The origin of this beast is threefold,—­“out of the sea,” (v. 1,) “out of the bottomless pit,” (ch. xi. 7; xvii. 8,) and “out of the earth.”  (Dan. vii. 17.) Out of the sea of the commotions arising from the incursions of the northern barbarians, by whom the Roman empire was dismembered.  “The ten horns out of this kingdom are ten kings that shall arise.” (Dan. vii. 24.) This is the result of revolution,—­“the sea.”  The Roman empire, especially as nominally Christian, is thus characterized as being “earthly, sensual, devilish,” a suitable agent of the dragon.

The fact of the ten horns of the beast, now wearing crowns, proves that the time to which the prophecy refers, is that which followed the division of the empire into ten kingdoms.  The seven heads of the beast have a double significance,—­seven different forms of government, and seven mountains, afterwards to be more fully explained, (ch. xvii. 9, 10.) The “name of blasphemy” may indicate “eternal city, mistress of the world.”—­Of this characteristic of the beast, other examples will be discovered hereafter.

Daniel was solicitous to “know the truth (interpretation) of the fourth beast, which was diverse from all the others,” (ch. vii. 19.) Although “diverse from all the others” in geographical extent and destructive power, this fourth beast combined in one all the ravenous propensities of the three predecessors, but in reverse order.  The “leopard, bear and lion of Daniel,” by which Grecian, Persian and Chaldean dynasties were symbolized, are all comprised in John’s beast of the sea,—­the antichristian Roman empire.  Since this beast of the sea embodies all the voracious properties of the three persecuting powers which went before it; this may be a suitable place briefly to review the sufferings inflicted by them upon the saints, that we may know what the witnesses were taught to expect at the hands of this monstrous enemy.—­“Israel is a scattered sheep, the lions have driven him away:  first, the king of Assyria hath devoured him, and last, this Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon hath broken his bones.—­The violence done to me and to my flesh, be upon Babylon, shall the inhabitant of Zion say; and, My blood upon the inhabitants of Chaldea, shall Jerusalem say.” (Jer. 1. 17; li. 35.)—­“Haman, the son Hammedatha, the Agagite, the Jews’ enemy,—­thought scorn to lay hands on Mordecai alone.”—­“If it please the king, let it be written that they (the whole people) may be destroyed; and I will pay ten thousand talents of silver,—­to bring it into the king’s treasuries.”—­“Behold also the gallows, fifty cubits high, which Haman had made for Mordecai, who had spoken good for the king, standeth in the house of Haman.  Then the king said, Hang him thereon.” (Esth. iii. 1, 9; vii. 9.) Such were the crimes and such the punishments of the enemies of God’s people in Babylon and Persia, as already matter of inspired history:  and had we equally full and authentic records of the punishments