1 There is here no variation in the critical editions from the received text of the least importance; except the insertion in verse 7 of the clause "and the third part of the earth was burnt up:" which I have accordingly inserted.
2 Thus Vitringa observes in his Preface, that the burning mountain cast into Me sea might, of itself, indicate either the evils which the Jews suffered from the Romans,-those which the Western Romans suffered from the Goths,-or the Eastern Romans from the Turks." p. v.
3 Mr. Faber suggests a geographical distinction of a different kind; viz. with reference to the quarters (not on which the tempests were to fall, but) from which they were to blow. This is founded on the hypothesis of each one of the four tempest-angels corresponding with one of the four trumpet-angel; and of their blowing one by one singly, in the first four trumpet-visions, then ceasing -. a supposition that takes for granted what should be proved, as to the separate action of each of the four tempest-angels; not to add that it is inconsistent with the much longer commission which, it seems probable, as will be seen hereafter, attached to them. And even waiving these objections, how indistinct would be the distinction pro. posed ; because there is nothing to fix the order in which, in such case, the winds should blow. Mr. Fabers order of North, South, West, and East, is altogether arbitrary; as indeed would be any other. See his S. C. i. 250, &c.
4 So Mr. Cuninghame says (p. 49) ; "All interpreters of note agree that this universe is to be considered symbolical." There is, however, much variety in the application. Vitringa in Trumpet 2 makes the sea, like the earth, to be the Roman empire: elsewhere, p. 456, to symbolize the barbarous nations separated from it." Daubuz says that the sea means the greater part of the Roman population; "the rivers the small remaining part." p. 377. Faber thinks that by the sea is to be understood "the people of the Roman empire, distracted by the wars and revolutions of the 1st Trumpet!" (S. C. i. 263 :) though elsewhere (S. C. iii. 260) limiting it to " the largest nation of the divided Roman empire." " The rivers and fountains," he explains to be the numerous Gothic kingdoms of the divided Western Empire." (S. C. i. 267.) This may suffice.
5 So also Daubus, Newton, &c. Lowman interprets it as to mean a great part. Mr. Cuninghame, after a lengthened discussion on the subject, confesses, (p. 62) that if the question were put to him, why the proportion of one third of the symbolical universe should be the limit affixed to the effects of the four Trumpets, he can not answer. (My references are to the last editions of Cuninghame and Faber.)
6 Thus Archdeacon Woodhouse, when objecting to the usual interpretations of the fifth Trumpet, as having reference to the Saracens, says; " To make out the interpretation, Commentators are obliged to apply the prophetic characters sometimes in a borrowed, sometimes in a literal sense; which I suppose is unwarranted. They ought all to be applied in the same sense." So too, in a measure, the Reviewer of Keith's Signs of the Times, in the Investigator, iii. 271.
7 For instance in Ezek. 19:12; " Thy mother (Judah) is like a vine, &c. But she was plucked up in fury; she was cast down to the ground: the east wind dried up her fruit." And again in xvii. 10, a passage very similar. So also in Jer. 18:17, and Hosea 13:15. In all these cases the emblem that I speak of, the east wind, is appropriate both figuratively, (with reference to the general picture,) and geographically, with reference to the situation of Babylonia and Assyria as lying east of Judah. So in Isaiah 41:2, Abraham's coming out from Mesopotamia or Babylonia to Canaan is spoken of as his coming from the east; and in Matt. 2:1, the wise men from Babylonia are called the wise men from the east it is to be observed that the Babylonians, though east of Palestine, yet entered it from Damascus and the north.
Hence they are sometimes spoken of as coming from the north. So Jer. 1:13, 14 ; " I said, I see a seething-pot, and its face is toward the north. Then the Lord said unto me, Out of the north shall an evil break forth upon all the inhabitants of the land." But no where is such a figure as a whirlwind from south, or west, applied to Nebuchadnezzar or the Assyrians ; though winds quite as suitable to cause shipwreck as the east wind. Compare Is. 21:1, and Zech. 9:14; in both which the whirlwind from the south is the figure: and it is used in the one cue of Persia attacking Babylon, a city north of it; in the other of Judah attacking the Greeks, whose Asiatic cities (as Antioch, &C,) were situated north of them.
8 It may be satisfactory to the reader to see here a statement of all the successive legitimate divisions of the Roman imperial world. I therefore subjoin it, arranged chronologically. It will be seen from it, that there were no de jure tripartitions except those specified in the text. Other divisions were into four, two, and once six.
AD
|
290 308 311 313 314 324 337 350 364 379 385 387 394 396 |
Division into four Praefectures by Diocletian: the Ist, Italy and Africa; 2nd. Asia and Thrace -. 3 rd, the Rhine frontier, and three Western Provinces; 4th, the Danube frontier and Illyricum. This quadripartition continued till the death of Constantius A. D. 306: when, Constantine having succeeded him in the West, Maxentius, being emperor at Rome, Maximian, (who had resigned) resuming the purple, and two subordinate emperors, instead of one, being made by the Eastern Augustus Galerius, (vix. Licinius for the government of Illyricum, and Maximim for the government of Syria,)--for the first and last time. The Roman world was divided between six emperors. This continued till the death of Galerius. That same year war arising. the result was the first tripartition of the empire, that between Constantine, Licinius, and Maximim, Spoken of in my text above. On Maximin's defeat and death the Roman world was bipartitioned between Constantine and Licinius. Licinius had the East and Illyricum. On Licinius' first defeat, Illyricum was transferred to Constantine. On Licinius' second defeat, the empire was reunited under Constantine. On Constantine's death there was a tripartition again; that between his three sons, Constantine, Constans, Constantius. After civil wars, and the death of the two other brothers, Constantiles again reunited the Roman world. The Monarchy continued after his death under Julian, and then Jovian. On whose death, The celebrated bipartition into Eastern and Western was made by Valentinian and Valens. The Western Empire included the whole of Illyricum; the Eastern Thrace and (See Gibbon iv. 242.) On Gratian's appointing Theodosius Eastern Emperor, after the death of Valens, an the Gothic war was to be Theodosius' cam, the Illyricum Prefecture was dismembered, and the Dioceses of Dacia and Macedonia added to Thrace, Asia, and Egypt, as Theodosius' portion. On Maximus defeating and murdering Grotian, Theodosius arranged temporarily with that usurper that he should confine himself to the countries beyond the Alps, leaving to Gratisn's brother Italy, Africa, and Western Illyricum. (Gib. v. 13.) This was much the same trisection as between Constantine's three sons. For a year or two Theodosius; Valens' successor reunited the Empire. Then on his death it was at length finally partitioned into Eastern and Western, under his two sons Arcadia* and Hunorius : the lllyrian Praefecture being divided between them, nearly as now between the Turks and Germans. Noricum, Pannonia, and Dalmatia belonged to the West - Dacia and Macedonia, (the other half of the Illyrian Praefecture to the East. Gib. v. 138. The result was very speedily a total separation of the two empires. Gibbon observes that about 410 A.D. such was the absolute separation of the two monarchies, both in interest and affection, that Constantinople would rather have obeyed the orders of the Persian than those of the Latin Court. v. 161. |
9 The apportionment of Illyricum was variable both before, and after, the bipartite division under the emperors Arcadius and Honorius. Before the first war between Constantine and Licinius, the Illyrian Praefecture was attached to the Eastern empire; but, after the first war between them, it was taken from the East. and added to the West. When a bipartition was next arranged between Valentiniati and Valens, it was all again attached in the same manner to the Western empire. But on Valens' death,* and Theodosius' accession. the Praefecture was dismembered; and its Eastern half, including Dacia and Macedonia, added by Gratian to the East. It was this last that was the line of separation settled on in the bipartition between Arcadius and Honorius, to which our difficulty chiefly refers. Yet we find that, some ten years after, the Western emperor claimed jurisdiction over the whole of Illyricum, "according to its true and ancient limits; and about 20 years still later, a new arrangement was made between the two emperors, by which the whole of the Western Illyricum was ceded to the Eastern empire. This took place A.D. 425.** It was the final line of dispartition, and one to which I shall again have to call the reader's special attention. Thus the staple, if I may so say, or permanently legitimate territory appertaining to each respectively, was still Constantine's original third for the Western empire, and Maximin's original third for the Eastern empire. In every case, I should observe, the latter included Thrace
*See the tabular view
**lb. vi. 7. This partition was made between Theodosius 2nd, and Valentinian the 3rd. "The emperor of the East acquired the rich Province of Dalmatia, and the dangerous sovereignty of Pannonia and Noricum; which had been filled and ravaged for about twenty years, by a promiscuous crowd of Huns, Ostrogoths, Vandals, and Bavarians," He refers to Count Bust, a laborious investigator of the antiquities of those times, as his authority for this Treaty; and which he considers quite satisfactory. Yet it would seem that still the Western emperor revived his claim to one of its provinces. For in an embassy to Attila he sent the civil and military governors of Noricum as his envoys. Gibbon vi. 92. So also Sismondi, Roman History, i. 160: who says indeed that the complaint of Attila had reference to things embezzled in a church at Sirmium; a town situated a little south of the modem Belgrade. In A.D. 453, again, the emperor Marcian granted all Pannonia, as far as Vindobona (Vienna), to the Ostrogoths.
The ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Eastern Illyricum was a point similarly disputed between the Roman and Byzantine Sees. Thus in the year 451, the Council of Chalcedon adjudged that the Patriarchate of the Constantinopolitan Bishop extended over Eastern llIyricum: yet in 490, we find that Pope Felix 2, (or 3), had his vicar in the Eastern Illyricum, resident at Thessalonica
10 The Mediterranean was often spoken of by the Romans as their sea. " mare nostrum." Hence when the word sea was used by itself, this would be the meaning attached to the word by them.
11 The higher third of the Danube indeed belonged to the Western division; but its whole lower stream to the Illyrian.
12 On the cold of ancient Germany, see Gibbon i. 346
13 The set was a word used by the Romans to include the islands and maritime coasts.
14 This is no exaggeration of the extent of volcanic action, seen in nature. Dion Cassius (lxvi. 23) relates that in the eruption of Vesuvius, in which Pliny lost his life, the ashes reached Africa, Syria, and Egypt, and filled the air above Rome. In more modem times during one eruption of Etna, an area of 150 miles in circumference is said to have been covered with a stratum of volcanic sand and ashes twelve feet deep. In the year 1783 a current of lava sixty miles long, and twelve broad, was formed by a volcano in Iceland. And in 1813, as Mr. Bakewell states, in the eruption of the volcano of Sumbawa the clouds of smoke and ashes darkened the sky for 300 miles round; and the sound of the explosions was heard in Sumatra, 970 miles distant. See Memoire sur lea lies Ponces; and Bakewell's Introduction to Geology. p. 342, 343.
15 " A great star blazing like a torch." This designates a meteor, as distinguished from one of the starry luminaries. So Virgil, Ea. ii. 694,
16 Compare Jer. xxiii. 15; " I will feed them with wormwood, and make them drink the water of gall; " L e. in the afflictions of the Babylonish captivity. Also Lam. 3:15, 19. The metaphor is not uncommon. In Antar, the Arabic Romance, we find it applied, as here, to death. " Death served them with a cup of absinth by my sword."
17 1st, The tempest. So Is. 28:2 The Lord hath a mighty and strong one: which, as a tempest of hail and a destroying storm, as a flood of mighty waters over. flowing, shall cast down to the earth with the hand." This was said of Shalmanezer and the Assyrian invasion. And again of Gog; Ezek.38:9; "Thou shalt ascend, and come like a storm: thou shalt be like a cloud to cover the land: thou, and all thy bands, and many people with thee."
18 At their entrance through the Salarian gate, they fired the adjacent houses to guide their march, and to distract the attention of the citizens. The flames, which encountered no obstacle in the disorder of the night, consumed many private and public buildings: and the ruins of the palace of Sallust remained in the age of Justinian, a stately monument of the Gothic conflagration." Gibbon v. 317.
19 v. 214.-The chronological intermingling of the invasions of Italy by Alaric and Rhadagaisus will appear from the following tabular sketch.
A.D.
|
396 400-403 406 408 409 410 |
Alaric's invasion of Greece. His first invasion of Italy. (Gibbon v. 190.) Rhadagaisus with 300,000 Vandals from the Baltic, marching by way of the upper Danube, invades Italy.-Defeated and killed under the wails of Florence, the remains of his army retire from Italy, and cross the Rhine into France. Alaric's first siege of Rome. Second siege Third siege and capture . In the same year followed Alaric's death. |
20 Ib. v. 224.-Daubuz (p. 368) notices Claudian's comparison of Alaric and his Goths to a hail-storm. Schlegel too (Philos. of Hist. ii. 54) uses the same Apocalyptic figure. " To defend himself from this people, (the Goths) the sons of Theodosius knew no other expedient than to let loose on Italy these barbarians, and to divert and point the storm of invasion towards that quarter."
21 The terrible eruption of these volcanoes, which in their extinct state have become so celebrated among modem geologists, took place A. D. 458-460. Both Auvergne and Dauphine were convulsed by the accompanying earthquakes, and the face of nature changed in their immediate neighborhood. The Rogation days after Ascension Day, which still remain in our church ritual, were then instituted by Mamertus, Bishop of Vienne, with the view of deprecating God's wrath. The account is given in a letter of the cotemporary writer Sidonius Apollinaris, " a Rogation Homily of Alcimus Avitus, the next Bishop of Vienne, still extant.
Let me add to what is there stated, that the character of the deprecatory rogation then in use, appears sufficiently from the conclusion of Sidonius' letter : where he speaks of one martyrs body, fortunately found whole by Mamertus, and the head also of another martyr, both transported to Vienne; and begs, in consideration of this list having been a native of Auvergne, that he and his neighbors of that district might share the saint's patronage. l observe, that the celebration of the Rogation days was in the year 511 enjoined by the Council of Orleans. Canons 27, 28.
22 So Muller, Univ. History, ii. 110; (Hess' tranal. Paris 1814;) " Genseric wasted it all with fire and the sword." And Gibbon vi. 181 ; Genseric determined to "reduce Mauritania to a desert. He burnt the villages, and poisoned the springs." From Priscus p. 42:
23 Victor Vitensis expressly Says that Genseric had Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, Majorca, Minorca ; B. P. M. vid. 676. See too Gibbon vi. 146; and Sismondi, Roman History. i. 172.
24 It should be remembered by the reader that, "on the division of the empire into East and West, an ideal unity was scrupulously preserved." Gib. x. 152. The imperial sun was one. The same is indeed implied in the Senate's address to the Eastern Emperor, on Odoacer's mandate.
25 For example we find it assembling in 500 A. D. to welcome Theodoric; in 536 sending deputies, in conjunction with those of the Pope, clergy and people, to invite Belisarius to the deliverance of the city; in 546 temporarily broken up by Totilas, banishment of its members on his capture of Rome; then restored, and at length in 552 finally abolished, as a body exercising political functions, by Narses. Gibbon. vii. 30. 223, 368, 370, 377, 389.
26 See Gibbon, vii. 370, &c. Marcellinus (referred to by Gibbon) states in his Chronicon that after Totilas had taken, partly demolished, and then evacuated Rome, carrying off the senators with him, the city remained for forty days desolate; Then occurred Relisarius' Visit from Ostia; he having cut his way with 1000 horses through in interposing division of the Gothic army, " to visit with pity and reverence (" Gibbon says) the vacant spa" of the Eternal City." Of which visit Dr. Miley, the Roman Catholic Priest, in his "Rome Pagan and Papal," (i. 263, ii.'196,) has given a very picturesque description.
27 Charles V, pp. 11, 12: " If a man were called on to fix upon a period in the history of the world.. the most calamitous, it would be that from the death of Theodosius to the establishment of the Lombards."
28 Childe Harold, Cantro iv Stanza 80
29 Let me observe, in concluding, that the exposition of the four trumpet visions here given resembles generally that of Whiston, Bicheno, and Dr. Keith: there being excepted my interpretation of the third part, of which mention has been made before and the connection of Attila with the river Rhine; a point almost overlooked by Whiston and Keith, though not by Bicheno.
30 Griesbach and the other critical Editors read strou instead of &"oAav, an mCie instead of an angel. And the external evidence of Manuscripts is decidedly in favour of the former reading. On the other hand the internal evidence of Scriptural analogy, with which Griesbach and the rest did not concern themselves, is as decidedly,-indeed, as it seems to me, even more so,-against it. For no where in the Apocalypse is the proclaiming any being hurt an angel or the divine Spirit.