"And I will give to my two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred and sixty days, having been clothed in sackcloths."
 
 

I have shown elsewhere that Daniel’s "time and times and the dividing of a time," and John’s "forty and two months," are the same measurement; and both relating to the same subject -- the Saints as the Holy City; and both terminating at the same crisis -- the resurrection at the advent of the Ancient of Days; and both constituted of 1260 years. And here we have immediately following, a repetition of the same duration. In the third verse, the Holy City is consigned to a trampling of forty and two months; and in the fourth, the Witnesses are to prophesy in tribulation 1260 days. It will, of course, strike the reader as remarkable, that a coequal length of years should be prefigured in different terms. But the reason is, that the two periods relate to different subjects, and are not coterminal. The trampling of the Holy City was one thing, and its prophesying in sackcloth was another. These two series of events were not to be parallel in the whole of their course; so to prevent confusion, the two periods of equal duration were stated in different terms. As the Holy City was to be trampled forty and two months by the Gentiles; and as these were to trample it under the inspiration of the Antichristian Mouth of the Beast, the power given him for this purpose by the Dragon-Emperor was to be operative for the same length of time, which, in order to show this relation between the Mouth and the Holy City, is also expressed by the same formula of "forty and two months" (Apoc. xiii. 5). And, for a somewhat similar reason, that is, to connect the sackcloth witnessing of the Holy City community with the fugitive woman and the earth that protected her by its help (Apoc. xii. 6,16), the things affirmed of the woman in relation to her feeding are expressed in the same kind of time as the duration of the witnessing -- 1260 days; and, furthermore, to show that 1260 symbolic days are equivalent to "a time and times and the dividing of a time" (a formula which occurs nowhere else in the Apocalypse, and pertains exclusively to the measurement of the Holy City) the 1260-feeding of the woman by the earth, in the fourteenth verse of the twelfth chapter, is styled her nourishing "for a time and times and half a time;" for to feed and nourish her are the same idea; so that the one statement of the duration of her feeding, is expository of the duration of her nourishing.

This view of the matter which I believe is the only correct one, helps us greatly in determining the commencement of the saints witnessing after the sackclothes had been put upon them by their enemies. This beginning carries us back to the epoch of the Woman’s flight into the wilderness, or two wings of the Great Roman Eagle. Her flight, by which she turned her back with contempt upon the honors and riches of the world; which she left to the leaders of the Catholic Apostasy -- the Eusebiuses, Lactantiuses, Ariuses, Athanasiuses, and Chrysostoms of the day -- her fugitive separation from these, by which she became a witness for the truth against their worldliness and traditions, occurs after the birth of the Man-Child of Sin -- that sanguinary Cain, who, as the Antichrist, in the power of his manhood and impiety, afterwards slew the Abel of the Faith, whose blood cries for vengeance against him from the ground.

The birth of this imperial child of the woman occurred in the enthronement of Constantine in Rome on his defeat of Maxentius at the battle of Saxs Rubra, A.D. 312. This introduced a remarkable epoch in the history of the woman, to be more particularly considered in my exposition of the twelfth chapter. It will be sufficient to remark here, that this was the epoch of her deliverance from pagan persecution by the celebrated edict of Constantine published at Milan, A.D. 313; and of her introduction to an acquaintance with the worse than pagan persecution, which sought to exterminate her in the after years of Catholic ascendancy. Constantine delighted to style himself "THE DELIVERER OF THE CHURCH." He was truly the deliverer of the Catholic Church; but he was also the first to inflict persecution and death itself upon those, "who kept the commandments of the Deity, and retained the testimony of Jesus Christ." The edict of Milan, the great charter of toleration, had confirmed to each individual of the Roman world, the privilege of choosing and professing his own religion. But this inestimable privilege was soon violated; with a smattering of truth, the woman’s child imbibed the maxims of persecution, and the Dissenters from the Catholic Church were afflicted and oppressed by its political triumph over Paganism. Constantine easily credited the insinuation that the HERETICS, as they were called, who presumed to dispute his opinions, or to oppose his commands, were guilty of the most absurd and criminal obstinacy; and that a seasonable application of moderate severities might save those unhappy men from the danger of an everlasting condemnation. Confounded with these so called Heretics, as has been the case in all ages since, were those who held the testimony, and therefore, the witness of Jesus. Not a moment was lost in excluding their pastors and teachers from any share in the rewards and immunities Constantine had so liberally bestowed on the Catholic Spirituals. But, as the Dissenters might still exist under the cloud of imperial disfavor, the conquest of the East was immediately followed by an edict which announced their total destruction. After a preamble filled with passion and reproach, he absolutely prohibits the assemblies of "Heretics," and confiscates their public property to the use, either of the revenue, or of the Catholic Church. Some of the penal regulations were copied from the edicts of the pagan emperor Diocletian; and this method of conversion was applauded by the same bishops who had felt the hand of oppression, and pleaded for the rights of humanity.

But Constantine was not the only oppressor whose tyranny bore heavily upon the woman. His imperial colleague, Licinius, also within the limits of his jurisdiction, made her to groan with anguish. "Those who had done no evil," says Eusebius, "were led away to punishment without any pretext, just like murderers and assassins. Some also endured a novel kind of death, having their bodies cut into many small pieces, and after this savage and terrible spectacle, were thrown as food to the fishes into the depths of the sea. Again the worshippers of God began to flee; again the open fields, the deserts, forests, and mountains, received the servants of Christ."

The fleeing of the woman was the reduction of her to a state of humiliation and tribulation, far removed from the exaltation and haughtiness characteristic of the region of imperial grace. The gates of this clerical paradise were closed against her. She has nothing to do with emperors and courts. These are only for the votaries of fashion, and parasitic spirituals, who hold the persons of rulers in admiration for the sake of gain. Bishops, cardinals, archbishops, and other princes of the church, flourish in regions of imperial sunshine; but for the woman and her seed, the farther off they flee from such a heavenly, the clearer will they see the truth, and the better able will they be to "keep the commandments of the Deity," and to testify with the approval of Jesus Christ.

Thus, then, the woman in flight is related both to state and place. She fled because she was persecuted by "the angels of the Dragon" officials in power, both imperial and magisterial. The interval from the birth of her child, A.D. 312, to the conquest of the East by the overthrow of Licinius, A.D. 324, was occupied in ecclesiastical legislation in favor of the Catholic Church, and against Dissenters; and in carrying off her son unto deity, and the throne thereof. Here was an epoch of twelve years. At the end of this, that is, A.D. 325, he sat as a god, a presidential episcopal god, in the Council of Nice, exhibiting before the world the type of that full grown Man of Sin, who should be worshipped by all the nations of the unmeasured Court as "the Deity of the earth."

Now, it was at some point in this epoch of twelve years, that the 1260 years of witnessing began. As the woman’s seed in their sackcloth witnessing were to "stand before the deity of the earth" in the sense of testifying against him, it is reasonable to refer the commencement of the witnessing period to the time of the formation of an issue between him and them. Let us then see what is the state of the case bearing upon this result.

The complaints and mutual accusations which assailed the throne of Constantine, as soon as the death of Maxentius, A.D. 312, had brought the Roman Africa into subjection to his victorious arms, were ill adapted to edify an imperfect proselyte.* He learned with surprise, that the provinces of Africa, from the confines of Cyrene to the columns of Hercules, were distracted with religious discord. The cause of dissension, for the most part, ceases to characterize religious disputes after the fervor of the onset subsides. This is proved in numberless instances. It is so in the case before us; for though the election of two rival bishops fanned the latent heat into a flame, the cause of the Great Secession which was about to ensue, must be sought for in the deep rooted affection of "the faithful" for the ANCIENT GOSPEL AND APOSTOLIC TRADITIONS. In the second of Acts, Luke informs us, that on the Day of Pentecost there were Jews from "Egypt, and the parts of Africa, which are about Cyrene." Many of these, no doubt, obeyed the gospel preached by Peter, and carried it to their adopted homes, where they would persuade others to embrace the faith of Jesus Christ. The churches thus formed in these parts, secluded from the theatre, and inducements of the ecclesiastical discord and ambition, would be more likely to "retain the testimony of Jesus Christ," than the churches of those princely bishops, which had transferred their devotion from apostolic to worldly objects. The disciples in the country could not but grieve at the apostasy and corruption of the church in the cities, which would be equally deplored by the "few names which had not defiled their garments" in these assemblies. But corruption may be lamented by the few, and yet continued by the many, unless some incident transpire, often trivial in itself, or some master-spirit arise to unfurl the standard, and rally around it the friends of christian purity, liberty, and truth. Such, I apprehend, was the state of things in the Roman Attica, Italy, and Gaul, at the time we are now considering. The church in Carthage, the metropolis of the Roman Africa, and the second ecclesiastical throne of the Roman West, was the occasion of the dispute which involved the province in the most calamitous convulsions. Mensurius, the bishop of the church, having died in A.D. 311, the majority of the people chose the chief deacon Caecilianus to succeed him. In these times of Laodicean corruption and apostasy it is not to be supposed, that because the majority elected him, he was therefore best qualified for the "good work" of which Paul treats in 1 Tim. iii. 1, and Tit. i. 7; nor is it to be taken for granted that because the majority were Laodicean, the minority was all blameless and pure. The ground of their objection to Caecilianus, if true, was certainly just and valid, and honorable to those who made it the occasion of their secession from a church so corrupt and insensible to its christian dignity, as to appoint a man for their episcopal ruler, who had abandoned his brethren under persecution and distress, and had received ordination from an apostate, who had delivered up the Holy Scriptures to be burned.

[* No fact in history more faithfully illustrates the true character of the pretended "religion of Christ" called Catholic which had gained the ascendancy in the beginning of the 4th century than the "conversion of Constantine." "The first of the Christian emperors," says Gibbon truly, "was unworthy of that name till the moment of his death," A.D. 337. During fourteen years he had the reputation of a christian, he assumed the character of a bishop, he presided at ecclesiastical councils, gave judgment against christians reputed "heretical" by catholics, enjoined the solemn observance of the First day of the week, which he styled Dies Solis, the Day of the Sun, after his once favorite god, and in the same A.D. 321 directed the regular consultation of the Auruspices; he was permitted by the Catholic Church to enjoy most of its privileges -- instead of retiring from the congregation when the voice of the deacon dismissed the profane multitude, he prayed with the faithful, disputed with the bishops, preached on the most sublime and intricate subjects of theology, celebrated with sacred rites the Vigil of Easter, and publicly declared himself, not only a partaker, but, in some measure, a priest and hierophant of the christian mysteries -- how, I say, shall we judge of such a religion, whose professors would permit and even applaud, such flagrant violation of the first principles of christianity? Such a community is no other than the CHURCH OF ANTICHRIST, and her imperial proselyte, the MAN-CHILD OF SIN. This unbaptized imperial bishop, aided and advised by ignorant, proud, and superstitious ecclesiastics, constituted the tribunal, before whom those who rejected their traditions and commands, were arraigned and condemned, as odious and pestilent heretics! Shall we receive their sentence as just, and denounce whom they condemn? If we were, we should be led into great error concerning the merits or demerits of the proscribed; for nothing is more common than for the catholics, as the so called "orthodox" do at this day, to misrepresent their principles, blacken their characters, and stigmatize them by some obnoxious and opprobrious name.]

This traditorial archdeacon, Caecilianus, then, had been elected and ordained by a party. His opponents, however, refused to acquiesce in his ordination. By their influence an assembly of bishops was convened, and Caecilianus was cited before them; but, being contumacious, he was condemned as unworthy of the episcopal office. Majorinus, a deacon, was therefore chosen in his place. The charges in their specification were, that Felix, who assisted at his ordination, was a traditor, and therefore disqualified for the service by his apostasy; and that Caecilianus himself was unfit, because of his cruelty to his brethren under persecution, whom, though a deacon, he had abandoned in a merciless manner, leaving them without food in their prisons, and precluding the grant of relief from those who were willing to succor them. These were grave specifications; and, if true, ought to have placed Caecilianus among "heathen men and publicans." A party which could choose and ordain such a spiritual guide must have been as unworthy as their chief. His principal opponent was DONATUS, a bishop from Casae Nigrae. The excitement spread through all the African Wing of the Great Eagle, so that there were two opponent parties in every city. In A.D. 313, the DONATISTS, as they were now called by way of distinguishing them from the Catholics, carried the affair before Constantine at Rome. The principal bishop there, and eighteen others, were appointed by him to settle the dispute. As might have been supposed, judgment was given against the Donatists. In A.D. 314, the case of Felix was brought before the Proconsul of Africa. The Donatists were again in the minority. Seventy African bishops had condemned Caecilianus; nineteen Italian bishops had acquitted him. In A.D. 315, the whole affair was again agitated before a numerous assembly at Arles, in Gaul. The Donatists were again cast. In A.D. 316, Constantine himself examined the case "in sacred consistory," at Milan. But here again their plea was rejected. He deprived them also of their places of worship, sent their bishops into banishment, and punished some of them with death. Caecilianus was now unanimously acknowledged by the civil and ecclesiastical power as the true and lawful primate of Africa. The Donatists protested against the Emperor’s sentence as an unrighteous one; and that his credulity had been abused by the insidious arts of his advisers. But they could get no redress from the Man-Child, whose persecuting edicts drove them into exile from the high places of the State. Thus, "the woman fled into the wilderness," where it was appointed for her to remain, testifying in the sackclothes forced upon her, during 1260 years.

These trials in Rome, Milan, and Arles, would be well calculated to subserve the interests of the truth. They afforded the Donatists scope for their testimony against the imperialized catholicism in Italy and the South of France. They doubtless dropped their word in these regions copiously; and failed not to enlist many in their protestation against it. "What has the emperor to do with the church? And, what have christians to do with kings, or what have bishops to do at court?" These were their inquiries, which, in the face of scripture, the State Church party found to be both inconvenient and unanswerable. In these countries, there were already many dissenters from catholicism, the Novatians, who were in sympathy with them. The DONATIST TRIALS no doubt infused new life into these, who, cooperating with them would develop the evangelism, which, in our seventh chapter, has been considered under the symbolism of the Sealing Angel of eastern origin (Apoc. vii. 2). Thus, this whole proceeding, which, from the first appeal to the final sentence, lasted three years, became an important epoch in the woman’s history. "This incident," says Gibbon, "so inconsiderable that it scarcely deserves a place in history, was productive of a MEMORABLE SCHISM, which afflicted the provinces of Africa above 300 years, and was extinguished only with christianity itself." The inflexible zeal of freedom animated the Donatists to refuse obedience to the courtly bishops, whose spiritual powers they denied. Excluded themselves from the civil and religious communion of mankind by an edict of banishment, they boldly excommunicated the rest. They asserted with confidence that the Apostolical Succession was interrupted; that all the bishops of Europe and Asia were infected by the contagion of guilt and schism; and that the prerogatives of the universal church were confined to the chosen portion of the African believers, who alone had preserved inviolate the integrity of their faith and discipline. This sounds like the testimony of Jesus Christ in the mouth of his witnesses. Gibbon terms it "a rigid theory," and says "it was supported by the most uncharitable conduct," in his opinion. "Whenever they acquired a proselyte, even from the distant provinces of the East, they carefully repeated the sacred rites of baptism and ordination, as they rejected the validity of those he had already received from the hands of heretics and schismatics." The Novatians before them, and the Waldenses after them, did the same; and so do all those who coincide in faith and practice with the writer of this exposition of the apocalypse. We repudiate the immersion of every one as invalid, who is not, previously to immersion, the enlightened subject of the one faith. Mr. Gibbon would probably regard this "theory" more "rigid" than theirs. We do not, however, accept him, nor our clerical contemporaries of antichristendom, as competent to give a scriptural decision in the case. We know that a man must first believe "the truth as it is in Jesus" before he can obey it. This is as certain as that two and two make four. Being only "christians" of the antichristian type, their preaching, praying, praises, and performances, are but the spiritualism of the unmeasured court -- the outpourings of "the spirit that now works in the children of disobedience." The "divinity" with which they profess to "cure souls" is not therapeutic; and as effective for the transformation of sinners into saints, as the philosopher’s stone for the alchemical transmutation of ignoble metals into gold. This being our conviction from an upwards of thirty years study of the word, we have as little respect for their "ripe scholarship" and scholastic traditions, as Paul had for those of the renowned Barjesus; or Christ for "the wise and prudent" of his day.

This "uncharitable" exclusiveness, and "bigoted" devotion to the primitive apostolic faith, was the truly christian spirit of the woman and her seed at the epoch which initiated the 1260 years of their sackcloth-witnessing against the apostasy. In repudiating all its institutions, the Donatists drank of this spirit, and maintained, as Gibbon confesses, the sentiment of a greater part of the primitive church. Such was their abhorrence of the apostasy, that if they came into possession of a church which had been used by the catholics, they purified the building with the same jealous care which a temple of the old idolatry might have required. The learned du Pin, who is their adversary says: "They did not teach anything that was contrary to the (apostles’) creed; but they were so rash as to affirm that all the churches everywhere, which had embraced the communion of Caecilianus and his party, ceased to be the true churches of Jesus Christ; that thus the catholic church was only found among themselves, having ceased to exist in other parts of the world. Besides which, being very fond of the ancient doctrine of the African churches, that baptism and the other sacraments conferred out of the church were null and void, they rebaptized such as had been baptized by the Catholics, trampled upon their eucharist as a profane thing, and maintained that the consecration, unctions, and ordinations performed by the Catholics were of no avail. They burned or scraped the altars which the latter made use of, as being polluted by impure sacrifices, and broke their (communion) cups. They looked upon the vows made in their communion as of no value; in a word, they would not communicate with them. They maintained that the church ought to be made up of just and holy men, or at least of those who were such in appearance; and that, although wicked men might lurk in the church, yet it would not harbor those who were known to be such."

This was spuing the apostasy out of their mouth as effectually as the Eternal Spirit threatened to do to the Laodiceans, because of their lukewarmness (Apoc. iii. 16). They drew as broad a line between themselves and all other churches, as could possibly have been drawn by any claiming to be the Woman and her seed, and the party allied to imperial power that made her flight into the wilderness necessary to her preservation. Their testimony against the catholic church, whose system of tradition had become in this epoch "the religion of the State" was in strict accordance with that of the Spirit, who denounced it as "wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked." The Donatists testified neither more nor less than this; and their view of what a church ought to be, harmonized with what the Spirit exhorted the Laodiceans to become. I have, therefore, no doubt that the three years’ conflict of the Donatists with the party of the Imperial Man-Child was the epoch which truly marks the beginning of the witnessing period of the 1260 years. Here, then, we take our stand, and, with the following extract from Mosheim, conclude, for the present, what we have to say concerning this notable crisis of the fourth century. "The doctrine of the Donatists was conformable to that of the church, as even their adversaries confess; nor were their lives less exemplary than those of other christian societies, if we except the enormous conduct of the CIRCUMCELLIONS, which the greatest part of the sect regarded with the utmost detestation and abhorrence. The crime, therefore, of the Donatists lay properly in the following points: in their declaring the church of Africa, which adhered to Caecilianus, fallen from the dignity and privileges of a true church, and deprived of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, on account of the offences with which the new bishop, and Felix who had consecrated him, were charged; in their pronouncing all the churches, which held communion with that of Africa, corrupt and polluted; in maintaining that the sanctity of their bishops gave their community alone a full right to be considered as the true, and the pure, and the holy church; and in their avoiding all communication with other churches from an apprehension of contracting their impurity and corruption. This erroneous principle was the source of that most shocking uncharitableness and presumption (poor Dr. Mosheim!) which appeared in their conduct to other churches. Hence, they pronounced the sacred rites and institutions void of all virtue and efficacy among those christians who were not precisely of their sentiments; and not only rebaptized those who came over to their party from other churches, but even with respect to those who have been ordained ministers of the gospel, they observed the severe custom, either of depriving them of their office, or obliging them to be ordained a second time." If such only was "the crime" of the persecuted Donatists, had I lived in their day, I should have been guilty of their "shocking uncharitableness and presumption" too.