Joseph Mede · 53 of 69

The Mystery Of the Woman dwelling in the Wilderness. · Part 4

Moreover, the song is new which is sung to God, after the appearance of Christ in the world, in which, to Him that sitteth on the throne, and to the Lamb together, and to them alone, redemption, and power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing, are religiously and evangelically offered. The formula of this song is to be found, c. v. v. 12, 13, and that under the title of a new song. So that it is scarcely to be doubted but that reference is made to it here, since mention is no where else made of a new song in this book. “Worthy,” say they, “is the Lamb that was slain;” that is, as it is before a little more explicitly said by the elders and living creatures, because he was slain, “to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing.” “To Him, therefore, that sitteth on the throne, and to the Lamb, be blessing, and honour, and glory, and strength, for ever and ever.—Amen.” This is the formula of the new song, which, if God should ever enable me more thoroughly to understand, I shall, perhaps, more diffusively detail by an explanation; for it is deeply imprinted on my mind, that the whole mystery of the evangelical worship is therein contained.

As to the reason of the term applied to it, it seems to be called new, either as different and distinguished from that which was sung before the mission of Christ, (for under this, according to the saying of the apostle, “Old things are passed away, behold all things are become new,”) or, for the new benefit resulting from his advent, granted to none of the former ages of the world, but only to the last times; for which benefit, God was from thenceforth to be glorified, as well by angels as by men. And this reason for the expression will be confirmed both by that passage of Isaiah, c. xlii. vv. 9, 10, “New things do I declare—Sing unto the Lord a new. song,” and that appellation which occurs so often in the Psalms, of a new song, not to be understood, as it appears, in any other sense than either such a one by which the Divine power is celebrated for some new blessing, especially that of deliverance; (as in Psalm xl. “He brought me out of the miry clay; and He hath put a new song into my mouth;”) or, at least, one which is sung according to the manner of such songs, with no common joy and delight. That either of which would agree with the evangelical hymn is so plain, that there is no reason why I should endeavour to prove it.

“And no one could learn that song but the hundred and forty and four thousand, who were redeemed from the earth.” In the whole Christian world, as long as the beast was possessed of power, no one knew how to sing the song of angels, except those who were of the number of that 141,000 attendants of the Lamb. Since these alone, without any spot of idolatry, glorify the Father and the Lamb on earth, as the blessed angels in heaven, and they do that very thing which the Church in the Lord’s Prayer incessantly asks of the Father that it may be done by all: “May thy will be done, as in heaven, so also on earth.” The idea, therefore, or perfect example, of worshipping the Divine Power lawfully and duly, cannot be sought from any other source than from the celestial inhabitants.—“These are they who have not been defiled with women, for they are virgins.” That is, who have not associated with immodest women, or harlots. But who are these women? Certainly not those who are commonly so called, but in the language of the prophets, states, and those indeed nominally Christian, but devoted. to idols, of which the queen is Babylon the Great, called the Mother of Harlots, with whom the kings and inhabitants of the earth commit fornication. With such, those who are of the company of the Lamb have not consorted; that is, they have not contaminated themselves with idolatrous incest. “For they are virgins;” that is, free from all stain of idolatry. For the mode of analogy fully requires that these should be called virgins in the same sense in which the others, whether kings or people, are said to commit fornication with Babylon. Besides, since Babylon herself is spoken of as the mother of harlots, it follows that her daughters, the other states, must likewise be young harlots, with whom the inhabitants subject to them are polluted by spiritual fornication.

“These are they that follow the Lamb wheresoever he goeth.” That is, most faithfully adhere to him, and do not desert him on any occasion; the metaphor being taken from those who never recede from a person’s side, but accompany him in every place. Or thus: In whatever city, region, or territory, the Lamb has pitched his tent, there they attend upon Him; not like the rest of those who are called Christians, but will not seek for and follow the Lamb any where, unless he dwell at Rome, in the seat of St. Peter. “These were redeemed from among men, being the first-fruits unto God and the Lamb.” That is, they were redeemed from the remaining profane crowd, that they might become a sacred property to God and the Lamb, like the first-fruits. For the Ἀπ9αρ9χὴ, or Primitiæ, do not, as is commonly. believed, denote merely the first-fruits, but also, whatever in general is consecrated to God, as exempt from profane uses; for that expression in the Hebrew is תְּרוּמָה, under which name the Scripture comprehends, as well tithes, as whatever were the object of oblations, except burnt offerings. Whence Chrysostom calls the tithes which Abraham paid to Melchisedeck, first-fruits. And Irenæus also contends that the first-fruits, which he asserts that God even still requires of his creatures for himself in his Church, ought not to be less than a tenth, since Christ says he did not abolish the natural precepts of the Law, but extended them; and, in truth, Christians have not an inferior, but a greater hope than the Jews. (Iren. adv. Heres. lib. iv. c. 27 and 34, juxta Feverardent. ed.) Why, even Callimachus, in his Hymn on Delos, calls the tenths, accustomed to be sent to Apollo, ἀπαρχὰς δεκατηφόρους, first-fruits producing tithes. From all which circumstances it appears, that the word ἀπαρχὴ, not only denotes an oblation of first productions, which in Hebrew is רֵאשית or בַּבּורִים but also any other; and the reason of the name arises from this, that his own portion was to be given to God, before any thing was consumed for own purposes. Moreover, since the word does not include the definition of what part of the first-fruits was to be given, it came to pass that the ancient Christians chose to call their productions of the earth, or oblations of fruits, (though they thought they ought not to be less than the tenth part,) ἀπαρχὰς, or first-fruits, rather than tenths, as a voluntary, not a forced donation.

These observations, though not much conducing to my object, I nevertheless wished to introduce, that I might make it palateable, if possible, to those among us, who sometimes employ themselves in searching out the antiquity and right of tithes in the Christian Church, from the Fathers and the Councils. In the mean time, (to return to the subject from which I have made a little digression,) it must be confessed, that the more strict signification of first-fruits is not ill-suited to the place before us,—namely, that the virgin company may be called the first-fruits in respect to the multitude of palm-bearers who are afterwards to receive him in a much larger number. Let the reader’s judgment be free.

“And in their mouth was found no guile,” (ψεῦδος, mendacium, lie: So the Vulgate, Syriac, Complutensian, Aretas, and Andrew in the Palatine copy; in others δόλος;) “for they are blameless.”

“There is found no lie.” Of the kind of which there is found in the mouth of the beast’s company, and of all idolaters, who profess that they worship the Lamb and the Father, yet really bestow the honour due to the Divine power on created things. For in truth, all idolatry is lying, since it worships for God what is not God. To which refers that passage of the apostle to the Romans, ch. i. 25, “They have changed the truth of God into a lie, and served the creature instead of the Creator,” παρὰ τὸν κτίσαντα. Whence idols are called lies, as Amos ch. ii. v. 4, “Their lies (idols in the Vulgate) have caused them to err, after which their fathers walked.” In the same manner, Isaiah ch. xxviii. v. 15, “We have made lies our refuge.” So also Jerem. ch. xvi. v. 19, 20, “The Gentiles shall come unto thee from the ends of the earth, and shall say, Surely our fathers have inherited lies, (Chaldee, פלחוּ have worshipped vanity); and things wherein there is no profit. “Shall a man make gods unto himself, and they are no gods?” Hence, too, the Apocalypse, ch. xxi. v. 8, “Idolaters and liars;” and also ver. 27, “that worketh abomination and maketh a lie,” seem to be placed on a level, or as synonymes. Moreover, since the idolatry of men of any description is a lie, then truly that of those, who at the same time pretend that they are the worshippers of the true Deity, is most properly deceit, or a fraudulent lie; so that if we attend to the hypocrisy of those followers of the beast, in opposition to whom the company of the sealed attendants of the Lamb is described, the reading which has “guile,” will appear preferable to the other, which has “a lie;” though it makes no great difference in the matter itself. In the mean time, for a fuller explanation of this pas. sage, let the reader compare that of Zephaniah iii. 13, which is indeed very similar to it. “The remnant of Israel shall not do iniquity, nor speak lies; neither shall a deceitful tongue be found in their mouth.”

“And I saw another angel flying in the midst of heaven (ἐν μεσουρανήματι), having the everlasting Gospel to preach to those who dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and tribe, and tongue, and people.”

The description of the assembly being finished, the history of events in that state of the Church follows, which were to be transacted, as well by the assembly under the auspices of the Lamb, their leader, as by the Lamb himself, against revolters and rebels. Of those events the order is double. First, of a three-fold admonition to the followers of the beast, exhibited as the shout of so many angels; secondly, of judgments in the Parable of the Harvest and Vintage. The first of the admonitory angels is he who is called another; but another, as I observed with reference to the chorus of angels, a little before described, in the number of whom that evangelist was not included. And here it must be remembered, (what I have already noticed above,) that the angels, in visions of this kind, represent the rule of those over whose government they preside; and what is transacted by the joint operations of both, is said to be done by the authority of angels, as the leaders or directors of the action. Hence, therefore, there is room to suppose, that the flying so sublimely, (provided that also ought to be considered as within the purview of the parable) is the president, not of every rank of men, but of those of a higher condition, and of such men lie is about to make use in publishing the Gospel. Besides, that Gospel is called αἰώνιον, or eternal, and that, I think, not so much with respect to the future as the past, as that which was promised, ἀπ᾽ αἰῶνος, that is, from the foundation of the age, or the beginning of the world, namely, “that the seed of the woman should hereafter bruise the serpent’s head;” that is, by the coming of Christ, the kingdom of the devil should be destroyed, and the kingdom of God established. In which sense also, the apostle says, that it was “promised by God, πρὸ χρόνων αἰωνίων, before the world began,” Titus, ch. i. v. 2. So then αἰώνιον will be here the same as ἀπ᾽ αἰῶνος, and the everlasting Gospel mean the same as in the Hebrew, any בשרה שלם the ancient Gospel, as ἔρημοι αἰώνιοι, Isa. ch. lviii. τριβοι αἰώνιοι, Jer. ch. vi. v. 16, and Βουνοὶ ἀένναοι, Deut. ch. xxxiii. v. 15, are rendered, the “old waste places, the old paths, and the ancient mountains.”

“Saying with a loud voice, Fear God and give glory to him, for the hour of his judgment is come, and worship him who made heaven and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters.”

The first angel, announcing that the time of the kingdom of God was now at hand, in which his judgment would be exercised on idols and idolaters, and therefore it began to be exercised as soon as the demons were thrown down, and cast out from the Roman throne; on which account he exhorts the nations, and tribes, and tongues, and people, who had from that time submitted to the power of Christ, that mindful of what they had done, they should worship the one only true God, the Creator, as it is announced in the Gospel,—and keep themselves from idols. “Fear God,” says he; that is, reverence him, and give him the glory,—the glory of adoration and religious worship, as is explained in the following words: “For the time of his judgment is come;” that is, the time when Christ by his cross spoiled principalities and powers, and announced, by his apostles and evangelists, to the nations whom he had suffered so long to walk in their own ways, that they must be converted from idols, or otherwise they would be punished with eternal death, at his return from heaven. Why, then, did Christians, who profess their faith in Jesus Christ, this judge and conqueror of demons, return again to the worship of idols and demons?

It is perhaps possible, that the time of judgment might be understood more strictly of the judgment of God, some time before displayed against the dragon and his followers, by which Paganism fell; but I would rather extend it more widely, and take it universally of the kingdom of Christ begun and promulgated in the last times, in which idols are no longer to be endured; namely, according to that saying of our Saviour, in the Gospel by St. John, ch. xii. v. 31,—“Now is the judgment of this world, now shall the prince of this world be cast out.” See also ch. xvi. v. 11. From which judgment, indeed, the apostle Paul also (in the same manner as the angel here) drew an argument for dissuading the Athenian pagans from the worship of idols, Acts, ch. xvii. v. 30, 31, “The times of this ignorance God overlooked, but now commandeth all men every where to repent, because he hath appointed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness, by that man whom he hath ordained; having given assurance thereof to all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead.” Similar to which is his admonition to the Lycaonians, ch. xiv. 15, “We preach unto you, that ye should turn from these vanities to the living God, who made heaven and earth, and the sea, and all things therein; who, in the generations that are passed, suffered all nations to walk in their own ways;” that is, before his judgment was manifested to them. We must supply: But now he promulgates his judgment to all; which the angel here expresses by saying, “The time of his judgment is come.” But when? you will ask; and where, and with what ministers, did this angel perform his preaching? Certain preludes were issued as soon as superstition began to attach itself to the memories, and to hang round the relics of the martyrs in the Church, as appears by the history of Vigilantius, with whom, when opposing a superstition of this kind, many others, even some of the bishops of that time, agreed, as his adversary Jerome witnesses, who improperly attacks him on that account.

But this preaching most manifestly appears to have been fulfilled from the year of our Lord 720, in the Greek and Oriental Churches, where the evangelical angel indeed was flying, ἐν μεσουρανήματι, in the midst of heaven, that is, in a lofty and sublime place; for he employed one who was of the administrators of the Gospel, not a man of low and vulgar rank, but of the highest powers in the Christian world; for instance, the Constantinopolitan emperors, Leo Isauricus, Constantine Iconomachus, Leo the Arminian, Michael Balbus, and Theophilus; who all, but especially the first, protested most strenuously by their edicts and decrees in favour of a religious worship addressed to God alone, the Creator, in contradiction to the worship of the creature, not only that which was exercised in the veneration of images, but in reference to the saints, and their relics. Let the reader look back to the testimonies which I quoted upon this subject from Theopanes, when 1 was treating of the two-horned beast. But besides this, under the auspices of the second emperor, a council of bishops was convoked at Constantinople, in 338, and the adoration of images was charged with impiety, and condemned. You will acknowledge, Reader, if you are not tired of referring to it, that the very declaration of the Synod is the address of the angel, and grounded on the same foundation as his, according to our interpretation. But since it happened there, by the fraud of some who had indeed assented with the rest to the condemnation of images, yet favoured the invocation of saints, (for the votes were not equal against the latter and former superstitions,) that two canons, one relative to the worship of the blessed Mary, the mother of God, the other to the addressing the rest of the heavenly saints with religious invocation, were intermixed in the beginning with the decrees of the Council. As soon as the Emperor Constantine, with the Fathers of the sounder opinion, had remarked them, they immediately adjudged them to be erroneous, and took care, in testimony of their judgment, that they should be cancelled, and blotted out of the book. Of this fact I have a witness, if any one should doubt it; in the first place, the author of the refutation of that Constantinopolitan declaration, inserted in the Acts of the second Council of Nice; which, while it assumed that the first publication of it refuted itself, thus refers to those canons: “After this their publication,” says he, “they rejected even the offer of intercessions acceptable to God, blotting it out from this their rescript.” Then the acts of Stephen the monk and pseudo-martyr, according to whom, when the bishops, who were sent by the emperor to convince him, began to recite the decree of the Council, he immediately proceeded to object to the title of the Council as Holy, that it ought not to be called holy which proscribed holy things. “Have you not,” says he, “torn in pieces the sacred shrine adorned with images? Have you not discarded this adjective Ἄγιος, Saint, from all the just, from all apostles, from prophets, from martyrs, and pious men? For it is established by you, O generous men! that when any one should approach one of these persons, and he should be asked by him whither he was going, he should answer, To the apostles, to the forty martyrs; or, whence he came, From the temple of the martyr Theodorus, from the temple of the martyr George. Are not these your doctrines? With what consistency then have you, who have proscribed holy things, convened a holy council?” These are the words of Stephen himself. Let us hear besides the describer of his acts (who lived at the same time), tragically exclaiming against the same persons, for undervaluing the worship of the mother of God. “To what a degree, O Christ, do I admire thy lenity, which cannot be expressed in words! In what manner may I explain the depth of your benignity, which surpasses all the power of words! Still do those audacious tongues continue to burst forth in such a manner, that they do not hesitate to utter that great and wicked saying, namely, that the virgin mother of God herself is a being of no utility after death, and destitute of all advantage, and cannot be an aid, or a patroness to any one.” I add to these the testimony of Cedrenus. He relates, that Constantine issued an universal law, (without doubt, from the opinion of a council, whose Acts are not extant at this day, except the declaration only) “That no one whatever of the servants of the Lord should be called Saint, but that their relics when found should be despised, (that they might not be superstitiously venerated, O Cedrenus, even though they were real; and if false, be cast out of the temple;) nor their intercession invoked, for it was of no value.” “The wretch added,” says he, “that no one should implore the intercession of Mary.”

Now the reader may agree with me, whether he does not think it clear from these testimonies, that there was something transacted in that council against the worship of saints and relics. I have dwelt so much the longer on the proof of this, because it is not so well known to every one as that against images. But we have not yet discharged our duty; that calumny about the epithet of Saint being denied to the just, as if in degradation and contumely, must first be wiped away. For it is evident from the declaration of the Synod, (which is extant at this clay in the Acts of the second Nicene Council) that the apostles and the just are every where honoured by those fathers with the title of sanctity. They are not therefore to be supposed to have absolutely prohibited that which they themselves have often done. But we may be allowed to conjecture, that, in the opinion of that age, the word ἅγιος (for of this word only are we disputing,) appeared to infer the honour of intercession; and therefore, that superstition might by all means be opposed, the use of it in common discourse about the temples, especially when they went there to pray, was interdicted. For ἅγιος seems to he derived from ἅγος, by which word is signified veneration, or a being worthy of veneration. Whence are ἅγιοι, σεβάσμιοι, and both from ἅζω, to venerate, to worship. Nay, that it manifestly refers to the worship of the dead, it is of common origin with ἐναγίζειν, to offer sacrifices to the dead, to perform funeral rites to deceased relatives; and with ἐναγισμὸς, the performance of such rites, sacrifices to the dead. Besides, (with the reader’s good leave, and without a charge of trifling annotation,) it might be the case, that the word ἅγιος, among the Greeks, (as the examples of similar blunders on the part of the vulgar may sometimes be observed among us,) might seem to imply, though falsely, by whom our prayers are offered to God; that is, προσαγωγία, an usher and mediator with God; in the same manner as Gregory Nazianzen gives the title to our Lord Christ, according to the apostle to the Ephesians, c. ii. v. 18. Δἰ αὐτοῦ ἔχομεν προσαγωγὴν πρὸς τὸν Πατέρα. “Through him we have access to the Father.” However it may be, it appears by the testimonies adduced, it was at the time supposed, that by the use of this word the superstitious feeling towards the saints who had departed this life, was supported and cherished. To resist which, by every means and effort, its use was interdicted, not, indeed, absolutely and universally, as their adversaries calumniously represent, but in giving that title to the temples only, which were named in memory of the apostles and martyrs.

This was done, as it appears, to do away the error of supposing, that either the places themselves, where God was approached through the intercession of martyrs, or of those whose names they bore, were entitled to veneration. Therefore, instead of the name of Saints, they thought fit to substitute that of apostles and martyrs, certainly not less honourable. It was indeed the province of him to judge on this subject considerately and advisedly, who had all the circumstances of the time, and the facts of the case, before him, openly and fully displayed. In the mean time, it does not detract at all from the virginity and purity of the Church, if she has sometimes judged with less wisdom in such cases as refer to the reason and mode of performing any act. It does not necessarily follow, that she who is chaste should always act or speak prudently. From nearly a similar cause, the word sacerdos, priest, as applied to evangelical presbyters; and sacrificium, a sacrifice, as applied to the sacrament of the eucharist; (not to name other words of this kind,) were ordered to be disused among many of the reformed churches. And that indeed not altogether rashly, if they had not substituted (in the opinion of some,) the word ministri, ministers, not a very appropriate term; by which all who discharge the sacred office are properly called according to the use of Scripture, but by which, however, priests are not distinguished from deacons. Should we not rather have called them by the apostolical name of presbyteri, presbyters, if we dislike sacerdoti, priests? But these are matters which belong to another place.

Moreover, not only in the East, but in the West also, though the Roman pontiff was enraged, the proclamation of this angel resounded, not indeed, as there, with the full blast of the trumpet, but still with a public and solemn denunciation. First in the year 790, in the Synod of Frankfort, under Charlemagne, composed of nearly 300 bishops, besides abbots, and others; where the worship and adoration of images were condemned, together with the second Nicene Council, which had established them, and which Pope Hadrian had by his legates managed and approved. And again in the Synod of Paris, in the year 825, assembled by the command of Louis, in which it is shown at length, both from Divine authority and from the opinions of the Fathers, that the adoration of images was a wicked and impious practice, and the Nicene Synod was reprobated, as guilty of this kind of superstition. Add to this, the commentary sent by Charlemagne to the pontiff Hadrian, the champion of idols, after the Frankfort Council; and here likewise you may acknowledge the angel flying in the midst of heaven. Hitherto we have attended to the exhortation of the first angel: now let us listen to the preaching of the second.

The second angel denounces Rome for its filthiness, and the multitude of its idolatries; by which, in despite of the exhortations of the first angel, she had not only contaminated herself, but also had exhibited herself as the leader and chief of all the nations of the world, that they with her might do the same, and by which she was now converted from the city of God into Babylon; on this account become at length wholly obnoxious through her impenitence to the Divine sentence delivered against all idolaters, as no longer to be endured, but to be destroyed, and cut off by an irrevocable decree; and the preparation for that ruin was ordained to be continually and assiduously prosecuted from this proclamation.

And the assembly of the Waldenses and Albigenses were the attendants of this proclamation, partly in word, and partly in deed, as those who first of all mortal beings openly denounced the Roman Church for its idolatry, or mystic whoredom, to be the apocalyptical Babylon; and they likewise took the first step towards its ruin; since thus detected, immediately a great multitude of men began to abominate her, and privately to make a defection throughout all the provinces of her dominion; and, in addition, her authority from thenceforth, day by day, began to fall more and more into decay, and her ruin then to commence, which was not to stand still, till it should at length come down to the burning of the city. I will say in a word, from the preaching of this angel, a select force of holy soldiers began to be formed for the uninterrupted destruction of Babylon.

“Babylon has fallen. It has fallen.” As if he had said, Now are the foundations laid for the ruin of Babylon; from this time shall the preparations for waging war against her be undertaken. It is an imitation of Isaiah, c. xxi. who expressly, in the same words, and on an occasion not different in kind, related the ruin of the ancient Babylon, not yet accomplished, but pre-announced, as here by the foundations being laid, it should most surely come to pass. For as chronology teaches, Isaiah uttered his prophecy at the very time when the Medes, who were hereafter to lay waste Babylon, having shaken off the yoke of the Assyrians, asserted their own liberty; and having built Ecbatana, under their new king, Dejoces, laid the foundations of that kingdom, which was to be fatal both to Nineveh .and Babylon.

“Because she made all nations drink of the wine of the excess of her fornication.”