What was the Holy Roman Empire?

"Standing where he ought not." Throughout medieval times "Antichrist" was regarded as Mohammedanism; since the Reformation the Papacy has enjoyed that unhappy distinction in the eyes of Protestant controversialists. To the view in general of the Reformers Dr. C. H. H. Wright adheres in the first of his two volumes on Daniel recently published. According to Dr. Wright, the Jesuits started, as a set-off against the Protestant view, the idea now shared by all premillenarian writers, who have abandoned the Lutheran "Antichrist." Be this as it may, the belief that the "man of sin" (2 Thess. 2:3-4) stands either for the political head of the Roman Empire when it is revived (Rev. 13:1), or for his confederate (ibid., ver. 11) prince of a revived Jewish State, called the false prophet in Rev. 16:13 (see Kelly, "The Revelation Expounded," third edition, pp. 159-162), agrees, as far as the first alternative is concerned, with the conviction of the primitive Christians, which seems to have passed away definitely only after Constantine's acceptance of Christianity as the religion of the Empire. The "Holy Roman Empire" established by Charlemagne passed away in 1806, and the "temporal power" of the Pope in 1870; but students of prophecy look for a confederacy between the magnates symbolized in Rev. 13 as "beasts." Those who advocate "reunion" of Christendom on the basis of "the primacy of Peter" seem as feebly to apprehend the bearings of the last book of the Bible as supporters of "Zionism" would do. The "Revelation of John" must be studied in close connection with the prophecy on Olivet. Besides Mr. Kelly's writings on the subject, readers would do well to acquaint themselves with the late R. Govett's "The Apocalypse Expounded by Scripture," and Sir R. Anderson's "The Coming Prince."

Charlemagne visited Rome again in 781, and a third time in 787, and on each occasion the church was enriched by gifts, bestowed, as he professed in the language of the age, "for the good of his soul." Overwhelmed with gratitude, and fully conscious of his own need of a permanent defender, the pope crowned Charlemagne on the Christmas-eve of the year 800 with the crown of the Western empire, and proclaimed him Caesar Augustus. A Frankish prince, a Teuton, was thus declared the successor of the Caesars, and wielded all the power of the Emperor of the West. "The empire of Charlemagne," says Milman, "was almost commensurate with Latin Christendom; England was the only large territory which acknowledged the ecclesiastical supremacy of Rome, not in subjection to the new Western empire." This event forms the great epoch in the annals of Roman Christendom.

But another important matter to remark here is, that the breach which ambition on both sides had brought about between the heads of the Roman and Greek ecclesiastical bodies now became complete. They anathematized each other, and no universal ecclesiastical body ever subsisted since. The Emperor's power in the East was reduced to a shadow by Saracens and Turks. The Western Empire, founded by Charlemagne, in which the prelates acted, as we have seen, independently of the pope while it subsisted, fell to pieces by the weakness of his successors; and the pope gradually acquired, through violent struggles with the German Emperors, at last in the person of Gregory VII, the desired supremacy. Yet he died, driven from his see by the Emperor. And mark, there was from this time, confessedly, pitch darkness in everything, as Romanists themselves confess; they are called the dark ages. And a vast number of the popes were the greatest monsters that ever disgraced the name of man, and the clergy the most corrupt of the whole population. But we have touched on this point, and what is necessary we will speak of when sanctity as proof of the true church is spoken of.

Two events happened about this time, I may note in passing. The Lombards having driven the Greeks out of Italy, Pope Stephen called the Franks in. They had sanctioned already the French mayors of the palace who really reigned, setting aside the puppet kings who did so nominally. The pope received territorial authority under the new Western empire, established in the person of Charlemagne crowned Emperor at Rome. The second fact was the forgery of supposed early decretals, ascribing superior authority to the popes from the first. These were the great foundation of papal authority till the Reformation, when the forgery was detected and exposed, being admitted now by all. There was some opposition from metropolitans at the time; but, as they increased their authority over the prelates under them, they too accepted them.

The connection of the woman with the beast is of the greatest importance to consider in all this. The beast is plainly Daniel's fourth beast, however much it may unite in itself at last the characters of those preceding. But Daniel's fourth beast, it is evident, has no successor. It is Rome, therefore, that is to be found in power at the end, as Babylon was at the beginning. It is not imperial Babylon that is to be revived, nor is it possible to make room in the prophecy for this. It may be true that the seven heads of the beast, successive as they are plainly, may, as already has been said, begin before Rome, and the Roman beast be seen in this, like the Roman woman, to be but the development of that which began in earliest human history. The beast, though the Roman beast, is only the continuance of the lawless Gentile powers that were from the beginning ever against God. The six heads culminate, as already said, in Rome, before the collapse of the empire. The seventh head is a new imperial head, as seen with its ten horns and as carrying the woman. It is a different form of power, transitional, and thus anomalous, but with the germ in it of the last, so that the whole number of horns is, in another view, only nine. When Christianized, Rome already lost in a sense its beast-character, though still in fact existing. Morally, it was never Christian, and its profession to be this was but a weight upon it, provoking judgment for its profession of the holy name. Thus it went down, as the historical view of Revelation shows, under the war-trumpets. The trumpets begin the history of the Church, when Church and world have become thus one. Thus at last the beast was not, though the "holy Roman empire" remained, as it were, as the ghost of what was departed. When it rises again, it rises in this anomalous condition; but even as it could not continue in this way before, so now its continuance is but "for a short time." The seventh head is wounded to death, and only revived by the power of Satan when now it becomes, as the eighth head, openly apostate, destroying the woman herself, and thus making an end of the corrupt profession upon earth. There now remains only the open war with God and the Lamb.

149 In the Western empire, under Charlemagne, the Council of Nice was rejected. First of all this great founder of the new Western empire assembled his bishops, and put forth a book in his own name, in which he condemned the Council of Constantinople, which suppressed all pictures and images, and equally the Council of Nice, which allowed them to be reverenced and worshipped. He went through scripture and the Fathers, and proved that this worship and reverence was all wrong. But the Emperor's and bishops' book goes farther. Pope Adrian had sent them the decisions of the Council of Nicaea (or Nice), to which they had never been called, and they say, "We receive the Six General Councils, but we reject with contempt novelties, as also the Council held in Bithynia (that is, the so-called Seventh General Council of Nice), to authorize the worship of images, the Acts of which, destitute of style and sense, have come to us"; and then they refute seriously all that the pope had said to the Eastern Emperor. They declare that the Council of Nice is not a general one, because it was not gathered from all parts of the church, and appeal to Gregory the Great's letter to Serenus. But this work of the bishops of France and Germany, then one empire, issued in Charlemagne's name, was not all. In 794 he had a council at Frankfort-on-the-Main, at which were the pope's legates and 300 prelates of Germany, France, and Spain. This council refers to the Council of Nice as the council of the Greeks, and rejects entirely, unanimously, and with contempt its doctrine and decision. All this was sent to the pope. He replies in a long letter on the doctrines, and adds, "We have received the Council of Nice because conformed to the doctrine of St. Gregory [Gregory the Great, which it was not], fearing the Greeks might return to their error. However, we have yet given no answer to the Emperor as to the council."

One who accepted Wycliffe's ideas from these students was Jan Huss. He became a rector of the University of Prague in 1402. His preaching of Wycliffe's views contributed to a rise of nationalism among the Bohemians who chafed under the Holy Roman Empire and its close associate, the Roman Catholic Church.

The diets had the levying of taxes; enacting laws; declaring war; concluding peace. The Emperor could refuse his ratification, but could not modify the decisions of the diet. On August 6, 1806, the Emperor Francis II. abdicated the imperial crown of Germany, and declared the dissolution of the Germanic empire.}

"Charlemagne, in christian history, commands a more important station even than for his subjugation of Germany to the gospel, on account of his complete organization, if not foundation, of the high feudal hierarchy in a great part of Europe. Throughout the Western empire was, it may be said, constitutionally established this double aristocracy, ecclesiastical and civil. Everywhere the higher clergy and the nobles, kind so downwards through the different gradations of society, even of the same rank, and liable to many of the same duties, of equal, in some cases of co-ordinate, authority. Each district had its bishop and its count; the dioceses and the counties were mostly of the same extent.....

Page 246. We have another proof of the fallacy of the system. The dragon is the pagan beast, according to Mr. Gaussen, but "one recognises it to be the same beast," he says, "by the duration of its war against the saints." The war of the dragon! Is it the pagan empire that persecuted during the twelve hundred and sixty years? This also, which we indeed find in that chapter (for the woman flies into the wilderness from the face of the dragon, there to be fed twelve hundred and sixty days), overturns all Mr. Gaussen's system, which brings in that period after the complete change of the dragon through Christianity; and not only that, but he makes his period of twelve hundred and sixty days to begin under the second form of the beast. The dragon has nothing to do with the twelve hundred and sixty days in Mr. Gaussen's system, but it is what he has in Revelation 12. That is, the system is untenable. It is in vain to say that it is the same beast. Observe by the way the uncertainty which reigns here. Mr. Gaussen says (page 248), "It [the empire has] nevertheless had emperors at the same time as kings, until the days of Buonaparte." In page 250, "The ten kings have hardly ever ceased to own a holy Roman empire." "One might almost say it has lasted till our day." He had positively affirmed it two pages before. But, elsewhere, he confesses there had been an interval of sixty years (vol. 2, page 255); and more positively (vol. 3, page 274), where it is said that it must perhaps be prolonged even two hundred and sixty-three years more.