He finds him under the _Beast_ of the Revelation of St. John, (xvii. 11‐14,) who will drive the Church into the wilderness, and finally be vanquished by our Lord. He identifies the ten kings who will give their kingdom to the beast with the ten divisions of Daniel’s fourth kingdom, (Dan. ii. 33,) of whom three will be killed by Antichrist; and the rest, submitting to him, will assist him in conquering Babylon, and burning it with fire: and he makes the stone cut out without hands to be Christ, who shall destroy temporal kingdoms, and set up an eternal one, (Dan. ii. 44, 45(513)). Irenæus again sees Antichrist in the _beast_ (Rev. xiii. 2‐18) whose head was wounded, who has a mouth given to him speaking great things, and receives power for forty and two months; who has an armour‐bearer, called the false prophet, who will work great miracles by magical power, through the aid of evil spirits; the number of whose name is 666(514). Respecting this number he enters into a special discussion, in which he first reproves those who hastily endeavoured to interpret it(515), and then endeavours to lay down correct principles of interpretation for it. He suggests that we must wait till the other signs of Antichrist begin to be fulfilled, such as the division of the Roman Empire into ten parts, and the sudden coming of another power to their discomfiture. We must also remark, he tells us, that Jeremiah (viii. 16) has foretold that he will be of the tribe of Dan(516). We must not be rash in applying the number to any particular individual or power, for many names will correspond with it, such as Εὐάνθας, Λατεῖνος, (which he thinks very probable, as being the name of the last of the four empires,) and Τειτὰν, for which he suggests many, to his apprehension, plausible recommendations(517). This is the sum of what he tells us on the subject of Antichrist; and he declares that when he has reigned, sitting in the temple of Jerusalem, for three years and a half, then the Lord will come to judgment, and to introduce the times of the kingdom of heaven, and the true Sabbath, in which many shall come from the east and west, and sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob(518). It is foreign to my purpose to enter into the probability or improbability of these interpretations: but two things strike me as remarkable: first, the decided identification of the ten horns of _the beast_ with the Roman Empire in a state of division; and secondly, the admission of the mystical meaning of _days_ in the prophecy of Daniel (viii. 27) as signifying _years_, coupled with the literal interpretation of time in other passages; as, for instance, Dan. vii. 25, and Rev. xiii. 5.