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empire or system.' But, on the other hand, the darkness being excessive, neither day nor night appearing, the disasters, portended, are of such magnitude as to threaten utter ruin, and to take away all hope.

The theatre of the predicted events is the provinces of the old Roman empire, as its boundaries were fixed by Augustus Cæsar, and as a third denotes Europe, Asia, or Africa, one of these divisions is the especial scene of these calamities.

At the time of this vision (which must be the sixth or seventh century,) the Christian religion was excessively depraved by the introduction of pagan rites and superstitions, which even then prevailed to such an extent, that the worship of the dead, and their supposed intercession, had almost entirely superseded the worship of the Almighty and the Mediation of the Redeemer.

This was the state of religion, especially in Asia, when Chosroes, in the seventh century, made his dreadful irruption, endeavoured to extend the Persian empire to its old limits, to extinguish Christianity, and establish on its ruins the religion of Zoroaster. It is in these events that the prophecy will be found to have its accomplishment.

In the reign of Heraclius, Chosroes, king of Persia, formed an alliance with Baian, the formidable Chagan, or princes of the Avars, invaded the eastern provinces of the empire, besieged Constantinople, and reduced the emperor and his court to such despair, that he was on the point of abandoning his capital and giving up the whole of the east to the Persian domination. His ships were in the harbour, his treasures were embarked, and he was deterred from following them, only by the energy and resolution of the archbishop of Constantinople.

The following brief account of this dreadful irruption is taken from Gibbon, Decline and Fall, c. xlvi.

"Under the reign of Phocas, (603-610) the fortifications of Medin, Dara, Amida, and Edessa were successively besieged, reduced and destroyed by the Persian monarch (Chosroes); he passed the Euphrates (A. D. 611), occupied the Syrian cities, Hierapolis, Chalcis, and Berrhæa

"The darkening," says Sir Isaac Newton, "the smiting, the sun, moon, and stars are put for the setting of kingdoms and the desolations thereof, proportional to the darkness."

or Aleppo, and encompassed the walls of Antioch with his irresistible

arms.

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The first intelligence which Heraclius received from the east, was that of the loss of Antioch. The Persians were equally successful and more fortunate in the sack of Cæsarea, the capital of Cappadocia. The pleasant vale of Damascus has been adorned in every age with a royal city: her obscure felicity has hitherto escaped the historian of the Roman empire: but Chosroes reposed his troops in the paradise of Damascus before he ascended the hills of Libanus, or invaded the cities of the Phenician coast. After the reduction of Galilee, and the region beyond Jordan, whose resistance appears to have delayed the fate of the capital, Jerusalem itself was taken by assault. Egypt itself, the only province which had been exempt, since the time of Diocletian, from foreign and domestic war, was again subdued by the successor of Cyrus. Pelusium, the key of that impervious country, was surprised by the cavalry of the Persians. They passed with impunity, the innumerable channels of the Delta, and explored the long valley of the Nile, from the pyramids of Memphis to the confines of Ethiopia. Alexandria might have been relieved by a naval force, but the archbishop and the prefect embarked for Cyprus; and Chosroes entered the second city of the empire, which still preserved a wealthy remnant of industry and commerce. His western trophy was erected, not on the walls of Carthage, but in the neighbourhood of Tripoli; the great colony of Cyrene was finally extirpated. . . . In the first campaign, another army advanced from the Euphrates to the Thracian Bosphorus; Chalcedon surrendered after a long siege, and the Persian camp was maintained above ten years in the presence of Constantinople. The sea coast of Pontus, the city of Ancyra, and the Isle of Rhodes are enumerated among the last conquests of the great king. . From the long-disputed banks of the Tigris and the Euphrates, the reign of the grandson of Nurshivan was suddenly extended to the Hellespont and the Nile, the ancient limits of the Persian monarchy.

"Syria, Egypt, and the provinces of Asia were subdued by the Persian arms, while Europe, from the confines of Istria to the long wall of Thrace, was oppressed by the Avars. By these implacable

enemies Heraclius was insulted and besieged; and the Roman emperor was reduced to the walls of Constantinople with the remnant of Greece, Italy, and Africa, and some maritime cities from Tyre to Trezibond, of the Asiatic coast. After the loss of Egypt, the capital was afflicted by famine and pestilence; and the emperor, incapable of resistance, and hopeless of relief, had resolved to transfer his person and government to the more secure residence of Carthage. His ships were already laden

with the treasure of his palace, but his flight was arrested by the patriarch, who armed the powers of religion in the defence of his country, and led Heraclius to the altar of St. Sophia, and extorted a solemn oath, that he would live and die with the prople whom God had entrusted to his care."

Heraclius now endeavoured to obtain peace from Chosroes; who replied, "I will never give peace to the emperor of Rome, till he has abjured his crucified God, and embraced the worship of the sun." As these terms could not be accepted, Heraclius determined to carry the war into the heart of Persia.

"Since the days of Scipio and Hannibal," says Gibbon, "no bolder enterprise has been attempted than that which Heraclius achieved for the deliverance of the empire. He permitted the Persians to oppress for a while the provinces, and to insult with impunity the capital of the east; while the Roman emperor explored his perilous way through the Black Sea and the mountains of Armenia, penetrated into the heart of Persia, and recalled the armies of the great king to the defence of his bleeding country. With a select band of five thousand warriors Heraclius sailed from Constantinople."

The Persians were defeated in a succession of battles, and

peace was made with the Avars. Chosroes was obliged to return to the defence of his own dominions; his subjects, oppressed by a long and unsuccessful war, revolted, and deposed him: one of his sons was raised to the throne; eighteen of them were slain before his eyes; and he was himself cast into prison, where he died in five days.

This dreadful war completely exhausted the strength of the Roman and Persian monarchies, and prepared the way for the events of the next vision-the opening of the pit and the irruption of the locusts.

In the seventh chapter, a symbolical tempest is ready to burst forth on the four corners of the earth. The winds, we have seen, represent invasions; the earth, the Roman empire; and the sea, the barbaric world, which lay beyond and encompassed it. Now, if history be carefully examined, it will be found that there was scarcely a spot of these vast dominions, from the mouths of the Danube and of the Rhine to Libya, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Euphrates, over which the waves of this

raging sea had not passed. The Goths, Scythians and Germans devastated Europe; the Vandals, instigated by Boniface, the Roman governor, invaded, and, assisted by the Moors, desolated Africa; and, in this last irruption, Syria, Asia Minor, and Egypt were wasted by the Persians and Arabs: so that there was not a province, not a mountain that had been trodden by the foot of man, nor a valley, however sequestered, perhaps not a town or city of the empire, (except Constantinople) from Rome to the most petty village, which had not been traversed. and occupied by the invaders.1

The effects of the Persian war are thus stated by Gibbon:

"The glory of the house of Sassan ended with the life of Chosroes. His unnatural son enjoyed only eight months the fruit of his crimes; and in the space of four years the regal title was assumed by nine candidates, who disputed with the sword or dagger the fragments of an exhausted monarchy. Every province, and each city of Persia, was the scene of independence, of discord, and of blood, aud the state of anarchy prevailed about eight years, till the factions were silenced and united under the common yoke of the Arabian caliphs."

As regards the Romans he says:

"The loss of two hundred thousand soldiers which had fallen by the sword, was of less fatal importance than the decay of arts, of agriculture,

I These invasions are represented in the Apocalypse by an inundation or a deluge. Poets and historians have the same imagery. Thus, Milton, Paradise Lost, b. i.

"A multitude, like which the populous north
Poured never from her frozen loins, to pass
Rhene or the Danau, when her barbarous sons
Came like a deluge on the south, and spread
Beneath Gibraltar to the Libyan sands."

And so Gibbon frequently. For example: "Carthage, Cirta, and Hippo Regius, were the only cities that appeared to rise above the general inundation."-Decline and Fall, c. xxxi.

And Schlegel, lecture xi. on History, in describing the migrations of the barbaric hordes, says, "Doth not the earth, I say, teeming, as it doth, with fertility and life, rest on the gigantic remains of a primitive world, submerged by the old floods. Well, the migration of the northern nations was a new Ogygean inundation of nations in the historical ages. . . A vast influx and reflux of nations, rolling in incessant waves from the east to the west and to the north."

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and of population, in this long and destructive war: and although a victorious army had been formed under the standard of Heraclius, the unnatural effort appears to have exhausted rather than exercised their strength. While the emperor triumphed at Constantinople, or Jerusalem, an obscure town on the confines of Syria was pillaged by the Saracens, and they cut in pieces some troops who advanced to its relief: an ordinary and trifling occurrence, had it not been the prelude of a mighty revolution. These robbers were the apostles of Mahomet; their fanatic valour had emerged from the desert, and, in the last eight years of his reign, Heraclius lost to the Arabs the same provinces which he had rescued from the Persians."

END OF THE FIRST PART.

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