"Apoc. xxii. 1. It is declared how this happiness shall abound both with drink and with meat, to the use of others, and shall remain for ever. 6. The conclusion confirmeth the whole prophecy, with many most effectual arguments."

Pareus' Commentary followed not long after Brightman's. It was the substance of Lectures, delivered in the year 16082 to the Academy of Heidelberg, over which he presided; but seems not to have been published till the year 1615.3 My own edition is an English translation by Elias Arnold; printed Amsterdam, 1644.

In the four first Seals he makes the horse the Church, Christ being its rider: first white, with reference to its primitive purity; chiefly for the first 200 or 300 years: next red, with reference to its persecutions and blood-shedding of martyrs, early begun, and running on to Constantine: thirdly black, with reference to the heresies that soon darkened it; Christ holding the balance of his word with which to try them, and the words about corn, wine, &c. indicating a spiritual scarcity fourthly pale, as with the deadly disease of Antichristianism a disease prepared in the clerical and prelatical luxury and pride consequent on the Constantinian revolution, and developed, as having then taken hold of the whole body ecclesiastical, in the time of Gregory and Boniface III; the latter made Universal Bishop by Phocas, and so sitting in the chair of "universal pestilence." The fifth Seal depicts the blessedness of the martyrs slain in Christ's cause, from Nero to Boniface, "the first Antichrist;" with intimation added of another set of martyrs to be slain under Antichrist before the time of vengeance: the sixth Seal, 1. the horrible confusions and calamities from which the Church was to suffer, for 1000 years and more, under the reign of Antichrist; 2. the day of the Lamb's wrath and judgment against the Antichristians; 3. the preservation meanwhile of a true Church to himself during Antichrist's reign, figured under the 144,000 sealed ones; and 4. their ultimate triumph and blessedness in Heaven.—On the seventh Seal's opening, 1 i. e. as he explains, "all the time the world shall last after this."

2 Pareus' Preface notes the date, being thus headed; "The Author's Preface on the Revelation of St. John, happily begun and propounded to his auditory in the University, Anno 1608.-It was the result of thirty years' thought, he tells us, p. 20.

3 At p. 18 of the English Edition Pareus gives an extract from a letter received by him, apparently while preparing the work for publication, or while passing it through the press, dated March 1615.

Pareus explains the half-hour's silence to be merely a break and pause, during which St. John rested from the contemplation; a new series of visions being then marked as commencing.

For he makes these visions to retrogress to the times of the beginning of the Christian Church. First, Christ, as having ascended, is seen acting as the High Priest for his people; and sends down the fire of the Holy Ghost on his disciples, in answer to their prayers :consequent on which are the voices, thunderings, and lightnings; typifying what before was typified under the red, black, and pale horses; and an earthquake moreover, answering to the revolution in the church and world, caused by the rise of the Papal Antichrist and of Mahomet.

:

The Trumpets Pareus refers to the same times respectively as the corresponding Seals the 1st being significant of the injuries to the faithful, from the time of Nero to Domitian; the 2nd of the bloodshed of the subsequent Pagan persecutions to Constantine; the 3rd of the preparation for Antichrist, in the rapidly-developed ecclesiastical apostacy; an apostacy fitly figured as a star falling from heaven, and embittering the streams of Church doctrine: the 4th being the darkening of the Church under the advancing apostacy; the 5th and 6th the rising of the Western and Eastern Antichrist, or the Popes and Mahomet: the desolations by the former of whom were depicted under the figure of locusts, the time five months having only reference to the usual time of locusts making their ravages; those by the latter under that of horses and horsemen from the Euphrates. In the case of the Euphratean horsemen the four angels bound were Arabians, Saracens, Tartars, Turks: the " hour, day, month and year," for which they were prepared, designating only their preparation at any day that the Lord should send them. For Pareus, while noticing Brightman's notable view of this clause, as meaning a period of 396 years from A.D. 1300, measuring the Turkish empire's duration, hesitates to admit it.-The non-repenting remnant, Apoc. ix. 20, is explained of the Papists still persisting in idolatry, after all the Turkish desolations of Christendom.

In Apoc. x. the vision of the Covenant-Angel shows Christ's provisions for the preservation of a Christian ministry, and for the opening of his word, during all the long times of opposition, especially

that under Antichrist. (So that Pareus, like Brightman before him, made a less definite application of this prophecy to the times of the great Lutheran Reformation than some of his Protestant predecessors had done.)-By the Angel's oath it appeared, he says, that but one Trumpet more remained after the Turkish woe to the consummation. "Thou must prophesy again," is applied by him to the preachers of truth near the end of the 5th and 6th Trumpets-; also the measuring of the Temple to the Church's reformation, as begun about the time of Huss, continued A.D. 1517. The 1260 days of the Gentiles treading the Holy City, he inclines to reckon as 1260 years, beginning from Boniface's grant of the title of universal Bishop to the Roman Pope, î.d. 606; a period ending, says he, A.D. 1866. But he leaves the decision of this point with God. The two Witnesses he understands indefinitely for all true Christian witnesses. Their symbolized slaughter in the great city, and the 3 days' exposure of their dead bodies, had respect to the repeated slaughter, and as repeated revival very speedily of Christ's witnessing servants: Foxe's particular case of Huss and Jerome at Constance, and Brightman's case of the Council of Trent's temporary triumph over Protestantism, and its revival through Prince Maurice, both included. The Witnesses' resurrection he explains of the martyred saints' resurrection literally: and makes the tenth part of the city, that fell, to be the part that fell off from the great city of Papal Christendom at the time of the Reformation.

In Apoc. xii the Woman (as usual) he makes the Church; the Dragon the Devil; his seven heads and ten horns symbolizing indefinitely the multitude of earthly powers under him. The battle or war in heaven, is explained 1st allegorically, of the conflict of Christ and Satan; 2nd historically, of Constantine's being advanced to the throne of the Roman Empire.-The waters cast after the Woman are heresies, such as the Arian, &c : and the Woman's 1260 days in the wilderness to be dated from the Papal Antichrist's constitution by Phocas, as before.—In Apoc. xiii the first Beast out of the sea, is the Popedom with reference to the Popes' asserted imperial power and authority; his deadly wound that of the Papal schism healed at Constance: the second Beast being the Papal Antichrist in his character of a seducing Prelate; the head with the members, or whole crew of

his seducing priests. The Image of the Beast Pareus deems to be one image for many; meaning the images of saints, which the Papal Beast requires men to worship. The name and number he makes with Irenæus and Foxe, respectively, to be Aatevos and .—In Apoc. xiv the first preaching Angel is explained as Wicliffe; the second as Luther; the third all faithful preachers since Luther.-In Apoc. xvi. the seven last plagues are the plagues under the last of the four periods into which the Christian æra is divided: viz. 1, that to Constantine; 2, that to Phocas; 3, that to Leo and Luther; 4, and last, that after Luther. The 1st Vial is the sore that fell on the Popedom from Luther's Reformation; the 2nd the deadly decrees of the Council of Trent; the 3rd, the persecuting Papal Bishops and Doctors; the 4th, a fresh heat and light from the Scriptures opened by Christ, yet with the result of only the more enraging the Papists; the 5th, the darkening of Rome of its former lustre; the 6th, the drying up of the resources of the Antichristian Babylon or Rome; the 7th, the smiting of the air or natural atmosphere with pestilence, and the universal destruction then following.

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On Apoc. xvii Pareus explains the Beast to designate Antichrist not simply, but as clothed with the skin of the Roman Empire: an Empire which was" under the old government of kings, consuls, &c; which "is not" because of the Roman ecclesiastical hierarchy not having begun in St. John's time; and which "is to ascend out of the bottomless pit" at the time of Phocas. Further the seven kings, answering in the seven hills, are construed by him, after Aretius, Napier, and Brightman,' to signify Kings, Consuls, Dictators, Decemvirs, Military Tribunes, and Emperors, according to the enumeration of Rome's ruling magistrates given in Tacitus; five having

1 This explanation has been ascribed to James I. (Daubuz on Apoc. xii. 3.) In King James's comment I find the explanation stands thus. "The seven heads of the Beast signify as well seven material hills, whereupon the seat of this monarchy is situated; as also seven kings, or divers forms of magistrates, that this empire hath had, and is to have hereafter." He is said by the Editor of the Edition of his Works in 1616, the then Bishop of Winchester, to have written this commentary on the Revelations before he was twenty years old; which would be A. D. 1586. And I see in Watts' Bibliotheca that 1588 is put down as the date of its first publication. Now this was the same year that Foxe's Eicasmi was published, giving the same solution; and giving it as from Peter Artopæus and Dr. Fulke, both some years King James' seniors. See my p. 437 suprà. Fulke published on the Apocalypse A. D. 1573, and died 1589: Artopæus earlier. And, as I observed at p. 437, Osiander suggested nearly the same yet earlier.

passed away, and the sixth, or Pagan Emperors, holding the rule at the time when St. John saw the vision: the seventh head being the Roman Christian Emperors from Constantine, and the eighth the Popes or Antichrist. "And is of the seven," Pareus understands to mean, that this eighth would have the same power as the seven previous. (He notes in passing, that other Protestant Expositors made the eighth to be the French and German Emperors of the West.) With regard to the ten horns symbolized, he supposes them to have sprung out of the 7th head, or that of the Christian Cæsars. The statement that the ten kings, after rising at one and the same time with the Beast, are to strip and make bare the Woman, or Rome, he speaks of as a thing still future.' But they are not, he adds, therewith to destroy the Papal Antichrist: he being destined to survive Rome's destruction, and to be destroyed only by the brightness of Christ's coming.

On Apoc. xx the Millennium is explained nearly on the Augustinian principle; Satan having no power, says Pareus, after Christ's first advent and ministry effectually to maintain Paganism: and his destined post-millennial loosing was at the time of Antichrist's full development in Gregory VII; i. e. A.D. 1073. Meanwhile the saints and martyrs did all reign with Christ in heaven after death during that earlier part of Antichrist's reign, which lasted from 606 to 1073; in which, although he was not then fully developed, they had yet to encounter and resist him. (Pareus here takes occasion to controvert the Chiliasts; the first resurrection being spiritual, he says, not corporal.)—Then Gog and Magog are explained as the Turks loosed about the time of Gregory VII; and finally that it was the heavenly glory of the redeemed that was typified under the figure of the New Jerusalem.

By far the most valuable part of Pareus' exposition seems to me to consist in his interpretation of the two Beasts; distinguishing between them, as he did, to symbolize the Popes in their imperial supremacy, and the Popes in their ecclesiastical and prelatic supremacy. The application of the Papal pretensions as Christ's Vicar, (or Antichrist,) on which in fact the Pope's grand supra-imperial supremacy

'On this passage Pareus strongly insists that the right reading is emɩ TO Onplov, and not what Bellarmine would have, kaι to onion.