Section 5. The Philadelphian State

5. Souls

“When he opened the fifth seal, I saw underneath the Altar the souls of them who had been slain”—τας ψυχας των εσφαγμενων. Clerical metaphysicians, with rare exceptions, declare these hieroglyphic souls seen by John in vision to be the disembodied immortal spirits of saints with Christ in heaven. The Alexandrian and Origenic philosophy—the exceedingly thin and innutritious fluid supplied them by what they call their Almæ Matres—knows no other souls, and can make no other disposition of them than this. With this heathen theory of souls darkening their understandings, the Apocalypse is for them a sealed book. Their attempted interpretations have all failed because they have sought an exposition in harmony with this dogma, which is the rope of sand by which the whole edifice of their Laodicean superstition is bound together. What they call “religion” is for the conversion, and salvation from eternal torment in flaming brimstone, and from the Devil, of immortal and post-mortem disembodied spirits, by sending them at death on angels’ wings to heavenly kingdoms beyond the realms of time and space! But there is no such soul; and, therefore, the “religion” invented for it by the Laodicean Apostasy is vain—a mere invention for the salvation of a nonentity, or, in the expressive language of Paul, “a lie”—2 Thess. ii. 11. But, being divinely and judicially deluded “because they receive not the love of the truth that they might be saved,” they seek support for “the lie” they believe in this fifth seal. They think it is a proof of the existence of a part of man in a conscious state altogether independent of body. That the dead are not dead, but, freed from “mortal coil,” exceedingly elastic and lively; that “the dead” is a phrase only to be applied to body; that, beyond this, there is really no such thing as death; so that “the dead” is only a conventionalism, by which the living freed from mortal coil in the world of spirits is to be understood; and that, though divided from us by the veil of flesh, they are highly intellectual and well informed of all that is transacting among the sons of men; and many more absurdities they teach, styled by the Spirit “the depths of the Satan as they teach,” which are so well known by all who are familiar with pulpit traditions that it is needless to encumber our pages with any more details.

p. 235 In addition to what we have already said about souls underneath the Altar, we may remark that all the corporeal organizations of the animal world are denominated souls in the scripture. A few references will sufficiently prove this, “And Elohim said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly שׁרץ נפּשׁ חיה, sheretz nephesh khayyah, ‘swarming soul of life’”—Gen. i. 20. In the next verse, all fish are termed souls; and, in verse 24, all creatures produced from the earth are styled nephesh khayyah, “soul of life.” In verse 28, the creatures thus called are summed up as כל חיה, kol-khayyah, “everything of life;” and, in verse 30, every beast, fowl, and reptile, are said to have “in” them “soul of life.”

What the Spirit, who made them all, says of these creatures, he affirms also of man. He, even as they, has in him “breath of lives” and “soul of life,” and is “a soul” or body “of life.” Thus, in Gen. ii. 7, it reads, “And Yahweh Elohim formed the man, dust of the ground; and breathed into his nostrils breath of lives; and the man was FOR A BODY OF LIFE”—le nephesh khayyah. If we come to the word with our minds free from tradition, there is no difficulty in understanding this simple statement. The man is put on the same footing with all other creatures. They are bodies or “souls of life,” and so is he; they all have “the breath of the spirit of lives,” and so has he; they are all “dust of the ground,” save those from the waters, and so is he; the only difference between him and them is the same thing that constitutes the difference between the dog and the lion, or the elephant and the camel—organization of the dust.

The same “breath of the spirit of lives,” I say, is common to all animals and man. This will be evident to those who can consult the original of Gen. vii. 22, 15. They know that in the English Version it is not correctly rendered “breath of life;” the words “the spirit of” have been unfaithfully omitted. In verse 15, the words rendered “breath of life” are not the same as those similarly rendered in Gen. ii. 7. In this, it reads נשׁמת חיים, nishmath khayyim, “breath of lives;” and in that, “from all the flesh which has in it רוח חיים, ruach khayyim, spirit of lives.” So that man is affirmed to have “the breath of lives” in his nostrils, and all other flesh “the spirit of lives” in theirs; hence, as spirit is regarded as of a higher dignity than breath, we might, on such premises, conclude that the “lower” animals are really demiurgically superior to man. Aud, indeed, when we compare the doings of said animals with the conduct of men, lay and clerical, we might suppose that the stupidity and brutishness of brain-flesh was truly their distinguishing p. 236 characteristic, and that the so-called “brutes” were essentially their superiors. But said premises are not sound; for the superiority of the one race over the other is not predicated on the matter of which they are made, and by which they are vitalized, but on the organic formation of the same. Hence, there is no natural demiurgic difference between an Archbishop of New York or of Canterbury, or a Bishop of Natal, and the serpent and monkey tribes of the forest; the Spirit, therefore, by Moses (and this, perhaps, may be the reason why the Bishop of Natal is so hostile to Moses) has been careful, in Gen. vii. 22, to give us to understand that the nishmah and ruach, “breath” and “spirit,” are common to all kinds of human brutes, both “lower animals” and men. I say human brutes, for the word human, which one class of brutes has appropriated to itself exclusively, really or demiurgically pertains to all the earthborns or formations from the ground.^a The text reads, after mentioning all the creatures, “and every man, all which has breath of spirit of lives, כל אשר נשמת-רוח חיים, kol asher nishmath-ruach khayyim, in their nostrils, out of all which is in the dry land, died.”

We have seen that man and the other creatures are all termed nephesh, and are said to have nephesh in them; and in Gen. ix. 4, we are informed by the Spirit what nephesh elementally, or in concrete essence, is, in the law given to Noah. “Flesh with its nephesh, or soul, its blood, ye shall not eat.” From these premises, then, we learn, that men and their brethren of the ground are all of them souls—human or ground-souls; that they have all got souls in them; and that these souls are the blood of their flesh. For further remarks upon soul in blood see what we have written concerning the Altar.

Now, by this Mosaic testimony the Eternal Teacher proclaims the doctrine that man, though created in the image and likeness of Elohim, as Seth was in the image and likeness of Adam, hath nevertheless “no preëminence over a beast.” And this testimony is doubtless true, and in perfect harmony with man’s developments when abandoned by his creator to his own instincts and lusts. But, we are not left to inference. The Spirit has endorsed our inferences by positive testimony. In speaking by Solomon of the דברה divrah, or cause for adjudication, termed “estate of the sons of the man,” the old man of the flesh, the king is caused to say, “would that the Elohim would purify them, so that they might see for themselves that they are beasts. For that which befalleth p. 237 the sons of the man also befalleth the beasts; even one thing befalleth them; as dieth the one, so dieth the other; for there is one spirit for all; so that excellence over the beast the man hath none; for the whole are a vapour (Ps. lxxviii. 39). The whole go to one place: the whole was from the dust, and the whole return to the dust. Who knoweth the spirit of the sons of the man that it goeth upwards? Or the spirit of the beast that it goeth downwards to the earth? Wherefore I perceive that there is nothing better than that the man rejoice in his works; for that is his portion: for who shall cause him to see what shall be after him?”—Eccl. iii. 18.

Leaving the reader, then, to adjudicate the traditions of the Apostasy by this divine teaching, I proceed to remark that the Spirit has favored us with a comment upon his own words in Gen. ii. 7, in what he caused Paul to write in 1 Cor. xv. 44, 45. “There is a natural body,” saith he; a σωμα ψυχικον: and he proceeds to prove the assertion by quoting the words of Moses, saying, “And so it is written, The first man Adam was made into a living soul—εις ψυχην ζωσαν. These words are parallel with le-nephesh khayyah, and are explanatory of them. If the Spirit be asked, what is a nephesh khayyah, he answers in Greek, psuche tzosa; and if it be further inquired, what is psuche tzosa? the English version replies, a living soul, or a natural body; but as חיה khayyah is not an adjective, but a substantive, it should be rendered a body of life.

And what, then? say “the merchants of the earth,” who auction off their spiritual merchandize from the pulpits of all lands. Are not “bodies and the souls of men,” σωματα και ψυχαι ανθρωπων, the most precious of our wares? But wherein is the preciousness of souls, which we proclaim to be immortal jewels, whose estimation is incalculable, if men have no preëminence over monkeys; and bishops, deans, and ministers, no excellence over the reptiles of the wilderness? The supposition is downright atheism and infidelity!—Apoc. xviii. 13, 11.

Doubtless, in the opinion of the soul-merchants of the earth the Spirit’s teaching is both atheistic and infidel, for it is destructive of their whole system. He has, to speak apocalyptically, “spued them out of his mouth;” how, then, could there be any harmony between his word or teaching and their theologies? They teach, that there are in men “immortal souls;” souls which are immaterial, and therefore immortal; and which, when their bodies die, exist without bodies: that the value of a single such soul is incalculable; and that it is the possession of this divine incorporeal p. 238 entity angelized at death, which constitutes the preëminence of men over all other created things. But to such, the Spirit rejoins, “Fools and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken!”—“Man that is in honour, and understandeth not, is like the beasts that perish”—Ps. xlix. 12, 20. One such divine oracle is worth incalculably more than whole shiploads of university logic and collegiate “bodies of divinity.”

This, then, is the grand principle upon which the immortality of man is based—a scriptural comprehension of the truth developing a faith that works by love and purifies the heart in the obedience it commands. A man with such an understanding heart is a “spiritual man;” but before he had the understanding of the truth, he was like bishops, deans, ministers, reptiles and monkeys, without preëminence demiurgically on any other speciality than form. The “natural man,” the Spirit saith, is a beast; a mere “body of life.” He may be decorated with all imaginable titles of honour, and humbly worshipped by his fellows; nevertheless, if he “understandeth not,” he is a mere natural still. There is no seed of immortality in him.

Now, the scriptures teach that the seed of immortality in a believing man is Christ; and therefore he is styled by Paul in writing to saints in Colosse, “Christ our life.” “I am,” said Christ, “the truth and the life.” “Let Christ,” says Paul, “dwell in your hearts by faith;” hence, “the truth and the life” dwell in the heart by faith, by an intelligent comprehension and conviction of the truth. A man of such an understanding has life in him in this sense; and in the same sense it is, that “he believing into the Son hath everlasting life”—John iii. 36; for “my words,” saith Christ, “are spirit and life”—Ib. vi. 63.

From this testimony, it will be perceived, that the principle of a man’s immortality is not physical or material, but doctrinal—the truth revealed and believed. Faith such as Abraham had, gives a believer “a right” to eternal life; and in so doing makes him “an heir of life,” and “joint heir with Christ of all things.” Hence, it is written, Apoc. xxii. 14, “Blessed are those who wash their robes that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city.” So Tregelles’ text. It is equivalent to the words in the Common Version; for no believer can “wash his robes white in the blood of the Lamb” unless he “do his commandments,” which say to him who believes the gospel of the kingdom “μετανοειτε, change the mind, and be immersed upon the name of Jesus Christ for or into the remission of sins”—Acts p. 239 ii. 38. To obey these commandments is to wash the robes white in the blood of Christ, and to obtain a right to life when he shall appear in glory—Col. iii. 4. By such a washing, he lays hold of the horns of the Altar, and is safe, if he continue within the Altar; otherwise not.

But, the right obtained may be forfeited by misconduct. Hence, Paul says to certain who had obtained the right, “If ye walk after the flesh ye shall die;” that is, if ye obey the instincts and lusts of the natural man ye shall die, or forfeit your right. He therefore exhorted them to keep down these lusts by the power of the truth; and assured them that, if they sought for glory, honor, incorruptibility, and life, by “a patient continuance in well doing,” the Deity would render them eternal life—Rom. ii. 7; and thus, the right obtained would merge into actual possession.

Now, when actually possessed the possessor is a “spiritual man” in the highest sense. He becomes such after resurrection from among the dead. Before he died he differed from all natural men and other animals, in that he was “filled with the knowledge of the Deity’s will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding”—Col. i. 9; and thus became “a partaker of the divine nature,” in a moral sense: and in this sense also he was a spiritual man. But, though wise and understanding, he was still encumbered with a “vile body.” This needed to be changed, “that it might be fashioned like to the body of Christ’s glory”—like to that which He now has—Phil. iii. 21. In other words, he needed to be invested with the white robe symbolically given to the souls underneath the Altar; a robe, which clothes one to the feet with the incorruption of the Holy Spirit. Hence, the promise is, “When Christ shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is”—1 John iii. 2. The saints shall be like him, “I was dead,” says Christ, “but I am alive for evermore”—Apoc. i. 18. Paul styles him, “the Lord the Spirit,” “a Quickening Spirit,” “the Lord from heaven,” “the Heavenly Man,” “the last Adam.” The wise shall be like what he now is. They will therefore be partakers of the divine nature in a substantial material sense; in other words they will be spirit; “for that which hath been born of spirit is spirit”—John iii. 6.

From this condensed view of the subject, it will, then, be perceived, that, according to the scripture teaching, there are in the arrangements of Deity, two bodies of life; that is, two kinds of body through which life is manifested: the one body in its organization is essentially perishable; the other, essentially imperishable. p. 240 Each body is formed, or organized, before it is made the medium of the life peculiar to it. At this crisis, they are simply nephesh psyche or soul; but when the mechanism of each body is put into motion, the one becomes nephesh khayyah, psyche tzosa, living soul or natural body; and the other, σωμα πνευματικον, a spiritual body, “spirit;” πνευμα αγιοσυνης, spirit of holiness, or holy spirit nature. But these bodies of life are not absolutely independent of one another. Their relationship is similar to that between the wheat standing in the field in winter time, and the same plant in harvest. The perishable body is projected from the earth in the resurrection period, when it stands a body of life, waiting for the Deity to give it a body according to his own good pleasure—1 Cor. xv. 30; John v. 21—to give it a white robe if approved. No body of life is resurrected except such an one, whose organization will give expression to a character extant before death. Such a corporeally expressed character is the restoration of personal identity. The resurrected body of life thinks, remembers, feels and acts, like Paul, or, it may be, Judas; therefore, it is Paul or Judas to all intents and purposes. But, in this stage of the affair, the resurrected body of life, so named because of identity, is a body capable of perishing again, if left to itself; or, of becoming imperishable eternally if acted upon by the power of Deity. This alternative, then, has to be determined by the Judge. Paul informs the saints of both classes—of that class who have “walked worthy of their high vocation,” and of that, who have “walked after the flesh,” since their immersion—he says to both these, “Every one of us shall give account of himself to the Deity;” “for we must all appear before the judgment-seat of Christ; that every one may receive δια του σωματος, through the body the things according to that he hath done, whether good or bad”—Rom. xvi. 12; 2 Cor. v. 10. Hence, Paul and Judas will both be there to tell the story of their lives in a previous state of existence. While they are giving account of themselves they are both of them bodies of life, like two plants of the same species in the field, the one may perish by frost or other cause; the other may be unaffected by evil, and yield fruit in harvest. The fate of Paul and Judas will depend on the nature of the account given by each. The rule by which the causes will be adjudicated, is laid down by Paul in Gal. vi. 7, 8—“Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” A man sows before death; he reaps after rising from death. “He that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit, shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting.” This p. 241 is the rule, which is also illustrated by Paul himself and Judas. The last “sowed to his flesh;” and in his account he will abundantly show it. The sentence upon him in the resurrection-period will therefore doom him to “reap corruption of the flesh”—to “receive through the body according to what he had done;” and as this was bad, he will, through the body he acquires in the future, receive “bad,” or corruption. The body of life, then, named Judas, as a type of his class, remains perishable, and “when cast into outer darkness,” reaps all the evil of which it is susceptible.

But Paul’s case is differently disposed of. He also may represent a class. In his previous state of being, instead of betraying the truth, or perverting it to his own fleshly purposes, he “sowed to the Spirit.” By reading the New Testament, it is easy to see how he did this. He will give account of himself in accordance with what is written of him; and he had great confidence that it will be accepted. Being accepted, then, he will “of the Spirit reap everlasting life.” A white robe, as it were, will be presented to him. The power of the Deity will change, or transform, the body standing at the tribunal in the twinkling of an eye; even as Paul testifies, the saints living at the advent, who may be approved, shall be changed without tasting of death—1 Cor. xv. 51, 52. Thus, the body by this transformation is “clothed upon” with incorruptibility and immortality, by which “mortality is swallowed up of life”—2 Cor. iv. 4; and thus will be verified in his own experience, his own testimony, that “this corruptible must put on incorruption; and this mortal must put on immortality,” when “death is swallowed up in victory”—1 Cor. xv. 53, 54; and when this process is completed, Paul in victory, is spiritual in the highest sense, a body of life eternal.

The scripture teaching, then, concerning souls and immortality, has no affinity with the teaching of pulpiteers on these subjects. The scripture defines immortality to be life manifested through incorruptible body; and declares, that the only being in the universe that has it underived is the Deity—1 Tim. vi, 15, 16. It also declares, that it is a part of the reward promised to the righteous to be given to them exclusively after the advent of Jesus in power, and his resurrection of them from the grave. Men attain to immortality, or deathlessness, in recompense for character, conformed to the moral image of the Deity, as he shines forth in the example of Jesus Christ. Faith and obedience are the basis of this character. Men are alienated from the life of the Deity through the ignorance that is in them—Eph. iv. 18. Hence, there is no immortality p. 242 for those who understand not the gospel; and this can be believed by none who believe the foolish rhapsodies and rhodomontade histrionically dispensed from the pulpits of the world. There is no immortality out of Christ; and they only are in him, who “believe the things concerning the kingdom of the Deity, and of the name of Jesus Christ, and are immersed unto him, both men and women”—Acts viii. 12.

John says, in ch. xx. 4, “I saw the souls, τας ψυχας, of them who had been beheaded on account of the testimony of Jesus, and on account of the word of the Deity . . . and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years.” As we have remarked before, among these beheaded souls were those of the fifth seal which he saw underneath the Altar, and to whom white robes were given. When he sees them in ch. xx. they were, hieroglyphically, resurrected souls; for he says “they lived.” Those in the fifth seal were, emblematically, in the death state, where nothing is really known; for “the dead know not anything”—“for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, בשאול, b’sheol (in the land of forgetfulness—Ps. lxxxviii. 12), whither thou goest”—Eccl. ix. 5, 10. But, in the fifth seal symbolization, a white robe is given to each, with an injunction to repose. This repose continues till the Messenger descends from heaven with power. He then awakes them, and they stand again on their feet above ground. This is αναστασις. At this crisis they are “souls” or bodies of life, prepared for investiture with the white robe of incorruption. When John saw these beheaded souls alive again he also saw thrones—“I saw thrones,” says he, “and they sat upon them.” But, says Paul, “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of the Deity; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption”—1 Cor. xv. 50. Now, as I have shown, bodies of life projected from the grave, with antecedent personal identity, are perishable. At this stage, therefore, of renewed existence they could not occupy the thrones seen. They must first appear at the tribunal of Christ, the Great White Throne (ch. xx. 11), and give account of themselves or report to him. Being deemed “holy, and unblameable, and unreproveable in his sight, having continued in the faith, rooted and settled, and not moved away from the hope of the gospel”—Col. i. 22, 23; Christ transfigures the bodies of their humiliation, that they may become symmorphous or conformable to the body of his glory, through the energy whereby he is able also to subdue to himself all things—Phil. iii. 21. Being thus “clothed upon,” they are no longer mere “souls,” which are “naked” and put to shame if not “clothed,” but incorruptible and p. 243 deathless beings, “the sons of the Deity, being the sons of the resurrection, and equal to the angels”—Luke xx. 36. Thus robed in the pure incorruption of the Spirit, Paul’s objection in their case is removed, and they are qualified to possess “the thrones of the House of David;” so that it will be said to them by the King, “Come, ye blessed of my Father, take possession of the kingdom which has been prepared for you from the foundation of the state”—Matt. xxv. 34.

In dismissing this item of the fifth seal, it may be remarked that its symbolization, with respect to the souls, is the representation in emblem of ideas perfectly familiar to the christian mind of the times antecedent and concurrent with the seal. Believers were exhorted by the apostles to be ready at any time for a sacrifice of themselves. In view of his own execution, Paul says, “If I be poured out upon the sacrifice of your faith, I rejoice;” and again, “I am now ready to be offered,” or poured out at the base of the altar, “and the time of my analysis is at hand.” And, in the century succeeding the apostolic age, Ignatius, who was ordered to execution by Trajan, speaks of his approaching end as his being poured out as a libation to God on his altar. And speaking of Polycarp of Smyrna, who suffered about A. D. 160, his biographer says: “Having his hands tied behind him, and being bound as a ram out of a great flock for an offering, and prepared for a burnt sacrifice, acceptable to the Deity, he looked to heaven and said: ‘O Father, I give thee hearty thanks that thou hast vouchsafed to me that at this day and this hour I should have a part in the number of thy witnesses in the cup of thy Christ, unto the resurrection of eternal life both of soul and body, in the incorruption of the Holy Spirit. Among whom may I be accepted this day before thee as an acceptable sacrifice, as thou hast ordained.’” He regarded his execution as a sacrifice, or outpouring underneath the altar, and met it cheerfully, in hope of the resurrection of his soul as well as his body for investiture with the white robe, which he styles the “incorruption of the Holy Spirit.”

In conclusion, I may just inform the reader that the Rev. Mr. Elliott expounds the white robes emblematically given to the souls underneath the altar as symbolical of their justification before the pagan public by the edict of the emperor Galerius, granting toleration to christians, and entreating them to pray to their God for his restoration to health. Thus, he considers their memory was justified. A remarkable robe this, and of pagan manufacture too! A clergyman might rejoice in the honor of such a justification, but certainly not the humblest of the saints.

p. 2446.—“O Despot, Holy and True!”

Such was the style of address put into the mouths of the souls underneath the altar by the Spirit—ὁ Δεσποτης ὁ αγιος και ὁ αληθινος. This is the only place in the Apocalypse where the word Despotes occurs; in the twenty-two other places where the word Lord is found it is κυριος, kyrios, in the original. I conclude, therefore, that there must be some special reason why δεσποτης and not κυριος is adopted in the symbolography of the fifth seal.

I find that despot is used in nine other places in the New Testament. In four of these it is applied to men, and translated master; in one instance it is so rendered in regard to God; and in the remaining four it is rendered Lord, and affirmed of the Deity. In Acts iv. 24, the Holy and True Despot is declared in the address of the disciples after their return from the Chief Priests to their companions, saying to the Deity, “O Despot, thou art the Deity who made the heaven, and the earth, and the sea, and all things in them; and spake by the mouth of David.” And Jude, speaking of certain false professors that had crept into the ecclesias unawares, says, that they “denied the only Despot Deity—τον μονον δεσποτην Θεον— even the Lord Jesus Anointed.” These were Nikolaïtans, who were without judgment in the “great mystery of Deity manifested in Flesh”—“the fathers” of that great apostasy which afterwards developed itself into that enormous imposture, THE KINGDOM OF THE CLERGY, which darkens and demoralizes the peoples of the earth.

The Deity, then, symbolized by “the Lamb as it had been slain, having Seven Horns and Seven Eyes,” is the only Holy and True Despot Deity of the Universe. This, however, in the period of the fifth seal, was disputed by another, who denied the existence of the Holy and True One, and claimed that he was the only Despot of the habitable, whom men ought to honor and obey. He styled himself Diocletianus Jupiter or Jove, while Maximian, whom he associated with himself in the imperial offices, assumed the title of Hercules.

Now, it is a remarkable historic fact that, at the epoch of the opening of the fifth seal, a New Despotism was set up by Diocletian Jupiter, totally different from that to which the Roman peoples had been subject from the days of Augustus hitherto. Gibbon says, “Diocletian may be considered as the founder of a new empire.” This arduous work, he says, he completely achieved by A. D. 303, which was the twentieth of his reign, when he celebrated that memorable æra, by a Roman triumph. “He framed a new system of p. 245 imperial government, which was afterwards completed by the family of Constantine.” Eight years before his elevation, the Roman Senate had aspired to the restoration of republicanism. This was an offence in his sight, and he assigned to Hercules the work of reducing it to sheer abjection, while the dignity of Rome was impaired by the studied absence of Jupiter and Hercules, who made Milan and Nicomedia their palatial residences. By this policy, “the Senate of Rome, losing all connection with the imperial court and the actual constitution, was left a venerable but useless monument of antiquity on the Capitoline Hill.”

The ancient modest titles of civil magistracy were laid aside, and, if these deities still distinguished their high station by the appellation of emperor, or imperator, that word was understood in a new and more dignified sense, and no longer denoted the general of the Roman armies, but the Sovereign of the Roman World. The title emperor was associated with another of a more servile kind. Dominus, or master, owner, supreme lord, was expressive of the despotic power of a master over his domestic slaves. Viewing it in this odious light, it had been rejected with abhorrence by the first Cæsars. “Pliny,” says Gibbon, “speaks of Dominus with execration, as synonymous with tyrant and opposite to prince.” But, notwithstanding this repugnance, the name in time lost its odiousness, till at length the style of “Our Despot and Emperor”—Dominus et Imperator noster—was not only bestowed by flattery, but was regularly admitted into the laws and public monuments. The whole magnificence and ceremony of Asiatic state and servility was introduced under Diocletian and Maximian, who usurped the attributes of Divinity, and transmitted the titles expressive thereof to a succession of Catholic emperors. The Diocletian Jupiter ventured to assume the diadem, an ornament detested by the Romans as the odious ensign of royalty, and the use of which had been considered as the most desperate act of the madness of Caligula. It was no more than a broad white fillet set with pearls, which encircled the emperor’s head. Thus, the Sixth Head of the Dragon was diademed, whereby also, as all the five previous forms of government were all subordinately merged in the emperorship, they were diademed as well. The progress of despotism was rapid and irresistible. When a subject was admitted to the divine presence of the imperial Jupiter, he was obliged, whatever might be his rank, to fall prostrate on the ground, and to adore, according to the eastern fashion, the divinity of his Lord and Despot. The state maintained by Diocletian was theatrical, the object of which was to display the unbounded p. 246 power which the emperors possessed over the Roman world.

Now, it cannot be supposed that this novel despotism should develope itself and be established without exciting great attention and discussion among the people. The immense number of professors of christianity in the empire would reject the pretensions of Diocletian to be the only true and holy despot of the world. They would affirm the claims of the Deity whom they worshipped; and would refuse to prostrate themselves in his imperial presence in recognition of his divinity and lordship upon earth. This was, doubtless, the reason why a great number of “christians” were dismissed from their official employments in the imperial household and other departments of the state. An issue was joined upon the question of—Who is the Holy and True Despot of the world, Jupiter or the Lamb? This was the great question of the day, which, until the Lamb’s party gained the victory, absorbed all others. It was a question which, in its discussion, shook the empire to its foundation, and brought great calamity upon those who repudiated the high pretensions of “the Father of the gods and men.” Like the question that abolished the constitution of the Union and brought ruin upon the republic, it had its period of discussion and its period of war. The first eighteen years of the reign of Diocletian afforded scope for “the word of the Deity and the testimony held” against his usurpation of divine attributes. Policy, however, inclined him to toleration, until, by the importunity of his associate, Galerius, who entertained the most implacable aversion for the name and religion of Christ, he was induced to proclaim war against the adherents of the Lamb. This edict inaugurated the fifth seal, of which the great and absorbing subjects of debate were the antagonistic claims of Jupiter and the Lamb to the Despot-Sovereignty of the world.

This, then, is the reason why the Spirit puts this remarkable style of address into the mouths of the souls underneath the altar. By so doing, he pronounces through them sentence in the great controversy being so sanguinarily discussed during the period of the fifth seal. In effect, he proclaims, “I, even I the Lamb, am the Despot, holy and true; the claims of the pretended Jupiter shall not stand; for the great day of my wrath is near, when I will judge and avenge the blood of my servants, and expel from the heaven their persecutor and cast him to the earth”—ch. vi. 17; xii. 8. The introduction of the word Despot in this the only place of the Apocalyse, is a sort of chronological indication that the fifth seal belongs to the period to which it is herein assigned.

p. 2477.—Their Fellowservants and Brethren

In the answer given by the Spirit to the emblematic souls underneath the altar, the professors of christianity still alive and contemporary with the fifth seal period, are divided into two classes—the one the fellowservants, and the other the brethren, of the deceased souls. The brethren were fellowservants, but all the fellowservants were not brethren—even as christadelphians are christians, but all christians so-called are not christadelphians. The brethren of the souls were all fellowservants of the Lamb’s household in the service of “conquering” the idolatry enthroned in the Dragon empire. The Nikolaitanes, the spurious Jews of Satan’s synagogue, the Balaamites, Jezebel’s children, the dead Sardians who had only a name to live, the feeble Philadelphians, and the lukewarm Laodiceans, were all fellowservants in this crusade against that which hindered the manifestion of the Man of Sin. They all belonged to the ecclesiastical community called “Christian” by the idolators, and were exposed in common to all the persecutions raised against it by the priests and rulers of the Roman Habitable. Multitudes of them were killed in this long and sanguinary religious war. But, though they thus became what ecclesiastics call “martyrs,” they “remembered not from whence they had fallen, to repent and do the first works;” they repented not of the blasphemy of styling themselves Jews when they were only of the Satan’s synagogue; they still taught that believers might eat things sacrificed to idols, and themselves sacrifice as an expedient to save their lives in times of persecution, and, though thus “lapsed,” on the restoration of peace, be received again among “the brethren;” they still adhered to “the depths of the Satan as they teach;” they kept not the word, and denied the Spirit-Name; they repented of none of these things, but still styling themselves “Jews inwardly,” or christians, they waxed worse and worse to the times of the Sixth Seal, saying, at the crisis of the war against the Dragon, “We are rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing;” but they knew not that they were “wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked.”

Many of them “gave their bodies to be burned” in this great antipagan war; but, not possessing the αγαπη, agape, or love which comprehends the one faith and the one hope, believing and hoping all the things, and rejoicing in the truth, and styled in the Common Version, most incorrectly, “charity,” they were sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal. Paul had prevision of these “fellowservants” in the war, who, indeed, brought much trouble upon him in his day.

p. 248 In reference to them, he warned the Ephesian Brethren that from among their own Elders men would arise “speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them;” and, in writing to the saints at Corinth, says of their class, in 1 Cor. xiii. 2: “Though I have prophecy, and understand all the mysteries, and all the knowledge; and though I have all the faith, so that I could remove mountains; and though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor (charity); and though I give my body to be burned, and have not αγαπη, or love (as he defines it), it profiteth me nothing.” Hence, the “martyrdom” of the many of these fellowservants of the souls underneath the altar, so glorified by their class in then present and aftertimes, was of no profit to them; it served for a testimony against paganism and judgment upon themselves for their apostasy.

About fifty years previous to the opening of the fifth seal, a broad line of demarcation began to be drawn ecclesiastically between these “fellowservants” and “the brethren.” As we have already seen in our account of the Novatians, these fellowservants, who called themselves “Catholics,” because the majority, and holding chiefly the offices of the Ecclesias, expelled “the brethren” from their pale. Cyprian, whom modern Episcopalians regard as the great “father” who championed the things which they approve, was a notable chief of the fellowservants in the Roman Africa. He was a notable specimen of a pious, eloquent, and charitable ecclesiastic; he would have made a first-rate archbishop of Cambray, or Canterbury; or a zealous minister of any other denomination. No one can doubt his sincerity; for he suffered death for the testimony he held against paganism. But he was not of “the brethren.” We refer the reader to Vol. 1, p. 444, for reference to him more in detail than is necessary here. He may also turn to p. 296 of that volume, for things taught and believed by “the fellowservants.” None who rejoice in such traditions can be brethren to “souls slain for the word of the Deity.” This does not teach the inherent and hereditary immortality of ground-souls; it does not teach, the salvation from, or damnation in, flaming sulphur, of infant immortal souls; it does not teach sacramentalism; or the impartation of converting and regenerating spirit, technically styled “grace” by Laodiceans, through unenlightened formalism; or the subjection of an infant, or ignorant faithless adult, to the ceremonial use of water, bread, and wine, in any form; it does not teach, either baptism or rantism—immersion or sprinkling—for the remission of original sin; nor does it teach, that baptism came in the room of circumcision. The word of the Deity, on account of which the souls underneath the altar were slain, p. 249 teaches none of these “depths of the Satan;” therefore they were not slain on account of them; and the living styled “their brethren,” could not have believed them.

The Brethren in the period of the fifth seal had become what would now be styled “a contemptible few.” They were, however, the “little strength” of the dilapidated and demoralized christian body. The true scriptural understanding of the word was with them. They were the salt, without which the whole community of professors would have been currently putrescent. The Lamb, for their sakes, still delayed to “spue them out of his mouth;” but, when the number of the Brethren that should be killed by the pagan power should be filled up, there would no longer be any reason why the spuing should be deferred.

During the period of the first Six Seals the number of “the Brethren” or christadelphians, continually decreased, while that of “the fellowservants” as persistently and rapidly increased. This will appear, not only from history, but from the general tenor of the epistles to the seven Asiatic ecclesias. In Ephesus, contemporary with the giving of the apocalypse, the Brethren of Christ were in the majority, as they were also in all other parts of Asia Minor. The Spirit commends their works, and labor, and patience; though indeed, they were not up to that standard of excellence that prevailed in the time of Paul. They had “fellowservants” among them when John wrote; but being in the official, as well as the popular majority, they were able to try and convict pretenders to apostleship; and to denounce their Nikolaitanism as a hateful and detested imposition. But, in two hundred years after, a great revolution in affairs had been effected; and the relative position of parties altogether reversed. The Brethren had entered the Sardian state. They had dwindled down to “a few names,” and to but a “little strength;” while the Fellowservants had gained official and numerical ascendancy; they “had a name that they were living;” that they were vigorous, and strong. They now formed a distinct and independent republic, in the midst of the empire, governed by its own laws and magistrates, possessed of a public treasury, and intimately connected in all its parts, by the frequent assemblies of its bishops, to whose decrees their numerous and opulent congregations yielded an implicit obedience. Thus ecclesiastically organized, the Fellowservants considered that “they were rich and had need of nothing,” but a military leader, (for they already swarmed in the armies of the state) to place the sovereign power in their hands. But against all this “the Brethren” protested as indicative of p. 250 spiritual death; that those who approved it were “dead;” and that the system itself, as a divine institution for the separation of a people from among the Gentiles for the Spirit-Name, was “ready to die.” But the protest of the Brethren was unheeded by their Fellowservants, or the “Catholics” so-called. The events of the Sixth Seal furnished these with the desired Military Chieftain in one of the six emperors of the Roman world. Thus led, they became victorious over Jupiter and Hercules; and in their prosperity, ignored all connection with “the Brethren;” who, having been mostly killed in the period of the fifth seal, were added to the souls underneath the altar; so that the “little strength” of the Philadelphian state being reduced to lukewarmness among the Fellowservants, these under the sixth seal entered the Laodicean, in which they shone forth “clothed with the sun, and the moon under their feet, and upon their head a stephan, or coronal wreath, of twelve stars”—ch. xii. 1. Politically, they had “conquered” the Pagan, whose philosophy spiritually had vanquished them.

In conclusion, it may be remarked under this head, that the term “fellowservants” is as appropriate for “the Catholics” of the latter part of the third century and the early part of the fourth (but not “catholics” of succeeding times) as the term “sanctified ones” was to the pagan Medes and Persians in Isa. xiii. 3. These were the Spirit’s sanctified ones in the sense of their being separated by him for the work of overthrowing the Babylonish Lion. The primitive catholics were separated, or sanctified, to the service of “casting the great red Dragon and his angels out of the heaven”—ch. xii. 7-10; because he was the prosecutor of “their brethren.” The Brethren themselves, who were not allowed the use of carnal weapons, could not have effected this expulsion; it was therefore reserved for the time when the Brethren would be inappreciably few, and in effect superseded by mere nominal professors of christianity calling themselves Catholics, to expel by these the Accuser from the heaven. These christians in name, having become in the sight of Deity “wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked”—only a slight spiritual improvement, if any, upon the vicious and bloodstained idolators—he assigned to them the service of dethroning Jupiter by the sword; for “the wicked are His sword.” They were sanctified to this work; or, in modern phraseology, this was their mission. The doctrinal defeat of paganism, in the conversion of the worshippers of the gods to “the faith once delivered to the saints,” was due to “the Brethren” who faithfully adhered to “the word of the Deity;” but the political and military p. 251 overthrow of the common enemy, to “the Fellowservants” or catholics under the Sixth Seal, who were prepared like the troops of Cyrus, to combat on the principles of the flesh, for dominion and the glory of the world. Victory gave them these, and they have retained them to this day. The use they have made of them has been worse than pagan. Having become putrid, the Spirit ejected them with disgust and loathing; and as “the thinking of the flesh” now obtained full sway, they were inimical to the Deity and “the word of his grace,” and became the violent and bitter persecutors of “the Brethren,”—“the remnant, who keep the commandments of the Deity, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ—ch. xii. 17.

In conclusion lastly, the reader may now “see” the reason why the symbolization of the first seal was white indicative of peace and prosperity within the limits of the Roman Habitable; and of the succeeding seals, red, black, livid pale, and the sun of the heavens black as sackcloth of hair, indicative of war, distress, famine, pestilence, and total obliteration. The reason may be found in this. Christ said to his disciples, “ye are the salt of the earth; but if the salt has lost its savor, wherewith shall it (the earth) be salted? It is thenceforth good for nothing but to be cast out, and trodden under foot of men.” During the first seal-period, the Body of Christ had not lost its savor; it salted Roman Society, “the earth,” with divine wisdom; and society had peace and prospered. Life and property were secure; government was fairly administered; and the people were successful in trade and commerce. But, in the second seal-period, the savor of the salt had much deteriorated— civil war took the peace away from the earth in retribution; in the third seal-period, the savor had still more diminished, and there were superadded greater public calamities: in the fourth seal-period, it was hardly possible to discover any salt in the so-called Body of Christ at all; and the consequence was that famine, pestilence, and sword, brought the state to the verge of dissolution, and reduced the population of the world to half: in the sixth seal-period, the salt had become tasteless; in the mouth of the Spirit, it was utterly insipid, and “good for nothing but to be cast out;” and therefore, as he threatened to do if they repented not, he spued the self styled “catholics” out of his mouth—He repudiated them with all their speculations about immortal souls, eternal torture with and by the devil in flaming brimstone, going to heaven at death, infant damnation and salvation, baby and adult sprinkling, baptism in the room of circumcision, salvation of apostates, the saving efficacy of martyrdom, salvation by sacraments without faith, the p. 252 apostolic successorship of ecclesiastics, and many other vain traditions too numerous to mention here—He spued them all out of his mouth as the loathsome and nauseous putrid sloughs of a carcass he pronounced “dead,” and dissolving in corruption. Such was the end of primitive christianity in the times parallel with paganism in power. It went forth “conquering” and it “conquered.” It gained the stephan in the games; but in its victory became a wreck.