The Sovereign Pontiff, and the Church of Rome.
They Vindicate the Truth by Fulfilling the Prophecies.
A DISCOURSE DELIVERED BY PROF. GAUSSEN, AT THE RE-OPENING OF THE SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY AT GENEVA, OCTOBER 3, 1843. You will recollect, gentlemen, that in his chapter 2, Daniel, under the figure of a golden image, had described already at large the future history of nations until the second coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. According to him, four great monarchies must successively appear upon the stage of the world, gain dominion over all other nations, and trample under foot Jerusalem. The last monarchy, after cruelly enslaving all the countries of the prophetic land, should be devided into ten kingdoms (by the barbarians), and continue, under this new form, until the restoration of Israel, the blessed millennium, and the reign of the saints. In this seventh chapter, we see again the same succession of four great monarchies; but here presented only for the purpose of revealing to us the time and place of a frightful apostasy which should afflict the church during many ages, and which, taking its rise in the empire of the Latins, soon after its division into ten distinct kingdoms, should not be destroyed till the second coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. But mark how sublime and majestic is this symbolical conception of the future! These four great empires, which contain in their destinies all the glories of this world during twenty-four hundred years, exhibit themselves to the prophet under the view of four great beasts, rising up one after the other on the bosom of a great sea agitated by tempests. These four monarchies will be equally cruel and tyrannical; they will oppress the people of God; they will devastate the earth, and their glory will be that of the destroyers of mankind. The first, the Babylonish empire, is a lion with eagle's wings. Dan. 7:1-3. The second, the empire of the Medes and Persians, a wild bear of the mountains, to whom it is said: Arise, devour much flesh! Dan. 7:5. The third depicts admirably, with a few strokes, Alexander and his history: it is not only a leopard, swift and terrible; it has four wings of a fowl, and it has also four heads; its power is taken away, and its empire is soon scattered to the four winds of heaven. Dan. 7:6. The fourth, lastly, the empire of the Latins, has no name, so terrible is it; it tramples everything under foot; but (as in the prophecy of the golden image) it ends by being devided into ten; its ten horns are the ten kingdoms of the Gothic nations, which, towards the fifth century, all at once (as if at the word of command, from the banks of the Vistula to the Roman frontiers), invaded, with a view to retain, under a divided form, the vast empire of the Latins (Dan. 7:7), namely, the Visigoths, Heruli, Ostrogoths, Franks, Burgundians, Vandals, Alans, Suevi, Gepides, and Lombards. Now listen: You have here already the place of the predicted apostasy, and you have also its time. Its place: it is a Roman apostasy, it is the whole territory of the Latin Monarchy; its time: the ages which shall follow the invasion of this empire by ten barbarian kings. You have also its whole progress; for, narrow as the canvas is, by a few strokes of the pencil, the Holy Spirit describes both the character and destinies of the empire, with wonderful precision. Mark the 8th verse: "I considered the horns, and, behold, there came up among them another little horn, before whom there were three of the first horns plucked up by the roots, and, behold, in this horn were eyes like the eyes of a man, and a mouth speaking great things." Dan. 7:8. Then (verses 24, 25) in the interpretation which the angel gives of these symbols to Daniel, we are told this signifies that another king shall rise up after the ten kings and he shall be diverse from the first ten, and he shall subdue three kings, and moreover, he shall speak great words against the Most High, and shall wear out the saints of the Most High, and think to change times and laws. It would take long, gentlemen, to do justice, by our interpretations, to the divine beauty of this picture. Popery is here found completely described by thirteen or fourteen marks. I will try to make you understand how, at each of these marks, we are forced to exclaim, not only, Is this the pope? but, "There is nothing under the sun, nor in the history of all ages, to which these divine descriptions can be applied, unless to the pope! it can only be the pope!" First mark. The NATURE itself of the power prefigured by the little horn. Plainly, according to the prophecy, this must be a PRIEST-KING. It is a KING; for it is written: The little horn came up among the other ten; and another king shall arise after the ten. It is a PRIEST-KING; for it is written that it shall be diverse from the other kings; and all that follows is designed to tell us in what it shall be different, and to show it to us at once in a political and a religious character. What does it do? It blasphemes, persecutes the saints, pretends to change times and laws. As KING, it is feeble and small, it is a little horn; but as PRIEST-KING, it is great and mighty, it has power to oppress the saints for ages, it speaks great words, it governs the world. But (I ask already for this first mark), where will you find under the sun a priest-king, unless at Rome, or perhaps in the mountains of upper Asia in the Grand Lama? Where will you find in the whole history of the world, unless in popery, a priest-king who has pretended to change times and laws, who has reigned with power, and who has made war upon the saints? Second mark. You have here, too, the geography of this power. Where must we seek for the little horn? Where is its "holy see?" Where its lands, its patrimony, the "domain of the church?" Where must we place the theater of these abominations? How clear is the prophecy? It points you to the Roman monarchy; places this holy see in Rome; these lands of the church in Italy; and this theater of a wicked power in the vast empire of the ten Latin kingdoms. You are not ignorant with what care John elsewhere points us to it in Rome, the city of seven hills, the Babylon of the last times. You know, too, that the Roman Catholics, as well as we, all recognize that Babylon, in John, can be no other than Rome. If, then, this power is a territorial State, it is according to Daniel, a Roman State; if it is a church, this church, according to Daniel, is a Romish church; if it is a pontiff, this pontiff, according to Daniel, is a Roman pontiff; if it is a great apostasy, this apostasy extends according to Daniel, between the Rhine, the Danube, the Greek Empire, the Adriatic, Mount Atlas, and the great ocean, that is to say, throughout the whole territory of the "Fourth Beast." In other words, we must seek it in France, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Savoy, Italy, Bavaria, Austria, and in a part of Hungary. Third Mark. The ORIGIN of this power and the nature of its growth. How did it come into the world? Slowly, little by little, by constant increase, as the horn grows on the head of a bullock. Remark that the first ten horns (or the ten kingdoms established by the barbarians in the Roman empire) had appeared to the view of the prophet as already full-formed; but not so with the eleventh horn: it presents itself as coming up after the others, silently and imperceptibly, as a horn grows. And now inquire of all historians, if this is not an exact description of the origin of the papal tyranny; and if it has not become threatening, imposing and terrible, without their being able to tell the year when it began. Fourth Mark. The chronology of this apostasy; by which I mean to say the time of its commencement and of its end. When ought it to commence, according to Daniel? (This is a striking mark.) It is, according to the vision, it is immediately after the division of the Latin empire into its ten Gothic kingdoms; that is to say, towards the sixth or seventh century. And, according to the same vision, this divided state must continue till the coming of Christ! But, I ask, if it is possible to find, anywhere but in the papacy, the least solution to so clear and distinct a problem. I ask, if all the histories of the popes do not show us this power springing up from the ruins of the Roman empire, towards the sixth or seventh century, rising out of the very midst of the ten kingdoms formed from these ruins in the days of Clovis, Justinian and Belisarius! Point me, then, in all the world (but especially in the Roman empire and in Rome), to a priest-king who began to reign 1200 years ago, and who reigns in our day, still to continue till the second coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.