Chapter XI. Second Section of the Seventh Seal

1.—“The Light Shining in Darkness”

Thus, the history of the ages and the generations of the unmeasured Court is in strict harmony with this prophecy of the witnesses. For a period considerably over a thousand years after Rome renounced its old gods for the ghosts, dry bones, and fables of the catholic superstition, the Spirit had provided himself with Two Witnessing Classes, to whose custody he providentially committed the truth, and its judicial vindication by fire and sword. This was their combined mission in all that long series of centuries. The one witness was the military arm of the other; and both in combination were the two arms of the Spirit, holding the Olive Branch in one hand, and the Flaming Sword, in the other. “These,” said the Spirit-Voice to John, “are the Two Olive Trees and two Lightstands, which have stood before the god of the earth.” That is, the p. 615 Two Olive Trees, or Branches, and Two Golden Pipes, about which Zechariah made special inquiry, represent these two classes of anticatholic and antipapal, but not “protestant,” though protesting, witnesses. They are represented by two olive trees, because, though generically one, they are distinct species of witnesses. They are both olive trees, in whom light-giving oil was generated, as already explained; but the one class of witnessing prophets is of the wild olive species; while the other is of the good, or cultivated olive.

In the eleventh chapter of Romans, Paul compares all mankind to two olive trees of the wild and cultivated species. The twelve tribes of Israel to whose country the olive is indigenous he likens to “a good olive tree,” with a “holy root,” representing “the fathers” Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, on whose account the whole nation is beloved. The rest of mankind he compares to “a wild olive tree,” which is smaller and inferior in all its parts. Eliphaz in Job xv. 33, compares a wicked man to an olive tree whose flowers fall before their season, and consequently brings no fruit.

Such is the primary import of these two trees, symbols of Israel and the Gentiles. But, the Israelitish Olive Tree, and the Gentile Olive Tree, signified something more than this in the symbols before us. There was a specialty to be represented which had been apostolically elicited. This was the adoption of believing Gentiles into the Israelitish Family, that they might be Israelites in every particular, except the accident of birth according to nature. This adoption, Paul styles “grafting in;” and figuratively represents the process, as a breaking of branches off from the wild Gentile olive, and inserting them into the place of certain sapless branches of the good Israelitish olive, which had also been broken off, and cast away. This teaches allegorically that while the good olive tree represents the Israelitish peoples generally; there is nevertheless a Gentile element in the nation, equally interested in the promises made to their fathers, which are “the fatness of the tree.” Thus, the good olive tree represents “the Israel of the Deity,” constituted of Israelites and Gentiles, who believe “the promises covenanted to the fathers;” and who, since Pentecost, A. D. 34, have believed “the truth as it is in Jesus,” and by immersion into him, have been adopted, or grafted, into the Commonwealth of Israel, as it will be in the times of restitution.

This union of Israelites and Gentiles into One Body, or Holy City, was represented to Zechariah, by connecting the two trees by means of two golden pipes with the one golden bowl of the lightstand; p. 616 the idea of branch-union being set forth in the connection of the pipes with certain branches of the trees.

In the eleventh chapter of the Apocalypse, the two olive trees are not united by pipes into one lightstand, as in Zechariah. This is an important item in the premises. In the first chapter, there is only one Lightstand with seven burners; but in the text before us, we have “two lightstands” with a tree to each. Had there been but one class of witnesses, composed of faithful and obedient Israelites and Gentiles, there would, doubtless, have been only one Lightstand, indicative of their union into One Body. We should then have found it impossible to interpret “the prophecy” in harmony with the anti-war principles delivered to it. But we are relieved of this difficulty by the introduction into the vision of two separate and distinct lightstands. A wild olive branch and a lightstand are symbolical of “the Earth”—the anticatholic and antipapal champion of civil and religious liberty, and the rights of man, standing defiantly “before the god of the earth,” and the other branches of the wild olive tree. Fed by the revolutionary principles of wild olive liberalism, the earthy lightstand shone with light amid the deep and universal gloom of “the dark ages.”

But, if this “lux lucens in tenebris,” or light shining in darkness, had been the only light, it would have been a feeble one indeed. It would have been like the light of “peace democracy” shining in the abolition darkness of the past four years. There was another lightstand and a good olive branch. These symbolized the One Body, witnessing the truth. This lightstand shone with the light of the word, “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light to my path”—Ps. cxix. 105. This was “the golden oil” of the good olive, by which the lightstand burners were fed. It was “the unction from the Holy One by which they knew all the things” they witnessed; and by which they were taught, “and is the truth”—1 John ii. 20, 27. By the shining of the light from this lightstand, the gross darkness of catholic superstition and idolatry were made tormentingly manifest. The god of the earth, his cardinals, bishops, priests, deacons, monks, and such like, were exhibited to the peoples of the Court, as profane mountebanks, and blasphemous impostors. The light showed them to be, what they are to this day, unrepentant hypocrites, and a generation of poisonous serpents. Multitudes were enlightened to discern this; and caused thereby to desert the temples of the god. They recruited the ranks of the witnesses, and greatly increased their power; until the issue was formed, that either these lightstands must be extinguished; or the p. 617 spirituals of the wickedness of the Court would find their occupation gone.

2.—“The God of the Earth”

Now, it is expressly said, that these “two witnesses,” “two olive trees,” “two lightstands,” and “two prophets,” “have stood before the god of the earth.” This was to be their position. This god is not to be mistaken for the Eternal Creator. Though he made the earth, and the sea, and all things that are therein; and claims them all as his, He is not styled in this prophecy “the God of the earth.” His title in this chapter is “the God of heaven,” to whom glory is ascribed at the concluding act of the second woe—ch. xi. 13. It is true, these witnesses in a certain sense stand before the Creator; but in the sense of giving testimony against, they do not; and that ενωπιον, before, is to be understood in the sense of against, is evident from the effect of their testimony which “torments,” and stirs up the powers to destroy them—verses 7, 10. These two witnessing classes of antipapists confront the representatives of the papal deity in all the nations of the abyss; and in so doing, they stand in a hostile attitude before the God of the earth.

I have already shown, that this was a deity newly come up from the abyss, which was entirely unknown to the nations of the fourth beast dominion, commonly styled the pagan Roman empire; and that he was two hundred and eighty years, after the similitude of a fœtus in embryo being two hundred and eighty days in developing into “THE MAN OF SIN, the Son of Perdition, who opposeth and exalteth himself over every one called god, or an object of fear”—σεβασμα—into the Lawless One, ὁ Ανομος, who, Daniel was informed, would “think to change times and laws;” and “whom the Lord will consume with the Spirit of his mouth, and destroy in the manifestation of his presence—τη επιφανεια της παρουσιας αυτου—2 Thess. ii. 3, 4, 8. This lawless deity of the court, who sets himself above all law even in his decrepitude, while he has to be supported upon his tottering throne against “the Earth” by French bayonets, claims to be the successor of the apostle Peter, and Vicegerent of Jesus Christ—in other words, THE ANTICHRIST—αντι, instead of, χριστος, Christ.

That the term deity, or god, is rightly applied to this imperially apotheosized Roman bishop, is apparent from the following testimonies:

“The venerable name of Pope (or Father)” says Gibbon, speaking p. 618 of A. D. 500, “was now appropriated to the Roman Pontiff.” Addressed by nations, it was an imperial, and originally a divine title. So Ovid says to Augustus, “Thou hast that name through earth, which in high heaven is Jupiter’s; thou, the Father of men, He of the gods.” And Horace, “Here thou mayest love to be called Father and Prince.” The title as given to the Roman Bishop, was sometimes in the form Pater Patrum, Father of fathers; as in a letter from the bishop of Larissa to Boniface II., A. D. 531, in which occurs the sentence, “to my holy lord, and over all most blessed, and truly venerable Father of Fathers, the universal Patriarch (Chief Father) Boniface.” The imperial and royal sense attached to the title pope, is illustrated in the legend of the medal of Julius III.; “Dominus Julius Rep. Christianæ Rex. ac Pater—“Lord Julius, King and Father of the Christian Commonwealth.”

In the time of Charlemagne, A. D. 799, a Roman Council declared, that the Pope who was the judge of all men was above being judged by any other than himself. So in the year 1090, “that the right of judging concerning every church is to the Pope alone; but he himself, indeed, is subject to the judgment of none.” Afterwards in the Canon Law, collected and published by Gratian in the 12th century, it was said, “It is certain that the Pontiff was called a God by the pious prince Constantine; and it is manifest that God cannot be judged by men.” This claim continued, unchanged in the 15th century. So A. D. 1463, on Paul II. dismissing Platina after his election, and Platina’s threatening to bring the case before the judges of the Rota, Paul fiercely replied, “Thou bring us before the judges? Would’st thou not know, that all laws are placed in the repository of our breast? . . . I am Pontiff: and upon the pleasure of my mind it depends both to rescind, and approve the acts of others.” Assuredly, no future antichrist can be more entitled to the name, “Lawless,” than the popes.

They exalted themselves above all called god, or an object of homage, worship, or fear. This papal exaltation and superiority. above all royal majesty, Innocent III. declared to be that of the sun above the moon; and Gregory VII. affirmed that it was fit that all Princes should kiss his feet. He claimed to make and unmake kings; to assign kingdoms and to take them away. Pius II. proposed even to the sultan of Turkey to give him a legal title to the Greek empire, if he would assist him. And to come nearer to our own times, we find Pius VII., while suffering under the deep humiliation inflicted upon him by Napoleon, asserting the same authority, “Let them learn,” said he, in his excommunication of Napoleon, p. 619 June 10, 1809, “that they are subjected by the laws of Jesus Christ to our throne, and to our commandment.” Concerning Celestin III., on occasion of the coronation of Henry VI. of Germany, A. D. 1191, Roger of Hoveden, gives the following illustration of the pope’s exaltation of himself “above all called god.” “The Lord Pope,” says he: “sat in the pontifical chair, holding the golden imperial crown between his feet; and the Emperor bending his head received the crown, and the Empress in the same manner, from the feet of the Lord Pope. But the Lord Pope instantly struck with his foot the Emperor’s crown, and cast it upon the ground; signifying that he had the power of deposing him from the Empire, if he were undeserving of it. The Cardinals however lifted up the crown, and placed it on the Emperor’s head.”

The pope was frequently addressed as Christ, and received the title as distinctively and only his due. Illustrative of this S. Bernard in the 12th century writes to Pope Eugenius, “Consider that thou art the Vicar of Christ, the Christ of the Lord.” Another and later illustration occurs in an official report about Pope Martin’s embassy to the Greek Emperor containing the following description of the Pope by his own accredited orator: “The most Holy and most Blessed One, who hath divine judgment, who is Lord on earth; successor of Peter, the Lord’s Christ, Lord of the universe, Father of kings, Light of the world, the Chief Pontiff Pope Martin.” It was the command of Gregory VII., that “the name of the pope alone should be recited in the churches;” and Southey observes, that men were required to bow at the Pope’s name (so recited) as at Christ’s.

In setting up for Vicar, he claimed to be the substitute, not of a pure man, but of the true God—“Summus Pontifex non hominis puri sed VERI DEI, veré Vicarius appellatur:”—ruling in place of the true God on earth—“VERI DEI, VICEM gerit in terris,” as said Innocent III. “Sir Culling Eardly,” says Mr. Elliott, from whose Latin notes I have translated these gleanings, “in a late pamphlet, notices the following title of a book, published with the sanction of the Neapolitan censorship in 1724, and which illustrates the common application of this title Vice-God to the popes, even in the 18th century: “Istoria dell’ antica Republica di Amalfi; Consecrata al VICE DEO Benedetto decimo-terzo, Pontefice Ottimo Massimo. Con licenza dei Superiori”—History of the ancient Republic of Amalphi; Consecrated to the Vice-God Benedict XIII., a perfectly good supreme pontiff. With license of the Superiors.

The Papal Casuists say, “that honor which is due to Christ, according p. 620 to what God is, is due to the Pope; because honor is due to power. But the power of Christ, according to what God is, and of the Pope, is one.” The same had been set forth by Innocent in his Decretals, “the Pope is God because the Vicar of God: also in the Canon Laws’ statement, before referred to, that Constantine called the pope a God; with the gloss, “Our Lord God the Pope.”

The following is a striking statement to the same effect from the “Speculum Vitæ Humanæ” of Rodericus Sancius, Romish Bishop and Refendary of Paul II.; a book published at Rome by Papal authority, in 1468, and many times afterwards. “The majesty of his most sacred state impairs every human intellect. If nothing in this world is more excellent than the state of simple priests, what must be thought of the Chief Pontiff who rules on earth instead of the true God? who is exalted, not only to a human sovereignty, but to a divine one; not to ruling mortals alone, but angels; not to judging the living, but also the dead; not on earth alone, but in heaven, by the great God, and in his place.”

The saying of a certain French writer concerning a particular pope, would be well and truly applied to the whole fraternity of papal gods. “The bulls of John XXIII.,” says he, “commenced with a lie—Servant of the servants of God. He ought rather to have entitled himself Lord of lords. Seeing that he boasts himself of having as much power as Jesus Christ possesses, as God and man.”

Some lines were addressed to an elephant presented to Leo X., two of which were as follows:

Si servire Deo veré est regnare, Leoni \ Dum servis regnas: nam Leo in orbe DEUS.

If to serve God truly is to reign, while thou servest Leo thou reignest; for Leo is God on earth—App. to Roscoe’s Leo, X.

This exaltation of the Roman Bishop from a Patriarch, or Chief Father, into the God of the earth, was not altogether approved by his brethren. Arnulph of Orleans in the Synod at Rheims, A. D. 991, exclaimed in reference to John XV.: “What is this, Reverend Fathers, sitting upon a lofty throne, radiant with a golden and purple vesture; what, I say, think ye that this is? Doubtless, if he is destitute of love, and puffed up and exalted with knowledge only, he is Antichrist sitting in the temple of Deity, and exhibiting himself as if he were God.” Arnulph’s suspicion was well founded, only he erred in supposing that Antichrist was to be found sitting in the temple of the true God. This is an universal error. The temple of the Deity who created all things, is a living temple; p. 621 a house not made with hands. In such a temple as the Roman, he does not dwell. His habitation is that Spiritual House, built up by his formative word, of lively precious stones, called saints, because they are “sanctified in Christ Jesus.” In this temple of the Deity, Antichrist has never yet sat enthroned, nor ever will. He sits in his own temple—in the temple of the God of the earth; and there, as represented in an engraving published at Rome with license of the authorities, and republished in Elliott’s Hor. Apoc. he sits upon the high altar of the Cathedral dedicated to Peter; and receives the adoration of his scarlet-robed cardinals, who worship him by bowing down before him, and kissing his toe! Thus, he sits in the temple of the deity as a deity, publicly exhibiting himself that he is a deity.” This is what Paul said, and most strikingly and literally it has come to pass.

In the year 727, Gregory II. boasted to the Dragon-Emperor, that “all the kings of the west held the pope to be a God upon earth.” In this he told the truth; for when Stephen visited France to obtain aid from the Franks against the Lombards, Pepin received him, according to Sismondi, as a Divinity.

In Elliott’s repository of papal curiosities, I have before me copies of medals, which illustrate very forcibly the “great things and blasphemies” of the Man Eyes and Mouth of the Little Horn, which were developed into the deity of the earth; before whom the witnesses stood, and by whose command they were at length killed.

The first is a medal struck by order of Martin V., A. D. 1417. The Roman Bishop is sitting upon a throne, with the Holy Spirit symbolized by a dove, hovering amidst rays over its canopy. Two cardinals, one on each side of him, are crowning him with the tiara, or conical cap with three diadems one above another, and surmounted at the peak by a ball and a cross. On the right of the throne is an altar with a cross upon it, and a light burning on each side of it. Before the altar and throne is a figure upon his knees, his hands lifted up in prayer, and his head thrown back in devout contemplation of the pope. Opposite to this representative of the multitude, are three cardinal princes and electors, who represent the spiritual and sovereign influences by which they were inspired in the election. On the margin, is the inscription “Quem creant adorant Romæ.” Whom they create they worship at Rome.

Another medal was struck by Calixtus III., A. D. 1456. Upon a knoll stands a cross with a tiara above it, and rays of spirit shed upon it. Behind the mound, intended to represent Calvary, is the open sea, studded with sailing craft, and a mountain peering up p. 622 above the horizon, symbolical of the governments of the world. In this symbolism, the Pope appears as Christ’s substitute, or vicar. Jesus had all the sufferings; the Pope claims all the glory. The legend of this medal shows this—“Omnes Reges servient ei”—All Kings shall serve him; that is, the Pope!

A third is a medal struck by Clement VII., A. D. 1525, commemorative of his opening of heaven at the jubilee. On the right is a doorway that had been walled up for the occasion. Standing before the wall is the Roman God with a pickaxe hard at work demolishing the wall, which is represented as about a third open, and the rubbish piled up at his feet. Above him in the air, and sitting upon a cloud with a key in his hand about the size of the pick, is Peter before the gate of heaven, which is unobscured by cloud in proportion to the opening in the gate below. The relation between the two gates is shown by a parallellogram of rays from Peter’s opening to the Pope’s. Behind the divine pickman are five waiting figures upon their knees, representative of the multitude, who have friends in purgatory. They are watching for the entire demolition of the wall, as the sign that Peter will have then finished his job above; and his door in heaven being wide open (and if the God below had not picked out his door, Peter’s would have never been opened at all) their suffering friends will pass through it, out of the scorching flames into the refreshing coolness of paradise! The legend of this medal is “Et Portæ Cœli apertæ sunt”—And the gates of heaven are opened.

A fourth medal struck by Alexander VII., A. D. 1655, represents the Roman God creating God out of bread for the people to worship, and then to eat. Upon a sedia gestatoria, or chair of state borne on clerical shoulders, the Pope is represented as kneeling before his breaden god, which he holds up to public gaze in a pyx, or small box, mounted on a stand. Above him is a canopy decorated with crosses, keys, and tiaras; and on either side of the sedia are priests bearing wide-expanded flabelli, or fans of peacocks’ feathers, mounted on staves, so as to flank the pope from his shoulders upwards, and considerably above his head. The eyes of the fans signify the innumerable eyes of the Cherubim; so that the Roman God, while kneeling upon his sedia, is “dwelling between the Cherubim!” Surely blasphemy like this cannot be surpassed. The rest of the medal shows a crowd of worshippers, whose superstition is expressed in the legend, “Procidamus et adoremus in Spiritu et veritate”—We fall prostrate and adore in spirit and in truth!

A fifth medal also by Alexander VII., A. D. 1655, illustrates the p. 623 asserted power of the Vice-Christ over the so-called “spirit-world.” He is represented sitting upon a judgment seat with his cardinals on his right and left sitting in double rows, with an open space before them; across which is a bar in the foreground. Over the canopy of his throne is the symbol of the Spirit, the dove with expanded wings, and surrounded with rays and angel-heads. The legend informs us, that the matter before this divine consistory is an inquiry for reckoning Bishop Francis among the saints—“Blato Francisco Episcopo inter sanctos relato.”

A sixth medal by Gregory XV., A. D. 1622, commemorates his award of heaven to five of the dead, and their apotheosis. The tiaraed god is sitting upon his throne, with a book of judgment supported upon the head of a figure kneeling before him, in which he is about to sign the decree of canonization. On the left, and above the group of attendants, are opened clouds between which is the dove, from which rays of light descend towards the book, indicating divine approval. Around the whole is the legend, “Quinque Beatis Cælestes Honores decernit”—He decrees celestial honors to five Blessed Ones.

In a seventh medal, struck by order of Clement X., A. D. 1670, is a group of five figures, four men and one woman, kneeling, standing, and sitting upon a cloud, with the dove shedding his rays upon them from above. Each has a halo of glory round the head. The figures are symbolical of the dæmonials, or deified ghosts, of a king, a cardinal, a pope, a priest, and a matron, as indicated by a crown, a hat, a tiara, a crucifix, and a babe. The central figure, the cardinal, has a book in one hand, and a pen in the other, symbolical of their admission among the gods of the catholic aerial, being consequent upon the decree of the God upon the earth below! This is expressed in the legend, “Decor ejus Gloria Sanctorum”—His grace the glory of the saints!

3.—“The God of the Earth” and “the Antichrist” Identical

Thus, in this eleventh chapter, two Deities are presented to view; the one living and true Deity, styled in the C. V., “the God of Heaven;” and his counterfeit and rival, called “the God of the Earth.” This is the Antichrist—ὁ αντιχριστος. The preposition anti in composition has the force of instead, equal to, like, corresponding to, counter, against, &c. In the word antichrist, which is not a classical word, but one especially coined by inspiration, it signifies p. 624 AN Anointed One substituted for THE Anointed One; and therefore an usurper of the rights of the true. This is certainly a hostile position for one to hold, and puts him in antagonism to Christ. But an enemy to Christ is not the force of the word. It signifies, as Mr. Elliott contends in his note upon antipope, one occupying the true Christ’s place, receiving his honors, and exercising his functions.

The germ which in after ages was fully developed into the Antichrist was the denying the Father and the Son—1 John ii. 22. This denial was in the sense of not confessing that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh—2 John 7. All who held this damnable tradition (which in our time is an article of “orthodoxy” so called) forsook the fellowship of the apostles, and were thus manifested as antichrists. “Ye have heard,” says John, “that The Antichrist comes; even now are there many antichrists. They went out from us, but they were not of us.” These were “false prophets,” spirits, or teachers, whose doctrine was “that of the Antichrist that should come; and even now already,” says John, “is in the world”—1 Epist. iv. 3. They confessed not, that he whom they called Jesus Christ was a man in the flesh common to all mankind, which is σαρξ ἁμαρτιας, Sin’s flesh—Rom. viii. 3. They maintained that he had another kind of flesh, which was pure, holy, and immaculate. They confounded his immaculate, or spotless, character, with his maculate flesh. This was a fatal heresy; for if Jesus was not crucified in the flesh common to us all, then “sin was” not “condemned in the flesh,” as all the apostles taught; and there has been as yet no sacrifice for sin, and consequently there are no means of remission of sins extant.

This immaculate nature of Jesus was the germ of the Catholic Apostasy headed up in the Antichrist, or Deity of the Earth. All who taught the dogma were the founders of a New Religion, and became its “Fathers;” and all who received their traditions became, with them, the Mystical Body of Antichrist, whose Head is the Deity of the Earth. The immaculate nature of Jesus, however, involved “the Fathers,” and their “Father of the Fathers”—πατηρ πατερων—in the necessity of transforming the mother of Jesus into an immaculate virgin-goddess—immaculate in her conception, and therefore not of the common flesh of Jewish nature. The Deity of the Apostasy was bound to decree this to avoid the inconvenient questions, “Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?”—Job xiv. 4; and, “How can he be clean that is born of woman?”—xxv. 4. Job says, “Not one” can do this. But this paragon of patience knew nothing of the Pope! He undertook to accomplish p. 625 Job’s impossibility; for nothing is impossible with the Great Blasphemer of the Deity of the Heaven!! He decreed that the woman Mary was of clean and holy flesh; and therefore the thing born of her was “a thing”—spotless flesh untainted of Adam’s sin, though εφ, ώ παντες ἡμαρτον, in him all sinned, which an unsophisticated mind would suppose included all liable to death; Eli, Mary, her mother, and Jesus all died, and must necessarily have been included federally in Adam. But these considerations are no difficulty with the Chief Sorcerer of “Christendom.” His magic wand, “thus I decree,” transforms all lies into divine truths, and the grossest absurdities into the sublimest and most adorable mysteries!

Thus, then, “the Antichrist” is the imperial and pontifical incarnation of immaculate-conceptionism; ideally conceived in apostolic times; personally enthroned A. D. 604–’8; and culminating in the pontificate of Leo X., A.D. 1513–’21. The blasphemies of the Antichrist, the Eyes and Mouth of the Beast of the Abyss (ch. xiii. 1) attained the most audacious phase of their profanity in his reign; and from the intense disgust they created even in the monkish mind, became the occasion of the renowned ANTIPAPAL REBELLION led off by the Augustinian monk of Erfurt. At this crisis, there was no impiety this Lion-Mouth forebore to utter. His pretensions were as high as heaven; his moral degradation, deep as “the lowest hell.” His assumption of divine honors, as the Christ-Impersonation, is symbolized in a pontifical medal, on the reverse of which is a lion with his right foot resting on the globe, representing the pope, who assumed the name of Lion X., being crowned by an angel; with the legend, or utterance of the angel, “Vicit Leo de Tribu Iudæ”—The Lion of the Tribe of Judah has conquered.

Such is the Antichrist, once a formidable power in all Antichristendom by which he was worshipped; but now, as the phrase is “standing upon his last legs,” a bye-word and a scorn to millions. But, although the lines of his temporality are contracted almost to the limits of “the Seven Mountains,” his divine attributes are acknowledged by many nations, and peoples, crazed and intoxicated by the wine, administered to them by the spiritual knaves who are devoted to his will. Respect for this deified impropriator of the attributes of “the Father and the Son,” is, however, not wholly confined to papists. The governments of Protestant peoples send their representatives to his court; and subsidize his emissaries in their states. Their schools are patronized by pious sinners of “orthodox” antipapal “abominations;” who, being profoundly p. 626 ignorant of the history of “the God,” or not believing its testimony, entrust the formation of their children’s minds to his spirituals, whose intoxicating superstition and blasphemy inscribe “his mark in their foreheads,” and prepare them for drinking the wrath of God in the outpouring of his indignation—Apoc. xiv. 9, 10. Many calling themselves protestants recognize the popes, cardinals, bishops, priests, and such like, as christians; and the church over which they preside as a true one, and the Mother of all others. In such a recognition is abundant proof, that they do not know what constitutes a christian; and that, consequently, they have no scriptural claim to the name themselves. The church of the Antichrist is undoubtedly the mother of all protestant churches. This I would in no wise dispute; for their dogmas are all stained with the “great things and blasphemies” of his mouth. The fathers of protestantism, in a qualified sense benefactors, were but the rebellious servants of the Antichrist, who revolted from his authority, but held on to many of his traditions. While they rejected Antichrist they did not submit to Christ; but allied themselves with sinful princes and governors of the court. The papal scheme of salvation was through penances and works of merit; the Lutheran and its fellows, “justification by faith ALONE.” These two schemes divide the Court of the Gentiles. They are both equally false; and therefore, neither of them “the power of God for the salvation of them that believe.” The principle of the Spirit’s witnessing prophets, is “justification through the One Faith.” This “One Faith” is proposed for faith, which, “if it hath not works, is dead, being alone”—James ii. 17. To the one faith belongs “the law of faith,” which excludes all boasting; and where law is, obedience is required—Rom. iii. 27. The one faith was intrusted to the apostles, that they might go forth, and publish it “for obedience to the faith for his name among all nations”—Rom. i. 5; xvi. 26. All who received the one faith, and yielded the obedience it demands, “believed the things concerning the kingdom of the Deity, and of the name of Jesus Christ; and were immersed into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, for repentance and the remission of sins—Acts viii. 12; ii. 38; Matt. xxviii. 19. The firm of Luther, Calvin, Knox, Cranmer and Company, knew nothing of this; yet they were highly useful in their day. They were Satan casting out Satan, whereby his kingdom was greatly weakened. They fought their master with his own weapons, and prevailed; and became the founders of Harlot-Superstitions, which flourished in power and worldly glory, while the Spirit’s Witnesses were p. 627 lying dead and unburied in the breadth of the Great City, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified”—ch. xi. 6, 9. In this breadth, πλατεια, they still flourish in all the pomps and vanities of sin and folly. They are useful antagonists to the power of the Antichrist, while they are themselves but antichristian fellowships inimical to the truth. But, the Deity of the heaven, in his providence, educes good out of evil to his saints, “for whose sake are all things.” The antagonisms of Satan so neutralize his power, that his Deity in Chief can no longer torment them unto death. So shorn is he of his glory, that though still upon his throne, and wearing the pontifical mitre and the imperial tiara, his divine bombast is a bursted bubble, and he stands before the world “the False Prophet of the Beast”—ch. xvi. 13; xix. 20; and unconsciously waiting with the beast, until the expiration of the “forty and two months;” when the Lord Jesus Christ, whom he has burlesqued and blasphemed; and the saints whom he has murdered, shall pay him in his own coin; and utterly destroy him in the brightness of their manifestation.

4.—How the Two Prophets Destroyed their Enemies

Before this Deity of the earth, while in the plenitude of his power, the Spirit’s witnessing prophets had to stand in all the breadth of his dominion. The One Body and the Earth that helped it were the Mordecai in the gate, who, in all the west, refused to salute him and to do him honor. But the time was at length approaching when their mission for a while would be fulfilled; and a substitute would be found for them in their testimony against the Antichrist, though not in their exhibition of the engrafted word for salvation, in the antipapal rebellion soon to blaze forth.

As I have shown, their mission was warlike as well as doctrinal. In the prophecy, what “the earth” executed as the minister of divine wrath, both were said to do; unless we understand the plural to refer to the multitude of which “the Earth” was composed. “If any will to injure them”—if any power undertake to fall upon them with the sword—“fire bursts forth out of their mouth and devours their enemies; and if any wills to injure them, thus must he be put to death.” This is prophetic of the wars that would be waged against the forces raised by the antichrist for their extermination. The Deity of the heaven did not require the members of the One Body to stand and be murdered by their enemies without help. If persecuted in one city they were to fly to another; but “the p. 628 Earth,” not believing in non-resistance and passive obedience to ecclesiastical tyranny, stood their ground, and devoured their enemies, after the introduction of gunpowder in war, at the cannon’s mouth. In this way “the Earth” performed their part. This was their mode of prophesying against the Antichrist; which, “in all their days of the prophecy,” was very effective in the preservation of civil and religious liberty, and the rights of man; and in perpetuating them to succeeding generations. Moreover, being not without political organization under their Counts, they were enabled to exercise a will in these matters. They could will to make war upon their enemies at pleasure; and, in so doing, they had “power to shut the” antichristian “heaven, that rain might not fall in their days of the prophecy.” I say, the antichristian heaven—the heaven of Antichrist’s inhabitation; the heaven in which “the God of the earth” dwells, under the whole of which “the Earth” and the “Holy City” stood while testifying or prophesying against him. To shut up any sort of heaven that rain might not descend upon those who lived under it, is figurative of divine wrath upon the sufferers. This appears from Deut. xi. 17—“And Yahweh’s wrath be kindled against you, and he shut up the heaven that there be no rain.” This shutting up was the effect of divine displeasure. The shutting up of a heaven is never significative of blessing upon any people, but always of calamity of some sort. The genial, refreshing, and fertilizing character of the administration of human affairs by the Mystical Christ—Jesus and his Brethren—is compared to an opened heaven from which rain descends in gentle showers upon the grass newly mown: as, “There shall be a ruler over mankind, a Just One, ruling in the righteous precepts of Elohim. And as the brightness of morning, He shall rise the Sun of an unclouded dawn shining forth after rain upon tender grass out of the earth”—2 Sam. xxiii. 4; and, “He shall descend like rain upon the mown grass; as showers that water the earth.” The meaning of which is, that “In his days shall the righteous flourish; and abundance of peace so long as the moon endureth”—Ps. lxxii. 6, 7. But, when the heaven is shut, the reverse of this obtains—the righteous do not flourish, but are “in sackcloth;” and there is no peace. Thus, by way of illustration, while I now write, the atheistic abolition faction is prophesying against their brethren in Antichrist dwelling in the South. Until the day of their own judgment comes, “they have power to shut the heaven that rain fall not in their days of prophesying,” neither upon themselves nor upon their enemies. In other words, while they have the ability to carry death and desolation to the p. 629 hearths and altars of their coreligionists, they prevent the righteous flourishing, and peace descending with its blessings upon the people. Hence, this infidel faction is the Deity’s scourge upon communities of religionists, who corrupt his way, and make void his word by their traditions. The faction is itself a compound of “abominations of the earth”—an aggregation of pious and profane infidels, being χώρις χριστου and αθεοι· εν τῳ κοσμῳ, without Christ and atheists in the world—Eph. ii. 12. Hence, they are fit only for a providential work of blood; in which, while they are blindly executing vengeance for him, they are preparing disaster and ruin by which they will be themselves submerged into “the lowest hell”—שׁאול תחתיה, shĕol tāchtiyāh—Ps. lxxxvi. 13; ix. 17. As delighting in carnage and desolation, they must be scattered, and all their knavish devilry confused; for so the Spirit taught the Psalmist to pray—“Scatter thou the people that delight in war”—Ps. lxviii. 30.

But, his witnessing prophets of the Holy City do not delight in war. The Earth that helps them only draws the sword to “turn the waters into blood, and to smite the earth with the plagues” of war, when the rulers of those waters, or “peoples and multitudes and nations and tongues,” will to deprive them of civil and religious liberty and the rights of men. Hence, these rulers in the antichristian heaven bring the evils of war upon themselves. But, it must be noted, that civil and religious liberty and rights are only sacred in the sight of heaven when it is the liberty and rights of his people that are in question. He has granted a dispensation to no set of men to worship him “according to the dictates of their own conscience.” This is a liberty and right that he has granted to none. All that he has granted is liberty to enter his august presence, and to do him worship according to the dictates of his word. All else is mere “will-worship and voluntary humility,” of which he has recorded his contempt—Col. ii. 18, 23. This is the character of the worship offered by the State Harlots and Dissenting Abominations of their Great Mother. They are worships according to their unpurified, and therefore evil, consciences; for none of them are to be found in the living word of the Deity of the heaven. All of them, therefore, being of this category or order of things, they are an offence to him, as offerings superseding his appointments, and which he has not required at their hands. Such worshippers as these are the worshippers of the unmeasured or excommunicated court; the worshippers of the Beast and of his Image, and the mark of whose name is indelibly impressed in their foreheads. To such he has granted neither liberty nor rights. The liberty he grants is the p. 630 freedom with which the truth makes free—John viii. 32, 36; a perfect law of liberty, into which whoso looketh narrowly and continueth therein, not being a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, shall be blessed in his deed—James i. 25. This is the only true liberty, to which none have any right save those who repudiate the worships of the Court, and become the adopted freemen of the Holy City.

But, while all others, not of the Earth and the Holy City, are mere liberty-brawlers, “promising liberty to others, while they are themselves the slaves of corruption,” the Deity of the heaven has granted the right to none to forbid men adopting any worship they please. In this negative sense, the rights of all men are in themselves a common birthright. Hence, the Antichrist has no divine right to compel all men to be papists; nor have the State Harlots such a right, though they often experimented in that direction even to the shedding of blood. The right exercised by the Antichrist he derived from the Dragon Imperiality of the East, styled by Daniel the Little Horn of the Goat; a right afterwards recognized by that other Little Horn, which came up in the midst of, and after, the Ten Horns of the European Commonwealth. “The Dragon gave him his power, and his throne, and great authority”—Apoc. xiii. 2; and it is by virtue of this, which is mere right based upon might, the right of brute force, that “the Devil and his Angels”—Antichrist and the Sin-Powers of the Court—have sought to force men, thus given into their hands, to worship what they call God according to their dictates. Now, it is in opposition to this blasphemous assumption, and in the negative sense already defined, that the witnessing prophets of the Deity of the heaven, champion civil and religious liberty and the rights of man. The enemies of these are their enemies; for if the spiritual and temporal Sin-Powers were to deprive society of these, their testimony or prophesying would inevitably be suppressed also. The conflict, therefore, which raged for ages in the Court of the Gentiles was one of life or death to the witnessing existence of the One Body, and the defensive self-devotion of the Earth. This conflict of ages was long and bloody for all concerned. The saints of the Holy City fell by thousands under the savage and merciless hand of the Roman God. His Spouse of Babylon became red and drunk with their blood, which, like the righteous Abel’s, still cries for vengeance upon the ruthless harlot that sits upon the beast—Apoc. xvii. 3. The Earth valiantly helped her, but could not destroy the murderess. It gave her papistic myrmidons frequent and signal overthrows. It gave them blood p. 631 to drink, and smote them with the plagues of war; so that, if they were determined to trample the Holy City of the Faith, they should not be permitted so to do with impunity.

But in process of time their power of resistance was diminished. This was attributable to the testimony of the One Body being enfeebled by the admixture of traditions which had crept in, and, in so far, rendered it ineffectual. The pastors, whose business it was to keep the lightstand well supplied with the golden olive oil of truth, were deteriorating in faithfulness and aptitude for teaching. Hence, the light grew dim and smoky, and men did not see their way as in former years. In consequence of this enfeebled perception, their christian virtue became too easy and tolerant of the traditions of the apostasy, until at length their individuality converged towards, and was finally lost in, the indefiniteness and confusion of the Lutheran and Calvinistic novelties of the sixteenth century. This fatal termination of their labors is styled in the prophecy, the finishing of their testimony. Their word having lost its power, the energy of their ancient helper, the Earth, was enfeebled likewise. When men’s hold upon principles is relaxed, they lack that enterprize and force which is necessary for their preservation in this evil world. A worldly and “charitable” spirit generates indifference, by which the pointedness and sharpness of the truth are destroyed. The word handled in a worldly spirit is always “charitable” or tolerant of traditions, which make it of none effect. The word being ministered thus, the power of energetic resistance, and of a bold and valiant advocacy of their ancient principles, was wanting, and deprived both classes of witnesses of their efficiency. Hence, the Spirit had no longer any use for them; for the protestantized testimony they were now only able to give, was not of that brightness necessary to constitute them the Golden Oil Light of the world. Men may testify against the Roman Antichrist, and denounce both him and his coreligionists as idolators, which is unquestionably true; but such a testimony leaves the Court as much in the dark as to what must be believed and done for remission of sins, and for obtaining a right to eternal life, as though nothing had been said. This is Protestantism. It protests truly, that the pope is a blasphemous impersonation of the Christ; but it cannot delineate Christ Jesus according to the prophetic and apostolic testimony. It is, therefore, simply a negation; it denies every thing, but can scripturally affirm nothing. Such a witness as this is of no account in the premises; its doctrine and institutions are devoid of all power for the salvation of the soul.

p. 632III.—Concerning the Time During Which the Witnesses Prophesy in Sackcloths

“And I will give to my two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred and sixty days, having been clothed in sackcloths.”

I have shown elsewhere that Daniel’s “time and times and the dividing of a time,” and John’s “forty and two months,” are the same measurement; and both relating to the same subject—the Saints as the Holy City; and both terminating at the same crisis—the resurrection at the advent of the Ancient of Days; and both constituted of 1260 years. And here we have immediately following, a repetition of the same duration. In the third verse, the Holy City is consigned to a trampling of forty and two months; and in the fourth, the Witnesses are to prophesy in tribulation 1260 days. It will, of course, strike the reader as remarkable, that a coequal length of years should be prefigured in different terms. But the reason is, that the two periods relate to different subjects, and are not coterminal. The trampling of the Holy City was one thing, and its prophesying in sackcloth was another. These two series of events were not to be parallel in the whole of their course; so to prevent confusion, the two periods of equal duration were stated in different terms. As the Holy City was to be trampled forty and two months by the Gentiles; and as these were to trample it under the inspiration of the Antichristian Mouth of the Beast, the power given him for this purpose by the Dragon-Emperor was to be operative for the same length of time, which, in order to show this relation between the Mouth and the Holy City, is also expressed by the same formula of “forty and two months”—Apoc. xiii. 5. And, for a somewhat similar reason, that is, to connect the sackcloth witnessing of the Holy City community with the fugitive woman and the earth that protected her by its help (Apoc. xii. 6, 16), the things affirmed of the woman in relation to her feeding are expressed in the same kind of time as the duration of the witnessing—1260 days; and, furthermore, to show that 1260 symbolic days are equivalent to “a time and times and the dividing of a time” (a formula which occurs nowhere else in the Apocalypse, and pertains exclusively to the measurement of the Holy City) the 1260-feeding of the woman by the earth, in the fourteenth verse of the twelfth chapter, is styled her nourishing “for a time and times and half a time;” for to feed and nourish her are the same idea; so that the one statement of the duration of her feeding, is expository of the duration of her nourishing.

This view of the matter, which I believe is the only correct one, p. 633 helps us greatly in determining the commencement of the saints’ witnessing after the sackclothes had been put upon them by their enemies. This beginning carries us back to the epoch of the Woman’s flight into the wilderness, or two wings of the Great Roman Eagle. Her flight, by which she turned her back with contempt upon the honors and riches of the world; which she left to the leaders of the Catholic Apostasy—the Eusebiuses, Lactantiuses, Ariuses, Athanasiuses, and Chrysostoms of the day—her fugitive separation from these, by which she became a witness for the truth against their worldliness and traditions, occurs after the birth of the Man-Child of Sin—that sanguinary Cain, who, as the Antichrist, in the power of his manhood and impiety, afterwards slew the Abel of the Faith, whose blood cries for vengeance against him from the ground.

The birth of this imperial child of the woman occurred in the enthronement of Constantine in Rome on his defeat of Maxentius at the battle of Saxa Rubra, A. D. 312. This introduced a remarkable epoch in the history of the woman, to be more particularly considered in my exposition of the twelfth chapter. It will be sufficient to remark here, that this was the epoch of her deliverance from pagan persecution by the celebrated edict of Constantine published at Milan, A. D. 313; and of her introduction to an acqaintance with the worse than pagan persecution, which sought to exterminate her in the after years of Catholic ascendancy. Constantine delighted to style himself “THE DELIVERER OF THE CHURCH.” He was truly the deliverer of the Catholic Church; but he was also the first to inflict persecution and death itself upon those, “who kept the commandments of the Deity, and retained the testimony of Jesus Christ.” The edict of Milan, the great charter of toleration, had confirmed to each individual of the Roman world, the privilege of choosing and professing his own religion. But this inestimable privilege was soon violated; with a smattering of truth, the woman’s child imbibed the maxims of persecution, and the Dissenters from the Catholic Church were afflicted and oppressed by its political triumph over Paganism. Constantine easily credited the insinuation that the HERETICS, as they were called, who presumed to dispute his opinions, or to oppose his commands, were guilty of the most absurd and criminal obstinacy; and that a seasonable application of moderate severities might save those unhappy men from the danger of an everlasting condemnation. Confounded with these so called Heretics, as has been the case in all ages since, were those who held the testimony, and therefore, the witness of Jesus. Not a moment was p. 634 lost in excluding their pastors and teachers from any share in the rewards and immunities Constantine had so liberally bestowed on the Catholic Spirituals. But, as the Dissenters might still exist under the cloud of imperial disfavor, the conquest of the East was immediately followed by an edict which announced their total destruction. After a preamble filled with passion and reproach, he absolutely prohibits the assemblies of “Heretics,” and confiscates their public property to the use, either of the revenue, or of the Catholic Church. Some of the penal regulations were copied from the edicts of the pagan emperor Diocletian; and this method of conversion was applauded by the same bishops who had felt the hand of oppression, and pleaded for the rights of humanity.

But Constantine was not the only oppressor whose tyranny bore heavily upon the woman. His imperial colleague, Licinius, also, within the limits of his jurisdiction, made her to groan with anguish. “Those who had done no evil,” says Eusebius, “were led away to punishment without any pretext, just like murderers and assassins. Some also endured a novel kind of death, having their bodies cut into many small pieces, and after this savage and terrible spectacle, were thrown as food to the fishes into the depths of the sea. Again the worshippers of God began to flee; again the open fields, the deserts, forests, and mountains, received the servants of Christ.”

The fleeing of the woman was the reduction of her to a state of humiliation and tribulation, far removed from the exaltation and haughtiness characteristic of the region of imperial grace. The gates of this clerical paradise were closed against her. She has nothing to do with emperors and courts. These are only for the votaries of fashion, and parasitic spirituals, who hold the persons of rulers in admiration for the sake of gain. Bishops, cardinals, archbishops, and other princes of the church, flourish in regions of imperial sunshine; but for the woman and her seed, the farther off they flee from such a heavenly, the clearer will they see the truth, and the better able will they be to “keep the commandments of the Deity,” and to testify with the approval of Jesus Christ.

Thus, then, the woman in flight is related both to state and place. She fled because she was persecuted by “the angels of the Dragon”—officials in power, both imperial and magisterial. The interval from the birth of her child, A. D. 312, to the conquest of the East by the overthow of Licinius, A. D. 324, was occupied in ecclesiastical legislation in favor of the Catholic Church, and against Dissenters; and in carrying off her son unto deity, and the throne thereof. Here was an epoch of twelve years. At the end of this, that is, p. 635 A. D. 325, he sat as a god, a presidential episcopal god, in the Council of Nice, exhibiting before the world the type of that full grown Man of Sin, who should be worshipped by all the nations of the unmeasured Court as “the Deity of the earth.”

Now, it was at some point in this epoch of twelve years, that the 1260 years of witnessing began. As the woman’s seed in their sackcloth witnessing were to “stand before the deity of the earth” in the sense of testifying against him, it is reasonable to refer the commencement of the witnessing period to the time of the formation of an issue between him and them. Let us then see what is the state of the case bearing upon this result.

The complaints and mutual accusations which assailed the throne of Constantine, as soon as the death of Maxentius, A. D. 312, had brought the Roman Africa into subjection to his victorious arms, were ill adapted to edify an imperfect proselyte.^a He learned with surprise, that the provinces of Africa, from the confines of Cyrene to the columns of Hercules, were distracted with religious discord. The cause of dissension, for the most part, ceases to characterize religious disputes after the fervor of the onset subsides. This is proved in numberless instances. It is so in the case before us; for though the election of two rival bishops fanned the latent heat into a flame, the cause of the Great Secession which was about to ensue, must be sought for in the deep rooted affection of “the faithful” for the ANCIENT GOSPEL AND APOSTOLIC TRADITIONS. In the second of Acts, Luke informs us, that on the Day of Pentecost there were Jews from “Egypt, and the parts of Africa, which are about Cyrene.” Many of these, no doubt, obeyed the gospel preached by Peter, and carried it to their adopted homes, where they would persuade others to embrace the faith of Jesus Christ. The churches p. 636 thus formed in these parts, secluded from the theatre, and inducements of ecclesiastical discord and ambition, would be more likely to “retain the testimony of Jesus Christ,” than the churches of those princely bishops, which had transferred their devotion from apostolic to worldly objects. The disciples in the country could not but grieve at the apostasy and corruption of the church in the cities, which would be equally deplored by the “few names which had not defiled their garments” in these assemblies. But corruption may be lamented by the few, and yet continued by the many, unless some incident transpire, often trivial in itself, or some master-spirit arise to unfurl the standard, and rally around it the friends of christian purity, liberty, and truth. Such, I apprehend, was the state of things in the Roman Africa, Italy, and Gaul, at the time we are now considering. The church in Carthage, the metropolis of the Roman Africa, and the second ecclesiastical throne of the Roman West, was the occasion of the dispute which involved the province in the most calamitous convulsions. Mensurius, the bishop of the church, having died in A. D. 311, the majority of the people chose the chief deacon Cæcilianus to succeed him. In these times of Laodicean corruption and apostasy it is not to be supposed, that because the majority elected him, he was therefore best qualified for the “good work” of which Paul treats in 1 Tim. iii. 1, and Tit. i. 7; nor is it to be taken for granted that because the majority were Laodicean, the minority was all blameless and pure. The ground of their objecton to Cæcilianus, if true, was certainly just and valid, and honorable to those who made it the occasion of their secession from a church so corrupt and insensible to its christian dignity, as to appoint a man for their episcopal ruler, who had abandoned his brethren under persecution and distress, and had received ordination from an apostate, who had delivered up the Holy Scriptures to be burned.

p. 637 This traditorial archdeacon, Cæcilianus, then, had been elected and ordained by a party. His opponents, however, refused to acquiesce in his ordination. By their influence an assembly of bishops was convened, and Cæcilianus was cited before them; but, being contumacious, he was condemned as unworthy of the episcopal office. Majorinus, a deacon, was therefore chosen in his place. The charges in their specification were, that Felix, who assisted at his ordination, was a traditor, and therefore disqualified for the service by his apostasy; and that Cæcilianus himself was unfit, because of his cruelty to his brethren under persecution, whom, though a deacon, he had abandoned in a merciless manner, leaving them without food in their prisons, and precluding the grant of relief from those who were willing to succor them. These were grave specifications; and, if true, ought to have placed Cæcilianus among “heathen men and publicans.” A party which could choose and ordain such a spiritual guide must have been as unworthy as their chief. His principal opponent was DONATUS, a bishop from Casæ Nigræ. The excitement spread through all the African Wing of the Great Eagle, so that there were two opponent parties in every city. In A. D. 313, the DONATISTS, as they were now called by way of distinguishing them from the Catholics, carried the affair before Constantine at Rome. The principal bishop there, and eighteen others, were appointed by him to settle the dispute. As might have been supposed, judgment was given against the Donatists. In A. D. 314, the case of Felix was brought before the Proconsul of Africa. The Donatists were again in the minority. Seventy African bishops had condemned Cæcilianus; nineteen Italian bishops had acquitted him. In A. D. 315, the whole affair was again agitated before a numerous assembly at Arlés, in Gaul. The Donatists were again cast. In A. D. 316, Constantine himself examined the case “in sacred consistory,” at Milan. But here again their plea was rejected. He deprived them also of their places of worship, sent their bishops into banishment, and punished some of them with death. Cæcilianus was now unanimously acknowledged by the civil and ecclesiastical power as the true and lawful primate of Africa. The Donatists protested against the Emperor’s sentence as an unrighteous one; and that his credulity had been abused by the insidious arts of his advisers. But they could get no redress from the Man-Child, whose persecuting edicts drove them into exile from the high places of the State. Thus, “the woman fled into the wilderness,” where it was appointed for her to remain, testifying in the sackclothes forced upon her, during 1260 years.

p. 638 These trials in Rome, Milan, and Arles, would be well calculated to subserve the interests of the truth. They afforded the Donatists scope for their testimony against the imperialized catholicism in Italy and the South of France. They doubtless dropped their word in these regions copiously; and failed not to enlist many in their protestation against it. “What has the emperor to do with the church? And, what have christians to do with kings, or what have bishops to do at court?” These were their inquiries, which, in the face of scripture, the State Church party found to be both inconvenient and unanswerable. In these countries, there were already many dissenters from catholicism, the Novatians, who were in sympathy with them. The DONATIST TRIALS no doubt infused new life into these, who, coöperating with them would develope the evangelism, which, in our seventh chapter, has been considered under the symbolism of the Sealing Angel of eastern origin—Apoc. vii. 2. Thus, this whole proceeding, which, from the first appeal to the final sentence, lasted three years, became an important epoch in the woman’s history. “This incident,” says Gibbon, “so inconsiderable that it scarcely deserves a place in history, was productive of a MEMORABLE SCHISM, which afflicted the provinces of Africa above 300 years, and was extinguished only with christianity itself.” The inflexible zeal of freedom animated the Donatists to refuse obedience to the courtly bishops, whose spiritual powers they denied. Excluded themselves from the civil and religious communion of mankind by an edict of banishment, they boldly excommunicated the rest. They asserted with confidence that the Apostolical Succession was interrupted; that all the bishops of Europe and Asia were infected by the contagion of guilt and schism; and that the prerogatives of the universal church were confined to the chosen portion of the African believers, who alone had preserved inviolate the integrity of their faith and discipline. This sounds like the testimony of Jesus Christ in the mouth of his witnesses. Gibbon terms it “a rigid theory,” and says “it was supported by the most uncharitable conduct,” in his opinion. “Whenever they acquired a proselyte, even from the distant provinces of the East, they carefully repeated the sacred rites of baptism and ordination, as they rejected the validity of those he had already received from the hands of heretics and schismatics.” The Novatians before them, and the Waldenses after them, did the same; and so do all those who coincide in faith and practice with the writer of this exposition of the apocalypse. We repudiate the immersion of every one as invalid, who is not, previously to immersion, the enlightened subject of the one p. 639 faith. Mr. Gibbon would probably regard this “theory” more “rigid” than theirs. We do not, however, accept him, nor our clerical contemporaries of antichristendom, as competent to give a scriptural decision in the case. We know that a man must first believe “the truth as it is in Jesus” before he can obey it. This is as certain as that two and two make four. Being only “christians” of the antichristian type, their preaching, praying, praises, and performances, are but the spiritualism of the unmeasured court—the outpourings of “the spirit that now works in the children of disobedience.” The “divinity” with which they profess to “cure souls” is not therapeutic; and as effective for the transformation of sinners into saints, as the philosopher’s stone for the alchemical transmutation of ignoble metals into gold. This being our conviction from an upwards of thirty years study of the word, we have as little respect for their “ripe scholarship” and scholastic traditions, as Paul had for those of the renowned Barjesus; or Christ for “the wise and prudent” of his day.

This “uncharitable” exclusiveness, and “bigoted” devotion to the primitive apostolic faith, was the truly christian spirit of the woman and her seed at the epoch which initiated the 1260 years of their sackcloth-witnessing against the apostasy. In repudiating all its institutions, the Donatists drank of this spirit, and maintained, as Gibbon confesses, the sentiment of a greater part of the primitive church. Such was their abhorrence of the apostasy, that if they came into possession of a church which had been used by the catholics, they purified the building with the same jealous care which a temple of the old idolatry might have required. The learned Du Pin, who is their adversary, says: “They did not teach anything that was contrary to the (apostles’) creed; but they were so rash as to affirm that all the churches everywhere, which had embraced the communion of Cæcilianus and his party, ceased to be the true churches of Jesus Christ; that thus the catholic church was only found among themselves, having ceased to exist in other parts of the world. Besides which, being very fond of the ancient doctrine of the African churches, that baptism and the other sacraments conferred out of the church were null and void, they rebaptized such as had been baptized by the Catholics, trampled upon their eucharist as a profane thing, and maintained that the consecrations, unctions, and ordinations performed by the Catholics were of no avail. They burned or scraped the altars which the latter made use of, as being polluted by impure sacrifices, and broke their (communion) cups. They looked upon the vows made in their communion p. 640 as of no value; in a word, they would not communicate with them. They maintained that the church ought to be made up of just and holy men, or at least of those who were such in appearance; and that, although wicked men might lurk in the church, yet it would not harbor those who were known to be such.”

This was spuing the apostasy out of their mouth as effectually as the Eternal Spirit threatened to do to the Laodiceans, because of their lukewarmness—Apoc. iii. 16. They drew as broad a line between themselves and all other churches, as could possibly have been drawn by any claiming to be the Woman and her seed, and the party allied to imperial power that made her flight into the wilderness necessary to her preservation. Their testimony against the catholic church, whose system of tradition had become in this epoch “the religion of the State,” was in strict accordance with that of the Spirit, who denounced it as “wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked.” The Donatists testified neither more nor less than this; and their view of what a church ought to be, harmonized with what the Spirit exhorted the Laodiceans to become. I have, therefore, no doubt that the three years’ conflict of the Donatists with the party of the Imperial Man-Child was the epoch which truly marks the beginning of the witnessing period of the 1260 years. Here, then, we take our stand, and, with the following extract from Mosheim, conclude, for the present, what we have to say concerning this notable crisis of the fourth century. “The doctrine of the Donatists was conformable to that of the church, as even their adversaries confess; nor were their lives less exemplary than those of other christian societies, if we except the enormous conduct of the CIRCUMCELLIONS, which the greatest part of the sect regarded with the utmost detestation and abhorrence. The crime, therefore, of the Donatists lay properly in the following points: in their declaring the church of Africa, which adhered to Cæcilianus, fallen from the dignity and privileges of a true church, and deprived of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, on account of the offences with which the new bishop, and Felix who had consecrated him, were charged; in their pronouncing all the churches, which held communion with that of Africa, corrupt and polluted; in maintaining that the sanctity of their bishops gave their community alone a full right to be considered as the true, and the pure, and the holy church; and in their avoiding all communication with other churches from an apprehension of contracting their impurity and corruption. This erroneous principle was the source of that most shocking uncharitableness and presumption (poor Dr. Mosheim!) which appeared in p. 641 their conduct to other churches. Hence, they pronounced the sacred rites and institutions void of all virtue and efficacy among those christians who were not precisely of their sentiments; and not only rebaptized those who came over to their party from other churches, but even with respect to those who had been ordained ministers of the gospel, they observed the severe custom, either of depriving them of their office, or obliging them to be ordained a second time.” If such only was “the crime” of the persecuted Donatists, had I lived in their day, I should have been guilty of their “shocking uncharitableness and presumption” too.