576. [verse 3] 'And I saw one of his heads as if wounded to death' signifies that this point of doctrine, which is the head of all the rest, that a man is justified and saved through faith alone without the works of the law, is not in agreement with the Word, where works are so often commanded. By 'one of his heads' is signified the principal and fundamental point of the whole of the doctrine of the Church of the Reformed; for the beast had 'seven heads', by which the insanity resulting from sheer untruths is signified (n. 568), thus also all untruths in the aggregate; for by 'seven' in the Word all are signified (n. 10, 390). And because all the untruths of their doctrine concerning salvation depend upon this one, 'that a man is justified and saved by faith alone without the works of the law', it is this that is signified here by 'one of the beast's heads'. By its being 'as if wounded to death' is signified that it is not in agreement with the Word, where works are so often commanded; for every doctrine of the Church that is not in agreement with the Word is not sound, but sick with a deadly disease; for out of the Word, and from no other source, will the doctrine of the Church be.