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IT is the origin and commencement of the blessed REFORMATION that is now our subject. And how can we so well set it forth, or how so well expound the Apocalyptic vision which prefigured it, as by tracing its development in the mind and history of LUTHER? In no case, perhaps, is the principle of studying history in biography applied with such advantage as in this. Luther was both the master?spirit of that great revolution of the 15th century; and also the type, ill the inward experience of soul that made him a reformer, of what afterwards influenced the soul of many another. " The Reformation passed," it has been said by a learned Professor of Modern History, " from the mind of Luther into the mind of Western Europe: "and by M. Merle D’Aubigne, more in particular; "The different phases of the Reformation succeeded each other in the soul of Luther, its instrumental originator, before, their accomplishment in the world."
Of these phases the two first, and those from which the rest proceeded, are figured to us, as distinctly as beautifully, in that portion of the Apocalyptic vision (already in part discussed) that stands referred to at the head of this chapter. Let us consider the two separately. They will exhibit to us the secret origin, the first public acts, and so the opening epoch of the Reformation.
" And I saw a mighty Angel coming down from heaven, clothed with a cloud: and the rainbow was upon his head; and his face was as the sun, and his feet, as pillars of fire; and He had in his hand a little book opened. And He set his right foot upon the sea, and his left upon the land; and cried with a loud voice, as wheel a lion roareth." Rev. x. 1?3.
It was LUTHER, we said, that was Gods chosen instrument to effect this great revolution : Luther, the son of a poor miner in Mansfield; one who when at school in his early boyhood, both at Magdeburgh and then at Eisenach, had to beg his bread under the pinching of want, with the pitiful cry of "Bread for the love of God;" and was indebted to the charity of a burghers wife in Eisenach, afterwards spoken of as the pious Shunamite, for the power of pursuing his studies, and almost for his preservation. "Not many mighty, not many noble: but God hath chosen the weak things of the world, to confound the things which are mighty; and base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen ; that no flesh should glory in his presence."
Let us hasten to that crisis in his history to which our subject directs us; that wherein he was prepared for, and then began to act out, the great part assigned him, in the reformation and revivification of Christ’s fallen church.
He had grown at this time into manhood; and, having passed from the schools to the University of Erfurt, had there, in the course of the usual four years of study, displayed intellectual powers and an extent of learning, that excited the admiration of the University, and seemed to open to his attainment both the honours and the emoluments of the world; when behold, on a sudden, to the dismay as well as astonishment of his friends, he renounced the world and all its brilliant prospects, and betook himself to the solitude anti gloom of an Augustine monastery. Wherefore so strange a step? We find that thoughts deeper and mightier than those that agitate the surface of a vain world were then pressing on his soul; the thoughts of death, judgment, eternity, God Almighty! There had combined together different causes to induce this state of mind. He had found a Bible. It was a copy of the Vulgate, hid in the shelves of the University Library. Till then he had known nothing more of the New Testament gospels or epistles, than what were given in the Breviary or the Sermonaries.
The discovery amazed him. He was at once riveted by what he read therein. It increased, even to intenseness, the desire already awakened in his heart to know God. At the same time there was that in its descriptions of mans sinfulness, and Gods holiness anti wrath against sin, which awed and alarmed him Providential occurrences, following soon after, confirmed and deepened the work on his conscience. He was brought by a dangerous illness into the near view of death. He saw a beloved friend and fellow student suddenly cut off with scarce a moments warning. He was overtaken while journeying by a lightning storm, terrific to him, from his associating it with an angry God, as the lightning of Sinai to Israel. He felt unprepared to meet him. How shall I stand justified before God? This was now the absorbing thought with Luther. Thenceforth the world, its riches and its honours, were to him as nothing. What would he profit, were he to gain the whole world and lose his own soul? In the pursuit, however, of this great object, no success seemed to attend him. He longed to know God: but neither his own understanding, nor the philosophy and learning of the University, yielded him the light he needed for it. He longed to propitiate Him: but his conscience itself was dissatisfied with the inadequacy of his performances. It was the long?established notion among the more serious, that the convent was the place, and its prayers penances and mortifications the means, whereby most surely to attain to the knowledge and favour of God. There, then, he determined to pursue his absorbing object. He gathered his friends around him; ate his farewell heal with them; then sought the monastery. Its gate opened and closed on?him. He had become an Augustinian Monk.
But was his object attained? Did he find the holiness, or the peace with God, that he longed for? Alas, no! In vain he practiced all the strictest rules of the monkish life. In vain he gave himself, night and day, to the repetition of prayers, penances, fasting, and every kind of self mortification. He found that in changing his dress he had not changed his heart. The consciousness of sin remained with him; of its indwelling power, its guilt, its danger. "O, my sin! my sin!" was the exclamation heard at tunes to burst from him. Pale, emaciated, behold him moving along the corridors like a shadow! Behold him on one occasion fallen down in his cell, and, when found, lying in appearance dead; from the exhaustion of the mental conflict, yet more than of sleeplessness and fasting. He is a wonder to all in the convent. A wounded spirit who can bear?
There was a copy of the Vulgate chained in the monastery. With eagerness still undiminished he renewed leis intense study of it. But it gave him, no more than before, the consolation that he sought for. Rather those awful attributes of God, his justice and holiness, appeared to him, as there represented, more terrible than ever. Above all for this reason, because even in the gospel, (that which professed to be the gospel of mercy to fallen mail,) there seemed to be intimated a fresh exercise and manifestation of Gods justice. Such appeared to him the point of that saying of St. Paul to the Romans, "Justitia Dei revelatur in co;"?" the justice of God is revealed in it." Was it not adding grief to grief, to make even the gospel an occasion for threatening mankind with Gods justice and wrath?
It was at this time that Staupitz, Vicar?general of the Augustines, was sent by God as his messenger, to assist in shedding light on the darkness of this wounded soul, and opening to him the Scriptures. Oil his visitation of the convent at Erfurt he at once distinguished front among the rest the young monk of Mansfield. He beheld him with his eyes sunk in their sockets, his countenance stamped with melancholy, his body emaciated by study, watchings, and fastings, so that they might have counted his bones.
It needed not an interpreter to tell him what was pressing on that sorrowful soul. For Staupitz teas one who, in secret and unknown to the world, had gone through somewhat of the same conflicts as Luther; until in the gospel, rightly understood, he found a Saviour. In the experience of his own heart he had both a key by which to understand, and a spring of sympathy to feel for, what was passing in Luther’s. He sought and gained his confidence. He entered with him on the solemn subjects of his anxiety. The Bible lay open before them. He expounded from it, to the poor trembler, Gods love and mercy to man, as exhibited in Christ crucified. He spoke of his death as the expiation for penitent sinners; Ills righteousness and perfect justice of life as their plea, their trust. These were views as comforting as new to Luther. He began to see that the justice, of which St. Paul spoke as manifested in the gospel, was not the active vindictive justice that he had supposed, but passive justice, as the schoolmen might say, inherent righteousness: that which, being the characteristic in perfection of the life of the LORD Jesus, was accepted by God vicariously, (being in this sense called " Gods righteousness,") in place of the imperfect and defiled performance of penitent sinners; just as his death was also vicarious, and expiatory of the guilt of their sins. O godlike scheme for saving sinners! O how unlike that of the convent and the schools, which through penances and works of merit directed men to accomplish their salvation! When Luther still objected his sinfulness, it was answered by Staupitz, "Would you have merely the semblance of a sinner, and the semblance of a Saviour?"
And when he objected again that it was to penitent sinners only that Christ’s salvation belonged, and that how to obtain the true spirit of Renitence, that which included, as he now learnt from the Bible, both the love of holiness and love of God, he had with all his self mortifications and penitential observances sought in vain, it was answered by the Vicar-general; "It is from the love of God that true repentance has alone its origin. Seek it not in these macerations and mortifications of the body! Seek it in contemplating Gods love in Christ Jesus! Love him who has thus first loved you!
He heard the words; he received them: received them not as the voice of his Vicar?general, but as the voice of the Divine Spirit speaking by him. It was the opening to him of the gospel; the setting forth to him of the two things he had been so intently seeking, and which he now saw to be clearly expressed in the gospel?record; the principle of justification before God, and the principle of godly penitence and sanctification within. O how did the glory of JEHOVAH JESUS, even of Him that furnishes both to the believing penitent, begin now to shine before him! Was it not just as in the emblems of the Apocalyptic vision under consideration? With the eye of faith he beheld Him beaming upon this lost world, yea, and upon his own lost soul, as the Sun of Righteousness: and the dark thunder clouds of the mental storm that had past over him only served to throw out more strikingly the beauty of the rainbow of covenant?mercy, as reflected from them; that characteristic and constant accompaniment of the Sun of .Righteousness, when shining on a penitent. "He be. held his glory, as of the only?begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." In the sunshine of this forgiving love, the former overwhelming bitterness of his sense of sin yielded to sweeter sensations. " O happy sin," was his very hearts language, "which hast found such a Redeemer!"
The subject of repentance too was now as sweet as once it had been bitter to him. He sought out in the Bible, (that precious volume with a copy of which the Vicar?general had personally enriched him,) all that related to it: and the Scriptures that spoke upon the subject seemed, he tells us, as if they danced in joy round his emancipated Soul. Nor, in the delight of these perceptions of the Divine forgiving love and mercy; did he rest content and inactive. He found in them, as his evangelist and friend had assured him he would, a spring and a power for the pursuit of holiness altogether unfelt before. The love of Christ constrained him. From the view of Jesus he drew strength, as well as righteousness. In the course of two or three years next following, the variations both internal and external with which the lot of man is ever affected; and not these alone, but dangerous illnesses also, tested the truth and power of the new views he had received of gospel?salvation: one illness in the convent at Erfurt; another afterwards at Bologna, in his way on a mission entrusted to him from the Wittenberg Augustinians to Rome.
The result was his confirmation in their truth and preciousness. For a little while indeed, while at Rome on the occasion last mentioned, the ideas so long cherished of its local sanctity, and the influence of early associations, induced his momentary return, in regard of outward observances, to the old superstition. With a devoutness which astonished, and drew ridicule on him from, the Romish clergy, he made the round of its churches; celebrating masses in them, as that which might yield a blessing to the devotee. He even climbed on his knees the Dilate staircase near the Lateran, brought, it was said, from Jerusalem; on hearing that to the so climbing it there attached a papal indulgence, and remission of sin. But, while in the act of clinching, a voice as from heaven sounded in his ears, "The justified by faith shall live; they, and they only." He started up in horror at himself, on the heavenly monition; and the superstitions he had been educated in had never more influence, or power, to obscure or to distract his vision of the Sun of Righteousness.
Thus was Luther inwardly prepared for the work that Providence intended him. It remained that he should act as Gods chosen minister, to set before others, in all its glory and its power, what he had himself seen and felt. Already a fit sphere of action had been provided for the purpose. A University had been just recently founded at Wittenberg by the Elector of Saxony. Of the arrangements a principal part had devolved on Staupitz. Impressed with a sense of Luther’s intellectual powers and piety he summoned him, A.D. 1509, to a professorship in the university.
The call of his Vicar?General was obeyed, as in duty bound, by the young Augustinian monk: and being appointed first Bachelor, then in 1512 Doctor, of Divinity ad Biblia, and having to vow on his appointment to defend the Bible doctrines, he received therein, as it has been said, his vocation as a reformer. It was another epoch in his history. Forthwith in his lectures to the students, and in his sermons too in the old church of the Augustines to the people, (for, ordained as he had already been to the priests office, he neglected not like others the priests duty of evangelic preaching,) he opened to them the gospel that had been opened to him, and set before theta the glory of JESUS, mighty to save. His letters and private ministrations still dwelt on the same favorite theme. "Learn, my brother," was the tenor of his perpetual exhortation, "to know Christ; Christ crucified, Christ come down from heaven to dwell with sinners. Learn to sing the new song; Thou, Jesus, art my righteousness; I am thy sin: Thou hast taken on thyself what was mine: Thou hast given me what is thine!" Against the schoolmen, and their scholastic doctrine of mans ability and strength to attain to righteousness in religion, he published theses, and offered to sustain them; his text being, Christ is our strength and our righteousness. Thus did he attack rationalism, as it has been well said, before he attacked superstition; and proclaimed the righteousness of God, before he retrenched the additions of man. Multitudes crowded from different parts to the University, to hear a doctrine so new, and expounded with eloquence so convincing. "It seemed," says Melancthon, "as if a new day had risen oil Christian doctrine, after a long and dark night." The eyes of men were directed to the true Sun of Righteousness, as risen upon them, (and many saw and felt it,) with healing in his wings.
Thus far the manifestation of gospel?light, however glorious, had been comparatively noiseless and tranquil. There lead been simply a revelation of Himself by the Lord Jesus to the favoured ones at Wittenberg, in his character of the Sun of Righteousness, and the rainbow?vested Angel of the Covenant, mighty to save. But now the calm was to end. There was to be added his roaring, like as the Lion of the tribe of Judah, against the usurping enemy; and so the fiery conflict L to commence between those two mighty antagonistic principles and powers, between Christ and Antichrist. The infamous Tetzel precipitated the conflict. Approaching in prosecution of his commission to the near neighborhood of Wittenberg, (it was some eight or nine years after Luther’s removal thither from Erfurt,) he there proclaimed, as elsewhere, the Papal Bulls of grace and indulgence; in other words, set forth the Pope as the heaven sent dispenser of mercy, Sun of Righteousness, and source of all divine light, grace, and salvation. Then was the spirit of the Reformer kindled within him. His Lords honour was assailed, his Lords little flock troubled by the impostor. Little thinking of the effect they were to produce, he published his celebrated 95 Theses against Indulgences; affixing them, according to the custom of the times, to the door of the chief church at Wittenberg; and offering to maintain them against all impugners. The truths most prominently asserted in them were the ropes utter insufficiency to confer forgiveness of sin or salvation, Christ’s all?sufficiency, and the true spiritual penitents participation, by Gods free gift, independently altogether of Papal indulgence or absolution, not merely in the blessing of forgiveness, but in all the riches of Christ. There were added other declarations, also very notable, as to the gospel of the glory and grace of God, not the merits of saints, "being the true and precious treasure of the Church;" a denunciation of the avarice and soul?deceiving of the priestly traffickers in indulgences; and a closing exhortation to Christians to follow CHRIST as their chief, even through crosses and tribulation, thereby at length to attain to his heavenly kingdom. Bold indeed were the words thus published; and the effect such, that the evening of their publication (All?Hallow?e’en, Oct. 31) has been remembered ever afterwards, and is ever memorable, as the epoch of the Reformation. With a rapidity, power, and effect unparalleled, unexpected, unintended, even as if it had been the voice of one mightier than Luther, speaking through him, and so Luther himself felt it, the voice echoed through continental Christendom, and through insular England also.
It was felt by both friends and foes to be a mortal shock, not merely against indulgences, but against the whole system of penances, self?mortification, will?worship, and every means of justification from sin, devised by superstition, ignorance, or priestly cunning, and accumulated in the continued apostasy of above ten centuries; a mortal shock too, though Luther as yet knew it not, against the Papal Supremacy in Christendom. For there had been implanted in men’s minds, both on the main?land and the island, a view of Christ’s glory, rights, and headship in the Church, which, notwithstanding the support of the Papacy by most of the powers of this world, was not to be obliterated. The result was soon seen both in the one, and in certain countries of the other, (including specially some of the Swiss Cantons, as I must now add, brought through the independent but contemporary teaching of Zuingle and other Reformers to the recognition very similarly first of Christ," then afterwards of Antichrist,) I say the result was there seen in the national erection of the gospel?standard, the overthrow of the Papal dominion, and the establishment of churches pure and reformed, that acknowledged Christ alone as in spiritual things their Master. Adopting the symbols of the Apocalyptic vision, we may say that the Angels fixing of his right foot on the sea, and his left on the main?land," was thus fulfilled, in sequence to the uttering of his voice as when a lion roareth. Nor did He quit either ground, or remove the marked stamp of his interference, till the political overthrow had been accomplished, both in the one locality and the other, of a part of the mystic Babylon: in short until, as stated in the conclusion of this vision, "a tenth part of the city lead fallen, and there had been slain in it names of men seven chiliads; "a pledge of its total ultimate overthrow, and of the establishment, upon its ruins, of Christ’s universal kingdom. But in this last observation I anticipate.
"And, when He had cried, the seven thunders uttered .their own voices. And when the seven thunders lead spoken I was about to write. And I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Seal up the things which the seven thunders uttered, and write them not! " Rev. x. 3, 4.
We have traced the first great step in the Reformation, as prefigured in the opening verses of the vision under consideration. It remains to trace the next, as prefigured in the two verses that follow, and which stand prefixed to the present Section.
In order to this, however, there will be needed in the first instance, a very careful sifting of the prophetic enunciation that develops it. What mean the seven thunders? This is the question that meets us at the outset of our inquiry. The careful attention needed to solve it will appear the more strikingly from the perplexity that it has occasioned to commentators, and the evident lack of satisfaction of all their solutions. Many, because of the charge to St. John, "Seal up the things which the seven thunders uttered, and write them not," have passed it over as a point never to be revealed, and therefore presumptuous to inquire into.
But, if such be the meaning, wherefore the description of Johns hearing, and being about to write them, here given; and its handing down too in the Apocalyptic Book, as if for the benefit of the church, and as a part of the inspired prophecy? Others have supposed it a pre?intimation of the septenary division of the seventh Trumpet; a supposed preintimation altogether unmeaning, as well as out of place. Three commentators only, of those I am acquainted with, interpret the thunders as significant of actual events; viz. Vitringa, who explains them of the seven crusades; Daubuz, who makes them the echo of laws, affirmatory of the Protestant doctrines of seven kingdoms that embraced the Reformation; and Keith, whose explanation refers them to the seven continental wars, characterized by the roar of " the modern artillery," which intervened, he says, to fill up the period between the Reformation as begun by Luther, and the sounding of the seventh Trumpet at the French Revolution. These solutions seem to me to carry their own refutation with them. Vitringa’s is quite out of place, as referring to events long preceding the Reformation. And, as to those of Mr. Danbuz and Dr. Keith, without entering into other particulars, who can believe that the injunction, "Seal up what the thunders have uttered, and write them not," could mean, either, as the one says, a prophetic check to the multiplication and progress of Protestant institutions, beyond the original seven Protestant kingdoms; or, as the other, a mysterious concealment of the seven great wars that followed the Reformation; because the minds of men, being then inclined to hold to Scripture prophecies as rules of action, would, in case of those wars having been clearly predicted, have thrown themselves into them as with Scripture warrant ?
Proceed we then to a careful analysis of this most remarkable passage: well assured, even 14 priori, of what some of the expositors noticed by us seem really to have almost forgotten; viz. that it must needs have been meant to signify something, indeed something of importance, for the information and instruction of Christ’s Church, as to thinks to come; accordantly with the protest object of the whole revelation. And in it five several points will be found to call for consideration:
1st, the vocality of the thunders spoken of; (vocality, albeit still as of
thunders;) for they are said to have voices:
2nd, the pointed definition of the voices of the thunders, as voices proper
and peculiar to themselves, "their own voices:
3rd, the absoluteness of the prohibition, " Seal up and write them not:
4th, the further definition of the thunders by the septenary numeral:
5th, the definite article prefixed to them, " the seven thunders.
"To which five phraseological characteristics of the thunders there must be added further a consideration of St. Johns symbolic character on the Apocalyptic scene. Which done, all will appear clear, if I mistake not, as to the signification of the prophecy ; and nothing more needed than a reference to history, to make its fulfillment clear also.
1st, then, there is to be observed the vocality attributed to the thunders; the thunders being said to have voices, and to speak, evidently in a manner intelligible to St. John. By this they are distinguished from the thunders elsewhere mentioned in the Apocalyptic visions, as proceeding from the throne : the which were known indeed to be sounds of wrath and judgment from on high, echoed in the judgments forthwith following on earth; but still sounds not articulate, or intelligibly vocal. Such being the case, the thunder mentioned in the 12th chapter of St. Johns Gospel offers itself to our remembrance as a nearer Scripture parallel to those before us. For we read that there was heard in it also an articulate voice from heaven : the which the people around thought to be the voice of an angel, and of which the words are actually given us. This, says Mede, was by the Jews called Bath Kol, and, coming whence it did, was considered, as he adds, a voice from heaven, or oracle. It might seem probably inferable, respecting the thunders here spoken of, that they too, as they fell oil St. Johns car, fell not only intelligibly, but also as an oracle, or voice from heaven.
2ndly, comes up for consideration that singular definition of the voices as " the seven thunders own voices: "for so, I think, we may fitly here render the reflective pronoun in the phrase, as often elsewhere; in order to mark with emphasis, what it was evidently meant markedly to imply, that these thunders had a voice distinctively and peculiarly their own. Remarkable in itself, this distinctiveness and peculiarity because the more remarkable from its direct contrast to, and distinction from, those other two voices that were mentioned in the context: the one the voice of the Covenant Angel, as of a lion rowing, which immediately preceded; the other that from heaven, which followed immediately afterwards. Was there then accordance between it and those other two; or discordance and opposition ? This is the next point for inquiry, and a pre?eminently important one. And the next indicatory particular that we leave to consider gives, as it seems to me, to the question an answer quite clear and decisive. For,
3rdly, we were to note the absoluteness of the heavenly prohibition respecting them ; " Seal up the things which the seven thunders have uttered, and write them not ! "?Noiv had there been simply the first injunction, " Seal them up," instead of indicating the same thing as the temporary sealing spoken of in Daniel xii. 4, 9, ("Seal up till the time of the end,") with which not a few expositors have unadvisedly compared it, we might even then rather have inferred a permanent consignment of these oracular voices to oblivion; seeing that no period, however distant, was assigned for their unsealing. But, besides this, there was added, as if by way of explanation, the further and yet more emphatic prohibitory clause, of which the absoluteness could not be mistaken, " Write them not! "?And what the reason of the prohibition ? Surely it was as simply as satisfactorily to be inferred from the reasons of the contrary injunction, " Write them," given three times elsewhere to St. John, on occasion of his hearing other voices as from heaven. First that in ch. xiv. 13 ; " I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Write! Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord. Even so saith the Spirit." Next in ch. xix. 9; "He saith unto me, Write! Blessed are they which are called to the marriage supper of the Lamb. And he said, These are the true sayings of God." Once more in ch. xxi 5; "He said, Behold I make all things new. And he said to me, Write! for these words are true and faithful." These are all the examples of the kind that occur, from the beginning of the prediction of things future in Rev. iv. to the end of the Book. And in every case the reason given for the Apostles writing was of one and the same character: viz. because the voice that was to be written was true and faithful ;?because it was the voice of the Spirit ; because it was the true saying of God. The natural, indeed almost necessary inference, as to the reason of the prohibition, "Write not!" is this :?that what the seven thunders uttered, although with semblance to a Bath?Kol, or oracular voice from heaven, was not true and faithful, not the voice of the Spirit, not the true saying of God ;?but, instead thereof, false and an imposture.
But, if so, what then were these voices; voices not really from heaven, et
with a certain semblance and pretension, as if they were??Towards a solution
of this question it
will be not a little helpful, I think, to borrow an illustration from the times
of St. John himself. For even then there were two voices that in a measure answered
to the description. First, the Jewish Rabbis had been wont to palm upon the
people their own false religious decrees and dogmas, as if bath?kols, or oracles
from heaven; at least till the fall of Jerusalem might seem to have set aside
the idea of any influential deceiving power, as if from heaven, attaching to
them. Further, from the worlds mighty capital the voices of the imperial head
of heathenism there reigning, as those of one deified in the view of the Roman
people; were similarly recognized and feared as thunders from heaven.?Now, with
the light of these illustrations applied to the times here prefigured in the
Apocalyptic drama, does not the thought suggest itself presumptively that the
Christ?opposing voice of tike great Antichrist may be the thunders here meant;
especially as being the ]lead of an apostasy prefigured as Judeo?heathen in
character," and one whose empire both by Daniel and Paul had been mysteriously
connected with Rome? Certainly this notion will be found to gather strength
not a little, on proceeding to consider the fourth characteristic of the Apocalyptic
thunders in question: vii.
4thly, their being in number seven thunders. For it strikes me there are but two senses in which the septenary number can well be regarded as symbolic: the one its general and more abstract significancy, as the sacred number ; the other its particular significancy, as referring to sonic septiform local source, such as might give to the voices thence issuing a kind of septenary force and value. And while, expounding the numeral as meant in the former sense, its applicability to the voice of the Papal Antichrist is obvious from the fact of its claiming and being supposed to have a Divine origin, still more, if expounded in the latter sense, would it answer perfectly and strikingly. For, in regard of a voice from the seven?Milled city/, so natural was it in poetic or prophetic figure to depict it as a septenary of voices, that with Roman poets themselves such was the actual form of expression: and similarly thunders thence issuing would answer to the designation of seven thunders.
And then, and so,
5thly, as to the prefixed article, " the seven thunders,"?that which
to Bishop Middleton appeared strange and unaccountable,?all would seem easily
explicable: seeing that no seven?pilled city could be the seven?hilled city
but Rome; no septenary of voice, or thunder, " the seven thunders,"
but those from the seven hilled city of Rome.
All which considered, I cannot but believe that even to St. John himself, quite irrespectively of any peculiar intelligence that may have attached to him in his representative character in the extasis of the vision, the thought can scarcely but have occurred of the voice of the predicted Antichrist as the seven thunders presignified. For, as to his rule taking place of the imperial rule, anti so his seat being probably in the swine seven?hilled Rome, which Daniel and Paul had Hinted, it was afterwards expressly signified to John in the Apocalyptic visions. It was there therefore that he was usurpingly to sit in the temple of God ; and to utter voices with his mouth, and speak great things, as if God.
Yet more with ourselves the conclusion nifty have seemed obvious that the seven thunders did indeed figure the voices of CHRISTS counterfeit, the Papal ANTICHRIST, because of our having seen, and known, the striking fulfilment in him of all these prophetic indications. For do we not know that the voices of the Roman Pope, as exprest in his decrees and bulls, profest to be, and were regarded throughout Christendom as, oracles from heaven: indeed that the name commonly given to them, when condemnatory, was that of Papal thunders? Again, as to another point, does it need to suggest to any one well acquainted with Romish writings, and Romish ceremonials, the Popes affectation of the septenarry numeral, in its primary sense of the sacred number? And, as regards the other probable intent of the numeral in the Apocalyptic symbol, do we not know how the prophecy was fulfilled of his see being the seven?killed site of the ancient Rome; (" The seven heads are seven hills whereon the woman sitteth:") insomuch that occasion was thus given to the designation of the Papal set; its that of " the seven thrones of the supreme Pontificate : " whence, of course, as each one of these would furnish its own echo in Papal as well as Pagan Rome, the voice thence issuing alight still fitly be designated in prophetic ligure as a septenary voice, or seven voices. Indeed the truth is that, so applied, the allusion to the seven?hilled Roman site has in it a point and propriety quite peculiar. For so it was, that the locale of Rome seemed necessary to give the Papal thunders their full sacredness and authority in the estimation of Christendom. During the 70 years secession of the Popes to Avignon, this became notorious. It is remarked on by Mosheim. It is remarked on again by he Bas. The language of the latter, more especially, is quite illustrative of the phrase we are discussing. "The thunders," he says, "which shook the world when they issued from the seven hills, sent forth an uncertain sound, comparatively faint and powerless, when launched from a region of less elevated sanctity." g Thus the seven hills seemed, like Olympus of old, to be an almost necessary earthly adjunct to the mock ideal heaven of the Papal Antichrists Apostolic supremacy. And accordingly, a century before the times of Leo and Luther, the Popes saw it to be their policy to return to the seven?hilled capital.
Finally, as to the definite article prefixed to the thunders, methinks had the learned prelate Bishop Middleton advanced thus far with us in the historical exposition of the Apocalyptic, he would have seen the solution of his critical difficulty on the point, in the very fact that he suspected of the notoriety and pre?eminence of the seven thunders :a notoriety of those from imperial Rome known in St. Johns time; but much more of those from Papal Rome, afterwards known in Western Christendom, at that time to which the prophetic vision had reference.?For does it need anything more than the mere mention of them to satisfy us as to the notoriety and the pre?eminence of the seven thunders of the Papal Antichrist? In its full mystical sense the septenary attribute could indeed only attach to them. In a subordinate sense each synod, each primate, indeed each bishop, might issue ecclesiastical thunders, within his or its sphere and diocese. But the Papal bulls and anathemas were emphatically the thunders, the Pope, the thunderer.
Regarded as he was in the light of Gods Vicar on earth, there was supposed to be Gods own condemning voice in the thunderbolts of his wrath : and with a range and extent to their efficacy universal as the universe itself. Invested with which terrors by the prevailing superstition, throughout the long middle ages, where was the kingdom in Western Europe that did not tremble, where the heart so stout, of noble or of prince, that did not quail before them?
And now then do I presume too much on my proof if I express at persuasion that the meaning of the seven thunders here spoken of is clear? Surely the five Apocalyptic distinctive answer completely, one and all, to the thunders of the Vatican. In fact (not to speak just at present of his so understanding the symbol whom I suppose St. John at this point to have specially impersonated, the great reformer Martin Luther) certain eminent Papal expositors of the Apocalyptic as I have learnt since my first publication, have been led by the singular propriety of the symbol to a very similar conclusion ; though without any analysis of it like my own, and withal taking good care not to give its proper Apocalyptic sense to the connected charge, " Seal up the thunders, Write them not." Says Silveira, "The seven thunders are the decrees of [Papal] (Ecumenic Councils, Gods Spirit dictating them, and thunders of their anathemas against heretics." And moreover, quite in our own times, an eloquent modern Romanist has adopted the precise symbolic phraseology of the Apocalyptic, in designation of the Papal voice from Rome, as if a designation conventionally understood, or otherwise obviously appropriate : " From Rome’s seven hills seven thunders have uttered their voices."?So .natural is the sense that I give to the symbol. And certainly, in my opinion, there is nothing else whatsoever, to which the seven Apocalyptic thunders ever have been, or can be, with the slightest semblance of plausibility, made to answer.
And when, their signification being thus made clear, as I trust, we next inquire whether what was prefigured of the seven thunders uttering their voices of opposition, immediately after the Covenant?Angels lion?like cry, had its fulfillment in the utterance of Papal thunders against Christ’s voice by Luther, it needs only that we look into the historic page to see it. Scarce lead Luther published his Theses, when the attack on them by Sylvester Prierias, the official Censor at Rome, and which was dedicated to Pope Leo, showed what was to be expected front the Pope himself: and, ere a year had elapsed, a solemn Papal Bull condemnatory of Luther’s Theses, and in defense of the whole system of indulgences, was committed to Cardinal Cajetan, and by him presently after published.
It is added, “And when the seven thunders lead uttered their own voices, I was about to write;" We have here a statement which will be found to lead us forward another step, and a most important one, in the history of the Reformation. In order however to our drawing this inference from it, it will be necessary that we recall and apply that important exegetic principle, to the which I alluded already earlier in this Section, namely, of St. Johns Apocalyptic character on the scene.
For I trust that the reader will by this time have become not only familiarized with, but convinced of the truth of, this most important view of the Evangelists character, in the figurations of the Apocalyptic drama : it having peen not only illustrated by me alike from parallel prophetic Scriptures, and patristic authorities," but also again and again confirmed from history, in the preceding volume. It will be remembered generally that what was seen and heard by John on the Apocalyptic scene, appeared to be that which would be seen and heard by the faithful, at each successive epoch in the advancing drama, whom he presignified; whether the denotations of war, mutations of empire, or persecutions, sufferings, impressions, and worshipping, of Christ’s people themselves More especially he will remember that memorable sealing vision, just before the bursting of the Trumpet?judgments, wherein was exhibited to St. John a manifestation of Christ, as rising with light from the East, and selecting and sealing his own people from amidst the professing Israel; (a revelation evidently such as the world in general would not have perception of;) and then the prospective vision appended, of the ultimate salvation and glory of the sealed ones, wherein he actually held colloquy with some of the twenty?four presbyters round the throne:?all which, otherwise enigmatical and most obscure, seemed to be explained, as simply as satisfactorily, by reference to Christ’s doctrinal revelation respecting his own true Church of the election of grace, and the final assured salvation of his elect, to one that was St. Johns truest successor in spirit at the chronological epoch corresponding, just before the Gothic invasions; I mean Augustine. And now behold the apostle in personal association with a yet brighter vision of Christ, and more glorious manifestation of Himself on the Apocalyptic mundane scene, than even in the Sealing Vision; and moreover yet more prominently, variedly, and remarkably acting out his own part in the dramatic vision. For we read of his rising up to meet the revelation, and, notwithstanding the cloud that mantled the Covenant?Angel, realizing the glory and the divinity of his aspect and his voice; then, on occasion of the seven thunders sounding, preparing to write, until deterred by a warning from heaven against it; then hearing a solemn declaration from the Covenant?Angel respecting the chronological place of this intervention in the great mundane drama, as separated by but one Crumpet more from the consummation: then, under the salve heavenly impulse as before, going and taking the book out of the hand of the Covenant?Angel, and eating it, and tasting its sweetness and its bitterness ;?then receiving the Angels solemn charge to prophesy again; then being presented with a reed, like unto a rod, wherewith to measure the temple and them that worshipped ill it; then, finally, having the history of Christ’s Witnesses through the dark ages preceding, even up to the tinge then present, retrospectively set before him. Which being so, supposing we are satisfied that St. John is to be viewed as a symbolic character, not merely will the general inference follow that there must have been prefigured hereby some singular re?awakening at that time in the Church of ministerial apostolic spirit, in all its energy of action, such as in fact we know to. have been the case, in measure unprecedented ? since apostolic times, with the Fathers of the Reformation, insomuch that historians can scarce speak of Luther more especially, and his first fittings in the Reformation, without noticing the parallel; but also, as to details, that each particular thing heard or done by the Evangelist in vision, must have been meant to symbolize something correspondent in the views, history, and actions of these reforming Fathers, his successors in office and in spirit.
To show this is now my duty, as an Apocalyptic expositor: and it will occupy us both in what remains of the present chapter, and also m the three next chapters, afterwards following.
For the present it is the meaning of the first particular statement, viz. " When the seven thunders had uttered their own voices I was about to write," together with that of the clause following, " And I heard a voice from heave,: saying unto me, Seal up those things which the seven thunders uttered, and write them not," that claims our attention.
"And when the seven thunders uttered their own voices I was about to write." Applying the principle of interpretation just laid down to this statement, the fact presignified seems clearly to be this; that those members of Christ’s true Church whom we suppose St. John to have symbolized, Luther most of all, even after witnessing the glory and beauty of Christ’s revelation of Himself as the Sun of Righteousness, would yet, on hearing the hostile Papal thunders, be ready to receive and publish them, as if they were what they professed to be, a voice from heaven. An intimation strange indeed! Was it possible that such could have been the case with Luther? We look into history; and behold ! we find this to have been the very case. Indeed it forms n feature so prominent and interesting, in the history both of the progress of Luther’s own mind, and of the Reformation, that no ecclesiastical historian can properly develop the advance of that eventful history, without making a distinct reference to it.
The truth was that Luther formed acquaintance with the character of Christ some years before he formed it with that of Antichrist. The cry of the Pope being Antichrist, raised long previously by the followers of Waldo, Wickliff, and Huss, had almost died away in Christendom; and, if heard of by Luther at Erfurt, or at Wittenberg, had been heard of only as a blasphemous heresy. With a conscience very tender, and tremblingly afraid of offending God, the supposed sacredness and authority of the Pope, as head of the Church and Christ’s Vicar, (for such, in accordance with the long?received superstition, he as yet. regarded hint,) induced in his mind a pre?disposition to bow with implicit deference to the Papal decision, alike in other things, anti in the controversy about indulgences that he had engaged in. III his Theses nothing appeared against the authority of the Pope, but the Contrary. Listen to his own account of his feelings at this time, as given many years afterwards. "When I began the affair of the indulgences, . . I was a monk, and a most mad Papist. So intoxicated was I, and drenched in Papal dogmas, that I would have been most ready to murder, or assist others in murdering, any person who should have uttered a syllable against the ditty of obedience to the Pope." And again ; " Certainly at that time I adored him in earnest." He adds; " I?low distressed my heart was in that year 1517, and the following, how submissive to the hierarchy, not feignedly but really, those little know who at this day insult the majesty of the Pope with much pride and arrogance . . . I was ignorant of many things which now, by the grace of God, I understand. I disputed; I was open to conviction. Not finding satisfaction in the works of theologians and canonists, I wished to consult the living members of the Church itself. There were some godly souls that entirely approved my propositions. But I did not consider their authority as of weight with me in spiritual concerns. The popes, cardinals, bishops, monks, priests, were the objects of my confidence... It was from them I looked for the voice of the Spirit.
After being enabled to answer every objection that could be brought against Ins from the Scriptures, one difficulty still renta;r1ed, rind only one ;?that the Church [the Roman Church] ought to be obeyed." " If I had then braved the Pope as I now do, I should have expected every hour that the earth would have opened to swallow me up alive, like Korah and Abiram." It was in this frame of mind that in the summer of 1518, a few months after the affair with Tetzel, he wrote that memorable letter to the Pope, of which the tenor may be judged of from the clause following; and what can more admirably illustrate the passage we are considering? " Most blessed Father! prostrate at the feet of thy Blessedness, I offer myself to thee, with all I am and all I have. Kill me or make me live, call or recall, approve or reprove, as shall please thee. I, will acknowledge thy voice as the voice of Christ, presiding and speaking in thee." Thus, "when the seven thunders had uttered their own voices, he was about to write:" i. e. as the phrase means, to recognize, publish, act on them; even as if they had been, what they pretended to be, an oracle from heaven.
But so it was that just at this critical point of temptation and danger a real voice front heaven, the voice of Gods Spirit, saying, " Seal up what the seven thunders have uttered, and write them not," was his preservation. Already in the October of that year, on being summoned and appearing, as we have intimated, before the Papal Legate Cardinal Cajetan, when the Popes judgment was affirmed by the Legate to be in favour of indulgences, and also of the efficacy of the sacraments ex opcre operate, independently of faith in the recipient,?seeing its contradictoriness both to the word and spirit of the Gospel, he would not receive it. The Spirits whisper began, " Write not !
"Still however for a while he remained partially ill suspense. He doubted, indeed discredited, the fact of the Papal sanction! But soon after, when the publication of the Popes Bull, in direct sanction of indulgences, had forced him to identify the Pope himself with those antichristian errors, and yet more when in the year next following, on occasion of the approaching disputation with Eck, he was brought by Eck’s theses into the positive necessity of examining into the origin, foundation, and character of the Papal supremacy, then the real antichristian character of the Papacy began more and more to open to his view. Near the end of 1518 we find him thus writing to his friend Link, on sending him a copy of the acts just published of the conference at Augsburg. "My pen is ready to give birth to things much greater. I know not myself whence these thoughts come to me. I will send you what I write, that you may see if I have well conjectured in behaving that the Antichrist, of whom St. Paul speaks, now reigns in the court of Rome." For a while, however, he combated the thought, to him so fearful. Some three or four months after, in answer to the request from the Elector of Saxony to be in all things reverential to the Pope, he wrote to Spalatinus, (April 1519) “To separate myself from the Apostolic See of Rome had not entered my mind”; But still the views hinted to Link recurred; and pressed upon him in greater and greater force.
The Elector was startled with hearing (March 13, 1519) “I have been turning over the Decretals of the Popes, with a view to the ensuing debate at Leipsic; and would whisper it into thine ears that I began to entertain doubt, (so is Christ dishonoured and crucified in them) whether the Pope be the very Anti Christ of Scripture.” Further study of the Scripture, with further teaching of the Holy Spirit, concurred with the Pope’s reckless support of all the antichristian errors and abominations against which he had protested, (and well did the reminiscences too of his visit to Rome help on the conviction,) to make what was for a while a suspicion only, an awful anti certain reality to him. And when at length, near the close of 1520, the Popes final Bull of anathema and excommunication came out against him, when the seven thunders pealed against the voice that the Covenant?Angel had uttered by him, fraught with the collected fury of all the artillery of the Papal heaven, accordantly with that monitory voice front heaven which bade his Apocalyptic representative St. John long before to "seal them up," (almost a phrase of the times, I may observe, for rejecting Papal Bulls, and consigning them to oblivion,) he did an action by which all Europe was electrified. He summoned a vast concourse of all ranks outside the walls of Wittenberg, students and professors inclusive; himself kindled a fire in a vast pile of wood previously prepared for the purpose; then committed the Bull, together with the Papal Decretals, Canons, &c., accompanying, to the flames. Perhaps the impression was even then resting influentially oil his mind, of which he told not very long afterwards, that the Papal Decretals, Canons, and condemnatory Bull, thus consigned by him to oblivion, were the realization of the selfsame " seven thunders," that St. John was bid not to write, but to seal up, when. they uttered their owls voices on the Apocalyptic scene. Moreover, in his published Answer to the Bull, he rejected and poured contempt on those Papal thunders, as " the infernal voices of ANTICHRIST."
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Such was the memorable act that marked the completion of the first epoch of
the Reformation. Once convinced by the heavenly teaching of this awful and so
long unsuspected truth, no earthly terrors or power could induce from Luther
its recantation. When summoned before the Emperor, Legate, and Germanic Princes
and Nobles at the Diet of Worms, the momentous cause entrusted to him was only
strengthened by his intrepid confession. Moreover he was now no longer alone,
as once, in the undertaking.
A goodly company, Melancthon, Carolstadt, Bugenhagen, Justus Jonas, and many others, since known as Fathers of the Reformation, lead already joined themselves to him. In many too, perhaps in most, of the German universities and towns, by students and by people, and by not a few even of priests and monks also, the new doctrine had been embraced with enthusiasm; besides that in Switzerland the work was fast progressing. It is the remark of his biographer, wheel arrived at this epoch of the Reformation, that at various times the world has seen the power of an idea, even of common and earthly origin, to penetrate society and rouse nations: how much more, he adds, when, as now, it was an idea originating from heaven. In this observation he is speaking of the new views at this time spread abroad of Christ and Antichrist. And have we not a comment in it on the Apocalyptic statement, " I heard a voice from heaven saying to me, Write Hot!" The effect was seen and confessed by the Popes astonished Legate, when, in traveling through Germany to Worms, instead of the wonted honours and reverence to his high office, he found himself disregarded and shunned as an agent of ANTICHRIST. A mighty revolution, it was evident, had begun: and who could foresee its issue?