LECTURE XV.

CHRIST THE REDEEMER-THE OPENING OF THE

SEALS.

REV. vi. 9-17.

And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held. And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth? And white robes were given unto every one of them, and it was said unto them, that they should rest yet for a little season, until their fellow-servants also, and their brethren that should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled. And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and lo, there was a great earthquake, and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood; and the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig-tree casteth her untimely figs when she is shaken of a mighty wind: and the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places: and the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free-man hid themselves in the dens, and in the rocks of the mountains; and said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of Him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb: for the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?

THE action of the seals is, beyond a question, the act of putting Christ and his saints into possession of the inheritance which he purchased with his blood. It is the Father's accomplishment of that decree, "Ask of me, and I will give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the

uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession;" his fulfilment of that word, "Sit thou on my right hand until I make thine enemies thy footstool;" his demonstration that Jesus is Lord of all, "unto whom every knee shall bow, of things upon the earth." But as grace precedes punishment, and mercy rejoiceth over judgment, there must be a period of forbearance and long-suffering before the period of wrath and indignation. "The law came by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ." This is the reason why these seals open not at the beginning of the Christian dispensation, but three hundred years onward, during which the Father gave Christ a seed in every land; a flock of little ones, in whom his name and honour were placed, according to their treatment of whom all nations might be treated of him in the judgment. For, according to the parable, Matt. xxv. 31, the principle upon which the reward or the punishment of nations proceedeth, is the way in which they have dealt by his saints : "Inasmuch as you did it unto the least of these, you did it also unto me. This is the reason why the first three hundred years after the outpouring of the Holy Ghost to beget a seed unto Christ, are given to men in probation, before any act of judgment is permitted to fall in upon the earth. The seven churches, that is, all the churches, are by the Holy Ghost constituted and preserved in all lands, as witnesses to the one God, the Creator of heaven and earth, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and there they are kept against their own inbreeding corruption, against all outward persecution, harmless and inoffensive, deserving no evil, and revenging no injury, meek, lowly, and righteous, industrious, temperate, and obedient, persons of that very character whom kings and judges of the earth should protect from oppression; being the chosen and the holy ones of the great King; who, instead of receiving the protection which bare justice entitled them to, the countenance which quietness and uprightness should ever have, the reverence which goodness and piety should command, are persecuted, cast out, and broken to pieces, hunted like the partridge upon the mountains, counted as the offscourings of the earth, and put to death with ignominy and torture. During these three hundred years did God look on and suffer, he patiently

took evidence against that thing which he hated; the Paganism and the Idolatry of the earth. He hated it as giving his own honour to demons, yet would he not crush it until he had shewn how unjust, how cruel, how immoral a thing it was; for it had decorated itself with art and science, praised itself in poetry and eloquence, established itself with a shew of philosophy and morality, and it wore the specious form of mercy and grace to all the religions of the earth. These hypocrisies of Paganism to discover, these fallacious appearances to expose, God sent amongst them this most numerous company of Prophets and wise men, renewed after his own image in righteousness and true holiness; by the light of whose beauty, the darkness of their deformity might be discovered; by the meekness, and patience, and mercifulness of whose dispositions, the hideous cruelty, and falsehood, and wickedness of Paganism might be brought to light; to the end that he might be fully justified in the sight of the intelligent universe, in that awful destruction which he was about to bring upon the whole fabric of idolatry which had so long corrupted the earth, and grieved the Majesty of heaven. This period of grace and mercy, of forbearance and long-suffering before the act of judgment; this taking of the evidence, and justifying of the act before it comes to pass; this carefulness of God that the morality of all his several actings may clearly appear, and that he may not be taken for one who delights in, or decrees evil, or hath pleasure in making the innocent to suffer; is that which causeth it to be necessary that if these seals are acts of judgment, as we have many ways shewn them to be, they should not commence at the beginning of the preached Gospel and planted church, but some time onward in the stream of its history. The time of commencement we have fixed and determined by many criterions to be the time of Constantine: and the two actors in the subversion of Paganism, we have proved to be Constantine and Theodosius; the one reigning over it with a crown of dignity, and a bow of instruction, its mighty conqueror,-the other beating it down to the earth with the great sword of civil warfare. After which came a period of yoke and famine, under Honorius; and lastly, under Justinian, a period of utter destruction and desola

tion to the fourth part of the earth, Italy and Africa, where chiefly the wickedness had been perpetrated. This fourfold action embraceth in all a period of about two centuries and a half; during which, to use the eloquent and exact words of Dr. Robertson, "new forms of government, new laws, new manners, new dresses, new languages, and new names of men and countries were every where introduced. To make a great or sudden alteration with respect to any of these, unless where the ancient inhabitants of a country have been almost totally exterminated, has proved an undertaking beyond the power of the greatest. conquerors. The total change which the settlement of the barbarous nations occasioned in the state of Europe, may therefore be considered as a more decisive proof, than even the testimony of contemporary historians, of the destructive violence with which these invaders carried on their conquests, and of the havoc which they had made from one extremity of this quarter of the globe to the other." (Robertson's Charles V. vol. i. pp. 12, 13.)

These observations I make, not to weary you with repetitions, but to impress great principles, by shewing them in various aspects, and to introduce the fifth seal, which, in relation to the sixth and seventh, occupies the same place of long-suffering and forbearance, of witnessbearing, and evidence taking, as did the period before the coming of judgment in the days of Constantine. Which is put beyond a doubt by its language and structure, so different from that of all the rest, and yet so contrived as to be the expositor of them all. It reflects light upon the four gone by; it anticipates the two which are about to come, and it explains the moving cause of both. The martyrs, the souls of them that were slain [that had been slain] for the word of God, and for the testimony of Jesus, the same cause for which John had been a prisoner in Patmos (chap. i. 2—9), are represented as crying with a loud voice, "How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?" This, the first part of the seal, contains first the information that the dwellers upon the earth" had slain the martyrs; secondly, that the martyrs were expecting judgment and recompence upon their murderers, from their holy and true Lord; thirdly, that this judgment was not

yet accomplished, but by them eagerly waited for, and earnestly desired. The last part of the seal is in these words: "White robes were given unto every one of them, and it was said unto them, that they should rest yet for a little season, until their fellow-servants also, and their brethren, that should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled;" and contains, first, a present reward and consolation to them; secondly, the announcement of a delay of that judgment which they expected; and, thirdly, the intimation of another company of martyrs, their fellowservants, who should be slain in what way they had been slain; after which they that dwell upon the earth should be visited for the martyrs' blood.

From this short analysis of the contents of this seal, it is manifest that the previous judgments are not to the extirpation of them that dwell on the earth, nor yet to the eradication of their hatred of Christ's people, nor yet to the full avengement of their blood; all which is, by decree and purpose of God, postponed for a little while longer, till a second glorious company of the martyrs shall have won their crown. For, behold when the next seal is opened (vi. 15), every bondman, and every freeman, is in an agony of instant destruction; and in the seventh seal (xvi. 18-21) they are all destroyed. This leaves no doubt upon our minds, that this fifth seal occupies the whole of the second time of long-suffering and witness-bearing, and that the sixth seal proclaims it to be at an end: the seventh is the end, the final catastrophe which here is prayed for, and which there is performed. There is, as we said, a beginning, a middle, and an end, in this great action of the Lamb; the beginning is the first four seals, the middle is the fifth seal, and the end is the sixth and seventh.

THE FIFTH SEAL.

II. Now, in opening the fifth seal, the second part into which the whole action of the seals divides itself, it seems best, as our custom is, carefully to examine and explain the language in which it is written, and then to detail the historical facts to which it hath reference. "And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and