SECTION II
The next great enemy introduced to our notice is the Beast from the
Sea (Rev. xiii. 1):--"I stood, " says John,"upon
the sand of the sea-shore, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea."
The seven heads and ten horns on this beast, as on the great dragon,
show that this power is essentially the same beast, but that it has
undergone a circumstantial change. In the old Babylonian system, after
the worship of the god of fire, there speedily followed the worship of
the god of water or the sea. As the world formerly was in danger of
being burnt up, so now it was in equal danger of being drowned. In the
Mexican story it is said to have actually been so. First say they, it
was destroyed by fire, and then it was destroyed by water. * The Druidic
mythology gives the same account; for the Bards affirm that the dreadful
tempest of fire that split the earth asunder, was rapidly succeeded by
the bursting of the Lake Llion, when the waters of the abyss poured
forth and "overwhelmed the whole world." * In Greece
we meet with the very same story. Diodorus Siculus tells us that, in
former times, "a monster called AEgides, who vomited flames,
appeared in Phrygia; hence spreading along Mount Taurus, the
conflagration burnt down all the woods as far as India; then, with a
retrograde course, swept the forests of Mount Lebanon, and extended as
far as Egypt and Africa; at last a stop was put to it by Minerva. The
Phrygians remembered well this CONFLAGRATION and the FLOOD which
FOLLOWED it." * Ovid, too, has a clear allusion to the same
fact of the fire-worship being speedily followed by the worship of
water, in his fable of the transformation of Cycnus. He represents King
Cycnus, an attached friend of Phaethon, and consequently of
fire-worship, as, after his friend's death, hating the fire, and taking
to the contrary element that of water, through fear, and so being
transformed into a swan. * In India, the great deluge, which occupies so
conspicuous a place in its mythology, evidently has the same symbolical
meaning, although the story of Noah is mixed up with it; for it was
during that deluge that "the lost Vedas," or sacred
books, were recovered, by means of the great god, under the form of a
FISH. The "loss of the Vedas" had evidently taken
place at that very time of terrible disaster to the gods, when,
according to the Purans, a great enemy of these gods, called Durgu,
"abolished all religious ceremonies, the Brahmins, through fear,
forsook the reading of the Veda,....fire lost its energy, and the
terrified stars retired from sight;" * in other words, when
idolatry, fire-worship, and the worship of the host of heaven had been
suppressed. When we turn to Babylon itself, we find there also
substantially the same account. In Berosus, the deluge is represented as
coming after the time of Alorus, or the "god of fire," that
is, Nimrod, which shows that there, too, this deluge was symbolical.
Now, out of this deluge emerged Dagon, the fish-god, or god of the sea.
The origin of the worship of Dagon, as shown by Berosus, was founded
upon a legend, that, at a remote period of the past, when men were sunk
in barbarism, there came up a BEAST CALLED OANNES FROM THE RED SEA, or
Persian Gulf--half-man, half-fish--that civilised the Babylonians,
taught them arts and sciences, and instructed them in politics and
religion. * The worship of Dagon was introduced by the very
parties--Nimrod, of course, excepted--who had previously seduced the
world into the worship of fire. In the secret Mysteries that were then
set up, while in the first instance, no doubt, professing the greatest
antipathy to the prescribed worship of fire, they sought to regain their
influence and power by scenic representations of the awful scenes of the
Flood, in which Noah was introduced under the name of Dagon, or the
Fish-god--scenes in which the whole family of man, both from the nature
of the event and their common connection with the second father of the
human race, could not fail to feel a deep interest. The concocters of
these Mysteries saw that if they could only bring men back again to
idolatry in any shape, they could soon work that idolatry so as
substantially to re-establish the very system that had been put down.
Thus it was, that, as soon as the way was prepared for it, Tammuz was
introduced as one who had allowed himself to be slain for the good of
mankind. A distinction was made between good serpents and bad serpents,
one kind being represented as the serpent of Agathodaemon, or the good
divinity, another as the serpent of Cacodaemon, or the evil one. * It
was easy, then, to lead men on by degrees to believe that, in spite of
all appearances to the contrary, Tammuz, instead of being the patron of
serpent-worship in any evil sense, was in reality the grand enemy of the
Apophis, or great malignant serpent that envied the happiness of
mankind, and that in fact he was the very seed of the woman who was
destined to bruise the serpent's head. By means of the metempsychosis,
it was just as easy to identify Nimrod and Noah, and to make it appear
that the great patriarch, in the person of this his favoured descendant,
had graciously condescended to become incarnate anew, as Dagon, that he
might bring mankind back again to the blessings they had lost when
Nimrod was slain. Certain it is, that Dagon was worshipped in the
Chaldean Mysteries, wherever they were established, in a character that
represented both the one and the other. *
In the previous system, the grand mode of purification had been by
fire. Now, it was by water that men were to be purified. Then began the
doctrine of baptismal regeneration, connected, as we have been, with the
passing of Noah through the waters of the Flood. Then began the
reverence for holy wells, holy lakes, holy rivers, which is to be found
wherever these exist on the earth; which is not only to be traced among
the Parsees, who, along with the worship of fire, worship also the
Zereparankard, or Caspian Sea, * and among the Hindoos, who worship the
purifying waters of the Ganges, and who count it the grand passport to
heaven, to leave their dying relatives to be smothered in its stream;
but which is seen in full force at this day in Popish Ireland, in the
universal reverence for holy wells, and the annual pilgrimages to Loch
Dergh, to wash away sin in its blessed waters; and which manifestly
lingers also among our-selves, in the popular superstition about witches
which shines out in the well-known line of Burns - "A running
stream they daurna cross."
So much for the worship of water. Along with the water-worship,
however, the old worship of fire as soon incorporated again. In the
Mysteries, with modes of purification were conjoined. Though
water-baptism was held to regenerate, yet purification by fire was still
held to be indispensable; * and, long ages after baptismal regeneration
had been established, the children were still made "to pass
through the fire to Moloch." This double purification both by
fire and water was practised in Mexico, among the followers of Wodan. *
This double purification was also commonly practised among the old Pagan
Romans; * and, in course of time, almost everywhere throughout the Pagan
world, both the fire-worship and serpent-worship of Nimrod, which had
been put down, was re-established in a new form, with all its old and
many additional abominations besides.
Now, this god of the sea, when his worship had been firmly
re-established, and all formidable opposition had been put down, was
worshipped also as the great god of war, who, though he had died for the
good of mankind, now that he had risen again, was absolutely invincible.
In memory of this new incarnation, the 25th of December, otherwise
Christmas Day, was, as we have already seen, celebrated in Pagan Rome as
"Natalis Solis invicti," "the birth-day of the
Unconquered Sun." * We have equally seen that the very name of
the Roman god of war is just the name of Nimrod; for Mars and Mavors,
the two well-known names of the Roman war-god, are evidently just the
Roman forms of the Chaldee "Mar" or "Mavor,"
the Rebel. * Thus terrible and invincible was Nimrod when he
reappeared as Dagon, the beast from the sea. If the reader looks at what
is said in Rev. xiii. 3, he will see precisely the same thing:
"And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded unto death; and his
deadly wound was healed: and all the world wondered after the beast. And
they worshipped the dragon, which gave power unto the beast, and they
worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? who is able to
make war with him?" Such, in all respects, is the analogy
between the language of the prophecy and the ancient Babylonian type.
Do we find, then, anything corresponding to this in the religious
history of the Roman empire after the fall of the old Paganism of that
empire? Exactly in every respect. No sooner was Paganism legally
abolished, the eternal fire of Vesta extinguished, and the old serpent
cast down from the seat of power, where so long he had sat secure, than
he tried the most vigorous means to regain his influence and authority.
Finding that persecution of Christianity, as such, in the meantime would
not do to destroy the church symbolised by the sun-clothed Woman, he
made another tack (Rev. xii. 15): "And the serpent cast out of
his mouth a flood of water after the woman, that he might cause her to
be carried away of the flood." The symbol here is certainly
very remarkable. If this was the dragon of fire, it might have been
expected that it would have been represented, according to popular
myths, as vomiting fire after the woman. But it is not so. It was a
flood of water that he cast out of his mouth. What could this mean? As
the water came out of the mouth of the dragon--that must mean doctrine,
and of course, false doctrine. But is there nothing more specific than
this? A single glance at the old Babylonian type will show that the
water cast out of the mouth of the serpent must be the water of
baptismal regeneration. Now, it was precisely at this time, when the old
Paganism was suppressed, that the doctrine of regenerating men by
baptism, which had been working in the Christian Church before,
threatened to spread like a deluge over the face of the Roman empire. *
It was then precisely that our Lord Jesus Christ began to be popularly
called Ichthys, that is, "the Fish," * manifestly to
identify him with Dagon. At the end of the fourth century, and from that
time forward, it was taught, that he who had been washed in the
baptismal font was thereby born again, and made pure as the virgin snow.
This flood issued not merely from the mouth of Satan, the old
serpent, but from the mouth of him who came to be recognised by the
Pagans of Rome as the visible head of the old Roman Paganism. When the
Roman fire-worship was suppressed, we have seen that the office of
Pontifex Maximus, the head of that Paganism, was abolished. That was "the
wounding unto death" of the head of the Fiery Dragon. But
scarcely had that head received its deadly wound, when it began to be
healed again. Within a few years after the Pagan title of Pontifex had
been abolished, it was revived, and that by the very Emperor that had
abolished it, and was bestowed, with all the Pagan associations
clustering around it, upon the Bishop of Rome, * who, from that time
forward, became the grand agent in pouring over professing Christendom,
first the ruinous doctrine of baptismal regeneration, and then all the
other doctrines of Paganism derived from ancient Babylon. When this
Pagan title was bestowed on the Roman bishop, it was not as a mere empty
title of honour it was bestowed, but as a title to which formidable
power was annexed. To the authority of the Bishop of Rome in this new
character, as Pontifex, when associated "with five or seven
other bishops" as his counsellors, bishops, and even
metropolitans of foreign churches over extensive regions of the West, in
Gaul not less than in Italy, were subjected; and civil pains were
attached to those who refused to submit to his pontifical decisions. *
Great was the danger to the cause of truth and righteousness when such
power was, by imperial authority, vested in the Roman bishop, and that a
bishop so willing to give himself to the propagation of false doctrine.
Formidable, however, as the danger was, the true Church, the Bride, the
Lamb's wife (so far as that Church was found within the bounds of the
Western Empire), was wonderfully protected from it. That Church was for
a time saved from the peril, not merely by the mountain fastnesses in
which many of its devoted members found an asylum, as Jovinian,
Vigilantius, and the Waldenses, and such-like faithful ones, in the
wilderness among the Cottian Alps, and other secluded regions of Europe,
but also not a little, by a signal interposition of Divine Providence in
its behalf. That interposition is referred to in these words (Rev. xii.
16): "The earth opened her mouth and swallowed up the flood,
which the dragon cast out of his mouth." What means the symbol
of the "earth's opening its mouth"? In the natural
world, when the earth opens its mouth, there is an earthquake; and an "earthquake,"
according to the figurative language of the Apocalypse, as all
admit, just means a great political convulsion. Now, when we examine the
history of the period in question, we find that the fact exactly agrees
with the prefiguration; that soon after the Bishop of Rome became
Pontiff, and, as Pontiff, set himself so zealously to bring in Paganism
into the Church, those political convulsions began in the civil empire
of Rome, which never ceased till the framework of that empire was broken
up, and it was shattered to pieces. But for this the spiritual power of
the Papacy might have been firmly established over all the nations of
the West, long before the time it actually was so. It is clear, that
immediately after Damasus, the Roman bishop, received his pontifical
power, the predicted "apostacy" (1 Tim. iv. 3), so
far as Rome was concerned, was broadly developed. Then were men "forbidden
to marry," * and "commanded to abstain from
meats." * Then, with a factitious doctrine of sin, a
factitious holiness also was inculcated, and people were led to believe
that all baptised persons were necessarily regenerated. Had the Roman
Empire of the West remained under one civil head, backed by that civil
head, the Bishop of Rome might very soon have infected all parts of that
empire with the Pagan corruption he had evidently given himself up to
propagate. Considering the cruelty * with which Jovinian, and all who
opposed the Pagan doctrines in regard to marriage and abstinence, were
treated by the Pontifex of Rome, under favour of the imperial power, it
may easily be seen how serious would have been the consequences to the
cause of truth in the Western Empire had this state of matters been
allowed to pursue its natural course. But now the great Lord of the
Church interfered. The "revolt of the Goths," and the
sack of Rome by Alaric the Goth in 410, gave that shock to the Roman
Empire which issued, by 476, in its complete upbreaking and the
extinction of the imperial power. Although, therefore, in pursuance of
the policy previously inaugurated, the Bishop of Rome was formally
recognised, by an imperial edict in 445, as "Head of all the
Churches of the West," all bishops being commanded "to
hold and observe as a law whatever it should please the Bishop of Rome
to ordain or decree;" * the convulsions of the empire, and the
extinction, soon thereafter, of the imperial power itself, to a large
extent nullified the disastrous effects of this edict. The "earth's
opening its mouth," then--in other words, the breaking up of
the Roman Empire into so many independent sovereignties--was a benefit
to true religion, and prevented the flood of error and corruption, that
had its source in Rome, from flowing as fast as far as it would
otherwise have done. When many different wills in the different
countries were substituted for the one will of the Emperor, on which the
Sovereign Pontiff leaned, the influence of that Pontiff was greatly
neutralised. "Under these circumstances," says Gieseler,
referring to the influence of Rome in the different kingdoms into which
the empire was divided, "under these circumstances, the Popes
could not directly interfere in ecclesiastical matters; and their
communications with the established Church of the country depended
entirely on the royal pleasure." * The Papacy at last overcame
the effects of the earthquake, and the kingdoms of the West were
engulfed in that flood of error that came out of the mouth of the
dragon. But the overthrow of the imperial power, when so zealously
propping up the spiritual despotism of Rome, gave the true Church in the
West a lengthened period of comparative freedom, which otherwise it
could not have had. The Dark Ages would have come sooner, and the
darkness would have been more intense, but for the Goths and Vandals,
and the political convulsions that attended their irruptions. They were
raised up to scourge an apostatising community, not to persecute the
saints of the Most High, though these, too, may have occasionally
suffered in the common distress. The hand of Providence may be
distinctly seen, in that, at so critical a moment, the earth opened its
mouth and helped the woman.
To return, however, to the memorable period when the pontifical title
was bestowed on the Bishop of Rome. The circumstances in which that
Pagan title was bestowed upon Pope Damasus, were such as might have been
nit a little trying to the faith and integrity of a much better man that
he. Though Paganism was legally abolished in the Western Empire of Rome,
yet in the city of the Seven Hills it was still rampant, insomuch that
Jerome, who knew it well, writing of Rome at this very period, calls it "the
sink of all superstitions." * The consequence was, that, while
everywhere else throughout the empire the Imperial edict for the
abolition of Paganism was respected, in Rome itself it was, to a large
extent, a dead letter. Symmachus, the prefect of the city, and the
highest patrician families, as well as the masses of the people, were
fanatically devoted to the old religion; and, therefore, the Emperor
found it necessary, in spite of the law, to connive at the idolatry of
the Romans. How strong was the hold that Paganism had in the Imperial
city, even after the fire of Vesta was extinguished, and State support
was withdrawn from the Vestals, the reader may perceive from the
following words of Gibbon: "The image and altar of Victory were
indeed removed from the Senate-house; but the Emperor yet spared the
statues of the gods which were exposed to public view; four hundred and
twenty-four temples or chapels still remained to satisfy the devotion of
the people, and in every quarter of Rome the delicacy of the Christians
was offended by the fumes of idolatrous sacrifice." * Thus
strong was Paganism in Rome, even after State support was withdrawn
about 376. But look forward only about fifty years, and see what has
become of it. The name of Paganism has almost entirely disappeared;
insomuch that the younger Theodosius, in an edict issued A.D. 423, uses
these words: "The Pagans that remain, although now we may
believe there are none." * The words of Gibbon in reference to
this are very striking. While fully admitting that, notwithstanding the
Imperial laws made against Paganism, "no peculiar
hardships" were imposed on "the sectaries who
credulously received the fables of Ovid, and obstinately rejected the
miracles of the Gospel," he expresses his surprise at the
rapidity of the revolution that took place among the Romans from
Paganism to Christianity. "The ruin of Paganism," he
says--and his dates are from A.D. 378, the year when the Bishop of Rome
was made Pontifex, to 395--"The ruin of Paganism, in the age of
Theodosius, is perhaps the only example of the total extirpation of any
ancient and popular superstition; and may therefore deserve to be
considered as a singular event in the history of the human mind."....After
referring to the hasty conversion of the senate, he thus proceeds: "The
edifying example of the Anician family [in embracing Christianity] was
soon imitated by the rest of the nobility.....The citizens who subsisted
by their own industry, and the populace who were supported by the public
liberality, filled the churches of the Lateran and Vatican with an
incessant throng of devout proselytes. The decrees of the senate, which
proscribed the worship of idols, were ratified by the general consent of
the Romans; the splendour of the capitol was defaced, and the solitary
temples were abandoned to ruin and contempt. Rome submitted to the yoke
of the Gospel....The generation that arose in the world, after the
promulgation of Imperial laws, was ATTRACTED with the pale of the
Catholic Church, and so RAPID, yet so GENTLE was the fall of Paganism,
that only twenty-eight years after the death of Theodosius [the elder],
the faint and minute vestiges were no longer visible to the eye of the
legislator." * Now, how can this great and rapid revolution be
accounted for? Is it because the Word of the Lord has had free course
and been glorified? Then, what means the new aspect that the Roman
Church has now begun to assume? In exact proportion as Paganism has
disappeared from without the Church, in the very same proportion it
appears within it. Pagan dresses for the priests, Pagan festivals for
the people, Pagan doctrines and ideas of all sorts, are everywhere in
vogue. * The testimony of the same historian, who has spoken so
decisively about the rapid conversion of the Romans to the profession of
the Gospel, is not less decisive on this point. In his account of the
Roman Church, under the head of "Introduction of Pagan
Ceremonies," he thus speaks: "As the objects of
religion were gradually reduced to the standard of the imagination, the
rites and ceremonies were introduced that seemed most powerfully to
effect the senses of the vulgar. If, in the beginning of the fifty
century, Tertullian or Lactantius had been suddenly raised from the
dead, to assist at the festival of some popular saint or martyr, they
would have gazed with astonishment and indignation on the profane
spectacle which had succeeded to the pure and spiritual worship of a
Christian congregation. As soon as the doors of the church were throne
open, they must have been offended by the smoke of incense, the perfume
of flowers, and the glare of lamps and tapers, which diffused at
noon-day a gaudy, superfluous, and, in their opinion, sacrilegious
light." * Gibbon has a great deal more to the same effect.
Now, can any one believe that this was accidental? No. It was evidently
the result of that unprincipled policy, of which, in the course of this
inquiry, we have already seen such innumerable instances on the part of
the Papacy. * Pope Damasus saw that, in a city pre-eminently given to
idolatry, if he was to maintain the Gospel pure and entire, he must be
willing to bear the cross, to encounter hatred and ill-will, to endure
hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. On the other hand, he could
not but equally see, that if bearing the title, around which, for so
many ages, all the hopes and affections of Paganism had clustered, he
should give its votaries reason to believe that he was willing to act up
to the original spirit of that title, he might count on popularity,
aggrandisement and glory. Which alternative, then, was Damasus likely to
choose? The man that came into the bishopric of Rome, as a thief and a
robber, over the dead bodies of above a hundred of his opponents, *
could not hesitate as to the election he should make. The result shows
that he had acted in character, that, in assuming the Pagan title of
Pontifex, he had set himself at whatever sacrifice of truth to justify
his claims to that title in the eyes of the Pagans, as the legitimate
representative of their long line of pontiffs. There is no possibility
of accounting for the facts on any other supposition. It is evident also
that he and his successors were ACCEPTED in that character by the
Pagans, who, in flocking into the Roman Church, and rallying around the
new Pontiff, did not change their creed or worship, but brought both
into the Church along with them. The reader has seen how complete and
perfect is the copy of the old Babylonian Paganism, which, under the
patronage of the Popes, has been introduced into the Roman Church. He
has seen that the god whom the Papacy worships as the Son of the
Highest, is not only, in spite of a Divine command, worshipped under the
form of an image, made, as in the days of avowed Paganism, by art and
man's device, but that attributes are ascribed to Him which are the very
opposite of those which belonged to the merciful Saviour, but which
attributes are precisely those which were ascribed to Moloch, the
fire-god, or Ala Mahozim, "the god of fortifications." *
He has seen that, about the very time when the Bishop of Rome was
invested with the Pagan title of Pontifex, the Saviour began to be
called Ichthys, or "the Fish," thereby identifying
Him with Dagon, or the Fish-god; * and that, ever since, advancing step
by step, as circumstances would permit, what has gone under the name of
the worship of Christ, has just been the worship of that same Babylonian
divinity, with all its rites and pomps and ceremonies, precisely as in
ancient Babylon. Lastly, he has seen that the Sovereign Pontiff of the
so-called Christian Church of Rome has so wrought out the title bestowed
upon him in the end of the fourth century, as to be now dignified, as
for centuries he has been, with the very "names of
blasphemy" originally bestowed on the old Babylonian pontiffs.
*
Now, if the circumstances in which the Pope has risen to all this
height of power and blasphemous assumption, be compared with a
prediction in Daniel, which, for want of the true key has never been
understood, I think the reader will see how literally in the history of
the Popes of Rome that prediction has been fulfilled. The prediction to
which I allude is that which refers to what is commonly called the
"Wilful King" as described in Dan. xi. 36, and succeeding
verses. That "Wilful King" is admitted on all hands
to be a king that arises in Gospel times, and in Christendom, but has
generally been supposed to be in Infidel Antichrist, not only opposing
the truth but opposing Popery as well, and every thing that assumed the
very name of Christianity. But now, let the prediction be read in the
light of the facts that have passed in review before us and it will be
seen how very different is the case (ver. 36): "And the king
shall do according to his will; and he shall exalt himself and magnify
himself above every god, and shall speak marvellous things against the
God of gods, and shall prosper till the indignation be accomplished: for
that that is determined shall be done. Neither shall he regard the god
of his fathers, nor the desire of women, nor regard any god: for he
shall magnify himself above all." So far these words give an
exact description of the Papacy, with its pride, its blasphemy, and
forced celibacy and virginity. But the words that follow, according to
any sense that the commentators have put upon them, have never hitherto
been found capable of being made to agree either with the theory that
the Pope was intended, or any other theory whatever. Let them, however,
only be literally rendered, and compared with the Papal history, and all
is clear, consistent, and harmonious. The inspired seer has declared
that, in the Church of Christ, some one shall arise who shall not only
aspire to a great height, but shall actually reach it, so that "he
shall do according to his will;" his will shall be supreme in
opposition to all law, human and Divine. Now, if this king is to be a
pretended successor of the fisherman of Galilee, the question would
naturally arise, How could it be possible that he should ever have the
means of rising to such a height of power? The words that follow give a
distinct answer to that question: "He shall not REGARD * any
god, for he shall magnify himself above all. BUT, in establishing
himself, shall he honour the god of fortifications (Ala Mahozim), and a
god, whom his fathers knew not, shall he honour with gold and silver,
and with precious stones and pleasant things. Thus shall he make into
strengthening bulwarks * [for himself] the people of a strange god, whom
he shall acknowledge and increase with glory; and he shall cause them to
rule over many, and he shall divide the land for gain." Such
is the prophecy. Now, this is exactly what the Pope did. Self-aggrandisement
has ever been the grand principle of the Papacy; and, in
"establishing" himself, it was just the "God of
Fortifications" that he honoured. The worship of that god he
introduced into the Roman Church; and, by so doing, he converted that
which otherwise would have been a source of weakness to him, into the
very tower of his strength--he made the very Paganism of Rome by which
he was surrounded the bulwark of his power. When once it was proved that
the Pope was willing to adopt Paganism under Christian names, the Pagans
and Pagan priests would be his most hearty and staunch defenders. And
when the Pope began to wield lordly power over the Christians, who were
the men that he would recommend--that he would promote--that he would
advance to honour and power? Just the very people most devoted to
"the worship of the strange god" which he had introduced into
the Christian Church. Gratitude and self-interest alike would conspire
to this. Jovinian, and all who resisted the Pagan ideas and Pagan
practices, were excommunicated and persecuted. * Those only who were
heartily attached to the apostacy (and none could now be more so than
genuine Pagans) were favoured and advanced. Such men were sent from Rome
in all directions, even as far as Britain, to restore the reign of
Paganism--they were magnified with high titles, the lands were divided
among them, and all to promote "the gain" of the
Romish see, to bring in "Peter's pence" from the ends
of the earth to the Roman Pontiff. But it is still further said, that
the self-magnifying king was to "honour a god, whom his fathers
knew not, with gold and silver and precious stones." The
principle on which transubstantiation was founded is unquestionably a
Babylonian principle, but there is no evidence that that principle was
applied in the way in which it has been by the Papacy. Certain it is,
that we have evidence that no such wafer-god as the Papacy worships was
ever worshipped in Pagan Rome. "Was any man ever so mad," says
Cicero, who himself was a Roman augur and a priest--"was any
man ever so mad as to take that which he feeds on for a god?" *
Cicero could not have said this if anything like wafer-worship had been
established in Rome. But what was too absurd for Pagan Romans is no
absurdity at all for the Pope. The host, or consecrated wafer, is the
great god of the Romish Church. That host is enshrined in a box adorned
with gold and silver and precious stones. And thus it is manifest that "a
god" whom even the Pope's Pagan "fathers knew
not," he at this day honours in the very way that the terms of
the prediction imply that he would. Thus, in every respect, when the
Pope was invested with the Pagan title of Pontifex, and set himself to
make that title a reality, he exactly fulfilled the prediction of Daniel
recorded more than 900 years before.
But to return to the Apocalyptic symbols. It was out of the mouth of
the "Fiery Dragon" that "the flood of
water" was discharged. The Pope, as he is now, was at the
close of the fourth century the only representative of Belshazzar, or
Nimrod, on the earth; for the Pagans manifestly ACCEPTED him as such. He
was equally, of course, the legitimate successor of the Roman "Dragon
of fire." When, therefore, on being dignified with the title
of Pontifex, he set himself to propagate the old Babylonian doctrine of
baptismal regeneration, that was just a direct and formal fulfilment of
the Divine words, that the great Fiery Dragon should "cast out
of his mouth a flood of water to carry away the Woman with the
flood." He, and those who co-operated with him in this cause,
paved the way for the erecting of that tremendous civil and spiritual
despotism which began to stand forth full in the face of Europe in A.D.
606, when, amid the convulsions and confusions of the nations, tossed
like a tempestuous sea, the Pope of Rome was made Universal Bishop; and
when the ten chief kingdoms of Europe recognised him as Christ's Vicar
upon earth, the only centre of unity, the only source of stability to
their thrones. Then by his own act and deed, and by the consent of the
UNIVERSAL PAGANISM of Rome, he was actually the representative of Dagon;
and as he bears upon his head at this day the mitre of Dagon, so there
is reason to believe he did then. * Could there, then, be a more exact
fulfilment of chap. xiii. 1: "And I stood upon the sand of the
sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten
horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the names of
blasphemy....And I saw one of his heads as it had been wounded to death;
and his deadly wound was healed, and all the world wondered after the
beast"
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