PL XVIII.

THE ROMAN IMPERIAL ENSIGN OF THE DRAGON.

P.14

From Montfaucon

ΜΑΧΙΜΙΑΝ.

As the destroyer of the Seven-headed Hydra of Christianity.

tury-in short that of the same crisis of transition from the Pagan supremacy to the Christian that the previous figuration of the woman indicated.-To this crisis every indication converges. And it is precisely such an one as prophecy delights in depicting.

For the verification both of what was figured of the crisis itself, and of its result in the woman's parturition of her male child and the dragon's dejection from heaven, we must next look, as proposed, into history. It is easily seen, notwithstanding Mr. Faber's impression of their incompatibility,' how at such a crisis the woman's and dragon's elevation might well have existed cotemporarily in the same political heaven. But it is something much more precise and definite respecting their relative positions that we have now to verify in history:-viz. a crisis when not only both the one and the other were elevated in political power, but when the proportion of power was such, that the Pagan Dragon held ascendancy in but one third of the Roman political heaven, the Christian Church in the other two. This point is one never yet, I believe, explained by expositors. Yet on a careful investigation of the history of the times referred to, it will soon appear.

II. THE HISTORICAL SOLUTION OF THE CRISIS. It is to be remembered then that in A. D. 303, when Diocletian and Galerius published their terrible edicts of persecution against the Christians, the Roman empire was divided into four Tetrarchies, governed respectively by Diocletian and Maximian in the character of the two Augusti, or senior Emperors, and Galerius and Constantius as the two Cæsars, or junior Emperors: the empire however being considered as still politically united and one. Soon after this, Diocletian and Maximian abdicated. And, a few other changes having occurred in the years next following, the Empire was at the commencement of the year 311 thus partitioned :— Britain, Gaul, and Spain under Constantine, the son and successor to Constantius ;-Italy, together with the Afri

1 "According to neither interpretation of heaven" (i. e. as denoting either secular or ecclesiastical supremacy) can we place the Christian and the Pagans within the limits of the same heaven. Antecedent to the time of Constantine the Pagans were in the secular heaven, the Christians excluded from it:" &c. S. C. iii. 84.

can Province, under Maxentius ;-Illyricum under Licinius;-the East of Europe with Asia under Galerius, now the first in dignity of the Augusti ;-and Syria and Egypt under Maximin: which last of the list had just previously been appointed, with the Syrian and Egyptian Government as his appanage, a fifth Emperor.-During this period what the Church suffered it is needless to recount. The vision of the 5th Seal has depicted it.1 The sorrows of a woman in travail had indeed come upon her. Her children were to be crushed, as one of the hydra-like enemies of the state, by the heaven-sent champions of Roman Paganism and the Roman Empire.2 -In the May following, however, light dawned on the Christians. From his sick and dying bed the conscience-stricken Galerius issued an Edict of Toleration in their favor:-an Edict which was published in the names of Constantine and Licinius, as consentient parties, as well as in his own: though not in those of Maxentius or Maximin. And when, in the course of the two next eventful years, the following further changes had occurred,- viz. the European Provinces of Galerius been appropriated, on his death, by Licinius, the Asiatic by Maximin, and those of the Emperor Maxentius, on his

3

1 See Vol. i. p. 185.

2 See the medal appended; where Maximian appears in the guise and with the name of Hercules, destroying his hydra enemy. Similar in character to which is a medal of Diocletian as Jove striking down with his thunderbolt a Titan monster ending in serpents, in place of the lower half of the human body. The exact year of their being struck is uncertain. Eckhel viii. 9, 19, places them among the numi vagi from 284 to 304 A.D.; including therefore 303, the year of the commencement of their persecution of the Christians. The titles Jovius and Herculius are amply explained from their two Emperors' mad devotion to Jupiter and Hercules, from whom they effected to be sprung, whom to represent, and as whom to be worshipped.-Under figure of the Titan and the Hydra certain enemies hated and destroyed by them are of course signified. Were these the barbarian invaders of the empire only? Eckhel (p. 19) inclines to this notion. On the other hand Spanheim (Dissert v.) and Beger (Thesaurus Palatinus p. 361,) in commenting on this medal explain it, as well as other writers, with reference to the Emperors' persecution of the Christians. Nor I think without reason. That they regarded the Christians, and thought to have destroyed them, as enemies of the state, appears in their famous inscription; "Diocletianus Jovius et Maximian Herculeus . . . nomine Christianorum deleto, qui Remp. evertebant." And so Gibbon, quoted Vol. i. p. 184. Compare too Lactantius' boast over the Jovii and Herculei, quoted by me, Vol. i. p. 219 Note 3, also Julian's designation of Constantius' adherents, (Ep. xxiii.), on the professedly Christian side, as πολυκέφαλον ὑδραν.

3 So Gibbon, ii. 214; "The Provinces of Asia fell to the share of Maximin, and those of Europe augmented the portion of Licinius. The Hellespont and the Thracian Bosphorus formed their natural boundary.”—Milner is incorrect in assigning Asia Minor to Licinius in the partition. Cent. iv. c. 1.

defeat and death, by Constantine,-when, in this manner, the Roman empire had for the first time become tripartited between three Emperors,'-the precedency among whom, I may just observe in passing, was adjudged by the Senate to Constantine,2-the Christians emerged from these political revolutions thus variously circumstanced. In two thirds of the Empire, embracing its whole European and African territory, they enjoyed toleration; and presently after, by virtue of the celebrated Milan Decree of Constantine and Licinius, issued March 313 in their favor, the imperial kindly recognition and support: in the other or Asiatic third they were still, after but a brief and uncertain respite, exposed to persecution, in all its bitterness and cruelty, as before.

And now then was not the state of things in the Roman empire one that precisely answered to the crisis depicted in the vision ?-First the christian Church, united as one,3 and morally bright and beautiful,‘— abundantly the more so from the purifying effect of the late persecution, appeared before the world ascendant, for the first time, in the political heaven ;5 with the sunshine embracing it of the highest of the three Imperial dignities, and the light and favor of the second also beaming on it: moreover with the chief bishops resplendent at its head, as a starry coronal; they being recognized generally as ecclesiastical dignitaries, and soon

1 See the Tabular View given Vol. i. p. 335.

2 "The Roman Senate assigned Constantine the first rank among the three Augusti who then governed the Roman world." Gibbon, ii. 234.

3 "When Constantine was admitted into the Church, it was one and undivided as to articles of faith; the Novatians, Meletians, and Donatists being rather schismatics than heretics." Burton, Hist. of the Christian Church, p. 427.

"We must not expect," says Neander, i. 278, "to find in the visible Church (of early times) any community entirely glorious, and without spot and wrinkle : on the other hand we should not fail to perceive the heavenly beauty, which really did beam through the stains and blemishes of the early Church."-We must remember too that it is Christ's true Church which seems to be contemplated all through in the Apocalyptic figuration; though professedly all Christians, at the time spoken of, in respect of fundamental doctrines attached themselves to it, as to the primitive and true mother-Church. See Milner, Cent. iii. chaps. 21, 22.

• Compare Gibbon's description, iii. 278, to precisely the same effect.

6 Τοιστον μονος εξ αιώνος εἰς βασιλευς Κωνσταντινος Χριστῳ στεφανον δεσμῳ συναψας ειρηνης. So Eusebius V. C. iii. 7, of the Bishops assembled by Constantine to the Council of Nice.