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"The riders on the horses represent, not so much any particular persons, as rather events, that should take place in the four regions of the Roman empire, rapidly succeed each other, and occupy but a short period. The first of them points at the victories of Trajan, subduing Arabia Petræa, Armenia, Assyria, and Mesopotamia; and attracting embassies even from India, to respect the Roman conqueror. The second intimates the sanguinary war carried on in Dacia, against Decebalus; the third, the Egyptian scarcity; and the fourth, the earthquakes, inundations, pestilence, and conflagrations, by which, from the time of Trajan, multitudes of the human race, within the Roman empire, were swept away. What was fulfilled, under these four seals, all within the few first years after St. John wrote, served to establish the credibility of the whole prophecy, by giving a fourfold proof that all was under the dominion of Christ, and that he was fully able to dispose the future after his own counsel, agreeably to what he had here foretold. The three last seals relate to the invisible world, which is equally under the government of Christ. First, and under the fifth seal, appear the martyrs, who had lost their lives by the persecutions that raged under the Roman emperors. Their cries for vengeance import, that Rome had not, under the four first seals, suffered any peculiar trouble. They are directed to wait till the other martyrs shall have been added to their number. In the middle ages, the church had rest from persecution; but towards their close, the popes, who now occupied the place of the Cæsars, began those persecutions of faithful Christians, which they have ever since abetted, and will continue to do till their city has filled up the measure of her iniquity. Under the sixth seal, appear the departed souls of the wicked, awaiting in terror the day of judgment. Preparatory to the grand sequel, the 144,000 of Israel next appear; and after this, an innumerable company of all nations and kindreds and people and tongues, who should be delivered out of the great tribulation' and temptations that would commence soon after the date of the Apocalypse. Hereby is intimation given, that even in the most distracted and troublous times, the Lord will preserve a people to himself in all quarters of the earth! The sealing of the elect, in chapter the seventh, may be regarded as preparatory to the all-important seventh seal (under which the representatives of the invisible world, and especially angels, are again set forth); so likewise the holy silence in heaven,' recorded in chapter the eighth, which, as it seemed to John, lasted about

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half an hour, may be considered as more specially preparatory to that important period. The angels now make ready for the full execution of the great commissions given them, which they then execute singly and successively. The trumpet of the first angel, (ch. viii. 7,) relates to the Asiatic' earth,' and denotes the dreadfully raging rebellions of the Jews, which commenced in the reign of Trajan, but were chiefly carried on in the reigns of his successors; and in particular, the rebellions conducted by the false Christ, Bar-cochab. The second (ch. viii. 8,) relates to Europe; which from Patmos would appear encompassed by the sea;' and announces the irruptions of the Goths, and other barbarous nations, into the Roman empire. The third (ch. viii. 10,) relates to the Arian heresy, the founder of which fell from' the 'heaven' of the church, when he diffused his blasphemous doctrine amongst a great multitude of adherents, particularly in Africa (the land of torrents and inundations,) and hereby occasioned many sanguinary conflicts. The fourth (ch. viii. 12,) comprises the then known world, and signifies the disruption of the old Roman empire, which, a. D. 395, was divided between Arcadius and Honorius, and which Alaric, Attila, Genseric, and Odoacer ravaged, one after another. By the woe crying eagle are the seven trumpets divided, as by a break, into four and three, like the former partition of the seals. The eagle's triple woe is coincident with a period about A. D. 500; when Andreas Cæsariensis in Asia, Primasius in Africa, Apringius in Spain, and Cassiodorus in Italy, wrote much upon the Apocalypse. With this triple woe is next contrasted the everlasting gospel, as signifying, that the triple woe, in announcing temporal plagues, intimated also great mischief to souls. The fifth trumpet (ch. ix. 3,) relates to the blind zeal of the Parsees for their own eclipsed and darkened philosophy, which instigated them to raise a very severe persecution against the Jews, that continued seventy-nine years. This was also the first woe, and was stirred up by the destroyer out of the bottomless pit, who afterwards rises up as the Antichrist. The twelfth verse intimates a state of respite, or comparative quietness between the first and the second woe. This respite lasted fortyfive years after the twentieth of Mahomet. During that period, the whole Saracenic woe, and the Popish, in part, were already in a state of preparation. The sixth trumpet announces the Saracenic slaughter, as now commenced, under the caliphs Abubeker, Omar, Osman, and Ali. It began upon a small scale, but grew more and more terrible, till it was broken up, a. D. 847,

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before the city of Rome. By this plague were the nations of Christendom chastised, especially for the image worship (ver. 20,) which had leavened nearly the whole mass, and which such severe chastisement did not prevail with them to abandon, for they continue it even down to the days of the two witnesses. In ch. x. an angel stands up, who solemnly swears, that although the three foes of Christianity, Satan, who is now thrust down to the earth, the Beast, that rises up out of the sea, and the other Beast, that arises out of the earth,-will now bring on the third woe, yet no further period of 1111 years should elapse, before the finishing of the mystery of God, the consummation so often foretold by his servants, the prophets of the Old Testament, and which was to take place under the trumpet of the seventh angel, now just at hand, (ch. x. 7.) But before the consummation, a series of many kings (ch. x. 11,) was to arise, the most important of whom is the Germanic Roman emperor; consequently this 'non-chronus,' no period, or time no longer,' commences A. D. 800, with the establishment of his imperial power, under Charlemagne. This power (together with the other kingdoms formed about the same period, as that of France, A. D. 752, that of the Roman ecclesiastical state, A. D. 755, that of England, A. D. 819, &c.) comes to its dissolution before the end of the non-chronus (in 1836,) preparatory to which, the imperial, and these regal powers, will have undergone great transformations. Here, by the way, we see refuted those interpreters who restrict the fulfilment of nearly all the Apocalypse to a few of the years of Antichrist. That the eleventh chapter pertains to a later period than the order of the book would seem to intimate, is evident from the seventh verse. We therefore waive for the present the particular matter of this chapter. By its fourteenth verse it connects itself with the twelfth verse of the ninth, and with the eleventh verse of the tenth; agreeably to the positive assurance which had been given, that Jerusalem would become converted (to God and to his Christ.) After the Saracen arms had encountered violent opposition, especially from the Germanic empire, during the hundred years' respite, which was to succeed to the second woe, then the third woe breaks out rapidly. At the trumpet of the seventh angel is heard (ch. xi. 17,) the hymn of praise sung by those in heaven, in reference to the scope and end of the tribulation, which at this period is coming upon the earth. Then a new scene of a very important kind is disclosed. First, there appears (ch. xii. 1,) the woman clothed with the sun, that

is, the church of God and of his Christ, as originally and principally from Israel, but now from the Gentiles also, formed, planted, edified, spread abroad, and maintained toward the east and west, and such as it shall much more appear hereafter, especially when the natural branches' shall have been grafted in again upon their own olive tree. Here, therefore, she is represented in the glorious attire in which she shall come forth out of the wilderness, when a christian government of the world ('the sun,') the Mohammedan power (the moon,') and Israel (the twelve stars,) shall constitute her adorning. Her being with child,' denotes, that in the age of Charlemagne commenced a kind of foreshowing that all nations will become her inheritance; and her 'crying,' intimates the waiting and painful longing of the saints, that the kingdom of God might be speedily accomplished. But against this accomplishment, which now seems quite near, a great red dragon with seven heads, ten horns, and seven diadems, sets himself in violent opposition. Hereby is represented the devil in all his wrath and power. His drawing after him the third part of the stars, intimates the apostasy of multitudes of teachers from the true faith. This apostasy took place in the years 847-947, when the Manichean heresy, and profligacy with it, wrought dire mischief to the church. The man-child is a figure of Christ's kingly dominion; hence its birth is here implied to be an event invisible; and its being caught up to God, signifies that Christ's kingly dominion in the period of the seventh trumpet is a thing at present hidden from the world. The flight into the wilderness refers to the transition of Christianity from Asia to Europe, especially to its northern parts, which till that period had been a spiritual wilderness, in comparison of countries that were included in the Roman empire, and which had long since received the gospel; for Christianity, at the very period of its suppression in the East, began its progress in Germany, Hungary, Bohemia, Poland, Russia, Sweden, and Denmark, by the labours of Ansgarius, Cyril, Methodius, and Herbertus, in the ninth century. This was the 'preparing of a place appointed for' the woman; and the preparation became completed in Bohemia, the more special place of her refuge, in the year 940, when Duke Boleslaus, at the urgent desire of Otho the Great, obliged his princes to receive christian instruction. Christianity in these countries required at first the immediate fostering care of their princes; it was 'nourished' by them, and continued to be so, during twelve hundred and sixty prophetic days, from

A. D. 940 to A. D. 1617, but was gradually passing in the mean time into another condition. The most helpless period of the woman was from A. D. 940 to a. D. 1058; then began the time, times, and half a time, (or 3 times,) during which, from A. D. 1058 to A. D. 1617, the woman was at first partly to 'nourish' herself, and partly to be 'nourished' (by others;) but was afterwards herself to be the NOURISHER, from A. D. 1617 to A. D. 1836. Within the second of these three periods, from A. D. 1058 to A. D. 1617, we find the revival of learning, the invention of the art of printing, the Hussites, and the Reformation; and in the third (from A. D. 1617 to A. D. 1836,) we have pietism, protestant Bible societies and missions, and a beneficial energy extending itself to foreign and far distant countries.

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"The water as a flood,' (ch. xii. 15,) which the great serpent cast out of his mouth after the woman,' represents the Turkish power that in the Asiatic earth' received its check and limitation by the crusades and subsequent events; and that was to be further checked and limited in the last half period between 1725 and 1836, chiefly from Russia and Persia; and at length to be entirely evaporated by the Divine judgments. The persecution, in ver. 13, relates to the oppressive vexations which those who had embraced Christianity in the north (of Europe) should suffer from their pagan countrymen. The Great Serpent himself,namely, Satan, who, though despoiled of his original glory, had kept till then his place in heaven' as the accuser of the saints,— was now, after his conflict with Michael, cast down to the earth, where he is to practise for a short time,' 888 years. That to the woman were given for her flight two wings of an eagle, denotes, that her flight was to take place in a period during which the Eastern Roman empire was standing. What is said in the seventeenth verse, refers to Christians concealed in various parts, especially in the East, who, though much oppressed for a time by infidel rulers, are by and by to grow into considerable importance.

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"The Beast, which appears in ch. xiii., has a twofold rise; first out of the sea; then out of the bottomless pit. In the former he makes things evil and troublous; but his time for doing it is short. He is a secular power with spiritual pretensions, and arises not very long after the termination of the second woe; but his second and last form, which is out of the bottomless pit, will survive the desolation of the great city of seven hills. He is evidently the Papal Hierarchy, which commenced principally with

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