women.

prevail, calls these deceivers Supe ȧvůρwτoμoppa, wild-beasts with the appearance of men. (Patres ApostoLlici, sect. iv.)

They possess the arts of allurement. The hair of the women,

Their hair, as of among the Eastern nations of antiquity, was long; which was accounted effeminate in a man. (1 Cor. xi. 14, 15.)

Yet under this effeminate alluring appearance, they devour and

Their teeth, as of destroy. (Joel. i. 6. Psalms lvii. 4.

lions.

They have breastplates, as of iron.

Ver. 9. The sound of their wings is as the sound of chariots, of many horses rushing to battle.

Ver. 10. They have tails like to scorpions, and stings in their tails.

lviii. 6. Ezek. xix. 6. xxii. 25. 1 Pet. v. 8. Heb. xi. 33.)

The natural locust has a breastplate, or coat of mail: these symbolic locusts have defensive armour, to repel the weapons of controversy,such Scriptural opposition as the orthodox Christian would bring against them.

Their attack is powerful and alarming; with the furious noise of a great host, they overbear all before them. (Joel ii. 5.)

As by the appointment of the Creator, the face belongs to man only; so the tail is peculiar to brutes: and thus the more brutal passions and appetites seem to be here employed, as an instrument of seduction. The dragon acts by the same instrument,

Their power is to injure the men, five months.

Ver. 11. Lastly, They have over them a king, the angel of the bottomless deep. Hisname in Hebrew is Abaddon, in the Greek Apollyon, that is, Destroyer.

instrument, the tail, (ch. xii. 4). "The sting of death is sin," (1 Cor. Lxv. 56).

The continuance of these antichristian invaders is during five months, or 150 days; that is, in prophetical language, (see note, ch. ii. 10.) 150 years.

The king, or leader of this warfare, is not one of the scorpion-locusts, one of their own earthly stock and nature; they have supernatural assistance and direction; the evil angel, who had embittered the waters, and opened the infernal abyss, being himself their king. With respect to the name Apollyon, observe, that Judas Iscariot is called by our Lord & vios Tйs amoλelas, the son of perdition or destruction, after Satan had entered into him, (John xvii. 12). And the heresies described in 2 Pet. ii. which by the best commentators are supposed to be of the Gnostic cast, are styled αίρεσεις απολειας.

After this comparative view of the figurative language of the text, we may proceed to observe, that, as swarms of locusts, under the Old Testament, are used to signify armies devastating the Holy Land, the heritage of God, the Theocracy under which the Israelites enjoyed superior blessings and protection: So, under the New Testament, such an invasion, led by an evil angel, from the depths of hell, must be understood

5

Ch. ix. 1-12.]

APOCALYPSE.

235

derstood to have for its object, the Christian Church, the heritage of Christ.

The object of attack, then, seems clearly ascertained. But of what nature are the assailants? Do they attack the Church with arms? or with more formida ble weapons, with corruptive doctrines? The figurative expressions here used, may, in many instances, imply either. But that part of the description which represents the "sealed of God," the faithful and true Christians, as unhurt by their stings, seems to point out decisively, that the invasion is not by arms literally understood, In no invasion of the Christian Church by arms, has it been known, (nor indeed can it be consistently supposed,) that the sealed, the sincere servants of God through Christ, should escape. Upon such trying occasions, they die nobly, as martyrs, or at least undergo patiently their share of the common calamity. But suppose a base corruption of Religion, engendered in the depths of hell, and promising worldly greatness, and pleasure and power, to attack the Christian Church;-in such case, the prophecy now before us might be exactly fulfilled. The sealed, the true servants of Christ, would reject the proffered allurements, would adhere to their ancient faith; while the worldly and nominal Christians would be captured in the snare. For this reason, (as well as because in the progress of our enquiry it will be found so best to accord,) under the symbol of the scorpion-locusts, we are to look for a swarm, not of armed men, but of teachers of corrupt doctrines.

In the early times of the Church, many notions, corruptive of pure Christianity, were engendered by fanatical and wicked heretics. But the authority of the Apostles and of apostolical men prevented, for a time, their successful propagation. Yet their in

crease

crease and prevalence were foretold by the Holy Spirit*; and, these holy men being now removed, they swarm through the Christian world. Such heresies were preordained, to prove the Church; the sealed, the pure and faithful followers of their Lord, were to escape the contagion . And, in the corrupted, they do not utterly destroy the life, the spiritual life which is in Christ; for, the Divine evidences of the Gospel were in those early times so clearly established by recent miracles, were so palpable and convincing, as not to be withstood, or denied, by those who made enquiry. But these heretics corrupt and debase the faith which they acknowledge, by the addition of their own philosophical dreams and superstitions.

Now, the first swarm, the first multitudinous host of corrupters, recorded in Christian history, is that of the Gnostics § Their seeds and beginnings are observable in the first century, even in the apostolic times. Cerinthus appears to have imbibed the Gnostic doctrines, and also the Nicolaitans ¶. But heretics of this description were not successful in corrupting the Church during its first century. Euse

* 2 Cor. xi. 13. 14; 1 Tim. vi. 3, 4, 5, 20, 21; 2 Tim. iii. 13; 2 Pet. ii. 1, &c.

+ 1 Cor. xi. 19; 2 Thess. ii. 13. iii, 3.

See notes, ch. iii. 1. vi. 8.

§ "The first great heresy, which as a gangrene did overspread and "consume much of the beauty, glory, and vigour of the Christian "Church, was that of the Gnostics." Gale, Court of the Gentiles,

pt. iii. b. ii. sect. 7.

|| Tns Jovdarome yotes: the very name under which it is attacked by Irenæus; 1 Tim. vi. 20, 21; Col. ii. 8, 9, 10; 1 John ii. 18; Epist. Polycarpi.

Euseb. H. E. lib. iii. c. 28. Mosheim, i. 116. 117. Whitby on 2 Pet. ii. See also note, ch. ii, 6; p. 45.

3

: bius

bius says expressly, that the attempts of the heretics against the purity of the Church, had little success in the apostolical times; and he dates their prevalence from the times of Ignatius's martyrdom, the latter days of the emperor Trajan, or the beginning of those of Adrian. The same author has preserved for us a fragment from the works of Hegesippus, who lived in the times of Adriant; and he says, that, "until those "times the Church had continued a pure and incorrupt "Virgin; for, that those who attempted to corrupt "the wholesome canon of Evangelical doctrine, had

hitherto remained in obscurity. But when the sa"cred company of the Apostles was departed, and "the generation of those who were thought worthy "to hear their divine preaching was gone, then the

conspiracy of impious deceit had its beginning;"then to the preaching of the truth did they dare "boldly to oppose their knowledge falsely so called " Clemens Alexandrinus, speaking of the Gnostics, asserts that they were not a pestilential heresy before the times of Adrian §. Irenæus, a nearer witness of those times, after describing the doctrines of the Gnostics, as derived from Simon Magus and Menander, to Saturninus, Basilides, and Carpocrates, speak

Eccl. Hist. lib. iv. c. 7. iii. 36.

+ Lib. iii. c. 32.

Yeudarupor yowain, the term used by Irenæus, in his treatise against the Gnostics. Twos is true knowledge, and is thus applied by the Sacred writers, and by the fathers, to express divine knowledge. And therefore sxs means a well-informed Christian. (See Clem. Alex. Strom. lib. iv. and vi.) Hence the Gnostics were not allowed by the orthodox, the name which they impudently assumed: but to them they attributed the evdarov yao mentioned by Saint Paul, (1 Tim. vi. 20). In the next century, when this folly was gone, & fraternity of monks took the name of Gnostics in its proper and good sense. Socratis Hist. Eccl. lib. iv. c. 23.

Strom. lib. vii, 17. viii. 27.