Acts xii. 22.) The poor ignorant and deluded
subject, in rendering homage to the beast, did homage to the devil, from
whom the power was derived. Such is the degradation to which man is
reduced by blind obedience to despotic power, whether civil or
ecclesiastical. He glories in the chains which bind him!--And this is
the actual and voluntary condition of the great majority of the
population of Christendom at the present hour. There has been, indeed,
within the current century, an effort by the masses of the people to
assert their natural and civil rights, to regain the exercise of the
elective franchise; but in selecting candidates to bear rule over them,
they generally prefer such as are, like the majority of
themselves,--"aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from
the covenants of promise." Hence, "vile men are exalted, the wicked bear
rule, and the people mourn." (Ps. xii. 8; Prov. xxix. 2.)--The
"blasphemies" uttered by this beast are all those _royal prerogatives_
claimed by the several crowned horns or civil sovereigns who have
established idolatry and superstition within their respective dominions.
The "blasphemous headship" over the church of Christ, as viewed and
designated by his persecuted disciples in the British empire, may tend
to illustrate this part of the beast's history. King Henry VIII. of
England, upon renouncing the civil and ecclesiastical headship of the
Pope, proceeded to usurp an ecclesiastical headship within his own
dominions; and all his royal successors till the present day have
asserted a similar dominion over the faith of the Lord's people. As an
"inherent right of the crown," the sovereign of Britain, male or female,
is declared to be "supreme judge in all causes, as well ecclesiastical
as civil!" The rest of the horns are no less blasphemous in their
haughty pretensions. History attests that the martyrs of Jesus denounced
these encroachments on the prerogatives of Christ, and the intrinsic
power of his church, as "Erastian supremacies,--blasphemous
supremacies." Most expositors tell us that the blasphemies are
chargeable to the Pope or to the Romish church. But this interpretation
confounds this beast of the sea with the apostate church of Rome; and
indeed this confounding of symbols and consequent mistaking of objects
in actual history, are the primary errors of expositors in nearly all
their attempts at expounding the Apocalypse. This first beast of John,
and fourth of D