Forth Seal Footnotes

1 first grassy green; also pale; and then, livid. Its application to death in either of the latter sense in obvious and frequent. In these and such like examples the epithet of the effect is, by a metathesis, applied to the causal agent. In the symbol of the forth Seal (like as in the colours of the horses of the three Seals preceding) it is applied, and more appropriately, to the party affected. So the emperor Constantius, father to Constantine, was called Chlorus from his paleness.

Hippocrates, in his 2nd Book on Prognostics, enumerates among the symptoms of approaching death, the colour of the facial skin becoming thus green and black.

2 So pestilence ought here to be rendered, as most commentators observe. Its use in this sense is borrowed from the Septuagint; which thus, in near thirty places, renders the Hebrew word translated in our English version, and without doubt correctly, pestilence. So 2 Sam. 24: 13, 15; "Or shall it be three days' pestilence?" where the Septuagint translation is pestilence. The difference of reading given parenthetically will be noticed afterwards.

3 So Isa. v. 14; "Therefore hades hath enlarged herself, and opened her mouth without measure, and their glory, and multitude, and pomp shall descend into it."

4 L 455, 456 -It was during this pestilence that the Christian Bishop Cyprian wrote his treatise De Mortelitate," of which the very title illustrates the imagery of this fourth Seal comforting his brother Christians who suffered under it; reminding them that all things, even death, were theirs; that in this world they were strangers; and that death would but take them to their home with Jesus.

5 See the Pagan historian Zosimus B. ii. ad init. He gives a long account of their origin, and the ancient mysteriously discovered altar, on which the chief sacrifices were offered: tells how, on the raging of wars and diseases, the Sybilline books inculcated these games and sacrifices; (as well as to other gods also, specially Apollo and Diana;) and how, according to the oracle, the Roman empire was to he secured in his greatness and power by the celebration of the games; 

6 Exod. 23:29.

7 This unhappy prince after being taken by Sapor, king of Persia, died in his captivity. At Nakshi Roustam there still remains a sculpture in the rock commemorative of the event. A sketch is given in Sir R. Portees Travels in Persia, Vol. i. p. 540.

8 In an Edict by Aurelian, given in Vopiscus c. 47, mention is made incidentally of the already begun desolation in Italy. He urges agriculturists to plant vines in certain extensive fertile lands of Etruria, that had been deserted ; whence to furnish the Roman populace with wine.

9 See Eumenius' Paneq. Constantii, c. 12. There exist coins of A.D. 290, with the heads of Carausius, Diocletian, and Maximian; and the inscriptions, Carausius et Fratres: Pax Juxgg. Eckhel 8:47.

10 These and such like destroying insects, moreover also venomous snakes, are included in the Apocalyptic word beasts; as much as in the noisome beasts of Ezekiel.

11 Hence his argument that "it was not on account of Christians that the wretched race of man was opprest and afflicted by these evils."

12 Tertull. De Animi, c. .50. " Certainly the world is now from day to day brought mom under cultivation. Pleasant farms have obliterated ill-famed solitudes: cultivated fields occupy the place of woods ; wild beasts have been driven away by cattle; sands are sown, marshes dried. Everywhere there is the inhabited house and population; everywhere the republic, everywhere life.- 'This was about A.D. 200.

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14 I My first suggested solution was to the effect that out of Death's four destroying agencies the forth part of the earth might define the scene simply of one of those agencies; viz. that of the sword, next specified. I cited in illustration Jer. 15: 2 ; "Such as are for the pestilence to pestilence ; and such as are for the sword to sword; such as are for famine to famine; and such as are for captivity to captivity:" also Ezek. 33: 27; "Surely they that are in the wastes shall fall by the sword; and him that is in the open field will I give to the beasts to be devoured; and they that be in the forts and caves shall die of the pestilence." So too Ezek. 5:12.

15 I was enabled to satisfy myself of this on occasion of a visit to Florence: having there inspected in the Laurentian Library what, I believe, is the earliest existing MS. of the Vulgate; (one assigned to the 6th or 7th century;) and found the reading in it, as in the modem copies, " super quatuor partes terrae." Moreover I have found it in all alike of the earliest Latin Apocalyptic expositors who used Jerome's version, Bede, Ansbert, Haymo; though on certain other points exhibiting variations in their copies. E. g. in Apoc. 17: 17 Ansbert reads et bestia; the others, in bestia.

16 To Jerome's critical eminency and faithfulness, and the value of his version, we have the testimony of the best scholars ; e. g. Bentley.