Page:Mahometanism in its relation to prophecy - or, an inquiry into the prophecies concerning antichrist, with some reference to their bearing on the events of the present day (IA mahometanisminit00philrich).pdf/176

 lieving that the first beast signified the Mahometan Saracenic empire, and if I am right in that supposition, it necessarily follows that the second beast must symbolize the Mahometan empire, that succeeded the Saracenic, from the very terms employed by St. John in the next verse (12): "And he executed all the power of the former beast in his sight; and he caused the earth, and them that dwell therein, to adore the first beast, whose wound unto death was healed."

Is it possible that the Prophet could use language more forcible to describe that which Turkish history records the Turkish power to have done. If the destruction of the Saracenic empire threatened death to the Mahometan system upheld by it, assuredly that deadly wound was healed by the establishment of the Mahometan Turkish empire. But let us examine a little more closely some of the predicated characteristics of this second beast. It came up out of the earth. The first beast had arisen from the sea, that is, symbolically from "the sea," as the symbol of mankind tossed about by the winds of corrupt nature, and the revolutionary upheavings of the restless multitude, which is the interpretation St. Jerome gives to this prophetic image; and literally from the sea, inasmuch as it sprung from the pestilent shores of the great Asiatic Ocean,