# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1855 06 05_S164
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

164

one hardly finds, such as the bear has. And so the Romans at bottom could do nothing more than stand, and that, to be sure, well: for their civil commonwealth was so well ordered that in that respect one still learns from them today. Noble arts and deeper sciences, however, they themselves did not bring upon the road, nor advance further. In these they remained bunglers when one compares them with their masters, the Greeks. They learned such things as the bear learns dancing. Even the celebrated Horace, however long he walks upright on the staff of foreign teachers, in the end always falls again upon all fours and testifies by clumsy vulgarity of what stock he is. But power gives fame, and money covers many a nakedness. So it has come about that the name of the ancient Romans, in spite of the leopard's spots and bear's feet which the Holy Ghost ascribes to them, has a good sound in the world. Democrats they indeed also were, but only for a time, and when they were not disturbed: as soon as they came into distress they had to have a lord, whom they called Dictator; but at last, instead of the kings whom they had driven out, they got emperors, and what sort of ones! Their element, therefore, was properly not the participation of the whole people in the government; but it was only as when the bear holds himself upright for a while on the staff, however much, for the rest, the broad foundation of their constitution, even so long as they paid homage to democracy, corresponded to the bear's feet.

"His mouth" is as "the mouth of a lion." It goes without saying that such people threw out their chests and put on great airs, as Luther says. How Cicero swelled when he tickled the ears of the Roman rabble! How the whole world trembled before the pronouncements of the Roman Senate! It was a foolish command that one should sacrifice to the Roman emperors. But it cost martyr blood when a Christian resisted it.

That is the power of the beast. Now comes its impotence. "The dragon," namely, "gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority"; it was in itself as powerless as the most despised people on whose neck it trod. This the Romans themselves at bottom admitted: for they undertook not the least thing without consulting the devil, to whom they unknowingly rendered divine service: he then lent them his wit and great defiance, cast his children at their feet, as he meant someday to betray them also to others, and made them rich and great, as one fattens swine for slaughter. — In the light of the words which we read in Matt. 4, 8. 9., we recognize here already plainly that the Antichrist casts his black shadow upon the earth.

From the third verse on there now follows the history of the beast, which we find confirmed in many ways in every world history. Here only a few things in proof.

1. Of the deadly wound of one of its heads, which was healed again to the wonder of the earth. In this the interpreters commonly think of the fact that in the West the Roman imperial crown lay in the dust for a time and afterwards in the year 799 was set upon the head of Emperor Charles the Great by Pope Leo VIII. Admittedly that strikes the eye most when one surveys the Roman Empire from beginning to end, because thereby it was granted, after it had already been buried, to haunt as it were still and, as such a ghost, to hover about the seat of Antichrist which it had built. In our passage it serves besides to give the view its direction toward the goal: for the Roman Empire comes into consideration here only for this reason, that it prepared the way for the papacy and helped it. Especially thereby it came about also that the Roman Empire has continually remained for the whole earth an object of wonder, whereas other very mighty kingdoms have in time passed into oblivion. For that here, by the whole earth, one is chiefly to think of the course of the ages, which will preserve to coming generations also the tidings of the Roman Empire, is proved by the Greek text, in which it reads literally thus: "and the whole earth wondered after the beast."

Moreover the "deadly wound" and its healing play their part from the beginning in Roman history. The kingship, one and the first of the heads (forms of government) of Rome, was first rooted out and remained dead for centuries; but then it revived in the form of the empire. He who first went about to seize the imperial scepter, Caesar, from whom all other emperors received their title, as it still echoes also in our "Kaiser" and in the Russian "Czar," was treacherously murdered, and behold, his death gave the republic its deathblow; after him Emperor Augustus arose. And how much mutiny was there not otherwise in Rome and afterwards in Constantinople, whereby one ruling house after another was overthrown and the whole empire brought to the brink of ruin? The deadly wound which was healed again is therefore rightly Rome's coat of arms.

If only it had remained with the wonder at the indestructible monster; but men also played the harlot with it, because they practiced idolatry with it: therefore

2. a word still on the worship of the beast. That is also placed predominantly in the time which saw the Roman Empire rise anew by the help of the papacy, as indeed in v. 4 the worship of the beast appears only as a reflection of the worship of the dragon. In the latter case one would then think of the devil-service which was rendered to the old serpent in the person of the Pope. But in what the worship consisted, the close of the verse says: men held it to be invincible and bowed before it, without daring to resist, because they saw that it nevertheless always revived again.

Yet this also admits again of a more general application, although that ought not deter us from letting our eye rest especially on the time in which, since Charles the Great, the papacy went hand in hand with the Roman Empire, so that it is not precisely the period of Rome's splendor: for in the first place all of it fits Charles the Great himself to a hair, who bent the heathen with the sword under the papacy, and when he compelled the people to baptism, was at bottom worshiped more than Christ, upon whose bare word no one would come, and then afterwards also throughout the whole West the Roman Empire spread terror enough and, apart from that, governed the peoples by its statutes, and breathed its spirit into them (cf. v. 15.). But that the worship admits of more general application, and the Roman Empire, so long as it has risen as a sun under the moon upon earth, clothed as it were in a radiance of rays, is proved by the terror which ever and anon went before it and had stamped it as an idol long before, ere one set the bust of the emperor as an idol upon the altar and on pain of death commanded the worship of it. There indeed, quite properly, the dragon and the beast were worshiped together, and the world rejoiced thereat or echoed with the sigh: "Who is like unto the beast? and who is able to make war with him?" Who can resist him in what he wills, and refuse him obedience?

Fear created this idol also: for the power of Rome could in and of itself take the heart from no one who had not already before fallen away from God and become the devil's bondman. If therefore in this verse the worship of the dragon is spoken of before all, the Holy Ghost lifts the lid from the "mystery of iniquity," which as a magical power in the Roman Empire as well as in the papacy has its roots under the earth, yea, in hell, but before faith dissolves into nothing as a lie of the devil.

3. Of the mighty enmity with which the beast rages against God. Verse five ff. — the 42 months of verse five compel us to think here again especially of the last times of the Roman Empire, which are however distinguished by hostile blasphemies against the Church. Yea, all that the Roman Empire does toward the end is only rebellion against the LORD and his Anointed. What else of greatness did the Roman Empire do in the second half of its existence? It was moreover useless, a plague to itself and to other peoples. Nobler emperors succumbed to the toil which their curse-laden crown prepared for them. They sighed, like Maximilian, over the press into which the Pope brought them, and the Hohenstaufen had to pay for it that they inclined not their ear to the great blasphemous mouth of Antichrist, irksome to them. The Roman Empire in and of itself, apart from the persons who bore this dignity with reluctance, was as a creature of the Pope created only to serve the great mouth of lies and blasphemy at Rome as a kind of trumpet, which by earthly power reinforced the thunder that from the seven hills aped the terrors of Sinai. In that it gave emphasis to the ban through the proscription, it had to help encompass the camp of the saints. We will now run over the words.

"And it was given unto him" — of itself it had no