anity in the days of Constantine, the downfall of paganism, and the tranquillity which the Church enjoyed for a season after her manifold troubles and persecutions.* The opening of the seventh seal is the prelude to the disturbing of that tranquillity, the harbinger of the downfall of the Western empire, the herald of the revealing of the man of sin. The year 313 was marked by the famous edict of Constantine in favour of Christianity: in this year therefore the tranquillity of the Church commenced. No great length of time however elapsed before the peace of the Empire began to be broken by the incursions of the northern barbarians about the years 321 and 323. At this period I conceive the seventh seal to have been opened, and the silence of half an hour or rather of half a season to have commenced.† As the seventh seal introduces those first incursions of the Goths that took place after the beginning of the Church's tranquillity, incursions which were easily repelled by the yet vigorous government of the Empire; so the silence seems to denote the state of mute and anxious expectation in which the Church anticipated, as it were, from various less important invasions, the grand irruption of the Gothic monarch Alaric and his associates under the first trumpet. The period then of the half season describes the affairs of the Church and the Empire from about the year 323 to the year 395.

What the Church gained in outward splendor and prosperity under Constantine, she lost in purity of man

* Rev. vi. 12-17. vii. 1—17. See Bp. Newton's Dissert. in loc. I cannot but think however, that his Lordship extends the season of tranquillity, predicted in the seventh chapter, much too far, in supposing it to reach from the reign of Constantine to the death of Theodosius, when the first trumpet began to sound. Such an opinion neither accords with facts, nor with the tenor of the prophecy. If we advert to facts, we shall find, that the peace of the Church began to be disturbed even during the life of Constantine by the heresy of Arius, and afterwards by the apostacy of Julian. If we advert to the prophecy, we shall find, that the scheme in question makes the tranquillity of the sixth seal synchronize for the most part with the silence introduced by the opening of the seventh seal. Now, since the tranquillity is placed under the sixth seal, it is reasonable to suppose that it is considered as terminating, when the seventh seal is opened, which introduces no scenes of peace, but a mute and anxious expectation of the calamities soon about to fall upon the Roman empire under the trumpets. History shews, that this supposition is just; for we can scarcely consider that as a period of much tranquillity to the Church which was at once disturbed by the quarrels of the Consubstantialists and the Arians, the malignity of Julian, and the perpetual incursions of the Goths.

↑ I shall take occasion hereafter to discuss the import of the word hour.

...........

ners and doctrine. The holy simplicity of primitive Christianity was no more, and the heresy of Arius introduced a succession of crimes disgraceful alike to humanity and religion. Accordingly, before the sounding of the trumpets commences, the state of the world at that period is foretold by an emblem most significant of the corruptions then prevailing among Christians. Much incense is offered from a golden censer along with the prayers of the Church, in order to shew how much purification those prayers required ere they were meet to be presented before the throne of grace; and the placing of this circumstance "immediately before the sounding of the trumpets suggests, that the subject of these prayers was the aversion of something to be called for by those trumpets: and what could this be, but that of the destruction of the Roman empire, for the duration of which we know the ancient Christians were wont to pray? It is plainly suggested, that the petition for some delay would be accepted; yet all further applications on that head are discouraged by a most significant emblem, that of the censer being cast away while the filling of it with fire from the altar," the well known symbol of divine wrath, "but too plainly indicates, that the succeeding troubles should at least be forwarded by those who minister at the altar; and the immediate succession of voices, and thunderings, and lightnings, and an earthquake, manifest, that, though the sounding of the trumpets should be deferred, yet some judgments should immediately follow."*

Upon referring to history we find, that the incursions of the northern barbarians gradually became more and more formidable. Between the years 365 and 379, an almost perpetual war was carried on between them and the Romans with various success: and in the last of these years, when the Empire seemed on the point of being completely overrun and dismembered, Gratian associated with himself in the imperial dignity the famous Theodosius. By the successful valour of this warlike prince, the sounding of the first trumpet, and the impending ruin

of the Empire, were delayed for sixteen years: but “ the genius of Rome expired with Theodosius, the last of the successors of Augustus and Constantine, who appeared in the field at the head of their armies, and whose authority was universally acknowledged throughout the whole extent of the Empire."*

"And the seven angels, which had the seven trumpets, prepared themselves to sound."

The four first trumpets describe the removal of that power, which in the days of St. Paul letted or prevented the developement of the man of sin, namely the western imperial dignity of Rome: while the three last, which are awfully styled the three woes, detail the history of the great two-fold Apostacy both in the East and in the West; exhibit the man of sin in the plentitude of his power, upheld by the secular arm, and tyrannizing over the Church of Christ; predict his complete destruction at Armageddon, in the very act of opposing the Almighty conjointly with his temporal colleague the ten-horned beast or revived Roman empire; and finally bring us to the period, when all the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ.

"The first angel sounded: and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth; and the third part of the trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up."

Throughout a great part of the prophecy of the trumpets, the Roman empire is denominated the third part of the whole symbolical universe, as including the third part of the then known world, and as being seated principally in Europe which at that time was accounted the third part of the world.† Hail and lightning mingled with blood denote a tremendous tempest of desolating war and foreign invasion. The storm therefore, which is here

* Hist. of Decline, Vol. v. p. 137.

See Bp. Newton's Dissert. on Rev. viii. and Waple and Whiston in loc. Mr. Bicheno conjectures, that the expression the third part, which occurs so frequently in this portion of the Apocalypse, is used in allusion to the three_prefectures of the Roman empire. History however will not bear him out. We do not find, that one particular prefecture was affected exclusively by the blast of one particular trumpet, which the adoption of such a scheme necessarily requires: on the contrary, the miseries introduced by at least the first trumpet extended more or less to all the three prefectures. Signs of the times, Part iii, p. 153.

represented as falling upon the earth or Roman empire, typifies that grand compound irruption of the barbarous northern nations, from the effects of which the Roman empire never recovered itself, as it had done from those of the foregoing irruptions. In the natural world a storm is frequently preceded by a calm hence in the figurative world the great hail-storm mingled with lightning is represented as being preceded by silence. This silence however is not so deep, but that the latter part of it is interrupted both by thunderings, and lightnings, and an earthquake,* the immediate harbingers of the hail-storm. Accordingly we find, that the fierce Gothic tribes though perpetually at war with the Romans, and though threatening to overwhelm them by repeatedly violating the long extent of the northern frontier, were for a time restrained by the genius of Theodosius :† but, upon the decease of this great prince in the year 395, the northern cloud, which had so long been gathering, discharged itself with irresistible fury upon the Empire. "He died in the month of January; and before the end of the same year the Gothic nation was in arms-The barriers of the Danube were thrown open the savage warriors of Scythia issued from their forests; and the uncommon severity of the winter" (the season in which natural hail and snow are generated) "allowed the poet to remark, that they rolled their ponderous waggons over the broad and icy back of the indignant river-The fertile fields of Phocis and Beotia were covered with a deluge of barbarians, who massacred the males of an age to bear arms, and drove away the beautiful females with the spoil and cattle of the flaming villages." The whole territory of Athens was blasted by the baleful presence of Alaric; and "the travellers, who visited Greece several years afterwards, could easily discover the deep and bloody traces of the march of the Goths."+

Such were the first effects of the symbolical hail-storm. Having thus ravaged Greece, it was next carried into

*Rev. viii. 5.

"As the impatient Goths," says Mr. Gibbon, " could only be restrained by the firm and temperate character of Theodosius, the public safety seemed to depend on the life and abilities of a single man." Hist. of Decline, Vol. iv. p. 443.

Hist. of Decline and Fall, Vol. v. p. 176-181.

Italy and the West. Under the guidance of Alaric, it passed over Pannonia, Istria, and Venetia; and threatened the destruction of imperial Rome herself. length it was driven out of Italy by Stilicho.

At

Yet, scarcely was this part of the tempest dissipated, when another dark cloud,* generated like its fellow in the cold regions of the North, (so accurately does the symbol correspond with its antitype) burst in the year 406 upon the banks of the upper Danube, and thence passed on into Italy. Headed by Radagaisus, the northern Germans emigrated from their native land, besieged Florence, and threatened Rome. Stilicho however was again victorious; but the remnant of the vanquished host was still sufficient to invade and desolate the province of Gaul. "The banks of the Rhine were crowned, like those of the Tiber, with elegant houses, and well cultivated farms. This scene of peace and plenty was suddenly changed into a desert; and the prospect of the smoking ruins could alone distinguish the solitude of nature from the desolations of man. The flourishing city of Mentz was surprised and destroyed; and many thousand Christians were inhumanly massacred in the church. Worms perished, after a long and obstinate siege; Strasburgh, Spires, Rheims, Tournay, Arras, Amiens, experienced the cruel oppression of the German yoke; and the consuming flames of war spread from the banks of the Rhine over the greatest part of the seventeen provinces of Gaul. That rich and extensive country, as far as the ocean, the Alps, and the Pyrenees, was delivered to the barbarians; who drove before them, in a promiscuous croud, the bishop, the senator, and the virgin, laden with the spoils of their houses and altars."†

Meanwhile that part of the storm, which was directed by Alaric, soon began to beat afresh. After the death

* I have adopted the language of the historian. Unconscious that he was bearing his testimony to the truth of prophecy, he has used the self-same allegorical language as that employed by St. John. "The correspondence of nations," says he, "was in that age so imperfect and precarious, that the revolutions of the North might escape the knowledge of the court of Ravenna; till the dark cloud, which was collected along the coast of the Baltic, burst in thunder upon the banks of the upper Danube." Hist. of Decline and Fall, Vol v. p. 214.

+ Hist. of Decline, Vol. v. p. 225.