headed by the Apostate or Man of Sin. All had hitherto been evil and not good, which the devoted and intelligent people of God beheld at length with grief and dismay. We do not imply that the Church was then destitute of every good quality; there was much in its institutions, which might now be adopted with profit to the furtherance of piety, virtue, and truth; but such a representation of it belonged not to the scope of the prophet, who saw in vision only the darkening wings of the bird of night, and the evils he would be permitted to do to the doves, the favoured ones of heaven.

Verses 9, 10, 11. "And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held and they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth? And white robes were given to every one of them; and

it was said unto them, that they should rest yet for a little season, until their fellow-servants also, and their brethren, that should be killed as they were should be fulfilled.

Discerning Christians a from the fourth century and downward, who saw the baneful tendency of the evils we have depicted, reprobated the corruptions that power and prosperity had introduced, felt they were unable to remove them from the Church, and foreseeing they would increase to greater ungodliness looked for consolation to the advent of the Saviour for the destruction of the Man of Sin. This latter event was then supposed to depend on the fall of the Roman empire, which was the let or hinderance, obstructive to his full manifestation; and as the persecutions under the Man of Sin are here limited to 66 a little

a Mosheim, cent. 4. part ii. ch. iv. sect. 1.; cent. 4. part ii. ch. iii. sect. 13-22.

b Bishop Kaye's Justin Martyr, ch. v. The early Christians imagined that the Man of Sin was also the Antichrist.

scason," and elsewhere to 1260 days, which they limited to three years and a half, they supposed naturally enough that the end of the world was not very distant. They indeed expected his advent would be a scourge to the Church for the corruptions it then allowed. Alas! they little dreamed those corruptions were the infancy itself of the Man of Sin, who, as soon as the throne of the Western empire should be vacated, would stealthily mount into it, and reign with iron energy over the submissive kings of the earth.

We behold the only power likely to make head against the growing evil with piteous lamentation confess its inability to continue the strife; we may therefore expect the early defeat of every meaner foe: who can withstand what the sons of God hesitate for awhile to meet? None but the stripling David can slay the Goliath of evil, especially when it is intermixed with much that is essentially good.

But if the discerning few lamented the current that set so strongly in favour of ceremonies and idolatry, the great body of the visible Church was totally carried away and hurried on to a consummation of evil that was yet remote, or only half conceived. A great change is introduced under this seal. In the vision of the throne of God, or of the Christian Church, chapters iv. and v., neither of the altars is alluded to. Something more significant is introduced, in order better to represent the new dispensation, consequently the temple, which is the platform of that description, undergoes a considerable change. The holy and the most holy place are thrown. open by the removal of the veil, that was rent or done away on the death of Christ, who brought life and immortality to light, or opened heaven to our eyes; instead of the altar of sacrifice, the true Lamb, as though it had been slain, stood in the midst of the throne of God, symbolising Christ, our Priest and

a 2 Cor. iii. 6—18.; Heb. xii. 23.

K

King; and the four beasts and twenty-four elders represented the altar of incense by their vials full of odours. Under this seal, however, the temple service is partly restored, or the Christian church described, chapters iv. and v., receives a more Judaical form. The prophet saw the altar of burnt offering, for we presume it was that altar, as it alone was open at the bottom, or underneath. And where the fire usually was, he beheld the "souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held," who did not appear to be in a fire, though under the altar, and as their language of complaint, at first view, implied, for the white robes given to them were a token of purity, worth, and honour. And in answer to their inquiry, when the blood they had shed would be avenged on the then inhabitants of the earth, they were told to remain in their present state or posture, till a similar persecution to their own had elapsed. And has not something very like

a Exod. xxxvii. 26.; xxxviii. 7.