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The properties of the little horn are, by all, imputable to the papal power. His empire, at first, was very small. He brought the province and city of Rome under his pontifical jurisdiction. He next was helped to tear up the empire of Lombardy and of Ravenna by the roots, and thus subdued three horns of the ten from among which he sprang up. In the possession of the total jurisdiction of these three kingdoms or provinces; in connection with an assumed, acknowledged, yet disputed ecclesiastical jurisdiction over the other seven; this papal power hath, in a higher or less degree, been enabled to maintain its jurisdiction until the day in which we have seen its body given, thus far, to the burning flame.

Not all the pontifical airs assumed; nor the universal jurisdiction claimed; nor the thunders of power sent abroad; nor the great words it spake have availed to hinder that its foundations should not be shaken, its authority had in contempt, and its thunders trampled under foot.

"I beheld then because of the voice of the great words which the horn spake. I beheld even till the beast was slain, and his body destroyed, and given to the burning flame." This exploit we now live to see performed. The convulsive scenes of European conflict are loosening the stones of the papal fabric; and more and more sapping the foundation of this anti-christian structure.

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The ten kings are loosing their dominion. The subjects of these papal branches are uniting in the common enmity, and with common consent, seem willing that this anti-christian power should be consumed by the breath of that irresistible flame in which God is breathing forth his indignation upon it; waiting for the fatal and deadly blow this power is to receive at the brightness of his coming.

Now of the characters recorded in Scripture, as the undoubted marks of Antichrist, many, at least, have been shown to belong, exclusively, to the tyranny now existing in Papal Rome. For, first of all, this power is certainly a Roman one: secondly, it is confined to the limits of the Latin, or western empire: thirdly, it arose among the ten kingdoms into which that empire was parted by the northern barbarians: fourthly, its throne or seat is in the city of Rome: fifthly, it is a Christian power; and sixthly, it is discriminated from all others, by being of the spiritual or ecclesiastic kind. These are circumstances so plainly realized in that part of Christendom which is subject to the Roman Pontiff, that it is not possible, by any art or subtlety of our adversaries, they can be evaded or denied. (22)