CHAPTER III.

FOREWARNINGS OF COMING WOE.

"And I beheld, and heard an angel' flying through the midst of heaven; and saying with a loud voice, Woe, Woe, Woe, to the inhabitants of the earth, by reason of the other voices of the trumpets of the three angels which are yet to sound!" Apoc. viii. 13.

This vision, occurring as it does between the fourth Trumpet-vision and the fifth, corresponds with that period of time which intervened between the extinction of the last rays of the old government at Rome, and the rise of Mahomet and the Saracens :-an interval of some 40 or 45 years, which we may date from Justinian's death, or the Lombards' establishment in Italy, A. D. 565 and 570; and which was chiefly memorable in Rome and Roman Christendom from the Pontificate which closed it, of Pope Gregory the Great. It is a period of transition from what we may designate as the ancient, to the more modern division of Roman history; and this both as regards the West and the East. As such it is notable, and indeed noted by historians.3 With regard to the vision before us, it is to be ob

1 Griesbach reads aers instead of ayyeλs, an eagle instead of an angel. And the external evidence of Manuscripts is decidedly in favour of his reading. On the other hand the internal evidence of Scriptural analogy, with which Griesbach did not concern himself, is as decidedly,—indeed, as it seems to me, even more so, against it. For no where in the Apocalypse is the proclaiming function assigned to a bird, or indeed to any being but an angel or the divine Spirit. We may compare chap. xix. 17, and xiv. 6, 8, 9. In the first of these passages a proclamation is made not by, but to, the fowls that fly in mid-heaven: and for what? to fulfil their proper functions of devouring flesh. In the second the proclaiming agents in mid-heaven are thus described: "I saw an angel flying in midheaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach, and crying," &c.: "And another angel followed, saying:" &c.-I therefore do not hesitate to retain our translator's reading ayyeλs.

2 Pope from A. D. 590 to 604.

3 So Hallam, with reference to the Eastern empire. "The appearance of Mahomet, and conquests of his disciples, present an epoch in the history of Asia even more important and definite than the subversion of the Roman empire in Europe. Hence the boundary line between the ancient and modern divisions of Byzantine history will intersect the reign of Heraclius." Middle Ages, i. 162.

served, that the warning-cry of the coming woe was made not by an angel in the inner temple,—the councilchamber of the Eternal One, but by an angel flying through the midst of heaven. Hence we may infer, I conceive, agreeably with the analogy of other such Apocalyptic visions, that it was not a mere private intimation to the evangelist of what yet remained to be foreshown respecting the coming future, but signified that which would have its fulfilment in some forewarning signs in real life, publicly observed by men at the time prefigured: -just, for example, as the very parallel proclaiming cry of the angel that appeared afterwards flying in mid-heaven,' may be shown to have had facts clearly answering to it in the correspondent historic æra.-So that we must not be satisfied to pass onward, without looking into the history of the times here referred to, and seeing whether there was in them any thing, and what, that might be regarded as a warning-voice of calamities impending :a warning-voice audible, and fit to strike upon the minds of men, throughout the length and breath of that which, from the professed christianization of the Romano-Gothic kingdoms, might in regard of the West, as well as East, be still called Roman Christendom.

Nor, as it seems to me, does it need more, in order to our perceiving the thing we seek for, than that we should throw ourselves, as it were, into the times spoken of; and identify our thoughts and our sympathies, for the moment, with those of the age.-I purpose, in what follows, to speak of the signs of the times, 1st, as they might strike foreboding and fear into the minds of reflective men generally: 2ndly, as they might affect the minds more particularly of the discerning among God's true servants; men such as St. John himself specially represented, that had the seal of God on their foreheads, and whose judgments of things were formed by the rule of God's written word.

I. And let me begin with observing on the solemnity

of the æra, and the solemn prognostications connected with it, from its following immediately on the close of that mighty revolution, the fall of Rome's ancient empire. -Escaped from so terrible a wreck, it might have been natural perhaps for the survivors, independent of any peculiar causes of apprehension, to look with awe into a dark and uncertain future. ' But to regard it in this point of view merely, will be altogether to underrate the awfulness of the crisis. The reader has already seen how, on the sure warrant of Scripture, the destruction of the Roman empire had been all along looked forward to by the early church as an event fraught with consequences most peculiar and most awful. He will not have forgotten the predictions of Antichrist as to come; -how his manifestation was understood to be connected with the dissolution of the Roman empire, its dissolution into ten kingdoms; and that persecutions, calamities, and judgments very fearful were to follow, and after them the end of the world. He will remember how the fathers of the second, and then those of the third century, construed the KaTeXO of St. Paul,-the let and hindrance to Antichrist's manifestation,-as the then existing empire of Rome; 2 and the intense interest, consequently, with which its continuance was regarded by them, the alarm with which its apprehended fall. "We pray for the emperors and the empire of Rome," said Tertullian, in a passage already in part quoted; "for we know that convulsions and calamities threatening the whole world, and the end of the world itself, are kept back by the intervention of the Roman empire." And so again, just after the termination of the third century, Lactantius: "The fact itself plainly assures us that things will ere long totter and fall. Only while the city of Rome is safe, there seems reason not to appre

'3

1 So Dupin, v. 123, in speaking of the apprehensions of some at the time referred to says; "Whenever there have been great revolutions, Christians have easily persuaded themselves that the end of the world was approaching."

2 See pp. 204, 205; where Justin Martyr, Irenæus, Tertullian, and Hippolytus are quoted to this effect.

hend it. For that is the state which as yet props up all things."-The same conviction continued afterwards through the fourth century, as we learn from the consenting statements of the Latin fathers and the Greek, -of Cyril and Chrysostom, Ambrose and Jerome : 3

1 Div. Inst. vii. 25; quoted more fully p. 209 Note 1, suprà.

2 That is, if we may reckon on the Comment on the Epistles given under Ambrose's 's name, but which is rather the comment (in part at least) of a cotemporary of Ambrose, perhaps Hilary of Rome, (see the Benedictine notice) as fairly representing his opinions. See the next Note.

3 It will be useful on more than one account, as well as interesting to the reader, to subjoin a somewhat copious abstract of the opinions of these eminent fathers of the fourth century on the great cognate prophecies respecting the Antichrist, of Daniel, St. Paul and the Apocalypse, involving the point alluded to. It will be a sequel to that given at pp. 204, 205 of the sentiments of the earlier fathers, Justin Martyr, Irenæus, Tertullian, Hippolytus, Cyprian.

1. Cyril; ordained Bishop of Jerusalem, A.D. 350, died 386.

He, like the Fathers before him, explained the four wild Beasts of Dan. vii to be the Babylonian, Persian, Macedonian and Roman empires, and identified the fourth Beast's little horn with St. Paul's Man of Sin, and St. John's Antichrist :further he judged that the time of his coming was to be when the times of the then Roman empire were fulfilled, (όταν πληρωθωσιν οἱ καιροι των Ρωμαίων, Baoiλeias,) and it was dissolved into ten kingdoms, kingdoms rising up cotemporaneously, but in different places; that then Antichrist (“some great man raised up by the devil") falsely calling himself the Christ, and so seducing the Jews, would by magical arts and false miracles seize on and usurp the power of the Roman empire, eradicate three of the ten kings, and subjugate the other seven: -that at first mild in semblance, and prudent, and the abolisher of idols, (all with a view to self-exaltation) he would afterwards show himself as God, sitting in the Jewish temple, (" for God forbid it should be that in which we are ;") and for three years and a half persecute the Church :-finally that the apostacy St. Paul spoke of as Antichrist's precursor, meant a religious apostacy, "from the right faith, from truth, and from good works." (So Catech. xv.)

2. Ambrose; ordained Bishop of Milan A.D. 374, died 398.

The only prophetical notices on the point proposed in the genuine writings of this father, are those in his Comment on Luke xxi. 20; Book x, § 15-18. He there (like Cyril) explains the apostacy of St. Paul to mean an apostacy from true religion: (à verâ religione plerique lapsi errore desciscent: ")-that it would be the Jewish inner or mental temple in which Antichrist would sit; and that then, seizing on the kingdom, (I presume the Roman kingdom or supremacy,) he would claim for himself a throne of divine authority: " sibi divinæ vindicet solium potestatis."

In the Comment on 2 Thess. ii. of the Pseudo-Ambrose, the hindrance to Antichrist's manifestation is explained to be the Roman empire; its defection (awosaσia) or abolition, being the occasion of his appearance; and that he would then restore freedom to the Romans, " sub suo nomine:"-that the mystery of iniquity spoken of by St. Paul was Nero's persecuting spirit against Christians, which still afterwards had continued to actuate succeeding Pagan emperors down to Diocletian and Julian; finally that he would "in domo Domini in sede sedeat Christi, et ipsum Deum se asserat."

3. Chrysostom; ordained A.D. 380, made Bishop of Constantinople 398, died 407.

He too (on Daniel) expounded Nebuchadnezzar's quadripartite Image, and Daniel's four Beasts, as the other fathers. "The days of those kings," said of the time of the stone being cut out, he explains as the days of the Romans: and that

and solemn thoughts as to the coming future crossed the minds even of the earlier of those fathers, as they

in smiting and destroying the Roman kingdom it would destroy the others too, as included. He says; "As Rome succeeded Greece, so Antichrist is to succeed Rome, and Christ our Saviour Antichrist."-Also in his Hom. iv on 2 Thess. ii, he made the Roman Empire to be the let or hindrance to Antichrist's manifestation meant by St. Paul; (τετ' εσιν ἡ αρχη ἡ Ρωμαική όταν αρθη εκ μέσε τότε εκείvos ne.) and explained the temple in which he would sit, to be rather the Christian churches every where, than the Jewish temple-The mystery of iniquity he thought might be the persecuting spirit already working in Nero in St. Paul's time.

4. Jerome; ordained A.D. 378, died 420.

On Dan. ii. he expounds the gold, silver, brass, and iron of the symbolic Image to be the same four kingdoms as the other fathers: the stone cut out of the mountain without hands being Christ born of a virgin; whose kingdom, upon the destruction of all the other kingdoms, was finally to fill the whole earth. The breaking of the iron legs into ten toes,-part iron, part clay,―he explained of the weakness of the Roman empire at the time he wrote,-about A.D., 407, according to the Benedictines; "Ut in principio nihil durius, ita in fine rerum nihil imbecillius; quando et in bellis civilibus, et adversúm diversas nationes, aliarum gentium barbararum indigemus auxilio."-On Dan. vii he explains the four Beasts of the same four empires; the four heads of the third or Macedonian Beast indicating its subdivisions, on Alexander's death, into the kingdoms of Ptolemy, Seleucus, Philip, Antigonus. On the divisions of the fourth or Roman he writes; "Ergo dicemus, quod omnes scriptores ecclesiastici tradiderunt, in consummatione mundi, quando regnum destruendum est Romanum, decem futuros reges qui orbem Romanum inter se dividant; et undecimum surrecturum regem parvulum, qui tres reges de decem regibus superaturus sit: quibus interfectis etiam septem alii reges victori colla submittent :"-adding that this eleventh king is to be a man, with Satan's spirit indwelling, the same as St. Paul's man of sin also that the Roman empire is to be finally destroyed on account of this Antichrist's blasphemies, and with it all earthly kingdoms. "Idcirco Romanum delebitur imperium quia cornu illud loquebatur grandia. In uno Romano Imperio, propter Antichristum blasphemantem, omnia simul regna delenda sunt; et nequaquam terrenum imperium erit, sed sanctorum conversatio, et adventus Filii Dei triumphantis."-This was written between 407 and 410 A.D.

Further, on Jer. xxv (written A.D. 416) he explains the let or hindrance in the way of Antichrist's manifestation (2 Thess. ii) to be the then existing Roman empire: "Eum qui tenet Romanum Imperium ostendit: nisi enim hoc destructum fuerit sublatumque de medio, juxtà prophetiam Danielis, Antichristus ante non veniet:" adding that St. Paul did not mention this, for fear of stirring up persecution against the then infant Christian church.-In the Quæstio xi ad Algasiam, he says very similarly as to the let; "Nisi prius Romanum deleatur imperium . . . . nisi fuerit desolatum," that Antichrist would not come he also explains the mystery of iniquity, even then working when St. Paul wrote, to be the evils and sins with which Nero then oppressed the Church, and prepared for Antichrist: the amosaσia, or apostacy, to be a political apostacy or defection of the nations from the Roman empire, "ut omnes gentes quæ Romano Imperio subjacent recedant ab iis; "—that Antichrist's self-exaltation over all that was called god, &c, meant, "ut cunctarum gentium deos, sive probatam omnem et veram religionem, suo calcet pede : " and that the temple he would sit in would not be the temple at Jerusalem, but the church: "in ecclesiâ ut verius arbitramur."-It should be observed in the above that he makes a two-fold destruction of the Roman empire: the one its desolation and dissolution by a breaking up into ten kingdoms, introductory to Antichrist's manifestation; the other its total and final destruction, to take place on account of Antichrist's blasphemies at Christ's coming.