tions of Rome pagan, it seems natural to conclude, that an ecelesiastical rather than a temporal revolution should be here intended. Accordingly, the persecution of Diocletian and Galerius, which ceased in the year 311, was rapidly followed by the greatest ecclesiastical revolution, that the world ever beheld; no less a revolution, than the overthrow of the lately rampant Paganism of the Roman Empire and the establishment of Christianity in its stead.

I consider the sixth seal to have been opened in the year 313: for that year was marked by the famous edict of Constantine in favour of Christianity, which soon after led to its establishment upon the ruins of Paganism, and which finally liberated the Church from heathen persecution !

It is worthy of note, that even the prophet himself has with much art contrived to indicate, that the announced revolution is not a temporal but an ecclesiastical one.

Isaiah, foretelling the establishment of the spiritual Empire of Christ, had, many centuries before, described the overthrow of Paganism in language, that bore an immediate relation to the mode in which its most recondite mysteries were celebrated. Rochwy caves and grottos were ever deemed peculiarly sacred: and, throughout the east in particular, the rites of the principal divinities were constantly performed in caverns sometimes natural and some

Gibbon's Hist. of Decline vol. ii. p. 489.

times artificial. Such being the case, the prophet tells us, that, in the day when the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established in the top of the mountains and when the idols shall be utterly abolished, the perplexed votaries of Paganism shall go into the Mithratic caverns of the rocks, and shall seek to hide themselves in the consecrated clefts of the mountain crags, for fear of the Lord and for the glory of his majesty, when he arises to shake terribly the earth 1.

This same imagery St. John has most artfully adopted from the Hebrew prophet: and he has thus indirectly taught us, that he also, while foretelling some great revolution, refers to the overthrow of Paganism and to the establishment of Christianity. Astonished and terrified at the sudden change by which Paganism is depressed and Christianity is exalted, the various idolaters of the Roman world, whether high or low, rich or poor, are described, as hiding themselves in their consecrated grottos, and as vainly seeking to avert the ruin which hangs over their late triumphant superstition.

2. The second portion of the sixth seal shews us the consequences of the mighty theological revolution, by which the long-established Paganism of the Roman Empire was overthrown; consequences of a mixed nature, and by no means altogether felicitous.

1 Isaiah ii.

* See my Origin of Pagan Idol. book v. chap. 6. § I. 2. II.2.

2

And, after these things, I saw four angels standing on the four corners of the earth, holding the four winds of the earth, that the wind should not blow on the earth nor on the sea nor on any tree. And I saw another angel ascending from the east, having the seal of the living God: and he cried with a loud voice to the four angels, to whom it was given to injure the earth and the sea, saying ; Injure not the earth nor the sea nor the trees, until we shall have sealed the ser, vants of our God upon their foreheads. And I heard the number of the sealed: an hundred and forty and four thousand were sealed out of all the tribes of the children of Israel. After this I beheld : and, lo, a great multitude, which no one could number, from all nations and tribes and people and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes and with palm-branches in their hands. And they cry with a loud voice, saying : Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb! And all the angels stood round about the throne and the elders and the four living creatures, and fell before the throne on their faces, and worshipped God, saying: Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honour and power and might be unto our God for ever and ever! Amen! And one of the elders answered, saying unto me: Who are these, which are arrayed in white robes; and whence came they? And I said unto him : O my lord,

thou knowest. And he said unto me: These are they, who have come out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and have made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore are they before the throne of God, and serve him day and night in his temple: and he, that sitteth on the throne, shall dwell over them. They shall hunger no more, neither shall they thirst any more; nor shall the sun strike on them, nor any burning. Because the Lamb, which is in the midst of the throne, shall rule them like a shepherd, and shall lead them unto the fountains of waters of life: and God shall wipe away every tear from their eyes1.

At the commencement of the subordinate period described in this second portion of the sixth seal, a figurative sealing of God's people is said to have taken place, by which they are separated from a larger mass that heretofore comprehended them : and, at the same time, the recently persecuted and harassed Christians come forth out of great tribulation, being wonderfully and unexpectedly delivered from the hands of their pagan oppressors.

(1.) The imagery of the present portion is borrowed from the Levitical Dispensation.

Agreeably to that system of types and antitypes which pervades the whole Bible, the house of Israel is employed as a figure of the Christian Church. But, as the Apostle teaches us, all are not Israel who are of Israel: all, who bear the name of Chris

tians, are not Christians in spirit and reality. Hence the mystical number of 144,000 saints is said to be separated, at the chronological epoch when this second portion commences, by the allegorical act of sealing, from the great general mass of the figurative Israel. In other words, a separation takes place, at this special era, between the faithful followers of the Lamb and the great body of the visible Church. Such, when stripped of its symbotical imagery, is the obvious meaning of the vision now before us.

While the Church was in a suffering state, few, save the truly pious, would be disposed to join her: but, when the religion of the Church became the religion of the Emperor, converts of a much more ambiguous nature might be expected, and a lamentable growth of secularity might with reason be anticipated. The faith of the reigning prince would, of course, be the faith of every well-bred courtier : the profession of Christianity would be made the high road to imperial favour: the hierarchy would be infected with the baneful spirit of clerical tyranny and ambition : and, by a very intelligible revolution of sentiment, the late despised and persecuted Gospel would become the fashionable religion of the Roman world.

This mixture of sincerity and hypocrisy, of spirituality and secularity, when assisted by the growing superstition of the age and by the honours which Constantine so profusely heaped upon an aspiring priesthood, produced a state of things,