336

Wrath of the Devil.

[LECT. of the trumpets, in the eighth chapter, was uttered by the "loud voice" of "an angel flying in the mid space between earth and heaven." And in that vision, it is to be observed, the denunciation of woe follows immediately upon the scene described in the fourth trumpet, the darkening of the third part of the sun, and the moon, and the stars,—a description which, as we have seen, may best be interpreted as foretelling the overthrow of the ancient Empire of Pagan Rome. And that which followed in the next trumpet, which trumpet contained "the first woe," was the falling of a star from heaven to the earth, the angel of the abyss, whose name is Abaddon and Apollyon, the Destroyer. And if that woe was rightly interpreted as denoting the false doctrines and heresies, which, in the early ages, were raised by "the craft and subtilty of the devil," tormenting men as with a scorpion's sting, we may in like manner understand the denunciation before us as foretelling the efforts of his rage and malice, when the possession of supreme worldly dominion had now been wrested from his hand, and the pure faith of Christ,-the full confession of His essential deity, after being, for a season, bitterly and restlessly assailed in the times of the Arian heresy, was to be finally established, under Theodosius the Great, throughout the limits of the Roman Empire. "And when the dragon saw that he was cast unto the earth, he persecuted the woman which brought forth the man child. And to the woman were given two wings of a great eagle,”—or rather, " of the great eagle,—that she might fly into the wilderness, into her place, where she is nourished for a time, and

66

8

Chap. viii. 12, 13.

9

τοῦ ἀετοῦ τοῦ μεγάλου.

XI.]

Protection by the Roman Empire.

337

times, and half a time, from the face of the serpent 1."

66

The great eagle here spoken of we have, on a former occasion 2, seen reason to identify with the fourth of those mystic emblems of earthly dominion -for such they seemed to be-the four living creatures which St. John beheld beneath the throne of God Most High. And that fourth, or Roman, Empire in its Christian state, made now visibly subservient to God's invisible kingdom, and, according to His Providential appointment, ministering to His Church, was that which, in the imagery of the vision before us, gave wings unto her to carry her into a place of security and shelter from the face of her enemy. 'Among the benefactors of the Church," says the historian of the Roman empire, in his wonted tone of subdued irony, "the fame of Constantine has been rivalled by the glory of Theodosius. If Constantine had the advantage of erecting the standard of the cross, the emulation of his successor assumed the merit of subduing the Arian heresy, and of abolishing the worship of idols in the Roman world." But, in the words of an eloquent bishop of our Church, "Christ had triumphed over the princes and powers of the world, before He would admit them to serve Him; He first felt their malice, before He would make use of their defence; to show that it was not his necessity that required it, but his grace that admitted kings and queens to be nurses of the Church.

"And now," Bp. Jeremy Taylor continues, "the Church was at ease. .. Indeed it was a great mercy in appearance, and was so intended; but it

1 Vv. 13, 14..

2 Vid. sup. pp. 216, 217.

3 Gibbon's Decline and Fall, chap. 27. vol. iii. p. 11.

Ꮓ

338

Flight into the wilderness.

[LECT.

proved not so. But then the Holy Ghost, in pursuance of the design of Christ, who meant by suffering to perfect his Church, as Himself was by the same instrument, was pleased, now that persecution did cease, to inspire the Church with the spirit of mortification and austerity; and then they made colleges of sufferers, persons who, to secure their inheritance in the world to come, did cut off all their portion in this, excepting so much of it as was necessary to their present being; and by instruments of humility, by patience under, and a voluntary undertaking of the cross, the burden of the Lord, by selfdenial, by fastings and sackcloth, and pernoctations in prayer, they chose then to exercise the active part of the religion, mingling it as much as they could with the suffering." What was this but the woman fleeing into the wilderness? And the time when this impulse came upon the Church is surely very remarkable-the very time when, if it had been a religion of this world, it would doubtless have been found freely entering upon the full enjoyment of its new possession. But the unbelieving historian has himself informed us, that it was "prosperity and peace" that "introduced the distinction of the vulgar and the Ascetic Christians." It was "in the reign of Constantine," he tells us, that "the Ascetics fled from a profane and degenerate world, to perpetual solitude, or religious society. Like the first Christians of Jerusalem," he says, "they resigned the use, or the property, of their temporal possessions; established regular communities of the same sex, and a similar disposition; and assumed the name of 'Hermits,' 'Monks,' and 'Anachoretes,' expressive of

4

Bp. Taylor's (Twenty(Twentyseven) Sermons, Sermon ix.

Works, vol. v. pp. 534, 535. ed. Heber.

XI.]

Withdrawal from the world.

339

their lonely retreat in a natural or artificial desert. They soon acquired," he tells us, "the respect of the world which they despised; and the loudest applause was bestowed on this Divine Philosophy, which surpassed, without the aid of science, or reason," says the historian with his usual sneer, "the laborious virtues of the Grecian schools." "But the votaries of this Divine Philosophy," he goes on to say, "aspired to imitate a purer and more perfect model. They trod in the footsteps of the prophets, who had retired to the desert 5." And as we saw, in the preceding vision of the temple, that, when the Gentile nations with their multitude were admitted to "tread the holy city," the two witnesses began to prophesy in sackcloth, so here a like period of prophet-like retirement from the world is described as having commenced, apparently, amidst the very signs of Christ's taking visible possession of His kingly dominion therein. And thus was "her place" ready prepared for her in the wilderness, against the time when the Church would need a refuge from the face of the serpent.

The thoughtful student of Scripture and history will assuredly discover here something which, in its spirit and design at least, was beyond the reach of ordinary causes; and which, in its influence on the fortunes of the Christian Church through many an age, formed part of the wonderful arrangements of Divine Providence in her behalf. If error and degeneracy and corruption pursued her continually into the wilderness, and it became to her a scene of

5 Decline and Fall, chap. 37. init. The historian's statement is, essentially, correct. For a more strictly accurate

account, however, see Bingham, Antiq. book vii. chap. 1. Vid. Note, Appendix.

340

Shelter of the Catholic Faith.

[LECT.

spiritual temptation beset by its own peculiar dangers, even as was the city, this was no more than might have been looked for from human weakness, and the deeply-seated enmity of her great adversary. It must be recollected, meanwhile, that it was in the desert that Athanasius found, in the days of Arianism, a refuge from his enemies, and a hiding place and home for the Catholic Faith; and that among the religious communities which cherished, through a long period, the name of St. Augustine, as the great Doctor of the Western Church, his writings, from which were derived, to a great extent, their systems of theological teaching, were means, under Providence, of preserving from being overwhelmed by Pelagian error, or scholastic speculation, the great doctrines of Divine grace. And the ministry of St. Augustine himself, in his see of Hippo, as well as the final establishment of the orthodox Faith concerning our Blessed Lord at the Council of Constantinople, ratifying and confirming the Nicene, was "instrumentally due," it has been observed, to the "respite given to the Church, as well as to the empire," in the reign of Theodosius, "from the tremendous and already imminent irruption of the Gothic flood." For, "had it burst over the empire, when first it threatened, at the death of Valens, it might probably," humanly speaking, "have overwhelmed the Church "."