Vol. I., pp. 428, 443.
Spiritual death overshadowing the ecclesias from long peace and the philosophical “divinity” which had, to a great degree, superseded the gospel. The things that remain not yet dead, “ready to die.” The Thyatiran, or Jezebel-and-Satan, ethics, the seed which ripens into the Sardian—Apoc. iii. 1.
Act IV.—Seal-Period Fourth
Apoc. vi. 7, 8.
p. 186 War, famine, pestilence, and barbarian invasion combined, sickly over the Roman Horse with the pale cast of death and corruption.
A. D. 235
“And when he opened the Fourth Seal I heard the voice of the Fourth Living One, saying, ‘Come and see!’ 8. And I saw, and behold a pale horse, and he who sits upon him, the name for him is Death; and Hades follows with him: and there was given to them authority to kill upon the fourth of the earth with sword, and with famine, and with pestilence, and under the beasts of the earth.”
The fourth living one full of eyes is likened in countenance to a flying eagle. The people represented by this were still “a habitation of the Deity through the Spirit,” and witnesses of the judgments to be revealed in this fourth seal. The Spirit of this divinely inhabited community did not invite John to “come and see” till the Lamb had opened the seal; and this series of events did not occur till A.D. 235, when the auspicious calm that had pervaded the Roman world for thirteen years came to an abrupt and sanguinary termination by the assassination of Alexander Severus, and the massacre of his most faithful friends, by the fury of the soldiers.
When the opening was complete, John saw ἵππος χλωρος, a pale horse. The word rendered pale indicates green as the basis of the pallor. Pallida mors was proverbial among the Latins. Hippocrates enumerates the color of the facial skin fading into green and black among the symptoms of approaching death. Nothing could be more appropriate than the color which accompanies putrefaction as representative of the Italian body politic at this crisis of its “dreadful and terrible” history. It had suffered severely under the second and third seals; but what were these in comparison of the deathstrokes by sword, famine, pestilence, and beasts, speedily and of long continuance, to fall upon the Pagan Horse! A deadly paleness and livor would come over it—a hue emblematic of approaching dissolution, as most expressively represented by the chloros of the fourth seal.
1.—The Rider “Death”
John says that the name of the representative personage he saw sitting above, over, or upon, επανω, the pale horse, was “Death.” The form of words in which he tells us this is according to the form of the previous seals. “The rider was not, as before,” says Elliot, “the representative of human functionaries and rulers, whose distinctive emblems, though well understood at the time, might now require investigation to unfold them. It is a symbol of meaning as p. 187 obvious to the reader now as it could have been then to the seer; for who it meant is expressly told us. It was the personification of Death! To mark that it was the actual King of Terrors—and not. as otherwise it might possibly have been construed, the destroyer merely of political existence—his badge, so to express it, is said to have been Hades following him, the recipient, with his opening jaws, of the victims slain by Death.” But Mr. Elliot has not attempted to show why death should be personified in the fourth and not in the second seal, where the horse is fiery red, and they are engaged in slaying one another. The truth is the very reverse of Mr. Elliott’s supposition; for the rider, as before, represented, not death in the abstract, but human functionaries and men of power, so victimizing and victimized by assassination and war as to become, as it were, the sons of death, and, therefore, as a class, fitly represented by the symbolical name, “Death.” John does not say that the sitter upon the pale horse was death, but that the name bestowed upon him was death—“the name for him is Death.” Neither did the rider, Death, indicate “the destroyer of mere political existence;” for the agents, as a class, and the state, still survived the fourth seal. No interpretation of a fulfilled prophecy not in harmony with authentic history can be correct; therefore, this last idea of mere political destruction must be rejected. History will show that my interpretation is the only true one, namely, that the name “Death” was bestowed upon the class of agents riding, sitting upon, or affecting the dying horse or heathen people and empire, because few of them died a natural death. In the first fifty years of the period of this seal, there were thirty-nine claiming to be emperors, and all of them died by violence. One of them fell by pestilence, and the form of the death of another is uncertain; but, with these two exceptions, nearly all died by assassination, and two or three by the sword in battle. Let such a class of rulers, then, predetermined to death as sure as they obtained the imperial office, be symbolized in a hieroglyphic, by what could they be so fitly represented as by a man with the name of “Death?” This name was his badge; so that any ruler represented by this class-man entered on the imperial office under the sentence of death, as prefigured by “the name” of this seal.
2.—Ὁ ἍΔΗΣ, Hades
John says, that he saw ὁ Ἅδης, ho Hades, following with Death. This word ᾰιδης, or ᾰδης, is usually derived from a privative, and p. 188 ιδειν, to see; others regard it as “most clearly derived from ᾰειδής, invisible.” It therefore means that which is concealed from present vision. This is the most common acceptation of the word—the unseen, whether as to place or state.
The expresssion οικος Ἅδου, corresponds both in form and sense, to the Hebrew בית עולם, baith ŏlām, Eccl. xii. 5, “man goeth to the House of Olam,” house of the unseen, instead of long home, as in the English Version; that is, the grave. When men are therein deposited they are invisible; hence the grave becomes their house, οικος, in which they are unseen. They are then in hādes. Xenophon in his life of Agesilaus, says: “And thus this man spent his life in the service of his country, and having at length died he was carried down into the invisible dwelling”—εις την ’αιδιον οικησιν κατηγαγετο. So also Diodorus Siculus, in his account of the Egyptians, says: “They call the habitations of the living, inns, because we dwell in them for a short time; but the abodes of the departed they style hidden houses, because in the unseen they remain the unknown cycle”—αϊδιους οικους προσαγορευουσιν, ὡς εν ’Αιδου διατελουντων τον ᾰπειρον ’αιωνα—lib. 1. 51. The word ᾰϊδης, in relation to world, time, place, can only signify boundless, eternal, everlasting, in the sense of heathen boundless inexperience and ignorance of invisible things. The phrase εις Ἅιδου, is eliptical for εις οικον ᾰδου, into the house of the unseen, or the grave; and is supposed to have been derived from the baith Olam of the Hebrews..
The πυλαι ᾰδου, the Gates of Hades, or the gates of the unseen, is used in Matt. xvi. 18. To say as there, that they should not prevail against Christ’s ecclesia, was to predict the resurrection of his saints; and that they should no more be shut in from the outside world by grave or sepulchre. The dead are truly themselves the unseen, as well as in the unseen. Open the graves of the generation of this seal, as an instance; lay them all into one vast unpartitioned area; let us descend and enter there, and view the mighty hollow, and ask, where are all the dead? They are all invisible. The grave, which is the mouth, or gate, of this vast subterranean hall, has eaten them up, and consumed their form. Ask for them; but you ask in vain; they are all there, but you cannot see them; therefore they are in Hades, or in שאול Shĕōl.
“Our Saxon word Hell,” says Lord King, “in its original signification, exactly answers to the Greek word Hades, and denotes a concealed or unseen place; and this sense of the word is still retained in the eastern, and especially in the western counties of England; to hele over a thing is to cover it.” The modern, or Laodicean use of p. 189 hell is not the scriptural use of hades or sheol; but the old mythology of the heathen—the fabulous theory according to which they fitted up and furnished, the vast subterranean we have supposed, with flames, sulphur, brazen-throated dogs, furies, and such like. Plato, speaking of all this mythological apparatus and the legends appended to it, says, “Which, under the name of Hades and similar titles, men (that is, pagans) greatly fear, and dream about living and dissolved of bodies.” This last expression is explained by what he says elsewhere: “For be well assured, O Socrates, that when any one is near that time in which he thinks he is going to die, there enter into him fear and anxiety. For then the old stories about Hades, how that the man who has here been guilty of wrong must there suffer punishments, torture his soul. Wherefore he who in the retrospect of his life, finds many crimes, like frightened children starting from their sleep, is terrified, and lives in evil forebodings.” Thus, as Paul says, “through fear of death they were all their lifetime subject to bondage”—afraid, like the heathen of the Laodicean Apostasy, of what awaits them in the unseen. Hence, when they approach dissolution of body, terror seizes them, and they send for the priest of Plato, or some minor god, in ancient and modern times, to calm their panic by the pseudo-consolations of their respective delusions.
Such, then, is Hades abstract from this fourth seal; not “a place of departed spirits;” not a place divided into two grand compartments or chambers; in one of which the spirits of “virtuous heathen,” ancient and modern, of “all names and denominations of professors” and christians, are provisionally cribbed, cabined, and confined, in a sort of dreamy blissfulness, awaiting their reunion, at some indefinite epoch, with their old grave-eaten mortalities, as a condition upon which they shall enter upon eternal fulness of felicity and joy, beyond the bounds of Hades, yea, “beyond the bounds of time and space,” if any one can tell where that is! Not a place, in the other compartment of which, “the spirits of the damned” are in view of the dreamy blessed, heightening their felicity, with their torment-developed wailings and gnashing of teeth. It is no such pagan, papal, protestant, and sectarian “hell,” “purgatory,” “heaven,” or “intermediate state,” as this; but simply, the receptacle into which is carried down all that remains of a man when he is dead, with this single exception—his character. Before he is born he is in a sort of Hades, the womb of his mother; and when he is dead, he is deposited in the womb of his mother earth, a larger excavated Hades, in which, if one of “the faithful in Christ Jesus, p. 190 called saints,” he sleeps death’s sleep until awaked by the Spirit’s power, when “in the beauties of holiness, from the womb of the morning, he has the dew of his birth,”—Ps. cx. 3. This is Hades abstract from the seal—Hades in the abstract.
In Isai. v. 14, the Spirit speaks of Hades, by the name of שאול Sheol, and as a female with a mouth that is insatiable—Sheol is never satisfied—Prov. xxx. 15, 16. “My people are gone into captivity, because they have no knowledge; and their honorable men are famished, and their multitude dried up with thrist; therefore Sheol, or Hades, hath enlarged herself, and opened her mouth without measure: and their glory and their multitude, and their pomp, and he that rejoiceth, shall descend into it.” Though metaphorical, this is very intelligible. It predicted great destruction of all ranks and classes in Israel; and consequently, a great shovelling of them into the never filled receptacle of the dead. This insatiable nature of Sheol, or Hades, is the reason of her being styled “cruel.” Thus, “love is strong as Death; jealousy, cruel as Sheol”—Cant. viii. 6.
Again, in the Spirit’s prophetic address to Belshazzar, as the Lucifer of the Babylonish Heavens, he says, “Sheol or Hades, from beneath is moved for thee to meet thee at thy coming; it stirreth up the dead for thee... who say, Art thou become weak as we? Thy pomp is brought down to Hades .. the worm is spread under thee, and the worms cover thee! Thou art cut down to the ground; thou art brought down to Sheol or Hades, to the sides of the pit. All the kings of the nations lie every one in his own house, but thou art cast out (violently excluded) from thy קבר, kever, sepulchre... as a carcase trodden under feet; thou shalt not be joined with them in burial”—Isai. xiv. 9-20. Here, this cruel subterranean unseen is personified. She has the dead in custody, all their individual graves and sepulchres being the houses or cells of her vast prison. She is metaphorically supposed to arouse all her prisoners to meet a great destroyer when he is about to be brought by bearers into his sepulchre; and to taunt him with his iniquity perpetrated above ground. She is that vast prison; and all whom she has swallowed, she devours with the worms spread under and over, “which cover,” the weak and helpless, and unconscious, unseen sleepers in their cells.
This Hades is a great and voracious destroyer, the cruel ally of Death. They are companions in nature, as they are made symbolical associates in the fourth seal. It is, however, comforting to know, that, though Death and Hades went forth on such “a dreadful and terrible” mission of destruction by sword, famine, pestilence, and beasts of the earth, in this fourth seal-period of apocalyptic p. 191 development, yet both of them shall be destroyed when the purpose of the Deity shall have been fully apocalypsed. “O Death,” saith the Spirit, “I will be thy plagues; O Sheol or Hades, I will be thy destruction”—Hos. xiii. 14. And the earnest of this we have in the manifestation of the Deity in our nature, as Jesus Christ; “who has prevailed,” as the Seven-Horned and Seven-Eyed Lamb, “to unroll the scroll, and to unloose the seven seals thereof;” and hath abolished death through death, and brought life and incorruptibility to light through the gospel of the kingdom—Heb. ii. 14; 2 Tim. i. 10. Still, we see Death reigning, and Hades following with him, on every side. True; but the Spirit tells us by Paul, that Death is the last enemy, and shall be destroyed; and apocalyptically by John, that “there shall be no more death,” and “no more curse”—ch. xxi. 4; xxii. 3. “Death, is,” then, “swallowed up in victory,” which victory is obtained through Jesus Christ. Temporarily, victory is on the side of Death and his companion Hades; but when he and she have come to “the End,” their power and victory over the faithful will prove to have been without permanent results. Then, “O Death, where is thy sting? O Hades, where thy victory?” Both abolished with the abolition of every curse; for sin will be served no more on earth; and therefore, “the wages of sin,” which “is death” will no more be earned and paid; so that Hades having no more victims for her devouring maw, is herself destroyed—she dies for the want of sustenance.
What a glorious and blissful consummation is this of human affairs. Instead of generation after generation of our unhappy race, rushing like a torrent into the deep caverns of the unseen never more to see the light of day; instead of sword, famine, pestilence, and all the mishaps of fire, flood and field, sweeping them for seven thousand years into a subterranean prison-house, within whose gates they are barred up for ever; instead of this, the time will have arrived for every individual dweller upon the earth to be, what Jesus Christ is now—incorruptible, deathless, glorious, and powerful; Deity manifested in glorified nature—ὁ Θεος τα παντα εν πασιν, the Deity the all things in all men.
But from the contemplation of this brilliant and eternal future, we must return to the consideration of the fearful and gloomy past, when DEATH sat, as it were, the grim and livid occupant of the imperial throne; and HADES reigned with him, the cruel and voracious goddess of his dominion.
As the rider on the pale horse symbolized a class of ruling agents, sold to the work of death, and in the midst of it to a violent death for themselves; so “Hades following with him,” is representative p. 192 of another class of destroying agencies which coöperate in the destruction of the horse-people, so as to bring their body politic to the verge of dissolution, as indicated by the color of the hieroglyphic.
3.—“The Fourth of the Earth”
When John beheld these two symbolical powers, Death and Hades, he saw that “εξουσια, authority was given to them to kill upon the fourth of the earth, with sword, and with famine, and with pestilence, and under the beasts of the earth.” The phrase, “the fourth of the earth,” implies other three fourths. Did such a division of the empire obtain, as seems to be indicated here? There can, I think, be little doubt of such a division. The whole empire was one Roman Sovereignty or Majesty, but, at a certain epoch of its history, for convenience of administration, there was a practical distribution of the imperial territory into Four Præfectures. Gibbon says: “According to the plan of government instituted by Diocletian (A. D. 292), the four princes had each their prætorian præfect; and after the monarchy was once-more united in the person of Constantine, he still continued to create the same number of four præfects, and trusted to their care the same provinces which they already administered.
1. The Præfect of the East stretched his ample jurisdiction into the three parts of the globe which were subject to the Romans, from the cataracts of the Nile to the banks of the Phasis, and from the mountains of Thrace to the frontiers of Persia.
2. The important provinces of Pannonia, Dacia, Macedonia, and Greece, acknowledged the authority of the Præfect of Illyricum.
3. The power of the Præfect of Italy was not confined to the country whence he derived his title; it extended over the additional territory of Rhætia as far as the banks of the Danube, over the dependent islands of the Mediterranean, and over that part of the continent of Africa which lies between the confines of Cyrene and those of Tingitania.
4. The Præfect of the Gauls comprehended under that plural denomination the kindred provinces of Britain and Spain, and his authority was obeyed “from the wall of Antoninus to the foot of Mount Atlas.”
But previous to Diocletian, and in course partly of the fourth seal-period, the empire was subjected to four sovereignties; first, Syria and the East under Odenathus and Zenobia; second, Illyricum under Aureolus; third, Gaul, Spain and Britain, under Posthumus p. 193 and then Tetricus; and fourth, Rome and Italy under Gallienus. The last was constitutionally emperor of the whole; but usurpations which he could not suppress, left the reigning power in actual possession of only the fourth division of the Roman earth, for nearly ten years previous to the death of Gallienus, A. D. 268.
Now, certain writers who have attempted an interpretation of the fourth seal, have doubted the correctness of the reading in the text. Those who perceive the time of the seal to be that interval between the death of Alexander Severus and the death of Gallienus, find the words, “there was given to them authority to kill upon the fourth of the earth,” a difficulty in the way of a satisfactory exposition. “The devastations,” say they, “extended over all the Roman earth; how then are the history and the text to be reconciled? And how is the text to be reconciled with itself? For not a fourth part of the horse, but the whole horse was sickly pale.” Not being able to solve this enigma, they have fallen back upon the suggestion that το τεταρτον της γης, is a spurious reading; and that the true reading conjectured by Mede, is το τετραδιον της γης, the quaternion (or all four parts) of the earth. They strengthen themselves in this conjecture by the reading of the passage in Jerome’s Latin Version, who has it, super quatuor partes terræ, “over the four parts of the earth.” In commenting upon this, Mr. Elliott says: “The genuineness of this, as Jerome’s own version, and not any mistake of a later copyist, is indubitable; and since his faithfulness to the Greek text is as unquestioned as his critical judgment in choosing between various readings in it, it follows that he must have had before him some correspondent reading in a Greek manuscript, or manuscripts, of authority, though our extant Greek manuscripts do not exhibit it; and which he deliberately preferred, as of all the best. Admitted, this reading makes the prophecy at once consistent with itself.”
What Mr. Elliott says of Jerome is no doubt correct. He saw Greek copies, one or more, with such a reading; yet there is now no such reading extant. This is Greek against Greek; what then shall we do? I know of only one course—make it harmonize with history as it stands in our Greek text; and if this cannot be done, then adopt Jerome’s testimony, and reject it for his emendation. Can this be done? Let us “see.”
The prophecy of the fourth seal does not import that the devastations of Death and Hades were to be confined or restricted to the fourth of the earth; on the contrary, as the history shows, they would be coextensive with “the earth.” What then the speciality in the premises? Why this; that, whereas in the second and third p. 194 seals, the judgments peculiar to them did not notably affect “the fourth of the earth,” or præfecture of Italy, as defined by our quotation from Gibbon; inasmuch as, that the riders on the red and black horses, had not received authority specially to distress that region; but that, in this fourth seal, the time had come in the wise providence of the Deity, to bring judgment home to the very heart and soul of the Italian body politic, “Authority was,” therefore, “given to Death and Hades, to kill upon the territory of the Italian Fourth with sword, with famine, with pestilence, and by, beasts of the earth,” as well as upon the other three præfectures. But, if the authority had not been given with reference to “the fourth of the earth,” the præfecture of Italy would still have remained exempt from the combined operation of the four plagues. Thus, then, there is no need of any learned emendation of the text; for rightly understood, there is no real difference in Jerome’s Greek copies and ours. The reading, however, as it stands in our version is preferable to his. In ours we have the enigma, which has so puzzled the learned Laodiceans of “christendom,” that they have given it up; but in Jerome’s reading the enigma is lost, and the prophecy, consequently, deprived of much of its ingenuity and force. The Fourth Beast empire originated with the city of Romulus and its Italian territory as the brain and heart of the future dominion; in order then to affect the body politic with a mortal languor, as represented by the deadly pallor of the horse ridden by Death, it was necessary morbidly to affect the vital organs of the state located in the original “fourth of the earth,” or Italian Præfecture; for so long as this retained its vigor dissolution would be deferred—men do not die till the brain and heart have been stricken fatally by disease. Hence, the reason of the authority given. Death and Hades might have continued their work indefinitely upon the præfectures of the East, Illyricum, and the Gauls, the other threefourths of the earth, and by so doing have invigorated the Italian Fourth, seeing that a cause of the weakness of the Roman Body was its extreme magnitude. But this was not the purpose of the Deity. His purpose was to take political paganism out of the way, that the Man of Sin-Power, which the Lamb and his followers are to have the honor of destroying, might be revealed. The time had come, therefore, after the death of Alexander Severus, to begin the work of exhausting the seat of the pagan power of its vitality, that it might be paralyzed in all its members, and be prepared for the consummating events of the sixth seal, in the development of which it should be dethroned, or “cast out of the heaven.” The authority p. 195 was therefore given to Death and Hades to extend their operations into the “fourth of the earth,” and to kill there with all the agencies at work in the other three fourths of the dominion.
4.—Fulfilment of the Prophecy
A.—Death and Hades kill with Sword
The Sword in the hands of Death and his companion Hades, is not μαχαιρα, as the second seal, but ῥομφαια, rhomphaia. The former was a small sword, or dagger, borne by imperial magistrates; the latter was a different weapon—“a large sword used by the Thracians”—ορθας ῥομφαιας βαρυσιδηρους, strait swords heavy with iron. A very expressive symbol of what is now to be related of Death and Hades killing upon the fourth of the earth with the Thracian weapon, heavy in its fall upon all it destroyed.
About thirty-two years before the death of Alexander Severus, Septimus Severus, “the great machaira” of the second seal, was in Thrace, celebrating with military games the birthday of his younger son, Geta. Among the spectators was a young barbarian, whose gigantic stature exceeded the measure of eight feet. He earnestly solicited permission to contend for the stephan of wrestling. As the pride of discipline would have been disgraced in the overthrow of a Roman soldier by a Thracian peasant, he was matched with the stoutest followers of the camp, sixteen of whom he successively laid on the ground. Next day, having attracted Severus’ notice, he ran up to his horse, and followed him on foot, without apparent fatigue, in a long and rapid career. “Thracian,” said the astonished emperor, “art thou disposed to wrestle after thy race?” “Most willingly, sir,” replied the youth; and almost in a breath, overthrew seven of the strongest soldiers in the army.
This youth, whose name was Maximin, having been received into the imperial body guard, became in the reign of Alexander Severus, tribune of the fourth legion, which distinguished him as its favorite hero, by the names of Ajax and Hercules. From tribune he was successively promoted to the first military command; and, but for the fierceness of his savage origin which he still retained, he might have become the husband of the emperor’s sister.
But the favors bestowed served only to inflame the ambition of the Thracian, who deemed his fortune unequal to his merit so long as he was constrained to acknowledge a superior. Selfishly cunning, he perceived that his emperor had lost the affection of the army, p. 196 and how their discontent might be turned to his own exaltation. The troops listened with pleasure to his emissaries. It was time, they cried, to cast away that useless phantom of the civil power, and to elect a real soldier, who would assert the glory, and distribute among his companions the treasures of the empire. One day, as he entered the field of exercise, the Army of the Rhine saluted him as emperor, and consummated their rebellion by the murder of Alexander Severus.
Maximin, now become the straight heavy Thracian weapon, or rhomphaia, in the hands of Death and Hades, was cruel as Sheol. His cruelty is said to have been derived from fear of contempt. He was conscious that his mean Thracian origin, his savage appearance, and gross ignorance, formed a very unfavorable contrast with the amiable manners of his unfortunate predecessor. He remembered that he had often waited before the door of the haughty nobles of Rome, and had been denied admittance by the insolence of their slaves. But those who had spurned, and those who had protected the Thracian, were guilty of the same crime—the knowledge of his original obscurity. For this crime many were put to death.
To be distinguished by birth or merit was to become an object of suspicion to his dark and sanguinary soul. Alarmed by the sound of treason, his cruelty was unbounded and unrelenting. Without a witness, without a trial, and without an opportunity of defence, Magnus, a consular senator, with four thousand of his supposed accomplices, were given over to Death and Hades. The Italian fourth, and the whole empire were infested with innumerable spies and informers. On the slightest accusation, the first of the Roman nobles, governors of provinces, and commanders of armies, were chained on the public carriages, and hurried away into his presence. Confiscation, exile, or simple death, were esteemed uncommon instances of his lenity. Some of the unfortunate sufferers he, ordered to be sewed up in the hides of slaughtered animals, others to be beaten to death with clubs, and others again, to be exposed to wild beasts, for “under” these the reigning authority was commissioned “to kill.” During the three years of his reign, he disdained to visit either Rome or Italy, but dragged his victims from that “fourth” by his secret police to his camp on the Rhine or Danube, the seat of his stern despotism which trampled upon every principle of human law and justice, and was supported by the avowed power of the sword.
As long as the cruelty of Maximin was confined to the illustrious senators, and bold adventurers, who in the court or army expose themselves to the caprice of circumstances, the body of the people p. 197 viewed their sufferings with indifference, or perhaps with pleasure. But the tyrant’s avarice, stimulated by the insatiate desires of the soldiers, at length attacked the public property. Every city of the empire was possessed of an independent revenue, destined to purchase wheat and barley for the multitude, and so forth. By a single act of authority he acted unjustly by the wheat and barley, like the predecessors of Alexander Severus, and confiscated the whole mass of wealth to the use of the imperial treasury. The temples were stripped of their most valuable offerings of gold and silver, and the statues of gods, heroes, and emperors, were melted down, and coined into money. This retributive indignation of Heaven upon paganism by the blind instrumentality of this Thracian sword, excited tumults and massacres, as in many places the people chose rather to descend into Hades in defence of their superstition, than to behold in the midst of peace their cities exposed to the rapine of cruelty and war. Throughout the Roman world a general cry of indignation was heard, imploring vengeance on the common enemy of mankind; or, in view of the hieroglyphic of the fourth seal, on “Death” who rode them, and in “Hades who followed with him;” for these are “the common enemy of mankind.”
At length a province of “the fourth” præfecture “of the earth,” was driven into rebellion against this Thracian minister of Death and Hades. The procurator of Africa was a servant worthy of such a master, who considered the fines and confiscations of the rich as one of the most fruitful branches of the imperial revenue. The despair of this class roused them to arm their slaves and peasants for their protection, and to destroy the rapacious treasurer. Having assassinated him, they seized on Thysdrus, and there erected in the name of the two Gordians, the standard of rebellion against the Thracian despot. The Senate ratified their election to the imperial office, and thereby involved Rome and Italy in the guilt of treason against him. His hatred against the Senate was declared and implacable; the tamest submission had not appeased his fury, the most cautious innocence would not remove his suspicions; and even the care of their own safety urged them to share the fortune of an enterprise of which, if unsuccessful, they were sure to be the first victims. They, therefore, boldly prepared for the issue, and without delay proclaimed Maximin, and his adherents, enemies of their country; and offered liberal rewards to whosoever had the courage and good fortune to destroy them.
The result of the secret sitting of the Senate soon manifested itself in the assassination of the prætorian præfect by their quæstor. p. 198 and tribunes, who, on their return from the camp, ran through the streets with their bloody daggers in their hands, proclaiming to the people and the soldiers the news of the happy revolution! The statues of Maximin were thrown down; the authority of the two Gordians and the Senate was acknowledged by the capital; and the example of Rome was followed by the rest of Italy. Thus, the whole “fourth of the earth” was prepared for the invasion of Death and Hades, who were divinely authorized “to kill upon it with sword, famine, pestilence, and beasts of the earth.”
Having assumed the reins of government, the Senate selected twenty of their number to conduct the war against Maximin. To these the defence of “the fourth of the earth” was entrusted. A number of other deputies were sent to the provincial governors of the three other præfectures, earnestly conjuring them to fly to the assistance of Rome and Italy, and reminding the nations of their ancient ties of friendship with the Roman senate and people. The reception of these deputies, and the zeal of Italy and the provinces in favor of the senate, sufficiently prove that the subjects of Maximin were reduced to that uncommon distress, in which the body of the people has more to fear from oppression than from resistance. The consciousness of that melancholy truth, inspires a degree of persevering fury, seldom to be found in those civil wars which are artificially supported for the benefit of a few factious and designing leaders.
But, in a conflict with Maximin’s Mauritanian governors, the Gordians, after a reign of thirty-six days, lost both life and throne. The news of this filled Rome with just but unexpected terror. Silent consternation also seized upon the senatorial assembly, till a descendant of Trajan aroused them from their fatal lethargy. He reminded them that Maximin was advancing towards Italy at the head of the military force of the empire; and that their only remaining alternative was to meet him bravely in the field, or tamely expect the tortures and ignominious death reserved for unsuccessful rebellion. He then proposed two successors to the Gordians, named Maximus and Balbinus; one to conduct the war against Maximin; the other to direct the civil government in Rome. This was readily acquiesced in; and to appease the clamours of a seditious multitude, a third Gordian, a boy of thirteen years, was invested with the ornaments and title of Cæsar.
While these events were transpiring “upon the fourth of the earth,” Maximin was agitated with the most furious passions. He received the news of the rebellion, and the Senate’s decree against p. 199 him, with the rage of a wild beast, which threatened the lives of all that ventured to approach him. Revenge was the only consolation left him, and this could only be obtained by arms. But delays are dangerous to all but omnipotence. It proved so to the redoubtable Thracian, who did not reach the frontiers of “the fourth of the earth” till the ensuing spring, A. D. 238. This delay gave the Senate’s lieutenants time for preparation; so that when his army arrived at the foot of the Julian Alps, they were dismayed by the silence and desolation that reigned on the frontiers of Italy. The villages and open towns were abandoned, the cattle driven away, the provisions removed or destroyed, the bridges broken down, nor was anything left which could afford either shelter or subsistence to an invader. Aquileia received, and withstood, the first shock of the invasion. Its citizens were animated by the extreme danger, and their knowledge of the Thracian’s unrelenting temper. Their fears for the result were unexpectedly quieted by the appearance of the heads of Maximin, his son, his præfect, and principal ministers of his tyranny, paraded on spears before the walls. They threw open the gates of the city, and the whole army fraternizing with the citizens, gave in their adhesion to the Senate and people of Rome, having obeyed its decree in assassinating the tyrant, and thereby entitling itself to the promised liberality and reward.
While the fate of Italy was being contested under the walls of Aquileia, Death and Hades were actively engaged in scenes of blood and intestine discord at Rome. Distrust and jealousy reigned in the senate; and in the temples where they assembled, every senator carried open or concealed arms. In the midst of their deliberations two veterans of the guards having intruded beyond the altar of Victory, two senators, drawing their daggers, laid them dead at the foot of the altar; and then advancing to the door, exhorted the multitude to massacre the prætorians, as the secret adherents of Maximin. Those who escaped the first fury of the tumult took refuge in the camp, which they defended against the attacks of the people, assisted by numerous bands of gladiators, the property of opulent nobles. Death and Hades held high revel here for many days, with infinite loss and confusion to the combatants on both sides. When the supply of water was cut off from the camp, the prætorians were reduced to intolerable distress; but, in their turn they made desperate sallies into the city, set fire to a great number of houses, and filled the streets with the blood of the inhabitants. The Emperor Balbinus attempted to reconcile the factions. But their animosity though smothered for a while, burnt with redoubled violence. The soldiers, detesting the senate and p. 200 people, despised the weakness of a prince, who wanted either the spirit or the power to command the obedience of his subjects.
But distrust and jealousy reigned in the emperorship as well as in the senate. Maximus and Balbinus despised each other; and they both feared the prætorians as much as these turbulent military profligates hated them and the civil authority in general. The result was, that while Rome was celebrating some heathen games, a troop of desperate assassins invaded the palace, seized both “the Emperors of the Senate,” as they contemptuously styled them, stripped them of their robes, dragged them in insolent triumph through the streets of the city, in which they left their bodies, mangled with a thousand wounds, exposed to the insults or to the pity of the mob.
Thus, in the space of a few months, Death and Hades had killed with the sword, six emperors. The third Gordian, officially styled Cæsar, still survived. The prætorians, who asserted the authority of the sword, saluted him Augustus and Emperor, in which election the Senate and people acquiesced, rather than hazard the renewal of war in the capital. In A. D. 242, Gordian, who was only nineteen, marched his forces against the Persians; but while engaged in this war, his prætorian præfect, Philip, an Arab by birth, and a robber by original profession, was made emperor by the soldiers; and the unfortunate Gordian was sent down into Hades by the sword, which had destroyed so many of his more guilty predecessors.
In A. D. 248, Rome had attained the venerable age of one thousand years from its foundation by Romulus. Philip, whom Eusebius styles a christian (!) solemnized with infinite pomp and magnificence, the secular games, which were skilfully adapted to inspire the superstitious mind with deep and solemn reverence. To the undiscerning eye of the vulgar, Philip appeared as powerful a monarch as Hadrian or Augustus. The form of the dominion was still the same, “but the animating health and vigor were fled.” This is Gibbon’s remark without alteration or condensation by me. When the animating health and vigor of bodies have departed, they are pale with the paleness of death, as the horse in this fourth seal. “The industry of the people was discouraged and exhausted by a long series of oppression. The discipline of the legions was corrupted by the ambition of the emperors; the strength of the frontiers was insensibly undermined; and the fairest provinces were left exposed to the rapaciousness or ambition of the barbarians,” or “beasts of the earth,” who, under the inspiration of the opener of the fourth seal, of “the authority given to Death and Hades to kill,” soon discovered the decline of the pagan empire of Rome.
p. 201B.—Death and Hades kill with Wild Beasts of the Earth
John informs us, that “authority was given to Death and Hades to kill by wild beasts upon the fourth of the earth.” In commenting upon this, Mr. Elliott says: “There is just one of the destroying agencies mentioned in the vision that is passed over without notice by the historian—that of the wild beasts of the earth.” This idea of Mr. Elliott’s is quite a mistaken one; and he is led into the assumption by supposing that the θηρια which we agree to render wild beasts, or beasts of prey, are quadrupeds and reptiles. He enters into an argument to show, that these creatures must have been extensively employed in the service of Death and Hades, as one of the plagues with which the land was then afflicted, because one Arnobius about A. D. 296, says: “Men complain, there are now sent us from the gods pestilence, drouths, wars, scarcities, locusts hail, and other things noxious to man; but, was it not so in ancient times also?” Again: “If every species of corn be now devoured by locusts, or if floods destroy the human race, was it not so before? Were there not wars with wild beasts, and battles with lions, and destruction from venomous snakes, before our time?” The christians, who were able to “see” the fourth seal while being fulfilled, were, no doubt, arguing that the calamities of the times were sent upon the pagan world by the displeasure of “the Lamb;” which caused Arnobius to rebut the idea with the above argument, beyond which our contemporaries have not advanced. There may have been trouble with beasts of this kind in parts of the empire. But, I am satisfied that they were wild beasts of a different sort sent “to kill upon a fourth of the earth.”
Paul in Tit. i. 12, styles the Cretans κακα θηρια, evil wild beasts. They had all the characteristics of men without understanding in divine things, who, the Spirit testifies, are “as the beasts that perish.” Apocalyptically, this term is used emblematically for the wild savage men who should invade the empire, and carry death and destruction into the central “fourth of the earth” itself. Instead of Gibbon passing over the plague of wild beasts unnoticed, the tenth chapter of his history is a remarkable illustration of the fulfilment of this specification of the seal. We learn from him, that the “wild beasts of the earth” were the Franks, the Alemanni, the Goths, and the Persians; comprehending adventurers of less considerable tribes, whose obscure and uncouth names would only serve to oppress the memory and perplex the attention of the reader.
p. 202 Illustrative of this part of the seal, we learn from this historian that from the celebration of the secular games by Philip in A. D. 248, to the death of the Emperor Gallienus, A. D. 268, there elapsed twenty years of shame and misfortune. During that calamitous period, every instant of time was marked, every province of the Roman earth was afflicted, by barbarous invaders and military tyrants, the “wild beasts of the earth;” and the ruined empire seemed to approach the last and fatal moment of its dissolution. Gibbon had no understanding of this seal, and all his sympathies were with the adversaries of the christians. He cannot therefore be suspected of giving a prophetic coloring to the history of these twenty years. He speaks of the empire as ruined, and death-stricken, and of being in the article of death—the last and fatal moment of dissolution. Let the empire, then, be represented by a horse, with what color should we paint him; and what kind of a rider should we place upon him; and by what name should he be called; in order to represent on canvas the state of the dominion as history reveals it? The only answer is, that no hieroglyphic would be so appropriate as that given to John a hundred and fifty years before in the imagery of the fourth seal.
In the fifth year of his reign, retribution fell upon the head of Philip for the murder of the third Gordian. A senator named Decius, whom he had sent to quell a military insurrection in Mæsia, was saluted Augustus by the insurgents; upon this he marched them into “the fourth of the earth,” and there met Philip in battle near Verona, under the inspiration of “Death and Hades who followed with him.” Philip went down into Hades there, by sword or dagger; while in Rome his son and associate was hurried after him by the sanguinary prætorians.
A few months after these events, the Emperor Decius was summoned to the Danubian frontier to repel an invasion of wild beasts, rude and warlike barbarians, known in history as the Goths. This is the first considerable occasion in which history mentions that great people, who afterwards broke the Roman power, sacked the capital, and reigned in Gaul, Spain, and Italy. They migrated from Sweden into Prussia, and thence to the Ukraine. From this region they poured through Dacia, now Hungary, and appeared at length under the walls of Marcianopolis, the capital of the second Mæsia, now called Bulgaria. A large sum of money ransomed the city; but they soon returned with increased numbers, and scattered devastation over the country. They took Philippopolis, a city of Thrace, by storm; and 100,000 persons were massacred in the p. 203 sack of that great city. Thus, Death and Hades killed by wild beasts on this first meeting between the Romans and the Goths. Not long after this slaughter, Decius encountered the barbarians in a terrible battle; it was the conflict of despair against grief and rage. The fortune of the day was adverse to the Romans. Their army was irrecoverably lost, and Decius was slain in the overthrow, A. D. 251. He was succeeded by Gallus, and Hostilianus, his only surviving son.
The policy of Gallus was to get these wild beasts out of “the earth” into their native dens at any sacrifice. He consented to leave in their hands the rich fruits of their invasion, an immense booty, and a great number of prisoners of the highest merit and quality. He plentifully supplied their camp with every convenience that could assuage their angry spirits, or facilitate their departure; and even promised to pay them annually a large sum of gold, on condition that they should never afterwards infest the Roman “earth” with their incursions.
This ignominious treaty, although it gave the Romans peace for a year, did not secure their repose. The dangerous secret of the wealth and weakness of the empire had been revealed to the world. New swarms of “wild beasts,” encouraged by the success of their brethren, invaded “the earth,” and spread desolation through the Illyrian provinces, and, passing into “the fourth of the earth,” carried terror to the gates of Rome. The defence of the monarchy, which seemed abandoned by the emperor, was assumed by Æmilianus, governor of Pannonia and Mœsia. He attacked them unexpectedly, chased the “wild beasts” beyond the Danube, and distributed the money for the tribute among the soldiers, who forthwith proclaimed him emperor. Gallus hearing of this, advanced to meet him in battle on the plains of Spoleto, about seventy-five miles from Rome. The assassination here of Gallus and his son interrupted briefly the work of Death and Hades killing on the fourth of the earth with sword; these were, however, hewing down the people with a raging pestilence, according to history and the seal, by which Hostilianus had been swept into Hades. The Senate gave a legal sanction to the triumph of Æmilianus over Gallus, and were blindly assured by the victor that he would, in a short time, deliver the Roman Horse from Death and Hades, who were killing and devastating by the wild beasts of the north and east. Of course, he did not give the assurance in these words; but what he said was in substance the same, “Hercules the Victor, and Mars the Avenger,” as he is p. 204 styled in medals struck in honor of him, did not, however, execute his purpose. Death and Hades did not grant him time to fulfil his splendid promises; for less than four months intervened between his victory and his assassination. Valerian at the head of the legions of Gaul and Germany arrived in “the fourth of the earth,” with the resolve to avenge the murder of Gallus, by sending Æmilianus and his adherents down into Hades to be devoured with her myriads of worms. The issue was tried by the sword on the plains of Spoleto, and decided against Æmilianus. The fortune of war had spared him. Death and Hades, however, would not be cheated of their prey; and the usual course of the prætorians added him by the assassin’s dagger to the long, but still unfinished, list of victims sacrificed to their avarice and rage.
Valerian was now recognized as emperor; and consulting only his affection or vanity, he immediately associated with him in office his worthless son Gallienus. The whole period of their reigns was one interrupted series of confusion and calamity. This was in strict conformity with the imagery of the seal. The Roman empire was at the same time, and on every side, attacked by the blind fury of foreign invaders, the “wild beasts of the earth,” and the wild ambition of domestic usurpers, Death and Hades’ “sword.” The Franks broke in upon “the earth.” Their rapid devastations spread from the Rhine to the foot of the Pyrenees. Spain was unable to resist. During twelve years it was the arena of destructive hostilities. Taragona was sacked and almost destroyed; and as late as the fifth century, wretched cottages, scattered amidst the ruins of magnificent cities, still recorded the ferocity of these wild beasts from what is now Hesse, Brunswick, and Lunenburgh. From Spain they transported themselves into the Mauritanian province of “the fourth of the earth.” The fury of these “wild beasts of the earth” astonished these Roman Africans, who regarded them, from their name, manners, and complexion, as a destroying storm from a world unknown.
But Death and Hades had work for their wild beasts to do “upon the fourth of the earth” nearer to the seat of empire. The Alemanni burst into Gaul, upon the rich provinces of which they inflicted severe wounds; and afterwards were the first who removed the veil that covered the feeble majesty of Italy. A numerous body of them crossed the Danube, and penetrated through the Rhætian Alps into the plains of Lombardy, as far as Ravenna, and displayed the victorious banners of barbarians almost in sight of Rome. Valerian being in the East, and Gallienus on the Rhine, the hopes and resources of the Romans were in themselves. In the emergency p. 205 the Senate became courageous, and prepared to meet the foe, who found it prudent to retire, to save the spoil with which they were incumbered. But, under the reigns of these emperors the frontier of the Danube was perpetually infested by the inroads of German and Sarmatian “wild beasts.” The Goths renewed their incursions, which were diverted into a new channel. They acquired ships, by which they were enabled to ravage the coasts of Asia Minor. They took Trebizond, and put the inhabitants to the sword. The booty they acquired was immense, and the number of captures incredible. The rich spoils of Trebizond filled a large fleet of ships found in that port. The robust youth of the Black Sea-coast they chained to the oar; and satisfied with the success of their first naval expedition, returned to their new establishments in the kingdom of the Bosphorus.
In their second expedition, they captured Chalcedon, well stored with arms and money; and then proceeded to the plunder of the luxurious and wealthy cities of Bithynia, of which they gave Nice, and Nicomedia to the flames.
In their third naval expedition they made their appearance among the numerous islands of the Ægean Sea, and at length anchored in the Piræus, five miles distant from Athens, which they sacked. A general conflagration blazed out at the same time in every district of Greece; and the temple of Diana at Ephesus, was finally burned by the Goths. It would be interesting to us to know something of the affairs of Christ’s ecclesia there while these wild beasts of the fourth seal were doing the work of Death and Hades in their midst. It would give them no pain to see this “wonder of the world” in flames. They might regret its destruction as a work of art; but, as a stronghold of superstition, in which Jupiter’s image that fell from heaven, was enthroned, and revered by all Asia and the world, its destruction would afford them much satisfaction. It had been seven times destroyed before, but from this last catastrophe it never recovered; for he that was destined “to conquer” was still “conquering,” and consummating the work begun by Paul, who persuaded and turned away much people, not alone at Ephesus, but almost throughout all Asia, saying, that they be no gods which are made with hands—Acts xix. 26. To them, as to us of the household of faith, the destruction of the temple of Diana, and those other temples of St. Peter’s at Rome, and St. Paul’s at London, not from an architectural, but from a scriptural, stand-point, would be a glorious earnest of the approaching downfall of the several superstitions they represent. Ephesus was once famous p. 206 for the bright lamp burning with the oil of the spirit in her midst; but Nikolaitanism, as an extinguisher, put out the light, and she became dark as the heathen catholicism, fashionable episcopalianism, gloomy presbyterianism, shallow congregationalism, and fanatical methodism, and so forth, of our day: therefore Death and Hades had authority to kill and destroy with wild beasts of the earth; these began their work with wild devastation, and all that remains of Ephesus in our time is a few families of Turks, and a Mohammedan mosque.
While the wild beasts of the north were slaying and plundering the heathens of the Roman earth, a wild beast of the east, by Daniel styled a Bear with three ribs in its mouth, spread devastation and terror on either side of the Euphrates. The Persians, under Sapor their king, had crossed that river in great force. Valerian marched against them, was defeated, and captured with his whole army. Sapor then moved against Antioch, the metropolis of the Roman East. Its splendid buildings, private as well as public, were pillaged or destroyed; and its numerous inhabitants were put to the sword, or led away into captivity. The conquest of Syria and Cilicia scarcely interrupted the progress of the ravenous bear. Sapor invaded Cappadocia, and besieged Cæsarea, a city of four hundred thousand inhabitants; many thousands of whom were massacred, and those made prisoners treated with wanton and unrelenting cruelty. In the conquest of Armenia, a state beyond the Roman earth, Sapor treated the people mildly; but when, as one of the wild beasts of Death and Hades, he ravined in “the Great City,” he displayed only the stern features of a conqueror. He sought only to leave behind him a wasted desert, while he transported into Persia the survivors and the treasures of the provinces.
The captivity of Valerian, A. D. 260, ended only with his death. Being relieved of his paternal colleague’s censorial severity, Gallienus reigned for eight years without restraint. When exasperated, Death and Destruction characterized his rule; till, satiated with blood, or fatigued by resistance, he insensibly sunk into the natural mildness and indolence of his character. Owing to the looseness of his government, a crowd of usurpers started up in every province of the empire against him. These had all been born of peasants, and served as soldiers in the ranks, except two. They were Valerian’s lieutenants, who disdained to serve his unworthy son. Of all these nineteen usurpers of imperial power there was not one who enjoyed a life of peace or a natural death. As soon as they were invested with the bloody ensigns of royalty, Death and Hades p. 207 marked them as theirs. Encompassed with domestic conspiracy, military sedition, and civil war, they trembled on the edge of precipices, over which, sooner or later, they fell, and were inevitably devoured by the cruel and insatiable Hades. Italy, Rome, and the Senate, constantly adhered to the cause of Gallienus. The transitions during this fourth seal-period from the cottage to the throne, and from the throne to the grave, or Hades, were rapid and perpetual. The election of these precarious emperors, their power and their death, were equally destructive to their subjects and adherents. The price of their fatal elevation was instantly paid to their troops, by an immense donative drawn from the bowels of the exhausted people—the pale horse. When they fell, they involved armies and provinces in their fall. How dreadful and terrible the significance of the saying of this seal, “there was given to Death and Hades authority to kill.” Illustrative of this still further, it may be remarked, that there is extant a most savage mandate from Gallienus to one of his ministers after the suppression of Ingenuus, who had assumed the purple in Illyricum. “It is not enough,” says he, “that you exterminate such as have appeared in arms: the chance of battle might have served me as effectually. The male sex of every age must be extirpated: provided that, in the execution of the children and old men, you can contrive means to save our reputation. Let every one die who has dropped an expression, who has entertained a thought against me, against me, the son of Valerian, the father and brother of so many princes. Remember that Ingenuus was made emperor: tear, kill, hew in pieces. I write to you with my own hand, and would inspire you with my own feelings.”
Such were the “wild beasts” and such the “sword” which, in the period of the fourth seal, dismembered the provinces, and reduced the heathen dominion of Rome to the lowest pitch of disgrace and ruin, from which it seemed impossible that it should ever emerge. There still remain some particular facts which may serve to reflect a strong light on the horrid picture of this seal.
The situation of Sicily preserved it from the “wild beasts of the earth,” whose dens were beyond the limit of “the Great City.” The sufferings of that once flourishing and still fertile island were inflicted by baser savages within its own limits. A licentious crowd of slaves and peasants reigned for a while over the plundered country and renewed the memory of servile wars of more ancient times. The agriculture of Sicily was ruined; and as the principal estates belonged to the opulent senators of Rome, who often enclosed p. 208 within a farm the territory of an old republic, this private injury probably affected the capital more deeply than all the conquests of the Goths or the Persians.
After the captivity of Valerian and the insolence of Gallienus had relaxed the authority of the laws, the Alexandrians abandoned themselves to the ungoverned rage of their passions. Philosophical Christianity had done no more for them than it has for Russians or Poles, or for Americans of the North and South. They made their unhappy country the theatre of a civil war which continued (with a few short and suspicious truces) above twelve years. This was a commercial city of about six hundred thousand inhabitants on “the fourth of the earth,” as well as Sicily. All intercourse between the several quarters of this afflicted city was cut off, every street was polluted with blood, every building of strength was converted into a citadel; nor did the tumult subside till a considerable part of Alexandria was irretrievably ruined, and reduced to a state of dreary solitude.
C.—Death and Hades kill with Famine and Pestilence
It was revealed to John that among the agencies coöperating in the development of deadliness in the enemy with which the Bowman of the first seal would have successfully to contend, there would be famine and pestilence—so we render with Mr. Elliott the word, θανατος, on the authority of the Septuagint, in 2 Sam. xxiv. 13, 15—“Or shall it be three days דבר, dĕvĕr, pestilence?” where the LXX. translation is θανατος.
What the Spirit revealed to John, history informs us came to pass with a destructiveness by no means exaggerated in the imagery of the fourth seal. Death and Hades killed the people with famine and pestilence with terrible fatality. Gibbon tells us that there was a long and general famine of a very serious kind, and that it was the inevitable consequence of rapine and oppression, which extirpated the produce of the present and the hope of future harvests. Then, in the order of the seal, which places famine before pestilence, he proceeds to inform us that the famine generated pestilence. Famine, says he, is almost always followed by epidemical diseases, the effect of scanty and unwholesome food. Other causes must, however, have contributed to the furious plague, which, from the year 250 to A. D. 265, raged without interruption in every province, every city, and almost every family of the Roman empire.
p. 209 The fourth of the earth was not exempt. During some time five thousand persons died daily in Rome, and many towns that had escaped the sword and wild beasts of Death and Hades, were entirely depopulated. Above half the people of Alexandria had perished in their calamities; and if the analogy might be extended to other provinces, it might be concluded that war, pestilence, and famine had consumed in a few years the half of the human species.
In conclusion of our exposition of this seal, though not the full end of the seal-period itself, which continued yet a few years developing results of Death and Hades’ mission similar to those already before the reader, we may record in this place the testimonies of Sismondi, Schlegel, and Niebuhr concerning the deadly paleness of the Roman body politic consequent upon the judgment of this seal. Sismondi says, as quoted by Mr. Elliott: “Diocletian put an end to this long period of anarchy. But such a succession of invasions and civil wars, and so much suffering, disorder, and crime, had brought the empire into a state of mortal languor from which it never recovered.” The apocalypse which enables one to “see” below the surface of events, teaches me that “the Lamb,” not Diocletian, put an end to the long period of anarchy caused by Death and Hades by opening the fifth seal. Diocletian was only the instrument by which He effected it. The mortal languor was represented in the pale color of the horse ridden by Death. Speaking of the state of things after Diocletian’s accession, A. D. 285, Niebuhr says: “After the cessation of the plague (‘which began to decrease in the time of Probus,’ between A. D. 276 and A. D. 282) the empire was suffering from general distress; and its condition was very much like that which followed after the cessation of the Black Death in the middle ages.” And Schlegel says: “The division of the empire among several sovereigns appeared then (in the reign of Diocletian) as afterwards, an inevitable and necessary evil. In other words, the several parts and members of the vast body of the Roman empire, which approached nearer and nearer to dissolution, began to fall to pieces.”
The rest of the events of this seal-period fall under the reigns of Claudius, Aurelian, Tacitus, Probus, Carus and his sons, and the first eighteen years of Diocletian, embracing a period of thirty-five years in which the blood of the people was poured out like water. Thus, the whole period of the fourth seal would be sixty-eight years, the result of which was the establishment of a new system of government, which was afterwards completed by the family of Constantine.