is no notice whatever of Mahommedism or the Saracens; who in the year 636 A.D. finally overthrew both the Persian empire and the religion of the Magi.-Fourthly, on Apoc. xvii. 18, "the city which now reigns over the kings of the earth," Andreas argues against ancient Rome being meant, because of its having some time before lost its imperial dignity: a statement scarcely applicable to the time of Theodoric, A.D. 500, when Rome exhibited not a little of its ancient splendour; but strikingly agreeing with the period from after its ruin by Totilas, about the middle of the sixth century, till the accession of Gregory to the Popedom at the end of that century; when, to use Gibbon's language, Rome had reached the lowest point of depression.3-Fifthly, he alludes to the Roman Emperor, that is the one reigning at Constantinople, as holding the rod of power strong as iron in support of Christianity. So that the period of the Constantinopolitan Emperor's depression under Chosroes' invasions, from the year 616 to 622, seems thereby set aside.4-Sixthly, he speaks of certain Scythian Northern Hunnish nations, as among the most powerful and warlike of the earth: 5- —a statement perfectly applicable to the æra of the empire of the White Huns of Bochara and Samarcand, whose kingdom in 488 stretched from the Caspian to the heart of India, where Perozes the Persian king fell in an unfortunate expedition against them: 6 and continued till their subjugation, about A.D. 550, by the Turks of Mount Altai: and also applicable, perhaps, to the empire of the Turks their subduers, as these too were of similar Scythian origin; an empire well known to the Greeks of the time, by means of the embassies that past between them and the Constantinopolitan Emperor, from A.D. 569 to 582.7-On the whole, we may date Andreas' Treatise, I think,

for some six or eight years the Persian dominion and its worship of fire established: the Christians meanwhile being persecuted and oppressed: till Heraclius's celebrated repulse of the Persians, aud victories in 622. Gibb. viii. 222, &c.

Siquidem antiqua Roma jam olim majestatem amisit; nisi quisquam arbitretur pristinam dignitatem et majestatem suo postea tempore de novo recuperaturam." 3 Gibbon viii. 158-161.

2 See Gibbon vii. 29, 30.

"Per quem Christus Deus nunc quidem Romanorum manibus, quasi ferrum robustis, gentes regit." p. 610.

5 On the Gog and Magog of Apoc. xx, he writus: "Scythicas et Aquilonicas quasdam gentes, quæ alio nomine Hunni, bellicâ virtute, militum numero, quâvis terrena potentiâ finitimoque regno potentiores." • Gibb. vii. 136.

7 lb. 288-297. Gibbon notes the Scythian characters in which the letters of the

either about 550, just before the Huns' overthrow by the Turks, the date which I prefer; or A.D. 612-615, just before Chosroes' temporary subjugation of Asia Minor.1

Let me now turn from this argument, which has indeed occupied us too long, to our Author's Apocalyptic Commentary. Like his predecessors, he speaks in the introduction of the tripartite sense of scripture, its body, soul, and spirit: and that the spiritual or anagogical sense is applicable in the Apocalypse, even more than in other Scripture. Yet in fact Andreas admits a larger mixture of the literal, here and there, than Tichonius, Primasius, or Ansbertus : and there is also somewhat more of a consecutive historical view of its different parts; as of a prophecy figuring successive events from St. John's time to the consummation.3-Passing by the primary figuration of Christ, which he explains somewhat as Victorinus, and the Epistles to the seven Churches (representative of all Churches) on which I give two or three of his detached remarks below, he exemplifies in the heavenly scene next opened the literalizing tendency I spoke of, by explaining the glassy sea before the throne, not only anagogically of the virtues and blessed tranquillity of the heavenly state, but literally also, as perhaps the chrystalline heaven.-Of the seven-sealed Book (the Book of God's mind and purposes, or Book of prophecy) he explains Greek Khan of the Turks to the Greek Emperor were written.-It may be remarked too from him, how they "proudly computed their cavalry by millions."

By his speaking (on Apoc. xx. 7) of the 6000th year from the world's creation as not then elapsed, we might perhaps infer an earlier date than either; as the Septuagint Chronology usually received in the Greek Church, (i. e. according to the Alexandrian copy,) would have made the 6000th year expire about A. D. 500. But there were various readings in some Septuagint copies that made that epoch later; and moreover the Hebrew Chronology, that had by this time made progress in the West, may also have been very probably preferred by Andreas in the East. See my Vol. i. p. 371. 2 B. P. M. 590.

3 On Apoc. i. 1, "things which must be shortly," he says: "Nonnulla ex iis jam præ foribus urgere, brevique eventum sortitura esse; sed et ea ipsa quoque quæ ad sæculi tandem finem continent hand procul abesse, quippe cùm mille anni apud Deum ut dies."

1. On the threatening to Ephesus of removing its candlestick, Andreas says that some referred it to the transfer of the earlier Ephesian Archbishopric to Constantinople.

2. Respecting Antipas he says that he had formerly read his martyrium.

3. The promise, “I will give him the morning star," he explains as meant either of Isaiah's Lucifer, (i. e. morning star) to be trodden; or of Peter's morning star, viz. the light of Christ, to be received into the hearts; or of John Baptist and Elias, the herald stars of Christ's first and second coming, to be associated and company with.

the several Seals to signify as follows:-1st, the apostolic æra, and victories of the Gospel :-2nd, the æra of bloody martyrdoms next to the apostolic; when Christ's words were fulfilled, "I came not to send peace, but a sword : "—3rd, that of true Christians mourning over others, who under trial, being weighed in the balance, were found wanting; there being also perhaps famine at the time :— 4th, a calamitous time of joint famine and pestilence; such as Eusebius relates to have happened under Maximin, the Eastern Emperor, when corpses lay unburied, and dogs were killed that they might not devour them :-5th, the martyrs' cry for vengeance against their injurers, a cry even then continued: 2 as to whom, while waiting till the martyr-number should be completed, it was shewn that whiterobed in virtues they repose on Abraham's bosom, anticipating eternal joys :-6th, a transition to the times and persecution of Antichrist: (though some had suggested, Andreas says, both here and in the sealing vision, a retrogressive reference to Titus' destruction of Jerusalem: 3) under which Antichrist the earthquake figured a change of things, or revolution, as usual in scripture and perhaps the rolling up of the sky physical changes, such as Irenæus expected at the consummation:-after which the 144,000 of the sealing vision depicted the Christians saved from Antichrist's hand; (not the Christians saved at the siege of Jerusalem :) the winds held signifying the stagnation of death that is then to occur; and the palmbearing vision the happiness after death of the innumerable company of both earlier martyrs and the martyrs under Antichrist: when (the wicked having been cast into hell) the angels and saved ones of men will openly constitute but one family.

At the opening of the seventh Seal a regression is supposed from this palm-bearing scene; the half-hour's silence indicating the short

Lest otherwise, says he, "the righteous put their hand to iniquity." Ps. cxxv.

2 For though many wicked have already experienced God's anger, yet survivors still need the scourge.

3 Not however on any presumption of the Apocalypse having been revealed before the destruction of Jerusalem; because other of its visions were explained by the parties alluded to as figuring the events of Christ's life. So Andreas on the first Seal. "Sunt qui et præsentis sigilli et reliquorum patefactionem ad incarnati Verbi œconomiam referunt:" viz. the first Seal to Christ's birth; the second to his baptism, &c; and the sixth to his burial.

Somewhat like Pollok's description of the winds' stagnation just before the consummation, in his Poem,-The Course of Time.

2

space between the plagues before-mentioned and the end: and the Trumpet-figurations, events in the interval. Of these Trumpet-woes he explains the first on the land literally, (and I think rightly,) of the burnings and slaughters through invading barbarians, by which the third part of things inland would be consumed: '-the second, on the sea, figuratively, as meaning the Devil and his burning wrath : -the third again, similarly, of sufferings through the Devil fallen starlike from heaven :—and the eclipses in the fourth of much the same; somewhat as in Joel ii. 31: mercy restricting their duration, however, to the third part of the day and the night.-Then the Angel's warningcry, next heard, he speaks of as marking Angels' pity for men's woes; and interprets the fifth Trumpet's scorpion-locusts of demons whose sting, being that of sin, is death: also the sixth Trumpet's four Angels from the Euphrates of demons, bound at Christ's coming, but now let loose, leading on either spiritually-destroying heretics, or literally-destroying barbarian armies; perhaps locally from the Euphrates, as Antichrist would come from the East."

3

In the vision of the rainbow-crowned Angel, Apoc. x, the planting of his fiery feet on land and sea is curiously explained of indignation to be manifested against robbers by land, and pirates by sea: the opened book, as the record of names and deeds of such wicked ones: the seven thunders, as seven voices prophetic of the future, either by this Angel, or some other taking up the subject in response: the sealing them up, as of the same intent with Daniel's sealing till the time of the end: the oath, as to the effect, that in no long time after, at the conclusion of the sixth age, and in the days of the seventh, all would end, and the saints' rest begin.-In what ensues,

"Incendia et cædes per barbarorum manus illatas." His personal experience would make him well enter into this. See p. 348, just before.

2 Some explained it, he says, of the sea and those living in it, as destined to burn with expiatory fire after the general resurrection.

3 Thus Andreas reads ayyeλs, not aers, though he notes the latter as another reading.

✦ Some, he says, explained the locust-stings as the never-dying worm of the punishments of the wicked.-The five months meant, according to Andreas, the short term of life; so numbered because in it there are enjoyed five senses!!

5 Some, Andreas writes, explained these four Angels of the Archangels Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, and Uriel: a fancy repeated afterwards by Arethas.

On Apoc. ix. 21, "The rest repented not of the idolatries," &c, he notices re

ligious hypocrisy and avarice, as included in that charge.

7" Post sex sæculorum periodum." I suppose six millennaries, as Hippolytus. VOL. IV.

2 A

Andreas very much follows his predecessors. John's eating the Book, and charge to prophesy again, was significant of his personally prophesying again to the end of the world, by the publication of his Apocalypse and Gospel. In the Witnesses' vision, the temple meant the Church; the outer court Infidels and Jews; the Holy City, or New Jerusalem, also the Church; the three and a half years those of Antichrist; the two Witnesses, Enoch and Elias; (of whose modes of killing enemies one perhaps might be the pestilence ;) the scene of their lying dead, the streets of Jerusalem; the rising of the Witnesses, a literal resurrection; the tenth part of the city falling, the judicial fall of the impious, not even the Witnesses' resurrection having induced repentance; the rest that glorified God, those that, when the martyrs were visited with glory, might be deemed not unworthy of salvation.-Then the seventh Trumpet figured the general resurrection; the temple's concomitant opening the heavenly blessing of the saints; and the lightnings and thunderings the torments of the damned.

In the vision of the Dragon and Woman, Apoc. xii, Andreas (like Primasius, &c,) makes the Woman the Church, bringing forth (just as in Isa. lxvi, which he refers to) a Christian people: the moon under foot meaning (so as Methodius had explained it) the Jewish synagogue; and the male Child and his iron rod having fulfilment in the Roman Christian Emperors ruling the heathen. Further, the Dragon was the Devil; his seven heads symbolizing seven devilish powers, his ten horns the ten anti-decalogic sins!-During Antichrist's three and a half years' reign, the Church's abstraction from the world is to fulfil the figure of the Woman's flight into the wilderness, with perhaps a literal flight into deserts: God's providence, and the two Testaments, being the wings supporting and preserving her from the waters, or multitude of the impious, cast by the Dragon against her.-Then on the Beast of Apoc. xiii, Andreas, very much following Hippolytus, interprets that this Antichrist, or Pseudo-Christ,2 is to rise after the ten kings rising; and, "adorned with the title of Roman king," to overthrow their princedoms, like Augustus healing and restoring the

"Ecclesiæ populus filius masculus rectè appellatur; per quem nunc Christus Deus Romanorum manibus, quasi ferrum robustis, gentes regit." Andreas adds that this people of God is to rule the nations after the resurrection also.

So Andreas three different times, on Apoc. xvi and xix.