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2 Vitringa proposes the Saracens, the Seljukian Turks, the Tartar's under Zenghis and Tamerlane, and the Othmons. So also Woodhouse; they being four Islamic nations, he says, memorable near the Euphrates. But, besides the decisive objection mentioned above, it is plain that the Saracens, having been the subject of the former Trumpet, cannot be figured here. Moreover, after they became a Euphratean power, they ceased to be a destroying woe to Christendom. As to the Tartars under Zenghis, and then Tamerlane, how did they help to destroy the Greek empire? The former destroyed, not the Greeks, but the Seljukian Turkish dynasty, that was long the chief enemy of the Greeks. The latter overthrew Bojazet, Sultan of the Othman Turks, another most deadly enemy of their empire; and thereby delayed its fall, instead of accelerating it, (as will soon appear,) for perhaps half a century.
3 Mede's list gives us the dynasties of Baghdad, Damascus, Aleppo, and lconium: founded, he says, from 1055 to 1080, A.D. ; and of which the three last, I may observe, were founded during Malek Shah's life, and were dependent on him. So Bishop Newton also. The list given by Faber and Keith is the quaternion into which Malek Shah's empire split on his death, A.D. 1092; viz. Persia, Kerman, Syria, Roum. The two lists are nearly similar: there being this difference how- ever, that Kerman has place in the latter, not in the former; and that Mede's Aleppo and Damascus are supposed in the latter to have coalesced into the one kingdom, if so it be called, of Syria.
That decisive objections exist against these lists, and such as these, objections alike chronological, geographical, and historical, will thus appear.
1. Chronological : That Mede's four dynasties did not all come into existence till some time after A.D. 1057, whence he and Keith compute the hour, day, month, and veer, follows from the various dates of their founding, from 1055 to 1692, given in the Note preceding. Again Faber's Kerman dynasty perished above a century before 1301, his date of the loosing.
2. As to geographical situation, Kerman was separated from the Euphrates by 500 miles of space at the nearest, and by the intervening kingdom of Persia; Roum (or Iconium) by the Halys and Mount Taurus; Damascus by the desert. So far were the four from being all watered, as Keith represents, by the Euphrates and its tributaries.
3. Historically considered, neither Kerman nor Persia had any thing to do with the Turkish ways against the Greek empire. And as to the Syrian Moslem dynasty, whether under Noureddin or Saladin, though it had much to do with the Latin crusaders, it had little concern with the Greeks. I may add that Syria was not united to the Othman Turkish power till Sultan Selim's time, A.D. 1517, long after the taking of Constantinople. It was the Turkish dynasty of Roum, or Iconium, that was alone charged with the commission of slaying the third part of men.
4 Foxe, the earliest interpreter I have seen that applies this prophecy to tile Turks, expounds the four angels of the Turks from Persia, Tartary, Arabia, Scythia. Martyrs, iv. 102. To this theory similar objections apply.
Mr. Cuninghame, after mentioning each of these solutions, and his dissatisfaction with them, finally takes refuge with Woodhouse in the number four as a sacred and complete number!
Mr. Foster in his " Mahommedanism Unveiled," i. 223, cites what follows from the Abbot Ekkehard's Chronicle, (a Chronicle composed about the year 1117, and given in Martene and Durand's Vet. Mon. Collect. T. v, p. 5 14) in evidence of four other Se1jukian powers answering to the prophecy. But is the term Gorizana by the Euphrates? or did the Syrian branch take part in the destruction of Constantinople ?
5 Jer. 49:36; Ezek. 37:9: Dan. 7:2; Matt. 24:31
6 The circumstance of the angels themselves not being again mentioned in the subsequent figurations of judgments no more negatives this fact. than the subsequent silence, after the first mention of their loosing, about the angels from the Euphrates whom yet we certainly know to have been the spirits, whether seen or unseen after. wards, that impelled and directed the woe of the Euphratean horsemen.
7 As to the thunderings, lightnings, and hail, of the seventh Seal's introductory Vision and first Trumpet, it is needless to show the connection of winds with them it is notorious. With regard to their association with earthquakes and volcanic fire, as under the second Trumpet, I may suggest Isa. 29:6 and 30: 30, for scriptural examples; and further beg to refer to authentic accounts of most great volcanic eruptions, in illustration. For example, in that at Sumbawa, Daubeny says; " Between nine and ten, ashes began to fall ; and soon after a violent whirlwind ensued, which blew down nearly every house in the village of Sangir," &c. Daubeny on Volcanoes, p. 34.
8 And with the obscuration of heavenly luminaries, such as in the fourth Trumpet, the winds are also associated; as in Matt. 24: 29.
9 The view taken supposes the combined action of these angels under each of the Trumpets,-just as of the four winds let loose against Elam in Jeremiah 49: 36, of Homer, and of Virgil, to introduce and direct the judgment-woes.
10 So Exod. x. 13 ; " The east wind brought the locusts." Similar is their association also with river floods ; such as appear from Rev. 16:12 to have been the accompaniment of the lion-headed horses, that issued at the blast of the sixth Trumpet, from the swellings of the Euphrates against Christendom. So Matt. vii. 25, &c.
Let me further observe here, that the action of these angels of the winds as God's commissioners, is not inconsistent with the cotemporary action, though in another way, of a spirit or angel from hell:-such, I mean, as in the fifth Trumpet is described as acting in and influencing the locusts : or, again, such as is spoken of in the 8th Apocalyptic chapter as urging on the Gothic invasions ; they being there represented as a flood out of the mouth of the dragon, though in the 8th figured as tempests raised and directed by the angels of the winds. I say there is in this conjunction of the two agencies no inconsistency.
For it is but an exemplification of a truth uniformly taught in the Bible; viz. that evil angels are permitted to act in this world's political affairs, as well as good: in such wise, however, as that the former are overruled and controlled by the latter ; and that nothing can result which is not according to the will and foreseen purpose of God.-See what is said in Rev. 7:7, of the action of the devil and his angels, as well as of Michael and his, in the affairs of this world. Compare too the striking narrative in Job i, ii ; and also Dan. 10:12, 13
11 Rev. 9:4 "It was said to them that they should…..only hurt those men that had not the seal of God on their foreheads:" a charge implying the existence of, and the protective care over, those that had it.
12 So Virgil depicts the tempest-winds as bound when inactive.
He also speaks, in similar figure, of their being loosed, when afresh raging; In all this Virgil follows Homer.-Compare also Prov. 30:4; " Who hath gathered the winds in his fists ; " where, as in Virgil, the winds of a the four quarters are depicted as gathered and held in one spot ; also Psalm 135: 7.
13 2 Sam. 24:15,16, &c.; I Chron. 21:15, 16, &c.
14 It has been already mentioned that Baghdad was built on the Tigris, within some twenty or thirty miles from the Euphrates. It had in the twelfth century, according to Benjamin of Tudela, a canal from the Euphrates falling into the Tigris at that very spot. In the course of years changes have taken place, and some of the canals been dried up. But it may be well to add a statement or two from both ancient authors and modern, to show that the level of the Tigris there has been always lower than that of the Euphrates; and the intervening land such as to allow of the Euphratean water, whether by canal or otherwise, winding its way to Baghdad or its neighborhood.
1st Arrian, who says, "Near the bend of the Tigris, about two hours below Baghdad, we were shewn the marks of an inundation all the way from the Euphrates; rafts even coming over from one river close to the other by its waters. This .... proves that the bed of the Euphrates is higher at Felugiah, than that of the Tigris at Baghdad, in the line of east and west."