It has, ever since it was first established, occupied the seat of the dragon, the city of Rome, building for itself such a sanctuary, St, Peter's, as the world nowhere else beholds.

It is a blasphemous power, speaking the most presumptuous words it is possible for mortal lips to utter against the Most High.

It has worn out the saints, the Religious Encyclopedia estimating that the lives of fifty millions of Christians have been quenched in blood by its merciless implements of torture.

It has continued a time, times and a half, or forty-two months, or twelve hundred and sixty years.

Commencing in 538, when the decree of Justinian in behalf of papal supremacy was first made effectual by the overthrow of the Goths, the papacy enjoyed a period of uninterrupted supremacy for just twelve hundred and sixty years, when its power was temporarily overthrown, and its influence permanently crippled, by the French in 1798.
Can any one doubt that the papacy is the power in question, and that the interpretation of this symbol brings us down within seventy-six years of our own time?
We regard the exposition of the prophecy, thus far, as clear beyond the possibility of refutation; and if this is so, our future field of inquiry lies within a very narrow compass, as we shall presently see..