AND I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seven seals; and I heard one of the four living creatures saying, as it were with a voice of thunder, Come I And I looked, and behold a white horse I And he that sat on it had a bow: and a crown was given unto him: and be went forth conquering, and to conquer.
And when he opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature saying, Come I And there went out another horse that was red: and power was given to him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another: and there was given unto him a great sword.
And when he opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature saying, Come! And I looked, and behold a black horse! And he that sat on it had a pair of balances in his hand. And I heard as it were a voice in the midst of the four living creatures saying, A choenix of wheat for a denarius, and three choenixes of barley for a denarius; and see thou hurt not [or, wrong not in regard to] 1 the oil and the wine. And when he opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature saying, Come!
And I looked, and behold a pale horse! And his name that sat on him was Death, and Hades followed with him.
And power was given unto him over the fourth part [or, over the four parts] 2 of the earth to kill with the sword, and with famine, and with pestilence, and by the wild beasts of the earth.
And when he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held. And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, 0 Master holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the 'earth?
And a white robe was given unto each one of them: and it was said unto them, that they should rest yet for a little season; until their fellow servants also, and their brethren that should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled.
And I beheld when he opened the sixth seal, and there was a great earthquake.
And the sun became black as sackcloth of hair: and the full moon became as blood: and the stars of heaven fell unto the earth; even as a fig-tree casteth its untimely figs when it is shaken of a mighty wind.
And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together: and every mountain and island were moved out of their places.
And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the chief captains, and the rich men, and the mighty men, and every bondman and freeman, hid themselves in the caves and in the rocks of the mountains; and said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of Him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb. For the great day of his wrath is come; and who is able to stand?" 3
The passage above quoted constitutes the first Act in the heavenly drama; that represented under the six first Seals.
Its general subject I have presumed to be the decline and fall, after a previous prosperous era of the empire of Pagan Rome. And it may be well to observe by anticipation, that, though it was only in a later part of the prophecy that the Apocalyptic earth, which the Seals soon began to speak of, was expressly identified with the Roman earth, 4 yet there was that in the emblems of the very first Seal, if I mistake not, which, instead of leaving its reference doubtful or indistinct, must almost at once have suggested the Roman empire and emperors, as its intended subject of figuration: i.e. to an observer unencombered by other expectations as to the intent of the prophecy; and conversant, like the Evangelist, with the manners and customs of the age.
The evidence of this I trust soon to bring not only before the mind, but even the eye of the reader. Before doing so, however, it may be useful to make a few preliminary remarks, bearing on the right interpretation alike of the symbols of this first Seal, and of those of the three next following; which four comprehend that quaternion of horses and horsemen, with the succession of which the revelations of the future given to St. John opened. The principles suggested will be found very simple; and such, I trust, as will readily approve themselves to the common sense of the intelligent and candid reader.
1st, the chronological reference of each vision, as fixed by the prophecy itself, is evidently a point most necessary to attend to: that of the first Seal being determined by its position, next after the Angel's was to signify what was to happen soon after the epoch of St. John's seeing the visions in Patmos ; that of the second, third, and fourth, in like manner, being fixed to events, or changes, that were to have commencing, dates each in chronological sequence to the commencing dates of the events, or changes, signified in the vision of the Seal next immediately preceding. 5
Hence the inadmissibility not merely of such directly anti-chronological explanations as that of the martyrologist Foxe and Mr. Faber, 6 which interprets the four horses and horsemen of the four successive military empires of Babylon, Persia, Macedon, and Rome, the three first of which had already some centuries before St. John passed away: -but also of such as Dr. Keith's, which would interpret them to symbolize the four successive religions of primitive Christianity, Islam, Popery, and Infidelity; though elsewhere insisting on the establishment of the reign of Popery and the Popes, as dating near a century before the rise of Islam. 7 Hence too the probable exclusion of that very old and recently revived explanation, 8 which makes the first Seal to symbolize Christianity and its gospel Preaching in triumphant progress, the three next the several evil agencies of war, famine, and pestilence, introduction to Christ's second advent: these being not supposed to follow each other in any distinctly marked order of chronological sequence, on a grand scale ; but rather to occur in a series of recurring exemplification's, on a small scale, all chronologically intermix together; after the type of those predicted by Christ, as what would occur before the destruction of Jerusalem. 9
2nd The presumption against this last-mentioned view seems to me strengthened by the fact that abstract ideas, such as of war, famine, and pestilence, are I believe never depicted elsewhere in Scripture under the form of symbolic impersonations, after the manner of these introductory Seals Death stands alone in this respect; and from the very singularity of the circumstance needed to be specifically named, where his personification occurs in the 4th Seal: while war and famine (the supposed subjects of the two preceding symbolic impersonations) are specified in that same Seal in simple literal language, as two out of the four by which Death was to kill 10 " It will be seen that the price of barley named in the 3rd Seal, suffices of itself to put the idea of famine having been there intended altogether out of the question.
3rd Abstractions being thus presumptively set aside, we seem very much reduced to the idea of some nation and empire, or else the Church, being the main subject of the four symbolizations. And I think it will be admitted on this head that, whichever of these two be chosen, the homogeneity of the symbols of a horse and horseman, common to the four first Seals, would seem to require a homogeneous interpretation of them. Hence, the exclusion of views like Mede's; who would explain the first Seals horse and rider with reference to Christ or his Church, the three next Sears horses and riders with reference to the Roman empire or emperors. 11
The rule is of course applicable in detail. What the horse singly is meant to symbolize in the first Seal, whether the Church or an empire, that it might reasonably be expected to symbolize in the three next Seals, though under new and different aspects. And in the three first Seals the rider too ought to be interpreted on the same common principle. I say in the three first Seals ; the case of the fourth Seal's rider being, as before remarked, peculiar.
4th As to the grand question just mooted, whether it be the Church, or some nation and empire, that is designated under the figure of the horse in these four Seals, the presumption in favor of the former idea which many have entertained, in consequence of its being Christ that appears crowned as the rider on a white horse in a later vision, like as the first Seal's rider too sate crowned on a white horse, that presumption will utterly vanish, I believe, before a more careful comparison of the two symbolizations. For the only real point of resemblance will be found to be the mere indistinctive one of riding a white horse: while the differences will appear so man and so marked, as to place the two symbolizations (so as have suggested before when speaking of the moral of the drama 12 ) in the light of a marked contrast, not an identity of subject. 13
The impracticability, according to Vitringa, (the most eminent probably of the Church system advocates,) of carrying out an explanation of the horse and horseman on this system into the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Seals, otherwise than as of one compound emblem, 14 increases the already strong presumption against that view: besides that the fitness of a horse to designate the Church, even supposing Vitringa's difficulty to be overcome, seems very questionable. 15
'Nor, I am persuaded, will human learning or Ingenuity ever be found able to carry out satisfactorily a detailed historical explanation of the four Seals, on this view of the horse as signifying the Church. 16
Hence, in fine, the 'a priori probability of the Apocalyptic horse meaning a nation or empire: and, if so, then of course that nation with which, more than any other, Christ's Church both was, and was to be, locally connected, and which was the subject consequently long before of Daniel's prophecy; viz. the Roman nation.
The circumstance of other heathen nations, or empires, having been elsewhere similarly symbolized in Scripture prophecy, not merely as wild beasts, (their emblems in the persecuting character,) but under figure also, with reference to their mere national history, of certain of the domesticated animals, (e. g. the Persian nation as a ram, and Macedonian as a goat, 17 ) is one confirmatory of this view.
And the fitness of the war-horse, sacred to; Wars, to signify the martial Roman nation, especially as claiming to be the Mavortia proles, with Mars for their father, seems almost self-evident. Of which their fabled parentage the memorial, we read, was ever publicly kept up: at spring and at autumn, each year as it rolled round, from Romulus' time, it is said, down to the time of the emperors, the Romans being wont to see the horse exhibited in sacrifices and in games, as the animal sacred to their father Mars. 18
Nor, if the appropriateness of the Scriptural emblems of the ram and the goat to > Persia and Macedon has been evidenced to us by those nations' actual adoption of them for types on their coinage, (so as Persian and Macedonian coins still extant prove to us, 19 ) is similar ocular proof of symbolic fitness wanting in the present instance.
Multitudinous Latin, or, as I may truly call them, Roman coins, of early date and beautiful fabric, such as the reader now sees engraved before him, still remain to illustrate to modern eyes this recognized connection of Mars, the horse, and the Roman people. 20
Besides that a horse too was one of the ancient Roman war-standards. 21 Nor should I omit to observe, though somewhat anticipatively, since symbols were often borrowed from real life, that in the times of St. John the horse was frequently seen by Romans in association with riders to whom such insignia belonged as those on the three first Seals, the crown, the sword, and the balance, the first more especially: 22 that in this association moreover occasions sometimes arose when the horse-was viewed ominously; and that it was then, by a natural principle, interpreted with reference to those whom the official rider might be ruler over; that is, a Roman army, or the Roman people. 23
The meaning of the Apocalyptic horse thus presumptively settled, that of the other details of the symbol will readily suggest itself. Its colors, in the successive Seals, marked obviously the successive symptomatic phases that the body politic which the horse represented would exhibit, from that of high health and prosperity at the first to that of mortal dissolution; its riders the characteristic agents or agencies, by whom, during the times respectively intended, it would be thus acted on and influenced; the instrumental causes, in effect, of these symptomatic phases.
To prevent mistake as to the particular agents or agency Signified in each case, the rider bore, or had given him, in the successive visions, some distinctive badge of his claw, as the crown, bow, sword, balance, &c, I say of his class: for in each case, I conceive, it was not an individual that the rider was likely, to represent; but, conformably with the corporate signification of the emblematic horse, and other such symbols in prophecy, a collective body, class, or series.
Thus simply, if I mistake not, were the main points that Gibbon deemed it important to mark in his philosophic history of the Roman empire, set forth before the Evangelist in the four first of the Apocalyptic figurations: I mean, not the events or changes alone in that empire's history; but, to ether with them in each case, the instrumental cause and the symptomatic phase.
Nor let me omit to add, with reference to the epochs and eras, as well as subjects, chosen as I presume for delineation, that they too will be found well to agree with those that Gibbon and other historians make prominent in their pictures, as bearing most importantly on the grand subject of the decline and fall of the Roman empire.
Indeed these epochs, and the new agencies for good or evil then successively introduced, did so bear upon it, that, as it seems to me, no philosophic history of the fortunes of Imperial Rome for the period they include could omit them. or, let me add, does it seem to me that the philosophy of history would require the introduction of any more. Short as are the four figurations, they contain within themselves, I believe, the very spirit of the Roman history, for the next two centuries after St. John: i.e. up to the memorable epoch of the year 292, when the unity of the empire was practically dissolved.
And let me not forget to add, ere closing this introductory Section, that there was then further foreshown to St. John in the fifth Seal, though under imagery quite different and peculiar, another and different era and causal agency, which bore yet more directly and strongly on the overthrow of the empire and religion of Pagan Rome than even any depicted before : it being so the fit introduction of the sixth Seal's hieroglyphic, charged with the perforation of that overthrow; itself the grand consummation of this first Art of the heavenly Drama.
Thus much premised, proceed we more particularly to consider the sacred figurations. On the first Seal's opening, the voice of the first of the four living creatures, in sign and token of Christ's already assumed part in the providential government of the world, 24 I called as with a voice of thunder, Come. And instant, as if in obedience to the summons, a horse and horseman, with certain peculiar and significant insignia, appeared issuing forth, as I suppose, upon the Roman landscape.
1 . kaito elaion ton sinon adikshj . I shall have to remark under my third Seal on the alternative translation here given.
Jerome Vulgate, "super quatuor partes terrae." I shall have to remark on this various reading under my fourth Seal.
3 I have in the above followed Tregelles' text; of the deviations of which from the received text the most observable is the omission of the kai blepe , after ercsu , on the opening of each of the four first Seals, in which omission Scholz has preceded him. I shall remark more fully on it under my first Seal.
I have also generally followed Mr. Tregelles in his translation; and, like him, have deviated from the received version in translating living creatures, instead of beasts; and Hades, instead of hell. I deviate from both in translating choenix, instead of measure; denarius, instead of penny; pestilence, instead of death; wild beasts, instead of beasts: also,, famine, and, full moon.
4 In Apoc. xvii. 18 we read that the woman, or Roman seven hilled city, was the great city which ruled over , " the kings of the earth.'' And so in verses 2, 5, 8 of the same chapter. The 8th verse speaks of " the inhabitants of the earth " as in connection with, and subjection to, the Beast who was associated with the woman. So too in Apoc. xiii. 8, xi. 10, &c.; whereby the earth, of Apoc. xvii may be traced back to. and probably identified with, the earth, of the Trumpets and Seals preceding.
5 Of course there may be a certain overrunning by the subject of one vision into the period of that of the vision succeeding; supposing these subjects of the two visions to be not incompatible, but rather altogether consistent one with the other.
6 See Faber's Sacr. Cal. ii 205; (2nd Ed.) and, for Foxe's view, my notice of him in the History of Apocalyptic Interpretation in the Appendix to Vol iv.
7 I have noticed this in my Vindiciae Horariae, pp. 9. 20.
8 E. g. Victorinus of old; and in our own times Mr. Burgh, and I believe the Futurists generally.
9 Our Lord's prophecy Matt. xxiv. 7, 14, is referred to for authority, both by ancients and moderns: "For nation shall rise against nation,.. .. and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.
Mr. Burgh, p. 159, (4th Ed.) to make the parallel more striking, adds the further statement in Matt. xxiv. 9, "Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted," &c. as answering in order, as well as subject, to the vision of the 5th Seal. But in Luke xxi. 12 it is said, (after notice of the famines, &c,) " But before all these things they shall lay their hands on you," &c.
10 " And his name that sat thereon was Death: .... and power was given unto him to kill with sword, and with famine, and with pestilence," &c. Apoc. vi. 8.
11 So Vitringa, p. 3 10. " Si fata Romani Imperii symbolicis imaginibus priorum quatuor sigillorum depingerentur, necesse erat ut Romanum Imperium, continui temporis serie, sub quatuor his prodiisset aspectibus qui his imaginibus exhibentur." This he says in refutation of Mede's exposition.
12 At p. 100 supra.
13 I have urged this point fully at pp. 10, 11 of the Vindiciae Horariae. I there observe as follows.
"In the one case it is simply a rider on a white horse, without a single declared attribute, name, or emblem of divinity ; bearing in his hand a bow, receiving a crown, and with the simple destiny of conquering on the earth, so as any mere human conqueror might do, and that he should conquer.
In the other case it is One with eyes like a flame of fire, and on his head many diadems , and with his vesture dyed in blood, and the incomprehensible name, the WORD or GOD, written on him, and in his hand a sword, (not a bow,) and his point of egress not earth, (whereon the Church theory would require him to have been progressing victoriously ever since his first outgoing,) but heaven."
I then further state that the one and only point of similarity in the two cases, viz. that of riding a white horse, is any thing but a distinctive: seeing that neither in Psalm xlv, nor Habakkuk iii, (passages cited as parallels,) is the color of the Messiah's horse specified; and that in the vision of Zech. i. 8, where we read of horses 'with riders on them) red, speckled, white, it is on a red horse, not white, that the Messiah is there represented as riding.
I also anew that the mere difference of time, to which the visions of Apoc vi and Apoc. xix respectively refer, does not account for the vast multitude of differences in the representation, were the rider in the first case, as in the second, really Jesus Christ: seeing that much of the same divine glory that appeared attached to him in the vision of Apoc. xix, appeared attached to him also in the primary vision of Apoc. i; and that the many diadems could only signify the same universal kingdom which the crown did, were the Church-scheme of the Seals correct ; Christ's investiture to this universal kingdom having taken place immediately on his ascension.
In fine, I conclude that the differences are purposely made thus many and great, in order to set aside all idea of identity between the two riders, in the one case and the other.
14 " Videbam interpretes qui per equum alburn hic intelligunt ecclesiam Christi vehementer laborare in sequenente emblemate recte exponendo." p. 328.
15 The horse and his rider is an expression continually used in Scripture in designation of a heathen military power. So Exod. xv. 21, Jer. li. 21, Ezek. xxiii. 6, Hagg. ii. 22, Zech. ix. 10, &c.
There is but one passage in the Old Testament, where the symbol of a horse is used of any but a military heathen power, viz. Zech. x. 3 ; where God says, " I will make Judah my goodly horse in battle: " and there it is borrowed, if I may so say, from the custom of Judah's enemies boasting (ib. 5) of their horses and riders.
Indeed horses were expressly forbidden to the Jews : see Deut. xvii. 16, Ps. xx. 7, &c.Moreover Judah is not the Christian Church.
16 See my review of the Church-Scheme of the Seals in the Appendix to Vol. iv.
17 Daniel viii. 20, 21.
18 The sacrifice of the horse, in one annual festival to Mars. is noted by Festus in Octob. and the horse-races by the same author, in Equtiria, as at another. So > Tertullian de Spectac. c. 5 ; " Dehinc equiria 'Marti Romulus dixit; " just afterwards mentioning Romulus as Mars' son. On which passage Pamelius illustrates the institution from Varro, Festus, and Ovid. On the horse's consecration to Mars see ib. 9.
19 Engravings of these coins will be given in my 3rd Volume.
20 On these coins see Eckhel, vol. v. pp. 46-49; who explains the horse on them to have been the Roman horse, sacred to Mars at Rome. " Ad Roman hic typus sacm pertinet Refert Festus Equiria ludi quos Romulus Marti instituit per equorum cursum, qui in Campo Martio exercebatur.' De equo dicto Octobri, qui singulis annis Marti in Campo Martio immolabatur, vide eundern Festum in October equus."
From a mistaken impression as to the chief districts where the coins were found, and for some other reasons, Eckhel supposed them to have had a Campanian local origin. And Niebuhr, in his history of the second Samnite war, suggests that they may probably have been struck by a community of Roman colonists early settled at that time in Campania: (French Translation of Golberry, vol. v. p. 399:) their date being probably somewhere between the times of the second Samnite and first Carthaginian wars.
More recent researches however have assigned them to Latium, as their chief locale, rather than Campania. See my Paper on the Roman coinage, in the Appendix at the end of this Volume. -Some of this class, Eckhel adds, were restored as Roman by Trajan. "Quod non mirum: narn numi hi, etsi peregrini, tamen Romae fuerunt obvii; et cum in iis expressum Romae nomen legeretur, poterant monetae Romanae accenseri." lb. p. 46.
21 So Pliny x. 4 ; "Erat et antea aquila prima cum quatuor aliis. Lupi, minotauri, equi, aprique singulos ordines anteibant." So up to the time of Marius.
22 See Lipsiui in Tacit. Ann. xv. 7: also certain notices on the point in my 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Seals respectively.
23 So Plutarch relates, as in omen of the destruction of Crassus and his army in the Parthian campaign, that one of his war-horses richly caparisoned leapt into the Euphrates, and was seen no more. (c. 36.) And Tacitus too, in relating the consul Paetus' passage over the Euphrates, on some military expedition in the time of Nero, says that it was made " tristi omine:" because " in transgressu Euphratis, quem ponte transmittebat, nulla palm causi turbatus equus, qui consularia insignia gestabat, retro evasit." (Annal. xv. 7.) So the retreating back of the horse that bore the consul's insignia was interpreted to betoken the retreat of the Roman army and its consul.
24 See p. 87 supra. Christ was not indeed to take his kingdom visibly till the end. But meanwhile " all power was committed to him in heaven and in earth; I and so the Providential government of the world, in connection with the Church, committed to him.