The Ten Kingdoms by J.

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Oct 7, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 39.

The Ten Kingdoms.

By J.

BISHOP NEWTON, in his “Dissertations on the Prophecies,” pp. 209, 210, has given us three distinct lists besides his own, viz., one by Mede, one by Sir Isaac Newton, one by Bishop Chandler indorsed by Bishop Lloyd. Mede’s list is as follows:—

“Mr. Mede, whom a certain writer esteemed as a man divinely inspired for the interpretation of the prophecies, reckons up the ten kingdoms thus in the year A. D. 456, the year after Rome was sacked by Genseric, king of the Vandals: (1) The Britons; (2) the Saxons in Britain; (3) the Franks; (4) the Burgundians in France; (5) the Visigoths in the south of France and part of Spain; (6) the Sueves and Alans in Galicia and Portugal; (7) the Vandals in Africa; (8) the Alemanes in Germany; (9) the Ostrogoths, whom the Longobards succeeded, in Pannonia, and afterwards in Italy; (10) the Greeks in the residue of the empire.”

There are two points in this list that are manifestly wrong: First, in naming the Britons. These could perhaps properly be named in A. D. 456, the date at which Mr. Mede makes his list, because then the Saxons had only been seven years on British soil. But in the end the Saxons utterly swept away not only the power of the Britons but the Britons themselves. Of the conquest of Britain, Green says:—

“With the victory of Deorham [A. D. 577] the conquest of the bulk of Britain was complete. Britain had in the main become England. And within this new England a Teutonic society was settled on the wreck of Rome. So far as the conquest had yet gone it was complete. Not a Briton remained as subject or slave on English ground. It is this that distinguishes the conquest of Britain from that of the other provinces of Rome. The conquest of Gaul by the Franks, or that of Italy by the Lombards, proved little more than a forcible settlement of the one or the other among tributary subjects who were destined in the long course of ages to absorb their conquerors. But the English conquest of Britain up to the point which we have reached was a sheer dispossession of the people whom the English conquered. So far as the English sword in these earlier days had reached, Britain had become England, a land, that is, not of Britons but of Englishmen. Even if a few of the vanquished people lingered as slaves round the homesteads of their English conquerors, or a few of their household words mingled with the English tongue, doubtful exceptions such as these leave the main facts untouched. The key-note of the conquest was firmly struck. When the English invasion was stayed for awhile by the civil wars of the invaders, the Briton had disappeared from the greater part of the land which had been his own; and the tongue, the religion, the laws of his English conquerors reigned without a break from Essex to Staffordshire, and the British Channel to the Firth of Forth.”—History of the English People, chap. 2, par. 1-5.

“Their conquest was not the settlement of armed conquerors amidst a subject people, but the gradual expulsion—it might almost seem the total extirpation—of the British and the Roman British inhabitants. Christianity receded with the conquered Britons into the mountains of Wales, or towards the borders of Scotland, or took refuge among the peaceful and flourishing monasteries of Ireland. On the one hand, the ejection, more or less complete, of the native race, shows that the contest was fierce and long; the reoccupation of the island by paganism is a strong confirmation of the complete expulsion of the Britons.”—Milman’s Latin Christianity, Book IV., chap. 3, par. 3.

It is evident, therefore, that for this reason, if for no other, the Britons cannot be counted as one of the ten kingdoms. But there is another important consideration that forbids it. The Britons were themselves a part of the body of the Roman Empire, which was conquered and broken up by the new peoples who came in. And if in Britain it be proper to count as a kingdom the conquered equally with the conquerors, then we may do so also in all the other parts of the empire, and, as Mr. Green shows, with more propriety. If we count the Britons and the Saxons in Britain, we may with equal propriety count the Gauls and the Franks in France, the Spanish and the Suevi in Spain, the Africans and the Vandals in Africa, and so on through the list, which would give us twenty kingdoms instead of ten! Plainly, Mr. Mede’s insertion of the Britons is erroneous. This latter consideration too, demonstrates the impropriety of counting any part of the old empire of Rome, as one among the ten which were to arise. The prophetic word is marking the rise and fall of distinct nations; and when Rome has risen, run her course, and is brought to ruin by the rise of ten other kingdoms, it were unreasonable to count a part of that which is fallen, as one of those which were to arise. No, Rome had run her course, as had the empires before her, and in the ten kingdoms God raised up new peoples by whom he would fulfill his purposes.

Secondly, Mr. Mede’s list is defective in another place. He counts as his tenth kingdom, “The Greeks in the residue of the empire.” We have shown, and this agrees with Bishop Newton exactly, that the ten kingdoms must arise within the bounds of the Western Empire. But Mr. Mede fills the Western Empire with nine nations and lumps up all the rest of the empire in one. But in A. D. 456 there were divisions in the Eastern, or Greek, Empire as well as in the Western, and we cannot see by what right they can be summed up in one, any more than could those in the Western Empire, for the empire at that time still existed in the West as well as it did in the East. In short, two things are certain, either of which excludes Mr. Mede’s tenth kingdom; (a) we cannot rightly go outside of the limits of the Western Empire to count the ten kingdoms; and (b) if we do go beyond those limits, we cannot rightly lump together as one kingdom all that were in the bounds of the Eastern Empire, and that would give again considerably more than ten.

The others that are named in this list are in the main correct; one minor point we would mention, i. e., “the Alemanes in Germany.” Simply to prevent misapprehension, we would remark that if Mr. Mede meant, as he probably did, the Alemanni in what is now Germany, he is correct, for the Alemanni were the root of the present nation of Germany. That part of the present Germany which lies south of the river Main and the Moselle, including about half of Bavaria, is the country taken from the Roman Empire by the Alemanni. Of the Roman Empire it formed the province of Rhatia, and a part of Gaul. Of what was then Germany, none lay south of the Main or of the Danube. The Emperor William of Germany is directly descended from a prince of the Alemanni.

The next is Sir Isaac Newton’s list, thus:—

“(1) The kingdom of the Vandals and Alans in Spain and Africa; (2) the kingdom of the Suevans in Spain; (3) the kingdom of the Visigoths; (4) the kingdom of the Alans in Gallia; (5) the kingdom of the Burgundians; (6) the kingdom of the Franks; (7) the kingdom of the Britons; (8) the kingdom of the Huns; (9) the kingdom of the Lombards; (10) the kingdom of Ravenna.”

We know not at what date Sir Isaac found these, only that, as he names “the kingdom [exarchate] of Ravenna,” it must have been somewhere between A. D. 554 and 752, for that is the time of the existence of the exarchate of Ravenna. But that comes into history too late to be counted as one of the ten. They must all be seen before A. D. 493. He too names the Britons, but it is most likely that he uses that name for that of the Saxons, as England is even now called Britain, and the English sometimes Britons. His mention of the “Alans in Gallia [Gaul]” as one of the ten kingdoms is, we think, rather more than they deserve, and more than their history will justify. It is true that of the Alani that crossed the Rhine in A. D. 406, with the Burgundians, the Suevi, and the Vandals, a portion settled near Valence and Orleans in Gaul, while the body of the nation went on into Spain; but soon after the battle of Châlons, “their separate national existence in Gaul was merged in that of the Visigoths” (Encyc. Brit., art. “Alani”); and when, in A. D. 508, the Visigoths were, by the Franks, driven from their Gallic possessions into Spain (Gibbon, chap. 38, par. 13, 29), this body of the Alani were lost to history, if not to the world. The Huns likewise cannot properly be numbered as one of the ten kingdoms, but as they are named in other lists we shall defer the notice of them till later.

Bishop Newton makes up his list in the “eighth century,” which is more than two hundred years too late, and that of itself destroys its value as a correct list. Nevertheless we shall insert his list as well as the others; of course it is not altogether wrong, as it would be scarcely possible to name ten kingdoms at any time after the middle of the fifth century without including some of the right ones. He names them as follows:—

“(1) Of the senate of Rome, who revolted from the Greek emperors, and claimed and exerted the privilege of choosing a new Western emperor; (2) of the Greeks in Ravenna; (3) of the Lombards in Lombardy; (4) of the Huns in Hungary; (5) of the Alemanes in Germany; (6) of the Franks in France; (7) of the Burgundians in Burgundy; (8) of the Goths in Spain; (9) of the Britons; (10) of the Saxons in Britain.”

This list, being drawn in the eighth century, is after the establishment of the Papacy, and, consequently, is after the rooting up of the three that were displaced that it might be set up. And as the prophecy plainly says that “three of the first horns”—three of the ten—should be “plucked up by the roots,” it is certainly a vain effort to try to find ten after three of them have been taken entirely away. Therefore so far is the Bishop’s list from being of any real value as that of ten kingdoms, it is worthless as such, because it is made at a time when the prophecy allows but seven beside the Papacy. As for these seven, however, his list contains them all but one—the Suevi. Of the seven, he gives us the Lombards, the Alemanni, the Franks, the Visigoths, the Burgundians, and the Saxons.

(To be continued.)