Bookshelf/ Vol.I / Vol. IV. Part VI. Contents. Chapter I. 1. 2. 3. II. 1. 2. 3. III. 1. 2. 3. IV. 1. 2. V. 1. 2. Appendix I. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. II. 1a. 1b. 2a. 2b. 2c. 3. 4. III 1. 2a. 2b.
PERIOD 3. FROM FALL OF R. EMPIRE,
A.D. 500 TO 1100. (Primasius)
The period included in this Section comprises that of the early establishment, and growth to mature strength, of the Papal supremacy over the ten Romano-Gothic kingdoms of the revived Western Empire; also in Eastern Christendom the reign of Justinian, and rise of the Saracens, and then of the Seljukian Turks, down to the first Crusade. Its history is sketched in my Part II., Chapters iii., iv., and v. How the end of the eleventh millennary of the Christian æra constituted an important epoch in the history of Apocalyptic interpretation, such as to furnish a fit ending to the present Period, will appear at the close of this Section. - We open on it with the important question, Did prophetic expositors now, after the breaking up of the old Roman empire, recognize the signs of the times, and look out for a Roman Antichrist?
The Latin expositors that I shall first notice under this division are Primasius, Bede, and Ambrose Ansbert, of the 6th and 8th centuries: then (after a few passing words on Haymo) the Greek expositors Andreas and Arethas, also of the 6th and 8th or 9th centuries, respectively. And I shall close with another Latin expositor who flourished later, perhaps near about the end of the 11th century; I mean Berengaud.
1. Beginning with Primasius, his name appears in the second Conference of the fifth General Council, held at Constantinople A.D. 553; [1] where he is noted as a Bishop of the Byzancene or Carthaginian province; in which province he is supposed to have been Bishop of Adrumetum. [2] The manuscript of his works was discovered in the monastery of St. Thenderic near Lyons, in the 16th century; and was published, with a high eulogy on the author prefacing it, by the learned Gagnæus. [3] These works are all given in the xth volume of the B. P. M.; that on the Apocalypse occupying from p. 287 to p. 339.
There is so much of general resemblance in this Apocalyptic Commentary to that of Tichonius, (to which indeed he refers, as also to Augustine, as an exemplar before him at the outset, [4] ) that there will be no need to enter so much at large into it, after the full sketch just given of Tichonius. His mention of Jerome’s Origenistic saying at the outset, that the Apocalypse has as many mysteries as words, and many hidden meanings too in each word, [5] is ominous; and might well prepare us for the kind of commentary following. Indeed, his seeking for mysteries has imparted an air of mysteriousness and obscurity to parts of it, such that I do not wonder at Ambrose Ansbert’s complaining of its frequent unintelligibility. [6] What follows will give a sufficient notion of his general views, and of his more remarkable particular explanations.
He begins with stating the objects of the Apocalypse. It needed to be revealed how the Church, then recently founded by the apostles, was destined to be extended; (for it was to have the world for an inheritance;) that so the preachers of the truth, though few and weak and poor as regards this world, might yet boldly make aggression on the many and the great. [7] Which Church, its great subject, was in different parts of the Apocalypse ever prominently though variously depicted: - alike, he says, by the seven Asiatic Churches and seven candlesticks, and seven stars; (the fitness of the septenary to signify unity being fancifully accounted for;) [8] by Christ himself, too, as figured on the scene, the Church being Christ’s body; [9] and yet more by St. John as a representative: (even his opening act of falling as one dead before Christ, being but a type of the Church dead to the world:) [10] also, in the other and higher visions next vouchsafed, alike by the heaven, by the figured throne placed in it, by Him that sate on the throne, by the twenty-four elders, and by the four living creatures: which last however may mean the four Evangelists: [11] - “Quod est thronus hoc animalia; hoe et seniores; id est ecclesia.” [12] - I need not suggest the confusion of ideas, and incoherence of interpretation, necessarily arising from this confused generalization, and identification in meaning, of the varied scenic imagery of the Apocalypse.
The Sealed Book he explains as meaning either Testament: the Old Testament being, like the side of the Apocalyptic scroll without written, outwardly visible,; the other the New, like the side within written, hidden within the symbols of the Old. [13] The successive symbols of its six Seals, as opened, he expounds very much like Tichonius; with additional conceits however, arising out of his straining to find out yet further mysteries. [14] Like him, besides noting certain devilish agencies as meant figuratively in the second, third, [15] and fourth [16] Seals, opposed to Christ and his Church, after their going forth to victory, as figured in the first, he also adds Victorinus’ literal solution of the bella, fames, pestis: and like him joins Victorinus in explaining the fifth Seal of martyrs generally, the sixth Seal, both in general and in detail, of the last persecution, [17] towards the end of the last age of the Church: the chronology here passing from the whole period of Christianity generally to its last epoch specially. By which persecution (a persecution I presume by Antichrist, though Antichrist is not indeed mentioned as its author) the world generally, Primasius supposes, is to be oppressed. The elemental convulsions in the Seal he expounds, as might be expected figuratively.
Like Tichonius, again, he interprets alike the 144,000 [18] and the palm-bearing white-robed [19] company to mean the whole Church of the elect; and interprets the four angels of the winds (a point unnoticed by the former expositor) to be the four winds spoken of by Daniel as striving on the agitated scene of the four great empires: while the Angel from the East symbolizes Christ at his first coming, restraining by the power of his gospel-preaching the hostile powers: this being the stone cut out of the mountain, which was to smite, and in fine destroy, the great image. [20] The great tribulation out of which the palm-bearers were to come he explains generally by the text, “We must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God;” not with reference to any final tribulation. And their predicated happiness he does not, like Tichonius, confine to the Church in its present state, though he seems to include it; but refers such particulars as, “God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes,” to the Church’s future bliss. - The half-hour’s silence he explains with his two predecessors of the beginning of the saints’ eternal rest.
In the Trumpets he still follows Tichonius. Throughout the time of the Church’s preaching-voice, fulfilling the Angel’s trumpet-blowings, there would be the destruction of the earthly-minded temporally or spiritually in God’s wrath; by the Devil’s burning fury; by the falling to earth, and consequent embittering of the streams of doctrine, of many once in the ecclesiastical heaven: as also by the obscuration in part of the Church’s light; and by heretical teachers too, and false prophets, with venom-distilling tails, like those of the scorpion-locusts of the 5th Trumpet: - until, under the 6th Trumpet, or in the 6th age, the four winds (this should be marked) would be loosed from long partial confinement in the mystical river of Babylon; (this corresponding with the loosing of the Devil, mentioned in Apoc. xx., after the millennium;) and with the force of eight myriads, [21] or myriads of myriads, including both heretics and the whole body of the wicked, urge during the fated “hour, day, month, and year,” or quadripartite period of the 3 1/2 years, the last and great persecution.
In the vision of the rainbow-crowned Angel of Apoc. x., Primasius combines Victorinus’ and Tichonius’ explanations. The Angel he explains to be Christ; the opened book the New Testament; the seven thunders the Church’s preaching; the sealing a proper reservation of its truths such as Christian discretion might dictate. Again, Christ’s charge to John to eat the book, and prophesy again, he explains as true both of John personally, by the publication of his Apocalypse and Gospel, so as Victorinus would have it, and of the Church’s preaching always, so as Tichonius; a sweetness resulting to the preacher where the word is received by the hearer, and pain and bitterness where it is rejected and in vain. - The measuring the temple follows naturally; signifying, as it does, the informing and instructing the Church, especially in matters concerning the altar, or Christian faith. - Further, as to the two+ Apocalyptic Witnesses, their testifying included both the Church’s witness, with the two Testaments, throughout the whole time of Christianity; that being the mystical sense of the 42 months, [22] as Tichonius had previously set forth; [23] and also specially their witness, and that of Elias, in the first half of Daniel’s last hebdomad; [24] very much as Victorinus. The witnesses’ death he explains as occurring in the literal Jerusalem: this death including the hiding of living Christians in secret refuge-places from Antichrist’s violence, as well as the death of others: the 3 1/2 days of their exposure as dead being the 3 1/2 years of Antichrist.
In the vision of the Woman and Dragon we still see Tichonius’ track followed. It is the Church bringing forth Christ in his members; and the Devil wielding the supremacy of this world’s dominion, and seeking to devour the new man: which new man is as it were caught up to God’s throne; because his conversation, as Paul says, is in heaven. The wilderness where the woman is nourished is this world of her pilgrimage; the two wings sustaining her, the two Testaments; the 1260 days’ period of her sojourning, both that of the Christian dispensation generally, and specially the 3 1/2 years of Antichrist. - Again, as to the Beast, of Apoc. xiii., it is the whole mass of the reprobate, making up the Devil’s body; the last of its heads being Antichrist, under whom fully and specially the Devil will act out his purposes. Primasius, like others before and after him strongly marks this Antichrist’s affected impersonation of, or substitution of himself for, Christ; and blasphemous appropriation to himself of Christ’s proper dignity. [25] - The Image of the Beast (the second two-horned Beast) Primasius seems to view as the ecclesiastical præpositi, or rulers, hypocritically feigning likeness to the Lamb, in order the better to war against him: [26] and (somewhat as Tichonius too explained it) by the mask of a Christian profession, under which mask the Devil puts himself before men, acting out the Mediator. [27] He gives for the Beast’s name and number, 666, the words antemov and arnoume: [28] the former from Victorinus; the latter from, or antecedently to, the pseudo-Hippolytus.
The Vials, now filled with God’s wrath, he views as the same that were previously seen held by the twenty-four elders, or seven Trumpet-Angels, full of the prayers of saints: [29] for, to the wicked such prayers “are a savor of death unto death in them that perish.” They signify generally God’s spiritual judgments on them. Under the sixth Vial Primasius speaks of Christ as the king (regi, in the singular,) from the East, or sun-rising: [30] and of the way as now prepared for his coming to judgment, by nothing of good remaining, and the earth being, as in the parallel symbol Apoc. xiv. 15, “ And another angel came out of the temple, crying with a loud voice to him that sat on the cloud, Thrust in thy sickle, and reap: for the time is come for thee to reap; for the harvest of the earth is ripe,” dried up in readiness for burning. - In Apoc. xvii. the Woman means the worldly, reprobate, or evil body; the desert in which she appears God’s absence: (a striking sentiment!) [31] the ten horns of the Beast she rides on, Daniel’s ten kings just preceding Antichrist; the diadems seen upon them marking them out as then the alone reigning powers. The seven hills indicate Rome; but Rome only as a type of the ruling power and dominion. [32] The destruction of Babylon in Apoc. xviii. is of course the destruction of all worldly, Christ-opposing powers.
The millennium Primasius expounds as Augustine and Tichonius; the new heaven and earth, and the new Jerusalem, as a new world, so changed from the old as may befit the saints in their new bodies; i.e. after their own resurrection, and the condemnation of the wicked. [33]
2. The venerable Bede comes next in our list of Apocalyptic expositors; the date of his death, in the Northumbrian monastery of which he was the ornament, being A.D. 735, at the age of 63.
At the outset of his Commentary his full citation of the seven rules of Tichonius prepares the reader for its general Tichonian character. It has however points of peculiarity in certain passages worth the notice.
The figures of the opening vision of Christ and the seven candlesticks, or Churches, together with the letters to those Churches, [34] are explained much as by Tichonius or Primasius; the latter of which expositors is also often referred to by Bede. Of the new vision commencing in Apoc. iv. his expository views, as to order and subject, are thus stated: “Descriptis ecclesiæ operibus, quæ et qualis futura esset, recapitulat à Christi nativitate, eadem aliter dicturus. [35] Totum enim tempus ecclesiæ variis in hoc libro figuris repetit.”
So the seven-sealed Book, containing the mysteries of the Old and New Testament opened by Christ at his incarnation, is expounded as follows: - the 1st Seal to figure the primitive Church in its triumphs; the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th the “triforme contrà eam bellum,” of bloody persecutions, false hypocritical brethren, and soul-destroying heretics such as Arius; the 5th the glory of deceased martyrs, under the golden altar of incense; the 6th the last persecution of Antichrist: all much as by Tichonius. - In the 4th I observe that Bede, while reading, like Jerome, [36] “super quatuor partes terræ,” notices also that another Latin Version (evidently Tichonius’ or Primasius’) [37] read “super quartam partem,” answering to the epi to tetarton of our present Greek MSS.
In the sealing vision of Apoc. vii. the 4 Angels of the winds are construed by Bede as the 4 great prophetic empires; whom Christ, the Angel from the East, restrains, in so far as the sealing or the care of his saints may require it: the 144,000 of Israel signifying the whole number of the redeemed; [38] and the palm-bearing vision their glory after death, more especially that of the saints victorious over Antichrist. - As to the half-hour’s silence after the opening of the 7th Seal, Bede suggests that it may answer to the 45 days mentioned in Dan. xii., intervening, according to Jerome, [39] between Antichrist’s destruction and the commencement of the saints’ reign. An original explanation, I believe.
The Trumpets Bede explains generally like Tichonius and Primasius. The following points of detail may be remarked as interesting, and mostly original. The seven trumpet-blasts of the Church’s preaching he compares with those after which the walls of Jericho fell. - In the 1st Trumpet, symbolizing the destruction of the impious by fire and hail, he refers it to the torments of hell, combining the transition from icy cold to fiery heat. [40] - After the 4th Trumpet the voice of the eagle flying through mid-heaven, with its cry of Woe, is the voice of preachers forewarning men of Antichrist’s being near at hand; - “In the last days perilous times shall come:” “And then shall that Wicked One be revealed,” &c.: after which the day of judgment. - On Apoc. ix. 6, “In those days men shall seek death, &c.,” he cites illustratively Cyprian’s remark respecting the Decian persecution, “Volentibus mori non permittebatur occidi.” - In the 6th Trumpet the 4 Angels loosed are explained as the same with those holding the winds in Apoc. vii.; the plague being that of Antichrist and his heretical ministers loosed from the Euphrates, or river of Babylon, against the Church; and the hour, day, month, and year signifying the evil spirits’ constant preparedness for destroying men. - The rainbow-crowned angel vision in Apoc. x. is inserted with a new recapitulation, to signify the preparation made by Christ’s first coming for the destruction of the Adversary: - Christ’s feet like pillars of fire answering to Peter, James, and John, who seemed pillars of the Church; the planting them on sea and land, the preaching the gospel over either; and the seven thunders the Church-preaching's under influence of the divine septiform Spirit; with reservation of its mysteries from all but fit hearers. - In this Bede follows Primasius.
In the Vision of the two Witnesses, Apoc. xi., the measuring reed is explained by Bede as the gospel-rule, whereby all but true professors are excluded from the Church, and counted with Gentiles. These tread down the holy City, or Church, not only specially during Antichrist’s time, but also in a manner always; he being the proper head of which they are the body. Meanwhile the two Witnesses, or Church formed out of the two people of Jews and Gentiles, and with Christ as their head, perform their ministry; [41] the 3 1/2 years’ time of their sackcloth-robed witness being commensurate with that of the treading down of the Holy City, and especially that of Daniel’s abomination of desolation, or Antichrist. Their death signifies Antichrist’s all but suppression of the witness during the time of his reign: [42] the great city of their death being the “civitas impiorum” which crucified Christ, and the 3 1/2 days of their exposure as dead the 3 1/2 years of Antichrist’s reign; after the end of which the saints rise to glory. [43]
As to the Beast in Apoc. xiii. and xvii., its body is the whole body of the wicked, its last head Antichrist: the 2nd lamb-like Beast, meaning Antichrist’s pseudo-Christian false prophets; [44] and what is said of their persuading men to make an image of the Beast, the persuading men to imitate and become like him. As to the city of Antichrist’s origin Bede notes doubtingly the idea of its being the literal Babylon. [45] His name, like Primasius, he explains as teitan, avtemov, or arnoume. - The contrasted 144,000 with the Lamb on Mount Zion, he explains (as before in Apoc. vii.) not as mere virgins, but the whole faithful Church of Christ.
Of the millennium Bede set forth of course the now universally received spiritual view, which had been first propounded by Jerome and Augustine.
Bede introduces his Apocalyptic Commentary by a versified sketch of what he viewed as its general purport and more characteristic points: [46] and he concludes by a request to the reader for his prayers.
“Explicato tandem tanto tamque periculoso labore, suppliciter obnixèque deprecor, ut si qui nostrum hoc opusculum lectione vel transcriptione dignum duxerint, auctorem quoque operis Domino commendare meminerint; ut qui non solum mihi, sed et illis, laboraverim. Illorum vicissim qui meo sudore fruuntur votis precibusque remunerer; lignique vitæ, cujus eos aliquatenus odore famáque aspersi, suis meritis faciant visu fructuque potiri. Amen!”
3. Ambrose Ansbert is my next Latin Expositor. He fixes his own æra to about A.D. 760 or 770. For he dedicates his Apocalyptic Commentary at is commencement to Pope Stephen; and at the end tells us that it was written in the times of Pope Paul, and of Desiderius, king of the Lombards. [47] Now Desiderius was king of the Lombards from 756 to 774; in which year he was defeated, and the Lombard kingdom overthrown by Charlemagne. Also Pope Stephen III died in 757, Pope Paul in 767, Pope Stephen IV his successor in 772. [48] He further tells us in his Postscript, that he was a native of Provence in Gaul; and had become a monk of the monastery of St. Vincent in Samnium. [49] Elsewhere he mentions that he had to write the comment with his own hands, the aid of a notary not being afforded him. [50] The Commentary is a copious one, occupying some 250 folio pages in the Bibliotheca; viz. from p. 403 to p. 657 of is xiiith volume. He makes mention of Victorinus as the earliest Apocalyptic expositor among the Latins; and as expurgated and altered by Jerome: also of the two next as Tichonius and Primasius: - a specification satisfactory, as showing us that we still possess all the earliest Latin expositors on this Book. A few detached notices on it are also mentioned by him as occurring in the works of Augustine and Pope Gregory the 1st. [51]
In his comment Ambrose Ansbert treads in the steps of Tichonius and Primasius so closely, that there seems to be as little need as in the case of Primasius to give lengthened details. At the outset he recognizes John’s representative character, - representative of the Church generally, of holy preachers, particularly: [52] also the principle of the Church (or at least its prelates) being figured in the twenty-four elders: and all comprehended indeed in Christ himself too, as being his body; the 24 thrones being thus included, as if one with it, in the circuit of Christ’s own throne. [53] The seven-sealed Book Ansbert views with his predecessors as the Old and New Testament; the Old written without. [54] An ominous notice of the seven different modes of expounding, viz. the historic, allegoric, mixt historic and allegorie, mystical, parabolic, that which discriminates between Christ’s first and second coming, and that which “geminam præceptorum retinet qualitatem, id est vitæ agendæ vitæque figurandæ,” is developed in some six folio pages preceding his exposition of the Seals. [55] - In which exposition of the Seals, while explaining the 1st, as usual, of the progress of Christ and his gospel, it is spiritual evils that he considers chiefly symbolized in those that follow. His chief differences from his predecessors is in making the rider of the black horse in the third Seal, with a pair of balances, to mean the Devil and his followers deceitfully weighing the world against Christ, so as to cheat men with the idea of the world being the more valuable; [56] also, in the fourth Seal, in making Death and the pale horse that he rides to mean the Devil killing men’s souls by means of heretical teachers. In which Seal, let me observe, he reads with Jerome and Bede “on the four parts of the earth,” not “the fourth part.” [57] Further, it is observable that under the sixth Seal he makes the rocks of refuge in the last great persecution, and under fears of the approaching day of judgment, to be “suffragia sanctorum;” that is, of departed saints and of angels. For, says he, even with regard to “the elect,” and the good works that may have preceded, yet “necesse est ut semper ad coelestium civium confuginamus latibula; id est Agelorum intercessionibus ab irâ Judicantis nos deprecemur liberari.” [58] So does the taint of angel and saint worship, then current, appear on the face of this Apocalyptic Exposition. - In the scenic figuration next following the angels of the winds are explained as the evil spirits acting in the four great idolatrous empires, so as by Primasius; and the 144,000 as the mystic number of the elect: the numeral 12, here squared, having parallelism with the 12,000 stadia measure of the new Jerusalem.
Proceeding to the Trumpets, he makes the preparatory half-hour’s silence to be that of the Church’s silent contemplation: (a half-hour, not a whole hour, because in this state its contemplation can never be perfect:) and then (first I believe of expositors) compares the seven Trumpet-soundings with those of the jubilee-trumpets under the old law: as also those sounded on the seven days’ compassing of Jericho; - Jericho, the type in its fall of that of this world. [59] - Inconsistently with what he had said before of the need of the “sufferings of the saints,” he explains the Angel-Priest with the incense-offering so as Tichonius, Primasius, and Bede before him, to be Christ our Mediator. [60] In the 5th Trumpet he suggests that the specification of “hair as the hair of women” might refer to the fact of women having been so often misled by, and given patronage to, heretics: e.g. Constantine’s sister, and afterwards Justina, in the case of Arius and the Arian heresy; Priscilla in that of Montanus; Lucilla in that of Donatus. [61] In the 6th Trumpet he supposes the four Euphratean Angels to be identical with the four Angels of the winds of Apoc. vii.; [62] and the hour, day, month, and year to be equivalent to the 3 1/2 years; like Primasius and other expositors before him.
After this I see no variation from Primasius worth noticing either in the exposition of the rainbow-crowned Angel’s figuration in Apoc. x., or that of the Witnesses in Apoc. xi. Indeed he often quotes at length from Primasius, though without acknowledgment; for example in the exposition of the verse, “Thou must prophesy again,” as applicable both to John specially, and the Church universally. [63] The two Witnesses also he makes to be the Church preachers generally, as well as Enoch and Elias specially; [64] reproving Victorinus for suggesting Jeremiah in the special case, instead of Enoch. [65] The great city in which the Witnesses would be slain might be either the world, or the earthly literal Jerusalem: their witnessing time of 1260 days (= 3 1/2 years) either, mystically, the whole time of Christ’s Church witnessing; (a period borrowed from the 3 1/2 years that was the whole time of Christ’s ministry:) [66] or 1260 days literally: the 3 1/2 days’ apparent death of the witnesses being the 3 1/2 years of the last persecution. Following speedily on which will be the 7th Trumpet of the last judgment, at Christ’s coming. [67] - In Apoc. xii., he expounds the travailing Woman, both of the Virgin Mary and the Church, specially and generally. - On Apoc. xiii. he makes Antichrist to be the eighth head of the Beast, accordantly alike with the symbol of the Beast from the sea in Apoc. xiii., one of whose seven heads had been wounded to death but revived; and also with the Angel’s explanatory observation to that effect in Apoc. xvii. [68] The second or two-horned Beast he explains distinctively from the other, like Gregory and Bede, as signifying the preachers and ministers of Antichrist: [69] feigning the lamb, in order to carry out their hostility against the Lamb: just as Antichrist too, the first Beast’s head wounded to death, would, he says, exhibit himself pro-Christo, [70] in Christ’s place. The “bringing fire from heaven,” he explains as pretending, and seeming to men, to have the power of giving the Holy Spirit, such as Simon Magus wished to obtain by money; [71] and that the second Beast would by its preachings, signs, and dogmas, make men believe that the Holy Spirit resided in Antichrist. [72] (This idea seems to me original, and deserving of remark.) Also that the Beast’s image meant Antichrist, as pictured to themselves by men (after the antichristian preachers’ teaching) to be Christ’s image, though really the Devil’s image. - On the Beast’s mark he observes, that its being required on the forehead meant a man’s profession; on the hand, his acts: and that this was the case even within the Church, in the case of false professors. Further, as names containing the number 666, he mentions Irenæus’ teitan, as well as those in Victorinus and his interpolator, antemov, genshrikov: there being added for the first time a Latin solution also, a very curious one,) DIC LUX. [73]
After the Vials, in which nothing appears to me observable, but that he makes the ulcer of the first Vial to be infidelity, (Such as with the Jews and Pagans, [74] ) the subject comes up again in Apoc. xvii., of the Beast and the Harlot riding him. Here Ansbert speaks of the old notion that the Beast that was and is not meant Nero, once one of seven Roman emperors, and destined to rise again in the character of Antichrist, as “absurd:” [75] adding that the Beast (answering to Antichrist’s body) had in fact existed from the beginning in Cain, and the wicked afterwards; and that it might be said to have been, and not be, and yet be, because of the fleeting and successive generations in whom he rose and fell of evil men. [76] - Of the seven kings symbolized by the Beast’s seven heads, of which five had fallen, his solution is certainly as “absurd” as that he ridicules: - viz. that, as in man the five senses exist before reason, and then, on reason’s unfolding, man’s sixth and mature age begins, to be improved to the man’s salvation, or abused to his destruction, so in its sixth age, then current, the world had come to its maturity; and, preferring error, [77] that so in the seventh would come Antichrist. [78] - On the millennium he of course follows his two predecessors and Augustine. And the New Jerusalem, and its blessings, he explains partly of the Church’s present blessings; partly of those to be enjoyed in its future and heavenly state. [79]
4. Early in the next, or 9th century, fourished Haymo, Bishop of Halberstadt; who wrote an Apocalyptic Comment which forms a thick substantial duodecimo, (i.e. in the princeps Editio printed at Cologne, A.D. 1529,) after collation, it is said, of many manuscript codices. But I do not see need to cite from or refer to it at any length. For I have found it, on examination, to be very mainly copied or abridged from Ambrose Ansbert. There is scarce a chapter in which the examiner will not observe this. - I shall therefore only mention four notabilia in his Commentary; - 1st, that in Apoc. vi. 8, “And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.” - on the 4th Seal, he reads like Jerome, [80] Bede, and Ambrose Ansbert, “super quatuor partes terræ, on the four parts of the earth,” not the fourth part; explaining it as meant either of the reprobates in all the four parts of the earth, or the four great kingdoms of prophecy: (he does not seem to have been aware of any different rendering:) - 2 that in support of his view of the 3 1/2 days of the two Witnesses lying dead meaning 3 1/2 years, he cites (first I believe of expositors) the well-known passage from Ezekiel iv., as well as that from Numbers xiv.: - 3. that the reading first given by him in Apoc. xvii 16, “And the ten horns which thou sawest upon the beast, these shall hate the whore, and shall make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and burn her with fire.” - is “cornua quæ vidisti in Bestiâ,” epi qhrion; there being noticed however by him afterwards the other reading “reges et Bestia,” given by Ansbert, or kai to qhrion: - 4. that on Apoc. xviii. 3, “For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies.” -- speaking of the reprobated merchandise of Babylon, he applies it to those who then sold their souls for lordships and bishoprics; “comitatus et episcopatus, cæterasque dignitates hujus sæculi.”
I now turn to Primasius’ and Ambrose Ansbert’s two chief contemporary expositors in the GREEK Church and empire; viz. Andreas, and his follower Arethas.
5. Andreas was Bishop of Cæsarea in Cappadocia. His age is said by Bellarmine, and also by Peltan the Jesuit, in his Preface to the first printed Edition of Andreas’ Apocalyptic Commentary, [81] to have been uncertain; save only that it was later than Basil, the famous Father of the fourth century, since Andreas quotes him. By Cave and Lardner, [82] while admitting its uncertainty, he is assigned to the latter part of the fifth century. And so too Professor M. Stuart. [83] But I think internal evidence is not wanting to fix his date a half-century at least, if not a whole century, later.
For first, besides other authors, he quotes Dionysius, the so-called Areopagite; [84] one whose work is cited by no authority of known earlier chronology than the middle of the sixth century. [85] Secondly, after noticing (under the fourth Seal) a pestilence and famine in the Emperor Maximin’s territory, at the close of the Diocletian persecution, in which dogs were wont to be killed that they might not prey on the unburied corpses, Andreas speaks of the very same things having occurred in his own time; “Kai en hmetera de genea toutwn ekaston sumban egnwmen” - a statement scarcely applicable except to a time of very aggravated pestilence and mortality; and most exactly applicable to the æra of the great and almost universal plague and mortality under Justinian, prolonged from A.D. 542 to 594; during which it is expressly on record that corpses were frequently left unburied. [86] - Thirdly, while recording generally the calamities experienced by the generation then living, from barbarians invading the province or empire, [87] Andreas more than once particularly specifies the Persians as persecutors and slaughterers of Christians, both long previously, and even up to the time when he wrote; also their having been ever given up to magic (mageiaiv) and superstitions: [88] - statements well applicable to the period of Nushirvan’s invasion of the Syrian province, A.D.546, or of his last brief war with the Romans A.D. 572; and still more to that of Chosroes’ invasion and desolation of Cappadocia and other Roman provinces, in the year 611. [89] On the other hand there is no notice whatever of Mahommedism or the Saracens; who in the year 636 A.D. finally overthrew both the Persian empire and the religion of the Magi. - Fourthly, on Apoc. xvii. 1-3, “And there came one of the seven angels which had the seven vials, and talked with me, saying unto me, Come hither; I will shew unto thee the judgment of the great whore that sitteth upon many waters: 2: With whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication. 3: So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness: and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns.” -- Andreas argues against ancient Rome being meant “as the city which now reigns over the kings of the earth,” because of its having some long time before lost its imperial dignity: [90] a statement scarcely applicable to the time of Theodoric, A.D. 500, when Rome exhibited not a little of its ancient splendor; [91] but strikingly according with the period from after its ruin by Totilas, about the middle of the sixth century, till the accession by Gregory to the Popedom at the end of that century; when, to use Gibbon’s language, Rome had reached the lowest point of depression. [92] - Fifthly, he alludes to the Roman Emperors reigning at Constantinople, as those that had held a rod of power strong as iron for the depression of heathenism: [93] a characteristic probably referable to the time of Andreas’ writing as well as to times previous. In which case the period of the Constantinopolitan Emperor’s great depression at the time of Chosroes’ invasions, from A.D. 611 to 622, would so seem to be set aside. - Sixthly, he speaks of certain Scythian Northern Hunnish nations, as among the most powerful and warlike of the earth: [94] - a statement perfectly applicable to the æra of the empire of the White Huns of Bachara and Samarcand: whose kingdom in 488 stretched from the Caspian to the heart of India, when Perozes the Persian king fell in an unfortunate expedition against them; [95] and continued till their subjugation, about A.D. 550, by the Scythian Turks of Mount Altai. [96] - On the whole we may date Andreas’ Treatise, I think, with some measure of confidence, between A.D. 550 and 579: - about 550, just before the Huns’ overthrow by the Turks, if Andreas’ word Hunnish be construed strictly; about 575, if the word seem applicable also to the cognate race of the Turks. [97]
Let me now turn from this argument, which has indeed occupied us too long, to our Author’s Apocalyptic Commentary. Like his predecessors, he speaks in the introduction of the tripartite sense of Holy Scripture, its body, soul, and spirit: and that the spiritual or anagogical sense is applicable in the Apocalypse, even more than in other Scripture. [98] Yet in fact Andreas admits a larger mixture of the literal, here and there, than Tichonius, Primasius, or Ansbertus: and there is also somewhat more of a consecutive historical view of its different parts; as of a prophecy figuring successive events from St. John’s time to the consummation. [99] - Passing by the primary figuration of Christ, which he explains somewhat as Victorinus, and the Epistles to the seven Churches (representative of all Churches), on which I give two or three of his detached remarks below, [100] he exemplifies in the heavenly scene next opened the literally tendency I spoke of, by explaining the glassy sea before the throne, not only anagogically of the virtues and blessed tranquility of the heavenly state, but literally also, as perhaps the crystalline heaven. - Of the seven-sealed Book (the Book of God’s mind and purposes, or Book of prophecy) he explains the several Seals to signify as follows: - 1st, the apostolic æra, and apostles’ triumph over Satan, more especially in the conversion of the Gentiles: - 2nd, the æra of anti-gospel war, and bloody martyrdoms, next after the apostolic; when Christ’s words were fulfilled, “I came not to send peace on earth, but a sword:” - 3rd, that of Christians’ grief for the falling away of professors, through inconstancy, vain-glory, or weakness of the flesh, and so, when weighed in the balance, being found wanting; the oil of sympathy for such being mixed by true Christians with the sharp wine of rebuke: (there being also perhaps, adds Andreas in a more literal sense, a famine at the time:) - 4th, a calamitous æra of joint famine and pestilence, in judgment on the apostate and impious, [101] such as Eusebius relates to have happened under Maximin the Eastern Emperor, when corpses lay unburied, and dogs were killed that they might not devour them: [102] - 5th, the martyrs’ cry for vengeance against their injurers, [103] and so for the consummation: in regard of whom, while waiting till the martyr-number should be completed, it was shown that, white-robed in their virtues, they now repose on Abraham’s bosom, anticipating eternal joys: - 6th, a transition to the times and persecution of Antichrist: (though some had suggested, Andreas says, both here in in the sealing vision, a retrogressive reference to Titus’ destruction of Jerusalem: [104] ) in reference to which times of Antichrist the earthquake figured a change of things, or revolution, as usual in Scripture; the obscuration of the sun and moon God’s judicial blinding of men’s minds; the falling stars the apostasy and falling away of those who were thought to be lights in the world; and the rolling up of the sky, perhaps physical changes in the natural world for the better, [105] such as Irenæus expected at the consummation; or perhaps, seeing that the unrolling of Hebrew scrolls (unlike that of our books, says Andreas) was the unfolding of their contents, the revelation and manifestation of the heavenly, blessings laid up for the saints. [106] - After which the 144,000 of the sealing vision depicted the body of true Christians, distinguished on Antichrist’s coming by the sign of the cross from unbelievers: (not the Christians saved at the siege of Jerusalem:) the winds held signifying some deadly stagnation of the aerial element then to occur; [107] and the palm-bearing vision the happiness of the heavenly and everlasting rest, by God’s throne, of the innumerable company of both earlier martyrs and the martyrs under Antichrist: when (the wicked having been cast into hell) the angels and saved ones of men will constitute but one family.
At the opening of the seventh Seal, a regression is supposed from this palm-bearing scene: its loosing, as of the 7th and last Seal, indicating as its result the dissolution of each polity of this world; [108] the silence in heaven, the angelic hosts’ reverential awe, or perhaps their ignorance of the time of the consummation; the half-hour of its duration the brief space intervening before the end; and the Trumpet-figurations judgments in the interval. Of these Trumpet-woes he explains the first, which was to fall upon the land, literally, [109] (and I think rightly,) of the burnings and slaughters through invading barbarians, by which the third part of things inland would be consumed: [110] - the second, on the sea, figuratively, as meaning the Devil and his burning wrath, falling on the world, especially near the time of consummation: [111] - the third, again, similarly, of sufferings through the Devil fallen star-like (as Isaiah’s Lucifer) from heaven: - and the eclipses in the fourth of very much the same judgments as in Joel ii. 31, “The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and the terrible day of the LORD come.”; mercy however restricting their duration to the third part of the day and the night. - Then the Angel’s warning-cry, next heard, he speaks of as marking Angel’s pity for men’s woes. [112] And he interprets the fifth Trumpet’s scorpion-locusts of demons, (once bound by Christ, but now loosed a little before the consummation;”) [113] with influences darkening the soul, and for some fated quintuple of time [114] wounding with a poison-sting, which being that of sin, is death: [115] - also the sixth Trumpet’s four angels from the Euphrates of hell’s most evil demons, [116] bound (like those of the previous plague) at Christ’s coming; but now let loose, to stir up nation against nation, as well as against Christians: and urging on either spiritually-destroying suggestions to sin, or literally-destroying barbarian armies; perhaps locally from the Euphrates, as Antichrist would come from the East. [117]
In the vision of the rainbow-crowned Angel of Apoc. x., (a created Angel, according to Andreas,) the planting of his fiery feet on land and sea is curiously explained of indignation to be manifested against robbers by land, and pirates by sea: [118] the opened book, as the record of names and deeds of such specially wicked ones: the seven thunders, as seven voices prophetic of the future, either by this one Angel, or by seven others taking up the subject in response: the sealing them up, as tantamount to Daniel’s sealing till the time of the end; the issues of futurity being till then uncertain: the oath, as to the effect that no long time after, at the conclusion of the sixth age, [119] and in the days of the seventh Trumpet, all would end, and the saints rest begin. - Then, in what ensues, Andreas follows his predecessors in applying it personally to St. John: John’s eating the book, (a book sweet for the joyous things predicted in it, bitter for the bitter things,) [120] and charge to prophesy again, being significant of his personally prophesying again to the end of the world, by the publication of his Apocalypse and Gospel. - In the Witness vision the temple meant the Christian Church; its outer court, the concourse to it of Infidels and Jews: [121] the Holy City (or New Jerusalem), the faithful Church; [122] the 3 1/2 years of the Gentiles trampling it, those of Antichrist’s persecuting the faithful: the two Witnesses, Enoch and Elias; endowed by God’s mercy with miraculous powers antagonistically to the Satanic supernatural powers of Antichrist: the time of their slaughter by Antichrist, that of their warnings against him being completed: the scene of their lying dead, the old and desolate Jerusalem: (Antichrist there fixing his royal seat probably, in order to seem the fulfiller of the prophecy, “I will raise up the tabernacle of David that is fallen,” and so deceiving the Jews into a belief on him:) the rising of the Witnesses, 3 1/2 days after death, their literal resurrection: the tenth part of the city falling, and seven thousand slain, the judicial fall and ruin of the impious of the seventh age of the world, not even the Witnesses’ resurrection having induced repentance: the rest that glorified God, those that, when the martyrs rose to glory, might be deemed not unworthy of salvation. - Then the seventh Trumpet figured the general resurrection; the temple’s concomitant opening, the manifestation of the heavenly blessedness of the saints; and the lightings and thunderings, the torments of the damned.
In the vision of the Dragon and Woman, Apoc. xii., Andreas (following “the great Methodius,” whom he cites) [123] makes the Woman to signify the Church, bringing forth (just as in Isa. lxvi., which the citation refers to) a Christian people: the moon under foot meaning either the world, or the Jewish ritual law; and the male child, and his iron rod, having fulfillment in the Roman Christian people and emperors, ruling the heathen. [124] Further, the Dragon was the Devil: his seven heads symbolizing seven chief devilish powers, from conquering which the Christian warrior wins his diadems; his ten horns, the ten anti-decalogic sins, or decuple division before the consummation of the mundane empire: his symbolical fall, that when he was first cast out of heaven on his transgression; or that spoken of by Christ as fulfilled on his coming, when Satan seemed like lightning to fall from heaven. - During Antichrist’s 3 1/2 years’ reign, the Church’s abstraction from the world is to fulfill the figure of the Women’s flight into the wilderness, with perhaps a literal flight into deserts: the two Testaments being in God’s providence the wings supporting and preserving her from the waters, or multitude of the impious, (whether men or dæmons,) ejected by the Dragon against her.
Then, on the Beast of Apoc. xiii., [125] Andreas, professedly, but not really, following Hippolytus, [126] interprets it as Antichrist: stating that this Antichrist, or pseudo-Christ, [127] is to rise after the ten kings’ rising, answering to the ten toes of the prophetic image: and, coming with the title of Roman king, [128] to overthrow their princedoms; like Augustus healing and restoring the Roman kingdom, when (like the Beast’s wounded head) as it were dissolved by its division into ten. [129] - The second Beast with the two horns like a lamb, he prefers to explain, after Irenæus, as Antichrist’s prodromov and false prophet: exhibiting a show of piety; and with pretence of being a lamb, when in fact a wolf. - The image of the Beast he supposes to be literally meant of some image of Antichrist made by the False Prophet; through which the Devil would speak, as by the heathen idols. - Antichrist’s miracle he explains as Satanic impostures: his name, with the number 666, as either a personal noun, such as Aampetiv, Teitan, Aateinov, Benediktov; or an appellative, as kakov odhgov, amnov adikov, palai baskanov; of all which names the number is 666. [130] - With regard to the Harlot seated on the Beast in Apoc. xvii., he observes that Rome had been judged by certain earlier writers to be the city intended; because of its being built on seven hills; and having had too seven chief persecuting emperors, from Domitian to Diocletian inclusive. But he objects its having then for some time lost its imperial majesty: unless, indeed, he adds, very remarkably, this should in some way be restored to her; [131] “a supposition involving the fact of a previous overthrow of the city now ruling,” [132] i.e. Constantinople. Further he notices the fact of ancient Babylon and Jerusalem having been each called a harlot; and that the old Rome was called Babylon by St. Peter: also the special fitness of either appellative to the ten Persian capital (Ctesiphon). So too the characteristic “drunk with the blood of saints,” applied alike to Old Rome, under the emperors, down to Diocletian; to New Rome, or Constantinople, under Julian and the Arian Emperors: and to the Persian capital: for who can calculate the sufferings of the saints in Persia? Thus the harlot-city meant might be any one of those, if at the time of the end invested with the world’s supremacy: or perhaps, Andreas adds, generically the dominion of the world. - The “Beast that was, and is not, yet shall be,” he explains to signify the Devil; broken in power by Christ’s death, and banished into the abyss or elsewhere, yet fated at length to revive in Antichrist. The Beast’s seven heads he interprets to mean the seven successive seats of the world’s supremacy, Nineveh, Ecbatana, Babylon, Susa, Pella, Rome, Constantinople; or the first kings reigning in each respectively, the representatives of the respective empires. He adds however Hippolytus’ alternative explanation of them as seven ages: and Irenæus’ suggestion that as seven is a sacred number, so there might be fated a septenary of dominant empires in the world; the old Roman empire being the 6th, and perhaps that of new Rome or Constantinople the 7th: but in this, and in every case, the seventh having in St. John’s time not come. The Beast, or Beast’s eighth head, is Antichrist; called “one of the seven,” because of springing from one of the heads, or kingdoms, viz. the Roman; for he is to rise and flourish not as a foreigner, but as king of the Romans. [133] The Ten horns or kings that were to reign one hour with the Beast, he identifies with Daniel’s ten horns: and construes the one hour to mean either some short time, or perhaps a quarter of a year; because wrh in Greek means not only an hour, but also one of the year’s four seasons. In verse 16 he reads “The ten horns and the Beast (kai to qhrion) shall hate the whore.” But in his comment he speaks as if the ten horns did so, under the Devil’s influence, not Antichrist’s: and marvels at his so acting against a harlot antichristian city. [134]
Reverting to Apoc. xiv., I may observe that Andreas views the 144,000 with Christ on the Mount Zion (or Christian Jerusalem) as the virgin-saints of the New Testament; a body different probably from those of Apoc vii., because of the fact of the former being noted (which the others are not) as virgins. - The three flying angels are warners against Antichrist, and the Babylon of this world. - The earth’s harvest he makes to be Christ’s gathering of the good; (like wheat, with its increase of 30, 60, or 100 fold;) while the vintage in the gathering of the bad to judgment. [135] - Then, advancing to the Vials in Apoc. xv., xvi., he explains the harpers by the glassy sea to be the saved ones; and the glassy sea itself, mixed with fire, to symbolize their tranquil happy state, yet as those that had been saved by fire: the song of Moses being that song by the saved ones of the Old Testament dispensation, that of the Lamb by the saved ones of the New. [136] The statement that none might enter the temple till the plagues of the seven Vial-Angels [137] had been fulfilled, he expounds to mean that the saints might not enter on the rest of the heavenly Jerusalem, till after the finishing of God’s indignation against the wicked. - The plague of the first Vial he makes to be the inward corroding ulcer of heart-grief at the plague suffered; and perhaps also literally outward ulcers, the fit symbol of that within. [138] Again, the statement under the sixth Vial respecting the way of the kings from the East being prepared he expounds as meaning that a way would be opened for Gog and Magog to come across the Euphrates: or perhaps for Antichrist coming from Persia, whither the Jewish tribe of Dan, whence he is to spring, was once carried captive: he, together with other kings from the East, bringing death with him; whether to men’s souls, or bodies, or both. The pouring out of the seventh Vail into the air, he supposes to indicate lightning's and elemental convulsions, such as once at Mount Sinai; in fulfillment of Heb. xii. 27, “Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven.” As to the great city tripartited, as the result of this seventh Vial’s outpouring, he judges it to be Jerusalem, great from its religious celebrity, rather than from its actual extent; and which is then and thereupon to be divided, in respect of its population, into Christians, Jews, and Samaritans.
I need only add that, as to the millennium, he explains it anagogically, as Augustine: notes there being two deaths, that of the flesh and of sin temporary, that of hell eternal: also two resurrections, that by baptism, and that to incorruption; the first, and its accompanying millennial rule of the saints over sin and Satan, being but an introduction to the other. - Gog and Magog meant the Scythian or Hunnish nations; even in Andreas’ time a mighty power, and only restrained by God till the time of Antichrist: that these will, on Antichrist’s coming, gain the empire of the world; surround the Church, or camp of the saints; and also assail “the new Jerusalem,” the city loved by God, whence the Gospel went forth. [139] - The heavenly Jerusalem he explains as the saints’ heavenly state; then when St. Paul’s prophecy of the creation’s deliverance is to take place from the bondage of corruption: the state being one of perfect union, many mansions, and eternal joy; its full fruition taking place not till after the saints’ rising again. [140] Such expressions as that the kings and nations of the earth bring their glory into it, he expounds of the then manifested glory of the good deeds of such as have reigned over their passions, and have pleased Christ. [141] On the “sea then being no more,” he explains it both literally and figuratively. What need any more of the sea, when men need not to sail on it, for fetching from other regions the earth’s fruits and merchandize? And what can there be of the troublesome tossing of life, which the figure means, when no more of fear or trouble is ever to betide the saints?
In concluding summary Andreas states very distinctly his view of the Apocalypse being a prophecy of the things that were to happen from Christ’s first coming even to the consummation. [142]
I observe in fine that there is an air of much piety in this Commentary. I may exemplify in Andreas’ remark on the sin of adding to, or taking from divine Scripture, Apoc. xxii. 18, 19, “ For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book:
19: And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.” [143] He here waxes quite warm in speaking of the superiority of Scriptural to all classical or dialectic or reasoning knowledge. [144]
6. Arethas, a successor of Andreas in the Bishopric of Cæsarea, was his follower also in great measure in the Commentary that he wrote on the Apocalypse. Thus much he tells us himself. [145] Respecting his date there seems to me to have been a considerable mistake on the part of most that have expressed an opinion about it. Alike Coccius, the Editor of the B. P. M. (which work gives a Latin translation of Arethas’ Commentary in its ixth Volume, [146] ) and Cave too, and Lardner, and just recently Professor M. Stuart, [147] assigned to his the date of A.D. 540 or 550. On the other hand Casimir Oudin and Fabricius incline to identify him with a Presbyter of the same Cappadocian Cæsarea, of the name Arethas, who, about A.D.920, translated a work of the Constantinopolitan Patriarch Euthymius. But, says Cave, [148] Oudin had no argument or evidence to adduce in favor of his conjecture. Nor Indeed Fabricius either; if (not having access to his work) I may judge from the reference to him in Lardner. [149] I have observed, however, very decisive evidence in the Commentary itself, of Arethas having lived as late at least as near the end of the eighth century. For he speaks of the capital and palace of the Saracens as being then still at Babylon, evidently meaning Bagdad: [150] - a capital not built till A.D.762; [151] and where the Saracen Caliphs continued to hold a waning empire through the ninth century, till its extinction A.D. 934 by the Bowides. [152] A curious reference to Constantinople, which will be found in my page 180, following. [153] may possibly appear to furnish a further indication. The identity of our Cæsarean Bishop with the Cæsarean Presbyter that translated Euthymius seems to me more than doubtful. The very appellative of the one as a Bishop, the other as only a Presbyter, constitutes a presumption against that idea. Moreover, Arethas’ reference to the Saracens and Bagdad seems to indicate the fact of their empire being still powerful there. - I say still, after Arethas’ “in hoe usque tempus;” and powerful, because of his representing it as in place of the old lion-like Babylonian empire. Hence, on the whole, we may I think reasonably reckon his date as somewhere within the limits of the first half of the 9th century; between A.D. 800 and 850. [154]
In the heading of his Apocalyptic Commentary there is, as hinted by me just before, an intimation of its having been very much taken from that of Andreas. He generally indeed gives the opinions of the latter; sometimes in the form of direct quotation, and by name; more often silently: adding however from time to time some strange conceits of his own [155] . It is only the more important variations from Andreas that need here to be noticed. And these are as follows.
Under the sixth Seal he singularly explains the earthquake, &c., there figured, of the literal earthquake and elemental convulsions at Christ’s death and resurrection: [156] particularly dwelling on the adjective olh attached to selhnh in his copy: [157] the moon having been (just agreeably with it) whole, and at the full, on the occasion of its eclipse at the time of Christ’s death, and so the eclipse miraculous. - He adds, however, a notice of the interpretation by certain other expositors, explaining it “tropicè” of the destruction of Jerusalem; and that of Andreas, referring it to the convulsions under Antichrist.
Under the Sealing Vision he suggests the possible reference of the four angels of the winds to the desolations of Judæa by the Romans; or, yet more probably, to the desolations of Antichrist: then, in speaking of the sealing itself, more distinctly and decidedly explains and sealing 144,000 as meaning the Jews converted to Christianity before the destruction of Jerusalem, asserting that Jerusalem was not destroyed when John received these revelations; the Virgin Mary having only lived fourteen years after Christ’s ascension, and John immediately after her death removed to Ephesus. [158] Which passage has been naturally adduced by the advocates of an early date to the Apocalypse, in support of their opinion: but of which the value as an authority, small in itself because that of so late a writer, is rendered yet smaller by the fact of Arethas having not once only, but twice, stated from Eusebius, that it was under Domitian’s reign that John was banished to Patmos. [159] - On the Angel’s charge, “Thou must prophesy again,” Arethas observes that it was hence that the vulgar opinion arose that John was to live to the end of the world; and then to prophesy with Enoch and Elias, and with them suffer martyrdom, in the time of Antichrist. [160] - In the first part of Apoc. xii. he interprets the travailing Woman to mean the Virgin Mary; and the Woman’s flight of 3 1/2 years into the wilderness to have been fulfilled in the Virgin’s flight into Egypt, and stay there near 3 1/2 years till Herod’s death: adding however the alternative solution also of the Woman’s signifying the Church; and the wilderness flight her retirement from the world during the 3 1/2 years of Antichrist’s reign. - With regard to the Beast of Apoc. xiii., or Antichrist, he suggests the same solutions of his name and number as Andreas; viz. - lampetiv, teitan, lateinov, o nikhthv, kakov odhgov, alhqhv blaberov, palai baskanov, amvov adikov: and suggests that the second Beast would act the same part as forerunner to Antichrist that John the Baptist did to Christ. - On the declaration that the great city was to be divided into three parts, he notices Andreas’ idea, that it was the literal Jerusalem that was to be so tripartited: and also as an alternative, that it might mean the world and its empire, as subjected successively after Christ, in chronological tripartition, to Pagan kings, Christian kings, and Antichrist. [161] The Babylon there mentioned he prefers to understand of Constantinople; with reference apparently to some recent domineering of the civil power over the ecclesiastical; which made that city answer, in his view, pre-eminently to the type of Babylon. [162] - On the summons to the birds in Apoc. xix., to gather to God’s great supper, he strangely explains them to mean the souls of saints, called from a state of depression to meet Christ in the air. [163] - And, finally, he makes the New Jerusalem to represent the habitation and polity of the saints after the resurrection, conjunctively with Angels: “Civitas quod ominium tum Augelorum tum hominum futura sit domicilium.” [164]
6. I now return Westward from Greek Christendom, to note a somewhat later Latin Expositor of the Apocalypse; [165] one whose epoch, I now think, was near about the conclusion of the period included in this Section, though elsewhere referred by me to a considerably earlier period: - I mean Berengaud.
In my Vol. iii. p. 279, I have noticed this Commentary. I had stated originally that the writer (probably, from his reference to the Rules of that order, a Benedictine monk) had in a singular manner intimated his name under the enigmatic form of Greek numerals; [166] also that by his noting the facts of the Saracens who had overrun; Asia, as well as the Lombards who had conquered Italy, having had their kingdoms overthrown when he wrote, [167] his æra seemed fixed as not earlier than the end of the ninth century. An approximation this to his real age which well agreed with that drawn by the Benedictine editors of Ambrose, from his specification of archdeacons receiving hush-money for overlooking the fornication of the priesthood, as a sin of the then times: this crime being prominently noticed in Synods held at Paris, Chalons, and Aquis-Granum, in the same ninth century. [168] But the crime continued flagrant long after, so as to be by no means any certain or specific chronological designative. [169] And a notice as to the then existing Jerusalem being inhabited by Christians [170] seemed to me afterwards to mark a much later æra than the 9th century; in fact one subsequent to the taking of Jerusalem by the crusaders. A lateness of date corroborated by the late epoch at which Berengaud’s comment is said to have come into notice. [171]
The Commentary is one too original to omit noticing; and goes on a regular connected chronological plan, which (however unsatisfactory it may be as an exposition) makes it easy to read, in comparison with the other Latin Commentaries of the æra under review. This chronological plan is sketched at the outset, and adduced repeatedly, even to the end. It is founded on the frequent septenary division of the Apocalyptic prefigurations: to all which seven (except the seven epistles to the churches) Berengaud supposes that substantially the same chronological reference and order attaches; a chronology commencing from the creation, and reaching to the consummation.
Thus in the opening figuration of Christ he remarks on eight particulars as given in the description; his priestly garment, his zone, his head, his eyes, his feet, his voice, his sword, and his face as the sun; and of these the first seven are expounded as typical of that “civitas Dei quæ ex omnibus electis constat; [172] et quæ ab initio usque ad finem tendit, in septem partes divisa.“ Which seven parts are 1. the elect from the Creation till the Flood; 2. the patriarchs and saints from the Flood to the giving of the Law; 3. the multitudes saved under the ministry of the Mosaic Law; 4. the prophets; 5. the apostles; 6 the multitude of the Gentiles that believed in Christ; 7. the saints that are to conflict with Antichrist at the end of the world. The 8th particular noted in the symbol, viz. Christ’s face as the sun, he makes to prefigure the Church of the elect after the resurrection; when they too shall all shine as the sun in the firmament. - The testifying of the saints in these seven ages of the world would be, he suggests after Bede and Ansbert, like Israel’s seven days’ compassings of Jericho; and that during their preaching's in the seventh age its end would come suddenly.
After this, the seven Epistles to the Churches having been expounded as lessons of warning and instruction to the Church in general, [173] Berengaud explains the heaven that was afterwards opened to St. John as the Church, Christ being the door to it; the twenty-four elders as the twenty-four fathers of the Old Testament dispensation; the four living creatures as all the doctors of the Church; (Victorinus’ explanation of their twenty-four wings being here, though without mention of him, adopted; [174] ) the seven-sealed Book as the Old and New Testament; (the New that written within;) and the seven horns of the Lamb that opened it, as the elect of the same seven ages of the world that were before enumerated. The Lamb’s opening the seals of the book signified his opening, or explaining to the faithful, the spiritual meaning of the same successive æras and histories. A very characteristic feature this in Berengaud’s Commentary; and which what follows will sufficiently explain to the reader.
1st Seal. The white horse meant the righteous before the Flood, white in token of innocence; the rider, God; the bow in hand, his token of vengeance and conquering, as against Adam, Cain, and the world destroyed by the flood. - The Lamb having opened the Seal, it became understood how Adam typified Christ, Eve the Church, Cain the Jews, Abel the Christians; and so on.
2nd Seal. The red horse meant the righteous from the Flood to the Law: red, as the golden color, with references to their wisdom; or red as blood, because of their persecutions: the peace broken being that evil peace with the heathen which God put aside; those killed, alike the just and unjust in their mutual contentions. By Christ’s opening this Seal the spiritual mysteries of the ark were unfolded; and those also of the patriarchal histories, as of Abraham offering Isaac, Jacob’s vision at Bethel, &c.: on each of which mysteries Berengaud dilates.
3rd Seal. The black horse was the Doctors of the Law till the rise of the Prophets: the black marking the severity of the Mosaic law; the balance, its rigid requirements of justice, as of eye for eye, &c. the intent of the wheat and barley was very obscure. Perhaps the choenix (or two pounds) of wheat meant the two Testaments, the food for souls; the denarius marking its connection with Christ; [175] while the barley might signify the good works of saints. Or the wheaten bilibres might be the precepts of love to God and man; the denarius, the eternal life that is their reward, as in Christ’s parable of the workmen in the vineyard, Matt. xx.; the Church (in the voice from the four living Creatures) praying Christ to give the denarius of eternal life to them that observe those precepts. [176] By the wine guaranteed from hurt might be meant Christians of active life; by the oil those given to contemplation.
4th Seal. The pale horse symbolized the Prophets; pale through fear of the evils they denounced on sinners: the rider, still Jehovah Jesus; He being death to the reprobate. (A rather harsh appellative this for Christ, Berengaud allows; and that, but for the requirements of the Seal’s chronological place and order, its symbol might naturally have been expounded rather of Antichrist.) - By Christ’s apostles the prophets’ writings had been spiritually explained. Therefore, it being needless to enter on that, Berengaud confined his spiritualizing illustrations to the history and doings of the prophets; as of David, Elijah, Elisha, &c. &c.
5th Seal Souls under the altar. This vision referring to the martyrs under the New Testament dispensation, Christ opened its seal, when he explained to the doctors of the Church his parables and dark sayings about the suffering of his disciples and their after glory.
6th Seal. The elemental convulsions, &c., here enacted, figured the destruction of Jerusalem, falling of its priests and governors, darkening of its nation, once bright by the revelation granted it, even as the sun in the world’s system, and passing away of God’s covenant and the Old Testament dispensation from the Jews to the Gentiles. The cry to the hills and rocks for covering was illustrated by the actual hiding of many of the Jews in the cloacæ from the Romans’ fury: as Christ hath said, “Then shall ye begin to call upon the hills, &c.
In the Sealing Vision the four angels are explained to mean the four great empires, combined at length into the Roman, which desolated other lands, restraining the winds of life and happiness: Christ being the sealing angel, and the 144,000 the number of elect alive at one and the same time. [177] Berengaud expounds the Christianized meaning of each of the names of the twelve Jewish tribes; last of all that of Benjamin, meaning the son of my right hand. Whence, says he, a natural transition to the palm-bearing vision. “Having brought down the saints history in their mystical names to this point of their collocation at God‘s right hand in heaven, it is fit that this vision should next, in the 7th place, represent their heavenly blessedness.”
His first chronological septenary thus ended, Berengaud makes a singular break between it and the next by interpreting the 7th Seal as a kind of parenthetic notice of Christ‘s first advent: the half-hour‘s silence figuring the general peace under Augustus, and Roman toleration of the Church, continued till Nero‘s persecution. [178] Then, coming to the septenary of the Trumpet-Angels, he explains them of divinely-taught preachers, sounding forth the brazen trumpet, under nearly the same septenary of æras as was noted before; the six first being the patriarchal, [179] the lawgiving, [180] the prophetic, [181] Christ’s own æra, [182] that of the Gnostic confuting primitive doctors, [183] and that of the Rome-subduing martyrs. [184] - And, after a parenthetic exposition of Apoc. x., as depicting the source of the Church’s support and light, like as of Israel in Egypt, under all the trials above noted, - the Angel’s descent in which is construed of Christ’s incarnation, veiled in the cloud of humanity, with the iris of mercy and light of divine glory attendant, his feet the two Testaments, the Book opened in hand that of the Scriptures, the seven thunders figures of the seven virtues, unknown in their full spirituality except through Christ, and sealed up partially from weaker Christians, unable to bear them, the charge to eat the book, and prophesy again, being true both of John personally, when returned from Patmos, and of all the apostles and Christian teachers, - after this Berengaud supposes a sudden transition to the times of Antichrist, and of the two Witnesses against him: the transition, he says, being not unnatural; as passing from Christ’s ministry when the Jews were cast out, to that of Enoch and Elias, which is to restore them.
And, in the account of the Witnesses, Berengaud expounds the measuring the court and its worshippers to signify Christian ministers, ministering to their edification: the reed being the gospel; the rod, church discipline; and those cast out as Pagans, the Jews: the fire from the Witnesses’ mouth signifying their doctrine kindled by God’s Spirit; their heaven-shutting, a judgment literally to be understood, it might be, but rather spiritually: their place of death, the street of the world’s great city, Babylon, [185] consisting of all the reprobate; and its duration 3 1/2 days, meant in the sense of 3 1/2 years.
Then, their revival and resurrection described, the prophecy passes, says Berengaud, to describe the history and evils of the great Witness-slayer, Antichrist: a commencement being however made from the Devil’s first injuries to Christ and the Church, at his first advent; prior and preparatory to the last injuries through Antichrist. - In Apoc. xii. the travailing Woman might mean both the Virgin Mary and the Church: [186] Christ himself being the male child born of the one, Christians of the other; the one snatched up to God at his ascension, the others at death: the opposing Dragon’s [or Devil’s] seven heads figurating the reprobate of the same seven ages, as before specified; and his dejection effected by Michael, through Christ’s ministry, casting him out of the hearts of the elect, into the reprobate. The Woman’s 3 1/2 times’ nourishment in the wilderness, after the Dragon’s dejection, means first, and on the scale of literal time, the early disciples feeding on Christ’s doctrine, separate from the world; [187] as also the feeding of the souls of the faithful (“dapibus gloriæ coelestis patriæ”) on the glories of a heavenly home, during the whole time from Christ’s passion to the world’s end: while the wilderness of her refuge symbolized heaven; (such is Berengaud’s singular explanation:) [188] somewhat like the wilderness of the ninety-nine sheep in Luke xv. 4, “What man of you, having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he find it?”.- Then at length the Devil goes against the remnant of the Woman’s seed left at the end of the world; and attacks them through the Beast, i.e. Antichrist.
Of which Beast Berengaud explains the seven heads as the seven principal vices, affixed like the seven wicked spirits in the parable; and the ten horns wearing diadems, as the nations subjugated by him: his mouth speaking great things, as of one boasting himself to be the Son of God; his blasphemies, as of one denying Jesus Christ’s god-head, asserting the worthlessness of Christ’s religion, and inability of martyrs and saints to profit men: also as arguing from the fact of men’s passions being implanted by God, in proof that they might abandon themselves to licentiousness. (This is, I think, the earliest suggestion I have noticed of Antichrist being in any way an avowed infidel, and open advocate of licentiousness.) - The second Beast he interprets as the Preachers of Antichrist: its two lamb-like horns signifying his constituency of Jewish and Gentile reprobates; just as the Lamb’s seven horns figured all the elect: and the Beast’s image, images of Antichrist, which Antichrist’s priests will make men worship. - As to his name and number, says Berengaud, I know it not: for any one might at baptism have a name of that number given him. Then, passing on to the vision of Apoc. xvii., the Beast-riding Harlot is explained (besides her general signification as the world) to be especially Rome; and her predicated burning and spoiling by the ten kings, as the destruction of ancient Rome by the Gothic barbarians: [189] (with reference however, as Rome was professedly Christian at that time, to the reprobate in her:) also the Beast (here the Devil) ridden by her, as that which “was” during his unquestioned sovereignty of the world before Christ’s coming; which “is not,” i.e. in the same power as before, since Christ’s overthrow of Satan; and which “is to be” again, on Antichrist’s revelation. As to the Beast’s heads, they meant the same as the Dragon’s in Apoc. xii. Of these the first five had passed away when John had the Apocalypse revealed to him, the fifth being the Jews just then destroyed by the Romans; the sixth signified the then existing Roman Pagan persecutions; and the seventh, Antichrist. The eighth, or Beast itself of Apoc. xvii., [190] was, as just before observed, the Devil.
On other lesser points I have only to add that Berengaud makes the 144,000 of Apoc. xiv. to be the elect in heaven, [191] while the 144,000 of Apoc. vii. were the elect alive on earth; explains the earth’s harvest of the good, its vintage of the bad: in Apoc. xv. reads liqon for linon, like Jerome and Andreas, said of the dress of the Vial-Angels; and interprets the Angels themselves as preachers of the same seven æras as before. In Apoc. xvi. he makes the Euphrates’ drying up to mean the drying up of persecution, that so the way be opened to the Gentiles to believe; explains the millennium like Augustine; and, on the Angel’s showing St. John the New Jerusalem, notes very distinctly John’s representative character; “Johannes typum gerit cæterorum fidelium.”
In conclusion, on considering retrospectively the character of the Apocalyptic exposition of this our 3rd Period, from A.D. 500 to A.D. 1100, or thereabouts, the question following may naturally suggest itself; - How was it that when the “let,” so much talked of by the earlier Fathers, had just before this period’s opening been so strikingly taken away, by the utter breaking up of the old Roman empire proper, and its division into something ominously like the ten predicted subdivisions of prophecy, there was yet wanting among prophetic expositors all recognition of that sign of the times; [192] and little thought or care being manifested about the apparently necessary consequence of Antichrist’s development occurring even then synchronically. And we shall find, I think, in answer to the question, that three causes connected with prophetic interpretation powerfully contributed to that result: - 1st, the universal prevalence in the West of the Origenic or Tichonian Anagogic principle of interpretation, throughout almost the whole of the period under review. [193] and indeed to a considerable extent in the East also; whereby all that was topographically or chronologically most definitely applicable to Papal Rome in the prophetic symbols of the Beast, and Beast’s seven heads, and Beast’s ten horns, and Babylon, in Primasius, Bede, Ambrose Ansbert, Andreas, as if respectively the body of the Devils’ regnant, the world’s successive ages, the world’s kingdoms, and world itself: [194] 2ndly, the fact of the Greek Byzantine ruler being still called and thought of as Roman emperor, after the Gothic catastrophe, albeit not having Rome itself as the seat and center of his power, like the Beast of the Apocalypse; as also, some three centuries later, Charlemagne and the Frank emperors in the West: whence the reasoning, as if the “let” still remained, that we see exemplified alike in Adso of Western Europe, [195] and the pseudo-Athanasius, [196] and Theophylact and (Ecumenius too, who were Greek Biblical expositors of the 10th and 11th centuries: [197] - 3. the generally received idea of the time they lived in being a part of the Apocalyptic millennium, precursive to the little 3 1/2 years’ season of Satan’s loosing, and the manifestation of Antichrist. [198] To all which there is to be added the political fact that the Bishops of Rome, (the true Antichrist, as I doubt not,) rose gradually and almost surreptitiously, furtively, in the first centuries of this æra, to political power; and with such admixture too of lamb-like pretensions to sanctity, as well as lion-like pretensions in character of Christ’s Vicegerent, that is, they considered themselves as the administrative deputies of the King, Christ Jesus, [199] serving in that dark and unintellectual æra to blind the minds of expositors to the Pope’s real answering to the prophetic Antichrist: though this was but in truth what Hippolytus and others had inferred from prophecy respecting the mode of Antichrist’s incoming. Further the moral fact is to be remembered, that the corruption of Christian doctrine and worship enforced by Papal Rome, [200] which was one grand mark of the antichristian apostasy, was participated in, more or less, by the expositors themselves, alike in the West and in the East: [201] whence the rather their blindness to the great fact of the already developed Antichrist.
But, as the 11th century wore away, everything prepared for, and symptoms very significative betokened, that a new æra of prophetic interpretation was approaching. The Papacy had risen under Gregory VII, ere the conclusion of the 11th century, to such a height of power as well as of pretension, [202] and abused it to the enforcement of such unchristian dogmas, albeit in the profest character of Christ’s Vicar, as to force on the minds of the more discerning surmisings about the Popes and Papal Rome, and their possible prefiguration in Apocalyptic prophecy, scarce dreamed of before. Already, just before the year 1000, Gherbert of Rheims had spoken in solemn council of the Pope upon his lofty throne, radiant in gold and purple; and how that, if destitute of charity, he was Antichrist’s sitting in the temple of God. [203] And Berenger in the 11th century, as if Apocalyptically instructed, and with special reference to the Popes’ enforcement of the antichrist dogma of transubstantiation, declared the Roman See to be not the apostolic seat, by the seat of Satan. [204] - The passing away of the millennial year 1000, without any such awful mundane catastrophe, loosing of Satan, and manifestation of Antichrist, as had been popularly expected, [205] tended to make earnestly reason and question both on the long received millennial theory, and on that of the Antichrist intended in prophecy, more than before. [206] - Moreover the incoming of the 12th century from Christ promised (should the world last through it) to open to expositors the first possible opportunity of some way applying the year-day principle (which had never been unrecognized) not to the smaller 3 1/2 days’ prophetic period only, but also to the great prophetic period of the 1260 days, without abandonment of the expectation, ever intended, of Christ’s second advent being near. [207]
Such, I say, were the new circumstances of the times, which promised to operate powerfully in the new opening æra on prophetic interpretation. Besides that the very intellectual expansion of men’s minds necessitated a change from the long established mystical system of interpretation, for one more definite and explicit. Even in the Commentary by Berengaud, with its seven successive æras, (however unskillfully applied to the Apocalyptic prophecy,) we yet see an illustration of the natural tendency of expositors’ minds, then already acting, towards the adoption of some chronologically consecutive scheme of Apocalyptic interpretation: in place of that so long prevalent in Christendom, which explained it as mainly significant of general and constant Christian truths or doctrines: - some one more consonant in this respect with common sense; and also with the precedent of Daniel’s prophecies, as expounded in great part by inspiration itself.
[1] Harduin iii. 68.
[2] So Mosheim, &c.
[3] So in his Dedication to the French king, Francis the 1st. B. P. M. x. 142.
[4] B. P. M. x. 287. - Ambrose Ansbert notices this also. “Post quem (Tichonium) Primasius, Africanæ Ecclesiæ Antistes, . . . quinque prædictam Apocalypsim enodavit libris. In quibus, ut ipse asserit, non tam propria quàm aliena contexuit; ejusdem seiliect Tichonii bene intellecta deflorans.” Ansbert adds that Primasius borrowed also from Augustine: - “sed et beatæ recordationis Augustini quædam . . capitula annectens.” B. P. M. xiii. 401.
[5] Ib. x. 288.
[6] “Fateor multa me in ejus dictis sæpissimè legendo scrutatum esse, nee intellexisse.” Ibid. xiii. 404.
[7] Ib. x. 288.
[8] B. P. M. x. 289, 290. - Seven being a complete number: as man is made up of body and soul; the soul with its three parts, heart, soul, mind; the body with its four, hot and cold, moist and dry!
[9] “Genus à parte,” p. 290. So the Donatist Tichonius, Rule 1.
[10] “Joanes qui ista vidit, (and when he saw fell at Christ’s feet as dead,) totius ecclesiæ figuram portat.” Ib. 290. So also Victorinus and Tichonius.
[11] B. P. M. 294, 295.
[12] Ib. 301.
[13] Ib. 297.
[14] E. g. the fitness of a septenary, to signify completeness and unity, is illustrated by the seven moods of a verb in grammar: also by the seven ages distinguishable in the inward and spiritual history of a spiritual man: and yet other similitude's. pp. 297-299.
[15] He translates chænix, like Jerome, by bilibris. - Primasius’ Latin version, let me here observe, is not Jerome’s Vulgate. It is more like Tichonius’ though different.
[16] In the 4th Seal he thus accounts for the specification of the fourth part of the earth, as a scene of injury. The world is divided into two parts, one for God, one for the Devil; and the latter subdivided into three, Pagan, heretics, and false orthodox professing Christians. Now it is the first of these four only, or true Church, that is assailed.
[17] “Secta ætas mundi, circà cujus finem novissima persecutio nunciatur.” p. 303. He refers to Isaiah ii. 21, “They shall go into the clefts of the rocks, &c.” in illustration of the Church, and her Christian faith, being the world’s refuge under present suffering and future fears.
[18] On the mysteries of the names of the twelve Jewish tribes, as applied to the Christian Church, Primasius has not less than three folio pages, from 305-308. He speaks of Dan as if a tribe included, not excluded, p. 306. Yet at p. 314 he notices the current notion of Antichrist’s being born of the tribe of Dan.
[19] The robes being made white, after neglect of the grace of baptism, by the grace of the Lamb, or perhaps by martyrdom; the palms figuring the triumph of the cross. 308, 309.
[20] p. 304.
[21] I am not aware that any manuscript, or any Expositor but Primasius, exhibits the various reading, oktw muriadev. He notices the common reading of two myriads of myriads as that given by Tichonius.
[22] 314. - By construing the 42 months and 3 1/2 years literally, as well as mystically, and speaking of its having reference to the last persecution, (see p. 162 suprà. Tichonius too seems to have intended to mark the witnessing under Elias; whom he makes to be the wings sustaining the woman of Apoc. xii. of the last persecution. But he does not express this.
[23] The prophesied drought Primasius makes to be spiritual; also the killing by fire from the witnesses’ mouths to be spiritual death, through the Church’s anathema.
[24] Through which, adds Primasius, the Jews are to believe on Jesus Christ, p. 315. He means, I suppose, the Jews generally, not universally. For respecting the Beast that kills the witnesses, i.e. Antichrist, he explains the abyss whence he is to rise as the “latebræ nequitæ cordis Judæorum.” 314. - Primasius does not specify any individual companion to Elias.
Daniel’s seventy weeks’ prophecy. let me observe, Primasius, pp. 314, 315, supposes to refer to Christ’s first coming mainly. But he is so obscure in part of his explanations that I am unable clearly to comprehend his meaning. For, though speaking of the 70 weeks, he yet makes Christ’s coming after 62, and then allots the last week to the events of the consummation. Did he suppose the remaining seven to be the time from Christ’s birth to his death?
[25] “Ut publicè audeat blasphemare, quande dignitatem ei (Christo) specialiter debitam sibi ausus fuerit adsiguare; et, contrarius Christo, se velit pro co accipiendum vel vi ingerere, vel fraude supponere.” ib. 319. - And again, p. 326; “Contrarius Christo (quod et nomen ejus Antichristus indicat) se velit haberi pro Christo.”
[26] “Agnum fingit ut Agunum invadat.” Ibid. The want of distinction between the two Beasts and the Dragon or Devil, continually appears. So of the second Beast. “Bestia cum duobus cornubus, quæ, est pars Bestiæ, facit Bestiam adorare Bestiam.”
[27] “Sathanas transfigurat se velut angelum lucis, exhibens suis fallaciter solo nomine Christum. Porro ipse et suum et mediatoris implet locum; quod mediatorem non habet, nisi simulacrum Christi. Ipsam insimulationem dicit Bestiam habere plagam gladil, et vivere. . . Tres itaque, diabolus, bestia velut occisa, populus cum præpositis suis, due sunt mediante imagine.” Ibid. It is hard indeed in such passages to catch Primasius’ meaning.
[28] For arnoumai, I deny; as a Christ-denying profession. The pronunciation of ai as (?) is here indicated. - Primasius here adds sundry other numeral conceits.
[29] So Primasius, p. 323, by a strange mistake; the Angel in Apoc. viii. 3, “ And another angel came and stood at the altar, having a golden censer; and there was given unto him much incense, that he should offer it with the prayers of all saints upon the golden altar which was before the throne.”; who had the incense of the prayers of all the saints, being quite distinct from the seven Angels of Apoc. viii. 2, “ And I saw the seven angels which stood before God; and to them were given seven trumpets.”..
[30] So reading tw basilei, for toiv basileusi. p. 324.
[31] “Desertum ponit Divinitatis absentiam, cujus præsentia paradisus est.” Ib. 325.
[32] p. 326. - This view is a little like that which Dr. Arnold and the Rev. T. K. Arnold, following certain German expositors, have advocated in our own day: - the thing symbolized being symbolic of something else.
[33] “Judicatis implis atque damnatis, figura hujus mundi mundanorum ignium conflagratione præteribit; . . ut, cælo et terrà in melius commutatis, . . mundus, in melius innovatus, aptè accommodetur hominibus in melius innovatis;” i.e. with “bodies incorrupt and immortal.” ib. 334.
[34] Some he says, on Apoc. ii. 10, “Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer: behold, the devil shall cast some of you into prison, that ye may be tried; and ye shall have tribulation ten days: be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life.”, explained the ten days’ tribulation of the ten Pagan persecutions from Nero to Diocletian. So Augustine, I think, somewhere suggests.
[35] The recapitulation, he says, in his Preface, is generally after the 6th part in prophetic series.
[36] See p. 324. Bede’s version is in fact the Vulgate.
[37] For he gives their explanation with the reading.
[38] After 3 pages in development of this mystical and Christian view of the 144,000 of the sealed of Israel, Bede adds on the literal and Judaic view in 3 lines; “Potest et sic intelligi, guod enumeratis tribubus Israel quibus evangelium primo prædicatum est, salvationem quoque velit commemorare gentium.” I observe that Mr. C. Maitland, p. 267, cites this from Bede without any notice of Bede’s other and evidently approved view; which other is repeated by him without any alternative explanation, on Apoc. xiv. 1, “And I looked, and, lo, a Lamb stood on the mount Sion, and with him an hundred forty and four thousand, having his Father's name written in their foreheads”.
[39] “Quare autem post interfectionem Antichristi quadragesimum quintum dierum silentium sit, divinæ scientiæ est.” So Jerome, using the word silentium; which probably suggested to Bede the explanation.
[40] “Poenam gehennæ: . . . ad calorem nimium transibunt ab aquis nivium.” Compare Milton Par. L. B. ii.
Thither, by harpy-footed furies hal’d,
At certain revolutions all the damn’d
Are brought: and feel by turns the bitter change
of fierce extremes, extremes by change more fierce,
From beds of raging fire to starve in ice.
When did this idea of hell-torments begin?
[41] At the end of this vision Bede notices the idea of Enoch and Elias’ 3 1/2 years of prophesying being the first half of the last of Daniel’s 70 hebdomads, and Antichrist’s 3 1/2 years’ reign the last half. But this only as an opinion current with certain other expositors; - “Quidam interpretantur.”
[42] This view deserves to be remarked. Not, says Bede, that they do not still (i.e. after the Beast’s conquering and killing them) resist the enemy with their testimony; but because the Church is then left destitute of its virtues, the adversary outshining it with his lying signs and miracles: - “Non quòd tunc eodem testimonio non nitantur hosti fortiter resistendo; sed quòd tunc ecclesia virtutum gratiâ destituenda credatur, adversario palam signis mendacii coruscante.”
The not suffering their bodies to be put in graves he thus explains. “Votum eorum dixit, et impugnationem. . . Facient autem perspicuè de vivorum occisorumque corporibus: quia nec vivos sinent sacra celebrando in memoriam colligi, nee occisos in memoriam recitari, nec eorum corpora in memoriam Dei Testium sepeliri.”
[43] “Et post 3 1/2 dies, &c. Angelus nunc inducit factum quod futurum audit, regno Antichristi perdito sanctos resurrexisse ad gloriam.”
[44] So too Gregory i.; ap Malv. i. 425.
[45] “De Babylone natum.” So, he says on Apoc. xvii., “quidam.”
[46] The reader may be interested to see these introductory verses. I therefore subjoin them:
Exul ab humano dum pellitur orbe Johannes,
Et vetitur Coici est cernere regna soli,
Intrat ovans coeli Domino dilectus in aulam,
Regis et altithroni gaudet adesse choris.
Hic ubi subjectum sacra lumina vertit in orbem,
Currere fluctivagas cernit ubique rates;
Et Babel et Solymam mixtis confligere castris;
Hinc atque hinc vicibus tela fugamque capi
Sed mitem sequitur miles qui candidus Agnum,
Cum duce percipiat regna beata poli.
Squameus est Anguis: per Tartara cæca maniplos
Submergit flammis peste fameque sucs.
Hujus quæ, quæ fanies, studiumve, ordove duelli,
Ars quæ, quæve phalanx, palms, vei arma forent,
Pandere dum cuperem, veterum (?) sata læta peragruns,
Excerpsi campis germina pauca sacris.
Copia ne potior generet fastidia mensis,
Convivam aut tenuem tanta parare vetet.
Nostra tuis ergo sapiant si fercula labris,
Regnanit laudes da super astra Deo.
Sin alias, animos tamen amplexatus amicos,
Quæ cano corripiens pumice frange, rogo.
[47] B. P. M. xiii. 403, 657.
[48] Trithemius strangely writes of his age; “Claruit sub Arnoldo Imperatore A.D. 890.” Quoted B. P. M. xiii. 403.
[49] Ibid. 657.
[50] “Quia in hoc tam laborioso opere notariorum solatia deesse mihi videntur, ea quæ dictavere manu proprià exarare contendo.” p. 408. He was in this respect less fortunate than Joachim Abbas afterwards.
[51] p. 404.
[52] p. 407.
[53] “Quia singulariter et principaliter universam Dominus, sive in prælatis sive in subditis, judicabit ecclesiam, ideirco seniores et throni una sedes dicuntur.” Ib. 464. I suppose the subditi meant here are the subordinate clergy.
[54] p. 469.
[55] Ib. 470-475. I think Ambrose Ansbert will be found sometimes as difficult of understanding by modern readers as he tells us he found Primasius.
[56] “Quibus (sc. malis hominibus) Principis sui affectus paratissimus servit; cùm, staterem in manu tenens, temporalibus stipendiis quorumdam vitam mercari quærit, quæ illorum suamque esuriem saturare quest.” In contrast with which he adds Christ’s saying, “What shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” - Ib. 483.
[57] “Hunc super quatuor partes terræ potestatem accepisse denuntiat.” On which he comments, as meant of the four divisions on the Devil’s side, - heathen, Jewish, heretic, and that of false professions within the Church. Ansbert does not seem to have been aware of any other reading. This is the rather to be observed, because though he used the common Vulgate Latin version, yet it was here that there with variations; as in Apoc. xvii. 16, noticed p. 170 Note 1397 infrà.
[58] Ib. 487
[59] Ib. 497. He notices this with usual brevity: “Has certe Angelorum tubes illæ præsignabunt quæ in Jubilæi usibus per Maysem factæ fuisse memorantur. Quibus septem dierum circuitu clangentibus, in typum hujus sæculi, muri Jericho cecidisse narantur.”
[60] This their concurrent explanation should be noted, in controversy with the Romanists. Ansbert cites 1 John ii. 1; “If any man sin we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.”
[61] Ib. 503.
[62] “Eosdem angelos qui super quatuor angulos ventos, terræ ne flarent, alligatos tenebant, in flumine magne Euphrate vinetos perhibuit.” p. 505.
[63] See the full quotation at p. 151 of my 2nd Volume.
[64] So, he says, Jerome and Pope Gregory. Ib. 522.
[65] See my p. 107 Note 5.
[66] “So at p. 537, in his notice of the woman’s flight into the wilderness for 3 1/2 times. “Cur autem hoc totum ecclesiæ tempus tribus annis et sex mensibus generaliter designetur patet ratio; propter evangelicam seilicet prædicationem, [sc. by Christ,] quæ trium temporum et dimidii spatiis edita fusse cognoseitur.“ - I do not remember to have seen any such reason given for this mystical sense in Ansbert’s predecessors. - Elsewhere, p. 545, Ansbert compares the equivalent 42 months to Israel’s 42 stations in the wilderness.
[67] pp. 526, 528.
[68] p. 542 (?)
[69] So p. 541: repeated again. p. 548, “Quia soli præpositi prædicatores atque ministri Antichrist.” Here he also nearly follows Irenæus.
[70] Ib. 544.
[71] “Quos ut illi ministri Sathanæ facilius decipere possint, eoram ipsis Spiritum sanctum dare se simulant; . . sicut dudum Simon Magus, &c.“ p. 549.
[72] “Quomodo intelligendum est dare illi spiritum, nisi quia sive prædicationibus, seu signis et miraculis, suadere hominibus conatur spiritu prophetiæ plenum esse Autichristum?“ p. 550
[73] p. 552. Mr. C. Maitland (p. 319) erroneously inscribes the invention of this to Rupert, three or four centuries later. Ansbert speaks of it as his own discovery; “invenimus.”
[74] p. 576. - Let me add that the Euphrates, the river of Babylon, will, he considers, be dried up when its power to injure and persecute is dried up; and that thus the way will be prepared for Christ the King from the East, according to Primasius’ reading of the word in the singular; or, if in the plural, for the apostles and ministers of the Church. Ib. 580 and 581.
[75] Ib. 592.
[76] Ibid. So Tichonius .See p. 163 supra.
[77] p. 593.
[78] Ansbert reads in verse 16 “the ten horns and the Beast;” (ta deka kerata kai to qhrion¢) not, as the common copies of Jerome’s Vulgate, “the ten horns on the Beast,” epi to qhrion.
[79] “So on the river of life; “Possunt cuneta hæc non inconvenieuter ad præsens tempus referri, quo, ad instar Paradisi, prædicationis flumine saneta rigatur ecclesia.” p. 646. At p. 647, however, on the absence of the curse, he explains it as fulfilled “in illà æternà felicitate,” &c.
[80] Ib. 592.
[81] Prefixed to the original Edition in Greek, which is appended to Commelin’s Edition (A.D. 1696) of Chrysostom’s Commentaries on St. Paul’s Epistles; also to Peltan’s Latin Translation in the B. P. M. 589-635.
[82] Lardner cites Cave’s statement. “Vixisse videtur circà exitum seculi istius, acclaruisse anno 500. Incerta enim prorsus illius ætas.” Lardner v. 77.
[83] In Apoc. Vol. i. p. 267. - Prof. Hug, in his Introduction to the New Testament, Vol. i. p. 230, (Wait’s Translation,) speaks of Andreas’ age as not known; and that people vary in their conjectures from the 5th to the 8th century.
[84] Viz. on Apoc. iv. 8, “And the four beasts had each of them six wings about him; and they were full of eyes within: and they rest not day and night, saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come.”.
[85] The earliest occasion, as Pagi admits, being the conference at Constantinople between the Catholics and the Severiani, A.D. 532. - Lardner, v. 73, allowing a margin of forty years, supposes that Dionysius’ date may be perhaps set down at A.D. 490.
[86] Gibb. vii. 421. I have noticed this famous pestilence in my Vol. i. p. 309.
[87] So on the sixth Seal, speaking of Christian Churches, and rulers both secular and ecclesiastical, fleeing from place to place, in the time of the “Pseudo-Christ” or Antichrist, in order to escape his persecution, he adds; wn kai hmeiv, pro thv autou parousian, di amartias. . pepeirameqa. And on the 4th Vial, Apoc. xvi. 9, “And men were scorched with great heat, and blasphemed the name of God, which hath power over these plagues: and they repented not to give him glory.” -- he speaks of many of his fellow-citizens of the Eastern Empire impeaching God’s goodness for allowing such calamities to their particular generation; wv kai nun dran exesti pollouv toiv kuklwsasin hmav ek barbarikwn ceirwn arrhtoiv deinoiv ascallontav, thn qeian aitiasqai agaqothta dti tav tosautav kakwseiv th hmetera genea tethrhken.
[88] On Apoc. xviii. 21-24: “And a mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone, and cast it into the sea, saying, Thus with violence shall that great city Babylon be thrown down, and shall be found no more at all. 22: And the voice of harpers, and musicians, and of pipers, and trumpeters, shall be heard no more at all in thee; and no craftsman, of whatsoever craft he be, shall be found any more in thee; and the sound of a millstone shall be heard no more at all in thee; 23: And the light of a candle shall shine no more at all in thee; and the voice of the bridegroom and of the bride shall be heard no more at all in thee: for thy merchants were the great men of the earth; for by thy sorceries were all nations deceived. 24: And in her was found the blood of prophets, and of saints, and of all that were slain upon the earth.” -- after stating the reason of the Apocalyptic Babylon’s doomed utter destruction to be its having deceived all nations with its sorceries, and shed the blood of saints and prophets, Andreas thus states the applicability of these characteristics to the Persian capital Ctesiphon; Di wn apantwn thn asibh para Hersaiv Babulwna dhlonsqai eikov, wn pollwn agiwn kata demForouv kairouv meCri tou nun dexamenhn aimata, kai wv mageiaiv kai apataiv dihnekwv cairousan through the distinctly Roman origin and local empire of Daniel’s Antichrist forbad his resting on this solution of the prophetic symbol. Again in Apoc. xvii. 6, “And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus: and when I saw her, I wondered with great admiration.” -- he similarly characterizes the then Persian rulers and capital; Kuriwterwn de kai h para hersaiv to kratov ecousa kai Babulwn kai pornh prosagoreuetai' adding; tuv en Herside toutwn [marturwn] kolaseiv tev an exariqmhsaito;
[89] The following chronological sketch (taken from Gibbon) of the Roman wars with Persia will illustrate what has been said: a sketch commencing from the æra of the great Theodosius, and his peace with Persia about 390 A.D.
A.D. 422, a slight alarm of Persian war; which however scarcely disturbed the tranquility of the East. A Christian Bishop having in 420 destroyed a fire-temple at Susa, (the then Persian capital,) the Magi excited a cruel persecution of Christians in Persia. This was in the last year of Yezdegerd’s reign, and first of his son Bahram’s. Armenia and Mesopotamia were filled with hostile armies; but no memorable acts followed. A truce for 100 years was agreed on; and the main conditions of the treaty were respected for nearly 80 years: i.e. till about A.D. 502. Gibbon v. 428.
A.D. 502-505. Nushirvan (also called Chosroes) invades Syria, takes Antioch, its capital, slaughters the people, pillages the churches, and sacrifices to the Magian god, the sun. - A.D. 541-542, he is forced beyond the Euphrates by Belisarius; and, Dara and Edessa having shortly afterwards successfully resisted a Persian attack, “the calamities of war were suspended by those of pestilence; and a tacit or formal agreement between the two sovereigns protected the tranquility of the Eastern frontier.” Gibb. vii. 311-318. In Colchoa the war still continued, till A.D. 561; when a peace of fifty years was agreed on. Ib. 339. - A.D. 572-579. Renewal of war. Dara taken; Syria overrun and despoiled; Cæsarea (in Cappadocia) threatened; till in the battle of Militene the tide of success turned in favor of the Romans. - A.D. 579, Nushirvan’s death. Gibb. viii. 175-177.
Shortly after this Chosroes, Nushirvan’s grandson, under the pressure of civil war, fled for refuge to the Romans; and was soon with their aid restored. On Phocas’ murder of the Emperor Maurice, and usurpation of the Eastern empire, Chosroes, A.D. 603, invades the empire; A.D. 611 conquers and desolates Syria; then takes and sacks Cæsarea; and then, A.D. 614, Jerusalem; the Magi and the Jews urging the holy warfare: the sepulchre of Christ is pillaged of the offerings of 300 years, and 90,000 Christians massacred. In 616 Asia Minor is overrun again to the Bosphorus; and for some six or eight years the Persian dominion, and its Magian worship of fire, established; the Christians meanwhile being persecuted and oppressed: till Heraclius’s celebrated repulse of the Persians, and victories in 622. Gibb. viii. 217, &c.
[90] 'H gar palaia 'Rwmh ek pollou to thv basileiav kratov apibalen ei mh upsqwmeqa eiv authn tu arcaion palen anastrefein axiwma.
[91] See Gibbon vii. 29, 30.
[92] Gibbon viii. 158-161.
[93] De' ou (viz the. ekklhsiav laov) hdh men taiv twn dunatwn 'Rwmaiwn cersi, taiv krataiaiv wv o sifhrov, ta eqnh epoimanen Cristov d qeov. On Apoc. xii. 5, “And she brought forth a man child, who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron: and her child was caught up unto God, and to his throne.”.
[94] On the Gog and Magog of Apoc. xx. 8, “And shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle: the number of whom is as the sand of the sea.” -- he writes thus: Einai de ton I`wg kai ton Magwg tinev men Skuqika eqnh nomizousin uperboreia, aper kaloumen Ounnika, pashv epigeiu basileiav wv orwmin poluanqrwpotera te kai polemikwtera, monh de th qeia ceiri prov to krathsai thv oikoumenhv pashv epecomena.
[95] Gibb. vii. 137.
[96] Of these Turks, the subduers of the White Huns, the power and empire were well known to the Greeks of the time, by means of the embassies that past between them and the Constantinopolitan Emperor, from A.D.569-582. - As to their Scythian nationality, Gibbon, ib. 288-297, notes the Scythian language and character in which the letters of the Great Khan of the Turks to the Greek Emperor were written.
Let me add another curious synchronism. Andreas, first, gives benediktov as a solution of the Beast’s name and number. And the 1st Pope Benedict dates from 572 to 577 A.D.
[97] By his referring (on Apoc. xx. 7, “ And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison,”) to the 6000th year from the world’s creation, as if an epoch not then elapsed, some might perhaps infer an earlier date to Andreas’ Treatise than either of the two mentioned: as the Septuagint Chronology, usually received in the Greek Church, (i.e. according to the Alexandrian copy,) would have made the 6000th year expire about A.D.500. But there were other readings in certain copies of the Septuagint which made that epoch later: and moreover the Hebrew Chronology, which had by this time made progress in the West, may also not improbably have been preferred by Andreas in the East. See my Vol. i. p. 397
[98] In the Prologue, p. 1.
[99] 1. On Apoc. i. 1, “things which must shortly come to pass,” he says: To en tacei genesqai shainei to tiva men autwn para podav genesqai thv peri autwn propphsewv, kai ta epi sunteleia de mh bradunein diote c?lia eth para Qey we h hmera h ecqev lelogistai.
[100] 2. 1. On the threat to the Ephesian Church of removing its candlestick, Andreas says that some referred it to the transfer of the earlier Ephesian Archbishopric (ton arcieratikon thv Efesou qronon) to Constantinople!
2. On the Epistle to Pergamos, he says that he had formerly read Antipas’ martyrium.
3. The promise to the Church of Thyatira, “I will give to him the morning star,” he explains as meant either of Isaiah’s Lucifer, (i.e. morning star,) to be trodden under foot by the saints; or of Peter’s morning star, viz. the light of Christ, to be received into the hearts; or of John Baptist and Elias, the herald-stars of Christ’s first and second coming, with whom the conquering saints are hereafter to be associated.
[101] Andreas makes not the slightest allusion to any limitation of the scene of the judgment to the fourth part of the earth: whereas in the Trumpets he expressly notices the limitation to the third part of the earth. So that I doubt whether Andreas’ copy did not read ta d' thv ghv, like Jerome’s; or rather, perhaps, to tetrmdion, for tetarton
[102] Brief headings are added, (such as on this Seal, Ausiv thv tetarthv sfragidev, emfeinousa tav epagomenav toiv asebesi mastigav, )connecting each Seal, in a manner, with that preceding it.
[103] Lest otherwise, says he, “the righteous put their hand to iniquity.” Ps. cxxv. “1:They that trust in the LORD shall be as mount Zion, which cannot be removed, but abideth for ever. 2: As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so the LORD is round about his people from henceforth even for ever. 3: For the rod of the wicked shall not rest upon the lot of the righteous; lest the righteous put forth their hands unto iniquity. 4: Do good, O LORD, unto those that be good, and to them that are upright in their hearts. 5: As for such as turn aside unto their crooked ways, the LORD shall lead them forth with the workers of iniquity: but peace shall be upon Israel.”
[104] Now however on any presumption of the Apocalypse having been revealed before the destruction of Jerusalem, so as some of the Præterist expositors would argue from our expositor: any more than in the case of other expositors, who explained the 7 Seals as figuring the seven successive events of Christ’s birth, baptism, ministry, accusation before Pilate, crucifixion, burial, and descent to hell. Of these expositors Andreas makes mention under the 1st Seal. Probably he may have alluded to Hilary. See p. 154 supra.
[105] oion eiligmon tina kai allaghn epi to bealtion.
[106] A very curious explanation! Eilitarioiv gar oi Ebraioi, anti twn par' hmin bibliwn, ekecrhnto wn h aneilixiv ouk afmnismon, alla twh gegpammenwn fmverwsin, apeirgasato. In the Apocalypse figuration it was a rolling up, not unrolling, of the heaven.
[107] Somewhat like Pollok’s description of the winds’ stagnation just before the consummation, in his Poem entitled, The Course of Time.
[108] Andreas seems to have regarded the 7th Seal as containing within it the seven Trumpets.
[109] Not (as some, he says, explained it) hell-torments. See p. 167. suprà.
[110] Tav ek barbarikwn ceirwn genomenuv purpolhseiv te kai androktasiav oshmerui.See my p.172, just before.
[111] Some explained it, he says, of the sea and those living in it, as destined to burn with expiatory fire after the general resurrection: tw kaqarsiw pure . . . meta thn anmstasin. And so, Andreas intimates, he might himself have preferred to explain it, but for the circumstance of its being said to be the 3rd part only that was burnt up: whereas, in fact, the number of the lost is more than of the saved.
[112] Thus Adreas reads here aggelou, not aetou.
[113] omimonav ouv o cristov enanqrwphsav edhsen opwv pro thv sunteleiav, ta oikeia energasmntev, k. t. l.
[114] So defined perhaps because of the five senses through which sin enters the soul!
[115] Some, Andreas says, explained the 5th Seal of hell-torments; the sun-light all hid from the sight of the condemned by the smoke of hell: the five months being some certain defined time of intense anguish; continued afterwards, however, though less intensely: (the reader may remember my similar division of the period of the 5th Trumpet’s plague into that of 5 months of chief intensity, and a subsequent undefined time of less intensity:) the locust-stings symbolizing the never-dying worm of the punishments of the wicked.
[116] Some, Andreas writes, explained these four Angels of the Archangel’s Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, and Uriel; erewhile bound to the presence and contemplation of God, but loosed at the day of judgment, for the destruction of wicked men. A fancy repeated afterwards by Arethas.
[117] On Apoc. ix. 21, “Neither repented they of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts.” -- next following, “The rest repented not of the idolatries,” &c., Andreas notices religious hypocrisy and avarice, as included in that charge.
[118] Were any such notable in the Eastern empire towards the middle of the 6th century?
[119] meta thn ex aiwnwn paradromhn. I suppose six millennaries, agreeably with the view of the early Fathers.
[120] Or, adds Andreas, (taking the book as before in the sense of a record of gross sinners and their sins,) John was taught by eating, &c., the sweetness of sin at the first, and its bitterness afterwards.
[121] Some, observes Andreas, otherwise expound the temple of God [the inner temple] as the Old Testament; the outer court, with its larger circuit, as the New Testament, so greatly more comprehensive: the 3 1/2 years signifying the short time in which its mysteries are to be in force; viz. from the time of Christ 1st to his 2nd coming.
[122] eite thn nean Ierousalhm, eite thn kaqolekhn ekklhsian. In which clause either expression seems intended by Andreas of the Christian Church; for he explains himself to mean the pistoi and dokimoi opprest by Antichrist’s tyranny. See Note 2 p. 1473 infrà.
[123] See p. 146 suprà.
[124] Arrhn de uiov o thv ekklhsiav laov. . di ou hoh, taiv twn dunatwn 'Rwmaiwn cersi, taiv krataiaiv wn o sidhrov, ta eqnh epoimane cristov o Qeov. An explanation similar to my own.- Andreas adds that the people of God are moreover to rule the nations after the resurrection of the dead.
[125] In Apoc. xiii. 1, “ And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy.”, Andreas reads estaqhn.
[126] See p. 140 suprà.
[127] So Andreas calls him three or four different times, on Apoc. xii., xiii., xvi., &c.
[128] wn (viz. of the Greek, Persian, and Babylonian empires, signified by the Beast’s likeness to the leopard, bear, and lion,) krathsei o Anticristov, wv rwmaiwn basileuv eleusomenov. So again on Apoc. xvii. 11, “And the beast that was, and is not, even he is the eighth, and is of the seven, and goeth into perdition.”, xviii. 24, “And in her was found the blood of prophets, and of saints, and of all that were slain upon the earth”.
[129] Thn 'Rwmaiwn basileian, th diairesei sfaghn tropon tina upomenousan, thn monarcian td, teqermpeusqai dukousan, kata thn eikona Augoustou Kaisarov. So again on Apoc. xiii. 11, “And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon.”: just as Hippolytus, before him. See p.140 suprà. Of which restoration of Rome’s empire, however, Mr. C. M. in his notice of Andreas says nothing. - Andreas offers the alternative solution of the revival of one of the arcontev of the empire, after being killed, by Antichrist’s magical arts.
[130] We have here in Peltan’s Latin version a most extraordinary perversion of the sense of the original Greek. The Greek is; Onomata polla estin eurein, ton apiqmon touton perieconta, proshgorika te kai kuria. Kuria men oion Aampetiv, Teitan, ek tou teinw, kaq' 'Ippoluton, Aatenov, omoiwv dia defqoggou, Bdnediktuv, oper ermhneuetai euloghmenuv. The Latin translation; “Multa confingi possunt nomina quæ numerum illum compleetantur, cum propria, tum etiam appellative, idque in omni propemodum linguà Proprium, e.g. Græcè sit Aampethv, Latinè Benedictus, Persicè Sarmnæus. Similis in eæteris linguis efforn atio fiat.” This is copied into the B. P. M. In my Vol. iii. p. 249, not then having access to the original Greek, I noticed the evident mistakes about the Benedictus in Latin, and the Sarmnæus.
[131] So too on verse 7; eite thv palaian 'Rwmhn, auqiv to arcaion kratov analambanousan.
[132] Because of its being said of the great city meant, “This is the city which ruleth over the kings of the earth,” in the present tense.
[133] ek twn epta oe wv ek miav autwn [basileiwn] blastanwn ou gar ex allou eqnouv . . all' wv Rwmaiwn basileuv. . eleusetai.
[134] dio sunergnsei s diabalov toiv up' aut? hniocoumenoiv deka kerasi . . thn ekporneusasan ek twn qeiwn entulwn polin . . erhmwsai.
[135] The vine to be trodden without the city of the just, thv twn dikaiwn polewv
[136] Compare my own remarks on the passage Vol. iii. pp. 474, 475.
[137] In referring to the dress ascribed to the Vial-angels, he notices the curious reading of liqon, as well as of lenon, like Jerome before him: “clothed in stone pure and white.”
[138] eikuv de kai aisqhtwv ta toutwn traumatizesqai ta swmata, prov elegcon thv elkwqeishv autwn yuchv. Let the reader mark this. It is much the same idea that I have often expressed about a symbol being drawn from the life and times; and which I have indeed on this very passage illustrated form the facts of history. See Vol. iii. pp. 357, 375.
[139] Thus Andreas unadvisedly here gives the title of New Jerusalem to the literal earthly Jerusalem; though explaining the New Jerusalem of Apoc. xxi. distinctly of the Christian Church.
Indeed he virtually suggests the same here too as an alternative. For, he adds, there also they say that Antichrist will sit in the temple of God; whether the old Jewish one restored by Antichrist, or the Catholic Church, which is the true temple: eite en tw Iondaidw tw palai qeiw, kaqaireqenti dia thn kata Criwtou Ioudaioiv eite en tw alhqwv qeiw naw, th kaqolekh ekklhsia.
[140] That it is to this time that Andreas mainly refers the symbol appears continually. Thus on the call on all to praise God, both small and great, Apoc. xix. 5, preparatorily to the introduction of the bride or New Jerusalem, he speaks of those who have died young, as rising to partake in the song: Oimai de kai oi nun mikroi th hlikia kai ateleiv puidev qnhskontev, megaloi anistamenoi ton megalourgon qeon umnhsousin. Again, the glory of the New Jerusalem is on Apoc. xxi. 8, “But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.” - defined as the saints’ eternal glory: and again, speaking of the 12,000 furlongs of the city, xxi. 16, “And the city lieth foursquare, and the length is as large as the breadth: and he measured the city with the reed, twelve thousand furlongs. The length and the breadth and the height of it are equal.”, Andreas thus mystically explains the number: twn men cilewn dhlountwn thv aperantou zwhv thn teleiothta, twn de eptakosiwn to en anapausei teleion, twn de dekatessarwn ton diploun sabbatismon, thv yuchv kai tou swmatov. Yet here and there we find a reference in his comment to the Church’s present state: e.g. on the leaves of the tree being even now for the healing of the nations; contrastedly with the fruit of perfect knowledge to be enjoyed in the world to come.
[141] oi en th gh twn paqwn basileusantav thn twn alaqwn praxewn doxan kai timhn en auth oisousi. k. t. l.
[142] biblon (i.e. the seven-sealed Book) twn apo thv auton (Christ‘s) parousiav mecpi thv sunteleiav gegenhmenwn.
[143] So Andreas understands the passage; and not as referring simply to taking from, or adding to, the Book of the Apocalypse. Foberm h kata twn paracaraktwn twn qeiwn grafwn katara.
[144] Ta grafika ediwmata twn Attikwn suntaxewn, kai twn dialektikwn sullogismwn, axiopistotira kai semvotepa oson de to meson twn par hmin kai ekeinoiv endoxwn kai to en nw labein amhcanon oimai gar einai pleon h oson fwv skotouv dieothke.
I must add that Peltan’s Latin translation, to which alone I had access in my three first Editions, is often disgracefully incorrect. A notable example has been given . See Pages 12, 13, especially Note 129, suprà.
[145] On Apoc. viii., speaking of the incense-Angel, he says; “huie angelo Andreas, qui ante me digne Cæsareæ Cappadociæ eposcopatum sortitus est, quemque pontificem assimilat.” And the heading title to his Commentary in the Latin translation, and I presume in the original Greek also, is as follows: - “Aretæ, Cæsareæ Cappadociæ Episcopi, in D. Joannia Apocalypsim compendiaria explanatio, ex beatissimi Andreas Archiepiscopi Cæsareæ, Cappadociæ Deo gratis, commentariis concinnata.” Dupin is evidently mistaken in saying that there is no ground for regarding this Arethas as a Bishop of Cæsarea.
[146] Pp. 741-791.
[147] On the Apocalypse, Vol. i. p. 268: “Arethas. . who lived near the middle of the 6th century.”
[148] Hist. Litt. i. 408, ad ann. 540. “Verum id gratis affirmat Oudinus; nec enim præsto ei est argumentum quo sententiam suam confirmet.”
[149] Hug too, i. 230, assigns him to the xth Century; but without giving his reasons.
[150] On Apoc. xiii. 2: “Peros leonis regnum designatur Babyloniorum: cui Saracenorum reguum maniestè successit; quòd, in hoc usque tempus, regia corum Babylone sit.” B. P. M. 771. - I have noted this already in my Vol. i. p. 39.
[151] See my Vol. i. pp. 461, 462, and Vol. iii. p. 439.
[152] See my Vol. i. p. 466.
[153] Note 1495 p. 180 infra.
[154] Mr. C. Maitland (p. 276), while noticing after me (though without acknowledgment) the passage in Arethas about the Saracens and Bagdad, yet strangely dates him A.D. 650; i.e. above 100 years before Bagdad was built!
[155] Of these his explanation of the 3rd Seal may furnish a specimen. Besides symbolizing famine, it may have a moral signification. The chænix of wheat for a denarius means faithful witnesses for Christ, each counted worthy of a denarius; “quasi datæ sibi divinæ imaginis custodes exactissimi commonstrati:” while the three choenixes of barley are the weak ones who have failed in the day of trial, but repented; and who altogether are only valued at a denarius!
[156] Like those alluded to by Andreas on the first Seal, as observed by me. p. 174, Note 1437, and who explained the sixth Seal of Christ’s sepulture.
[157] So the best critical Editions, kai h selhnh s l h eleneto wv aima the olh being alike in the three most authoritative MSS. A, B, C, i.e. the Codex Alexandrinus, Codex Vaticanus, and Codex Ephraemi.
[158] “Nondum cuim vastatio à Romanis illata Judæos involverat, ubi hæe Evangelista oracula suscipiebat; neque Hicrosolymis, sed Ionià quæ apud Ephesum. Equidem post passionem Domini quatuordecim tantùm annis permansit in Hierusalem theotocum Domini tabernaculum in hàc temporatiâ vitâ, post passionem inquam ac resurrectionem incorruptæ suæ prolis; cui etiam (Joannes), tanquam matri sibi à Domino commendatæ, semper aderat. Post hujus enim morten nequaquam jam in Judæa mansisæ fertur; sed Ephesum commigrasse;” &c. - A statement which is palpably incorrect.
[159] First on Apoc. i. 9, “I John, who also am your brother, and companion in tribulation, and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ, was in the isle that is called Patmos, for the word of God, and for the testimony of Jesus Christ.”; B. P. M. 743: “Relegatum autem ipsum in Patmum Insulam sub Domitiano fuisse, Eusebius Pamphili in Chronieâ suâ citat.” Next on Apoc. iii. 10, “Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth.”, B. P. M. 751: “Horam tentationis . . persecutionem illam dicit quæ secunda post Neronem sub Domitiano excitata fuit, quemadmodum in Historià suà Eusebius Pamphili testatur: quando etiam idem Evangelista in Patmum ab eodem Domitiano exillie relegatus fuit.” In which last passage he does not state it simply as Eusebius’ opinion, that St. John was then banished to Patmos; but rather propounds it as his own also. See my Vol. i. p. 40.
[160] The idea of St. John’s living to the end of the world arose rather, we know, from Christ’s saying, (John xxi. 22, “Jesus saith unto him, If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? follow thou me.”,) “If I will that he tarry till I come, &c.”
[161] A curious notion.
[162] “Et quænam hæc (Babylon)? Nulla sanc alin quàm Constantinopolis; in qua olim colebatur justitia, nunc autem in eà homicidæ habitant, ex mutuà contentione, dum cives laici ecclesiasticis æquari contendunt: imo ne æquales quidem fieri contenti sunt, nisi aliquis etiam ex eis premium referat, ad majorem divinæ indignationis accensionem.” B. P. M. 778.
[163] “Aves quæ per medium coeli volant animas dicit sanctorum; quæ, à depressis humi rebus emergentes, juxta magnum Paulum procedunt ad occurrendum obviæ Domino in acra.” B. P. M. 783.
[164] p. 786.
[165] In passing let me here briefly notice a curious passage that occurs in a Treatise on Antichrist by Adso, a monk of the monastery of Derve in Champagne; dedicated to Gerberga, Queen of Louis d'Outremer, and consequently of about the date of 950 A.D. Having spoken of Babylon as Antichrist’s birth-place, of his being educated by sorcerers at Bethsaïda and Chorazin, then coming to Jerusalem, proclaiming himself the Son of God, by gifts, miracles, or terror converting kings and people to acknowledge him, and then at length persecuting the saints, and commencing the great tribulation of 3 1/2 years, - Adso proceeds to state that the precise time for his manifestation would be marked by the ‘discessio’ of its constituent kingdoms from the Roman Empire: (so, like some of the early Fathers, he explained the apostmsia of St. Paul:) which time had not then as yet come: because, says Adso, though the Roman Empire has been in chief part destroyed, yet, so long as the Frank kings last,* to whom belongs the empire, so long the Roman dignity will not altogether perish. And then he adds; “Some of our doctors affirm that there will arise in the last times a king of the Franks, who shall again re-unite under his rule all the Roman empire: and after a prosperous reign shall go to Jerusalem, and lay down his sceptre and crown at Mount Olivet: - that this will be the end of the Roman empire, and then immediately will follow Antichrist.” † - Adso further observes, that the Antichrist would sit either in the Jewish temple, rebuilt by him, and there receive worship; or perhaps in the Christian Church; also that after killing the two witnesses, Enoch and Elias, he would be slain on Mount Olivet by Michael, or Christ, with the breath of his mouth. Soon after which (not immediately) would follow the last judgment.
* Compare the statement by the Pseudo-Athanasius, pp. 151, 152 supra..
† This tradition is noted in the Encyclopedic Methodique: and it may perhaps remind some of the French Chief Bonaparte’s mighty empire, and Syrian expedition, in these latter days; as also of certain prophetic speculations propounded thereon, by expositors that deemed him to be Daniel’s so called wilful King.
This treatise is given in the 9th Volume of the late Paris Benedictine Edition of Augustine, col. 1647 - 1652. It is the same that has been incorrectly ascribed by some to Aleuin, by others (e.g. Malvenda, i. 398) to Rabanus Maurus.
[166] “Auisquis nomen auctoris seire desideras, literas expositionum in captibus septem visionum primas attende. Numerus quatuor vocalium quæ desunt, si Græeas posureris, est 81.“ Now the first letters of these seven parts, or visions, are B R N G V D S: and if eeao be inserted, which together make up (5+5+1+70 = 81,) the name will resut, Berengaudus.
[167] “Saraceni totam Asiam subegerunt, Gothi Hispaniam, Longobardi Italian, &c. Hæe regua, co tempore quo visio ista Johanni demonstrata est, potestatem nondum acceperant: sed unà horà tanquam reges potestatem acceperunt, quia singularum istarum gentiam potestas pauco tempore permansit.“ So on Apoc. xvii.
[168] See my Vol. i. p. 473, Note 1, where Berengaud is also noticed.
[169] See my Vol. ii. p. 14.
[170] See p. 182, Note 1581.
[171] I copy what follows from Mr. C. Maitland’s book, p. 349: “About this time (viz. 1400 A.D.), without name or date, the Apocalyptic Commentary of Berengaud stole into notice. It was first copied from by the Block Book Apocalypse, published soon after 1400: and next quoted by Dionysius the Carthusian, who wrote not later than 1470.” So too Dr. S. R. Maitland, before him; Reply to Morning Watch, pp. 19, 20.
[172] Observe how Augustine’s view of the Civitas Dei, as made up only of the elect, had traveled influentially downward.
[173] On the promise, “I will write on him the name of the New Jerusalem,” &c., Berengaud observes that it may seem marvelous that this New Jerusalem should be described as descending from heaven, when it is known that the elect continually ascend from earth to heaven, instead of descending. But he solves the enigma by explaining it of Christ’s descent; in whom all the saints (the constituency of the New Jerusalem) were even then federally existent.
[174] See p. 142. - Here Berengaud contrasts the incessant occupation in divine worship of the twenty-four elders and four living creatures, with the earthly-mindedness and earthy occupation of many in monasteries.
[175] “Denarius Dominum designat. Binæ ergo libræ tritiei denario copulantur; quia quod sancta Scripture loquitur ad unius Dei omnipotentiam, magnitudinem, bonitatem, atque severitatem pertinet.“ I suppose Berengaud meant the denarius to figure Christ, somewhat like Arethas, on the 6th Seal, p. Note 1488. p.179 suprà.
[176] Compare Arethas on the same 6th Seal, p. 179, suprà.
[177] This explanation of Berengaud’s is cited by me in support of my own, Vol. i. p. 297, Note 1.
[178] “But why Christ’s advent under the seventh and not the fifth Seal?” A question which Berengaud thus answers: - Because on the seventh day God rested from creation; and Christ is our rest.
[179] The fire of the symbol being the fire of the Holy Spirit, burning up what was evil in the heart.
[180] The fiery mountain cast into the sea being explicable of Mount Sinai cast among the Jews; the faithful amongst whom, dead to the law, lived as God.
[181] The prophets themselves being like burning stars to light the people; and with threats that had bitterness in them, acting so as to produce repentance.
[182] By whose doctrine the elect Jews were struck, and Judaism eclipsed in them.
[183] Doctors preaching against the first of the three woes; viz. heretics, lapsed like a falling-star from heaven: during five months of which æra, a period meant to signify the present life, men that sought death by mixing in the world would be sickened at it; and so return, and live.
[184] Martyrs opposed to the four angels; i.e. (these being the same as the four angels in Apoc. vii.) to persecutors out of the Roman empire; an empire signified also by Babylon’s river, the Euphrates. These martyrs he supposes by their invincible resolution and gospel-preaching to have stirred up the Roman Pagans to persecute them; - the horses’ heads being the Roman emperors; the sulphur from the horses’ mouths their blasphemy; and the fire their persecuting proclamations.
[185] It is not Jerusalem, says Berengaud, for three reasons: - 1. that the great city of the Apocalypse is always Babylon: 2. because the present Jerusalem is not built precisely on the site of the old: 3. because the present city of Jerusalem, being inhabited by Christians, cannot justly be called Sodom and Egypt.” See the citation in my Vol. ii. p. 430.
[186] So Arethas.
[187] The 3 1/2 years’ duration of Christ’s ministry being the ground-work of the larger interpretation of the 3 1/2 years, so as with Ambrose Ansbert. See pp 5, 6, suprà.
[188] Compare Methodius’ “à malis desertum;” See p. 146. suprà.
[189] I beg my readers to mark this.
[190] He seems to make the Beast of Apoc. xiii. Antichrist; of Apoc. xvii. the Devil.
[191] Without spot, says Berengaud, because of the pollution contracted form the world having been washed away by penitence and tears, or by works of charity, or per flagella, by scourging, or at any rate “post mortem igni purgatorio.” - Purgatory was now established.
[192] At least till Berengaud; see p. 183.
[193] Mr. C Maitland says (p. 279), with reference to the mediæval æra, which he dates from Rome’s separation from the Byzantine dominion, accomplished A.D. 730, “Once more the popular style of [prophetic] exposition is entirely changed.” My readers will naturally be surprised at such a statement: as they will have seen that in the West, for some two or three centuries after that date, all the chief expositors, as Bede, Ambrose, Ansbert, Haymo, did but follow the same mystical anagogic style of exposition as Tichonius and Primasius before them; while in the East Arethas professedly followed Andreas of the 6th century. Possibly Mr. C. M. may have meant that it changed after Jerome.
[194] See pp. 166, 167, 168, 171, 176, 177, suprà
[195] So Adso of the 10th century: abstracted p. 180 suprà. So too Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury in the 11th century, on 2 Thess ii. 7: - “He who now letteth: he means the Roman empire; after the destruction of which Antichrist will come.”
[196] For the pseudo-Athanasius, see pp. 153, Note 1217.
[197] Theophylact was Archbishop of Bulgaria in the 11th century. Speaking of the let being the Roman empire, and of its taking away as of an event still future in his time, he says; “Eo dissoluto, vacuo insidiabitur [Antichristus] imperio, eique instabit; conabiturque cum hominum tum Dei imperium rapere.” So too Œcumenius; an expositor who was his contemporary, or nearly so. (See Malvenda i. 396.) In their exposition of St. Paul these both follow Chrysostom generally; and, like him, forbore from writing any direct Apocalyptic commentary.
It may be well to compare on this point the surmisings of Andreas and Arethas. See pp.176, 179.
[198] So all the expositors after Tichonius and Augustine.
[199] So Gregory 1. See my Vol. i. pp. 401-403.
[200] See my Vol. i. p. 473.
Mr. C. Maitland (p. 291) well cites the Papal jurist of the 14th century, Marsillius of Padua, in testimony to the otherwise well authenticated fact that Papal Rome’s revolt from the Byzantine emperors, under Gregory III, was a consequence of the emperor proscribing, the Pope affirming, the worship of images.
[201] See, for example, Ambrose Ansbert’s expressed approbation of angel-mediatorship, p. 170 suprà.
[202] Especially in Gregory’s mighty contest with the emperor Henry.
[203] See my Vol. ii. p. 78, Note 1.
[204] See Vol. ii. pp. 280, 281.
Let me observe that it is stated by Bishop Hurd that Berenger wrote a Commentary on the Apocalypse: and he ascribes Berenger’s anti-Romish sentiments on the subject of transubstantiation to this origin; as I have observed in my Vol. ii. p. 281, on the Witnesses. How much could we have desired that this Commentary should have been preserved to us! But I am aware that it is anywhere extant.
[205] See my Vol. i. p. 470.
[206] Mr. Faber (On Waldenses p. 394) speaks of Tissington, a writer of the 14th century, saying that it was a day-dream of Berenger’s (Berengarium somnium) that at the expiration of 1000 years from Christ’s death Satan was loosed; and his loosing evidenced in the promulgation of before unequaled heresies and errors by the Romish Church, especially that of transubstantiation.
[207] See my Vol. iii. p. 265.