obscurities of what follows in the prophecy, (the which I shall hope to do in the chapters following,) but of adding confirmation to the historical exposition of its commencement, just given. Nor,-thanks be to God's providential care over the records known by Him to be illustrative of it,-is the additional proof that we might reasonably desire on so important a point wanting. The fact is, there exists what I may call documentary, and indeed almost ocular evidence of it, to my own mind singularly striking. It is such, I think, as will not only satisfy us as to the justness of our reference of the opening clause of the vision generally to the Reformation ; but will connect it, by certain most remarkable chronological and historical coincidences, with that wonderful event's precise epoch of commencement. Yet more, it will serve as a guide and index to prepare us for observing in all that follows of the vision,-even down to the Witnesses' ascent and fall of the tenth part of the Great City described in Apoc. xi. 12, 13,-the orderly prefiguration, point by point, of each chief subsequent step of progress in the Reformation. For, as that event is of all others that have happened since apostolic times in Christendom the grandest and most glorious,—so it is of all others that which was prefigured most fully and circumstantially in the apocalyptic prophecy.

CHAPTER III.

EPOCH OF ANTICHRIST'S TRIUMPH THE EPOCH OF CHRIST'S INTERVENTION.

"And I saw a mighty Angel descending from heaven, clothed with a cloud; and the rainbow was upon his head; and his face was as the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire, and he had in his hand a little book opened. And he set his right foot on the sea, and his left on the land; and cried with a loud voice, as a lion roareth?"

3

Let me, in introduction to what follows, remind the reader of that principle of allusive reference, in visions figuring CHRIST's revelations of himself to his true church, to something opposed to it and Him, which we have seen exemplified very strikingly already twice in this Commentary; viz. first in the sealing vision of Apoc. vii,' secondly in the incense-offering vision of Apoc. viii.2 Such then having been the case previously, it is natural for the question to arise in the inquirer's mind, whether perchance there may not be here also, on occasion of this third representation of Christ on the Apocalyptic scene, some such allusive reference and contrast: the rather because there appears in the action of the Angel, whether as regards his planting of his feet on earth and sea, or his roaring as a lion, a singular abruptness and decision; in no way so simply explicable, it might seem, as by the supposition of reference to some signal usurpation of his rights at the time figured, and the triumph of some enemy and rival. Thus we are led to inquire, whether, at the epoch just before the Reformation, there was any such signal triumph of antichristian usurpation and usurper in Christendom? Whether ANTICHRIST, the ANTICHRIST of Daniel, St. Paul, and St. John, had really risen in the Church visible; (for he it is of whom we must needs think when such usurpation is hinted ;) and not only advanced pretensions to the place of the Lord Jesus in it, but succeeded in establishing them? Also whether, just at the said epoch, his triumph was so signalized as to furnish any remarkable parallelism of particulars, in contrast with those that accompanied Christ's emblematic appearance and descent, in the vision now before us; parallelisms such as we verified in the cases of the sealing and incense-offering visions, from comparison of their details with certain prominent characteristics of the apostacy at the times prefigured.

1 See Vol. i. pp. 244-257.

2 See Vol. i. pp. 302-320.

3 In the contrast of God's 144,000 sealed ones in Apoc. xiv. and the Beast's sealed ones in Apoc. xiii,-that of Babylon and Jerusalem,-and that of the Bride and the Harlot, we see the same principle of contrast kept up afterwards also: only in these latter cases expressly, not allusively.

The which suggestion and inquiry direct us at once to Rome. For with Rome and its seven hills, prophecy, we saw, in our early glances of it, prospectively connected Antichrist. There, moreover, and in the person of its bishops, we noticed certain suspicious symptoms of the development of Antichrist, that occurred some nine centuries before the times now under review. There, in the historical sketch prefixed to the vision of the Turkish Woe,3 we expressed a presumptive belief of his being enthroned and ruling, at the bisecting chronological point of those nine centuries. And though in the sketch of the Middle Ages, given in the chapter last but one preceding this, we did not directly advert to the point, yet it was evident, from the moral and religious corruptions of Western Christendom, as subordinated to Rome, and their support and fostering by the Romish bishops,* that everything there noted tended to corroborate the impression, not to negative it.-Thither then let us pass in imagination; and observe what may be enacting at Rome, and by the Pope, at the epoch and crisis that we have supposed alluded to in the vision of the text: i. e. at the crisis that immediately preceded the Reformation.

And behold, the historic records of the times referred to represent to us, just at this epoch, a scene in that seven-hilled city of high triumph and festival. There had been very recently a new election to the Popedom. The announcement was made at the time from the window of the conclave of Cardinals: "I tell you tidings of great joy: a new Pope is elected, Leo the X: "5 and the 1 Vol. i. pp. 204, 365. Of course a fuller inquiry will be needed into these prophecies of Antichrist; and it will in the next, or 4th part of my Work be given. 2 Vol. i. 386-389. 3 Vol. i. p. 447.

4 See pp. 10-28 suprà, passim. "Gaudium magnum nuncio vobis. Papam habemus Reverendissimum Dominum Johannem de Medicis, qui vocatur Leo Decimus." This was the usual form of announcement. Roscoe's Leo X, ii. 174, 409. (3rd Ed.)

It is curious that on Leo's promotion to the Cardinalate, when only thirteen years old, some 25 years before, Ficinus thus wrote: "Semen Johannis ejusdem," (viz. of Lorenzo of Medici "in quo benedicentur omnes gentes, est Johannes Laurentiæ genitus: cui adhuc adolescentulo divina Providentia mirabiliter cardineam contulit dignitatem, futuri Pontificii augurium." Epist. ix. p. 159, (Venet. 1495,) given in M'Crie's Italy, p. 11.

festivities began, on his coronation at St. Peter's, immediately after. But the grander ceremonial of his going to take possession of the church of his bishopric, St. John Lateran, that church by the bishopric of which as the mother and mistress of all churches, he is to be constituted not only bishop of Rome, but, by consequence, of the church universal, was delayed for a month, to allow of the proper pomp attending it.' And now the day is come for its celebration. The city is thronged with visitors on the occasion. Besides the hierarchy of Rome, there appear many of the independent princes of Italy; ambassadors also from most of the states of Western Christendom, and moreover the episcopal and ecclesiastical deputies that have assembled to represent the church universal in the General Council now holden at the Lateran; a Council convoked a year since by Pope Julius, (in opposition to the French king's Conciliabulum, or Private Council, held at the time at Pisa,) and which has already been advanced through five Sessions.-The concourse from early morn has been to the great square before St. Peter's. There the procession forms on horseback, and thence puts itself in motion: its course being across the bridge of St. Angelo, through the heart of the city, to the Lateran church at its opposite extremity. First in order is a troop of cavalry; then a long line of the gentry and nobility; then successively the senators of Rome, a file of Florentine citizens and other provincials, the Pope's body-guard, and a second file of provincial barons and gentry; then the envoys from Germany, Spain, Portugal, and other parts of Christendom; then abbots, bishops, archbishops, and patriarchs, above 250; then the cardinals :-the ecclesiastical dignitaries wearing their jewelled mitres and their copes; the rest drest in richest costumes, and with banners streaming, as on a day of Jubilee:-then,

1 For authority in regard of this ceremonial, the reader is referred to the interesting, curious, and full account given by a Florentine physician, I. I. De Pennis, who was an eye-witness of it. It was addressed to the Countess of Piero Ridolphi, sister to Leo X: and the only copy of it preserved is in the Vatican. It is given as No. 70, in the Appendix to Roscoe's Leo the X.

at length, thus preceded, and duly followed and closed in by a troop of military, Himself the Hero, (is it not rather the God?) of the day, Himself the POPE! The horses of the bishops and cardinals preceding him are covered from head to foot with white trappings.1 He comes forth Himself too on a white horse: a cope of richest broidery mantling him; the ring of espousal with the Universal Church glittering on his right-hand ringfinger ;3 and on his head the regno, or imperial tiara of three crowns. A canopy is borne over him by the chief

1 Of the bishops' horses it is said, "i cavalli coperti di guarnello bianco; excepti li occhi, donde vedeano." Of the cardinals'; "cavalli coperti, fino in terra, di taffeto biancho." Ib. 415. It was white for the occasion, and of course by Papal order. The usual colour for the cardinals' horse-trappings was now scarlet. Long appropriated to the Pope, the privilege had been accorded by Paul II, in 1463, to the cardinals, to use the same colour. Wadd. p. 645.

Compare, generally, on this subject of the processional, the Ordo for a new Pope's inauguration given in Martene, De Rit. ii. 88-90. The comparison will be both interesting and elucidatory.-Compare too the account of Gregory IX.'s inauguration, A.D. 1227, given in Waddington, p. 415.

? Penni does not give the colour of the "richissimo piviale" of the Pope. Martene seems to imply that the same white robe was still worn, that was previously worn by him in a preliminary service at St. Peter's. For, on occasion of his public sitting in the vestibule of St. Peter's, in the interval between the service and the procession, he states the custom of the Cardinal Deacon disrobing him of his pontifical mitre, and placing on his head the crown or regno, instead; but does not mention any other disrobing. The white, however, was not invariable and the richissimo of Penni may rather perhaps indicate the rich purple which the Pope often wore in his processions. So Bernard's description, in his De Considerat. iv. 3, addrest to Pope Eugenius: "purpuratus incedens, gemmis ornatus, vectus equo albo." And so Gregory IX, on his inauguration. Wadd. p. 415. Compare Apoc. xix. 11-14. "I saw heaven opened; and behold a white horse, and him that sate upon it. . . . . And on his head were many crowns .... And he was clothed in a garment dipped in blood. . . . and the armies of heaven followed him upon white horses," &c.

3 This was put on the ring-finger of the right hand in the preceding ceremonial service; and is expressly specified by Martene as to be worn by the newlyelected Pope in the procession: "Papa habebit annulum Pontificalem.”—As to the ceremony of putting it on, we thus read: "Consecratione manuum factâ, consecrator immittit annulum in digitum annularem dextræ manus Papæ consecrati, dicens ; ' Accipe annulum, fidei scilicet signaculum; quatenus sponsam Dei, viz. sanctam universalem ecclesiam, intemeratâ fide ornatus illibatè custodias."

On this regno, or Papal Imperial crown, see Ducange on the word, and his Supplement. I abstract from thence mainly what follows.

It has been said by some that this was originally given the Pope about A.D. 500 by the Frank king Clovis ; and that from thenceforward the Popes used it in public processions. But this, says G. Rhodig. de Liturg. is incorrect; and that it was not so used by them till after the seventh century. In Baronius ad Ann. 1159, it is described as " mitra turbinata cùm coronâ; Alexander III having just then added the first corona to the mitra: in an Epistle of which Pope soon after, it is described as regnum quod ad similitudinem cassidis ex albo fit indumento." Afterwards a second crown was added to it by Boniface VIII, about 1303; and a third by Urban V, A.D. 1362. And so it became a triple crown : as

"