Vs. 3-6.—­The next “sign in heaven,” exciting the apostle’s admiration, was “a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns,”—­The dragon is fully described, v. 9, leaving no place, or even pretence for conjecture.  He is known from the day that he “beguiled Eve” in the garden of Eden.  “That old serpent” still intrudes among the saints, in the garden of the Lord. (Job i. 6; John vi. 70; xiii. 27.) As the devil possessed the serpent to deceive the mother of mankind, so, with the same malevolent design, he possessed himself of the whole political and ecclesiastical power of the Roman empire, thereby to deceive and destroy the “seed of the woman,” all true believers.  His color is red, denoting his character as cruel and blood-thirsty.  Sir Isaac Newton considers the dragon as symbolical of the Greek Christian empire of Constantinople.  Scott thinks this symbol represents the pagan Roman empire; while others suppose the British government to answer the symbol, because of the scarlet costume of her officers and soldiers!  Thus, inspired symbols may mean any thing suggested to the imaginations of men, not by the text or context, but by their respective and conflicting political prejudices.  Surely, if the red color signify any thing besides cruelty, it may be discerned with equal clearness in the scarlet cloaks of Pope and Cardinals.  As “heaven” is to be taken in an ecclesiastical sense, so are the “stars,” (ch. i. 20,—­) “the angels of the churches,” ministers of the gospel.—­As the Saracenic locusts and the Euphratean horses had stings and hurtful power in their tails, (ch. ix. 10, 19;) so it is with this dragon.  The destructive influence of Mahometan delusion and papal idolatry, operated as a fatal poison in the souls of men.  The judgments of the past woes left many still in a state of impenitence, (ch. ix. 20, 21.) “The leaders of this people caused them to err,” by inculcating submission to existing corrupt civil power.  The “little horn” of Daniel, as first rendered visible in the person of the brutal Phocas, began to be addressed in language of most fulsome and degrading flattery, which seems to be copied till the present time.  That we may see how mercenary and aspiring ecclesiastics paid court to civil despots from the commencement of the famous 1260 years, let the following instance serve for a sample.  Addressing the monster Phocas, Pope Gregory, as the mouth of the clergy and laity,[4] uses this language:  “We rejoice that the benignity of your piety(!) has reached the pinnacle of imperial power.  Let the heavens he glad and the earth rejoice.”—­Now let us hear the character of Phocas from the pen of an infidel:—­“Ignorant of letters, of laws, and even of arms, he indulged in the supreme rank a more ample privilege of lust and drunkenness.—­The punishment of the victims of his tyranny was imbittered by the refinements of cruelty:  their eyes were pierced, their tongues were torn from the root, their hands and feet were