Lives of the apostles of Jesus Christ

by David Francis Bacon

The internal evidence is also so minutely protracted in its character, that only a bare allusion to it can be here permitted, and reference to higher and deeper sources of information, on such an exegetical point, may be made for the benefit of the scholar. Lampe, Wolf, Michaelis, Mill, Eichhorn and others, quoted by Fabricius, [Bibliotheca Graeca, vol. IV. p. 795, note 46.] Hug and his English translator, Dr. Wait, are also full on this point.

This evidence consists for the most part in a comparison of passages in this book with similar ones in the other writings of John, more especially his gospel. Wetstein, in particular, has brought together many such parallelisms, some of which are so striking in the peculiar expressions of John, and yet so merely accidental in their character, as to afford most satisfactory evidence to the nicest critics, of the identity of authorship. A table of these coincidences is given from Wetstein, by Wait, Hug’s translator, (p. 636, note.) Yet on this very point,——the style,——the most serious objection to the Apocalypse, as a work of the author of John’s gospel, has always been founded;——the rude, wild, thundering sublimity of the vision of Patmos, presenting such a striking contrast with the soft, love-teaching, and beseeching style of the gospel and the epistles of John. But such objectors have forgotten or overlooked the immense difference between the circumstances under which these works were suggested and composed. Their period, their scene, their subject, their object, were all widely removed from each other, and a thoughtful examination will show, that writings of such widely various scope and tendency could not well have less striking differences, than those observable between this and the other writings of John. In such a change of circumstances, the structure of sentences, the choice of words, and the figures of speech, could hardly be expected to show the slightest similarity between works, thus different in design, though by the same author. But in the minuter peculiarities of language, certain favorite expressions of the author,——particular associations of words, such as a forger could never hit upon in that uninventive age,——certain personal views and sentiments on trifling points, occasionally modifying the verbal forms of ideas——these and a multitude of other characteristics, making up that collection of abstractions which is called an author’s style,——all quite beyond the reach of an imitator, but presenting the most valuable and honest tests to the laborious critic,——constitute a series of proofs in this case, which none can fully appreciate but the investigators and students themselves.

II. With what design was the Apocalypse written?

There is no part of the Bible which has been the subject of so much perversion, or on which the minds of the great mass of Christian readers have been suffered to fall into such gross errors, as the Apocalypse. This is the opinion of all the great exegetical theologians of this age, who have examined the scope of the work most attentively; and from the time of Martin Luther till this moment, the opinions of the learned have for the most part been totally different from those which have made up the popular sentiment,——none or few, caring to give the world the benefit of the simple truth, which might be ill received by those who loved darkness rather than light; and those who knew the truth, have generally preferred to keep the quiet enjoyment of it to themselves. This certainly is much to be regretted; for in consequence of this culpable negligence of the duty of making religious knowledge available for the good of the whole, this particular apostolic writing has been the occasion of the most miserable and scandalous delusions among the majority even of the more intelligent order of Bible readers,——delusions, which, affecting no point whatever in creeds and confessions of faith, those bulwarks of sects, have been suffered to rage and spread their debasing error, without subjecting those who thus indulged their foolish fancies, to the terrors of ecclesiastical censure. The Revelation of John has, accordingly, for the last century or two, been made a licensed subject for the indulgence of idle fancies, and used as a grand storehouse for every “filthy dreamer” to draw upon, for the scriptural prophetical supports of his particular notions of “the signs of the times,” and for the warrant of his special denunciations of divine wrath and coming ruin, against any system that might happen to be particularly abominable in his religious eyes. Thus, a most baseless delusion has been long suffered to pervade the minds of common readers, respecting the general scope of the Apocalypse, perverting the latter parts of it into a prophecy of the rise, triumph and downfall of the Romish papal tyranny; while in respect to the minor details, every schemer has been left to satisfy himself, as his private fancy or sectarian zeal might direct him. Now, not only is all this ranting trash directly opposed to the clear, natural and simple explanations, given by those very persons among the earliest Christian writers, who had John’s own private personal testimony as to his real meaning, in the dark passages which have in modern times been made the subject of such idle, fanciful interpretations; but they are so palpably inconsistent both with the general scope and the minute details of the writing itself, that even without the support of this most incontrovertible evidence of the earliest Christian antiquity, the falsehood of the idea of any anti-papal prophecy can be most triumphantly and unanswerably settled; and this has been repeatedly done, in every variety of manner, by the learned labors of all the sagest of the orthodox theologians of Germany, Holland, France and England, for the last three hundred years. A most absurd notion seems to be prevalent, that the idea of a rational historical interpretation of the Apocalypse, is one of the wicked results of that most horrible of abstract monsters, “German neology;” and the dreadful name of Eichhorn is straightway referred to, as the source of this common sense view. But Eichhorn and all those of the modern German schools of theology, who have taken up this notion, so far from originating the view or aspiring to claim it as their invention, were but quietly following the standard authorities which had been steadily accumulating on this point for sixteen hundred years; and instead of being the result of neology or of anything new, it was as old as the time of Irenaeus. The testimony of all the early writers on this point, is uniform and explicit; and they all, without a solitary exception, explain the great mass of the bold expressions in it, about coming ruin on the enemies of the pure faith of Christ, as a distinct, direct prophecy of the downfall of imperial Rome, as the great heathen foe of the saints. There was among them no very minute account of the manner in which the poetical details of the prophecy was to be fulfilled; but the general meaning of the whole was considered to be so marked, dated, and individualized, that to have denied this manifest interpretation in their presence, must have seemed an absurdity not less than to have denied the authentic history of past ages. Not all, nor most of the Christian Fathers however, have noticed the design and character of the Apocalypse, even among those of the western churches; while the scepticism of the Greek and Syrian Fathers, after the third century, about the authenticity of the work, has deprived the world of the great advantage which their superior acquaintance with the original language of the writing, with its peculiarly oriental style, allusions and quotations, would have enabled them to afford in the faithful interpretation of the predictions. From the very first, however, there were difficulties among the different sects, about the allegorical and literal interpretations of the expressions which referred to the final triumph of the followers of Christ; some interpreting those passages as describing an actual personal reign of Christ on earth, and a real worldly triumph of his followers, during a thousand years, all which was to happen shortly;——and from this notion of a Chiliasm, or a Millennium, arose a peculiar sect of heretics, famous in early ecclesiastical history, during the two first centuries, under the name of Chiliasts or [♦]Millenarians,——the Greek or the Latin appellative being used, according as the persons thus designated or those designating them, were of eastern or western stock. Cerinthus and his followers so far improved this worldly view of the subject, as to inculcate the notion that the faithful, during that triumph, were to be further rewarded, by the full fruition of all bodily and sensual pleasures, and particularly that the whole thousand years were to be passed in nuptial enjoyments. But these foolish vagaries soon passed away, nor did they, even in the times when they prevailed, affect the standard interpretation of the general historical relations of the prophecy.

[♦] “Millennarians” replaced with “Millenarians”

It was not until a late age of modern times, that any one pretended to apply the denunciations of ruin, with which the Apocalypse abounds, to any object but heathen, IMPERIAL Rome, or to the pagan system generally, as personified or concentrated in the existence of that city. During the middle ages, the Franciscans, an order of monks, fell under the displeasure of the papal power; and being visited with the censures of the head of the Romish church, retorted, by denouncing him as an Anti-Christ, and directly set all their wits to work to annoy him in various ways, by tongue and pen. In the course of this furious controversy, some of them turned their attention to the prophecies respecting Rome, which were found in the Apocalypse, then received as an inspired book by all the adherents of the church of Rome; and searching into the denunciations of ruin on the Babylon of the seven hills, immediately saw by what a slight perversion of expressions, they could apply all this dreadful language to their great foe. This they did accordingly, with all the spite which had suggested it; and in consequence of this beginning, the Apocalypse thenceforward became the great storehouse of scriptural abuse of the Pope, to all who happened to quarrel with him. This continued the fashion, down to the time of the Reformation; but the bold Luther and his coadjutors, scorned the thought of a scurrilous aid, drawn from such a source, and with a noble honesty not only refused to adopt this construction, but even did much to throw suspicion on the character of the book itself. Luther however, had not the genius suited to minute historical and critical observations; and his condemnation of it therefore, though showing his own honest confidence in his mighty cause, to be too high to allow him to use a dishonest aid, yet does not affect the results to which a more deliberate examination has led those who were as honest as he, and much better critics. This however, was the state in which the early reformers left the interpretation of the Apocalypse. But in later times, a set of spitefully zealous Protestants, headed by Napier, Mede, and bishop Newton, took up the Revelation of John, as a complete anticipative history of the triumphs, the cruelties and the coming ruin of the Papal tyranny. These were followed by a servile herd of commentators and sermonizers, who went on with all the elaborate details of this interpretation, even to the precise meaning of the teeth and tails of the prophetical locusts. These views were occasionally varied by others tracing the whole history of the world in these few chapters, and finding the conquests of the Huns, the Saracens, the Turks, &c. all delineated with most amazing particularity.

But while these idle fancies were amusing the heads of men, who showed more sense in other things, the great current of Biblical knowledge had been flowing on very uniformly in the old course of rational interpretation, and the genius of modern criticism had already been doing much to perfect the explanation of passages on which the wisdom of the Fathers had never pretended to throw light. Of all critics who ever took up the Apocalypse in a rational way, none ever saw so clearly its real force and application as Hugo Grotius; and to him belongs the praise of having been the first of the moderns to apprehend and expose the truth of this sublimest of apostolic records. This mighty champion of Protestant evangelical theology, with that genius which was so resplendent in all his illustrations of Divine things as well as of human law, distinctly pointed out the three grand divisions of the prophetical plan of the work. “The visions as far as to the end of the eleventh chapter, describe the affairs of the Jews; then, as far as to the end of the twentieth chapter, the affairs of the Romans; and thence to the end, the most flourishing state of the Christian church.” Later theologians, following the great plan of explanation thus marked out, have still farther perfected it, and penetrated still deeper into the mysteries of the whole. They have shown that the two cities, Rome and Jerusalem, whose fate constitutes the most considerable portions of the Apocalypse, are mentioned only as the seats of two religions whose fall is foretold; and that the third city, the New Jerusalem, whose triumphant heavenly building is described in the end, after the downfall of the former two, is the religion of Christ. Of these three cities, the first is called Sodom; but it is easy to see that this name of sin and ruin is only used to designate another devoted by the wrath of God to a similar destruction. Indeed, the sacred writer himself explains that this is only a metaphorical or spiritual use of the term,——“which is spiritually called Sodom and Egypt;”——and to set its locality beyond all possibility of doubt, it is furthermore described as the city “where also our Lord was crucified.” It is also called the “Holy city,” and in it was the temple. Within, have been slain two faithful witnesses of Jesus Christ; these are the two Jameses,——the great apostolic proto-martyrs; James the son of Zebedee, killed by Herod Agrippa, and James the brother of our Lord, the son of Alpheus, killed by order of the high priest, in the reign of Nero, as described in the lives of those apostles. The ruin of the city is therefore sealed. The second described, is called Babylon; but that Chaldean city had fallen to the dust of its plain, centuries before; and this city, on the other hand, stood on seven hills, and it was, at the moment when the apostle wrote, the seat of “the kingdom of the kingdoms of the earth,” the capital of the nations of the world,——expressions which distinctly mark it to be imperial Rome. The seven angels pour out the seven vials of wrath on this Babylon, and the awful ruin of this mighty city is completed.

To give repetition and variety to this grand view of the downfall of these two dominant religions, and to present these grand objects of the Apocalypse in new relations to futurity, which could not be fully expressed under the original figures of the cities which were the capital seats of each, they are each again presented under the poetical image of a female, whose actions and features describe the fate of these two systems, and their upholders. First, immediately after the account of the city which is called Sodom, a female is described as appearing in the heavens, in a most peculiar array of glory, clothed in the sun’s rays, with the moon beneath her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars. This woman, thus splendidly arrayed, and exalted to the skies, represents the ancient covenant, crowned with all the old and holy honors of the twelve tribes of Israel. A huge red dragon (the image under which Daniel anciently represented idolatry) rises in the heavens, sweeping away the third part of the stars, and characterized by seven heads and ten horns, (thus identified with a subsequent metaphor representing imperial Rome;)——he rages to devour the offspring to which the woman is about to give existence. The child is born destined to rule all nations with a rod of iron,——and is caught up to the throne of God, while the mother flees from the rage of the dragon into the wilderness, where she is to wander for ages, till the time decreed by God for her return. Thus, when from the ancient covenant had sprung forth the new revelation of truth in Jesus, it was driven by the rage of heathenism from its seat of glory, to wander in loneliness, unheeded save by God, till the far distant day of its blissful re-union with its heavenly offspring, which is, under the favor of God, advancing to a firm and lasting dominion over the nations. Even in her retirement, she is followed by the persecutions of the dragon, now cast down from higher glories; but his fury is lost,——she is protected by the earth, (sheltered by the Parthian empire;) yet the dragon still persecutes those of her children who believe in Christ, and are yet within his power; (Jews and Christians persecuted in Rome, by Nero and Domitian.)

Again, after the punishment and destruction of imperial Babylon have been described, a second female appears, not in heaven, like the first, but in an earthly wilderness, splendidly attired, but not with the heavenly glories of the sun, moon and stars. Purple and scarlet robes are her covering, marking an imperial honor; and gold, silver, and all earthly gems, adorn her,——showing only worldly greatness. In her hand is the golden cup of sins and abominations, and she is designated beyond all possibility of mistake, by the words, “Mystery, Babylon the Great.” This refers to the fact, that Rome had another name which was kept a profound secret, known only to the priests, and on the preservation of which religious “mystery,” the fortunes of the empire were supposed to depend. The second name also identifies her with the city before described as “Babylon.” She sits on a scarlet beast, with seven heads and ten horns. The former are afterwards minutely explained, by the apostle himself, in the same chapter, as the seven hills on which she sits; they are also seven kings, that is, it would seem, seven periods of empire, of which five are past, one now is, and one brief one is yet to come, and the bloody beast itself——the religion of heathenism——is another. The ten horns are the ten kings or sovrans who never received any lasting dominion, but merely held the sway one after another, a brief hour, with the beast, or spirit of heathenism. These, in short, are the ten emperors of Rome before the days of the Apocalypse;——Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian and Titus. These had all reigned, each his hour, giving his power to the support of heathenism, and thus warring against the faith of the true believers. Still, though reigning over the imperial city, they shall hate her, and make her desolate; strip her of her costly attire, and burn her with fire. How well expressed here the tyranny, of the worst of the Caesars, plundering the state, banishing the citizens, and, in the case of Nero, “burning her with fire!”

Who can mistake the gorgeously awful picture? It is heathen, imperial Rome, desolating and desolated, at that moment suffering under the tyrannic sway of him whom the apostle cannot yet number with the gloomy TEN, that have passed away to the tomb of ages gone. It is the mystic Babylon, drunk with the blood of the faithful witnesses of Christ, and triumphing in the agonies of his saints, “butchered to make a Roman holiday!” No wonder that the amazement of the apostolic seer should deepen into horror, and highten to indignation. Through her tyranny his brethren had been slaughtered, or driven out from among men, like beasts; and by that same tyranny he himself was now doomed to a lonely exile from friends and apostolic duties, on that wild heap of barren rocks. Well might he burst out in prophetic denunciation of her ruin, and rejoice in the awful doom, which the angels of God sung over her; and listen exultingly to the final wail over her distant fall, rolling up from futurity, in the coming day of the Gothic and Hunnish ravagers, when she should be “the desolator desolate, the victor overthrown.”