Page 79 - New English Book L
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(b) All the four beasts are represented in the vision as
irrational brutes; but the Little Horn possessed a human
mouth and eyes, which is, in other words, the description
of a hideous monster endowed with reason and speech.
He proclaimed Christianity as the true religion, left Rome
to the Pope and made Byzantium, which was named
Constantinople, the seat of the empire. He pretended to
profess Christianity but was never baptized until a little
before his death, and even this is a disputed question. The
legend that his conversion was due to the vision of the
Cross in the sky has long since, like the account about
Jesus Christ (pbuh) inserted in the Antiquities of Josephus,
been exploded as another piece of forgery.
The enmity of the beasts to the believers in God
was brutal and savage, but that of the rational Horn was
diabolical and malignant. This enmity was most noxious
and harmful to the religion, because it was directed to
pervert the truth and the faith. All the previous attacks
of the four empires were pagan; they persecuted and
oppressed the believers but could not pervert the truth and
the faith. It was this Constantine who entered in the fold
of Jesus (pbuh) in the shape of a believer and in the clothes
of a sheep, but inwardly he was not a true believer at all.
How poisonous and pernicious this enmity was can be
seen from the following:
(c) The Horn-Emperor speaks “big things” or “great
words” (rorbhan in the Chaldean tongue) against the
Most High. To speak blasphemous words about God, to
associate with Him other creatures, and to ascribe to Him
foolish names and attributes, such as the “begetter” and
“begotten,” “birth” and “procession” (of the second and
the third person), “unity in the trinity” and “incarnation,”
is to deny His unity.