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"resistance and without mercy the provinces of "Thrace and Macedonia. Heraclea and Hadrianople "might perhaps escape this dreadful irruption of the "Huns; but the words the most expressive of total extirpation and erasure, are applied to the ca"lamities which they inflicted on seventy cities of "the eastern empire."*

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In the year 450, Attila invaded Gaul, and ravaged it with fire and sword; but in the following year he was defeated with prodigious slaughter at the battle of Chalons. In the year 452, he entered Italy, and besieged Aquileia, which he took, and destroyed so completely, that the succeeding generation could scarcely discover its ruins. The cities of Altinum, Concordia, and Padua, were also reduced into heaps of stones and ashes. Alarmed for the safety of Rome, the emperor and senate sent a solemn embassy to deprecate the wrath of the conqueror: a peace was in consequence concluded, and Attila evacuated Italy, and died in the following

year.

The successive invasions of the empire by Attila were probably the accomplishment of the third trumpet, on the sounding of which "a great star "fell from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and "fell upon the third part of the rivers and the foun"tains of waters." The star seen by the apostle in this trumpet appears to have been a comet, which is a fit emblem of a mighty conqueror. Indeed, in the symbolical language, a star, when applied to temporal things, always means a king or a prince : this star, burning like a lamp, therefore denotes * Gibbon, chap. xxxiv. ›

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a prince armed with the fire of war.

The worm

wood into which the waters were converted by this star, seems emblematical of the bitter and dreadful sufferings inflicted on the empire by Attila and his Huns.

On the sounding of the fourth trumpet, the third part of the celestial luminaries were smitten and obscured. This, in the language of symbols, evidently refers to the extinction of the imperial government of Rome within the limits of the western empire, which was effected between the years 455 and 476. In the first of these years, Rome was taken and sacked by Genseric, king of the Vandals, who carried away with him immense spoil, and an innumerable multitude of captives; among whom were the Empress Eudoxia and her two daughters. Rome never recovered this stroke. In the year 476, the imperial government was subverted, and Augustulus, the last emperor of the west, was deposed and banished from Rome by Odoacer, the general of the Heruli, who was elected, and reigned, the first barbarian king of Italy.

Having thus given a hasty sketch of the series of events to which the symbols of the first four trumpets seem to be applicable, I shall now offer some remarks in confirmation of the foregoing interpretation. It is important, in considering these trumpets, not to lose sight of the oneness of the complex symbols which are therein presented to our attention. To say that these trumpets are all homogeneous, is not enough they are more than homogeneous, they in fact all belong to one undivided subject; and that is, as I observed before, a symbolical universe, and

we may hence deduce a new argument to show the impropriety of those interpretations which refer some of the symbols to spiritual and others to secular objects. This symbolical universe is viewed as consisting of two great divisions, the terrestrial and celestial. The first of these must be considered as representing the territories and population of the empire, and the second its government or ruling powers.

It also appears that the terrestrial symbolical world is considered as consisting of three distinct parts, the dry land, the sea, and the rivers and fountains; but it does not follow, that each of these portions of the symbolical earth is applicable to distinct and specific parts of the Roman empire.* The above division of the symbolical earth seems rather to be made for the purpose of exhibiting to us the universality of the desolation of the empire, which is represented by the symbols. To enlarge a little upon this idea, it may be observed that the natural globe which we inhabit is actually divisible into the above three parts of dry land, sea, and rivers, and

* This remark, and the one made at the beginning of the following paragraph, receives a very remarkable confirmation from the following passage of Vitringa's commentary:-" Ego vero lubens concedo, “imagines symbolicas variis casibus non esse nimis quæsite et anxie "ab interprete tractandas, sed sæpe in complexu, non singulatim esse "exponendas; nec abnuo in ipsa hac imagine symbolica id forte alibi usu venire: aliis tamen locis et in hac prophetia ubi partes em"blematis fusius et explicatius recensentur et subjectum ad quod "emblema referendum est partium emblematis præcipuarum inter"pretationem particularem admittit, eadem negligenda non videtur

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cum aliunde constet partes emblematis ut sunt sol, luna, stellæ, “insulæ, montes, arbores, singulas per se mystice et alligorice res "alias significare posse, et ad eas figurandas adhiberi.”- Vitringa Anak. Apocalyp. p. 283.

lakes. When therefore the natural world is used as a symbol to denote any particular empire, the destruction of that empire, in all its parts, must be shown by the destruction of the symbol which represents it in all its parts. Thus if only the dry land of the symbolical world were destroyed, it would imply that only a part of the empire was to be affected. But as in these trumpets, the dry land, sea and fountains, are all affected, it denotes universality in the desolation of the empire.

In making the above remarks, it is not my intention to maintain that there are no cases in which the symbolical dry land, and sea, and rivers and fountains, have specific and definite significations. In considering the prophecy of the seven last vials of wrath, which refer to the final destruction of the Roman empire, I shall endeavour to show that these symbols are, in the accomplishment of the vials, each referrible to particular objects. But it is observable, that the Roman empire, at the period of the pouring out of the vials, is divided into a number of independent kingdoms and states, which considerably facilitates such a reference. In the mean while I shall only remark, that the earth or dry land is in general a symbol denoting the territorial dominions of the empire which is the subject of the prophecy;* and that the sea, and rivers and fountains, which together form the collective body of waters, signify, in the language of symbols, the united population of the empire, or the "peoples, and multitudes, and "nations, and tongues," who inhabit it.†

* Faber's Dissertation on the 1260 years, vol. i. chap. 2.
+ Rev. xvii. 15.

There is a circumstance with respect to the trumpets we are now considering, which seems to have perplexed all our interpreters. It is, that on the sounding of each trumpet, only a third part of the object against which it denounces vengeance is destroyed. I have not, in any author whose writings I have met with, seen any sufficient reason for this singular fact. Bishop Newton supposes that there is in it a reference to the Roman empire, as being at that time a third part of the known world, and the Bishop is followed by Mr. Faber in this idea.* But it may be remarked, that the symbolical universe seen by the Apostle John, represented not the whole habitable world, but the Roman empire in particular, which is the special subject and theatre of the Apocalyptic prophecies; and in the interpretation of the vials, Mr. Faber himself admits this to be the case. "The earth," says Mr. Faber, in his remarks on the first vial, "is the Roman empire.”+

If, then, the entire symbolical earth denote the

* In his fifth edition, Mr. Faber has adopted a new exposition of the third part. He divides the Roman empire and symbolical universe into three parts, the western, the eastern, and the provinces of Africa, and he supposes the destruction of one of these thirds to denote the overthrow of the western empire. But this is inconsistent with his own explanation of the vials; for in their effusion, the whole earth, sea, and rivers and fountains, and not a third part of them, are the objects of vengeance; and yet Mr. Faber limits the effects of those vials to the Latin, or western empire. Neither is it true, as Mr. Faber affirms, that the western empire alone was subverted under the four first trumpets: the provinces of Africa were included in the same calamity, and wrested from the Roman empire by the Vandalic arms. Mr. Faber's new explanation does not, therefore, afford a satisfactory solution of the difficulty. See his Dissertation on the 1260 years, vol. ii. p. 8, 9.

+ Dissertation on the 1260 years, vol. ii. p. 8. 4th Ed.

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