GENERAL REMARKS
The time in which we live appears to be rife with inventions. The rage for novelty
is unbounded. We marvel that Mohammed, aided by the sword, succeeded in converting
so many to his doctrine. But Mohammed acknowledged certain fundamental truths; and,
to use a nautical phrase, from them he took his departure. He took advantage of the
popular belief in Judaism and Christianity, and molded that belief into such shape as
answered his purpose. If a man heard the alarm of fire, and became convinced that a
conflagration was raging in some part of the city, it might be easy for an impostor to
persuade him that the house of Mr. A, Mr. B, or Mr. C, was burning, and even that one of
the tenant's family had perished in the flames. Convince a countryman that
the smallpox is raging in Boston, and you may locate the disorder in any part of the city
which suits your convenience.
The skeptic believes nothing, and is not deceived by false prophets. He rejects
the premises, and the argument falls to the ground. The true believer must watch, or
he will fall into error. The skeptic is a ship becalmed; the believer is a ship
under full headway: the helm must be nicely watched, or the vessel will run upon the
rocks. The Saviour told his church to beware of the lo heres and lo theres. No
such caution was necessary for the unbelieving Jews.
This is the day of strange things. We have phrenology, animal magnetism, sleeping
preaching, political crises, and the end of the world. Many modern inventions are
truly useful, for science pursues her steady and onward march; but science is always
followed by her shadow, which some mistake for the substance. The same may be said
of religion. The benign effects of Christianity upon the world, since its
first introduction by the blessed Redeemer, may be traced in all our social institutions;
but there is a shade even to this picture, for the recipients of religion are but men.
Hence we have to mourn over the consequences of bigotry, intolerance, and
fanaticism. Many deceivers have crept under the sacred mantle of religion, and Mr.
William Miller is one of them. Whether he has been first himself deceived, or
whether he is wittingly practising a pious fraud, is known to the Searcher of
hearts. I have but to point out sundry errors and weak places in his book;
sufficient, however to destroy his credibility, but not to prove that the end of the word
is distant; for "of that day knoweth no man"; and we are told that it is even
hidden from the angels.
If a man were to prophesy that, on a certain day during the next year, Washington city
would be destroyed by an earthquake, who could positively declare the contrary? I
pretend not to know that the world will survive the year 1843; but I think that Mr.
William Miller knows as little about it as I do.
Predictions similar to that which we are noticing have been made at various times.
About forty years ago it was currently reported, among a certain class of the
community, that a child, on first coming into the world, miraculously spoke, and declared
that, on a certain day, the consummation of all things would take place. A Mr.
Edwards, of New York, fixed upon a certain day in the year 1812 for that important event.
He published it through a speaking-trumpet about the streets, and many weak men and
women believed the report. The day came, and with it a tempest. In the country
many trees were blown down, and large hailstones smote the earth. Many fell on their
knees and prayed for mercy. The storm passed by, and their fears were at an
end. But it would be just to conclude that the effect of those fears was far from
salutary, and that they were calculated to work much mischief upon persons in delicate
health. The Almighty has wisely hidden that day from us. Let the man who would
rashly essay to raise the veil, ponder well upon the responsibility he assumes. Let
him not imagine that he does God service by terrifying the weak, and, in this way, driving
them into the church. Such was not the policy of the apostle, who cautioned the
flock not to be terrified by word or by epistle, as if the great day of the Lord was at
hand. Let those clergymen who willfully encourage Miller's imposture bear in mind
that the cause of truth can never be aided by deception; and that, if they should now
gain a few converts through his instrumentality, their loss will eventually be greater
than their gain. That portion of their wall which is built with his untempered
mortar will, when it fall, carry with it some of the more sound mason-work, and
"great will be the fall thereof." Those who are driven into the church by
groundless fears will prove sad converts when those fears are removed by the disgraceful
exposure of their prophet. A sectarian triumph of three years will hardly compensate
them for the reproof of their own consciences, and for making merchandise of men by
feigned words, or by withholding sound ones. Suppose that Christ had not risen from
the dead; then would the apostle's faith have been in vain; and how can it be expected
that those who have embraced religion on the credit of Mr. Miller's prediction will remain
firm in the faith after the imposture is exposed?
If Miller is desirous of making money, it appears to me that he might have chosen some
more harmless species of charlatanry than wandering about the country and frightening the
simple inhabitants. His manner of dealing with his subject is reprehensible.
He not only strains the meaning of the text, gives forced and unnatural constructions, but
also abounds in palpable falsehoods, and evinces a vindictive and intolerant spirit,
better becoming an imp of Satan than a follower of Jesus Christ our Lord.
I believe the man is a farmer; and he is doubtless very conversant with cattle of all
kinds; and therefore handles calves, rams, and horned beasts generally, like one who has
been brought up to the business. He frequently takes "a slide" from the
tip of one horn to the root of another, and, indeed, moves among them so recklessly as to
in manifest danger of impalement.
It must be a matter of surprise to those who have been seduced by the ravings of this
man, that no commentator, no learned or erudite man, since the establishment of
Christianity, has come to the same conclusions with himself. The truth is, that no
man of name and influence has yet had the presumption to point out that "day for
which all other days were made." It remained for this famous revivalist
to make the grand discovery, and that by the force of mathematical reasoning. It is
remarkable that none of the learned Jews, who are so conversant with the Old Scriptures,
that none of the apostles, fathers, or modern divines, have been beforehand with the
gentleman from Hampton. Of course, he proscribes all the parsons and priests of
modern date, and pronounces the D.D.'s a set of ambitious, skeptical, and avaricious
ignoramuses. Nothing is more useless than a liberal education, in the eyes of those
who never enjoyed its advantages. It is evident, however, that the gentleman is very
partial to arithmetic.
If Miller's calculations are correct, it is very evident that he is wiser than the
angels, the prophets, the apostles, and the saints. It was an angel who was
commanded to make Daniel understand the vision. Now, if that angel showed the
prophet that the world would be destroyed in 2300 years, then is it not true, as Christ
declared, that "of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels
which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father."
We are also informed that, "In such an hour as you think not, the Son of man
cometh;" which will not be the case with the Millerites, if his prediction
shall be fulfilled.
The author of this work, in replying to William Miller, is principally actuated by a
desire to set truth in the foremost rank; and, in so doing, he feels called upon to answer
him in the plainest and simplest manner, without evasion or compromise.
Consequently, this work cannot be sectarian. Plain truth will do justice to all
sects, without favor or partiality. I feel myself the opponent of Miller's theory;
and, if he does injustice to any unpopular class of the community, and thus strengthens
his argument by appealing to common prejudice, even at the risk of being considered
partial to such injured class of the community. But this work is not written for the
purpose of building up any particular creed; and I hope its effect -- if it have
any effect -- will be rather to sink arbitrary distinctions, and establish that
universal charity which becomes us as brethren of the same great family.
As I have brought my labors to a conclusion in less that two weeks from the time when I
first saw Miller's book; and as I had previously no knowledge whatever of the ground he
took, or the arguments he used, it can occasion no surprise if my answer lacks the
completeness or finish which, under other circumstances, I should have regarded as
indispensable.
I saw this wolf ravaging the flock; I saw weak men and timid women turning pale at the
name of this ferocious animal, dismayed at his howlings, and yet following him in his
track: there was no time to select a patent rifle, and to cast the nicely-rounded
ball. I snatched down the rusty musket from over the mantle, and, thrusting in a
handful of slugs, pursued him to his den. Whether my shot has taken effect or not,
the public must judge.
Boston,
February, 1840.
MILLER OVERTHROWN.
-------------------------------
CHAPTER I.
The first lecture in Miller's book appears designed to prove that there will be a day of
judgment and resurrection of the dead, when the world will be destroyed by fire. In
this point, our author does not differ from many other professing Christians; and I shall
not examine his doctrines, only in so far as they are peculiar to himself. Yet, even
in the first lecture, there are some things worthy of notice. He states that,
"at the destined hour," all things on earth shall be purged and cleansed by
fire; that the earth shall rise from its ashes pure and sanctified, and that here
the Lord Jesus shall reign in person, and all his holy saints with him. At this
time, the wicked will be destroyed, together with the "antichristian beast,"
whose civil power, he says, is already destroyed, but which shall now be burned with fire,
and her flesh given to the dogs. Our author gloats over the reeking limbs of this
beast very much as if he were one of those devouring dogs himself; and certainly no
animal, either human or bestial, ever betrayed the same exulting ferocity over a fallen
enemy which this man does in the prospect of witnessing the destruction and utter despair
of our Catholic neighbors. It is to be feared that he knows not what manner of
spirit he is of.
As a sample of the general unfairness which characterizes Miller's work, let the reader
take the following: In his very first lecture, he speaks of Christ's prophecy respecting
the destruction of the temple, and quotes largely from the 24th chapter of Matthew, to
prove that his views of a final day of judgment are orthodox. After giving us all
which he thinks will strengthen his argument, he carefully omits the 36th verse:
But of that day and hour knoweth no man; no, not the angels of heaven, but my
Father only.
Why does this great advocate of the Bible so lightly skip over the above verse?
It came directly in his way, and required an explanation. He is continually bawling
about the importance of those texts which he imagines to be favorable to his own views,
but brushes away the others as if unworthy of his notice. Does not this prove that
the man is going about to establish his own doctrines, and not the doctrines which are
taught in holy Scripture? What confidence can be placed in so uncandid a
commentator? Has he ever read that "the Scripture is of no private
interpretation?" If so, how dare he thus pick and cull in order to make it bend
to his individual opinions? Is this the course of an honest man?
In this lecture there are many texts brought from the Old Testament which evidently
have no allusion to the last day; but they are all worked in, and harnessed to his team,
without regard to reason or propriety. What does the reader think of the following
texts? They are unceremoniously applied to the day of final judgment:
Balaam was constrained to admit, "Out of Jacob shall he that shall have
dominion, and shall destroy him that remaineth of the city," plainly referring to the
judgment day; for he says, "Alas! who shall live when God doeth this?"
Our author says,
And Moses as plainly refers to this day in Deut. xxxii. 43: "Rejoice, O ye
nations, with his people; for he will avenge the blood of his servants, and will render
vengeance to his adversaries, and will be merciful to his land and to his people."
Such texts are brought forward in support of the belief in a general judgment, and the
destruction of this globe by fire.
It is plain that the gentleman belongs to the old school of theologians who thrived in
Scotland in the time of Oliver Cromwell. One of those worthies preached with great
zeal against gayety of apparel and personal decorations. It was at that time common
with the bucks or dandies to wear a bunch of hair on top of the forehead, which they
styled the top-knot. The preacher gave out his text: "Let him that is on the
house-top not come down." He then expressed his intention of improving on the
latter part of the text, and immediately vociferated, in tones of thunder, "Top-not,
come down!" From this portion of Scripture he proved, to the satisfaction of
the brethren, that the Saviour had always held top-knots in great detestation, and that
all who were found with those crowns of Satan on their heads at the great day of
vengeance, would be burnt up like stubble.
Who can fail to trace the resemblance between the anti-top-knot preacher and the
gentleman from Hampton when he reads the following text, brought forward in support of the
doctrine of a general judgment, and the destruction of the world by fire, (Mal. iv. 2):
But unto you that fear my name shall the sun of righteousness arise with healing
in his wings, and ye shall go forth and grow up as calves of the stall.
It is certainly very difficult to understand this passage as our author does, unless we
infer from it the destruction of the world on the ground that calves are fatted for the
slaughter.
Before concluding the lecture, our author warns his readers against the sin of unbelief
-- the sin of disbelieving him. He evidently regards himself as
one of the watchmen, now commissioned to give the midnight cry, "Behold, the
bridegroom cometh!" Eternal punishment is threatened against those who
disregard the warning voice of Mr. Miller, and those who will not adopt his
interpretations of the prophecies! Presently we shall hear him storming about the
infallibility of the pope; whereas it is notorious that no pope ever presumed to name the
day on which the world should be destroyed. But all men are menaced with eternal
damnation who do not acknowledge the infallibility of Mr. William Miller, the arithmetical
prophet!
This lecture concludes with an earnest exhortation to the sinner to repent; and, in
short, the strain of the whole book will lead many to believe that the writer has been set
on by certain mercenary sectarians, to get up an excitement and fill their meeting-houses.
There is quite as much fraud as fanaticism in this business.
CHAPTER II.
In his second lecture the impostor undertakes to explain "the first
resurrection." He incorrectly states that "the word resurrection is
nowhere used in a figurative sense." How does he understand the following:
I am the resurrection and the life: if a man believe in me, though he were dead,
yet shall he live.
Does our author infer that Jesus had already risen from the dead, or that those who do
not believe in Christ will be annihilated? Is not the life here spoken of a
spiritual one; and does not the Saviour mean to say that he is the sovereign power which
animates those who are dead in trespasses and sins? Read John iii. 36.
"He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life; and he that believeth
not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.
I cannot believe that Miller has accidentally overlooked these texts; but I am
persuaded that he is determined to build up a theory, in defiance both of Scripture and
common sense. Now when a man does this, he places himself above the Scripture,
subjecting revelation to his own private judgment. He places himself above all
that is called God, and, sitting in the temple of God, does, in effect, give out that he
is God.
The arrogant assumptions of this man are beyond parallel. He commands all men to
believe him, on pain of damnation, and triumphs over the prospective wailings of sinners,
as if he expected to be clad in a fire-proof jacket when the immense bonfire should take
place.
That being raised into newness of life is figuratively spoken of as a resurrection,
must be evident to every reader who will turn to Rom. vi. 4-13:
Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was
raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness
of life. For, if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we
shall also in the likeness of his resurrection. Knowing this, that our old
man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we
should not serve sin; for he that is dead is freed from sin. Now if we be dead with
Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him; knowing that Christ, being raised
from the dead, dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him: for in that he died,
he died unto sin once; but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God. Likewise reckon ye
also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus
Christ our Lord. Let not sin, therefore, reign in your mortal body, that ye should
obey it in the lusts thereof. Neither yield ye your members as instruments of
unrighteousness unto sin; but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from
the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.
Here we perceive that Christ declared himself to be "the resurrection and the
life," and Paul illustrates and explains the figure. But this would not suit
Mr. Miller's theory; therefore plain Scripture testimony must be thrust aside to make way
for 1843.
After saying that the righteous will be raised a thousand years before the wicked, and
that they will live a thousand years upon the earth in a happy and holy state, he quotes
from Rev. xx. 1. He says that the angel who came down from heaven and bound Satan a
thousand years was the Lord Jesus himself. We object to this, on the ground
that all the angels are but ministers of Christ. He now describes the reign of the
saints on earth after the world has been purified by fire, and the devil pinioned.
Here we have Miller's first resurrection. He continues:
Then comes in our text, which has and will be explained in the lecture, 7th
verse: "And, when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his
prison."
He adds:
We may reasonably expect that, when Satan is let loose, all the damned spirits
are let loose with him; and it has been strongly implied they were to live again in the
body at the end of the thousand years, 8th verse: "And shall go out," that is,
Satan, "to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth."
In order to show that, at the time of loosing Satan, there were none but holy saints
upon the earth, our author finds it necessary to let loose all the damned spirits with
him. However necessary this may be to prove Miller's theory, we find no such thing
in the Scriptures; but we do read, in the last chapter of Revelations, 18th verse
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.
Concerning the enlargement of Satan, the Scripture saith, verses 7, 8,
And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his
prison, and shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four
quarters of the earth, Gog and Mogog, to gather them together to battle; the number of
whom is as the sand of the sea. And they went up the breadth of the earth, and
compassed the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city, &c.
Here we are distinctly taught that the saints will not inhabit the whole earth, and
that the whole earth will not be pure and regenerated; for all save the city is inhabited
by the wicked nations. But these wicked insurgents are slain by fire from heaven;
and this is what our author terms "the second death;" for he states that what
follows is only another view of the same things. So far from that, what follows is a
continuation of the vision; and it is not until after the general resurrection of the dead
that the second death occurs, as the apostle testifies, verse 14: "And death and hell
were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death."
A more willful perversion of Scripture can hardly be conceived. The text says
that fire came down from heaven and devoured the belligerent sinners, and immediately
continues:
And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and
brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented
day and night forever and forever.
On the strength of this, our dishonest commentator adds:
In this verse the final condemnation of the wicked, soul and body, is
given, and the last that God has seen fit to reveal concerning them to us, that they are
cast into everlasting torment.
Not a syllable is here said about casting the wicked into everlasting
torment. We learn that the wicked nations were devoured by fire from heaven;
but that Satan, who deceived them, was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone.
Here is not, therefore, the judgment of the wicked; and the apostle goes on to speak of
the final judgment. Our author follows the apostle through what he terms his second
vision, until the sea has given up her dead, and death and hell have surrendered up their
inhabitants to be judged; and then says:
I conclude the apostle, after he had seen the righteous dead raised, small and
great, and stand before God, and saw the book of life open to justify them, and saw them
judged and rewarded, he then GLIDES down to the end of the thousand
years, and beheld the wicked dead given up by those elements and places wherein they had
been confined, during the millennial period, to be judged in the flesh, every man
according to his works.
Had the apostle been as slippery a sinner as himself, he might have glided
through a thousand years in this manner, and have kept his own counsel in the mean
time. The gentleman is very sensible of the difficulty into which he has plunged
himself, and adds:
This only can reconcile some of those conflicting passages (or seemingly so to
us) concerning the resurrection; and I cannot see any impropriety in thus understanding
these prophecies, for it is the common manner of the prophets, here a little and there a
little.
It is certainly the common manner of Mr. Miller to pick out "here a little
and there a little," in order to build up a theory which the whole tenor of Scripture
absolutely condemns; and, when he speaks of "conflicting passages," the reader
must see that this chapter contains passages which conflict with nothing but chimerical
theories like that under examination. Hence the necessity of gliding over a
thousand years, as well as a thousand passages, in order to establish the crude system of
Miller.
Our author shows a most indecent haste to have the "antichristian beast"
destroyed, and all the wicked safely housed in hell. We cannot avoid applying to him
the words of Capt. Thornton to Baillie Nicoll Jarvie, who counseled the immediate
execution of the Highland scout: "Be patient, sir; for, when it comes your own turn
to be hanged, you will be in no such ------ hurry!"
Our author regales himself with the following comfortable reflections:
Here the children of the kingdom are persecuted, tormented, perplexed, cast
down; but, in the kingdom of God, their enemies are all slain; they are comforted,
glorified, justified, exalted, and not a dog to move his tongue.
Our author doubtless expects to take his stand among the happy hosts: his skill in
arithmetic alone ought to entitle him to that distinction; while his intense hatred of
sinners and ten-horned animals gives evidence that he has triumphed over human nature.
I hazard the opinion that when it shall please God to plunge sinners into the gulf of
eternal woe, he can do it without any of Mr. Miller's assistance; and the extreme
officiousness of that gentleman, in this respect, would lead a stranger to mistake him for
one of the tormenting imps of the lower regions, instead of an angel of the heavenly
kingdom. There are in this lecture some rare commentaries on passages of holy writ;
but I cannot now pause to edify the reader with gleanings. The harvest is so rich,
that we can well spare those precious droppings of the wheat sheaves.
I would here remark that nothing is more easy than the founding of a plausible theory
from the Scriptures, so that you exercise a little ingenuity. By choosing such texts
as suit your purposes, explaining some of them literally, and others figuratively, now and
then appealing to the prejudices of the community, and anon exciting their fears, you may
hammer out a system as unlike the truth as possible; yet which; although full of holes,
like the cobweb, may yet entangle such flies as have not the strength of wing to force a
passage through it.
CHAPTER III.
We are now to examine Mr. Miller as an arithmetician; and, although the sum which he
compasses, and proves to his own satisfaction, is a very simple one, yet let it be
remembered that the attraction of gravitation was discovered by so simple a circumstance
as the fall of a ripe apple; and that apples have fallen ever since the world was
created. This old earth has been careering through the fields of ether some six
thousand years; yet she has, until now, been without a navigator to keep her reckoning,
and admonish the crew and passengers when she had nearly arrived at the end of her voyage.
The gentleman introduces his third lecture with the following text:
Dan. viii. 13, 14. Then I heard one saint speaking, and another saint said
unto that certain saint which spake, How long shall be the vision concerning the daily
sacrifice, and the transgression of desolation, to give both the sanctuary and the host to
be trodden under foot? And he said unto me, Unto two thousand three hundred days:
then shall the sanctuary be cleansed.
Our author adds, "or, justified, as it might have been translated."
Our author begins to explain what is meant in the text by "the daily
sacrifice." He says,
It is very evident, when we carefully examine our text, that it is to be
understood as referring to pagan and papal rites; for it stands coupled with "the
abomination of desolation," and performs the same acts, such as are ascribed to the
papal abomination -- "to give both the sanctuary and host to be trodden
under foot."
He says,
See also Rev. xi. 2 : "But the court which is without the temple leave out,
and measure it not; for it is given unto the Gentiles; and the holly city shall they tread
under foot forty and two months." This last text only has reference to the
papal beast, which was the image of the pagan.
It is well to state here that we are rather diffident about defining the meaning of the
Scripture texts: it will be perceived that our author has no scruples on that head.
He has a perfect knowledge of the Bible, and has ciphered it all out.
Our author says that by the sanctuary we must understand the temple at
Jerusalem, and those who worshipped therein; and that by the host we must
understand the Christian church, "who worship in the outer court," and are said
to be strangers and pilgrims on the earth, having no continual places, &c.
This is certainly figurative enough; and it is in this way that the Bible may be made
to mean anything. At the time that Daniel saw this vision, he was a captive in
Babylon. He was concerned about his own people and their worship, and inquired, with
the very natural anxiety of a pious young man, how long the sanctuary should be violated;
and he was answered, two thousand and three hundred days, which was the whole time in
which Antiochus persecuted his people, he being cut off by death at the end of six years
and nearly four months from the time that he commenced his persecutions. With
respect to the word host, it is no more allusion to the Christians than it has to
Jefferson's gun-boats, and is sometimes translated the strength. Some zealous men,
in their eagerness to prove the divine mission of the Messiah, would make it appear that
the Jewish prophets knew more about the future condition of the Christian church than did
the apostles themselves.
But it is needful that our author should give a peculiar meaning to the text --
otherwise 2300 days could not stand for 2300 years -- and fix the time for the
resurrection in 1843.
Nevertheless, we ought to be very cautious about disputing Mr. Miller, when he brings
forward such powerful proofs as the following:
What must we understand by days? In the prophecy of Daniel, it is
invariably to be reckoned years; for God hath so ordered the prophets to reckon
days. Num. xiv. 34. "After the number of days in which you searched the
land, even forty days, each day for a year, shall you bear your iniquities, even forty
years." Ezek. iv. 5,6. "For I have laid upon thee the years of their
iniquity, according to the number of the days, three hundred and ninety days; so shalt
thou bear the iniquity of the house of Israel. And when thou hast accomplished them,
lie again on thy right side, and thou shalt bear the iniquity of the house of Judah forty
days: I have appointed thee each day for a year." In these passages we prove
the command of God. We will also show that it was so called in the days of Jacob,
when he served for Rachel. Gen. xxix. 27. "Fulfill her week, (seven
days,) and we will give thee this also, for the service which thou shalt serve with me yet
other seven years."
After this, who can entertain a doubt that Jonah was three years in the whale's
belly? By that time, he must have been in a fine condition for gliding and
sliding. The people of Ninevah took time by the forelock in performing their works
of penance, seeing that the term of safety extended to forty years. Our author
might, in order to prove some other point, quote from the scriptures, 2 Pet. iii. 8:
"But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day with the Lord as a
thousand years, and a thousand years as one day:" and this declaration is made by St.
Peter immediately after affirming that the heavens and the earth were "reserved unto
fire against the day of judgment and perdition of unholy men."
Our author, however, is resolved that one day shall invariably mean one year. On
such brittle premises does Mr. Miller build up his system, and, with no better seal to his
mission, wanders about the country, alarming the weak, and disgusting the wise.
But he says that "the daily sacrifice" applies to pagan and papal rites; for
it stands coupled with "the abomination of desolation." The latter phrase
may be applied to more than one event; such as that under Antiochus; also when the Jewish
temple was razed by the Romans; and also anti-Christ, who, it is supposed, will come at
some future day, near the consummation of all things: but if the "Roman beast' was
anti-Christ, then should the world have been destroyed a thousand years ago. There
are no Papal rites to which the term "daily sacrifice" could allude. It
can be applied only to a custom among pagans and Jews.
The text from Revelations was of course written by St. John, while on the island of
Patmos, whither he had been banished; and it probably alludes to the fact than the pagan
persecutors always surrounded the true worshippers, who were obliged to secrete themselves
in sepulchers, caves, and other secret places, where they reared their altars and attended
to their religious duties; but of this there is no certainty.
Our author next slides into the vision of Nebuchadnezzar's image, and then the vision
of the four beasts. The latter beast probably means pagan Rome; and the text which
Miller quotes from Dan. vii. 21, 22, probably alludes to the downfall of the pagan power,
and the triumph of Christianity under Constantine:
I beheld, and the same horn made war with the saints, and prevailed against
them, until the Ancient of days came, [i.e. God arose for their deliverance,] and judgment
was given to the saints of the Most High; and the time came that the saints possessed the
kingdom.
This will be more apparent when we reflect that the prophet is speaking of one of the
kingdoms of this world, and not of an immortal and supernatural existence. It is not
probable that these prophesies have any allusion to the sins of the Christians, as our
author, in the plenitude of his sectarianism, would have us believe.
Our author mentions the seventy weeks, previous to the cutting off of the Messiah, each
day counting one year; and he argues from this that the 2300 days should be reckoned 2300
years. But the former prophesy alluded to a distant event, and an event of great and
surpassing importance; while the latter was one in which Daniel was peculiarly interested,
as an Israelite. I will illustrate this: The angel might have used the term seventy
weeks -- one day for a year -- when speaking of the Messiah; but if Daniel
had asked him how long it would be before he heard from Jerusalem and from his relatives
there, he would have been answered in a more familiar style. In speaking of a young
man recently deceased, we might say, "he was cut off in the morning of life,"
thus applying phrase proper to the early part of the day to a term of years; but if it was
a colt that had died, we should say, "he was two years old." The more
important the prophecy, the more likely would the angel be to speak in mystical terms.
Being willing to assist our author all we can, we will mention in passing, a discovery
of our own, although he may have already found it out. According to his calculation,
there were just as many weeks of years before the birth of Christ as there will be months
of years when the world is destroyed. If there were 534 years from the time that the
angel gave his last instructions to Daniel, up to the birth of Christ, there were 76 weeks
and a fraction inclusive. Now 2300 years from the time that Daniel held his
conversation with the angel are 76 months of years and a fraction inclusive. This is
a coincidence which the Millerites may not all have noticed.
But let us see if we cannot find another coincidence, which will serve to show that Mr.
Miller might have explained the vision, without burning us all up in 1843. We have
said that if the 2300 days were understood literally, it would make six years and nearly
four months -- the term of Antiochus's persecutions. But, if we reckon them
2300 weeks, it will make 44 years, the period when "the sanctuary was cleansed,"
and when, according to Mr. Miller's own showing, Ezra had liberty to build
Jerusalem. To use our author's words, -- "Here, then, we find the
fulfillment of what the angel told Daniel would be done under the command that would begin
the seventy weeks, and which is the same thing, the vision."
Let us examine this point a little. The angel tells Daniel that seventy weeks (of
years) after the order goes forth to build Jerusalem, the death of Christ would be
consummated. But Daniel had desired to know how long Jerusalem should be in the
power of the foe, and her sanctuary profaned. He is answered, 2300 days --
not of years but of weeks -- and in just 44 years after this conversation, the
decree is accordingly given to rebuild Jerusalem, to purify the sanctuary, and restore the
true worship. This is one theory, and I think it is a much more easy and natural one
than that of the gentlemen from Hampton; but neither of us may be right. Let the
reader turn to chapter and verse, and compare what is here written with Scripture itself.
After a great deal of senseless and incoherent raving about horns, images, and beasts,
which serves but to show the acrimony of the author's zeal, and the ferociousness of his
disposition, the third lecture closes with an address to the sinner. I close this
chapter by an address to the arithmetical saint himself. Go home, sir, to your
closet, fall on your knees, pray God to forgive you for all that you have charged upon
better men than yourself; and, above all, seek to obtain a clean heart, purged from
rancorous sectarianism, falsehood, and fiend-like enmity. You are, at present, in
the gall of bitterness, and the bond of iniquity.
CHAPTER IV.
Mr. Miller commences his fourth lecture with the following text:
Dan. ix. 24. Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people, and upon thy
holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make
reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the
vision and prophecy, and to anoint the Most Holy.
Our author goes on to say, that
This text furnished Simeon, Anna, Nathaniel, and others, with a strong faith
that they should see the consolation of Israel.
Whether it was this text or the Holy Ghost which enabled those faithful ones to discern
the Messiah in Jesus of Nazareth, I will not pretend to decide; but it is most singular
that neither of them, nor of the disciples, nor of the scribes or Pharisees, nor of the
early promulgators of the gospel, understood the "cleansing of the sanctuary" in
2300 days to mean the destruction of the world and the resurrection in 1843. It is
plain that the disciples understood no such thing, although they were conversant with the
Jewish scriptures, and with the prophet Daniel in an especial manner. They demanded
of Christ when the end of the world should come. In speaking of the destruction of
Jerusalem, the Saviour says:
But when you shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the
prophet, standing where it ought not, (let him that readeth understand,) then let them
that be in Judea flee to the mountains.
Of course this alludes to the Roman devastations, and has nothing to do with the end of
the world; and the "abominations of desolation" implies the heathen sacrilege,
or desecration of the holy temple and the holy city, which they utterly destroyed.
The Saviour then goes on -- as Mr. Miller believes -- to describe the
consummation of all terrestrial things, and adds: "But of that day and that hour
knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the
Father." It therefore appears that, however the good men and women may have
been enlightened by Daniel's vision, with respect to the time of the Savior's appearance
on earth, neither they nor any other person -- not even the angels -- could
draw from that vision, any information touching the time when the world should be
destroyed. But if the angels knew not, as Christ expressly says, how then could the
angels have revealed the secret to Daniel? All this our author passes by in silence;
and pronounces the sentence of endless damnation on such as prefer the testimony of the
Scripture to his own revival-hatching opinion. I have heard of popes who
excommunicated men for denying the faith of many centuries; but this modern pope would
send us all to perdition for differing from him in his private interpretation of
the Scriptures; and I have not a shadow of doubt, that, if he possessed the power, he
would imprison and burn all such as disputed the orthodoxy invented by himself.
The holy and inspired apostles did not pretend to know when the resurrection would take
place. How unfortunate that they had not the key to the old Scriptures, which has
since been found by William Miller of Hampton! St. Paul says, in writing to the
Thessalonians,
But of the times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write unto
you, for yourselves know perfectly, that the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the
night, to him and to all.
Consequently he knew nothing of the time when he should come. He had never ciphered
out Daniel's vision. Again, Paul writes:
Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, and by our
gathering together unto him, that ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither
by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter, as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand.
Why, what an oversight in Paul! Did he not know that this was the way to throw
cold water upon revivals, and to quiet people's minds, when they ought to be stirred up by
impending horrors? Ah! but Paul knew nothing of Mr. Miller's 2300 days; he was very
dull at figures, because he had not all the light which the thousand and one sects of this
day enjoy.
The most holy St. Peter says, in his second General Epistle:
But the heavens and the earth which are now, by the same word are kept in store,
reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men. But,
beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand
years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slack concerning his promise
as some count slackness; but is long-suffering to us-ward, not willing that any should
perish, but that all should come to repentance. (Chap. iii. 7-9.)
Who can gather from the above, that St. Peter entertained any opinion with regard to
the time? In fact, this was hidden even from the inspired apostles, and they were
left to form their own conjectures. From men and angels, as Christ says, that day
was hidden. The holy apostles were taught by the Holy Ghost all that was needful for
them and the church in that day; and they neither wrote nor asserted any thing contrary to
the truth; but it was not given them to know when the world would be
destroyed. Even the Son of man received not that from his Father, as one of the
truths to be communicated to us. In the bosom of that eternal Being, whose fiat
spoke myriad's of worlds into existence, reposes the dread secret; and neither apostle,
nor angel, nor martyr, nor saint, was ever intrusted with its keeping -- known only
to God. But William Miller has ferreted it out: he has done it by figures.
Everyone knows that "figures never lie" -- consequently the 2300 days
must inevitably stand for 2300 years; and "cleansing the sanctuary" at Jerusalem
must imply the burning up of the world, and a grand auto de fe of all who do
not believe in the infallibility of William Miller, the revivalist.
Our author says it was by this text -- the one quoted in the beginning of this
chapter -- that Caiaphas, the high-priest, knew it was expedient for Jesus to die.
And one of them named Caiaphas, being high-priest that same year, said unto
them, Ye know nothing at all, nor consider that it is expedient for us that one man should
die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not. (John xi. 49, 50.)
What shall we say to this abominable profanation of holy Scripture! Here we are
told by Mr. Miller that the high-priest put to death the Lord of life and glory, knowing
him to be the Messiah, the Prince of peace, the promised Shiloh ! ! Thus has this
desperate commentator made the Jews the willful murderer of their Messiah, and branded the
Son of God on the cross with falsehood; for he expressly says in his intercession
for them, "They know not what they do."
The prophecy of Daniel concerning Christ is so full, that no one could have mistaken
the true character of Jesus Christ, had he supposed those passages to apply to him.
Now Miller says that Jesus was cut off by the Jews, when the Jews knew that he was
their Messiah and the Holy One of God! Monstrous thought! The Jews did not
believe that Christ Jesus was the person spoken of by the prophet, and they put him to
death for professing to be the Son of God and the king of the Jews. We might almost
expect this commentator, in the next place, to fling the ear of the high-priest's
servant into our teeth, as scriptural proof that the wicked are to be cut off in
1843.
After a little more wrestling of Scripture, and bold assertion, the gentleman closes
his fourth lecture, as usual, by warning sinners of the approach of the great day.
This, like a woman's postscript, is always meant to be the most important and effectual
part of the lecture -- the grand finale -- and sufficiently explains the
object of the writer in putting together such a mass of blasphemy and nonsense.
CHAPTER V.
The fifth lecture commences with this text:
Rev. xiii. 18. Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count
the number of the beast; for it is the number of a man; and his number is six hundred
three score and six.
Our author then goes on as follows:
This text has caused as much speculation as any text in the whole Bible; rivers
of ink have been shed in trying to explain its meaning; brains have been addled in trying
to find some great mystery which the wisdom of this world, as was supposed, could only
discover; and, in trying to be wise above what was written, men have lost their balance,
and fell into absurdities too ridiculous to mention.
You need not mention them; for your illustration is sufficiently ample without notes or
appenda; if, indeed, there may not be more fraud than fanaticism in your attempts
to disturb the public mind. It must be conceded that this lecture smacks more
strongly of the former ingredient than of the latter one.
In the plenitude of his egregious egotism, he proposes,
1. To show what wisdom it is
of which the text speaks.
2. To speak of the beast num-
bered, and show what beast.
3. The number, and what we
may understand by it.
First, -- he says that the wisdom here spoken of is not the wisdom of men, and
proves by several texts that human wisdom is of small value, when brought to bear upon
religious matters. From all of this, we may conclude that he regards arithmetic as a
divine science.
Secondly, -- the beast numbered in the text. He here says that it is the
first beast, mentioned in the fore part of the same chapter. He says, --
See our context, 12th verse: "And he exerciseth all the power of the first
beast before him;" that is, the beast which John saw come up out of the sea, (the
Roman government,) "having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns,
and upon his head the name of blasphemy; and the beast which I saw was like unto a
leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion;
and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority." By this
beast, I understand the same as Daniel's fourth kingdom, the Roman government; by
"names of blasphemy," I understand a mode of worship which would be idolatrous
or blasphemous; by the dragon, we must understand the civil power of the same government
giving its power to the ecclesiastical beast, whether pagan or papal. 3d verse:
"And I saw one of his heads of [blasphemy, pagan] as it were wounded to death; and
his deadly wound was healed, [by the substitution of the papal blasphemous head,] and all
the world wondered after the beast."
Here we perceive that a wounded head may be healed by the substitution of another
head. If our author has really the skill to do this thing, what a capital surgeon he
would have been in France, at the time the guillotine was doing its work!
It was necessary for our author to identify the beast numbered with the first beast, in
order that he might apply a verse to him which speaks of the first beast.
Accordingly, he slides over the second beast, and does not stop until he gets back
to the tenth verse:
He that leadeth into captivity shall go into captivity;
he that killeth with the sword must be killed with the sword. Here is the
faith and patience of the saints.
On the strength of this, our author says of the first beast:
In the tenth verse, he shows us how this civil power should be destroyed, by
captivity and the sword; and this was fulfilled in 1798, when the pope was carried a
captive into France, and the states of Italy were conquered by the sword of the French
army.
A mighty event, truly, to make so much ado about! It is true that all Europe felt
the edge of Napoleon's sword; but I do not know why the war in Italy should have
particularly engaged the attention of the evangelist. But any thing answers our
author's purpose.
There is great incongruity in our author's explanations here. He not only slides,
but seems to perform that evolution which the lads term cutting a pigeon-wing, on
skates.
The gentleman states that when the beast received the second head, and his wounded one
was thus made whole, the Roman government became papal; and that it was subsequently
visited by the sword and captivity. The second beast is next spoken of by the
apostle, and the chapter ends with the text in the beginning of this chapter. This
text he carries back to the first beast, and applies it to him, with his old head on his
shoulders, in order to show that it means pagan Rome, and that her number was 666.
He then goes on to prove that the last vestige of paganism vanished from the Roman
empire 666 years from the period when the Romans became connected with the Jews, and, by
becoming connected with them, fell under the eye of prophecy. Had the number fallen
short of 666, Miller would have shown us that the beast was to remain that number of years
after John had the vision, or after some other time convenient for his purpose. But
this is most lame; for if this number alludes to the number of years which the beast with
ten horns and seven heads should reign or exist, how can the mere wounding of
one of his heads, which wound was healed, be the exit or downfall of the whole beast,
with seven heads? What if one man should say that the number of another man's years
was forty, when it could be proved that he had merely bruised one of his limbs at the age
of forty years, and that limb had been healed again, and he had lived afterward to the age
of seventy?
In this lecture we find little said about the second beast with horns like a
lamb. It appears, however, that the first beast is living, and in good case, while
the second beast is making an image to him -- to "the beast which had the
wound by a sword and did live." If so, we have popery and paganism both
existing at once; but we learn that paganism was put to death, and died in earnest, in the
year 508. So says our author. And he endeavors to make this consistent, by
bringing up the last verse of the chapter. We learn that the wounded head was truly healed,
and that the first beast lived. Now our gentleman knows that paganism did not live;
so he tries to kill him with the last verse. But, if the last verse applies to the
length of time which the beast actually lived, why does our author pretend that it applies
to the time which he had lived previous to receiving the wound?
Indeed, here is something incomprehensible. He says that one of the beast's heads
was wounded to death, and that this wound was inflicted on paganism. Now the apostle
tells us that "his deadly wound was healed"; not that another head was
substituted. Our author confounds the wound in this head with the death of the
beast; but the beast recovered, and did not die. Our author, in speaking of the
wound inflicted on one of the beast's heads, says:
And that in the year 496, Clovis, king of France, was converted and baptized
into the Christian faith, and that the remainder of these kings (pagan kings) embraced the
religion of Christ shortly after, the last of which was christianized in the year 508, and
of course paganism ceased, having lost its head by the power of the sword, or kings who
wield the sword.
This, he says, makes up the 666 years since pagan Rome had made her league with the
Jews; and this is the number of the first beast, or the term of her existence since the
league.
Now let us read the testimony of Scripture on this subject, and see whether the number
of the first beast was 666 years or not, according to the author's calculation:
And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death: and his deadly wound was
healed; and all the world wondered after the beast. And they worshipped the dragon
which gave power unto the beast: and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto
the beast? Who is able to make war with him? And there was given unto him a
mouth speaking great things and blasphemies; and power was given unto him to continue forty
and two months.
Now Miller says that the end of this beast was in AD 508; but the Scripture says he had
power to continue forty-two months; and Miller says that forty-two months stand for 1260
years. Miller also says, as quoted above, that paganism ceased in 508, having lost
its head. But the Scripture says its head was healed.
He also says that the forty-two months applies to the image beast; but so
strange an assertion can best be answered by requesting the reader to turn to the chapter
itself. It is plain that the first beast is alive through all the operations of the
second beast.
Even admitting that the last verse in the chapter applies to the first beast, it cannot
be intended to define the number of years that he lived; because the beast lived after
receiving the wound, at which period the 666 years came to an end. Indeed, our
author himself says that "the deadly wound was healed, [by the substitution of the
papal blasphemous head,] and all the world wondered after the beast." What has
the substitution of this new head to do with the lifetime of the beast -- the
number of his years? The Scripture says that the beast continued to live, and
"his deadly wound was healed"; so that 666 years were not the number of his
years, nor anything like it. It may be doubted whether this number of 666 alludes to
years at all. The words of Scripture are, --
And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the
beast, or the number of his name. Here is wisdom. Let him that hath
understanding count the number of the beast; for it is the number of a man; and his number
is six hundred three-score and six.
The "number of the beast" probably refers the number of his name as it were
upon a roll with other names, and numbered from the top of the roll. Such number
would be "the number of the beast."
I again quote from the fifth lecture:
Rev. xviii. 7: "And the angel said unto me, Wherefore didst thou
marvel? I will tell thee the mystery of the woman, and of the beast that carrieth
her, which hath the seven heads and ten horns. The beast that thou sawest was, and
is not; and shall ascend out of the bottomless pit, and go into perdition; and they that
dwell on the earth shall wonder, whose names are not written in the book of life from the
foundation of the world, when they behold the beast that was, and is not, and yet
is."
"That was," pagan Rome before John saw his vision; "and is
not," yet in its last stage of papal Rome; "and yet is," in the same
spirit; for papal Rome is but an image of paganism, as says the apostle, 2 Thess. ii. 6,7:
"And now ye know what withholdeth, that he may be revealed in his time, for the
mystery of iniquity doth already work." And 1 John ii. 18: "Little
children, it is the last time, and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now
are there many antichrists, whereby we know it is the last time."
Thus far we have followed our author. Now let us examine his positions.
The apostle had just been speaking of Babylon, for such was the figurative name applied
to pagan Rome, from her resemblance to ancient Babylon. It appears to me that, in
order to carry out and explain this figure, he says the beast "that was,"
meaning old Babylon, which was at that time a heap of ruins; "and is not, because she
had been many years a desolate place; "and yet is," which means that she had
revived in her prototype, pagan and persecuting Rome. Far be it from me to explain
the book of Revelations; which book, according to one of the ancient fathers,
"contains almost as many mysteries as words"; but which is, nevertheless,
perfectly intelligible to every ranting revivalist of the present day. But I think
that my explanation will hold quite as well as that of Miller.
But now let us present one striking example of Mr. Miller's disingenuousness. He
says "Papal Rome is but an image of paganism, as saith the apostle." He
then quotes from Paul, and then from John, thus: "Little children, it is the last
time; and, as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many
antichrists, whereby we know it is the last time."
We can understand this declaration of the apostle but in one way. The last day
was hidden from the apostles, as was elsewhere observed; and they were left to their own
conjectures respecting it. But one thing they were assured of, to wit, that
antichrist should come before the consummation of all things. They believed that
immediately after he came the world would be destroyed. Such, at least, appears to
have been the opinion of St. John. Also St. Paul, in writing to the Thessalonians,
tells them not to be deceived in regard to the second coming of Christ, as the man of sin
must be revealed before he comes. St. John, adopting this view of the subject, says
that the last time has arrived, for there are already many antichrists. But what is
his definition of antichrist? Did he, as our author contends, mean to say that papal
Rome was antichrist? If so, he had a singular way of expressing it. Let us now
give the whole of St. John's idea on this subject, instead of one verse. He says,
For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes,
and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world
passeth away, and the lust thereof; but he that doeth the will of God abideth
forever. Little children, it is the last time; and as ye have heard that the
antichrist shall come, [before the last time,] even now are there many antichrists,
whereby we know that it is the last time.
The apostle then goes on to describe these antichrists:
They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they
would, no doubt, have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made
manifest that they were not all of us.
Thus far, we understand that those antichrists went out from the visible church;
which cannot be said of the papal church, as it is only said of her that she has become corrupted;
and this charge of corruption comes from those who have gone out from her.
But let us follow the apostle still farther, and see what are the peculiar
characteristics of these antichrists:
But ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things. [This a
general epistle to the whole church.] I have not written to you [the whole church]
because ye know not the truth, but because ye know it, and that no lie is of the
truth. Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is
antichrist that denieth the Father and the Son. Whoever denieth the Son, the
same hath not the Father; but he that acknowledgeth the Son hath the Father also.
Now what could be Mr. Miller's inducement to apply the verse from St. John to papal
Rome? Does the church say that Jesus is not the Christ? Does she deny the
Father or the Son? But, lest Mr. Miller should endeavor to figure away these express
declarations of the apostle with regard to antichrists, let us hear what the same apostle
says elsewhere on the same subject; and let it be borne in mind that we are quoting from
the writer of the Revelations.
In his second Epistle, St. John says,
For many deceivers are entered in to the world, who confess not that Jesus
Christ is come in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist.
I think it unnecessary to say more in evidence that St. John could not have meant to
apply the term of antichrist to the papal church.
The following is another precious sample of our author's reasoning:
"And the ten horns which thou sawest upon the beast, these shall hate the
whore, and shall make her desolate and naked, and cut her flesh, and burn her with
fire."
He then says,
This text has been literally accomplished within a
few years; and those kingdoms which were of the ten kingdoms which first gave power
to the beast, have,
of late, persecuted and destroyed her who is the abomination of the whole
earth. Witness the trans- actions of Great Britain, France, Spain, Portugal,
Austria, Naples, and Tuscany, the seven kingdoms which were not plucked up by the little
horn: each of these nations have, in their turn, resisted the power and pretensions of the
pope of Rome, until his civil authority is reduced to a cipher in all these
kingdoms. "For God hath put it into their hearts to fulfill his will, and to
agree and give their kingdom unto the beast, until the words of God shall be
fulfilled,"
-- when, our author says, the papal beast will be sunk in the deep forever and
ever.
Here our author quotes Scripture to prove that these kings will give their kingdom to
the beast, "until the words of God shall be fulfilled"; that is, until
the beast shall be smitten and destroyed by the breath of Christ in his second
coming. Nevertheless, he has thought proper to tell us that, instead of giving their
kingdom to the Roman beast, or civil power, they have persecuted and destroyed him.
The Scripture says also that these kings should "burn her with fire."
Pagan Rome was, indeed, burned; but this has not happened to papal Rome. Neither
could it be said with propriety that papal Rome was the abomination of the whole earth,
when France and England, at different times persecuted her. But it might have been
said of pagan Rome. In these latter days, we comprise the populous country of China,
together with North America, under the denomination of the whole earth. It is true,
that Bonaparte persecuted the pope; but he was afterward chained to a rock, and France
went back into the old track, while England assisted in restoring the old order of things
in Italy.
CHAPTER VI.
The following text commences the sixth lecture:
Dan. x. 14. Now I am come to make thee understand what shall befall thy
people in the latter days; for yet the vision is for many days.
We must here observe that the angel has come to tell Daniel what shall befall his
people (the Jews) in the latter days. Mr. Miller chooses to apply the prophecies to
the world at large, and to nations that sprung up after the Jews had been scattered over
the world by the destruction of Jerusalem. Our author makes the text bend to such
circumstances as he chooses, in order to pave the way for the destruction of the world in
1843. In this way, one might easily build up a thousand theories. But some of
our author's explanations are absolutely ridiculous; insomuch so, that one can scarcely
believe him to be in earnest. To follow him, step by step, from the commencement to
the close of this lecture, would be a dizzying task. So much marching and counter
marching, doubling and turning, bolting and whirling, as we should be obliged to put in
practice, if we kept constantly at his heels, would rather have a tendency to bewilder the
common reader than to enlighten him. It shall therefore be our aim to expose his
principle absurdities; which may be done in a few words. This lecture is
sophistry sophisticated; it is darkness painted black; it is the crookedness of
error, pregnant with a knot of serpents; it is madness and folly brayed together in a
mortar, until they seem to form but one ingredient.
Beginning at the eleventh chapter of Daniel, our author goes through it, up to the
fortieth verse applying the prophecies, verse after verse, to such persons and events as
he sees fit to drag into his service. Of course, some generally-acknowledged truths
are here told; for it was impossible for him to avoid it. Alexander, Cleopatra, and
others are treated with decency, and generally put into their proper places. But he
sees fit to give Antiochus the go-by, and to place others in his stead who are not even
hinted at in the vision. The angel came to show Daniel what should befall his
people in the latter days, and our author suddenly drags in the pope of Rome and
Bonaparte, to enact their several parts in company with Antiochus, Cleopatra, Alexander,
and the king of Egypt. Let the reader turn to Maccabees, and make himself familiar
with the history of Antiochus, who ordered the idol of Jupiter Olympus to be set up in the
sanctuary of the Jewish temple, and then judge whether the following verse does not apply
to him, (Dan. xi. 31) :
And arms shall stand on his part, and they shall pollute the sanctuary of
strength, and shall take away the daily sacrifice, and they shall place the abomination
that maketh desolate.
Again, Dan. xi. 28: "Then shall he return into his land with great riches; and his
heart shall be against the holy covenant; and he shall do exploits, and return to his own
land."
This is probably Antiochus; but, in order to accommodate the text to Octavius Caesar,
the author says, --
Then Octavius returned to Rome. And the next exploit (!) that this fourth
kingdom would do, would be against the holy covenant. They, by their authority,
crucified our Saviour, persecuted the saints, and destroyed Jerusalem; and this fills up
the acts of this pagan history until towards the close of the reign of the pagan beast.
So these are the exploits of Octavius Caesar, for only one person is spoken of
in the text; and, in order to make these exploits as imposing as possible, it is necessary
to term the crucifixion of the Saviour an exploit, and to lay the act at the door
of Octavius Caesar, or the Roman emperor at least. This is too much: this is too
great an insult to the understanding of the reader. Jesus Christ was crucified under
the authority of Pontius Pilate, but sorely against the wishes of the governor, and
because he was compelled to assent by the Jews. But is this brought in proof that
the heart of Octavius Caesar was against the holy covenant? It is true, that at a
subsequent day, Jerusalem was besieged and finally destroyed by the Romans; but what has
all this to do with Octavius Caesar, or with the text? And is this the way that the
destruction of the world in 1843 is to be proved? But the very next verse says:
"At the time appointed, he shall return and come toward the south; but it shall not
be as the former, or as the latter."
The latter part of this verse has been translated, -- "But the latter time
shall not be as the former;" and this verse is evidently a continuation of the
history of the same man -- Antiochus; and this last verse alludes to the fact that
the Roman ambassadors, with Popilius, came in galleys, and obliged him to depart out of
Egypt. But our author takes a slide, or a stride, and suddenly places
us at the end of the 666 years. Hear this outrageous man:
He shall return, and come towards the south, "not as the former or the
latter." Not Romans going into Egypt, the latter; nor the Syrians going into
Egypt, the former; but Italy must take her turn to be overrun by the northern
barbarians.
The reader will agree with me, that our author might well hang up his fiddle on this
peg; as the world is safe from this moment. But he has gone farther, and we
must follow him. But how has he come to the sage conclusion noticed above? It
is built upon the simple fact that the verse commences with these words, --
"At the time appointed."
Of course this means that, at the appointed time, this victorious tyrant should receive
a check. But our gentleman has a certain theory to establish, and "Fortune
favors those who dare." A more daring commentator has not risen up in these
latter days; for he places common sense at defiance.
This jump has brought our author directly into St. Peter's chair at Rome. I
am not surprised at this great hurry to get there: His claim of infallibility entitles him
to the seat.
Verse 30. For the ships of Chittim shall come against him; therefore he
shall be grieved, and return, and have indignation against the holy covenant: so shall he
do; he shall even return, and have intelligence with them that forsake the holy covenant.
Now this is elsewhere written, -- "And the galleys and the Romans shall
come upon him"; alluding to the fact that Antiochus was compelled to leave Egypt by
the Roman ambassadors, who came in galleys. But, in pursuance with his plan, our
author places these transactions in the year 447 after Christ, and makes the latter part
of this verse to allude to the persecution of the Christians by the Roman emperors!
Next follows, verse 31, -- "And arms shall stand on his part," &c.
As I have elsewhere said, he carries this verse up to the papal beast.
Our author says:
But the reign of papacy would not be set up until AD 538, and would end us in
the same year, AD 1798, being 1260. This, then, is the history the angel will give
us next. Verse 32: "And such as do wickedness against the covenant shall be
corrupted by flatterers; but the people that do know their God shall be strong, and do
exploits."
The reader will observe, that, although our author places these events after the coming
of Christ, nothing is said by the angel of the new dispensation, or of a new religion of
the Jews and the worship of Israel's God, without relation to the Mediator. He
explains the last verse which I have quoted:
The ecclesiastical historians tell us that, in the beginning of the sixth
century, about AD 538, a number of writers in that day undertook to prove that the papal
chair, together with councils of his approval, were infallible, and their laws were
binding on the whole church. Those writers were highly honored, and flattered with
promotion by the reigning powers. While, on the other hand, there were many who
opposed this power of the pope and clergy, who were denounced as schismatics and Arians,
and driven out of the kingdoms under the control of the Romish church.
We beg the reader first to read the verse, and then his explanation, and see if ten
thousand better ones could not be invented. But we have some observations to
make on Miller's last quoted words.
There were, indeed, several writers in the Christian church about the time mentioned by
Miler; but the honors and rewards that they obtained were few and far between. That
writers flourished any more in or very near the year 538 than they had done long before
and long after, and indeed throughout all the early ages of the church, is a mere
pretense; and all the members of the church who did write, of course upheld the doctrines
of their church against the various opinions which were continually broached by
surrounding controversialists. For instance, about the year 510, Fulgentius wrote a
confutation of Arianism. He also wrote against the Pelagians and Nestorians; and
such was the character of the works put forth in those days, works which we make no doubt
Mr. M. would himself have approved. But it is surprising -- if, indeed, any
thing could surprise us when coming from him -- that he should pretend the councils
were not regarded as infallible until about the year 538. All this is said in order
to make his figures come out right, and to make it appear that the papal beast did not
begin to roar until such a time as he is ready to exhibit him. How can he pretend
that the authority of these councils was not acknowledged till 538, when the council of
Nice was held in A. D. 325, and promulgated the famous Nicene Creed, without which
promulgation, and its reception by the church, Mr. Miller himself might have been a
Unitarian?
Nor need we stop at the Nicene council of 325. We read, Acts xv. of the first
general council in the church, and that council was regarded as infallible; or if it was
not so, then Mr. Miller must not take the Bible for his rule of faith. We find, in
chap. xv. that Paul and Barnabus disputed with certain Jewish interlopers who contended
for circumcision. The brethren were divided in their minds, and did not surrender up
their right of private judgment even to the inspired St. Paul. Therefore Paul and
Barnabus were sent up to Jerusalem to hold a council with the apostles and elders.
No sooner had they reached Jerusalem, than there rose up certain believing Pharisees, who
contended with them as the people at Antioch had done, saying it was necessary for the
Gentiles to be circumcised and to keep the law of Moses. So we read that "the
apostles and elders came together to consider this matter." After there had
been much disputing, Peter arose and gave his opinion, in general terms, that the Gentiles
should not be burdened with the yoke which neither themselves nor their fathers had been
able to bear. Then Barnabus and Paul gave an account of their labors among the
Gentiles; and James, referring to the opinion of Peter, draws up a particular form of
expression to be adopted by the council. It received their approval, and they
accordingly wrote to the brethren at Antioch, saying, "For it seemed good to the Holy
Ghost and to us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things,"
&c.
At this council were assembled several of the inspired apostles, and a greater number
of the elders and brethren, who had been converted by their preaching, and their decision
was the decision of the church and of the Holy Ghost. Yet Mr. Miller pretends that
these councils commenced in 538, in order to make his reckoning good.
He goes on as far as the 39th verse, applying this part of the chapter, which alludes
to Antiochus Epiphanes, to the papal beast; and the manner in which he finds out
resemblances would be extremely edifying in a buffoon, but is a criminal burlesque on holy
Scripture, and stamps the author a man run mad with bigotry.
Where it is said of Antiochus that "he shall speak marvelous things against the
god of gods" -- meaning by this last term the God of Israel -- our
author applies the prophecy to papal Rome; whereas it is notorious that blasphemy against
the Supreme Being, or even against the apostles or saints, is regarded with horror by that
people.
Where it says, "Neither shall he regard the God of his fathers," meaning that
Antiochus should even lack heathen piety, and should assume to introduce new gods, our
author applies it to the Catholics who do not regard the pagan deities, for he says the
pagans were their fathers!
He says the pope of Rome claims to be "God on earth"; which pope, as is well
known, during some parts of the service smites his breast, and calls on God to be merciful
to him a sinner, and asks the prayers of the people that he may be saved from his
sins. In a letter to Bonaparte, in reply to some offers of favor from that emperor,
the pope wrote: "As for myself, I am but dust and ashes; but the religion which I
profess will exist and prosper when you are lying low in your grave," or words to
that effect.
When it is said of Antiochus that he should honor the God of forces -- meaning
the god Maozim, who was the god of forces or strong-holds -- our author
brings the expression to bear upon the fact that the pope has a guard, in his capacity of
temporal prince, or, in other words, that he upholds civil institutions and the
laws. He also states that the pope has had, for ages past, large armies at his
command.
And a god whom his fathers knew not shall he honor with gold, and silver, and
precious stones, and pleasant things.
This is spoken literally of Antiochus's fathers; but our author goes back some
centuries to pagan Rome, to find the fathers of the Christian Romans among the pagans; and
this god that they worship turns out to be the virgin Mary, or rather the images of
Christ, apostles, virgin Mary, and canonized saints. It appears, then, that this god
must be not only a trinity, but must be composed of a thousand persons, all in one.
Whoever looks on the statue of Washington in the state-house must be callous indeed, if
some interesting recollections, some patriotic emotions, are not awakened by the sight of
it; and whoever can look on a picture or collection of statues representing some
interesting portion of Scripture history and does not feel a still more sacred emotion, is
either a stupid fellow, destitute of all taste for the fine arts, or one who cannot be
interested by reading of the same thing in the Bible. Pictures and statues impress
the mind more powerfully than printed books, and are excellent aids to piety.
Whoever reads an account of the crucifixion of our Saviour, immediately forms a picture of
the scene in mind; else he could not form an idea of the facts related. A skillful
and devout men of genius may draw a still better picture than that which he had formed in
his mind. If he reverences the Bible which relates the story, he must reverence the
picture or statues which relate the same story. But let us illustrate this in
another way. Suppose that the reader should see St. Paul as live and in the body;
would he look upon the man with veneration? You answer, yes. But why
should you do so? For that which you see is not his soul; it is mere perishable dust
and ashes, and no better than wood or stone. But you look upon his outward form with
reverence on account of the soul connected with it. Even so you may look upon images
or pictures with reverence on account of the sacred idea connected with them; and not
because you venerate the paint, the canvass, the wood, or the stone. This is the
whole secret of that image worship about which the wretched persecutors of
modern times are bawling at their revival meetings and elsewhere.
So much for the strange god of Mr. Miller.
I have not noticed all the objectionable parts of the lecture, nor is it my object to
do so; nor is it necessary; for, if it can be shown that the author is at fault in his
calculations, it may suffice to preserve the senses of some luckless being who might
otherwise be deluded by him.
CHAPTER VII.
The seventh lecture opens with the following text:
Dan. xii. 8. And I heard, but I understood not: then said I, O my Lord,
what shall be the end of these things?
It is a singular fact that some men prefer intricate error to plain truth: they are
determined to make mysteries where all is simple and easy. The term mystery
Babylon may well be applied to this strange author. We have seen, in the
preceding lecture, how he has endeavored to apply the prophecy which gives the history of
one man, in the most regular and consecutive manner, to a multitude of events with which
the text has no natural connection. Such is still the plan which he is pursuing in
the present lecture. We shall remark upon this in place, but must now follow the
author into the twelfth chapter, whither he has gone on an expedition to bring up one of
his arguments.
After quoting the verse at the head of this chapter, in which we learn that Daniel
declared his inability to understand the vision, Mr. Miller undertakes to give us the
reason that Daniel could not understand it. He says:
Previous to Daniel's asking the question contained in our text, he had been
taught, as we have seen in our former lecture, not only the history of future events as
they would succeed each other down to the end of the world, (!) but he had the regular
order of time specified in the duration of the little horn, -- 'time, times, and
a half,' as in Dan. vii. 25, and xii. 7. But he had been informed of many events
which should transpire after his 'time, times, and a half' should be finished, and,
not having the length of the pagan beast or daily abominations given to him at all, he
could not tell or understand whereabouts in his great number of 2300 days the end of the
civil power of the little horn, or papal Rome, carried him. There was no rule given
Daniel yet by which he could tell when or how long after the crucifixion of the Messiah
before the daily sacrifice abomination would be taken out of the way, and the power of the
little horn be established, and the abomination of desolation set up. Be sure,
Daniel had heard the whole history down to the resurrection, and had the whole vision
specified in his 2300 days. But as he saw there were evidently three divisions of
the time after the crucifixion or cutting off of the Messiah at the fulfillment of his 490
years, which would be the remainder of his total number of 2300 years after his 70 weeks
should be fulfilled. And having only 1260 of those years accounted for by the reign
of his little horn, leaving 550 years to be applied on the pagan beast and for the events
which we are to attend to after the papal beast lost his civil power.
Therefore the propriety of Daniel's saying in our text, "Then I heard, but I
understood not." He understood not how this time was divided, and especially
how much time would be taken up in the last division of the angel's history, beginning
with the fortieth verse of the 11th chapter, where our last lecture ended, and finishing
with the context of the 12th chapter, and the verse previous to our text.
The reader will now perceive how our author has divided the time; that is, the whole
2300 years which transpired after the order was given to build Jerusalem. As a maker
of almanacs, Mr. Miller would be preeminent; but, as a commentator, he is woefully at
fault, being led more by his passions and prejudices than by reason and candor. The
reader now knows the reason that Daniel did not understand the vision; and it must be
confessed that no man with less intellect and ingenuity than our author could possibly
have understood it as he does.
Whether Mr. Miller's calculations are correct or not depends wholly upon the propriety
of his divisions, and on the correctness of his application of the prophecies. We
are soon to see poor Napoleon stretched upon his rack and brutally murdered; torn joint by
joint, in order to accommodate him to Scripture -- a most unscriptural character,
truly, to be served up in this way.
With regard to this division of time I shall have to request the reader to turn to the
11th chapter of Daniel, and the 21st verse, commencing, "And in his estate shall
stand up a vile person." With this verse commences the future history of Antiochus
Epiphanes, and his history is continued regularly to the end of the chapter. Yet
our author attributes a part of his exploits to the pagan Romans, a part of them to papal
Rome, and a part of them to Bonaparte. It is necessary to point out where these
divisions are made, that the reader may see there is no such change of characters and
scenery in the history itself, and that the whole is meant to apply to but one
individual. We will just notice, however, the places across which Miller builds his
Virginia fences.
Verse 21. And in his estate shall stand up a vile person, to whom they
shall not give the honor of his kingdom; but he shall come in peaceably, and obtain the
kingdom by flatteries.
Verse 22. And with the arms of a flood shall they be overthrown from
before him, and shall be broken; yea, also the prince of the covenant.
Thus the reader will find, by reference to the chapter, that the narrative goes on
until we arrive at the 28th verse:
Then shall he return into his land with great riches, and his heart shall be
against the holy covenant; and he shall do exploits, and return to his own land.
Verse 29. At the time appointed he shall return and come toward the south;
but it shall not be as the former, or as the latter.
This last clause, of course, means that now he shall not carry everything before him,
as he has done, but that he shall meet with a check. Hence the verse begins,
"at the appointed time," i.e. the item to change his successes into defeats.
But our author draws a line between the 28th and 29th verses.
The first part of the 28th verse he applies to Octavius Caesar; but, being in a hurry
to build his fence, makes the rest of the verse apply to all the acts of pagan Rome, until
the end of the 666 years. Therefore here is one of his divisions. Here is the
end of pagan Rome. Then he takes up the 29th verse, evidently applying to the same
individual whose history has been delineated, and says, verse 29, "He shall return
and come towards the south, not as the former or the latter." And here he
continues his explanation, that Italy herself is to be overrun. He now sets up the
papal beast. Let us point out the line of demarcation:
Verse 31. And arms shall stand on his part, and they shall pollute the
sanctuary of strength, and shall take away the daily sacrifice, and they shall place the
abomination that maketh desolate.
Verse 32. And such as do wickedly against the covenant shall be corrupt by
flatteries; but the people that so know their God shall be strong and do exploits.
Our author ends the reign of the pagan beast at the close of the 31st verse; and,
between the 31st and the 32d he places thirty years, in order to bring in some writers
who, he says, flattered the pope and clergy about the year 538. Of course, the
passage means nothing of the kind; but 538 is the number which he stands in need of, in
order to make his reckoning good. He says that the last of the ten horns was
converted to Christianity in 508; but that, if he could end the pagan beast there, it will
not reconcile the two statements respecting the taking away the daily abomination and
setting up the abomination which maketh desolate, and that the time in which the savage
beast should continue to reign, unless he allows an interim of 30 years. No one will
object to that; for, after the pagan best is dead, it must require some time to take off
his hide and cut him up.
We are now prepared for the bringing in of Napoleon. We left off at the 32d verse
of the chapter, which chapter goes on to describe the history of one individual; and we
have read that "at the time appointed," he met with a reverse, and was obliged
to return from Egypt, and he now stirs himself up against the holy covenant, profanes the
temple at Jerusalem, and persecutes the faithful, and then we arrive at the 35th verse:
And some of them of understanding shall fall, to try them, and to purge, and to
make them white, even to the time of the end; because it is yet for a time appointed.
This is in the time appointed; but we find there is to be a "time of the
end," when he shall be prostrate, and shall perish miserably.
The prophecy continues on to the 39th verse:
Thus shall he do in the most strong holds with a strange god, whom he shall
acknowledge and increase with glory; and he shall acknowledge and increase with glory; and
he shall cause them to rule over many, and shall divide the land for gain.
Verse 40. And at the time of the end, shall the king of the south push at
him; and the king of the north shall come against him like a whirlwind, with chariots, and
with horsemen, and with many ships; and he shall enter into the countries, and shall
overflow and pass over.
Our author makes the 39th verse find the pope of Rome in full blossom, and pursuing his
career at the top of his bent; and at the beginning of the 40th verse, we pop suddenly
upon the year 1798, and upon Napoleon Bonaparte. The papal beast has held civil sway
for the space of 1260 years, and now is "the time of the end" of that beast,
agreeing with the commencement of the 40th verse. Our author says that this year,
1798, is the very year in which the French destroyed the power of the pope. We have
now got within 45 years of the end of the world, consequently the plot thickens.
Our author dogmatizes thus:
At this time, then, our prophecy begins, and Bonaparte is the person designated
by the pronouns he and him in the prophecy: "And at the time of
the end shall the king of the south push at him; and the king of the north shall come
against him like a whirlwind, with chariots, and with horsemen, and with many ships."
Our author thus makes the application:
"This is a description of an alliance entered into by the king of Sardinia, Italy,
and Spain, in the south, and Great Britain in the north, for six years," to prosecute
the war against Napoleon; and then our author goes into the particulars of the league.
But we beg the reader to look over the 39th and 40th verses, and decide whether they
are not part of the history of one individual. Nothing has been said of another
person, and to what nouns do the pronouns he and him refer, if a new
character has just been introduced? Is there an angel among the host of heaven who
would not be ashamed to outrage grammar in this manner? Who can hope that this poor
old earth will die with decency, if she is to burned up in the face of such grammar as
this! When angels begin to talk in this manner, I shall myself, begin to think that
the world is coming to an end. According to Miller, as a signal of the approaching
end of the Roman beast, certain princes will push at Bonaparte, and come against him with
ships and chariots.
After saying that Napoleon made himself master of almost all that belonged to the
western empire of Rome except Great Britain, our author quotes again from the Scriptures:
Verse 41. "He shall enter also into the glorious land, and many shall be
overthrown; but these shall escape out of his hand, even Edom, and Moab, and the chief of
the children of Ammon."
Upon this verse, our author has the hardihood to remark, that "the glorious
land" no doubt means Italy.
The reader will bear in mind that the angel is giving the history of Antiochus --
a man who could eat nearly half an ox at a time, and who never heard of frog soup in his
life; and in order to show the treachery of our author, we have only to turn back to the
16th verse of the chapter which we are now examining which reads:
But he that cometh against him shall do according to his own will, and none
shall stand before him; and he shall stand in THE GLORIOUS LAND,
which by his hand shall be consumed.
Here the words glorious land are undoubtedly applied to Judea, and can have no
relation to Italy; and the reader will also perceive, throughout, that the king of the
north and the king of the south are constantly spoken of, and cannot allude to the kings
of England and the princes of Sardinia, Italy, and Spain.
The verse continues -- "And many countries shall be overthrown."
This very definite statement is, of course, applicable to Napoleon, as well
as to Antiochus. But we also learn -- "But these shall escape out of his
hands, even Edom, and Moab, and the chief of the children of Ammon."
Upon this our commentator remarks:
Bonaparte, when he went into Egypt, calculated to march into the East Indies: he
advanced into Syria, where, after gaining some advantages, he received a decisive check
before St. John d'Acre, when he was obliged to raise the siege, and retreat back to
Egypt with the shattered remains of his army. So the country, once inhabited by the
Edomites, Moabites, and Ammonites "escaped out of his hands."
After this, who can doubt that Bonaparte is the man pointed out by the angel?
Suppose an editor should publish in his paper an account of the execution of Mr. Miller
for stealing a horse, and Mr. Miller were to present himself alive before the editor, and
demand his motive for thus lifting him up before the public; and suppose the editor
should say -- "It matters not; there was a man who once resided where you do
that was hanged for delivering a stable of its contents"; would Mr. M. be satisfied?
Verse 42. He shall stretch forth his hands also upon the countries; and
Egypt shall not escape.
Verse 43. But he shall have power over the treasures of gold, and of
silver, and over all the precious things of Egypt.
Our author says that Napoleon conquered all Lower Egypt; and "levied contributions
upon the inhabitants of the country sufficient to support and pay his troops, and brought
away much with him." But that is not the account given in the text, which
applies to a very different individual.
And the Libyans and Ethiopians shall be at his steps.
Our author says:
When he first went into Egypt, he landed his army in the coast of what was
anciently called Lybia, and his last battle was fought in Upper Egypt, what the ancients
called Ethiopia. So both of these places were at his steps, although neither of them
was fairly conquered, as was Egypt.
Verse 44. But the tidings out of the east and out of the north shall
trouble him.
Our author says this alludes to the holy alliance which was composed of most of
the kings on the north and on the east of France.
I recollect that, when a lad, I was at the museum, attended by several old
gentlemen. One of them suddenly said to another, as he pointed at a piece of plank
to which an explanatory card was nailed: "See! this is a piece of the ship Endeavor,
in which Captain Cook sailed around the world." The old gentleman to whom these
words were addressed looked at the block, tapped it with his cane, and dryly remarked --
"Well, I suppose it will answer for that as well as for anything else."
Our author continues:
The news of this alliance caused him much trouble, and also his immediate return
to France. "Therefore he shall go forth with great fury to destroy, and utterly
to make away many." This is a plain description of Bonaparte's campaign into
Russia. He went forth with an army of 400,000 men, with fury, in order to break up
the holy alliance. He did utterly destroy Moscow, and laid desolate the country
through which he passed. He made away with more than two hundred thousand of his own
army, besides the destruction of his enemies, say many thousands more. Such a
destruction of life and property, in one campaign, was never known since the days of the
Persians and the Greeks.
But your great conflagration will exceed that of Moscow.
Verse 45. And he shall plant the tabernacles of his palace between the
seas, in the glorious holy mountain (or "mountain of delight," our author adds).
He says:
This was literally fulfilled in May 26, 1805, when Bonapart was crowned king of
Italy at Milan, Italy lying between two seas.
"The glorious holy mountain" is, of course, the same spoken of by the
prophets, as "nothing shall harm in all thy holy mountain;" "Let us go up
into the mountain to pray," &c. And in this instance it alludes to the
fact, that Antiochus should reign over Israel and defile the true worship with his false
gods. The expression applied to Italy, would have been perfectly unintelligible to
Daniel.
"Yet he shall come to his end," with a dose of poison; but that is probably a
fabrication. It is no unusual thing for great men to come to their end in the manner
mentioned in this verse. Darius, Julius Caesar, Balthazzar, Charles I, Louis XVI,
and a host of others who might be mentioned, together with Antiochus, who repented and
died in despair of God's mercy, being cut off by loathsome disease, might lay claim to the
above quotation from holy writ.
Our gentleman concludes his history of Napoleon -- which, after all, contains
fewer lines lies than Sir Walter Scott's -- with the following pious observations:
By this history, the kings of the earth may learn that God can, with perfect
ease, when the set time shall come, break them and their kingdoms to pieces, so that the
wind may carry them away like chaff, that no place shall be found for them.
This is certainly a very valuable piece of information; but as the kings who peruse Mr.
Miller's book are likely to be scarce, we fear it will prove like precious ointment spilt
upon the ground.
Our author goes on:
I shall now examine the remainder of Gabriel's message, contained in Dan. xiii.
i : "And at that time shall Michael stand up, the great Prince, which standth for the
children of thy people." Michael, in this passage, must mean Christ; he is the
great Prince, and Prince of princes.
It means no such thing. The text does not call him the "Prince of
princes," but the Prince of Israel, or Daniel's people. It is the same Michael
of whom St. Jude speaks, and who was acknowledged by the Jews as the guardian angel of the
church.
Jude, verse 9. Yet Michael, the archangel, when contending with the devil,
(he disputed about the body of Moses,) durst not bring against him a railing accusation;
but said, The Lord rebuke thee.
Our author says of this time, when Michael shall stand up for the people of Judea --
The time here spoken of is when Bonaparte shall come to his end, and none to
help him. This was in the latter part of AD 1815.
If Bonaparte had not been a special favorite of our author, he would doubtless have
made Lord Wellington personate the archangel. We wonder he did not tell us that in
the year 1815 the war between England and the United States was brought to a close.
But let us follow him further, and we shall learn how Michael stood up for Daniel's
people:
There are two things for which Christ [Michael] stands up for his people
to accomplish; one is their faith, and the other their judgment. Jer. iii. 13.
Now it is evident he did not then stand up in judgment; therefore I shall choose the
former, that he stood up to plead the cause of his people, to restrain backsliders, and to
add to the church of God many who should be saved.
Here we see the great object of Miler's book -- the promotion of sectarian
revivals, and other fanatical enterprises. But what is the true meaning of the
text. I should conjecture that it alluded to the death of Antiochus, the consequent
relief from bitter persecution, and the great victory of Judas Machabeus over the enemies
of Israel, and especially over Nicanon; for the head of that enemy was hung up" as an
evident and manifest sign of the help of God," and it was ordained by a common
decree, to solemnize the day in which that victory was won; for we read that, from that
time, the city was occupied by the Hebrews.
But our author, with his usual eagle gaze, sees much farther. We will continue
his remarks:
And, blessed be his holy name, he accomplished his purpose; for, in the years
1816, 17, 18, more people were converted to the faith of Jesus than had been for 30 years
before. Almost, and I know not but every town in these States was visited with a
shower of mercy, and hundreds and thousands, yea, tens of thousands, were born into the
invisible kingdom of the dear Redeemer, and their names recorded among the members of the
church of the first-born.
How religion thrived about that time I know not. If true religion did then
increase, to God be the praise. If men and women did, in great measure, cease from
their evil works and learn to do well, if they attended steadily to their religious and
moral duties, let go their hold upon this vain world and its miserable delights, and
engaged in works of charity, in almsgivng, in protecting the stranger and the fatherless,
and, in short, in obeying the excellent Epistle of St. James, we ought to be abundantly
thankful to the giver of every good and perfect gift. But if our author means that a
religious crusade against certain doctrines was waged, that those men who had been engaged
in the war, and had spent several years in the camp, felt disinclined to labor, and that
many of them took up the business of itinerant preaching, and went yelling and
caterwauling through the country, as if to scare away the devil by acclamation, then do I
think that he has pressed the holy archangel into a service to which he was never
inclined. Every rational person knows that those religious excitements, as falsely
termed, result in no good. They do not purify the heart, and lay the foundation of
abiding faith and good works. Weak women and excitable men are carried away by those
tempests of fanaticism, and talk religiously for a few weeks or months, become puffed up
with an idea of their own holiness, and then sink down into apathy or infidelity.
There can be little doubt that those persons who are so constituted that they can scarcely
live, except like the salamander, in a continual heat, felt the want of some new impetus
at the conclusion of the wars in Europe and Canada; and, as the fire and brimstone of hell
bears some resemblance to gunpowder flashes, they very easily exchanged the latter for the
former, and embraced with open arms those ranting itinerants who would paint the horrors
of perdition in the most glowing terms.
Our gentleman himself furnishes us with a sample of this kind of declamation, in his
eleventh lecture; and I will insert it here, lest the reader should accidentally lose the
benefit of it, through my negligence:
But you, O impenitent man or woman, where will you be then? When heaven
shall resound with the mighty song, and distant realms shall echo back the sound, where,
tell me, where will you be then! In hell! oh think! In hell!
a dreadful word! Once more, think! In hell! lifting up your eyes,
being in torment. Stop, sinner, think! In hell! where shall be
weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth. Stop, sinner, stop; consider on your latter
end. In hell! where the beast and false prophet are, and shall be
tormented day and night forever and ever.' I entreat of you to think. In
hell!
I know you hate to hear the word. It sounds too harsh. There is no
music in it. You say it grates upon the ear. But think, when it grates upon
the soul, the conscience, and the ear, and not by sound only, but a dread reality, when
there can be no respite, no cessation, no deliverance, no hope! You will then think,
yes, of this warning, of a thousand others, perhaps of this hour, with many more that are
lost; yes, worse than lost, that have been squandered in earthly, vain, and transitory
mirth, have been abused; for there have been many hours the Spirit strove with you, and
you prayed to be excused. There was an hour when conscience spake, but you stopped
your ears and would not hear. There was a time when judgment and reason whispered,
but you soon drowned their cry by calling in some aid against your better
part. To judgment and reason you have opposed will and wit, and then, in
hell, was only in the grave. In this vain citadel, on this frail house of
sand, you will build, until the last seal is broken, the last trump will sound, the last
ave pronounced, and the last vial be poured upon the earth. Then, penitent man or
woman, you will awake in everlasting woe.
He then goes on to exhort the sinner to join the church immediately; for he says --
"Then come in God's appointed way, (!!!) repent. Do you want a house not made
with hands, eternal in the heavens? Then join, in heart and soul, this happy people,
whose God is the Lord."
Let me now ask the reader if it be possible, that a man who speaks flippantly --
nay, triumphantly -- of the awful perdition of his fellow-sinners, ever knew
anything of true religion. Was his heart ever imbued with the charity of the
gospel? Never! Such a man would rejoice, Nero-like, while the world was in a
blaze. Amid the dreadful screams and shrieks of despairing souls, he would clap his
hands for joy. Wretched man! smite your own breast, and with your mouth
prostrate in the dust, ask of God that mercy which you rejoice to believe will be withheld
from others. St. Paul acknowledged himself to be the chief of sinners, while you,
like the proud Pharisee, thank God that you are better than other men. Remember the
man who made the brazen bull; he was the first whose vain roarings came from its mouth.
Our author goes on to speak of the wonderful spread of religion, and also boasts of
those miserable hypocrites who have gone out as missionaries, making their converts
"ten times more the child of hell" than they were before. These
pestilential fellows have gone through the world like roaring lions, seeking whom they
devour, teaching the simple savage -- who is an angel of light when compared with
themselves -- that God damned them before the world was created, and that therefore
they ought to repent, and return to this most merciful Being!
The gentleman again quotes from the Scripture:
And there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation
even to that same time; and at that time, thy people shall be delivered, every one that
shall be found written in the book.
This probably alludes to the awful persecutions of Antiochus, which should be brought
to an end when Michael stood up for the faithful Jews: many of the Jews suffered the most
cruel martyrdom; and many went into caves, sepulchers, and holes of the earth to celebrate
the Sabbath, or to circumcise their children, as they were sure of a cruel death if
discovered in worshipping the God of Israel, according to the law of Moses. Many
that were cruelly put to death most firmly resisted the tyrant and his decrees, among whom
were women and little children.
Our author takes a different view of the text:
This time of trouble is yet in futurity; but is hanging, as it were, over our
heads, ready to break upon us in tenfold vengeance, when the angel of the gospel, who is
now flying through the midst of heaven, shall seal the last child of God in their
foreheads. And when the four angels who are now holding the four winds, that it blow
not on the sea nor on the land, shall cease their holding; when the angel standing on the
sea and land shall lift his hand to heaven and swear, by him that liveth forever and ever,
that time shall be no longer, or, as it might and perhaps ought to have been translated,
"that there shall be no longer delay!" That is, God would wait no longer
for repentance, no longer to be gracious; but his Spirit would take its flight from the
world, and the grace of God would cease to restrain men. He that is filthy will be
filthy still. Mankind will for a short season give loose to all the corrupt passions
of the human heart. No laws, human or divine, will be regarded; all authority will
be trampled underfoot; anarchy will be the order of governments, and confusion fill the
world with horror and despair. Murder, treason, and crime, will be common law, and
division and disunion the only bond of fellowship. Christians will be persecuted
unto death, and dens and caves of the earth will be their retreat. All things which
are not eternal will be shaken to pieces, that that which cannot be shaken may remain.
The author here mentions the time when he imagined these events would take place; but
as I understand this arose from a trifling error in his calculations, which he has since
rectified, it would of course be unfair to taunt him with his mistake; but the dreadful
events he here pictured out answer very well, with a few exceptions, to the time of
Antiochus's persecutions, and to which the prophecy evidently refers. As the world
has been so long resting in comparative tranquillity, it would not be surprising, if war
should break out soon in some quarter; but I trust the reader will not suffer himself to
be alarmed, though he should hear of "wars and rumors of wars." I have a
better opinion of my fellow-men than to suppose they will so soon become murderers,
traitors, thieves, and robbers; and trust Mr. Miller will never have the opportunity to
gloat on such horrid spectacle as his dark extravagant imagination has conjured up.
Perhaps we are not sufficiently sensible of God's mercy to such unworthy sinners as we
are, in giving us seed time and harvest, winter and summer, and, above all, such political
blessings as our revolutionary fathers could hardly have hoped for, in their most sanguine
moments. These mercies, instead of puffing us up, should inspire us with humility,
when we contrast the continued bounties of the great Shepherd with our own poor
merits. Our ingratitude is such that we should have no right to complain, even if
Heaven visited us with all those plagues; yet I do not think he will do it for Mr.
Miller's individual gratification.
Verse 2. And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake,
some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.
Some commentators have accommodated these things to antichrist, who, they say, shall
come in the end of the world. I am rather inclined to believe that the angel is
speaking of the time of Antiochus and the wars of Judas Machabeus. Read the
Saviour's account of the destruction of Jerusalem, in which he says, (Matt. xxxiv. 15)
When ye, therefore, shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel
the prophet, stand in the holy place, [alluding to the setting up of the heathen image in
the temple, and the standards of the soldiers in the time of Antiochus, of which the Roman
sacrileges would be an imitation,] then let them which be in Judea flee into the
mountains: let him which is on the house-top not come down to take any thing out of his
house; neither let him which is in the field return back to take his clothes,
&c. For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning
of the world to this time; [and then he adds] no, nor shall ever be.
But the angel Gabriel does not say, when speaking of the times of Antiochus, "nor
shall ever be." He simply says, "such as never was since there was a
nation even to that time."
The time of which Gabriel prophesied was not to be like the troubles at the destruction
of Jerusalem, and the troubles which pursued the Jews for many centuries afterward;
nevertheless, they were horrible enough to satisfy anybody but our author.
Thus we have compared the first verse of the chapter with the Saviour's account of the
troubles to come upon Jerusalem; and now let us speak of those who, the angel said, should
awake from the dust of the earth.
We read, in the 10th verse of the same chapter,
Many shall be purified, and made white, and tried; but the wicked shall do
wickedly: and none of the wicked shall understand; but the wise shall understand.
Now, in the time of Antiochus's persecutions, there were some who became corrupted, and
joined with the idolaters; but others remained steadfast, and these were tried as in a
fire, and purified by their sufferings. Accordingly, when their tribulations were
removed by the death of Antiochus and the victory of Machabeus, they came up out of the
dust, into which they had been crushed, filled with joy, and faith, and hope; which is
termed everlasting life in the Scriptures. "He that believeth on the Son hath
everlasting life." "This is eternal life, to know thee,"
&c. But those who had yielded in the time of trouble and temptation, came forth
with shame, and subject to everlasting contempt.
Hence the angel says:
And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to
everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.
Verse 3. And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the
firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness, as the stars forever and ever.
Of course this awakening from the dust cannot allude to the general
resurrection, as it says that "many" shall awake. Some may choose to
interpret the passage, that those who were slain in battle, or put to death for their
adherence to the religion of their nation, would awake in the future state of existence,
and there receive the meed of their deservings.
Daniel did not understand the vision; and the angel told him the words were
"closed up and sealed until the time of the end," like the sealed book in
Revelations, which none but the lion of the tribe of Judah could open. Since those
prophecies have all been fulfilled, and "the time of the end" has long gone by,
the seal is removed.
"At the time of the end many shall run to and fro." This is attributed,
by our author, to steamboats, railroads, the Great Western, and the many recent inventions
to expedite travel.
"And knowledge shall be increased." "This," our author says,
"is literally fulfilled." But in what age of the world was it not
fulfilled? The invention of printing, the discovery of America, Newton's
discoveries, and those of Galileo, give celebrity to former ages, greater than that which
we can claim. It is true, we have phrenology, and some other futile inventions,
together with many improvements in the arts; but the world is always discovering or
inventing something new. It may be doubted whether there is more sound knowledge
among men now than there was in former ages of the world. Our learning is, for the
most part, superficial, when compared to that of former days.
With regard to "running to and fro," I wonder our author had not introduced
the tread-mill as an illustration of his argument. People in this country thought
they were running to and fro at a prodigious rate, when the mail was two weeks between
Boston and New York; and it is possible that, in one hundred years from this time, our
posterity will, in turn, laugh at us as a generation of snails. No doubt people in
all ages have thought that they lived in a day of immense traveling; and every new
improvement, in vehicles or packets, was regarded as a prodigy.
Doubtless, in the end of the persecutions which we have related, those who had hidden
themselves in holes and crannies came out and avenged themselves for lost time, by
stirring among their friends and in the neighboring countries; and, as Judas Machabeus
made a covenant with the Romans about this time, with whom the Jews were previously but
little acquainted, it is probable that much knowledge came through them to the people of
Judea.
When the inquiry is made, how long before there shall be an end of these wonders? we
find, in verse 7, that the angel swore it should be for "a time, times, and
a half." How long a time that is I know not; but Miller says it is 1260
days.
I wish the reader to observe that our author has confined the whole of this last
chapter to the 45 years preceding the resurrection. Yet here are the 1260 days
mentioned which should have preceded the 45 days, (or years, as our author terms
them). How, then, does he leap over these bounds, which he cannot pass? It is
thus:
But the question, "How long to the end of these wonders?" means, to
the end of the reign of the beast which the world wondered after.
On the strength of this one word wonder, he rejects the manifest meaning of the
text.
The angel says it should be "for a time and times and a half; and when he shall
have accomplished to scatter the power of the holy people."
This probably means that Antiochus should succeed in scattering the power of Daniel's
people, and reducing them to subjection before the time of trouble in Judea should take
place, and those events just related; and that they should experience deliverance at the
end of the time, times, and a half.
After saying that many shall be purified in this furnace of affliction, the angel
continues:
Verse 11. And from the time that the daily sacrifice shall be taken away,
and the abomination that makes desolate set up, there shall be a thousand two hundred and
ninety days.
Our author says that these 1290 days are the 1290 years from the time that the last
horn, or pagan king, was converted to Christianity, up to the taking away of the power of
the pope by Bonaparte, in 1798.
Thus Mr. Miller makes the plain declaration, that from the time the fire should be
taken from the temple, until the time that Antiochus should set up the abomination
that maketh desolate, or image, in the holy place, should be 1290 days, to mean that from
the time paganism is banished out of the Roman empire, and the papal beast is set
up, until the downfall of civil power at Rome, shall be 1290 years. Now it
could not be 1290 years from both the downfall of paganism and the beginning of popery,
unless our author is willing to throw out his 30 years.
In relation to the scattering of the power of the holy people, our gentleman comments
thus:
But the last sign, "the scattering of the holy people," a part of the
perilous times. How are they to be scattered? I answer, by the errors of the
antichristian abomination, and the lo heres and lo theres; by dividing the people of God
into parties, divisions, and subdivisions. And methinks I hear you say, surely these
things are already accomplished. Yes, you are right in part, but not to its extent:
the sects are all divided now, but not crumbled to pieces; some are divided, but not
scattered. The time is soon coming when father will be against son, and son against
father. Yea, the sects are divided now. Presbyterians are divided into old and
new school, and then again into Perfectionists. Congregationalists are divided
between Orthodox and Socinianism, old and new measures, Unionists, &c.
Methodists are divided between Episcopal and Protestant. Baptists are divided
between old and new measures, antimasons, Campbellites, open and close communion, &c.
&c. Quakers are divided between Orthodox and Hicksites. And thus might we
go on and name the divisions and subdivisions of all sects who have taken Christ for their
captain.
The above is doubtless very true; and I insert it more on account of its truth than for
any other reason. A slight error in the beginning, however, mars the beauty of his
argument. We read "the power of the holy people shall be
scattered;" which simply means that the people of Judea should be subdued before they
should triumph, and has no more to do with Presbyterians and antimasons than that with the
marriage of Queen Victoria.
CHAPTER VIII.
The eighth lecture of Mr. Miller opens with this text, (Rev. viii. 13):
And I beheld and heard an angel flying through the midst of heaven, saying, with
a loud voice, Woe, woe, woe to the inhabitants of the earth, by reason of the other voices
of the trumpet of the three angels which are yet to sound.
He says that "the sounding of trumpets is always used to denote the downfall of
some empire, nation, or place, or some dreadful battle which may decide the fate of
empires, nations, or places." He also says that the four first trumpets
"had their accomplishment in the destruction of the Jews and their dispersion, in the
fall of imperial Rome, in the overthrow of the Asiatic kingdom, and in the taking away of
pagan rites and ceremonies." He therefore supposes that the three last trumpets
carry us forward to the end of the world, or to AD 1843. The first four trumpets had
their accomplishments under Rome pagan; the last three under Rome papal. He also
says,
These three trumpets and three woes are a description of the judgments that God
has sent and will send on this papal beast, the abomination of the whole (?) earth.
If papal Rome is the abomination of the whole earth, what shall we say of Juggernaut,
Mohometanism, and the various superstitions that prevail in the known world? There
are about one hundred and sixty millions of Roman Catholics, and about fifty millions
belonging to the various Protestant sects. The other eight hundred millions of human
beings who inhabit this globe are sunk in various superstitions. Papal Rome cannot
therefore be called "the abomination of the whole earth"; but, in the days of
St. John, Rome, sunk in pagan darkness, persecuting the saints, with her Neros and her
Domitians, might well have been called "the abomination of the whole earth," as
her power and influence reached very far over the then known world. The Revelations
were written sixty-four years after our Lord's ascension, about seven years before the
fall of Jerusalem, and about the time that the war commenced which ended in the total rout
of its vile inhabitants. St. John, both as a Jew and as a Christian, must have felt
very little respect for the tyrannical nation who both worshipped heathen deities and
persecuted his countrymen. Hence, when he speaks of the fall of pagan Rome, and of
meting out to her the same punishment which she was to inflict upon Jerusalem and upon the
Christians, it is in strong and energetic language. Although Jerusalem was to
be punished for her sins, yet the nation which was made use of for her scourge was none
the less guilty on that account; even as the Jews who murdered the Lord were none the less
guilty on account of the holy purposes which were fulfilled by his death. Therefore
the apostle might well term Rome "the abomination of the whole earth."
Our author terms Mohomet "a fallen star," in order to adapt him to the star
which fell from heaven to the earth, and to whom was consigned the key of the bottomless
pit; but on what authority I know not; for we do not learn that that wretched deceiver was
ever remarkable for virtue or piety. In one sense, he was a risen star; but perhaps
Miller alludes to his distemper -- the falling sickness. We again
quote from the work:
The fifth trumpet alludes to the rise of the Turkish empire under Ottoman, at
the downfall of the Saracens.
He then speaks of the check which the papal church received from the principles of
Mahomet.
Let us briefly notice the manner in which our gentleman applies the prophecies of this
chapter:
Rev. ix. 1. "And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from
heaven unto the earth; and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit."
After the downfall of pagan Rome, and the rise of the antichristian abomination, Mahomet
promulgated a religion which evidently came from the bottomless pit; for it fostered all
the wicked passions of the human heart, such as war, murder, slavery, and lust.
It appears to me that his is too strong language to apply even to Mahometanism; but
there is nothing definite here -- nothing that particularly applies to the faith of
Mahomet; and to call this impostor a fallen star from heaven is ridiculous in the extreme.
Verse 2. And he opened the bottomless pit, and there arose a smoke out of
the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air was darkened by reason
of the smoke of the pit.
He says the bottomless pit denotes the theories and doctrines of men not
grounded upon the word of God. According to this explanation, I should rather
suppose the star which fell from heaven was some apostate from the true faith, who
broached idle doctrines that set men to work in framing creeds, forever changing and never
established. He says that smoke denotes the errors from such doctrine, which
serve to blind the eyes of men that they cannot see the truth; and that, as this was as the
smoke of a great furnace, it shows the extent to which these false theories
should prevail. He says the sun denotes the gospel, and the air denotes
piety, which gives animation and life to the heart, as air does to the physical
system. This may be very ingenius, but does not well apply to Mahometanism, which
triumphed over paganism, and crushed, as our author says, the power of the papal beast.
He says that the papal power was checked by Mahometanism, and that the pious influence
of the gospel was obstructed by it.
Verse 3. And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth: and unto
them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power.
By locusts he understands armies, which had the power to furnish the
antichristian beast.
Verse 4. And it was commanded them that they should not hurt the grass of
the earth neither any green thing, neither any tree but only those men which have not the
seal of God in their foreheads.
The author thus cavalierly interprets the verse:
By grass, green things, and trees, (Ps. lxxii. 6, Hosea xiv. 8,) I understand
the true church or people of God. By those men having not the seal of God,
&c. I understand the antichristian church, or papal Rome. Then this would
be the sense: And it was commanded them that they should not hurt the true church
nor people of God, but only the antichristian beast or powers subject to her.
I desire the reader to bear in mind the above explanation, as I shall soon show how
widely our author shoots from the mark, and how he falsifies the plain declarations of
history.
Verse 5. And to them it was given that they should not kill them; but that
they should be tormented five months and their torment was as the torment of a scorpion
when he striketh a man.
Our author says, to kill is to destroy. Five months is, in prophecy, 150 years
and to torment as a scorpion is to make sudden excursions and eruptions into the country;
and that this means that Turkish armies would harass and not destroy the papal powers for
150 years. The reader will please bear this in mind.
Verse 6. And in those days shall men seek death and shall not find it, and
shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them.
To which Miller adds:
About this time the Greek church at Constantinople was so harassed by papal
authority that it gave rise to a saying among them, "that they had rather see the
Turkish turban on the throne of the Eastern empire than the pope's tiara." And
any one who has read the history of the 14th century will see that this text was literally
accomplished.
Yes, Mr. Miller; and so was their wish in respect to the turban; and woeful, indeed,
have been the consequences. But it is not probable that such wish was general;
neither were they in such distress until the Turks entered Constantinople.
There was, indeed, a theological dispute going on between the Western and Eastern
churches; but the people were not desirous of dying on that account. Your
explanation is puerile in the extreme.
Verse 7. And the shapes of the locusts were like unto horses prepared unto
battle; and on their heads were, as it were, crowns like gold, and their faces were
as the faces of men.
Our author says these were the Turkish armies who were all horsemen. He says,
This was true with the Turks, and no other kingdom since Christ's time,
that we have any knowledge of, whose armies were all horsemen. They wore on their
heads yellow turbans, which can only apply to the Turks, looking like crowns of gold.
This explanation is ingenious; but burnished helmets, glittering in the sun, might be
spoken of as crown's of gold; although it is not probable that the apostle would have so
compared them, as helmets were common enough among the warriors in his day. I can
hardly believe, however, that the apostle would have said of simple cavalry, with which he
was well acquainted, that the scorpions were horses with the faces of men, and that the
heads on these horses were crowns of gold. The description appears to me more like a
figurative allusion to some wild, lawless bands of uncivilized warriors, of bestial
character, very rapid in their assaults, and making themselves masters of the country
which they attacked, having faces like men, in almost all respects resembling beasts.
Verse 8. And they had hair as the hair of women, and their teeth were as
the teeth of lions!
He says,
They wore long hair attached to their turbans, and they fought with javelins
like the teeth of lions.
The apostle could hardly have termed the javelins or darts which they used the teeth of
those animals.
Verse 9. And they had breast-plates, as it were breast-plates of iron; and
the sound of their wings was as the sound of chariots, of many horses running to battle.
Our author says that by breast-plates he understands shields, which the Turks carried
in their battles; and that history informs us they made a noise upon them, when they
charged an enemy, like the noise of chariot wheels. Yet the apostle knew what
shields were; and why should he call them breast-plates? It is well known that
horses wore breast-plates in days of yore, and this is probably the meaning of the
text. He says this noise was made by their wings, and not upon their breast-plates.
Verse 10. And they had tails like unto scorpions, and there were stings in
their tails, and their power was to hurt men five months.
Our author expounds this verse thus:
The Turkish horsemen had each a scimitar, which hung in a scabbard at their
waist, that they used in close combat after they had discharged their javelins, with which
they were very expert, severing a man's or even a horse's head at a blow. And from
the time that the Ottoman power or Turkish empire was first established in Bythinia, until
the downfall of the Greek or Eastern empire, when the Turks took Constantinople, was five
prophetic months, or 150 years.
All animals who have stings, have tails in which they are sheathed. But the
apostle knew what a scabbard and a sword were. "Put up thy sword into its
sheath," said our Lord to Peter while John was present. Neither would the
apostle have termed an instrument used for striking, a sting, for that is thrust
into the sufferer. Figure to yourself a man brandishing a sting in his hand, high in
the air, and smiting off a man's head with it! The idea is forced, strained, and
unnatural. These scimitars are particularly intended for striking, and are not at
all like the French small sword.
Verse 11. And they had a king over them, which is the angel of the
bottomless pit, whose name in the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon, but in the Greek tongue hath
his name Apollyon.
Our author says on this point, that the founder and king of the Turkish empire was
Othoman of Ottoman, and that great has been the destruction which this government has
executed upon the world, and therefore it may well be styled Destroyer, which is,
in prophecy, the signification of Abaddon or Apolloyon. But all this has nothing to
do with the text, and throws no light upon it.
Now, I propose to throw out a few remarks which will destroy the premises of our
author's reasoning. He says that these Turkish warriors were commanded to hurt no
green thing or tree, which signify the true church and people of God; but that
they were to hurt only such as had not the seal of God in their foreheads. By those
who have not the seal of God he understands the Papal church. He then tells us that
the Greeks were plagued by these warriors a considerable time, and finally overthrown;
that Constantinople was captured, and became a Turkish city. Now how happens it that
the enemies of the beast were plagued and tormented, and finally overthrown by these
warriors? It is true that they made incursions into Spain, France, and Italy, and
committed various excesses. But where do they now triumph, and where have they
triumphed for centuries, reducing the inhabitants to a state of slavery? Is not the
Eastern church the bondsman of Mahomet? Those faithful and constant followers of the
Roman beast, Ferdinand and Isabella, drove the Moors from their dominions, and trampled
the crescent under their feet. The Mahometan lies like an incubus on the Greek
church, but the Catholic countries have shaken him off like a dew-drop from the lion's
mane.
History informs us that the Greek church acknowledged, for the first eight centuries,
the supremacy of the Roman pontiff. But one Photius, who was elected patriarch of
Constantinople in the year 858, disturbed this order of things; and it is also stated that
he was a man of most perverse, insidious, and hypocritical character. Being very
ambitious, he desired to reign "alone in his glory," and created a schism.
This did not, for some time, dissolve the union between the two churches; but the Greeks
gradually altered some part of the creed which they had held for eight centuries in common
with their Roman neighbors. Here is a sample of the changes which they made:
1. They condemn the Latins as heretics, for eating things strangled, and such
other meats as are prohibited by the Old Testament.
2. They deny that simple fornication is a mortal sin.
3. They insist that it is lawful to deceive an enemy, and that it is no sin to
injure and oppress him.
4. They are of the opinion that, in order to be saved, there is no necessity to
make restitution of such goods as have been stolen, or fraudulently obtained.
These opinions they have long held, in opposition to the Roman beast, who maintains the
contrary. We know the Greeks of latter times to have been great pirates, thieves,
and so much meaner than the Turks, that some people have given the latter the preference.
We read that, as early as the first part of the seventh century, when the Greeks
were harassed and overrun by the Persians, the emperor Heraclius, astonished at their
victories, and demanding one day in council what could be the cause, a grave person stood
up and said, "It is because the Greeks have dishonored the sanctity of their
profession, and no longer retain the doctrine taught by Jesus Christ and his
disciples. They insult and oppress one another, live in enmity and dissensions, and
are abandoned to the most infamous usuries and lusts."
The schism of Photius gradually gained ground, and many councils were held in order to
compare differences; and while the Roman church insisted on their retaining the old system
of faith and discipline, the Greeks held out for their new improvements; and although the
latter did sometimes return for a short space, yet they as often revolted. Thus
things continued until 1451, when Pope Nicholas V wrote them a letter, addressed
particularly to the emperor, in which he says,
The Greeks have already too long abused the patience of God, in persisting in
their schism. According to the parable of the gospel, God waits to see if the
fig-tree, after having been cultivated with so much care, will at last yield fruit; but if
it does not, within the space of three years, which God still allows them, [see how the
beast and Mr. Miller agree,] the tree will be cut down by the root, and the Greek nation
shall be entirely ruined by the ministers of divine vengeance, [here our author and the
beast agree again,] which God will send to execute the sentence already pronounced in
heaven against them.
It appears, then, that this pope thought the locusts would be let loose upon those who
had not the mark of the beast. Mr. Miller thinks they were to be let loose on those
who did have the mark of the beast. And we must confess that , in this
instance, the pope proved himself the true prophet. Now if Mr. Miller cannot
prophesy correctly about things which are past, how shall we believe his fish story about
the things to come?
About three years after the pope's letter had been written, Mahomet II besieged
Constantinople with a land army of 300,000 men, and a fleet of above 100 galleys, with 130
other smaller vessels. According to Phranzes, the Greek historian, the Turks entered
the city through a breach which they had made by shooting some stone bullets of two
hundred pounds weight from fourteen batteries. The emperor's head was cut off and
fixed on a pike; the nobles and grandees were massacred and dissected, and the bodies of
the empress and her daughters were commanded to be cut in pieces and served up on dishes
at a banquet. 40,000 Greeks perished, and 60,000 were sold as slaves.
Thus fell the Eastern empire, 1123 years after its first establish- ment. Thus it
appears that those who had not the seal of God in their foreheads, and whom God had
devoted to destruction, were those who had not had the mark of the beast in the forehead,
but who had been for centuries in opposition to the beast, and whom the beast himself had
given up and repudiated. The thunder of the Vatican and the lightning of the Turkish
artillery, fell together upon the heads of that debauched, mercenary, and false-hearted
people. Picart, in his history of manners and customs, says, --
The patriarch of Constantinople assumes the honorable title of Universal
or Oecumonical Patriarch. As he purchases his commission of the grand
signior, it may easily supposed that he makes a tyrannical and simoniacal use of a
privilege which he himself holds by simony.
Here, then, it will be observed, that Miller has been directly advocating the cause of
the Roman beast, and taking sides with that animal against his inveterate foes.
It is sometimes singular that our author has not applied any of these prophecies to the
crusaders, who might much more justly have been compared to armies of locusts, springing
suddenly out of the earth, and spreading their devastations far and wide.
Our author says of these things:
And if these things are revealed by God himself unto us, surely no one will dare
to say that it is nonessential whether we believe this part of the revealed will of God or
not. Shall God speak and man disregard it?
The author's antipathy to the Roman beast appears to arise from the circumstances that
he wishes to snatch the diadem of infallibility from the brow of that animal, and place it
upon his own.
Far be it from me to decide that these locusts do not figure forth the Turkish armies;
but it is not proved by the fact that some resemblances may be traced between them, as may
be seen by taking some other persons, and drawing a comparison in the way that Miller has
done. Let us take Napoleon's grand army, and apply the prophecy to that:
1. The smoke from the pit, and the locusts coming up in its midst, will apply
to the army of Bonaparte enveloped in the smoke of their artillery, with which St. John
was unacquainted. The star which fell from heaven to the earth was Bonaparte, who,
having commenced as a republican and a violent defender of liberal principles, became the
founder of despotism.
2. It was commanded them to hurt no green thing, nor tree, nor the grass of the
earth. Accordingly Napoleon had no power over England or America, but plagued the
ancient and despotic governments of Europe, destroyed the inquisition, dethroned the pope,
and especially harassed the haughty Austrian.
3. To them it was given that they should not kill men, but should torment them
five months. After Napoleon had run his course, the Bourbons came back to the throne
of France, and the princes of Europe were restored to their former quiet.
4. In those days men shall seek death and not find it. Napoleon's veterans
rushed up to the very cannon's mouths, and seemed to seek death, but came out oftentimes
unscathed.
5. The shapes of the locusts were like horses prepared for battle, with golden
crowns on their heads and faces like men. Murat's cavalry were the admiration of all
Europe, and princes fought in the army of the man who gave and took away crowns at his
pleasure. The lion's teeth will answer for Napoleon's marked battery. Long
hair is often worn in horsemen's caps.
6. "They had breastplates, as it were plates of iron." This
will answer for the cuirassiers, who wore steel breastplates. "The sound of
their wings was as the chariots of many horses running to battle." Napoleon's
onsets were impetuous in the extreme, and the rattle of musketry like the crackling of
chariot wheels.
7. "Tails like scorpions, and stings in their tails." This may be
applied to bayonets, or to the match which looks like a serpent, and is applied to the
tail of the piece to discharge it.
8. They had a king over them called Abaddon in the Hebrew, but hath his name
Apollyon in the Greek. Take away the initial of the emperor's name, and we have it: A-pol-e-on.
Miller continues, verse 13:
And the sixth angel sounded, and I heard a voice from the four horns of the
golden altar which is before God,
Verse 14. Saying to the sixth angel which had the trumpet, Loose the four
angels which are bound in the great river Euphrates.
These angels were loosed to destroy the third part of men. Miller says they were
Turks, Tartars, Arabs, and Saracens, who were to destroy and conquer one third part of the
kingdoms and governments of the papal beast.
Verse 16. And the number of the army of the horsemen was two hundred
thousand thousand; and I heard the number of them.
Here Mr. Miller is brought to the wall; but he leaps over it with incredible agility,
and says that 200,000,000 of men would be more than there were ever on our earth capable
of bearing arms; and he might also have added that the description of these warriors would
answer to nothing which ever appeared on this globe. He chooses, however, to say
that St. John heard the angel repeat 200,000 twice, which would make the number
400,000. Perhaps he thinks that the apostle, on account of his great age, was a
little deaf by this time, and could not hear accurately; but he might have got over the
difficulty by supposing that the angel had an impediment in his speech, and, intending to
say two hundred thousand, pronounced it two hundred thousand, pronounced it two hundred
thou-thousand.
Verse 17. And thus I saw the horses in the vision, and them that sat
on them, having breastplates of fire, and of jacinth, and brimstone; and the heads of the
horses were as the heads of lions, and out of their mouths issued fire, and smoke, and
brimstone.
Verse 18. By these three was the third part of men killed -- by the
fire, and by the smoke, and by the brimstone, which issued out of their mouths.
Verse 19. For their power is in their mouth and in their tails; for their
tails were like unto serpents, and had heads, and with them they do hurt.
Our author remarks, among other things:
Who ever saw an army of horsemen engaged in an action but would think of St.
John's description: "Out of their mouths issued fire, and smoke, and brimstone,"
and in the breech of the guns were bullets, like "heads, and with these they do
hurt"?
He says that guns and firearms were invented just before this last trump sounding, and
that the Turks appropriated to themselves the invention.
But what shall we say to the breastplates of jacinth, and fire, and brimstone?
What shall we say to the lion's heads and serpentine tails? If our author pleases to
say that this prophecy is meant to apply to the Mahometan armies, he is at liberty to do
so; but certainly, if the apostle had been taking special pains not to confound his
horsemen with any earthly warriors, he could not have drawn a broader line of
distinction. At first blush, the fire, and smoke, and brimstone seem remarkably
applicable to gunpowder; but, when we reflect that smoke, and fire, and brimstone are so
often used in the Scriptures in a different sense, we shall see no reason to take it for
granted that they apply to gunpowder in this solitary instance.
We learn that the false prophet and others will be cast into a lake which burns with fire
and brimstone. Smoke ascended out of the bottomless pit. "All liars
shall have their portion in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone."
The eyes of the Son of man were as a flame of fire and his feet "like unto
fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace." "Out of the throne proceeded
lightning, and thunderings, and voices." We hear nothing of the noise
of Mr. Miller's firearms, which the apostle would certainly have noticed. "And
the angel took the censer, and filled it with the fire of the altar, and cast it into the
earth; and there were voices, and thunderings, and lightnings, and an
earthquake." "A great mountain burning with fire was cast into the
sea." "And he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the
presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb; and the smoke of
their torment ascendeth up forever and ever."
In short, fire and brimstone are frequently used in Scripture to imply the judgments of
God upon the wicked. Sodom and Gomorrah were literally destroyed by fire and
brimstone, not by gunpowder. Our Saviour threatens Capernaum with a worse punishment
than that which befell Sodom and Gomorrah. "Depart from me, ye cursed, into
everlasting fire," says the Saviour to the Jews, who claimed to be the favored
people, and were yet to be persecuted and trodden down of all Christian nations for many
centuries. "In flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not
God." St. Peter says the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were condemned with an
overthrow, as an example to those who should live ungodly after the destruction. St.
Jude expresses the same sentiment. Of course fire and brimstone are here recognized
as the ministers of divine vengeance. The apostle knew nothing of gunpowder; and we
do not learn that, when the contention was so sharp between Paul and Barnabus, they called
for coffee and pistols, which Christian gentlemen, in these days, regard as so necessary
to the preservation of their honor.
We may, in connection with the foregoing views, believe the fire, and brimstone, and
smoke of which the apostle speaks, did literally come from the mouths of the horses.
It is a common expression of Scripture. The Son of man was to smite the man of sin
with the breath of his mouth. The conqueror on the white horse had a sword which
proceeded out of his mouth.
CHAPTER IX.
In his ninth and tenth lectures our hero endeavors to prove that the seven churches to
whom St. John writes, in Revelations, are not seven contemporary churches; but that he
addresses the church in its seven ages, from that time forward, until the destruction of
the world.
The first church or age is apostolic;
the second precedes the emperor Constantine;
the third prepares for the papal beast;
and the fourth is the church in the wilderness, that is, persons not connected with the
Catholic church, but in opposition to her and her creed;
the fifth is still addressed to the church in the wilderness, which began about the
tenth century;
and the sixth is the church of Luther, or the Protestant church; and to this church is
said -- "Behold, I have set before thee a door which no man can shut,"
which, according to our author, alludes to the fact that those dissenters who had been
crushed and kept out of sight previous to the reformation, now came out into the light,
and went boldly forward, and that the power of the beast to put them down existed no
longer. The door was opened, and the progress of Protestant principles could not now
be checked; the door was opened.
The seventh church, he says, is the church from the year 1798 until the end of the
world. By this we learn that the church remained distinguished as the proper church
of Christ, until after the year 508 or 538, and that then St. John turns short off from
the Catholic church, and addresses the various persons scattered up and down, who were not
in connection with the visible church.
By turning to the ninth and tenth lectures of Mr. Miller, the reader will be able to
judge how far he has made good his assertions. There is scarcely a shadow of proof,
and many of his arguments are very awkward and ridiculous. Other portions of those
two lectures, however, are not destitute of cunning. There can be no doubt
that the apostle was addressing seven distinct and contemporary churches in Asia.
Where can our author trace that the church in the wilderness of which he
speaks? The reader must bear in mind that he repudiates Unitarians and
Universalists; therefore he cannot allude to the Arians or the followers of Origen.
In the days of the apostle, the church in the wilderness was composed of the Gnostics,
the Nicolaitans, the followers of Simon the Magician, and some others; all of whom the
apostles frequently caution the flock against. The Gnostics pretended to
extraordinary light, and to a wonderful knowledge of mysteries. The Nicolaitans
believed in the lawfulness of adultery and a community of wives. The Cerethians
taught that the reign of Jesus Christ would be terrestrial, and that the saints would
dwell with him on earth, enjoying all manner of sensual delights in that period.
Some believed that this reign would be a time of great spiritual enjoyment, Christ
dwelling here with his elect. Papias, a disciple of St. John the Evangelist, was the
ringleader of this sect, who is said to have understood literally what was spoken in a
mystical sense. This doctrine of the millennium owes its origin to the Jews, who
expected a reign of a thousand years on earth with their Messiah. Simon pretended to
be a Christian, and sometimes termed himself their Messiah. He had a great many
followers, and many were deceived by his miracles. It is said that he
contrived to ascend into the air, in a chariot of fire, in the presence of Nero, he being
a great favorite with that gentleman.
In the year 140, one Cerdo went about teaching that there were two gods, the one
rigorous and severe, the other merciful and forgiving. Another person, called
Valentine, revived the errors of Simon Magus, and was excommunicated at about the same
time with Cerdo. There were also the Montanites, who arose about the year 170, who
regarded their leader as the Holy Ghost. These people professed to be inspired, kept
long fasts, and were extremely rigid. They declaimed against the church of Rome in
strains much like those of Miller. Trapozito taught that Melchisedec was greater
than Christ; and one Theodotus taught that Christ was but an ordinary man. These men
were excommunicated, and joined Mr. Miller's church in the wilderness.
Praxeas taught that there was but one person in Christ, and that the Father was crucified
as well as the Son: he was excommunicated, and his followers joined the church in the
wilderness. There were also some who taught that Jesus Christ had never come in
the flesh, (of whom St. John speaks, and whom he terms antichrists;) and many other
strange doctrines were broached, and continued to be taught at various times. Such
irregular persons were cut off from the church, and became "the church in the
wilderness." We hear of no other persons who would answer Mr. Miller's
description of "the true church," up to the twelfth century. Does Mr.
Miller mean to say that these men were the church that was nourished 1260 years in the
wilderness? It was certainly a very irregular church.
The Manicheans had been hovering about the regular church for about a thousand years,
sowing sedition, and counseling bloodshed. In the thirteenth century, they had
become strong enough to burn churches, demolish monasteries, and finally entered the field
with a hundred thousand men. They were met and conquered by the civil troops.
The Waldenses, who arose some time in the twelfth or thirteenth century, were rigid
predestinarians, and were opposed to all order and regularity, saying that any man might
preach and administer the sacraments. These men demolished churches, and raged
violently against the Catholics. They believed in transubstantiation and confession,
and held that as many steps as one took in dance, so many steps he took toward hell.
They seem to have been a mixture of the Quaker, the Calvinist, and the Catholic; but full
of self-righteousness and bigotry.
Now will our author pretend that any of these men were the church in the
wilderness? If not, what becomes of the 1260 years? If not, his whole argument
falls to the ground. Fortunately, we have a certain standard; and out
of our own author's mouth we will condemn both him and his theory. He says, on the
last page of his book, --
"Can you not discern the signs of the times?" Let me give you
one rule by which you may know a false doctrine. They may have many good things in
their creeds, they may be very plausible in their arguments, and after all deceive
you. But examine them closely, and you will find they will deny, ridicule, or try to
do away some prominent doctrine of the Bible; such as the divinity of Christ, his second
coming, (!) office of the Holy Ghost, eternal punishment, doctrine of grace, election,
conviction of sin, regeneration, repentance, or faith. And when you hear or see them
make light or scoff at any thing of this kind in the word of God, go not after them, nor
bid them God speed.
The reader now knows the creed of Mr. Miller: he is a thorough Calvinist, and is so
firmly rooted in the doctrines enumerated above, that he will not even bid a man God speed
who thinks differently from himself. Of course, then, Unitarians, Universalists,
Methodists, Episcopalians, Catholics, Quakers, and other denominations, are all heretics,
with whom it would be criminal "so much as to eat." (See 2 John 9, 10,
11.)
Now I demand of Mr. Miller whether there ever was a church or sect, previous to John
Calvin and Martin Luther, who taught the doctrines in which Miller believes. If they
were not of his opinion, then they were teachers of false doctrines, and it would be
criminal, as he says, to bid such men God speed. But will he say that Luther and
Calvin came up out of the wilderness, where they had been fed, and where their
predecessors had been fed 1260 years? Certainly not; for both those gentlemen were
monks, who had taken the vow of eternal celibacy, and who came directly out of the bosom
of the great whore of Babylon. What, then, becomes of Mr. Miller's 1260 years?
Our author says the sixth age of the church is styled Philadelphia, signifying brotherly
love. Let us hear this base fabricator:
The signification of the name of this church, Philadelphia, is brotherly love,
and this age began about the time of the Reformation; for then God opened an effectual
door for the gospel to be spread, which no man or set of men have been able to shut.
And the early reformers displayed a zeal [brotherly love?] and fearlessness in
their cause which astonished their friends and confounded their enemies. At this
time, too, Christian love and fellowship was evidently one of the strongest marks of the
day, and manifested that the work was of God.
If any person can read the last clause of the above quotation without being sensible of
the desperate straits to which Mr. Miller is driven for the support of his theory, he must
be indeed blind to the most glaring facts on the page of modern history. If there
ever was a time when the very demon of discord raged, when murder, rapine, robbery, and in
tense sectarian hate turned the land into pandemonium, it was at the time of the
Reformation. No sooner had the reformers commenced their career, no sooner had they
found it impossible to obey Luther's call to "bathe their arms to the elbows in the
blood of popes, cardinals, and bishops," than they fell violently afoul of each
other. Luther pronounced sentence of eternal woe against Calvin, and Calvin, with
the smoke of Servetus's burning body in his throat, belched out the damnation of
Luther. Melanchthon, the intimate of Luther, said the latter was more of a brute
than a Christian. Throughout England, the furious flame of persecution raged up and
down, like a whirl of fire. As soon as the German insurgents had finished their
plunderings and massacres in their own land, they were sent for to defend and establish
the new faith in Britain. The German bayonet, the rack, the gibbet, the iron hoop --
termed, in the slang of that age, "the scavenger's daughter" -- were
called into requisition, in order to set up this religion of "brotherly love;"
and King Henry VIII at the head of the church, with that bloody monster, Cranmer, burned
men for every variation in the new creed, insomuch that people knew not what to profess in
order to escape the blood-red hand of Cranmer and his satellites, Ridley and Latimer.
The Calvinists in France were little better than banditti; murder and destruction
of property being their principle aim. Nor was this bloody scene enacted only in the
outbreak of the Reformation. When the English church became established, and the
king, without regard to character, was put in as head of the church, then came the
persecution of the Dissenters. -- Perhaps Mr. Miller admires the tender
mercies of the Scotch boot, by which the leg and foot of the victim were crushed
until he recanted and joined the Protestant church. Various sects arose, and began
condemning and persecuting each other with the malice of fiends: the Quakers were beaten,
starved, and imprisoned by the Church of England, and hanged by the Puritans.
"Brotherly love" first dawned in our own country when Lord Balti- more, a
Catholic, proclaimed liberty of Conscience in Maryland, and William Penn did the same in
Pennsylvania. But not until the sects became too many and too weak to persecute, not
until the arm was tired with slaughter, and the power was taken away, did these new
sects cease to bruise each other. And it is very evident that, if Mr. Miller had the
power, he would now persecute every man who dissented from his own religion, or who
presumed to dispute his silly theory about the second coming of Christ.
CHAPTER X.
In the commencement of his twelfth lecture, our commentator says:
The book of Revelation has been called by thousands a sealed book; and many a
dear saint, while in this imperfect state of vision and knowledge, has wept much because
they could not read and understand the book.
I venture to assert, that it would have been better had Brother Miller followed the
example of his dear saints. They have set him an example of humility, which
contrasts much with his self-confidence, and the difference is altogether in their
favor. But our hero is doubtless aware, that all the "dear saints"
have not regarded the Revelation as a sealed book. About the year 1700, a certain
sect of people went forth to prophesy, among whom were one Lacy, an Englishman, Sir
Richard Bulkley, and Fatio de Duiller, of Switzerland. This trio of worthies
succeeded as well as Mr. Miller: they wrought miracles, danced, ate spiritually, and
acknowledged no superior in church or state. They could throw themselves into
violent convulsions at the shortest notice, and were almost as expert as Luther in
wrestling with the devil. These gentlemen had discovered that they lived on the very
verge of the millennium, and loudly and constantly did they proclaim the approach of that
happy period. They had received extraordinary light; they could describe every
feather on Gabriel's wing; and all the texts of Scripture were as familiar to them as the
beads of the rosary to a Catholic maiden. Their millennium did not come; they had
made a mistake in their reckoning; they should have fixed the time in 1843. Ah!
there is the point where they were at issue with Mr. Miller. But they agreed with
our author in one thing: they bellowed antichrist! antichrist! and prophesied that in a
few days the papal beast, and all kings, governors, and constables, would be burned to
ashes. They labored hard to bring about the fulfillment of their scorching prophecy,
but could not produce the requisite ignition.
In his thirteenth lecture, we have the two witnesses spoken of in Revelation, who are
the Old and New Testament, according to our author. A description of the French
Revolution follows, as if there were not bloody deeds committed in olden time to which the
prophecies of the apostle would apply much better than to the reign of infidelity in
France. This lecture is full of slanders and falsehoods: some of them are stale, and
have been often refuted; others are forged to answer our author's purpose. Our
author says that if any man will hurt these two witnesses (the Old and New Testament) fire
proceeds out of their mouth and kills them; and he says that this was the case with
deistical France, in the Revolution.
The rulers of France, in the Revolution, proclaimed a war of extermination
against the fisherman's Bible, as they were pleased to term it; and within six years they
exterminated themselves, the republic, and almost all their principles.
On the preceding page, our author complains that the beast hid and perverted the
Bible. Now how can he call this deistical warfare a war against the Bible, when he
knows that those revolutionists were at war with the beast -- faithful allies of
his own? He well knows that the Catholic clergy were the objects of their vengeance;
and that those holy men were martyred by hundreds in cold blood; and that they were seen
calmly confessing their sins to each other, and kneeling in prayer before the beautiful
emblems of their faith, while the ax was grinding and the bayonet was screwed on for their
destruction. The beloved and honored Cheverus was one of those clergy, and narrowly
escaped death; and while the Protestant priests were, on all sides, giving up their
religion and forsaking Christ, the confessor of Louis XVI attended his king to the
scaffold, and, as the ax fell, and the minister of God was sprinkled with the sovereign's
blood, he undauntedly exclaimed, "Enfant de St. Louis, montez au ciel!"
[Child of St. Louis! ascend to heaven!]
The following passage in this lecture deserves a moment's thought:
About the close of the eighteenth century, in consequence of the abominable
corruptions of the church of Rome being exposed to public view, the men of the world began
to treat revelation as a fiction, and religion as priestcraft, and, instead of searching
for the pillar and ground of the truth, [see 1 Tim. iii. 15,] "their imaginations
became vain, and their foolish minds were darkened"; they declared war against the
Bible, the "two witnesses," which war became general all over Europe and
America.
Here we learn that the exposure of popish errors brought about infidelity. Those
exposures were chiefly made in a previous century; and, with regard to infidelity, it has
been steadily increasing, in England and America, for the last 300 years; and, we shall
have a new batch of infidels, hot from Miller's oven, and ready to avouch, at the point of
the bayonet, that there is neither angel nor resurrection.
Let me ask the candid reader what effect the following denunciations will have upon
wavering minds:
And once more, let me inquire how it stands with you, my dear hearer? Are
you prepared for that great and solemn day? Are you ready to meet the
judgment? The two witnesses will appear for or against you. Their testimony
will not fail. (!!!) Do you believe them? He that believeth will be
saved, and he that believeth not, shall be damned.
The above is certainly explicit. We are told, in so many words, that if we do not
believe Mr. Miller's interpretation of the Scriptures, we shall be condemned to eternal
woe. Here is the claim of infallibility with a vengeance. I begin to
have some misgivings that William Miller is antichrist. It is very evident that our
gentleman has been employed or encouraged by certain sects, in this land, who have, of
late years, lost ground considerably. The regular, old, gloomy, savage,
brimstone-blue church has been sorely afflicted by the progress of more mild and popular
doctrine, as well as by the partiality which many of their preachers have shown for the
gentler portion of our race. Mr. Miller can prove, however, that "faith works
by love"; and Calvin expressly taught that good works were wholly
unnecessary under the new dispensation. It is necessary that these old skeleton
sects should be clothed with flesh, and "all is fish that comes to their net";
and if Mr. Miller can drive them within the pale, with fire and brimstone, like one of
Scott's heroes chasing the Highlanders with a red-hot poker, it will answer their purpose
admirably.
Among the proofs of Miller's dishonesty, I cannot avoid noticing the following, which
is taken from his seventeenth lecture:
I believe all writers and commentators on the Apocalypse agree that the church
of Christ has been in the wilderness more than twelve centuries past. Some have
fixed the time of the church entering into her wilderness state as early as A. D. 534,
when the great controversy between the Orthodox and Arians, which in the days of Justinian
shook the religious world. &c.
Here we have a palpable falsehood, which may be detected at any time. There was
no such controversy in the days of Justinian. The empress Theodora endeavored to
promote the sect of Acephali, and, finding that she could not obtain her ends, persecuted
the pope, who was stripped of his pontifical ornaments, and sent into exile. This
happened in the days of Justinian. But the great Arian controversy took place in the
fourth century. The council of Nice decided against Arianism in 325, although the
dispute was continued a few years after that date.
It is easy to perceive that Miller places this controversy in the days of Justinian, in
order to fix the date of his wilderness church as near to 538 as possible.
The opinion for which the empress Theodora contended was simply that of one nature in
Christ; that he was wholly divine, and not possessed of a human soul at all. The
Arians contended that Jesus Christ was a created being, who existed before the world was
made, but inferior to the Father.
In order to convict Mr. Miller of falsehood, although hardly necessary, I will quote
from three different authors to prove that the great Arian controversy was settled in the
fourth century.
Voltaire says:
Constantine convened at Nicea, opposite to Constantinople, the first ecumenical
council in which Osius presided. There was determined the great question which
disturbed the church, concerning Christ's divinity; one side availing themselves of the
opinion of Origen, who, in chapter vi against Celsus, says, "We offer up our prayers
to God, through Jesus, who holds the middle place between created nature and the uncreated
nature, who brings to us his Father's grace, and presents our prayers to the great God as
our high priest."
Dr. Priestly, the Unitarian, says:
The emperor Constantine, having endeavored in vain to compose those differences
in the religion which he had lately professed, and especially to reconcile Arius and
Alexander, at length called a general council of bishops at Nice, the first which had
obtained that appellation, and in this council after much indecent wrangling, and violent
debate, Arius was condemned and banished to Illyricum, a part of the Roman empire very
remote from Alexandria, where the controversy originated.
Gahan, in his Church History, says:
To put a stop to the unhappy disputes that were raised by the Arians and divided
the church, Constantine, the emperor, zealously concurred in assembling a general council,
this being the only remedy adequate to the growing evil, and capable of restoring peace to
the church. By letters of respect he invited the bishops, from all parts of the
world, to the city of Nice, in Bythinia, and defrayed their expenses. They assembled
in the imperial palace on the 19th of June, in the year 325. The emperor entered the
council without guards, nor would he sit till he was requested, as Eusebius says.
The renowned Osius, bishop of Corduba, in Spain, presided thereat in the name of St.
Sylvester, by whom he was commissioned. The fathers, thus assembled, in invitation
of the apostles on a similar occasion, examined, refuted, and proscribed the doctrine of
Arius, and cut him off from the communion of the faithful. They ascertained the
Catholic faith, and drew up a solemn profession, known by the name of the Nicene Creed;
wherein, to exclude all the subtleties of the Arians, they declared, in terms that left no
subterfuge for error, no room for heresy to play in, the Son consubstantial
with the Father.
Now Mr. Miller has expressly stated that his wilderness church took its flight at the
time of the great Arian controversy. Then what becomes of his 1260 years, his 666
years, and his 538, for the setting up of the papal beast? He knew that his
reckoning would be wrong if he gave the correct date for this controversy; and he
therefore pretends that it occurred in the day of Justinian, two centuries after it really
took place.
In the days of Justinian, the empress Theodora took sides with the Acephali -- a
rigid sect of the Eutychians. But these people did not divide the church into two
great parties: they were dissenters from the church, and were divided among
themselves. Dr. Priestly says:
In 535 the Eutychians divided, some of them maintaining that there were some
things which Christ did not know, while others asserted that he knew everything, even the
time of the day of judgment.
How would that people have been surprised had they lived in this day of light and
knowledge, when mere mortals know all about the day of judgment! Alas! mathematics
had not then undergone those improvements in which we rejoice in this age! Had the
bishops exchanged the miter and crosier for the slate and pencil, they might have become
wiser than Christ.
In his thirteenth lecture we find the following characteristic misrepresentations:
Verse 8. "And their dead bodies shall lie in the streets of the great
city which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified."
This verse teaches us that the word of God would be made a dead letter, by the
authority of one of the principle kingdoms out of one of the ten into which the Roman
government was divided, and that they would be guilty of the same sins that Sodom and
Egypt were guilty of, and also of crucifying our Lord, in a spiritual sense. This
will apply to France in particular. France, previous to and in the French revolution
was guilty of Sodomitish sins; and also held in bondage, like Egypt, the people of God;
and, in France, Christ had been crucified in his people, on St. Bartholomew's eve, A. D.
1572, when 50,000 Huguenots were murdered in one night.
The two witnesses, whose dead bodies are spoken of above, were probably Paul and Peter,
who were both put to death by Nero in Rome. "Where also our Lord was
crucified" alludes, probably, to the fact that St. Peter perished on the cross;
insomuch as Peter was the principal disciple of our Lord, was commissioned to feed his
sheep and lambs, and, as far as possible, supplied the place of Jesus Christ after his
ascension. Christ was crucified afresh in his servant St. Peter; but not in the
persons of the Huguenots, who were put to death on political grounds. The Duke of
Guise, an inestimable nobleman, had been treacherously assassinated at the instance of
Cologni, the chief of the insurgent sect, and also by the persuasion of one Beza, a
miserable fanatic of that age. This wicked deed had, however, been overlooked, and
the king of France had even invited the Huguenots to the celebration of a marriage between
the king's sister and the young king of Navarre. When these people entered Paris the
inhabitants very naturally recollected the treacherous conduct of Cologni; but every thing
would have gone peaceably enough had not a relation of the murdered duke fired at Cologni
in the street. The followers of this man were highly incensed at this outrage, and,
rallying around their leader, swore vengeance against the government itself. The
king resolved to quench this rising treason at once, knowing that no terms could be kept
with the Huguenots. He was even persuaded to attack them on the instant; in
consequence of which, some fifteen hundred of those rebellious people were sacrificed.
A Church of England writer thus speaks of that unfortunate affair:
The massacre at Paris very far exceeded the wishes of the court, and orders were
instantly despatched to the great towns in the provinces to prevent similar scenes.
Such scenes took place, however, in several places; but though, by some Protestant
writers, the whole number of persons killed has been made to amount to a hundred
thousand, an account published in 1582, and made up from accounts collected from
the ministers in the different towns, made the number for all France amount to
786 persons! Dr. Lingard, with his usual fairness, says, "If we double this
number we shall not be far from the real amount." The Protestant writers began
at one hundred thousand, then fell to seventy thousand, then to thirty thousand, then to
twenty thousand, then to fifteen thousand, and, at last, to ten thousand. All in
round numbers! One of them, in an hour of great indiscretion, ventured upon
obtaining returns of names from the ministers themselves; and then came out the 786
persons in the whole! A number truly horrible to think of, but a number not half so
great as that of those English Catholics whom "good Queen Bess" had, even
at this time, (the 14th year of her reign,) caused to be ripped up, racked till the
bones came out of their sockets, or caused to be despatched, or to die in
prison or in exile; and this, too, observe, not for rebellions, treasons, robberies, and
assassinations, like those of Cologni and his followers; but simply and solely for
adhering to the religion of their and her fathers, which religion she had openly practiced
for years, and to which religion she had most solemnly sworn that she sincerely belonged.
So much for Miller's commentary on the Revelations, and his dastardly falsehoods, in
order to throw odium upon a class of the community whom he hates with all the malignity of
the original tempter.
CONCLUSION.
I have now examined the principal arguments of William Miller; not so fully as I could
have wished, but as far as the prescribed limits of this work permitted me. It will
be observed that his argument is wholly grounded upon the belief that paganism ended in
the Roman empire in 666 years after the league between the Jews and Romans, and 508 years
after Christ; that in thirty years commenced the reign of the image beast, or antichrist,
which reign continued until 1798, or 1260 years, during all of which time the true church
of Christ existed, collateral with the beast; and that, in order to make up the 2300 days
of Daniel, there are 45 years to be added to the 1798. He says, from the time when
the decree went forth to build Jerusalem until the time of the Saviour's death, was
seventy weeks, or 490 years; the pagan abomination would be taken away 475 years
afterwards; the papal abomination would be set up 30 years after that, and would continue
1260 years; and that then but 45 years would be wanting to complete the 2300 days, when
the papal abomination, or abomination which maketh desolate, would be utterly destroyed,
in the grand consummation of all things. In all this he has taken it for granted
that 2300 days stand for 2300 years; that forty two months stand for 1260 years; and a
time, times, and a half, stands for 1260 years. According to his computation, the
ten kings who received power as kings one hour with the beast must have had this
power but the 24th part of a year. When "there was silence in heaven for the
space of half an hour," this silence must have lasted more then a week. Indeed,
there is no rule by which we may determine when days are intended to mean days, and when
they are intended to mean years: so that the Creator may have been six years in creating
the world, and the Saviour may have fasted for forty years; and this last will appear more
probable, when we remember that the Scripture says he was an hungered after this
fast.
I know it may be said that prophetic days, months, and weeks are not to be
reckoned as other days, months, and weeks; yet, as prophetic days are sometimes so
reckoned, how or when can we decide their true meaning? Miller thinks he has decided
this point, by being able to show that the events prophesied of have all taken place --
with the exception of the resurrection -- in the specified time, a day being
taken for a year, a week for seven years, and a month for thirty years. But here I
think he has failed; and I have endeavored, in the preceding pages, to show that those
events did not take place as he has represented them. The passages in Daniel which
he applies to Napoleon and to the papal beast will better apply to Antiochus; for, during
his persecution of the Jews, there was a time of trouble greater than that nation had ever
before experienced. Many apostatized from Judaism, while those who remained firm
endured the most dreadful inflictions. Antiochus penetrated to the holy of holies,
and desecrated the temple, by offering a large hog on the sacred
altar. And with respect to the setting up of the papal abomination in 538, it is all
imaginary. Constantine had been converted in 312, and surely it was no subject of
regret that an emperor should become a Christian. St. Paul says to king Agrippa,
"I would that not only thou, but all who hear me this day, were as I am, except these
bonds." The popes exercised no more authority in 538 than they had always done;
and the Catholic church underwent no change at that particular time, but remained as she
had been for centuries previous. At a much later day, there were one or two popes
who assumed more temporal power than became them; but they were only exceptions to a
general practice.
But let us take a more general view of this subject. Our author frequently calls
upon us to regard "the signs of the times." Now what prospect is there of
the horrible scene of anarchy, riot, and general ruin, which ought to have commenced even
now? If the end of all things is to take place in 1843, -- and if, previous
to that time, the world is to be turned upside down, -- if there is to be an end
to all civil order, -- if the son is to be in arms against the parent, and the
parent against the son, -- if treason, murder, robbery, and continual uproar, are
to be the order of the day, it is certainly high time that we made a beginning; and
I must say that I fear Mr. Miller is doing his part to bring about such deplorable events.
In the first place, to persist in prophesying of such a state of things is the readiest
way to hasten it on. But will rational men and women permit themselves to be jostled
from their propriety by a man whose ends would be answered, and whose fame would be
augmented, by their utter destruction. Dr. Young says:
How fain our thoughts
to fancy what we wish!
Shall the wish of Mr. Miller be gratified? Shall we aid him in the fulfillment of
his prophecy? But there is more mischief in this man than may at first sight
appear. How artfully has he taken advantage of a popular prejudice against our
naturalized fellow-citizens, and the religion which they generally profess! After
laboring to prove that the Catholic church is the horrible beast against which Heaven and
all her servants are waging war, he calls upon us to believe, as a duty most sacred, that
the church will very soon rise up in its strength and make war upon the saints --
that, before the year 1843, the Catholics will make a desperate attack upon the true
church of Christ -- that they will gather themselves together in Amageddon, for
the purpose of slaughtering the armies of God! What is the following rant but a call
for general riot and religious persecution?
The dragon begins to sound for the onset; the armies of the beast begin to
muster for the battle; they are furbishing their swords for the slaughter; the kings of
the earth are combining against the freedom of their subjects, &c.
Who that reads the above can avoid believing that the author is a reckless and violent
man? Who can resist the conclusion that he is willing to turn the world upside down,
if he can but obtain a little notoriety for himself, and gratify his own malicious and
fiendish desires? There is, indeed, a class of men who have risen up lately, ay, and
some women too, whose sole aim appears to be the promotion of anarchy and confusion.
Some of them are disappointed persons, who are resolved to gain the notice and attention
of mankind. They aim to unloose the bands of social life; they seem to be
discontented, and dissatisfied with every thing. They can live only in a continual
tempest, and, because their own passions are raging like the sea in a storm, they endeavor
to make every body else unhappy and dissatisfied. I repeat the question: is there
any prospect, are there any signs now, of the general anarchy throughout the world which
this man has declared to be at our very doors?
What shall I say to those who have been already duped by this prince of quacks and
deceivers? You will tell me that the day of judgment is to come as a thief in the
night, and that no one can say it will not come in the year 1843. But if all that is
granted, it is no less certain that no person can say it will arrive in that
year. We are assured in Holy Scripture that the angels themselves do not know.
You may reply, that the angels do not know the day and the hour, but that
they know the year. Let us consider this objection a moment. The angel
who told Daniel about those events which were to befall his nation, could have reckoned
from the very moment when the decree went forth to build Jerusalem. He must have
known the day and the hour, if the end of the world was meant by the end of the 2300
days. Let us also recollect the circumstances under which the disciples questioned
the Lord. They desired to know when those things would take place: they did not know
but they would occur during their own lives. When Christ told them that neither men
nor angels, that none but the Father, knew the time, he did not intend to turn them off
with a mere quibble and play upon words. He meant that he could not satisfy them on
the subject; for surely, if he had told them the year, they would have required no
farther information; for when they learned that it would take place at so distant a day,
the exact hour would have been a matter of small concern to them.
Why will you not learn wisdom from those who have gone before you, instead of
surrendering up your judgment into the hand of a man who endeavors to revive the
heart-burnings and the vagaries of a former century? There is nothing new or
original in these wayward fancies; and it is not to be supposed that the fanatics of
former days ran their wild courses without supposing they had reason and Scripture on
their side. They felt as confident as you do. They supposed they lived in an
age when marvelous things were to be brought about, even as Miller does. Politicians
and religionists have always been on the eve of some mighty revolution; crises are
the order of the day in every age. Espouse not, then, the desperate cause of
Miller. Suffer not yourselves to be numbered with the lo heres! and lo theres! of
other days, whose frantic excesses are the scoff of the infidel and a stumbling-block to
the wavering.
You may think that I have not fully answered Miller's arguments; but take not occasion
from thence to suppose that they are unanswerable. Some persons have endeavored to
answer infidel authors, but not possessing equal wit and knowledge, have wholly failed in
the attempt. But you are not only mistaken in your opinions, -- you are the
propagators of mischief; you are bringing discredit on the gospel; you are binding the
brows of the infidel with laurel. You are also sapping the foundations of civil
society; you are filling the hearts of the simple with amazement. In his great
wisdom, the Almighty has seen proper to hide from us the time of his second appearance,
because the expectation of so wonderful an event would throw mankind into a ferment;
because we could not regularly pursue the various occupations, and fulfill the many duties
of life, if our whole souls were filled with the expectation of the general
judgment. Will you contrive a way to circumvent the Almighty? Will you make
void his decrees, and deprive the world of the benefits which he had intended for us, by
getting up a fictitious day of judgment?
"Behold the bridegroom cometh!" It is true that our Saviour declared
that this cry would be heard; but not until the bridegroom was manifestly come; for the
foolish virgins, instead of doubting his arrival, immediately demanded oil at the hands of
the wise virgins. So that, even admitting this parable had reference to the day of
judgment, it will not apply to the present case. That time is hidden from all but
God; and so our Saviour expressly declares. It was to prevent men from framing such
theories as that of Miller, that Christ assured his disciples the time was known only to
God.
This audacious man has also declared that, after next August, there is no repentance
nor forgiveness of sin! This is but a consequence of his presumption in naming the
year of the resurrection. The one grows out of the other. He sets bounds to
the mercy of God, and declares that no sinner shall be saved after next August.
Persons who believe him are thus liable to be driven to despair, unless as confident of
their acceptance with God as he is.
Let me then conclude by advising all lovers of peace, good order, and the gospel, to
beware of the leaven of William Miller, to fulfill their several duties in life quietly,
patiently, and with resignation to the will of Heaven, to be "amazed with no sudden
amazement," and to avoid all clamorous persons who aim to create excitements that
they may ride conspicuously on the foam of the waves which they have raised.
A rage for becoming great reformers, the founders and leaders of new sects and parties,
predominates in this age of the world: a want of humility, of temperance, and habitual
sobriety, leads infatuated men to seek distinction, while a predominance of self-esteem
inspires them with the belief that they are peculiarly qualified for doing wonders.
O for the honest simplicity of other days, when men were content to do right; when they
patiently listened to deserved reproof, and were more intent on reforming themselves than
in reforming the world. "Be ye not many masters" was the exhortation of
Paul to the flock in his day; but now there are so many who desire to be masters and
leaders, that it is difficult to point out the followers, and the sheep and the lambs of
the flock. Every sheep is wiser than his shepherd, and every lamb is taught to push
with his tender horns against the stakes and boundaries of the New Jerusalem. There
was a time when sacred things were respected, and when infidels could not deny that
believers sincerely cherished the faith which they professed. There was a time when
great men did not suppose themselves above the word of God, and the laws of his church;
but then people did not run after every lo here! and lo there! supposing them to be
"the great power of God." The foot did not essay to enact the part of the
head, nor did the elbows invade the province of the breast. They did not heap to
themselves teachers, having itching ears, and ever on the watch for some new thing.
Such things as veneration, high-souled and confiding faith, were known in the earlier ages
of Christianity, and the true shepherds of the flock were held in esteem by the wise and
the simple, the weak and the powerful.
Who can read the following account of the emperor Theodosius, without admiring the
faith and the humility of a hero who, notwithstanding his worldly power and authority,
bowed to the cross of Christ, and recognized him in his servant:
But Theodosius unhappily forgot the clemency and moderation which he had shown
on this occasion, when he received an account of another tumultuous insurrection that
happened in Thessalonica, where the populace stoned Botheric, the governor of that city,
to death. When the emperor was apprised hereof, instead of checking the impetuosity
of his hasty disposition, he suffered himself immediately to be carried away by the first
transports of his passion, and issued a commission, or warrant, for the soldiery to be let
loose for three hours on the inhabitants of Thessalonica, till about 7000 of them were
massacred, without distinguishing the innocent from the guilty.
The horror with which the news of this tragical scene filled the breast of St.
Ambrose is not to be expressed. After giving the emperor a little time to reflect,
and enter himself, he wrote him a letter, wherein he declared that he neither could nor
would receive his offerings at mass, nor celebrate the divine mysteries before him, till
he expiated, by an exemplary penance, the enormity of the massacre lately committed.
The emperor, notwithstanding, resolved to go to the church of Milan, according to
custom. St. Ambrose, meeting him at the church porch, forbade him any further
entrance. The prince alleging, by way of extenuating his guilt, that king David had
also sinned, the holy bishop replied, "Him whom you have followed in sinning, follow
also in his repentance."
Theodosius submitted to this sentence as if pro- nounced by God himself, and
returned to his palace, bewailing his miserable condition, and saying, "The church is
open to beggars and slaves, and to the meanest of my subjects; but the doors of it, and
consequently the gates of heaven also, are shut against me."
He remained shut up at home in his oratory for the space of eight months, clad
with penitential weeds, imploring mercy and pardon, and shedding many tears. When
the feast of Christmas was come, he went to the enclosure of the church, placed himself in
the rank of the public penitents, prostrate on the ground, and striking his breast with
grief, and with tears running down his cheeks, begging pardon of God in the sight of all
the people, who were so touched with his humility and edifying piety, that they wept and
prayed with him for a considerable time.
In short, he made an open confession of his sins, accepted and performed the
public penance enjoined him by St. Ambrose, according to the sacred canons; for the
church, instructed by the word and example of the apostles, was accustomed then to inflict
public penance upon public sinners, and these penances were determined by the bishops,
according to the particular circumstances of the case.
Who can read the above simple yet sublime recital of the faith and loyalty
of the sinful emperor, without remembering the stone cut out of the mountain without
hands, which was to break principalities and powers to pieces; not by bloodshed, fire and
murder -- as recommended by Miller -- but by the power of the Holy
Spirit, and the benign authority of the legitimate rulers of the church, acting on behalf
of the Lord Jesus Christ. Why, then, do we labor to scatter in Israel and divide in
Jacob? Why all these false prophets, these ringleaders, and founders of new
orders? Whence is this strange fire? Better by far that we go back, and do our
first works; for, in endeavoring to do greater things than our fathers, we have only rent
the garment of Christ, and cast lots for his vesture.
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