Chapter 110

¹ Since, then, we have already in another treatise rendered an account concerning these matters—both the coming of the Antichrist and his lineage, and from where and how the deceiver shall be present—and have not passed over his activity in silence, nevertheless even now I shall briefly call it to mind, so that a man, standing firm in all respects and wavering in his mind at nothing, may be able to believe God with his whole heart.

² For the blessed Daniel says, when interpreting the vision for Nebuchadnezzar—I mean that of the image, whose head he declared to be of gold, then hands and arms and breast of silver, then belly and thighs of bronze, then legs of iron, then feet, in which one part was of iron and one part of clay—that in this he might show forth what he himself has now set out in his own vision by means of the beasts:

³ namely, that the gold is the kingdom of the Babylonians, which was the lioness; the silver, that of the Persians, which was the bear; then the bronze, that of the Greeks, over whom Alexander the Macedonian ruled, that he might signify the leopard.

⁴ After these things he speaks of legs of iron, that he might signify the beast terrible and astounding, the one having teeth of iron—which is the Romans who now hold power, being strong as iron.

⁵ Now after the iron legs of the image, what remains except the feet, in which are ten toes, and these mingled of clay and iron—so that by the ten toes the ten horns might be signified, and by the clay and the iron their discord, in that they shall indeed be commingled in the seed of men, yet they shall not cleave together, the one with the other?

⁶ For just as iron does not mingle with clay, so neither then shall men be able to be of one mind with one another, as different ones are carried in different directions in disorder, and divide the kingdom among themselves nation by nation.