other than the seven electorates of the German empire. These were, indeed, mountains of vast eminence; for in their sovereigns was vested the sole power of electing the head of the empire. But this was not all; for, besides the power of electing an emperor, the electors had a right to capitulate with the new head of the empire, to dictate the conditions on which he was to reign, and to depose him if he broke those conditions. They actually deposed Adolphus of Nassau in 1298, and Wenceslaus in 1400. They were sovereign and independent princes in their respective dominions, had the privilegium de non appellando illimitatum, that of making war, coining, and exercising every act of sovereignty; they formed a separate college in the diet of the empire, and had among themselves a particular covenant, or league, called Kur verein; they had precedence of all the other princes of the empire, and even ranked with kings. The head of the beast, understood in this way, is one of the finest emblems of the German constitution which can possibly be conceived; for as the Roman empire of Germany had the precedence of all the other monarchies of which the Latin empire was composed, the seven mountains very fitly denote the seven PRINCIPAL powers of what has been named the Holy Roman empire. And, also, as each electorate, by virtue of its union with the Germanic body, was more powerful than any other Roman Catholic state of Europe, not so united; 'so was each electorate, in the most proper sense of the word, one of the highest elevations in the Latin world. The time when the seven electorates of the empire were first instituted, is

very uncertain. The most probable opinion appears to be that which places their origin sometime in the thirteenth century. The uncertainty, however, in this respect, does not in the least weaken the evidence of the mountains being the seven electorates, but rather confirms it; for, as we have already observed, the representation of the woman sitting upon the beast, is a figure of the Latin church in the period of her greatest authority, spiritual and temporal; this we know did not take place before the commencement of the fourteenth century, a period subsequent to the institution of the seven electorates. Therefore the woman sits upon the seven mountains, or the German empire in its elective aristocratical state: she is said to sit upon them, to denote that she has the whole German empire under her direction and authority, and also that it is her chief support and strength. Supported by Germany, she is under no apprehension of being successfully opposed by any other power: she sits upon the seven mountains, therefore she is higher than the seven highest eminences of the Latin world; she must therefore, have the secular Latin empire under her complete subjection. But this state of eminence did not continue above two or three centuries: the visible declension of the papal power in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries occasioned partly by the removal of the papal see from Rome to Avignon, and more particularly by the great schism from 1377 to 1417, though considered one of the remote causes of the Reformation, was at first the means of merely transferring the supreme power from the pope to a general council, while the dominion of

the Latin church remained much the same. At the Council of Constance, March 30, 1415, it was decreed "that the synod being lawfully assembled in the name of the Holy Ghost, which constituted the general council, and represented the whole Catholic church militant, had its power immediately from Jesus Christ; and that every person, of whatsoever state or dignity, even the pope himself, is obliged to obey it in what concerns the faith, the extirpation of schism, and the general reformation of the church in its head and members." The council of Basil, of 1432, decreed, "that every one of whatever dignity or condition, not excepting the pope himself, who shall refuse to obey the ordinances and decrees of this general council, or any other, shall be put under penance, and punished. It is also declared that the pope has no power to dissolve the general council without the consent and decree of the assembly."-See the third Tome of Du Pin's Ecclesiastical History. But what gave the death-blow to the temporal sovereignty of the Latin church was the light of the glorious Reformation, which first broke out in Germany in 1517; and in a very few years gained its way not only over several of the great principalities of Germany, but was also made the established religion of other popish countries. Consequently, in the sixteenth century the woman no longer sat upon the seven mountains, the electorates not only having refused to be ruled by her, but some of them having also despised and abandoned her doctrines. The changes, therefore, which were made in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries in the number of the

electorates, will not affect in the least the interpretation of the seven mountains already given. The seven electors were the archbishops of Mentz, Cologne, and Triers, the count palatine of the Rhine, the duke of Saxony, the marquis of Brandenburgh, and the king of Bohemia. But the heads of the beast have a double signification, for the angel says,

Verse 10. And there are seven kings-Before it was said, they are seven mountains; here, they are also seven kings, which is a demonstration that kingdoms are not here meant by mountains; and this is a further argument that the seven electorates are represented by seven mountains, for though the sovereigns of these states ranked with kings, they were not kings; that is to say, they were not absolute and sole lords of the territories they possessed, independently of the emperor; for their states formed a part of the Germanic body. But the seven heads of the beast are also seven kings; that is to say, the Latin empire has had seven supreme forms of government; for king is used in the prophetical writings for any supreme governor of a state or people, as is evident from Deut. xxxiii. 5. where Moses is called a king. Of these seven kings, or supreme forms of Latin government, the angel informs St. John.

Five are fallen and one is—It is well known that the first form of Latin government was that of kings, which continued after the death of Latinus 428 years, till the building of Rome, B. C. 758. After Numitor's decease, the Albans or Latins, instituted the form of a republic, and were governed by dictators. We have M*

only the names of two, viz. Cluilius and Meteus, Fufetius or Suffetius; but as the dictatorship continued at least eighty-eight years, there might have been others, though their names and actions are unknown. In the year before Christ 665, Alba, the metropolis of the Latin nation, was destroyed by Tullus Hostilius, the third king of the Romans, and the inhabitants carried to Rome. This put an end to the monarchical republic of the Latins: and the Latins elected two annual magistrates, whom Licinius calls dictators, but who are called prætors by other writers. This form of government continued till the time of P. Decius Mus, the Roman consul; for Festus, in his fourteenth book, informs us, "that the Albans enjoyed prosperity till the time of king Tullus; but that Alba being then destroyed, the consuls, till the time of P. Decius Mus, held a consultation with the Latins at the head of Ferentina, and the empire was governed by the council of both nations." The Latin nation was entirely subjugated by the Romans B. C. 336, which put an end to the government by prætors, after it had continued upwards of three hundred years. The Latins from this time ceased to be a nation, as it respects the name; therefore the three forms of government already mentioned were those which the Latins had during that period which the angel speaks of, when he says, the beast which thou sawest WAS.

But as five heads, or forms of government, had fallen before St. John's time, it is evident that the two other forms of government which had fallen, must be among those of the Romans; first, because though the Latin