identify the beasts, it must surely be meant to date their origin, and thus to designate the length of time that elapsed between the the rise of the first beast and the second one. Did the second beast arise in the 666th year of the first beast? If so, when did the first beast arise? This was matter of plain history, and the search from this time onward would be a comparatively easy task. The beasts are now properly identified. If the second beast arose in the 666th year of the power of the first beast, nothing is simpler than to work out the problem to its end. The conditions of the problem are: That the number of the beast's name shall be also the number of a man; and that upon the first beast's heads shall be found the name of blasphemy. The first beast arose out of the sea, the second one out of the earth. This Faber and others have interpreted to mean that the one arose in times of and by means of war and commotion, and that the other arose peacefully and by peaceful arts. This would also accord with his two horns as of a lamb. In order therefore to fulfil the conditions of the problem, the Political Roman Empire must take its rise through bloodshed and in the person of a man whose name should yield the number 666, and at the same time be a name of blasphemy. And the spiritual Roman Empire must take its rise in some peaceable and unnoticed way, and in the person of a man whose name must also yield the mystical number 666. Now an Empire is a civil government that is administered by an Imperator. But an Imperator is a military officer. He gets his authority in a military and not in a civil way. That is, he must administer the civil government by virtue of his military authority. This is not martial law, for martial law is the substitution of military for civil law. History attests with one voice that the Roman Empire was founded by Julius Cæsar. Augustus was the heir under whom it was consolidated and brought to perfection, but Cæsar was the man who introduced it. When we come to look into the public career of Julius Cæsar, we find but one event that meets the requirements of the case. The senate at Rome was manipulated by Cæsar's enemies. Cæsar in command of his victorious legions, stood on the north bank of the Rubicon, debating with himself whether he would cross the Rubicon and lay down his command, in obedience to the order of the Senate, on Roman soil, or whether he should retain his command and enter Roman territory as a conqueror. Should he be the victim or the master of the Roman Senate? He decided upon the latter. He plunged into the Rubicon, and when he touched the southern shore, the Roman Empire was inaugurated on Roman soil. This was in the year 49 before Christ. This being the rise of the first beast, the rise of the second, which was 666 years later, would be in the year of Grace 617. It remains but to consider the "name of blasphemy," and the number of the name. It is known to the whole world that in the early persecutions of the Christians, the crucial test was whether or not the accused would consent to burn incense before the image of the Emperor, thus worshiping him as God. The title Dius or Divus was assumed by all the Emperors. None can deny that this is a name of blasphemy. blasphemy" is shown by the fact set free upon acknowledging it. therefore, the name would be as follows, throwing the numeral letters into relief: That it was "the name of that the early Christians were Applied to the first Emperor, CaIVs IVLIVS DIVS. It is not necessary to explain to any scholar that the letters V and U in the Latin alphabet are one and the same, and that the Latin adjective Divus, meaning divine, has two spellings of equal authority, Divus and Dius. With this understanding, therefore, the name of blasphemy of the first Roman Emperor would be as above," Caius Julius Dius," which name, counting the numeral letters, makes 666, thus: CaIVs. C-100, and IV-4, 104 - 58 504 666 Thus the whole name by which Julius Cæsar received divine adoration, and consequently "the name of blasphemy," yields the number of the beast, exactly 666. So we have the origin of the Political Roman Empire in the person of a man whose official name yields the mystic number 666. If therefore the spiritual Roman Empire arose in the 666th year of the first Beast, we must expect that in that year-the year of grace 617-there would be a Bishop of Rome whose name would also yield the mystic number 666, and during whose Pontificate the beginning of the 1260 years should take place. The reigning Pope in the year A. D. 617, was Deusdedit, an insignificant Pope, concerning whom little more than the name is known. The character of this man and the inconspicuous nature of his reign, accord well with the theory that in his time the papacy should come to its majority. At any rate the 1260 years must begin-if not in his time-certainly in times as inconspicuous as his, because their beginning was secret. The name Deusdedit does not yield the requisite number from the Latin numeral letters. But by turning to the Prophet Daniel, the other apocalyptic book, and using the name of God there employed, which is Eljon, the "Most High," and translating this name into Hebrew we get exactly 666. Thus: Here we have all the conditions of the problem fully satisfied. In the case of both beasts we have the "number of a man." In the case of the first beast, this number is arrived at through "the name of blasphemy." In the 666th year of the first beast whose name of blasphemy is 666, we find the papacy arising in the person of a Pontiff whose official name yields the exact number 666. As any one will see in a moment of time, if the 1260 years be gin in the 666th year of the first beast, A. D. 617, then the end of the 1260 years will be A. D. 1877. This is a date not given hitherto by any interpreter, and before strengthening it by separate lines of interpretation, it may be well enough to note how it meets some requirements of history, as no other date has ever been shown to do. (1.) The phrase "the time of the end" is so used in the Prophet Daniel as to leave the impression that it would require a "time" of 360 years for the overthrow of the Papacy. If we subtract 360 from 1877, the remainder is 1517. Now it was in this year that Martin Luther nailed up his thesis on the cathedral door at Wittemberg, and the Reformation suddenly blazed out all over the Continent, extending to the British Islands. Since this date the Papacy has been getting gradually weaker and weaker, until now all are agreed that it is moribund. (2.) Inasmuch as the power of the beast was to last during 1260 years, this must be true of the first beast as well as of the second one. Assuming therefore that the power of the first beast arose B. C. 49, the end of his power would be in A. D. 1211. In this year Pope Innocent III. entirely crushed the Emperor Otho IV. He excommunicated him and pursued him with spiritual terrors, until the poor Emperor died in abjectness and servility. In Milman's Latin Christianity, Vol. V, Book X, Chap. I, his death is thus described, showing that the true imperialism had passed from the Empire to the Papacy: The death of Otho in the castle of Wurtzburg, near Goslar, had been a signal example of the power of religious awe. The Battle of Bouvines and the desertion of his friends had broken his proud spirit; his health failed, violent remedies brought him to the brink of the grave. Hell yawned before the outcast from the Church; nothing less than a public expiation of his sins could soothe his shuddering conscience. No bishop would approach the excommunicated, the fallen Sovereign; the Prior of Halberstadt, on his solemn oath upon the relics of St. Simon and St. Jude, brought for that purpose from Brunswick, that if he lived he would give full satisfaction to the Church, obtained him absolution and the Last Sacrament. The next day, the last of his life, in the presence of the Empress and his family, the Nobles, and the Abbot of Hildesheim, he knelt almost naked on a carpet, made the fullest confession of his sins; he showed a cross which he had received at Rome, as a pledge that he would embark on a Crusade: "The devil had still thwarted his holy vow." The cross was restored to him. He then crouched down, exposed his naked shoulders, and entreated all present to inflict the merited chastisement. All hands were armed with rods; the very scullions assisted in the pious work of flagellation, or at least of humiliation. In the pauses of the Miserere the Emperor's voice was heard: "Strike harder, spare not the hardened sinner." So died the rival of Philip of Swabia, the foe of Innocent III., in the forty-third year of his age. There is probably no historical question about which scholars are so universally agreed, as that the papacy attained the highest position it ever had during the pontificate of Innocent III. Pope Gregory VII., commonly called Hildebrand, whose claims were as high as those of Innocent, was but the pioneer. Innocent III. entered into the full fruit of his labors. It would require more space than can here be given to it, to simply record the splendors of the Papacy during the reign of Innocent. The Lateran Council, the crusade against the Albigenses, the humbling of King John of England, the successful assertion of the Papal claims in England, the establishment of the inquisition, all these all that made the Papacy the marvel and the execration of history-had their accomplishment or their origin during the illustrious and baleful pontificate of that greatest of Popes, Innocent III. It is worthy of note how the figures dovetail into one another. Both beasts have a career of 1260 years each. In the 666th year of the first beast, the second one arises, and the power of the first goes out just 666 years before the end of the power of the second, for 666 added to 1211 gives 1877. The time when the power of the first beast is fully absorbed by the second is also the time of the greatest exaltation of the second beast's power. (3.) One occurence of the year 1211 A. D., has not received the consideration that it deserves. It was in this year that the humiliation of King John of England was accomplished, so far as the Church is concerned one of the most important events of all history. To one who reads between the lines, that is, who reflects on what he reads, the full significance of this event must appear. Not only did King John consent to hold his kingdom as the vassal of the Pope, thus acknowledging that the true dominion, both spiritual and temporal, was vested in the Papacy, but, what is a vastly more important matter, the two national Churches of England and Ireland were for the first time brought into subjection to the Papacy. That is they lost their autonomy, they ceased to be national and independent Churches, and became part of the Roman Catholic Church, and so continued for exactly 350 years. For from the time that John was first excommunicated, A. D. 1208, to the accession of Elizabeth in A. D. 1558, just 350 years elapsed. Now if we may regard a hundred years as a prophetic day, and the two Churches of England and Ireland as the two witnesses, then it would follow that the three and a half centuries |