Hitherto we have considered the history of the Two Babylons chiefly in detail. Now we are to view them as organised systems. The idolatrous system of the ancient Babylon assumed different phases in different periods of its history. In the prophetic description of the modern Babylon, there is evidently also a development of different powers at different times. Do these two developments bear any typical relation to each other? Yes, they do. When we bring the religious history of the ancient Babylonian Paganism to bear on the prophetic symbols that shadow forth the organised working of idolatry in Rome, it will be found that it casts as much light on this view of the subject as on that which has hitherto engaged our attention. The powers of iniquity at work in the modern Babylon are specifically described in chapters 12 and 13 of the Revelation; and they are as follows:--I. The Great Red Dragon; II. The Beast that comes up out of the sea; III. The Beast that ascendeth out of the earth; and IV. The Image of the Beast. In all these respects it will be found, on inquiry, that, in regard to succession and order of development, the Paganism of the Old Testament Babylon was the exact type of the Paganism of the new.
This formidable enemy of the truth is particularly described in Revelation 12:3--"And there appeared another wonder in heaven, a great red dragon." It is admitted on all hands that this is the first grand enemy that in Gospel times assaulted the Christian Church. If the terms in which it is described, and the deeds attributed to it, are considered, it will be found that there is a great analogy between it and the first enemy of all, that appeared against the ancient Church of God soon after the Flood. The term dragon, according to the associations currently connected with it, is somewhat apt to mislead the reader, by recalling to his mind the fabulous dragons of the Dark Ages, equipped with wings. At the time this Divine description was given, the term dragon had no such meaning among either profane or sacred writers. "The dragon of the Greeks," says Pausanias, "was only a large snake"; and the context shows that this is the very case here; for what in the third verse is called a "dragon," in the fourteenth is simply described as a "serpent." Then the word rendered "Red" properly means "Fiery"; so that the "Red Dragon" signifies the "Fiery Serpent" or "Serpent of Fire." Exactly so does it appear to have been in the first form of idolatry, that, under the patronage of Nimrod, appeared in the ancient world. The "Serpent of Fire" in the plains of Shinar seems to have been the grand object of worship. There is the strongest evidence that apostacy among the sons of Noah began in fire-worship, and that in connection with the symbol of the serpent.
We have seen already, on different occasions, that fire was worshipped as the enlightener and the purifier. Now, it was thus at the very beginning; for Nimrod is singled out by the voice of antiquity as commencing this fire-worship. The identity of Nimrod and Ninus has already been proved; and under the name of Ninus, also, he is represented as originating the same practice. In a fragment of Apollodorus it is said that "Ninus taught the Assyrians to worship fire." The sun, as the great source of light and heat, was worshipped under the name of Baal. Now, the fact that the sun, under that name, was worshipped in the earliest ages of the world, shows the audacious character of these first beginnings of apostacy. Men have spoken as if the worship of the sun and of the heavenly bodies was a very excusable thing, into which the human race might very readily and very innocently fall. But how stands the fact? According to the primitive language of mankind, the sun was called "Shemesh"--that is, "the Servant"--that name, no doubt, being divinely given, to keep the world in mind of the great truth that, however glorious was the orb of day, it was, after all, the appointed Minister of the bounty of the great unseen Creator to His creatures upon earth. Men knew this, and yet with the full knowledge of it, they put the servant in the place of the Master; and called the sun Baal--that is, the Lord--and worshipped him accordingly. What a meaning, then, in the saying of Paul, that, "when they knew God, they glorified Him not as God"; but "changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is God over all, blessed for ever." The beginning, then, of sun-worship, and of the worship of the host of heaven, was a sin against the light--a presumptuous, heaven-daring sin. As the sun in the heavens was the great object of worship, so fire was worshipped as its earthly representative. To this primeval fire-worship Vitruvius alludes when he says that "men were first formed into states and communities by meeting around fires." And this is exactly in conformity with what we have already seen in regard to Phoroneus, whom we have identified with Nimrod, that while he was said to be the "inventor of fire," he was also regarded as the first that "gathered mankind into communities."
Along with the sun, as the great fire-god, and, in due time, identified with him, was the serpent worshipped. "In the mythology of the primitive world," says Owen, "the serpent is universally the symbol of the sun." In Egypt, one of the commonest symbols of the sun, or sun-god, is a disc with a serpent around it. The original reason of that identification seems just to have been that, as the sun was the great enlightener of the physical world, so the serpent was held to have been the great enlightener of the spiritual, by giving mankind the "knowledge of good and evil." This, of course, implies tremendous depravity on the part of the ring-leaders in such a system, considering the period when it began; but such appears to have been the real meaning of the identification. At all events, we have evidence, both Scriptural and profane, for the fact, that the worship of the serpent began side by side with the worship of fire and the sun. The inspired statement of Paul seems decisive on the subject. It was, he says, "when men knew God, but glorified Him not as God," that they changed the glory of God, not only into an image made like to corruptible man, but into the likeness of "creeping things"--that is, of serpents (Rom 1:23). With this profane history exactly coincides. Of profane writers, Sanchuniathon, the Phoenician, who is believed to have lived about the time of Joshua, says--"Thoth first attributed something of the divine nature to the serpent and the serpent tribe, in which he was followed by the Phoenicians and Egyptians. For this animal was esteemed by him to be the most spiritual of all the reptiles, and of a FIERY nature, inasmuch as it exhibits an incredible celerity, moving by its spirit, without either hands or feet...Moreover, it is long-lived, and has the quality of RENEWING ITS YOUTH...as Thoth has laid down in the sacred books; upon which accounts this animal is introduced in the sacred rites and Mysteries."
Now, Thoth, it will be remembered, was the counsellor of Thamus, that is, Nimrod. From this statement, then, we are led to the conclusion that serpent-worship was a part of the primeval apostacy of Nimrod. The "FIERY NATURE" of the serpent, alluded to in the above extract, is continually celebrated by the heathen poets. Thus Virgil, "availing himself," as the author of Pompeii remarks, "of the divine nature attributed to serpents," describes the sacred serpent that came from the tomb of Anchises, when his son Aeneas had been sacrificing before it, in such terms as illustrate at once the language of the Phoenician, and the "Fiery Serpent" of the passage before us:--
It is not wonderful, then, the fire-worship and serpent-worship should be conjoined. The serpent, also, as "renewing its youth" every year, was plausibly represented to those who wished an excuse for idolatry as a meet emblem of the sun, the great regenerator, who every year regenerates and renews the face of nature, and who, when deified, was worshipped as the grand Regenerator of the souls of men.
In the chapter under consideration, the "great fiery serpent" is represented with all the emblems of royalty. All its heads are encircled with "crowns or diadems"; and so in Egypt, the serpent of fire, or serpent of the sun, in Greek was called the Basilisk, that is, the "royal serpent," to identify it with Moloch, which name, while it recalls the ideas both of fire and blood, properly signifies "the King." The Basilisk was always, among the Egyptians, and among many nations besides, regarded as "the very type of majesty and dominion." As such, its image was worn affixed to the head-dress of the Egyptian monarchs; and it was not lawful for any one else to wear it. The sun identified with this serpent was called "P'ouro," which signifies at one "the Fire" and "the King," and from this very name the epithet "Purros," the "Fiery," is given to the "Great seven-crowned serpent" of our text. *
* The word Purros in the text does not exclude the idea of "Red," for the sun-god was painted red to identify him with Moloch, at once the god of fire and god of blood.--(WILKINSON). The primary leading idea, however, is that of Fire.
Thus was the Sun, the Great Fire-god, identified with the Serpent. But
he had also a human representative, and that was Tammuz, for whom the
daughters of Israel lamented, in other words Nimrod. We have already
seen the identity of Nimrod and Zoroaster. Now, Zoroaster was not only
the head of the Chaldean Mysteries, but, as all admit, the head of the
fire-worshippers.(see
note
below)
The title given to Nimrod, as the first of the
Babylonian kings, by Berosus, indicates the same thing. That title is
Alorus, that is, "the god of fire." As Nimrod, "the god of fire," was
Molk-Gheber, or, "the Mighty king," inasmuch as he was the
first who was called Moloch, or King, and the first who began
to be "mighty" (Gheber) on the earth, we see at once how it was
that the "passing through the fire to Moloch" originated, and how the
god of fire among the Romans came to be called "Mulkiber." *
It was only after his death, however, that he appears to have been
deified. Then, retrospectively, he was worshipped as the child of the
Sun, or the Sun incarnate. In his own life-time, however, he set up no
higher pretensions than that of being Bol-Khan, or Priest of Baal,
from which the other name of the Roman fire-god Vulcan is evidently
derived. Everything in the history of Vulcan exactly agrees with that
of Nimrod. Vulcan was "the most ugly and deformed" of all the gods.
Nimrod, over all the world, is represented with the features and
complexion of a negro. Though Vulcan was so ugly, that when he sought
a wife, "all the beautiful goddesses rejected him with horror"; yet
"Destiny, the irrevocable, interposed, and pronounced the decree, by
which [Venus] the most beautiful of the goddesses, was united to the
most unsightly of the gods." So, in spite of the black and Cushite
features of Nimrod, he had for his queen Semiramis, the most beautiful
of women. The wife of Vulcan was noted for her infidelities and
licentiousness; the wife of Nimrod was the very same. * Vulcan was the
head and chief of the Cyclops, that is, "the kings of flame." **
** Kuclops, from Khuk, "king," and Lohb, "flame." The image of the
great god was represented with three eyes--one in the forehead;
hence the story of the Cyclops with the one eye in the
forehead.
Nimrod was the head of the fire-worshippers. Vulcan was the forger of
the thunderbolts by which such havoc was made among the enemies of the
gods. Ninus, or Nimrod, in his wars with the king of Bactria, seems to
have carried on the conflict in a similar way. From Arnobius we learn,
that when the Assyrians under Ninus made war against the Bactrians,
the warfare was waged not only by the sword and bodily strength, but
by magic and by means derived from the secret instructions of the
Chaldeans. When it is known that the historical Cyclops are, by the
historian Castor, traced up to the very time of Saturn or Belus, the
first king of Babylon, and when we learn that Jupiter (who was
worshipped in the very same character as Ninus, "the child"), when
fighting against the Titans, "received from the Cyclops aid" by means
of "dazzling lightnings and thunders," we may have some pretty clear
idea of the magic arts derived from the Chaldean Mysteries, which
Ninus employed against the Bactrian king. There is evidence that, down
to a late period, the priests of the Chaldean Mysteries knew the
composition of the formidable Greek fire, which burned under water,
and the secret of which has been lost; and there can be little doubt
that Nimrod, in erecting his power, availed himself of such or
similar scientific secrets, which he and his associates alone
possessed.
In these, and other respects yet to be noticed, there is an exact
coincidence between Vulcan, the god of fire of the Romans, and Nimrod,
the fire-god of Babylon. In the case of the classic Vulcan, it is only
in his character of the fire-god as a physical agent that he is
popularly represented. But it was in his spiritual aspects, in
cleansing and regenerating the souls of men, that the fire-worship
told most effectually on the world. The power, the popularity, and
skill of Nimrod, as well as the seductive nature of the system itself,
enabled him to spread the delusive doctrine far and wide, as he was
represented under the well-known name of Phaethon,
(see note below)
as on the point of
"setting the whole world on fire," or (without the poetical metaphor)
of involving all mankind in the guilt of fire-worship. The
extraordinary prevalence of the worship of the fire-god in the early
ages of the world, is proved by legends found over all the earth, and
by facts in almost every clime. Thus, in Mexico, the natives relate,
that in primeval times, just after the first age, the world was burnt
up with fire. As their history, like the Egyptian, was written in
Hieroglyphics, it is plain that this must be symbolically understood.
In India, they have a legend to the very same effect, though somewhat
varied in its form. The Brahmins say that, in a very remote period of
the past, one of the gods shone with such insufferable splendour,
"inflicting distress on the universe by his effulgent beams, brighter
than a thousand worlds," * that, unless another more potent god had
interposed and cut off his head, the result would have been most
disastrous.
In the Druidic Triads of the old British Bards, there is distinct
reference to the same event. They say that in primeval times a
"tempest of fire arose, which split the earth asunder to the great
deep," from which none escaped but "the select company shut up
together in the enclosure with the strong door," with the great
"patriarch distinguished for his integrity," that is evidently with
Shem, the leader of the faithful--who preserved their "integrity" when
so many made shipwreck of faith and a good conscience. These stories
all point to one and the same period, and they show how powerful had
been this form of apostacy. The Papal purgatory and the fires of St.
John's Eve, which we have already considered, and many other fables or
practices still extant, are just so many relics of the same ancient
superstition.
It will be observed, however, that the Great Red Dragon, or Great
Fiery Serpent, is represented as standing before the Woman with the
crown of twelve stars, that is, the true Church of God, "To devour
her child as soon as it should be born." Now, this is in exact
accordance with the character of the Great Head of the system of
fire-worship. Nimrod, as the representative of the devouring fire to
which human victims, and especially children, were offered in
sacrifice, was regarded as the great child-devourer. Though, at his
first deification, he was set up himself as Ninus, or the child, yet,
as the first of mankind that was deified, he was, of course, the
actual father of all the Babylonian gods; and, therefore, in that
character he was afterwards universally regarded. *
As the Father of the gods, he was, as we have seen, called Kronos; and
every one knows that the classical story of Kronos was just this,
that, "he devoured his sons as soon as they were born." Such is
the analogy between type and antitype. This legend has a further and
deeper meaning; but, as applied to Nimrod, or "The Horned One," it
just refers to the fact, that, as the representative of Moloch or
Baal, infants were the most acceptable offerings at his altar. We have
ample and melancholy evidence on this subject from the records of
antiquity. "The Phenicians," says Eusebius, "every year
sacrificed their beloved and only-begotten children to Kronos or
Saturn, and the Rhodians also often did the same." Diodorus Siculus
states that the Carthaginians, on one occasion, when besieged by the
Sicilians, and sore pressed, in order to rectify, as they supposed,
their error in having somewhat departed from the ancient custom of
Carthage, in this respect, hastily "chose out two hundred of the
noblest of their children, and publicly sacrificed them" to this god.
There is reason to believe that the same practice obtained in our own
land in the times of the Druids. We know that they offered human
sacrifices to their bloody gods. We have evidence that they made
"their children pass through the fire to Moloch," and that makes it
highly probable that they also offered them in sacrifice; for, from
Jeremiah 32:35, compared with Jeremiah 19:5, we find that these two
things were parts of one and the same system. The god whom the Druids
worshipped was Baal, as the blazing Baal-fires show, and the
last-cited passage proves that children were offered in
sacrifice to Baal. When "the fruit of the body" was thus offered, it
was "for the sin of the soul." And it was a principle of the Mosaic
law, a principle no doubt derived from the patriarchal faith, that the
priest must partake of whatever was offered as a sin-offering (Num
18:9,10). Hence, the priests of Nimrod or Baal were necessarily
required to eat of the human sacrifices; and thus it has come to pass
that "Cahna-Bal," * the "Priest of Baal," is the established word in
our own tongue for a devourer of human flesh. **
** From the historian Castor (in Armenian translation of EUSEBIUS) we
learn that it was under Bel, or Belus, that is Baal, that the Cyclops
lived; and the Scholiast on Aeschylus states that these Cyclops were
the brethren of Kronos, who was also Bel or Bal, as we have elsewhere
seen. The eye in their forehead shows that originally this name was a
name of the great god; for that eye in India and Greece is found the
characteristic of the supreme divinity. The Cyclops, then, had been
representatives of that God--in other words, priests, and priests of
Bel or Bal. Now, we find that the Cyclops were well-known as
cannibals, Referre ritus Cyclopum, "to bring back the rites of
the Cyclops," meaning to revive the practice of eating human flesh.
(OVID, Metam.)
Now, the ancient traditions relate that the apostates who joined in
the rebellion of Nimrod made war upon the faithful among the sons of
Noah. Power and numbers were on the side of the fire-worshippers. But
on the side of Shem and the faithful was the mighty power of God's
Spirit. Therefore many were convinced of their sin, arrested in their
evil career; and victory, as we have already seen, declared for the
saints. The power of Nimrod came to an end, * and with that, for a
time, the worship of the sun, and the fiery serpent associated with
it.
The case was exactly as stated here in regard to the antitype (Rev
12:9): "The great dragon," or fiery serpent, was "cast out of heaven
to the earth, and his angels were cast out with him"; that is, the
Head of the fire-worship, and all his associates and underlings, were
cast down from the power and glory to which they had been raised. Then
was the time when the whole gods of the classic Pantheon of Greece
were fain to flee and hide themselves from the wrath of their
adversaries. Then it was, that, in India, Indra, the king of the gods,
Surya, the god of the sun, Agni, the god of fire, and all the rabble
rout of the Hindu Olympus, were driven from heaven, wandered over the
earth, or hid themselves, in forests, disconsolate, and ready to
"perish of hunger." Then it was that Phaethon, while driving the
chariot of the sun, when on the point of setting the world on fire,
was smitten by the Supreme God, and cast headlong to the earth, while
his sisters, the daughters of the sun, inconsolably lamented him, as,
"the women wept for Tammuz." Then it was, as the reader must be
prepared to see, that Vulcan, or Molk-Gheber, the classic "god of
fire," was so ignominiously hurled down from heaven, as he himself
relates in Homer, speaking of the wrath of the King of Heaven, which
in this instance must mean God Most High:--
The lines, in which Milton refers to this same downfall, though he
gives it another application, still more beautifully describe the
greatness of the overthrow:--
These words very strikingly show the tremendous fall of Molk-Gheber,
or Nimrod, "the Mighty King," when "suddenly he was cast down from the
height of his power, and was deprived at once of his kingdom and his
life." *
Now, to this overthrow there is very manifest allusion in the
prophetic apostrophe of Isaiah to the king of Babylon, exulting over
his approaching downfall: "How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer,
son of the morning"! The Babylonian king pretended to be a
representative of Nimrod or Phaethon; and the prophet, in these words,
informs him, that, as certainly as the god in whom he gloried had been
cast down from his high estate, so certainly should he. In the classic
story, Phaethon is said to have been consumed with lightning (and, as
we shall see by-and-by, Aesculapius also died the same death); but the
lightning is a mere metaphor for the wrath of God, under which
his life and his kingdom had come to an end. When the history is
examined, and the figure stripped off, it turns out, as we have
already seen, that he was judicially slain with the sword. *
Such is the language of the prophecy, and so exactly does it
correspond with the character, and deeds, and fate of the ancient
type. How does it suit the antitype? Could the power of Pagan Imperial
Rome--that power that first persecuted the Church of Christ, that
stood by its soldiers around the tomb of the Son of God Himself, to
devour Him, if it had been possible, when He should be brought forth,
as the first-begotten from the dead, * to rule all nations--be
represented by a "Fiery Serpent"?
Nothing could more lucidly show it forth. Among the lords many, and
the gods many, worshipped in the imperial city, the two grand objects
of worship were the "Eternal Fire," kept perpetually burning in the
temple of Vesta, and the sacred Epidaurian Serpent. In Pagan Rome,
this fire-worship and serpent-worship were sometimes separate,
sometimes conjoined; but both occupied a pre-eminent place in Roman
esteem. The fire of Vesta was regarded as one of the grand safeguards
of the empire. It was pretended to have been brought from Troy by
Aeneas, who had it confided to his care by the shade of Hector, and
was kept with the most jealous care by the Vestal virgins, who, for
their charge of it, were honoured with the highest honours. The temple
where it was kept, says Augustine, "was the most sacred and most
reverenced of all the temples of Rome." The fire that was so jealously
guarded in that temple, and on which so much was believed to depend,
was regarded in the very same light as by the old Babylonian
fire-worshippers. It was looked upon as the purifier, and in April
every year, at the Palilia, or feast of Pales, both men and cattle,
for this purpose, were made to pass through the fire. The Epidaurian
snake, that the Romans worshipped along with the fire, was looked on
as the divine representation of Aesculapius, the child of the Sun.
Aesculapius, whom that sacred snake represented, was evidently, just
another name for the great Babylonian god. His fate was exactly the
same as that of Phaethon. He was said to have been smitten with
lightning for raising the dead. It is evident that this could never
have been the case in a physical sense, nor could it easily have been
believed to be so. But view it in a spiritual sense, and then the
statement is just this, that he was believed to raise men who were
dead in trespasses and sins to newness of life. Now, this was exactly
what Phaethon was pretending to do, when he was smitten for setting
the world on fire. In the Babylonian system there was a symbolical
death, that all the initiated had to pass through, before they got the
new life which was implied in regeneration, and that just to declare
that they had passed from death unto life. As the passing through the
fire was both a purgation from sin and the means of regeneration, so
it was also for raising the dead that Phaethon was smitten. Then, as
Aesculapius was the child of the Sun, so was Phaethon. *
To symbolise this relationship, the head of the image of Aesculapius
was generally encircled with rays. The Pope thus encircles the heads
of the pretended images of Christ; but the real source of these
irradiations is patent to all acquainted either with the literature or
the art of Rome. Thus speaks Virgil of Latinus:--
The "golden beams" around the head of Aesculapius were intended to
mark the same, to point him out as the child of the Sun, or the Sun
incarnate. The "golden beams" around the heads of pictures and images
called by the name of Christ, were intended to show the Pagans that
they might safely worship them, as the images of their well-known
divinities, though called by a different name. Now Aesculapius, in a
time of deadly pestilence, had been invited from Epidaurus to Rome.
The god, under the form of a larger serpent, entered the ship that was
sent to convey him to Rome, and having safely arrived in the Tiber,
was solemnly inaugurated as the guardian god of the Romans. From that
time forth, in private as well as in public, the worship of the
Epidaurian snake, the serpent that represented the Sun-divinity
incarnate, in other words, the "Serpent of Fire," became nearly
universal. In almost every house the sacred serpent, which was a
harmless sort, was to be found. "These serpents nestled about the
domestic altars," says the author of Pompeii, "and came out,
like dogs or cats, to be patted by the visitors, and beg for something
to eat. Nay, at table, if we may build upon insulated passages, they
crept about the cups of the guests, and, in hot weather, ladies would
use them as live boas, and twist them round their necks for the sake
of coolness...These sacred animals made war on the rats and mice, and
thus kept down one species of vermin; but as they bore a charmed life,
and no one laid violent hands on them, they multiplied so fast, that,
like the monkeys of Benares, they became an intolerable nuisance. The
frequent fires at Rome were the only things that kept them under."
Some pictures represent Roman fire-worship and serpent-worship at once
separate and conjoined. The reason of the double representation of the
god I cannot here enter into, but it must be evident, from the words
of Virgil already quoted, that the figures having their heads
encircled with rays, represent the fire-god, or Sun-divinity; and what
is worthy of special note is, that these fire-gods are black, *
the colour thereby identifying them with the Ethiopian or black
Phaethon; while, as the author of Pompeii himself admits, these
same black fire-gods are represented by two huge serpents.
Now, if this worship of the sacred serpent of the Sun, the great
fire-god, was so universal in Rome, what symbol could more graphically
portray the idolatrous power of Pagan Imperial Rome than the "Great
Fiery Serpent"? No doubt it was to set forth this very thing that the
Imperial standard itself--the standard of the Pagan Emperor of Rome,
as Pontifex Maximus, Head of the great system of fire-worship and
serpent-worship--was a serpent elevated on a lofty pole, and so
coloured, as to exhibit it as a recognised symbol of fire-worship.
(see note below)
As Christianity spread in the Roman Empire, the powers of light and
darkness came into collision (Rev 12:7,8): "Michael and his angels
fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, and
prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven. And
the great dragon was cast out;...he was cast out into the earth, and
his angels were cast out with him." The "great serpent of fire" was
cast out, when, by the decree of Gratian, Paganism throughout the
Roman empire was abolished--when the fires of Vesta were extinguished,
and the revenues of the Vestal virgins were confiscated--when the
Roman Emperor (who though for more than a century and a half a
professor of Christianity, had been "Pontifex Maximus," the very head
of the idolatry of Rome, and as such, on high occasions, appearing
invested with all the idolatrous insignia of Paganism), through force
of conscience abolished his own office. While Nimrod was personally
and literally slain by the sword, it was through the sword of
the Spirit that Shem overcame the system of fire-worship, and
so bowed the hearts of men, as to cause it for a time to be utterly
extinguished. In like manner did the Dragon of fire, in the Roman
Empire, receive a deadly wound from a sword, and that the sword
of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. There is thus far an exact
analogy between the type and the antitype.
But not only is there this analogy. It turns out, when the records of
history are searched to the bottom, that when the head of the Pagan
idolatry of Rome was slain with the sword by the extinction of the
office of Pontifex Maximus, the last Roman Pontifex Maximus was the
ACTUAL, LEGITIMATE, SOLE REPRESENTATIVE OF NIMROD and his idolatrous
system then existing. To make this clear, a brief glance at the Roman
history is necessary. In common with all the earth, Rome at a very
early prehistoric period, had drunk deep of Babylon's "golden cup."
But above and beyond all other nations, it had had a connection with
the idolatry of Babylon that put it in a position peculiar and alone.
Long before the days of Romulus, a representative of the Babylonian
Messiah, called by his name, had fixed his temple as a god, and his
palace as a king, on one of those very heights which came to be
included within the walls of that city which Remus and his brother
were destined to found. On the Capitoline hill, so famed in after-days
as the great high place of Roman worship, Saturnia, or the city of
Saturn, the great Chaldean god, had in the days of dim and distant
antiquity been erected. Some revolution had then taken place--the
graven images of Babylon had been abolished--the erecting of any idol
had been sternly prohibited, * and when the twin founders of the now
world-renowned city reared its humble walls, the city and the palace
of their Babylonian predecessor had long lain in ruins.
The ruined state of this sacred city, even in the remote age of
Evander, is alluded to by Virgil. Referring to the time when Aeneas is
said to have visited that ancient Italian king, thus he speaks:--
The deadly wound, however, thus given to the Chaldean system, was
destined to be healed. A colony of Etruscans, earnestly attached to
the Chaldean idolatry, had migrated, some say from Asia Minor, others
from Greece, and settled in the immediate neighbourhood of Rome. They
were ultimately incorporated in the Roman state, but long before this
political union took place they exercised the most powerful influence
on the religion of the Romans. From the very first their skill in
augury, soothsaying, and all science, real or pretended, that the
augurs or soothsayers monopolised, made the Romans look up to them
with respect. It is admitted on all hands that the Romans derived
their knowledge of augury, which occupied so prominent a place in
every public transaction in which they engaged, chiefly from the
Tuscans, that is, the people of Etruria, and at first none but natives
of that country were permitted to exercise the office of a Haruspex,
which had respect to all the rites essentially involved in sacrifice.
Wars and disputes arose between Rome and the Etruscans; but still the
highest of the noble youths of Rome were sent to Etruria to be
instructed in the sacred science which flourished there. The
consequence was, that under the influence of men whose minds were
moulded by those who clung to the ancient idol-worship, the Romans
were brought back again to much of that idolatry which they had
formerly repudiated and cast off. Though Numa, therefore, in setting
up his religious system, so far deferred to the prevailing feeling of
his day and forbade image-worship, yet in consequence of the alliance
subsisting between Rome and Etruria in sacred things, matters were put
in train for the ultimate subversion of that prohibition. The college
of Pontiffs, of which he laid the foundation, in process of time came
to be substantially an Etruscan college, and the Sovereign Pontiff
that presided over that college, and that controlled all the public
and private religious rites of the Roman people in all essential
respects, became in spirit and in practice an Etruscan Pontiff.
* Commonly spelled Mulciber (OVID, Art. Am.); but
the Roman c was hard. From the epithet "Gheber," the Parsees,
or fire-worshippers of India, are still called "Guebres."
* Nimrod, as universal king, was Khuk-hold, "King of the
world." As such, the emblem of his power was the bull's horns. Hence
the origin of the Cuckhold's horns.
* SKANDA PURAN, and PADMA PURAN, apud KENNEDY'S
Hindoo Mythology, p. 275. In the myth, this divinity is
represented as the fifth head of Brahma; but as this head is
represented as having gained the knowledge that made him so
insufferably proud by perusing the Vedas produced by the other four
heads of Brahma, that shows that he must have been regarded as having
a distinct individuality.
* Phaethon, though the child of the sun, is also called
the Father of the gods. (LACTANTIUS, De Falsa Religione) In
Egypt, too, Vulcan was the Father of the gods. (AMMIANUS
MARCELLINUS)
* The word Cahna is the emphatic form of Cahn. Cahn is
"a priest," Cahna is "the priest."
* The wars of the giants against heaven,
referred to in ancient heathen writers, had primary reference to this
war against the saints; for men cannot make war upon God except
by attacking the people of God. The ancient writer Eupolemus, as
quoted by Eusebius (Praeparatio Evang.), states, that the
builders of the tower of Babel were these giants; which
statement amounts nearly to the same thing as the conclusion to which
we have already come, for we have seen that the "mighty ones" of
Nimrod were "the giants" of antiquity. Epiphanius records that Nimrod
was a ringleader among these giants, and that "conspiracy, sedition,
and tyranny were carried on under him." From the very necessity of the
case, the faithful must have suffered most, as being most opposed to
his ambitious and sacrilegious schemes. That Nimrod's reign terminated
in some very signal catastrophe, we have seen abundant reason already
to conclude. The following statement of Syncellus confirms the
conclusions to which we have already come as to the nature of that
catastrophe; referring to the arresting of the tower-building scheme,
Syncellus (Chronographia) proceeds thus: "But Nimrod would
still obstinately stay (when most of the other tower-builders were
dispersed), and reside upon the spot; nor could he be withdrawn from
the tower, still having the command over no contemptible body of men.
Upon this, we are informed, that the tower, being beat upon by violent
winds, gave way, and by the just judgment of God, crushed him to
pieces." Though this could not be literally true, for the tower stood
for many ages, yet there is a considerable amount of tradition to the
effect that the tower in which Nimrod gloried was overthrown by
wind, which gives reason to suspect that this story, when
properly understood, had a real meaning in it. Take it
figuratively, and remembering that the same word which signifies the
wind signifies also the Spirit of God, it becomes highly
probable that the meaning is, that his lofty and ambitious scheme, by
which, in Scriptural language, he was seeking to "mount up to heaven,"
and "set his nest among the stars," was overthrown for a time by the
Spirit of God, as we have already concluded, and that, in that
overthrow he himself perished.
Hurled headlong downwards from the ethereal height;
Tossed all the day in rapid circles round,
Nor, till the sun descended, touched the ground.
Breathless I fell, in giddy motion lost.
The Sinthians raised me on the Lemnian coast."
Men called him Mulciber; and how he fell
From heaven, they fabled. Thrown by angry Jove
Sheer o'er the crystal battlements; from morn
To noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve,
A summer's day; and, with the setting sun,
Dropped from the zenith, like a falling star.
On Lemnos, the Aegean isle."
Paradise Lost
* The Greek poets speak of two downfalls of Vulcan. In
the one case he was cast down by Jupiter, in the other by Juno. When
Jupiter cast him down, it was for rebellion; when Juno did so, one of
the reasons specially singled out for doing so was his "malformation,"
that is, his ugliness. (HOMER'S Hymn to Apollo) How exactly
does this agree with the story of Nimrod: First he was personally cast
down, when, by Divine authority, he was slain. Then he was cast down,
in effigy, by Juno, when his image was degraded from the arms of the
Queen of Heaven, to make way for the fairer child.
* Though Orpheus was commonly represented as having been
torn in pieces, he too was fabled to have been killed by
lightning. (PAUSANIAS, Boeotica) When Zoroaster died, he also
is said in the myth to have perished by lightning (SUIDAS); and
therefore, in accordance with that myth, he is represented as charging
his countrymen to preserve not his body, but his "ashes." The
death by lightning, however, is evidently a mere figure.
* The birth of the Man-child, as given above, is
different from that usually given: but let the reader consider if the
view which I have taken does not meet all the requirements of the
case. I think there will be but few who will assent to the opinion of
Mr. Elliot, which in substance amounts to this, that the Man-child was
Constantine the Great, and that when Christianity, in his person sat
down on the throne of Imperial Rome, that was the fulfilment of the
saying, that the child brought forth by the woman, amid such pangs of
travail, was "caught up to God and His throne." When Constantine came
to the empire, the Church indeed, as foretold in Daniel 11:34, "was
holpen with a little help"; but that was all. The Christianity of
Constantine was but of a very doubtful kind, the Pagans seeing nothing
in it to hinder but that when he died, he should be enrolled among
their gods. (EUTROPIUS) But even though it had been better, the
description of the woman's child is far too high for Constantine, or
any Christian emperor that succeeded him on the imperial throne. "The
Man-child, born to rule all nations with a rod of iron," is
unequivocally Christ (see Psalms 2:9; Rev 19:15). True believers, as
one with Him in a subordinate sense, share in that honour (Rev 2:27);
but to Christ alone, properly, does that prerogative belong;
and I think it must be evident that it is His birth that is
here referred to. But those who have contended for this view have done
injustice to their cause by representing this passage as referring to
His literal birth in Bethlehem. When Christ was born in
Bethlehem, no doubt Herod endeavoured to cut Him off, and Herod was a
subject of the Roman Empire. But it was not from any respect to Caesar
that he did so, but simply from fear of danger to his own dignity as
King of Judea. So little did Caesar sympathise with the slaughter of
the children of Bethlehem, that it is recorded that Augustus, on
hearing of it, remarked that it was "better to be Herod's hog than to
be his child." (MACROBIUS, Saturnalia) Then, even if it were
admitted that Herod's bloody attempt to cut off the infant Saviour was
symbolised by the Roman dragon, "standing ready to devour the child as
soon as it should be born," where was there anything that could
correspond to the statement that the child, to save it from that
dragon, "was caught up to God and His Throne"? The flight of Joseph
and Mary with the Child into Egypt could never answer to such
language. Moreover, it is worthy of special note, that when the Lord
Jesus was born in Bethlehem, He was born, in a very important sense
only as "King of the Jews." "Where is He that is born
King of the Jews?" was the inquiry of the wise men that came from the
East to seek Him. All His life long, He appeared in no other
character; and when He died, the inscription on His cross ran in these
terms: "This is the King of the Jews." Now, this was no accidental
thing. Paul tells us (Rom 15:8) that "Jesus Christ was a minister of
the circumcision for the truth of God, to confirm the promises
made unto the fathers." Our Lord Himself plainly declared the same
thing. "I am not sent," said He to the Syrophoenician woman, "save to
the lost sheep of the house of Israel"; and, in sending out His
disciples during His personal ministry, this was the charge which He
gave them: "Go not in the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of
the Samaritans enter ye not." It was only when He was "begotten
from the dead," and "declared to be the Son of God with power," by His
victory over the grave, that He was revealed as "the Man-child, born
to rule all nations." Then said He to His disciples, when He had
risen, and was about to ascend on high: "All power is given unto Me in
heaven and in earth: go ye therefore, and teach allnations." To
this glorious "birth" from the tomb, and to the birth-pangs of His
Church that preceded it, our Lord Himself made distinct allusion on
the night before He was betrayed (John 16:20-22). "Verily, verily, I
say unto you, That ye shall weep and lament, but the world shall
rejoice; and ye shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned
into joy. A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow, because her
hour is come; but as soon as she is delivered of the child, she
remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a MAN is born into the
world. And ye now therefore have sorrow; but I will see you
again, and your heart shall rejoice." Here the grief of the apostles,
and, of course, all the true Church that sympathised with them during
the hour and power of darkness, is compared to the pangs of a
travailing woman; and their joy, when the Saviour should see them
again after His resurrection, to the joy of a mother when safely
delivered of a Man-child. Can there be a doubt, then, what the
symbol before us means, when the woman is represented as travailing in
pain to be delivered of a "Man-child, that was to rule all nations,"
and when it is said that that "Man-child was caught up to God
and His Throne"?
* The birth of Aesculapius in the myth was just the same
as that of Bacchus. His mother was consumed by lightning, and the
infant was rescued from the lightning that consumed her, as Bacchus
was snatched from the flames that burnt up his
mother.--LEMPRIERE
Four steeds the chariot of Latinus bear,
Twelve golden beams around his temples play,
To mark his lineage from the god of day."
* "All the faces in his (MAZOIS') engraving are quite
black." (Pompeii) In India, the infant Crishna (emphatically
the black god), in the arms of the goddess Devaki, is
represented with the woolly hair and marked features of the Negro or
African race.
* PLUTARCH (in Hist. Numoe) states, that Numa
forbade the making of images, and that for 170 years after the
founding of Rome, no images were allowed in the Roman temples.
Two stately towns on either side the flood;
Saturnia and Janicula's remains;
And either place the founder's name retains."