CONTENTS.

'VOL. III.

DISSERT. I.

Respecting the rise and fall of the seventh and eighth apocalyptic

forms of Roman government and the effusion of the fourth and

fifth vials. p. 3.

SECT. I.

Preliminary Observations. p. 3.

THE Roman Empire, as all agree, is symbolized by the apo-

calyptic seven-headed and ten-horned wild beast: and its first

six heads or forms of government are easily ascertained to be

Kings, Consuls, Dictators, Consular Tribunes, and Roman Em-

perors. p. 3.

I. But it is not equally easy to ascertain the seventh head,

which was future at the time when the apostle wrote.

P. 4.

II. Most protestant expositors, however they may have been

perplexed in the arrangement of the seventh head,

have supposed the eighth and last form of Roman go-

vernment which succeeds it to be the Papacy. But

this opinion is plainly untenable, both on account of

the difficulties with which it is hampered, and because

it wholly violates the never-to-be-relinquished principle of homogeneity. p. 5.

III. Neither can the seventh head, running into and identifying itself with the eighth political form, be the Carlovingian Emperorship viewed as a distinct head from the Augustan Emperorship, as I once supposed, p. 7.

1. An objection, from naked matter of fact, urged against such an opinion. p. 8.

2. If this objection cannot be obviated, the opinion must be relinquished. p. 10.

3. But the objection cannot be obviated. p. 10.
4. Therefore the opinion must be relinquished, p. 12.

SECT. II.

Respecting the rise and full of the seventh apocalyptic form of Roman government. p. 12.

IT is a naked matter of fact, that the Roman head or political form, of which the Austrian Archdukes, as Emperors of the Romans, were latterly the representatives, ceased to exist or (as St. John speaks) fell, when the dignity of Roman Emperor was abdicated on the 7th of August 1806: because, as no other prince assumed the abdicated dignity, it is therefore now no longer in being. p. 12.

I. It may be demonstrated, that the Carlovingian Emperorship, which expired in the August of 1806, was certainly a head of the Roman wild beast. p. 14.

1. This may be proved from its characteristic marks. p. 14. 2. It may also be proved from the very necessity of the

thing. p. 16.

II. This point being demonstrated, we have next to inquire,

with which of the seven Roman heads the Carlovingian Emperorship must be identified. p. 17.

1. It cannot be the seventh head: because the characteristic of the seventh head is short continuance. p. 19. 2. Neither can it be the eighth form of Roman government : because the mode of its extinction, which we have recently witnessed, does not correspond with the predicted mode of extinction, which the eighth form is prophetically described as experiencing. p. 19.

3. Therefore, since it plainly cannot be identified with any one of the five earlier heads which had all fallen even in the time of St. John, it must be identified with the sixth head. Hence it will follow, that the Carlovingian Emperorship, like the Constantinian, is a continuation of the Augustan Emperorship of the Romans: so that the Roman Emperorship, whether Augustan or Constantinian or Carlovingian, is, in the eye of prophecy, one and the same sixth head or Roman form of government. p. 20.

4. This was the opinion of Bp. Newton: and the event has shewn him to be in the right. p. 20.

III. A statement of the predicted characteristic marks of the seventh head. p. 21.

1. In its quality of a Roman head, it must, during some part of its existence, rule over the city of Rome. p. 21.

2. It must be a power of short duration. p. 21.

3. It must bear a title distinct from those of its six predecessors; because, otherwise, it cannot be distinguished from them. p. 22.

4. It must have sprung up, either in, or shortly before, the year 1806; in order that it may regularly succeed the fallen sixth head. p. 22.

IV. By an exact correspondence with all these characteristics, the seventh head is proved to be the Francic Emperorship founded by Napoleon Buonapartè. p. 23.

V. Through the recent violent excision of the seventh head or the Francic Emperorship, the Roman wild beast, which has no more than seven heads, has now become

headless.

headless. But, in the economy of nature, a headless
beast must sink into a state of death. Accordingly,
St. John, whose hieroglyphic is constructed on the
economy of nature, has foretold the present condition
of the Roman Empire under the imagery, of the wild
beast being slain by a sword which mortally wounds
one of his heads, and of his consequent non-existence
as a single living political body. p. 25.

VI. Respecting the purport of the phrase death, as used by St.
John when speaking of the Roman beast. p. 29.
VII. An inquiry, as to which of the Roman heads was mortally
wounded by a sword. p. 31.

1. The head, to be so wounded, may be proved to be the seventh. p. 33.

2. The death, produced by this wound, has been shewn by the event to be not moral but political. p. 37.

VIII. An exposition, drawn from historical facts, of the prophecy, which foretells; that the seventh Roman head should be violently slain by the sword, and that in consequence the now headless beast should lie for a season in a state of death or political non-existence as an Empire. p. 38.

1. The seventh short-lived head or the Francic Emperorship was violently slain by the sword in the June of 1815. p. 39.

2. In consequence of the excision of the seventh and last head, all the six former heads having previously

fallen, the beast became headless, and therefore sank into a state of political death or non-existence. In this state, we now, in the present year 1817, may be. hold him. For, since the fall of the sixth head in 1806 and the violent excision of the seventh head in 1815, no one of the European powers can be deemed the secular head of the Roman Empire. Hence, as an Empire, it is politically dead and exists no longer. p. 41.

SECT.