This section comprehends the events resulting from the release of the Four Winds, held by the Four Angels standing at the Four Corners of the Earth (Apoc. vii. 1). When in operation, they were to blow injuriously upon the earth, the sea, and the trees, of Daniel’s Fourth Beast-Dominion. They were what Gibbon styles "the threatening tempests of barbarians which subverted the foundations of Roman greatness." They were commissioned against the catholic empire of the west, and did not cease to blow until they had sorely plagued the Apostasy, and disrobed Old Rome of its glory and dominion. The Four Wind-powers angelized against Roman Europe are identical with the first four trumpets, which were sounded or blown against "the earth," the "trees," and "sea," which were not plagued to the subversion of their sovereignty until these trumpets had produced their full effect.
 
 

PREPARATION FOR SOUNDING

The seven angels, which John tells us in ch. viii. 2, he saw standing before the Deity, and to whom were given seven trumpets, he further informs us, in the sixth verse, "prepared themselves to sound." Though they had been commissioned in the days of Constantine, they had also been forbidden to execute judgment until the sealing of the 144,000 was duly effected. Their preparing to sound was no part of their sounding. When the trumpets were given them they were quiescent, and quiescent they remained during the "voices, and thunders, and lightnings, and earthquake" of the reigns of Constantius and Julian; but, when the earthquake was over, and the Catholic Apostasy found unexpected deliverance in the military election of JOVIAN, a trinitarian catholic, nothing improved by the well merited castigation it had experienced, it progressed from bad to worse, until the forebearance of the Deity had attained the limit which, in His wise foreknowledge of all things, He had fixed, and beyond which He had predetermined that the blasphemous superstition should not continue unscathed by the fierceness of His devouring indignation. From the death of Julian, A.D. 363, to the death of Theodosius the Great, and the revolt of the Goths under Alaric, A.D. 395, a period of thirty-two years, was the period also of the preparation for sounding, which terminated in the Gothic blast of the First Wind-Trumpet. At the end of this PREPARATION-PERIOD, the Catholic Imperiality was finally divided into Two SOVEREIGNTIES, which answered to the TWO IRON LEGS of Nebuchadnezzar’s Image -- the sovereignty of Constantinople under Arcadius, and the sovereignty of Rome under Honorius, both of them the worthless sons of the catholic tyrant, "Theodosius the Great."

This preparation period of thirty-two years includes the reigns of Jovian, Valentinian and Valens, Gratian, and Theodosius -- of Jovian, who reigned about seven months; of Valentinian, who ruled twelve years; of Gratian, who, after reigning four years, associated Theodosius with himself in the purple; and of Theodosius, who reigned sixteen years, or till his decease, A.D. 395. The sounding of the seven angels was, and is (for they will not have ceased to sound until the reign of the saints shall have been established over all the apocalyptic earth), the execution of judgment upon the Laodicean Catholic Apostasy in its imperio-regal constitution. During this preparation-period it made rapid and gigantic progress in developing "the mystery of iniquity," "after the working of the Satan with all power and signs and wonders of falsehood, and with all deceivableness of the iniquity in them who are being destroyed." It rapidly filled up that measure of iniquity which rendered it no longer expedient to defer judgment -- to restrain the tempest of "hail and fire mingled with blood," which, as a devouring blast, should scorch and torment it unto death.

It will, doubtless, be satisfactory to the reader unacquainted with the history of this period to receive some information respecting it. I shall, therefore, as briefly as is compatible with clearness, notice the state of the Catholic Apostasy in the thirty-two years of angel-preparation for the execution of judgment.