to John the Baptist and Christ; 2. from Christ to the time of the fulness of the Gentiles; 3. from that to the consummation.

2. He states that certain mysteries of the Old Testament history were depicted by the seven Seals of the Apocalyptic seven-sealed Book and that these mysteries were opened by Christ after his resurrection.

3. He illustrates the concord of the two Testaments; and correspondence of certain events affecting the Old Testament Church, with certain that affected the New Testament Church, the latter being a kind of fuller expansion and accomplishment of the types of the former and this in the seven æras following, signified under the seven Seals. We have here the key to Joachim's Apocalyptic views.

SEAL

:

OLD TESTAMENT.

SEAL

NEW TESTAMENT.

1. From Abram or Jacob, to Moses and 1. From Christ to death of John the Joshua; in which æra occurred Evangelist.-Conflict of the Church with the Jews. Israel's war with the Egyptians.

2. Joshua to David.-Wars with the 2. Death of St. John to Constantine.

Canaanites.

3. David to Elias and Elisha.-Schism 3.

of Israel and Judah, and civil wars.
Also wars with Syria.

4. Elisha to Isaiah and Hezekiah. 4.
Wars with Assyrians, resulting in
Israel's ten tribes' destruction.

5. Hezekiah to Judah's captivity by the 5.
Babylonians: the Egyptians under
Pharaoh Necho partially preparing
or co-operating.

Persecutions of Pagan Rome.

Constantine

to Justinian.-Persian oppression of the Church. Schism of the Greek Church from the Latin. Justinian to; Charlemagne.-Saracens

overrun and mutilate the Greek Church and nation.

Charlemagne to the time now present.— German Emperors from Henry the 1st (men worse than heathens) endeavour to destroy the liberties of the Church.

6. Jews' return to Malachi's death.-- 6. Times, just about beginning, in which

Babylon conquered by the Persians.

Jews suffer from Assyrians under
Holofernes, and Syro-Macedoni-
ans.2

the Roman Babylon will be struck to death.

7. Malachi to John the Baptist and 7. End of the Second State in the world's Christ.-World's First State ends.

Conversion and Sabbath.3

"Apertio sexti sigilli," he concludes, "nuper initiata in paucis annis vel diebus consummationem accipiet. Ut autem in tempore

See his Leaf 6 to 10.

2 An evident anachronism; as it was not till long after Malachi that the SyroMacedonians opprest the Jews. But he calls Haman a Macedonian.

At Leaf 9, he allows two generations, or some 60 years from A.D. 1200, as the interval of transition from the second to the third state.-I shall have to remark afterwards on certain inconsistencies and obscurities in his statements about the 6th and 7th Times.

sexti signaculi percussa est Vetus Babylon, ita et nunc percutietur Nova. Et sicut tunc Assyria et Macedones deterruerunt Judæos, ita et nunc Saraceni, et qui post eos venturi sunt pseudo-prophetæ, facient mala multa in terrâ, et talem tribulationem qualis non fuit ab initio. Consummatis autem pressuris istis adveniet tempus beatum." Other chapters are on the Dragon and Antichrist? De duplici intelligentiâ distinctionis:" "Pulchrum mysterium;""On the difference of sabbaths;" "On the perfection of the numbers five and seven" &c. now not needful to enter on. Let me only in passing call attention to the heading of one," De vitâ activâ designatâ in Petro; et de contemplativâ in Joanne."-On various occasions this view of Peter as type of the priestly order, John of the monastic, is put forward by Joachim.

I now pass on to Joachim's PART ii. of the Commentary, and beginning of the opening of the Seals: observing in transition that he explains the four Cherubim around the throne to signify, in chronological succession, the first, the apostles; the second, the martyrs and confessors; the third, doctors of the 4th and 5th Centuries; the fourth, virgins or monks.

The 1st Seal then having been opened by Christ, the first Cherub, or Apostolic Order, as with a voice of thunder invited the world to contemplate.-The White Horse was the Primitive Church: the rider Christ, with his crown of righteousness, in person conquering alike the world, death, and Satan; and to the disciples triumphantly assigning the kingdom, the Jewish perfidy being overcome. (Just as Israel emerged from and conquered the Egyptians.)

In the 2nd Seal, the Red Horse is the Roman army: the rider the Devil, that great Homicide, or the Roman Emperors actuated by him. So were wars kindled, and peace disturbed. And especially what bloodshed of the saints in the Roman persecutions; till the Church's victory over Paganism under Constantine and Pope Sylvester! (So in Jewish history the conquest of the Canaanites.) The Order of Martyrs by their sufferings invited attention to this Seal.

3rd Seal. The Black Horse was the Arian Clergy, masters of error and darkness: the balance symbolizing the disputatio literæ, and cunning dialectics of the Arians. Sed tu tene tuum pondus : tu serva numerum quem audisti!" viz. "a choenix of wheat for a

penny." Which choenix (or bilibres) Joachim explains as having reference to the two Testaments;" or perhaps to the cry of the two Seraphim, Holy, Holy, Holy! "Which cry had the wretched Arians heard, they would never have impeached the Deity of the Son or Holy Ghost." (The order of the Catholic Doctors here proclaimed the truth.)

4th Seal.-The Pale Horse signified the Saracens, those destroyers of much of the Greek Church and Empire; the rider Mahomet. For, "Quis tàm rectè Mors appellari potuit quàm ille perditus Maometh, qui tot millium hominum facta est causa mortis!" (Joachim identifies this with the Little Horn of Daniel's fourth Beast.) By "Hades following" was perhaps meant Meses Mutus; a persecutor of Christians then ruling in Mauritania.-It was the order of Monks and Virgins that here answered to the fourth Cherub; crying, Come and see!-(Israel's fourth tribulation, from the Syrians and Assyrians, is the Jewish parallel referred to by Joachim.)

5th Seal. By the altar of God, which is associated with this Seal, as the four Cherubs were with the Seals preceding, is meant the Romish Church, including both clergy and monks. As the four primary persecutions originated in Judæa, Rome, Greece, and Arabia, so this fifth in Mauritania and Spain; where many Christians of the Romish communion have been killed, even until now. (The Saracens, who seemed to have fallen, having been revived like the Beast's head in Apoc. xiii, caused this result; just like the revived Assyrian power under Holofernes.)—" And they cried, How long, O Lord, dost not thou avenge, &c." A different cry this from that of the proto-martyr Stephen! For of the just some, like him, are more patient.-The white robes given signify how the martyrs pass from mourning to joy. -The words, "till their brethren be judged, that are to be slain even as they," show that after the fifth Seal, in cujus extremitate nos sumus," there remains still to be accomplished a martyr-struggle.

6th Seal.-Earthquake, &c. Here is the beginning of the New Babylon's day of judgment. ("Perpende verba hæc misera Babylon," says Joachim ; ecce enim appropinquat desolatio tua! Necesse est enim ut in sexto recipias quod in quinto tempore contulisti." He includes here the false members of the Roman Church in the new

1 So Joachim. Qu. Nebuchadnezzar ?

Roman or Western Empire, especially the German Emperors: adding, as a parallelism from Apoc. xvii, xix, "Ipsi enim reges qui percussuri sint Fornicariam, ut emundent superficiem terræ, pugnaturi sunt cùm Agno, et Agnus vincet illos.") This day of judgment, he says, is to be understood in a larger sense, as well as stricter: the large for a certain indefinite period of judgment; as Paul, Us on whom the ends of the world are come:" a stricter, when the just shall rise to eternal life, the wicked to eternal punishment.-Here the earthquake is the soul's earthquake of terror: the sun and moon darkened, the spiritual eclipse of both the monastic and the clerical orders: the heaven passing away, the passing away of the Church, so as that there be no more public preaching: (though some will still be in secret :) just as says Apoc. xiii, " that none might buy or sell," i. e. none offer the gospel, but they that had the Beast's mark. The islands and mountains fleeing away, are the Christian churches and monasteries. The kings of the earth noted, are the same that in Apoc. xix are seen to gather against the Lamb: and many thousands will fall in martyrdom, to complete the martyr-number.-Then Babylon having thus been judged, the Mahomedan nations (joined by false prophets apostatized from Christianity) will prophesy triumph to their law. But the Lamb shall conquer them.

Sealing Vision.-The four angels here are the same evil angels as those that (Ps. lxxvii) once afflicted Egypt; judicially permitted to withhold the life-giving influences of the winds; i. e. of the Spirit. (Or, if good angels, they may signify the four preaching orders withholding the word, as in Amos viii.) The sealing angel is either Christ, risen from the dead, and having the name of the living God as the Divine Author of life: or perhaps the Roman Pontiff, charged like Zerubbabel of old to rebuild Jerusalem and the temple; Christ acting and triumphing in him, "maximè cùm ipse solus principaliter teneat locum ejus."-Whichever it be, he will arise as with the influence of the morning sun, at which the wild beasts, or adverse powers of darkness, will get them away to their dens (Ps. civ); while he preaches with certain evidence the near resurrection of the dead :-that so, in this breathing-time between the two last tribulations, the faithful ones may be active to complete the mystic number of the elect 144,000; (the same that are re-mentioned in Apoc. xiv, and figured

too in the 144 cubits of the Holy City :) and to fight the remainder of the battle, under the Lamb and his followers, with the Beast and kings of the earth.—The interval will be like the six years after the return from Babylon, in which the temple rebuilding was completed. Besides which 144,000, an innumerable number will be killed for Christ's name, whose blessedness is declared in the palmbearing vision: a blessedness partly in this world, where they begin the ascription of praise to God the Saviour; and lasting afterwards through eternity: the angels (here meaning all the elect ones1) crying, Amen! and serving him alike day and night, or in times of joy and sorrow, in his Church: as also in heaven afterwards; when they drink of the fountain of life in his presence, where there are no tears.

7th Seal. As in Luke xxiii it is said that "the women rested (siluerunt) on the Sabbath, according to commandment,” so the halfhour's silence of this Seal may mean the sabbath-keeping, especially in a contemplative life. So in Psa. lxxxiv, "I will be silent to hear what the Lord God may say concerning me."-In the corresponding æra under the Old Testament, viz. after Ezra and Malachi, there was a cessation too from writing Scripture. So under the coming 7th Seal the time of expounding Scripture will have ended. (Did Joachim believe the prophetic Expositor's office closed in himself ?)—He adds; "The half-hour specified I deem to be the seventh and last half time of the three and a half prophetic times, whether literally or mystically understood."

PART iii.—With the Trumpets Joachim makes the chronology of the Visions to regress to the commencement of the Gospel-dispensation: the seven Trumpet-Angels being New Testament preachers, appointed to raise their voice like a trumpet; just as Israel's trumpet-priests round Jericho. With what those priests did in one week we may compare what has been done, or is to be done, in the sixth age of the world: the world being fated to fall, together with Antichrist, on the completion of seven times from Christ's birth; which seven times are all included under the world's sixth age.

The incense-Angel being explained as Christ, after his ascension,

1 "Omnes angeli in hoc loco omnes illi electi homines intelligendi sunt; qui, etsi non sint enumerati inter quinque ordines qui specialius pertinent ad civitatem, pertinent tamen ad suburbana et vicos."