tions of the revelation of Jesus Christ, and serve to bring us down to the nearer contemplation of the signs of the times--that from thence we may learn to see, what, in controlling evil and overruling all earthly power, the Lord is still doing on the earth, in order that the kingdom like the power may finally be his own, when nothing of wars shall be left but the remembrance, and when men, seeking after the virtue and glory which shall never be eclipsed, shall enter into the kingdom of which neither man nor angel--whether of light or darkness-shall ever tell the fall or the decline. CHAPTER XVIII. THE FIFTH TRUMPET, OR FIRST WOE. THERE is scarcelý so uniform an agreement among interpreters concerning any part of the apocalypse as respecting the application of the fifth and sixth trumpets, or the first and second woe, to the Saracens and Turks. It is so obvious that it can scarcely be misunderstood. Instead of a verse or two designating each, the whole of the ninth chapter of the Revelation, in equal portions, is occupied with a description of both. The Roman empire declined, as it arose, by conquest; but the Saracens and the Turks were the instruments by which a false religion became the scourge of an apostate church; and, hence, instead of the fifth and sixth trumpets, like the former, being marked by that name alone, they are called woes. It was because the laws were transgressed, the ordinances changed, and the everlasting covenant broken, that the curse came upon the earth or the land. We have passed the period, in the political history of the world, when the western empire was extinguished; and the way was thereby opened for the exaltation of the papacy. The imperial power of the city of Rome was annihilated, and the office and the name of emperor of the west was abolished for a season. The trumpets assume a new form, as they are directed to a new object, and the close coincidence, or rather express identity between the king of the south, or the king of the north, as described by Daniel, and the first and second woe, will be noted in the subsequent illustration of the latter. The spiritual supremacy of the pope, it may be remembered, was acknowledged and maintained, after the fall of Rome, by the emperor Justinian. And whether in the character of a trumpet or a woe, the previous steps of history raise us as on a platform, to behold in a political view, the judgments that fell on apostate Christendom, and finally led to the subversion of the eastern empire. The subject still lies within the province of Gibbon; and his illustrations are so copious and apposite, as in general to supersede entirely the need of appealing to any other commentator than the very historian, who, of all others, is the most free from any possible imputation of straining a single word in adaptation of any prophecy. To enter again into the labours of Gibbon, is to illustrate other texts. In drawing from history, he again becomes but the copyist of the prophet, who embodies in a few verses the substance of volumes, the events of centuries, and the fate of millions. And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit. And he opened the bottomless pit; and there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit. And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth, and unto them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power. And it was commanded them that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, neither any green thing, neither any tree, but only those men which have not the seal of God in their foreheads. And to them it was given that they should not kill them, but that they should be tormented five months: and their torment was as the torment of a scorpion when he striketh a man. And in those days shall men seek death and shall not find it, and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them. And the shapes of the locusts were like unto horses prepared unto battle; and on their heads were as it were crowns like gold, and their faces were as the faces of men. And they had hair as the hair of women, and their teeth were as the teeth of lions, and they had breastplates, as it were breastplates of iron and the sound of their wings was as the sound of chariots of many horses running to battle; and they had tails like unto scorpions; and there were stings in their tails: and their power was to hurt men for five months. And they had a king over them, which is the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon, but in the Greek tongue hath his name Apollyon.-Chap. ix. 1-11. Constantinople was besieged for the first time after the extinction of the western empire, by Chosroes, the king of Persia. "Under the reign of Phocas (A.D. 611) the fortifications of Merdin, Dara, Amida, and Edessa, were successively besieged, reduced, and destroyed by the Persian monarch: he passed the Euphrates, occupied the Syrian cities, Hierapolis, Chalcis, and Berrhoea or Aleppo, and soon encompassed the walls of Antioch with his irresistible arms. The rapid tide of success discloses the decay of the empire, the incapacity of Phocas, and the dissatisfaction of his subjects; and Jerusalem was taken by assault. Egypt itself, the only province which had been exempt from the time of Diocletian from foreign and domestic wars, was again subdued by the successors of Cyrus. Pelusium, the key of that impervious country, was surprised by the cavalry of the Persians: they passed with impunity the innumerable channels of the Delta, and explored the long valley of the Nile, from the pyramids of Memphis to the confines of Ethiopia. In the first campaign, another army advanced from the Euphrates to the Thracian Bosphorus; Chalcedon surrendered after a long siege, and a Persian camp was maintained for ten years in the province of Constantinople.* "From the long disputed banks of the Tigris and Euphrates, the reign of the grandson of Nushirvan was suddenly extended to the Hellespont and the Nile, the ancient limits of the Persian monarchy. Conscious of their fear and hatred, the Persian conqueror governed his new subjects with an iron sceptre. And as he suspected the stability of his dominion, he exhausted their wealth by exorbitant tributes and licentious rapine, despoiled or demolished the temples of the east, and transported to his hereditary realms the gold, the silver, the precious marbles, the arts, and the artists of the Asiatic cities. In the obscure picture of the calamities of the empire it is not easy to discern the figure of Chosroes himself, to separate his actions from those of his lieutenants, or to ascertain his personal merit in the general blaze of glory and magnificence."+ A star fell from heaven unto the earth, and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit. "While the Persian monarch contemplated the wonders of his art and power, he received an epistle from an obscure citizen of Mecca, inviting him to acknowledge Mahomet as the apostle of God. He rejected the invitation, and tore the epistle. 'It is thus,' exclaimed the Arabian prophet, 'that God will tear the kingdom, and reject the supplication of Chosroes.' Placed on the verge of these two empires of the east, Mahomet observed with secret joy the progress of mutual destruction; and in the midst of the Persian triumphs he ventured to foretell, that, before many years should elapse, victory should again return to the banners of the Romans." "At the time when this prediction is said to have been delivered, no prophecy could be more distant from its accomplishment (!) since the first twelve years of Heraclius announced the approaching dissolution of the empire."§ It was not, like that designative of Attila, on a single spot that the star fell, but upon the earth. * Gibbon's Hist. vol. viii. pp. 222-5. † Ibid. pp. 226, 227. Ibid. pp. 228, 229. Ibid. Chosroes subjugated the Roman possessions in Asia and Africa. And "the Roman empire," at that period, "was reduced to the walls of Constantinople, with the remnant of Greece, Italy, and Africa, and some maritime cities, from Tyre to Trebisond, of the Asiatic coast. The experience of six years at length persuaded the Persian monarch to renounce the conquest of Constantinople, and to specify the annual tribute or the ransom of the ROMAN EMPIRE: a thousand talents of gold, a thousand talents of silver, a thousand silk robes, a thousand horses, and a thousand virgins. Heraclius subscribed these ignominious terms. But the time and space which he obtained to collect those treasures from the poverty of the east, was industriously employed in the preparations of a bold and desperate attack."* The king of Persia despised the obscure Saracen, and derided the message of the pretended prophet of Mecca. Even the overthrow of the Roman empire would not have opened a door for Mahometanism, or for the progress of the Saracenic armed propagators of an imposture, though the monarch of the Persians and the chagan of the Avars (the successor of Attila) had divided between them the remains of the kingdom of the Cæsars. Chosroes himself fell. The Persian and Roman monarchies exhausted each other's strength. And before a sword was put into the hands of the false prophet, it was smitten from the hands of those who would have checked his career, and crushed his power. "Since the days of Scipio and Hannibal, no bolder enterprise has been attempted than that which Heraclius achieved for the deliverance of the empire. He permitted the Persians to oppress for a while the provinces, and to insult with impunity the capital of the east; while the Roman emperor explored his perilous way through the Black Sea and the mountains of Armenia, penetrated into the heart of Persia, and recalled the armies of the great king to the defence of their bleeding country. The revenge and ambition of Chosroes exhausted his kingdom. The whole city of Constantinople was invested, and the inhabitants descried with terror the flaming signals of the European and Asiatic * Gibbon's Hist. † Ibid. pp. 239, 240. |