"teeth" like those of lions indicated their strength and fury to
destroy. "Breast-plates of iron,"--defensive armour, indicates
self-protection by the most effectual public measures. The sound of
their wings may denote the fury of their assaults, and the rapidity of
their conquests. But the deadly stings in their tails were their most
fatal instruments of torture, symbolizing the poison of their abominable
and ruinous religion.

Their king is "Abaddon or Apollyon," the destroyer: for so is his name
by interpretation, both in Hebrew and Greek. He is from the "bottomless
pit,"--from hell, the vicegerent of the devil. Mahomet in person, and in
the person of his official successors, will alone answer to this
_duplicate_ symbol. This is, without a rational shadow of ground for
controversy, the _Great Eastern Antichrist_, sufficiently distinguished
from the _Western_. The western combination against real Christianity
never attained to power by successful conquest of the nations; but on
the contrary by chicanery, insidious policy, flattery of princes and
priestcraft. This enemy is described with sufficient accuracy and
peculiar precision in the subsequent part of the Apocalypse. Prophecy
has a determinate meaning; and we are not at liberty to give loose reins
to our imagination: otherwise we shall bewilder, rather than satisfy the
devout and earnest inquirer.


12. One woe is past: and, behold, there come two woes more hereafter.

V. 12.--Before the time of the sixth trumpet, intimation is given that
some pause shall intervene prior to the judgments which are to
follow:--"One woe is past."--The object of the first woe is the
nominally Christian Roman empire, which still stands in its Eastern