CHAPTER VII
HITHERTO we have considered the history of the Two Babylons chiefly
in detail. Now we are to view them as organised systems, The idolatrous
system of the ancient Babylon assumed different phases in different
periods of its history. In the prophetic description of the modern
Babylon, there is evidently also a development of different powers at
different times. Do these two developments bear any typical relation to
each other? Yes, they do. When we bring the religious history of the
ancient Babylonian Paganism to bear on the prophetic symbols that shadow
forth the organised working of idolatry in Rome, it will be found that
it casts as much light on this view of the subject as on that which has
hitherto engaged our attention. The powers of iniquity at work in the
modern Babylon are specifically described in chapters xii. and xiii. of
the Revelation; and they are as follows:--I. The Great Red Dragon; II.
The Beast that comes up out of the sea; III. The Beast that ascendeth
out of the earth; and IV. The Image of the Beast. * In all these
respects it will be found, on inquiry, that, in regard to succession and
order of development, the Paganism of the Old Testament Babylon was the
exact type of the Paganism of the New.
This formidable enemy of the truth is particularly described in Rev.
xii. 3: "And there appeared another wonder in heaven, a great
red dragon." It is admitted on all hands that this is the
first grand enemy that in Gospel times assaulted the Christian Church.
If the terms in which it is described, and the deeds attributed to it,
are considered, it will be found that there is a great analogy between
it and the first enemy of all, that appeared against the ancient Church
of God soon after the Flood. The term dragon, according to the
associations currently connected with it, is somewhat apt to mislead the
reader by recalling to his mind the fabulous dragons of the Dark Ages,
equipped with wings. At the time this Divine description was given, the
term dragon had no such meaning among either profane or sacred writers.
"The dragon of the Greeks," says Pausanias, "was
only a large snake;" * and the context shows that this is the
very case here; for what in the third verse is called a "dragon,"
in the fourteenth is simply described as a "serpent." Then
the word rendered "Red" properly means "Fiery";
so that the "Red Dragon" signifies the "Fiery
Serpent" or "Serpent of Fire." Exactly so
does it appear to have been in the first form of idolatry, that, under
the patronage of Nimrod, appeared in the ancient world. The "Serpent
of Fire" in the plains of Shinar seems to have been the grand
object of worship. There is the strongest evidence that apostacy among
the sons of Noah began in fire-worship, and that in connection with the
symbol of the serpent.
We have seen already, on different occasions, that fire was
worshipped as the enlightener and the purifier. Now, it was thus at the
very beginning; for Nimrod is singled out by the voice of antiquity as
commencing this fire-worship. * The identity of Nimrod and Ninus has
already been proved; and under the name of Ninus, also, he is
represented as originating the same practice. In a fragment of
Apollodorus it is said that "Ninus taught the Assyrians to
worship fire." * The sun, as the great source of light and
heat, was worshipped under the name of Baal. Now, the fact that the sun,
under that name, was worshipped in the earliest ages of the world, shows
the audacious character of these first beginnings of apostacy. Men have
spoken as if the worship of the sun and of the heavenly bodies was a
very excusable thing, into which the human race might very readily and
very innocently fall. But how stands the fact? According to the
primitive language of mankind, the sun was called "Shemesh"--that
is, "the Servant"--that name, no doubt, being
divinely given, to keep the world in mind of the great truth that,
however glorious was the orb of day, it was, after all, the appointed
Minister of the bounty of the great unseen Creator to His creatures upon
earth. Men knew this, and yet with the full knowledge of it, they put
the servant in the place of the Master; and called the sun Baal--that
is, the Lord--and worshipped him accordingly. What a meaning, then, in
the saying of Paul, that, "when they knew God, they glorified
Him not as God;" but "changed the truth of God into a
lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the creator, who
is God over all, blessed for ever." The beginning, then, of
sun-worship, and of the worship of the host of heaven, was a sin against
the light--a presumptuous, heaven-daring sin. As the sun in the heavens
was the great object of worship, so fire was worshipped as its earthly
representative. To this primeval fire-worship Vitruvius alludes when he
says that "men were first formed into sates and communities by
meeting around fires." *
And this is exactly in conformity with what we have already seen(p.
117) in regard to Phoroneus, whom we have identified with Nimrod, that
while he was said to be the "inventor of fire," he
was also regarded as the first that "gathered mankind into
communities."
Along with the sun, as the great fire-god, and, in due time,
identified with him, was the serpent worshipped. * "In the
mythology of the primitive world," says Owen, "the
serpent is universally the symbol of the sun." * In Egypt, one
of the commonest symbols of the sun, or sun-god, is a disc wit a serpent
around it. * The original reason of that identification seems just to
have been that, as the sun was the great enlightener of the physical
world, so the serpent was held to have been the great enlightener of the
spiritual, by giving mankind the "knowledge of good and
evil." This, of course, implies tremendous depravity on the
part of the ringleaders in such a system, considering the period when it
began; but such appears to have been the real meaning of the
identification. At all events, we have evidence, both Scriptural and
profane, for the fact, that the worship of the serpent began side by
side with the worship of fire and the sun. The inspired statement of
Paul seems decisive on the subject. It was, he says, "when men
knew God, but glorified Him not as God," that they changed the
glory of God, not only into an image made like to corruptible man, but
into the likeness of "creeping things"--that is, of
serpents (Rom. i. 23). With this profane history exactly coincides. Of
profane writers, Sanchuniathon, the Phoenician, who is believed to have
lived about the time of Joshua, says--"Thoth first attributed
something of the divine nature to the serpent and the serpent tribe, in
which he was followed by the Phoenicians and Egyptians. For this animal
was esteemed by him to be the most spiritual of all the reptiles, and of
a FIERY nature, inasmuch as it exhibits an incredible celerity, moving
by its spirit, without either hands or feet.....Moreover, it is
long-lived, and has the quality of RENEWING ITS YOUTH....as Thoth has
laid down in the sacred books; upon which accounts this animal is
introduced in the sacred rites and Mysteries." *
Now, Thoth, it will be remembered, was the counsellor of Thamus, that
is, Nimrod. * From this statement, then, we are led to the conclusion
that serpent-worship was a part of the primeval apostacy of Nimrod. The
"FIERY NATURE" of the serpent, alluded to in the above
extract, is continually celebrated by the heathen poets. Thus Virgil,
"availing himself," as the author of Pompeii remarks,
"of the divine nature attributed to serpents," *
describes the sacred serpent that came from the tomb of Anchises, when
his son AEneas had been sacrificing before it, in such terms as
illustrate at once the language of the Phoenician, and the "Fiery
Serpent" of the passage before us:--
"Scarce had he finished, when, with speckled pride,
A serpent from the tomb began to glide;
His hugy bulk on seen high volumes rolled,
Blue was his breadth of back, but streaked with scaly gold.
Thus, riding on his curls, he seemed to pass
A rolling fire along, and single the grass." *
It is not wonderful, then, that fire-worship and serpent-worship
should be conjoined. The serpent, also, as "renewing its youth
every year, "was plausibly represented to those who wished an
excuse for idolatry as a meet emblem of the sun, the great regenerator,
who every year regenerates and renews the face of nature, and who, when
deified, was worshipped and the grand Regenerator of the souls of men.
In the chapter under consideration, the "great fiery
serpent" is represented with all the emblems of royalty. All
its heads are encircled with "crowns or diadems;" and
so in Egypt, the serpent of fire, or serpent of the sun, in Greek was
called the Basilisk, that is, the "royal serpent," to
identify it with Moloch, which name, while it recalls the ideas both of
fire and blood, properly signifies "the King." The
Basilisk was always, among the Egyptians, and among many nations
besides, regarded as "the very type of majesty and
dominion." * As such, its image was worn affixed to the
headdress of the Egyptian monarchs; and it was not lawful for any one
else to wear it. * The sun identified with this serpent was called "P'ouro,"
* which signifies at once "the Fire" and "the
King," and from this very name the epithet "Purros,"
the "Fiery," is given to the "Great
seven-crowned serpent" of our text. *
Thus was the Sun, the Great-Fire-god, identified with the Serpent.
But he had also a human representative, and that was Tammuz, for whom
the daughters of Israel lamented, in other words Nimrod. We have already
seen the identity of Nimrod and Zoroaster. Now, Zoroaster was not only
the head of the Chaldean Mysteries, but, as all admit, the head of the
fire-worshippers. * The title given to Nimrod, as the first of the
Babylonian kings, by Berosus, indicates the same thing. That title is
Alorus, * that is, "the god of fire." * As Nimrod, "the
god of fire," was Molk-Gheber, or, "the Mighty
king," inasmuch as he was the first who was called Moloch, or
King, and the first who began to be "mighty" (Gheber)
on the earth, we see at once how it was that the "passing
through the fire to Moloch" originated, and how the god of
fire among the Romans came to be called "Mulkiber." *
It was only after his death, however, that he appears to have been
deified. Then, retrospectively, he was worshipped as the child of the
Sun, or the Sun incarnate. In his own life-time, however, he set up no
higher pretensions than that of being Bol-Khan, or Priest of Baal, from
which the other name of the Roman fire-god Vulcan is evidently derived.
* Everything in the history of Vulcan exactly agrees with that of
Nimrod. Vulcan was "the most ugly and deformed" of all the
gods. * Nimrod, over all the world, is represented with the features and
complexion of a negro. Though Vulcan was so ugly, that when he sought a
wife, "all the beautiful goddesses rejected him with
horror;" yet "Destiny, the irrevocable, interposed,
and pronounced the decree, by which [Venus] the most beautiful of the
goddesses, was united to the most unsightly of the gods." *
So, in spite of the black and Cushite features of Nimrod, he had for his
queen Semiramis, the most beautiful of women. The wife of Vulcan was
noted for her infidelities and licentiousness; the wife of Nimrod was
the very same. * Vulcan was the head and chief of the Cyclops, that is, "the
kings of flame." * Nimrod was the head of the fire-worshipers.
Vulcan was the forger of the thunderbolts by which such havoc was made
among the enemies of the gods. Ninus, or Nimrod, in his wars with the
king of Bactria, seems to have carried on the conflict in a similar way.
From Arnobius we learn, that when the Assyrians under Ninus made war
against the Bactrians, the warfare was waged not only by the sword and
bodily strength, but by magic and by means derived from the secret
instructions of the Chaldeans. * When it is known that the historical
Cyclops are, by the historian Castor, traced up tot he very time of
Saturn or Belus, the first king of Babylon, * and when we learn that
Jupiter (who was worshipped in the very same character as Ninus, "the
child"), * when fighting against the Titans, "received
from the Cyclops aid" by means of "dazzling
lightnings and thunders," we may have some pretty clear idea
of the magic arts derived from the Chaldean Mysteries, which Ninus
employed against the Bactrian king. There is evidence that, down to a
late period, the priests of the Chaldean Mysteries knew the composition
of the formidable Greek fire, which burned under water, and the secret
of which has been lost; * and there can be little doubt that Nimrod, in
erecting his power, availed himself of such or similar scientific
secrets, which he and his associates alone possessed.
In these, and other respects yet to be noticed, there is an exact
coincidence between Vulcan, the god of fire of the Romans, and Nimrod,
the fire-god of Babylon. In the case of the classic Vulcan, it is only
in his character of the fire-god as a physical agent that he is
popularly represented. But it was in his spiritual aspects, in cleansing
and regenerating the souls of men, that the fire-worship told most
effectually on the world. The power, the popularity, and skill of
Nimrod, as well as the seductive nature of the system itself, enabled
him to spread the delusive doctrine far and wide, and he was represented
under the well-known name of Phaethon, * as on the point of "setting
the whole world on fire," or (without the poetical metaphor)
of involving all mankind in the guild of fire-worship. The extraordinary
prevalence of the worship of the fire-god in the early ages of the
world, is proved by legends found over all the earth, and by facts in
almost every clime. Thus, in Mexico, the natives relate, that in
primeval times, just after the first age, the world was burnt up with
fire. * As their history, like the Egyptian, was written in
Hieroglyphics, it is plain that this must be symbolically understood. In
India, they have a legend to the very same effect, though somewhat
varied in its form. The Brahmins say that, in a very remote period of
the past, one of the gods shone with such insufferable splendour,
"inflicting distress on the universe by his effulgent beams,
brighter than a thousand worlds," * that, unless another more
potent god had interposed and cut off his head, the result would have
been most disastrous. In the Druidic Triads of the old British Bards,
there is distinct reference to the same event. They say that in primeval
times a "tempest of fire arose, which split the earth asunder
to the great deep," from which none escaped buy "the
select company shut up together in the enclosure with the strong
door," with the great "patriarch distinguished for
his integrity," * that is evidently with Shem, the leader of
the faithful--who preserved their "integrity" when so many
made shipwreck of faith and a good conscience. These stories all point
to one and the same period, and they show how powerful had been this
form of apostacy. The Papal purgatory and the fires of St. John's Eve,
which we have already considered, and many other fables or practices
still extant, are just so many relics of the same ancient superstition.
It will be observed, however, that the Great Red Dragon, or Great
Fiery Serpent, is represented as standing before the Woman with the
crown of twelve stars, that is, the true Church of God, "To
devour her child as soon as it should be born." Now, this is
an exact accordance with the character of the Great Head of the system
of fire-worship. Nimrod, as the representative of the devouring fire to
which human victims, and especially children, were offered in sacrifice,
was regarded as the great child-devourer. Though, at his first
deification, he was set up himself as Ninus, or the child, yet, as the
first of mankind that was deified, he was, of course, the actual father
of all the Babylonian gods; and, therefore, in that character he was
afterwards universally regarded. * As the Father of the gods, he was, as
we have seen, called Kronos; and every one knows that the classical
story of Kronos was just this, that, "he devoured his sons as
soon as they were born." * Such is the analogy between type
and antitype. This legend has a further and deeper meaning; but, as
applied to Nimrod, or "The Horned One," * it just
refers to the fact, that, as the representative of Moloch or Baal,
infants were the most acceptable offerings at his altar. We have ample
and melancholy evidence on this subject from the records of antiquity. "The
Phenicians," says Eusebius, "every year sacrificed
their beloved and only-begotten children to Kronos or Saturn, * and the
Rhodians also often did the same." Diodorus Siculus states
that the Carthaginians, on one occasion, when besieged by the Sicilians,
and sore pressed, in order to rectify, as they supposed, their error in
having somewhat departed from the ancient custom of Carthage, in this
respect, hastily "chose out two hundred of the noblest of their
children, and publicly sacrificed them" to this god. * There
is reason to believe that the same practice obtained in our own land in
the times of the Druids. We know that they offered human sacrifices to
their bloody gods. We have evidence that they made "their
children pass through the fire to Moloch," and that makes it
highly probable that they also offered them in sacrifice; for, from
Jeremiah xxxii. 35, compared with Jeremiah xix. 5, we find that these
two things were parts of one and the same system. The god whom the
Druids worshipped was Baal, as the blazing Baal-fires show, and the
last-cited passage proves that children were offered in sacrifice to
Baal. When "the fruit of the body" was thus offered, it was "for
the sin of the soul." And it was a principle of the Mosaic
law, a principle no doubt derived from the patriarchal faith, that the
priest must partake of whatever was offered as a sin-offering (Numbers
xviii. 9, 10). Hence, the priests of Nimrod or Baal were necessarily
required to eat of the human sacrifices; and thus it has come to pass
that "Cahna-Bal," * the "Priest of
Baal," is the established word in our own tongue for a
devourer of human flesh. *
Now, the ancient traditions relate that the apostates who joined in
the rebellion of Nimrod made war upon the faithful among the sons of
Noah. Power and numbers were on the side of the fire-worshippers. But on
the side of Shem and the faithful was the mighty power of God's Spirit.
Therefore many were convinced of their sin, arrested in their evil
career; and victory, as we have already seen, declared for the saints.
The power of Nimrod came to an end, * and with that, for a time, the
worship of the sun, and the fiery serpent associated with it. The case
was exactly as stated here in regard to the antitype (Rev. xii. 9): "The
great dragon," or fiery serpent, was "cast out of
heaven to the earth, and his angels were cast out with him" that
is, the Head of the fire-worship, and all his associates and underlings,
were cast down from the power and glory to which they had been raised.
Then was the time when the whole gods of the classic Pantheon of Greece
were fain to flee and hid themselves from the wrath of their
adversaries. * Then it was, that, in India, Indra, the king of the gods,
Surya, the god of the sun, Agni, the god of fire, and all the rabble
rout of the Hindu Olympus, were driven from heaven, wandered over the
earth, * or hid themselves, in forests, * disconsolate, and ready to "perish
of hunger." * Then it was that Phaethon, while driving the
chariot of the sun, when on the point of setting the world on fire, was
smitten by the Supreme God, and cast headlong to the earth, while his
sitters, the daughters of the sun, inconsolably lamented him, as,
"the women wept for Tammuz." Then it was, as the reader
must be prepared to see, that Vulcan, or Mold-gheber, the classic "god
of fire," was so ignominiously hurled down from heaven, as he
himself relates in Homer, speaking of the wrath of the King of Heaven,
which in this instance must mean God Most High:--
"I felt his matchless might,
Tossed all the day in raped circles round,
Nor, till the sun descended, touched the ground.
Breathless I fell, in giddy motion lost.
The Sinthians raised me on the Lemnian coast." *
The lines, in which Milton refers to this same downfall, though he
gives it another application, still more beautifully describe the
greatness of the overthrow:--
"In Ausonian land Men called him Mulciber; and how he fell From
heaven, they fabled. Thrown by an angry Jove Sheer o'er the crystal
battlements; from morn To noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve, A
summer's day; and, with the setting sun, Dropped from the zenith, like a
falling star, On Lemnos, the Aegean isle." *
These words very strikingly show the tremendous fall of Molk-gheber,
or Nimrod, "the Mighty King," when "suddenly
he was cast down from the height of his power, and was deprived at once
of his kingdom and his life." * Now, to this overthrow there
is very manifest allusion in the prophetic apostrophe of Isaiah to the
king of Babylon, exulting over his approaching downfall: "How
art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!" The
Babylonian king pretended to be a representative of Nimrod or Phaethon;
and the prophet, in these words, informs him, that, as certainly as the
god in whom he gloried had been cast down from his high estate, so
certainly should he. In the classic story, Phaethon is said to have been
consumed with lightning (and, as we shall see by-and-by, AEsculapius
also died the same death); but the lightning is a mere metaphor for the
wrath of God, under which his life and his kingdom had come to an end.
When the history is examined, and the figure stripped off, it turns out,
as we have already seen, that he was judicially slain with the sword. *
Such is the language of the prophecy, and so exactly does it
correspond with the character, and deeds, and fate of the ancient type.
How does it suit the antitype? Could the power of Pagan Imperial
Rome--that power that first persecuted the Church of Christ, that stood
by its soldiers around the tomb of the Son of God Himself, to devour
Him, if it had been possible, when He should be brought forth, as the
first-begotten from the dead, *1* *2* to rule all nations--be
represented by a "Fiery Serpent"? Nothing could more
lucidly show it forth. Among the lords many, and the gods many,
worshipped in the imperial city, the two grand objects of worship were
the "Eternal Fire," kept perpetually burning in the
temple of Vesta, and the sacred Epidaurian Serpent. In Pagan Rome, this
fire-worship and serpent-worship were sometimes separate, sometimes
conjoined; but both occupied a pre-eminent place in Roman esteem. The
fire of Vesta was regarded as one of the grand safeguards of the empire.
It was pretended to have been brought from Troy by AEneas, who had it
confided to his care by the shade of Hector, * and was kept with the
most jealous care by the Vestal virgins, who, for their charge of it,
were honoured with the highest honours. The temple where it was kept,
says Augustine, "was the most sacred and most reverenced of all
the temples of Rome." * The fire that was so jealously guarded
in that temple, and on which so much was believed to depend, was
regarded in the very same light as by the old Babylonian
fire-worshippers. It was looked upon as the purifier, and in April every
year, at the Palilia, or feast of Pales, both men and cattle, for this
purpose, were made to pass through the fire. * The Epidaurian snake,
that the Romans worshipped along with the fire, was looked on as the
divine representation of AEsculapius, the child of the Sun. *
AEsculapius, whom that sacred snake represented, was evidently, just
another name for the great Babylonian god. His fate was exactly the same
as that of Phaethon. He was said to have been smitten with lightning for
raising the dead. * It is evident that this could never have been the
case in a physical sense, nor could it easily have been believed to be
so. But view it in a spiritual sense, and then the statement is just
this, that he was believed to raise men who were dead in trespasses and
sins to newness of life. Now, this was exactly what Phaethon was
pretending to do, when he was smitten for setting the world on fire. In
the Babylonian system there was a symbolical death, * that all the
initiated had to pass through, before they got the new life which was
implied in regeneration, and that just to declare that they had passed
from death unto life. As the passing through the fire was both a
purgation from sin and the means of regeneration, so it was also for
raising the dead that Phaethon was smitten. Then, as AEsculapius was the
child of the Sun, so was Phaethon. * To symbolise this relationship, the
head of the image of AEsculapius was generally encircled with rays. *
The Pope thus encircles the heads of the pretended images of Christ; but
the real source of these irradiations is patent to all acquainted either
with the literature or the art of Rome. Thus speaks Virgil of Latinus:-
"And now, in pomp, the peaceful kings appear,
Four steeds the chariot of Latinus bear,
Twelve golden beams around his temples play,
To mark his lineage from the god of day." *
The "golden beams" around the head of AEsculapius
were intended to mark the same, to point him out as the child of the
Sun, or the Sun incarnate. The "golden beams" around
the heads of pictures and images called by the name of Christ, were
intended to show the Pagans that they might safely worship them, as the
images of their well-known divinities, though called by a different
name. Now AEsculapius, in a time of deadly pestilence, had been invited
from Epidaurus to Rome. The god, under the form of a larger serpent,
entered the ship that was sent to convey him to Rome, and having safely
arrived in the Tiber, was solemnly inaugurated as the guardian god of
the Romans. * From that time forth, in private as well as in public, the
worship of the Epidaurian snake, the serpent that represented the
Sun-divinity incarnate, in other words, the "Serpent of
Fire," became nearly universal. In almost every house the
sacred serpent, which was a harmless sort, was to be found. "These
serpents nestled about the domestic altars," says the author
of Pompeii, "and came out, like dogs or cats, to be patted by
the visitors, and beg for something to eat. Nay, at table, if we may
build upon insulted passages, they crept about the cups of the guests,
and, in hot weather, ladies would use them as live boas, and twist them
round their necks for the sake of coolness....These sacred animals made
war on the rats and mice, and thus kept down one species of vermin; but
as they bore a charmed life, and no one laid violent hands on them, they
multiplied so fast, that, like the monkeys of Benares, they became an
intolerable nuisance. The frequent fires at Rome were the only things
that kept them under." * The reader will find, in the
accompanying woodcut , a representation of Roman fire-worship and
serpent-worship at once separate and conjoined. * The reason of the
double representation of the god I cannot here enter into; but it must
be evident, from the words of Virgil already quoted, that the figures in
the upper compartment having their heads encircled with rays, represent
the fire-god, or Sun divinity; and what is worthy of special note is,
that these fire-gods are black, * the colour thereby identifying them
with the Ethiopian or black Phaethon; while, as the author of Pompeii
himself admits, these same black fire-gods are in the under compartment
represented by two huge serpents. Now, if this worship of the sacred
serpent of the Sun, the great fire-god, was so universal in Rome, what
symbol could more graphically portray the idolatrous power of Pagan
Imperial Rome than the "Great Fiery Serpent"? No
doubt it was to set forth this very thing that the Imperial standard
itself--the standard of the Pagan Emperor of Rome, as Pontifex Maximus,
Head of the great system of fire-worship and serpent worship--was a
serpent elevated on a lofty pole, and so coloured, as to exhibit it as a
recognised symbol of fire-worship. *
As Christianity spread in the Roman Empire, the powers of light and
darkness came into collision (Rev. xii. 7,8):--"Michael and his
angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels,
and prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven. And
the great dragon was cast out;.... he was cast out into the earth, and
his angels were cast out with him." The "great serpent of
fire" was cast out, when, by the decree of Gratian, Paganism
throughout the Roman empire was abolished--when the fires of Vesta were
extinguished, and the revenues of the Vestal virgins were
confiscated--when the Roman Emperor (who though for more than a century
and a-half a professor of Christianity, had been "Pontifex
Maximus," the very head of the idolatry of Rome, and such, on
high occasions, appearing invested with all the idolatrous insignia of
Paganism,) through force of conscience abolished his own office. * While
Nimrod was personally and literally slain by the sword, it was through
the sword of the Spirit that Shem overcame the system of fire-worship,
and so bowed the hearts of men, as to cause it for a time to be utterly
extinguished. In like manner did the Dragon of fire, in the Roman
Empire, receive a deadly wound from a sword, and that the sword of the
Spirit, which is the Word of God. There is thus far an exact analogy
between the type and the antitype.
But not only is there this analogy. It turns out, when the records of
history are searched to the bottom, that when the head of the Pagan
idolatry of Rome was slain with the sword by the extinction of the
office of Pontifex Maximus, the last Roman Pontifex Maximus was the
ACTUAL, LEGITIMATE, SOLE REPRESENTATIVE OF NIMROD and his idolatrous
system the existing. To make this clear, a brief glance at the Roman
history is necessary. In comma with all the earth, Rome at a very early
prehistoric period, had drunk deep of Babylon's "golden
cup." But above and beyond all other nations, it had had a
connection with the idolatry of Babylon that put it in a position
peculiar and alone. Long before the days of Romulus, a representative of
the Babylonian Messiah, called by his name, had fixed his temple as a
god, and his palace as a king, on one of those very heights which came
to be included within the walls of that city which Remus and his brother
were destined to found. On the Capitoline hill, so famed in after-days
as the great high place of Roman worship, Saturnia, or the city of
Saturn, the great Chaldean god, had in the days of dim and distant
antiquity been erected. * Some revolution had then taken place--the
graven images of Babylon had been abolished--the erecting of any idol
had been sternly prohibited, * and when the twin founders of the now
world-renowned city reared its humble walls, the city and the palace of
their Babylonian predecessor had long lain in ruins. The ruined state of
this sacred city, even in the remote age of Evander, is alluded to by
Virgil. Referring to the time when AEneas is said to have visited that
ancient Italian king, thus he speaks:-
"Then saw two heaps of ruins; once they stood
Two stately towns on either side the flood;
Saturnia and Janicula's remains;
And either place the founder's name retains." *
The deadly wound, however, thus given to the Chaldean system, was
destined to be healed. A colony of Etruscans, earnestly attached to the
Chaldean idolatry, had migrated, some say from Asia Minor, others from
Greece, and settled in the immediate neighbourhood of Rome. * They were
ultimately incorporated in the Roman state, but long before this
political union took place they exercised the most powerful influence on
the religion of the Romans. From the very first their skill in augury,
soothsaying, and all science, real or pretended, that the augurs or
soothsayers monopolised, made the Romans look up to them with respect.
It is admitted on all hands that the Romans derived their knowledge of
augury, which occupied so prominent a place in every public transaction
in which they engaged, chiefly from the Tuscans, * that is, the people
of Etruria, and at first none but natives of that country were permitted
to exercise the office of a Haruspex, which had respect to all the rites
essentially involved in sacrifice. * Wars and disputes arose between
Rome and the Etruscans; but still the highest of the noble youths of
Rome were sent to Etruria to be instructed in the sacred science which
flourished there. * The consequence was, that under the influence of men
whose minds were moulded by those who clung to the ancient idol-worship,
the Romans were brought back again to much of that idolatry which they
had formerly repudiated and cast off. Though Numa, therefore, in setting
up his religious system, so far deferred to the prevailing feeling of
his day and forbade image-worship, yet in consequence of the alliance
subsisting between Rome and Etruria in sacred things, matters were put
in train for the ultimate subversion of that prohibition. The college of
Pontiffs, of which he laid the foundation, * in process of time came to
be substantially an Etruscan college, and the Sovereign Pontiff that
presided over that college, and that controlled all the public and
private religious rites of the Roman people in all essential respects,
became in spirit and in practice an Etruscan Pontiff.
Still the Sovereign Pontiff of Rome, even after the Etruscan idolatry
was absorbed into the Roman system, was only an offshoot from the grand
original Babylonian system. He was a devoted worshipper of the
Babylonian god; but he was not the legitimate representative of that
God. The true legitimate Babylonian Pontiff had his seat beyond the
bounds of the Roman empire. That seat, after the death of Belshazzar,
and the expulsion of the Chaldean priesthood from Babylon by the Medo-Persian
kings, was at Pergamos, where afterwards was one of the seven churches
of Asia. * There, in consequence, for many centuries was "Satan's
seat" (Rev. ii. 13).There, under favour of the deified * kings
of Pergamos, was his favourite abode, there was the worship of
AEsculapius, under the form of the serpent, celebrated with frantic
orgies and excesses, that elsewhere were kept under some measure of
restraint. At first, the Roman Pontiff had no immediate connection with
Pergamos and the hierarchy there; yet, in course of time, the
Pontificate of Rome and the Pontificate of Pergamos came to be
identified. Pergamos itself became part and parcel of the Roman empire,
when Attalus III., the last of its kings, at his death, left by will all
his dominions to the Roman people, B.C. 133. * For some time after the
kingdom of Pergamos was merged in the Roman dominions, there was no one
who could set himself openly and advisedly to lay claim to all the
dignity inherent in the old title of the kings of Pergamos. The original
powers even of the Roman Pontiffs seem to have been by that time
abridged, * but when Julius Caesar, who had previously been elected
Pontifex Maximus, * became also, as Emperor, the supreme civil ruler of
the Romans, then, as head of the Roman state, and head of the Roman
religion, all the powers and functions of the true legitimate Babylonian
Pontiff were supremely vested in him, and he found himself in a position
to assert these powers. Then he seems to have laid claim to the divine
dignity of Attalus, as well as the kingdom that Attalus had been
regarded. * Then, on certain occasions, in the exercise of his high
pontifical office, he appeared of course in all the pomp of the
Babylonian custom, as Belshazzar himself might have done, in robes of
scarlet, * with the crosier of Nimrod in his hand, wearing the mitre of
Dagon and bearing the keys of Janus and Cybele. * Thus did matters
continue, as already stated, even under so-called Christian emperors;
who, as a slave to their consciences, appointed a heathen as their
substitute in the performance of the more directly idolatrous functions
of the pontificate (that substitute, however, acting in their name and
by their authority), until the reign of Gratian, who, as shown by
Gibbon, was the first that refused to be arrayed in the idolatrous
pontifical attire, or to act as Pontifex. * Now, from all this it is
evident that, when Paganism in the Roman empire was abolished, when the
office of Pontifex Maximus was suppressed, and all the dignitaries of
paganism were cast down from their seats of influence and of power,
which they had still been allowed in some measure to retain, this was
not merely the casting down of the Fiery Dragon of Rome, but the casting
down of the Fiery Dragon of Babylon. It was just the enacting over
again, in a symbolical sense, upon the true and sole legitimate
successor of Nimrod, what have taken place upon himself, when the
greatness of his downfall gave rise to the exclamation, "How
art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!"
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