Chapter IX. Second Section of the Seventh Seal; or, First Two Woe-Trumpets

1.—“One Voice of the Four Horns”

“And I heard One Voice out of the Four Horns of the Altar of Gold which is in the sight of the Deity, saying, &c.” This is the same altar as that in the scene pictured in Apoc. viii. 3, which may be fitly reproduced here by way of remembrance. “And another angel came and stood by the altar, having a golden censer; and there was given to him many odors, that he might cast for the prayers of all the saints, upon the golden altar which is in sight of the throne. And the smoke of the odors for the prayers of the saints ascended out of the hand of the angel, in the sight of the Deity. And the angel took the censer, and filled it from the fire of the altar, and cast into the earth and there were voices and thunders and lightnings and an earthquake. And the Seven Angels having the seven trumpets prepared themselves that they might sound,”

This scene is, as it were, a general preface to the sounding of each of the seven trumpets. That is, each trumpet developes its judgments retributively upon the enemies of the saints, and responsively to their prayers. The prayers of the saints were not to be confined to the apostolic age; but to ascend till Christ the avenger, should return. “Men,” said Jesus, “ought always to pray, and not to faint.” This saying he illustrated by the parable of the unjust judge and the widow, in Luke xviii. 1-8. “Avenge me,” said she, “of mine adversary;” but he would not, until wearied by her importunity, he complied to get rid of her complaints. If an unjust judge would do this, “shall not the Deity,” the just judge of all the earth, “avenge his own elect, who cry day and night unto him, though he bear long with them? I tell you,” said Jesus, “he will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless when the Son of Man cometh, shall he find the faith upon the earth?”

p. 480 In all apocalyptic times, the elect of the Deity are represented as crying unto him “to judge and avenge their blood on them that dwell upon the earth”—ch. vi. 10. In Apoc. viii. 3-5, the sounding of all the trumpets is dramatically represented as responsive to “the prayers of all the saints;” and consequently, not to the prayers of those saints only who lived between A. D. 324 and A. D. 395; but also to the prayers of the saints living contemporarily with all the trumpets. The successive soundings of the first five trumpets have brought us down to A. D. 933; and we have seen how the safety of the saints was guaranteed by the command of the Angel of the Abyss to his destroying agents to torment only the unsealed. The saints were not to be harmed by the special plagues; for they were “nourished” while the unsealed, who were their enemies, were being scourged.

In all the days of their nourishment, which were 1260, their prayers were “ascending out of the angel’s hand in the sight of the Deity.” They ascended as sweet odors of the golden altar, for his eyes were always upon the Woman’s place in the wilderness—ch. xii. 14. Her seed had been contemporary with the seals as the four living ones full of eyes; they were coeval with the first five trumpets as the golden altar; with the sixth, as “the four horns of the altar of gold; and with the seventh trumpet as the four living ones, and in its seventh vial manifestation, as “the nave of the Deity” and “the four and twenty elders sitting upon their thrones”—ch. xi. 16-17; xv. 7. Hence, in all the apocalypse, under one symbol or another, the saints are discerned in position; and that position is always in opposition to “the men who have not the seal of the Deity in their foreheads;” and as constituting no part of the symbols representing their civil and ecclesiastical organizations.

Now, although, according to the pattern in the Mosaic Tabernacle, this living altar of gold has four horns, answering to the four living ones, and four corners of the square, but one spirit pervades the whole. The multitude of the true believers which compose the altar “are of one heart and of one soul”—Acts iv. 32. In singleness of heart—“with one mind and one mouth they glorified the Deity, even the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ”—Acts ii. 46; Rom. xv. 6. With this spirit of unanimity, resulting from their being sealed in their foreheads with the seal of the living God, they cause their prayers to ascend as burning odors—as one voice out of the four horns—and not a distinct and discordant voice from each horn. In “the vision” there was only “one voice.” It was the voice of the altar of gold, for it proceeded from the four horns thereof. This p. 481 voice of prayer said, “Loose the four angels;” and, in answer to the prayer addressed “to the sixth angel, that had the trumpet,” “the four angels were loosed.”

This unanimous voice of prayer, ascending from hearts whose faith was more precious than gold which perishes, was addressed, I say, to the sixth angel. This was equivalent to addressing the Father-Deity, whose apocalyptic symbol is “a Lamb as it had been slain, having Seven Horns and Seven Eyes.” This represents Omnipotence and Omniscience manifested in flesh that had been slain, and afterwards “justified in spirit.” These seven horns and seven eyes, viewed apart from the slain Lamb, represent “the Seven Spirits of the Deity sent forth into all the earth.” These seven spirits as sent forth are symbolized by the Seven Angels, who in all the earth sound the seven trumpets. It is the Omnipotent and Omniscient Spirit, in sevenfold manifestation, that sounds. HE, incarnate in the Lamb, creates powers in the earth, stirs up their ambitions, and impels them on to destinies which they can neither control nor see. “There is no power,” says Paul, “but of the Deity;” and when judgments are abroad in a country, the spirit of Yahweh is in an unquiet state—Zech. vi. 8. In the previous trumpets, we have seen illustrations of the terrible nature of the inquietude of the Spirit. The Goths, Huns, Vandals, and Saracens, were embodiments of this unrest. When they acquired motion, they swept as a tornado over the guilty; fell upon them like hail and fire mingled with blood; plunged in among them as a great mountain burning with fire; scathed them as with a burning torch; smote them, darkened them, destroyed them with scorpion-torment, and killed them, as we shall see, with serpents. And all this in vindication of “the truth as it is in Jesus;” in retribution of blasphemy, dæmon-worship, and idolatry; and in retaliation of war against the saints, whom they labored, but too successfully, to subdue.

Now, the Spirit created and excited these powers as he operated upon Pharaoh when he hardened his heart; and as he will hereafter operate upon the powers that be now, when he shall put in their hearts to fulfil his will, and to agree, and give their kingdom, or power and strength unto the Eighth Head of the Beast, until his words be fulfilled—ch. xvii. 13; 17. It was the same Spirit that inhabited the golden altar, only that it was incarnate in the altar by the truth understood, believed, and obeyed. This incarnation of spirit is holy, and, standing “in the sight of the Deity,” as his holy altar, “smokes” with the fragrant odors of enlightened zeal and indignation p. 482 against “every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of the Deity.” With “one voice” this emanation of spirit cries day and night, through the angel of the altar, to be avenged. This cry ascends from spirit, through spirit, to the Eternal Spirit—from the truth incarnate in the saints; through “the Lord the Spirit,” who makes intercession for them; to the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. The answer to this cry sets in motion the whole machinery of judgment exhibited in the scenery of the apocalypse, which ultimates in the consummation which completely and thoroughly avenges his elect.

In addressing the sixth angel, then, the Deity was addressed by the “one voice from the four horns of the altar of gold.” The Spirit had the trumpet, which he sounded in the loosing of the four angels, in the killing of the Third, and in the overthrow of the Tenth of the City—ch. ix. 15, 18; xi. 13; and all of this, a judicial development through seven centuries, in response to that one voice so influential before the throne.

The altar of gold is said to be ενωπιον του Θεου, which I have rendered, “in the sight of the Deity.” Literally, enopion signifies in the eye, from εν, in, and ωπι, dative of ωψ, the eye. The Golden Altar Community is in the eye of the Deity, in the same sense that the twelve tribes of Israel were in his eye when they dwelt in the Holy Land; but, when expelled therefrom by the Assyrians, were said to have been removed out of his sight—2 Kings xvii. 18. The Golden Altar Community have never been “removed out of his sight,” as Israel and Judah were. But, can any thing be removed out of the sight of him who sees all things? In a certain sense it can. Now, concerning the Holy Land, by way of illustration, Moses says, in Deut. xi. 12: “It is a land which Yahweh thine Elohim careth for; the eyes of Yahweh thine Elohim are always upon it, from the beginning of the year even unto the end of the year.” When, therefore, Israel and Judah were dwelling there, they were in his sight; for his eyes were upon them, being upon the land; but, when expelled, they were not within the landscape, and, therefore, out of his sight. But they are to return from captivity; and then, the prophet says, “in the third day he will raise us up, and we shall live in his sight”—Hos. vi. 2; that is, in the Holy Land. In a like sense, the Golden Altar Community is in his eye, or in his presence, or before him. It is sojourning, and has been for a long series of ages, among the nations, kindreds, and tongues, which have been given over to the Dragon and the Beast, and which have been made drunk by the Mother of Harlots that sits upon them. But in the midst of all p. 483 these, it is not hidden from his sight. It is before him in all the brightness of fine gold. It is the Altar of gold from which ascends sweet odors in the holy and heavenly in Christ Jesus.

2.—“Loose the Four Angels”

To loose is the opposite of to bind. The nature of the loosing depends upon that of the thing bound. The things to be loosed in the text before us are “the four angels.” These are the symbols of the “two myriads of myriads of cavalry” by which “the third” is killed. The four angels, therefore, represent four powers. These were “bound.” A power bound is either a power restrained from action, or bound by its own territorial limits. An example of the former occurs in the Dragon shut up in the abyss. Here the Dragon-power is restrained from acting—from “deceiving the nations.” When it is “loosed,” its wonted action is restored, and it returns to its old work of deceiving—ch. xx. 3, 7, 8. The four angel-powers of the sixth trumpet were bound territorially; for we are informed that they “had been bound—δεδεμενους—by the great river Euphrates.” This river was the boundary of their dominion, and divided it from the territory of “the Third” which they were to kill. To loose these Oriental powers was to cause them to cross the Euphrates, to invade with their myriads of cavalry the Eastern Third of the Roman inhabited earth, and to extend their own dominion at its expense.

They “had been bound by the great river Euphrates,” until the time of their loosing arrived. They were eastern powers, therefore. The countries east of the Euphrates were the area of their preparation for the work they had to do. They were prepared angel-powers; therefore it is written, “The four angels having been prepared were loosed.” While they were in preparation, or being prepared, they were confined, or bounded within confines, that did not extend further west or southwest than the Euphrates. The powers or angels were not contemporary. They were not all four being prepared at one and the same time. They were successively prepared messenger-powers, to be brought into action one after the other. Hence, the loosing of the four angels was not simultaneous. First, one angel was loosed: then followed an interval; after that, a second: then a second interval; the third angel was next unbound, and executed his mission: a third interval then ensued; and, lastly, the fourth angel was loosed, and he consummated the work of killing “the third.” Thus, these four angel-powers may p. 484 very properly be styled Euphratean. The fourth angel still exists, and occupies the capital in which the throne of the extinct “third” flourished for a thousand years. It is, therefore, by origin and possession, Euphratean; for this “great river” flows through its territory. Hence, “the Great River Euphrates” is made the symbol of the fourth angel in the period coincident with the advent of Christ—ch. xvi. 12, 15.

3.—Symbolic Period of the Loosing

These four angel-powers of the Euphratean region of the globe, were loosed for the execution of a mission to be completed in a specific period—“they were loosed that they might kill the third of the men at the end of, εις, until, THE hour, and day, and month and year,” ενιαυτον. Here was a whole period, which began with the complete preparation of the first angel-power, and ended with the consummation of the work of the four angels, which was the putting to death of “the third”—ver. 18. Of how many years was this period composed? The answer to this question is, of three hundred and ninety-one years and thirty days. The time of the preparation of each angel-power, is not stated. The transactions, which developed the angels beyond the Euphrates, do not enter into the vision; nor the time they consumed. The period of time has exclusive reference to the operations of the “two myriads of myriads of cavalry” against the Eastern Third peoples, after their crossing the Euphrates.

But, it may be further asked, How are these 391 years and 30 days arrived at? In answer to this it may be remarked, that it is absolutely certain from the historical illustration of the fifth trumpet, that the two periods of “five months” each, were periods of 150 years; and that the whole ten months, or 300 years, was the æon, or cycle, allotted to the tormenting and injuring ascendancy of the Caliph-Angel of the Abyss. Events having clearly demonstrated the duration of five months, we are thereby instructed as to the number of years contained in one month. A symbolical month, then, is thirty years. When a month, therefore, is associated with “hour, day and year” in symbolic time, these must be relatively proportional. The year, ενιαυτος, that which returns into itself, or a circuit of time, must be twelve times the length of “the month;” and “the day” one thirtieth of the month; and “the hour,” one twelfth of “the day.” In the case of the five months events have proved that apocalyptic time is based upon the principle of a day for a year

p. 485 According to this, an eniautos or year, being twelve times more than a month of years, would be equal to three hundred and sixty ordinary years; a day, one year; and an hour, thirty days. These added together give the whole number of years for the period of the execution of the mission of the four loosed angel myriads of Euphratean cavalry, as stated above; and may be tabularly presented thus:

In the Greek text the definite article την is prefixed only to ὠραν hour. It does not read, “for the hour, and the day, and the month, and the year;” but, one article is prefixed to the whole time—εις την ὠραν and so forth; “for, during or until the end of the hour,” &c. This was, doubtless, significant; and designed to indicate, that the divisions of time were to be taken as proportional parts of a whole period.

4.—Number of the Cavalry

“And the number of the hosts of the cavalry was two myriads of myriads”—δυο μυριαδες μυριαδων. This is the symbolical number of the four angel-powers—two myriads of myriads ἱππικον of cavalry—equestrian myriads. The number is enormous when literally stated; but, however great, is in strict accordance with the truth of history. A myriad is ten thousand. But this must be multiplied by two, for there are “two myriads,” or twenty thousand. In the phrase “two myriads of myriads,” this twenty thousand becomes the multiplier of “myriads,” which is the multiplicand. If μυριαδων, genitive plural, is to be taken as one myriad of ten thousand, then the “two myriads of myriads” will represent two hundred millions, or twenty thousand ten thousands. These 200,000,000 must not be taken as the numeration of the angel-hosts at any one time; but as the aggregate of the equestrian forces of the four angel-powers in all the 391 years and 30 days of the killing period—their numbers were computed by millions.

p. 4865.—The Horses and their Riders

“And thus I saw the horses in the vision; and those sitting upon them.” The description which follows exemplifies the “thus.” He saw the equestrian millions in vision. What a host to contemplate! He beheld them embattled, and vomiting forth fire and smoke, and deadly missiles. The horses he saw were not real horses, but horses in vision, or symbolical horses and symbolical riders; which in solid array and in action presented certain characteristics illustrative of the historical reality.

I find the following concerning the horse in symbol in Daubuz. He says: “The horse was of old used only for warlike expeditions, and not barely to ride, draw, and drudge, as it is now practised with us. Hence, in that noble description of the horse, in Job xxxix. 18-25, there is no notice taken of any quality of his but what relates to war. So that the horse is the symbol of war and conquest.” When, therefore, the Spirit saith in Zech. x. 3, “Yahweh Tz’vaoth hath visited his flock the House of Judah, and hath made them as his goodly horse in the battle,” the meaning is, that he will ride them as their Commander-in-Chief, and make them conquerors over his enemies, glorious and successful.

Thus in Ps. xlv. 5, רכב r’chăv, to ride, is rendered in the Septuagint by βασιλευειν, to reign. And in several other places to ride, signifies to have dominion. “Agreeably to this,” the Oneirocritics say, “that if any one dreams that he rides upon a generous horse, it denotes that he shall obtain dignity, fame, authority, prosperity, and a good name among the people; in short, all such things which may accrue to a man by good success in martial affairs.” And hence, from the horse being an instrument of conquest, and therefore the symbol of the dignity, fame, power, prosperity, and success he causes, when Carthage was founded, and a horse’s head was dug up by the workmen, the soothsayers gave out that the city would be warlike and powerful.”

“As a horse is warlike, so he is also a swift creature, and is therefore not only the symbol of conquest, but also of the speediness of it—Joel ii. 4; Jer. iv. 13.

The following in Hab. i. 8, concerning the swift, fierce, and invincible career of the Chaldeans against Judah, is expressive also of that of the four Euphratean angel-powers, as represented by the equestrian myriads in the sixth trumpet vision: “Their horses are swifter than the leopards, and are more fierce than the evening p. 487 wolves: and their horsemen shall spread themselves, and their horsemen shall come from far; they shall fly as the eagle. hasteth to prey. They shall come all for violence . . . they shall scoff at the kings, and the princes shall be a scorn unto them: they shall deride every stronghold; for they shall heap dust, and take it.

6.—Breasts Fiery and Hyacinthine

But, there were characteristics pertaining to the armed equestrian myriads seen in vision by John, that Habakkuk did not see in the Chaldean hosts. He says, the horsemen “had breasts θωρακας, fiery and hyacinthine and sulphurous.” These were breastworks, in military phraseology; and on these were mounted “heads,” in which were “mouths.” They were equestrian lion-heads, very fierce and destructive; and out of these horse-lion-head mouths “burst forth fire, and smoke, and sulphur.” These horses were what is now styled horse-artillery: artillery drawn by horses, without which they would be of little use in war. “The heads of the horses were as the heads of lions,” because of their roaring; “and out of their mouths burst, or roared forth the fire, smoke, and sulphur.” Hence, the horses in the vision besides being symbolical of the equestrian character, and of the swift and fierce invincibility, of the Euphratean angel-powers, are representative of the new and powerful artillery used by the fourth Euphratean Angel in putting to death “the third”—the third that belonged to the men who were unsealed. These lion-headed horses, roaring and vomiting fire, smoke, and sulphur out of their mouths, were cannons belching forth destruction. John saw them mounted on breastworks, which breasted the troops behind them; and from these “breasts,” as well as from the “mouths,” burst forth fire; for the riders had “breasts fiery, hyacinthine, and sulphurous.” He saw these artillery mounted breastworks actively at work; and the nature of their activity he signifies by the sight and smell. They appeared to the eye “fiery and hyacinthine.” This is the symbolism of the flash seen on the discharge of loaded cannon. If a little saltpetre and sulphur be triturated together, and then thrown into the fire, the hyacinthine color will be seen in their combustion. In other words, this combustion will be “fiery and hyacinthine.” Hence, breastworks, lined with cannon in explosive operation, would be fiery and hyacinthine to the eye, being illuminated with these colors at every flash. The smell also would be highly “sulphurous,” owing to the composition of matters vomited out of the roaring mouths of the great guns.

p. 4887.—“With the Heads they do Injure”

But what he saw and smelt were not mere holiday salutes. He saw and smelt them in the battles which extinguished the political existence of “the third”—το τριτον. There were not only color and smell, but death also, in “the fire, and the smoke, and the sulphur;” for “by these three,” saith he: “were killed the third of the men by the fire, and by the smoke, and by the sulphur bursting forth out of their mouths. And the reason given for the deadliness of these three agents in combination, when bursting forth from the mouths of the lion-headed horses, or artillery, is “because their powers are in their mouths and in their tails.” A cannon, in modern style, is divided into breech, barrel, and mouth. The Spirit only indicates the mouth and the breech, which he terms the tail, which is an appendage thereto. These “tails” were “like serpents,” in the similitude of their destructive operation; for the tails were not headless. Had they been headless tails, they could have done no injury; no more than a serpent without a head. When a serpent injures, it coils, and making a fulcrum of its tail, shoots forth its head from amid the coils, which are straightened by the spring, and with its head strikes its victim with a deadly stroke. Hence, the death-dealing powers of the serpent are in its head, or mouth, and in its tail. So it is with flying artillery, and with artillery mounted on breastworks, compared herein to “serpents.” Without the tail of the piece the mouth thereof could not injure; and without the mouth, or outlet, the tail could do no harm. As in the natural, “the powers” of these artillery serpents “are in their mouths and in their tails.” The projecting power is in the tail of the piece; many pieces, therefore, in our time, being “breechloading.” But until of late, the projecting power and the projectile were always mouth, or muzzle-loaded—they went through the mouth into the tail; and being well rammed, they spring or shoot forth with the voice of a lion, straightening themselves from tail to mouth, out of which they rush in “fire, smoke, and sulphur,” dealing death and destruction upon what things soever may be encountered by their “head,” their tail-heads, or cannon balls; “for their tails have heads, and with these do they injure.” Thus, “by the fire, and by the smoke, and by the sulphur,” as an exploding power projecting the tail-heads, were “the third of the men killed.” The scorpions of the first woe were highly incendiary; but they did not make breaches in walls, and overturn lofty towers: the serpents of the second woe did all this; and in opening breaches by their p. 489 tail-heads, gave admission to he fourth Euphratean angel-power into the capital of the Eastern Third, where he has been enthroned upwards of four hundred years, the observed of all observers; some of whom long for his decease, that they may be enriched by the division of his estate.

8.—Fire, Hyacinth, and Sulphur

“Fire, hyacinth, and sulphur,” and “fire, smoke, and sulphur,” are symbolical of gunpowder, which is composed of charcoal, saltpetre, and sulphur: These three substances in their normal, distinct, and quiescent state, have no resemblance to fire, hyacinth, and smoke; but while, in combustion, they are the appearances, which, with the sulphurous smell, most forcibly strike our senses. Hence, the phenomena resulting from the combustion, become symbolical of the projecting force, or power, which drives forth the power that strikes with the stroke of death. Saltpetre, or nitrate of potassa, is symbolized by hyacinth-color, because of the analogy it bears to it in color when in deflagration. Nothing could be more significant of this destructive agent, first used in the warfare of nations in the fourteenth century, than the terms employed by the Spirit in this vision. The hieroglyphic can mean nothing else than the great destroying machinery of modern warfare.

9.—“Lake of Fire Burning with Sulphur.”

It will be in place here to remark, that “these plagues,” as they are fitly termed in verse 20, will be terribly operative in the destroying of the body of the beast, and in the binding of the dragon, and casting of him into the abyss—Dan. vii. 11. They will be swamped in “a fiery stream,” and “be given to the burning flame.” This is apocalyptically styled, “a Lake of Fire burning with sulphur”—ch. xix. 20. The territory upon which the beast and false prophet dominion exist, will be turned into a lake of fire by this sulphur-burning machinery of war. The saints will be in that lake, “executing the judgment written,” in tormenting with fire and sulphur the worshippers of the beast—ch. xiv. 10. Fire, sulphur, and smoke, in these places, symbolize the same agent as they do in the second woe. The governments are not casting great guns, and storing up munitions of war in vain. They are preparing them blindly for their own destruction. Their arsenals will fall into the hands of the Lamb and his people, who will plunge incessant fire upon their enemies, the smoke of whose torment will ascend, until p. 490 their power shall be totally and finally destroyed. From thenceforth, war will be no more for a thousand years.

10.—“The Rest of the Men.”

In the twelfth verse, the Spirit refers to οι λοιποι των ανθρωπων, “the rest of the men who were not killed by these plagues.” The το τριτον των ανθρωπων, the third of the men were killed by the plagues. The former class who were not killed, though filled with consternation at the fate of “the third,” still flourished in political existence. The fourth Euphratean angel-power, though it injured them greatly in its wars upon them, was unable to kill them, as he had slain their brethren of “the third.” The others, οι λοιποι, inhabit all those countries of the Roman orb not included in the Ottoman empire, or fourth Euphratean angel dominion. They are known as “the Latins,” who in ch. xiii. 4, 5, are said to worship the beast, and to be subject to his Mouth, which speaks great things and blasphemies. These are said in ch. ix. 20, to worship the Dæmonials and idols, the works of their hands. Notwithstanding the signal overthrow and political annihilation of their dæmon and image-worshipping brethren of the eastern third, they, the Latins of the west, still continued the same abomination, as at this day. Hence, the work of judgment ceased not with the death of the third; but continues still, and will continue, until all “the dæmons” are cast out, and “the idols” are thrown to the moles and the bats, and Yahweh alone is exalted in the glory of his majesty and might—Isai. ii. 17-21.

11.—“The Dæmonials.”

In the English Version of Apoc. ix. 20, τα δαιμονια, is very improperly rendered “devils.” In my translation I have merely transferred it from the Greek, leaving it for explanation as a symbol.

Under the word δαιμονιον, I find the following among other significations of the noun: “Especially an inferior race of divine beings; the name by which Socrates called his genius, or the SPIRIT he supposed to dwell within him.” (Not diminutive from δαιμων, but neuter from δαιμονιος.) The root of the word is δαιμων, of which one of the senses given is “the souls of men of the golden age hovering between heaven and earth, and acting as tutelary deities; they formed the connecting link between gods and men, and so Æschylus calls the deified Darius δαιμων, a dæmon: hence, when δαιμονες and p. 491 θεοι are joined, the δαιμονες are gods of lower rank; and here note, that θεος is never used for δαιμων, though δαιμων is for θεος. In later authors, as Lucianus, in general, departed souls”—Liddel and Scott’s Lex.

This was the sense of the word among the heathen who worshipped images. They foolishly imagined that all men, women, and children have within them a genius, spirit, or soul which they considered to be a particle of the essence of Deity, whoever or whatever he might be; and that, therefore, said genius, spirit, or soul, was absolutely and essentially immortal or deathless. This was the dæmon in a living man, such as Socrates surrendered himself blindly to the guidance and protection of. But, when men, women, and children, ceased to be creatures visibly existing, they supposed, that they still continued in being, only invisible to the naked eye. Their bodies they often burned to ashes, which they deposited in urns; nevertheless, they supposed that they were still in existence, only in a new form. They conceited that the real man was the indwelling soul; and that when the body ceased to breathe, said soul ascended into the air, or aërial, where it “hovered between heaven and earth.” These were deified souls—souls made deities by human decrees, or apotheosis. They styled them “Immortal Gods,” though but “an inferior race of divine beings.” Of these gods were Darius, Cæsar, Alexander, and a host of others, who had made themselves “great,” in the estimation of the blind multitude, who decreed divine honors to their souls, and erected statuesque copies of their perished forms, for the glorification of their friends, and the factions they were supposed to have adorned. The immortal soul in the aërial called Darius, and decreed to be a god, was what they called a dæmon or a dæmonion. Such dæmons the heathen worshipped, and placed themselves, their families, their property, and countries, under the protection of. Hence, they styled them “tutelary deities,” or divine guardians.

“In classical use,” says Dr. Geo. Campbell, “demon signified a divine being, though not in the highest order of their divinities, and therefore supposed not equivalent to Θεος, but superior to human, and consequently, by the maxims of their theology, a proper object of adoration.” “All demons,” says Plato, “are an intermediate order between God and mortals.” “It was customary with the pagans to deify abstract qualities, making them either gods or goddesses, as suited the gender of the name.” “They sometimes deified men who had been their benefactors.” “The proper notion of demons is, beings in respect of power superior to human, but inferior to that which christians comprehend under the term divine.”

p. 492 “What are men?” says a dialogist in Lucian. The answer is, “Mortal gods. What are gods? Immortal men.” In fact, immortality disembodied was almost the only distinction between them. Disembodied immortals is the idea represented by demons.

“The pagans were a kind of superstitious atheists,” says another writer, “who acknowledged no being that corresponds to our idea of a deity. Besides, a great part of the heathen worship was confessedly paid to ghosts of departed heroes, of conquerors, and potentates, and of the inventors of arts, whom popular superstition, after disguising their history with fables and absurdities, had blindly deified. Now, to all such beings they themselves, as well as the Jews, assigned the name δαιμονια, demons.”

The whole superstructure of paganism is based upon the unscriptural dogma, and invention of the carnal mind, of an immortal essence in man capable of disembodied existence after death. But for this stupid fiction there would have been no dæmons, nor any of the thirty thousand gods and goddesses, nor any guardian saints, or tutelary deities, of ancient and modern Greece and Rome. A scribe well instructed for the kingdom of the heavens, knows that man has no such dæmon in him; and that however high he may be “in honor,” if he understand not the truth, “is as the beasts that perish”—Ps. xlix. 12, 20.

In the apocalypse δαιμονια occurs only once, and that in ch. ix. 20; while δαιμων in the genitive plural is found twice; first, in ch. xvi. 14; and then in ch. xviii. 2. In ch. ix. 20, it is really the neuter plural of the adjective δαιμονιος, of, or pertaining to, dæmons: “that they should not worship τα δαιμονια things related to dæmons”—things supposed to exist in the aërial, “between heaven and earth.” In ch. xvi. 14, the word is different, because it refers to different things, and pertaining to a different region. Both in this text, and, in ch. xviii. 2, the things signified by δαιμονες are related to earth; though, among the inhabitants of the Roman earth, they occupy a position analogous to that of the dæmons of the mythical aërial between the political heaven and the peoples beneath. The habitation of these dæmons is the aërial of Babylon; “the hold of every foul spirit, and cage of every unclean and hateful bird,” such as popes cardinals, bishops, priests, monks, and other officials of the state. In ch. xvi. 14, they are the gods of the political aërial, whose policies, or “spirits,” develope remarkable and notable events. The dæmons of these two texts are men of high degree—real men of flesh and blood, in the official exercise of power; and not objects of superstitious worship. But this is not the case in ch. ix. p. 493 20. Here the things related to dæmons are associated with idols or images, in the phrase τα δαιμονια και ειδωλα, where the definite article τα serves both for δαιμονια and ειδωλα; and very properly so, because the eidola are the visible representations of the dæmonia.

“The passage in which,” says Mr. Tayler Lewis, in his Platonic Theology, “we find the most express and the clearest mention of dæmons is in the Epinomis,” which he renders thus: “Next to these, and under these, the Dæmons, an aërial race, having the third seat, must we honor by prayers.” They are spoken of as possessing wonderful intelligence, as feeling a deep sympathy in human affairs, as loving the good, hating the bad, and, in consequence of their middle position in the air, acting as interpreters and mediators between gods and men. To the same effect Socrates speaks of them in the Symposion, as: “For the whole demonial race is between Deity and mortals, acting as interpreters or messengers to both. Through this passes all divination, and the whole prophetical art; for Deity mingles not directly with the human race, but through these media is ever carried on the intercourse between Heaven and men, both when awake and when asleep.”

Such were the δαιμονες, dæmons, τα δαιμονια, the things pertaining to dæmons, of pagan antiquity. They were “unsubstantial, unreal, imaginary phantasms, and fit only to make symbols of, as representative of other abominations analogous to, and as unreal as, themselves.

The Greeks and Romans have never relaxed their hold upon dæmonolatry or demon-worship to this day. They have only changed the character of their dæmons and idols. When they became catholics they did not really cease to be pagans; they only “baptized” their dæmons, and called them by other names. Jupiter, the Latins styled St. Peter, and the idol representative of “the father of the gods and men” became the image of St. Peter, “the Prince of the Apostles.” Jupiter’s wife, Juno, the Queen of the Universe, was converted by the Collyridion “heretics,” who changed her name to “Mary, Mother of Mercy, Queen of the whole world, Mother and Spouse of God.” After this fashion, they have conferred the names of fabulous saints and angels upon the gods and dæmons of ancient Greece and Rome. All that the old heathens affirmed of their deities, the modern heathens of the Greek and Latin communions affirm of their martyrs, saints, and angels. The dæmonology of the ancient world is the dæmonology of the Apostasy, catholic and protestant. These are in fellowship with Plato, Socrates, and other pagans, in their views about “souls” and “departed p. 494 spirits;” and, with all their “ripe scholarship,” as they absurdly style proficiency in “the foolishness” of their collegiate “divinities,” they are not one step in advance of the Platonists upon these subjects. That is, they know no more about souls and departed spirits, and their post mortem relations, than did they who had no revelation at all to guide them into truth.

Protestants and Catholics now believe, with all the heathen, that there is inherent in man a particle of the Divine Essence, endowed with all the attributes of deity, in like proportion as part bears to whole. This they call “soul,” or “spirit,” or “immortal soul;” because they imagine it is incorruptible, indestructible, deathless. They regard this fiction as the real man. The body, in their psychology, is of no account. The soul is God in man’s nature—an immortal god in mortal flesh—both in combination constituting what the pagan poet styles “a mortal god.” When what is mortal of this god dies, that which they style “the immortal soul” still lives, and becomes what their brother Lucian denominates “an immortal man;” that is, a dæmon of inferior rank, nevertheless a god!

Now catholics and protestants hold such gods as these in high esteem. The old mythologist had thirty thousand dæmons; as—

“For thrice ten thousand wait upon our earth;\ Jove’s everlasting guards for mortal men,\ Who roam the world in robes of air conceal’d.”

But their successors of the Laodicean church have millions. The immortal soul-dæmons of all their favorites are “sainted in heaven,” as soon as they are supposed “to shuffle off the mortal coil.” The disembodied immortal soul-dæmons of what are called men, women, children, babes, are decreed by their theologies, or dæmonologies, to be saints and angels in the aërial or sky. The soul-dæmon of a babe is transformed into “a little darling angel” with wings, and is symbolized by painters, as wild in their imaginations as the poets, by a head with wings peeping out of a cloud. The air, which these phantoms are supposed to inhabit, they term the “spirit-world,” “the spirit-land,” “the eternal world,” “the world to come,” “kingdom come,” and so forth; for, in reference to them in the words of Hesiod, they say—

“close at hand,\ Immortal eyes behold us evermore.”

Or, as Milton expresseth it—

“Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth,\ Unseen, both when we sleep and when we wake.”

p. 495 But, though they suppose all individuals of the human race have immortal souls, catholics do not worship all soul-dæmons. All these they suppose go to “purgatory;” but it is only those of the dead they delight to honor whom they exalt to the aërial between heaven and earth. They do this by a process in their ecclesiastical court called canonization. Having tried their characters in this court, and heard all the Devil’s lawyer has to say against them, they are, in spite of the Devil, decreed to be adorable saints, and are translated out of purgatory beneath, to the aërial between heaven and earth!

Apotheosis was the deification of the disembodied ghosts, or soul-dæmons, of pagan heroes and great men, by which they were exalted to the aërial between earth and heaven, and became, in their new position, adorable dæmon-gods, interpreters, mediators, angels or messengers, guardians and protectors of persons, families, nations, temples, and states. Now, what apotheosis was among the worshippers of Jupiter, canonization is among the worshippers of the fictitious ghost which they call “the Virgin Mother and Spouse of God.” It is the next process to what they style beatification. The ghost supposed to be a blessed or beatified ghost, after a scrutiny of its embodied life, in the presence of the Roman bishop and his cardinals, is proclaimed a holy one, or what these “worshippers” of the dæmonials and images term “a saint,” upon which the Pontiff decrees the canonization and appoints the day.

On the day upon which the beatified soul dæmon is installed by sovereign authority among the saint-protectors and mediators of the Laodicean aërial, the episcopal chief of the apostasy officiates in white, and his cardinals are dressed in the same. The temple dedicated to the ghost-god whom they christen “St. Peter,” is hung with rich tapestry, upon which the arms of the Romish High Priest, and of the prince or state requiring the deification, are embroidered in gold and silver. A great number of lights blaze around the temple, which is crowded with a swinish multitude, who await with the impatient devotion of ignorance and superstition till the new dæmonial has made his public entry into the aërial paradise between earth and heaven, that they may offer up their petitions to his demon-godship without danger of being rejected.

The catholic aërial is full of these deified ghosts, whose demonial images and relics are stored in the church-bazaars dedicated to them, for the adoration of their besotted worshippers. All the apostles, and “the noble army of martyrs,” and the popes and cardinals, and “the fathers,” and Constantine, and Theodosius, and St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, St. Jerome, and a countless host of the same sort of p. 496 deities, with the Immaculate Goddess Mary, “the Queen of Heaven,” at the head of them, are all supposed to be there, interceding with Mary’s Son for the safety and prosperity of their catholic adorers, “whose public and private vows,” says Gibbon, “were addressed to their relics and images which disgraced the temples of the east.” This catholic aërial is supposed to be before the throne. The reader, therefore, may easily perceive the fitness of the historian’s style, in, continuing: “The throne of the Almighty was darkened by a cloud of martyrs, saints, and angels, the objects of popular veneration; while the Virgin Mary was invested with the name and honors of a goddess.” They are, indeed, a cloud darkening the Almighty’s throne, so that no worshipper of dæmonial ghosts, dæmonial relics, and dæmonial images, can see that throne, or find transmission for a single sigh.

Such were the many new deities raised to the rank of celestial and invincible protectors of the Roman empire. The intelligent reader will know that they exist only in the intoxicated imaginations of their deluded worshippers, as do the phantoms seen by an inebriate in delirium tremens. Immortality is neither innate nor disembodied. “The Deity only hath it,” Paul says; and he only bestows it upon obedient believers of the truth as it is in the Jesus he preached; and that bestowal is upon men and women bodily existing; and by clothing their bodies with incorruptibility and deathlessness after resurrection from among the dead. This is what the scripture teaches in opposition to the mythologies of the ancient and modern worlds. If “the simplicity which is in Christ” had not been departed from, there would have been no catholic and protestant dæmonialism. The dogma of inherent immortality in sin’s flesh would have remained with the old pagans; but the faith was departed from by those who ought to have been its earnest defenders. They abandoned the word, and substituted the vain imaginations of the heathen, which are all resolvable into the reasonings and speculations of the brain, unenlightened by revelation of any kind. They became polytheists in spite of revelation; and polytheists they will remain till Babylon falls; and the divine reprobation is stamped upon its idolatry in its destruction by the judgment to be executed by the saints.

The clergy, who are in all ages the blind adherents and patrons of profitable errors, came to perceive that this polytheistic dæmonialism would be more valuable to them than gold or precious stones. This stimulated them to a fraudulent multiplication of dæmonial relics, such as the bones, hair, teeth, toe nails, blood, and so forth, of p. 497 some fictitious saint or martyr; all of which were declared to be holy and endowed with miraculous powers for the healing of the sick, and even for the resurrection of the dead. “Without much regard for truth or probability,” says Gibbon, “they invented names for skeletons, and actions for names. The fame of the apostles, and of the holy men who had imitated their virtues, was darkened by religious fiction. To the invincible band of genuine and primitive martyrs, they added myriads of imaginary heroes who had never existed, except in the fancy of crafty or credulous legendaries; and there is reason to suspect that Tours might not be the only diocese in which the bones of a malefactor were adored instead of those of a saint.”

But, he believes that “the progress of superstition would have been much less rapid and victorious if the faith of the people had not been assisted by the seasonable aid of visions and miracles” (termed by Paul, “all power, and signs, and wonders of falsehood”) “to ascertain the authenticity and virtue of the most suspicious relics.” He then gives an account of how the remains of Stephen were discovered by the appearance of Gamaliel to one Lucian, a presbyter of Jerusalem, in the reign of Theodosius II., A. D. 421-460. The ghost named Gamaliel revealed the place of Stephen’s burial. When his alleged coffin came into view, the earth trembled, and an odor such as that of Paradise was smelt, which instantly cured the various diseases of seventy-three of the assistants. These fragrant dæmonial relics were transported in clerical procession to a church-bazaar constructed in their honor on Mount Zion; and the minute particles of those relics, a drop of blood, or the scrapings of a bone, were acknowledged in almost every province of the Roman world to possess a divine and miraculous virtue. Augustine, bishop of Hippo, a renowned saint of the Apostasy, and the great exemplar of Mr. Elliott’s “sealed ones,” attests the innumerable prodigies performed in Africa by the dæmonial relics of the catholic St. Stephen. In his work, the City of God, he enumerates about seventy miracles, of which three were resurrections from the dead, in the space of two years, and within the limits of his own diocese! Paul had such “saints” as this Augustine before his mind when he wrote to Timothy that in later times there would be “seducing spirits, with teachings concerning dæmonials; speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared as with a hot iron.” If we enlarge our view to all the dioceses, and all the saints of the catholic world, it will not be easy to calculate the fables and the errors which issued from this inexhaustible source.

p. 498 “Whatever might be the condition of vulgar souls in the long interval between the dissolution and the resurrection of their bodies, it was evident,” says Gibbon, satirically, “that the superior spirits (or deified ghosts) of the saints and martyrs did not consume that portion of their existence in silent and inglorious sleep. To the pious worshippers, it was evident that these dæmonial spirits enjoyed the lively and active consciousness of their happiness, their virtues, and their powers, and that they had already secured the possession of their eternal reward. The enlargement of their intellectual faculties surpassed the measure of the human imagination, since it was proved by the (alleged) experience of their worshippers that they were capable of hearing and understanding the various petitions of their numerous votaries, who, in the same moment of time, but in the most distant parts of the world, invoked the name and assistance of Stephen or of Martin.” The confidence of their suppliants was based on the supposition that the saints, by dæmonial transformation were reigning with Christ, and were warmly interested in the prosperity of the catholic church; and that the individuals who imitated the examples of their faith and piety, were the peculiar and favorite objects of their most tender regard. They imagined that the dæmonials viewed, with partial affection, the places which had been consecrated by their birth, their residence, their death, their burial, or the possession of their relics. In short, as the dæmonials of the aërial were the mere fictions of disordered imaginations, the vagaries of the human mind in its passion and desires were ascribed to them. Thus, they were as proud, avaricious, and revengeful as their votaries, neither more nor less. As all they had to say to their worshippers was said or interpreted by lying and hypocritical priests and monks, they testified their grateful approbation of the liberality of their votaries; and hurled the sharpest bolts of punishment against those impious wretches who violated their magnificent shrines or disbelieved their supernatural power. “The imagination, which had been raised by a painful effort to the contemplation and worship of the Universal Cause, eagerly embraced such inferior objects of adoration as were more proportioned to its gross conceptions and imperfect faculties. The sublime and simple theology of the primitive christians was gradually corrupted; and the monarchy of heaven, already clouded by metaphysical subtleties, was degraded by the introduction of a popular mythology, which tended to restore the reign of polytheism.”—Gibbon.

Thus, contemporary with the sounding of the fifth and sixth trumpets, the latter of which did not cease to sound till A. D. 1794, p. 499 the dæmons of pagan Rome recovered their places in the aërial under new names; and became the patrons and protectors of the catholic apostasy. These trumpets were terrible judgments inflicted upon mankind because of their dæmonolatry and idolatry. Protestantism appeared on the stage of action about the time of, or a few years before, the killing of the third of the men by the fourth angel power. But, though it protested against some catholic abominations of the grosser sort, it still clung tenaciously to the beatified existence of the dæmonials in the aërial. It holds to all the absurdities which flow from the dogma of hereditary immortality, and the disembodied existence of the immortal essence after death. It erects statues in honor of its departed great, and dedicates them with clerical prayers and other ceremonies; and proclaims the dead to be alive in heaven, whence they look down with pleasure and grateful satisfaction upon the demonstrations of their admirers. Protestant dæmonolatry is no more agreeable to heaven than the dæmon-worship of the catholic world. Behold the vengeance that desolates the protestant South, and that oppresses the protestant North, with death and perplexity. These sectarian sections, being composed of all kinds of polytheists, are being plagued for reasons similar to those which caused the locust-torment, and the loosing of the four trans-Euphratean angel-powers. Erecting statues, and memorial windows in churches, in honor of “immortal souls in heaven,” is worship, homage, or reverence; and they who practice such things are as much guilty of “worshipping the dæmonials,” as are they who bow down before the image of a “saint.”

12.—“Idols”

The All Seeing Spirit, in ch. ix. 20, intimates that the “plagues” of the first and second woes were designed to abolish, or punish, the worshipping of dæmonial things, and idols or images. There were many other abominations concurrent with these woes not specified; but daimonia, and eidola, things related to dæmons, and idols, are especially named, because the ages contemporary with the fifth, and the interval preceding the sixth trumpet, were conspicuous for the legal establishment of the worship of dæmonials, and their idolatrous symbols, called images or idols.

The introduction and establishment of dæmonial and idol worship as an institution of the catholic apostasy, was progressive. It began with a “voluntary humility and worshipping of angels”— p. 500 an intruding into the unseen, and a vain inflation of the mind of the flesh, in the apostolic age, as appears from Col. ii. 17; and was established as early as the end of the sixth century, but more firmly by Greek and Papal authority in the eighth and ninth. In the beginning of the eighth, the idol worship was in full magnitude, and became a striking characteristic of the Laodicean Apostasy; so that with Jews, Saracens, Turkmans, Moguls, and Bible Christians, apocalyptically styled “the Golden Altar,” and the “sealed,” catholics and idolators were and are but different terms for the same thing.

As I do not write for “the learned,” who are supposed to know all about the history of the past, but whose ability to apply it rightly for apocalyptic exposition is at zero; I shall give the reader a brief account, condensed from Gibbon, of the idolatry which brought the judgments of the first and second woes upon “the men” of the Greek and Latin sections of the Roman world.

At the head of certain ecclesiastical phenomena, by which the decline and fall of the Roman empire were materially affected, “We may,” says he, “justly rank the Worship of Images, so fiercely disputed in the eighth and ninth centuries;” since this question of popular superstition produced the revolt of Italy from the Greek, or Sixth Dragon-Head of the empire; developed the temporal power of the popes; and the restoration of the Roman empire of the west under its last, or Eighth Head.

Images or idols are symbols. They are symbols which represent the things related to dæmons—τα δαιμονια. Hence, when a catholic idolator looks upon the statue or image of Jupiter, which he has been taught to regard as the image of Saint Peter, that Saint Peter upon which the catholic church is built, he immediately has before “the mind of his flesh,” ὁ νοῦς της σαρκοσ αυτου, a disembodied ghost, with a bunch of keys, at the gates of Paradise, called Saint Peter. He bows before this image and kisses it, as the nearest approach he can make to bowing before the dæmon-ghost in the aërial. It is to him not merely an image, but a representative image, or idol, before which certain attitudes are assumed, offerings presented, vows made, prayers repeated, which get no nearer heaven than the eyes, ears, and pockets of the hypocrites who minister before the symbol. The first introduction of this symbolic worship was in the veneration of the cross, and of relics. At first, the experiment of dæmonial relic and image worship was made with caution and scruple. By a slow though inevitable progression the honors conferred on the original dæmon were transferred to the copy, whether in picture, or in marble, wood, brass, silver or gold; p. 501 the votary prayed before the image of a deified ghost; and the pagan rites of genuflexion, luminaries, and incense, reappeared in the catholic church. The use, and even the worship of images, was ineradicably established before the end of the sixth century. They were fondly cherished by the warm imagination of the Greeks and Asiatics; and the Pantheon and Vatican were adorned with the emblems of the new superstition.

Five hundred years after the crucifixion, a certain bishop “speaking lies in hypocrisy,” pretended to have discovered a true image of Christ, which he presented to the devotion of the times. It was enthroned at Edessa in Syria, where it was adored by the catholics as the immediate creation of the divine original. The style and sentiments of a Byzantine hymn will declare how far their worship was removed from the grossest idolatry. “How can we with mortal eyes contemplate this image, whose celestial splendor the host of heaven presumes not to behold? He who dwells in heaven condescends this day to visit us by his venerable image. He who is seated on the cherubim visits us this day by a picture, which the Father has delineated with his immaculate hand, which he has formed in an ineffable manner, and which we sanctify by adoring it with fear and love.” Before the end of the sixth century, these acheiropoietal images (images made without hands) were propagated in the camps and cities of the Eastern Third; they were the objects of worship, and the instruments of miracles. The fruitful precedent was speedily transferred to the Virgin Mary, and the dæmonials of the catholic air; not very godlike, doubtless, being but faintly and flatly delineated by monkish artists in the last degeneracy of taste and genius.

In the beginning of the eighth century, in the full magnitude of the abuse, many of the Greeks were awakened to the conviction, that under the name of christianity they had restored the idolatry of their fathers; and they heard, with grief and impatience, from Mohammedans and Jews the incessant charge of worshipping dæmonial images, which were incapable of defending themselves, much less the cities which superstition had placed under their protection. In ten years, the Saracens had subdued all the dæmonially protected cities of Syria, Palestine, and Egypt, by which conquest, in their opinion, the Lord of hosts had pronounced a decisive judgment between the adoration and contempt of their mute and inanimate idols. In this season of distress and dismay, when the worshippers sought death, but found it not; and desired to die, and the death fled from them (ch. ix. 6.) the eloquence of the monks was exercised in the p. 502 defense of images. “But,” says the historian, “they were now opposed by the murmurs of many simple or rational christians, who appealed to the evidence of texts, and of the primitive times, and secretly desired the reformation of the church.”

This reformation was attempted by Leo III., surnamed Iconoclast, who ascended the throne of the Eastern Third, A. D. 726. After ten years, he proscribed the existence, as well as the use of religious pictures; the church-bazaars of Constantinople were cleansed from idolatry; the images of Christ, “the Virgin, and the saints,” were demolished, or a smooth surface of plaster was spread over the walls of the edifice. For these things, Leo the Isaurian, and his party, were styled Iconoclasts, or Image breakers; by whom under six emperors, the East and West were involved in a noisy conflict of one hundred and twenty years. They held a synod in Constantinople, A. D. 754, which, after a session of six months, decreed, that all visible symbols of Christ, except in the eucharist, were either blasphemous or heretical; that image-worship was a corruption of christianity and a renewal of paganism; that all such monuments of idolatry should be broken or erased; and that those who should refuse to deliver the objects of their private superstition were guilty of disobedience to the authority of the church and of the emperor.

The execution of the imperial edict was resisted by frequent tumults in Constantinople and the provinces; the person of Leo was endangered, his officers were massacred, and the popular enthusiasm was quelled by the strongest efforts of the civil and military power. Of the Archipelago, or Holy Sea, the numerous islands were filled with images and monks; and their votaries abjured the emperor, without scruple, as the enemy of Christ, his mother, and the saints. They sallied forth in armed boats and galleys against the capital, depending upon the succor of a miracle for success. But monkish miracles were inefficient against Greek fire, which wrapped their fleet in a sheet of flame, and gave victory to the image breakers; who forthwith suppressed the monks, ever the faithful slaves of the superstition to which they owed their riches and influence; dissolved their fraternities; converted their monasteries into magazines, or barracks; and confiscated their lands, movables, and cattle, to the use of the state. With the habit and profession of monks, the public and private worship of images was rigorously proscribed; and a solemn abjuration of idolatry was exacted from the clergy of the Eastern Third of the Roman orb.

The patient east abjured, with reluctance, her sacred images; p. 503 while they were fondly cherished, and vigorously defended, by the Italians. Their popes were the chief advocates of “the dæmonials and idols.” It is agreed, that in the eighth century, their dominion was founded on rebellion, and that the rebellion was produced and justified by the heresy of the Iconoclasts. In the epistle of Pope Gregory II. to the Emperor Leo, A. D. 727, he says: “You now accuse the catholics of idolatry; and by the accusation you betray your own impiety and ignorance. To this ignorance we are compelled to adapt the grossness of our style and arguments: the first elements of holy letters are sufficient for your confusion; and were you to enter a grammar school, and avow yourself the enemy of our worship, the simple and pious children would be provoked to cast their horn books at your head.” After this very episcopal salutation, he maintains a distinction between the idols of antiquity and the catholic images. The former were the fanciful representations of phantoms or dæmons; while the latter are the genuine forms of Christ, his mother, and his saints, who had approved by a crowd of miracles the innocence and merit of this relative worship; and falsely asserts the perpetual use of images from the apostolic age. Then addressing Leo, he continues: “You assault us, O Tyrant! with a carnal and military hand; unarmed and naked, we can only implore the Christ, the prince of the heavenly host, that he will send unto you a devil, for the destruction of your body and the salvation of your soul. You declare with foolish arrogance, I will despatch my orders to Rome, I will break in pieces the image of St. Peter; and Gregory, like his predecessor Martin, shall be transported in chains, and in exile, to the foot of the imperial throne. Incapable as you are of defending your Roman subjects, the maritime situation of the city may perhaps expose it to your depredations; but we can remove to the distance of four and twenty stadia, to the first fortress of the Lombards, and then—you may pursue the winds. Are you ignorant that the popes are the bond of union, the mediators of peace(δαιμονες dæmons, in the sense of ch. xviii. 2), between the east and west? The eyes of the nations are fixed on our humility (“pride that apes humility”); and they revere, as a God upon earth, the apostle Saint Peter, whose image you threaten to destroy. The barbarians have submitted to the yoke of the gospel, while you alone are deaf to the voice of the Shepherd. These pious barbarians are kindled into rage: they thirst to avenge the persecution of the east. Abandon your rash and fatal enterprise; reflect, tremble, and repent. If you persist, we are innocent of the blood that will be spilt in the contest; may it fall on your own head.”

p. 504 When Leo’s proscriptive edict arrived in Italy, the catholics trembled for their domestic deities; the images of Christ and the Virgin, of the angels, martyrs, and saints, were abolished in all the church-bazaars of the country; and a strong alternative was proposed to the pope, the imperial favor of the Dragon Chief as the price of compliance, or degradation and exile as the penalty of disobedience. Gregory refused to submit, and gave the signal of revolt. The Italians swore to live and die in the defence of the pope, and the holy images. They destroyed the statues of Leo, withheld the tribute of Italy, and put to an ignominious death the officials who undertook to enforce his decree. To punish these flagitious deeds, and to restore the dominion of the Dragon in Italy, Leo sent a fleet and army into the Adriatic gulf. In a hard fought day, the invaders were defeated, and the worship of images vindicated in a baptism of blood. Amidst the triumph of the idolators, their Chief Pontiff, with the consent of a synod hastily convened, pronounced a general excommunication against all who by word or deed should attack the traditions of the fathers and the images of the saints. They spared, however, the relics of the Byzantine dominion. They delayed and prevented the election of a new emperor, and exhorted the Italians not to separate from the body of the Roman monarchy: and till the imperial coronation of Charlemagne, A. D. 799, the government of Rome and Italy was administered in the name of the successors of Constantine.

While the popes established in Italy their freedom and dominion, the images, the first cause of their revolt, were restored in the eastern empire. The tree of superstition had been hewn down, but the stump was still enrooted in the soil. The idols were secretly cherished by the monks and women, whose fond alliance obtained a final victory over the reason and authority of man. The ambitious empress Irene, A. D. 780, undertook the ruin of the Iconoclasts. In her restoration of the monks, a thousand images were exposed to the public veneration; and a thousand lying legends invented of their sufferings and miracles. The seventh general council was convened at Nice, A. D. 787. The legates of the Roman God, and the eastern patriarch, sat in the synod of three hundred and fifty bishops, who unanimously decreed, that the worship of images is agreeable to scripture and reason, to the fathers and council of the church. The acts of this council are still extant; a curious monument of superstition and ignorance, of falsehood and folly. The comparative merit of image worship and morality in the judgment of these bishops, is illustrated by the following anecdote. A monk p. 505 had concluded a truce with the dæmon of fornication on condition of interrupting his daily prayers to a picture that hung in his cell. His scruples prompted him to consult the Abbot, “Rather than abstain from adoring Christ and his Mother in their holy images, it would be better for you,” said he, “to enter every brothel, and visit every prostitute in the city.”

The final victory of “the dæmonials and idols” was achieved by a second female, the empress Theodora, who was left guardian of the empire A. D. 842. Her measures were bold and decisive. She ordered the Iconoclast patriarch to be whipped with two hundred lashes. Upon this the bishops trembled, the monks shouted, and idolatry reigned supreme. The churches of France, Germany, England, and Spain, steered a middle course between the adoration and the destruction of the idols, which they admitted into their temples, not as objects of worship, but as lively and useful memorials of faith and history. Among the barbarians of the west the worship of idols advanced with silent and insensible progress, because among them were “nourished the Woman and the Remnant of her seed”—ch. xii. 14-17; but a large atonement is made for their hesitation and delay, by the gross idolatry of the ages which precede the protestant modification of Romanism, and of the countries, both in Europe and America, which are still immersed in the gloom of dæmonial superstition.

Thus, having become inveterate idolators “the inhabitants of the earth” were given over to their delusions, and nothing remained but to inflict upon them the sanguinary judgments of the three woes, or fifth, sixth, and seventh trumpets. As I have said, the second woe ended in A. D. 1794; and since then, the third woe has been doing its work upon the dæmonialists and image worshippers of the European and American sections of the globe. Its judgments have not yet ceased; for “the rest of the men” have “not changed from the works of their hands, that they should not worship the dæmonials and idols;” nor have they of the “religious world” abandoned murder, sorcery, fornication, and theft. Therefore the judgments of the third woe will not cease, until all the catholic, protestant, and sectarian systems of Dæmonialism shall be destroyed; and Yahweh be alone exalted as Elohim and King over all the earth in a peaceful and glorious reign of one thousand years—ch. v. 10; xx. 4, 6.

p. 506II.—Historical Exposition

As we have seen, the two periods of five symbolic months of years pertaining to the fifth trumpet, terminated with the divesting of the Caliph-Angel of the Abyss of all temporal power, which had enabled him to “torment” and “injure,” or destroy, the catholic worshippers of the dæmonials and idols, for 300 years. Since that notable event, A. D. 933, their superstition and demoralization continued to intensify to the full establishment of what the moderns, in the plenitude of their own conceited wisdom, term “the dark ages.” Dark enough they were; nevertheless there were more in those ages than in this, who were scripturally enlightened in “the truth as it is in Jesus.” These were “the golden altar,” “the altar” of sacrifice, and “the holy city trodden under foot of the Gentiles”—ch. xi. 1, 2; in other words less highly figurative, “the Woman in the Wilderness” and the remnant of her seed, who keep the commandments of the Deity, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ”—ch. xii 6, 17.

Parallel with the ascendancy of the Caliph-Angel of the Abyss, and far transcending the epoch of his loss of temporal power; that is, from A. D. 660 to A. D. 1200, the Woman’s Seed, under the tolerating government of the Arabs, and under the cruelly persecuting rule, both of the image-worshipping and Iconoclastic Greeks, was exceedingly active in opposing the superstition of the catholics of the Eastern Third. We shall have to speak of these more particularly in the exposition of the eleventh chapter; I need therefore only say here, that, while their labors were beneficial to individuals in regard to their eternal salvation, and as a protest against iniquity, it worked no change in the public conscience. The one hundred and thirty years that intervened between the Caliph-Angel’s loss of temporal power, and the loosing of the first of the four angel-powers from its Euphratean boundary, were a period of supine superstition. Indeed, not only for this period, but “from the beginning of the eighth century,” says Gibbon, “to the last ages of the Byzantine empire, the sound of controversy was seldom heard; curiosity was exhausted, zeal was fatigued, and in the decrees of six councils, the articles of the catholic faith had been irrevocably defined; and the prostrate Greeks were content to fast, to pray, and to believe, in blind obedience to the patriarch and his clergy. During a long dream of superstition, the Virgin and the Saints, their visions and miracles, their relics and images, were preached by p. 507 the monks and worshipped by the people, including the first ranks of civil society.” The Iconoclasts somewhat rudely disturbed this dream; but the Eastern World embraced or deplored its visible deities, and the restoration of images was celebrated as the feast of orthodoxy. In this passive and unanimous state, the ecclesiastical rulers were relieved from the toil, or deprived of the pleasure of persecution. The old pagans had been superseded by the new; the Jews were silent and obscure; the disputes with the Latins were rare and remote hostilities; and the sects of Egypt and Syria enjoyed a free toleration under the shadow of the Arabian Caliphs. One enemy alone remained to disturb their spiritual slumbers; and these were the Altar-Worshippers of the apocalypse, whom they selected as the victims of diabolical tyranny: “the earth” that “helped” them (ch. xii. 16) was at length exasperated to rebellion; and the exile into which they were driven, scattered over the west fresh seeds of antagonism to the Papal Power, styled “the Beast and his Image”—ch. xiii.

What, then, could be done with such an incorrigible generation of dæmonial and idol-worshippers, but to prepare powers, which, when loosed against them, should proclaim idolatry a sin punishable with slavery or death? This was the course of the Eternal Spirit, as revealed in the vision of the second woe. The Euphratean Powers were prepared powers—powers prepared for a special mission, and therefore “angels” or messengers; and messengers are so called, because they are sent to perform, or execute missions. The mission of these Euphrateans was to make war upon idolatry with sword and gun, until the dominion of the Eastern Dragonic Third should be transferred to the Conqueror; and so, in relation to the dæmonial and idol-worshipping community, to all intents and purposes, “killed.” In the order, then, of things presented to our hand, I shall proceed to relate the