CALIFORNIA

THE FOUR FIRST SEALS.

grisly king of terrors, so mounted, is left to be supplied by the imagination of the reader. "And hell followed with him "—that is, the receptable of the dead, the place of departed souls-implying that there was a more dreadful enemy in regions beyond the grave signifying, both images taken together, the destruction in the heart of all true religion, and the extinction of all spiritual life-and every horrible and dreadful result that can flow from such a state of things.

At the head of this fourth change in the aspect of the church, stands the name of CHARLEMAGNE, who reigned from the year 768 to 814. "We are penetrating," says Mr. Milner, in commencing his history of the ninth century, "a land of deserts and pits, a land of drought, and of the shadow of death; and are carried, by every step, into scenes still more gloomy than the former." Baronius, a popish writer, calls it "an iron age, barren of all goodness; a leaden age, abounding in all wickedness; and a dark age, remarkable above all others for a scarcity of writers and men of letters." The often repeated language of Mosheim, speaking of these centuries, is in the same strain. He speaks of "the astonishing ignorance that gave a loose rein both to superstition and immorality "—of the thick darkness, the clouds of ignorance, which universally prevailed-of the Latins presenting a spectacle almost without exception sunk in the most brutish and barbarous ignorance—a dismal night of ignorance, covered with a thick and gloomy veil of superstition and cruelty,

and other epithets shewing that it was an era that is well designated as the dark ages.

Charlemagne himself, whose private character, amidst all his splendid and valuable qualities, was any thing but influenced by Christian principles, endeavoured to stem the torrent of this most deplorable and degenerate state of ignorance and vice; but the methods he took only riveted the chains of superstition and priestly tyranny stronger and firmer, and opened the sources of corruption wider. "The epoch," observes Mr. Hallam, "made by Charlemagne in the history of the world, has cast a lustre over his head, and testifies to the greatness that has embodied itself in his name. He possessed in every thing that grandeur of conception that distinguishes extraordinary minds. Like Alexander he seemed born for innovation-perhaps his greatest eulogy is written in the disgraces of succeeding times, and in the miseries of Europe. In the dark ages of European history, the reign of Charlemagne affords a solitary resting place between two long periods of turbulence and ignorance."

Dr. Robertson, likewise speaking of this great prince, says, "All the calamities which flow from anarchy and discord, returning with additional force, afflicted the different kingdoms into which his empire was split. From that time to the seventeenth century, a succession of uninteresting events fill and deform the annals of all the nations of Europe. Charlemagne in France, and Alfred the Great in England, endeavoured to dispel this darkness, and

gave their subjects a short glimpse of light and knowledge. But the ignorance of the age was too powerful for their efforts and institutions. The darkness returned, and settled over Europe more thick and heavy than before."

This sad darkness was followed by a corresponding wickedness. Hence the same author observes-and it will suffice in drawing this dismal picture—that " a greater number of those atrocious actions which fill the mind of man with astonishment and horror, occur in the history of the centuries under review, than in that of any period of the same extent in the annals of Europe. If we open the history of Gregory of Tours, or of any contemporary author, we meet with a series of deeds of cruelty, perfidy, and revenge, so wild and enormous as almost to exceed belief."

We now come to the next particular in the great change from bad to worse which is exhibited in this seal-and that its LIMITATION-" power was given him over the fourth part of the earth," and this we shall find exactly applies to the era formed by Charlemagne. The preceding ones-viz, those formed by the reigns of Constantine, Theodosius, and Justinian, each extended over the length and breadth of the whole Roman empire, in all the three quarters of the world, Europe, Asia, and Africawhereas the sway of Charlemagne, great as it was, extended to only about "a fourth part." The western portion of the empire is, as we shall here

after find in explaining the "trumpets," considered as a "third part"-but, according to Gibbon, "only two thirds" of the western empire of Rome were subject to Charlemagne ; and the petty sovereigns of the remaining part of it, including England and Spain, implored the honour of his alliance, and styled him their common parent, the emperor of the West."

With the greatest historic accuracy, therefore, the fourth part is here mentioned as the more immediate sphere of the operation of this seal-and it is a limitation that was especially necessary to be noticed, because no new era was formed in the East at this period; besides which the West was the more immediate and proper territorial limits of the fourth great empire of the world. It was likewise at this time, on the occasion of the Western imperial Headship being revived in the person of Charlemagne, that the Greek and Latin, or the Eastern and Western churches, were finally and irrevocably separated.

The power that was thus given to the fourth part of the empire was "to slay by sword, and by famine, and by pestilence, and by the beasts of the earth;” which would seem to imply that all sorts of devastation and destruction-that "death," in all its most horrid forms, was to ride triumphant during this devoted period. The visible church being now plunged into all the idolatry and superstition and unparalleled wickedness of popery, which had struck at the very vitals of godliness, and being thus disunited

from Christ her living head, was plunged thereby into the lowest and deepest abyss of misery. Perhaps its meridian may be considered to have been from the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries, and to have been most clearly manifested in its direful effects by the Crusades. Mr. Hallam remarks, that "to engage in the Crusades, and to perish in them, were synonymous;" and that "they drained to the lees the cup of misery." Of the first, he says, "So many crimes and so much misery have seldom been accumulated in so short a space as in the three first years of this enterprize;" and of the last, "that such calamities now fell upon this devoted army, as have scarce ever been surpassed-hunger and want of every kind, aggravated by an unsparing pestilence." And these were not casual evils-they were caused by the spirit of the times, the withering influence of the prevailing apostacy, the death-cold shade of the almost universal dominion of Satan over the hearts and consciences of men, and the almost total absence of the Word of God. Thus was the visible church, in what are immediately called the Latin nations-for these are the fourth part of the earth here spoken of-given up to a total state of corruption. Thus, did Death both morally, spiritually, and physically reign; and thus did, most emphatically, 'hell" follow!