But hark! Hear ye not, O ye servants of the Deity, that "voice of thunder," issuing from that one of the four living ones like a lion, and inviting you to "Come and see!" It is the voice of the Spirit, as fatal to Domitian as the writing of the same spirit upon the wall was to Belshazzar on the night he was slain. The voice is the opening voice of the first-seal period, A.D. 96. A voice that changed the times, and whitened the situation of the affairs of the great Roman Habitable. It was the thundering voice of revolution that hurled the tyrant from his throne, and inaugurated a new course of things; the effect of which should not cease until Christ had conquered Caesar. And what the second causes resulting in this premanifestation and predetermination of the Spirit? Listen; Domitian bestowed on his cousin Flavius Clemens his own niece Domitilla in marriage, adopted the children of that marriage to the hope of the succession, and invested their father with the honors of the consulship. But he had scarcely finished the term of his annual magistracy, when on a slight pretence he was condemned and executed; Domitilla was banished to a desolate island on the coast of Campania; and sentence either of death or of confiscation was pronounced against a great number of persons who were involved in the same accusation -- atheism and Jewish manners. He charged this upon those symbolized by "the Lamb and the Four Living Ones;" and in so doing the pagan government, their Accuser, "accused them before the Deity day and night" (xii. 10). But the mandate of retribution had gone forth, and a few months after the death of Clemens, and the banishment of Domitilla, Stephen, one of her freedmen who had enjoyed her favour, assassinated the emperor in his palace. Thus Heaven’s decree, that "whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed," took effect in Domitian’s case. He had shed the blood of the servants of the Deity, and by the wicked as His sword, he fell.