VI. VIALS INEFFECTIVE TO PRODUCE REPENTANCE VII. § 1. PREDICTED TIME OF THE SIXTH VIAL § 2. OUTPOURING OF THE SIXTH VIAL. XX. PAPAL INDULGENCE OF THE XVIITH CENTURY 151 159 XXII. THE PERSIAN RAM, AND MACEDONIAN GOAT 376 "AND there appeared a great sign in heaven ;-a woman So we enter on the Fourth and Supplemental Part of Before proceeding however to consider the vision here tion to the evidence of a retrogressive character in both it, and the two subsequent and intimately connected. visions, of the Wild Beast from the Sea, and the Lamb with his 144,000 followers on Mount Zion ;-evidence just hinted at, at the close of my last chapter. Hitherto the series of Apocalyptic visions had been, in respect of their development of things future, uninterruptedly continuous and progressive :-the retrospective history of Christ's two Witnesses not forming an exception, because that is given in conversational explanatory narrative by the Angelic interlocutor. But there now appear in the new vision marks, not to be mistaken, of an interruption and breaking off from the subject next preceding. For the temple, with its ark of the Covenant, just said to have been opened in heaven, and the thunderings, lightnings, and voices, that followed thereon, are abruptly left in the sacred description, although evidently indicative of events that were to follow consecutively afterwards; and a vision begins,—the first of a new and continuous series of visions,- apparently quite unconnected and detached. Further, that this series of visions is supplemental, and explanatory of what has gone before, appears from the two following characteristic and decisive marks: first, that their grand subject is the development of the rise, establishment, and reign of that Wild Beast from the abyss, or sea, which was before spoken of as existing in the time of Christ's two Witnesses, and making war upon, and killing them :-secondly, that the same remarkable period of 42 months, or 1260 days, which was noted in the Witnesses' history as that of Paganized Christians treading down the Holy City and of the Witnesses prophesying in sackcloth, is here spoken of as inluded in the visio ns now commencing also; it being that of the Wild Beast from the abyss, or sea, holding investment of the seven-headed Dragon's delegated authority, and of the sun-clothed Woman's remaining a 1 Vitringa thinks that there was a pause in the representation, the better to mark this break: "Visum hoc est novum; ac probabile est intercessisse temporis aliquod intervallum inter illud et superius." p. 691. refugee in the wilderness.' It is surely scarce presumable, even à priori, that there should have been intended. in the divine prophetic calendar two different successive periods of 42 months; during the first of which Paganized Christians should lord it, with the Beast from the abyss among them, during the second the Pagan Wild Beast from the sea: two different and successive periods of 1260 days; during the first of which the witnesses of Christ should prophesy in sackcloth, during the next the Church of Christ disappear and take refuge in the wilderness. Moreover Daniel's mention of but one such period, ere the Saints' assumption of the kingdom,2 puts the supposition out of the question.-Hence the periods must be considered coincident: the vision of the Wild Beast from the sea, described in Apoc. xiii, running on in chronological parallel with that of the Witnesses' sackcloth-prophesying, and those of the cotemporary external judgments of the Saracens and the Turks; that of the Woman and seven-headed Dragon, the subject of the preceding or xiith Apocalyptic Chapter, in parallel with visions yet earlier. A reason quite sufficient for the retrogression at once suggests itself, in the necessity of further information respecting the persecuting Wild Beast, just referred to as the slayer of the witnesses, in order to its clear elucidation. For (as I intimated at the close of the last chapter) must not St. John, on hearing of their being slain by the Beast from the abyss, have necessarily felt the questions rising in his mind, Who? How? Whence ?Retrogression for explanations like this is a method practised by the best writers, (I might instance Gibbon or Hallam,) on modern European history. Having in the first instance described the events of some long period of time with reference chiefly to secular matters, or foreign politics, they return on their steps, in a new chapter or section of their book, to trace the ecclesiastical history through the same interval, and bring it up to the same 1 Compare Apoc. xi. 2, 3; xii. 14; xiii. 5. 2 Dan. vii. 25, 26. point of time as the secular.-And let me add that the opisthographism, or writing without, as well as within,' of that seven-sealed scroll in the Lamb's hand, which contained, as we may presume, all the Apocalyptic prophecy, furnished peculiar facility for the exhibition of these retrogressive visions in their chronological parallelism with the visions preceding. On the full, or nearly full unrolling of the scroll, after the seventh trumpet's sounding, the length without might be exhibited to the Evangelist's sight similarly divided as the length within; and with many marks of parallelism and running correspondence connecting the one and the other. I say many, because in effect between the new visions and the old, there are traceable many and striking correspondencies; more, if I mistake not, than have hitherto been thought of and all in continuous succession; just like the taches and loops, to borrow an old comparison, of the hangings of the Jewish Tabernacle.2 Now supposing the one series to have been written without, as the other within, and the parallelism marked by corresponding lines. in the Apocalyptic scroll, an evident fitness will appear in the opisthographic form of the scroll: a fitness worthy, as it seems to me, of its divine authorship, and such as no other explanation of it can suggest.3 I have just glanced at the same view of the writing without in the Apocalyptic Book in my General Introduction, Vol. i. p. 105. 2 Exod. xxvi. 5, 6. 3 The usual cause of opisthographism was, as Vitringa observes, p. 262, the redundancy of the matter beyond what the author, in choosing the length of his roll, had calculated on. "More fere receptum erat ut hujusmodi volumina intus tantùm sive adversâ parte scriberentur. Rarius accidebat ut essent οπισθο Ypapa; quod tamen factum ubi materiæ major erat copia quàm ut interior membranæ pars eam admitteret totam." Hence the affectation of it by some writers, as if to mark the overflowing fulness of their thoughts, on which Juvenal observes, Sat. i. 5: aut summi jam margine libri Scriptus, et in tergo, necdum finitus. Of course no such reason could exist for the opisthographism of an inspired Book. And though in Ezekiel's prophetic scroll, which was a collection of unconnected prophecies, it might simply indicate fulness, and in the Flying Roll of Zech. v. 1-3 simply a twofold division of subject, yet something of more exact paral "This is the curse that goeth forth over the face of the whole earth. For every one that stealeth shall be cut off, as on this side, according to it; and every one that sweareth shall be cut off, as on that side, according to it." On |