nt
were already passed in John's day; and he was living under the sixth.
Under what form did John live? The imperial; it being the cruel decree
of the emperor Domitian which banished him to the isle of Patmos where
this vision was given. Kings, Consuls, Decemvirs, Dictators, and
Triumvirs, were all in the past in John's day. Emperors were then ruling
the Roman world; and the empire was still pagan. Six of these heads,
therefore, Kings, Consuls, Decemvirs, Dictators, Triumvirs, and Emperors
belonged to the dragon; for they all existed while Rome was pagan: and
it was no one of these that was wounded to death; for had it been, John
would have said, I saw one of the heads of the dragon wounded to death.
The wound was inflicted after the empire had so changed in respect to
its religion that it became necessary to represent it by the leopard
beast. But the beast had only seven heads, and if six of them pertain to
the dragon, only one remained to have an existence after this change in
the empire took place. After the Emperors, the sixth and last head that
existed in Rome in its dragonic form, came the Popes, the only head that
existed after the empire had nominally become Christian. The "Exarch of
Ravenna" existed so "short a space," Rev. 17:10, that it has no place in
the general enumeration of the heads of this power.

From these considerations, it is evident that the head which received
the mortal wound, was none other than the papal head. This conclusion
cannot be shaken. We have now only to inquire when the papal head was
wounded to death. It could not certainly be till after its full
development; but after this, the prophecy marked out for it an
uninterrupted rule of 1260 years from its establishment in 538, till the
revolution of 1798. Then the papacy was, for the time being, overthrown.
General Berthier, by order of the French Directory, moved against the
dominions of the pope in January, 1798. February 10, he effected an
entrance into the self styled eternal city, and, on the 15th of the same
month, proclaimed the establishment of the Roman republic. The pope,
after this deprivation of his authority, was conveyed to France as a
prisoner, and died at Valence, Aug. 29, 1799.

This would have been the end of the papacy, had this overthrow been made
permanent. The wound would have proved fatal had it not been healed.
But, though the wound was healed, the scar, so to speak, has ever since
remained. A new pope was elected