saying, The Arians have embraced our religion." Again he adds, on another occasion; "Zealous heretics were by force of arms intruded into the places of the exiled Trinitarians and Arianism seemed well nigh to have avenged the cause of fallen idolatry.' The real though invisible originator of the heresy and the persecution, noted in this vision, was early recognized by the Christians. "It was some evil Damon," says Eusebius,3" that wrought the mischief; envious of the prosperity and happiness of the Church."

We are next told of

II. THE WOMAN'S PROGRESSING FLIGHT TO THE WILDERNESS, AND THE HELP GIVEN HER TOWARDS IT.

"And to the woman were given two wings of the great eagle, that she might flee into the wilderness into her place, from the face of the Serpent: 4-where she is nourished for a time, times, and half a time."

1. The woman's flight towards the wilderness.

It has been a question among Commentators whether by the woman's flight into the wilderness there be meant a change of state, or a change of place. Vitringa argues against Mede for the latter signification; as that which is necessarily required by the attribution of movement to the woman, in the very terms of the figure: —but,

1 They united with Arians in the accusation personally of Athanasius. Ib. c. 10, p. 248. Jovian's answer to the Pagan accuser is reported: 'What business has a Pagan like thee to trouble himself about Christians?'-Vitringa observes, p. 738, that these Arian persecutions were called diwyμoi.

2 Milner fb. c. 4, p. 225.

3 V. C. ii. 73. Ταύτα μεν εν φθονος τις (φθονερος ?) και πονηρος δαίμων, τοις της εκκλησίας βασκαίνων αγαθοις, κατειργάζετο. Quoted by Vitringa and Newton. 4 This seems the proper place of the clause, " from the face of the Serpent;" the clause following being parenthetical. So Vitringa.

5 Prophetia ipsa nos accuratè hic jubet distinguere terminum à quo, quem vocant, et ad quem locum ex quo mulier fugit, et ad quem fugiendo pervenit. Fuga hæc nos ducit ad cogitandum de mutatione loci, non status." p. 741.-He then explains the flight as made from the Eastern empire, where Arianism first prevailed and subsequently other heresies, to the comparatively barbarous nations of the Franks, Angli-Saxons, &c: who in the eighth, ninth, or tenth centuries in multitudes embraced Christianity; and among whom, he says, it was preserved during the reign of the Beast, which he makes to begin about the xiith century. Of course on the year-day principle (of the truth of which I feel no doubt) there are decisive chronological objections to this interpretation. And, besides and independent of them, others too occur that are insuperable. 1. At VOL. III.

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as it seems to me, quite in vain. There is implied movement from one local point to another, in the representation just previously given of the Dragon's dejection from the heaven to the earth: yet Vitringa, in common with most other Apocalyptic expositors, explains this of a change of state in the same Roman empire; viz. from political supremacy and establishment to political degradation. The same, we may presume, is the case here.And what then is the state indicated by the figure of the woman, or church, i. e. Christ's true Church (for we must never lose sight of the distinction) being in the wilderness? Both the figure itself, and the type also that is evidently referred to of the sojourn of the ancient Israel in the wilderness, imply insulation from the rest of the world, invisibility in respect of its public worship,1 and destitution of all ordinary means of spiritual sustenance, (I say spiritual because the thing symbolized is the Church,)—a destitution such as to need God's special interposition to support life.-Such are the conditions of the completed wilderness-state. Of course in proportion as the Church might approximate to it, they must be supposed to have had a partial and approximate fulfilment. And as, in the Chapter before us, the woman is described as transferred into the wilderness not suddenly but gradu

the time of the flight commencing (viz. at the birth of the man-child) and long after, these nations were not Christians. 2. At the time of their adoption of Christianity, they were no longer foreign to, but had become part of, the Roman Western Empire. 3. Their Christian character, then and afterwards, had as little to do, for the most part, with real religion, as that of the Christians of the Eastern empire, from which Vitringa makes it to flee in the fourth, fifth, or sixth centuries.-Vitringa had better, as it seems to me, have referred to Constantine's Christian Missions into Armenia, Georgia, and Abyssinia, to make his hypothesis at all tenable.

So the most able of Roman controversialists, and to whom I have particular reasons for referring, Bossuet. He says in explanation of the 6th verse; "L'église cache son service, dans les lieux retireés. C'est une imitation de l'état où se trouva la synagogue dans la persécution d'Antiochus."-On verse 14 indeed he observes ; "Nourrie ;-sous les ordres de Dieu, par les pasteurs ordinaires; comme le peuple dans le désert par Moses et Aaron, et sous Antiochus par Mattathias et ses enfans sacrificateurs. Afin qu'on ne se figure par ici une église invisible, et sans pasteurs." But who the pastors that nourished it? Not those of the world from which it had fled, but those that were exiled in the wilderness with it. And how, as in the extract before given, cachée, hidden, (“L'église cache son service dans les lieux retirés,") and yet not invisible?-The subject will be recurred to at the end of this chapter.

ally, her first movement thitherwards being represented as begun soon after the birth of the man-child, for it is then that the first mention is made of her fleeing a wanderer towards the wilderness,1-and her settlement therein as not completed until after the dragon's dejection, his subsequent persecution of the woman, the two wings of the great eagle being given her, the dragon's casting water out of his mouth to overwhelm her, and the earth absorbing, or at least beginning to absorb, the flood of waters,—such I say being the representation of her long and as yet not completed flight into the wilderness-state, it is her earlier movement and progress thitherwards that must first and for the present claim our attention.

In proof then that Christ's spiritual Church, "the blessed company of all faithful people," 2-once discernible almost as a body corporate before the world in the generally holy evangelical character of the members, doctrine, and worship of the professing Church,3-began from soon after the establishment of Christianity in the Roman empire, and through all the half century following, to flee towards the wilderness,-in other words to vanish rapidly in its distinctive features from public view, become more insulated and desolate, and more and more straightened for spiritual sustenance in the then public means of grace,-I have only to make appeal to the testimony of the most respectable ecclesiastical historians. The period in question is the same, it will be observed, that was before depicted in the two parallel visions of the segregation of the sealed from the unsealed, and of those

1 Equyev els tηy èρnμov. This may be rendered towards, as well as into; so indicating the commencement of the movement. So Luke ix. 56, 57; Kaι eñopeuθησαν εἰς ἑτεραν κωμην: immediately after which we have a relation of sundry things that occurred in the course of the passage to the village spoken of; Eyevετο δε πορευομένων αυτων, &c. The example is precisely parallel to that before So again Acts viii. 25, xix. 18, &c. And in the Old Testament, Gen. xxii. 3; "Abraham went unto the place (Greek ent) of which God had told him and on the third day he saw the place afar off." &c.

us.

It will be observed that I do not, like many others, regard this first mention of the woman's flight as proleptical; though indeed prolepses are not infrequent in Scripture; as in Gen. i. 1, Jer. xxxvi. 8-10, Matt. xxvii. 53, Luke iii. 19, John xx. 3, 4, &c. 2 English Communion Service.

3 We must indeed look to primitive Apostolic times for this. See 2 Cor. iii. 2.

that adhered to Christ as their Mediator and Atoner, from the apostatized multitudes of the professing Israel. And the general view given from history, in my illustrative comments on those visions,' of the then state of religion in the Roman empire, I mean after Constantine's establishment of Christianity, might almost be referred to as sufficient to prove the question now in hand. It will doubtless, however, better satisfy the reader to see a few further testimonies more direct and explicit to the point. I therefore subjoin them from both Milner and Mosheim omitting for the most part such as refer to Arianism, both because it has been already considered, and because it is obvious that wherever Arianism was dominant Christ's true church must needs have been hidden from view and desolate; but begging the Reader not to forget the operation of this cause, as well as others; and its aggravation of all the rest, through the bitter and contentious spirit, as well as the direct heresies, thereby engendered.

The former then thus describes the state of religion, even where Arianism prevailed not, after Constantine's establishment of Christianity, and for the half century following. "In the general appearance of the Church, we cannot see much of the spirit of godliness. External piety flourished. But faith, love, heavenly-mindedness appear very rare. The doctrine of real conversion was very much lost, and external baptism placed in its stead: and the true doctrine of justification by faith, and true practical use of a crucified Saviour for troubled consciences scarce to be seen at this time. Superstition and self-righteousness were making vigorous shoots; and the real gospel of Christ was hidden from the men that professed it." He afterwards refers to the Council of Antioch, held about the year 370 in Valens' reign:

1 See Vol. i. pp. 259-267, and 306-315, suprà.

2 Cent. iv. c. 2, pp. 211, 212.-He here adds (just according to the chronological position of the predictive statement that the dragon after his dejection persecuted the woman) that Satan saw it his time to make a direct attack on the dignity of the Son of God, and to stir up persecution against Christians by means of those that bore the Christian name.

in the which the 140 or 150 Bishops that attended "pathetically bewailed the times, and observed that the Infidels laughed at the evil; while the Christians, (he means orthodox Christians,) avoiding the churches as now nurseries of impiety, went into the deserts, and lifted up their hands to God with sighs and tears." He elsewhere instances the piety of the monk Antony, to show that "godliness in those times lived obscure in hermitages; though abroad in the world the Gospel was almost buried in faction and ambition: "2 and at the same time, as if in proof that the true church had not yet quite left the world for the wilderness, speaks of godliness also thriving in some unknown instances in ordinary life;" and refers to Ammianus Marcellinus,— an unbeliever little disposed to speak too favourably of Christians, as showing that " among the lower orders, and in obscure places, exemplary pastors and real religion were not wanting." 3

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To the same effect is the report of Mosheim. Of the life and morals of the professing Christians of the fourth century he says: "Good men were, as before, mixed with bad but the bad were by degrees so multiplied, that men truly holy and devoted to God appeared more rarely; and the pious few were almost oppressed by the vicious multitude." Of the doctrine he says; "Fictions, of early origin, (viz. about saint-veneration and

1 lb. c. xi. p. 250.

2 Ib. c. v. p. 229. "We are not," he justly observes, " to form an idea of ancient monks from modern ones. It was a mistaken thing in holy men of old to retire altogether from the world. But there is reason to believe that it originated in piety." p. 228. A sketch of the Monk Antony's character and faith follows, which should be read. Instead of Antony's heading (as we might perhaps expect from his being a monk) the gathering superstitions of the times, he is actually associated with Vigilantius by Mr. Daubuz, p. 538, as an opponent to them. 3 Ib. c. xii. The passage from Ammianus, xxvii. 3, is as follows. "They (the Roman Bishops) might be happy if, contemning the splendour of Rome, they lived like some bishops of the provinces; who, by the plainness of their diet, their mean apparel, and the modesty of their looks, make themselves acceptable to the eternal God and his true worshippers."-It a little savours, the reader may perhaps think, of Pagan irony.

4Mores et vitam Christianorum si spectes, boni, ut antea, malis commisti fuere at malorum tamen numerus sensim ita cæpit augere, ut rarius apparerent homines verè sancti atque Deo debiti." Again: "Exiguam piorum manum ab illis (agminibus vitiosorum) pænè oppressam fuisse." iv. 2. 3. 17,