Section I. The Epheso-Smyrnean State

Vol. I. pp. 428, 432, 433.

This section of the subject answers to those things written within the scroll pertaining to the concluding portion of the Ephesian, and commencement, or first part of the Smyrnean, state of the Body of Christ.

Act I.—Seal Period First

Chap. iv. 1, 2.

The Archer of the White Horse goes forth from the Lamb with his Bow on a career of conquest.

A. D., 96.

I. Initiation of the Seal-Period

1. “And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals, and I heard from one of the four living ones saying as a voice of thunder, Come and see!”

In spirit John was in the Lord’s day, and “saw” spirit-manifestations, or spirit-forms, styled by us symbols or emblems; and among these was the spirit-manifestation, or “sign,” of this first-seal period. It was all a visual creation of the spirit “signified to his servant John,” that through this recorded rehearsal, might be shown to the fellow-servants of the apostle, his brethren and companions in the Domitian tribulation, and in the kingdom and patient waiting for Jesus Christ ἃ δεῖ γενεσθαι εν ταχει, things which must come to pass speedily.

p. 122 These honored “servants of the Deity,” while John was in Patmos, shared with him in the great tribulation inflicted upon the whole community of the faithful at the close of the first century by the government of “the timid inhuman Domitian.” This man was son of Vespasian, and brother of Titus, the renowned destroyers of the holy city and temple of the Jews. These had learned in the school of experience the value of reason, humanity, and justice in the government of mankind; and they accordingly exhibited a character which, in some of its parts, was still new on the throne previously occupied by Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero and Vitellius—the character of wisdom, propriety, and humanity, assumed for its own sake, and without any intention to circumvent the people, or to impose on the world. But the fortunes of their family soon devolved upon a person equally unfit to sustain them, and equally unfit to be endured by a submissive world.

Domitian ascended the throne of the Cæsars, A. D. 81; and, as a “destroyer of the earth,” his tyranny was endured for fifteen years. The greatness of his family alarmed his pusillanimity, which could only be appeased by the blood of those Romans whom he either feared, or hated, or esteemed. His ferocity does not appear to have been inflamed against the christians immediately upon his accession to power. He increased in cruelty as he approached the end of his reign, when he renewed the horrors of Nero’s persecution, imputing to his victims the guilt of “atheism and Jewish manners,” which was the common charge against christadelphians^a on account of their refusal to worship the idols of Greece and Rome. “Many,” says Dion, “were condemned who had embraced Jewish customs, part of them were put to death, and others spoiled of their goods and banished.” Tertullian says, he ordered John to be cast into a caldron of boiling oil, but that he came out unhurt. If this really happened, it did not bring liberty to the apostle who was forthwith driven from the haunts of men, and confined in Patmos, a solitary island of the sea.

In this state of things at the close of Domitian’s maladministration of power, there was nothing answerable to the spirit’s symbolization of the first-seal period. There was no whiteness in the situation nor the times for pagan, Jew, or Christadelphian. How much longer the tyrant should redden them with their own blood,

p. 123 and desolate their hearths with his fierceness, who could tell? A gloomy cloud was impending; and, as as there was no habeas corpus for the defence of liberty, the lives and property of the whole people were suspended on the fiat of “the basest of men.”

1. The Voice of Thunder

But hark! Hear ye not, O ye servants of the Deity, that “voice of thunder,” issuing from that one of the four living ones like a lion, and inviting you to “Come and see!” It is the voice of the Spirit, as fatal to Domitian as the writing of the same spirit upon the wall was to Belshazzar on the night he was slain. The voice is the opening voice of the first-seal period, A. D. 96. A voice that changed the times, and whitened the situation of the affairs, of the great Roman Habitable. It was the thundering voice of revolution that hurled the tyrant from his throne, and inaugurated a new course of things; the effect of which should not cease until Christ had conquered Cæsar. And what the second causes resulting in this premanifestation and predetermination of the Spirit? Listen; Domitian bestowed on his cousin Flavius Clemens his own niece Domitilla in marriage, adopted the children of that marriage to the hope of the succession, and invested their father with the honors of the consulship. But he had scarcely finished the term of his annual magistracy, when on a slight pretence he was condemned and executed; Domitilla was banished to a desolate island on the coast of Campania; and sentence either of death or of confiscation was pronounced against a great number of persons who were involved in the same accusation—atheism and Jewish manners. He charged this upon those symbolized by “the Lamb and the Four Living Ones;” and in so doing the pagan government, their Accuser, “accused them before the Deity day and night”—ch. xii. 10. But the mandate of retribution had gone forth, and a few months after the death of Clemens, and the banishment of Domitilla, Stephen, one of her freedmen who had enjoyed her favour, assassinated the emperor in his palace. Thus Heaven’s decree, that “whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed,” took effect in Domitian’s case. He had shed the blood of the servants of the Deity, and by the wicked as His sword, he fell.

2. The Lamb

Such was the secondary agency in this revolutionary event, but what was the primary? John says, that the first cause of all the p. 124 events represented in the seals was “THE LAMB;” “he openeth and no man shutteth; and shutteth, and no man openeth;” He opens all the seal-periods; and, by that omnipotence given to him in heaven and in earth, he gives such a shape and color to the world’s affairs, civil, ecclesiastical, and social, as accords with the prefigurations of the Spirit in this prophecy. He is that popularly styled “Providence,” who, for the past eighteen centuries, has been engaged in preparing a situation of affairs favorable to the establishment of his throne and kingdom upon earth. Providence is the Lamb; and the Lamb, with his seven horns and seven eyes, recovered from the wound with which he was wounded in the house of his friends (Zech. xiii. 6); and embodying the seven lamps of fire burning before the throne—is the symbol of the All-powerful Spirit of the Deity. This is manifest from ch. iv. 5; v. 6. It gives symbolic shape to the great mystery of Deity manifested, justified and glorified in crucified flesh. The embodiment of this mystery was “made both Lord and Christ” by his ascent from the lower nature of His fathers Abraham and David, to the higher nature of his Father the Eternal Spirit—John xx. 17; Heb. ii. 7, 9, 16, 17; Acts ii. 36. Thus he became spirit after leaving his sepulchre, and about forty days before his assumption to the right hand of power. Ever since he hath been “the Lord the Spirit”—2 Cor. iii. 17; “the Quickening Spirit”—1 Cor. xv. 45: so that when “He that was dead”—Apoc. i. 18, dictates to John the matter of the epistles to the seven Asian ecclesias, he concludes his address to each of them by an exhortation to “hear what THE SPIRIT saith to the ecclesias.” As the Dead One, anointed with spices and bound with grave clothes, he was Sin’s Flesh crucified, slain, and buried; in which by the slaying sin had been condemned, and by the burial, put out of sight: but as the Living One again alive for the Aion of the Aions—“the Son of Deity with power by spirit of holiness out of a resurrection of dead ones,” He is the Spirit—“the Seven Spirits before the throne;” “the Alpha and the Omega, beginning and ending; the first and the last; he who is and who was and who is coming, THE OMNIPOTENT”—Apoc. i. 4, 8, 11; xvi. 5.

Such is the signification of the symbolic Lamb who opens the scroll, having prevailed so to do, and to “see it” in the loosing of all its seals, that the prophecy may be read, and understood, and observed by them who are faithful and true.

3.—The Four Living Ones

But beside the symbolic Lamb we find the Four Living Ones p. 125 acting a part in connection with the first four seal-periods. They are not introduced into the drama as mere drapery and ornament; but as representative of a class of agents performing a very important part in association with the Lamb during the first four seal-periods. Aggregately they are the symbols of the “ONE BODY—of “the Ecclesia which is His body”—Eph. i. 22, 23; iv. 4. When encircling the throne, they represent the one body of the redeemed after their appearance at the judgment seat of Christ; but in these seals they are emblematic of the general assembly and ecclesia of firstborns, who have been enrolled for heavens” (Heb. xii. 23) in their relation, or rather, opposition, to “the Prosecutor of the Brethren” enthroned in the heaven of Pagan Rome—ch. xii. 7-10. This power, symbolized by “the Dragon in heaven,” was continually assailing them with accusations of blasphemy and atheism, and of hatred to mankind in general; and unrighteously subjecting them to the cruelest pains and penalties of despotic and arbitrary power. But, energized by the Lamb, “they loved not their lives unto the death”; and “by the word of their testimony” withstood their enemy until at length “they overcame him.”

The Lamb and the Four Living Ones in the first four seals symbolize, then, what may be styled in popular phrase, “the church militant”—such as the ecclesia of the Deity was in the time of the apostle John. The Lamb was then in the midst of the seven golden lightstands, in which burned the seven flames of fire. In other words, the apostolic ecclesias were all in the Spirit’s Mouth, from which they were not “spued,” or ejected, until after the fifth seal. The Lamb and the Four Living Ones were One Body—“the Father in Jesus; and Jesus in the Father, and they, the true believers, in them,” a Divine Unity. This was a power too strong for the Dragon-power of Rome. It was the spirit of the Deity in intellectual and moral activity contending in flesh and blood “against principalities, against powers, against the worldrulers of the darkness of the aion, against the spirituals of the wickedness in the heavenlies” of Daniel’s fourth beast—Eph. vi. 12. While the weapons of the Dragon’s warfare were carnal—imprisonment, torture, confiscation, fire, and sword; the weapon of theirs was “the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God.” It was not they who opened the seal-periods, but the Spirit-Lamb; and when he opened them in order, the voice of that same spirit, issuing from the corporate aggregations of eyes, which derived their intelligence from Him, invited John as a member of the body, and as the dramatic representative of his class in then present and after times, to “Come and see.” “And,” saith he, “I saw.” The dethronement and death of p. 126 Domitian were the thunder-voice of the opened first seal-period, which arrested the attention of all christadelphian eyes to behold what was next to “come.” Their Ephesian vigilance required not to hear the mandate, “Come and see,” for their eyes were full orbed upon the government; and anxiously and earnestly watching events bearing upon its policy with reference to themselves, and the conflict in which they were engaged.

The fall of Domitian, then, was in itself a command to all the eyes of the One Body (and it was γέμοντα ὀφθαλμῶν, “full of eyes” ch. iv. 8; Ezek. x. 12) to come “to the consideration of the event,” and to “see,” or discern, the unloosing of the seal.

And what did they see in the Dragon-empire consequent upon the tyrant’s fall? They saw a very remarkable change of times. The previous fifteen years of misrule and cruelty were immediately succeeded by a mild and beneficent reign of sixteen months and eight days. This was the short, but brilliant reign of Nerva, which was inaugurated by an act of the Roman Senate, which condemned Domitian’s memory, and rescinded his decrees. Nerva was one of the best monarchs permitted by the Lamb to occupy the Dragon throne. Under his mild administration of the laws, the people of the Roman Horse were everywhere contented and happy. He extended his clemency as “the minister of the Deity for good,” to all who were imprisoned for treason; called home all that had been banished in Domitian’s time, except the tyrant’s own niece, Domitilla, whose freedman had assassinated him; restored all sequestrated estates; punished informers, and, to the utmost of his power, redressed the grievances of every description of his subjects. To christadelphians he allowed the freest toleration, not permitting any to persecute either them or the Jews, though the saints were generally regarded as Atheists, having no visible temples, altars, or sacrifice, which the pagans considered as essential to a profession of religion,

II. The Seal-Period Occurrent

2. “And I saw, and behold a White Horse, and One sitting upon him having a Bow, and there was given to him a coronal wreath; and he went forth conquering, and that he might conquer.”

1. The Whiteness of the Horse

In regard to the period thus propitiously initiated by the reign of Nerva, Gibbon has remarked that, “were a man called to fix upon an epoch in the history of the world during which the condition of the human race was the most happy and prosperous, he would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death p. 127 of Domitian to the accession of Commodus,” namely, from A. D. 96, to A. D. 180. “The vast extent of the Roman empire was governed by absolute power under the guidance of wisdom and virtue. The armies were restrained by the firm but gentle hand of four successive emperors, whose characters and authority commanded involuntary respect. The forms of the civil administration were carefully preserved by Nerva, Trajan, Adrian, and the two Antonines, who delighted in the image of liberty, and were pleased with considering themselves as the accountable ministers of the laws. Such princes deserved the honor of restoring the republic, had the Romans of their day been capable of enjoying a rational freedom.”

Here then are two periods of about equal duration, the one ending, and the other beginning at the death of Domitian; the former styled by the historian, “that unhappy period;” and the latter, “the most happy and prosperous” known to the world. This happiness and prosperity of the Roman people for eighty-four years was owing to the exemption they enjoyed from civil discord under these emperors. The period was a reign of peace over the Roman earth, granted by the opener of the seal; and as white is symbolical of peace and prosperity, the Horseman in the first seal-period, is paraded upon the arena sitting on a white horse.

Some light is thrown upon the whiteness of the horse in this seal by what the spirit saith of the white horses in Zech. vi. 6. He reveals four chariots issuing forth from between two mountains of brass, and horsed with horses of divers colors. He terms these “the four spirits of the heavens which go forth from standing before the Lord of all the earth.” One of the spirit-chariots was harnessed with black horses, and another of them with white. Their mission was “into the north country”—north from Jerusalem. That country was to be plagued, therefore the black horses were sent thither first. While they were doing their work, the Lord’s Spirit was in a state of unrest, actively inflicting judgment upon the workers of iniquity in the north country. But when they had been sufficiently plagued, the white horses were sent into the country after them—“the white go forth after the black.” As the white drove through the land the black would retire; and the vision of the north country would be a spirit-chariot with white horses. What then would be the condition of that country so symbolized? The answer is, peace, prosperity, and plenty would be its condition; in other words, the Lord’s Spirit having conquered, would be in a state of rest; his wrath against the people would have passed away, p. 128 and public tranquility be restored; as saith the Spirit, “Behold these that go toward the north country have quieted my spirit in the north country.”

Now without identifying the vision in Zechariah with the seals, the illustration of the figuration of the first seal derived from it is this. The “unhappy period” which preceded the fall of Domitian was a period of unrest to the Spirit of the Lord of the whole earth—“the Lamb.” In it “the spirits of the heavens” went forth through all the Roman habitable earth, inflicting judicial calamities upon the families which had for ages presided over the destinies of the republic, and upon the pagan people; all of whom were colleagued against the Deity in their persecution of his apostles unto death, and of his saints and nation. Had these fourscore years of trouble been symbolized by horses, they would have been black and red; and while in motion, going forth, would have indicated the unquiet state of the spirit of judgment. But the judicial condition of the Roman habitable during those years is not symbolized. We know from Daniel, that the Roman Dragonic Horn would magnify itself against the Prince of Judah’s host, suppress the Daily Sacrifice, destroy the city and sanctuary, cast down the truth to the ground, and practice and prosper—ch. viii. 11, 12; ix. 26;—all of which came to pass in the period before Domitian’s assassination. But, of the judicial visitation that should fall upon Roman society in the period the Roman government and people should be venting the ferocity so characteristic of them upon Messiah the Prince and “the people of the holy one,” prophecy does not testify. But with the first seal’s symbolization, we “see,” as John “saw,” that whatever might have been the color of things hitherto, a white horse was to be the spirit of the heaven when the first seal-period should be open; and that then the spirit of the Lord would be quieted in the Roman Habitable until the time arrived to open the second seal-period however long that might be; and that then in the first seal-period, there would be peace, prosperity, and plenty for the people generally.

2.—The Rider and the Bow

But John not only saw the coming of this “most happy and prosperous period” in the color of the horse, but he saw a rider upon him. The rider of a horse is one who governs, controls, influences him in all his movements. He is active, while the horse is passive and subject to his will. The Roman horse, or people, in this first seal-period, were to be ridden, or subjected to certain activities, which p. 129 would result in such a consummation as was indicated by other elements of the figuration. The rider was “the spirit of the heaven” whose mission was conquest. He gave energy to a certain class of activities, by which they were prosperously advanced, until at length they overcame all obstacles. He was not therefore an emperor, nor a succession of emperors, wreathed or diademed; but a class of spirit-agencies to be coronally wreathed when their triumph over all that hindered was complete.

A rider with any thing remarkable in his hand would naturally attract a beholder’s attention, and fix it upon himself and the instrument he bore. John therefore not only notes the rider, but tells us that “he had a bow.” Whatever the bow may signify, it was the rider’s badge or token, a mark by which he might be known. He was then, an archer, and his mission that of archery. But he had no “quiver full of arrows,” nor any arrow at all; what use then a bow without arrows to shoot? But suppose he had been armed with arrows, what then? In that case the horse he rode should have been red, not white. He would have represented a bloodshedding agency, which would have been incompatible with the color pertaining to the first seal-period.

“He had a bow.” John did not see him without a bow. The bow was inherently his. It was the weapon of his warfare which killed without shedding the blood, or piercing the bodies, of his enemies. It was the weapon with which “he went forth conquering that he might conquer.” It was an invincible weapon in his hand; and he who used it, though unharnessed with shield, breastplate, or helmet in the figuration, was fearless of heart, and able to quench all the fiery darts of his adversaries.

But this conquering archer’s bow, what did the Deity “signify” by the use of it in this symbolization? To get at the divine signification, we must consider the prophetic use of the symbol in other parts of the scripture; we may perhaps then be able to “see it.”

In Zech. ix. 13, the Spirit says, “I will render double unto thee, O Zion, when I have bent Judah for me, filled the bow with Ephraim and raised up thy sons against the sons of Greece.” In this a bow in the hand of the Spirit symbolizes a multitude, and that multitude the whole tribe of Judah. This will be a mighty bow, but not arrowless, like the same Spirit’s bow in the seal. The arrow of the Judah-bow, is Ephraim, or the ten tribes which fill the bow. Here is a bow and arrow of tremendous power when handled by the Spirit, who expelled the Dragon-power from the heaven in the period of the sixth seal. Of this Ephraim-arrow, which is Yahweh’s, p. 130 it is said, “it shall go forth as the lightning,” and “they shall devour.”

Again, in Hab. iii. 9, the Spirit saith, “quite naked was made thy bow—oaths of the tribes—the word.” Here bow stands for the word, which contains the covenanted promises of Deity concerning the tribes of Israel. In other words, bow represents that “certain word” which Paul preached as “the hope of Israel,” and styled in the New Testament “the gospel of the kingdom.” This is the Spirit’s Bow from which arrows are shot more killing than barbed steel.

Thus a multitude imbued with the word is an agency that might be fitly represented by a bow in the hand of the Spirit of the heaven riding the white horse of the seal. But then, how does he use this intelligent multitudinous bow? How does he shoot from it; and what are the arrows he shoots? We shall be able to “see” this by reference to other scriptural uses of the word bow.

In Ps. lxiv. it is written, “the workers of iniquity whet their tongue like a sword, and bow their arrows, bitter words, that they may shoot in secret at the perfect.” In this the tongue is compared to a bow from which words are shot forth as arrows. Hence, a multitude may not only itself be a bow, but its tongues may be bowed or bent, to shoot forth doctrine or testimony, which, as an arrow in the vitals, shall put to death the enmity of the carnal mind, or “the thinking of the flesh,” against the Deity. When such a multitude would deliver the testimony it held to be true, it would be drawing the bow and shooting at its adversaries the word of truth. This word would also be the arrow of their bow, as well as their sword; and whether regarded as an arrow or a sword, “living and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart”—Heb. iv. 12.

But there is a remarkable instance of the use of the phrase drawing the bow, in the sense of proclaiming the truth, in Isa. lxvi. 19: thus, “I will send מהם maihem of those that escape to the nations Tarshish, Pul, and Lud, drawers of the bow; Tubal and Javan, the coasts far off which have not heard my fame, nor seen my glory; and they shall declare my glory among the nations.” “Yahweh gives the word, and great is the company of those who publish it”—Ps. lxviii. 11.

Translators of Isaiah have been much at a loss what to do with משכי קשת moshkai kĕshĕth “drawers of the bow,” in this text.

p. 131 Some have thought that moshkai should be rendered Meshech, called Moschi by the Greeks, as a proper name, seeing it is associated with Tubal as in other places. Boothroyd has so rendered it, and Lowth is inclined to it, as appears from his notes; but in the text he renders the phrase by the words “who draw the bow” in common with the English Version. But though it is true it may be literally rendered thus, the strictly literal sense does not apply in this place. “Who draw the bow,” or “drawers of the bow,” is a mode of warfare not at all more characteristic of Tarshish, Pul, and Lud, than of Tubal and Javan, of whom it is not affirmed. They all drew the bow in battle when the prophet wrote; and Tarshish at the present time is more famous for gunpowder and cannon balls than for shooting arrows from the bow.

The metaphorical, and not the literal, must be the sense of the words in this place. It should be rendered sounders of the truth, which is in agreement with what is affirmed of those sent saying, “and they shall declare my glory (or sound the truth in bowing, or bending, their tongue to shoot) among the nations.” See note in Anatolia, p. 94.

From this text we derive then the idea of a multitude going forth with a bow to the nations, and in their use of it, declaring the truth, or their testimony, to them concerning the coming of Yahweh with his chariots like a whirlwind to render his anger with fury, and his rebuke with flames of fire. Such is the style in which the spirit gives expression to “the deep things of Deity” in the holy writings of the prophets; and as the writings of the apostles are a revelation by the same spirit of the hidden mysteries of the prophetic scriptures, he continues therein to speak after his wonted manner; which is “not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the holy spirit teacheth, interpreting spiritual things by spiritual.”

We conclude then that the spirit-symbols of the first seal, which are its “spiritual things,” are scripturally interpreted by comparison with the “spiritual things” of the law and the testimony; for “the servants of the Deity” are instructed out of the law, and not out of learned and classical disquisitions on Greek and Roman Numismatics. The rider and his bow in the first seal, doubtless, symbolizes a like idea to that of the Spirit giving the word, and bowing or shooting it through a great company of believers to the world. This answers to the “facts in the case as they obtained in the first, second, and third centuries; and as they will obtain again, when the Lamb appears upon Mount Zion with the 144,000 gathered unto p. 132 him—ch. xiv. 1; 2 Thess. ii. 1. A great company of obedient believers had been gathered together into “one body” by the labours of the apostles, which, in John’s apocalyptic epoch, had attained “to a perfect man”—a man that could not be seen as an ordinary man by the eye of sense; but a man who could be seen, discerned, looked upon, as the seals can be seen, by the eye of the understanding enlightened by the divine testimony. This was the Spirit-Man who fought for conquest against Cæsar as the power which hindered, that he might be taken out of the way. He began this good fight in Cæsar’s empire on the fiftieth day after he was wounded in the heel by the serpent-power. Being healed of his wound, he went forth with his bow “conquering;” and in his prospering course, “pulling down strongholds, casting down reasonings, and every lofty conceit that exalted itself against the knowledge of the Deity, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ”—Eph. iv. 13; 2 Cor. x. 5. For about sixty years he had handled his bow with great dexterity, prowess, and effect; and had already witnessed the signal overthrow of the Jewish power, against which he had been practising his archery nearly forty years. But the fall of Jerusalem did not bring peace to him. His work was still to “contend earnestly for the faith once for all delivered to the saints,” until the idolatrous superstition of which Cæsar was the Chief Pontiff should be expelled from place and power in “the heaven” of the Roman Orb, or habitable earth. For upwards of thirty years he had been bleeding at every pore, “sweating great drops of blood,” in his encounters with the Neros and Domitians of the Roman state. Still he went on conquering with his bow, subduing enemies with the truth, and transforming them into Eyes of the Living Ones, and his own faithful allies in the good fight of faith.

This perfect man of the Ephesian phasis of the “One Body” had thus for sixty years “borne, endured, and labored for the sake of the Spirit’s Name, and had not fainted”—ch. ii. 3. He drew his bow against all adversaries, whether lying pretenders to apostleship, and Nicolaitanes within; or the Jewish and Pagan denizens of the rayless darkness without. They were all the prey of his devouring bow, which spared neither age, sex, nor condition, admitted of no neutrality, knew no compromise, and tolerated only that which was indisputably true. This Spirit-Man, whose head was Christ, his members in particular, those whom he filled with spirit-gifts for the work of the ministry and edifying of the body; and his flesh and bones, the faithful in general—Eph. iv. 10-12; v. 30—this p. 133 Spirit-Man, I say, was a real and formidable potential existence in the empire of the Goat’s Little Horn. He had made Felix tremble; he had almost persuaded king Agrippa to be a bowman with himself; and he had so alarmed Cæsar, that this imperial pontiff of the state superstition commanded him to draw his bow no more in the name of Jesus. But to this mandate he paid no regard. The louder the lion of the forest roared, the louder the echoes of his voice above the battle’s din, and the grander the execution of his bow; so that, according to Pliny’s letter to Trajan (see vol. i. p. 254) in the early part of his reign, the number of the bowman’s victims was so great as to call for the serious consultation of the authorities; for, he says, “the contagion of the superstition hath spread not only through cities, but even villages and the country: . . . the temples were almost desolate, the sacred solemnities long intermitted, and the sacrificial victims could scarcely find a purchaser.” This roused the priests, who had their wealth by the craft “by law established,” to infuriate official Rome to the deadliest ferocity against him. But “the great iron teeth, and brazen claws,” of the Dragon could not devour and rend him to death. The twoedged sword of the magistrate was too dull fatally to disable this Bowman of the Seal. His “fellow-servants and brethren” might be laid under the altar, weltering in their blood (see fifth seal); but the power of Rome was not equal to the subjugation of what Pliny styles “their sullen and obstinate inflexibility.” They obeyed Christ before Cæsar, whose gods and imperial image were their abomination; and his power, though “dreadful and terrible,” too impotent to compel them to invoke.

While John was in Patmos, and recording ἃ εἰσι the things which are, and anxiously awaiting the opening of the first seal, he was gratified with the apparition of this valiant archer, bow in hand, and bestriding the Roman world as its conquering rider, in a period of public prosperity and peace. This represented an existing fact, as we have seen, on the fall of Domitian, and before the death of John about A. D. 98. John “saw him thus produced in vision; and doubtless, by spiritual discernment, recognized him as his ancient and familiar companion in arms. John knew that hitherto they had been successful in their warfare against Judaism and idolatry; but what of the future?—what ἃ μελλει γινεσθαι μετα ταυτα, the things that shall come to pass after these, in relation to the archer? Shall his career of conquest be arrested? Shall the Dragon and his adherents break his bow, and silence his testimony; or shall he prove too strong for him, and hurl him like lightning from “the p. 134 heaven” amid “the inhabiters of the earth and sea?”—xii. 12. This was an interesting inquiry for John and all the saints with him; for the issue of the cause for which they counted every thing but refuse was comprehended in this archer’s fate.

3. The Coronal Wreath

How gratifying, then, to the spectator when he beheld a coronal wreath bestowed upon him—“and there was given to him a stephanos,” not a diadema. John “saw” the full import of this sign, which we, who are confined to the English Version, do not. In the revelation communicated to him the Spirit was very exact in the use of words. When he desired to impart distinct ideas, he did not select one word-sign as representative of them all. For different ideas he chose different Greek words and phrases. This rule the translators of our English Verson have not regarded; for, in numerous instances, they have used but one and the same word to express “the words which the Holy Spirit teacheth.” Thus, for αιων, κοσμος, γῆ, οἰκουμένη, four widely differing word-signs, they have substituted our indefinite sign, world; for μαχαιρα and ῥομφαία the word sword; and for στεφανος and διαδημα the word crown. These are only a few instances, but sufficient to show that the English translation does not with critical accuracy represent “the things which the Holy Spirit teaches.” This defect we must endeavour to supply by interpretation and exposition.

As to διαδημα, the diadem, we see in Apoc. xii. 3, the great red dragon in the heaven wearing seven diadems, one upon each head. In ch. xiii. 1, we behold ten diadems on the beast that rises out of the sea, one on each of his horns. And lastly, in ch. xix. 12, many diadems are seen upon the head of Him, who conquered and possesses the kingdoms of the nations previously held by the ten horns—on the head of the King of kings and Lord of lords. These are the only places in the apocalypse where diadem occurs.

Diadema signifies a band or fillet, and comes from διαδεω to bind round. It was properly the band of the tiara or turban worn by kings. The diademed tiara was the badge of sovereignty among the Asiatics; hence it signifies in the symbolization of the apocalypse the royal dignity of the wearer. Kings used several diadems when they possessed several kingdoms. Thus, Ptolemy, having conquered Syria, made his entry into Antioch, wearing two crowns upon his head, that of Egypt and that of Asia. The seven heads of the Dragon were actually sovereign; so the Ten Horns; and so will p. 135 the Faithful and True One be over the many kingdoms, when the time for the verification of the prefiguration shall have been fulfilled.

A diadem was not given to the Bowman of the first seal. He was therefore not a reigning sovereign; and could not represent a Roman emperor, or a succession of emperors, as is supposed by the learned author of the Horæ Apocalypticæ. The Roman emperors, good, bad, and indifferent, were already diademed in the sixth head of the Dragon. The Bowman had nothing to do with the emperors but to obey them in all things not forbidden by the Spirit; and to contend against the superstition over which they presided as pontiffs supreme. The destiny of the rider of the white horse was not to wear the diadem, but to win the stephanos when the limit of his conquering should be reached.

We need not say much about the stephanos in this place, having dwelt upon it considerably in vol. i. p. 386. It was a circlet of evergreen offered as a prize of honor and glory to the victor in the public games celebrated in the service of the gods. Before the combatant could receive the stephan he had to go on conquering according to the rules of the fight; then at the end of the conflict, he was adorned with the emblem of victory. The stephan may therefore be said to import, as a symbol, something to be obtained by conflict; or something that may have been obtained thereby. In Apoc. iv. 4, 10, the twenty-four elders are stephaned with each a stephan, which they cast down before the throne. Their stephans are golden or unfading, which they receive after having been invested with white garments—victors’ wreaths, bestowed by the Spirit upon all who overcome.

In Apoc. ix. 7, the locusts have something on their heads resembling stephans of gold—yellow turbans. In ch. xii. 1, the woman in the heaven, from which the Dragon had been expelled, is encompassed about the head with a stephanos of twelve stars, indicating that she had obtained her position there by having conquered. Lastly, in ch. xiv. 14, one resembling the Son of Man rides a white cloud, and wears a golden stephan. This indicates that he has a conflict before him, and at the same time is predictive of his conquering unto final victory.

From considerations, then, derived from the use of the word stephanos in general and particular, we “come” with John “and see,” that the valiant archer of the seal was not a ruler, or succession of rulers, of an established dominion, or royalty; but a combatant, an athlete, in that great public game, whose issue was his extermination by fire and sword; or his victory over Cæsar, by which that p. 136 god of the whole Roman earth should be displaced, and the Man-Child of the Star-wreathed woman enthroned as his substitute over all the nations of the Dragon empire. This was the grand proximate issue between the “One Body,” or Christ Mystical, to which John belonged, and the pagan Roman power that oppressed him and his brethren and companions in tribulation for the word of the Deity, and for the testimony of Jesus Christ—ch. i. 9. They were gratified, comforted, and energized, by the testimony of this prophetic seal, that they would go on conquering for a purpose; and that purpose, not merely the converting of men and women from idolatry that they might obtain remission of sins and eternal life; this was only one department of their mission, great and important in itself; but “conquering that they might conquer” the great Dragon, that old Serpent, surnamed the Diabolos and the Satan, which deceived the whole habitable, and persecuted them continually unto imprisonment, confiscation, and death—ch. xii. 9. Hence, the mission of this body of believers in its manhood, with no other weapon than a bow,—the word of the Deity, or gospel of his kingdom,—was twofold; namely, “to take out from the nations a people for his name;” and secondly, and subordinately to this, so to indoctrinate society with their principles, as by its enlightenment to make it the instrument of a grand political revolution, by which its constitution in all departments of the body politic should be changed and thoroughly remodelled after a pattern altogether different from the old. This conquest of Rome pagan they saw foreshadowed in a stephanos being given to the rider on the white horse. They knew from the nature of the gift, and their own condition in the world as a proscribed people, that it was prophetic, and not the representation of an accomplished fact. When they reviewed their progress in the empire for the past sixty years, they perceived that they were a conquering people, but that they had not yet won the stephan, or victor’s wreath. They had therefore to go on “conquering that they might conquer;” and with this most satisfying consideration to strengthen and encourage them, that if in the conflict their blood were poured out under the Altar, and they might not be personal witnesses of the Dragon’s expulsion from the heaven, yet, “precious in the eyes of Yahweh is the death of his saints;” they would therefore not be forgotten, but at a remoter epoch would be raised from among the dead, and be associated with the Lamb as his companions in arms in the conquest of the Ten Horns, and in the binding and shutting up of the Dragon in the abyss for a thousand years.

p. 137 Such, then, is the general import of the first seal. Although its period was most happy and prosperous for the generations ruled by Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian and the two Antonines, yet the “we all who had come to a perfect man” had often to groan under the bloody despotism of those wise and virtuous heathen. Of Trajan, the historian saith, “There remains one panegyric far removed beyond the suspicion of flattery. Above two hundred and fifty years after the death of Trajan, the Senate, in pouring out the accustomed acclamations on the accession of a new emperor, wished that he might surpass the fidelity of Augustus and the virtue of Trajan.” Yet this virtuous emperor ordered his subjects to be capitally punished if convicted of the guilt of Christianity, as is clearly seen from his letter to Pliny. There is still a letter extant addressed by Tiberianus, of the province of Syria, to Trajan, which shows his persecuting spirit, and the boldness of his victims. “I am quite wearied,” says he, “with punishing and destroying the Galilæans, or those of the sect called Christians, according to your orders. Yet they never cease to profess voluntarily what they are, and to offer themselves to death. Wherefore I have labored, by exhortation and threatening, to discourage them from daring to confess to me that they are of that sect. Yet, in defiance of all persecution, they still continue to do it. Be pleased, therefore, to inform me what your highness thinks proper to be done with them.”

Whatever answer was given to this, the sanguinary enmity of the government continued to be evinced during the whole of Trajan’s reign; for it does not appear that the edicts which were in force against the christadelphians and their fellowservants when he ascended the throne, were ever repealed or revoked during his life, which was closed A. D. 117, while prosecuting his great military expedition into the East, having swayed the imperial sceptre nineteen years.

Trajan was succeeded by Hadrian, under whose reign the state of affairs in regard to our hero of the first seal-period was somewhat ameliorated. This ruler had decreed that “these people were not to be officiously sought after;” nevertheless, such as were accused and convicted of an obstinate adhesion to the faith, were to be put to death as criminals; a sentence from which there was no escape but by worshipping the gods and abjuring Christ. Nevertheless, Hadrian, according to Gibbon, was a wise and virtuous prince, under whom “the empire flourished in peace and prosperity. He encouraged the arts, reformed the laws, asserted military discipline, and visited all his provinces in person. His vast and active p. 138 genius was equally suited to the most enlarged views and the minute details of civil policy; but the ruling passions of his soul were curiosity and vanity. As these prevailed, and as they were attracted by different objects, Hadrian was by turns an excellent prince, a ridiculous sophist, and a jealous tyrant.” He reigned twenty-one years, that is, to A. D. 138, when death caused him to give place to the Antonines.

According to Tertullian, he was in the highest degree curious and inquisitive. His knowledge is said to have been varied and extensive—he had studied all the arts of magic, and was passionately fond of the rites and institutions of Paganism. There could, therefore, have been no sympathy in his heart for those who were handling the bow for the victor’s wreath. Apologies, or vindications of christianity were addressed to him by two writers named Quadratus and Aristides, A. D. 126, which were supposed to have favorably affected him; but it could only have been slightly, as the imperial edicts were permitted to operate against them.

Concerning the period of this seal, Mosheim has remarked that such of the christians as could conceal their profession were indeed sheltered under the law of Trajan, which was therefore a disagreeable restraint upon the heathen priests, who breathed nothing but fury against the disciples of Jesus. The office of an accuser was also become dangerous, and very few were disposed to undertake it, which put the priests upon inventing new methods of oppressing the christians. The law of Trajan was consequently artfully evaded under his successor Hadrian. The populace, set in motion by their priests, demanded from the magistrates, with one voice, during the public games, the destruction of the christians; and the magistrates, fearing that a sedition might be the consequence of despising or opposing these popular clamors, were too much disposed to indulge them in their request. During these commotions, Serenus Granianus proconsul of Asia, represented to Hadrian how barbarous and unjust it was to sacrifice to the fury of a lawless multitude persons who had been convicted of no crime.

This remonstrance was not without effect. Hadrian saw the propriety of the complaint, and his moderation in yielding to it is supposed to have been attributable to the “Apologies” before mentioned. Serenus having resigned, Hadrian addressed the following rescript to his successor:

p. 139 “TO MINUTIUS FUNDANUS.”

“I have received a letter written to me by the very illustrious Serenus Granianus, whom you have succeeded. To me, then, the affair seems by no means a fit one to be slightly passed over, that men may not be disturbed without cause, and that sycophants may not be encouraged in their odious practices. If the people of the province will appear publicly, and prefer open charges against the christians, so as to afford them an opportunity of answering for themselves, let them proceed, but in that manner only, and not by rude demands and mere clamor. For it is much more proper, if any person will accuse them, that you should take cognizance of these matters. If, therefore, any should accuse the christians, and show that they actually break the laws, do you determine according to the nature of the crime. But, by Hercules! if the charge be a mere calumny, do you estimate the enormity of such calumny, and punish it as it deserves.”

But, during this seal-period, the swinish multitude and priests of pagan Rome, with the civil power of the state, were not the only enemy in the “outer darkness” with which the rider on the white horse had to contend in his conquering career. The Jews, whose state had been dissolved by the fervent heat of divine indignation, still were true to the character given to them by Paul, that “they pleased not God, and were contrary to all men”—contrary to the saints in Christ, and contrary to the Romans. Still, if the Gentiles made an onslaught upon the christians, the Jews were sure to throw in all their influence to aggravate the horrors of the situation. But the eye of the Deity was upon them, and his wrath ready to flame out anew.

During the half century that had elapsed since the destruction of Jerusalem by the Roman Horn of the Goat, the Jews had wonderfully increased. They felt their importance in this respect, and became daring and ferocious, making violent attempts, as opportunity seemed to favor, to restore their government. Their first rebellion was about a year before Trajan’s death. It extended through the Jewish population of Palestine, Egypt, Cyrenaica, Cyprus, and the neighboring coasts, and much blood was shed between them and Rome. A second rebellion broke out in the sixteenth year of Hadrian, A. D. 133. This was also very sanguinary, and continued to increase for about four years. In its suppression there was an unpitying destruction of the Jews, being more severe because they had long irritated and vexed the Romans. “But,” as a writer has well remarked, “their sufferings were a just reward for their cruelty and unrelenting hatred toward the christians, whose p. 140 principles would not allow them to unite in rebellion against the government.” This ruin of Jewish affairs was of some advantage to the party of the Bow, which, though not delivered from their hatred, was liable to less annoyance from the diminution of their influence with those in power.

But, with the death of Hadrian, A. D. 138, and the accession of Titus Antoninus Pius, a senator of about fifty years of age, who filled his place in “the heaven,” the state of the combatant for the victor’s wreath was relatively improved. The emperor appears to have been a most amiable prince. He caused order and tranquillity to be maintained throughout the empire, and though a heathen pontiff, he was never guilty, so far as his own personal character and intentions were concerned, of wantonly shedding the blood of christians. They were, however, cruelly treated in some of the Asiatic provinces. The crimes laid to their charge by the priests were those of impiety and atheism from a pagan point of view. But Antoninus issued an edict in which he decided that the profession of christianity was not in itself either the one or the other. He addressed a letter to this effect to the magistrate, as follows:

THE EMPEROR TO THE COMMON COUNCIL OF ASIA.

“I am quite of opinion that the gods will take care to discover such persons. For it much more concerns them to punish those who refuse to worship them, than you, if they are able. But you harass and vex the christians, and accuse them of atheism and other crimes, which you can by no means prove. To them it appears an advantage to die for their religion, and they gain their point while they throw away their lives, rather than comply with your injunctions. As to the earthquakes which have happened in past times or lately, is it not proper to remind you of your own despondency when they happened, and to desire you to compare your spirit with theirs, and to observe how serenely they confide in God? In such seasons you seem to be ignorant of the gods, and to neglect their worship. You live in practical ignorance of the supreme God himself, and you harass and persecute to death those who do worship him. Concerning these same men, some others of the provincial governors wrote to our divine father Hadrian, to whom he returned answer, ‘that they should not be molested unless they appeared to attempt something against the Roman government.’ Many also have signified to me concerning these men, to whom I have returned an answer agreeable to the maxims of my father. But if any person p. 141 will still persist in accusing the christians merely as such, let the accused be acquitted though he appear to be a christian, and let the accuser be punished.”—Set up at Ephesus in the Common Assembly of Asia.

Eusebius informs us that letters to the same purport were written to other assemblies, and to all the Greeks; and that the humane emperor took care that his edicts were carried into effect. He reigned twenty-three years, and it seems not unreasonable to conclude that during the greater part of that time the “we all who had come to a perfect man” were enabled still to go on conquering with the bow without very formidable molestation. But at length the senior Antoninus died, A. D. 161; and was succeeded by his colleague, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, an implacable persecutor of the faithful; yet, according to Gibbon, “just and beneficent to all mankind.” These two Antonines governed the Dragon empire forty-two years “with the same invariable spirit of wisdom and virtue. Their united reigns,” continues this elegant apologist for paganism, “are possibly the only period of history in which the happiness of a great people was the sole object of government.” Marcus detested war as the disgrace and calamity of human nature; yet he was forward to shed the blood of christians without a pang.

But Marcus Aurelius was a philosopher of the sect of the Stoics, the old opponents of Paul in Athens. His philosophy was his superstition. He fancied that he carried the Deity within him, and that to be good and virtuous was only to follow nature and to obey the dictates of the Deity—that is, of the human soul, which was divine and self-sufficient. Such was his wisdom—the wisdom of the world, which the wisdom of the Deity in its conquering progress proved to be folly. The collision of these systems brought the rider of the white horse into conflict with this imperial champion of deified human consciousness. His bow dashed it in pieces as a vain conceit; and as Dagon before the ark, scattered its fragments to the pity and contempt of myriads. This indignity was too much for the pride of a Stoic, wielding despotically the “dreadful and terrible” power of the Roman Dragon. The pride of the emperor was deeply wounded. He could not endure to be proved a fool by the logic of the truth twanging from the archer’s bow in flights of missiles, darkening the air of his philosophy. Nothing but blood could expiate the offence. Hence his cruel and exterminating policy against the christians, so opposite to that of his humane and noble predecessor.

In speaking of this ruler, Mosheim remarks, that “most writers have celebrated Marcus beyond measure on account of his extraordinary p. 142 wisdom and virtue. It is not, however, in his conduct towards the christians that we are to look for the reasons of these pompous encomiums; for here the clemency and justice of that emperor suffers a strange eclipse. . . . So that if we except Nero, there was no reign under which the christians were more injuriously and cruelly treated.” He commenced a persecution against them, and carried it on with merciless barbarity in those Asiatic regions which had been relieved by Antoninus Pius, whose tolerant principles, in the plenitude of his power, he dismissed altogether from his regard. Still, though the blood of the saints poured forth copiously afresh, the archer was not dismayed at the terrors of the fight. His career could not be impeded by an imperial professor and lecturer on Stoical metaphysics. He rode on, “conquering that he might conquer,” rejoicing in the honor of death, that being faithful thereto, he might receive the wreath of victory, and of the life that knows no end—Apoc. ii. 10. But, though undismayed, voices were sometimes heard deprecating the cruelties inflicted by power. “Pious persons,” said Melito of Sardis to the emperor, A. D. 177, “aggrieved by new edicts published throughout Asia, and never before practised, now suffer persecution. For audacious sycophants, and men who covet other persons’ goods, take advantage of these proclamations openly to rob and spoil the innocent by night and by day. If this be done by your order, let it stand good, for a just emperor cannot act unjustly; and we will cheerfully submit to the honor of such a death. This only we humbly crave of your Majesty, that after an impartial examination of us and of our accusers, you would justly decide whether we deserve death and punishment or life and protection. But if these proceedings be not yours, and the new edicts be not the effects of your personal judgment—edicts which ought not to be enacted even against barbarian enemies—in that case we entreat you not to despise us who are thus unjustly oppressed.”

The reign of this “philosophic emperor” abounds with instances of unrelenting cruelty towards the christians. He made it a capital offence for any one to avow himself a christian; by which he afforded the world a striking illustration of the justice, mercy, and beneficence, which flow from the mere reason and philosophy of the natural man! His theory deified what he called the soul; and this rational and philosophic god within him devoted all its divinity and power, inherent and acquired, to the maintaining a system of superstition and idolatry, repugnant to every principle of reason enlightened by sobriety and truth. But, the Lamb who opened this p. 143 seal, and who was now about to open the second, had tolerated this blind and ferocious philosopher’s malignity, so much in accord with the fury of the besotted and brutal populace, to the utmost of his forbearance. He had afforded “philosophy” in purple an ample opportunity and a splendid theatre for the display of its “wisdom and virtue,” in promoting the honor of the Deity, and the real happiness of mankind. But it had been weighed in the divine balance, and proved by the conquering bowman of the seal, to be lighter than vanity. His cruelty upon the Brethren of Christ is an indelible disgrace to his memory; which, however, according to Gibbon on the authority of Dion, “was revered by a grateful posterity, and above a century after his death, many persons preserved the image of Marcus Antonius among those of their household gods.” His death occurred A. D. 180, by which a period was put to the flaming of this firebrand, which, with little intermission, had continued in one quarter or another during a period of eighteen years.

4. Of Clerical Expositions

In concluding this section, I remark, that it is not within the scope of this exposition to occupy its pages in stating and examining the multitude of opinions and theories that have been broached by the many and various writers that have preceded me in attempts, all of which have proved futile attempts, at apocalyptical interpretation. To expose their speculative demerits would leave neither time nor space for the exposition of the text; and we should fall into the error of our predecessors, which has been a losing sight of the subject in the fog of their own “ripe scholarship,” with which they have confounded and stultified themselves, in demolishing the vain imaginations of their opponents. If A prove B’s position to be untenable, it does not therefore follow that A’s is impregnable. The reader is interested to know, not how many views there are of our grand subject in general and detail, or in what their error consists; but what is its true scriptural and historic import. This “the natural man” can neither unfold, nor “see” when it is explained; for the simple reason that it is “spiritually discerned”— 1 Cor. ii. 14. The clergymen and ministers who have mystified themselves and the public by their apocalyptic researches have all signally failed for this cause; not for want of an acquaintance with heathen authors in their original Latin and Greek, proficiency in which is the glory of the natural man; but for want of that spiritual discernment which is anchored to a comprehensive understanding and belief p. 144 of the truth, as it is in the prophets and apostles. Not having this light within them they cannot “see” that apocalyptic vein of pure gold, which is traceable amid the historic quartz and sands of the “great mountain,” which is to become a plain before Zerubbabel. This vein cannot be prospected by any signs extant in the literature and philosophy of the natural man. Volumes of this learned lumber may be compiled, with the most amusing and curious notes, annotations, and addenda, and after all said, the first scriptural idea fail of having been elicited, as in the Rev. E. B. Elliott’s Horæ Apocalypticæ. This accomplished “divine” of the Anglican Harlot as by Satan’s law established, whose book is a monument of industry, literary and classical research, and Laodicean foolishness, informs us of the opinions of other “divine” naturals concerning the first four seals, which he rightly rejects as absurd; and then adds thereunto a palpable absurdity of his own. “Hence,” says he, “the inadmissibility not merely of such directly antichronological explanations as that of the martyrologist Foxe and Mr. Faber, which interprets the four horses and horsemen of the four successive military empires of Babylon, Persia, Macedon, and Rome, the three first of which had already some centuries before St. John passed away:—but also of such as Dr. Keith’s, which would interpret them to symbolize the four successive religions of Primitive Christianity, Mohammedanism, Popery, and Infidelity; though elsewhere insisting on the establishment of the reign of popery and the popes, as dating near a century before the rise of Mohammedanism.” Having disposed of these, and very properly repudiated the notion of the horses signifying the church, he would have us believe that the first four seals in their figuration represent the martial Roman nation and its emperors. On this assumption, he expounds the figuration of the first seal of the Roman people in a happy and prosperous state, ruled by five successive emperors of extraodinary excellence; and characterized as the imperial riders by the Stephanos; and of the Nervan family of Cæsars by the bow, the symbol of Nerva the founder of the gens; who sprang originally from Crete, celebrated of old time for the manufacture of bows, which thus became the symbol of the Cretans, and stamped upon their coins! This “crowned bow bearing rider,” the Nerva family of emperors, “went forth conquering and to conquer;” “thereby,” says Mr. Elliott, “assuring the general inviolability from foreign foes and perhaps (for the words might seem to intimate as much) advancing the limits and the greatness of the empire” of Rome!

It is said, that there is but one step from the sublime to the ridiculous, and surely here it is. The figuration of the seal is the p. 145 sublime; but this Elliott “commentary” thereon is certainly the ridiculous. The reader, however, who now has the subject fairly before him, must judge for himself according “to the law and the testimony;” for, if we speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in us. Let him compare, if he will, these diverse and rival expositions; and according to the magnitude and grandeur of the things we have set forth, let him determine of himself, if their fitness be not more nearly allied to the heaven-born things of Deity than the learned and classical elaboration of the Nervan bow, by the antiquarian and excursive ingenuity of the “late Vicar of Tuxford.”