low, that we must seek for the corresponding historical events, chronologically at the commencement of the same period, and geographically within the limits of the same platform: hence likewise it will follow, since the woman brings forth her son at the commencement of the 1260 years, that the period of her allegorical gestation terminates when the period of the 1260 years begins. (1.) There is little difficulty in ascertaining the event, which is shadowed out by the fall of the Latin stars from heaven. -At the sounding of the fifth trumpet, which introduces the first woe, and which synchronises with the commencement of the latter 1260 years, a star completes its fall from heaven: and, agreeably to the prophetic mode of considering cause and effect, this star opens the pit of the abyss, and lets out Apollyon with his Saracenic locusts. But, in the figured language of symbols, the completed fall of a star, when interpreted ecclesiastically, denotes the completed apostasy of a Christian Bishop. Hence, as the great Apostasy was completed by the revelation of the man of sin, and as he himself was revealed when in the year 604 the times and the laws and the saints were given into his hand by the representatives of the ten secular Powers established within his own peculiar spiritual domain: I considered the completed fall of the star at the commencement of the fifth trumpet, which trumpet is determined by the chronology of Saracenic history to have begun to sound immedi ately before the year 608 or 609, to be the completed apostasy of the Roman Pontiff by his becoming in the year 604 the western head of the great demonolatrous Apostasy 1. Now, synchronically with the completed fall of this eminent star from heaven, the tail of the dragon, as we learn from the present vision, also draws along and casts down from heaven a third part of the stars, or the stars whose episcopal sees lay within the territories of the Latin Empire and the Patriarchate of Rome. Such a synchronism at once determines the proper application of the imagery before us. With the leading star of Rome, the subject stars of the Roman Patriarchate fell into complete apostasy: and the whole host, subsequent to the revelation of the lawless one, formed conjointly that wonderful spiritual Empire, which St. John (as we shall presently see) typifies by a second lamb-like beast, and which employed the first or secular wild-beast as its agent of persecution during the allotted term of 1260 years 2. (2.) Contemporaneously with the fall of the Latin stars, we are to seek for the event which answers to the parturition of the woman and the birth of the man-child. We have seen, that, in the abstract, the birth of the man-child from the woman denotes the setting apart of a community from a larger general collec ' Rev. ix. 1, 2. See above book iv. chap. 7. § I. tive body for some given purpose or other: and we have likewise seen, that the woman and the manchild in the present vision answer respectively to the measured worshippers and the two witnesses in the preceding vision. Such being the case, the event, thus hieroglyphically described, will be the setting apart of the Vallensico-Albigensic Church, from the general collective body of the faithful, for the purpose of testifying to the truth, as a distinct community and not as a mere scattered and unconnected body of individuals, during the whole period of the 1260 years. Hitherto, the man-child had existed only in the womb of his allegorical mother; or, in unfigured language, hitherto the Vallensico-Albigensic Church had existed conjointly with many pious individuals, and had not been set apart from them for the special purpose of testifying against the great Apostasy during the term of the 1260 years: but, at the commencement of that period, the manchild is born; or, in unfigured language, the Vallensico-Albigensic Church is specially set apart, that it might bear witness, in its corporate capacity, against the abominations of the prevailing demonolatry. (3.) We must next inquire, what circumstance is meant by the abreption of the man-child to the throne of God. In the vision, the man-child appeared to the prophet, as snatched away to God and to his throne immediately upon his birth; and the reason of his being so caught up was, that he might be preserved from the fury of the dragon which stood ready to devour him as soon as he was born. By this imagery we are plainly enough to understand, that, although the evil spirit, through the agency of his borrowed Roman members, would endeavour by the fury of persecution utterly to destroy the community which testified against the corruptions of the great Apostasy: yet, by the superintending regal providence of God, it should be wonderfully preserved from extinction; and, even when it should have been completely suppressed in its corporate capacity (as we learn from the preceding vision) during the space of three natural years and a half, still it should be restored to political life, and should reassume its allotted function of a faithful prophet. Much the same thing, though in different words, is said of the two mystic witnesses in the preceding vision. They stand before the God of the earth, who is seated upon his throne the mercy-seat in the penetrale of the temple: and, safe under his protection, though exercising their ministry in sackcloth, they are enabled to bid defiance to the utmost fury of their enemies. (4.) When the man-child is caught up to the throne of God, the woman his mother flees into the wilderness; where she has a place prepared of God, that they should feed her there during a period of 1260 prophetic days. The imagery, here employed, is borrowed from the history of Elijah: and both the circumstantial and the numerical coincidence is such, that the Hebrew prophet must certainly be deemed a type of that collective body of faithful worshippers, which is symbolised by the persecuted woman. During a period of famine, when the natural heaven was shut up for three years and six months, Elijah retired into the wilderness: and there, in a place prepared for him, he was from day to day miraculously fed by ravens'. After a similar manner, during a period of spiritual famine, when the allegorical heaven is shut so that it rain not for 1260 prophetic days or three prophetic years and a half, the woman flees into the wilderness: and there, in a place prepared for her by divine providence, she is wonderfully fed and sustained with a sufficiency of spiritual food. Elijah, then, is clearly a type of the persecuted woman: a matter of very considerable importance, because it decidedly establishes the true nature of her character. From the circumstance of the woman fleeing into the wilderness, and from the circumstance of the Babylonic harlot likewise appearing in the wilderness, some commentators have hastily supposed, that these two women are in truth one and the same person: whence, as the Babylonic harlot is the symbol of an apostate Church, they contend, that the flight of the woman into the wilderness denotes the lapse of the Western or Latin Church into apostasy. Now ' Luke iv. 25, 26. James v. 17, 18. i Kings xvii. 2 Rev. xi. 3, 6. xii. 6. |