A DISSERTATION ON THE PROPHECIES, THAT HAVE BEEN FULFILLED, OR WILL HEREAFTER BE FULFILLED, RELATIVE TO THE GREAT PERIOD OF 1260 YEARS; THE PAPAL AND MOHAMMEDAN APOSTASIES; THE TYRANNICAL REIGN OF ANTICHRIST, OR THE INFIDEL POWER; AND THE RESTORATION OF THE JEWS. By the Rev. GEORGE STANLEY FABER, B.D. RECTOR OF LONG-NEWTON IN THE COUNTY OF DURHAM. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. III. HLOW "Shut up the Words, and seal the Book, even to the time of the end; many LONDON: PRINTED FOR F. C. AND J. RIVINGTON, NO. 62, ST. PAUL'S CHURCH-YARD. 1818. CONTENTS. VOL. III. Respecting the rise and fall of the seventh and eighth apocalyptic forms of Roman government and the effusion of the fourth and THE Roman Empire, as all agree, is symbolized by the apo- calyptic seven-headed and ten-horned wild beast: and its first six heads or forms of government are easily ascertained to be Kings, Consuls, Dictators, Consular Tribunes, and Roman Em- I. But it is not equally easy to ascertain the seventh head, which was future at the time when the apostle wrote. II. Most protestant expositors, however they may have been perplexed in the arrangement of the seventh head, have supposed the eighth and last form of Roman go- the difficulties with which it is hampered, and because it wholly violates the never-to-be-relinquished principle of homogeneity. p. 5. III. Neither can the seventh head, running into and identify. ing itself with the eighth political form, be the Carlo vingian Emperorship viewed as a distinct head from the Augustan Emperorship, as I once supposed. p. 7. 1. An objection, from naked matter of fact, urged against such an opinion. p. 8. 2. If this objection cannot be obviated, the opinion must be relinquished. p. 10. 3. But the objection cannot be obviated. p. 10. 4. Therefore the opinion must be relinquished. p. 12. SECT. II. Respecting the rise and full of the seventh apocalyptic form of Roman government. p. 12. IT is a naked matter of fact, that the Roman head or political form, of which the Austrian Archdukes, as Emperors of the Romans, were latterly the representatives, ceased to exist or (as St. John speaks) fell, when the dignity of Roman Emperor was abdicated on the 7th of August 1806: because, as no other prince assumed the abdicated dignity, it is therefore now no longer in being. p. 12. I. It may be demonstrated, that the Carlovingian Emperorship, which expired in the August of 1806, was certainly a head of the Roman wild beast. p. 14. 1. This may be proved from its characteristic marks. p. 14. 2. It may also be proved from the very necessity of the thing. p. 16. II. This point being demonstrated, we have next to inquire, with which of the seven Roman heads the Carlovin gian Emperorship must be identified. p. 17. 1. It cannot be the seventh head: because the characteristic of the seventh head is short continuance. p. 19. 2. Neither can it be the eighth form of Roman government : because the mode of its extinction, which we have recently witnessed, does not correspond with the predicted mode of extinction, which the eighth form is prophetically described as experiencing. p. 19. 3. Therefore, since it plainly cannot be identified with any one of the five earlier heads which had all fallen even in the time of St. John, it must be identified with the sixth head. Hence it will follow, that the Carlovingian Emperorship, like the Constantinian, is a continuation of the Augustan Emperorship of the Romans: so that the Roman Emperorship, whether Augustan or Constantinian or Carlovingian, is, in the eye of prophecy, one and the same sixth head or Roman form of government. p. 20. 4. This was the opinion of Bp. Newton: and the event has shewn him to be in the right. p. 20. III. A statement of the predicted characteristic marks of the seventh head. p. 21. 1. In its quality of a Roman head, it must, during some part of its existence, rule over the city of Rome. p. 21. 2. It must be a power of short duration. p. 21. 3. It must bear a title distinct from those of its six predecessors; because, otherwise, it cannot be distinguished from them. p. 22. 4. It must have sprung up, either in, or shortly before, the year 1806; in order that it may regularly succeed the fallen sixth head. p. 22. IV. By an exact correspondence with all these characteristics, the seventh head is proved to be the Francic Empe rorship founded by Napoleon Buonapartè. p. 23. V. Through the recent violent excision of the seventh head or the Francic Emperorship, the Roman wild beast, which has no more than seven heads, has now become -headless. |