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triarch Joseph; and indeed with that explanatory note given at the very commencement of the Apocalyptic visions by the revealing Angel himself; "The stars are the angels, (or chief and presiding ministers,) of the churches." 2

And thus we are led to see that the representation here given of Christ's Church was not one universally or generally true; but designative of it at some remarkable and particular time and conjuncture: viz. when the ruling powers in the Apocalyptic world would be associated with it as its decoration and support; and its ecclesiastical rulers, or bishops, would be recognized as dignified authorities before the world.-And indeed much the same thing is indicated by the very representation of the woman as in heaven. For the heaven meant is evidently that of political elevation; just as in the vision, a little while since discussed by us, of the ascent of the Witnesses: it being one in which the dragon might occupy a place, as well as the woman and one, the position in which is contrasted with dejection to the earth, as of a change from political power to political degradation.3 -As to the description of her travailing, like a woman at her full time, to bring forth a male child, the meaning of this will best appear from the very similar prophetic imagery in a vision descriptive of the yet future restoration of the Jews. For, after the words, "Before she travailed she brought forth, before her pain came she was delivered of a man-child," the explanation is thus given by himself the inspired Prophet: "Shall the land be made to bring forth in one day? or shall a nation be born at once? For as soon as Zion travailed she brought forth children." 4-Thus the male child of which the literal Zion is to be delivered, is declared to mean her children united and multiplied into a nation or dominant body politic; with triumph, glory, and general blessed

1 Gen. xxxvii. 9, 10: "Behold the sun and the moon and the eleven stars made obeisance to me. And his father said, Shall I, and thy mother, and thy brethren," (the heads of eleven of the tribes of Israel,) "indeed come to bow ourselves to thee?" Apoc. i. 20. Apoc. xii. 9. with the context; see also Micah v. 3.

2

4 Isaiah lxvi. 8, 9;

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ness accompanying. In like manner we may interpret the man-child of whom the spiritual Zion, or Church of Christ, appeared travailing to be delivered,-not as the child Jesus, born at Bethlehem, an explanation on no account admissible,'-but as its children united into a body politic, and raised to dominant power; with the accompaniments of deliverance, triumph, and glory attending their nationalization and elevation.2--The question remains, however, whether by the woman's bringing forth this man-child, and his being caught up (as afterwards mentioned) to God's throne, there was intended that ultimate, perfect, and most glorious nationalization of the children of God, and assumption to a seat on Christ's throne, which is to take place at the Lord's second coming;-the same that St. Paul writes of in such glowing language, "The whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together, waiting for the adoption, or, as in a former verse, "manifestation of the sons of God."-whether, I say, this ultimate, perfect, and most glorious nationalization and elevation of her children, was the consummation for which the Church was in the vision before us represented as travailing; or rather one imperfect, and to be fulfilled in a subordinate and earthly triumph; the latter however and lesser typical of the greater. What is said of the man-child after birth. being "caught up to God and to his throne," and again of his lot being "to rule the Gentiles with a rod of iron, -phrases the same very nearly that are applied by Christ, in the way of promise, to all the perseveringly faithful of

1 So Woodhouse, &c. But 1. According to Apocalyptic usage an individual depicted in symbol means every where, I believe, many, either collectively, or as a succession. 2. Christ is no where called the Son of the Church, but its Husband. Isa. ix. 6, which has been cited, says only, "To us a child is born, to us a son is given;" not, a child is born of the Church. 3. If, notwithstanding this, an expositor will have Him to be the Son of the Church, it must be of the Jewish Church and so the woman in the vision will personify the Jewish Church, not the Christian; a view contrary to the whole tenor of the Apocalyptic prophecy. 4. In which case too the 1260 years of dwelling in the wilderness must be assigned to the Jewish Church :-a supposition quite untenable.

2 Daubuz (519) compares Cicero's calling the day of Rome's deliverance from Cataline's conspiracy its birthday. Quem ego diem verè natalem hujus urbis, aut certè salutarem, appellare possum." Orat. pro Flacco.

3 Rom. viii. 19, 22, 23.

the servants of God,'—these coincidences might perhaps at first incline us to attach the more glorious meaning to the symbols of the vision. But the next figuration of the fortunes of the woman, or church, shewing that she was immediately afterwards to be persecuted by the Dragon, and then to spend 1260 days, or years, in the wilderness, decisively negatives the supposition. It seems clear, that whatever the woman's hope in her travail,2 the lesser consummation was the one figured in the manchild's birth and assumption; viz. the elevation of the christians first to recognition as a body politic, then very quickly to the supremacy of the throne in the Apocalyptic world, i. e. the Roman Empire :-a throne which, as thenceforth christian, might consequently thenceforth, just like Solomon's,3 be designated as the throne of God. Seated on this, it appeared, the christian body would, after a little while, coerce the heathens of the empire; and rule them even as with a rod of iron.

2. The meaning of the other sign or symbol in the vision, I mean the great red dragon, seems also clear.In itself, and without the adjunct of some further and distinctive peculiarities, a dragon might be considered as the fit representative of any heathen persecutor: a persecutor in character resembling Pharaoh and Egypt; and animated by Him who is here set forth as the actor and

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1 Rev. ii. 26, 27. "To him that overcometh I will give power over the Gentiles (€8σav etɩ Twv €0vwv); and he shall rule them with an iron rod: as a potter's vessel they shall be broken." Rev. iii. 21; "To him that overcometh I will grant to sit with me on my throne: even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father on his throne."

2 Compare Vol. i. p. 230, 231, suprà.

31 Chron. xxix. 23 ; And Solomon sate on the throne of the LORD, as king, instead of David his father." This apposite passage is noted by Daubuz. See too Jer. xlix. 38, and Lowth's comment.-"To God and to his throne," is an hendyadis for God's throne: just as in Apoc. xiii. 12, "the earth and them that dwell therein," for them that dwelt on the earth, simply.

4 The figure is primarily Egyptian; having reference to the Nile, dragon, or crocodile. So Psalm lxxiv. 13; "Thou brakest the heads of the dragons in the waters" Isa. li. 9; "Art thou not he that hast cut Rahab, and wounded the dragon?" Ezek. xxix. 3; "I am against thee, Pharaoh, the great dragon that lieth in the midst of its rivers;"-all written of the Egyptian anti-Israelitish power. The reader will not have forgot that Egypt is among the Apocalyptic designations of Rome;-" which is spiritually called Sodom and Egypt." Apoc. xi. 8.

ruler in all the great heathen powers of this world,—the malignant Spirit that first tempted Eve in Paradise, the old Serpent, the Devil.' But what is added of the dragon now seen by St. John having seven heads and ten horns, marked it (though bearing indeed in the diadem the strange badge of Asiatic royalty) as distinctively the persecuting power of Pagan Rome. For these heads could scarce be different from the first seven of the Beast, the Dragon's successor. And the latter were elsewhere thus primarily explained by an Angel interpreter; "The seven heads are seven hills on which the woman (i. e. Rome) sitteth: "a secondary and figurative meaning being also assigned to them; of which (as well as of the ten horns, here budding, I conceive, from the root of the dragon's seventh head, and as yet undiademed) I shall speak with more advantage in a subsequent chapter; only now observing that it too was characteristic of the Roman empire.-The suitableness of this symbol to designate the Roman Emperors and Empire as a persecuting antichristian power,3 bent as it was, like Pharaoh, on destroying the Christian Israel just on the eve of its political establishment, is evident.'-Besides which its national appropriateness has been noted by commentators; inasmuch as the dragon was one of the military ensigns of imperial Rome. In fact, in respect of both colour and attitude, the dragon of the Roman ensign did not inaptly resemble that of the vision before us.5

But now let us look to the chronological indications in the imagery of this part of the vision.-And first there

But

1 This is evidently all that is meant by the explanatory observation in verse 9, "the great Dragon, that old serpent called the Devil and Satan." Mr. Maitland indeed observes; "What meaning is there in language, if we can make the Dragon any thing but the great enemy of man?" Second Enquiry, p. 24. would he argue that in the passages, "Get thee behind me, Satan," and, "One of you is a devil," (Matt. xvi. 23, John vi. 70) the Devil is meant abstractedly and personally, not as prompting Peter, and animating Judas? Or, again, that the Devil personally has seven heads and ten horns?

2 Apoc. xvii. 9, 18.-On the identity of the Dragon's and the Beast's seven heads, see the next chapter.

3 As a military power the war-horse was chosen to symbolize it. See Vol. i. 122. 4 Compare the danger of the Israelitish male children, especially Moses, exposed as they were on the Nile to the Nile-dragons or crocodiles.

See in my Plate at p. 16, the sketch of one from Montfaucon, vii. 405.Ammianus Marcellinus (xvi. 10) thus describes it: "The dragon was covered with purple cloth, and fastened to the end of a pike gilt and adorned with pre

seems to me to have been to a certain extent a chronological indication in the very use of the symbol of a dragon. For the Apocalypse, I think, makes use of no self-adopted symbols of a country, in reference to times earlier than their actual adoption in that country.' And since it was not till near the close of the 2nd century that the dragon was first used as a Roman ensign, nor till the 3rd that its use had become common,2 we might thence probably infer that the time represented in the vision was scarce earlier, if so early as the third century.A chronological indication of the same kind, but yet more restrictive, appears in the use of diadems, not crowns, on the heads of the dragon, in signification of royal or ruling power. For, as observed in an early chapter of this Commentary, it was not till about the time of Diocletian, towards the close of the third century, that the diadem was adopted as one of the imperial insignia: 3 an innovation accompanied with others so important as to constitute, we shall hereafter see, an epoch in the Roman imperial history.-Yet again, it is to be observed, as indicative of the precise time referred to, that though the dragon, or Pagan power of Rome, was still in the political heaven, yet it was only as drawing with his tail one third part of the stars of heaven. So that the intended period would seem to have been some little before the total dejection of Paganism from its supremacy in the Roman empire, at the commencement of the fourth cencious stones. It opened its wide throat, and the wind blew through it and it hissed, as if in a rage, with its tail floating in several folds through the air." He elsewhere often gives it the epithet of purpureus, purple-red: purpureum signum draconis," &c.-With which Claudian's description well agrees :

Hi volucres tollunt aquilas; hi picta draconum

Colla levant: multumque tumet per nubila serpens,
Iratus stimulante noto, vivitque receptis

Flatibus, et vario mentitur sibila flatu.

1 So in regard of the horse, the crown, the sword, and the balance in the three first Seals; also of the diadem, as here used, and in ch. xiii. 1.-Compare too Part ii. ch. iv. § 1, in my 1st Volume.

2 In Trajan's time it was a Dacian ensign, not a Roman; as appears from the bas-reliefs on Trajan's arch. Arrian, who wrote under the Antonines, is, I believe the first Author who assigns it to Roman armies. After which it was as a Roman ensign sculptured on Severus' Arch of triumph.-Later in the third century it had become almost as notorious among Roman ensigns as the eagle itself: and is in the fourth century noted by Prudentius, Vegetius, Chrysostom, Ammianus, &c; in the fifth by Claudian and others.

See Vol. i. p. 131, and my Article on the subject in the Appendix to the present Volume. 4 Viz in Chap. iv. of this Part iv.