stead of resting on mere conjecture, is in fact based upon the unequivocal declarations of the sacred text, will be

pent, the Devil, and Satan; and in the 20th he makes his appearance again, when precisely the same terms are employed to characterize this symbolical personage; the Dragon is THE Old Serpent, THE DEVIL, AND SATAN. Must it not then be the same Dragon in both places? Do we not find the same names, the same titles, and the same attributes? And can it be supposed that the Spirit of prophecy would give the same description where the symbolical existence was not the same? The term Dragon cannot have a literal signification, and when symbolically employed it must on deliberate reflection seem surprising that it should have two different senses in the same book, composed by the same author. Nothing but the supposed necessity of supporting a preconceived opinion could have been the origin of such an expedient. But the Dragon of the Apocalyptic Writer is the same symbolical personage wherever he appears. In the twelfth chapter he is represented as having seven heads and ten horns, with crowns on his heads. This, in the language of hieroglyphics, plainly expresses the Paganism of the Roman empire. In another place, an interpreting angel informs us, that the 'seven heads are seven mountains,' on which mountains Rome was built; and in the chapter to which reference has just been made, a conflict is described between Michael and his angels, and the Dragon and his angels, the issue of which was that the Dragon was cast unto the earth. Now I am not aware that there is any difference of opinion among the interpreters of prophecy relative to this conflict. It is admitted, that in this contest, Paganism was overcome, was hurled from the seat of empire, was excluded from having any part in the management of public affairs, and finally the rabble of the Pantheon were exiled from the Roman territory. But according to commentators and the expositors of prophecy it would seem, that the Dragon, on his defeat, exile, and imprisonment, underwent an astonishing metamorphosis. The Dragon, acknowledged to be Paganism at his first appearance in the prophetic scenery, becomes the Devil personally,

obvious from the bare inspection of the two following passages ranged in juxtaposition:

REV. XII. 9.

"And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world."

REV. XX. 2, 3.

"And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil and Satan, and bound him a thousand years-that he should deceive the nations no more."

This must of necessity remove all doubt as to the perfect equivalency of the symbols in the two visions. If then, as we have endeavoured to show, the term Dragon, Devil, or Satan, as used by John in the Revelation, must be understood, not as the literal appellation of the person of the Tempter, or the prince of fallen spirits, but as the mystic emblem of despotism and idolatry united, the true idea of Paganism, the inference is irresistible, that the binding of the Dragon or of Satan for the space of a thousand years must imply something more than the mere restraining of what is usually denominated 'Satanic influences.' It is in fact but a figurative mode of announcing the suppression of Paganism for a definite term of years; not indeed its universal suppression, but its banishment from the bounds of Christendom during the period specified, as will be more fully evinced

the Devil himself, the Prince of the power of the air. This certainly exhibits a strange latitude of interpretation: but by what authority or on what grounds is this liberty taken? Are there any canons or principles of interpretation which will sanction such a transformation? Can the symbols of prophecy be made to signify first one thing, and then another, according to the fancy of those who undertake to explain them? At this rate, symbolical language would be a mass of uncertainties, more vague in its import than the oracles of heathenism.”Vint's New Illustr. of Proph. p. 249, 250.

in the sequel. That this language should have been interpreted by the great mass of expositors in its most literal import, as implying that Satan should be confined in hell a thousand years, and his temptations during that period held in abeyance, and that they should have constructed upon this circumstance a theory of the Millennium distinguished by a state of the church and of the world all but absolutely sinless, can be accounted for only from the fact, that they have conducted their investigations upon principles which disregarded the most obvious laws of symbolical exegesis, and which were equally abhorrent to the dictates of sound reason. For freedom from temptation detracts from the value of obedience just so far as it exists. The strength and the worth of the pious principle in men is to be estimated by the counter-solicitations which it overcomes, and we know not that any state of the Christian church is predicted, in which men shall be delivered from the operation of those incentives to sin which are inseparable from the constitution of their nature as moral agents. Indeed, it may be affirmed, that the most pure and perfect, the most prosperous and glorious, state of the church in this world would be that in which the greatest strength of temptation to evil should co-exist with the most vigorous resistance to it; and this would be a state in which Satan, instead of being bound and hindered from putting forth his ordinary influences, would be most free and rampant, and would ply his hellish arts with most untiring activity. Into such incongruities are we led by giving a literal interpretation to symbolical terms. But suppose, on the other hand, the lan

guage in the passage before us to be interpreted in consistency with the ascertained import of the same symbols in other places, and an easy and natural sense at once discloses itself under the figured diction of the prophet. If the Dragon be Paganism personified, then his being seized, bound, and incarcerated for a thousand years, must necessarily signify some powerful restraint laid in the providence of God upon this baneful system of error, by which its prevalence, through the abovementioned period, is vastly weakened, obstructed, and confined to narrow limits, though not utterly destroyed.

The question, therefore, whether this period be already past or yet future, resolves itself into another question purely historical. Has there already occurred in the annals of the Christian world-for the book of Revelation has mainly to do with the territories of Christendom-an extended tract of time during which the system of Pagan delusions was suppressed, and the fabric of civil and ecclesiastical oppression represented by the Beast and the False Prophet prevailed in its stead? But this is a question which the veriest novice in the history of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, and of those nations which branched out of its dismembered fragments, is at once prepared to answer. No facts in the chronicles of the past are more notorious, than that Paganism under Constantine and his successors did, after a desperate struggle, succumb to Christianity in its triumphant progress; and that the religion of the Gospel, after subsisting for one or two centuries posterior to the age of Constantine in a state of com

parative purity, did gradually become corrupt in doctrine, carnal and secular in spirit, and arrogant in its claims, till finally it allied itself to the civil power in a union which gave birth to the ecclesiastico-politico dominion of the Roman pontificate, for so many centuries the paramount scourge of Europe. As it is unquestionable, therefore, that the ascendency of Paganism in the Roman empire was succeeded by that of Antichristianism, symbolically denoted by the Beast's succeeding the Dragon, so we are led to consider the binding of the Dragon, i. e. the suppression of Paganism, as commencing about the time of the rise of the Beast, and nearly coinciding with the first thousand years of his reign.

This may strike the reader as a very revolting con. clusion. To represent the Apocalyptic Millennium, which he has always conceived as but another name for the golden age of the church, as actually synchronizing with the most calamitous period of her annals, will no doubt do violence to his most cherished sentiments respecting that distinguished era. But this conclusion we know not how to avoid, nor do we see how any one can avoid it who admits the premises on which it rests. For certainly the millennial ligation of the Dragon must either coincide with a thousand years of the reign of the Beast, as we maintain, or it must succeed it. But if the latter, then we have a break in the prophetical history of the Dragon or Paganism, of between one and two thousand years, in relation to the events of which we are left in utter ignorance. By the former interpretation, the chain is preserved unbroken from its