power of his church, as "Erastian supremacies,--blasphemous
supremacies." Most expositors tell us that the blasphemies are
chargeable to the Pope or to the Romish church. But this interpretation
confounds this beast of the sea with the apostate church of Rome; and
indeed this confounding of symbols and consequent mistaking of objects
in actual history, are the primary errors of expositors in nearly all
their attempts at expounding the Apocalypse. This first beast of John,
and fourth of Daniel, however, is _wholly secular or civil_; and clearly
distinguished by both inspired prophets, from the other agents of the
dragon, as we shall find in the subsequent part of this chapter. This
beast "blasphemes the name of God" by compelling men to worship idols
and images, enacting penal statutes and issuing bloody edicts to force
their consciences. He "blasphemes his tabernacle," when stigmatizing the
assemblies of God's worshipping people as "traitorous conspiracies,
rendevouses of rebellion"--"and them that dwell in heaven," he
blasphemes by calling them "incendiaries, fanatics, enthusiasts, rebels
and traitors;" for all these terms of reproach are well authenticated in
history, as heaped upon the faithful and heroic servants of Christ.
Those who suppose that the phrase "them that dwell in heaven," means
saints departed and angels as worshipped by papists in obedience to the
Romish church, make two mistakes,--the one, that _ecclesiastical_ power
is here intended, whereas we have already shown that the power is
_civil_; the other, that the word "heaven" is to be taken in a literal
sense, contrary to the symbolic structure of the whole context. All
history, so far as authentic, teaches that the civil powers throughout
Christendom, attempt to coerce by penal inflictions the consciences of
all who refuse obedience to their commands, no less than the church of
Rome. Even _constitutional guarantees of liberty_ of _conscience_ have
never secured the witnesses from the savage rage of the beast or any of
his infuriated horns. Witness the history of the bloody house of the