Works, Book 5 · Part 1 – Part 4
The Second Prophecy, The Opened Book; containing Fata Ecclesiae.
I.
By the*Ch. 11. …. Inmost and Measured Court of the Temple, I understand the Church in her Primitive Purity, whenas yet the Christian Worship was unprophaned, and answerable to the Divine Rule revealed from above.
By the*Ch. 12. 7. War between Michael and the Dragon about the Woman's manly Off-spring contemporary with the Measured Court, I understand that long and bloudy Combate which Christ our Lord, animating with his Spirit his undaunted Souldiers, fought with the Devil possessing and reigning in the Ethnick Roman State; that is, the Times of the Primitive Persecution by the Heathen Emperors: a War lasting long, and costing the lives of many a valiant Martyr; yet at 300 years end, when a Christian was installed in the Imperial Throne, the old Dragon was*Verse 9. dismounted and overthrown, and the Souldiers of Christ our Lord prevailed; For‖Verse 1… they overcame him by the bloud of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and loved not their lives unto the death.
Note that the Description of this Vision is double in the Text: 1. more General, The Dragon's endeavour to destroy the Woman's Off-spring, from ver. 1. to the 7. verse; 2. more Particular, of his Battel with Michael the Woman's Champion. For that these two Descriptions are of the same thing and same time, is manifest in that one and the same Event [*Verse 6, 8… 14. The Woman's escape into the Wilderness] is the Consequent to them both.
II.
1. By the Second or*Ch. 11. 2. Outward Court trampled by the Gentiles, and not to be measured, I understand the Apostasie under the Man of Sin. when the Visible Church, being possessed by Idolaters and Idolatry like that of the Gentiles, became so inconformable and unapt for Divine measure, that it was to be cast out and accounted as prophane and polluted. For the Apostasie of the Church is Ethnicismus Christianus.
2. By the*Verse 3. Witnesses in sack-cloth, I understand the mournful Prophecy of God's true Ministers during all that time: who, when toward the end of their days of mourning they should be about to put off their sack-cloth and leave their lamentation, (seeing the Truth they witnessed beginning to take place by publick Reformation) the Beast which ascends out of the Abyss shall slay them,Verse. 7. 9. and rejoyce over them as dead three days and an half, that is, so many years.
3. By the Woman in the Wilderness, (Ch. 12.) I understand the condition of the true Church in respect of her*See a farther account of her being in the Wilderness, in the Short Observations, Chap. 12. & Comment Apocal in locum. Latency and Invisibility to the eyes of man. As the Israelites, when they had escaped the rage and gotten out of the reach of the Egyptian Pharaoh, yet lived a long time after, but in a Wilderness, an infrequent and barren place, where they could not have lived without being extraordinarily fed with Manna from Heaven: Such was the condition of the Apostolical Woman and Church of Christ, when she had escaped the rage and fury of the Dragon persecuting in the Seven-headed Empire.
4. By the*Chap. 14. 1. Virgin-Company of the 144000 Sealed ones, I understand the opposite State of the unstained Church unto the Kingdom of Apostasie, in their sincerity of Service and faithful adherence to their Lord and Master, whilst the rest worshipped the Beast and his Image. These are those who, when the Trumpets were to sound, were secured by the*Chap. 7. 3. Mark of Divine protection, lest their Society should have been extinguished in those Calamities which then fell upon the Empire. How could this Holy Company else but have perished in such Confusions? In that*viz. Ch. 7. place they were represented by the Tribes of Israel; for the present Church of the Gentiles is but Israel surrogatus, and so by God accounted, until the Fulness of the Gentiles come in.
5. By the*Ch. 13. 1. 11. Seven-headed Ten-horned Beast, the Two horned False-Prophet, and‖Chap. 17. Babylon the Mother of Harlots, I understand the State and Kingdom of Apostasie according to three subordinate parts thereof, 1. The Body, 2. the Head, 3. the Seat. For Kingdoms, especially of the ancient form, consisted of three parts, Regnum, Rex, Metropolis Regni. So in the Kingdom of Apostasie (for such it was to be) are Regnum Apostaticum, Rex Apostaticus, Metropolis foreign.
The Kingdom of Apostasie was to be the Roman Empire upon a deadly wound of the Caesarean Sovereignty shivered into a Plurality of Kingdoms, yet all joyntly as one Body anew acknowledging the Motherdom of the Roman City. This is that Seven-headed Beast with Ten crowned Horns upon the Seventh Head, whereof S. Iohn speaks Chap. 13. whose description there I understand as if he had said, I saw a Beast with Seven Heads and Ten Horns with Diadems, which, upon the recovery of a deadly wound in one of his Heads, arose out of the Sea, and succeeded in the Throne, Power and Authority of the Dragon; blaspeming God by another Idolatrous worship, and warring at length against his Saints and overcoming them. This I would call Antichristendom.
Rex Apostaticus, The King of this Apostatical Kingdom is the Two-horned False-Prophet, the Roman Bishop, who also is the Founder thereof, forasmuch as by lying Signs and Wonders establishing a new-coined Idolatry therein, he made it to be a living Resemblance or Image of the Kingdom of the Caesars in Ethnicism when the Dragon ruled. Observe here that in Ch. 13. 14. those last words [foreign] are not the words of the Beast speaking, but of S. Iohn relating the Event of his speech. And so the Interpretation will be plain.
The Metropolis of this Kingdom is Mystical Babylon, that is, the See and City of Rome, of the Spouse of Christ become a Babylonish Strumpet. This is the Mother of Harlots, that is, the Metropolis of the Brothel-Cities, and Lady of the Apostatical Kingdom, whose Kings commit fornication with her. For the Beast she rides upon is the new-formed Beast which arose out of the Sea with Ten crowned Horns; the meaning whereof the Angel here expoundeth, and thereby openeth an entrance to the whole Prophecy, which till now was nothing but an involved Mystery.
The Whore's Beast, Chap. 17.
The Whore's Beast is that Kingdom which in S. Iohn's time had Five Successive Heads already past, One (that of the Caesars) in present being; but the Last, or Seventh, wearing Ten Horns, which was yet to come, was that under which the Where should ride him. Hence comes the Angel's Riddle,*Ch. 17. 8. The Beast which was, and is not, and shall ascend out of the bottomless pit; The Beast that was, and is not, and yet shall be, foreign that is, The Beast or State that had then been in the course of Five or Six Seals, but in the Seventh was yet to come. Some read the last expression of the Riddle thus, The Beast that was, and is not, and yet is; that is. The Beast that had already been in the course of Five of his Heads, was not then in that State of Sovereignty in which the Whore should ride him; and yet was even then (in S. Iohn's time) in present being in the Sixth Head, the Caesars then reigning.
The*Verse 9. 10. Seven Heads of the Beast are by the Angel made a double Type both of the Seven Hills where the Woman …i…teth, and of the Seven Sovereignties with which in a successive order the Beast should reign. This is a pair of Fetters to tie both Beast and Whore to Western Rome. The Seven Sovereignties must not be separated from the Seven Hills, nor the Seven Hills from as many Sovereignties. Constantinople may have so many Hills, but those Hills had never so many Sovereignties. In other Cities where the Sovereign Roman Name (or but the Name) hath reigned, are neither so many Hills, nor ever were those Seven succeeding Sovereignties. By these Fetters we shall hold this Proteus-like and flitting Beast fast enough.
The Last Head of the Beast is indeed but the Seventh, (for the Beast, we see, hath no more Heads than Seven in the Vision) yet for some respect is an Eighth, namely, because the Sixth Head, the Sovereignty of Caesars, (that Head which in S. Iohn's time was) declined at length to a Demi-Caesar confined to the West, (beginning with Honorius, (or, if you will, sooner,) till after a short time it failed upon the death of the last Valentinian,) which being in some sort diverse from the former takes the Seventh place, and makes the False-Prophet the Eighth. But being, as in name, so in substance, the same Caesar with the former, the False-Prophet (in whose time the Whore rides the Beast) is still in order the Seventh. 2. The False-Prophet beginning his dominion as soon almost (if not altogether) as the Demi-Caesar, is therefore in order of time the Seventh as well as he. But the Demi-Caesar being soon gone, the False-Prophet still surviving, and therefore succeeding him, is, in respect of that time wherein he outlasteth him, as it were an Eighth. But whether Eighth or Seventh, he is the Last Head this Beast shall ever wear. When the former Heads failed, the Beast still continued by succession of a New: But in this he*Verse 11. goeth into perdition, that is, shall utterly be destroyed.
Object. Yea but when the Roman State was a Red Dragon, it appeared then also with *Ch. 12. 3.Seven Heads and Ten Horns as well as now.
Answ. As the Beast which carrieth the Whore appeareth with all his*Ch. 17. 3. Heads, though Six of them should be past before the Whore should ride him: so the Red Dragon, which watched the Woman in travail, is represented with the whole Roman Cognizance of Heads and Horns, though the Sixth Head only (the persecuting Caesars) were then in course when the bloudy Dragon informed it.
The Seven Vials.
The*Chap. 16. Seven Vials are the Seven several and successive degrees of the Fall of the Apostatical or Pseudoprophetical Beast: some whereof are already past, (for his Declination and Ruine we see is already begun.) some are still to come. They are called the*Chap. 15. 1. Seven last Plagues in reference to the Seven Trumpets which are the Seven first Plagues; the first ruining the Old Beast, the last destroying the New which is risen out of his ruine: Which is the reason why the Vials are so like the Trumpets. For as this Latter Beast was fashioned after the image of the Former; so was it fit his Ruine should carry the resemblance of the Ruine of it.
The Kingdom of Christ upon the Seventh Trumpet.
That Kingdom of our Lord to follow upon the sounding of the Seventh Trumpet, at the appearing whereof, in several Visions, the Quire of Wights and Elders sing and worship before the Throne, (Ch. 7. 11. Ch. 11. 16. Ch. 19. 4) what it means and what shall be therein, Posterity will better understand. Perhaps we may be as wide of the meaning thereof as our Forefathers were of the State and Condition of the times of Antichrist. Yet as they in this missed not of the main, but erred in the manner and particular Circumstances; so would it be considered whether the conceit the Ancients had of this Regnum Christi contains not likewise some general Truth received from the eldest times, though deformed with many erroneous misconceits and idle, yea some not tolerable, fancies.
The End of the Fifth Book.