said unto his disciples, casting devils out of the bodies of men, Luke x. 18. 'I beheld Satan, as lightning, fall from heaven.' In the same figure Satan fell from heaven, and was cast out into the earth,' when he was thrust out of the imperial throne, and his angels were cast out with him,' not only all the heathen priests and officers, civil and military, were cashiered, but their very gods and demons, who before were adored for their divinity, became the subjects of contempt and execration. It is very remarkable, that Constantine himself and the Christians of his time, describe his conquests under the same image, as if they had understood that this prophecy had received its accomplishment in him. Constantine himself, in his epistle to Eusebius and other bishops, concerning the re-edifying and repairing of churches, saith, that liberty being now restored, and that dragon being removed from the administration of public affairs, by the providence of the great God, and by my ministry, I esteem the great power of God to have been made manifest even to all.' Moreover, a picture of Constantine was set up over the palace gate, with the cross over his head, and under his feet the great enemy of mankind, who persecuted the church by the means of impious tyrants, in the form of a dragon, transfixed with a dart through the midst of his body, and falling headlong into the depth of the sea: in allusion, it is said expressly, to the divine oracles in the books of the prophets, where that evil spirit is called the dragon and the crooked serpent. Upon this victory of the church, there is introduced, v. 10. a triumphant hymn of thanksgiving for the depression of idolatry, and

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exaltation of true religion: for now it was no longer in the power of the heathen persecutors, as Satan accused holy Job before God, to accuse the innocent Christians before the Roman governors, as the perpetrators of all crimes, and the causers of all calamities. It was not by temporal means of arms that the Christians obtained this victory, ver. 11. but by spiritual, by the merits and death of their Redeemer, by their constant profession of the truth, and by their patient suffering of all kinds of tortures even unto death: and the blood of the martyrs hath been often called the seed of the church.-This victory was indeed, ver. 12. matter of joy and triumph to the blessed angels and glorified saints in heaven, by whose sufferings it was in great measure obtained; but still new woes are threatened to the inhabiters of the earth;' for though the dragon was deposed, yet was he not destroyed; though idolatry was depressed, yet was it not wholly suppressed; there were still many Pagans intermixed with the Christians, and the devil would incite fresh troubles and disturbances on earth, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time,' it would not be long before the Pagan religion should be totally abolished, and the Christian religion prevail in all the Roman empire.

When the dragon was thus deposed from the imperial throne, and cast unto the earth,' ver. 13. he still continued to persecute the church with equal malice, though not with equal power. He made several attempts to restore the Pagan idolatry in the reign of Constantine, and afterwards in the reign of Julian; he traduced and abused the Christian religion

by such writers as Hierocles, Libanius, Eunapius, and others of the same stamp and character; he rent and troubled the church with heresies and schisms; he stirred up the favourers of the Arians, and especially the kings of the Vandals in Africa, to persecute and destroy the orthodox Christians. These things, as Eusebius saith upon one of these occasions, some malicious and wicked demon, envying the prosperity of the church, effected. But the church was still under the protection of the empire, ver. 14. and to the woman were given two wings of a great eagle.' As God said to the children of Israel, Exod. xix. 4. 'Ye have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I bare you on eagles' wings, and brought you unto myself;' so the church was supported and carried as it were on eagles' wings: but the similitude is the more proper in this case, an eagle being the Roman ensign, and the two wings alluding probably to the division that was then made of the eastern and the western empire. In this manner was the church protected, and these wings were given, that she might fly into the wilderness,' into a place of retirement and security, 'from the face of the serpent.' Not that she fled into the wilderness at that time, but several years afterwards; and there she is nourished for a time, and times, and half a time,' that is, three prophetic years and a half, which is the same period with the thousand two hundred and threescore days,' or years before mentioned. So long the church is to remain in a desolate and afflicted state, during the reign of Antichrist; as Elijah, 1 Kings xvii. xviii. Luke iv. 25, 26. while idolatry and famine prevailed in Israel, was

secretly fed and nourished three years and six months in the wilderness. But before the woman fled into the wilderness, the serpent cast out of his mouth water as a flood,' ver. 15. with intent to wash her away. Waters, in the style of the Apocalypse, xvii. 16. signify peoples and nations; so that here was a great inundation of various nations, excited by the dragon or the friends and patrons of the old idolatry, to oppress and overwhelm the Christian religion. Such appeared plainly to have been the design of the dragon, when Stilicho, prime minister of the emperor Honorius, first invited the barbarous heathen nations, the Goths, Alans, Sueves, and Vandals, to invade the Roman empire, hoping by their means to raise his son Eucherius to the throne, who from a boy was an enemy to the Christians, and threatened to signalize the beginning of his reign with the restoration of the Pagan, and abolition of the Christian religion. Nothing indeed was more likely to produce the ruin and utter subversion of the Christian church, than the irruptions of so many barbarous heathen nations into the Roman empire. But the event proved contrary to human appearance and expectation; the earth swallowed up the flood;' ver. 16. the Barbarians were rather swallowed up by the Romans, than the Romans by the Barbarians; the Heathen conquerors, instead of imposing their own, submitted to the religion of the conquered Christians; and they not only embraced the religion, but affected even the laws, the manners, the customs, the language, and the very name of Romans, so that the victors were in a manner absorbed and lost among the vanquished. This course not

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succeeding according to probable expectation, the dragon did not therefore desist from his purpose, ver. 17. but only took another method of persecuting the true sons of the church, as we shall see in the next chapter. It is said that he went to make war with the remnant of her seed, who kept the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus,' which implies, that at this time there was only a remnant, that corruptions were greatly increased, and the faithful were diminished from among the children of men.'

CHAPTER XIII.

Here the beast' is described at large, who was only mentioned before: xi. 7. and a beast in the prophetic style is a tyrannical idolatrous empire. The kingdom of God and of Christ is never represented under the image of a beast. As Daniel, vii. 2, 3. beheld four great beasts,' representing the four great empires, come up from' a stormy sea, that is from the commotions of the world. So St. John, ver. 1. saw this beast in like manner rise up out of the sea.' He was said before, xi. 7. to ascend ek tes abyssou, out of the abyss or bottomless pit;' and it is said afterwards, xvii. 8. that he shall ascend ek tes abyssou, out of the abyss or bottomless pit;' and here he is said to ascend ek tes thalasses, out of the sea;' so that the sea and abyss or bottomless pit,' are in these passages the same. No doubt is to be made, that this beast was designed to represent the Roman empire; for thus far both ancients and mo

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