While the points of difference between the beasts of chap. xiii. and chap. xvii. may thus without difficulty be reconciled, the points of agreement are such as to lead directly to the identification of the two. Some of these have already come under our notice in speaking of the differences. Others are still more striking. Thus the beast of chap. xiii. is described as the vicegerent of the dragon[452]; and the object of the dragon is to make war upon the remnant of the woman's seed.[453] When therefore we find the beast of chap. xvii. engaged in the same work,[454] we must either resort to the most unlikely of all conclusions--that the dragon has two vicegerents--or we must admit that the two beasts are one. Again, the characteristic of a rising from the dead is so unexpected and mysterious that it is extremely difficult to assign it to two different agencies; yet we formerly saw that this characteristic belongs to the beast of chap. xiii., and we shall immediately see that it belongs also to that of chap. xvii. Nay more, it is to be noticed that both in chap. xiii. and in chap. xvii. the marvelling of the world after the beast is connected with his resurrection state.[455] This was undoubtedly the case in chap. xiii.; and in the present chapter the cause of the world's astonishment is not less expressly said to be its beholding in the beast _how that he was, and is not, and shall be present_.[456] Let us add to what has been said that the figures of the Apocalypse are the product of so rich and fertile an imagination that, had a difference between the two beasts been intended, it would, we may believe, have been more distinctly marked; and the conclusion is inevitable that the beast before us is that also of the thirteenth chapter. Turning then to the beast as here represented, we have to note one or two particulars regarding him, either new or stated with greater fulness and precision than before; while, at the same time, we have the explanation of the angel to help us in interpreting the vision. (1) The beast _was, and is not, and is about to come up out of the abyss: and he goeth into perdition_. The words are a travesty of what we read of the Son of man in chap. i.: "I am the first and the last, and the living One; and I became dead: and, behold, I am alive for evermore."[457] An antichrist is before us, who has been slaughtered unto death, and the stroke of whose death shall be healed.[458] Still further we seem entitled to infer that when this beast appears he shall have the marks of his death upon him. _They that dwell on the earth shall marvel when they behold the beast, how that he was, and is not, and shall be present._ The inference is fair that there must be something _visible_ upon him by which these different states may be distinguished. In other words, the beast exhibits marks which show that he had both died and passed through death. He is the counterpart of "the Lamb standing as though it had been slaughtered."[459]