it was promised that their sins should be forgiven them, and that the holy place, tabernacle, and altar should be cleansed from the uncleannesses of the children of Israel, and reconciled. It was thus that king Hezekiah, with all solemnity and earnestness, made atonement for Israel, after its notable apostacy under the reign of his father Ahaz. For they had, both priests and people, for years previous, forsaken the house and altars of the Lord, and sacrificed and burnt incense to other gods in every city of Judah; in spite alike of severe national chastisements, sent to bring their sin home to them, and of the remonstrances of Isaiah and other holy prophets. But this rite of atonement having been performed, the promised reconciliation with God followed. From the temple, and altar, and each blood-bedewed horn of the altar, a voice as it were went forth, not of judgment, but of mercy; of mercy through Him whose expiatory blood-shedding, and its application by Himself to purify and to reconcile, the whole ritual of atonement did but combine to typify. Instead of summoning destroying armies against Judah from the Euphrates, it staid them, when thence advancing to its invasion under Sennacherib:2 (thus direct was the contrast between Israel's case under Hezekiah, and that of Christendom that we are now reviewing): it staid them, I say; and, with authority not to be resisted, bade them back.

3

Such were the particulars common in these three rites of atonement; and with their real and spiritual meaning, just as with that of the rest of the Levitical ritual, St. John, we know, like his beloved brother Paul, was well familiar. It was by this knowledge that he had been prepared to understand the intimations given from time to time respecting the religious state of the Christian Church, in the mute. but significant language of what was enacted on the Apocalyptic temple-scene: specially for instance, how at the time correspondent with the

1 See 2 Chron. xxix. 20-24.

2 Ib. xxxii. 21; Is. xxxvii. 33, 34.

3 How beautiful the allusions to the Levitical services in his first epistle, i. 7, 9; ii. 2; iii. 5; v. 6; &c.

first preparing of the Trumpets of judgment, the large majority in Roman Christendom would have forsaken the great High Priest of their profession, in respect of his connection with either altar; in other words both as their atoner for sin, and as their intercessor, mediator, and offerer of their incense of prayer, on the golden incense-altar before God.' And now then, when, after the judgments of five successive Trumpets against them, he heard a voice denouncing judgment yet afresh from the four horns of the golden altar,-that altar which was appropriated to the true priest's offering the true incense, those horns of which the one and only use was in the rite of reconciliation, (specially in respect of sins associated therewith,) for a transgressing priesthood and people,-what could he infer from the figure but this, that in spite of the fearful previous rebuke of their apostacy from heaven, neither the priesthood nor the collective people, at least of this third of Christendom, would have repented and returned :—that the offer, the means provided, and critical occasion of respite given for reconcilement, would have past unheeded:-specially that their idolatrous superstitions would be persisted in, and abandonment of Christ, the High Priest over the house of God, for other intercessors and mediators, just as we have seen was the very fact throughout the whole continuance of the Saracenic woe:-that thus their sins would be graven even upon the horns of the golden altar; and the voice of the intercessorial High Priest himself forced to pronounce from the midst of them, "Loose the four angels to slay the third part of men!"-Such, I say, would, as it appears to me, be his interpretation of the voice in question." Issuing from the points whence it did, I think there could be no other meaning put upon it, accordantly with

1 See on Apoc. viii. 3, p. 304, &c, suprà.

2 Daubuz, alone of the commentators that I have seen, explains the passage under consideration by reference to these Jewish rites of atonement. But he does not particularize the special sin connected with the altar of incense. He at the same time supposes a reference also to the horns of the altar, as a place of refuge for criminals. But in this supposition he seems to be in error. It was the horns of the altar of sacrifice, not of the altar of incense, that were thus used. See 1 Kings i. 50-53; where the "brought down from it" implies height and ascent.

the spirit of the Levitical ritual: as also that no other imaginable typical action on the temple-scene could so accordantly with that spirit, and at the same time so simply and definitely, have intimated the important fact. -And alas! if the intent of the prefiguration was thus clear to St. John, there were answering facts in the state of Greek Christendom, at the time we speak of, equally clear to the discerning Christian. The offered opportunity for repentance and reconcilement, in regard more particularly of that crying sin against Christ of which I have been speaking, past unheeded. The guilt of inveterate anti-christian apostacy was fixed upon them. It was stamped on their ritual. It was stamped on their hearts. It was stamped on their very coinage. Witness the specimen here set before the reader's eye.1

II. "And I heard one voice from the four horns of the golden altar," (each corner of the land to which the horns pointed had been alike guilty,)" saying, Loose the four angels that have been bound by the great river Euphrates! And the four angels were loosed which

1 The coin I append, as illustrative of the saint-worship in vogue, and of their images, specially of that of the Virgin Mary, now established in the Greek empire, is a coin of the emperor John Zimisces, Emperor from 970 to 973. In this the image appears on the reverse surrounded with a nimbus, and with the letters MPOT, i. e. Mτηρ eoυ, the mother of God.-It seems that after defeating the Bulgarians, he placed on a chariot, taken among the spoils, an image of the Virgin of great reputed sanctity; made with it a triumphant entry into Constantinople; then deposited it with great solemnity in the principal church: where it was afterwards kept, like that of Minerva of old, as the Palladium of the state. So Walsh on Ancient Coins, p. 134.

It is added by Mr. Walsh that the Emperor John Zimisces was the first thus to represent the image of the Virgin on the Greek coins; and further that coins of the Basilian or Comnenian Imperial families subsequent to J. Zimisces, and clearly bearing this device, are scarcely to be found. But Rasche (iii. 246) instances the same device both in coins of Theophano and Nicephorus Phocas before John Zimisces, and also on coins of Romanus Diogenes, (the same that was defeated and taken prisoner by the Turks,) Isaac I, Constantine XI, and others of the Comnenian family subsequent. (See too the Dissertation annexed to Ducange's Supplement p. 27, and Plates 3 and 7.)-Thus the reader may regard the specimen given as characteristic of the Constantinopolitan coinage, as well as superstition, at least through the times of the Seljukian Turks, and up to the temporary capture of Constantinople by the Latin Crusaders. Subsequent to its recovery from the Latins, the superstition continued in full force, though the coinage is wanting to attest it. During the very last siege of Constantinople, and just before its storming by the Othman Turks, the divine image of the Virgin was brought out, and exhibited in solemn procession, as the last and best hope of the Greeks.

PL. XU

COIN OF THE EMPEROR JOHN ZIMISCES.

Illustrative of the Image.Worship then established in the Greek Empire.

P. 460.

From Walsh .