Joseph Mede · 51 of 69

The Mystery Of the Woman dwelling in the Wilderness. · Part 2

According to these examples, why should not “ποιῆσαι μῆνας 42,” signify lived so long, remained, continued blaspheming? The force of which expression, those who did not understand, seem to have inserted in the text the word “πόλεμον war,” which is extant in some of the copies. Now, as I said before, that by the name of blasphemy in this place, was designated, as by way of eminence, idolatry, or spiritual fornica. don, may be evinced by a twofold, or even a threefold argument. First, because Babylon, the metropolis of this beast, means the mother of harlots, and with her the kings and inhabitants of the earth are said to commit whoredom. But the beast of which we treat, is nothing else than the community of those kings and inhabitants. Secondly, it must be a blasphemy of the same kind, which should suit with the state of the head, immediately preceding nay, of all the other heads for on all “were written the name of blasphemy,” ver. 1. Add that this beast of the last state, was born and composed from the renewal of the impiety of his predecessor of the sixth head. But what blasphemy could be ascribed as common to them all, except idolatry alone? Assuredly none.

The use of Scripture adds force to these observations, by expressing the idolatry of God’s ancient people by this name. To understand which it must be known that there are three words in Hebrew, translated by the Greek interpreters and the Latin Vulgate in the acceptation of blasphemy, נִאֵץ, and חָרַף, in none of which you may not discover the sign of idolatry. In the word נִּדֵּף, Ezek. c. xx. v. 27, “Yet in this your fathers have blasphemed me. When I had brought them into the land, for which I lifted up my hand to give it them, then they saw every high hill, and all the thick trees, and they offered their sacrifices,” &c. In the word חָרַף, Isa. c. lxv. v. 7, “Which have burned incense on the mountains, and blasphemed me on the hills.” And certainly חָרַף answers precisely to the Greek βλασφημεῖν , for both signify to treat with contumely, or to reproach. Whence, 2 Kings, c. xix. v. 22, “Whom hast thou reproached and blasphemed?” it is joined with נִּדֵּף, as synonymous; as also Ps. xliv. v.16. The Seventy are in the habit of rendering both by ὀνειδίζω, π9αροξύνω, and the Chaldee also by its own חרם. Moreover, let me add this likewise, that it was usual with the Jews, not only of the age of Isaiah, but also of a lower age, to understand the worship of idols by the nomenclature of reproach or blasphemy. This may even be collected from the paraphrases of the Hagiographists, where, Ps. lxix. v. 10, instead of the words, “The reproaches of them that reproached thee are fallen upon me,” the Chaldee has, “The rebukes of the impious who rebuke thee, while they make their idols partakers of thy glory, are fallen upon me.”

With respect to the word נִאֵץ, which is another of the two, to which βλασφημεῖν answers, according to the Seventy; in Forster it is, to attack with contumacy, reproaches, and reviling words. Jerome always translates it in the Psalms, as often as it occurs, (and it occurs five times,) according to the true interpretation of the Hebrew, blasphemare. With others it is, to despise, or to irritate by contempt, so that the most accurate signification of it seems to be, to provoke to anger by reproaches and contumelies. By this expression, I say it may be shown from Deut. c. xxxi. v. 20, that idolatry is designated, as well as by the former. “When they shall have eaten and filled themselves, they will turn to other gods, and will serve them וְנִאֲצוּני, and will provoke me.” So, indeed, the Vulgate uses the sense of blaspheming, though not the word. For what else is Deo detrahere, to detract from God, than to blaspheme him? But in other places it does express the word, as Jer. c. xxiii. v. 15-17, “From the prophets of Jerusalem is profaneness gone forth into all the land.”—“They say לִמְנַאֲצַי unto those that blaspheme me, (the discourse is about idolaters,) the Lord hath spoken, There shall be peace to you, and to every one who walketh after the imagination of his heart,” &c.

To these quotations may be added, if you please, by way of illustration, that the profanations of Antiochus, by which he polluted the temple of God, and his sacrifices, are called blasphemies, 1 Macc. c. ii. v. 6, and 2 Macc. c. viii. v. 4. Also, that Kimchias interprets that of Gen. c. iv. v. 26, “Then was the name of the Lord profaned by invocation.” Then men turned away after idols, and the invocation of the divine name was polluted and profaned. Whether he has translated rightly or not I do not inquire, but so he has rendered and understood it. Hence according to the scholastic doctors there are three species of blasphemy; one, when something is attributed to God which does not belong to him; another, where something is taken from him which does belong to him; a third, when what is appropriated to God, is attributed to a creature, as in idolatry. For as an adulterous wife brings a reproach upon her husband, so the Church, prostituting herself to idols, does upon God; since idolatry is spiritual adultery.

“And he opened his mouth in blasphemy against God, to blaspheme his name, and his tabernacle, and those that dwell in heaven.”

What he had before said generally about blasphemy, he here pursues in detail, and distinguishes a triple idolatry of the beast: For first, he blasphemes the name of God; that is, in the worship of images. “By giving the incommunicable name to stocks and stones.” Wisdom, c. xiv. v. 21. Or the name of God means the person of God, (may we be permitted thus to speak,) which is then blasphemed, when any thing besides God is worshipped with divine honour. Secondly, his “tabernacle;” that is, the human nature of Christ, in which the Deity hypostatically dwells. Ὁ γὰρ λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο καὶ ἐσκήνωσεν ἐν ἡμῖν, John, c. i. v. 14. And according to the same Evangelist, c. ii. v. 19, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. But he spake of the temple of his body.” Has not that passage in the Hebrews, c. ix. v. 11, a reference to this “In a greater or more perfect tabernacle.” This tabernacle, I say, the beast blasphemes, when he believes the body of Christ to be made every day out of bread, by the transubstantiation of the mass, and therefore worships the bread instead of Christ, the tabernacle of God; nay, looks up to the propitiatory sacrifice offered for the living, and the dead, as crucifying Christ anew. He blasphemes the celestial inhabitants likewise, that is, the angels and saints, who dwell in heaven, whilst in their names he invokes the demons and idols which he worships.

What a reproach is this to the blessed spirits! nay, an affront to Christ their Lord: In derogation of whose prerogative and glory they are constituted, even against their will, mediators and intercessors with God, patrons and presidents of mortals in the manner of the heathen. See what we have already said, at the end of the sixth trumpet, out of the theology of the Gentiles on demons and their offices. And the beast, not content with this alone, degrades the blessed spirits besides, with his disgraceful and wicked fables and miracles; so that you may doubt whether he offends more by the worship which he wishes to display, as addressed to them, or by the injurious nature of his fables.

Thus far of blasphemy, then follows the other part of the impiety of the beast, by which he exhibited himself as the vicegerent of the red dragon,—-the persecution of the saints. For in addition, “it was given to him to make war upon the saints, and to overcome them.” So Daniel, “He made war with the saints, and prevailed against them.” With the saints, that is, with the seed which proceeded from the woman in the wilderness. Now, though the whole domination of the beast may be a kind of warfare against the saints, (according to what was said at the beginning, “that the dragon went away enraged,” under the mask of this beast, “to make war with the rest of the woman’s seed, who keep the commandments of God, and retain the testimony of Jesus Christ,”) yet a war of another kind is here to be understood, as appears from v. 10, where something is said of retaliation to be at some future time rendered to the beast. “If any one lead into captivity,” &c., and “If any one kill with the sword, he must be killed with the sword.” The war, therefore, is one which is waged with slaughter and blood. Add that we are at present engaged in the description, not of the ecclesiastical, but of the secular beast, with which war of any kind can scarcely agree.

But the beast did not carry on this war immediately from his commencement; but after he had arrived at his acme, during the twelfth age from the birth of Christ. His first expedition threatened the Albigenses and Waldenses, and by whatever other name the true worshippers of Christ were called; of whom so great a destruction was made, that throughout France alone, if P. Perronius, in his history of the war, has made a right calculation, there were slain about a million of men. For not only was this war carried on by burnings alive, by the loss of goods, by exile, and other kinds of punishment, but that nothing might be wanting to the true appellation of war, in such an inhuman persecution, whole armies were raised against them, and those crusading expeditions, first undertaken against the Saracens, being now turned against the Christians, of that chaste and pure religion which refused to adore the beast, it raged cruelly for about seventy years, with incredible fury and inhumanity.

The histories of this butchery are to be met with, to which I refer the reader. I choose to subjoin the words of Thuanus, a most illustrious historian, but of the opposite party. He says, in the Preface to the History of his own Time, “Since exquisite punishments were of little avail against the Waldenses, and what was unseasonably applied as a remedy aggravated the evil, and their number every day increased, a regular army was at length raised, and a war of no less magnitude than that which our people had formerly waged against the Saracens, was resolved upon against them; of which the issue was, that they were brought to their senses, rather by being slain, routed, every where despoiled of their goods and dignities, and dispersed on every side, than by being convinced of their error. Therefore, they who had defended themselves in the beginning by arms, being at last conquered by arms, fled into Provence, and the Alps bordering on the French domain, and there found retreats for their life and doctrine. Some departed into Calabria, and remained there for a long time, and even to the pontificate of Pius the Fourth; part passed over into Germany, and fixed their habitations among the Bohemians, in Poland and Livonia; others turning to the West, found refuge in Britain.”

Now in this war the memorable fact happened, that those Albigenses who were conquered at Morell with a great slaughter by Simon Montfort, the leader of those who were signed with the cross, seem to have seized on this prophecy of the saints conquered by the beast, as an argument for consolation and constancy. For when the Bishop of Toulouse, interposing to prevent the slaughter, admonished the remnant, who remained in tents, by sending to them a religious person, that, convicted by such a scourge, of God’s being angry with, and pronouncing a judgment upon them, they might at length, (having laid by their hard-heartedness) be converted to the faith which they call Catholic; but they, on the contrary, retorting that the conquered were the people of Christ, by this kind of shield frustrated the attack of temptation, and all to a man fell bravely, being slain by a band of soldiers rushing in upon them.

After this war against the Waldenses and the Albigenses, there was a cruel conflict carried on in various ways against different portions of their remains in different places, as well as against other associates of the same pure religion in every part of the world, until at length, notwithstanding all this, after the year 1500, whole kingdoms, principalities, and republics, with their reformed churches, seceded from the dominion of the beast to the party of the saints; against whom war was afterwards carried on, and continues to this day, nor will it finish until the beast shall come to an end.

Now if any one would diligently measure in his mind the whole series of this butchery, comprehended in little more than 450 years, and would refer the number of the slain to calculation, I am either deceived, or it will appear marvellous, that the persecution of the beast not only equalled, but surpassed the ten heathen persecutions.

We just now observed, that the number of the Albigenses and Waldenses who were slain, was estimated at a million of men. From that time to the Reformation of the Church, no one has undertaken the calculation of those who were taken off, partly by the flames, partly by the sword, partly by other tortures, though the number is known not to have been small. From the origin of the Jesuits to the year 1480, that is, in little more than thirty years, Baldwin on Antichrist remarks, that nearly nine hundred thousand were destroyed. In Belgium alone, and that only by the hand of the executioner, the Duke of Alva, that cruel champion of the Roman see, boasted, that under his authority about thirty-six thousand souls, by his orders, had been taken off in a few years. Vergerius testifies, who well knew the fact, that the Inquisition, as they call it, of heretical depravity, in the space of hardly thirty years, made away with a hundred and fifty thousand Christians, by divers kinds of afflictions. Sanders confesses, that an infinite number of Lollards, and Sacramentarians, were delivered to the flames through the whole of Europe; who, however, he says, were not given up to slaughter by the pope and bishops, but by political magistrates. So, indeed, in consistency with the prophecy, the fact ought to be; for of the secular beast it is said, “that he made war with the saints, and overcame them;” and of the ten kings, c. xvii. that “they should carry on war with the Lamb, and the elect, and faithful;” but of the ecclesiastical beast, not indeed that he himself killed with the sword, “but caused that whoever would not worship the image of the beast, should (by that image) be killed with the sword,” as we shall see a little below. Then follows, “And power was given him over every tribe, and tongue, and nation.”

Now what was this power, but that of waging war with the saints? as if it would extend itself as widely as the Roman domain, for the subject of discourse is not perhaps of dominion, but of the amplitude of persecution. If any one prefer the other interpretation, the sense will be, that such was the authority of the beast, that no tribe, tongue, nor nation, resisted his impiety. But we must not understand this of individuals, (many of whom were found in every age who preserved their faith to the Lamb) but of whole tribes, tongues, and nations, that is, of the political governments of mankind. Of which it is very true, that none is to be found which the beast had not detained for many ages in servile obedience to his impiety; so that those who dwelt dispersed here and there, through the provinces of the beast, and were in reality Christians, constituted alone at that time the undefiled and virgin Church, as that which had, alas! no state, republic, principality, nor kingdom, of its confession of faith. But here it is to be kept in mind, that the form of the beast was that impiety which supplied the place of the dragon, in whose communion those many kingdoms of the Roman dominion, as we have observed, coalesced to form one beast. Those, therefore, who embraced this are said to yield to the power of the beast, as all tribes, languages, and nations, did.

“And all they that dwell on the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb, slain from the foundation of the world.”

Now, lest any one, fascinated by so universal and catholic an assent to the laws of the beast, should presume that it was done piously and rightly, and that the example of so many nations and people might be followed by them without danger, or even when broken down and debilitated by the cruelty of persecution, he might violate his faith given to the Lamb, and yield to the worship of the beast; the Holy Spirit denounces, in a declaration plainly to be feared, in what situation and number they are to be esteemed by God, who exhibit themselves as complying with this monster of impiety; that they are not to be considered as in the roll of the Lamb who was slain, but to perish eternally as exiles from the kingdom of God. To this formidable admonition is subjoined an apostrophe, in order to excite attention. “If any one,” says he, “has ears to hear, let him hear.” As if he said, O pious worshippers of Christ, incline your ears, and retain in your inmost souls what is now proclaimed beforehand of the very unhappy lot of those who follow the beast; and it is not a thing of small moment, but the hinge upon which your salvation turns. Those words, therefore, ought to be referred to what precedes, and not to what follows, in the same manner as it is clear, the same address is more than once to be referred in the epistles to the churches. Vide c. ii. v. ult. c. iii. v. 6. 13. 22.

“If any one leadeth into captivity, he shall go into captivity; if any one killeth with the sword, he shall be killed with the sword.”

A consolatory reflection for the pious, against whom the beast, when they refused to obey him, proceeded with war, imprisonment, and the most inhuman punishments. The time will come, when God, the just avenger of his people, may demand retribution for so many butcheries, suchenormous cruelties, and may execute vengeance on the raging beast.

And “here,” says he, “is the patience and faith of the saints.” That is, let not the saints, relying on this equity of the Divine Power, and on his justice in ordering human events, be disturbed at what they are about to suffer, or faint in their minds, but courageously contending against the beast, firmly and patiently wait for the vengeance which will certainly, and in an accumulated degree, proceed from God.

Hitherto we have treated of the secular beast. Now the apostle proceeds to the description of the other beast seen by him, namely, the ecclesiastical beast, or rather the false prophet, who exercises the lieutenancy of the former beast, and of his blasphemies.

Of the other Two-horned Beast, or False Prophet.

The two-horned beast, or pseudo-prophet, is the Roman pontiff, with his clergy, having indeed two horns like the Lamb, of whose power of binding and loosing on the earth he boasts himself the vicar, but uttering idolatries and butcheries of the saints like a dragon. For this beast was the author and founder of that ten-horned beast, which supplied the place of the dragon in tyranny and blasphemies, under the mark of the Christian profession. Of whom, therefore, as he exercises the power in the office of hierarch, so likewise is he the pontiff of the same, no less than of his clergy, (with whom he privately constitutes the pseudo-prophetic beast,) he conducts himself as head and monarch, exhibiting that seventh and last head of the Roman commonwealth, in the city on seven hills; who, indeed, by signs and miracles, which it was given to him and his clergy to do, or pretend to do, by the thunder of excommunication, as of celestial vengeance, brought in by degrees the kings, lately risen in the Roman world, out of the dissipated empire of the Cæsars, to submit their necks unanimously to him and to the government of Rome, now otherwise subdued, so as to introduce an image of the ancient, and now demolished heathen empire. Which went on so favourably for him, that not only the Roman beast, wounded in his Caesarean head, evidently revived in that image, but the image itself likewise, at the nod of the false prophet, fell upon those who exclaimed against his appearance, and chastised them with the secular sword, as the false prophet did with the spiritual.

“And I saw (says he) another beast ascending out of the earth, and it had two horns like a lamb, and it spake as a dragon.”

He saw another beast, namely, the pseudo-prophetical or pseudo-ecclesiastical beast, which consisted, as we have said, of the Roman pontiff with his clergy. For the pontiff alone, and by himself, though he may be called the false prophet, does not, however, constitute the beast, unless with the addition of his clergy, since the beast denotes an assembly of men, delighting, like an animal, in a certain order of its members, and not a single person. But he saw him ascending from the earth; that is, not like the former, risen from the sea, or the dominions of the world; that is, from a more noble kind of origin, but sprung from the lowest condition of human affairs; or rather, not born as the secular one, during a tumultuous conflict of armies and people contending with each other, but growing up quietly, and without noise, like herbs and plants springing from the earth. For the sea, though it signifies a conflux of people into one dominion, signifies also an army in war. “And it had two horns like a lamb,” that is, the bipartite power of binding and loosing, delegated by Christ to Peter, and so far, indeed, similar to that of the Lamb, inasmuch as lie said, “As my Father sent me, so send I you.” This power, in fact, the beast assumes, and says that he acts therein as the vicar of Christ, hut he speaks as a dragon; even as the red dragon, whom Michael had a little before overthrown, and expelled from the Roman empire; whilst in truth, like him, he patronizes the worship of deities and idols, by his authority, and, in a similar manner, causes the true and pure worshippers of the Lamb that was slain to be exterminated by persecution and butcheries. For “he exercises all the power of the first beast before him.” The two-horned beast executes that delegated power of the dragon committed to the first beast, and consisting in idolatrous worship; as a hierarch, whose office it is to preside in offering sacrifices. “Before the beast, or in his sight,” is the same as with him, or for his sake; as if one should say, this two-horned beast belongs to the ten-horned beast, for the purpose of sacrifice, so that it ought not to appear wonderful if he speaks as a dragon. For thus the לְפִנֵי of the Hebrews; to which ἐνώπιον, in the sight of or before answers, is sometimes equivalent to the dative of the person to whom something is given, or in whose favour it is done, as, instead of that which is said 1 Sam. ii. 18, “Samuel was worshipping before the Lord,” it is in ch. iii. “worshipping the Lord.” But the Roman pontiff, in an especial manner the head of the latter beast, exercises the supreme administration likewise of the former beast: “And causet4 the earth, and those that dwell therein, to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed.” That is, in general, whatever the first beast is, whatever obedience is offered by the nations to his impiety, is wholly to be referred to this hierarch as its parent, by whose exertion, in fact, it should come to pass, that the earth and its inhabitants should worship the first beast, which arose out of the sea, and whose deadly wound was healed. In what manner, and by what means and contrivances he effected this, he particularly explains in the sequel. “For (says he) he doth great wonders, so that he maketh fire to descend from heaven on the earth, in the sight of men.”—“And he deceiveth those that dwell on the earth, by the miracles which it was given him to do, in the presence of the beast, saying to those that dwell on the earth, that they should make an image to the beast which had the wound by the sword, and yet lived.” For he doth, καὶ ποιεῖ, the Vau of the Hebrews; and, therefore, καὶ in Scripture is not only a conjunction copulative, but also disjunctive, rational, causal, or dinal, or explanatory, as the sense requires; and this it may be sufficient to observe once for all. The pseudo-prophetic, or pontifical beast, is the occasion of constituting for the nations that ten-horned beast, by which the power of the dragon revived. For he persuaded him, by the same signs and miracles, to agree with him in fabricating an image of the beast slain in its sixth head; which at length, being formed at his suggestion, that wound, received in its dragon state, appeared by the introduction of a new idolatry and tyranny, according to the similitude of the former, to be cured; and the beast who worshipped the dragon, to be renewed; for the Roman beast is the image of the last head of the beast slain in its sixth head. He said to the inhabitants of the earth, that they should make an image of the beast which had received the wound from a sword; that is, the image of him in the condition in which he was when he received the wound; “and he lived;” that is, thus at length the beast revived, or was restored. For those words do not refer to the description of the beast whose image was to be fabricated, as the words of the false prophet who was speaking; but they are those of the angel relating or exhibiting the consequence of that advice; namely, that in this manner the slain beast revived. As if he had spoken more fully as follows: “Saying to the inhabitants of the earth, that they should make an image to the beast which had the wound from a sword. They did so, and he revived.” As 2 Kings ch. xx. v. 7, Isaiah said, “Take a lump of figs;” and they took them and laid them on the ulcer, and he recovered, viz. Hezekiah, or the ulcer. Now this is what was said in the description of the secular beast, that the dragon delivered to him his forces, and great authority, and therefore his deadly wound was healed. That is, the dragon impressed the form of his worship and power on the beast of a different religion; whilst he substituted his angels or demons, not, indeed, as formerly, to he worshipped under those titles in which they proclaimed themselves enemies to Christ our Lord, but under the shelter of the Christian religion, in the names of saints and good angels,—and, shame on the blasphemy!—even of Christ himself. For he who worships idols, under whatever name he may invoke them, worships demons.

Nay, that nothing might be wanting to the complete image of the beast that was slain, that is, of the dragon, what some of the emperors who worshipped the dragon had done before, the pontiff himself took care should be offered to him; even divine honours, and an authority peculiar to God; so that “he sits in the temple of God,” as St. Paul says, “exhibiting himself as God.” Which though John, or the angel unfolding the history to him, does not here specially treat of, yet he means to have comprehended under the general name of an image, as a part of that similitude under which he is compared to the slain beast.

And thus far of the fabrication of the image; now we proceed to the wonders applied in favour of his party. “He doth great wonders, so that he even causes fire to descend from heaven on the earth.” Not unwillingly here should I accede to the opinion of Graser, if it could by any means be confirmed from the writings of the Hebrews, that this assertion of drawing down fire from heaven is used as a proverbial hyperbole, to the exaggeration of that which preceded it, as if one had said, he does great wonders, nay, of such a kind and so great, that they appear to be not far removed from the miracles of Elias himself, by which he maintained the worship of the true God. For the Jews, says Graser, commonly attribute so much to that miracle of Elijah, that they use it proverbially for all stupendous facts, by which the dignity of God is elucidated. But whoever is not pleased with this exposition, let him follow the Complutensian reading confirmed likewise by other copies. “He does great wonders καὶ πῦρ ἴνα ταταβαίνῃ, and that fire should descend from heaven on the earth;” and so, as the summary of those things which are afterwards more diffusively explained, may be proposed in these words; the sentence may be interpreted of a two-fold species of means, which the false prophet should employ, to induce the inhabitants of the Christian world to form anew the image of the beast, which was slain in his sixth head; that is, by the display of miracles, and by the thunder of excommunication, by one of which he seduced the minds of the nations into error, by the other he subdued the contumacy and pride of the disobedient. Now each of these, whichever way they are regarded, is treated of in the following words in order. Of the wonders in these words,—“And he seduces the inhabitants of the earth by the wonders which it was given him to perform, saying to the inhabitants of the earth, that they should make an image of the beast, which was wounded by the sword,” and those which follow to ver. 16. Of excommunication in these words,—“He causeth all to receive a mark in their right hands, or in their foreheads, that no one might buy or sell, but he who had the mark, or name of the beast, or the number of his name.”