Latinus was the name of a king of Latium, but not of any Roman emperor. Hence it must
here be taken in a generic sense, and applied to the whole heathen Roman empire.
Here the Roman Catholic divines stop.^1269 But many Protestant commentators apply it also,
in a secondary sense, to the Latin or papal church as far as it repeated in its persecuting spirit the
sins of heathen Rome. The second beast which is described, Rev. 13:11–17, as coming out of the
earth, and having two horns like unto a lamb, and speaking as a dragon, and exercising all the
authority of the first beast in his sight, is referred to the papacy. The false prophet receives a similar
application. So Luther, Vitringa, Bengel, Auberlen, Hengstenberg, Ebrard, and many English
divines.
Dean Alford advocates this double application in his Commentary. "This name," he says,
"describes the common character of the rulers of the former Pagan Roman Empire—'Latini sunt
qui nunc regnant,’ Iren.: and, which Irenaeus could not foresee, unites under itself the character of
the later Papal Roman Empire also, as revived and kept up by the agency of its false prophet, the
priesthood. The Latin Empire, the Latin Church, Latin Christianity, have ever been its commonly
current appellations: its language, civil and ecclesiastical, has ever been Latin: its public services,
in defiance of the most obvious requisite for public worship, have ever been throughout the world
conducted in Latin; there is no one word which could so completely describe its character, and at
the same time unite the ancient and modern attributes of the two beasts, as this. Short of saying
absolutely that this was the word in St. John’s mind, I have the strongest persuasion that no other
can be found approaching so near to a complete solution." Bishop Wordsworth gives the same
anti-papal interpretation to the beast, and indulges in a variety of pious and farfetched fancies. See
his Com. on 13:18, and his special work on the Apocalypse.
Nero.
The Apocalypse is a Christian counterblast against the Neronian persecution, and Nero is
represented as the beast of the abyss who will return as Antichrist. The number 666 signifies the
very name of this imperial monster in Hebrew letters, קִ ןוׄׄנֵׄ, Neron Kaesar, as follows: נ (n) =50, ר (r) = 200, וֹ (o) = 6, ן (n) = 50, ק (k) = 100, ס (s) = 60, ר (r) = 200; in all 666. The Neronian
coins of Asia bear the inscription: Νερων Και σαρ. But the omission of the ִי(which would add 10
to 666) from רסיק = Καῖσαρ, has been explained by Ewald (Johanneische Schriften, II. 263) from
the Syriac in which it is omitted, and this view is confirmed by the testimony of inscriptions of
Palmyra from the third century; see Renan (L’Antechrist, p. 415).
The coincidence, therefore, must be admitted, and is at any rate most remarkable, since
Nero was the first, as well as the most wicked, of all imperial persecutors of Christianity, and
eminently worthy of being characterized as the beast from the abyss, and being regarded as the
type and forerunner of Antichrist.
This interpretation, moreover, has the advantage of giving the number of a man or a particular
person (which is not the case with Lateinos), and affords a satisfactory explanation of the varians(^1269) If they go farther, they discover the anti-Christian beast in the mediaeval German (the so-called "Holy Roman") empire in
conflict with the papacy, in the Napoleonic imperialism, the Russian Czarism, the modern German empire (the anti-papal
Cultur-Kampf ), in fact in every secular power which is hostile to the interests of the Roman hierarchy and will "not go to
Canossa." This would be the very reverse of the old Protestant interpretation.
A.D. 1-100.