they served our Lord in hunger and thirst, in cold and nakedness, labour and weariness, in watchings and fastings, in prayers and holy meditations, in frequent persecutions and reproaches. Oh! what a strict and self-renouncing life the holy fathers of the desert led! what long and grievous temptations did they bear! how often were they harassed by the enemy! what frequent and fervent prayers did they offer up to God! what rigorous abstinence did they practise! what great zeal and fervour had they for spiritual progress! what a valiant conflict did they wage to subdue their imperfections! what purity and straightforwardness of purpose did they keep towards God! By day they laboured, and a great part of the night they spent in prayer; and even while they laboured they ceased not to pray in spirit. They spent all their time profitably; the hours seemed too short to spend with God; and even their needful refection of the body was forgotten in the great sweetness ​of their contemplations."—(Imitation of Christ, b. i. 18.)
What a picture is here given us of the first fruits of Christ's grace in converting the barren desert of this earth into a garden of spiritual delights!
But here below these bright intervals of Divine sunshine are few and transient: and so the Prophet at once prepares us for Satan's vengeance, the natural issue of his diabolical envy and wrath; hence he adds: "And the dragon was angry against the woman; and went to make war with the rest of her seed, who keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ. And he stood upon the sand of the sea."—(Apocalypse xii. 17, 18.)
We believe that these verses introduce us to the history of Mahometanism, that is, of the little horn of Daniel, and "the Antichrist" of the New Testament.
Satan, enraged at the failure of all his efforts to destroy the Church by the furious persecutions of the Roman emperors, still further infuriated by seeing that river absorbed by the earth in the conversion of those very emperors, and the manifold fruits of sanctity all over the earth, meditates a fresh war upon the seed of the woman, that is, the Church's children; ​and so St. John tells us, that this implacable enemy of God and man took his stand "upon the sand of the sea."
An able Catholic interpreter (Preuves Incontestables de l'Eglise Catholique, chap. v. p. 297), explains this to mean Arabia, for that country might well be termed "the sand of the sea," both from the vast tracts of sandy desert, of which it is mainly composed, and from the fact of its peninsular form being chiefly surrounded by the sea. But I should also interpret this expression, according to what we have already seen of St. Jerome's interpretation of the term "sea," to mean the most worthless portion of mankind, for if "the sea" signifies mankind, then the sand of the sea signifies all the scum and cast-off deposit, which the sea throws up upon the beach: and what would this be, but those reprobate outcasts of the Church, whom Mahomet seized upon as his instruments to propagate his mighty heresy? and as the grains of sand are infinite in number, so countless was the multitude of that light and faithless generation, which the hurricane of his impiety drove in clouds over the deserts of Asia and Africa, till the sun of Divine truth was darkened, and God's moon, the Church, was turned into blood, so that in those desolate regions she no longer reflected the rays of her ​Divine Master, but waned beneath the fury of the Mahometan tempest, and the clouds of schism and heresy.
The thirteenth chapter at once discloses to us the prophetic history of the two great Mahometan beasts or empires.
"And I saw," says St. John, "a beast coming up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten diadems, and upon his heads names of blasphemy."
Now, who is this beast? Some interpreters, observing no doubt that there are several points of resemblance between the description of this beast, and that of the great red dragon of the last chapter, which we have already proved to be mankind subdivided into seven monarchies, and, in a secondary sense, the pagan Roman empire, conclude that this beast, and the seven-headed dragon, are the same. But this is evidently a great mistake: there are indeed some points of resemblance in the two descriptions, but there are also differences, and these differences are fatal to their identity. For instance, the red dragon of the twelfth ​chapter is said to have "seven heads, and ten horns, and on his heads seven diadems:" whereas the beast that comes up out of the sea in the thirteenth chapter, is said to have "seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten diadems."
How, then, can these two beasts be the same?
Again, the Prophet assigns a chronological difference to them also.
The red dragon, with its seven heads and ten horns, failing in its onslaught on the woman, the devil subsequently takes his stand "on the sand of the sea," as we have already seen. And the Prophet tells us that he saw the result of that, in the coming of a beast "out of the sea."
Now, the pagan Roman empire arose long before the date of St. John's vision. Its twelfth emperor, Domitian, was reigning at the time, and what St. John is here describing is evidently posterior not only to Domitian, but to the conversion of Constantine.
This beast, then, in the thirteenth chapter, cannot refer to the pagan Roman empire. What is it then?
The learned Anglican, Bishop Newton, suggests another interpretation, which, with much ingenuity, he endeavours to establish.—​(Bishop Newton's Dissertations on the Prophecies, chap. xiii. p. 526.)
Affirming the general identity of the red dragon, and the first beast of the thirteenth chapter of the Apocalypse, whereby he violates all just rules of prophetic interpretation, he concludes this beast to be papal Rome. But we have already shown what place papal Rome occupies in prophecy, and especially in St. John's Apocalypse; we have shown that this place is a place of honour, not of dishonour; the place of the chief instrument of God in His spiritual sway over the nations, not one of error or blasphemy. How, then, can this beast be papal Rome? Bishop Newton admits (and it would be impossible for him to deny it), that there is a wonderful resemblance, amounting to complete identity, between this beast and another prophetic personage; viz., the little horn of Daniel, or rather what he, on his erroneous principles of interpretation, would term "the western little horn." Well, then, agreeing on this point with Bishop Newton, so far as the identity between this beast and Daniel's "little horn" is concerned, and having already shown that there is but one little horn, although mentioned twice, and not two little horns (as Bishop Newton and other Protestant commentators have conveniently imagined), and having ​already established and demonstrated what and where that little horn is, we say at once, without hesitation, that the first of the two beasts described in the thirteenth chapter of the Apocalypse is unquestionably the same power as Daniel's little horn, that is, the Mahometan empire, as it was at first established by Mahomet and his immediate successors.
Let us examine the words of St. John, and compare them with what history records, and we shall find that the prophetic description, and the history of Mahometanism, agree together.
St. John tells us that this beast, which we affirm to represent the empire of Mahomet, had "seven heads." By these seven heads, we understand the seven thrones, which were erected in seven different countries, wherein the power and religion of Mahomet were established with the greatest authority.
These seven heads or thrones were:—
1. That of the Caliphs, the immediate successors, and principal representatives of the false Prophet Mahomet, whose chief capital or seat of government was first placed at Medina, and then at Bagdad.
2. That of Persia, one of the principal Mahometan powers even to this day.
3. That of North Africa, or the empire of ​Morocco, whose sovereign had the title of Miramoulin, the last who bore it being the celebrated Muley-Ismael, who played a conspicuous part in the history of the seventeenth century.
4. That of Egypt, under the sway of the Fatimites, who occupy a great position in Mahometan history.
5. That of Damascus, in Syria, under especially those remarkable sovereigns, Noradin and Saladin, whose names figure so conspicuously in the history of the crusades, and even in our own contemporaneous English annals.
6. The Mogul empire in Hindostan, of the riches and splendour of which the accurate descriptions of grave historians sound more like Oriental fiction than a sober reality, although the remains, which exist even at the present day, are satisfactory evidence that they were not exaggerated nor over-coloured.
7. The seventh throne of the beast was the Moorish kingdom of Granada, in Spain, which has undoubtedly left monuments behind it of its power and its magnificence that can never be surpassed.
These, then, were the seven heads or thrones of the beast; these all existed and flourished ​simultaneously; and in their respective territories, as well as all around, they spread everywhere the terror of the name of Mahomet, and everywhere combated the religion of the cross.
But St, John tells us not only that the beast had "seven heads," but it had also "ten horns," and these ten horns were crowned with "diadems."
By these ten diademed horns, I understand ten royal dynasties, which we actually find described in Mahometan history, as having contributed, in an especial manner, to uphold and extend the faith and dominion of the little horn over that portion of the earth which God gave into his hand. The learned author of the "Preuves Incontestables de l'Eglise Catholique déduites de l'Apocalypse" (ch. vi. p. 210), has demonstrated these ten horns to represent the ten great dynasties as follow:—1. The Thaherians; 2. The Soffarides; 3. The Samanides; 4. The Gaznevides; 5. The Bouides; 6. The Tholonides; 7. The Seljucides; 8. The Ajoubites; 9. The Aglabites; 10. The Khouarasmians." These are the principal dynasties that figure in Mahometan history during the period of what we will now call the Saracenic or first beast.
We shall not at present enter into the minutiæ of Mahometan history, as it developed ​itself under these dynasties in the several kingdoms subject to the sway of the False Prophet. These details will come in their proper place in a future work, and we shall have occasion to glance at some of them in the course of the present treatise; but here our object must rather be as briefly as possible to lay our interpretation of the prophecy before our readers.
St. John continues (xiii. 2): "And the beast which I saw was like to a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion; and the dragon gave him his own strength and great power."
Now in this remarkable description of the Saracenic beast, it seems to me that the Prophet has given us a symbolical clue to ascertain where his power would chiefly be established. He describes the beast as made up of a strange conglomeration of three other beasts; he had the mouth of a lion, the body of a leopard, and the feet of a bear. Now it is impossible to read this description and not to remember Daniel's vision of the four beasts, which represented the four great monarchies. And if we turn to it, we shall find that the first Apocalyptic beast of St. John is compounded of the three first of the four beasts of Daniel.
​The lion or lioness represented the Assyrian or Babylonian empire; the bear, the Medo-Persian; and the leopard, the Greek empire of Alexander the Great.
Now it is a fact, fully borne out by history, that it was precisely of the provinces formerly subject to these very empires that the Saracenic empire was composed; and, what is more remarkable still, these provinces bore a relation to the Mahometan empire completely analogous to the position assigned to each of these three beasts in the Saracenic beast.
Thus his mouth is said to be that of a lion. Now in every animal the expression of the will is manifested by its voice or mouth, so that in a symbolical beast the mouth would represent the seat of the voice that governed its movements, and that expressed its will; in other words, it would represent its principal seat of government. Now what was this in the Saracenic empire? It was Bagdad, that is, the chief city of the Caliphs, situated in the province of Babylon, which was the capital of the old Assyrian empire symbolized in Daniel by the lion. In other words, its mouth was that of a lion, that is, its seat of government was in the chief province of the old Assyrian empire. Moreover, as this empire was not only a political but a religious power, and as its ​founder pretended to be God's greatest prophet, or the utterer of God's revealed will, the term mouth is aptly used by the Prophet to designate this most striking characteristic of the Saracenic empire. And the Assyrian or Babylonian qualification here given to the mouth of the beast aptly describes the geographical position not only of its seat of government, but also of the birthplace of Mahomet, its founder, which was in the province of Hejaz, of which the capital was Mecca, one of the most notable provinces of the old Babylonian empire.
But the Prophet continues. He describes the body of the beast as being that of a leopard. What can this mean, but that the main body of the Saracenic empire consisted of the provinces that had formerly composed the empire of the Macedonian leopard? Now history tells us what countries were subdued by Alexander the Great, and history informs us that it was precisely this very territory that formed the main body of the Saracenic empire. Alexander devoured the territory of Asia Minor, Syria, Arabia, Babylonia, Persia, Egypt, even to the Indus; and it was precisely in the same territory that the Saracenic empire extended its dominion; in other words, to use the symbolical language of St. John and of Daniel, this beast had the body of a leopard.
​But St. John gives us one more characteristic: it had the feet of a bear. Now we have already seen, in our remarks on Daniel's prophecies, that the bear symbolized the Medo-Persian empire; I therefore conclude that the territory of that empire had the same analogous relation to the Saracenic empire as the feet of a bear would hold to St. John's symbolical beast. Now in every animal the feet are the main instrument to effect its locomotion; and this is precisely the relation which the provinces of the Medo-Persian bear held to the Saracenic empire. Persia was, as we have already seen, the first kingdom to embrace Mahometanism, and it has been at all times from its Caucasian provinces that the chief strength of Mahometanism has issued forth. In other words, it had the feet of a bear. Besides all which, we may add what St. Jerome remarks of the four beasts of Daniel, that they represented the physical and moral characteristics of the peoples they symbolized. Hence, when it is said by St. John of the Saracenic beast that it had the head of a lion, the body of a leopard, and the feet of a bear, we are at once reminded of the loud and presumptuous language, the unfeeling cruelty, and the grasping ambition that have ever characterised the Mahometan system, and that ​were so remarkably conspicuous in Saracenic history.
The Apostle continues, "and the dragon gave him his own strength and great power." What can be more characteristic of Mahometanism than this prophecy? If ever there was an empire of which this was eminently true, it surely was the great Mahometan Saracenic empire. The dragon had given a portion of his strength and power to the other great empires, but as they all possessed it in common, and none of them had it in any superior degree over the rest, it could hardly be a characteristic distinction of any one of them in particular. But here in the case of this Apocalyptic beast, it is given as a most special characteristic, that it was to be emphatically the seat of Satan's power. Now either Mahometanism came from the devil, or it did not; if it did, then in that ease it was a political and religious system, endowed with vast power and territorial strength, raised up for the special purpose of warfare with Christianity and the true religion of God. That this was the special mission of Mahometanism is what it asserted of itself, and what has been fully borne out by its history from the beginning up to the present day. Assuming, then, the truth of Christianity and the falsehood of Mahometanism, no ​one can deny that it literally fulfils this portion of the sacred text; for no one can deny (admitting this premise) either its power or its strength on the one hand, or that Satan, not God, was the object in whose behalf all that power and strength were wielded. Besides, no other empire was ever of its own nature so essentially antagonistic to Christ. The paganism of the old heathen empires was antecedent to the coming of the Messiah; and though it naturally came into collision with the progress of His kingdom, still we cannot say of it what we must say of Mahometanism, that it was devised and constituted for the main purpose of opposing the Church of God. The force of this argument has appeared so cogent to learned Protestants, that Bishop Newton, in his celebrated treatise on the Prophecies, uses it as an overwhelming proof that this beast represents papal Rome, the latter power being in his opinion that of the great Antichrist, We agree with him and with the holy fathers in interpreting this symbolical beast of Antichrist; but we differ from him altogether in his estimate as to who Antichrist was; and differing from him im this, and believing as we do that Antichrist is no other than Mahomet, we come to the conclusion that this first beast of the Apocalypse represents the Mahometan ​Saracenic empire, and not what Bishop Newton erroneously interpreted it, papal Rome.
The Prophet continues, "And I saw one of his heads, as it were slain to death: and his death's wound was healed."
Bishop Newton and other Protestant commentators see in this text, following up their erroneous hypothesis concerning this beast, the destruction of the imperial power of old Rome in the person of its last western emperor, Romulus Augustulus. But that destruction was not the destruction of a form of government merely, but of the Roman empire itself. It was the destruction of the Roman beast, as a single empire, and not alone of one of the heads of that empire. That this was so history proves: from that time the Roman empire as such ceases, and the ten kingdoms, of which the Byzantine Greek empire was of course one, take its place. To say the contrary is to deny history. No man m his senses would call European history subsequent to that date "Roman history," but it is equally true that no man in his senses either could or does term European history before that date by any other name than that of Roman history. And why? because before that date Europe and the Roman empire were synonymous, whereas after it Europe was subdivided into independent king​doms or polities. It is from that date that English, French, German, Spanish, and the other national histories, of what is called modern Europe, commence.
The destruction of imperial Rome was therefore not the destruction of any head of any beast, but the destruction of the imperial beast itself; and consequently cannot (on that ground alone) be represented, as Bishop Newton thinks, by the deadly wound of one of the heads of the Apocalyptic beast in question: not to add that the falsehood of this conclusion has already been proved by anticipation, when we showed that this beast could not represent the Roman empire at all.
What then is the head referred to? We have already demonstrated the beast to signify the Mahometan Saracenic empire; we, therefore, without hesitation, express our conviction that his bead, thus wounded to death, symbolized the extinction of the dynasty of the caliphs, which took place under Motassem, the fifty-sixth successor of Mahomet. So that, as we shall presently see, St. John describes a second beast coming up out of the earth, which evidently is but a development of the consequences resulting from the healing of the deadly wound inflicted on the principal head of the first beast.
​Now the throne of the caliphs was extinguished by the Tartar Turks, led on by the great grandson of the famous Zingis Khan: and at the time when these Tartar hordes overthrew the caliph they professed paganism, and not Mahometanism. Those who would wish for fuller details of this portion of Mahometan history, if they have not time to refer to the larger histories, should by all means read the admirable lectures "on the Turks," published lately by that eminent writer, Father Newman, the superior of the Oratorians in England.
It appears from contemporary history that those, who witnessed the extinction of the caliphate by their Tartar conquerors, fully calculated on the utter destruction of Mahometanism. They saw the principal head of the Mahometan beast wounded to death, and they saw the Mahometan empire in its principal head, the caliphate, overthrown; but what was their wonder, what the horror in all Christian lands, when they saw that the deadly wound was healed, and that though the principal head of the Mahometan power had been destroyed, the natural effect of that event did not ensue!
But what does this healing refer to? I will say no more of Bishop Newton's theories, but I answer at once, it signified the conversion of ​the Tartars and Turks to Mahometanism, and the consequent establishment of the power of the Turkish sultans on the ruins of the caliphate. From the moment the Turkish sultans assumed the Mahometan turban, they constituted themselves the heads of the Mahometan religion, and were accepted as such by all true Mahometans. And when the Prophet continues, "All the earth was in admiration of the beast," he does but express in prophetic language what history records, that the Mahometan power became still more formidable in the eyes of all men; for the term, which in our version is here rendered by the word "admiration," would be more correctly translated by another, viz., "amazement:" that being rather the meaning of the Greek term, used by the Apostle, "ἐθαυμάσθη." And so it is rendered in the Anglican version, "all the world wondered after the beast."
And well might it wonder, for the Mahometan empire was dead, and was alive again! And well might the consequence be what St. John describes as ensuing thereon, "And they adored the dragon, which gave power to the beast: saying who is like unto the beast, and who shall be able to fight with him?"
Stricken with terror, the nations of Christendom fell before the beast one after the ​other, the victims of his rapacious ambition: and though for a season his rapid progress was checked by the crusades, it was but a momentary pause in that fearful career of conquest; for while to these holy expeditions, replete as they are with poetic and chivalrous interest, we may trace the ultimate safety and independence of Latin Christendom, they signally failed in their immediate object, and the ill success that attended them, did but force the whole world to cry out, as the Prophet foretold it would do, "Who is like unto the beast, and who shall be able to fight against him?" Nor were the terrors of Christendom groundless, for as St. John goes on, borrowing almost the very words of Daniel in his previous description of the little horn, "There was given unto him" (Apocalypse, xiii. 5) "a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies: and power was given unto him to do" (that is to carry on his career) "two and forty months." That is, the whole duration of Mahometan blasphemy shall be for the space of forty-two months; we have already seen in another prophecy that it was to last for the prophetic space of 1260 days, and if you reduce these forty-two months to days, according to the duration of Mahometan months, it also makes the exact number of 1260 days, or, as we have ​already shown, taking a day for a year, 1260 years. But St. John goes on: "And he opened his mouth unto blasphemies against God, to blaspheme His Name, and His Tabernacle, and them that dwell in Heaven." This description exactly agrees with what we have already seen in a former chapter was foretold by Daniel of the little horn: and it perfectly agrees with the religious character of Mahometanism. If Christianity be the religion of God, and God be what Christianity reveals Him to be, One God in Three Persons, then does Mahometanism emphatically "open its mouth in blasphemies against Gad, to blaspheme His Name," viz., that of the adorable Trinity. And if the sacred humanity of Jesus be, what Christianity reveals it to us, the very Tabernacle of the Godhead, then did Mahomet blaspheme "the Tabernacle of God:" and if the Christian Church be indeed, what the Gospel declares it to be, the Kingdom of Heaven, then did Mahomet blaspheme also them that dwelt in heaven, for assuredly he blasphemed against the Church, and against the Church's children, that is against them "that dwell" in the mystic "heaven."
Verse 7. "And it was given unto him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them. And power was given him over every ​tribe, and people, and tongue, and nation. And all that dwell upon the earth adored him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb, which was slain from the beginning of the world." This portion of St. John's prophecy, agreeing as it does in the most remarkable manner, and even in its very phraseology with Daniel's prediction of the little horn, foretells what portion of mankind would be the chief objects of Mahometan aggression, and of Mahometan subjugation. He was to make war upon the saints, as his principal object, that is, upon the Christians, for in Scripture, and especially in the Apostolic Epistles, the term "saints" is frequently applied to the Christians, that is, to the members of God's true Church, and with reason, for all the members of the Church are made saints or holy in baptism; and though, unhappily, too many fall from their baptismal innocency, yet they all possess, in the sacrament of penance, and the other means of grace, the means of recovering their sanctity, so that they may well be termed by the Apostle "saints," not only from the sanctification that has been bestowed upon them through the grace of the sacraments, but also because they are indeed "saints" in comparison and in relation to the world without; that world, of which Scripture tells us "that it ​lieth in wickedness." Now, it was emphatically upon "the saints," namely, the children of God's Church, that Mahometanism made war, and it was given unto him, the Apostle tells us, to overcome them, although the subsequent verse tells us, that this power was to be limited, and that the conquests of the beast were to be confined to those whose names were not written in the book of life of the Lamb. In other words, Mahometanism was to make war with Christianity, was to gain great victories over the Christians, but was only to conquer the reprobate Christians whose names were not written in the book of life of the Lamb, and those that dwelt on the earth, namely, the heathen nations, as contradistinguished from those that dwell in heaven, whom we have already shown to symbolize the children of the Church. Now, if St. John had written the history, instead of the prophecy, of Mahometanism, it is impossible that he could more accurately have described the characteristic features of its aggressions, or of its conquests.
But the Apostle suddenly halts in his description of Mahometan impiety and success, and he cries out, in the well-known words of his beloved Lord and Master, "If any man have an ear, let him hear." In such words as these did Jesus Christ usher in whatever He ​would most urgently commit to the consideration of His disciples, and in these same words does His favourite disciple call our attention to the future destruction {for it was then future, although it be passed now) of the Mahometan Saracenic empire. Verse 10. "He that shall lead into captivity shall go into captivity: he that shall kill by the sword, shall be killed by the sword." And so it was, the heathen Turks bore down with resistless force and countless multitudes upon the empire of Mahomet, led his hosts into captivity, and slaughtered them by the sword. St. John then adds, "Here is the patience and the faith of the saints;" as much as to say, that the events that are to ensue upon these victories of the Turkish hordes will give ample scope to the Christian nations to exercise the virtues of patience and faith. The next verse (11th) ushers into ourview the second Mahometan beast in these words: "And I saw another beast coming up out of the earth, and he had two horns, like unto a lamb, and he spake as a dragon."
Let me here pause for a moment to reply to an objection that the reader may possibly suggest. Why, he may ask, do you cull this second beast a Mahometan beast at all? Is not this a gratuitous assumption? I answer, certainly not; I have already shown my grounds for be​lieving that the first beast signified the Mahometan Saracenic empire, and if I am right in that supposition, it necessarily follows that the second beast must symbolize the Mahometan empire, that succeeded the Saracenic, from the very terms employed by St. John in the next verse (12): "And he executed all the power of the former beast in his sight; and he caused the earth, and them that dwell therein, to adore the first beast, whose wound unto death was healed."
Is it possible that the Prophet could use language more forcible to describe that which Turkish history records the Turkish power to have done. If the destruction of the Saracenic empire threatened death to the Mahometan system upheld by it, assuredly that deadly wound was healed by the establishment of the Mahometan Turkish empire. But let us examine a little more closely some of the predicated characteristics of this second beast. It came up out of the earth. The first beast had arisen from the sea, that is, symbolically from "the sea," as the symbol of mankind tossed about by the winds of corrupt nature, and the revolutionary upheavings of the restless multitude, which is the interpretation St. Jerome gives to this prophetic image; and literally from the sea, inasmuch as it sprung from the pestilent shores of the great Asiatic Ocean, ​the arid sands of Arabia. But this beast springs from the earth, that is, literally from the great continent, of which Europe, Asia, and Africa are but conventional and nominal divisions, constituting, as they do, that one only portion of habitable earth which, in the days of the Evangelist, was known to exist, and which was called by the great civilized nation, that ruled mankind in his day, the "Orbis terrarum," or, as the Apostle emphatically phrases it, "the earth;" and it sprang mystically from the earth, inasmuch as it represented all that evil and enmity to God of which this fallen and unregenerate earth has ever been the mother; that earth, of which God declared to our first parent Adam, after his fall, "Cursed is the earth in thy work." True religion is from above, descending from the Father of Lights, but it is from the earth that all false religion springs. From the earth came paganism; and when God by His only Son had once more enlightened mankind, and brought many nations to the belief of His Divine truth, Satan raised up in the person of Mahomet, and by his agency, a new system of error to combat God's truth; a system compounded of fragments of revelation, so as to deceive the unwary, and of the grossest impiety, so as to lead men to per​dition. Such a system might truly be said to spring from "the earth;" it was, as St. Paul elsewhere expresses it, "of the earth, earthy." And the Turkish empire, rising on the ruins of the former Mahometan empire, that of the Saracens, and fulfilling all the designs of its predecessor, accurately fulfilled the prediction of St. John in its mystic meaning; it sprang from the earth, no wholesome well of living waters, but a bitter and death-distributing fountain, destined for many centuries to over-flow and destroy some of the fairest provinces of God's Holy Church.
And this beast "had two horns, like unto the horns of a lamb." It is impossible to read this description of the second beast, and not to remember the pastoral origin of the Ottoman Turks, springing, as they did, from the steppes of Scythian Tartary, with their vast flocks of sheep, and all the habits of a nomad pastoral people. Let the reader turn to Father Newman's lectures on "The Turks," and he will see how appropriate a symbol of the Ottomans was "the horns of a lamb." Now, observe this beast "had two horns, like unto the horns of a lamb." The strength of every beast, as St. Jerome has observed, lies in its horns, and in its other weapons of defence; and the strength of the Ottoman Turks, in their origin, lay in ​the multitude of their flocks and herds: what apter symbol of a pastoral people could be devised than the two horns of a ram? If sportsmen hang up in their halls the horns and skins of the animals they have slain in the chase, well might the horns of a ram symbolize the origin and the character of a shepherd people, like the Ottomans, dwelling in tents, administering summary justice in the gate of a moveable camp, of which "the Sublime Porte" of modern Turkey hands on the memory and the tradition. But there is something else that these two horns of the ram remind us of; can we forget another Caucasian people and empire, which Daniel had seen under a similar image? The second of Daniel's four beasts was beheld by the Hebrew Prophet under the symbolical image of a ram with two horns: for the Medes and Persians, like their successors, the Ottoman Turks, were a pastoral people, and the angel declared to Daniel, that those two ram's horns signified those two nations. Is there not, then, a strong analogy between the two horns of the Medo-Persian beast of Daniel, and the Turks and Tartars of the second Apocalyptic beast of the blessed Apostle John? Can we forget the achievements of the Turkish tribes from the days of Othman, on the one hand, and of the Tartars, from those of Timour and Zingis Khan, ​on the other? The former overflowing with their irresistible hordes the west of Asia, the north of Africa, and the fairest European provinces of the Greek empire: the latter carrying their triumphant sword along with the Koran of Mahomet, across the Himalayas into the very heart of the Indies. Truly this second beast had two horns, and these horns were like the horns of a ram, for the flocks and herds of Tartary gave them their heraldic device, and symbolized the profession and the habits of their ancestors.
But this beast "spake as a dragon."—(Apoc. xiii. 2.) His language, his doctrine, came from below, from the great dragon of the abyss; the same dragon that in the twelfth chapter of this same Apocalypse we have already seen arming the Roman empire against "the woman and her seed;" and when the Roman empire became Christian, and so the very "earth" helped the woman, he, this implacable dragon, conjured up Mahomet and his first empire out of the sea; so now does he speak through the voracious throat of the two-horned Turco-Tartar beast uttering his dragon cries, terrible to be heard, and bearing the message of death to myriads of the human race.
St. John continues his description: "And ​he executed all the power of the former beast in his sight;" that is, whatever had been done by the Saracens is now repeated over again by the Turks and Tartars. “And he caused the earth, and them that dwell therein, to adore the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed;" that is, he caused the children of perdition, symbolized by "the earth, and them that dwell therein," to adore, that is, to venerate and accept the religious system of the first beast, that is, the religion and political system of Mahomet, whereby the deadly wound occasioned by the destruction of the Saracenic empire, that is, of the first Apocalyptic beast, was healed. In Scripture the term προσκύνειν, or to adore or worship, is not exclusively confined, as it is by our modern English, to the expression of Divine worship, but it signifies that homage and reverence which men are wont to give to any form or semblance of authority, whether true or false, Hence, in the passage before us, it need not mean any Divine worship paid to Mahomet, or still less to the Sultans who represented him, for all such Divine worship is expressly disclaimed by Mahometans, and therefore not to be charged upon them, but it signifies the allegiance, spiritual and temporal, which they pay to the false system of that ​great impostor, and to the polity established by him. In this sense, obviously the sense implied by the Apostle, did the second beast force all the children of perdition to adore the former beast, and in this sense his deadly wound was healed.
But let us follow the description of St. John; "And he wrought great wonders, so that he made also fire to come down from heaven unto the earth in the sight of men." From these words it appears that this beast was to astonish mankind by his wonderful achievements, and amongst the rest by one which the Prophet describes as "making fire to come down from heaven unto the earth in the sight of men." Now, bearing in mind that the language of prophecy in general, and especially of the Apocalypse, is conveyed to us under hieroglyphical symbols, we must not suppose that this second Mahometan power was literally to bring down fire from heaven, any more than that it was to be a literal beast with two literal horns; but though the language of prophecy is veiled under symbols, it never is used at random, and never fails to carry along with it some very veal, definite, and appropriate meaning. We say, then, without hesitation, that the figure here used by St. John is a most appropriate one to express a most remarkable cha​racteristic of Turkish warfare, one which at the time constituted a striking difference between the Turkish armies and those against whom they directed their victorious force. We refer to the use of firearms, which were first employed on an extensive scale and with apalling success by the Turks. When we reflect upon this remarkable fact, and the effect produced upon the minds of men by the heavy guns and enormous cannon used by the Ottoman Turks with such deadly effect, we can hardly conceive a more appropriate symbol than the one used by the Apostle, "that the beast wrought great wonders, so that he made also fire to come down from heaven unto the earth in the sight of men." How terribly these words were realized by the Turks, history accurately records. It was chiefly by means of his artillery that Amurath the Second subdued so large a portion of the Greek empire, after invading and laying waste the Peloponnesus. And when a few years later his son Mahomet besieged Constantinople, he employed guns of such a calibre, that the description of them, were it not vouched for in the most authentic statements of contemporary history, would sound quite fabulous. One of these guns was of such monstrous size, that it required seventy yoke of oxen, and no fewer ​than two thousand men to draw it. There were two more great cannon, each of which discharged huge stone balls of the weight of two hundred pounds. Several discharged balls of half a talent, or fifty pounds' weight; while there was one, which was the largest of all, and which actually discharged stone balls of the weight of three hundred pounds, and the report of this cannon is said to have been so loud as to shake all the country round to the distance of forty furlongs! When we reflect upon such facts as these, and bear in mind how very little there was as yet on the side-of the Christian armies to withstand such mighty machines, we shall at once see how graphic and appropriate is the symbolical language of St. John, that this beast "wrought great wonders, so that he made even fire to come down from heaven in the sight of men."
In the fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth verses, St. John continues to describe the mighty achievements of this Turkish beast, and he describes them in the same figurative but appropriate language. Thus, in the fourteenth verse, it is said "that he seduced them that dwell on the earth;" that is, that he perverted to the Mahometan faith all those whose "names were not written in the Book ​of Life of the Lamb" … "saying to them that dwell on the earth, that they should make the image of the beast that had the wound of the sword and lived;" that is, that all they who were seduced into the Mahometan apostacy by the great achievements of the Tartar Turks should constitute that mighty Turkish empire that was so lively an image of the Saracenic Mahometan empire, that empire which these very Turks had heretofore destroyed, while their own conversion to the creed of Mahomet had healed his deadly wound. And when the Prophet says, in the fifteenth verse, "And it was given to him to give life to the image of the beast, and that the image of the beast should speak," he well describes what terrible life and force these Turkish hordes imparted to Mahometanism, while the speaking of the image aptly denotes the impious preaching of Mahometan blasphemy which the Turkish power, as the image of the Saracenic empire, diffused amongst so large a portion of mankind. And when he says, "And he caused that whosoever will not adore the image of the beast should be slain," he well describes the bloody and implacable fury with which the Turks persecuted to death all who refused to accept the religion and polity of Mahomet; so that, as the follow​ing verse declares, "He maketh all, both little and great, rich and poor, freemen and bondmen, to have a mark in their right hand or on their forehead; and that no man might buy or sell, but he that hath the character or the name of the beast, or the number of his name." All these expressions aptly symbolize the conduct aid policy of the Turkish power. The giving a mark to the right hand and to the forehead signified the giving political power to the right hand to wield, and of authority to the mind for governing others; while the right of buying and selling symbolized the commoner rights of citizenship and the subordinate political privileges of ordinary subjects, which we know from history were inexorably denied by Mahometanism to any but its own votaries, Christians and all other religionists being reduced to the most abject slavery. Many authors have shown that this prophecy has had even a still more literal fulfilment, and explain it of the Mahometan turban, while they appeal to decrees of the Sultans actually forbidding the right of commerce to any but Mahometans. For my own part, however, I prefer the other more general interpretation, inasmuch as it agrees better with the general symbolical character of St. John’s prophecy.
​The concluding verse of this chapter is most remarkable, and it seems evidently designed by St. John to give us an unmistakeable clue for deciphering the name, and so for determining who and what are the two beasts described, and so closely identified together in this same chapter.
"Here is wisdom," says St. John (v. 18), "he that hath understanding let him count the number of the beast. For it is the number of a man, and the number of him is six hundred sixty and six."
As though he would say, "Here is something to exercise the ingenuity of the wise, something whereon he, who is learned in the Scriptures, and has studied the sacred and mysterious symbols contained there, may exercise himself in deciphering; here is a clue to enable him to discover the name that is ever to distinguish the beast, or rather the two beasts, which are here described as identical in their interests and their objects; and the clue is to be found by deciphering the number that spells the name of a man, who shall be inseparably connected with the empires and the system represented by these two beasts, And the number that contains his name is the number six hundred and sixty-six."
​I have already had occasion, in a foregoing chapter of this work, to give my interpretation of this remarkable prophecy, and I have shown that it relates to the name of Mahomet, and that it has been already so explained, as Father Salmeron assures us, in his "Præludia in Apocalypsin," by various Byzantine Greek authors, such as Cedrenus, Zonaras, and Euthymius: and as this learned author, Father Salmeron himself, adopts the same interpretation of the beasts of this thirteenth chapter of the Apocalypse, as referring to Mahomet, and the empires that sprang from him, it is clear this interpretation of the mystic numerals, 666, must be also that which he himself adopts, although he mentions, as I myself have already done, other interpretations also. The Oxford friar, Father Roger Bacon, has also adopted this same interpretation; and the learned Anglican, Mr. Forster, affirms that, in his opinion, this interpretation has higher claims to being the correct one than any other advanced by other commentators.
It must be borne in mind that the Apostle expressly tell us that "it is the number of a man," consequently it seems clear that we must seek for the solution of the mystic number in the name of a man, rather than of a nation or of a system; hence, although the ​following solution was given by so great an authority as the blessed St. Irenæus:—
| Λ | = | 30 |
| α | = | 1 |
| τ | = | 300 |
| ε | = | 5 |
| ι | = | 10 |
| ν | = | 50 |
| ο | = | 70 |
| ς | = | 200 |
| Λατεινος | = | 666 |
I confess it is to me far from satisfactory, because the word Λατεινος is not the name of any man recorded in history, but the general name of a nation: now the Apostle says "it is the number of a MAN," not of a nation." How then can it be rightly interpreted of the Latin nation? Protestants very naturally have caught at this interpretation coming from so great a saint, who had seen those who had seen St. John: they are ready enough to make much of the fathers, when they seem to say anything that favours their own theories; but we all know in what utter contempt they hold their testimony on general subjects. On the other hand, I am at a loss to understand how Protestant authors can possibly deduce Ρωμιιθ from 666. In Greek numerals that word would give us a ​sum, amounting to 969, which is unluckily too large to serve the purpose sought by these eager enemies of the papacy: and if they would get it from Hebrew numerals, the reader must recollect we have nothing to do with any but Greek numerals.
But it is an historical fact that, since the destruction of the Roman empire, two vast empires have arisen on the broad platform of the old empire of the Macedonian he-goat, that these empires have done exactly what all prophecy declared that they would do, that they have literally fulfilled the descriptions of Daniel and St. John: and it is no less a fact, that both these empires have been identified with Mahomet. Now then let the reader weigh in connection with this remarkable fact this equally remarkable solution of the mystic number 666.
| Μ | = | 40 |
| ο | = | 70 |
| ά | = | 1 |
| μ | = | 40 |
| ε | = | 5 |
| τ | = | 300 |
| ι | = | 10 |
| ς | = | 200 |
| Μόaμετις | = | 666 |
In other words, 666 in Greek numerals gives ​us the name of the MAN, Μοάμετις, that is Mahomet, the impious blasphemer, who proclaimed, that he was sent by God, as his last and greatest prophet, and that his mission was to overthrow the Church of Christ, and to put in its place his own diabolical sect.
We have thus far endeavoured to show the agreement between the prophecy contained in the thirteenth chapter of the Apocalypse, in relation to the two beasts, and the history of those two great empires, that have successively upheld the region of Mahomet. It remains for us to consider the objections that may be made to this interpretation, and to refute them.
We have already seen what is the interpretation of Protestant authors, such as the learned Bishop Newton, in reference to the first beast, and that which be gives of the second beast is in keeping with the former. As he believes the first beast to be papal Rome in its secular aspect, consisting of the various kingdoms, into which the western empire was subdivided, so he maintains that the second beast represents papal Rome in its ecclesiastical aspect, consisting of the clergy, regular and secular, whom he supposes to be represented by the two horns of a lamb, that grew out of the head of that beast. But such interpreters never reflect what is involved in their inter​pretations; in their anxiety to justify their own guilty separation from the Catholic and Apostolic Church of Christ, they hesitate not to adopt an interpretation of prophecy, which, if it were really true, would overthrow Christianity itself. For what becomes of Christianity, if the Apostolic See, and all the Churches in communion with it, could possibly constitute the Antichristian power predicted by the Apostle? Bishop Newton would include the Greek, and other Oriental communions, in the same anathema with those of the west, for, like the Latin Church, the Eastern upholds the same sacraments, the same adoration of Christ in the Eucharist, the same invocation and veneration of the blessed Virgin Mary and the saints, the same devotion to images and relies, and the same sacrifice of the Mass; where, then, does Bishop Newton look for his Christianity, and his witnesses of Divine truth? Either he must confess that Christ's truth was totally rooted out from the earth, or he must look for it amongst a number of discordant sects, founded at various epochs by persons who separated from the Catholic Church in which they had been baptized, and who agreed in nothing but their common hatred of their Mother Church. This alternative he adopts, but, by so doing, he ​utterly destroys the visible continuity of the Christian Church, her unity, and her universality; and after slandering the faith of Christendom, and utterly misrepresenting its tenets, he pins his own faith upon a few obscure men, without mission from Christ or his Apostles, who disagreed with each other in doctrine, and held no communion with one another. And yet all the while, as a consistent member and bishop of the Anglican Church, this same Bishop Newton must have held that he derived his own mission and orders from Antichrist, and that such mission and orders were necessary for the valid administration of the Sacraments of Christ! Could absurdity go further? Catholics, however, who believe the Word of Christ, that the gates of hell shall never prevail against His visible Church, and that as our Divine Master has commissioned His Church to teach all nations, He must have guaranteed Her from the possibility of teaching error,—Catholics, we say, can never regard with any other feelings, than those of pity and horror, such blasphemous interpretations of Divine prophecy.
On the other hand, the interpretation, which we have advanced, is consistent with what history records, with the fact that a great religious ​and political system arose upon earth, the main object of which was to uproot the Gospel, and that this religious and political system was upheld by two vast and most powerful empires, which occupied the very territory, that all prophevy foretold would be held by Antichrist, and which certainly fulfilled to the letter, as we have shown, all that prophecy said that these powers would do. We, therefore, wind up what we have to say upon this thirteenth chapter of the Apocalypse with this conclusion, either the Saracenic and Turkish empires have fulfilled this prophecy, or it has never been fulfilled. Either this is the fulfilment, and it now belongs to the domains of past history, or we must look forward to some future and still more accurate fulfilment. But this alternative is singularly unlikely, for the very preface of the Apocalypse leads us to look for a speedy, although a gradual accomplishment of the prophecy; and when we reflect that it is now more than eighteen centuries since the Apostle wrote his revelation, and that at least these great facts of history singularly accord with the prophetic statements, we confess that we at least cannot doubt that they are its fulfilment, and that it is quite vain to expect or wait for any other. In our next chapter we ​shall examine the prophecies of Daniel, which we believe relate also to these same Mahometan powers, and these we shall regard with all the more interest, because they seem to conduct us to the end and destruction of this impious system.
* ↑ It is in this sense that the Douay commentators understand it.
* ↑ Cornelius à Lapide, in his commentary on the Apocalypse, writing upon this verse, gives a summary of the different interpretations suggested by various eminent Catholic interpreters. He himself holds that the proper and genuine sense of this passage is that the "Man-child" whom "the woman brought forth" represents the children whom the Church bore to Jesus Christ, and who witnessed their faith by suffering martyrdom: "Fortes et electi Dei rapientur per mortem, vel per martyrium in cœlum, ut Deo fruantur itaque evadant os et manus Draconis." But then it is clear that the expression used of this man-child, that "he shall rule all nations with a rod of iron," is by no means applicable to the whole body of the martyrs in its direct sense, for in this it belongs exclusively to Christ, and only by participation can it be applied to the saints—"participativè tamen competit etiam aliis sanctis." And so St. Ambrose says: "The one man-child is He, whom the Blessed Virgin bore, and that which the Church bringeth forth, for Christ is one body, and as it were one person, with all His members, that is with the Faithful, as the Apostle saith in his first epistle to the Corinthians xii, 12, 27." "But," continues Cornelius à Lapide, "Alcazar (a very celebrated interpreter) in his method refers this passage to the Primitive Church: hence by the man-child he understands the Roman Church. 'Romano enim Pontifici data est à Christo VIRGA FERREA, quâ regat omnes gentes Christianismo subditas.'"
* ↑ The learned Father Salmeron, in his interesting "Præludia in Apocalypsin,” explains this beast, of the thirteenth chapter, of Mahomet and his empire in a dissertation of considerable length.—(Salmeron, Præludia in Apoc. tom. xvi, p. 365.)
* ↑ This title was derived from the words Emir-al-Mouslemin, or Prince of the Worshippers of Unity.—(See Encyclopédie, du xix, siècl. tom. xi. p. 484.)
* ↑ Genesis iii, 17.