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In the 13th, the Inquisition was invested with power; and thenceforward the most exemplary, learned, and pure, among the Reformed, were hunted down by this tribunal, and by the other agents of Papal persecution in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, &c.

THE FOURTH SEAL.

THE PROPHECY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. Ver. 7. And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see.

8. And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.

INTERPRETATION.

The summoner in this instance is the Eagle; the emblem of rapidity and fierceness of execution; the favourite standard of conquest and rapine, even in our own day.

The pale horse (xλwpos) is of the livid colour of corruption.

"Death" is used in Scripture for the extinction of the moral principle, the absence of spiritual life. (“ "Dead in trespasses and sins.") Christ is declared to come as the "day-spring" to give light to those who sat in "the shadow of death."'*

"Hell" is the emblem of hostility to God. The Scribes and Pharisees, in perverting the Jews, are said to be making them the children of hell.†

"The fourth part of the earth." This expression is remarkable, as the only instance of such a division in the Apocalypse.

To kill with the sword, and death (disease)" &c. implies an extraordinary loss of life, arising from war and its consequent famines, contagions, and that wasting of the human race which leaves the land to the ravage of wild beasts, &c.

* Luke i. 79.

† Matt. xxiii. 15.

There shall be a period of havoc, arising from total moral corruption. The doctrine of the immortality of the soul, and a God, shall be abrogated; death and hell shall be the creed and the impulse of the time. The war shall extend over one quarter of the globe. Great slaughter in the field shall be accompanied by various and extensive misery and desolation.

HISTORY.

A. D. 1789. The French Revolution began. It was excited and sustained by the singular corruption of Church, court, and people.

A. D. 1793. The Republic began. It declared that death was an eternal sleep; that Christianity was an imposture; and that there was no God!

In the same year it became military, raised the nation in arms by the Levee en Masse, and declared hostilities against Europe. Its civil and foreign wars, under both the Republican and Imperial governments, were marked by slaughter exceeding all within memory; and still more marked by the misery which they inflicted on Europe, in the shape of tyranny and insult, the waste of private happiness, and the sacrifice of the materials of renovation.

THE FIFTH SEAL.

The political changes, designated by the riders and horses, or the intervention of human force, are now finished. The events of the world are rapidly closing, and Providence becomes its own Agent. The punishment of the oppressors of the Church, and the final peace and triumph of Christianity, are now the unmixed purposes of Providence. The French Revolution, the quintessence of moral turpitude and furious cruelty, had given proof of the natural consequences of a corrupt reli

gion,-rebellion and infidelity. A general retribution visited on the crimes of the world; and a plain and universal vindication of the wisdom and justice of the Deity, are henceforth the subjects of the Seals.

PROPHECY.

Ver. 9. And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held:

10. And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?

11. And white robes were given unto every one of them; and it was said unto them, that they should rest yet for a little season, until their fellow servants also and their brethren, that should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled.

INTERPRETATION.

The altar is the "Brazen Altar'* on which the sacrifices of the Temple were offered. The spirits are still gathered round the spot where they were slain; indicating that the depression of the Church has yet undergone no signal change.

Their cry to God, the Aednotns or Supreme Ruler, implies that the measure of this depression is nearly complete, and that Providence is now about to take up the cause of its people. This demand of a thing to be done is not an unusual mode in prophecy of expressing the Divine Will, that it shall be done.

It is not improbable that some decided interposition of Providence may be prefigured by this Seal, some actual persecution checked, and some considerable accession to the Church effected. One purpose of the Seal, at least, is to declare that there shall be an interval, though comparatively brief, for the preparation

* Altare autem Holocausti hic intelligendum esse patet, quia absolute dicitur vocaornpiov, cum altare sancti passim vel aureum, vel suffituum dicatur. Vitring.

of the Church against the Christian trial and civil overthrow which are to follow in the next Seal. The interval seems to be given, for the distribution of the Scriptures and the awakened zeal of Christianity to take their effect, and call into the Church those who are to be saved.

The "slain" represents the whole multitude of the faithful departed; vast numbers having actually died by persecution; and the rest having been ready to lay down their lives for the faith.

The Fourth Seal closed the 1260 years, the prophetic period of the depression of the Church. The spirits of the saints, in strong expectancy, now cry out for their promised triumph. But they are told, that it shall not be yet; though the delay shall be but for "a little season." Christian blood is to be shed;

-and then comes the consummation.

THE SIXTH SEAL.

THE PROPHECY OF THE UNIVERSAL WAR.

12. And I beheld when he had opened the sixth Seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood;

13. And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig. tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind.

14. And the Heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places.

15. And the Kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bond man, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains;

16. And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb.

17. For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?

INTERPRETATION.

This Seal predicts a tremendous and final affliction of the earth; in which the visible power of Heaven will overthrow, at least, the guiltier portion of the present state of things in policy, national dominion, and religion.

The obscuration of the sun, moon, and stars, Scripture emblems of the governing powers; the earthquake; the disappearance of mountains and islands; all applied by a customary and easy figure to great political changes, predict a general summoning of the powers of destruction. This fearful prediction is repeated four times in the parallel chapters,* and the fall of the papal power forms one of its most express subjects. But the destruction goes beyoud that fall; sweeps the whole extent of the earth, and smites, root and branch, all the false religions. On referring to the passages predicting the ruin of Jerusalem,† of Egypt,‡ and of Babylon, the same images will be found, yet, in each instance, and peculiarly in that of Jerusalem, there will be discovered a reference to some destruction more complete, terrible and universal.

Our Lord's prediction of the fall of the Jewish polity and nation employs a force of language not to be accounted for even by the unequalled calamnities of the Jews, except it were intended as the type of some infliction adequate to the crimes or the purification of a world. And that it was thus typical is substantiated by the almost verbal repetition of our Lord's prophecy in this Seal.

In this period the papacy shall be extinguished, popery shall cease to be a religion, infidelity shall be crushed, the various and debasing forms of barbarian

*

Chap. xi. 15. xiv. 20. xvi. 17. xix. 19.
Ezekiel xxx. 2. xxxii. 7, 8.

† Matt. xx. 4.

§ Isaiah xiii.

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