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other persecutions, and we may suppose peculiarly of the Diocletian one, are exhibited to us under the fifth seal. St. John beholds the souls of the martyrs under the altar, and hears them crying with a loud voice for the just vengeance of heaven against their persecutors. Their prayer is heard, and is in a measure answered under the sixth scal; though it will not be completely answered until the great day of retribution, "until their fellow-servants also, and their brethren, that * should be killed as they were," in subsequent days of popish bigotry, "should be fulfilled." The sixth seal is opened; and, at the very time when the affairs of the Church appear at the lowest ebb, the reign of persecuting paganism is suddenly brought to an end, and christianity is publicly embraced and supported by Constantine. This great revolution is pourtrayed indeed under images borrowed from the day of judg ment: but, although the Archdeacon applies the sixth seal literally to the day of judgment itself, he is too skilful a biblical critic not to know that the very images which it exhibits are repeatedly used by the ancient prophets and even by our Lord himself to describe the fates of empires. The reason seems in some measure at least to be this: the downfall of any false religion or of any antichristian empire may be considered as an apt type of the last day, when retribution will be fully dealt out to all the enemies of God *.

The first seal then exhibits the Church of a spotless white colour, and under the influence of a heavenly rider. The second exhibits her of a red colour, and under the influence of a spirit of fiery zeal and internal discord. The third ex

hibits

"were two eye-witnesses, have written large accounts of it. Orosius asserts "that this persecution was longer and more cruel than all the past; for it

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raged incessantly for ten years by burning the churches, proscribing the innocent, and slaying the martyrs. Sulpicius Severus too describes it as "the most bitter persecution, which for ten years together depopulated the 66 people of God; at which time all the world almost was stained with the "sacred blood of the martyrs, and was never more exhausted by any wars. "So that this became a memorable era to the Christians, under the name of "the era of Diocletian, or as it is otherwise called the era of martyrs." Bp. Newton's Dissert. on Seal V.

* See Mede, Bp. Newton, and the Archdeacon.

hibits her as changed to black, and beginning to be subjected to a grievous yoke of will-worship and to experience the hørror of a spiritual famine. The fourth exhibits her under the last and most dreadful persecution of paganism, as having assumed a fivid cadaverous hue, as bestridden by death, and pursued by hell, as experiencing the excision of a fourth part of her members throughout the whole apocalyptic earth or the Roman empire, and we may add as falling into danger of the second death through constrained apostasy. The fifth exhibits to us the souls of the martyrs; and represents their blood, like that of Abel, as crying to God for vengeance upon their persecutors. And the sixth symbolically describes the overthrow of paganism and the establishment of christianity.

The seventh seal introduces the septenary of the trumpets. We are now arrived at the days of Constantine: but St. Paul had predicted, that a great apostasy should take place, and that a power which he styles the man of sin should be revealed, after he that letted, or the Western Roman empire, had been taken out of the way. In exact accordance with this prophecy of St. Paul, St. John proceeds to describe under the four first trumpets the removal of him that letted; and then, at the sounding of the fifth, the great apostasy in both its branches commences in the self-same year, and the man of sin is revealed.

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Such is the interpretation, which I give of this part of the Apocalypse, and which appears to me to accord better with its probable chronological arrangement than that broughtforward by the Archdeacon.

2. After my general objections to the Archdeacon's arrangement, it may be almost superfluous to state, that, if there be any cogency in those objections, his application of the fifth trumpet or the first woe to the Gnostics must be deemed inadmissible. Yet, since he has objected to the common exposition of this trumpet as relating to the rise of Mohammedism and and the ravages of the Saracens, it may be expedient to say a few words on the subject.

The Archdeacon supposes, that the sixth trumpet or the second woe does not relate exclusively to the Turks, as most modern commentators have imagined, but to all the professors

of Mohammedism, Saracens as well as Turks; and consequently that it begins to sound in the year 606, whence the rise of Mohammedism is most properly dated. Such an exposition of the two first woes does not seem to me to accord with the Archdeacon's own very excellent principle of homogeneity. In addition to the fifth and sixth trumpets being alike styled woes, the prophecies contained under each of them bear a most striking resemblance to each other, insomuch that there is nothing else in the whole Apocalypse that is at all similar either to the one or to the other of them. Yet, besides their being represented as successive and as constituting two distinct woes, there is a sufficient degree of difference between them to shew plainly that they cannot relate precisely to the same people and the same event. Now, independent of the Gnostics not harmonizing with the chronology of the Apocalypse (if there be any force in my general objection), I cannot but think homogeneity violated by referring the one prophecy to the Gnostics and the other to the Mohammedans. There is a greater difference between the actions of the Gnostics and the actions of the Mohammedans, than the obvious similarity of the two predictions will warrant; and at the same time there is a less striking resemblance between their principles, than the predictions seem to require. The actions of the Gnostics and the actions. of the Mohammedans were totally unlike; and I can see no reason why the principles of the Gnostics should be thought to resemble those of the Mohammedans more than the principles of many other Christian heretics. But, in the case of the Saracens and the Turks, we exactly find at once the required similarity and the required dissimilarity: and, while homogeneity is thus preserved inviolate, the chronology of the Apocalypse (supposing it to be, as I have attempted to prove it to be, one continued vision) remains perfectly unbroken. With so much in favour of Mede's interpretation, I cannot feel my faith in it shaken by the Archdeacon's objections. I fully agree with him, that the fallen star of the fifth trumpet cannot mean Mohammed: but this objection is removed by the interpretation which I have given of it. His three next objections do not seem to me insurmountable. The symbolical darkness of the

fifth trumpet I do not conceive to mean the darkness of preceding heresies: it began to issue out of the bottomless pit or hell, when the false prophet retired to the cave of Hera to vent his imposture. I cannot see, why we are bound to conclude that the darkness must extend to the whole christian world, merely because it is said that the sun and the air were darkened; any more than we ought to suppose the whole natural world darkened, because a great smoke darkened the sun and the air to the inhabitants of a particular country. The regions, in which the Waldenses most flourished, certainly did escape in a remarkable manner the incursions of the Saracens; and I think, with Bp. Newton, that this escape is a sufficient fulfilment of the prophecy. The fifth objection is invalid, supposing the prediction to relate to the Saracens in particular, and not to the Mohammedans in general. The Saracens indeed subsisted as a nation more than 150 years, just as the Gnostics continued as a sect more than 150 years; but they subsisted as an unsettled nation, answering to the character of a woe inflicted by locusts, exactly 150 years. In the sixth objection there is some weight, but I cannot allow it to counterbalance the arguments in favour of Mede's interpretation. In prophecies avowedly descriptive we not unfrequently meet with a mixture of the literal with the symbolical. Thus, in the final battle of Armageddon, if we compare the description of it with other parallel prophecies, Christ is probably a literal character, the kings of the earth and their armies are certainly literal characters, and the beast is just as certainly a symbolical character. Apply this remark to the Archdeacon's objection, that commentators, in order to refer the fifth trumpet to the Saracens, sometimes expound it literally and sometimes symbolically; and perhaps it may not be thought wholly unanswerable*. So again: whatever might have been the state of the Turkish nation before it it is mentioned by St. John, it was certainly, immediately before the period of its supposed introduction into the Apocalypse, divided into four sultanies; and those four sultanies were seated upon the Eu

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phrates whereas the rise of Mohammedism from the cave of Hera in Arabia can by no ingenuity be transferred to the Euphrates. It is not sufficient to say, that the Saracens were at a subsequent period seated upon the Euphrates: a prophecy relating to the rise of Mohammedism, must commence from Arąbia*. With regard to the propriety of considering the Saracens and the Turks as woes, the Archdeacon cannot object to it even according to his own definition of a woet: for surely the rapid propagation of Mohammedism by the Saracens, and its establishment by the Turks, may well be considered as two heavy woes to the christian church; especially if we take into the account the contemporary rise and establishment of the western apostasy. On the same ground, neither can he object to the interpretation which I have given of the third woe, as ushering in the open development of French atheism and anarchy. But I much doubt whether his idea of the three apocalyptic woes be perfectly accurate. They are woes to "the inhabiters of the earth 1." But the inhabiters of the earth are not the pure church, but the idolatrous inhabitants of the Roman empire. Accordingly, all the woes, supposing the seven vials to constitute jointly the third woe, are represented as punishments inflicted both upon the eastern and western Romans §. The sense, which the Archdeacon affixes to the apocalyptic earth, or (as he sometimes translates the original word) land, is irreconcileable with many passages wherein that symbol is introduced : therefore I consider it as untenable. And I think his definition of the apocalyptic sea to be equally untenable, and for the same reason.

3. The Archdeacon supposes the woman described in the 12th chapter to denote the Church, not merely while christian, but from the very earliest ages; and he conceives the manchild to be the literal Messiah, with whom the Church had been travailing in earnest expectation through a long series of The war in heaven he likewise understands literally, and believes it to relate to the expulsion of Satan and his apostate

years.

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4, 20, 21. xi. 15, 18. xvi. 2, 5, 6, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 17, 19. pare the Archdeacon, p. 210, 211. with Rev. xiii. 8, 12, 14.

Rev. ix.

|| Com¶p. 211.

angels.

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