divided into six chief " PARTS" or "ACTS," whose subject-matter is as follows: "1. That of the temporary glory, and then the decline and fall of Rome Pagan, before the power of Christianity: the subject of the first six seals. "2. The ravage and destruction of Rome Christian, after its corruption, in its divisions both of east and west; of the western empire by the Goths, of the eastern by the Saracens and Turks: the subject of the six first trumpets. "3. The history of the Reformation, as introduced towards the close of the sixth trumpet. "4. The supplemental and explanatory history of the rise and character of the Papacy and Papal Empire that sprung out of the Gothic inundations of Western Europe; a part corresponding, as I conceive, with the "written without" of the prophetic roll, and exhibited preparatorily to the representation of its final overthrow. "5. The final overthrow of Papacy and the Papal empire under the outpouring of the vials of God's wrath, and the coming of Christ to judgment. Consequent on which is,— "6. The glorious consummation, in the descent of the heavenly Jerusalem, and the reign of Christ and his saints on the renovated earth.”* Of these the author believes the first four to have had their accomplishment already; and of the fifth the prefigured events to have begun, and to be now in progress. Mr. Elliott here calls on his reader to admire with him the Divine wisdom, in so ordering things, that amidst the wreck of literary records, there should yet remain sufficient by which to illustrate nearly all the events foreshown; and that, in an especial manner, one most unlikely instrument should have been raised up in the person of the infidel Gibbon, whose mind God seems so to have constituted and prepared, as that he should become unconsciously the best illustrator of no small part of the heavenly prophecy. The value of this evidence will be evident throughout that portion of the history of the Roman earth more especially corresponding with the visions of the seals, although not confined to this. Apart, however, from the evidence of Gibbon, the author has brought a mass of historical matter to bear upon his subject truly astonishing; and has left nothing which zeal, learning, and patient investigation could achieve, undone. To go through the several parts of each of the divisions above given, would be obviously impracticable within the limits of our pages. Having given our readers an idea of the general plan and execution of the work, we must confine our notices to such parts of the prophecy *By this it will be seen, that in his interpretation of the last three chapters of the Apocalypse, the author's views incline to those commonly called Millenarian. as refer to leading historical events, and hasten forwards to that one absorbing portion of the history of the church on which the author has spent much of his strength, and which excites in these our days a renewed rather than a decaying interest. For the seals we can only spare a short notice, and that for the sake of adducing two examples of that happy mode of historical illustration of which the author has made such copious and effective use. The first is the realisation of the first seal in the Emperor Nerva, with his Cretan bow: the other, the coins of the Roman provincial governors of the era of Alexander Severus, bearing the devices of ears of corn, a balance, and a corn measure, illustrative of the third seal. Immediately consequent on the sixth seal, or Constantinian era, is the pause, or silence, in heaven-the period of the tempest angels' restraint; during which the sealing of the 144,000 preserved ones is going on: which, in Mr. Elliott's scheme, has its antitypical counterpart at the corresponding era in the Augustinian doctrine of an individual election by grace. Here, too, both as the particular occasion of the then specified election, and the cause of the judgments which the destroying angels were commissioned to inflict-here, in the secularity and the thickening corruptions of the Christian church, is the beginning of the Great Apostacy: having, in its early developement, the special character assigned it so ominous in our own day, of a "religion of sacraments ;" in which baptism, with its ritual regeneration, stood prominent. And curious enough it is to observe how complacently the worthy author, while faithfully depicting the evils of such a system, regards the church of England in this matter, and how happily blind he is to the Niceism of its baptismal language, which, in clearness and determinateness of expression, might satisfy Cyril himself. Connected with the sealing of the election, and descriptive of the final blessedness, is the prospective vision (the first interruption to the continuous series) of the palm-bearing multitude. Then, taking up the series where it was broken off, and in consecutive order, close upon the half hour's silence, during which the sealing was in progress, follow the trumpets; the first four of which are explained, as with most commentators, of the successive invasions and ravages of the Goths, chiefly in the fifth century, which ended in the subversion of the Western empire: then the fifth and sixth, or two first of the three woe trumpets, with their fulfilment in the Saracenic and Turkish irruptions, ending in the downfall of the Eastern empire, each happily explained and elucidated by the author's perfect acquaintance with his subject, and his ample stores of historical illustration. The seventh trumpet, or third woe trumpet, containing the vials of God's wrath on the apostate nations, the seat of the beast, and those that bear his name, Mr. Elliott, with Faber, Cuninghame, and others, thinks, began to sound at the French Revolution, when that nation, destined to act so fearful a part in the great drama of the world, and amongst the kingdoms of the prophetic earth more particularly, burst on affrighted Europe in the commencement of that unparalleled course of events, the issues of which are yet hidden in the womb of time. France has been, in the hands of Providence, in a remarkable manner, both the ally and the scourge of the Papacy. By her kings, the first popes were fixed in their seat, and by a monarch of France they were for a time hurled from it. The same country, as a new thrashing instrument, in the hands of a righteous God, frayed the horns of the beast, (who, in the mysterious dispensations of the same Almighty Ruler, were reinstated by Protestant England.) And now without looking to prophecy, we may discern in the signs of the times, indications that this same restless and unprincipled power, once more reviving the claims, and fighting the battles of her old protégé, is destined again to scourge the nations and to try the church. We are thus brought (the notice of the seventh trumpet being anticipated) to the era of the Reformation; at which we were anxious to arrive, for reasons which will be obvious; and as furnishing good examples of the author's style and management of his subject, as well as being to us the most interesting of the yet realised parts of the Apocalyptic prefigurations. There is no point in the history of that event, or standing in immediate relation to it, on which the Protestant reader would be more likely to dwell with feelings of awe and of anxious expectation; on which the greatest intensity of interest is more likely to be concentrated, than that immediately preceding its first outburst; when the man of sin reigned supreme without a single visible opponent throughout the vast extent of his spiritual dominion; when every rebellious tongue was silenced, and every knee ready to bend to the representative of Christ on earth. Nor, perhaps, has the Apocalyptic imagery, either in its more terrible or its more magnificent aspects, anywhere attained a higher reach in the sublime, than in that portion of the scenic series which Mr. Elliott supposes to correspond with this era. The passage is this :-" And I saw another mighty angel come down from heaven, clothed with a cloud and a rainbow was upon his head, and his face was as it were the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire. And he had in his hand a little book open and he set his right foot upon the sea, and his left foot on the earth, and cried with a loud voice, as when a lion roareth: and when he had cried, seven thunders uttered their voices." Rev. x. 1-3. Mr. Elliott, then, as introductory to the application of the prophecy, calls the attention of his reader to that principle of allusive reference more or less preserved in the apocalyptic visions, and in visions figurative of Christ's actions in his true church, to something opposed to it and to Him; of which instances had been previously given. He then, as the allusive reference, here introduces, in all the magnificence of papal royalty, and all the proud boastings and lofty pretensions of a superhuman authority, and of a rule extending over land and sea from the farthest east to the farthest west-LEO X. It is certainly a fine idea, if it can be sustained, (and we see no reasons why it need be disputed,)-this of the mock Christ-the Antichrist-now in the zenith of his power, with all his enemies trodden under his feet, sitting in the temple of God, and showing himself as God; opening heaven to the believer, pardoning sins and dispensing the mercies of the covenant; the usurper of the throne of Christ, the monarch of the monarchs of the earth, exacting an idolatrous homage from a prostrate world. It is a fine idea which represents this pseudoChrist, in mock, and what but for the awful associations, would be the ludicrous sublime, acting out this prophecy, assuming the attitude and parodying the words of the true Lord of all, and bearing, unwittingly, the very name of "Lion." But we must let Mr. Elliott finish the scene. “Just when the Roman Antichrist seemed to have completed his triumph, and when, not only without opposition in Christendom, but with Christendom consenting, applauding, admiring, and in the Papal exaltation and reign anticipating the fulfilment of Christ's promised reign with his saints, he acted out the character of Christ, and exercised, or professed to exercise, in regard to both worlds, Christ's God-like functions and prerogatives ;-Just when, as if he had been the heavensent One, mighty to save, he opened heaven to each believer in his charms, however laden he might be with guilt and sin, and exhibited himself to them as the dispenser of the mercies of the covenant, the Fountain of grace, the Saviour, the Justifier, the Sun of Righteousness;-Just when, as if he had been the heir of the world, and He that was to have all things put under his feet, he claimed the kingdoms of the earth (and not those of the Roman earth only, but those in the mighty seas beyond, that enwrap this terrene globe) as his own, and receiving homage for each one from the princes of the world, enfeoffed them as sovereign lord to whom he would;-Just when, after, agreeably with the anticipations of some of the ancient fathers respecting the predicted Antichrist, assuming Christ's title of lion, even as if the Lion of the tribe of Judah,―he did, by acts and mandates, framed with a view to secure the church and world in subjection to him, as it were, roar over his prey, and threaten every opposer;-Just when, on the day of his enthronisation, as on a day of high festival, there were exhibited, amidst the applause of congregated Christendom, paintings on which art seemed to have delighted to lavish its ingenuity of device and of decoration, and which, as that which might best symbolise these his threefold prerogatives and functions as Christ's vicar and impersonator, represented the Pope (the usurper Antichrist) in one part, as beaming like the new risen sun from heaven upon earth, together with the covenant rainbow to reflect his brightness; in another, as placing one foot on the land and the other on the sea; in a third, as looking and crying, with the world in his clutch, as when a lion roareth on his prey ;-Just at this very time it was that there was the fulfilment of another symbolic painting, devised by higher than human art, and in direct contrast to the former, though framed above 1400 years before it a painting which, in the visions of Patmos, represented Christ to St. John as now at length intervening, after long concealment, in vindication of his own rights, truth, and people,-revealing himself as the mighty covenant angel from heaven, with his face shining as the sun, and a rainbow about his head,-planting moreover his right foot on the sea, his left on the land,—and crying with a loud voice, as when a lion roareth."—Vol. ii. pp. 430, 431. It is at this juncture that the mighty angel whose personal and investing glories bespeak him to be none other than the Lord Jesus himself, appears on the scene with the open book, symbolical of the opening, at this time, of his own book—the Bible; with his right foot on the sea and his left on the land, and announcing with a loud voice, as when a lion roareth, (though not to be immediately,) the time when "the mystery of God should be finished;" and the earth, delivered from the usurping Antichrist, should be restored to its lawful sovereign, as foretold by his servants the prophets. The apostle is then commanded to take the little book and to eat it; and is told that he must prophesy again before many peoples, and nations, and languages, and kings. And there was given him a reed like unto a rod: "and the angel stood, saying, Rise and measure the temple of God, and the altar, and them that worship therein. But the court which is without the temple leave out, and measure it not; for it is given unto the Gentiles : and the holy city shall they tread under foot forty and two months." Rev. x. 9—11; xi. 1, 2. Thus, as Mr. Elliott supposes, the Reformation is prefigured, with a particular allusion to its great originator and leader-Luther. It is to be recollected that in Mr. Elliott's scheme, St. John is not a mere individual, or the spectator and narrator only of these visions, but that he himself fills an important place in them: that he is a symbolic person, sustaining a representative character— "impersonating Christ's true church of the era prefigured, or rather its more eminent and influential ministers." It is at this era that he may be considered as representing Luther and the Reformers, and the former especially, as the representative of the latter. And it is now, according to the same scheme, that Luther fulfils, in his own person, and with remarkable circumstances of correspondence, the particulars of the prophecy-in his first commission to preach the Gospel --his faithful obedience thereto in spite of the powers of Antichrist arrayed against him-his seclusion at Wartburg-his employment there in translating the New Testament-and finally, in his re-commission and prophesying again, &c., on his release from thence. That there is harmony enough in all this, as detailed and explained by Mr. Elliott, to give much plausibility to the interpretation, we readily admit but whether he may or may not have carried his allusive system here a little too far-whether any incident in the life of Luther may have been thus specially prefigured, we may perhaps be allowed to say that we are not prepared to decide. Two statements, however, occurring in this part of the author's exposition, we feel called upon briefly to advert to: sufficiently important, if true, to justify the anxiety betrayed in their defence; but, as we believe, not to be found : |