Part II, Chapter 3, 3

"Let all enemies of the sacred law who have crept into the rites of heretical superstition know that they will be punished with the penalty of proscription and of blood, if they should any longer dare to assemble in public with the execrable daring of their crime; for fear that true and divine reverence be profaned by any contamination. Given on the eighth day before the Kalends of September, in the tenth consulship of Honorius and the sixth of Theodosius, A.C. 415."

These Edicts, being directed to the governor of Africa, applied only to the Africans. Before these there were many severe ones against the Donatists, but they did not extend to blood. These two were the first which made their meetings, and the meetings of all dissenters, a capital crime: for by heretics in these Edicts are meant all dissenters, as is plain from the following one against Euresius, a Luciferan Bishop.

The Emperors Arcadius and Honorius, Augusti, to Aurelianus, Proconsul of Africa.

"Those are contained under the name of heretics, and must submit to the sanctions enacted against them, who are detected by even the slightest evidence to have deviated from the judgment and the path of the Catholic religion: and therefore let your experienced judgment recognize Euresius as a heretic. Given on the third day before the Nones of September, at Constantinople, Olybrius and Probinus being Consuls, A.C. 395."

The Greek Emperor Zeno adopted Theoderic, King of the Ostrogoths, to be his son, made him master of the horse and Patricius, and Consul of Constantinople; and recommending to him the Roman people and Senate, gave him the Western Empire, and sent him into Italy against Odoacer, King of the Heruli. Theoderic thereupon led his nation into Italy, conquered Odoacer, and reigned over Italy, Sicily, Rhætia, Noricum, Dalmatia, Liburnia, Istria, and part of Suevia, Pannonia and Gallia. So Ennodius said, in a Panegyric to Theoderic: "That the Roman kingdoms had returned to their own border." Theoderic reigned with great prudence, moderation and success; treated the Romans with singular benevolence, governed them by their own laws, and restored their government under their Senate and Consuls, he himself supplying the place of Emperor, without assuming the title. "He so ruled over his subjects," says Procopius, "that no honor befitting a true Emperor was lacking to him: he had a great reverence for justice, and a careful guardianship of the laws; he kept the lands untouched by the neighboring barbarians, etc." For which reason I do not count the reign of this King among the plagues of the four winds.

The plague of the northern wind, at the sounding of the fourth trumpet, was to cause the Sun, Moon and Stars—that is, the King, kingdom and Princes of the Western Empire—to be darkened, and to continue some time in darkness. Accordingly Belisarius, having conquered the Vandals, invaded Italy A.C. 535, and made war upon the Ostrogoths in Dalmatia, Liburnia, Venetia, Lombardy, Tuscany, and other regions northward from Rome, twenty years together. In this war many cities were taken and retaken. In retaking Millain from the Romans, the Ostrogoths killed all the males young and old, amounting, as Procopius reckons, to three hundred thousand, and sent the women captives to their allies the Burgundians. Rome itself was taken and retaken several times, and by that the people were thinned; the old government by a Senate ceased, the nobles were ruined, and all the glory of the city was extinguished; and A.C. 552, after a war of seventeen years, the kingdom of the Ostrogoths fell; yet the remainder of the Ostrogoths, and an army of Germans called in to their assistance, continued the war three or four years longer. Then ensued the war of the Heruli, who, as Anastasius tells us, "killed all Italy." This was followed by the war of the Lombards, the fiercest of all the Barbarians, which began A.C. 568, and lasted for thirty eight years together; "with such a disaster made," says Anastasius, "as no one remembers in any age"; ending at last in the Papacy of Sabinian, A.C. 605, by a peace then made with the Lombards. Three years before this war ended, Gregory the great, then Bishop of Rome, thus speaks of it: "For by what means, and by what daily swords, and by how many invasions of the Lombards, look now for the length of thirty-five years we are pressed, we are unable to express it in any words of report." And in one of his Sermons to the people, he thus expresses the great consumption of the Romans by these wars: "Look at how many of you remain of that innumerable people, and yet still daily whips press you, sudden disasters overwhelm you, unforeseen calamities and new reverses afflict you." In another Sermon he thus describes the desolations: "Cities destroyed, forts overturned, fields laid waste, the land reduced to a wilderness. No inhabitant in the fields, scarcely any inhabitant left in the cities. And yet these small remnants of the human race are struck daily and without ceasing, and the whips of heavenly justice have no end. And Rome herself, who not long ago seemed the mistress of the world, we see remaining under countless sorrows, many times over worn down by the loss of her citizens, the inroads of her enemies, and the frequency of her ruins.—Look, now all the powerful of this age have been taken from her.—Look, her peoples have failed.—Where then is the Senate? Where is the people? The bones are wasted, the flesh consumed. For every order of worldly dignities is extinct, and yet you yourselves, the few of us who remain, are pressed daily by swords, daily by innumerable tribulations.—Rome now burns empty. And what shall we say of these things as regards men? As the ruins multiply we see the buildings themselves destroyed too. After the men failed, even the walls fall. Look now she is desolate, look she is broken, look she is overwhelmed with groans, etc." All this was spoken by Gregory to the people of Rome, who were witnesses of the truth of it. Thus by the plagues of the four winds, the Empire of the Greeks was shaken, and the Empire of the Latins fell; and Rome remained nothing more than the capital of a poor dukedom, subordinate to Ravenna, the seat of the Exarchs.

The fifth trumpet sounded to the wars which the King of the South, as he is called by Daniel, made in the time of the end, in pushing at the King who did according to his will. This plague began with the opening of the bottomless pit, which denotes the letting out of a false religion: the smoke which came out of the pit, signifying the multitude which embraced that religion; and the locusts which came out of the smoke, the armies which came out of that multitude. This pit was opened, to let out smoke and locusts into the regions of the four monarchies, or some of them. The King of these locusts was the Angel of the bottomless pit, being chief governor as well in religious as in civil affairs, such as was the Caliph of the Saracens. Swarms of locusts often arise in Arabia fælix, and from there infest the neighboring nations: and so they are a very fit type of the numerous armies of Arabians invading the Romans. They began to invade them A.C. 634, and to reign at Damascus A.C. 637. They built Bagdad A.C. 766, and reigned over Persia, Syria, Arabia, Egypt, Africa and Spain. They afterward lost Africa to Mahades, A.C. 910; Media, Hircania, Chorasan, and all Persia, to the Dailamites, between the years 927 and 935; Mesopotamia and Miafarekin to Nasiruddaulas, A.C. 930; Syria and Egypt to Achsjid, A.C. 935; and now being in great distress, the Caliph of Bagdad, A.C. 936, surrendered all the rest of his temporal power to Mahomet the son of Rajici, King of Wasit in Chaldea, and made him Emperor of Emperors. But Mahomet within two years lost Bagdad to the Turks; and from then on Bagdad was sometimes in the hands of the Turks, and sometimes in the hands of the Saracens, until Togrul-beig, called also Togra, Dogrissa, Tangrolipix, and Sadoc, conquered Chorasan and Persia; and A.C. 1055, added Bagdad to his Empire, making it the seat of it. His successors Olub-Arflan and Melechschah conquered the regions upon the Euphrates; and these conquests, after the death of Melechschah, broke into the kingdoms of Armenia, Mesopotamia, Syria, and Cappadocia. The whole time that the Caliphs of the Saracens reigned with a temporal dominion at Damascus and Bagdad together, was 300 years, viz. from the year 637 to the year 936 inclusive. Now locusts live but five months; and therefore, for the decorum of the type, these locusts are said to hurt men five months and five months, as if they had lived about five months at Damascus, and again about five months at Bagdad; in all ten months, or 300 prophetic days, which are years.

The sixth trumpet sounded to the wars which Daniel's King of the North made against the King above-mentioned, who did according to his will. In these wars the King of the North, according to Daniel, conquered the Empire of the Greeks, and also Judea, Egypt, Lybia, and Ethiopia: and by these conquests the Empire of the Turks was set up, as may be known by the extent of it. These wars commenced A.C. 1258, when the four kingdoms of the Turks seated upon the Euphrates, that of Armenia major seated at Miyapharekin, Megarkin or Martyropolis, that of Mesopotamia seated at Mosul, that of all Syria seated at Aleppo, and that of Cappadocia seated at Iconium, were invaded by the Tartars under Hulacu, and driven into the western parts of Asia minor, where they made war upon the Greeks, and began to erect the present Empire of the Turks. Upon the sounding of the sixth trumpet,⁹ John heard a voice from the four horns of the golden Altar which is before God, saying to the sixth Angel which had the trumpet, "Release the four Angels which are bound at the great river Euphrates." And the four Angels were loosed, which were prepared for an hour and a day, and a month and a year, to kill the third part of men. By the four horns of the golden Altar is signified the situation of the head cities of the said four kingdoms, Miyapharekin, Mosul, Aleppo, and Iconium, which were in a quadrangle. They killed the third part of men when they conquered the Greek Empire, and took Constantinople, A.C. 1453; and they began to be prepared for this purpose, when Olub-Arslan began to conquer the nations upon the Euphrates, A.C. 1063. The interval is called an hour and a day, and a month and a year, or 391 prophetic days, which are years. In the first thirty years, Olub-Arslan and Melechschah conquered the nations upon the Euphrates, and reigned over the whole. Melechschah died A.C. 1092, and was succeeded by a little child; and then this kingdom broke into the four kingdoms above-mentioned.

Notes to Chap. III.

1 Apoc. ii. 4, &c.

2 Apoc. ii. 9, 10.

3 Ver. 14.

4 Numb. xxv. 1, 2, 18, & xxi. 16.

5 Apoc. iii. 10, 12.

6 Apoc. iii. 16, 17.

7 Apoc. viii. 7, &c.

8 Apoc. xvi. 5, 6.

9 Apoc. ix. 13, &c.

THE END.

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The last pages of these Observations having been differently drawn up by the Author in another copy of his Work; they are here inserted as they follow in that copy, after the 22d line of the 261st page foregoing.

And none was found worthy to open the book until the Lamb of God appeared; the great High-Priest represented by a lamb killed at the foot of the Altar in the morning sacrifice. And he came, and took the book out of the hand of him that sat upon the throne. For the High-Priest, in the feast of the seventh month, went into the most holy place, and took the book of the law out of the right side of the Ark, to read it to the people: and in order to read it well, he studied it seven days, that is, upon the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth days, being attended by some of the priests to hear him perform. These seven days are alluded to, by the Lamb's opening the seven seals successively.

Upon the tenth day of the month, a young bullock was offered for a sin-offering for the High-Priest, and a goat for a sin-offering for the people: and lots were cast upon two goats to determine which of them should be God's lot for the sin-offering; and the other goat was called Azazel, the scape-goat. The High-Priest in his linen garments, took a censer full of burning coals of fire from the Altar, his hand being full of sweet incense beaten small; and went into the most holy place within the veil, and put the incense upon the fire, and sprinkled the blood of the bullock with his finger upon the mercy-seat and before the mercy-seat seven times; and then he killed the goat which fell to God's lot, for a sin-offering for the people, and brought its blood within the veil, and sprinkled it also seven times upon the mercy-seat and before the mercy-seat. Then he went out to the Altar, and sprinkled it also seven times with the blood of the bullock, and as often with the blood of the goat. After this he laid both his hands upon the head of the live goat; and confessed over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions in all their sins, putting them upon the head of the goat; and sent him away into the wilderness by the hands of a fit man: and the goat bore upon him all their iniquities into a land not inhabited, Levit. chap. iv. & chap. xvi. While the High-Priest was doing these things in the most holy place and at the Altar, the people continued at their devotion quietly and in silence. Then the High-Priest went into the holy place, put off his linen garments, and put on other garments; then came out, and sent the bullock and the goat of the sin-offering to be burned outside the camp, with fire taken in a censer from the Altar: and as the people returned home from the Temple, they said to one another, "God seal you to a good new year."

In allusion to all this, when he had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour. And an Angel stood at the Altar having a golden Censer, and much incense was given to him, that he should offer it with the prayers of all Saints, upon the golden Altar which was before the throne. And the smoke of the incense with the prayers of the Saints ascended before God out of the Angel's hand. And the Angel took the Censer, and filled it with fire of the Altar, and cast it to the earth, we may suppose outside the camp, for sacrificing the goat which fell to God's lot. For the High-Priest being Christ himself, the bullock is omitted. At this sacrifice there were voices and thunderings, of the music of the Temple, and lightnings of the sacred fire, and an earthquake: and synchronal to these things was the sealing of the 144000 out of all the twelve tribes of the children of Israel with the seal of God in their foreheads, while the rest of the twelve tribes received the mark of the Beast, and the Woman fled from the Temple into the wilderness to her place upon this Beast. For this sealing and marking was represented by casting lots upon the two goats, sacrificing God's lot on mount Sion, and sending the scape-goat into the wilderness laden with the sins of the people.

Sciant cuncti qui ad ritus suos hæresis superstitionibus obrepserant sacrosanctæ legis inimici, plectendos se poenâ & proscriptionis & sanguinis, si ultra convenire per publicum exercendi sceleris sui temeritate temptaverint: ne quâ vera divinaque reverentia contagione temeretur. Dat. viii. Kal. Sept. Honorio x. & Theod. vi. AA. Coss. A.C. 415.

Because these Edicts were sent to the governor of Africa, they applied only to the Africans. Before these there were many harsh ones against the Donatists, but they did not go as far as blood. These two were the first to make their meetings, and the meetings of all dissenters, a capital crime. In these Edicts, heretics means all dissenters, as is clear from the following one against Euresius, a Luciferan Bishop.

Impp. Arcad. & Honor. AA. Aureliano Proc. Africæ.

Hæreticorum vocabulo continentur, & latis adversus eos sanctionibus debent succumbere, qui vel levi argumento à judicio Catholicæ religionis & tramite detecti fuerint deviare: ideoque experientia tua Euresium hæreticum esse cognoscat. Dat. iii. Non. Sept. Constantinop. Olybrio & Probino Coss. A.C. 395.

The Greek Emperor Zeno adopted Theoderic King of the Ostrogoths as his son, made him master of the horse, Patricius and Consul of Constantinople, and, handing over to him the Roman people and Senate, gave him the Western Empire and sent him into Italy against Odoacer King of the Heruli. Theoderic then led his people into Italy, conquered Odoacer, and ruled over Italy, Sicily, Rhætia, Noricum, Dalmatia, Liburnia, Istria, and part of Suevia, Pannonia and Gallia. So Ennodius said, in a Panegyric to Theoderic: Ad limitem suum Romana regna remeâsse. Theoderic ruled with great prudence, moderation and success. He treated the Romans with unusual kindness, governed them by their own laws, and restored their government under their Senate and Consuls, taking the place of Emperor himself without taking the title. Ita sibi parentibus præfuit, says Procopius, ut vere Imperatori conveniens decus nullum ipsi abesset: Justitiæ magnus ei cultus, legumque diligens custodia: terras à vicinis barbaris servavit intactas, &c. So I do not count the reign of this King among the plagues of the four winds.

The plague of the northern wind at the sounding of the fourth trumpet was to darken the Sun, Moon and Stars, that is, the King, kingdom and Princes of the Western Empire, and to keep them in darkness for some time. So Belisarius, after conquering the Vandals, invaded Italy A.C. 535 and fought the Ostrogoths in Dalmatia, Liburnia, Venetia, Lombardy, Tuscany and other regions north of Rome, twenty years in a row. In this war many cities were taken and taken back. When Millain was taken back from the Romans, the Ostrogoths killed all the males, young and old, amounting, as Procopius reckons, to three hundred thousand, and sent the women captives to their allies the Burgundians. Rome itself was taken and retaken several times, and the people were thinned out. The old government by a Senate ended, the nobles were ruined, and all the glory of the city was extinguished. Then, A.C. 552, after a war of seventeen years, the kingdom of the Ostrogoths fell, yet the rest of the Ostrogoths and an army of Germans they called in to help them kept the war going three or four years longer. Then came the war of the Heruli, who, as Anastasius tells us, perimebant cunctam Italiam, killed all Italy. That was followed by the war of the Lombards, the fiercest of all the Barbarians, which began A.C. 568 and lasted thirty eight years in a row, factâ tali clade, says Anastasius, qualem à sæculo nullus meminit. It ended at last with the Papacy of Sabinian, A.C. 605, through a peace made with the Lombards at that time. Three years before this war ended, Gregory the great, then Bishop of Rome, spoke of it like this: Qualiter enim & quotidianis gladiis & quantis Longobardorum incursionibus, ecce jam per triginta quinque annorum longitudinem premimur, nullis explere vocibus suggestionis valemus: and in one of his Sermons to the people he describes how badly the Romans were used up by these wars: Ex illa plebe innumerabili quanti remanseritis aspicitis, & tamen adhuc quotidiè flagella urgent, repentini casus opprimunt, novæ res & improvisæ clades affligunt. In another Sermon he describes the desolations this way: Destructæ urbes, eversa sunt castra, depopulati agri, in solitudinem terra redacta est. Nullus in agris incola, penè nullus in urbibus habitator remansit. Et tamen ipsæ parvæ generis humani reliquiæ adhuc quotidiè & sine cessatione feriuntur, & finem non habent flagella coefor fear thatis justitiæ. Ipsa autem quæ aliquando mundi Domina esse videbatur, qualis remansit Roma conspicimus innumeris doloribus multipliciter attrita, defolatione civium, impressione hostium, frequentiâ ruinarum.--Ecce jam de illa omnes hujus fæculi potentes ablati sunt.--Ecce populi defecerunt.--Ubi enim Senatus? Ubi jam populus? Contabuerunt ossa, consumptæ sunt carnes. Omnis enim sæcularium dignitatum ordo extinctus est, & tamen ipsos vos paucos qui remansimus, adhuc quotidié gladii, adhuc quotidié innumeræ tribulationes premunt.--Vacua jam ardet Roma. Quid autem ista de hominibus dicimus? Cum ruinis crebrescentibus ipsa quoque destrui ædificia videmus. Postquam defecerunt homines etiam parietes cadunt. Jam ecce desolata, ecce contrita, ecce gemitibus oppressa est, &c. All this was said by Gregory to the people of Rome, who had seen that it was true. So through the plagues of the four winds the Empire of the Greeks was shaken and the Empire of the Latins fell, and Rome was nothing more than the capital of a poor dukedom, under Ravenna, the seat of the Exarchs.

The fifth trumpet sounded to the wars that the King of the South, as Daniel calls him, made in the time of the end by pushing at the King who did according to his will. This plague began with the opening of the bottomless pit, which means a false religion being let out: the smoke coming out of the pit stands for the crowd that embraced that religion, and the locusts coming out of the smoke stand for the armies that came out of that crowd. The pit was opened to let smoke and locusts out into the regions of the four monarchies, or some of them. The King of these locusts was the Angel of the bottomless pit, the chief governor in religious as well as civil affairs, such as the Caliph of the Saracens. Swarms of locusts often rise up in Arabia fælix and from there infest the neighboring nations, so they are a very fitting picture of the large armies of Arabians invading the Romans. They began to invade them A.C. 634 and to rule at Damascus A.C. 637. They built Bagdad A.C. 766 and ruled over Persia, Syria, Arabia, Egypt, Africa and Spain. Later they lost Africa to Mahades, A.C. 910; Media, Hircania, Chorasan and all Persia to the Dailamites, between the years 927 and 935; Mesopotamia and Miafarekin to Nasiruddaulas, A.C. 930; Syria and Egypt to Achsjid, A.C. 935. And now in great distress, the Caliph of Bagdad, A.C. 936, handed over all the rest of his temporal power to Mahomet the son of Rajici, King of Wasit in Chaldea, and made him Emperor of Emperors. But Mahomet lost Bagdad to the Turks within two years, and from then on Bagdad was sometimes in the hands of the Turks and sometimes in the hands of the Saracens, until Togrul-beig, also called Togra, Dogrissa, Tangrolipix and Sadoc, conquered Chorasan and Persia and, A.C. 1055, added Bagdad to his Empire and made it his seat. His successors Olub-Arflan and Melechschah conquered the regions upon the Euphrates, and after the death of Melechschah these conquests broke into the kingdoms of Armenia, Mesopotamia, Syria and Cappadocia. The whole time that the Caliphs of the Saracens ruled with a temporal dominion at Damascus and Bagdad together was 300 years, that is, from the year 637 to the year 936 inclusive. Now locusts live only five months, and so, to keep the picture right, these locusts are said to hurt men five months and five months, as if they had lived about five months at Damascus and again about five months at Bagdad: ten months in all, or 300 prophetic days, which are years.

The sixth trumpet sounded to the wars that Daniel's King of the North made against the King mentioned above, who did according to his will. In these wars the King of the North, according to Daniel, conquered the Empire of the Greeks and also Judea, Egypt, Lybia and Ethiopia, and by these conquests the Empire of the Turks was set up, as can be known from its size. These wars began A.C. 1258, when the four kingdoms of the Turks seated upon the Euphrates—the kingdom of Armenia major seated at Miyapharekin, Megarkin or Martyropolis, the kingdom of Mesopotamia seated at Mosul, the kingdom of all Syria seated at Aleppo, and the kingdom of Cappadocia seated at Iconium—were invaded by the Tartars under Hulacu and driven into the western parts of Asia minor, where they made war on the Greeks and began to build the present Empire of the Turks. When the sixth trumpet sounded,⁹ John heard a voice from the four horns of the golden Altar which is before God, saying to the sixth Angel who had the trumpet: "Loosen the four Angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates." And the four Angels were let loose. They had been prepared for an hour and a day, and a month and a year, to kill a third part of men. The four horns of the golden Altar stand for where the head cities of those four kingdoms sat, Miyapharekin, Mosul, Aleppo and Iconium, which were in a quadrangle. They killed a third part of men when they conquered the Greek Empire and took Constantinople, A.C. 1453. And they began to be prepared for this purpose when Olub-Arslan began to conquer the nations upon the Euphrates, A.C. 1063. The time in between is called an hour and a day, and a month and a year, or 391 prophetic days, which are years. In the first thirty years, Olub-Arslan and Melechschah conquered the nations upon the Euphrates and ruled over all of them. Melechschah died A.C. 1092 and was succeeded by a little child, and then this kingdom broke into the four kingdoms mentioned above.

Notes to Chap. III.

1 Apoc. ii. 4, &c.

2 Apoc. ii. 9, 10.

3 Ver. 14.

4 Numb. xxv. 1, 2, 18, & xxi. 16.

5 Apoc. iii. 10, 12.

6 Apoc. iii. 16, 17.

7 Apoc. viii. 7, &c.

8 Apoc. xvi. 5, 6.

9 Apoc. ix. 13, &c.

THE END.

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The last pages of these Observations were written in a different form by the Author in another copy of his Work, and they are inserted here as they follow in that copy, after the 22d line of the 261st page above.

And no one was found worthy to open the book until the Lamb of God appeared: the great High-Priest shown as a lamb killed at the foot of the Altar in the morning sacrifice. And he came and took the book from the hand of the one sitting on the throne. For the High-Priest, in the feast of the seventh month, went into the most holy place and took the book of the law out of the right side of the Ark to read it to the people, and in order to read it well he studied it seven days, that is, on the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth days, with some of the priests attending to hear him perform. These seven days are referred to by the Lamb opening the seven seals one after another.

On the tenth day of the month, a young bullock was offered as a sin-offering for the High-Priest, and a goat as a sin-offering for the people, and lots were cast on two goats to decide which of them should be God's lot for the sin-offering, while the other goat was called Azazel, the scape-goat. The High-Priest, in his linen garments, took a censer full of burning coals of fire from the Altar, his hand full of sweet incense beaten small, and went into the most holy place inside the veil. He put the incense on the fire and sprinkled the blood of the bullock with his finger on the mercy-seat and in front of the mercy-seat seven times. Then he killed the goat that fell to God's lot as a sin-offering for the people, brought its blood inside the veil, and sprinkled it seven times as well on the mercy-seat and in front of the mercy-seat. Then he went out to the Altar and sprinkled it seven times with the blood of the bullock, and just as often with the blood of the goat. After that he laid both his hands on the head of the live goat and confessed over him all the wrongs of the children of Israel and all their transgressions in all their sins, putting them on the head of the goat, and sent him away into the wilderness by the hands of a fit man, and the goat carried all their wrongs into a land that is not inhabited, Levit. chap. iv. & chap. xvi. While the High-Priest was doing these things in the most holy place and at the Altar, the people stayed at their devotion quietly and in silence. Then the High-Priest went into the holy place, took off his linen garments and put on other garments, then came out and sent the bullock and the goat of the sin-offering to be burned outside the camp, with fire taken in a censer from the Altar. And as the people went home from the Temple they said to one another, "God seal you to a good new year."

In allusion to all this, when he had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour. And an Angel stood at the Altar with a golden Censer, and there was given to him much incense, so that he should offer it with the prayers of all Saints on the golden Altar which was before the throne. And the smoke of the incense with the prayers of the Saints went up before God out of the Angel's hand. And the Angel took the Censer, filled it with fire of the Altar, and threw it to the earth, suppose outside the camp, to sacrifice the goat which fell to God's lot. For the High-Priest being Christ himself, the bullock is left out. At this sacrifice there were voices and thunderings, from the music of the Temple, and lightnings of the sacred fire, and an earthquake, and at the same time as these things the 144000 out of all the twelve tribes of the children of Israel were sealed with the seal of God in their foreheads, while the rest of the twelve tribes received the mark of the Beast, and the Woman fled from the Temple into the wilderness to her place on this Beast. For this sealing and marking was shown by casting lots on the two goats, sacrificing God's lot on mount Sion, and sending the scape-goat into the wilderness loaded with the sins of the people.