CHAPTER VI.

RESPECTING THE FOUR FIRST APOCALYPTIC TRUMPETS.

THE quaternion of the four first trumpets stands broadly distinguished from the triad of the three last for the four first are plainly homogeneous in their style and arrangement; while the three last are associated together in a single class, as introducing three eminent woes.

Commentators are almost universally agreed, that the four first trumpets relate to the downfall of the Roman Power in the West and I think them perfectly right in their general opinion relative to the first and the second and the third, though I conceive them to have erred in their application of the fourth.

Yet, while all are agreed that the downfall of the Roman Power in the West is at least the most prominent subject of the prophecy, it is remarkable, that scarcely any two expositors concur as to the division of that subject among the several trumpets which are supposed to relate to it. The general result brought out is, indeed, the subversion of the Western Empire: but the particular steps, by which it is arrived at this result, are as multifarious and discordant as can well be imagined.

So curious a circumstance, the opprobium as it

may well be deemed of apocalyptic interpretation, may naturally lead us to suspect, either that the true key to the proper distinct application of the four first trumpets has never yet been found, or if found that it has never yet been satisfactorily used.

The common plan of exposition has been this. From the chronological arrangement of the Apocalypse it is rightly enough laid down, as a leading position, that the fall of the Roman Power in the West must here be predicted. This leading position being very justly assumed as an undoubted truth, the next matter, to be effected, is the proper distribution of the history of that period among the trumpets which are supposed collectively to announce the fall of the Western Roman Power. Here we plainly require a key: and yet commentators have usually gone to work, without so much as even attempting to find one. The consequence has been exactly what might have been anticipated. With the most complete disagreement of application, this portion and that portion of history has been arranged under this trumpet and that trumpet, purely according to the humour of each expositor and without a shadow of what may be called scientific principle. Hence, though the general result brought out is the same, namely the downfall of the Western Empire, scarce any two commentators perfectly accord in the interpretation of each separate trumpet.

Sir Isaac Newton forms an illustrious exception to that great body of writers, who have worked in

the dark because they have worked without any scientific principle. With his usual almost intuitive sagacity, he discovered the key: but, with that singular failure which marks the greatest portion of his expository labours, he misused it when discovered.

The four first trumpet-bearing angels are plainly those four angels, who, at the commencement of the second portion of the sixth seal, are stationed on the four cardinal points of the world.

This identity is proved by the identity of the task assigned to each quaternion. The office of the four first trumpet-bearing angels is to hurt the allegorical earth and the allegorical sea and the allegorical trees of the Roman world by the grie vous plagues which they bring upon them. But the office of the four angels, who are stationed on the four cardinal points of the world, is the very same for their office is equally to hurt the allegorical earth and the allegorical sea and the allegorical trees of the Roman world by letting loose upon them the four winds. Therefore, the four first trumpet-bearing angels, and the four angels stationed on the four cardinal points, are the same.

Such a conclusion is confirmed and established by the chronological relation of the two passages, where these two quaternions of angels are severally mentioned. The commencement of the second portion

Rev. viii. 7-12. 2 Rev. vii. 1-3.

of the sixth seal synchronises, as we have seen, with the opening of the seventh seal; each of these apocalyptic epochs coinciding with the year 324 1. Now, at the commencement of the second portion of the sixth seal, and therefore at the synchronical opening of the seventh seal, the four angels, whose office it is to hurt the allegorical earth and sea and trees of the Roman world, are restrained for a season from performing their task for they are forbidden to let loose the four destroying winds, until the servants of God shall have been sealed in their foreheads, or until a marked division shall have been made between the truly spiritual and the merely secular members of the now established Church. Accordingly, when these four angels appear again as the four first trumpet-bearing angels, the whole period of silence, with which the seventh seal commences, has expired: and, even after the expiration of that period, a certain time is consumed in their self-preparation, ere they begin to sound their trumpets and to hurt the allegorical earth and sea and trees. Consequently, they are restrained for an indefinite space after the opening of the seventh seal nor do they successively let loose the four winds, until they successively begin to sound their four trumpets.

Thus evidently, as Sir Isaac Newton well judged, are the four first trumpet-bearing angels the same as the four angels stationed on the four cardinal points of the world.

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1 See above book iv. chap. 3. § II. 2. chap. 4. § I.

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Now this identification at once puts into our hand the key to the right arrangement of the four first trumpets, in regard to their true connection with history. If the four first trumpet-bearing angels be the same, as the four angels stationed on the four cardinal points of the compass then the injuries, which they bring upon the Roman Empire, must come from those four cardinal points ; because they are allegorically described by the furious blowing of the four opposite winds of heaven. Hence it is clear, that no interpretation of the four first trumpets can be tolerated, which does not severally bring the plagues inflicted by them from the four cardinal points of the North and the South and the East and the West.

This was distinctly perceived by Sir Isaac Newton: and, accordingly, with much sound judgment in the abstract, he frames his exposition of the four first trumpets upon this strictly scientific principle. But, happy as he has been in the discovery of the true key, he has not been equally felicitous in the use of it.

Without the least regard to the poetical decorum of the imagery, he makes the first trumpet introduce the plague of the east wind; because, upon the death of Theodosius, the Goths and other northern tribes invaded and wasted the Greek or Eastern Empire. Hail, however, the characteristic plague of the first trumpet, is generated, not in the east, but in the north and, though the Eastern Empire might be injured by the Goths,