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Eureka

AN EXPOSITION OF THE APOCALYPSE
Sixth Edition, 1915
By Dr. John Thomas (first edition written 1861)

 

 

Chapter 8

Section 3  Subsection  2

Preparation-Judgments Upon Ghost-Worshippers


 
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Could it have been possible for "seducing spirits," or demons, who had departed from the faith, and speaking lies in hypocrisy, to have invented and set up such a system of abomination in the fourth century, and in the name of christianity, and the Deity not have poured out of His wrath upon the deceivers and the deceived? The whole Roman Catholic world had gone wondering after the NEW IDOLATRY, against which none opposed a scriptural testimony but the SEALING ANGEL, or those engaged in the work of sealing the servants of their Deity with His seal, in their foreheads. A presbyter or elder, among these took up his pen to oppose it. His book was directed against the institution of monkery, the celibacy of the clergy, praying for the dead, and to martyrs, celebrating their vigils, and lighting up candles to them after the manner of the heathen. Jerome, who is esteemed a saint and luminary of the catholic church, and who was a zealous advocate of all these popular superstitious rites, undertook the task of refuting him, whom he styled "a most blasphemous heretic," and "the organ of the Devil." An individual denounced after this fashion by a monk, or a clergyman, must have been one of the excellent of the earth; for it is only such who are obnoxious to their reproach. The following extract from Saint Jerome’s answer to his book, will satisfactorily explain the heresy of Vigilantius, for that is his name, who has still the honor of being enrolled in the list of those who are anathematized as heretics by the Mother of Harlots, whose citadel is Rome. "That the honor paid to the rotten bones of saints and martyrs," says Jerome, "by adoring, kissing, wrapping them up in silk and vessels of gold, lodging them in their churches, and lighting up wax candles before them after the manner of the heathen were the ensigns of idolatry -- that the celibacy of the clergy was a heresy, and their vows of chastity the seminary of lewdness -- that to pray to the dead, was superstitious, inasmuch as the souls of departed saints and martyrs were at present in some particular place, (Vigilantius taught the souls of prophets and martyrs were either in loco refrigerii, in a place of cooling, or else under the Altar of Deity. But Jerome sternly, yet ignorantly, tries to refute this "blasphemy." "Dost thou give laws to the Deity? says he to Vigilantius. "Thou bindest fetters upon the apostles, that they may be held in custody until the day of judgment, and be not met with their Lord; of whom it is written, ‘They follow the Lamb withersoever he goes.’ If the Lamb be everywhere, therefore, those also who are with the Lamb, are believed to be everywhere. Even as the devil and demons roam about in all the world.") from which they could not remove themselves at pleasure, so as to be everywhere present attending to the prayers of their votaries -- that the sepulchres of the martyrs ought not to be worshipped -- and finally, that the signs and wonders said to be wrought by their relics, and at their sepulchres, served to no good end or purpose of religion."

These were the sacrilegious tenets, as they are termed by the fanatical and superstitious Jerome, which he could not bear with patience, or without the utmost grief, and for which he declares Vigilantius a detestable heretic, venting his foulmouthed blasphemies against the relics of the martyrs, which were working daily signs and wonders. He tells him to "go into the churches of those martyrs, and he would be cleansed from the evil spirit which possessed him, and feel himself burnt, not with those wax candles which so much offended him, but with invisible flames, which would force that demon that talked with him to confess himself to be the same who had personated a Mercury, perhaps, or a Bacchus, or some other of the heathen deities." Such is the style in which this renowned father of the church rants and raves through several pages against the sealed servants of the Deity, who, in the days of this sealing, protested with Vigilantius against those delusions which had then become so strong.

As it may gratify the reader’s curiosity, the following specimen of Jerome’s absurd manner of refuting their testimony, is presented: "If it were such a sacrilege or impiety," says he, "to pay these honors to the relics of saints, as Vigilantius contends, then the Emperor Constantius must needs be a sacrilegious person, who translated the holy relics of St. Andrew, Luke, and Timothy to Constantinople; then Arcadius Augustus, also must be held sacrilegious, who translated the bones of the blessed Samuel from Judea, where they have lain so many ages, into Thrace; then all the bishops were not only sacrilegious, but stupid too, who submitted to carry a thing the most contemptible, and nothing but mere dust, in silk and vessels of gold; and lastly, the people of all the churches must needs be fools, who went out to meet these holy relics, and received them with as much joy as if they had been the prophet himself, living and present among them; for the procession was attended with swarms of people from Palestine, even into Chalcedon, singing with one voice the praises of Christ, who were yet adoring Samuel perhaps, and not Christ, whose prophet and Levite Samuel was."

What a development in this extract from Jerome, one of the greatest luminaries of the Apostasy in that age, of the darkness and superstition that overspread the Catholic World, and that in less than a hundred years after the Catholic superstition was established by law! The sentiments of Jerome were a sample of the opinions of Ambrose, Augustin, and the clergy at large; how deplorable then must have been the state of their flocks! Jerome’s defence of their stupid sacrilege against which the 144,000 lifted up their united voice, and which found a record in the writings of Vigilantius, is childish and ridiculous. The thing cannot be gainsaid, that to worship a bone, or a tooth, or the dust of a dead man, however excellent his character may have been, is idolatrous impiety of the basest, and most degrading kind. None would attempt to gainsay this but the clergy, who hold Jerome and his fraternity in admiration. There can be no doubt, therefore, that the emperors aforesaid were sacrilegious, the bishops both sacrilegious and stupid, and the people fools; and because of the intense disgust with which the Lamb contemplated their adulterous prostitution of his name to their gross and lying vanities. He caused the Seven Angels to prepare to sound; and in the preparation to execute upon them the calamities I shall now briefly recite.

"As soon as," says Gibbon, "the death of Julian had relieved the barbarians from the terror of his name, the most sanguine hopes of rapine and conquest excited the nations of the east, of the north, and of the south." The chiefs of the Allemanni being offended, crossed the Rhine, A.D. 365, and before Valentinian could cross the Alps, the villages of the ghost-worshippers of Gaul were in flames; and before his general could encounter them, they had secured the captives and spoil in the forests of Germany. In the beginning of the ensuing year, the military force of the whole nation, in deep and solid columns, broke through the barrier of the Rhine, during the severity of a northern winter. This irruption having been repelled, Mentz, the principal city of the Upper Germany, was unexpectedly attacked A.D. 368, while the relic-worshippers were celebrating one of their festivals. Rando, a bold and artful leader, suddenly passed the Rhine, entered the defenceless town, and retired with a multitude of captive idolators of either sex. Valentinian soon after followed them with a powerful force, and giving them a signal overthrow, recrossed the Rhine, and wintered at Treves. As his ambition was not to conquer Germany, he wisely confined his attention to the important and laborious defence of the Gallic frontier, against an enemy whose strength was renewed by a stream of daring volunteers, which incessantly flowed from the most distant tribes of the north. This influx from distant regions to the frontiers of the catholic world, was a very important and essential element of the preparation for sounding.

About the middle of the fourth century the Burgundians, a warlike and numerous people of the Vandal race, occupied the countries on either side of the Elbe, insensibly swelled into a powerful kingdom, and finally settled in the days of the sounding on a flourishing province of the catholic empire.

Three small islands toward the mouth of the Elbe, comprehended in the duchy of Sleswig-Holstein, were occupied by the Saxons. These were a gate, as it were, through which poured forth upon the sea and maritime parts of the doomed empire, inexhaustible swarms of barbarians, who descended from the gloomy solitudes of their woods and mountains; and as a military confederation gradually moulded into a national body, under the name and laws of the Saxons, sallied forth upon the ocean in quest of plunder. In this preparatory enterprize they acquired an accurate knowledge of the maritime provinces of the West, after which they extended the scene of their depredations, so that the most sequestered places had no reason to presume on their security.

In the preparation for sounding, A.D. 371, under the reign of Valentinian, the maritime provinces of Gaul were afflicted by the Saxons. They landed from their frail coasters, and spread desolation among the relic-worshippers with fire and sword. They were at length repelled, however, as the time of their permanent settlement under the sounding of the angels had not yet arrived.

From the reign of Constantine to A.D. 366, that is to say, during an interval of thirty years, there had been peace between the Catholic Empire and the Goths. During this period these barbarians under Hermanric, the king of the Ostrogoths, extended their dominions from the Danube to the Baltic, including the greater part of Germany and Scythia. The name of Hermanric is almost buried in oblivion, his exploits are imperfectly known; and the Roman and Greek worshippers of the dead themselves appeared unconscious of the progress of an aspiring power, which threatened the liberty of the north, and the peace of their dominion.

Civil war between Procopius an usurper, and Valens, A.D. 366 became the occasion of the Goths crossing the Danube to foment, as the allies of Procopius, the evil discord of the catholics of the East. The suppression of the usurpation by Valens, left him free to carry on the war against the Goths alone. "But," says Gibbon, "the events scarcely deserve the attention of posterity, except as the preliminary steps," or preparation, "of the approaching decline and fall of the empire." The war, which had inflicted much evil on both sides, terminated A.D. 369; after which the Goths remained tranquil about six years; till they were violently impelled against the Catholic empire by an innumerable host of Scythians, who appeared to issue from the frozen regions of the north.

This period of preparation which opened the way, under the sounding of the four wind trumpets to the inroads of so many hostile and savage tribes from the Danube to the Atlantic, was also signalized by terrible and wholesale destruction of catholic idolators by earthquakes, A.D. 365. On the twenty-first of July, the greatest part of their empire was shaken by a violent and destructive convulsion of the earth. The shores of the Mediterranean were left dry by the sudden retreat of the sea, and valleys and mountains were laid bare, which had never since the Mosaic Era of the globe been exposed to the sun. But the waters soon returned with the weight of an immense and irresistible deluge, which was severely felt on the coasts of Sicily, of Dalmatia, of Greece, and of Egypt; large boats were transported, and lodged on the roofs of houses, or at the distance of two miles from the shore; the ghost-worshippers, with their habitations, were swept away by the waters; and the city of Alexandria, the origenic birthplace, and alternate throne of Homoousianism and Homoiousianism, annually commemorated the fatal day, on which fifty thousand Trinitarians and Arians lost their factious and blasphemous lives in the inundation. This calamity astonished and terrified the subjects of Rome, who rightly considered these alarming strokes as the prelude only of still more dreadful calamities, which would ultimate in the submersion of the fabric of their world.

From the reign of Valens was a most disastrous period for the Laodicean Apostasy. "The fall of the Roman empire," says Gibbon, "may be justly dated from the reign of Valens." In this period of disaster, the happiness and security of each individual were personally attacked; and the arts and labors of ages were rudely defaced by the barbarians of Scythia and Germany. The invasion of the Huns from the rear and remoter countries of the north, A.D. 376, precipitated on the provinces of the west the Gothic nation, which advanced in less than forty years, from the Danube to the Atlantic, and opened a way by the success of their arms, to the inroads of so many hostile tribes more savage than themselves. The original principle of motion was concealed in the remote countries of the north, whence these destructive emigrations issued.

In the year 375, Valens, then resident at Antioch, was informed by his officers who were intrusted with the defence of the Danube, that the north was agitated by a furious tempest, that the irruption of the Huns, an unknown and monstrous race of savages, had subverted the power of the Goths; and that the suppliant multitudes of that warlike nation, whose pride was now humbled in the dust, covered a space of many miles along the banks of the river. They earnestly sought permission to cross the Danube, and to settle on the waste lands of Thrace, promising perpetual obedience to the laws, and to defend the limits of the empire. The prayers of the Goths were most imprudently granted, on condition of delivering up their arms, and their children to be dispersed through the provinces of Asia, as hostages to secure the fidelity of their parents. Upon these ignominious conditions the whole body of the Gothic nation was transported across the Danube, by the most strenuous diligence of the infatuated officials, who were careful that not a single barbarian of those who were reserved to subvert the foundations of Rome, should be left upon the opposite shore. The stipulation, however, most offensive to the Goths, and the most important to the Romans, was shamefully eluded by bribery and corruption. The catholic officials allowed them to retain their arms in exchange for the prostitution of their wives and daughters, and contributions of cattle and slaves. When the transportation was finished, and their strength collected on the southern side of the Danube, an immense camp of two hundred thousand Visigothic warriors in arms, was spread over the plains and hills of the Lower Maesia, and assumed a threatening and even a hostile aspect.

The leaders of the Ostrogoths, Alatheus and Saphrax, pressed also by the Huns in their rear, sought the like favor that had been granted to the Visigoths. But this was absolutely refused by Valens, whose suspicions and fears were now thoroughly aroused. His generals, however, whose attention was solely directed to the Visigoths whose discontent and hostility they had excited by their tyranny and avarice, had imprudently disarmed the ships and fortifications which constituted the defence of the Danube. The fatal oversight was observed, and improved by Alatheus and Saphrax, who anxiously watched the favorable moment of escaping from the pursuit of the Huns. By the help of such rafts and vessels as could be hastily procured, the leaders of the Ostrogoths transported, without opposition, their king and their army; and boldly fixed a hostile and independent camp on the territories of the empire.

A secret union having been formed between these Gothic powers, they were prepared for a desperate conflict with the catholics who had treated them with great inhumanity and treachery. The flames of discord and mutual hatred soon burst forth into a dreadful conflagration. At Marcianopolis, the capital of the Lower Maesia, about seventy miles from the banks of the Danube, they sought to purchase supplies in the plentiful markets of the city. They were refused, however, with insolence and derision; and as their patience was now exhausted, passionate altercations and angry reproaches ensued. A blow was imprudently given; a sword was hastily drawn; and the first blood that was spilt in this accidental quarrel, became the signal of a long and destructive war.

Valens removed from Antioch to Constantinople to be nearer the seat of war. He was received as the author of the public calamity; and provoked to desperate rashness by the vain reproaches of an ignorant multitude, whose contempt he had not firmness to resist; he hastened the downfall of the Roman empire, and the termination of his own inglorious career, by the terrible defeat of Hadrianople, A.D. 378, in which two thirds of the catholic army of 82,000 horse and foot were destroyed. The pride of the Goths, who had been joined by their former enemies the Huns, Alani, and other tribes, was elated by this memorable victory. The scene of war and tumult was instantly converted into a silent solitude, and abandoned for other fields. The Gothic inundation rolled from the walls of Hadrianople to the suburbs of Constantinople. Laden with the spoils of these, and the adjacent territory, they slowly moved from the Bosphorus to the mountains which form the western boundary of Thrace; and securing the important pass of Succi, the Goths who had no longer any resistance to apprehend from the scattered and vanquished troops of the East, spread themselves over the face of a fertile and cultivated country, as far as the confines of Italy, and the Hadriatic sea.

Jerome, a saint of the Apostasy, vehemently deplores the calamities inflicted by the Goths and their allies in the provinces of the catholic empire -- the rapes, the massacres, the conflagrations, and, above all, the profanation of the "churches," that were turned into stables, and the contemptuous treatment of the pretended relics of fictitious saints, rubbish regarded by him as worshipful and holy. The triumph of the Goths extended far beyond the limits of a single day. One of their chiefs was heard to declare, with insolent moderation, that, for his own part, he was fatigued with slaughter; but that he was astonished how a people who fled before him like a flock of sheep could still presume to dispute the possession of their treasures and provinces. The formidable name of the Goths spread terror among the subjects and soldiers of the catholic dominion, who, if they had been hastily collected, and led by Theodosius, the successor of Valens, would have been vanquished by their own fears. But this more fortunate emperor, through the superior vigor of his mind, effected the deliverance and peace of the provinces by prudence rather than valor, which was seconded by favorable circumstances, which he did not fail to seize upon and improve. By the death of Fritigern, their heroic leader, and the predecessor and master of the renowned ALARIC, the Gothic confederacy was broken into many disorderly bands of ferocious robbers, who destroyed every object which they wanted strength to remove or taste to enjoy, and they often consumed with improvident rage, the harvests or the granaries which soon after became necessary for their own subsistence. At length, a very considerable part, who already felt the inconvenience of anarchy, acknowledged Athanaric for their king, who, instead of leading them to battle, entered into treaty with Theodosius, A.D. 382, which resulted in the final capitulation of the Goths. By this treaty, a numerous colony of Visigoths was settled in Thrace, and the remains of the Ostrogoths in Phrygia and Lydia, as the allies of the Roman State. Prudence and necessity extorted the concessions and privileges of this treaty from Theodosius, who, nevertheless, had the address to persuade them that they were the voluntary expressions of his sincere friendship for the Gothic nation. It was apparent, however, to every discerning eye, that the Goths would long remain the enemies and might soon become the conquerors of the catholic empire. It was generally believed that they had signed the treaty of peace with a hostile and insidious spirit, and that their chiefs had previously bound themselves by a solemn and secret oath, never to keep faith with the Romans; to maintain the fairest show of loyalty and friendship, and to watch the favorable moment of rapine, of conquest, and of revenge. But the renewed outburst of the Gothic tempest was restrained by the firmness and moderation of Theodosius; so that the public safety seemed to depend on the life and abilities of a single man.

Such, then, is the historical illustration of "this unhappy period," as Gibbon styles it, in which the Lamb was gathering his hosts and bringing them into position on the four corners of the earth, that they might be prepared to subvert the western empire of Rome when the sealing of the 144,000 should have sufficiently advanced. His hosts were in position, the battle was arrayed, and nothing remained but that the trumpet should sound "its harsh and mournful music" for the dreadful combat to begin, that was to hurl fire and blood and bitterness into the highways and fastnesses of catholic superstition and crime.

 

 


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