2. The woman is the Church of Christ, originally comprehending all professed Christians, but afterwards confined within narrow limits, and driven into the wilderness. She is represented, as being clothed with the Sun; to denote, that her spiritual nakedness is only clothed by the righteousness of Christ: as standing upon the Moon, which, like herself, is a symbol of the Church, to mark, that she shines only with a borrowed light, being naturally a dark opaque. body: and as wearing a crown of twelve stars; to shew, that, as the Church is a crown of rejoicing to the Apostles, so the Apostles are the brightest crown of the Church.

3. The dragon, as St. John himself repeatedly teaches us, is the devil. He is represented with seven heads and ten horns, to shew us by whose visible agency he should persecute the woman; namely, by that of the seven-headed and tenhorned beast mentioned in the next chapter: and he is said to be in heaven, because the empire,

*Bp. Newton supposes the moon here to mean the Jewish new moons and festivals as well as all sublunary things: but I cannot find, that this interpretation at all tallies with the general analogy of symbolical language. When the Sun means a temporal sovereign; the Moon, as Sir Isaac Newton very justly observes, and as I have stated in my chapter upon symbols, is "put for the body of the common people, considered as the king's wife:" when the Sun is Christ; the Moon will, in a similar manner, signify his mystical wife the Church.

† 1 Thess. ii. 19.

which he used as his tool, made profession of Christianity, and was therefore a part, although an apostate part, of the visible Church general*.

Here it is of importance to remark, that the woman appears in heaven previous to the dragon's appearing there, and that they both appear in heaven before the commencement of the 1260 years. This perfectly corresponds with the history of the Church. The empire, which was a tool of the dragon, was not originally in the ecclesiastical heaven: nor did the dragon begin to use it overtly as his tool, until the apostasy of 1260 years had commenced; although a very general individual apostasy from the purity of the primitive faith had taken place prior to such commencement†, whence the dragon is likewise

* It is observable, that our reformers never thought of unchurching the church of Rome; though they freely declared it to have "erred, not only in living and manner of ceremonies, "but also in matters of faith." Hence, while they rejected its abominationis, they did not scruple to derive from it their line of episcopal and sacerdotal ordination; well knowing, that holiness of office is a perfectly distinct thing from holiness of character, and that the consecration of a Judas was no less valid than that of a Paul or a Peter.

+ This distinction between an individual and an authorized apostasy, the first commencing previous to and the other with the 1260 years, is stated at large in the beginning of this work (vol. i. p. 14, 15, 16.). I conceive it to be of great use in explaining the present prophecy, because it accounts for the representation of the dragon being in heaven, and of an apostasy taking place before the commencement of the 1260 years.

said to be in heaven prior to it. It is manifest therefore, that, as the labour-pains of the woman precede the 1260 years, so her open persecution by the dragon is carried on during the continuance of those years, and consequently (as I have already observed) can have no relation to the persecution of Christianity by pagan Rome. Since then the dragon uses the apostate Roman empire as his tool; its public apostasy, and his publicly beginning thus to use it, must be synchronical: and therefore his first direct attack upon the manchild, and the flight of the woman into the wilderness, must synchronize with the commencement of the authorized Apostasy, that is to say, with the commencement of the 1260 years.

As he is described with seven heads and ten horns in allusion to the first apocalyptic beast, or the Papal Roman empire: so he is said likewise to have a tail in reference to the corrupt superstition so successfully taught by the second apocalyptic beast, or, as he is elsewhere, styled, the false prophet. With this tail he draws the third part of the stars of heaven, and casts them down to the earth in other words, he causes those Christian bishops, whose sees lay in the Roman Empire*, to apostatize from the purity of the apostolic faith. This event is said to have taken place before the

*We have already seen, that the Roman Empire is frequently represented in the Revelation as being a third part of the symbolical Universe.

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commencement of the 1260 years. Long previous to that era there was a grievous individual apostasy from the faith. The whole Roman em- . pire was gradually corrupted; and this corruption paved the way for the developement of an authorized apostasy, and the revelation of the man of sin. The dragon had indeed crept into the Church before the commencement of the 1260 years; but that period is the peculiar time, during which he is permitted to reign, and during which the saints are openly given into the hand of the little horn hence the woman is said to flee from his face, during precisely that period, into the wilderness, as Elijah heretofore did from the face of Ahab: And there, in the midst of the spiritual barrenness which spreads far and wide around her, she is fed with the heavenly manna of the word in her prepared place; as Elijah was, in the waste and howling desert, by the

ravens.

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4. Thus far the prophecy is sufficiently easy of interpretation, but the character and birth of the man-child are attended with no small degree of difficulty. That he must be Christ in some sense, is manifest, as Mr. Mede very justly observes*; but the matter is, how we are to interpret his birth and character, so as to make them accord with the general tenor of the prediction. It

* "Cum verba sint Christi periphrasis, necesse est ut "iisdem Christus aliquis designetur." Comment. Apoc. in loc.

seems at once extremely harsh, and altogether incongruous with the universal phraseology of Scripture, to suppose that the absolutely literat Christ can be intended by this symbol; for our Lord is invariably represented as the husband, never as the son, of his Church. Hence Mr. Mede conceives, that the mystic Christ is here meant, or Christ considered in his members; in other words, that by the man-child we are to understand the whole body of the faithful, or the spiritual children of the Church. The greatest difficulty however yet remains. Supposing this interpretation of the symbol to be the right one, how are we to interweave it with the prediction, so as to make them properly harmonize together? Mr. Mede believes the pains of the woman previous to her parturition to denote the persecutions of the Church during the days of paganism; the birth of the child to mean the spiritual birth of the faithful by baptism; and the catching up of the child to the throne of God to signify the introduction of the Christians into sovereign power by the conversion of the Roman empire under Constantine. But, if the man-child symbolize the whole body of the faithful, and if his birth denote the spiritual birth of the faithful; why should they be said to be born in the age of Constantine rather than in any other age, since numbers of spiritual children still continue to be born to the Church by the laver of regeneration, 'and will thus continue to be born to the end of the world?

Mr.