Clement XII. ; or else from Celestine II., elected without the voice of the people, to a time when the Pope’s relation to Rome shall be changed [Napoleon’s decree abolishing the Pope’s jurisdiction, 17th of May 1809], 1143 to 1809. This last conjecture has proved in the event to be strikingly correct. His assigning 1836 as the year of the conflict of the Beast out of the Bottomless pit with the people of God (ch. xix. 11-21), has proved a mistake. But he has made some remarkable fore-announcements of facts. For instance, having from ch. x. 6, 11, fixed the rise of the Germanic Roman Empire under Charlemagne in 800 a.d. ( letting , 2 Thess. ii. 6, 7, i.e. standing in the way of Antichrist), he anticipated its fall shortly after 1800 (an event which came to pass in 1806) : also the increase of the Russian power, which we have already seen in our age partly fulfilled. “ See whether the King of France does not yet become Emperor (the very letters of the Greek number of the Beast form the words, TaXXog Kuicap, a Gallic Emperor) ; an anticipation re- markably fulfilled in the person of Napoleon.
B. observes that the Beast in ch. xiii. has a twofold rise ; first out of the sea ; then out of the bottomless pit. In the former he is a secular power with spiritual pretensions, rising not very long after the end of the second woe, evidently the Papal Hierarchy: But his last form, which is out of the bottomless pit, will survive the desolation of the city of the seven hills. The Beast, considered as to his seven heads, is the papal power transmitted through a succession of Popes : but when “ the last head,” and the Beast himself as “ the eighth,” shall rage, he is become a personal individual. The horns are ten kings of this last period : At the time of Antichrist’s coming, five heads are fallen, the sixth stands, but in weakness. The seventh when he comes proves to be the eighth, on account of the additional character he acquires by rising out of the bottomless pit as “the Man of Sin,” the very Antichrist, and as such continues 3^ years : he will be an individual , and perhaps, as tradition represents, a Jew. The Dragon opposes the special glory of God the Father ; the Beast, that of the Lord Jesus ; the False Prophet, that of the Holy Ghost. Bengel’s warning against Popery was seasonable ; for even in his age a dangerous latitudinarianism as to it had begun to show itself in the Protestant Church.
B. supposes a double thousand years to be implied in Rev. xx.: the first thousand, on earth , during Satan’s imprisonment, in which there will be much happiness, but wherein the saints will still have to walk by faith, not by sight : the second, a distinct thousand, of the risen saints in heaven , extending to the general resurrection.
Many of his descriptions of the characteristic features of the age, which he anticipated, have been accurately verified in the state of morals and religion which prevailed during the French Revolution and subsequently : that sins against the sixth commandment would be prevalent ; that the spirit of the age, as expressed in the journals.