# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1855 06 05_S163
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

163

"with cloisters, foundations, saints, pilgrimages, purgatory, indulgence, unmarriage, and countless more pieces of man's doctrine and works, etc. In the second place, who can tell how much blood, murder, war and misery the popes have caused, both by waging wars themselves and by inciting emperors, kings and princes against one another.

"Here now the devil's last wrath goes and runs in full swing together: yonder toward the morning the second woe, Mahomet and the Saracens, here toward the evening the papacy and the empire with the third woe, to which, as a bonus, the Turk, Gog and Magog also come, as will follow in the 20th chapter, and so Christendom in all the world and at all times is plagued with false doctrines and wars, with book and sword, in the most horrible and wretched manner, that is the dregs and final plague. Thereupon follow now almost nothing but pictures of comfort concerning the end of all such woes and abominations." (Luther.)

In the preceding chapter the reader, who has surrendered himself to the impression which the snorting rage of the dragon, of which that chapter gives warning tidings, makes upon a sheep of Christ, will have felt about as Tobias did when a great fish came out to devour him, and he cried with a loud voice: O Lord, he will eat me. (Tob. 6, 2—4.) In contrast there now follows a vision which permits us to contemplate in all tranquillity that monster before which the children of God there fled and hid themselves, just as young Tobias drew back from the great fish without being able properly to look at it. We therefore wish to write in thought over this chapter verses 4 and 5 from Tob. 6, namely the words: "And the angel said unto him: Take hold of him by the fins, and draw him out. And he drew him upon the land, and he flopped about before his feet." Though we then may not hope to enrich our apothecary's shop from the entrails of the beast which we are to behold, since this creature is nothing but poison and gall, yet we have the comfort that we need not first cut it asunder, and if the gall nevertheless overflows in us at the sight of it, such gall poisons no soul.

Herewith it is then already said that this chapter for once paints the monster himself completely, whose rogueries have hitherto been related to us. Whereas he was hitherto described as a robber and murderer, who plundered the city of God and made the roads unsafe, but withal, as his trade brings with it, appeared only masked, a glimpse is now opened to us into the den of murderers, where one can see him in his true shape.

As now the kingdom of Christ, although in its essence as the "one holy Church" from Adam until the last day, in spite of all change of time, remains always the same, because it has its sources in eternity, into which it empties, yet has appeared in two chief forms, as Old and New Testament, which are, so to speak, its right and left bank, so also the Roman Antichrist had already had in the Roman Empire his genuine prototype, before he partly renewed it, partly fulfilled it in the form of the papacy. For his complete description, therefore, the one belongs as well as the other. So it comes about that we find here:

1. V. 1—10. a description of the Roman Empire, before

2. V. 11—18. the papacy is presented to us.

"And I stood upon the sand of the sea" —: a worthy scene for a spectacle which has countless hosts of unfruitful works of darkness in its train. "And saw a beast rise up out of the sea," etc. —: in Chap. 12, 3. there appeared "a great red dragon" in the same shape which is here attributed to the "beast," only that the heads, not, as in this place, the horns, were crowned. The reason is that there the light fell more upon the rage of the devil, to whom the Roman Empire served merely as a staff: the instrument of the enemy vanished before the fury of the raging one and the bleeding wounds which he, without conquering, inflicted upon the bride of the Lamb, just as in the fall into sin we understand by the serpent, through which Satan spoke to Eve, more the devil than the beast which now crawls upon its belly; now, on the other hand, the Roman Empire is in itself the object of contemplation. As a kingdom of this world it comes before the prophetic eye, as once before Daniel in the shape of a beast: it corresponds to the wild nature that ruled at Rome and to the greed for plunder which devoured the world. The Holy Ghost lets it rise out of the sea, because the other kingdoms round about poured themselves into it like streams that have ended their course and in the boundless deep mingle nameless with many other waters. — That in Chap. 12, 3. the "seven heads" are resplendent with "seven crowns" has its reason in this, that there the view does not reach beyond the old imperial age: for the Roman Empire comes into consideration at that place only insofar as it played a part in the history of the bloody persecutions, which Christ's kingdom greeted as spring storms, and which stripped it of its blossoms without yet harming the fruit. For at that time the individual kingdoms which Rome had fused together were still kept under one imperial scepter, even if later divided. There was still always a common head that bore the crown. But since in our chapter a total picture of the Roman dominion was to be sketched, the tree had indeed to lie as it finally fell: and it fell in pieces, so that really ten separate kingdoms again arose out of the old empire, while of the one Roman Empire only the name remained. But the name remained: for the Pope obtained it when it was about to expire, in order thereby to prop up his own dominion. He had therefore to serve also toward the "blasphemy" of God. Therefore the first verse closes with the words: "and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy." But whoever takes more pleasure in the allegory of numbers is free to think, at the "ten crowns" (double sensuality), of the rising again of the earthly, to which the new kingdoms bore witness. Only leave the dawn out of the game for me: for the light of heaven does not wreathe the tumult upon the graves; at most one may make of it ten torches with which one escorts the corpse of Roman glory to the grave, which itself eke out its existence only as a ghost, under "names of blasphemy," yet even as such still a foil to the "ten crowns," that is to say: one proof more that "the dead bury their dead" and set monuments over them, or still more plainly, that the apostle is right when he writes: "The dog is turned to his own vomit again, and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire" (2 Pet. 2, 22.).

The "names of blasphemy" are the moss on the gravestone. That is the crown of the "heads," that the picture of death may not lack that of damnation.

V. 2. In the preceding verse the allegory (secret interpretation) asserted its prerogative, as indeed it is due to it in prophetic visions. As in ancient times at the birth of a child one first looked to the stars, in order to read in them his fate and to cast for him, as the expression is, his horoscope, so also of this monstrous birth the sign has as it were first been noted in which it came into the world and at the same time what sign it itself was to the world. Now natural history also comes into its right, since "the beast" is painted exactly as it lives and breathes. Its shape is like that of a leopard. That is a very sly, cruel beast of prey. Both the Romans were also. Then it has ringed spots. Just so variegated the old Roman Empire still looks on the map, and that presents to our eyes only a very feeble picture of the wonderful mixture in which at Rome manifold religions, languages, customs and orders surged together. Since now the end of the dominions, which all came under the Roman yoke, founded this new last world-empire, and moreover through it so many things were intertwined that would otherwise never have come together, one need only think of the worship at Jerusalem and the grotesque jugglery at heathen idol altars, and set the peoples of the old world, grown gray in lusts and weary unto death, who had played out their part, beside our forefathers and other rude hordes which were about to build a new stage out of the ruins of the former; so it is as if the leopard with its ringed spots had been created only in order to personify the Roman Empire (that is, to furnish a living portrait of it).

"His feet" are "as the feet of a bear." The bear has, it seems, in proportion the broadest foot. A tremendously great space also the Roman Empire occupied, on which it stood as on its feet. No beast has, it seems, a foot in proportion so strong and murderous as the bear: for in his paws he has properly his strength and uses them alone to lay low his prey. Wherever the Roman Empire set its foot, there all gave way before it, and woe to him that did not give way. A clumsier foot