8.—Historical Testimony
The materials for a complete history of the community sealed p. 323 during the interval from A. D. 325 to A. D. 396, are very scanty. All that can be done is to glean a few scattered hints, principally to be found in the writings of their catholic adversaries, who maligned them as heretics and schismatics.
We find that in this period the Novatianist societies, which, as we have seen, originated in the middle of the third century, were numerous; and maintaining their original distinctiveness from what had now become the Religion of Rome by law established. The following incident shows this. The historian Socrates informs us that Constantine, anxious for peace and desirous to procure the concord and harmony of the churches of his empire, invited Acesius, one of the Novatianist bishops, to attend the Council of Nice, A. D. 325, which he did. When the Nicene creed had been composed and subscribed by the synod, Constantine appealed to Acesius, and asked him whether he assented with them to the creed? He replied: “The Synod has determined nothing new, my prince; for thus heretofore, even from the commencement and times of the apostles, I traditionally received the definition of the faith, and the time of celebrating Easter.” When therefore the emperor further asked him, “For what reason then do you separate yourself from communion with the rest of the church?” he related what had taken place during the persecution under Decius; and referred to the rigidness of that canon which declares, that it is right to account unworthy of participation in the divine mysteries persons who, after immersion, have committed a sin, which the sacred scriptures denominate “a sin unto death” (1 John v. 16): that they should indeed be exhorted to repentance, but were not to expect remission from priests, but from the Deity, who is alone able and has authority to forgive sins. When Acesius had thus spoken, Constantine said to him, “Place a ladder, Acesius, and climb into heaven alone.”
The Novatianists had now been before the public about seventy-five years. They were very numerous, but seem to have abounded most in Rome, Constantinople and Asia Minor. Morally, they were a considerable improvement upon the adherents of the State Church, being careful to retain none among them whose characters were not reputable in the estimation of good men. Doctrinally, however, they do not appear to have differed materially from the so-called “orthodox.” Indeed their close agreement with state-churchmen in opinion concerning the Deity, and the time of observing the Passover, exempted them from persecution in common with other sects. Persecution, however, sometimes afflicted them; but p. 324 it does not appear to have befallen them because of their testimony for Jesus Christ against iniquity in high places, but, because of their sympathy with the Homoousians, or Consubstantialists, who were sure to come to grief when the Arians became the guardians of the imperial conscience.
The reply of Acesius to Constantine shows a unity of faith between the Novatianist Dissenter and the National Religionist, quite incompatible with the required intelligence of an angel-sealer of the servants of Deity in their foreheads. Had Acesius, as a type of his brethren, been “sealed in his forehead,” he certainly could not have assented to the Nicene Creed as a scriptural definition of “the faith” taught by the apostles, nor would he have troubled himself about the celebration of Easter. The apostolic faith was as little comprehended by church and dissent at this crisis, as by their representatives in our day. Hence, the statement of it by the Nicene Fathers was poor and meagre in the extreme; and, as the symbol of their spiritual intelligence, justifies in a great degree the judgment of Sabinus, a bishop of the Macedonian sect contemporary with the council, who styles all that were convened there “idiots and simpletons,” and “such as had no intelligence in the matter.” The historian Socrates, however, is quite restive under this opinion, and cites the declaration of Eusebius Pamphilus who was present, that “some were eminent for the word of wisdom, others for the strictness of their life; and that the Emperor Constantine himself being present, leading all into unanimity, established unity of judgment, and conformity of opinion among them.” But, with all deference to Socrates, the testimony of Pamphilus rather confirms the judgment of Sabinus; for, if the Nicenists had been truly wise in the word, it would not have required the superior wisdom of an unbaptized semi-heathen emperor to lead them into unanimity, and to establish unity and conformity among them. Imperial sunshine had more to do with the creed than “the wisdom from above, which is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy”—Jas. iii. 17: which Constantine to his sorrow found was by no means characteristic of the three hundred and eighteen fathers of this Council of Nice.
It was the year next ensuing the termination of the Sixth Seal that Constantine convoked this first Œcumenical Synod. He hoped by it to quiet the discord in his church then in full blast between Alexander and Arius; and to allay the incessant strife and tumult among his catholic people. The emperor had great expectations p. 325 from the council, which Pamphilus in his life of Constantine, styles, “a sacred edifice, dilated as it were by the Deity”—“a convocation in imitation of the Apostolic Assembly” on Pentecost; which, he says, was inferior in this respect, that all present were not ministers of the Deity: whereas at Nice the number of bishops exceeded three hundred; while the number of the presbyters, deacons, and acolyths, (or young priests) who attended them was almost incalculable.” Many of the laity were also present, who were practised in the art of reasoning,” or. of darkening counsel by words without knowledge; “and each prepared to advocate the cause of his own party. For a short time previous to the general assembling of the bishops, the disputants engaged in preparatory logical contests with various opponents: and when many were attracted by the interest of their discourse, one of the laity who was a man of unsophisticated understanding, and had stood the test of persecution in his confession of faith, reproved these reasoners; telling them that Christ and his apostles did not teach us the dialectic art, nor vain subtleties, but simple-mindedness which is preserved by faith and good works.” This man spoke like one of the Angel-sealers, the words of truth and soberness. “All present,” continued Socrates, “admired the speaker, and assented to the justness of his remarks; and the disputants themselves, after hearing his ingenuous statement of the truth, exercised a far greater degree of moderation; and thus the disturbance caused by these logical debates was suppressed.
In the second chapter of the Acts, the reader may find the Pentecostian declaration of faith proclaimed by the Spirit through the Twelve Apostles. He can compare this with the creed concocted and published by the episcopal fathers of the Nicene Pentecost, and then say, if it would not have been more demonstrative of the alleged wisdom of these Constantinian Catholics to have reaffirmed “the Spirit’s” simple declaration; than to have given utterance to the Nicene speculations of their “great and holy synod.” A comparison of the two is sufficient to convince any sealed servant of the Deity, that the opinion of Sabinus is correct; and that, clearly, “they had no intelligence in the matter.”
As many of our readers may have no acquaintance with this celebrated symbol of the Apostasy, by the unintelligible jargon of which, the minds of beclouded bishops, presbyters, and peoples, were distracted, and the peace and safety of society fatally impaired, I have concluded to insert it in this place, as the declaration of
p. 3269.—The Faith of “the Woman Clothed with the Sun.”
“We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of all things visible and invisible:—and in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the only begotten of the Father, that is, of the substance of the Father; God of God, and Light of Light; true God of true God; begotten, not made, consubstantial (ὁμοουσιον, Homoousion) with the Father: by whom all things were made, both which are in heaven and on earth: who for the sake of us men, and on account of our salvation, descended, became incarnate, and was made man; suffered, arose again, the third day, and ascended into the heavens, and will come again to judge the living and the dead. We also believe in the Holy Spirit.
“But the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church anathematizes those who say, that there was a time when the Son of God was not, and that he was not before he was begotten; and that he was made from that which did not exist; or who assert that he is of other substance or essence than the Father; or that he was created, or is susceptible of change.”
Such was the rattling skeleton enthroned in the temple of the Imperial Mother of the Man of Sin. All who desired court favor were required to glorify it as the orthodox definition of what they styled “the Unity of the Holy Trinity.” By the philosophy and vain deceit with which they were spoiled and deluded, they had lost the knowledge of the great mystery of godliness exhibited by Christ and the Apostles, “Deity manifested in flesh;” and, under the inspiration of what the Greeks called wisdom and logic, substituted this shallow conception which resulted in a furious and sanguinary strife about the words ουσια, substance, ὁμοουσιον, consubstantial, or of the same essence, ὁμοιουσιον, of the like substance, and so forth. The apostates in favor of the creed were styled Trinitarians, and the apostates opposed to it, Arians, all “men of corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the faith,” as their writings and practices abundantly show.
Having thus presented the reader with “the Faith” of the Catholic Mother, on account of which her fractious and ill-mannered offspring afflicted one another with pains and penalties more sanguinary and brutal than they had formerly experienced from the pagans, it will, I conceive, be perfectly in point, by way of contrast, and as an illustration of “the Seal of the Deity,” brought into renewed and active operation by his providence at this crisis of affairs, to present also “the faith once for all delivered to the saints” p. 327 in luminous simplicity by the Holy Spirit, in whom the Homoousians said they believed, but whose teaching had no more weight with them than with the hierarchists of modern times.
10.—The Faith Apostolically Declared
Acts ii. 22-39.
“Ye men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, A MAN approved of the DEITY among you, by powers and wonders, and signs which the Deity exhibited THROUGH HIM in the midst of you, as ye yourselves also know; Him, being delivered by the predeterminate counsel and foreknowledge of the Deity, ye have taken, and through lawless hands have crucified and slain: whom the Deity hath raised up, having loosed the pains of death: because it was not possible that He should be holden by it.
“For David (by Spirit) speaketh concerning him (Christ), ‘I foresaw Yahweh always before me. Because he is at my right hand I shall not be moved. Therefore did my heart rejoice, and my tongue was glad: moreover also my flesh shall rest in hope; because thou wilt not allow my soul to remain in the grave, nor wilt thou permit thy holy one to see corruption. Thou wilt make me to know the path of lives; thou wilt make me full of joy with thy countenance.’
“Men and brethren, let me speak freely to you concerning the patriarch David, that he is both dead and buried, and his sepulchre is with us until this day. Being a prophet, therefore, and knowing that the Deity with an oath had sworn to him that out of the fruit of his loins, according to the flesh, he would raise up the Christ to sit upon his (David’s) throne: foreseeing this, he spake concerning the resurrection of the Christ, that his soul should not be left in the grave, nor his flesh see corruption.
“This even Jesus the Deity hath raised up, of which all we are witnesses.
“Being therefore exalted to the right hand of the Deity, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, He hath shed forth this, which now ye see and hear.
“For David has not ascended into the heavens: but he himself saith, ‘Yahweh said unto my Lord, Sit at my right hand until I make thine enemies a footstool of thy feet.’
“Therefore, let all the House of Israel know assuredly, that the Deity hath made that same Jesus whom ye crucified both Lord and Christ.”
p. 328 “Let your mind (therefore) be changed, and be immersed every one of you upon the name of Jesus Christ into remission of sins: and YE shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is to you and your children, and to all afar off, as many as the Lord our Deity may invite.”
Here, then, are two faiths: the one, the faith of the Catholic Apostasy; the other, the faith dictated and confirmed by Deity himself. By this, the servants of the Deity were being sealed; while Arians and Trinitarians were splitting hairs about homoousion and homoiousion, and making themselves ridiculous and hateful on every side. “One saw,” says Socrates,” confusion everywhere prevailing; for not only the prelates of the churches engaged in contention, but the people also divided, some siding with one party, and some with the other. To so disgraceful an extent was this affair carried, that Christianity became a subject of popular ridicule, even in the very theatres.”
I have searched through Socrates, Sozomen and Theodoret, the Greek ecclesiastical historians of the period of the sealing, but have been unable to find any footsteps of Angel-sealers contending for the faith delivered on Pentecost, and standing aloof from, and in opposition to, both Trinitarians and Arians. All in the East seem to have been occupied on one side or the other of Homoousianism, evincing thereby the absence of any divine sealing operation in their foreheads. The countries whose vernacular was the Greek tongue seem to have been abandoned of Deity to the darkness of superstition, which was rapidly intensified by the controversialists of Nice. I turn therefore from these to those parts of the Empire where the Latin was the prevailing language of the people—the Roman West, in which John saw the sealing Angel in operation.
In the Roman Africa, then, in one of the wings of the Great Eagle, there appeared, in the early part of the fourth century, an intensely anti-catholic people, a people who, as the faithful agents of the Lamb, “spued them out of their mouth.” They denied the Christianity of Catholics, and would have no fellowship with them, regarding all religious contact with them as defiling. They rejected their immersion as null and void, and repudiated their bread-breaking as a profane thing, and “spued out” their consecrations, unctions, and ordinations, as nauseating abominations. These were just the sort of people John’s symbolization requires, as any one who knows what Catholicism was at that time, and how the Scripture reprobates all they called sacred, will readily perceive. These anti-catholics p. 329 were enlightened people, or they would have gone with the multitude, and have glorified Constantine and his ambitious and worldlyminded clergy. But they were opposed to all their dogmas, and schemes of aggrandizement. They contended for “the simplicity which is in Christ,” as exhibited in the word. They were uncompromisingly hostile to all things not according to the testimony of Jesus Christ and the commandment of the Deity. They would be styled, by the milk-and-water respectables and liberals of our day, ironical, sarcastic, uncharitable, and bitter! There might be some among themselves who would wince at the tone of their testimony, on the specious plea that it would “do harm,” or “do no good,” or that the public would not bear it! But these Roman-African believers were not generally of this punctilious and faint-hearted description. This sort of anti-catholics were few in the fourth century. The exigencies of the crisis, then as now, required earnest men, who feared neither Constantine, his clergy, nor their public, and who had sense and boldness enough to “cry aloud and spare not” any thing that exalted its corrupt self against the knowledge with which the servants of the Deity were being sealed in their foreheads. The crisis required men who were not afraid to stigmatize a blasphemy by the word blasphemy, and to nail a counterfeit to the board, and to proclaim it such, wherever they encountered it. They used the sword of the Spirit trenchantly, so that wherever they fleshed it, it made the victim writhe, and left behind its mark. They declared to their contemporary professors that they were not Christians, and could not be saved so long as they continued members of Constantine’s church. They knew what the truth was, and what the Deity commanded; and, being logical and sensible men, they knew that whatsoever was not of the truth was a lie, and that obedience to the commands of the Deity alone could impart life. The piety and grace of their dominant opponents were intense. They were of the very cream of orthodoxy, and their silver-tongued eloquence unquestionable. But these blandishments of the devout were lighter than vanity with the angel-sealers of that day. Weighed in the balances of truth, they were found utterly wanting; and food only for the indignant sarcasm, and pungent irony, which was practically developed in burning and scraping catholic altars, and breaking their communion cups!
Ecclesiastical historians take little notice of this terrible people, on whose account the four angels at the four corners of the habitable or Roman earth were commanded to restrain those awful tempests, which, in due time, swept the Latin world with hurricanes of p. 330 wrath. What has come down to us concerning them is derived principally from Optatus and Augustine, who wrote against them, and denounced them as schismatics and puritans. The learned Du Pin has noticed them, and, though an adversary, seems to have spoken of them without prejudice. “Hitherto,” says he, “we have only represented the Donatists as a faction that separated from the (catholic) church, without taking notice of any particular doctrine whereby they were distinguished. Indeed, they did not teach any thing that was contrary to the (apostle’s) creed; but they were so rash as to affirm that all the churches everywhere which had embraced the communion of Cœcilianus (bishop of Carthage) and his party, ceased to be the true churches of Jesus Christ; that thus the catholic church was only found among themselves, having ceased to exist in other parts of the world. Besides which, being very fond of the ancient doctrine of the African Ecclesias, that immersion and the other sacraments conferred out of the ecclesia were null and void, they reimmersed such as had been immersed by the catholics, trampled upon their eucharist as a profane thing, and maintained that the consecrations, unctions, and ordinations performed by the catholics were of no avail. They burned or scraped the altars which the latter made use of, as being polluted by impure sacrifices, and broke their (communion) cups. They looked upon the vows made in their communion as of no value; in a word, they would not communicate with them. They maintained that the ecclesia ought to be made up of just and holy men, or, at least, of those who were such in appearance; and that, although wicked men might lurk in the ecclesia, yet it should not harbor those who were known to be such.”
Thus testifies Du Pin concerning the Angel-sealers of the century preceding the sounding of the First Trumpet. He bears testimony to the soundness of their faith; but, while it was doubtless so, his testimony thereto is of no more value than would be that of Bishop Colenso, Professor Renan, or the Archbishop of Canterbury, for the simple reason that he, no more than these “divines,” is able to define the truth. Their faith was not catholic, but apostolic, and a living protest against every thing called christian which did not stand out before the world in fellowship with themselves. This was the only ground they could take consistently with their Apocalyptic position of assessors with the Lamb in spuing the Laodiceans out of his mouth. They proclaimed that the true church had ceased to exist in all parts of the world where they themselves were not. This would be styled arrogant assumption by the Nicene Fathers p. 331 and the catholic sects; but, according to the apocalypse, no other judgment can be given than that, at this crisis, a people of such rigid and sweeping exclusiveness was to exist. For, when the woman should repudiate an adulterous alliance with the State, and fly for refuge and nourishment into the two wings of the Great Eagle, what would that so-called “christianity” be in all “other parts of the world” but the apostasy “spued out of the Spirit’s mouth.” They shook their heads, and heaved with nausea and disgust at the wretched, pitiable, poverty-stricken, blind, and naked abortion basking in the sunshine of imperial grace, and glorifying itself with fulsome flattery and courtly phrase. The sealed servants of the Deity are always exclusive; for, being enlightened by the word and ruled by its principles, their liberality, toleration, and charity, transcend not the line which they describe—“to the law and the testimony, if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.” Tried by this rule, they found the whole world condemned except themselves, and boldly and bravely proclaimed the truth.
Behold, too, how energetic their testimony against the barren formality or sacramentalism which reigned on every side. They repudiated it as ahhorrent to spiritual purity. Did a courtly bishop consecrate an altar for the exposition thereon of the bread and wine? If that piece of ecclesiastical furniture came into their possession, they regarded the thing as polluted by impure sacrifices, and either burned it as church trumpery, or, if deemed convenient as a table, they scraped it clear of all imaginary sacramental unction ere they recognized it as fit for the use of those “who worship Deity in spirit and in truth.”
Du Pin’s is a noble testimony to the purity of their discipline. They maintained that an ecclesia of Christ should be constituted of just and holy men, or, at least, of those who appeared to be such; and that, although wicked men might lurk in the ecclesia, yet, when professors manifested themselves to be wicked, the brethren should put them away. This was the principle of the so-called Donatists—a principle fully supported and sanctified, or enjoined rather, by the New Testament. But it was scouted by the catholic church, which tolerated the notoriously wicked of all shades of abomination, and gloried in the presidency of an emperor who, from jealousy, murdered his own son, and was not immersed, though professing christianity for twenty years, till three days before his death. Need there be, then, any special wonder that the catholic church should have become “the habitation of demons, the hold of every foul p. 332 spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird?”—Apoc. xviii. 3.
The Donatists were a very numerous body in the Roman Africa, and, indeed, seem to have been almost as multitudinous there as the catholics themselves, which, considering the strictness of their discipline and their firm adhesion to the laws of Christ’s house, is gratifying to contemplate, There was scarcely a city or town in the Roman Africa in which there was not an ecclesia of these believers. A public conference was held at Carthage, A. D. 411, at which 286 bishops belonging to the catholics were present, and of the Donatists 270; and when we take into account, not only their rigid discipline, but also that they were a proscribed sect, and frequently the subjects of severe and sanguinary persecution from the catholic rulers, there is good reason to conclude that we have before us in the Donatists the very people foreshadowed in the servants to be sealed. They must have been energized by an enlightened faith, which gave them an intellectual and moral superiority over the imbecile and drowsy sacramentalists of the time. Their increasing numbers attracted the attention of the authorities, who were anxious, if possible, to conciliate them, and form a union between them and the catholics. The emperor Constans, A. D. 348, ten or a dozen years after the death of his father, Constantine, deputed two persons of rank to try to bring about a reconciliation between the two parties. When it was urged upon them that it was their duty to study the peace of the church and to avoid schism, they urged the unscriptural nature of the alliance which had recently taken place between church and state. “Quid est imperatori cum ecclesia?” said they—in plain English, “What hath the emperor to do with the church?” A more important and pertinent question could not have been propounded. Had civil rulers known their proper sphere, they would have accorded protection to citizens in all their rights, and have left them to their own convictions in matters of faith and practice. The civil power would then have restrained all ecclesiastics within the sphere of their own pales; and we should have had no “Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots, and Abominations of the earth.” The atrocities of the Roman Church would not have soaked the soil with the blood of the saints and witnesses of Jesus for hundreds of years, until she became drunk with their gore. Little was Constantine aware of the consequences that would follow his conferring wealth, and honor, and power upon the bishops, presbyters, and so forth, of the Laodicean Apostasy, which, in the ignorance of all concerned, was mistaken for the p. 333 Spouse of Christ. Could he have foreseen the racks, the fires, the massacres, the butcheries, that were to follow his misplaced liberality, he would, doubtless, have thrilled with horror and disgust at the iniquity he had unwittingly evoked.
Another maxim illustrative of the principles of these angel-sealing brethren of “Donatus the Great” is exhibited in the question they used to put, according to Optatus,—“Quid christianis cum regibus, aut quid episcopis cum palatio?” “What have christians to do with kings, or what have bishops to do at court?” They had learned from the scriptures that the principles of the doctrine of Christ were pure, peaceable, impartial, without hypocrisy, and full of good fruits; and that the rulers and courts of the nations were the concentrics of spiritual wickedness and political abomination; and that the overseers, or shepherds, of Christ’s flock had no divine call within those circles but to reprove them. They held with James, that “the friendship of the world is enmity against the Deity;—and that whosoever therefore is a friend of the world is the enemy of the Deity;” and every true believer, in all ages and generations since knows well, that those ministers of religion only obtain access and favor with the authorities and their recognized public, who prophesy smooth things and pervert the truth. They rebuke sin at a distance, rage against the transgressions of the lower orders, speculate upon remote abstractions, amuse and satisfy the well to do, and are recompensed with a fading crown of rejoicing in the abounding gifts and honors of a world lying under the wicked. Donatus and his brethren knowing this, as we know it, and all generations of the righteous since the days of Christ, sent out their Agonistici, or combatants, into the fairs, and markets, and other public places, to inquire of their contemporaries, “what christians have to do with kings, or what have bishops to do at court?” They contended against their presence there, and sought to subdue the people to the conviction, that an imperial and courtly christianity, endorsed by Nicene Fathers and Arian philosophers, was no part of “the faith once for all delivered to the saints.” In this truly orthodox, but dangerous, enterprise, they were sufficiently successful to be brought into collision with the so-called “First Christian Emperor,” who in council assembled at Milan, A. D. 316, condemned them to lose their conventicles, sent their shepherds into banishment, and punished some of them with death! Constantine’s son and successor Constans, also exiled Donatus and many of his brethren, whom he severely afflicted. This was the kind of treatment they experienced at tho hands of “christian emperors,” who smiled with the benignant and genial p. 334 sunshine, irradiable only by worldrulers in the darkness of high places, upon the metaphysical and courtly episcopal sycophants, who constituted “the tail”—the lying prophets (Isai. ix. 15) who caused the people to err; the tail of “the Serpent, who cast out of his mouth water as a flood after the Woman, that he might cause her to be carried away thereby”—Apoc. xii. 15. Donatus and his brethren, however, were not so easily to be swept away; for the more friendly “earth helped the woman, and opening its mouth, swallowed up the flood.” The enemies of the truth are not omnipotent, and rarely wise. Sooner or later retribution comes upon them; for “precious in the eyes of Yahweh is the death of his saints.” The cruelties and injustice of the Constantine Family upon the Angel-Sealers of the Deity’s servants; and the blasphemies of their catholic parasites, returned upon their own heads in the massacre of the imperial princes, and their eclipse by Julian; who, disgusted with their wickedness and hypocrisy, apostatized from the Apostasy to the more decent philosophy of the Antonines. This same “apostate,” who rightly expelled all bishops from court, and sent them to look after their flocks at home, recalled the real servants of the Deity from exile in A. D. 362, and bid them enjoy the rights and privileges which their hypocritical persecutors had wrested from them.
But, when the apostasy had recovered its position in the state, and was again clothed with imperial sunshine, persecution revived against them. The emperor Gratian published several edicts against their peace, and A. D. 377, deprived them of their conventicles, and prohibited all their assemblies. This severity is in itself a testimony in their behalf. Had they been sycophants and hypocrites, ignorant and fanatical fools, bringing forth the fruit of their iniquity in “walking after the flesh,” the catholic government, always inspired by bishops and their satellites at court, would not have inflicted on them disabilities and pains. But their testimony which they sealed upon the people whom they detached from the apostasy; their uncompromising denunciation of the Eusebiuses, Athanasiuses, Ariuses, and Augustines of Roman Ecclesiasticism; their zealous advocacy of the Pentecostian Faith to the utter subversion of all other conceivable creeds—brought down upon their devoted heads imperial and clerical wrath, which, in its tenderest manifestations, is always cruel. Notwithstanding, however, the severities they endured, the number of their ecclesias was very considerable towards the close of the sealing period limited by the sounding of the first trumpet. But, at this time history testifies that their efficiency began p. 335 to decline. Their mission, or angelism, antecedent to the loosing of the winds against the Catholic Apostasy of the Roman West, was nearly accomplished; and the 144,000 almost sealed. Historical romancers attribute their obscuration very principally to the zealous opposition of a catholic saint, named Augustine, who is the type of the Rev. E. B. Elliott’s “true apostolic line and ministry”—Saint Augustine, bishop of Hippo, the apostle of that fashionable “divine sovereign grace,” which elects, prevents, quickens, illuminates, adopts, saves, and leaves men as ignorant of Moses and the prophets, and the teachings of Jesus and the Apostles, as if the Word were indeed “a dead letter,” which, though without life itself, effectually “kills!” The decline of these angel-sealers effected by the logic of a catholic saint, who taught that the twelve apostles are now sitting on twelve thrones of judgment in heaven; and who taught, also, the justification of infants from birth—sin derived from Adam, its guilt, and condemnation, in their baptism!! This is too ridiculous for serious refutation. A writer who can affirm such nonsense in the very statement proves that he, and all who endorse him, are grossly ignorant of the first principles of the oracles of the Deity.
The Emperor Honorius, stirred up against them by two clerical councils, the one A. D. 404, and the other A. D. 411, adopted violent measures against them. Many he fined, banished their pastors, and some he put to death. This was the policy of the party, of which this Elliott-type of the 144,000, was a bright and dazzling light, or miasmal meteor seductive of the unsealed into the way of death. The sanguinary tyranny of the Augustinians, and not the logic of their adversaries, caused their decline. But, the Deity was not unmindful of them in trouble. He had prepared the winds to blast their profligate oppressors. He “hurled a great mountain burning with fire into the sea”—Apoc. viii. 8, which stained it with the blood of their enemies, and subverted their rule over the Roman Africa. Under the protection of the Vandals, who invaded that country A. D. 427, they revived and multiplied, and flourished for a hundred and four years. In 534, the power of their protectors was overturned, and left them again exposed to catholic malignity. Nevertheless, they remained a separate body until the close of the sixth century, when Gregory, the Roman Pontiff, used various methods for suppressing them. After this, but few traces of them under the name of Donatists, are to be found in history. The testimony against the catholic apostasy remained, but the Remnant of the Woman’s Seed that held it, became pricks in its eyes and thorns in its side by other names.
p. 336 In concluding this account of the missions, or apocalyptic angelism, of these sealers of the 144,000, it may be remarked, that the relation of Donatus and his brethren to the reigning apostasy, is precisely that of the author of this work, and of all Christadelphians, who understand themselves and the truth they have confessed. Christadelphians are neither Arians, Socinians, nor Trinitarians; but believers in the “great mystery of godliness, Deity manifested in Flesh,” as set forth in “the Revelation of the Mystery,” preached by the apostles. Our faith embraces “the things of the kingdom of the Deity, and of the Name of Jesus Christ,” as outlined in Acts ii. and iii.; and we recognize none as christians who have not first believed the Gospel of the Kingdom and Name; and after so believing been immersed “into the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” Having made this good beginning, we regard such as being “sealed in their foreheads;” as “the servants of the Deity;” as being in Christ, by whom they are covered over as with a white robe, circumcised with his circumcision, and pardoned for all sins committed to the time of their immersion. We recognize no immersion as the “One Baptism,” the subject of which has not been previously enlightened in the “One Faith” and the “One Hope of the Calling.” We regard all enlightened believers of the gospel of the kingdom, who have been immersed, as “citizens of the Commonwealth of Israel,” whose symbols are the square of twelve, as previously explained. During the absence of Christ, we hold these in all ages and generations, by whatsoever name they may be called, to be “the Israel of the Deity,” “the Temple of the Deity,” and “the Holy City;” and none else.
Furthermore, we hold, that all such immersed believers are “the workmanship of the Deity,” and the “taught of him;” not by Augustinian “sovereign grace,” which is the mere epidemic infection of the apostasy; but by the formative power of “the truth as it is in Jesus,” studied and understood. We hold, that the knowledge of this is renewing after the Christ-image of the Deity; and sufficient to make them partakers in his moral nature, without which no one can see him in peace and safety.
But, while we believe that we are justified by faith from all past sins in the act of putting on the Christ-robe by immersion, we hold that those only of the immersed will be saved in the kingdom of the Deity, who “by patient continuance in well doing, seek for glory, and honor, and incorruptibility and life.” In other words, all the baptized “who walk after the flesh shall die” the Second Death.
p. 337 We reject as pure heathenism, the dogmas taught by the clergy, and popularly assented to, on the topics of heaven, hell, souls, and the devil. We hold, that the Roman Catholic Church is “Mystery, Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots, and Abominations of the earth;” and that all the Names and Denominations of the Fourth Beast dominion, vulgarly styled “Christendom,” which practise infant sprinkling, or sanction the immersion of sinners ignorant, and therefore, faithless, of the truth, are “the Harlots and Abominations”—the “Names of Blasphemy of which the scarlet-colored beast is full”—Apoc. xvii. 3. In the days of Donatus and his brethren, the apostasy had not expanded itself into that ample development with which we are but too familiar. Like the malarious upas, it infects and deadens every thing beneath its shade. We repudiate it in all its details of theory and practice, as irremediably corrupt, and fit only for capture and destruction by the hand of Deity—by Christ and the Saints. Hence we reject all its institutions—its baptisms, “sacraments,” ordinations, consecrations, unctions, and so forth, as null and void, profane, polluting, and of no avail. We detest the system even to nausea, and “spue it out of our mouths.”
But, while words sufficiently significant fail to express our utter detestation of the hideous spectacle of spiritual rottenness, which seethes and festers in dying putrefaction on every side, we have nothing but kindness in our hearts towards the persons of our contemporaries. We thunder in their ears, and flash before their eyes, the sharp, bright, and rattling words of plain unvarnished truth, to awake them, if it be possible, from that deep sleep, which numbs them with the potency of death. We urge upon our fellow men, that unless they be sealed with the Pentecostian Faith, they cannot be saved. The preaching of the clergy and ministers of the day, is a mere darkening of counsel by words without knowledge. They preach “another Jesus, another Spirit, and another Gospel,” than Paul preached; and upon such, though the preachers might come direct from heaven, he imprecates a curse; and proscribes them from the fold of Christ as deceitful workers, transforming themselves into his apostles; but really like their master Satan, who long since transformed himself into an angel of light, mere ministers of righteousness in outward show—Gal. i. 8; 2 Cor. xi. 4, 13.
We therefore invite all who have ears, to lend their ears to what the Spirit hath said of old to the children of men. We are all by nature and practice dead in trespasses and sins, and therefore the children of wrath. Made subject to vanity, but not willingly, the p. 338 Deity commiserates our helplessness, and invites us into his favor. Why should we not, as the Anglican Harlot in her “Common Prayer” expresses it, “renounce the Devil and all his works;” and in so doing, renounce her and all her sister-prostitutes; whose touch uncleansed, defiles to hopeless exclusion from the Virgin-Community of the Holy Square—Apoc. xiv. 4. “Come out of them, my people, that ye partake not of their sins, and receive not of their plagues;” for, if ye partake of the one, there is no escape from the infliction of the other. Be sealed, then, in your foreheads with the truth; and “henceforth walk no more as others walk, in the vanity of their minds, having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of the Deity through the ignorance that is in them because of the hardness of their hearts.”
11.—“After these Things”
The eighth verse of ch. vii. concludes the section which treats of the sealing; and the ninth verse begins a new section of the prophecy, yet not unconnected with the former, with the words μετα ταυτα, which in the Common Version are inaccurately rendered “after this.” The correct translation is “after these things.” It is the same phrase with which the chapter opens; and there it is properly rendered; but why it is not similarly given in ver. 9, it is not easy to divine.
The reader is referred to ch. vii. 9, at the beginning of our chapter. There he will see in ver. 9 that John says, he saw “a great multitude” all of them assembled in a general convention before the Lamb; or, as Paul expresses it in 2 Thess. ii. 1, “our gathering together unto our Lord Jesus Christ,” as “the Glorious and Fearful Name, YAHWEH ELOHIM”—Deut. xxviii. 58. The multitude, John says, no one is competent to compute. It is the multitude of “the redeemed from among men, the first-fruits unto the Deity and to the Lamb”—ch. xiv. 4—the incorruptible and deathless seed promised to Abraham, who should be countless as the stars—Gen. xv. 5. This human incompetency for the calculation shows that the number 144,000 is not the real, but only the representative, number of the redeemed. Every saved individual of the unknown number redeemed will be one of the 144,000 sealed ones; he will be an element of the 144 cubits; which embrace within their limits the 144,000 furlongs; for these are the square of the root within which the innumerable multitude is enclosed.
“After these things;” but how long after the sealing in the p. 339 days of “Donatus the Great,” till A. D. 395, before what John saw in vision, shall be seen in fact? The answer to this question is not here expressed in time how long. The time when is indicated by certain characteristics of the great multitude beheld. These are signified by the words, “having been clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands.” The word clothed is in the perfect participle passive, showing that when they shall be seen in fact, in the palm-bearing attitude, they will have been raised to the divine nature, as Christ now is. This is the pure, incorruptible, and spotless, white robe which they receive who, in a doctrinal and moral sense, have, in the present state, “washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” The scene is postadventual and postresurrectional; and furthermore, it belongs to the epoch when the resurrected shall celebrate their first Feast of Tabernacles. This is indicated by their having “palms in their hands;” for palm-bearing belongs to the celebration of that festival in type and antitype. Let us look, then, for a little at the
12.—Feast of Tabernacles
Israel were commanded to keep their annual feasts: first, the Feast of Unleavened Bread; second, the Feast of Harvest: and third, the Feast of Ingathering, at the end of the year. The first began the day after the Passover; the second, fifty days from the morrow after the first sabbath following the passover; and the third, the fifteenth day of the seventh month. This last was the Feast of Tabernacles. It continued seven days, and was so called, because Yahweh “made the children of Israel to dwell in tents when he brought them out of the land of Egypt.” It celebrated the ingathering of the fruit of Israel’s land; and when the seven days of celebration had expired, the next day, the Eighth, was a sabbath, or Day of Rest. In the celebration, they took the boughs of goodly trees, branches of palm-trees, and the boughs of thick trees, and willows of the brook, and rejoiced before Yahweh their Elohim.
Now, we learn from the prophets that the Feast of Tabernacles had a more recondite signification than a mere memorial of the past. In other words, that it was emblematic of things to come in relation to Israel and the nations of the earth. The Spirit said by Hosea to Ephraim, “I, Yahweh thine Elohim from the land of Egypt, will yet make thee to dwell in Tabernacles, as in the days of the solemn feast.” This shows that it is connected with the ingathering of Ephraim, or the Ten Tribes, into their land, p. 340 where alone the feast can be lawfully celebrated. The Christ-Spirit also in Zechariah, declares that the nations generally shall come up yearly to Jerusalem to keep the Feast of Tabernacles, and to do homage to the Royal Name enthroned there—ch. xiv. 16. This indicates the ingathering of a joyous multitude before the King; for the feast is a rejoicing before the Lord. The sanguinary execution of judgment will have been perfected; and the nations under a new organization and administration, will be “blessed in Abraham and his Seed”—“the Glorious and Fearful Name, Yahweh Elohim.”
This great national celebration of the Feast of Tabernacles, then, argues the previous cessation of judgment; and consequently, the resting of the Saints from their labors in the execution of it. There will be no festive rejoicings while the events symbolized in ch. xiv., are in manifestation; neither will there be any national rejoicing which is not celebrative of their glory. When Jesus and his Brethren, the incorporation of the Eternal Father’s Spirit, the Yahweh-Elohim Name, “rest from their labors,” they do so because they have “gotten the victory over the Beast, and over the Image, and over his Mark, and over the number of his name”—ch xv. 2. Israel, whom they will have gathered into their own land, and the nations, will all rejoice with them in this great victory of the day—a victory, pregnant with political, social, and moral results, which only Omnipotence could gain. Never before will such a Feast of Tabernacles have been observed. World’s Fairs, and Fourths of Julys, and the Birthdays of Queens and Washingtons, will fall into eternal insignificance and oblivion before it. “The First in War, the First in Peace, and the First in the hearts” of the peoples, will not be these idols of the heathen, but the Lamb in the midst of this great palm-bearing multitude, which will make the welkin ring with their “Hallelu-YAHS,” ascribing, “the salvation to him who sits upon the throne of our Deity, and to the Lamb!” The ELOHIM of this celebration will be the stars of divers magnitudes, represented by “the Elders and the Four Living Ones,” who themselves fall prostrate before the throne and worship the Deity, saying, “Amen: Blessing, and glory, and wisdom, and thanksgiving, and honor, and power, and might unto our Deity for the aions of the aions,” or during the Millennium and beyond, “Amen!” These palm-bearing ELOHIM are the goodly trees, the palm trees, the fig trees, and the willows of the brook; the Trees of Righteousness, whose leaves are unfading; “the planting of Yahweh on either side of the pure river of water of life clear as crystal;” the great forest of evergreens filling the earth with their perfume, to the glory of His Name—Isai. lxi. 3; Ps. i. 3; Apoc. xxii. 1, 2.
p. 341 But, before they could figure, as stately palm trees in the concourse of nations, they had to “drink of the brook by the way.” In this relation of things they were “willows of the brook;” and this is the reason why afterwards, they exalt their heads above the peoples in this great Feast of Tabernacles, as lofty palms. The Captain of their salvation who leads them to glory, was himself once “a willow of the brook”—a weeping willow—“a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.” As the Christ-Spirit in David predicted in Ps. cx. 7, concerning David’s Son and Lord, so it was verified in Jesus—“he drank of the brook by the way, THEREFORE he shall exalt the head:” “He was obedient unto death, therefore he was crowned with glory and honor.” But, in the scene before us, though like their chief, they had been “willows of the brook,” John did not see them bearing willow boughs. He saw them only with “palms in their hands.” Had he seen willows in their hands instead of palms, it would have indicated that they were still a suffering community.
That they had been a community of sufferers in a former state, is certain by the question put to John, and answered by the Elder. He asked John, who the palm-bearers were, and whence they came? To which John replied, “Sire, thou hast known”—κυριε, συ οιδας. He knew experimentally, for he was one of them; inasmuch as the elders and living ones are representative of the whole company of the redeemed. “These are they,” said he, “who came out of the great tribulation, and washed their robes, and made their robes white in the blood of the Lamb.” Out of the great tribulation which precedes their resurrection from the dead. And, because they held fast the Name and the Faith, and defiled not their garments, and were faithful unto death; “therefore they are before the throne of the Deity, and serve him day and night in His temple.” Yahweh Elohim the almighty, is the temple, even the Lamb—ch. xxi. 22: being, therefore, constituents of Yahweh Elohim, they are living stones of the temple, and serving the Father continually, “who hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their Deity, and they shall be my people”—2 Cor. vi. 16: and because it is so written, the Elder added, “and he that is sitting on the throne shall pitch his tent over them. They shall hunger no more, neither shall they thirst any more, neither shall the sun,” with which the Woman was clothed, “smite them, nor any heat,” or oppression. “Because the Lamb in the very midst of the throne shall tend them, and lead them to living fountains of waters, and the Deity shall wipe away every tear from their eyes.”
p. 342 From these considerations the reader may, perhaps, be able to “see,” that this seventh chapter of the apocalypse presents before him two great epochs, with a long intervening period of tribulation extending from the one to the other. The first is the epoch of the sealing, ending A. D. 395; the last, the epoch of the festive celebration of the ingathering of the world’s fruit unto Yahweh Elohim, marked, probably, by the joyful observance of the first Feast of Tabernacles (for the feast will be celebrated annually) A. D. 1908. “He shall cause them that come of Jacob to take root: Israel shall blossom and bud, and fill the face of the world with fruit”—Isai. xxvii. 6. This, with the gathering together of the saints unto Christ, is the fruit, the ingathering of which is then celebrated.
13.—The Intervening Period
The interval, therefore, is long, 1513 years elapsing between the end of the sealing scene, and the manifestation of the “great multitude” as palm-bearers.
The reader, however, is not to suppose, that there was no sealing of servants for the Deity in their foreheads after A. D. 395. The sealing continued in all subsequent generations, and will continue, until the Ancient of Days comes; when “the door will be shut,” and entrance into his presence as a glorified constituent of the Royal Name, will be denied to every applicant—Matt. xxv. 1-13. In the chapter before us, the initial and terminal epochs only were exhibited to John, the first described in the first eight verses; the last in the concluding nine; the interval being about to be unfolded in symbolic detail in other scenic representations. The sealing and the palm-bearing are two piers, from which springs an aionial arch, which bridges over the times of the trumpets, vials, and seven thunders; and consequently spans the aion of the Woman in the wilderness; the partly contemporary aions of the two witnesses, the Beast of the Sea, the Beast of the Earth, the Imperial Image; and the aion of the judgment of the Scarlet-colored Beast and its drunken ecclesiastical rider. When all these aions, or cycles, have described their appointed circuits, we shall have traversed the grand aionial arch; and have reached the festive celebration which introduces the nations to the Eighth Day of Holy Convocation—the Millennial Sabbatism, or Rest, that remains for the people of the Deity—Heb. iv. 9.