Chapter 26

§ 1.

Again, yet more expressly, hath John the Lord’s Disciple in the Apocalypse signified concerning the Last time, and the 10 Kings which shall be therein, among whom will be parted the Empire which now reigneth: expounding the 10 horns which were seen by Daniel: when he saith that thus it was spoken unto him:¹ And the ten horns which thou hast seen are 10 Kings, which have not yet received the Kingdom, but they shall receive power as Kings for one hour with the Beast. These have one mind, and they give their might and power to the Beast. These shall fight with the Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome them, for He is Lord of Lords and King of Kings. Evident therefore it is that of these he that shall come will slay Three, and the rest shall be subject unto him, and he himself the eighth among them; and they shall waste Babylon and burn her with fire, and give their Kingdom unto the Beast, and drive out the Church: then afterwards they shall be destroyed by the coming of our Lord. For that the Kingdom must be divided, and so perish, the Lord saith,² Every Kingdom divided against itself shall be laid waste; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand. Both the Kingdom then and the City and the House must be divided into Ten: and therefore he already prefigured partition and division. And Daniel saith with exactness, that the end of the fourth Kingdom is the toes of the feet of that Image, which was seen by Nebuchadnezzar, upon which came the Stone cut out without hands,³ and as he saith himself, The feet, [were] some part iron and some part clay, until a stone was cut out without hands, and smote the Image on the feet of iron and clay, and ground them small unto the end. Then afterwards in the explanation he saith,⁴ And whereas thou sawest the feet and toes, part of iron and part of clay, the Kingdom shall be divided, and there shall be in it of the iron root, as thou sawest the iron mingled with the potsherd. And the toes, some part of iron and some part of clay—(therefore as to the ten Toes, they are ten Kings, among whom the Kingdom shall be divided, of whom some will be strong and active or energetic, others again will be slothful and good for nothing, and they will not agree: as Daniel also saith:—) Some part of the Kingdom shall be strong,⁵ and from that very portion part will be withdrawn. Whereas thou sawest iron mingled with earthen ware, there shall be mixtures in the seed of the men, and they shall not be joined one with another, as iron is not mingled with clay. And because there shall be an end,⁶ he saith, And in the days of those Kings shall the God of Heaven raise up a Kingdom which shall suffer no decay for ever, and the Kingdom thereof shall not be left unto another people. It shall crush and winnow all Kingdoms, and itself shall be exalted for ever. As thou sawest, that out of a Mountain was hewn a stone without hands, and it crushed clay, iron, and brass, and silver and gold: The Great God hath signified to the King the things that shall be hereafter: and the dream is true and the interpretation thereof faithful.

§ 2.

If therefore the great God signified by Daniel things to come,⁷ and confirmed them by His Son; and Christ is the Stone cut out without hands, which shall destroy temporal Kingdoms and bring in the Eternal One (which is the Resurrection of the just: The God of Heaven, saith he, will raise up again a Kingdom, which shall never be decayed for ever:)—let those repent, as they are confuted, who reject the Creator, and allow not that the Prophets are sent by that Father, from Whom the Lord also came, but affirm that the Prophecies were made by different Powers. For what things were foretold by the Creator through all the Prophets alike, those Christ fulfilled in the end, ministering to the will of His Father, and accomplishing what He had ordained touching mankind. Such therefore as blaspheme the Creator, either in express words and openly, as the party of Marcion, or by overthrowing His decree⁸, as the Valentinians, and all who are falsely called Gnostics;—let all worshippers of God know them to be the instruments of Satan, by whom Satan now, and not before, hath been seen to reproach God, Who hath prepared everlasting fire for all apostasy. For he himself by himself openly dareth not to blaspheme his Lord: as also in the beginning he beguiled man by the Serpent, as though God saw him not.⁹ Well said Justin, Before the Lord’s coming Satan never durst blaspheme God, as not yet knowing his own condemnation: how that both in parables and in allegories, it is so affirmed of him in the Prophets. But since the Coming of the Lord, he plainly learning from Christ’s and His Apostles’ discourses, that everlasting fire is prepared for him, departing as he doth from God of his own will;—as also for all who abide without penitence in their apostasy;—by men of that kind he blasphemes that God Who is bringing in the judgment, as one already condemned; and the sin of his own revolt he imputeth to his Maker, and not to his own will and mind: even as they also, who break laws and suffer penalties complain of the legislators and not of themselves. And so these also, full of a diabolical spirit, bring endless charges against our Maker, Who both gave us the Spirit of Life, and appointed a law meet for all: and they will have it that the judgment of God is not just. For which cause they imagine I know not what other Father, neither ordering nor taking thought for the matters which concern us, or even consenting to all sins.