dresses and the book, is to set aside the whole spectacle as a symbolization, and the whole series of visions, reject the laws of construction which its nature demands, and convert it into a chaos of unintelligibleness.

To prophesy as witnesses is, as is shown in the next chapter, to assert and proclaim the rights of God and the doctrines of his word in opposition to the blasphemous usurpations of the wild beast, and impious teachings of the false prophet. The wild beast is the agent it is shown also by which they were to be slain whom the apostle personated, and who were still to prophesy before peoples, and nations, and tongues, and many kings.

The rainbow angel then, like other symbolic actors, was the representative of a class and succession of agents of great conspicuity and influence, who were to enter on the apocalyptic scene during the period that was to intervene between the invasion of the empire by the last Turkish army, and the termination of the second woe. Those agents were to be men, religious teachers, and witnesses for God, manifestly from the relation of the responses which their message was to excite and the answering oath of the angel, to the period of the advent of the Son of God, to the mysteries of his administration, and to the glad tidings respecting it made known to the ancient prophets. Their message was to excite vast multitudes to loud and violent expressions of thought and passion, involving false pretences to inspiration, and an error in regard to the period of Christ's second advent, or the destruction of the antichristian powers. They were to respond to that expression by appealing to the word of God as the only guide of faith, and proclaiming its teachings, that that advent was not yet to take place, but at the sound of the seventh trumpet when the mystery of God is finished, as was foreshown to his servants the prophets. They were to deliver to those to whom they were to address their message, an open volume, which their hearers were to receive and study with eagerness and pleasure, but from which acidities, agitation, and violences of passion were to spring, analogous to the bitterness excited by the little book in the apostle; and they, their hearers, and their followers, were to fulfil the office of witnesses for God, in opposition to the wild beast.

These characteristics point us most obviously to the Reformers of the sixteenth century, and their followers, as their counterpart. All the peculiarities meet in them, and in them alone. They were as conspicuous to the men of that age and invested with as dazzling a splendor, as a gigantic angel could have been descending from heaven, robed in a cloud, and crowned with the brilliance of

a rainbow. They uttered their message with a lion voice that resounded through all the valleys of Europe, echoed from her remotest mountains, and struck their foes with a terror like that with which the onset of that monarch of beasts strikes its victims. Their voice drew from innumerable multitudes of the nations of Europe instantaneous and passionate expressions of thought and feeling, that shook the ecclesiastical and civil governments to their foundations, as loud thunders shake the dome of heaven. One of the first and most violent of those thunder utterances was a false pretence to inspiration, and expression of the persuasion that the period had arrived of the final overthrow of antichrist and establishment of the Redeemer's millennial kingdom. That expression prompted the Reformers and their successors to correct the error by an appeal to the Scriptures, and demonstration that the advent of Christ is not to take place until the sound of the seventh trumpet, and the close of the period of the wild beast, as was foreshown to the ancient prophets, Daniel and Zechariah, to the apostles by Christ, and to the churches by the apostles. They delivered to their followers the word of God, opened to their perusal by translation into their several languages, and easy and cheap multiplication through the art of printing, and like the angel enjoined them as an imperative duty and inestimable privilege to receive and study it as his, and the only authoritative revelation of his will. The Scriptures were received and studied by their followers with the utmost eagerness and delight, but diversities of opinion, alienations, contentions, and intolerances, soon sprung from the study of them, that distracted the Protestant churches, and filled them with confusion and misery. The Reformed teachers fulfilled, and their successors have continued in a degree through every subsequent age, to fulfil the office of witnesses for God, in opposition to the usurpations of the wild beast and errors of the false prophet; and they are still to sustain that office, as is shown in the following chapters, till the mystery of God is finished.

All these characters meet in them so eminently and so notoriously, as to leave it scarcely necessary to verify the application by references to history. Luther commenced the Reformation in 1517, one hundred years after the invasion of the eastern empire by Tamerlane, and sixty-four after the conquest of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks, but near one hundred before they reached the acme of their power, and relinquished the endeavor and hope to extend their empire over a larger space of eastern Europe. During that whole period they were objects of su

preme terror to both the Catholic and Protestant worlds. The attack on the papacy by Luther, Zuinglius, and their associates, and proclamation in opposition to the false doctrines and impious superstitions of the Romish church of the great truths of the gospel, instantly produced a thunder explosion of passion from the people throughout Germany and Switzerland, and subsequently the other nations of Europe.

I. Of those multitudes there were many, especially in Germany, who not only anticipated the speedy overthrow of antichrist and the establishment of the empire of the saints, but assumed the office of prophets, predicted the immediate fall of the apostate church, and claimed for their announcement the authority of inspiration.

"A body of persons secretly sprung up at this period, 1522, who asserted that they had communications from God, and had received a command to slay all the wicked and constitute a new world, in which the pious only and innocent should live and rule. They disseminated their doctrine clandestinely in that part of Saxony chiefly which borders the river Sale, and even Carlostadt, according to Luther's representation, approved of their opinions; for being unable from Luther's influence to effect his wishes at Wittemburg, he left his station there and joined these."

"In November, 1524, the peasants in several parts of Germany engaged in seditions, and in the spring of 1525 vast bodies rose, especially on the borders of the Danube, and made war on the papal ecclesiastics, partly in order to gain greater civil, and partly in order to religious freedom." "This contest was excited in a degree by a class of rash preachers of whom the principal was Thomas Muncer, who abandoning the gospel, proposed a new doctrine. He assailed not only the Roman pontiff, but Luther also, and denounced their doctrines as alike defective and corrupt, asserting that the pontiff chained the minds of men by too severe laws, and that Luther unloosed those chains indeed, but granted too great indulgence, and neglected to teach the things of the Spirit; that if we would gain salvation we must not only abstain from all flagitious crimes, but chasten and macerate the body by fasting, look grave, be taciturn, and wear a long beard. These and other things of the kind he called the cross, the mortification of the flesh, and discipline. Having prepared his followers by these instructions, he then directed each to retire from the crowd, and meditate on God, considering what he is, whether he exercises a providence over us, whether Christ died for us, 1 Sleidani Comment. de statu. Relig. lib. iii. f. 47. 2 Ibid. lib. iv. f. 66, 68, 69.

and whether our religion is preferable to that of the Turks; and to ask God to testify by a sign that we are the objects of his care, and are in the way of the true religion, and if he should not immediately grant a signal, to persist nevertheless and with the utmost urgency in prayer, and even seriously expostulate with him as unjust in not yielding an answer; that as the Scriptures represent him as willing to give whatever is asked, it would not be just should he grant no sign to one who prayed for a true knowledge of him; and such expostulation and anger he said were extremely grateful to God, as he saw from them their disposition towards him and earnestness; and there was no doubt but that being importuned in that manner, he would declare himself by some conspicuous signal, slake their thirst, and act with them as he formerly did with the patriarchs. He taught also that God manifested his will by dreams, made them the great instrument of his schemes, and when he succeeded in interpreting one, boasted of it in his public addresses. When he had in this manner induced a large number to join him, he began to enrol those who promised him assistance in his attempt to slay the ungodly and institute a new magistracy, asserting that he had a commission from God to destroy the old rulers and establish new; collected a vast crowd of followers half armed and without discipline to accomplish his purposes, and perished and a vast body of his adherents in the attempt.' 991

At the distance of ten years a party of similar fanatics again organized under Cnipperdoling who claimed prophetic gifts, was constituted their king, and asserted that the kingdom of Christ was to be like his till the day of judgment, in order that the wicked being wholly destroyed, the pious and elect might reign. He taught that it was lawful for the people to abolish their magistracies; that although the apostles were not commanded to assume a civil jurisdiction, yet the present ministers of the church ought to take the sword and by force constitute a new republic; that this was the time in which all the prophets had foreshown that righteousness was to prevail throughout the world; the time in which Christ had said the meek should possess the earth.3

1 Sleidani Comment. lib. v. f. 71-74.

2 Ibid. lib. x. f. 152. 3 Ibid. Ranke presents the same representation. "In 1521 a sect congregated around a fanatical weaver named Claus Storck, that professed the most extravagant doctrines. Luther did not go near far enough for them. Very different men they said, and of a much more elevated spirit were required; for what could such servile observance of the Bible avail. That book was insufficient for man's instruction; he could only be taught by the immediate inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Their fanaticism soon rose to such a pitch as to convince them that this was actually grant

II. That misapprehension the Reformers and their successors endeavored to counteract by an appeal to the word of God as the only revelation of his purposes, and exposition of the prophecies respecting the conflicts of the church with antichrist, and the advent of the Redeemer, which show that the persecuting powers are not to be overthrown until the times of the gentiles reach their end, the judgment of the wild beast is set, and the period of the seventh trumpet arrives.

Thus Luther immediately opposed these fanatics, pointed out their errors, and endeavored to recall them from their presumptuous schemes. He notified the magistrates of Mulhausen, into which Muncer was designing to introduce himself and his party, that he regarded him as a seditious person who thought of nothing but violence and robbery, that his plans were known, and that he ought therefore to be carefully watched, and not allowed to enter their city; and apprized them that if they rejected his counsel, and afterwards became involved in difficulties, he, having so carefully forewarned them, should be blameless. He recommended them to ask him who called him to the office which he assumed, and should he pretend to have been appointed by God, to require him to demonstrate his vocation by some evident sign, and if he declined, to reject him. And as the agitation spread through Germany, and indications appeared of a tumult, he published a book in which he warned all to abstain from sedition; and stated that although terrific mobs seemed to endanger the Roman ecclesiastics, yet in his judgment they were not to overturn their power; the calamities that were threatened to be inflicted on them were of a far different nature; Daniel and Paul had foretold that their tyranny was to be overthrown, not by the hand of man, but by the advent of Christ, and by the Holy Spirit. All endeavors therefore to conquer them by arms would prove vain; the only method of overcoming them was to expose their crimes and preach the gospel. If that were faithfully continued their kingdom would soon fall, or if any portion ed to them; that God spake to them in person, and dictated to them how to act, and what to preach. On the strength of this immediate inspiration, they pressed for various alterations in the service of the church." "They asserted that the world was threatened with a general devastation, of which the Turks were, perhaps, to be the instruments. No priest was to remain alive, nor any ungodly man; but after this bloody purification the kingdom of God would commence, and there would be one faith and one baptism."-Hist. Reformation, vol. ii. pp. 22, 23. He goes on to relate that they were inclined to begin that work themselves, and collected arms with the design of assaulting and slaughtering their opponents, but were intercepted and dispersed. See also vol. ii. chap. vi.

1 Sleidani Comment. lib. v. f. 74.