Chapter VIII. II.—The Seventh Seal Opened

2.—Historical Exposition

The following is Mr. Elliott’s sketch of the phænomena of this vision. “A pause ensues. Then presently there is heard another trumpet-blast of judgment. Now, is the visitation of the Western Third of the Mediterranean sea, and the islands and transmarine province included in it; a part hitherto unscathed and safe. Behold yon giant mountain-rock, blazing with volcanic fires, that upheaved from the southernmost point of Spain near the straits of Gades, and cast into the sea, looks like Etna in its raging! Mark how the waters p. 423 of the midland sea are agitated by it! The lava pours down the mountain sides. The igneous stones and ashes of the volcano are scattered for hundreds of miles all round, on sea and mainland, coasts and islands; first on the coast of Africa, then on that of the opposite continent, from the Atlantic Straits, all along up to the head of the Adriatic. Ships appear set on fire by them, at sea and in the harbors, and light the waters with their conflagrations. Blood marks the loss of life accompanying; the same as in the former vision. Over the whole maritime scene of its devastations whatever is habitable appears desolated; whatever had life, destroyed.”

To the Vandal power was providentially assigned the judicial execution of the second trumpet upon the guilty catholic population of the west. Their work began A. D. 429, by their precipitating their destroying hosts, led by GENSERIC their king, upon the rich and productive province of Africa. Gibbon styles him “the terrible Genseric; a name, which, in the destruction of the Roman empire, has deserved an equal rank with the names of Alaric and Attila.” His ambition was without bounds and without scruples; and prompted him to any enterprise that promised plunder and dominion. His power was a volcanic mountain vomiting forth desolation and death upon what he styled “the guilty.”

The discord of Ætius and Count Boniface, two generals of the Western empire, was the fatal and immediate cause of the eruption of this Vandal volcano, which resulted in the loss of Africa and the islands. Boniface, then in arms against the administration, invited Genseric to an alliance. The Vandal king readily accepted the invitation; and, by the assistance of the Spaniards, who, anxiously desiring to get rid of them, furnished him with ships, he transported his Vandals over the Straits of Gibraltar to the coast of Mauritania, where he mustered about 50,000 effective men.

When Genseric landed in Africa, he became the deliverer of the Donatists, who were then suffering the most rigorous persecution by the catholic officials, lay and clerical. Among the latter was their zealous enemy, the so-called “Saint” Augustin, Bishop of Hippo, who died just before his city was taken, A. D. 430, and, according to Mr. Elliott, was “joined to the white-robed company before the throne!!” Genseric being an enemy to the catholic faction in power, showed himself to the Donatists as a powerful deliverer, from whom they might reasonably expect the repeal of the odious and oppressive edicts of the Roman emperors. Genseric’s vengeance descended with terrible effect upon the “wolves in sheep’s clothing,” who had been so long and cruelly oppressing all p. 424 who were opposed to the reigning catholic superstition. Under the reign of the Vandals, whose success they favored, the Donatists of Africa enjoyed an obscure peace of one hundred years, at the end of which they may again be traced “by the light of the imperial persecutions.”

At the time of invasion, Africa was so fruitful as to deserve the name of the common granary of Rome and of mankind. On a sudden, the seven fruitful provinces from Tangier to Tripoli were overwhelmed. The Vandals where they found resistance seldom gave quarter, and the deaths of their comrades were expiated by the ruin of the cities before which they had fallen. Boniface having returned to his allegiance, obtained the command of a powerful armament of ships and land forces, with which he boldly attacked the Vandals before Hippo. But his defeat irretrievably decided the fate of Africa. Eight years after the fall of Hippo, Carthage was reduced to ignominious servitude. After permitting his troops to satiate their rage and avarice, he enjoined all persons, without fraud or delay, to deliver their gold, silver, jewels, and valuable furniture or apparel, to his officers; and the attempt to secrete any part of their patrimony was inexorably punished with torture and death, as an act of treason against the state. The nobility and senators of Carthage were condemned to perpetual banishment; and crowds of exiles, of fugitives, and of ingenuous captives, filled the provinces of the east and west.

With the capture and sack of Carthage, all resistance to the “mountain burning with fire” ceased in Africa. By the separation of this province, the internal prosperity of Rome was irretrievably destroyed. The rapacious Vandals confiscated the patrimonial estates of the emperors and cut off the regular subsidies. The distress of the Romans was soon aggravated by an unexpected attack, June 15, A. D. 455. There being nothing to tempt the rational ambition of the Vandal king in the direction of the desert, “he cast his eyes,” says Gibbon, “toward the sea. He resolved to create a naval power, and his bold resolution was executed with steady and active perseverance. He animated his daring Vandals to embrace a mode of warfare which would render every maritime country accessible to their arms;” so that, “after an interval of six centuries, the fleets that issued from the port of Carthage again claimed the empire of the Mediterranean.” They vomited fire upon Sicily, which “became blood” in its conquest and the sack of Palermo. The Western empire being left without a defender and lawful prince, the avarice of Genseric increased, and, with a numerous fleet of Vandals and p. 425 Moors, he cast the anchors of his burning power into the sea at the mouth of the Tiber. Having disembarked, he boldly advanced to the gates of Rome. The bishop (for there was then no Pope, no Pontiff King with temporal power, and “church-states” to be ruled with a grievous yoke)—this bishop Leo, at the head of his clergy, issued in procession to supplicate with all due orthodox humility, a restraining of the fierce and burning wrath of the heretical defender of the Donatists. The Vandal king promised to spare all non-resistants, to protect the buildings from fire, and to except the captives from torture. Nevertheless, Rome and its inhabitants were delivered to the blind passion of his soldiery. The pillage lasted fourteen days and nights. Among the spoils transported from the city by the king were the Golden Table and the Seven-Branched Golden Light-stand, brought by Titus to Rome, where they were deposited in the temple of peace. Nearly four hundred years after, these spoils of Jerusalem were shipped for Carthage, with the rich plunder of the catholic bazaars, dedicated to demons called “guardian saints,” and adorned by the excessive superstition of the coreligionists of Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, and company. The gold and silver, amounting to several thousand talents, with the jewels, brass, and copper, accumulated by rapine, were all removed to the fleet, which returned laden with thousands of captives, with a prosperous navigation, to Carthage—all except one vessel bearing the relics of the capitol, which descended to the bottom of the sea.

But “the sea” had not yet sufficiently “become blood;” nor had “the third of the creatures in the sea, having souls, died;” nor had “the third of the ships” been “destroyed.” To bring this about required the revival of “the kingdom of Italy’s” power of resistance (for the Western empire had been reduced to an Italian kingdom) to Genseric upon the sea. The four years reign of the judicious and enterprising Majorian afforded scope for this. Perceiving that Rome could not be safe while Carthage existed as a hostile state, he determined to create a maritime power, and by it achieve the conquest of Africa. In three years he collected an imperial navy of three hundred large galleys, with an adequate proportion of transports and smaller vessels, in the secure and capacious harbor of Carthagena in Spain. Hearing of this, and apprehensive of Majorian’s descent at his own original landing place, Genseric reduced Mauritania into a desert. Secret intelligence guided him to the anchorage of his foe, whose unguarded fleet he surprised in the bay of Carthagena. Many of the ships were taken, or sunk, or burnt, and the preparations of three years were destroyed in a single day.

p. 426 For six years after the death of Majorian, the government of Italy was in the hands of the Count Ricimer alone, one of the principal commanders of the barbarians, descended from the Visigoths and Suevi. Under his rule, the kingdom of Italy was afflicted by the incessant depredations and conflagrations of the Vandalic “mountain burning with fire.” In the spring of each year, Genseric sallied forth from the port of Carthage in command of the most important expeditions. When asked by his pilot what course he should steer, “Leave the determination to the winds,” said he, “THEY will transport us to the guilty coast whose inhabitants have provoked the divine justice.” They repeatedly visited the coasts of Spain, Liguria, Tuscany, Campania, Lucania, Bruttium, Apulia, Calabria, Venetia, Dalmatia, Epirus, Greece, and Sicily. They subdued the island of Sardinia, and spread desolation or terror from the columns of Hercules to the mouth of the Nile; and, as they always embarked a sufficient number of horses, they had no sooner landed, than they swept the dismayed country with a body of light cavalry. The fierceness of the scourge is attested by the massacre of five hundred noble citizens of Zante, whose mangled bodies he cast into the Ionian sea—“the sea became blood; and the creatures in the sea, having souls, died.”

The permission of such sanguinary severities by Providence can only be accounted for on the principle of the wicked being Yahweh’s sword for the punishment of the hypocrisy, blasphemy, superstition, and immorality of the victims. Genseric seemed to recognize that he was the executioner of “divine justice” upon the orthodox catholic fraternity that inhabited “the sea.” “The fury of the Vandals,” says Gibbon, “was confined to the limits of the Western empire”—to “the third of the sea, and of the creatures, and of the ships.” The Italians, now destitute of a naval force, through the haughty Ricimer were at length reduced to address the throne of Constantinople in the language of subjects; and Italy submitted, as the price and security of the alliance, to accept a master from the choice of Leo the First, the Emperor of the East, in the person of Anthemius, who entered Rome as Emperor of the West, April 12, A. D. 467. Immediately after this, “regardless of the majesty of the purple,” said he, “I gave my daughter to a Goth; I sacrificed my own blood to the safety of the republic.” But this did not prevent Ricimer, his daughter’s husband, from sacking Rome and putting him to death, A. D. 472.

In the meantime, however, the alliance developed immense naval and military preparations on the part of the eastern Romans, p. 427 languidly aided by the west, for carrying the war into Africa. One hundred and thirty thousand pounds weight of gold (about £5,200,000), and seven hundred thousand of silver, paid into the treasury for expenses, reduced the cities to extreme poverty. The fleet it provided, and which sailed from Constantinople to Carthage, consisted of eleven hundred and thirteen ships, and the number of soldiers and mariners—“the creatures in the sea having souls”—exceeded one hundred thousand men. This formidable navy was increased by a fleet under Marcellinus from the Adriatic. Consternation seized the Carthaginians; but Genseric beheld the danger with firmness, and eluded it with his veteran dexterity. Having obtained a truce of five days to regulate the terms of submission, in this short interval the wind became favorable to his designs. He manned his largest ships of war with his bravest Moors and Vandals, who towed after them many large barks filled with combustible materials. In the obscurity of the night, “as it were a mountain burning with fire,” these destructive vessels were impelled against the unguarded and unsuspecting fleet of the Romans. Their close and crowded order assisted the progress of the fire, which was communicated with rapid and irresistible violence; and the noise of the wind, the crackling of the flames, and the dissonant cries of “the creatures in the sea having souls”—the soldiers and mariners, who could neither command nor obey—increased the horror of the tumult. While they labored to extricate themselves from the fire-ships, and to save at least a part of the navy, the galleys of Genseric assaulted them with temperate and disciplined valor; and many of the Romans, who escaped the fury of the flames, were destroyed or taken by the victorious Vandals. “More than half the fleet and army was lost,” and Genseric again became “the Tyrant of the Sea.” The coasts of Italy, Greece, and Asia, were again exposed to his vengeance; and, before he died, in the fulness of years and of glory, A. D. 477, he beheld the final extinction of the Trinitarian Empire of the West. And thus “the third of the creatures in the sea, having souls, died; and the third of the ships were destroyed.”

Act III.—Third Wind-Trumpet

The poisoning of the third of the rivers and fountains of waters with a deadly bitterness, by the Great Blazing Star APSINTHOS, falling from the heaven into them, and causing the death of many.

A. D. 450, and onwards.

p. 428 “And the third angel sounded, and a great star blazing as it were a torch fell out of the heaven: and it fell upon the third of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters. 11. And the name of the star is called the Apsinthian; and the third of the waters became undrinkable; and many of the men died out of the waters, because they were made bitter.”

Apoc. viii. 10, 11.

1.—Symbols Explained

On account of the luminaries in the natural heaven governing the day and the night (Gen. i. 14-18), all luminaries in the symbolical language signify ruling powers; and the light itself is well employed to signify the edicts, laws, rules, or directions that proceed from them for the good of their subjects. Thus of the Great King, styled the “Day Star,” and “the Sun of Righteousness,” it is said in Ps. cxix. 105, “Thy word is a light unto my path;” and in Hos. vi. 5, “Thy judgments are as the light.”

“I am,” saith the Lord Jesus, “the bright and the Morning Star”—Apoc. xxii. 16; the Star which the Spirit compelled Balaam to predict would “come out of Jacob”—Numb. xxiv. 17. By this star is evidently intended a ruler, a conqueror, a great potentate; for, as the Sceptre of Israel, he is to “smite the princes of Moab, and to destroy all the children of Sheth.”

A Star, therefore, sometimes signifies a destroying power. The word is also put for that which is inconstant, or meteoric in its motions. Hence, in Jude, such stars are styled “wandering” or shooting stars. In this third trumpet prophecy, the star seen was of this species. It shot forth out of the heaven. John did not see it there, shining as a fixed star of great and sparkling, but steady light; its motion was erratic, wandering or shooting out of the starry sphere into regions below the ruling heaven. It fell from its position where it was “a Great Star” in the heaven. It fell, or descended, not because it was expelled as those stars of the heaven which the Little Horn of the Goat cast down to the ground, and stamped upon (Dan. viii. 9, 10) by a superior power; but by its own precipitancy, derived from the motive power of Deity, whose agent it was for judgment upon the Laodicean Apostasy.

In symbolic style, “a great star blazing as it were a torch” signifies no good to those upon whom it is, said to fall. Its effects must be conflagrating and deadly. An ordinary, or literal, blazing torch would be extinguished by falling into water; but we know that certain bodies cast into that fluid will set it on fire, and convert it into a solution that would be fatal to the drinker. There is therefore p. 429 a decorum, or fitness, in the language of the vision, which is now known to be founded in the nature of things. Mr. Cunninghame has therefore well remarked that “the language of symbols is not of arbitrary or uncertain signification, but is interpretable on fixed principles, to ascertain and define which, is the first duty of a commentator, as the judicious application of that language to the events of history is the second.”

“A shooting star was, in antiquity, the appropriate image of a powerful and successful invader from a distant country.” “The more I read this wonderful book” (the Apocalypse), says Bishop Horsley, “the more I am convinced that the precision of the phraseology is little short of mathematical accuracy. The language seems highly adorned, but the ornaments are not redundancies: they are not of that sort that the proposition would remain the same if the epithets were expunged. And in passages which may seem similar, there never is the smallest variation of style, but it points to something of diversity, either in the subject or the predicate. With this notion of the style of the Apocalypse, I think it of importance to remark that the falling stars of the third and fifth trumpets fall ‘from heaven,’ or ‘out of the sky,’ but are not said to be of ‘the stars of heaven,’ which are seen to fall in ch. vi. But, further, that which falls ‘from heaven,’ or ‘out of the sky,’ upon the sounding of the third trumpet, is a great star, burning as it were a lamp.

“Λαμπας, in the Greek language, is the name of a meteor of a particular sort. From Pliny’s description, it is evident that lampas was one sort of those meteors which are commonly called ‘shooting stars.’ It was of that sort, in which a large ball, appearing first in time, and foremost in the direction of the motion, draws a long train of bright sparks after it. Such exactly was the meteor in the vision of the third trumpet.

“The most remarkable circumstances in these shooting stars are these: 1. They have no appropriate place in the starry heavens, but are engendered in the lower regions of the earth’s atmosphere. 2. They shine by a native light; but, third, are visible only while they fall. 4. The motion is rapid. 5. The duration brief. 6. The brightness, while it lasts, intense. 7. The extinction instantaneous. 8. And when the light is extinguished, nothing remains: the body which emitted the light is no where to be found.”

The falling of a great star blazing like a torch out of the heaven, then, was symbolical of a great destroying power, issuing forth from a lower region of the political aerial, progressing by its native force, with rapid, but brief, yet intense motion, coming suddenly to the p. 430 end of its career, and leaving nothing but a smoking desolation as the memorial of its presence.

“The heaven” out of which it blazed forth was the heaven under which were “the rivers and fountains of waters” into which the great star precipitated itself. “Wherever the scene is laid,” says Daubuz, “heaven signifies, symbolically, the ruling power or government; that is, the whole assembly of the ruling powers, which, in respect of the subjects, or earth, are a political heaven, being over and ruling the subjects, as the natural heaven stands over and rules the earth: so that according to the subject is the term to be limited; and, therefore, Artemidorus, writing in the times of the Roman emperors, makes the country of Italy to be heaven. As heaven, says he, is the abode of gods, so is Italy of kings.”

But after the times of the pagan emperors, and concurrent with those of the scarcely less pagan Constantine and his successors, the Roman Heaven expanded itself into the comprehensiveness of the three seats, or thrones, which ruled over the three thirds, or Imperial Præfectures, into which the dominions of Daniel’s Fourth Beast, civil and ecclesiastical polity, were divided. These heavenly thirds are especially recognized in the vision of the fourth trumpet; and are styled in Dan. vii. 27, “the Whole Heaven.” The whole is more than its parts. These thirds of the heaven have relation to the thirds of the earth, or Roman Orb; and may be styled, the Byzantine or Constantinopolitan Heavenly, the Italian Heavenly, and the Illyrian Heavenly, all of them “the abode of kings.” A shooting star, generally, projects itself obliquely: so, when this “great star blazing as it were a torch” fell, it fell “out of” its own appropriate heavenly, into “the waters” under the neighboring third, whose heavenly bodies were doomed shortly to be eclipsed. It fell from the Illyrian heavenly section of “the whole heaven,” into the rivers under the Italian Third.

Yahweh charges Sennacherib with saying by his messengers to Hezekiah: “With the multitude of my chariots, I have digged and drunk strange waters, and with the sole of my feet have I dried up all the rivers of fenced places.” These waters and rivers were the foreign nations he had laid waste. And again: “O Jacob, when thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee”: that is, waters or peoples, and rivers or nations. So they are also explained in Apoc. xvi. 4-7, where “rivers and fountains of waters” are declared to be those who have “shed the blood of saints and prophets”; and in ch. xvii. 15, “the waters” upon whom the Great Harlot sits are peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues.

p. 431 But we are not to suppose that because “waters” signify these populations of earth, their geography and topography are left undetermined. On the contrary, in the phrase, “upon the third of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters,” is a blending of the literal and the symbolical, which is so frequent in prophecy. There is a striking illustration of this in Apoc. xvii. 9, 10, where the seven heads of the beast are symbolical of seven supreme powers, or “kings”; and literally identical with the seven mountains on which they were successively located: so “the rivers” pertaining to “the third” represent symbolically the populations thereof; and their literal chorography in the mountainous and valley, or river, regions of the Catholic West. These “rivers and fountains of waters” had not, previously to the times of the third trumpet, done much in the way of shedding the blood of saints and prophets; they were beginning to approve this remedy for what they were pleased to style “heresy”: nevertheless, they had proved themselves bitter persecutors of “the sealed servants of Deity,” during the one hundred and twenty-five years their rulers, who were all “pious catholics,” exercised dominion over Italy, Africa, Gaul, Spain and Britain. The third trumpet was an especial element of the judgment upon them. Its scorching visitations retaliated upon them bitterness and death for the bitterness they had caused “the sealed.”

But after the judgments of the third and fourth trumpets had extinguished the so-called orthodox catholic power of the West, another power arose out of the wreck, which was a perfect novelty in the earth. This has been known for more than a thousand years past as the Papal. It acquired sovereingty over “the rivers and fountains of waters,” and energized them “to shed the blood of saints and prophets,” and to pour it out abundantly; so that they became worthy to receive blood to drink, by one who, under the third Vial, gloried in his resemblance to the Great Star that blazed like a torch in the judicial execution of the third trumpet retribution.^a

“And the name of the star is called ὁ Αψινθος.” This I have simply transferred as being the name of the star before the English tongue was written or spoken. As the star-power did not exist in John’s day, the λεγεται, “is called,” must be understood to mean that, in the days of the third trumpet, those who spoke Greek called it ho Apsinthos. It is a proper name; and is to be taken in a like sense as the name of the conqueror, styled by men in p. 432 the days of the third vial, “the Corsican.” This was applied to the first Napoleon as indicative of the country from which he came; so the Great Star was called by the Greeks, “the Apsinthian,” to designate the region out of whose heaven he fell blazing upon “the third of the rivers,” after he had proved a scourge to them.

I have said that “the Apsinthian” fell upon “the rivers and fountains of waters,” out of the Illyrian section of the whole heaven of the Roman orb. My reason for this is that Apsinthos is the name of a river in the Illyrian third of the Roman earth; and is therefore as significative of Illyria, as the Euphrates was of Assyria, or the Nile of Egypt.

But, for what reason, may we conclude, did the Spirit select this river of Illyricum in preference to any other? Because of the signification of the name being appropriate to the nature of the judgments to be executed by THE ILLYRIAN POWER, which had been developed in the preparation of the angels of the trumpets for sounding. The word radically signifies undrinkable from whatever cause. The trumpet-mission of the Illyrian Power was to make the rivers of the third undrinkable, by putting many of the men of the waters to the sword, that they might die out from them. This was, as in the Arabic Romance, Antar, it is expressed, “Death serving them with a cup of apsinth by the sword.”

2.—Historical Exposition

The following is Mr. Elliott’s summary of the phenomena of the vision. “Which,” he inquires, “is the new scene of judgment? ‘The third of the rivers,’ it is said, ‘and the fountains of waters.’ It begins where yon mighty river to the North forms the ancient limit between barbarian Germany, and the Illyrian, or Middle Præfecture of the Roman Empire. Mark the portentous meteor that glares over it; like a blazing torch trailing its red line of light behind it in the Northern sky! And see, where the Teiss pouring itself into the Danube, marks the central point of the base of the Great Illyrian Præfecture; there suddenly it descends, and blazes, and taints with its sulphurous exhalations the downward course of that ancient river.

“But it was the same western third of the empire, as before, that was in this case too to taste specially of the bitterness of the woe, And mark how, in fulfilment of its mission, the meteor tracks the course of the Upper Danube, and then reaches and moves along p. 433 the Rhenish frontier river of the Western Empire; blazing over and poisoning its waters, down even to the Belgic lowlands. Thence again unquenched it rises; shoots in rapid course westward; is repelled, as if by some counter electric force, and as from a region on which it behoved not that it should permanently shed its malignant influences; then in southerly direction falls on the fountains of European waters, there where the Alpine snows are dissolving from their eternal glaciers. Wheresoever it has fallen, the rivers and their tributaries have been poisoned by it; and the dead and dying of those that drink them, appear lying on the banks. Having thus done its part, it shoots back towards the Danube; there blazes for a moment longer, and is extinct.”

“In the reign of ATTILA the Huns,” says Gibbon, “became the terror of the world—a formidable barbarian, who alternately insulted and invaded the east and the west, and urged the rapid downfall of the Roman Empire.” He alone among the conquering meteors, or blazing torches, of ancient or modern times, united the two mighty kingdoms of Germany and Scythia under one sceptre. Claiming to be the rightful possessor of the Sword of Mars, he asserted his divine and indefeasible claim to the dominion of the earth. He soon acquired a sacred character; and the barbarian princes confessed, in the language of devotion or flattery, that they could not presume to gaze with a steady eye, on the Divine Majesty of the King of the Huns. As supreme and sole monarch of the barbarians, he was able, when he collected his military force, to bring into the field an army of five, or according to another account, seven hundred thousand troops. When these were set in rapid motion, they constituted a power, that may be very appropriately likened to “a Great Star blazing as a torch.”

The Attila-power, which prevailed from A. D. 433 to 453, was fitly designated “the Apsinthian,” or Illyrian. It touched the Danube on one hand, and reached with the other, as far as the Tanais, or Don. On making peace with the Constantinopolitan power, after a ravaging war of five years to which he was stirred up by his African ally, the redoubtable GENSERIC, the eastern Catholic emperor, resigned to Attila an extensive and important territory, which stretched along the southern banks of the Danube from Belgrade to Nova, in the diocese of Thrace, a breadth of fifteen day’s journey, and embracing Naissus within the limits of his dominion. The exact location of his capital is uncertain; but supposed to have been seated between the Danube, the Teyss, and the Carpathian hills in the plains of Upper Hungary. All these regions p. 434 were embraced in the great Illyrian Præfecture; so that the great Attila-star might well be styled by its Greek contemporaries of the Byzantine dominion adjacent, “THE ILLYRIAN;” and by the Spirit symbolically, “the Apsinthian.”

Theodosius the younger, emperor of the east, having acknowledged Attila, the Illyrian, as the lord of the Lower Danube, the Huns were now its masters, commanding the navigation to the Black Sea; and prepared to blaze forth in any direction Providence might impel them to take. “What fortress,” said the Apsinthian to the Byzantine ambassadors, “what city, in the wide extent of the Roman Empire, can hope to exist, secure and impregnable, if it is our pleasure that it should be erased from the earth?” They knew by experience, that these were not mere words; and as they were unequal to contend with him in war, they sought to rid themselves of this “Scourge of God,” by his assassination. But “the Apsinthian” was not to be thus imperially disposed of till his mission was fulfilled; and then the Deity would lay his instrument aside in his own way. Attila was informed of the conspiracy against his life; and though he had the meaner conspirators in his hands, he disdained to punish them; but reserved his just indignation for the pious catholic prince who approved his murder. He denounced Theodosius as a wicked slave, who had clandestinely conspired against his master, “whom fortune and merit had placed above him.” Nevertheless, he consented to pardon the emperor, and to maintain peace.

All the history of the Illyrian Conqueror goes to show, that his abode was in “the heaven,” and that he was “a great star” therein; for he enjoyed the proud satisfaction of receiving in the same camp, the ambassadors of the eastern and western empires; and it is only to sovereign and recognized powers, that such apocalyptic “demons,” are commissioned by the superior gods of their heavenlies.

The inglorious life of Theodosius was closed A. D, 450. The Apsinthian Star forthwith assumed a threatening aspect against both empires. “While mankind,” says Gibbon, “awaited his decision with awful suspense, Attila sent an equal defiance to the courts of Ravenna and Constantinople, and his ministers saluted the two emperors in the same haughty terms, saying, ‘Attila my lord, and thy lord, commands thee to provide a palace for his immediate reception.’” But “the Apsinthian” despising the Romans of the east, whom he had so often vanquished, soon declared his resolution of suspending the easy conquest, till he had achieved the p. 435 more glorious and important enterprize of “blazing like a torch upon the third of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters;” and thus unconsciously fulfilled the mission appointed for him by the finger of God.

For this great and blazing descent upon the Western Third, the kings and nations of Germany and Scythia, from the Volga to the Danube obeyed the warlike summons of “the Scourge of God.” From the royal village in the plains of Hungary, he marched to the conflux of the Rhine and the Neckar, where he was joined by the Franks. These hostile myriads were poured with resistless violence, into the Belgic provinces. The consternation of Gaul was universal. Its cities were besieged and stormed by the Apsinthian Huns, who practised their customary maxims of war. They made the waters undrinkable; so that multitudes were separated from them by death; for they were made very bitter. “They involved,” says Gibbon, “in a promiscuous massacre, the priests who served at the altar, and the infants, who in the hour of danger had been providentially baptized by the bishop; and the flourishing city (Metz) was delivered to the flames.” From the Rhine and Moselle, Attila marched into the heart of Gaul; crossed the Seine at Auxerre; and fixed his camp under the walls of Orleans. From this city, however, he prudently retreated to the plains of Chalons. The nations from the Volga to the Atlantic were marshalled here under the Illyrian, and Ætius and Theodoric, the catholic generals of the west. The results were very bitter to the contending hosts. Many of the Gothic warriors, who served in that memorable engagement informed Cassiodorius, that it was “a conflict fierce, various, obstinate, and bloody; such as could not be paralleled, either in the present or in past ages.”

The number of the πολλοι των ανθροπων, the “many of the men” who were apsinthianized in this battle of Chalons, amounted to 162,000, or, according to another account 300,000. Though Attila was put to the worse in this battle, he threatened his foes with redoubled fury. Prudence, however, prevailed over revenge; and the allied army of Latin and Gothic catholics separated, and withdrew from the plains of Chalons. Attila’s retreat beyond the Rhine confessed the last victory achieved in the name of the western empire. The Thuringians who served under “the Apsinthian,” made the waters very bitter. They massacred their hostages and captives; they tortured young maidens with exquisite and unrelenting rage; their bodies were torn asunder by wild horses, or their bones were crushed under the weight of rolling wagons; and their unburied p. 436 limbs were abandoned on the public roads, as a prey to dogs and vultures.

Neither the spirit, the forces, nor the reputation of the Apsinthian Star were impaired by the failure of the Gallic expedition. It had blazed like a torch, and imbittered the river populations of the country; but it had only partially executed its mission upon the worshippers of relics and demons. In the ensuing spring he passed the Alps into Italy with an innumerable host of barbarians. He laid siege to Aquileia, the most populous and strongest of the maritime cities of the Hadriatic. The Huns mounted the breach with irresistible fury, and the succeeding generation could scarcely discover the ruins of Aquileia. After this dreadful chastisement, this blazing torch descended upon Altinum, Concordia, and Padua, which were reduced into heaps of stones and ashes. The inland towns, Vicenza, Verona, and Bergamo, were exposed to the rapacious cruelty of his Huns. Milan and Pavia submitted without resistance to the loss of their wealth; and applauded the unusual clemency, which preserved from the flames the public, as well as private buildings; and spared the lives of the captive multitude. After this, the scorching ravages of this Great Star, blazing like a torch, overspread the rich plains of modern Lombardy, which are divided by the Po, and bounded by the Alps and Apennine.

“It is a saying,” says Gibbon, “worthy of the ferocious pride of Attila, that the grass never grew on the spot where his horse had trod. Yet the savage destroyer undesignedly laid the foundation of a republic, which revived, in the feudal state of Europe, the art and spirit of commercial industry.” This was Venice. Before the Apsinthian descended like a blazing torch upon the Italian province of Venetia, extending from the confines of Pannonia to the river Addua, and from the Po to the Rhætian and Julian Alps, this fertile region was adorned with fifty cities flourishing in peace and prosperity. They also were swept by the conflagration; “all was flight,” says Sigonius, “depopulation, slaughter, slavery, and despair;” but many families who fled from the sword of Attila, found a safe, though obscure refuge in the hundred islets at the extremity of the Hadriatic. Upon these they laid the foundations of the queen of that sea, which in after times became the Tyre of the feudal world; “and,” says Elliott, “he who has seen the fair Venice may do well to remember that he has seen in it a memorial of the terrors and ravages of that Scourge of God, the Hun Attila.”

What a terrible signification there is in the apocalyptic symbols! This great blazing star was still craving devastation and blood; p. 437 and declared his resolution of carrying his victorious arms to the gates of Rome. But the Star was meteoric, and, as a meteor, must be of brief duration, and suddenly become extinct. It had been blazing and scorching among “the rivers and fountains of waters” during three years; but where was the power to extinguish it? The barbarians, who had defended Gaul, refused to march to the relief of Italy; and the succors promised by the Eastern Emperor were distant and doubtful. The only deliverance was in unqualified submission. The Western Emperor, with the Senate and people of Rome, by a solemn and suppliant embassy, embraced the salutary resolution of deprecating the wrath of “the Apsinthian.” The barbarian monarch listened with favorable, and even respectful attention; and the deliverance of Italy was purchased by an immense ransom; but before he evacuated the country, he threatened to return more dreadful, and more implacable, if the treaty were not faithfully and punctually observed. But his mission being accomplished, he was of no further use. Having returned to his royal village between the Danube and the Teiss, the next year, which was A. D. 453, he was suddenly cut off by apoplexy, and this blazing “terror of the world” lay powerless in death. The empire and power of the Huns was soon after broken; and the wind of the third trumpet ceased to blow.

Act IV—Fourth Wind-Trumpet

The darkening of the third of the luminaries of the Greco-Latin Catholic firmament by smiting them; so that the Day and the Night of their system were without ruling lights, and therefore, shone not for a third of them.

A. D. 476.

“And the fourth angel sounded, and the third of the sun, and the third of the moon, and the third of the stars, was smitten; so that the third of them was darkened, and the day shone not the third of it, and the night likewise.”

Apoc. viii. 12.

1.—Symbols Explained

“For the understanding of the prophesies,” says Sir Isaac Newton truly, “we are, in the first place, to acquaint ourselves with the figurative language of the prophets; which is taken from the p. 438 analogy between the world natural, and an empire or kingdom considered as a world politic.”

The sun, moon, and stars are therefore prophetic symbols taken from the natural world. “The Lord God is a sun, and shield”—Ps. lxxxiv. 11. He is the universe’s ruler and lightgiver, and protector. This is the signification of sun, as a symbol, in its largest sense. But, in Jer. xv. 9, it is used restrictedly in the testimony of the Spirit against Jerusalem; as “Her sun is gone down while it is yet day.” In this instance the sun symbolized the sovereign power and glory of the commonwealth, of which Jerusalem was the capital. It went down when the state was destroyed by the Chaldeans. But it shone forth again; and again went down, when the kingdom was taken away from the Pharisees—when “the sun was darkened, the moon gave no light, and the stars fell from the Heaven;” and were thenceforth suppressed superlatively “until He come whose right it is,” even “the sun and shield.” Then, the Spirit saith to Jerusalem, “the sun shall no more be thy light by day; neither for brightness shall the moon give light unto thee; but Yahweh shall be unto thee an everlasting light,” or sun; “and thine Elohim thy glory. Thy sun shall no more go down; neither shall thy moon withdraw itself; for Yahweh shall be to thee for the Light,” or sun, “of the Olahm;” and which is explained to signify, that “the days of Zion’s mourning shall be ended”—she should no more lose her sovereignty, and mourn the withdrawal of her ecclesiastical institutions and privileges.

Again, when the Spirit revealed his purpose to subvert the Egyptian monarchy by the Chaldean power, he said to the King of Egypt, whom he likened to a dragon in the seas, in Ezek. xxxii. 6-8, “I will water with thy blood the land wherein thou swimmest; and when I shall extinguish thee, I will cover the heaven, and make the stars thereof dark: I will cover the sun with a cloud, and the moon shall not give her light. All the bright lights of heaven, will I make dark over thee, and set darkness upon thy land, saith Adonai Yahweh.” The Chaldean power under Nebuchadnezzar was the “cloud” that covered the sun of Egypt, and made the stars of its heaven dark, and its moon eclipsed; and the Pharaoh-Dragon thenceforth swam no more in Egypt.

After the same manner the prophets spoke when they predicted the overthrow of the kingdoms of Babylon and Idumea. In foretelling the subversion of the former power by the Medes and Persians, Isaiah says in symbolizing ch. xiii. 9, “For the stars of heaven and the constellations thereof shall not give their light; p. 439 the sun shall be darkened in his going forth, and the moon shall not cause her light to shine”—ver. 10; which in verse 11, is interpreted to signify the punishing of the Chaldean world for evil, “and the wicked for their iniquity.”

The threatening against the Idumæan sovereignty is in the highly symbolic style of the sixth seal. “All the host of heaven,” says the Spirit in Isai. xxxiv. 4, “shall be dissolved, and the heavens shall be rolled together as a scroll; and all their host shall fall down, as the leaf falleth off from the vine, and as a falling fig from the figtree. For my sword shall be bathed in heaven;” then follows the exposition: “Behold, it shall come down upon Idumea, and upon the people of my curse to judgment.”

Thus, we see, that the moral universe, the Israelitish, the Egyptian, the Chaldean, and the Idumean, kingdoms and empires, have all their suns, moons, stars, and constellations, as well as the natural world or system of things. The supreme civil and military authority of a state is the sun which sheds forth all the light, power and glory of the polity. The moon, stars and constellations are the ecclesiastical and aristocratic orders, which reflect its beams upon the earth or subjects of the state. They rule the day and the night of their own polity, which, without their shining, has no distinction of day or night. Like the natural world luminaries, they are affected by eclipses, darkening, and so forth, which become causes intercepting or suspending their regular and peaceful influences upon the peoples.

Daniel’s fourth beast system of powers has its sun, moon, and stars, as well as the polities by which it was preceded. Under its pagan constitution, the authority and power vested in the imperial and senatorial orders were the sun of the Roman orb; its moon, the priestly orders of the state; and subject kings, nobles, and magistrates, its stars and constellations. When the pagan constitution that hindered was taken out of the way, the aërial, or political expanse, transmitted the rays of the same lights, only that they emitted influences less intensely heathen than before. The sun, moon, and stars which continued to shine had become “catholic.” They radiated the malign influences of the Laodicean Apostasy, and were essentially, though not professedly and in detail, as devilish as of old.

In the earlier years of Constantine’s reign, the Roman Sun was the one solar investment of three emperors—Constantine, Licinius, and Maximin. So also, when “the silence in the heaven about half an hour” had ended, his three sons were clothed with the sun. In p. 440 these instances, each emperor’s jurisdiction was representative of “the third of the sun;” and the ecclesiastical orders in each imperial jurisdiction, of “the third of the moon;” and the nobles and magistrates also in each, “the third of the stars.” If one of these emperors made war upon another of them, and defeated him, and incorporated the dominion of the vanquished in his own jurisdiction, then “the third of the sun and the third of the moon, and the third of the stars,” would be “darkened” by smiting; and there would be no political “day” nor “night” peculiar to that smitten third.

Now, in the days of the third trumpet, the sun of the Roman Heaven clothed the emperors of the eastern and western thirds, to say nothing of the Illyrian. The smiting of one of these thirds to obliteration from the political map, would be the darkening of that third in its imperial, ecclesiastical, and aristocratic relations to the subject peoples of its eclipsed jurisdiction. The unsmitten third would be “the third of the men,” which so long as it continued a distinct and independent power, would be regarded as living, or not “killed”—Apoc. ix. 18.

When there are no heavenly bodies visible to a spectator supposed to be standing upon the earth, the alternations styled day and night, do not exist. To blot out the sun, moon, and stars of the natural universe, would be to extinguish day and night, and to establish “darkness upon the face of the deep.” The effect would be analogous in the political universe. For, as in the case of Egypt, when Pharaoh’s dominion was abolished, to make all the bright lights of heaven dark, would be to set darkness upon the land. But, as in the instance of the Greco-Latin Catholic dominion, if only one third of its sun, moon, and stars be smitten into obscuration, the day and night of the whole polity would not be extinguished, but only a proportional third. The imperial catholic day and night would be restricted to the unsmitten thirds, where the bright lights of their heaven would still be observed to shine.

2.—Historical Exposition

The phænomena of the fourth trumpet are thus briefly sketched by Mr. Elliott: “The vision has passed; the fourth angel sounds. Hitherto, though its land, its sea, and its frontier rivers and fountains of waters have been desolated, yet the sun has still continued shining on the Western Empire as before. But now at length this too is affected. To the extent of a third part of its orb, it suffers p. 441 eclipse. The shadow falls over the Western Empire. Then the night supervenes. And see the eclipsing influences act on the luminaries of the night also. Presently the Western third of the moon becomes eclipsed; and of the stars scattered over the symbolic firmament, all that are in the third of the Roman sky, are darkened also.”

Thus, by the judgments of the first, second, and third, trumpets, the final catastrophe was preparing, by which the emperors of the west and their dominions were to be extinguished. Rome’s glory had long departed; its provinces severally and successively separated from it; the territory still remaining to it had become like a desert; and its maritime dependencies, and its fleets and commerce, been annihilated. Little remained to it but the vain titles and insignia of sovereignty; and now the time was come that, by the smiting of the fourth trumpet, these too were to be withdrawn; and that the imperial, or Sixth, Head of the Roman Dragon should be “as it were slain unto death,” and give place to the SEVENTH HEAD, which had not then yet come, and which, “when he cometh, must continue a short space”—Apoc. xiii. 3 and xvii. 10.

The blast of the fourth trumpet when it began to sound, found Romulus Augustulus, A. D. 476, the last and feeblest of emperors, upon the throne of the catholic dominion of the West. He was placed there by his father Orestes, the secretary of state to the imperious Attila: and after his death “Patrician, and Master General” of the barbarian confederates in the service of the Western empire, who formed the defence and the terror of Italy. They oppressed and insulted the last remains of Roman freedom and dignity. Their insolence and avarice at length prompted them peremptorily to demand, that a third part of the lands of Italy should be immediately divided among them. But Orestes rejected the audacious demand. The standard of revolt was raised, therefore, by the bold barbarian ODOACER. From all the camps and garrisons of Italy, the confederates flocked to the standard of this popular leader. Overwhelmed by the torrent, Orestes entrenched himself in Pavia, which was stormed and pillaged; and the tumult could be appeased only by his execution. This “smiting” left Augustulus at the mercy of Odoacer, whose clemency he was induced to implore.

The success of this revolt elevated the king of the Heruli to the Vicegerency of the Emperor of the West. But deeming the imperial office both useless and expensive, Odoacer determined to abolish it. The unfortunate Augustulus was made the instrument p. 442 of his own disgrace, by sending in his resignation to the Senate. An epistle was addressed by their unanimous decree to Zeno, the contemporary incumbent of the Byzantine throne. In this document, they solemnly “disclaim the necessity, or even the wish, of continuing any longer the succession in Italy; since, in their opinion, the Majesty of a Sole Monarch is sufficient to pervade and protect, at the same time, both the east and the west. In their own name, and in the name of the people, they consent that the Throne of Universal Empire shall be transferred from Rome to Constantinople; while they renounce the right of choosing a master, the only vestige that yet remained of the authority which had given laws to the world. The republic might safely confide in the civil and military virtues of Odoacer; and they humbly request, that the Emperor would invest him with the title of PATRICIAN, and the administration of the diocese of Italy.” After some display of displeasure and indignation, Zeno’s prudence and vanity prevailed. He was gratified by the title of SOLE EMPEROR, and by the statues erected to his honor in the several quarters of Rome. He gratefully accepted the imperial ensigns, the sacred ornaments of the throne and palace, which the Patrician Odoacer was not unwilling to remove from the sight of the people.

Speaking of Romulus Augustulus, whom Odoacer sent into banishment, Gibbon says, that of all the nine emperors of the last twenty years of the empire, Augustulus “would be the least entitled to the notice of posterity, if his reign, which was marked by the extinction of the Roman empire in the west, did not leave a memorable æra in the history of mankind.” The epoch was, indeed, remarkable and peculiar. The Roman Sun was still recognized as shining; but still it shed no administrative light in the west. One third of its face was pervaded by the shadow of a darkening body—the administration of the Patrician of Italy. By this also the light of the Roman Moon was diminished one third; for of what account in the state were the bishop of Rome and his clergy, while “the diocese of Italy” was the patrimony, not of St. Peter and his pretended successor, but of Odoacer and his military compatriots?

Odoacer was the first barbarian who reigned in Italy. The stern Ricimer had exercised the power, without assuming the title, of a king; so that the patient Romans were insensibly prepared to acknowledge the royalty of Odoacer and his barbaric successors. The laws of the emperors were strictly enforced, and the civil administration of Italy was still exercised by the prætorian præfect and his subordinates; while the Roman Magistrates were appointed p. 443 by Odoacer to the odious and oppressive task of collecting the public revenue. Being an Arian Catholic, the Trinitarian Catholics of the Italian Diocese were in eclipse. Their sect no longer constituted the State Church. The bishop of Rome was now the mere bishop of churches in Rome; and he and his clergy were nothing but sectaries and dissenters. The absence of catholic abuse of the Patrician by his contemporaries, attests the toleration which they enjoyed. His præfect, however, had to interfere in the choice of their bishop that the peace of the city might be preserved. They regarded this interference with disgust; but being under eclipse they could not help themselves. The brightness of their ecclesiasticism was darkened over them; and Trinitarian churches had to submit to the humiliation and defilement of heretical Arian interference in the election of a so-called Successor of St. Peter and St. Paul!

Notwithstanding the prudence and success of Odoacer, his patriciate exhibited the sad prospect of misery and desolation. The country was exhausted by the irretrievable losses of war, famine, and pestilence; and Gelasius, the Roman bishop, and one of Odoacer’s subjects, affirms, that in Æmilia, Tuscany, and the adjacent provinces, the human species was almost extirpated. The plebeians of Rome, who were fed by the hand of their master, perished or disappeared, as soon as his liberality was suppressed; and the senators, “the stars” of the Roman firmament, bewailed their private loss of wealth and luxury. One third of their ample estates was appropriated to the use of Odoacer’s confederates. Actual sufferings were imbittered by the fear of more dreadful evils; and as new lands were allotted to new swarms of barbarians, each senator, or “star,” was apprehensive lest the arbitrary surveyors should approach his favorite villa, or his most profitable farm. But the darkening power was irresistible, and absolute master of their fortunes. Desiring to live, they owed some gratitude to the tyrant who spared their lives; and as he could have taken all, they had to accept the portion he was pleased to leave as his pure and voluntary gift.

But the end was not immediately. The judgments of the fourth trumpet had not yet “slain” the Imperial Head “as it were to death.” Odoacer was the Patrician Representative of the Constantinopolitan Imperiality. He had ruled as such during fourteen years in Rome, and the epoch had now arrived, A. D. 489-493, that he should succumb to the superior genius of Theodoric, King of the Ostrogoths, who, after a march of seven hundred miles from the p. 444 region of Illyria, descended from the Julian Alps, and displayed his invincible banners on the confines of Italy. After the loss of two battles, Zeno’s Patrician fled to Ravenna. Favored, however, again “by fortune,” Odoacer reappeared upon the field in formidable array. The fierce conflict that ensued was finally decided by the victory of Verona, which conferred on Theodoric the independent royalty of Italy. The assassination of Odoacer, A. D. 493, left him without a rival, and the emperor of the East without a representative to administer the Diocese of Italy. From the Alps to the extremity of Campania, from Sicily to the Danube, and from Belgrade to the Atlantic Ocean, Theodoric reigned first King of the Seventh Head of the Beast. His royalty was proclaimed by the Goths, with a tardy, reluctant and ambiguous recognition by the emperor of the East. He maintained with a powerful hand, during a reign of thirty-three years, the balance of the West; and the Greeks themselves acknowledged that the heretical king of Italy reigned over the fairest portion of the darkened empire of the West.

“From a tender regard to the expiring prejudices of Rome, Theodoric declined the name, the purple and the diadem of the emperors; but he assumed,” says Gibbon, “under the hereditary title of king, the whole substance and plenitude of imperial prerogative. His addresses to the Eastern Throne were respectful and ambiguous; he celebrated in pompous style the harmony of the two republics, applauded his own government as the perfect similitude of a sole and undivided empire, and claimed above the kings of the earth the same preëminence which he modestly allowed to the person or rank of Anastasius.” Thus, while the jurisdiction and authority of the Sixth Head were completely darkened in Rome, after shining upon its Seven Hills for five hundred and twenty-four years, they continued in the light of imperial majesty to illume the eastern third of the catholic firmament. In regard to Rome, “it was slain as it were to death” by the Gothic sword. It seemed to be dead beyond all possibility of being “healed” or restored to life. It was expelled from the Seven Hills, and a new form of government established there, a Seventh Head, which claimed and possessed, and was able to maintain, the preëminence of its predecessor. In the recognition of the sovereignty of the Seventh Head, and the Horn-Powers that had established themselves, in the sounding of these tempestuous trumpets, in Gaul, Spain and Africa, by the Sixth Head, “the Dragon” had “ceded to the Beast his power, and his throne, and a great authority”; so that the worshipful allegiance of catholics “in the whole earth”—εν ολη τη γη—was divided between the Dragon and the Beast: as it is written, “they worshipped the dragon p. 445 which gave power to the beast; and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? Who is able to make war with him?”—ch. xiii. 3, 4.

Under the first king of the Seventh Head, prosperity and peace were revived under the shadow of the Seven Hills. Theodoric cultivated the affections of the Roman Senate and people. The nobles were flattered by sonorous epithets and formal professions of respect; while the people enjoyed, without fear or danger, order, plenty, and public amusements. But the reign of Theodoric was only a temporary arrest of judgment. The Seventh Head was only to “continue a short space”—sixty years, which is “short” compared with the supremacy of the Sixth. This was to be “healed” of its “deadly wound,” a process to be enacted at a great cost of blood and treasure. The death wound to the authority of the Sixth Head could only be “healed” by the destruction of the Seventh. When this should be abolished, the obscuration of the Imperial Roman “day and night” would cease. The fourth trumpet does not symbolize the healing of the deadly wound it judicially inflicted. To this our attention will be recalled in my exposition of Apoc. xiii.

A Warning Proclamation

Apoc. viii. 13.

“And I saw, and I heard from one, an eagle flying in midheaven, saying in a loud voice Woe, woe, woe, to the dwellers upon the earth, from the remaining voices of the trumpet-call of the three angels hereafter to sound.”

1.—Symbols Explained

An angel, in a symbolic sense, represents a class of agents executing a mission to which they have been appointed. We have seen this use of the word in ch. vii. 3, where an angel says: “Hurt not the earth and the sea until we have sealed the servants of our Deity.” So also in the text of the English version, the “angel flying” is representative of a class of agents having a mission to perform.

But Griesbach and other critical editors of the original text read αετον, an eagle, instead of αγγελον, an angel. Upon this, Elliott remarks: “The external evidence of manuscripts is decidedly in favor of the former reading. On the other hand, the internal evidence of scriptural analogy, with which Griesbach and the rest did not concern themselves, is as decidedly—indeed, as it seems to me, even more so—against it. For no where in the Apocalypse is p. 446 the proclaiming function assigned to a bird, or indeed to any being but an angel or the divine Spirit. . . I do not therefore hesitate to retain the reading αγγελον.”

Tregelles reads eagle in his translation, and gives us to understand that it is justified by manuscripts fourteen hundred years old. This would carry us back to the times of the second trumpet. In a note upon the word, the American Bible Union editor says: “I recommend that this reading be adopted and translated eagle; and that the following note appear in the margin: ‘Or, as a few copies read, angel.’”

I believe that eagle was the original and correct reading, and that it is supported both by the external evidence of manuscripts, and the internal evidence of apocalyptical testimony. It affords us a very important clue to the mystery of the text. Mr. Elliot is unquestionably mistaken in saying that “no where in the Apocalypse is the proclaiming function assigned to a bird.” We find the very reverse of this in ch. vi. 7, where the fourth living creature, likened to “an eagle flying” in ch. iv. 7, makes proclamation, saying: “Come and see!”

“An eagle flying” is the ensign of one of the camps of “the Israel of God”; and when we consider their relative position at the time when the Latin Catholic “day and night” were darkened by the fourth trumpet, it symbolized their community very fitly. The eagle was the ensign of the sealed servants of the Deity, who, during the tempestuous times of the first four trumpets, and for centuries after, were protected from extermination by the Serpent-power, in “the two wings of the Great Eagle”—ch. xii. 14. They were an eagle “flying” in the “midheaven” of the great eagle-dominion. They had an angelic mission indicated by the action of flying. This is motion from one place to another for a purpose. The eagle encampment was therefore an angel-community; and hence eagle and angel came afterwards to be traditionally used as equivalents in the text. The angelism of the eagle flying was to warn “the dwellers upon the earth” of what was still coming upon them. That flying in midheaven is symbolical of preaching, or making proclamation, is evident from ch. xiv. 6, where “another angel” is said to “fly in midheaven having the glad tidings of the Aion to preach unto the dwellers upon the earth.” Midheaven, μεσουανημαρ, is, according to the decorum of the symbol, the region of their flight. They are not luminaries of the political heaven; they are not constituents of the sun, moon, and stars, having no identity, officially or morally, with the secular and spiritual orders they symbolize. Neither are they “of the world,” p. 447 though encamping in the world. “The dwellers upon the earth” were the Arian and Athanasian catholics, and others, to whom they preached. Hence, the Heavenly they occupied was peculiar to themselves; it was, as it were, in the midst between the heaven of government and the peoples governed. In this midheaven they winged their flight as “one” of the four living ones, the fourth, or eagle flying, saying, “Woe, Woe, Woe, to the dwellers upon the earth”—woes issuing “out of the remaining voices of the trumpet-call of the three angels hereafter to sound.”

And because these woes were to issue out of the fifth, sixth and seventh trumpets, the last three have been appropriately enough styled woe-trumpets. In the ninth chapter, we enter upon the consideration of the fifth and sixth woes; the latter not being exhausted till the epoch indicated in ch. xi. 13, 14. The third woe will prove the most terrific of all winds and woes to “the dwellers upon the earth,” catholics, protestants, “sectaries,” and “infidels”; for, to the Lion, the Ox, the Man, and the FLYING EAGLE—symbols of the saints—will be given the consummating judgments of the three “Woes,” that they may slay the beast, and give his body politic to the burning flame.—Dan. vii. 11, 26.

2.—Historical Exposition

We have seen in ch. vii. that the judgments of the first four trumpets were restrained until the work of sealing the servants of the Deity should be sufficiently advanced. The tempests that were to wreck the state, and dash it in pieces upon the rocks, were not to blow until there should be a community of faithful ones developed, who should be able to read the signs of their times aright, and be able to instruct others. This is implied in their being “sealed in their foreheads.” Being thus prepared, when the trumpets sounded they could call the attention of their contemporaries to the true situation of affairs; and in so doing deliver them from the superstition and blasphemy of such blind leaders as Chrysostom, Jerome, Augustine, Ambrose, Cyril, and others, of the catholic church by law established. These all assumed that the superstition they professed was the true religion; and that when Antichrist appeared, he would be “some great man raised up by the devil,” who would head “the apostasy,” which could be no other than a falling away “from the right faith, from truth, and from good works,” as presented to the dwellers upon the earth in the traditions with which they made void the word. They taught that Antichrist was p. 448 to appear in a Jewish temple, and from among the Jews, and gain the empire of the world. They were all impressed with the idea that the dissolution of the Roman empire into ten kingdoms was at hand; their Antichrist would be revealed, and then destroyed by Christ, about A. D. 500, which was to be the end of the world!

The gloomy forebodings among them respecting their near future were heightened by chronological ignorance. They imagined that the world was nearly 6,000 years old. Hilarion, A. D. 402, thus wrote: “It now wants 101 years to the end of the Sixth Chiliad; about the closing of which the ten kings must arise, Babylon, now reigning, fall, Antichrist arise and be destroyed by Christ’s coming, and so the saints’ sabbath millennary begin.” To read the vagaries solemnly propounded by these Laodiceans, is to remind us of the times in which we live. The confusion of ideas was truly marvellous. Their speculations were as hairbrained as those of Mormons, Millerites, and clergymen at large, in the age in which we live. They had been given over to “believe a lie, that they all might be condemned who believed not the truth; but had pleasure in” their own righteousness, which was “unrighteousness.” What, then, was to be done in this extremity? They could no more deliver themselves from their own blasphemies, than the natural man from his own ignorance. The remedy was at hand, if they had been sagacious enough to discern it; but, like our contemporaries, they cruelly persecuted and denounced it as heresy, and put it from them. The remedy was the EAGLE-ANGEL preaching of the truth. These preachers being “sealed in their foreheads,” would be able to explain to them that the dissolution of the Western Empire was not the end of the world, but a judgment upon them as the real apostasy foretold by Paul. That they were deceivers and deceived. That the end of the world was not at hand, nor the reign of the saints either. That the trumpet-judgments of heaven were a call upon them to “repent of the works of their hands, that they should not worship dæmons, and idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and of wood, which can neither see, nor hear, nor walk;—to repent of their murders, of their sorceries, of their fornication, and of their thefts”—ch. ix. 20, 21. That of all these crimes they were guilty, and had been punished by heretical and pagan firebrands, as Alaric, Genseric, Attila, and other barbarian scourges; and that the terrible calamities they endured were not complete. That, as they repented not of the works of their hands; or, in the words of Jerome, though “the Roman world rushes to destruction, we bend not our neck in humiliation;” therefore, “Woe, Woe, Woe” to p. 449 them, both of the east and the west, because of the judgments yet to befal them before the end should come.

While this eagle-angel proclamation was warning the people, war, pestilence, and famine, in all the reign of Justinian, were plaguing them with unexampled miseries. A hundred millions of the human race were exterminated in his reign. But this was only introductory to the coming “woes.” The camp of safety was with “the flying eagle.” The belief and obedience of the gospel of the kingdom was then, as now, the only seal protective from the sword.