preserving grace obtained a general sanction and credence in the professing Church, Rome itself assenting,' (the rather because pure Pelagianism tended to make men independent of the ecclesiastical system of salvation, which Rome cherished, as well as of Augustine's more spiritual and scriptural system,) such as the eloquence, talents, episcopal authority, and weight of character, with which God had endowed this his eminent servant and instrument, influential as they were, would by themselves doubtless have failed to obtain. - But who does not see the contrariety of this system of salvation by grace,-God's own individual, direct, electing, and saving grace,—to a system of salvation ecclesiastical, begun by the opus operatum of the priest in baptism, and carried on simply by the saving virtue of church ceremonies and church observances ?-In fact the contrariety of the two systems was quickly felt; and Rome (though still professedly reckoning Augustine in its list of saints) eschewed very soon its former direct approval of his doctrine, and substituted virtually a mongrel system of ecclesiastical semi-Pelagianism.2

And so, as the barbarian tempests from the North were ravaging the Roman world, a twofold stream of doctrine was perpetuated in the Church visible through the ages following;- the one the ritualistic ecclesiastical doctrine of religion, the other the Augustinian spiritual doctrine of saving grace. In chapters that will follow, I

curve itself. Similarly since, in the case of adults, faith (personal faith) must needs accompany baptism to make it effectual, and this holds of the youngest adults, if only the age be rational,-the same, we may argue, must hold proportionally in the baptism of still younger children and infunts also, in order to its being effectual to spiritual life and salvation :-i. e. that faith must be then so implanted in the germ, if the child become at that moment in the largest sense of the word spiritually regenerate, that, in proportion as reason is developed, faith shall be developed also.

1 So Pope Zosimus. See Augustine's Life. Also afterwards Pope Celestine. 2 Take for example the extract following from Pope Gregory III's Judicia Congrua Pœnitentibus, written about the middle of the eighth century. Hard. iii. 1871.

"Prima est remissio quâ baptizamur in aquâ, secunda caritatis effectus, tertia eleemosynarum fructus, quarta perfusio lachrymarum, quinta afflictio cordis et corporis, sexta emendatio morum, septima intercessio sanctorum, octava fidei meritum, nona conversio et salus aliorum, decima indulgentia et remissio nostra!"

shall have to note, on the one hand, the names of many in the middle ages, professedly of the Romish Church, who fed on this spiritual doctrine as on heavenly food,' and found in it a blessed antidote to the ritualistic formalism in vogue, down even to the Reformation; and, on the other, to observe how Rome more and more shrunk from, and hated, and opposed it. Indeed I might trace both Rome's opposition to it, and God's blessing on it, even beyond the Reformation. Witness the histories of Luther,3 of the Jansenists, and indeed of

In my Chapters on the Western Line of Witnesses.

2 E. g. in the case of Gottshalk, which will be noted subsequently.

3 He was an Augustinian monk; and Augustine's writings united with the Bible to help him to the discovery of evangelic truth.

4 See in Harduin, xi. 1634, Pope Clement XI.'s condemnation, A.D. 1713, of the 101 Propositions of Jansen, mostly taken from Augustine: from which, as being eminently illustrative of my subject, though in respect of chronology long anticipatory, I must here beg to extract.

The Pope selects for condemnation among other propositions of Jansen the following:

1. Quid aliud remanet animæ quæ Deum atque ipsius gratiam amisit, nisi peccatum et peccati consecutiones, superba paupertas, et segnis indigentia; hoc est generalis impotentia ad laborem, ad orationem, et ad omne opus bonum.

2. Christi gratia, principium efficax boni cujuscunque generis, necessarium est ad omne opus bonum: absque illà non solùm nihil fit, sed nec fieri potest. 5. Quando Deus non emollit cor per interiorem unctionem gratiæ suæ, exhortationes et gratiæ exteriores non inserviunt nisi ad illud magis obdurandum. 8. Nos non pertinemus ad novum fœdus nisi in quantùm participes sumus ipsius novæ gratiæ, quæ operatur in nobis id quod Deus nobis præcipit.

14. Quantumcumque remotus à salute sit peccator obstinatus, quando Jesus se ei videndum exhibet lumine salutari suæ gratiæ, oportet ut se ei dedat, occurrat, sese humiliet, et adoret Salvatorem suum.

25. Deus illuminat animam, et eum sanat, æquè ac corpus, solâ suâ voluntate. 26. Nullæ dantur gratiæ nisi per fidem.

27. Fides est prima gratia, et fons omnium aliarum.

28. Prima gratia quam Deus concedit peccatori, est peccatorum remissio.

29. Extrà ecclesiam nulla conceditur gratia.

72. Nota ecclesiæ Christianæ est quòd sit catholica, comprehendens et omnes angelos cœli, et omnes electos et justos terræ, omnium sæculorum.

73. Quid est ecclesia nisi cœtus filiorum Dei, manentium in ejus sinu, adoptatorum in Christo, redemptorum ejus sanguine, viventium ejus Spiritu, agentium per ejus gratiam, expectantium gratiam futuri sæculi.

75. Ecclesia est unus solus homo compositus ex pluribus membris, quorum Christus est caput, vita; unus solus Christus, compositus ex pluribus sanctis, quorum est sanctificator.

80. Lectio sacræ Scripturæ est pro omnibus.

This enumeration ended, the Bull condemns them as-"falsas, perniciosas, impias, blasphemas, hæresim ipsam sapientes," &c. &c.-So, says Ranke, iii. 199, speaking of this Bull Unigenitus, "the Jansenist doctrines of sin, grace, justification, and the church, even in their mitigated expression, and sometimes as literally taught by Augustine, were denounced as heretical."

Gibbon, vi. 24, when observing on the affinity between Augustine and Calvin, remarks justly also on the secret repugnance of Rome to the former. And Mr.

our own Anglican Church :-a church in its doctrines (we might almost say) half Augustinian, as well as half Lutheran though with an Augustinianism moderate as the Apocalyptic figuration which I suppose to have symbolized it; omitting all deeper mysteries of the doctrine, and asserting simply its grand spiritual truth of the Lord's marking out from amidst the professing Church of an individual election of grace; to be preserved, through sanctification and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus, unto everlasting life.

3

Which being so, and the Augustinian light the chief that still, long after its first brighter orient beams,2 glimmered through the dark ages, down to the outburst of Gospel sunlight at the Reformation, I cannot but pray the reader, in conclusion, to mark the admirable prophetic truth and propriety wherewith the Apocalyptic Revelation, ere passing onward to depict the Gothic tempests' irruption into and desolation of the Roman

Newman, in his work on Romanism, p. 93, notes that in an Edition of Augustine published at Venice, the publishers speak of having "taking care to remove whatever might affect the minds of the faithful with heretical pravity."

"

1 I refer, of course, to its Art. xvii, On Predestination and Election. They which be endued with so excellent a benefit of God (predestination to life) be called, according to God's purpose, by his Spirit working in due season: they through grace obey the calling: they be justified freely: they be made sons of God by adoption: they walk religiously in good works; and at length, by God's mercy, they attain to everlasting felicity."

Compare the Collect for All Saints' Day; "O Almighty God, who hast knit together thine elect in one communion and fellowship, in the mystical body of thy son Christ our Lord;" where the sense of the word elect, as meant by our Church, is fixt by its choice of the very passage under consideration for the Gospel; I mean Apoc. vii. 2, &c, with its 144,000 sealed ones and palm-bearing company. Mark too the Augustinianism of the Anglican Church doctrine in its Articles ix, x, on Original Sin and Freewill. In Art. xxix, on the inefficacy of the sacrament in case of wicked partakers, Augustine is expressly cited.-The writings of Cranmer, Hooper, and others of the real founders of our Reformed Church, abound with references to Augustine.

2 Augustine's cotemporary Paulus Orosius, in the Preface to his History, speaks of the light shed on the Church and Christendom by the first ten Books just then published of the De Civitate Dei, in figurative language singularly correspondent with the Apocalyptic symbol: Quorum jam decem orientes radii mox, ut de speculâ ecclesiasticæ claritatis elati sunt, toto orbe fulserunt."

3 "It is evident that real Christianity, notwithstanding its nominal increase under the emperors, must soon have been extinct, if God had not interposed with a second great effusion of his Spirit. This involves the private life of Augustine. -The effects of this diffusion of the Spirit were solid, though never brilliant. The light from Augustine's writings never broke out into a vivid extensive flame, but shone with a moderate brightness at first, and afterwards glimmered through many ages, down even to the Reformation." Milner, v. 2, 3; also v. 9.

world, paused at this precise æra, with its two lightshedding visions from heaven, of the sealing and the palm-bearing, to depict it. The peculiarity and distinctiveness of the figuration will appear to us yet more remarkable, on finding, as we go forward, that there was depicted afterwards before the Evangelist no other vision of light from heaven, but only of tempests, and woes, and sins, and of Christ's two witnesses witnessing in sackcloth until at length, just in the midst of the second or Turkish woe, the same divine Angel in yet more glorious vision appeared descending to illuminate the scene, with the sun-light beaming from his face, and a rainbow encircling his head: which vision will be shown to have designated with equal, or even greater accuracy of delineation, the outburst and successive epochs and events of the glorious Reformation.-The one picture is in fact the counterpart of the other. Nor can either the evidence of their meaning what I have expounded them to mean (strong as it may have already appeared in the present case) be fully appreciated, nor the admirable suitableness of the two symbolized revelations of gospel-truth themselves to combat,-the one the incipient antichristian apostacy, with its more seemly yet earthly scheme of mere ecclesiastical salvation,-the other the perfected antichristian apostacy, with its worse than earthly terrors to enthral a fearful conscience,—and by consequence their suitableness to preserve to the Lord a true Church in Christendom, unless they be considered and compared together; each with its own proper comment and illustration in history.

PART II.

'APOC. VIII. 1.-IX, 20.

THE FIRST TRUMPETS.

THE DESTRUCTION OF THE WESTERN

EMPIRE BY

THE GOTHS; AND THE EASTERN EMPIRE BY

THE SARACENS AND TURKS.

A.D. 395-1453.

CHAPTER I.

THE HALF-HOUR'S SILENCE IN HEAVEN, INCENSEOFFERING, AND TRUMPET-SOUNDINGS.

1

:

"AND when he had opened the seventh Seal, there was silence in heaven' about the space of half an hour.-And I saw the seven angels which stood before God and to them were given seven trumpets. And another angel came, and stood at the altar, having a golden censer: and there was given unto him much incense, that he should offer it with the prayers of all the saints, upon the golden altar which was before the throne. And the smoke of the incense, which came with the prayers of the saints, ascended up before God out of the angel's hand. And the angel took the censer, and filled it with fire of the altar, and cast it upon3 the earth. And there were voices, and thunderings, &c. . . . . And the seven

1 εγενετο σιγη εν τω ερανω. I shall presently have to observe on this clause, and its rendering in our translation. πάντων των ἁγιων, with the article.

2

3 els τny yηv. I prefer to render the preposition by upon, rather than into.