is one, as we shall hereafter find, of no small nume rical importance. I fix it to the year 324: when Constantine, now become sole Emperor of the Romans, publicly announced to the world, by a special edict, his own conversion to Christianity; and when he thus made the religion of the Gospel the tempting and secularised religion of the court'.

(2.) Respecting the second specified particular, which takes place under the sixth seal in consequence of the downfall of Paganism, little needs to be said.

When the sword of persecution was wrested from the hand of the oppressor, and when the altars of his long-fostered superstition were overthrown; then it was, that the people of God came out of great tribulation, having washed their robes, and having made them white in the blood of the Lamb. This circumstance, which is foretold in the latter portion of the vision of the sixth seal, is in fact no other than the natural and immediate consequence of that great theological revolution, which is the subject of the former portion of the same vision. In a word, when Paganism was subverted by Constantine as the established and dominant religion of the Empire, the persecution of Christianity by the heathen temporal powers ceased as a thing of course.

This change is set forth in that grandiloquent phraseology, which symbolical prophecy so much. affects.

'Mosheim's Eccles. Hist. vol. i. p. 321, 322. Gibbon's Hist. of the Decline, vol. iii. p. 252, 253.

will inevitably produce it : but, if we discard the symbols, the language, in undergoing this clumsy operation, loses its special characteristic and undergoes a complete metamorphosis. The exaggeration, indeed, exists no more : but, in ridding ourselves of the hyperbolè, we have ceased to speak the language of hieroglyphics'.

" I have been the more full on this topic, because some commentators, misled by the magnificence of the images contained in the hieroglyphical picture of the sixth seal, have contended, that by them we must certainly understand the awful solemnities of the final and literal day of judgment. The evil consequence of this error has been a complete confusion in the abstract arrangement of the Apocalypse. For, if the sixth seal relate to the literal day of judgment, it is obvious, that its five predecessors must be loosely spread over the long and indefinite period which precedes that day. Now, of such an arrangement, the plain inconvenience is; that the seventh seal must inevitably be viewed, as chronologically anterior to the sixth seal : for, if the sixth seal brings us to the end of our present world, it is quite clear, that the seventh seal, being unable to advance any further, must of plain necessity retrograde in point of chronology. This single circumstance does, in my judgment, effectually subvert the arrangement before us. I will venture to say, indeed, that it is utterly impossible to bring out any consistent interpretation of the Apocalypse, if once we depart from the simple and intelligible and self-approved principle, that the three septenaries of the seals and the trumpets and the vials are chronologically successive to each other. This order forbids the application of the sixth seal to the literal consummation of all things : and, as every person knows who has paid the least attention to the figured language of prophecy, the mere magnificence of the imagery and the mere grandiloquence of the phraseology do in no wise require it.

CHAPTER IV.

RESPECTING THE SEVENTH APOCALYPTIC SEAL.

THE seventh seal, the seventh trumpet, and the seventh vial, contain each many more particulars than any one of the other seals or trumpets or vials for the seventh seal comprehends, within its own chronological period, all the seven trumpets; the seventh trumpet again comprehends, within its own smaller chronological period, all the seven vials; and the seventh vial similarly comprehends, within its own still smaller chronological period, several matters of such high importance, that the prophet thinks it necessary to give a very ample and detailed account of them each in its own place and order. This circumstance has produced a peculiarity in the arrangement of the seventh seal and the seventh trumpet and the seventh vial, by which none of the others are characterised.

At the opening of the seventh seal, instead of passing immediately to that full description of its effects which is contained in the series of the seven trumpets, St. John presents us with what may be denominated a summary or syllabus or brief prefatory table of contents: that is to say, he gives us a compendious view of those matters, which are

afterward distributed into seven successive periods, marked by the sounding of seven successive trumpets. The same method is observed, when the sounding of the seventh trumpet is introduced: a syllabus or table of contents is first given ; and, afterward, the matters, thus briefly enumerated, are described at large, being distributed into seven periods marked by the successive effusion of seven vials! In a similar manner, when the effusion of the seventh vial is introduced, a syllabus of contents is again briefly given : and, afterward, this short syllabus is expanded into an ample account of the most prominent events, contained within the period of the seventh vial; namely, the destruction of Babylon, the marriage of the Lamb, and the great battle of Armageddon”.

The introductory syllabus of the seventh seal is couched in the following words.

And, when he opened the serenth seal, there was silence in heaven as it were 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 was stationed at the altar, having a golden censer: and there was given unto him much incense, that he should offer, with the prayers of all the saints, upon the golden altar which was before the throne. And the

· The syllabus of the seventh trumpet is given in Rev. xi. 15-19,

• The syllabus of the seventh vial is given in Rev. xvi. 17-21.