Some may inquire for the historical evidence of the time when such a body withdrew. This, from the nature of the case, it may be difficult to give. If the withdrawal of the true worshippers had been an occurrence of so much notoriety as to be prominently historically noticed, it might have defeated their withdrawal. It is sufficient that the prophecy makes such a withdrawal necessary; and that at a later period such a body was found existing as predicted. See p. [198]. Says Mr. Lord:
“Her retreat into her place from the face of the serpent, denotes that the scene of her residence was unknown to the rulers. The anger of the serpent indicates their continued disposition to destroy her, if in their power; while its going on to make war with such of her seed as had not retreated to the desert, denotes that they continued, after her disappearance, [pg 165] to persecute the isolated individuals that from time to time dissented from the corrupt church, and professed the pure faith.
“As it was by spiritual aids that the true worshippers were enabled to resist the temptations and force by which the rulers endeavored to constrain them to apostasy, and to fly to the desert, no specific record of those aids is to be sought on the page of history. The only evidence that we can ask or possess, that they were conferred, is presented in the fact that a body of dissentients from the corrupt church were in a latter age found in a secluded scene, who had survived the endeavors of the rulers of the fourth, fifth, sixth, and following centuries, to compel all their subjects to conformity, and who have continued to maintain a separate existence, and offer an unidolatrous worship to the present time.
“And such a body were the Waldenses, inhabiting the eastern valleys of the Cottian Alps. They are known, from the testimony of cotemporary Catholics and their own authors, to have existed there as early as the eleventh century. It was then, and is now, claimed by themselves, and admitted by their enemies, that they had subsisted there from a much earlier age. These were a Christian church, having the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, regarding them as a revelation from God, and making them the rule of their faith; having a ministry of their own, [pg 166] holding religious assemblies, professing and teaching the doctrines of the gospel, and celebrating the sacraments.
“They were distinguished for the simplicity and purity of their lives. It was asserted by them, and repeated by the Catholics, that they were induced to retreat to the secluded valleys which they inhabit, to escape the despotism of the rulers and the corruptions and tyranny of the church, soon after its nationalization by Constantine. They have continued to subsist there to the present time, as a separate and evangelical church.”—Exp. Apoc., pp. 348, 349, 359.
Says Mr. Elliott:—“I must not pass on without pressing on the reader's notice this notable pre-figuration of the seclusion of Christ's church in the wilderness, as the true and fittest answer to the Romish anti-Protestant taunt, ‘Where was your religion before Luther?’ Protestants have not duly, as it seems to me, applied the answer here given. For the wilderness-life necessarily, as I must repeat,—and that on Bossuet's own showing,—implies the invisibility of her who lives in it. And consequently, instead of the long previous invisibility of a church like the Lutheran, or Anglican Reformed, of the sixteenth century, in respect of doctrine and worship, being an argument against, it is an argument for it. The Romish church, which never knew the predicted wilderness-life, could not, for this [pg 167] very reason, be the woman of the 12th Apocalyptic chapter; that is, could not be the true church of Christ.
“For 1260 prophetic days, then, or years, she was to disappear from men's view in the Roman world. Is it asked how her vitality was preserved? Doubtless in her children, known to God, though for the most part unknown to men; just like the 7000 that Elijah knew not of, who had not bowed the knee to Baal; some, it might be, in monasteries, some in the secular walks of life; but all alike insulated in spirit from those around them, and as regards the usual means of grace, spiritually destitute and desolate; even as in a barren and dry land, where no water is.—Besides whom, some few there were of her children,—some very few,—prepared, like Elijah of old, to act a bolder part, and stand forth, under special commission from God, as Christ's witnesses before Christendom.”—Horæ Apoc., pp. 55-57.
The flood of water cast out after the woman, is an appropriate symbol of the various tribes which subsequently overran the Western empire. Waters symbolize peoples, 17:15; and by hordes of barbarian Huns, Goths, and Vandals, Rome was inundated as by a flood, in the 5th century; and in A. D. 476 its government was entirely subverted.
Such an irruption of barbarians might be expected to extirpate Christianity from the [pg 168] earth; but help came from an unexpected quarter. The woman had retired to her secure retreat, and the earth swallowed up the flood. Those barbarous tribes were absorbed by, and mixed with, the previous population of the empire, and constituted the clay ingredient with the iron, in the feet of the metallic image.—Dan. 2:41. They rapidly assimilated to the character and habits of the previous inhabitants; and ultimately adopted the forms of government and religion which for a time they subverted; and within the limits of the Western empire, in the place of the Imperial head, constituted ten contemporary kingdoms. These were a continuation of the former government, and were symbolized by: