them under every discouraging and trying circumstance. The above prohibition is analogous to the triumphant declaration of the apostle Paul, that "neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor "things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any "other creature, shall be able to separate us from "the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our "Lord."*

.

To recapitulate the contents of this seal: The black colour of the horse, the yoke with which his rider was armed, the proclamation from the midst of the living creatures, that a chænix of wheat should be sold for a penny, and three chænices of barley for a penny, and the prohibition to hurt the oil and wine, unite in pointing out to us a period, when the grossest darkness and ignorance, should overspread the visible church; when a burthensome yoke of rites and ceremonies, and likewise of unscriptural articles of faith, should be imposed upon the necks and consciences of men; when there should be a great want and a famine of the preaching and ordinances of the true gospel in the church: but when notwithstanding this complicated train of evils, the consolations of the Spirit, his enlightening influences compared to oil,† and his gladdening and comforting influences likened to wine, should not be withheld from those, who in the midst of surrounding darkness and superstition, truly set their hearts to seek God. This prophecy was accomplished in the rise and

*Rom. viii. 38, 39.
+ 1 John ii. 20. 27.
Zechariah x. 7. Ephes. v. 18.

prevalence of the papal power. Even as early as the fifth century, ignorance and superstition had made much progress in obscuring the pure light of the gospel; and these evils gradually increased till they ended in almost banishing that light from the Christian world. The period during which they prevailed has been emphatically called the dark ages, and the spiritual bondage under which mankind then groaned, is known by the significant appellation of the papal yoke. During these ages of ignorance and superstition, the Scriptures were hidden from the eyes of the people; the worship of the Virgin Mary, of saints and their images, and of the bones of dead men, were substituted for the service of God and of Christ. A burthensome yoke of rites and ceremonies, of mortifications, penances, and celibacy, was imposed on men. in the midst of this darkness an obscure ray of light sometimes illumined the spiritual horizon: a few faithful and enlightened men in every age were raised up by Divine Providence to bear testimony against the universal corruption,† to whom were vouchsafed the influences of the Spirit, the wine and oil, in rich abundance. This light burst forth with increased and inextinguishable splendour at the era of the Reformation, and seems, in the present eventful period, to be extending its benign influence to those parts of the world hitherto unblest with the knowledge of Revelation. Thus has the command not to hurt the wine and oil, received its accomplishment in every period of the church.

Mosheim, Cent. V. part ii. chap. 4.

+ See Milner's History of the Church of Christ, passim,

Yet

THE FOURTH SEAL.

"I BEHELD, and lo! a pale livid green horse, and "his name that sat upon him was Death, and Hell "followed with him and power was given unto "them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill "with the sword, and with hunger, and with "death, and with the beasts of the earth."*

The word used to express the colour of the horse under this seal, which is rendered " pale" in our authorised translation, signifies, as Archdeacon Woodhouse remarks, a grassy-green hue, which, though beautiful in the clothing of the trees and fields, is very unseemly, disgusting, and even horrible when it appears upon flesh; it is there the livid colour of corruption.

This pale livid green colour of this horse is emblematical of a state of things even more dreadful than that of the preceding seal. The character of his rider corresponds with this idea; his name is called death, the king of terrors. He is followed by Hell, not the place of punishment for the wicked, but the general receptacle of departed souls, which is the usual meaning of the word ans, and in which sense it is used in that article of the apostles' creed regarding the descent of our Lord into hell.-Hell and Death are here personified.

The whole assemblage of figures constitutes an hieroglyphical representation, of the most horrible and terrific nature, and points out to us a period when the rulers of the visible church should seem to lose the character of men, and to assume that of

Rev. vi. 7, 8.

malignant demons and savage beasts, and should extirpate, by fire and sword, all who dared to prefer death to the sacrifice of a good conscience. This seal evidently represents the state of the church during those ages, when the flames of persecution were kindled by the papal power, to destroy all who refused obedience to its tyrannical authority, and who pretended to judge for themselves in matters of religion. Early in the thirteenth century, Pope Innocent III. addressed himself to Philip Augustus, King of France, and to the leading men of that nation, soliciting them, by the alluring promises of the most ample indulgences, to extirpate all heretics by fire and sword. Shortly afterwards a crusade was proclaimed in the name of the pope, against the heretics throughout the kingdom of France. An army of cross-bearers took the field against the Albigenses, and commenced a war, which was carried on with the utmost cruelty, and ended in the subjection or extirpation of that religious body in the southern provinces of France. About this time also the dreadful tribunal of the inquisition was instituted, which, in the thirteenth and following centuries, subdued a prodigious number of those who were called heretics, part of whom were converted to the church by terror, and the rest committed to the flames.*

The persecutions of the church of Rome against the servants of Christ continued, with unabated fury, down to the period of the revocation of the edict of Nantz, in every part of Europe where the secular powers consented to be made subservient to

* Mosheim, Cent. XIII. part ii. chap. 5.

this dreadful tyranny. It is computed, that in the
war against the Albigenses and Waldenses, in the
fourteenth century, a million of men were destroyed.
From the beginning of the order of the Jesuits to
the year 1580, it is said that nine hundred thou-
sand men perished. One hundred and fifty thou-
sand were destroyed by the inquisition in thirty
years.*
The ferocious Duke of Alva is reported to
have boasted, that during his government of the
Netherlands, in the short space of five years and
a half, upwards of eighteen thousand heretics had
suffered by the hand of the public executioner,
besides a much greater number whom he had put to
the sword in the towns he had taken, and in the
field of battle.+ At the memorable massacre of
St. Bartholomew, several thousands of protestants
were destroyed at Paris, in the space of three or four
days, by all the varieties of cruel deaths that the
most unbounded malice could invent. The same
scenes were acted in other cities of France, so that
in the space of two months, thirty thousand pro-
testants were butchered in cold blood. During
the dreadful persecution in France, in the reign of
Lewis XIV. five hundred thousand protestants were
driven into banishment, in the space of a few years,
and the prisons and galleys were filled with those,
who were stopped in their flight. About four
hundred thousand still remained in the kingdom.
They were compelled to go to mass and commu-
nicate. Some, who rejected the host after having

* Mede, Comment. Apocalyptic. ad cap. xiii.
+ Watson's Reign of Philip II. vol. i. p. 392.
Modern Universal History, vol. xxiv. p. 273.