throw the three most easterly of the ten, be received and submitted to by the rest as their head, change the name and seat of the empire, and by his cruelties introduce a time of grievous calamity, especially to persecuted Christians; portents on earth and in the sky accompanying, and plagues such as once in Egypt ;1-then, the consummation drawing on, that a great prophet would be sent by God, with power of working miracles, shutting up heaven, (like Elias,) turning water into blood, and by fire from his mouth killing such as would injure him; by whose preaching and miracles many would be turned to God: which done, that another king would rise from Syria, born of an evil spirit; and, after destroying that former evil one, (the king from the North?) conquer and kill God's prophets, whose corpse, left unburied, would on the third day be reanimated, and rapt before the enemies' eyes to heaven :-that the king his murderer would be a prophet too, but a prophet of lies; and with the miraculous power of evoking fire from heaven, arresting the sun in its course, and making an image speak: whereby he would make multitudes of adherents; branding them like cattle with his mark, and requiring worship from them as God and the Son of God: for that this would be in fact the ANTICHRIST; falsely claiming to be Christ, but fighting against the real Christ, and persecuting unto the death his saints; that the fated time of his domination would be forty-two months; at the end of which time, the saints having fled in a last extremity to the mountains, the heaven would be opened for their deliverance; 4 and Christ himself intervene to save them, and destroy this Antichrist and his allied kings. After which that the

in societatem à cæteris, ac princeps omnium constituetur.-Hic insustentabili dominatione vexabit orbem. . . denique immutato nomine, atque imperii sede translatâ, confusio humani generis consequetur." vii. 16.-A singular view! derived in part, I presume from Dan. xi. 40-43; the three kings destroyed being those of Egypt, Ethiopia, and Lybia.

1 The (Roman) world being then, says he, to the people of God, what Egypt was to God's ancient people Israel, vii. 16.-So on Apoc. xi. 7, "the city which spiritually is called Egypt."

"Peractisque operibus ipsius," i. e. the works of God's prophet, (agreeably with the Apocalyptic declaration, When they shall have completed their testimony,) "alter rex orietur ex Syrià, malo Spiritu genitus, qui reliquias illius prioris mali, cùm ipso, simul deleat." Ib. xvii.-Is there in this an illusion to Daniel's, "But tidings out of the east shall trouble him ;" i.e. the king of the north? Dan. xi. 43. Hic est qui appellatur Antichristus: sed se ipse Christum mentietur." So Apoc. xix.

3.66

saints, raised from the grave, would reign with Christ through the world's seventh Chiliad; a period to commence, it would seem, in about 200 years; the Lord alone being thenceforth worshipped on a renovated world; its still living inhabitants multiplying incalculably in a state of terrestrial felicity; and the resurrection saints, during this commencement of an eternal kingdom, in a nature like the angelic, reigning over them.2

The great Constantinian revolution, accomplished (as I before observed) just after Lactantius' publication of his 'Institutions,' could hardly fail of exercising a considerable influence on Apocalyptic interpretation. A revolution by which Christianity should be established in the prophetically-denounced Roman Empire, was an event the contingency of which had never occurred apparently to the previous exponents of Christian prophecy; and suggested the idea of a mode, time, and scene of the fulfilment of the promises of the latterday blessedness, that could scarcely have arisen before its scene the earth in its present state, not the renovated earth after Christ's coming and the conflagration; its time that of the present dispensation; its mode by the earthly establishment of the earthly Church visible. (It occurred not that this might in fact be one of the chief necessary preparations, through Satan's craft, to the establishment after a while of the great predicted antichristian ecclesiastical empire, on the platform of the same Roman world.) Thus Eusebius, as we saw long since,2 applied to this great event both Isaiah's promises of the latter day, and also (though with more of doubt) the Apocalyptic prophecy of the New Jerusalem:4 at the same time that the symbolic vision of the seven-headed dragon of Apoc. xii, cast down from heaven, was with real exegetic correctness (as I conceive) applied to the dejection of Paganism, and the Pagan emperors, from their former supremacy in the Roman world."—But to carry out such views

1 Noted by me, Vol. i.

2 Mark the distinction between the two classes. "Tunc qui erunt in corporibus vivi non morientur, sed per eosdem mille annos infinitam multitudinem generabunt: qui autem ab inferis suscitabuntur, ii præerunt viventibus, velut judices." Ib. 24. And in ch. 6 preceding : "Ut similes angelis facti summo Patri serviamus, et simus æternum Deo regnum."

3 Vol. i. p. 231.

4 See ib. Note 2.

See Vol. iii. p. 24, Note; and p. 25. notes ', 2. This view of the vision we shall

of the New Jerusalem must soon have appeared most difficult: the Arian and other troubles, which quickly supervened, powerfully contributing to that conviction. It resulted, perhaps not a little from this cause, that the Apocalypse itself became for a while much neglected. Especially in the Eastern empire, where the imperial seat was now chiefly fixed,' we find it almost passed over in silence by the great Greek Fathers of the remainder of the fourth century: by Basil and Gregory Nazianzen, who directly acknowledged its genuineness and inspiration, as well as by its less explicit advocates Cyril and Chrysostom. In the Western empire, however, at the close of the fourth century, two of the most eminent of the Latin Fathers, I mean Jerome and Augustine, not only recognized the work as divine, but threw out hints also on Apocalyptic interpretation, of no little importance, and with no little influence.

Of Jerome I may specify as most important the three following particulars :—1. that the Apocalypse was a book that had in it as many mysteries as words, and that sundry particular words had a manifold meaning: 3-2. that the Apocalypse was to be all spiritually understood; because otherwise Judaic fables would have to be acquiesced in; such as the rebuilding Jerusalem, and renewal in its temple of carnal ceremonies:-3. that the place where the two Apocalyptic witnesses were to be slain was not the literal Jerusalem, (as it had both been already subverted, and was moreover never called in Scripture either the great city, or Egypt,) but the same great city Babylon afterwards described in Apoc. xvii, xviii; in the sense however of the world: 4 or as he elsewhere explained it, more literally according to the Apocalyptic symbols and the Angel's explanation,

find repeated by other patristic expositors afterwards. Eusebius intimates that Constantine may have alluded possibly to Isa. xxvii. 1, "The Lord shall punish Leviathan that crooked serpent:" but the casting down of the Dragon, which Constantine notes prominently, is not in Isaiah's prophecy, but that of the Apocalypse.

The sole reigns of Constantine and Constantius, with the capital Constantinople, occupied some forty years.

2 See Vol i. pp. 32-34.-Cyril's exposition of the eighth head of the Apocalyptic Beast must not be overlooked ;-that Antichrist, after subduing three out of the ten kings of the Roman Empire in its later form, would, as the first and chief of the remaining seven, be the Beast's eighth head.

3 Letter liii to Paulinus.

Ib. Also the letter of Paula and Eustochion (his disciples) to Marcella.

Rome:

4. that the millennary theory of Victorinus and others

was utterly foolish and untenable. 2

Of Augustine's hints on Apocalyptic interpretation, the three following appear to me most deserving of remark.

1. That the Apocalypse embraced for its subject of prefiguration the whole period from Christ's first coming to the end of the world.3

2. That the 144,000 of the sealing vision (as also of Apoc. xiv) depicted distinctively (not the earthly professing visible Church, but) the Church of the saints, or elect, the constituency of what he calls the City of God, ultimately united into the heavenly Jerusalem: 5 while the appended palm-bearing vision figured the blessed and heavenly issue assured to them of their earthly trials and pilgrimage.6

3. That the millennium of Satan's binding, and the saints reigning, dated from Christ's ministry, when he beheld Satan fall like lightning from heaven; it being meant to signify the triumph over Satan in the hearts of true believers: and that the subsequent figuration of Gog and Magog indicated the coming of Antichrist at the end of the world; the 1000 years being a figurative numeral, expressive of the whole period intervening.7

1 So in the Letters contrasting Bethlehem with Rome.

2 So in his observations on Victorinus; and in the additions at the end of Victorinus, if Jerome's. Yet in his Comment on Isaiah lxv, referring to different views of the Apocalyptic millennium, &c. he says; "Which if I take figuratively I fear to contradict the ancients."-On Ezekiel xl, I may observe, he says; "Quod templum Judæi secundùm literam in adventu Christi sui, quem nos esse Antichristum comprobamus, putant ædificandum; et nos ad Christi referimus ecclesiam. Et quotidie in sanctis ejus ædificari cernimus." Where the words "in sanctis ejus" are to be remarked; and suggest an idea of Jerome's perhaps regarding the Church of the promises (like Augustine) as that made up only of true Christians. I say perhaps; because he sometimes used sancti in the lower and merely ecclesiastical sense.

3 "Per totum hoc tempus quod liber iste (sc. Apocalypsis) complectitur, à primo scilicet adventu Christi usque in sæculi finem." C. D. xx. 8. 1.

Elsewhere he notes the obscurity of the Apocalypse; very specially from its repeating the same objects under different figures.-C. D. xx. 17.

4

So in his Doctr. Christ. iii. 51; "Centum quadraginta quatuor (mille), quo numero significatur universitas sanctorum in Apocalypsi.”

5 “Civitatem sanctam Jerusalem, quæ nunc in sanctis fidelibus est diffusa per terras." C. D. xx. 21. In which city he says, on Psalm cxxi. 2, that the angels will be fellow citizens.

See my Vol. i. pp. 284–287, with the extracts from Augustine in the Notes. 7 See pp. 179, 180, suprà. So the Greek Andreas afterwards: as also Primasius of the Latin Church, before Andreas. It continued in fact the current opinion through the Middle Ages.-That Professor M. Stuart should have ascribed the origin of this

I may add, that he expounded the woman clothed with the sun, in Apoc. xii, of the true Church, or Civitas Dei; clothed with the sun of righteousness, trampling on those growing and waning things of mortality which the moon might figure, and travailing both with Christ personally, and Christ in his members: also the complemental set of martyrs, spoken of to the souls under the altar in Apoc. vi, of martyrs to be slain under Antichrist. As to Antichrist himself, like other earlier fathers, he viewed him as one that would arise and reign three years and a half at the end of the world; though meanwhile the body and city of Antichrist might be considered realized (so as Jerome also had intimated) in the world and its members.

There remains for consideration one direct Apocalyptic Expositor of the fourth century, I mean Tichonius. We know both from Augustine,3 and from the later Expositors Primasius and Bede,1 that a Donatist of that name wrote on the Apocalypse: whose date according to Gennadius was about A.D. 380,5 and was at any rate included within the thirty years of the Donatist Parmenianus' Episcopate, from A.D. 361 to A.D. 391;6 as the latter took umbrage at Tichonius' anti-Donatist sentiments, though a Donatist, and wrote against them. There is still extant an Apocalyptic commentary bearing his name, drawn up in the form of Homilies, in number nineteen; affixed to the fourth volume of the Paris Benedictine Edition of Augustine. And the question has arisen respecting these, whether they are the real work of this aforesaid Tichonius, or not. The arguments against

opinion (as he appears to do in his Vol. i. p. 459) to Andreas, not Augustine, appears surprising.

So on Psalm cxlii. 3.-On Psalm xliii. 25, he explains the opened Book in Apocalypse x, given to St. John to eat, not of the Apocalypse, but of the Bible.

2 On the Donatists claiming to be the complemental set of martyrs spoken of to the souls under the altar, Augustine observes; “Quid est stultius quàm quòd putatis prophetiam istam de martyribus, qui futuri prædicti sunt, non nisi in Donatistis esse completam. Quòd si a Joanne usque ad istos nulli occisi essent martyres veri, ut nihil aliud, vel temporibus Antichristi diceremus futuros in quibus ille martyrum numerus compleretur." Contra Gaudent. i. 31. In this he coincides with Tertullian. See pp. 309, 310 suprà.

a Viz. Vol. iii. p. 99, in his statement of Tichonius' seven Rules of interpretation. 4 Who both refer to him in their Apocalyptic Commentaries.

5 So the Benedictine Editor of Augustine, Vol. ii. col. 371, Note. 6 So the same Editor.

7 He wrote a letter of reprehension to Tichonius. So Augustine.