Part 2 of 2
I had almost forgotten that this French leopard had four wings of a fowl.—Well, these wings are nothing but sails: they both belong to the same element. Who does not know that sail and wing are, in all languages, convertible terms? And when Daedalus is said to have made wings for himself and his son Icarus to fly from Crete, does any man doubt that they sailed away in ships? The wings are the fleets of France, and their number is four, because those fleets pervade all the quarters of the globe. But why then the wings of a fowl? Here I must necessarily let out the discovery, to which I have already appealed as the test of my own individual skill in prophetic phrase. Though fowls may traverse the atmosphere on their wings, from one end of the world to the other, the eagle alone is queen of the air; and to her all the feathered creation must necessarily strike sail. Now Daniel has expressly said that the eagle's wings were attached to the body of the British lion (the first beast); and he adds, alas!
I beheld, until the wings thereof were plucked.
The final dissolution of these three first beasts is thus summarily set forth by the Prophet:
As concerning the rest of the beasts, they had their dominion taken away, yet their lives were prolonged for a season and time.
That is, in plain English, they must all lose their crowns, as Lewis XVI. did, (who was one of three,) about two years previous to the loss of their lives. Now I do positively affirm, that in these instances, as far as they go, we must either reject the prophecies of Daniel as absurd, aprocryphal, forged, and false, or admit that Mr. Brothers, who has so completely unlocked their mysterious allusions, has received directly from God himself the key for that purpose.
Our Author has entered much more into detail respecting the fourth beast, than any of the former, for which reason I shall take so much the less notice of him. But it is impossible not to feel the full force of his application of the prophecy to the King of Prussia, in that little horn that grew up after the former, "in which were eyes as the eyes of a man," viz. perpetually on the watch, and looking sharp out after every prospect of additional territory, or immediate profit, without regard to the means:—whether in France, or in England, or in Poland, or any other where else—neither an acre nor a dollar comes amiss to him. "And I beheld!" says Daniel, "because of the great words which the horn spake."— The prophet himself seems here to sympathise with the astonishment of all Europe, at the monstrous atrocities and intolerable blasphemies of the Duke of Brunswick's famous manifesto, which I am sorry I have not here by me, to insert as a comment on the divine text. The ruin and death of this detestable horn I shall presently shew from Esdras: Daniel gives it us in the 26th verse:
But the judgment shall sit, and they shall take away his dominion, to consume and to destroy it, unto the end:
—as well as in the lump with that of the beast.
I beheld even till the beast was slain, and his body destroyed, and given to the burning flame.
Mr. Brothers most truly interprets this passage, as relating to the death of the Emperor of Germany, (p. 33)
"It is," says he, "certain, and all the armies in Europe cannot save him. The judgment of God is also, that he shall suffer the punishment of everlasting fire." He enters minutely into particulars in another part of his book, where he tells us,
the Imperial family will all be cut off, and no successor will for ever after arise.
And again,
This is Francis II. the present Emperor of Germany. To be related to him now, will be considered hereafter as a capital crime.
—To come at this most tremendous curse, and also to find the particular designation of the death of the King of Prussia, and the utter downfall of the Popedom, we must have recourse to the 2d Book of Esdras.—Now this 2d Book of Esdras has hitherto been esteemed an apocryphal composition of the lowest order, and so it is termed in our church Bibles; where it is said to have been written about the time of Domitian by some learned Hebrew, to be extant only in the Latin, and to be stuffed full of Jewish fables and Rabbinical rhapsodies. But I have always considered this same book of Esdras as one of the most sublime, the most comprehensive, and the most explicit of all the ancient prophecies. And when we shall have heard his beautiful allegory of the whole Roman empire, from its first republican form to its actual state at this moment, I am sure we shall agree that, whether Esdras lived in the time of Domitian, in that of Daniel, or in that of Adam, there never was a more truly wonderful and super-human epitome of a long and eventful history revealed from the pen of man. It is in the xith chapter.
Then I saw a dream, and behold there came up from the sea an eagle, which had twelve feathered wings, and three heads. And I saw, and behold she spread her wings over all the earth, and all the winds of the air blew on her and were gathered together. And I beheld, and out of her feathers there grew other contrary feathers, and they became little feathers, and small. But her heads "were at rest: the head in the midst was greater than the other, yet rested it with the residue. Moreover, I beheld, and lo! the eagle flew with her feathers, and reigned upon earth, and over them that dwelt therein. And I saw that all things under heaven were subject unto her, and no man spake against her, no, not one creature upon earth. And I beheld, and lo! the eagle rose upon her talons, and spoke to her feathers, saying, Watch not all at once; sleep every one in his own place, and watch by course. But let the heads be preserved unto the last. And I beheld, and lo! the voice went not out of her heads, but from the midst of her body.
Here in these first ten verses we have an Iliad, and more than an Iliad, in a nutshell.—The eagle is the type of Rome. In this at least I shall not be in danger of contradiction.
But what is the meaning, in this and several other passages of the Prophet, of the word sea?—It cannot be taken literally; for Rome is an inland city.—It must therefore be observed, as a general rule, that in allegorical writings, every word is a portion of the allegory; and thus if the eagle be allegorical, the sea from whence it arises is allegorical also. We have the direct explanation of it in the Revelations, where mention is made of the great Whore that sitteth upon many waters.— And in the 15th verse of the same chapter, the angel says,
The waters which thou sawest, where the Whore sitteth, are peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues.
This eagle, therefore, coming up from the sea, is the city of Rome gradually rising among the nations of Italy.
The Prophet first is made to behold all the successive vicissitudes of her fate, wrought up into one compact assemblage. Her extent of dominion is marked by her wings over the whole earth. Her twelve feathered wings are the twelve Caesars, and her three heads are, the Pope, the Emperor of Germany, and King of Prussia. Well indeed might it be said, that the heads rested; for as yet they were nothing but embryos in the womb of futurity. "And I beheld," says the Prophet, "and lo! the voice went not out of her heads, but from the midst of her body."—This is the true spirit of prophetic lore, this is the genuine spark of Promethean fire! How was it possible in such few words, and yet with such astonishing accuracy, to delineate the focus from whence emanate all the rays of republican authority?
Ver. 12.
And I looked, and behold! on the right side there arose one feather, and reigned over all the earth: and so it was, that when it reigned, the end of it came, and the place thereof appeared no more.
The feather that now rose up on the right side was Julius Caesar; and the Prophet's expression is very remarkable—
And so it was, that when it reigned, the end of it came, and the place thereof appeared no more.
—We see clearly that this reign expired suddenly, almost at its very commencement, and was followed by a certain period of interregnum.
So the next following stood up, and reigned, and had a great time; and it happened, that when it reigned the end of it came also, like as the first, so that it appeared no more. Then there came a voice unto it, and said: Hear thou, that hast borne rule over the earth so long: this I say unto thee, before thou beginnest to appear no more, There shall none after thee attain unto thy time, neither unto the half thereof.
The next feather after this interval is Augustus. To put the matter out of all doubt, the inspired writer takes particular care to inform us of the great length of his reign: a circumstance remarkable enough of it itself, but rendered much more so, by his being so minutely accurate as to state with precision, that the reign of no other prince who should ever after govern that country should attain even to half the duration of that of Augustus. And therefore it is impossible this verse should be interpreted of any other emperor but him.
I shall not here follow the Prophet through the next ten verses from the 17th to the 27th—(They describe the rest of the Caesars, and the subsequent commotions in the state)—but shall go on to the 28th verse.
And I beheld, and lo! the two that remained thought also in themselves to reign: and when they so thought, behold! there awaked one of the heads that were at rest, namely, it that was in the midst for that was, greater than the two other heads, and then I saw that the two other heads were joined with it. And behold! the head was turned with them that were with it, and did eat up the two feathers under the wing that would have reigned. But this head put the whole earth in fear, and bear rule in it over all those that dwelt upon the earth, with much oppression; and it had the governance of the world more than all the wings that had been.
Now we come to the Papacy, to that great head in the midst, to which were joined the two other heads; namely, the States which were thereafter to form the dominions of the Empire and the King of Prussia. The gradual encroachments of that spiritual predominance over all the temporal authorities of the time are admirably described by the head eating up the two feathers that would have reigned. And this head put the whole earth in fear. How? By launching its most blasphemous thunders in interdictions, excommunications, and every species of ecclesiastical artillery, with much, very much oppression, as says the Prophet. Now for the close of the prophetical drama:
And after this, I beheld, and lo! the head that was in the midst suddenly appeared no more, like as the wings; but there remained the two heads, which also in like sort ruled upon the earth, and over those that dwelt therein.
The reformation, and revolt of so many nations from the Pope's power, both temporal and spiritual, are described in these verses; and his downfall is expressly mentioned to precede that of the other two heads, namely, the Emperor and the King of Prussia, who continue to reign now, in like sort as the wings (or twelve feathers) formerly did.
And I beheld, and lo! the head upon the right side devoured it that was on the left side.
Words cannot more expressly pronounce that the King of Prussia is destined to fall principally by the means of the Emperor of Germany. I say principally, because Mr. Brothers mentions that the Empress of Russia will assist in his destruction. But, from this verse, I have not a particle of doubt, but that she will in this case act only as an auxiliary in the Emperor's quarrel, even though she may contribute more than an equal share to his victory.
After this comes the great cataclysm, the most dreadful tremendous judgment upon the Emperor:
Verse 36.—
Then I heard a voice which said unto me, Look before thee, and consider the thing that thou seest. And I beheld, and lo! as it were, a roaring lion chased out of the wood; and I saw that he sent out a man's voice unto the eagle, and said, Hear thou; I will talk with thee; and the Highest shall say unto thee, Art not thou it that remainest of the four beasts whom I made to reign in my world?
Before we go any farther, it may be necessary to remark, that the Prophet, without any one circumstance alluding to the connection between him and Daniel, comes here all at once into the history of the four beasts, and expressly declares that his eagle is the very same with that fourth beast which Daniel saw, but did not delineate; only we are certain that it could not much have resembled an eagle, from the partial account he has given of him. If, however, Daniel's fourth beast be the Emperor of Germany, this must also be the same Emperor. And vice versâ; if this be the Emperor, as the whole preceding narrative does not leave the smallest possibility of a doubt, Daniel's beast must be the Emperor also. I shall omit the preliminary articles of accusation against his conduct, and come at once to the judgment pronounced upon him, and all the members of his family, by God, in the 45th verse:
And therefore appear no more, thou eagle, nor thy horrible wings, nor thy wicked feathers, nor thy malicious heads, nor thy hurtful claws, nor all thy vain body.
Every member, limb, joint, and articulation of the whole eagle, is here put in requisition, and separately enumerated, to take in every scion and branch of that devoted generation. Mr. Brothers might therefore well say,
That to be related to the Emperor now, would hereafter be deemed a capital crime.
The same catastrophe of the Papacy, the King of Prussia, and the Emperor, is also clearly pointed out in the next chapter of Esdras, which contains an interpretation, after the prophetic mode, of the vision which I have just gone through. I shall only here make use of the 26th, 27th, and 28th verses of that xiith chapter, which run thus:
And whereas thou sawest that the great head appeared no more, it signifies that one of them shall die upon his bed, and yet with pain.
This is incontrovertibly the Papacy, as I have before explained it. We have long seen it wasting with a grievous sickness, and it is now on its death-bed expiring in great agony. Mr. Brothers tells us in his book, that the Emperor will soon give it the coup de grace.
For the two that remain shall be slain with the sword.
The Emperor's authority, and that of the King of Prussia, are now in apparent health: their downfall, therefore, being destined to be sudden, will have no appearance of a natural decay, but may be likened to a violent death by a sword.
For the sword of the one shall devour the other; but at last shall he fall through the sword himself.
When these two great potentates shall quarrel, we cannot possibly doubt but that the Emperor will presently demolish his Prussian Majesty; and therefore we are at no loss to ascertain their different persons in this place. And now, having seen all these heroes fairly brought to the grave, I shall here take my leave of them, and proceed to a new subject; for which purpose we must open the Revelations.
Mr. Brothers tells us, that the Babylon mentioned in the xviiith chapter Apocalypse, does not mean Rome, but London—contrary to the express sentiment of all former expositors; and he proves his position in a very satisfactory manner, by shewing, that the various and multiplied allusions to navigation and commerce, in the description of this Babylon, cannot possibly be strained, with any propriety, to indicate an inland city, totally incapable of shipping, and remarkably destitute of trade. His remarks are perfectly just and apposite; all I have therefore to do, is, to corroborate and confirm his proofs, by others drawn from the nature of the articles of merchandize said to have been dealt in there. Verses 11, 12, 13.
And the merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn over her; for no man buyeth her merchandize any more: the merchandize of gold, and of silver, and precious stones, and of pearls, and fine linen, and purple, and silk, and scarlet, and all thyine wood, and all manner of vessels of ivory, and all manner of vessels of precious wood, and of brass, and iron, and marble, and cinnamon, and odours, and ointments, and frankincense, and wine, and oil, and fine flour, and wheat, and beasts, and sheep, and horses, and chariots, and slaves, and souls of men.
Here we have an instance of the prophetic art I formerly mentioned, by which the prominent features of the representation or vision are such as are put on purpose to mislead the observer; and the key to the mystery lies quite in the shade and obscurity of the back ground. For all this long and tedious enumeration of wares and commodities is really nothing at all to the business of the prophecy, whose real explication lies wholly in the last five words, "slaves and souls of men." What nation is notorious for its extensive and abominable traffic in slaves? Surely no part of Italy. I would ask an honorable gentleman, whose unparalleled exertions and perseverance in the cause of his oppressed fellow-creatures do him so much honor in the sight of God and man, whether he cannot in an instant put his finger on the city rendered particularly infamous by dealing in human flesh! We all know it is the Assiento wholesale trader; it is the City of London.—But souls of men are also sold there—Souls of men? And where can souls of men be properly deemed an article of trade? Certainly not in Rome, where ignorance and priestcraft bind up the souls of all their deluded subjects in chains of everlasting adamant. Still less in the ci-devant Paris, or Vienna, or Madrid, or any other city under a despotic government, where tyranny, whose essence it is to extinguish and utterly annihilate the human mind itself, leaves not a single man who can truly and properly call his soul his own. It is here, in England, it is in this and of liberty, where every man has a soul which he can keep or sell as he pleases, that this article can alone be called a merchandize; and Parliament is the grand emporium for the commodity.
Must I speak out? Must I produce an instance? Well, then, I have an instance: I myself am that instance, and the Speaker is a living witness to the truth of my assertion. There as he sat in his chair, day after day, for three years together, beholding me crouched behind the Treasury Bench, with my soul in my hand, like a country girl in the market with her butter and eggs before her, anxiously waiting for the lucky moment when the Tellers would come and rid me of my burthen, that I might run home and hide myself. And while I did sell my soul, it was all in the true spirit of commercial credit that so peculiarly distinguishes this country: I sold it purely upon trust: I never have received one shilling; and now I am taught by experience to apprehend that the purchaser will never pay me one farthing for it. But though I sold my soul, I could never sell my tongue. While the one loitered an abandoned prostitute in the market, the other remained sullenly immovable at home. The emancipation of the former would have opened the prison doors of the latter—could I have caught the Speaker's eye. But it is of no consequence now—Liberavi animam meam—and both my soul and tongue are from henceforrh at liberty.
London, as Mr. Brothers says, is known also in the Revelations by the name of Sodom: for which he quotes this passage of the xith chapter:
And their dead bodies" (viz. those of the two witnesses) "shall lie in the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom in Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified.
And in what city can our Lord be said to have been crucified except at Jerusalem, which surely was not in Egypt?—Why there, and there only, where the blessed sacrament of redemption is prostituted to the purposes of venality and ambition: where the benefits of salvation are bartered for filthy lucre: where the holy commemoration of Christ's death is degraded to a test and qualification for holding civil employments: and consequently, where the two witnesses of the Gospel are trampled under foot by authority of the State?—In no nation under heaven but in England, in no church in the world but that by law established here, does such a profanation exist: in that very church too which expressly says in one part of her own ritual, that taking the sacrament unworthily is crucifying Christ's body afresh, and eating and drinking our own damnation.
Out of thine own mouth will I condemn thee
—thou wicked church!—Here then we have in St. John both Babylon and Sodom to signify one and the same city, just as we have the two cities of London and Westminster within the same boundary; but which of the two be Sodom, and which Babylon, I leave to be decided by that sagacious assembly which has no doubt most oracularly pronounced whether Richard Brothers be an impostor or a madman.
And here let me ask, whether I have not, in the most clear and satisfactory manner, and upon full proof, established every one of those positions which I at first pledged myself to maintain: as well in support of Mr. Brothers's well-founded pretensions to divine inspiration, as of my own qualifications and abilities for executing the task I had undertaken? And I hope those persons of the better conditions of life, whom I know to have said that this book was calculated to make an impression on none but the most illiterate vulgar, will be now inclined to admit that it may have weight even with a man not much less instructed or experienced than themselves, nor very greatly their inferior in understanding, literature, or situation. Most of all, I hope that every one will at least think it worth while to examine the Scriptures calmly and attentively, to compare them with Mr. Brothers's assertions, and then judge for himself; for I can assure my readers, that I could never obtain the smallest explanation of any part of his book from Mr. Brothers, whom I called upon expressly for that purpose. He drily referred me to my Bible, observing that he could neither subtract from, nor add a single word to, what God had expressly dictated to him. The field is still open for fresh labourers; I have occupied but a small part of it; as well because it is fit this work should be comprised within moderate limits, as because I am satisfied that I have heaped proof upon proof beyond all reasonable necessity for full conviction. And here I shall close the subject as far as relates to politics, and employ a few words with regard to Mr. Brothers himself.
He says he is come to recall the Jews to their native country; and for the proof of his divine mission he refers us to the miraculous discoveries contained in his books, from a persuasion that, if we admit the prophecy, we cannot reject the prophet. Now that all Scripture as well as all Tradition bears testimony to the certainty of the recall of the Jews in the latter ages of the world, no man who has but a smattering of acquaintance with either can for a moment pretend to deny. The main design of Mr. Brothers, as far as he is personally concerned, is to shew us that the life and conduct of the first Moses was a sort of type or predetermined pattern for that of the second; and for this purpose he quotes a text of Scripture, which can neither be eluded nor explained away, that the man destined to lead the Jews a second time to Palestine should be like to Moses himself. The Parallel between the two personages Mr. Brothers states to have tallied hitherto, and he asserts that it will continue to do so; for, as Moses ascended from the ark of bull-rushes, so did Mr. Brothers rise from a ship, having been bred to the navy. This coincidence of characters might be evident at first sight, Mr. Brothers asserts, that by the command of God himself, he cut a wand in 1792, which is to perform precisely the same miracle with the former wand of Moses. Nor need we now be astonished or scandalized, when we hear Mr. Brothers affirm that God speaks to him in plain direct words, as one man would speak to another, since we kwow that in this respect Moses was favoured with a communication exactly similar. Moses, born in Egypt, led the Israelites from Egypt through the Red Sea into Palestine. The birth-place therefore of the second Moses, and the country from whence he is to summon the modern Hebrews, must spiritually at least have at one time or other been also denominated Egypt, to make the parallel between two events move an all fours: and I have already proved, from St. John in the Revelations, that the great city (viz. London) was spiritually called Sodom in Egypt.
In the spirit of this parallel Mr. Brothers remarks in his second book—
Pharaoh is appointed to die, and his government to be destroyed the priests and all the abominable idolatries of Egypt shall perish, never to be found any more.
I shall now slightly mention a few expressions to be found in Mr. Brothers's books, which have operated as stumbling-blocks to weak minds. And first, for the phrase which has caused so much offence, where he calls himself God Almighty's Nephew. I sincerely hope there is no man in this country who will openly deny that Jesus Christ is God Almighty. If there be, I speak not to him: I am sure no member of the established Trinitarian church can safely say otherwise. Now if Jesus Christ had brothers and sisters, as is expressly proved from the Gospel, the son of any one of those must necessarily have been his nephew. Extend the line of filiation as far as we please, through 50, 100, or 1000 descents, the last is still a nephew, lineally descended from the first, in the same manner as every Jew to this day is a son of Abraham, and as we are all of us beyond all doubt sons of Adam.
Next, Mr. Brothers says, he was in a vision taken up to heaven, where he saw the Holy Ghost under the figure of a silver-coloured dove. As a spirit truly the Holy Ghost may have no shape; but that he actually appeared as a dove when Jesus Christ was baptized by John in Jordan, I presume no believer in the Gospel will think fit to contest with me. Again, Mr. Brothers saw Satan entering London in a human shape. Why what shape should he be in? Perhaps, indeed, if he had represented him with saucer eyes, cloven hoofs, and a tail a fathom and a half long, all the old women of both sexes in this great city would have been mightily tempted to believe him. But after all, what other shape can we more consistently suppose him to have worn in his triumphal entry into a city inhabited by men? I am only sorry, that, described as he is in robes of white and scarlet, he must have been hardly distinguishable at first sight from any of the Peers of Great Britain, whom I have seen in the same dress come into and go out of Westminster Hall at the diabolical Impeachment.
Objections, but those perfectly groundless, and founded in gross ignorance of the general course of God's judgments, have been started against Mr. Brothers's assertion in his first book,
that God would have destroyed the city of London in 1791— but for his intercessions.
To shew that this doctrine is not unprecedented we might instance Abraham's repeated solicitations for the preservation of Sodom, and God's answers in the xviiith chapter of Genesis: as well as several other similiar circumstances in Scripture. But there is a passage in Ezekiel which comes, if possible, still more exactly to the point; it is in the xxiid chapter, the title of which runs thus—
V. 1. A catalogue of sins in Jerusalem.—17. God will burn them as dross in his furnace.—23. The general corruption of prophets, priests, princes and people.
—
Now let us attend to the 30th and 31st verses. It is God that speaks.
And I sought for a man among them, that should make up the hedge, and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I should not destroy it; but I found none. Therefore have I poured out mine indignation upon them, &c.
Words cannot be found more incontestably applicable to Mr. Brothers's description of himself
standing in the gap before the Lord for the city, that he should not destroy it.
To controvert this principal, is not to want conviction, but to repel it.
Now to conclude: If any man, calmly attending to what I have adduced, can still consider Mr. Brothers as an impostor or a madman, I wish him little joy of his feelings or his prospects. But whatever judgment be pronounced on him, let it at least be after a fair trial and sufficient hearing. Let us first reflect, whether it be possible that a madam should so ably and consistently press into his service the whole body of prophecy both in the Old and New Testament, all tending to one and the same distinct end; or whether an impostor should so honestly and disinterestedly entreat us only to take serious care of ourselves and our own most important concerns, leaving himself and all possible personal advantage totally out of the question. And what then is the point he so arduously labours? Nothing more than that we would, before it be utterly too late, relinquish this just and necessary war; just, only because it justifies God's vengeance—and necessary only because necessary for our punishment. And I doubt not but it is his opinion, as it is most assuredly mine, and my advice also, that the Fast which is appointed for the 25th of Feb. to implore success on our arms, should be converted, by Address to his Majesty, from both Houses of Parliament to that effect, to the purpose of a solemn and sincere humiliation for our crimes, and a most earnest supplication to God for the restoration of peace; and that we may take warning by the fate of our abandoned and subjugated ally, not to postpone our offers for a negotiation to the very last moment, when the sword shall already be at our throats, and all hopes of obtaining moderate terms must be totally relinqushed. Let us, while it is yet possible, adopt that most divine sentence of the Gospel, "on earth peace, good will towards men."
Nathaniel Brassey Halhed.
PALL-MALL,
29th January, 1795.