Question No. 58:
Does not the “head” that was “wounded to death” (Rev. 13:3) represent the combined secular and ecclesiastical power of the Middle Ages?
Answer:
Those who understand that the wounded head of the leopard-like beast (Rev. 13:1-3) symbolizes Rome in her ecclesiastical period doubtless also understand that the “little horn,” which had “the eyes of man, and a mouth speaking great things” (Dan. 7:8), likewise symbolizes Rome before the head was wounded. Rightly to understand the subject, it is expedient to examine this double-phased symbol. from the ground up, beginning with Daniel’s view.
Having “eyes of man” and “a mouth,” the “little horn” is actually a horn-head, a unique thing among governments, a composite hierarchy of civil and religious powers fused into one sovereign head during the Dark and Middle Ages, the “glory that was Rome’s.”
Accordingly, the medieval union of secular and ecclesiastical powers in the Roman church gives the key to the interpretation of both the horn and the head, proving that the head which was wounded unto death is figurative of the ecclesiastical part only. For on the leopard-like beast, Rome is not represented by either a wounded horn or a horn-head, but by a wounded head only, which shows that the blow affected, not the secular half, the state (horn), but only the ecclesiastical half, the church (head).