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The passage of such a meteor, in our popular language, is called the shooting of a star. Now a star, in prophetic language, signifies a prince, or eminent leader, a leader in doctrine*. Such an one, falling from heaven, as did Satan †, corrupts the third part of the rivers and springs of waters, corrupts the streams and the sources of pure doctrine, which are by our Lord expressed under the same metaphor. The corruption of pure doctrine and the introduction of heretical opinions are in Scripture commonly attributed to the agency of Satan and his angels §; and the corrupting doctrine, which produces heresies, is often expressed by the metaphors wormwood, gall, bitterness, &c. | And the death is spiritual ¶.

Under this Trumpet, therefore, we seem to obtain a general description of those corruptions, which, at the instigation of Satan, were seen to invade and subvert a great part of the Gentile Christian Church by the preaching of splendid heretics. Such, in the earliest times, were Simon, Menander, Cerinthus, &c.**

See note, ch. i. 16.

+ Luke x. 18. 2 Pet. ii. 4. Jude 6.-And observe in ch. xii. 4, the fallen angels are described under the symbol of the stars of heaven: and the star, in ch. ix. 1-12, is a fallen angel, and has the action of such ascribed to him; he opens the pit of the bottomless deep.

↑ John iv. 10. &c. vii. 37, 38, 39.

§ 2 Cor. xi. 14, 15. Eph. ii. 2. 2 Thess. ii. 9. 1 Tim. v. 15. Euseb. Hist. Eccl. lib. v, c.7.

Deut. xxix. 18. Is. v. 20. Amos v. 7. vi. 12. Acts viii. 23.

¶ See note, ch. ii. 16. iii. 1.

** This evil spread wide: and the Waters of Christian doctrine lost their original sweetness and salubrity, in other hands than those of acknowledged heretics. Many who are called Fathers of the Church, though by no means wilful and intentional corrupters of the Faith, are observed to have holden doctrines, which by no means

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Ver. 12. And the third part of the Sun was smitten; &c.] At the sound of the fourth trumpet, the same kind of stroke which had afflicted the three preceding divisions of the Creation, falls on the fourth remaining part, on the Heavenly Luminaries; the Sun, Moon, and Stars: a third part of these is smitten, and ceases to give light. When The Almighty took the Israelites to be his peculiar people, he is said, in prophetic language, to have " planted the Heavens, "and laid the foundation of the earth." It was a kind of new creation. Happiness was thereby founded for man on a new basis, and under new lights, unknown to the heathen. The Divine ordinances of Theocracy, under which that peculiar people flourished, are frequently expressed by the sublime images of the heavenly luminaries. So that the darkening of these implies, that this Divine polity shall fail†. But the heavenly dispensation of the Christian covenant, being to succeed to it by the appointment of the same Heavenly, Lord, is represented by the same figures. When the Jewish polity, expressed under the image of the Sun and Moon, is "ashamed and confounded t," the superior splendour of the Christian Light shines forth in the same kind of description. "The light of the Moon shall be as the light of the Sun, and the light of the Sun shall be "seven-fold §." There is likewise frequent allusion

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agree with the purity of Scripture. In some of them are to be discovered, the seeds at least of error, which were afterwards matured into dangerous beresies. (See this justly and eloquently set forth in a Sermon by the Bishop of Oxford, intitled Concio ad Clerum à Johan. Randolph; 1790.)

* Is. li. 16.
↑ Is. xxiv. 23.

† Amos viii. 9, &c. Matt. xxiv. 29. § Iɛ. xxx. 26.

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to this mode of expression in the Apostolic writers*. So that a third of the light taken from the heavenly luminaries, implies a failure in that invaluable light derived from the Christian revelation. The reign of darkness, ignorance, and superstition, did indeed return after the Light of the Gospel had been revealed; the more particular history of which will be unfolded in the following Trumpets. The prophecy of the fourth Trumpet, as of those preceding, is general. It follows the other three in natural order; and is indeed the effect of the third. Corruption of knowledge necessarily produces ignorance. The corruption of Christianity produced at length Gothic darkness and superstition.

Thus I suppose the four first Trumpets to afford a general view of the WARFARE which the Christian Religion underwent, upon its first establishment. The history delivered under the Seals, after a solemn pause and silence, begins again. Under the Seals, the degeneracy of the Church had been described. Under the Trumpets, the attacks which she had to sustain from her antichristian foes. And she is first represented as undergoing various kinds of assault in her several divisions; these divisions of the Christian world bearing analogy to the Scriptural divisions of the natural world. 1. The storm of persecution in Judæa, which, murdering the martyrs, and dispersing the Apostles †, is aptly represented by hail and fire, mingled with blood; on the bursting forth of which, the weak in the faith fall away. 2. The Gentile persecution, arising from the pagan religion, which is fitly designated by a

• Col. i. 12, 13. 2 Cor. iv. 6. 1 Thess. v. 4, &c. 2 Tim. i. 10, Heb. x. 32. James i. 17. 1 Pet. ii. 9. 1 John i. 5, &c.

† Acts vii. 54, &c. viii. 1.

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APOCALYPSE.

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burning mountain. 3. The corruption of the Waters
of Life, by the earliest heretics, and by injudicious
teachers. 4 The consequent failure, in part, of that
bright and glorious light which originally beamed from
this Revelation. The symbols do not appear to me to
warrant a more especial interpretation of them. The
difficulty which attends them, arises from the paucity
of the matter, and the short compass in which it is
expressed. The means of interpreting them which I
have ventured to apply, have been derived from com-
paring similar passages of Scripture; and by consider-
ing, that these four first Trumpets must be supposed to
sound the signal of the same kind of attack, and against
the same object, as the three last. Now, as these three
will be found to represent the invasion of the Christian
Church by Antichristian foes, we have reason to con-
clude that the preceding trumpets foretel a similar
history, Some additional light has been obtained from
the preparatory vision, which seems to restrict the
commotions contained under these Trumpets, to reli- !
gious causes. If Religion, descending from the altar
in heaven, had not mingled with the passions and pro-
chi
jects of men, these commotions would have had no !!!
place in history, The greater part of the modern ...
commentators, following Joseph Mede, have supposed
these prophecies fulfilled in the ravages committed by
the Gothic barbarians on the provinces of the Roman
Empire, But I have as yet been able to perceive no
plausible reason, produced either by Mede or his fol- f
lowers, to shew why the prophecies of the Apocalypse
in general, why the seals, or why the four first Trum-
pets in particular, should be understood to relate to the
history of the Roman Empire. Mede says, indeed, at

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his entrance upon the explanation of the Seals*, that, "as Daniel in the Old Testament both presignified the coming of Christ, and arranged the fortunes of the "Jewish Church by the succession of the empires; so "the Apocalypse is to be supposed to measure the "Christian history by the means of the Roman Em

pire, which was yet to be remaining after Christ." The conjecture is good; and as such will be acknowledged in its proper place.. For, in the course of the prophecy, that beast of the Prophet Daniel (or one nearly resembling him, and plainly representing the remains of the Roman Empire) will appear. But before the symbols under which the prophecy is expressed, are seen clearly to indicate the Roman Empire, why are we to expect that the prophecy should relate its fortunes? The subject of these Divine visions is of superior importance:-the fates and fortunes of the Christian Church:

non res Romanæ perituraque regna‡:

and the Roman Empire seems to be only so far noticed in them, as it necessarily became connected with the Church of Christ. The learned writer above quoted,

⚫ Quemadmodùm enim in V. T. Daniel, secundùm imperiorum successiones, tum Christi adventum præsignavit, tum Ecclesiæ Judaïca fata digessit; ita rem Christianam Apocalypsis, Romani, quod adhuc post Christum superfuturum esset, imperii rationibus admetiri censenda est.-Works, p. 441.

+ There is a period of the Roman Empire, even its latest period, pointed out by the Prophet Daniel in his Sacred Kalendar (so Mede calls it), when the Empire, divided under its ten Kings, will be intermixed with the fortunes of the Christian Church. This history will appear displayed in its proper symbols in the sequel of the Apocalypse; but hitherto no such symbols have appeared; nor do they appear before the production of the little book, ch. x.

See Bp. Hurd's Sermons on Prophecy, p. 43.

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