Vol. I. pp. 428, 436.
The Epheso-Smyrnean State of the Ecclesias degenerates into the Pergamian. The doctrine of Balaam and the Nikolaitanes gaining the ascendancy. Celsus, a heathen opponent of the word, objects, that christians were now so split into sects, that the name, christian, only remained to them in common.
Act II.—Seal-Period Second
Apoc. vi. 3, 4.
The rider of the Red Horse puts an end to the previous peace, and involves the populations of the Fourth Beast Polity in bloody civil wars.
A. D. 183.
3. “And when He opened the Second Seal, I heard from the Second Living One saying, ‘Come and see!’ 4. And there went forth another, a fiery-red horse; and to him sitting upon him, to him it was given to take the peace from the earth, and that they might slay one another; and there was given to him a great dagger.”
1.—Preliminary Remarks
In my previous exposition I have shown that the Bowman of the first seal is emblematic of the spirit of the heavens manifested in the “we all” who had “come to A PERFECT MAN,” who was engaged in an earnest contention for the faith against the superstition and infidelity of the world. This was that one styled by the Spirit p. 146 in David, in Ps. lxviii. 18, אדם ādām, “the man,” for whom the Lord Jesus received official gifts when he ascended to the right hand of power—“thou receivedst gifts בָּאָדָם for the Man,” or for the Adam. Paul styles Jesus, “made Lord and Christ,” “the last Adam;” and says, that as the saints have borne the image of the first Adam, so also shall they bear the image of the last—1 Cor. xv. 45-49. They shall be in nature like what he is now. But, in a moral sense they are required to be now like to what he was while on earth “learning obedience by the things which he suffered.” This tuition developed the moral image of Deity, as the creative energy of the Spirit did the material image after his resurrection. It is divinely predestined, therefore, (and the predestination is a necessity that cannot be dispensed with) that all who shall inherit salvation in the kingdom of the Deity shall be “conformed to the image of his son, that he might be the Firstborn (or Chief) among many brethren.” Paul says to the Colossians, “ye have put off the Old Man,” or moral image of the First Adam, “with his deeds; and have put on the New Man,” or last Adam, “who is renewed by knowledge after the image of him that created him”—iii. 9, 10. This they had done. They were in the last Adam, and conformed to his moral image, in hope of being conformed to his material image at the coming of their Chief.
Here then are two men, or Two Adams, occupying the arena of the Roman Habitable—the Old Adam and the New Adam. The former is an infidel atheistic sinner, declared by Paul to be αθεος εν τω κοσμω, atheist in the world. Read his summary of him in Eph. ii. 12; and his description of his vices in Rom. i. 21-32. The whole world of unenlightened natural men of all ages and generations constitutes collectively the Old Adam, who is also “the Devil and Satan” in a certain relation of things. This man has long since come to a perfect man—to the measure of the stature of the fulness of the Antichrist. He is strong and lawless, doomed to perdition when the times apocalyptically “signified” shall be fulfilled.
The other Adam came upon the arena of the habitable in a later age and generation; and was regarded by him as an intruder, and an enemy to be ejected by all possible means, the end to be attained sanctifying everything, however criminal or ferocious. But, if he could not prevail by violence, it was within the scope of his policy to try and corrupt with flatteries; for if he could put to silence by these he would convert the New Man into a partizan, and all opposition would cease. So long, however, as each remained true to his principles, the Old Adam to those of the flesh, p. 147 and the New Adam to those of the word, there could be nothing but war until the one or the other were subdued.
But, the New Man, though “perfect,” did not in all the constituents of his body continue in all his conflicts undefiled. Much of his flesh became diseased and gangrenous, and perished by the way. This reduced his proportions considerably, and leaves him in his nineteenth century existence feeble, emaciated and decrepid; while the Old Adam is still robust and powerful.
In the days of the first seal, the New Man of the spirit was healthy, vigorous, and formidable to the Old Man of the Flesh; who ruled in the Pagan Church and State, as he does now in all the Churches and States of what he ignorantly calls “Christendom.” The conflict between the two was very earnest and bloody. Many lives or souls were ruthlessly precipitated under the altar, while many of the Old Serpent-Man’s adherents fell from their allegiance, and became incorporated in the New Man. But, in this sanguinary strife all the desertions were not from the party of the Serpent; many relaxed their hold upon the Lamb, fell into the ranks of the enemy, and became, either implacable adversaries, or perverters of the truth, who pretended to have found a common ground, on which Jew, philosopher, vulgar Pagan, and christian might meet in the fellowship of the same essential opinions. Sects, formed of the factions who had become impatient of the restraints of the truth, had greatly multiplied. The seed sown in the first century by the seducers, evil men, and false prophets, of whom we read so much in the New Testament, was now in vigorous growth; multiplied, varied, complicated, and refined by endless subtleties and fancies, in which the poverty of taste and genius discovered itself abundantly.
There were at the time of the closing of the period of the first seal and the opening of the second, two classes among the professed adherents of the New Man, whose opposite characteristics were becoming daily more distinct. The one may be regarded as the vital and wholesome element of the man himself—Christadelphians; those who held fast the Spirit’s Name, and had not denied His faith; and those of the Balaam class, who held the teaching of the Nikolaitanes, or Gnostics, and were multiplying considerably. Instead of holding fast the Spirit’s Name, they were developing what in history is called the Αρνηστιθεος αποστασια, or Deity-denying apostasy, which affirmed that “Christ was no more than a man.” The Spirit’s Name is the Father by his spirit manifested in Sin’s Flesh begotten and born, not of the will of man, but by his own creative energy, p. 148 as was Adam the first: but, to say, that he was no more than a man, was to affirm, that he was begotten of blood, or of the will of the flesh, or of the will of man; which was to lay the basis of a name which the Spirit not only will not recognize, but one which he hates. These Gnostics also, while they claimed the name of christian, denied the Spirit’s faith, as do “the names and denominations” of modern times. These Nikolaitan sects amused and stultified themselves with the discussion of the merest trifles; such as, the proper time of the observance of Easter; the pretended prophetical illuminations of fanatics, and the questions agitated by the Eclectics of Egypt. These sects were “the Mystery of Iniquity” working under the name of christians; the Synagogue of the Satan that aggravated greatly the difficulties of the genuine elements of the New Man in that department of his work, the “taking out from among the Gentiles a people for the Spirit’s Name.” Still, out of the evil of these sects some good was extracted. They became a numerous and powerful political party, which eventually acquired sufficient strength to contend with the pagan party sword in hand and to expel it from “the heaven” of the Roman world. While they had denied the Spirit’s name and faith by their traditions, they still contended against the idolatry of the Gentiles: and in this contention they were, doubtless, very successful. The Christadelphians or true believers, and the heretics called Christians combined were too much for the heathen in their argument against their gods, and the worship with which they honored them; so that the New Man, notwithstanding all the discouragements which afflicted him on the right hand and on the left, still went on “conquering” under this second seal “that he might conquer” under the sixth, when his brethren and fellow servants who were to be slain should be filled up.
Now these Nikolaitan Heretics who were defiling the temple of the Deity with their traditions, were exhorted at this period to “repent; or else,” said the Spirit, “I will come unto thee suddenly, and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth”—ch. ii. 16. Hence the Spirit had a controversy with them as well as with the heathen populace, priests, and civil, and imperial rulers. He will not permit His name, His faith, and His faithful and true ones to be disregarded, denied, tormented, and destroyed with impunity. Nemo me impune lacessit, no one provokes me without punishment, is the Spirit’s maxim with respect to his holy things. Retribution had therefore accumulated within the past eighty years upon the heads of two classes of offenders—upon the Roman people and government; and upon the sectarian or Pergamian apostates, who p. 149 were neither pagan, Jew nor christadelphian; but, like our modern “names and denominations,” Balaamite and Nikolaitan blasphemers of the truth, yet “christians” so-called.
The retribution threatened against these apostatizing professors of christianity was that the Spirit would fight with them, and that the weapon he would wield against them would be “the sword of his mouth.” That is, he would command a sword to be unsheathed against them. Such a sword would consist in something more practical and material than reason and testimony. These were fast becoming to them, what their brethren in modern times affirm the word of the Deity to be now, “a dead letter.” Argument by the Spirit through the Angel-elderships of the Ecclesias had been exhausted; so that appeals to their intelligence being fruitless, it remained only to treat them as heathen men and publicans—mere creatures of sensation, brutish as the beasts that perish.
The sword, then, that was suspended over them was a sword of retribution, which, on smiting them, would also smite the heathen populace and its rulers, and redden society with its own blood. That this is the kind of sword “signified” by the Spirit’s words, will appear from the use of the phrase in Apoc. xix. 15—“Out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword that with it he might smite the nations;” and in verse 20, “The remnant were slain with the sword of him sitting upon the horse, which sword proceedeth out of his mouth;” and the blood of those slain flowed to the horse-bridles of them who inflicted the vengeance.
“Repent,” μετανοησον, change your minds, “or else I will come unto thee suddenly, and fight with thee.” But instead of such repentance as this, they hardened their hearts, and went on from bad to worse, until the patience and longsuffering of the Deity being exhausted, the Lamb opened suddenly the Second Seal, and a fiery red condition of society became the characteristic of the “Spirit of the Heavens” that ruled the passing hour.
2. The Opening of the Seal-Period
When the Lamb opened the first seal, John’s attention was called to the fact by a voice “as of a voice of thunder;” but in the opening of the second, he hears a voice of the same import, only without the thunder. There was no hurling of the tyrant Marcus Aurelius Antoninus into the shades of death by the hands of an assassin, and the revocation of his edicts, and declaring his memory infamous, by the decrees of an indignant Senate, as in the case of Domitian.
p. 150 Though this imperial stoick had shed so much christian blood, or permitted it to be shed when he could easily have prevented it, which is equally criminal with the Deity, the Lamb allowed him to depart to his own place without any signal personal vengeance being inflicted upon him. He died without violence, aged about fifty-seven, having reigned conjointly with Antoninus Pius twenty-three years, at the expiration of which he became sole emperor for thirteen, when he associated his son Commodus with him in the government. Four years after this he died, leaving Commodus, at the inexperienced age of about nineteen, the uncontrolled and irresponsible despot of the so-called “civilized world.”
Commodus ascended the throne as sole ruler A. D. 180. “The beloved son of Marcus,” says Gibbon, “succeeded to his father amidst the acclamations of the Senate and armies, and when he ascended the throne, the happy youth saw round him neither competitor to remove, nor enemies to punish. In this calm, elevated station, it was surely natural that he should prefer the love of mankind to their detestation, the mild glories of his five predecessors to the ignominious fate of Nero and Domitian.”
During the first three years of his reign, he reluctantly surrendered himself to the direction of those experienced counsellors whom his father had delighted to honor. By their influence his profligacy was confined to his private revels; and as his hands were yet unstained with blood, there was hope that he might become, if not the most virtuous, at least not the most “dreadful and terrible” of his kind. A fatal incident, however, dashed all hopes, and decided his weak and timid character for the worse, until cruelty degenerated into habit, and at length became the ruling passion of his soul.
One evening as Commodus was returning to the palace through a dark and narrow portico in the amphitheatre, an assassin, who waited his passage, rushed upon him with a drawn sword, loudly exclaiming, “The Senate sends you this.” The menace prevented the deed; the assassin was seized by the guards, and immediately revealed the authors of the conspiracy. The conspirators, who, with the assassin himself, were senators, were all executed. But, though relieved of their presence, the words of the assassin sunk deep into the mind of Commodus, and left an indelible impression of fear and hatred against the whole body of the Senate. Those whom he had dreaded as importunate ministers he now suspected as secret enemies. The Delators, a race of men discouraged and almost extinguished in the former reigns, again became formidable, as soon as they discovered that the emperor was desirous of finding disaffection or treason in the Senate. This great council of the p. 151 nation was composed of the most distinguished of the Romans, and distinction of every kind soon became criminal. “The possession of wealth stimulated the diligence of the informers; rigid virtue implied a tacit censure of the vices of Commodus; important services argued a dangerous superiority of merit; and the friendship of Marcus Aurelius always ensured the aversion of his son. Suspicion was equivalent to proof, trial to condemnation. The execution of a senator of consideration was attended with the death of all who might lament or avenge his fate; and when Commodus had once tasted human blood, he became incapable of pity or remorse.”
Such was the opening of the Second Seal, A. D. 183. It was a sign in “the heaven,” and the color of the sign was fiery red. The spirit that ruled the situation there was that of retributive vengeance, through a class of agents who were the blind executioners of a purpose which they knew not. Bloodshedding was the order of the day. The son-in-law of the late emperor was among the victims; and Arius Antoninus, the last representative of the Antonines, also fell by the axe of the executioner. Every sentiment of decency and humanity was extinct in the mind of Commodus. He abandoned the reins of empire to the most unworthy favorites, and valued nothing in sovereign power except the unbounded license of indulging his sensual appetites. He is said to have been the first of the Roman emperors totally devoid of taste for the pleasures of the understanding. From his earliest infancy he discovered an aversion to whatever was rational or liberal, and a fond attachment to the amusements of the populace, the sports of the circus and amphitheatre, the combats of gladiators, and the hunting of wild beasts. He entered the lists as a gladiator, and gloried in a profession which the laws and manners of the Romans had branded with the justest note of infamy.
He had now attained the summit of vice and infamy. Amidst the acclamations of a flattering court, he was unable to disguise from himself that he had deserved the contempt and hatred of every man of sense and virtue in his empire. History has preserved a long list of consular senators sacrificed to his wanton suspicion, which sought out with peculiar anxiety those unfortunate persons connected, however remotely, with the family of the Antonines, without sparing even the ministers of his crimes or his pleasures. His cruelty proved at last fatal to himself. He had shed with impunity the noblest blood of Rome; he perished as soon as he was dreaded by his own domestics. He was strangled while laboring with the effects of poison and drunkenness, A. D. 192, after a sanguinary reign of thirteen years.
p. 152 This reign may be regarded as the opening period of the Second Seal. In its course divine vengeance executed through the wicked, as the sword of Deity, retributive justice upon the authorities, and upon the imperial family, who had shed the blood of the saints in the former reigns; and, when the work was consummated in their case, the imperial executioner was punished for his crimes by death at the hands of the infamous.
But, though Commodus had destroyed the peace and happiness of the Senate and patricians of Rome, his reign was remarkable for the peace granted to the Ecclesia of Christ in all the habitable. In this one particular point only, namely, in his conduct towards the christians, Commodus was more just and equitable than his philosophical father. In this the change of emperors was propitious. The power, goodness, and justice of the Deity were evinced in making so vile a character at once his sword upon the persecutor and a check upon persecution, by which a breathing time was afforded after eighteen years of sufferings exceedingly cruel. The gospel, or what was called the gospel, is said to have “flourished abundantly, and many of the nobility of Rome, with their whole families, embraced it.” At all events, they abandoned paganism; but whether or not they embraced “the truth as it is in Jesus,” is beyond the competency of historians to testify.
3.—The Horse Fiery Red
In the first seal the horse was white—it was in peace and prosperity; but the horse in the second seal appears under an administration that “takes away the peace from the earth.” Hence the redness of the horse—a horse dyed with blood—with arterial blood the life of the flesh, and therefore its fiery rather than a purple hue. The same word is used by the LXX. in 2 Kings iii. 22, πυρρα ως αιμα, red as blood. The word is very expressive; the root of it being πυρ, fire, it indicates in this emblem both the brightness of the red and the cause of the horse’s redness—the fiery indignation of the Deity. John beheld the horse in a state of fiery redness without any whiteness about it. Not that the social horse became all over red on the opening of the second seal, but that this would be its condition before the seal-period should be superseded by that of the third. While the horse represents Greek and Latin society, the color represents that society’s judicial condition. The judgments brought upon it in the reign of Commodus fell chiefly upon the uppertendom of the State. The lower classes, however, of the city p. 153 Rome did not altogether escape. Pestilence and famine broke out among them there, so that two thousand persons died every day for a considerable length of time. The pestilence was attributed to the just indignation of their gods; but the famine they considered as owing to speculators, and among these principally to the emperor’s favorite, who had monopolized the breadstuffs of the city. The popular discontent, after it had long circulated in whispers, broke out in the assembled circus. The people quitted their favorite amusements for the more delicious pleasure of revenge, rushed in crowds towards the palace in the suburbs, and demanded with angry clamors the head of the public enemy. The obnoxious favorite ordered a body of prætorian cavalry to disperse the seditious multitude. The people fled towards the city; several were slain, and many more trampled to death. But when the prætorians entered the city, the foot-guards joined the people. The tumult became a regular engagement and threatened a general massacre. The cavalry at length gave way, and the tide of popular fury returned with redoubled violence against the gates of the palace, where Commodus lay dissolved in luxury, and alone unconscious of the civil war. It was death to approach his person with the unwelcome news. Two of his concubines, however, ventured to break into his presence, and revealed to the affrighted tyrant the impending ruin. He started from his dream of pleasure, and commanded that the head of his favorite should be thrown to the people. The desired spectacle appeased their rage, and the tumult ceased.
This was a sort of earnest of the sanguinary aspect that awaited the whole social horse when the judgments of the seal should be fully developed. He would, in all his parts, under the administration of his bloodshedding rider, bleed from every pore, and become fiery red, as John saw him in the vision; so that when the seal-judgments should be complete, the Senate, the executive, the pagans, philosophers, and heretics, of Daniel’s “dreadful and terrible” fourth beast, should be all fiery red from the sanguinary calamities their crimes, unbelief, and apostasy had brought upon them.
4.—The Rider of the Horse
John refers to the rider by the phrase “him who sits upon him.” This equestrian is a symbolical personage, not representative of an individual man, but of a class of agents blindly executing retribution upon those obnoxious to the Lamb’s displeasure. He evidently represents a class of agents endued with the power of the sword, p. 154 and who could wield it in the cause of peace or war. “It was given to him,” says John, “to take away the peace from the earth.” This shows, first, that the white period of the first seal was a period in which peace ruled the situation; and, secondly, that it was given to him to destroy public tranquility—to abolish “the peace,” and to substitute tumult and confusion where it had previously reigned. But this state of public disorder might obtain without bloodshedding. John was therefore informed that the reason why it was given to him to take away the peace, was that “they,” the agents symbolized by the rider, “might slay one another.” This was an intimation to the apostle that, when the second seal should be in manifestation, a period of civil commotion and bloodshed would have superseded “the most prosperous and happy era” of the first seal. A sanguinary revolutionary condition of things, in the presence of that generation of “the people of the mighty and the holy ones,” symbolized by the second or Ox-headed Living One “full of eyes,” was the signification or “mystery” of Roman society dyed fiery red and ridden by this “dreadful and terrible” equestrian.
In the English Version it reads, “Power was given to him to take peace from the earth.” This is very indefinite unless it is distinctly understood what is “signified” by “the earth.” In the original the phrase is, λαβειν την ειρηνην απο της γης, to take THE peace from the earth. The relation of the first two seals shows that the definite article, την, ought not to be omitted, whether it be so in some manuscripts or not. Public tranquility had obtained within the limits of the Dragon empire from the fall of Domitian to the alleged sending of a sword to Commodus by the Roman Senate, a period of eighty-seven years. This was peace notably definite in the history of the imperial diademed head of the Dragon, and the taking of it away was very properly foretold in the definite form of the original. I have, therefore, not omitted it in my rendering of the text, but, after “the form of words” before me, instead of “take peace from,” have given it “take the peace from the earth.”
5.—The Great Dagger
“And there was given to him (the rider) a great dagger.” So I render the words, και εδοθη αυτω μαχαιρα μεγαλη. In the English Version, machaira mĕgalē is rendered a great sword. My objection to this is, that in the symbolization of the Fourth Seal the sword is introduced in the English Version, although in the Greek the Spirit has selected a different word, which, in fact, represents a weapon of a different kind. In verse 4, a machaira was given to the rider; p. 155 while in verse 8, they kill with a rhomphaia. There must be a reason why two different words, both rendered sword in the English Version, are used by the Spirit in the second and fourth seals. A machaira and a rhomphaia, though both weapons of destruction, are such in the hands of different classes of destroyers. In Liddell and Scott’s Lexicon, μαχαιρα is defined “a large knife or dirk; a short sword or dagger; but still rather an assassin than a soldier’s weapon.” It was worn by the emperors as a symbol of their power, as magistrates-in-chief, over life and death. It was also worn by the præfects of the imperial guard. It was the badge indicating them as the constitutional authorities whose function it was to cause the laws to be obeyed on pain of death.
As a symbol, then, adapted to the representation of events peculiar to the bloodstained condition of things in the second seal-period, a machaira was very appropriate. In this symbolization, it was the emblem of the murder or assassination, committed by them, who wielded constitutionally the power over the lives of their contemporaries, commonly termed the power of the sword. It was a great dagger—symbolically great. It was great in the excessive and unconstitutional, or illegal use of it. Though a short, small, weapon in itself; yet in the hands of the class represented by the rider, it was great, or “dreadful and terrible.” It was a weapon in the hands of imperial and military assassins of murder by wholesale in cold blood; and of bloodshedding in civil war to avenge assassination; or to retain sovereign power which had been acquired by the dagger’s use. In giving therefore to this rider “a great dagger,” he had power “given to him to take away the peace of the earth,” and to cause its potsherds to slay one another in civil wars. He would redden them with a fiery redness—the redness of a brother’s blood.
6.—“The Earth”
“It was given to him (the rider) to take the peace from the earth.” “The earth” in this place cannot be the earth wherever men dwell, comprehending what we term Europe, Asia, Africa, America, and Australasia. The last two were unknown to the ancients; and may therefore certainly be excluded from “the earth” having relation to events being transacted in their time. The use of the phrase in this seal furthermore, could not have comprehended even all the territory known to them, for the prediction was “to take the peace” of the first seal “from the earth.” Now, “the peace” of this seal was internal, not external, peace; for although it was a “most prosperous and happy”, period for the Roman people, they still waged great wars p. 156 against the Persians, Jews, Quadi, Marcomanni, &c., in the reigns of Trajan, Hadrian, and Marcus Antoninus. Hence, the territories inhabited by these peoples must be excluded also from “the earth” of this text. In other words, “the earth” was bounded and confined to the frontiers of the Greco-Latin Dragon of Daniel and John; extending two thousand miles in one direction, and three thousand in another; and inclosing within its circuit the Mediterranean sea. This was the sense in which “the earth” was understood by the Greeks and Latins in John’s time. A writer named Dionysius speaks thus concerning it, Ἡ δε Ῥωμαιων πολις απασης μεν αρχει γης, οση μη ανεμβατος εστι, πασης δε κρατει θαλασσης— the city of the Romans indeed governs the whole earth, as much as is not inaccessible, and holds possession of all the sea. And Ovid sings,
Gentibus est aliis tellus data limite certo,\ Romanæ spatium est urbis et orbis idem.
that is, to other nations territory is given with a defined limit; to the Roman the extent of the city and the orb is the same; and in another place, he says, Roma caput orbis,—“Rome the head, or capital, of the earth.” This will remind the reader of what John says of this city in his day under the figurative name of “Babylon the Great,” in Apoc. xvii. 18, “that great city having dominion over the kings of the earth.”
This formula, then, “the earth” in this prophecy of the six seals, is to be interpreted of the Roman territory—all that portion of the orb we inhabit subject to the dominion of Pagan Rome. Beside the text before us, we have it occurring in verses 8, 10, 13, 15. In all these places “the earth” has the same limitation; and is to be interpreted only as the arena of events happening to the peoples and government of Rome.
Having thus expounded the beautiful and expressive figuration of the second seal, I shall now proceed to lay before the reader a narration of events illustrative of the foregoing exposition. I shall condense it from Gibbon as the best historian who has compiled the history of the seal-periods. If I wrote for the learned, this would still be indispensably necessary; for, though they may be well acquainted with the transactions of the times, very few of them are able to trace the apocalyptic vein of fine gold that runs through them; in other words, to run a parallel between the prophecy and p. 157 its historical fulfilment. But, this exposition is for the same class of readers as that to whom John was ordered to send the prophecy—“to the servants of the Deity;” and these in all the ages and generations since his day, have been mostly of the poorer sort; and but little acquainted with what has happened in the world beyond what is written in the scriptures. It is necessary, therefore, for their sakes, not only to explain the symbols, but to give so much history as will enable them to “see” for themselves, the reasonableness of the explanation; so that, when they shall have the prophecy in symbol turned into the prophecy in signification, and the history before them, they may be able to conclude that it can only mean what is shown, and nothing else.
7.—Fulfilment of the Prophecy
Commodus, the imperial sword-bearer of the Roman empire, was not poinarded, but strangled to death. He was succeeded by Pertinax, the præfect of Rome, a senator of consular rank, and conspicuous for his merit. He was chosen emperor by the Prætorian Guards, whose præfect, Lætus, had procured the murder of Commodus, and his election by the military. The election was ratified by the Senate, A. D. 193, which at the same sitting branded the memory of Commodus with eternal infamy.
Pertinax was a “virtuous” pagan, who sought to heal the wounds inflicted by the hand of tyranny. The innocent victims who yet survived, were recalled from exile, released from prison, and restored to the full possession of their honors and fortunes. The unburied bodies of murdered senators (for the cruelties of Commodus, an individual element of the rider of the fiery red horse, endeavored to extend itself beyond death) were deposited in the sepulchres of their ancestors; their memory was justified; and every consolation was bestowed on their ruined afflicted families.
Economy and industry he considered as the pure and genuine sources of wealth. The rapacious extravagance of Commodus had left only about forty thousand dollars in the treasury. With this small sum he had to defray the expenses of the government, and to discharge the pressing demand of a liberal donative he had been obliged to promise the licentious and turbulent soldiery who had elected him. Yet under this pressure, he remitted all the oppressive taxes invented by Commodus, and cancelled all the unjust claims of the treasury; declaring, “that he was better satisfied to administer a poor republic with innocence, than to acquire riches by ways of tyranny and dishonor.”
p. 158 His thorough radical reform of state abominations secured to Pertinax the love and esteem of the people, who never would have acquired a fiery redness had they been ridden solely by rulers of his description. They already flattered themselves that they should long enjoy the benign influence of his administration. But his zeal to reform the corrupted state was too hasty, and proved fatal to himself and to his country. His honest indiscretion united against him the servile and swinish multitude, who found their private benefit in the public disorders, and who preferred the favor of the most vicious tyrants to the inexorable equality of the laws.
Amidst the general joy, the sullen and angry countenance of the prætorian guards betrayed their discontent. They dreaded the restoration of ancient discipline; and regretted the licence of the former reign. Three days after their election of Pertinax, they seized on a senator with the design of making him emperor. But he escaped their grasp, greatly alarmed at their purpose of thrusting upon him so dangerous a distinction. A short time after this, one Sosius Falco, a rash youth, conspired with the soldiery in the absence of Pertinax; but the conspiracy was foiled by his unexpected return to Rome. Falco was on the point of being condemned to death by the Senate, but escaped through the intercession of the emperor, who desired that the purity of his reign might not be stained by the blood even of a guilty senator.
These disappointments served only to irritate the rage of the licentious and brutal prætorians, who were the curse of the state it was their duty to defend. Only two months and twenty-six days after the death of Commodus, a general sedition broke out in their camp, which the officers wanted either the power, or inclination to suppress. They marched at noonday with arms in their hands, and fury in their looks, towards the imperial palace. Their companions on guard gave them free admission; and they were welcomed by the domestics of the old court, who had already formed a secret conspiracy against the life of the too virtuous emperor. Pertinax, disdaining either flight or concealment, advanced to meet those in whose fiery red hand was already brandished “the Great Dagger.” He recalled to the minds of these assassins his own innocence, and the sanctity of their recent oath. But all in vain. A barbarian levelled the first blow, and Pertinax fell, pierced with a multitude of wounds. His head was borne on a lance in triumph to the prætorian camp in sight of a mournful and indignant people, who lamented the unworthy fate of an excellent prince, and the transient blessings of a reign, the memory of which could serve only to aggravate their approaching misfortunes.
p. 159 The prætorian bands, whose licentious fury was the first symptom and proximate cause of the decline of the Roman empire, numbered about fifteen thousand. They were instituted by Augustus for the maintenance of his usurped dominion. They enjoyed double pay, and superior privileges. After fifty years of peace and servitude, Tiberius for ever rivetted the fetters of his country by concentrating them at Rome, in a permanent camp without the walls, which was fortified with skill, on the broad summit of the Quirinal and Viminal hills.
Such formidable servants are always necessary, but often fatal, to the throne of despotism. By thus introducing the prætorian guards as it were into the palace and the senate, the emperors taught them to perceive their own strength, and the weakness of the civil government; to view the vices of their masters with familiar contempt, and to lay aside that reverential awe, which distance only and mystery, can preserve towards an imaginary power. In the luxurious idleness of an opulent city, their pride was nourished by the sense of their irresistible weight; nor was it possible to conceal from them that the person of the sovereign, the authority of the senate, the public treasure, and the seat of empire, were all in their hands.
The advocates of the guards endeavored to justify by arguments the power which they asserted by arms; and to maintain that their consent was essentially necessary in the appointment of an emperor. “Where,” said they, “was the Roman people to be found? Not surely amongst the mixed multitude of slaves and strangers that filled the streets of Rome; a servile populace as devoid of spirit as destitute of property. The defenders of the state were the genuine representatives of the people, and the best entitled to elect, the military chief of the republic.” These assertions became unanswerable when the fierce prætorians increased their weight by throwing their swords into the scale.
We have seen in the exposition of the first seal, how a bow may symbolize a multitude; it will not therefore be difficult for us to comprehend, how that the “great dagger,” or small sword, of the second, may symbolize a multitude of bloodshedding assassins in the hand of the power that rides the people, or rules the state. The scripture in various places uses the sword as emblematic of a multitude in arms. The wicked are the sword of Yahweh—Ps. xvii. 13; the sons of Zion are compared to a sword—Zech. ix. 13; all the tribes of Israel are styled Yah Elohim’s battle axe and weapons of war, with which He will break in pieces the nations, and p. 160 destroy kingdoms—Jer. li. 20. Hence, they are symbolized in the apocalypse by a sword proceeding out of His mouth with which he will smite the nations—xix. 15. These prætorian assassins, who claimed to be the representatives of the Roman people, were the sword in the hand of power; and became signally “great” when their numbers were increased by Severus, “the military chief of the republic,” to fifty thousand.
Having violated the sanctity of the throne by their atrocious assassination of Pertinax, the prætorians at once proceeded to dishonor its majesty by proclaiming, with a loud voice from the ramparts of their camp, that the Roman world was to be disposed of by public auction to the highest bidder. This infamous excess of military licence diffused grief, shame and indignation throughout the city. Two bidders presented themselves, Sulpicianus, father-in-law to Pertinax, and governor of the city, and Didius Julianus, a wealthy senator. The former offered £160 to each soldier; when the vain old Julian, eager for the prize, offered upwards of two hundred pounds sterling to each. This was irresistible; the gates of the camp were instantly thrown open to the purchaser. He was declared emperor; received their oath of allegiance, which would be regarded so long as convenient; and was conducted, in close order of battle, through the deserted streets to the senate-house where he received the imperial symbols from the obsequious and false-hearted council of the nation.
On the throne of the world, Julian now found himself without either friend or adherent. The prætorians even were ashamed of him, nor was there a citizen who did not regard his elevation with horror as the last insult on the Roman name. The streets and public places of Rome resounded with clamors and imprecations. The enraged multitude insulted the person of Julian, rejected his liberality, and called aloud upon the legions of the frontiers to assert the violated majesty of the Roman empire.
“It was given to him to take the peace from the earth.” The public discontent was soon diffused from the centre to the frontiers of the empire. The armies in Britain, in Syria, and in Illyricum, lamented the death of Pertinax, as an old and favorite commander; and sternly refused to ratify the ignominious sale. “Their immediate and unanimous revolt was fatal to Julian, but it was fatal at the same time to the public peace; as the generals of the respective armies, Albinus, Niger, and Septimus Severus, were still more anxious to succeed, than to revenge the murdered Pertinax. Of these rivals S. Severus was the most fortunate; and as the time of p. 161 the seal-period had arrived, “that they should slay one another,” they all prepared for the arbitrament of the sword. Severus being a man of energy as well as a soldier of experience and capacity, and having the best troops of the service; and being also nearer to the capital, had much the advantage over Niger of Syria, and Albinus of Britain. He speedily assembled his Pannonian legions; painted in the most lively colors the crime, the insolence, and the weakness of the prætorians, and animated his soldiers to arms and revenge. He concluded with the persuasive of about nineteen hundred and fifty dollars to every man; a donative double in value to the bribe with which Julian had purchased the world. The acclamations of the army immediately saluted Severus as emperor, who without delay marched them into Italy on the way to Rome.
Severus and his Pannonian legions were a “great machaira” in every sense of the phrase. His approach to the city made both Julian and the prætorians to tremble. They quitted, with a sigh, the pleasures of the baths and theatres, to put on arms, whose use they had almost forgotten, and beneath the weight of which they were oppressed. Every motion of Julian betrayed his trembling perplexity, which, with secret pleasure, was greatly enjoyed by the Senate. He insisted that Severus should be declared a public enemy; anon he entreated that he might be associated with him in the empire. He sent public ambassadors to negociate, while he dispatched private assassins to slay him. He designed a solemn procession of vestals, and all the colleges of priests in their canonicals, and bearing before them the symbols of Roman superstition, to meet the Pannonian legions; and at the same time he vainly tried to interrogate, or to appease, not “the Lamb,” but “the Fates,” by magic ceremonies, and unlawful sacrifices. But Severus dreaded neither his arms, nor his enchantments, but took wise precaution against assassination. His emissaries, dispersed in the capital, assured the guards, that provided they would abandon Julian, and the assassins of Pertinax, to the justice of the conqueror, he would no longer consider that murder as the act of the whole body. The faithless prætorians complied with these easy terms, seized the greater part of the assassins, and signified to the senate that they no longer defended the cause of Julian. That assembly forthwith, unanimously acknowledged Severus as lawful emperor; and pronounced sentence of deposition and death against the unfortunate Julian; who was beheaded as a common criminal in a private apartment of the baths of the palace, after an anxious and precarious reign of sixty-six days.
p. 162 Having settled affairs in Rome upon the new basis, he left the city at the end of thirty days, and led his legions to the slaughter decreed for them and their compatriots under Niger and Albinus, in the second seal—“it was given to him to take the peace from the earth, and that they should slay one another.” In less than four years Severus subdued the legions of the east under Niger and the valour of the west under Albinus. He vanquished these two competitors of reputation and ability, and defeated numerous armies provided with weapons and discipline equal to his own. He was, as a legitimate imperial power, truly a “great machaira;” whose uncommon abilities and fortune have induced an elegant historian of that age to compare him with the first and greatest of the Cæsars. He was a man of great craft and dissimulation. He promised only to betray; and flattered only to ruin. By these arts as well as by arms, his rivals fell singly and successively, an easy prey to their subtle foe. The sons of Niger had fallen into his hands at Rome. As long as the power of their father inspired terror, or even respect, they were educated with most tender care with his own children; but they were soon involved in Niger’s ruin, and removed—first by exile and afterwards by death—from the eye of public compassion.
As for Albinus, he was induced to accept from Severus the precarious rank of Cæsar, as a reward for his neutrality in his conflict with Niger. Till this civil war was decided, he treated Albinus, whom he had doomed to destruction, with every mark of esteem and regard. Even in the letter in which he announced his victory over Niger, he styles Albinus the brother of his soul and empire. The messengers charged with the delivery of this were instructed to accost the Cæsar with respect—to desire a private audience, and to plunge their daggers into his heart. The conspiracy was discovered, and the too credulous Albinus crossed over to the continent to meet Severus in arms for the work of mutual slaughter, according to the terms of the second seal. The battle of Lyons in France, where one-hundred and fifty thousand Romans were engaged, was fatal to Albinus; and this second civil war was finished by that memorable day, A. D. 197.
Both Niger and Albinus were discovered and put to death in their flight from the field of battle. Severus’ unforgiving temper, stimulated by avarice, indulged a spirit of revenge, where there was no room for apprehension. The most considerable of the provincials who had obeyed the vanquished governor under whose authority they were accidentally placed, were reddened with their own blood, sent into exile, and lost their estates by confiscation. He p. 163 sent the head of Albinus, with a threatening letter, to Rome, in which he announced that he was resolved to spare none of the adherents of the Cæsar. He condemned forty-one senators to the fiery redness of the seal. Their wives, children, and clients attended them in death; and the noblest provincials of Spain and Gaul were involved in the same fiery red ruin. Such rigid justice—for so he termed it—was, in the opinion of Severus, the only conduct capable of ensuring peace to the people, or stability to the prince; and he condescended slightly to lament, that to be mild it was necessary that he should first be cruel.
Having thus become the “great machaira” of his age, Severus considered the Roman empire as his property, and proceeded to improve and cultivate so valuable an acquisition. In the administration of justice, his judgments were characterized by attention, discernment and impartiality; and whenever he deviated from the strict line of equity, it was generally in favor of the poor and oppressed. The misfortunes of civil discord were obliterated. The wrath of the Lamb was temporarily assuaged; and the judgments of the second seal were complete. The calm of peace and prosperity was once more experienced in the provinces. The fame of the Roman arms was revived by that warlike and successful imperial sword-bearer: and he boasted, with no little pride, that having received the empire oppressed with foreign and domestic wars—“slaying one another”—he left it established in profound, universal and honorable peace.
But, while “the peace” was taken “from the earth,” and the armies of the empire were engaged in “slaying one another,” what was the condition of those anti-pagan professors of christianity who had let go their hold upon the Spirit’s name, had denied his faith, and had embraced the dogmas of Nikolaitanism? And amid all the trouble of the times, was the Bowman of the first seal “conquering,” while the Imperial Machaira of the second was blindly executing rigid justice upon the pagan senate and public at large?
In the beginning of the third century, at which we have arrived, we find an unhappy mixture of metaphysical self-righteousness and superstition, now amply developed in “the names and denominations” of blasphemy, overshadowing and darkening the world, and greatly clouding and depraving the pure light of the gospel. This perverting the gospel of Christ, and preaching another gospel than Paul’s, had been progressing from his time; but recently it had been greatly promoted by Ammonius, Pantænus, Clement, and Origen, of the Divinity School at Alexandria, the capital of Egypt; who p. 164 were all eminent in the unhallowed work of making christianity palatable to heathen philosophers and admirers of the world’s wisdom—a work that could only be successful by corrupting it. Would the Deity look with complacency upon this? Though they had renounced the gods of Greece and Rome, and contended against their existence and worship, as protestants now protest against the saints of the Romish calendar, and the worshipful honor paid to them, still this was only the negation of a particular superstition. The denial of this was not affirming “the truth as it is in Jesus.” Hence, Alexandrian divinity was no more the doctrine of Christ, by which alone men can be saved, than modern protestantism. It was a protest against vulgar paganism without being also an earnest contest for the faith. It was protestantism, only with a different form of superstition for its adversary. Did the Deity esteem the overthrow of heathenism more highly than holding fast his name and affirming his faith? We know he did not; for he threatened this class of professors that he would “fight with them by the sword of his mouth,” as he now fights against both papists and protestants by setting them to “slay one another” for their blasphemies and abominations. Zeal against an error or superstition does not sanctify the ignorance and unbelief of the zealots. They were vessels to dishonor in the master’s house. I say in the master’s house, for he had not yet “spued them out of his mouth,” as he did afterwards. They had not yet arrived at “the mystery of iniquity” in its seventh, or Laodicean degree. Christ loved them still, and therefore he chastised them to bring them back “to the faith once delivered to the saints.”
The great imperial machaira was the power employed in inflicting judgment upon “the house of the Deity”—1 Pet. iv. 17. In his younger days Severus had been a bitter persecutor of the christians at Lyons, where he afterwards fought his great battle with Albinus. But through the influence and kindness which he had received from Proculus, a christian physician, he became favorably disposed towards them for a time. It was not till about the tenth year of his reign, or A. D. 202, that his native ferocity of temper broke out afresh, and kindled a very severe persecution against them. He may have been provoked to this by some political demonstration against his administration on the part of heretical professors; who, taking advantage of the trouble of the times, may have given aid and comfort to Niger or Albinus, preferring them as rulers rather than Severus. Be this as it may, he visited Alexandria, formerly under Niger, with great severity. From various parts of Egypt p. 165 professors were brought to that capital to suffer; and they expired in torments. The justice of the Deity was very retributive in that city. It was the Oxford and Cambridge—the Andover and Princeton of spurious christianity; and there, consequently, the providential visitation was the most intense. From all I can see in the history of those times, the executions seem to have been chiefly of professors who coveted martyrdom, which was contrary to the teachings of Christ who told them that “when persecuted in one city they should flee to another.” But, the reverse of this, they rushed into the mouth of the dragon, and provoked him to devour them with his “great iron teeth,” and to rend them with his “brazen claws.” After the death of John this practice soon began to prevail. Multitudes in Asia presented themselves to Arrius Antoninus for execution in Trajan’s reign. He ordered a few of them to execution, and said to the rest, “Miserable people, if you choose death, you may find precipices and halters enow.” As time rolled on, this folly increased to mania; and in A. D. 167, we find the ecclesia in Smyrna saying, in its letter about the execution of Polycarp, “we do not approve of those who offer themselves for martyrdom, for we have not so learned Christ.” Among the Alexandrians, several were burned and destroyed in various ways. Of these Heraclides is mentioned, who had not been baptized, and was therefore certainly not a christian. Basilides, a soldier who had assisted at the execution of a professor, was converted by her appearing to him three days after her death; and on declaring that he was a christian, he also was put to death. Such spurious conversions as these abounded; and christians (!) of this sort had an idea that “by one hour’s torment they redeemed themselves from eternal punishment.” Such “miserable sinners,” styling themselves “christians,” abound in our time; multitudes of whom, tired of the troubles of life, would joyfully suffer death under the delusion that by giving their worthless bodies to be burned, they would by a brief torment acquire posthumous notoriety, and hide a multitude of sins. All this voluntary martyrdom was the result of ignorance and misdirected zeal. It was no proof of the sufferers being Christ’s Brethren. We may admit the piety and sincerity of many of them; but Paul has taught us that giving the body to be burned is no equivalent for the want of that “love,” which he, after the teaching of the Christ, says is “the fulfilling of the law”—hoping and believing all the things testified in the truth—1 Cor. xiii. Martyrdom, then, is no proof of a man’s being in Christ; and without being in him, he cannot be a christadelphian.
p. 166 The most it proves is the sincerity and devotion of the martyr to his profession, whatever that may be. Hence, the martyrdom of Huss, Jerome, Cranmer, Servetus, and such like, proved the sincerity of their anti-romish and anti-calvinistic opinions; it did not alter the fact of their being eminently pious members of the Apostasy; the stain of which cannot be obliterated by body-burning, but only by an intelligent belief and obedience of the truth.
There were many such “fellowservants,” who were tormented to death by order of Severus—fellowservants with the “brethren” (see the distinction made in the fifth seal), in the sense in which the Spirit spoke to Jeremiah of his “servant Nebuchadnezzar”—fellowservants in the work of “conquering the ruling superstition of their times.” Whether any of “the brethren” fell in his exercise of “justice,” as he called it, we can only conjecture. It is probable from the wording of the fifth seal that there were some. Ecclesiastical writers, being ignorant of the truth, are unable to discern between the two classes. They have not been able to “come” to the subject, “and to see.” Having no scriptural waymarks, they are lost in the sectarian wilderness of the early centuries; and find it, therefore, impossible to enlighten their readers in the premises. They tell us that heretics abounded in these times, all of them claiming the name of christian. Of these they judge them to be heretics, whom they in our times would decree to be such, according to their own creeds and articles: but they are more likely to have been the true brethren of Christ, or Christadelphians, than heretics. Little has been handed down to us that is reliable upon this point. The writers contemporary with the seals were chiefly of the heretical classes. Modern “divines” style them “the Fathers.” And so they were. They were the fathers of the Laodicean Apostasy, taught by that woman Jezebel to commit spiritual lewdness; and to speak according, to the depths of the Satan—Apoc. ii. 20-24. They denounced all for heretics who rejected their teaching. But the Deity knows his own, if they do not. The real heretics of the leading factions of Satan’s synagogue, doubtless, served for an earthwork upon which the dragon power expended much of his rage, before he reached the citadel of the four living ones’ encampment. While therefore many fell under the severe justice of this reign, few of the truly faithful may have suffered; for it was not against them, but chiefly against those who repented not, that the Spirit declared he would fight with the sword of his mouth.
Though troubled with fears within, and fightings without, the Archer with his bow, still went on “conquering.” Niger and p. 167 Albinus had been conquered, and their rival parties torn up by the roots. The same imperial conqueror, or “great machaira,” had made war upon him. The flood, however, though it dashed against him with roaring impetuosity, had not swept him away. Many had fallen around him, but he had not only not been conquered, but still was “conquering;” and his ranks were swelled with more deserters from the enemy than he had lost by fire and sword.
But, after nine years of sanguinary conflict, “the Lamb” sent relief to his suffering people. After a reign of eighteen years, Septimus Severus died, A. D. 211. From this time, “the brethren and fellowservants” found peace and tranquillity for the space of thirty-eight years. During this long period, a short turbulent interval under Maximin excepted, they enjoyed a continued calm. In this period, their sufferings were those of the third and fourth seals, of which they were partakers with the general public. What these were, we shall “see” in our further exposition of the prophecy.