of their sovereign and to embrace the divine truth of Christianity'. This happened in the year 324: in that year, therefore, silence, or complete freedom from pagan persecution, commenced in the Church; and, consequently, in that year also the seventh seal was opened. Hence it appears, that the seventh seal is opened synchronically with the commencement of the second portion of the sixth seal; the period of the sixth seal wrapping over or running into the period of the seventh seal, agreeably to the principle of arrangement which has already been laid down3: consequently, the period of silence commences synchronically with the coërcion of the four winds of the earth and the sealing of the 144,000 mystic Israelites. But this silence in the Church, which began in the year 324, is described as being only of short continuance: the space as it were of half an hour elapses; and then the silence terminates, and the ancient disturbance recommences. Such is the prediction: and the event exactly corresponds with it. In the year 361, Julian, usually denominated the Apostate, mounted the throne of the Roman world: and he forthwith put an end to the silence in the figurative heaven by renewing, 1 Hist. of Decline, vol. iii. p. 252. under a modified and more artful form, the briefly interrupted disturbance of pagan persecution. An historian, who has selected this fanatical idolater for his favourite hero, has stated, at considerable length, the system which he adopted for the purpose of blotting out the name of Christianity; a system of oppression and tyranny and bloodshed, rendered doubly offensive by an hypocritical affectation of philosophic clemency 1. Such a system, when carried into execution, effectually disturbed the silence and quiet of the Church: the whole Empire, and particularly the East, was thrown into confusion by the rash edicts of Julian: the pagans abused, without prudence or remorse, the moment of their prosperity: and the unhappy objects of their cruelty were released from torture only by death. II. When the short silence in the Church is broken by the renewal of pagan persecution, the seven appointed angels receive their seven trumpets: but, for a season, they are withheld from sounding by the circumstance of another angel offering up much incense, with the prayers of all saints, upon the golden altar before the throne. Of this incense the smoke, we are told, ascended before God out of the angel's hand, mingled with the general prayers of the saints. Yet, notwithstanding the prayers were thus heard and accepted, they could obtain only a short delay of the calamities 'Hist. of Decline, vol. iv. p. 109-135. "Hist. of Decline, vol. iv. p. 116, 124. which impended over the Empire. For we are forthwith taught, that the angel took the censer, and filled it with fire from the altar, and cast to the earth : the consequence of which action was, that there were voices and thunderings and lightnings and an earthquake. With the first of the seven trumpets, as we shall hereafter see, commence largely and permanently those Gothic invasions of the Empire, which produced at length its partition and dismemberment. In the year 361, when the period of silence expired, the seven angels received their trumpets, and the first angel held himself ready to sound. But he was stayed for a season by the intercession of the Church, which, as it is well known, ceased not to pray for the safety and duration of the Roman Empire'. In the year 365, the Alemanni invaded One special reason, why the Church from the very first prayed for the perpetuity and preservation of the Roman Empire, was the ancient persuasion, that, when the Empire should be removed, the man of sin would forthwith appear. On this point, Tertullian is express. Est et alia major necessitas nobis orandi pro Imperatoribus, etiam pro omni statu Imperii, rebusque Romanis, quod vim maximam, universo orbi inminentem, ipsamque clausuram sæculi acerbitates horrendas comminantem, Romani Imperii commeatu scimus retardari. Itaque nolumus experiri: et, dum precamur differri, Romanæ diuturnitati favemus. Tertull. Apol. adv. gent. Oper. p. 869. Again, in the same tractate, he mentions the offering up of prayers for the constituted authorities of the Roman Empire, as being the ordinary practice of the Church. Gaul without success: and the Gothic war, which commenced in the year 366, was but too plain an omen of what might be expected when the sound of the first trumpet should call into serious and decisive action the warriors of the north. Yet, for a brief space of time, the threatening angel was ar→ rested: nor did he begin to sound, until the Gothic nations precipitated themselves into the devoted Empire upon the death of the great Theodosius. III. At the close of the respite thus procured for the Roman world by the fervent prayers of all the saints, the incense-offering angel takes the censer, and fills it with fire from the altar, and casts to the earth: the immediate effect of which is, that there are voices and thunderings and lightnings and an earthquake. According to the construction of the original Greek, the angel does not throw the censer down upon the earth, but the burning coals from the altar with which he had filled it. Now the apocalyptic earth denotes the Roman Empire. Here then, in the syllabus of the seventh seal, commence those terrible calamities, which are afterward methodically arranged within the seven periods of the seven trumpets. To give any thing like a distinct enumeration of them in a purposely brief summary, were plainly impossible. The prophet, therefore, Oramus etiam pro Imperatoribus, pro ministris eorum et potestatibus sæculi, pro rerum quiete, pro mora finis. Ibid. p. 876. To these prayers of the Church, the apostolic prophet, if I mistake not, here alludes.. mentions them collectively under the general appellation of voices and thunderings and lightnings. But, that this mode of arrangement may be clearly understood, he subjoins, to the long-enduring calamities thus. generally described, the additional circumstance of an earthquake ; carefully and studiously placing it the last in his enumeration. By such management he teaches us, that, while the voices and thunderings and lightnings belong indiscriminately to the periods of the six first trumpets, the earthquake, with which the seventh seal concludes, must be sought within the period of the seventh trumpet alone, because the seventh seal concludes with it: and, again, by the same management he teaches us, that the concluding earthquake of the seventh seal must not only be sought within the period of the seventh trumpet, as being the last of the seven chief periods into which the term of the seventh seal is divided ; but that it must likewise be sought within the period of the seventh vial, as being the last of the seven minor periods into which the chief period of the seventh trumpet is subdivided. For, since the period of the seventh trumpet is the last chief period of the seventh seal, and since the period of the seventh vial is the last of those smaller periods into which the seventh trumpet is subdivided : we must plainly look for the earthquake, which is the last event specified in the syllabus of the seventh seal, not only in the period of the seventh trumpet as generally considered, but likewise in the period of the seventh |