Introduction
Revelation 13:1-10 A beast with seven heads and ten horns riseth out of the sea, to whom the dragon giveth his power, wherewith he blasphemeth God, and vexeth the saints.
Revelation 13:11-17 Another beast cometh up out of the earth, which supporteth the worship of the former beast.
Revelation 13:18 The number of the beast.
Chapter Introduction
God is now coming to show his prophet that grand enemy of his church, who is emphatically called antichrist; after the determination of whose time of one thousand two hundred and sixty years, the kingdom of Christ shall begin, whether in the day of judgment, or in some period of time before that, and here upon the earth, I dare not determine.
The rise, power, and prevalency of this adversary, is described in this chapter; the opposition made to him by Christ and his followers, Revelation 14:1-20; his fall, Revelation 15:1-18:24; for which praise is given to God, Revelation 19:1-21.
This enemy of the church is showed to John by the symbol or representation of two beasts; the one having the body of a leopard, the feet of a bear, and the mouth of a lion; the other having two horns like a lamb, but speaking like a dragon, Revelation 13:11.
The reader must understand, that the rise of these beasts, their rage, and prevalency, was contemporaneous with some of the six trumpets, mentioned Revelation 8:1-13 and Revelation 9:1-21. For, Revelation 9:15, upon the sounding of the seventh trumpet antichrist began to fall; whose gradual fall we shall find more fully described in Revelation 16:1-21, by pouring out of the vials; only (as was before said) there is from Revelation 12:1-17 a more particular description of what should happen to and in the church under the first six trumpets.
The best interpreters, by these two beasts, understand the antichrist, (for in a larger sense there are more antichrists than one), and by the antichrist they understand the pope, as armed both with a secular and ecclesiastical power; yet I durst not conclude from that notion, the civil magistracy of the Roman empire, who either helped the pope into his chair, or held him there.
The greatest loss we are at, is to determine the time when the papacy began: it could not be before the pagan empire was thrown down, that was about the year 325, nor before the silence in heaven for half an hour was over, which (if that by it the rest be meant which the church enjoyed in the time of Constantine and Theodosius) was about the year 390, or 400; but if we fix the rise of the papacy there, I know no ground for it, and it would, besides, have been determined in the year 1660, or thereabouts. I think, therefore, we must distinguish between the rise and reign of antichrist. It doth not seem to me reasonable to make his reign to commence higher than the year 600, or 606, when he arrogated to himself the primacy; and that was confirmed to Boniface the Third by Phocas, in requital of Boniface’s kindness to him, who had got the empire by the base murder of Mauritius his master, and of all his children, and stood in need of the pope’s help to support him. From that time, I judge, the one thousand two hundred and sixty years should be counted; but Nemo repente fit pessimus, we must allow the papacy some time to come to this virile estate from his cradle. And I see no great harm of allowing the two hundred years, from the year 400 to 600, for this. So that I do think that in this chapter is shortly revealed what should happen to the church from about the year 400, or the space of forty-two months, or one thousand two hundred and sixty years, the time of the beast’s reign.
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