1. Still more clearly in the Apocalypse has John, the Lord’s disciple,
pointed out the things about the last times, and the empire which now reigns
will be divided among the ten kings. He explained what the ten horns seen by
Daniel were. He affirmed that this is what was said to him: And the ten horns that you saw are ten kings
who have not yet received royal power, but they are to receive authority as
kings for one hour together with the
beast. These are of one mind and give over their power and authority to the
beast; they will make war on the Lamb, and the Lamb will conquer them, for he
is Lord of lords and King of kings, and those with him are called and chosen
and faithful. Hence, it is evident that he who is to come will kill three
of these, and the rest will be made subject to him; he himself will be the
eighth among them. They will lay Babylon waste, and will burn her with fire,
and will give her kingdom to the beast, and will put the Church to flight.
After that they will be destroyed by the Lord’s coming. In fact, the Lord said
that the kingdom must be divided and thus perish: Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and no city or
house divided against itself will stand. So it is necessary that the
kingdom and city and house be divided into ten parts. For this reason he
already prefigured the partition and division.
Daniel, too, said carefully that the end of the fourth kingdom is the
toes of the statue that was seen by Nebuchadnezzar, against which the stone cut
off without hands fell. He says: And its
feet were partly iron and partly clay, till the stone that was cut off without
hands smote the statue on its feet of iron and clay, and broke them in pieces
completely. Then for the interpretation he said: And as you saw the feet and the toes partly of potter’s clay and partly
of iron, it shall be a divided kingdom; but some of the firmness of iron shall
be in it, just as you saw the iron mixed with miry clay. And the toes of the
feet were indeed partly iron and partly clay. So the ten toes are the ten
kings among whom the kingdom will be divided, of which some are strong and
energetic, while others will be weak and idle, and they will not agree among
themselves. Of this Daniel said: The
Kingdom shall be partly strong and partly brittle. And as you saw the iron
mixed with miry clay, so will they mix with one another in marriage, but they
will not hold together, just as iron does not mix with clay. And that the
end will come he tells us: And in the
days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which shall never
be destroyed, nor shall his sovereignty be left to another people. It shall
break in pieces all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, and it shall stand
for ever, just as you saw that a stone was cut from a mountain by no hands, and
that it broke in pieces the clay and the iron and the bronze and the silver and
the gold. The great God has made known to the king what shall be hereafter. The
dream is true and its interpretation sure. (Irenaeus, Against Heresies 5.26.1, in St.
Irenaeus of Lyons: Against the Heresies Books 4 & 5 [trans. Dominic Unger
and Scott D. Moringiello; Ancient Christian Writers 72; Mahwah, N. J.: The
Newman Press, 2004], 182-83)
