Pope Benedict IX. was guilty of such flagitious crimes that he became an object of public abhorrence, and he finally sold the Popedom. One of his infallible (?) successors in the Papal chair, Pope Victor III., pronounced this infallible (?) profligate a person "abandoned to all manner of vice. A successor of SIMON THE SORCERER, and NOT OF SIMON THE APOSTLE." I do not question the truth of this assertion, but what becomes of their boasted uninterrupted apostolical succession? Baronius, the Popish annalist, confesses that Pope Sergius III. was "the slave of every vice, and the most wicked of men." Among other horrid acts Platina relates that he rescinded the acts of Pope Formosus, compelled those whom he had ordained to be re-ordained, dragged his dead body from the sepulchre, beheaded him as though he were alive, and then threw him into the Tiber! This Pope cohabited with an infamous prostitute named Marozia and by her had a son named John, who afterwards ascended the Papal throne, through the influence of his licentious mother, under the name of John XI. So the unlawful amours of Sergius produced this infallible, necessary link in the holy chain of uninterrupted apostolical succession! It must be remembered, also, that the Popes have for ages laid claim themselves to infallibility; and in the last General Council of that body, held at the Vatican in 1870, it was declared a dogma of the church. Romanists will tell us that this decree refers only to his official acts, and not to his personal character; but official acts have been the main thing under consideration in the case of Sergius, Honorius, and Benedict. But if such monsters of vice can produce good, holy, infallible acts, as Papists declare, then Jesus Christ is mistaken; for he declared positively that "a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit ... neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit." Mat. 7:17, 18. "God forbid: yea, let God be true, but every man a liar." Rom. 3:4. During these dark ages thousands of priests, who were by the laws of the church denied their Scriptural right of possessing a wife (1 Cor. 7:9, etc.), lived openly with concubines; and the Council of Toledo decreed that they should not be condemned therefor, provided they were content with one.
But the devil produced his master-piece of iniquity in the person of Roderic Borgia, who ascended the Papal throne in 1492 under the name of Alexander VI. The utmost limits assigned to Papal depravity were realized in him, so that the very name Borgia has come to be used as a designation of any person unusually wicked. Says Waddington: "The ecclesiastical records of fifteen centuries ... contain no name so loathsome, no crimes so foul as his.... Not one among the many zealous annalists of the Roman church has breathed a whisper in his praise.... He publicly cohabited with a Roman matron named Vanozia, by whom he had five acknowledged children. Neither in his manners nor in his language did he affect any regard for morality or decency; and one of the earliest acts of his pontificate was, to celebrate, with scandalous magnificence, in his own palace, the marriage of his daughter Lucretia. On one occasion this prodigy of vice gave a splendid entertainment, within the walls of the Vatican, to no less than fifty public prostitutes at once, and that in the presence of his daughter Lucretia, at which entertainment deeds of darkness were done, over which decency must throw a veil; and yet this monster of vice was, according to Papist ... the vicar of God upon earth, and was addressed by the title of HIS HOLINESS!!" But why stir this cesspool of filth any longer? Is not that church of which Alexander VI. was for eleven years the crowned and anointed head—a necessary link in the boasted chain of holy apostolical succession, the pretended vicar of Christ upon earth—is it not, I ask, fitly described by the pen of inspiration "MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH," as she reeled onward in the career of ages, "drunken with the blood of the saints"?
7. And the angel said unto me, Wherefore didst thou marvel? I will tell thee the mystery of the woman, and of the beast that carriest her, which hath the seven heads and ten horns.
8. The beast that thou sawest was, and is not; and shall ascend out of the bottomless pit, and go into perdition: and they that dwell on the earth shall wonder, whose names were not written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, when they behold the beast that was, and is not, and yet is.
9. And here is the mind which hath wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sitteth.
10. And there are seven kings; five are fallen, and one is, and the other is not yet come; and when he cometh, he must continue a short space.
11. And the beast that was, and is not, even he is the eighth, and is of the seven, and goeth into perdition.
12. And the ten horns which thou sawest are ten kings, which have received no kingdom as yet; but receive power as kings one hour with the beast.
13. These have one mind, and shall give their power and strength unto the beast.
14. These shall make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome them: for he is Lord of lords, and King of kings: and they that are with him are called, and chosen, and faithful.
The angel promises to explain "the mystery of the woman and of the beast that carried her." The beast is the same as the secular beast with seven heads and ten horns, described in chapter 13. An explanation of its heads and horns has already been given. The expression "the seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sitteth, and there are seven kings," requires further explanation. Many have understood the mountains to signify the seven mountains on which the city of Rome is said to be built; but that is adopting the literal mode of interpretation, and is contrary to the laws of symbolic language. The more obvious meaning is that the seven heads represent seven mountains and also seven kings; but this probably is not the idea intended. The heads of a beast are not the proper symbol of mountains. The fact, too, that the woman is represented as sitting upon these mountains, shows that they are to be taken as a symbol, as well as the woman, and not the object symbolized. They are, then, the same as the heads and denote the seven kings or seven forms of government under which the Roman empire subsisted.
The seventh and last head has not yet been identified. Before considering it, however, I wish to call attention to another point that has already been referred to. The beast that John here saw, with the seven heads and ten horns, was Rome under the Papal power. Did new Rome in reality have the seven heads? No. The dragon John saw in [chapter 12] is represented as having seven heads and ten horns, and signified Rome under the Pagan power. Did old Rome really possess the ten horns? No. According to verse 12 in this chapter, they were to arise future of John's time. But notice carefully that the seven heads, which according to this description, belonged to the beast sustaining the Papal power in after years, are here explained by the angel as signifying the very forms of government by which Pagan Rome subsisted. "Five are fallen is [exists at this present time], and the other is not yet come." So according to divine interpretation, the same heads and horns serve for both the dragon and the beast. This could not possibly be a true representation unless they were both in reality the same beast, they being represented as two only for the purpose of describing the two phases of Roman history—Pagan and Papal.
With this point established, that these two forms of Roman history are the same beast, we are now prepared to understand the statement that the beast "was and is not, and yet is." This is equivalent to saying that the beast existed, it ceased to exist, and then it came into existence again. This was exactly the history of Rome. Its downfall under the Pagan form was described under the fourth trumpet as an eclipse of the sun, moon and stars, so that they shone not for a third part of the day and night. For a time it seemed not to exist. A little later the eclipse is lifted; the beast exists again under the Papal form. In this is set forth clearly the wounding and the healing of the beast. The wound was inflicted on its sixth, or Imperial, head (for the first five had already fallen, according to the historical facts just related), being accomplished by the hordes of Northern barbarians overturning the empire of the West. It appeared for a time that the beast was indeed wounded unto death; but not so: to the surprise of all, he survived under the form of the seventh head. At this point the question is sure to be asked, How could the beast continue to live if its seventh head was to continue but "a short space"? This is accounted for by the fact that there was what might be appropriately called an eighth head, but which was in reality of the seven. "And the beast that was, and is not, even he is the eighth, and is of the seven." Verse 11.
The identification of the seventh head will now make the matter complete. The facts all meet in the Carlovingian empire, or the empire of Charlemagne. In the year 774 Charlemagne completed the work begun by Pepin twenty years before and overthrew the kingdom of the Lombards in Italy, which was the last of the three horns plucked up before the little horn of Daniel. By this victory he became complete master of Italy, and he received the title Patrician of Rome. This was not merely an honorary title, such as had for ages been conferred upon certain individuals; but it was a distinct form of civil government and supreme, taking the same rank with that of the Consular, the Decemvirate, the Triumvirate, etc., in the earlier history of the nation. It lasted, however, only "a short space," or twenty-six years, when Charlemagne, having extended his conquests over all the western part of Europe, assumed the Imperial title and thus revived the empire of Rome in the West under its Gothic form. In his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Gibbon says: "In the twenty-six years that elapsed between the conquest of Lombardy and his Imperial coronation, Rome, which had been delivered by the sword, was subject, as his own, to the scepter, of Charlemagne. The people swore allegiance to his person and family; in his name, money was coined, and justice was administered, and the election of Popes was examined and confirmed by his authority—except an original and self-inherent claim of sovereignity, there was not any prerogative remaining which the title of emperor could add to the Patrician of Rome." This decisive testimony by the highest authority on the subject shows conclusively that all the power of sovereignty resided in Charlemagne as the Patrician of Rome, and that this, therefore, is a proper head to be ranked with the other six that preceded it.[14]
Footnote 14: [(return)]
Commentators frequently identify the seventh head with the Exarchate of Ravenna. After the overthrow of the kingdom of the Ostrogoths in Italy by Belisarius, the general of Justinian, about the middle of the sixth century, the territory became subject to the emperor of the Eastern empire and was ruled by him through an Exarch whose place of residence was Ravenna. This Exarchate (sometimes called Patriciate) continued until about the middle of the eighth century, when it was terminated by Astolphus, king of the Lombards, who made Ravenna the capital of the Lombardic kingdom in 752. Three years later the Lombards were defeated by Pepin, who made the Holy See a present of the lands he conquered from them—the origin of the temporal power of the Popes. Pepin was succeeded by his son Charlemagne, who was appointed Patrician of Rome, by the Pope, in 774. During the last half century that the Exarchate of Ravenna remained its existence was but little more than a name, the real power of government being usurped by the Papacy. It could hardly be considered an inconsistency were we to interpret the seventh head as signifying both the Patriciate of Ravenna and the Patriciate of Charlemagne that closely followed it; but in the present work I have restricted its application to the latter form because of its distinctive characteristic as constituting a supreme civil power entirely independent of the empire of the East, and because of its importance in the revival of the empire of the West.