might expect the Church visible represented to be that of Roman Christendom, in the same full extent as before. But this, it seems,

is not so. The rider's yoke being the Papal, the horse is to be understood of Western Christendom only; and the other half of the Church visible, at the pleasure of the expositors, excised,'-Pass we this, however, to consider the horse's colour; which, being black, ought certainly, so as when applied elsewhere to pictures of famine, to signify the distressed aspect, and thus the distress itself, of the famished; then when the appetite craves, and there is nothing to satisfy it. But how can this apply to the state of Christendom during the time spoken of? The ecclesiastical history of the times negatives the idea of any such spiritual craving on the part of the mass of the population. Not merely as seen by man, but (to adopt Mr. Bickersteth's way of putting the case) as seen by the Holy Ghost, there was then nothing, or almost nothing, of the distressed aspect of spiritual famine. The general case was that of Judah in Jeremiah's time; "The prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests bear rule by their means, and my people love to have it so." 4

But it is the address to the rider about the corn, wine, and oil, that perhaps most curiously exhibits the difficulties and infelicity of this part of their interpretation. The spiritual state of the Church visible being the supposed subject of symbolization through the Seals, it is laid down by all who adopt it, (indeed by Vitringa, as well as Woodhouse, Cuninghame, Bickersteth, &c,) that the corn, wine, and oil are to have a spiritual signification :-though on the question, what precisely is the spiritual thing signified, there appears a certain diversity of opinion: some explaining those articles of food, all alike, of Church doctrines,5 Church ordinances, and the Bible itself; some

1 Woodhouse indeed speaks of the yoke of superstition imposed upon the Greek Church, and even on Mahommedans also. But Mr. Cuninghame understands it distinctively of the Papal yoke: and so too, I suppose, Mr. Bickersteth; as his duration of the Seal, reaching from A.D. 533 to near 1073, his date of the next Seal,-is a period for the greater part of which nearly all communion between East and Western Christendom was cut off.

So Lam. iv. 4; The young children ask bread, and no man breaketh it unto them." After which comes the description of the aspect of famine, (ascribed to another cognate class of the sufferers ;) "Their visage is blacker than a coal."

3

Prayer Book Sermon, p. 29.

* Jer. v. 31.

5 So Vitringa, as illustrated in what follows; and, in part, Woodhouse and Bickersteth.

-

Agreeably with

the oil and wine, at least, of the comforting, rejoicing, and sanctifying influences of the Holy Spirit : 1 which last surely ought not to be omitted.2 But how reconcile the two clauses of the address, the first tantamount (on their view of the choenix intended 3) to, "Let the wheat and barley be at scarcity price," the second, "Hurt not the wine and oil,"-with each other, and with historic fact? Says Vitringa very fairly; "The first clause is rather a charge to moderate the scarcity of corn, than to cause it; and so in apposition, not contrast, with the second about the wine and oil." which explication of the symbol, he asserts that the councils and rulers of the Church, from the fourth to the ninth century, (in his view the era intended) defined and preserved the true doctrines of religion, especially on the great contested questions of Arianism and Pelagianism. And so, very much, Woodhouse also. But, on consulting historic testimony, it will appear that, though on the two questions specially noted by him, the councils and rulers, at the beginning and end of the fourth century, did indeed define and assert the truth, yet at the same time they had even then begun, and in the four succeeding centuries went on, so to inculcate superstitious idolatry, and so to make void God's word by their traditions,5 (not to add, to teach a system of semi-Pelagianism also,6) as almost to cut off the people from all nourishment of the evangelic doctrine of God's word, and so from the grace and influence of Christ's Holy Spirit; in short, to introduce a spiritual famine. Really it is astonishing that by such a man there should have been propounded an ecclesiastical picture of the age referred to so incorrect.-But even this is not

1 Compare, on the symbols of corn and bread, Psalm lxxii. 16, lxxxi. 16, Prov. ix. 5. Amos viii. 11, John vi. 35;-on the wine, Prov. ix. 2, Isa. xxv. 6, lv. 1;— oil, Psalm xxiii. 5, xlv. 7, Isa. lxi. 3, Matt. xxv. 3.

-on the

2 Woodhouse explains the wheat and barley of the great saving doctrines of Christianity; the wine and oil of the divine knowledge laid up in the Bible as a depository, which, he says, has been always accessible to some persons, (Qu. how many in the dark ages ?) and handed down to us with its text uncorrupted.-Cuninghame understands the wheat and barley of the word and ordinances, dispensed to all within the pale of the visible Church; the wine and oil of the comforting and sanctifying influences of the Spirit of God, imparted only to true believers. p. 12.

3 They consider it the Attic choenix. See my remarks, Vol. i. p. 150, &c. 4 See my sketch of the æra, Vol. i. pp. 379–388.

5 See my observations, Vol. ii. pp. 209, 210.

so marvellous as that which attaches to Mr. Cuninghame's and Mr. Bickersteth's exposition; supposing, even, for argument's sake, that we were to admit the price specified of barley as well as of wheat to be, what we have long since seen it cannot be, a famine, or scarcity price. For Vitringa, in all he says, supposes the æra represented to be prior to that of the Apocalyptic Beast, or Antichrist. But Messrs. B. and C. while supposing the æra to be that of the Papal Antichrist, and indeed most strongly and energetically insisting on the point, do yet, in their interpretation of this Seal, assert an authoritative charge to have been given to the then rulers of the Church visible, (whether the popes, or priesthood, or Spirit of superstition,2) not to injure the wine and the oil of spiritual grace and joy, at that very time when, according to their own exposition of other parts of the prophecy, Christ's true Church would be living in the barrenness of the wilderness, and the body of the Church visible, or constituency of the black horse, (which of course was as well to profit by the conservative charge about the wine and oil, as to suffer from the restrictive charge about the wheat and barley,) would be drugged, universally and willingly drugged,-through the agency of these self-same rulers, with wine from the poison-cup of the fornication of the mystic Babylon !! 5

Nor does this interpretation succeed better in the fourth Seal, and its vision of Death on the pale horse, with Hades following, and all the destroying agencies in operation, in reference to "the fourth part of the earth," of the sword, famine, pestilence, and wild beasts. -Wherever Death is impersonated, it always, I believe, and cer

1 Vitringa would prefer to regard the 3 years of the reign of the Papal Beast as meaning three and a half centuries. See his Commentary, p. 620.

2 The latter, Mr. B's hypothesis, it will be remembered; the former, Mr. C.'s. 3 See the abstract from Mr. C. in the Note on p. 544.

Apoc. xii. 7. See my Vol. iii. pp. 33, 34.

5 Apoc. xvii. 2, xviii. 3.-- Mr. Cuninghame indeed would have the oil and wine, spared by the rider, to be set aside for Christ's true servants alone. But there is no distinction whatever in the words from the throne as to the parties to be affected respectively by the charges respecting the wheat and barley on the one hand, and the oil and wine on the other. And in either case it was evidently to be those that constituted the body of the horse.

-means the

tainly always when associated, as here, with Hades,' King of terrors, the destroyer of natural life. And Vitringa, sensible of this, as well as of the necessarily literal meaning of the sword, (of which more presently,) forms his interpretation accordingly; and explains the Seal of the dreadful destruction of life made in Christendom by the successive scourges of the Saracen and Turkish invaders : -though hinting, however, the possibility of the spiritual injury done by them to the Christian life and faith of the inhabitants being also intended. The other interpreters too, that I have spoken of, consider the rider Death to be an impersonator of the destroying powers of life natural, as well as life spiritual:2 and, though explaining his weapons of famine and pestilence spiritually, viz. of the pestilential doctrines and famine of the sword and ordinances introduced by him, yet admit that the sword must mean literally that of persecution. It is another example of the sliding scale between things spiritual and temporal.-And who then the sufferers from this sword? Of course (according to the purport of the symbol) they that are represented by the horse ;-i. e. the Church visible of the times. Yet, in the nature of things, could this be so? The ghastly and putrid colour of the horse, presignifying, it is said, the Church visible in its then climax of corruption and spiritual death,3 would indeed be of itself evidence of its having suffered from the spiritual famine and pestilence and from the wild Beasts of the earth, too, if interpreted of false ministers "like wolves in sheep's clothing," so as Mr. Cuninghame somewhat curiously would explain the emblem. But this very putridity and moral corruption would be its safeguard from the rider's sword of persecution. I say, from the very nature of the symbol, and character of the rider, as they themselves represent it, that sword could only be directed at individuals of spirit essentially and

1 Compare Apoc. i. 18, "I have the keys of Hades and of Death;" xx. 13, "Death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them;" xx. 14, "Death and Hades were cast into the lake of fire."

2 So Woodhouse, Cuninghame, and I believe Bickersteth.

3 Bickersteth on Prophecy. p. 366, and Sermon for Prayer-Book and Homily Society, p. 29. "The

4 p. 19.-Bickersteth explains them of the idolatrous secular empires. effects" (of Death's going forth) "were persecution, famine of the word, false doctrine full of deadly infection, and the kingdoms of the Western Empire become earthly and idolatrous." Homily Sermon, p. 29.

altogether distinct from that of the horse:-individuals spiritually alive, not dead. Just agreeably with which view of the necessity of things, the history of the æra supposed to be represented, describes the subjects of the fierce Papal persecutions of those middle ages to have been persons solemnly excommunicated and cut off from the body of the Church; nay more, depicts the members of the Church visible, of that æra,—in other words, the constituent body of the pale horse, -as the active energetic co-operators with their ecclesiastical superiors, or animating malignant Spirit, figured by the rider, in this persecution of the excommunicate Waldensian and other heretics. Turn it which way we may, this palpable inconsistency will be found essentially involved in the above scheme of interpretation of the 4th Apocalyptic Seal.-How far it accords with scriptural theology to represent God as commissioning a minister of his providence, and arming him with the sword of persecution, against his own faithful servants, is another and more serious question. This, however, has been already hinted at. And I feel bound to repeat that I believe it directly contrary to all spiritual representations of the dealings of God.

Thus there remains only for consideration on this head the explanation offered in the scheme we speak of, of that fourth part of the earth on which the rider Death is presumed3 to have had to execute his commission. In regard of which, Dean Woodhouse by his generalism of explanation, and Mr. Cuninghame by his entire silence on it, alike confess by implication their inability to offer a satisfactory interpretation. Mr. Bickersteth, however, boldly meets the difficulty, by identifying this fourth part of the earth with Daniel's fourth empire 5-a parallelism and identification of chronological order with geographical division surely most extraordinary; and only to be jusSee my Vol. iii. p. 180, 200.

When God's servants apostatize and are unfaithful, then God, as the God of justice, is frequently described as sending a sword against the people or land. In regard of the faithful, Satan sends the trial, as in Job's case; God permits and overrules it. 3 The reader may remember that the phrase admits of a very different explanation. See Vol. i. pp. 177-179.

4" It may perhaps be found that the Christian countries which underwent the rage of this Seal bore this proportion (one-fourth) to the remainder." p. 140. The Dean uses the word rage in reference to the sword of persecution, which he seems to view as the main subject of this Seal.

5 So in his work On Prophecy, p. 365, and Prayer-Book Sermon, p. 22.