THE NUMBER OF THE BEAST AND NUMBER OF HIS NAME

Much labor has been expended on this point; but as we have determined the question, who the beast is, we may with more certainty determine the number of his name. Among all the names which have been found, the numerical letters of which amount to 666, I am the best satisfied with that given in Clarke’s Commentary on the passage.APEC 72.1

The Papal power was emphatically a Latin government, so far as language and location are concerned, in a sense in which no other power has been. And it is a name by which they have always been distinguished from the Greeks. “The Latins” is a well-known name of the Roman church. I did once think it was pagan Rome, and the number of the beast, the number of years from their first league with the Jews, B. C. 158, to the conversion of the Ostrogothic king to Christianity, A. D. 508; but am now satisfied it was an error. The dragon, chapter 12th, is the representative of the civil Roman government. That dragon, when the seat of government was removed to Constantinople, gave up his seat to the beast-ecclesiastical or anti-Christian Rome. “The Dragon gave the beast his seat and power and great authority.” Imperial Rome made the beast; and Imperial France, the image of the beast.APEC 72.2