An humble attempt to promote explicit agreement and visible union of God's people in…

Whereas 'tis represented, Rev. xvii.10, 11. that there are seven different successive Heads of the Beast; that five were past, and another was to come, and to continue a short Space, that might on some Accounts be reckoned a seventh; and that Antichrist was to follow next after this, as the eighth; but yet the foregoing not being properly one of the Heads of the Beast, he was properly the seventh; Mr. Lowman don't think with others, that by the seventh that was to continue a short Space, which would not be properly one of the Heads of the Beast, is meant Constantine and the other Christian Emperors; (for he thinks they are reckoned as properly belonging to the sixth Head of the Beast) but that hereby is intended the Government that Rome was subject to under the Gothic Princes, and the Exarchate of Ravenna, after the Imperial Form of Government in Rome ceased in Augustulus, 'till the Pope was invested with his temporal Dominion, called St. Peter's Patrimony, by Pepin King of France, in the Year 756. And he supposes, that that wounding of one of the Heads ⟨p. 134⟩of the Beast with a Sword unto Death, that we read of Chap. xiii.3, and 14. was not fulfilled in the Destruction of the Heathen Empire, and the giving the Imperial Power unto Christians, but in the Destruction of the Imperial Form of Government, by the Sword of the Goths, in the Time of Augustulus. But it seems to me to be very unlikely, that the Spirit of God should reckon Constantine and the Christian Emperors as proper Members, and belonging to one of the Heads, of that monstrous wild and cruel Beast, that is compared to a Leopard and a Bear, and a devouring Lion, and that had a Mouth speaking great Things and Blasphemies, and that rules by the Power and Authority of the Dragon, or the Devil; ^†which Beast is represented in this very 17th Chap. as full of Names of Blasphemy, and of a bloody Colour, denoting his exceeding Cruelty in persecuting the christian Church. For Constantine, instead of this, was a Member of the christian Church, and set by God in the most eminent Station in his Church; and was honoured, above all other Princes that ever had been in the World, as the great Protector of his Church, and her Deliverer from the persecuting Power of that cruel scarlet-coloured Beast. Mr. Lowman himself styles him a christian Prince, and Protector of the christian Religion.