“R” Entries

Reformation, The, Its Importance.—The Reformation of the sixteenth century is, next to the introduction of Christianity, the greatest event in history. It was no sudden revolution; for what has no roots in the past can have no permanent effect upon the future. It was prepared by the deeper tendencies and aspirations of previous centuries, and, when finally matured, it burst forth almost simultaneously in all parts of Western Christendom. It was not a superficial amendment, not a mere restoration, but a regeneration; not a return to the Augustinian, or Nicene, or ante-Nicene age, but a vast progress beyond any previous age or condition of the church since the death of St. John. It went, through the intervening ages of ecclesiasticism, back to the fountain-head of Christianity itself, as it came from the lips of the Son of God and his inspired apostles.... It brought out from this fountain a new phase and type of Christianity, which had never as yet been fully understood and appreciated in the church at large. It was, in fact, a new proclamation of the free gospel of St. Paul, as laid down in the Epistles to the Romans and Galatians. It was a grand act of emancipation from the bondage of the medieval hierarchy, and an assertion of that freedom wherewith Christ has made us free. It inaugurated the era of manhood and the general priesthood of believers. It taught the direct communion of the believing soul with Christ. It removed the obstructions of legalism, sacerdotalism, and ceremonialism, which, like the traditions of the Pharisees of old, had obscured the genuine Gospel and made void the Word of God.—“A History of the Creeds of Christendom,” Philip Schaff, D. D., pp. 204, 205. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1877.SBBS 406.1

Reformation, The, Preparation for.—It [the Reformation] was not an abrupt revolution, but had its roots in the Middle Ages. There were many “Reformers before the Reformation,” and almost every doctrine of Luther and Calvin had its advocates long before them. The whole struggling of medieval Catholicism toward reform and liberty; the long conflict between the German emperors and the popes; the reformatory councils of Pisa, Constance, and Basel; the Waldenses and Albigenses in France and northern Italy; Wiclif and the Lollards in England; Hus and the Hussites in Bohemia; Arnold of Brescia, and Savonarola, in Italy; the spiritualistic piety and theology of the mystics of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; the theological writings of Wesel, Goch, and Wesel, in Germany and the Netherlands; the rise of the national languages and letters in connection with the feeling of national independence; the invention of the printing press; the revival of letters and classical learning under the direction of Agricola, Reuchlin, and Erasmus,-all these, and similar movements, were preparations for the Reformation. The evangelical churches claim a share in the inheritance of all preceding history, and own their indebtedness to the missionaries, schoolmen, Fathers, confessors, and martyrs of former ages, but acknowledge no higher authority than Christ and his inspired organs.—Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, Vol. III, art. “Reformation,” subtitle, “Preparation for the Reformation,” p. 2004, revised and enlarged.SBBS 406.2

Reformation, The, God’s Instrument in Its Accomplishment.—God who prepares his work through ages, accomplishes it by the weakest instruments, when his time is come.—“History of the Reformation,” J. H. Merle D’Aubigné, D. D., book 2, chap. 1, par. 1.SBBS 406.3

Reformation, The, Its Beginnings in the Struggles of a Humble Spirit.—The Reformation, commenced by the struggles of a humble spirit in the cell of a cloister at Erfurt, had continually increased.... A final struggle remained to be undergone. The Word was destined to triumph over the emperor of the West, over the kings and princes of the earth; and then, victorious over all the powers of the world, to uprise in the church, and reign as the very Word of God.—“History of the Reformation,” J. H. Merle D’Aubigné, D. D., book 7, chap. 1, par. 1.SBBS 406.4

Reformation, The, Luther’s Early Work.—Martin Luther, the son of a German peasant, was born in 1483. In his twenty-second year he left the study of law and entered the Augustinian convent at Erfurt. His legal studies had prepared him to sympathize with the German Church and the German Empire against the aggressions of Rome; but now for some years these external questions were forgotten, in a profound and passionate desire to solve, chiefly in the study of the Holy Scriptures, the question how the individual man may be just with God. He visited Rome in 1511, and on his return to the University of Wittenberg, in which he had for some years been professor of philosophy, he became doctor of Biblical theology, and his preaching of justification of a sinner by faith became a most powerful influence through the whole of Saxony. The inevitable collision between this and the church system came when Tetzel, a Dominican monk, was authorized by Pope Leo X to go through Germany selling pardons or indulgences in the form of stamped tickets, at the rate of a few ducats for the graver sins.—“Church and State,” A. Taylor Innes, pp. 111, 112. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark.SBBS 407.1

Reformation, The, Luther’s Experience on Pilate’s Staircase.—One day, among others, wishing to obtain an indulgence promised by the Pope to all who should ascend on their knees what is called Pilate’s staircase, the poor Saxon monk [Luther] was humbly creeping up those steps, which he was told had been miraculously transported from Jerusalem to Rome. But while he was performing this meritorious act, he thought he heard a voice of thunder crying from the bottom of his heart, as at Wittemberg and Bologna, “The just shall live by faith.” These words, that twice before had struck him like the voice of an angel from God, resounded unceasingly and powerfully within him. He rises in amazement from the steps up which he was dragging his body; he shudders at himself; he is ashamed of seeing to what a depth superstition had plunged him. He flies far from the scene of his folly.—“History of the Reformation,” J. H. Merle D’Aubigné, D. D., book 2, chap. 6, par. 19.SBBS 407.2

Reformation, The, Eck’s Appeal to Prejudice Against Luther.—Eck: “I am surprised at the humility and modesty with which the reverend doctor [Luther] undertakes to oppose, alone, so many illustrious Fathers, and pretends to know more than the sovereign pontiffs, the councils, the doctors, and the universities! ... It would be surprising, no doubt, if God had hidden the truth from so many saints and martyrs-until the advent of the reverend father!”-Id., book 5, chap. 5, par. 24.SBBS 407.3

Reformation, The, Luther’s Reply to Spalatin.—But Luther, undismayed, turned his eyes on the messenger, and replied: “Go and tell your master [Spalatin, chaplain to the Elector Frederick], that even should there be as many devils in Worms as tiles on the housetops, still I would enter it!”-Id., book 7, chap. 7, last par.SBBS 407.4

Reformation, The, “Here I stand; I can do no other.”—“Since your most serene majesty and your high mightiness require from me a clear, simple, and precise answer, I will give you one, and it is this: I cannot submit my faith either to the Pope or to the councils, because it is clear as the day that they have frequently erred and contradicted each other. Unless therefore I am convinced by the testimony of Scripture, or by the clearest reasoning,-unless I am persuaded by means of the passages I have quoted,-and unless they thus render my conscience bound by the Word of God, I cannot and I will not retract, for it is unsafe for a Christian to speak against his conscience.” And then, looking round on this assembly before which he stood, and which held his life in its hands, he said: “Here I stand, I can do no other; may God help me! Amen!”-Id., book 7, chap. 8, par. 54.SBBS 407.5

Reformation, The, Luther’s Protest Repeated by the Princes.—At Worms, Luther stood alone; at Spires, the one man has grown into a host. The “No” so courageously uttered by the monk in 1521 is now in 1529 taken up and repeated by princes, cities, and nations. Its echoes travel onwards, till at last their murmurs are heard in the palaces of Barcelona and the basilicas of Rome. Eight years ago the Reformation was simply a doctrine, now it is an organization, a church. This little seed, which on its first germination appeared the smallest of all seeds, and which popes, doctors, and princes beheld with contempt, is a tree, whose boughs, stretched wide in air, cover nations with their shadow....SBBS 408.1

In that document they recite all that had passed at the Diet, and they protest against its decree, for themselves, their subjects, and all who receive or shall hereafter receive the gospel, and appeal to the emperor, and to a free and general council of Christendom. On the morning after their appeal, the 26th, the princes left Spires. This sudden departure was significant. It proclaimed to all men the firmness of their resolve. Ferdinand had spoken his last word and was gone. They, too, had spoken theirs, and were gone also. Rome hoists her flag; over against hers the Protestants display theirs; henceforward there are two camps in Christendom.SBBS 408.2

Even Luther did not perceive the importance of what had been done. The Diet he thought had ended in nothing. It often happens that the greatest events wear the guise of insignificance, and that grand eras are ushered in with silence. Than the principle put forth in the Protest of the 19th April, 1529, it is impossible to imagine one that could more completely shield all rights, and afford a wider scope for development. Its legitimate fruit must necessarily be liberty, civil and religious. What was that principle? This Protest overthrew the lordship of man in religious affairs, and substituted the authority of God. But it did this in so simple and natural a way, and with such an avoidance of all high-sounding phraseology, that men could not see the grandeur of what was done, nor the potency of the principle. The protesters assumed the Bible to be the Word of God, and that every man ought to be left at liberty to obey it. This modest affirmation falls on our ear as an almost insipidity. Compared with some modern charters of rights, and recent declarations of independence, how poor does it look! Yet let us see how much is in it. “The Word,” say the protesters, “is the only truth; it is the sure rule of all doctrine and of all life;” and “each text of the Holy Scriptures ought to be explained by other and clearer texts.” Then what becomes of the pretended infallibility of Rome, in virtue of which she claims the exclusive right of interpreting the Scriptures, and binding down the understanding of man to believe whatever she teaches? It is utterly exploded and overthrown. And what becomes of the emperor’s right to compel men with his sword to practise whatever faith the church enjoins, assuming it to be the true faith, simply because the church has enjoined it? It too is exploded and overthrown. The principle, then, so quietly lodged in the Protest, lays this twofold tyranny in the dust. The chair of the Pontiff and the sword of the emperor pass away, and conscience comes in their room. But the Protest does not leave conscience her own mistress; conscience is not a law to herself. That were anarchy-rebellion against Him who is her Lord. The Protest proclaims that the Bible is the law of conscience, and that its Author is her alone Lord. Thus steering its course between the two opposite dangers, avoiding on this hand anarchy, and on that tyranny, Protestantism comes forth unfurling to the eyes of the nations the flag of true liberty. Around that flag must all gather who would be free.—“The History of Protestantism,” Rev. J. A. Wylie, LL. D., Vol. I, book 9, chap. 15, pp. 551-553. London: Cassell & Company.SBBS 408.3

Reformation, The, Protest of the Princes.—Thus, in presence of the diet, spoke out those courageous men whom Christendom will henceforward denominate The Protestants....SBBS 409.1

The principles contained in this celebrated protest of the 19th April, 1529, constitute the very essence of Protestantism. Now this protest opposes two abuses of man in matters of faith: the first is the intrusion of the civil magistrate, and the second the arbitrary authority of the church. Instead of these abuses, Protestantism sets the power of conscience above the magistrate; and the authority of the Word of God above the visible church. In the first place, it rejects the civil power in divine things, and says with the prophets and apostles: “We must obey God rather than man.” In presence of the crown of Charles the Fifth, it uplifts the crown of Jesus Christ. But it goes farther: it lays down the principle that all human teaching should be subordinate to the oracles of God. Even the primitive church, by recognizing the writings of the apostles, had performed an act of submission to this supreme authority, and not an act of authority, as Rome maintains; and the establishment of a tribunal charged with the interpretation of the Bible, had terminated only in slavishly subjecting man to man in what should be most unfettered-conscience and faith. In this celebrated act of Spires, no doctor appears, and the Word of God reigns alone. Never has man exalted himself like the Pope; never have men kept in the background like the Reformers.—“History of the Reformation,” J. H. Merle D’Aubigné, D. D., book 13, chap. 6, pars. 16, 18.SBBS 409.2

Reformation, The, Real Strength of.—The real strength of the Reformation movement did not lie in statesmen or even Reformers, but in the loyal, earnest men and women, in all the nations, who in their sense of sin and their yearning for reconciliation to God had gone directly to him, as the Reformers did, and had found pardon and peace in his free saving grace. At its best it was a great revival of heart religion, the greatest since apostolic days; and wherever that side of it predominated, it not only overcame all opposition, but spread in spite of the most cunning and cruel devices of the foe.—“The Arrested Reformation,” Rev. William Muir, M. A., B. D., B. L., pp. 7, 8. London: Morgan & Scott, 1912.SBBS 409.3

Reformation, The, A Return to the Living God.—But it was not restored learning, it was not rekindled genius, it was not reinvigorated reason, it was not the newborn power of the press, it was not its own accumulated vices and consummated corruptions before which the Papacy went down over half Christendom, which constituted the great assailing force which dealt the crushing and confounding stroke. These all came up at the right time, and did good service as auxiliaries in the great battle. The onslaught was more mightily made; the stroke was more divinely dealt. The victorious and irresistible assailant was a soul deeply stirred and divinely inspired, possessed by an intense yearning and filled with a quickening truth, eager to be rid of the crushing burden of sin, and finding only full deliverance in the free grace of God.SBBS 409.4

The Reformation has been spoken of not altogether wrongly as the insurrection of reason against authority, as the assertion of the right of private judgment in matters of religion, as the general emancipation of the intellect: the Reformation was all this, and something likewise far diviner. It was the re-enthronement of God’s truth; it was the reproduction of a vital principle of Christianity long hidden and buried under a heap of false dogmas and idle observances; it was the restoration of the soul to its right place in things spiritual, the renewal of direct communication between the spirit of man and the Spirit of God. The Reformation brought with it the negation of much, but it began with the most positive, profound, and glorious of all conceivable affirmations, that salvation is from the Lord, that divine life flows down into our hearts directly from the Divine Being. It brought low the Church of Rome by magnifying the Word; it deposed the Pope over the half of Christendom by re-enthroning faith in the living God. Luther was no subversive speculator, no discontented priest, but a sin-stricken soul, who weary of dead works had turned to living faith, and after trial of man’s absolution had won healing from God’s grace. He never sought directly to emancipate the intellect; he did not at first seek to overthrow the Papacy, but he sought to bring Christendom back into personal and living contact with the living God, and to pour into other souls the fire of that potent truth which had kindled his own. The Reformation was in truth a baptism of fire, a coming down of the Holy Ghost upon Christendom.—“The Papal Drama,” Thomas H. Gill, pp. 182, 183. London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1866.SBBS 410.1

Reformation, The, Milton on.—When I recall to mind at last, after so many dark ages, wherein the huge overshadowing train of error had almost swept all the stars out of the firmament of the church; how the bright and blessful Reformation (by divine power) struck through the black and settled night of ignorance and anti-Christian tyranny, methinks a sovereign and reviving joy must needs rush into the bosom of him that reads and hears; and the sweet odor of the returning gospel imbathe his soul with the fragrancy of heaven. Then was the sacred Bible sought out of the dusty corners where profane falsehood and neglect had thrown it, the schools opened, divine and human learning raked out of the embers of forgotten tongues, the princes and cities trooping apace to the new erected banner of salvation; the martyrs, with the unresistible might of weakness, shaking the powers of darkness, and scorning the fiery rage of the old red dragon.—“The Reformation in England,” John Milton, book 1; “Prose Works of Milton,” Vol. II, pp. 366-368. London: Bohn’s Library edition.SBBS 410.2

Reformation, The, Lines Drawn by.—After the first shock of battle was over, and the counter-Reformation had done its work, it was found that Protestantism and the Evangel had triumphed among the Germanic or Teutonic peoples, whereas Rome had kept the great Latin or Romance nations. On the one side of the line were the North Germans and the Swiss, the Scandinavians and the English, the Scots and the Dutch. On the other were the Austrians and the Italians, the Spanish and the French. And as it was then, so it is now. From the first the victory of the Reformation was swift and decisive among the peoples of Northern Europe, and they have never gone back on the choice which they made in the sixteenth century.—“The Arrested Reformation,” Rev. William Muir, M. A., B. D., B. L., pp. 3, 4. London: Morgan & Scott, 1912.SBBS 410.3

Reformation, The, Relation of Prophecy to.—I do not say that the teachings.of Scripture prophecy form the sole foundation of the Reformation. The doctrinal and practical truths of Scripture guided the action of the Reformers as well as the prophetic. They opposed the Church of Rome, as condemned alike by the doctrines, the precepts, and the prophecies of the Word of God. It might be difficult to say which of the three weighed with them most. On each they were clear and emphatic. These three elements cannot be separated in estimating the springs of the Reformation. From the first, and throughout, that movement was energized and guided by the prophetic word. Luther never felt strong and free to war against the papal apostasy till he recognized the Pope as Antichrist. It was then he burned the papal bull. Knox’s first sermon, the sermon which launched him on his mission as a Reformer, was on the prophecies concerning the Papacy. The Reformers embodied their interpretations of prophecy in their confessions of faith, and Calvin in his “Institutes.” All the Reformers were unanimous in the matter; even the mild and cautious Melanchthon was as assured of the antipapal meaning of these prophecies as was Luther himself. And their interpretation of these prophecies determined their reforming action. It led them to protest against Rome with extraordinary strength and undaunted courage. It nerved them to resist the claims of that apostate church to the uttermost. It made them martyrs; it sustained them at the stake. And the views of the Reformers were shared by thousands, by hundreds of thousands. They were adopted by princes and peoples. Under their influence nations abjured their allegiance to the false priest of Rome. In the reaction which followed, all the powers of hell seemed to be let loose upon the adherents of the Reformation. War followed war: tortures, burnings, and massacres were multiplied. Yet the Reformation stood undefeated and unconquerable. God’s Word upheld it, and the energies of his almighty Spirit. It was the work of Christ as truly as the founding of the church eighteen centuries ago; and the revelation of the future which he gave from heaven-that prophetic book with which the Scripture closes-was one of the mightiest instruments employed in its accomplishment.—“Romanism and the Reformation,” H. Grattan Guinness, D. D., F. R. A. S., pp. 153, 154. London: J. Nisbet & Co., 1891.SBBS 411.1

Reformation, The, Its Fundamental Doctrine the One Mediator.—The church had fallen, because the great doctrine of justification by faith in the Saviour had been taken away from her. It was necessary, therefore, before she could rise again, that this doctrine should be restored to her. As soon as this fundamental truth should be re-established in Christendom, all the errors and observances that had taken its place-all that multitude of saints, of works, penances, masses, indulgences, etc., would disappear. As soon as the one only Mediator and his only sacrifice were acknowledged, all other mediators and sacrifices would vanish.—“History of the Reformation,” J. H. Merle D’Aubigné, D. D., book 1, chap. 6, par. 6.SBBS 411.2

Reformation, The, Not Yet Completed.—The present situation [the incompleted work of reform] is not only sad but intolerable, and prayer should be offered continually that it may soon come to an end. Those who love our Lord can never look with complacency on the persistence of a great unreformed system which in so many respects is a menace to the spirituality of the kingdom of God; and what does the prayer, “Thy Kingdom come,” mean if it does not involve the endeavor to complete the Reformers’ work?-“The Arrested Reformation,” Rev. William Muir, M. A., B. D., B. L., p. 23. London: Morgan & Scott, 1912.SBBS 411.3

Reformation.—See Councils, 121; Creed of Pope Pius IV; Justification, 276, 277; Papacy, 340-343; Protestantism.SBBS 412.1

Reformed Church.—See Protestantism, 400.SBBS 412.2

Reformers.—See Idolatry, 217; Religious Liberty, 413; Sacraments, 478, 480.SBBS 412.3

Religious Liberty, Defined by the Dictionary.—Religious liberty, the right of freely adopting and professing opinions on religious subjects, and of worshiping or refraining from worship according to the dictates of conscience, without external control.—The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia, art. “Liberty,” subtitle “Religious Liberty.”SBBS 412.4

Religious Liberty, View of, in Early Church.—It is a fundamental human right, a privilege of nature, that every man should worship according to his convictions. It is assuredly no part of religion to compel religion. It must be embraced freely and not forced.—Tertullian, Ad. Scap. cap. ii; cited in “The Inquisition: A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church,” E. Vacaudard (translation by Bertrand L. Conway, C. S. P.), p. 3. Imprimatur, John M. Farley, D. D., Arch. of New York; N. Y., June 24, 1907. New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1908.SBBS 412.5

Christians cannot slay their enemies, or condemn, as Moses commanded the contemners of the law to be put to death.—“The Inquisition,” E. Vacaudard, p. 3.SBBS 412.6

I ask you bishops to tell me, whose favor did the apostles seek in preaching the gospel, and on whose power did they rely to preach Jesus Christ? Today, alas! while the power of the state enforces divine faith, men say that Christ is powerless. The church threatens exile and imprisonment; she in whom men formerly believed while in exile and prison, now wishes to make men believe her by force.... What a striking contrast between the church of the past and the church or today!-St. Hilary of Poitiers, Contra Auxentium, cap. iv (when Arian bishops used the power of the state against Catholics, A. D. 363); cited in “The Inquisition,” E. Vacaudard, p. 6.SBBS 412.7

To sum up: As late as the middle of the fourth century and even later, all the Fathers and ecclesiastical writers who discuss the question of toleration are opposed to the use of force.—Id., p. 7.SBBS 412.8

Religious Liberty, When the Church Seized the Sword.—When the Christian church became the Roman Church, and the Roman Church, by the might of its unconquerable spirit and its indestructible faith, became the Roman Empire, ... the church, instead of giving both hands to the Bible, gave one hand to the sword, and that not the left hand; and wickedly grasping a power under whose blows it had many times fallen prostrate and bleeding in the dust, the persecuted then became the persecutors, the sufferers became the avengers, only the victims were not their former enemies, but members of their own household of faith.—“Religious Liberty,” Henry M. King, pp. 4, 5. Providence: Preston and Rounds.SBBS 412.9

Religious Liberty, a Hard Lesson for the Reformers to Learn.—The principles which had led the Protestants to sever themselves from the Roman Church, should have taught them to bear with the opinions of others, and warned them from the attempt to connect agreement in doctrine or manner of worship with the necessary forms of civil government. Still less ought they to have enforced that agreement by civil penalties; for faith, upon their own showing, had no value save when it was freely given.... But whether it was that men only half saw what they had done, or that finding it hard enough to unrivet priestly fetters, they welcomed all the aid a temporal prince could give, the result was that religion, or rather religious creeds, began to be involved with politics more closely than had ever been the case before. Through the greater part of Christendom wars of religion raged for a century or more.... In almost every country the form of doctrine which triumphed associated itself with the state, and maintained the despotic system of the Middle Ages, while it forsook the grounds on which that system had been based.—“The Holy Roman Empire,” James Bryce, pp. 332, 333. London: Macmillan and Company, 1892.SBBS 413.1

Religious Liberty, Protestantism Rejects Civil Authority in Divine Things.—The principles contained in this celebrated Protest of the 19th April, 1529, constitute the very essence of Protestantism. Now this Protest opposes two abuses of man in matters of faith: the first is the intrusion of the civil magistrate, and the second the arbitrary authority of the church. Instead of these abuses, Protestantism sets the power of conscience above the magistrate; and the authority of the Word of God above the visible church. In the first place, it rejects the civil power in divine things, and says with the prophets and apostles: We must obey God rather than man. In presence of the crown of Charles the Fifth, it uplifts the crown of Jesus Christ. But it goes farther: it lays down the principle that all human teaching should be subordinate to the oracles of God.—“History of the Reformation,” J. H. Merle D’Aubigné, D. D., book 13, chap. 6, par. 19.SBBS 413.2

Religious Liberty, First Clear Pronouncement on, in Church Articles.—There was, however, one body or band of Separatists in James’s reign who had pushed farther ahead, and grasped the idea of liberty of conscience at its very utmost.... They were the poor and despised Anglo-Dutch Anabaptists who called John Smyth their leader. In a Confession, or Declaration of Faith, put forth in 1611 by the English Baptists in Amsterdam, just after the death of Smyth, this article occurs: “The magistrate is not to meddle with religion, or matters of conscience, nor compel men to this or that form of religion; because Christ is the King and Lawgiver of the church and conscience.” It is believed that this is the first expression of the absolute principle of liberty of conscience in the public articles of any body of Christians.—“The Life of John Milton,” David Masson, Vol. III, p. 101.SBBS 413.3

Religious Liberty, Roger Williams the Pioneer of, in the New World.—It is a monstrous paradox that God’s children should persecute God’s children, and that they that hope to live eternally with Christ Jesus in the heavens, should not suffer each other to live in this common air together. I am informed it was a speech of an honorable knight of the Parliament: “What! Christ persecute Christ in New England!”-“Bloudy Tenent of Persecution,” Roger Williams; cited in “Religious Liberty in America,” C. M. Snow, p. 133.SBBS 413.4

At a time when Germany was desolated by the implacable wars of religion; when even Holland could not pacify vengeful sects; when France was still to go through the fearful struggle with bigotry; when England was gasping under the despotism of intolerance; almost half a century before William Penn became an American proprietary; and while Descartes was constructing modern philosophy on the method of free reflection-Roger Williams asserted the great doctrine of intellectual liberty, and made it the corner-stone of a political constitution. It became his glory to found a state upon that principle.... He was the first person in modern Christendom to establish civil government on the doctrine of the liberty of conscience, the equality of opinions before the law.—“History of the United States of America,” George Bancroft, Vol. I, part 1, chap. 15, pp. 254, 255. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1888.SBBS 414.1

Religious Liberty, Famous Preacher on, at Time of Rise of Methodism.—It highly becomes those who are the advocates for the interference of government to restrain the efforts of Methodists and dissenters to diffuse the principles of knowledge and piety, to advert to the consequences which must result.SBBS 414.2

Those who are conscientious will feel it their duty, in opposition to the mandates of authority, to proceed patiently, enduring whatever punishment the legislature may think proper to inflict. The government, irritated at their supposed criminal obstinacy, will be tempted to enact severer laws, accompanied with severer penalties, which the truly conscientious will still think it their duty to brave, imitating the example of the early teachers of Christianity, who departed from the presence of the council “rejoicing that they were thought worthy to suffer for the name of Christ.”SBBS 414.3

Thus will commence a struggle betwixt the ruling powers and the most upright part of the subjects; which shall first wear each other out, the one by infliction, or the other by endurance; prisons will be crowded, cruel punishments will become familiar, and blood probably will be spilt. The nation will be afflicted with the frightful spectacle of innocent and exemplary characters suffering the utmost vengeance of the law for crimes which the sufferers glory in having committed.SBBS 414.4

It is an inherent and inseparable inconvenience in persecution that it knows not where to stop. It only aims at first to crush the obnoxious sect; it meets with a sturdy resistance; it then punishes the supposed crime of obstinacy, till at length the original magnitude of the error is little thought of in the solicitude to maintain the rights of authority. This is illustrated in the letter of Pliny to Trajan, treating of the persecution of the Christians.—“The Works of Robert Hall, A. M.,” Vol. III, pp. 402, 403. London: Holdsworth and Ball, 1833.SBBS 414.5

Religious Liberty, Provision of United States Constitution.—Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.—Article I of Amendments to the Federal Constitution of the United States of America.SBBS 414.6

Religious Liberty, A Virginia Presbytery’s Memorial on.—Every argument for civil liberty gains additional strength when applied to liberty in the concerns of religion; and there is no argument in favor of establishing the Christian religion but what may be pleaded with equal propriety for establishing the tenets of Mahomet by those who believe the Alcoran; or, if this be not true, it is at least impossible for the magistrate to adjudge the right of preference among the various sects which profess the Christian faith, without erecting a chair of infallibility, which would lead us back to the Church of Rome.—Extract from the Memorial of the Presbytery of Hanover to the General Assembly of Virginia, “Journal of the House of Delegates of Virginia,” Oct. 24, 1776.SBBS 414.7

Religious Liberty, Bancroft on the United States Constitution. No one thought of vindicating liberty of religion for the conscience of the individual, till a voice in Judea, breaking day for the greatest epoch in the life of humanity by establishing for all mankind a pure, spiritual, and universal religion, enjoined to render to Casar only that which is Casar’s. The rule was upheld during the infancy of this gospel for all men. No sooner was the religion of freedom adopted by the chief of the Roman Empire, than it was shorn of its character of universality, and enthralled by an unholy connection with the unholy state; and so it continued till the new nation,-the least defiled with the barren scoffings of the eighteenth century, the most sincere believer in Christianity of any people of that age, the chief heir of the Reformation in its purest form,-when it came to establish a government for the United States, refused to treat faith as a matter to be regulated by a corporate body, or having a headship in a monarch or a state.SBBS 415.1

Vindicating the right of individuality even in religion and in religion above all, the new nation dared to set the example of accepting in its relations to God the principle first divinely ordained in Judea. It left the management of temporal things to the temporal power; but the American Constitution, in harmony with the people of the several States, withheld from the Federal government the power to invade the home of reason, the citadel of conscience, the sanctuary of the soul; and not from indifference, but that the infinite Spirit of eternal truth might move in its freedom and purity and power.—“History of the United States of America,” George Bancroft, Vol. VI, book 5, chap. 1, p. 444. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1888.SBBS 415.2

Religious Liberty, First Amendment Dictated by Regard for Religion.—It was under a solemn consciousness of the dangers from ecclesiastical ambition, the bigotry of spiritual pride, and the intolerance of sects thus exemplified in our domestic as well as in foreign annals, that it was deemed advisable to exclude from the national government all power to act upon the subject.—“Commentaries on the Constitution,” Joseph Story, p. 702, sec. 992 (1 vol. edition), 1833.SBBS 415.3

By the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, it is provided that “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of a religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” and the States of the American Union have, in their various constitutions, placed the same restriction upon their legislatures. The amendment of the Constitution and the like provisions in State constitutions were not dictated by indifference or hostility to the principles of the Christian religion, but aimed to prevent not merely the establishment of any one form of religion, however widely spread, but to establish upon a firm footing the right before the law of every religious sect.—Solicitor for the Department of State (Washington, D. C.), in Statement presented to Edinburgh World Missionary Conference, 1910, in “Missions and Governments,” p. 124; Vol. VII of Report of Commission. Eainburgh: Oliphant, Anderson & Ferrier.SBBS 415.4

The framers of the Constitution recognized the eternal principle that man’s relation with his God is above human legislation, and his rights of conscience inalienable. Reasoning was not necessary to establish this truth; we are conscious of it in our own bosoms. It is this consciousness which, in defiance of human laws, has sustained so many martyrs in tortures and in flames. They felt that their duty to God was superior to human enactments, and that man could exercise no authority over their consciences. It is an inborn principle which nothing can eradicate. The bigot, in the pride of his authority, may lose sight of it; but, strip him of his power, prescribe a faith to him which his conscience rejects, threaten him in turn with the dungeon and the fagot, and the spirit which God has implanted in him rises up in rebellion, and defies you.—From House Report on Sunday Mails, communicated to House of Representatives, March 4, 5, 1830; cited in “American State Papers,” William Addison Blakely (member of the Chicago bar), pp. 257-260.SBBS 415.5

Religious Liberty, George Washington on Constitutional Guarantee of.—If I could have entertained the slightest apprehension that the Constitution framed by the convention where I had the honor to preside might possibly endanger the religious rights of any ecclesiastical society, certainly I would never have placed my signature to it; and if I could now conceive that the general government might ever be so administered as to render the liberty of conscience insecure, I beg you will be persuaded that no one would be more zealous than myself to establish effectual barriers against the horrors of spiritual tyranny and every species of religious persecution. For, you doubtless remember, I have often expressed my sentiments that any man, conducting himself as a good citizen and being accountable to God alone for his religious opinions, ought to be protected in worshiping the Deity according to the dictates of his own conscience.—George Washington, to Baptist delegation, Aug. 8, 1789; cited in “A History of the Baptists,” Thomas Armitage, D. D., LL. D., pp. 806, 807. New York: Bryan, Taylor & Co., 1887.SBBS 416.1

Religious Liberty, Thomas Jefferson on.—Well aware that Almighty God hath created the mind free; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burdens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the holy Author of our religion, who, being Lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coersions on either, as was in his almighty power to do.—From Virginia, “Act for Establishing Religious Freedom” (1785), written by Thomas Jefferson; in “Works of Thomas Jefferson,” Vol. VIII, p. 454; cited in “American State Papers,” W. Addison Blakely, pp. 132, 133.SBBS 416.2

Religious Liberty, James Madison on Unalienable Rights of Conscience.—The religion, then, of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man; and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate. This right is in its nature an unalienable right. It is unalienable, because the opinions of men, depending only on the evidence contemplated in their own minds, cannot follow the dictates of other men. It is unalienable, also, because what is here a right towards men is a duty towards the Creator. It is the duty of every man to render to the Creator such homage, and such only, as he believes to be acceptable to him. This duty is precedent, both in order of time and in degree of obligation, to the claims of civil society.—From Madison’s Memorial to the General Assembly of Virginia, 1785; “Writings of James Madison,” Vol. I, p. 162, Philadelphia, 1865; cited in “American State Papers,” William Addison Blakely, pp. 120, 121.SBBS 416.3

Religious Liberty, Patrick Henry on.—Religion, or the duty which we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence.—Virginia “Declaration of Rights,” article 16, drawn up by Patrick Henry. See Tyler’s “Patrick Henry,” pp. 183, 184.SBBS 416.4

Religious Liberty, Patrick Henry’s Defense of Baptist Ministers in Colonial Virginia.—If I have rightly understood, the king’s attorney has framed an indictment for the purpose of arraigning and punishing by imprisonment these three inoffensive persons before the bar of this court for a crime of great magnitude,-as disturbers of the peace. May it please the court, what did I hear read? Did I hear it distinctly, or was it a mistake of my own? ...SBBS 417.1

“Preaching the gospel of the Son of God!”SBBS 417.2

Amid a silence that could be felt, he waved the indictment three times round his head, ... “Great God!”SBBS 417.3

At this point, ... the audience relieved their feelings by a burst of sighs and tears. The orator continued: “May it please your Worships, in a day like this, when Truth is about to burst her fetters; when mankind are about to be aroused to claim their natural and inalienable rights; when the yoke of oppression that has reached the wilderness of America, and the unnatural alliance of ecclesiastical and civil power is about to be dissevered,-at such a period, when Liberty, Liberty of Conscience, is about to wake from her slumberings, and inquire into the reason of such charges as I find exhibited here today in this indictment”-SBBS 417.4

Here occurred another of his appalling pauses.... “If I am not deceived,-according to the contents of the paper I now hold in my hand,-these men are accused of preaching the gospel of the Son of God!” ... He waved the document three times around his head, as though still lost in wonder; and then with the same electric attitude of appeal to heaven, he gasped, “Great God!”SBBS 417.5

This was followed by another burst of feeling from the spectators; and again this master of effect plunged into the tide of his discourse:SBBS 417.6

“May it please your Worships, there are periods in the history of man when corruption and depravity have so long debased the human character that man sinks under the weight of the oppressor’s hand,—becomes his servile, abject slave.... But may it please your Worships, such a day has passed. From that period when our fathers left the land of their nativity for these American wilds,—from the moment they placed their feet upon the American continent,—from that moment despotism was crushed, the fetters of darkness were broken, and Heaven decreed that man should be free,-free to worship God according to the Bible.... But, may it please your Worships, permit me to inquire once more; For what are these men about to be tried? This paper says, for preaching the gospel of the Saviour to Adam’s fallen race!”SBBS 417.7

Again he paused. For the third time he slowly waved the indictment round his head; and then turning to the judges, looking them full in the face, exclaimed with the most impressive effect,SBBS 417.8

“What laws have they violated?”SBBS 417.9

The whole assembly were now painfully moved and excited. The presiding judge ended the scene by saying,SBBS 417.10

“Sheriff, discharge these men.”-“Life of Thomas Jefferson,” James Parton; cited in “American State Papers,” W. A. Blakely, pp. 664-667.SBBS 417.11

Religious Liberty, Thomas Jefferson’s Forecast of Peril to.—Besides, the spirit of the times may alter, will alter. Our rulers will become corrupt, our people careless. A single zealot may commence persecution, and better men be his victims. It can never be too often repeated, that the time for fixing every essential right on a legal basis is while our rulers are honest and ourselves united. From the conclusion of this war [the Revolution] we shall be going downhill. It will not then be necessary to resort every moment to the people for support. They will be forgotten, therefore, and their rights disregarded. They will forget themselves, but in the sole faculty of making money, and will never think of uniting to effect a due respect for their rights. The shackles, therefore, which shall not be knocked off at the conclusion of this war, will remain on us long, will be made heavier and heavier, till our rights shall revive or expire in a convulsion.—“Notes on the State of Virginia,” Thomas Jefferson, p. 169 (last part of Query XVII). Boston: Lilly and Wait, 1832.SBBS 417.12

Religious Liberty, U. S. Grant on Separation of Church and State.—Leave the matter of religious teaching to the family altar, and keep the church and state forever separate.—U. S. Grant; cited in Appleton’s Cyclopedia of American Biography, edition 1915.SBBS 418.1

Religious Liberty, On Religion by Majorities.—Let us reject this decree. In matters of conscience the majority has no power.—Decision of the Princes, at the Diet of Spires, 1529; cited in “History of the Reformation,” J. H. Merle D’Aubigné, book 13, chap. 5.SBBS 418.2

Religious Liberty, The Question of a “Right Conscience.”—As for New England, we never banished any for their consciences, but for sinning against conscience, after due means of conviction.—Rev. Thomas Shepard (1605-1649), “Massachusetts: Its Historians and Its History,” p. 23.*SBBS 418.3

A man enjoys religious liberty when he possesses the free right of worshiping God according to the dictates of a right conscience, and of practising a form of religion most in accordance with his duties to God.—“The Faith of Our Fathers,” James Cardinal Gibbons, chap. 17, par. 1, pp. 264, 265. Baltimore: John Murphy & Co., 220th thousand, 1893.SBBS 418.4

Religious Liberty, Famous English Jurist on.—Conscience is not controllable by human laws nor amenable to human tribunals. Persecution, or attempts to force conscience, will never produce conviction, and are only calculated to make hypocrites or-martyrs.—Lord Mansfield’s Speech in the House of Lords, Feb. 4, 1776; cited in Appendix to “Blackstone’s Commentaries and Burns’s Ecclesiastical Law,” p. 152.SBBS 418.5

Religious Liberty, Not Religious Toleration, but Religious Rights.—There is a very great difference between toleration and liberty.... In our country we ask no toleration for religion and its free exercise, but we claim it is an inalienable right.—“Church and State in the United States,” Philip Schaff, D. D., LL. D., p. 14. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1888.SBBS 418.6

Religious Liberty, Conscientious Men True Friends of Civil Authority.—Conscientious men are not the enemies, but the friends, of any government but a tyranny. They are its strength, and not its weakness. Daniel, in Babylon, praying contrary to the law, was the true friend and supporter of the government; while those who, in their pretended zeal for the law and the constitution, would strike down the good man, were its real enemies. It is only when government transcends its sphere, that it comes in conflict with the consciences of men.—“Moral Science,” James H. Fairchild, p. 179. New York: Sheldon & Company, 1892.*SBBS 418.7

Religious Liberty, The Logic and Results of State Religion.—If the state, as such, can possess a religion, we assert that the individual thenceforward can have none, and that the smallest degree of religious liberty is an anti-social heresy. We defy anything to be granted to the state, unless everything be granted, or anything to be refused to it, unless everything be refused.... The state which desires to deprive me of my religion, alarms me far less than the state which would have one of its own. A constitution which makes the state religious makes the individual irreligious, inasmuch as he consents to such a constitution. In vain will he declaim against dissimulation and falsehood; there exists in the political order to which he adheres, a primary falsehood, in which, by virtue of his adhesion, he is an accomplice. Nor does this remain an abstract falsehood; it has practical results; it produces a long line of individual falsehoods. He who accepts it, accepts the civil power as the responsible ruler of his conscience, and charges the state to provide a religion for him....SBBS 418.8

Moreover, it is impossible for us to regard this merely as a theory without consequences. This system, so hostile to the principle of religious profession, can arise only from contempt or forgetfulness of this principle. It has been established through the weakness or decay of convictions. What wonder, then, that its effects should correspond with its cause, and that having its origin in indifference, it should also produce remissness? When the church can consent to the fiction of a state religion, she has lost to a certain extent the consciousness of its reality, and this consciousness has a tendency to grow weaker and weaker.—“The Conscience of the State,” Prof. Alexander Vinet, pp. 12-14. London: Arthur Miall, 1867.SBBS 419.1

Religious Liberty, Man Cannot Repeat Jewish Theocracy.—The Jewish constitution was a theocracy, in which Jehovah assumed to that people a special relation,-a relation which he never sustained to any other portion of our race,-the relation of their King,-himself conducting the administration of their government, by a system of supernatural interposition, and immediate manifestation of his presence and authority. Who but Jehovah himself can imitate this? He must select another Abraham, make of his seed a nation, separate that nation to himself as a peculiar people, and, regarding the community, collectively considered as his church, institute for it the ordinances of an exclusive worship, as well as prescribe for it its civil constitution and laws. To talk of imitation, in a case so thoroughly peculiar, or to call that imitation, in which the very essence of the thing imitated is of necessity wanting, is the height of absurdity. It must be God’s doing, not man’s.—“Civil Establishments of Christianity,” Ralph Wardlaw, D. D. (Glasgow), p. 12. London: Arthur Miall, 1866.SBBS 419.2

Religious Liberty.—See Edict of Milan; Rome, 445, 446.SBBS 419.3

Religious Liberty, in Russia.—See Advent, Second, 25.SBBS 419.4

Revelation, Book of, for the Church.—The command to send what was written to the seven churches of Asia, showed that the revelation was not intended for the evangelist himself alone, but for the church at large: and the declaration added, “Blessed is he that heareth, and he that readeth the words of this prophecy,” was alike an injunction and an encouragement from the divine Spirit to all members of the church to peruse and study it.—“Hora Apocalyptica,” Rev. E. B. Elliott, A. M., Vol. I, p. 72. London: Seeley, Burnside, and Seeley, 1847.SBBS 419.5

Revelation, Book of, Genuineness and Inspiration of.—So ends our catena of testimonies to the genuineness and divine inspiration of the Apocalypse, traced as proposed through the three half-centuries that followed its publication. Alike from East and West, North and South,-from the churches of the Asiatic province and the Syrian, of Italy and of Gaul, of Egypt and of Africa,-we have heard an unbroken and all but uniform voice of testimony in its favor. Nay, even what there is of contrary testimony has been shown only to confirm and add new weight to that which it opposes: for it proves how unable they who most wished it were to find evidence or argument of this kind, of any real value, and such as could bear examination, on their side of the question.SBBS 419.6

Let me just add, by way of supplement to my sketch of the earlier historic evidence, that in what remained of the third century, while no other opponent to it appeared of any note, the Apocalypse was received as the work of the inspired apostle John, alike by the schismatic Novatians and Donatists, and by the most eminent writers of the Catholic Church; e. g., Victorinus, Methodius, Arnobius, Lactantius: further, that in the earlier half of the fourth century, while Eusebius doubted, Athanasius received it; and in its later half, while Cyril of Jerusalem apparently hesitated respecting it, and Gregory Nazianzen, and Chrysostom, though not rejecting, did yet but sparingly refer to it as inspired Scripture, it was on the other hand fully and unhesitatingly acknowledged, among the Greeks, by Epiphanius, Basil, and Cyril of Alexandria: as well as by Ephrem the Syrian, and, among the Latins, by Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine. Subsequently in the Greek Church, though the book was never formally rejected by any ecclesiastical council, yet the same variety of opinion was expressed by its chief authors as by those of the fourth century. On the other hand, by the Latin Church it was universally received; and in the third Council of Carthage, held a. d. 397, and presided over by the great Augustine, was solemnly declared to be included in the canon of inspired Scripture.—“Hora Apocalyptica,” Rev. E. B. Elliott, A. M., Vol. I, pp. 31-35. London: Seeley, Burnside, and Seeley, 1847.SBBS 420.1

Revelation, Book of, Date Assigned to.—The varied historical evidence that has been inquired into, all concurs to confirm the date originally and expressly assigned by Irenaus to the Apocalypse, as seen and written at the close of the reign of Domitian: that is, near the end of the year 95, or beginning of 96. Accordingly, the most approved modern ecclesiastical historians and Biblical critics,-writers who have had no bias on the point in question, one way or the other, from any particular cherished theory of Apocalyptic interpretation,-for example alike Dupin, Basnage, Turretin, Spanheim, Mosheim, Milner, Le Clerc, Mill, Whitby, Lampe, Neander, Lardner, Tomline, Burton, etc., etc.,-have alike adopted it. And we may, I am persuaded, depend on its correctness with as unhesitating and implicit confidence, as on the truth of almost any of the lesser facts recorded in history. It seems surprising to me that respectable and learned commentators should have wasted their time and labor in building up Apocalyptic expositions on the sandy foundation of an earlier Neronic date. It seems stranger still that they should have allowed themselves so to represent the present state of evidence and argument on the point, as if the fact of this earlier date were a thing admitted, and beyond doubt.—Id., pp. 50, 51.SBBS 420.2

From the first witness who speaks upon the point in the latter half of the second century down to the first half of the fifth, we have a succession of Fathers bearing testimony with one accord, and in language which admits of no misunderstanding, to the fact that St. John was banished to Patmos under the reign of Domitian, and that there he beheld those visions of the Apocalypse which he afterwards committed to writing. These Fathers too are men ... of ability, learning, and critical insight into the history of bygone times.... They belong to the most different and widespread regions of the church-to Gaul, Alexandria, the proconsular province of North Africa, Pannonia, Syria, and Rome. They are thus in a great degree independent of each other, and they convey to us the incontestable impression that for at least the first four centuries of the Christian era, and over the whole extent of the Christian church, it was firmly believed that St. John had beheld the visions of the Apocalypse in the days of Domitian, and not of Nero.—Baird Lecture on the Revelation of St. John, by Professor Milligan, p. 308, 1885; cited in “Key to the Apocalypse,” H. Grattan Guinness, pp. 7, 8. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1899.SBBS 420.3

Revelation, Book of, Scenery Employed in.—And what then was to be the mode and manner of unfolding, before the august company thus assembled, this great revelation of the coming future? Was it to be simply, as in the case of some other revelations from God, by the reading out what was written in the book? Not so. The subject matter therein contained was, in a manner far more interesting, to be visibly enacted, even as in a living drama; and for the requisite scenery and agency alike heaven and earth put in requisition....SBBS 421.1

Now of the Apocalyptic scenery, as the reader will be aware, no detailed or connected account is given us. We have only incidental notices of it. These, however, occur perpetually; and, if carefully gathered up and compared together, will be found wonderfully to harmonize, so as indeed to indicate a scenery designedly provided for the occasion, consistent and complete. And the importance of an early and familiar acquaintance with it will hence sufficiently appear, in that it is that from which the character and meaning of many important points in the Apocalyptic prefigurations is alone to be deduced; and that too which connects and gives unity to them as a whole.SBBS 421.2

The scene then first visible, and which remained stationary throughout the visions in the foreground, was as of the interior of a temple; including in its secret and inmost sanctuary the throne of Jehovah already spoken of, and the blessed company attendant round it. For this did not appear in open space or public: but, as seems manifest in the progress of the prophetic drama, and is indeed in one place directly intimated, within the inclosure of a temple sanctuary. It was a temple resembling Solomon’s, or, yet more, the tabernacle framed earlier by Moses in the wilderness; although on a grander scale, at least as regards the inner sanctuary, and with other marked peculiarities. The which resemblance is also expressly intimated to us. For it was called upon one occasion “the temple of God;” on another, in words only referable to the Jewish temple or tabernacle, “the temple of the tabernacle of witness, in heaven.” Moreover in its parts and divisions it well corresponded with that of Israel. The temple proper, or sanctuary, was similarly constituted of the holy place and that most holy; save that there was no veil, as of old, to separate them: the one being characterized by the golden altar of incense, and, as I think also, by the seven burning lamps; the other by the divine glory, and the ark of the covenant. A court too appeared attached to this sanctuary, just as to the Jewish, and one similarly marked by an altar of sacrifice standing in it: besides that there was the similar appendage of an outer court also, as if of the Gentiles.SBBS 421.3

As the visions proceeded, other objects appeared in connected landscape, around and beneath the temple. Nearest was the Mount Zion and its holy city: not the literal Jerusalem, which had been leveled to the ground, and was now literally in bondage with her children; but that which, though in some things different, sufficiently resembled it to have the likeness at once recognized, and to receive the appellation: then, beneath and beyond, far stretching (even as it might have appeared from that high mountain whence were seen in a moment of time the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them), the miniature but living landscape of the Roman Empire. Both the Mount Zion and the temple seem to have appeared high raised above the earth, although not altogether detached from it; and the former, as well as latter, in near proximity to the heavenly glory within the sanctuary. So that while, on the one hand, the temple might be called “the temple of the tabernacle of witness in heaven,” and they that were true worshipers and citizens in the temple and Mount Zion, “the tabernaclers in heaven,” yet, on the other, the outer court of the temple appeared accessible to the inhabitants of the earth below, and the holy city susceptible of invasion from them.SBBS 422.1

Such was the standing scenery throughout the Apocalyptic visions.—“Hora Apocalyptica,” Rev. E. B. Elliott, A. M., Vol. I, pp. 96-99. London: Seeley, Burnside, and Seeley, 1847.SBBS 422.2

Revelation, Book of, Antidote for the Papacy.—The Holy Spirit, foreseeing, no doubt, that the Church of Rome would adulterate the truth by many “gross and grievous abominations” (I use the words of the judicious Hooker); and that she would anathematize all who would not communicate with her, and denounce them as cut off from the body of Christ and from hope of everlasting salvation: foreseeing, also, that Rome would exercise a wide and dominant sway for many generations, by boldly iterated assertions of unity, antiquity, sanctity, and universality; foreseeing also that these pretensions would be supported by the civil sword of many secular governments, among which the Roman Empire would be divided at its dissolution; and that Rome would thus be enabled to display herself to the world in an august attitude of Imperial power, and with the dazzling splendor of temporal felicity: foreseeing also that the Church of Rome would captivate the imaginations of men by the fascinations of art allied with religion; and would ravish their senses and rivet their admiration by gaudy colors, and stately pomp, and prodigal magnificence: foreseeing also that she would beguile their credulity by miracles and mysteries, apparitions and dreams, trances and ecstasies, and would appeal to their evidence in support of her strange doctrines: foreseeing likewise that she would enslave men, and much more women, by practising on their affections, and by accommodating herself, with dexterous pliancy, to their weaknesses, relieving them from the burden of thought and from the perplexity of doubt, by proffering them the aid of infallibility; soothing the sorrows of the mourner by dispensing pardon and promising peace to the departed; removing the load of guilt from the oppressed conscience by the ministries of the confessional, and by nicely poised compensations for sin; and that she would flourish for many centuries in proud and prosperous impunity, before her sins would reach to heaven, and come in remembrance before God: foreseeing also that many generations of men would thus be tempted to fall from the faith, and to become victims of deadly error; and that they who clung to the truth would be exposed to cozening flatteries, and fierce assaults, and savage tortures from her,-the Holy Spirit, we say, foreseeing all these things in his divine knowledge, and being the ever-blessed Teacher, Guide, and Comforter of the church, was graciously pleased to provide a heavenly antidote for these widespread and long-enduring evils, by dictating the Apocalypse.—“Union with Rome,” Chr. Wordsworth, D. D., pp. 80, 81. London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1909.SBBS 422.3

Revelation, Book of, a Warning.—The Apocalypse thus assumes the rank not merely of an elucidation of the divine will, nor of an evidence of Christianity, but of a warning, of the highest and most pressing nature, to all men, in the entire range of human society. It is not the mere abstract study of the theologian, nor the solitary contemplation of the man or piety, but a great document addressed to the mighty of the earth; Wisdom calling out trumpet-tongued to the leaders of national council; the descended minister of heaven, summoning for the last time the nations to awake to the peril already darkening over their heads, and cut themselves loose from those unscriptural and idolatrous faiths, with which they must otherwise go down; the Spirit of God, commanding the teachers and holders of the true faith to prepare themselves by a more vigorous cultivation of their talents, by a vigilant purity, by a generous and hallowed courage, for that high service of God and man in which they may so soon be called on to act, and perhaps to suffer; and proclaiming to all men alike the infinite urgency or redeeming the time before the arrival of a period, that to the whole world of idolatry, European and barbarian, shall come with a civil ruin, of which the subversion of Jerusalem was but a type; and with a physical destruction that can find no parallel but in the inevitable fury of the deluge.—“The Apocalypse of St. John,” Rev. George Croty, A. M., pp. 6, 7. London: C. & J. Rivington, 1828.SBBS 423.1

Revelation, Book of, Evidence of Its Inspiration.—What, too, but Omniscience could have foreseen that a system, such as that of the Papacy, could ever effect an entrance into the Christian church, and practise and prosper as it has done? How could it ever have entered into the heart of John, the solitary exile of Patmos, to imagine that any of the professed disciples of that Saviour whom he loved, and who said, “My kingdom is not of this world,” should gather up and systematize all the idolatry and superstition and immorality of the Babylon of Belshazzar, introduce it into the bosom of the church, and, by help of it, seat themselves on the throne of the Casars, and there, as the high priests of the Queen of Heaven, and gods upon earth, for twelve hundred years, rule the nations with a rod of iron? Human foresight could never have done this; but all this the exile of Patmos has done. His pen, then, must have been guided by Him who sees the end from the beginning, and who calleth the things that be not as though they were.—“The Two Babylons,” Rev. Alexander Hislop, p. 290. London: S. W. Partridge & Co., 1907.SBBS 423.2

Revelation, Protestant and Catholic View of.—The main question, which we have now to answer, is this: How doth man attain to possession of the true doctrine of Christ; or, to express ourselves in a more general, and at once more accurate manner, How doth man obtain a clear knowledge of the institute of salvation, proffered in Christ Jesus? The Protestant says, By searching Holy Writ, which is infallible: the Catholic, on the other hand, replies, By the church, in which alone man arrives at the true understanding of Holy Writ.—“Symbolism,” John Adam Moehler, D. D. (R. C.), p. 277. London: Thomas Baker, 1906.SBBS 423.3

Revelation, Book of.—See Daniel, 134.SBBS 424.1

Robes, Ascension, Joshua V. Himes on.—We are glad to be able to print the following letter from “Father Himes,” who is undoubtedly the best living authority on the question which has interested so many of our readers:SBBS 424.2

“To the Editors of the ‘Outlook:’SBBS 424.3

“I have been much interested in the articles lately appearing in the Outlook upon the question of ascension robes. I am glad that public interest has been again aroused upon this topic, for it is time it should be settled, and settled right; and nothing is truly settled until it is settled right.SBBS 424.4

“I wish to say that I was intimately associated with William Miller for eleven years, beginning in 1839; that with him I attended hundreds of meetings, laboring with him in public and private, and was with him at his home in the State of New York on the night of the tenth day of the seventh month, when we expected the Lord to come; and having had a perfect knowledge of everything connected with that work, I know the whole story of ascension robes to be a concoction of the enemies of the Adventists, begotten of religious prejudices, and that there is not a scintilla of truth in it. No wonder the writer in the Outlook of October 27, did not give his name and address The statement that ‘to be prepared, dressed in their ascension robes, was the instruction given by their leaders to the rank and file of the Millerites,’ is almost too silly to be noticed. The writer originated, and with others signed, the call for the first Adventist Conference, which was held with the church over which he was pastor in Boston, Mass., in 1840.SBBS 424.5

“During those eventful days, from 1840 to 1844, and for several years after, I had charge of all their publishing work, and no man, living or dead, knew better what was taught and done by Adventists than did I. There were some excesses, such as always attend great religious upheavals, but they were not committed by the “instruction of their leaders,” and the putting on of ascension robes was not one of these excesses.SBBS 424.6

“When these stories first started, and while I was publishing in the interests of the Adventist cause, I kept a standing offer in the paper of which I was editor, of a large reward for one well-authenticated case where an ascension robe was worn by those looking for the Lord’s return. No such proof has ever been forthcoming. It was always rumor, and nothing more. Absolute evidence never has been furnished. It has always been one of those delightful falsehoods which many people have wanted to believe, and hence its popularity and perpetuity until this present day. I have refuted the story hundreds of times in both the Advent Herald in Boston, Mass., and in the Midnight Cry in New York, which had a circulation of tens of thousands of copies; and no accusers ever made an attempt to defend themselves, although I held my columns open to them to do so. And now, at the age of ninety years, with a full personal experience of those times, before God, who is my Judge, and before whose tribunal I must soon appear, I declare again that the ascension robe story is a tissue of falsehoods from beginning to end, and I am glad of the opportunity to deny it once more before I die.SBBS 424.7

“The preparation urged upon the ‘rank and file’ of those looking for the coming of the Lord was a preparation of heart and life by a confession of Christ, a forsaking of their sins and living a godly life; and the only robes they were exhorted to put on were the robes of righteousness obtained by faith in Jesus Christ-garments made white in the blood of the Lamb. Nothing of an outward appearance was ever thought of or mentioned. J. V. Himes.”SBBS 424.8

Note.—The foregoing was written Oct. 29, 1894, and appeared in the Outlook of Nov. 24, 1894. p. 875. At that time Mr. Himes was rector of St. Andrews Episcopal church, Elk Point, S. Dak., U. S. A. He died there, July 27, 1895, aged 91 years.SBBS 425.1

Roman Catholic, Use of the Combination Explained.—Roman Catholic, a qualification of the name Catholic commonly used in Englishspeaking countries by those unwilling to recognize the claims of the one true church. Out of condescension for these dissidents, the members of that church are wont in official documents to be styled “Roman Catholics” as if the term Catholic represented a genus of which those who owned allegiance to the Pope formed a particular species. It is in fact a prevalent conception among Anglicans to regard the whole Catholic Church as made up of three principal branches,-the Roman Catholic, the Anglo-Catholic, and the Greek Catholic....SBBS 425.2

In the Oxford English Dictionary, the highest existing authority upon questions of English philology, the following explanation is given under the heading “Roman Catholic:” “The use of this composite term in place of the simple Roman, Romanist, or Romish, which had acquired an invidious sense, ^{30NOTE.—The words Romish, Romanist, popish, papist, and papistical are highly objectionable to Roman Catholics, and may properly be avoided by Protestant writers. Some of these objectionable words are found in extracts in this book, and are allowed to appear, not because they are approved of, but because it is difficult to use the quotations without these words. Protestant writers and speakers ought to be considerate of the feelings of Roman Catholics, and in the use of language in the controversy, to apply the golden rule.—EDS.} appears to have arisen in the early years of the seventeenth century. For conciliatory reasons it was employed in the negotiations connected with the Spanish Match (1618-1624) and appears in formal documents relating to this printed by Rushworth (I, 85-89). After that date it was generally adopted as a non-controversial term, and has long been the recognized legal and official designation, though in ordinary use Catholic alone is very frequently employed” (New Oxford Dict., VIII, 766).—The Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. XIII, art. “Roman Catholic,” pp. 121, 122. New York: Robert Appleton Company.SBBS 425.3

Rome, Historical Sketch of.—Among the states and kingdoms which men have reared as the political bulwarks of progress and civilization, Rome has an easy pre-eminence.... From every point of view the mightiness of the Roman power stands forth in tremendous outline, against the background of the past. Above her brow is set a tiara of significant emblems, and at her girdle are hung the keys of the subject kingdoms of the world.SBBS 425.4

The beginnings of the history of Rome are set in the prehistoric shadows. Myth, tradition, legend of men and fable of the gods, are mixed and mingled in the story. A city is founded on a hill by the wolfnursling twins of Rhea Sylvia and Mars. There are half-robber heroes struggling for the mastery-Roman, Sabine, Etruscan-descendants of tribal ancestors of unknown name and station. There are interceding women with disheveled hair, strong as their armored brothers, brave as their warring lords. Then comes a line of kings, mostly mythical, fabled in the Vergilian hexameters-in the Augustan rhapsody-in which the Trojan blood is made to rule in Latium three hundred years. Glimpses of truth flash here and there on the hilltops, until the Elder Brutus comes and Tarquin skulks away.SBBS 425.5

More brilliant-less fabulous-is the story of the republic. The Age of the Consuls is the age of rising fame. In mere prowess a greater than the Greek is here. Without the artistic genius of his rival-without the subtlety, the wit, the intellectual acumen, songcraft, and tongueforce of the son of Hellas-the sturdy republican of Rome surpassed him in stalwart vehemence and the stroke of his sword. Stand out of the wind of that strong weapon. O Barbarian! for it is sharp and swift!SBBS 425.6

From the times of Africanus [Scipio Amilianus] to the age of Casar the strength and majesty of the republic were displayed to the best advantage.... The trophies of all lands were swept into the Eternal City, and her palaces shone with foreign gems and borrowed raiment.SBBS 426.1

It is the judgment of Gibbon that, on the whole, the happiest period of history was the age of the Antonines [a. d. 121-161]; that then the comforts of human life were more generally diffused, and its sorrows, misfortunes, and crimes fewer and more tolerable. Had the historian lived a century later he might have changed his verdict; but it cannot be doubted that in some fair degree the empire was at peace; nor is there any period in the Imperial course more worthy to be commended than the middle of the second century. From that time forth the decline was manifest. The crimes of the earlier Casars were the crimes of violence and audacity; those of the Imperial régime were the colder, but not less deadly, vices of a depraved court and a decaying people.SBBS 426.2

Coming to the times of Justinian, we note with admiration how the robust genius of Rome still asserted itself in the perfection of her jurisprudence. It is at this point that the Roman intellect is at its best, not indeed as a creative force, but as a great energy, producing order in the world and equity among men. Here was elaborated that massive civil code which Rome left as her best bequest to after-ages. From the luminous brains of Justinian’s lawyers were deduced those elements of jurisprudence which, abbreviated into textbooks and modified to meet altered conditions of civilized life, have combined to furnish the principia of the best law study in the universities of modern times.SBBS 426.3

The later history of the Roman Empire has much of melancholy in its texture. Not without sorrow will the reflective mind contemplate so majestic a ruin....SBBS 426.4

The harsh cadences of a speech most gutteral were heard in the palaces of the Western Casars, while distant a thousand years the shadow of the semilune of the Prophet was seen rising over the towers of Constantinople.SBBS 426.5

Great, however, is the change of aspect from the old ages of history to the new ages which follow. The Ancient World went back, seemingly, into primitive chaos and deep darkness. The wheels of evolution lagged, stood still, revolved the other way. Black shadows settled on all the landscape, and civilization stumbled into ditches and pitfalls. The contemplation of the eclipse of old-time greatness by the dark orb of barbarism may well fill the mind with a melancholy doubt respecting the course and destiny of the human race....SBBS 426.6

For the collapse and downfall of ancient society two general causes may be assigned. The first of these was the decay of those peculiar virtues which constituted the ethical and intellectual strength of the Graco-Italic races....SBBS 426.7

The second cause of the collapse was the impact of barbarism. For centuries the silent Nemesis-sheSBBS 426.8

“Who never yet has left the unbalanced scale”-SBBS 426.9

bottled her wrath against the offending peoples who held the Mediterranean. At last the seals were loosed, and the barbaric tornado was poured out of the North. Through the Alpine passes came the rushing cohort of warriors, each with the rage of Scythia in his stomach and the icicles of the Baltic in his beard. The great hulk of Rome tottered, fell, and lay dead on the earth, like the stump of Dagon.—“History of the World,” John Clark Ridpath, LL. D., (9 vol. ed.) Vol. III, pp. 27-29. Cincinnati; The Jones Brothers Pub. Co., 1910.SBBS 426.10

Rome, an Empire that “Filled the World.”—The empire of the Romans filled the world, and when that empire fell into the hands of a single person, the world became a safe and dreary prison for his enemies. The slave of imperial despotism, whether he was condemned to drag his gilded chain in Rome and the Senate, or to wear out a life of exile on the barren rock of Seriphus, or the frozen banks of the Danube, expected his fate in silent despair. To resist was fatal, and it was impossible to fly. On every side he was encompassed with a vast extent of sea and land, which he could never hope to traverse without being discovered, seized, and restored to his irritated master. Beyond the frontiers, his anxious view could discover nothing, except the ocean, inhospitable deserts, hostile tribes of barbarians, of fierce manners and unknown language, or dependent kings, who would gladly purchase the emperor’s protection by the sacrifice of an obnoxious fugitive. “Wherever you are,” said Cicero to the exiled Marcellus, “remember that you are equally within the power of the conqueror.”-“History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” Edward Gibbon, chap. 3, par. 37.SBBS 427.1

Rome, Cardinal Manning on Prophecy of.—The legions of Rome occupied the circumference of the world. The military roads which sprang from Rome traversed all the earth; the whole world was, as it were, held in peace and in tranquillity by the universal presence of this mighty heathen empire. It was “exceedingly terrible,” according to the prophecies of Daniel; it was as it were of iron, beating down and subduing the nations.—“The Temporal Power of the Vicar of Jesus Christ,” Henry Edward Manning, D. D., p. 122. London: Burns and Lambert, 1862.SBBS 427.2

Rome, a Single City Ruling the Earth.—Can any one be so indifferent or idle as not to care to know by what means, and under what kind of polity, almost the whole inhabited world was conquered and brought under the dominion of the single city of Rome, and that too within a period of not quite fifty-three years? Or who again can be so completely absorbed in other subjects of contemplation or study, as to think any of them superior in importance to the accurate understanding of an event for which the past affords no precedent?-“The Histories of Polybius,” book 1, par. 1, E. S. Shuckburgh’s translation, Vol. I, p. 1. London: Macmillan & Co., 1889.SBBS 427.3

The Roman conquest, on the other hand [unlike its predecessors], was not partial, nearly the whole inhabited world was reduced by them to obedience: and they left behind them an empire not to be paralleled in the past or rivaled in the future.—Id., par. 2 (p. 2).SBBS 427.4

Though from the frozen pole our empire run,
Far as the journeys of the southern sun.
-“Pharsalia,” Lucan, book 10.SBBS 427.5

Till her superb dominion spread
East, where the sun comes forth in light,
And west to where he lays his head.
-Horace, Ode 15, “To Augustus,” book 4.SBBS 427.6

Rome, Greeted from India.—[Strabo quotes Nicolaus Damascenus, who saw an embassy from India, bearing a letter to Augustus Casar.] The letter was written in Greek upon a skin; the import of it was, that Porus was the writer, that although he was sovereign of six hundred kings, yet that he highly esteemed the friendship of Casar; that he was willing to allow him a passage through his country, in whatever part he pleased, and to assist him in any undertaking that was just.—“Geography,” Strabo, book 15, chap. 2; Bohn’s Library edition, Vol. III, p. 119.SBBS 427.7

The Romans have surpassed (in power) all former rulers of whom we have any record.—Id., book 17, chap. 3.SBBS 428.1

Rome, the “Iron Monarchy.”—The arms of the republic, sometimes vanquished in battle, always victorious in war, advanced with rapid steps to the Euphrates, the Danube, the Rhine, and the ocean; and the images of gold, or silver, or brass, that might serve to represent the nations and their kings, were successively broken by the iron monarchy of Rome.—“History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” Edward Gibbon, chap. 38, General Observations at end of chapter, par. 1.SBBS 428.2

Rome, As Recognized in Imperial Times.—Rejoice, blessed Daniel! thou hast not been in error: all these things have come to pass. After this again thou hast told me of the beast, dreadful and terrible. “It had iron teeth and claws of brass: it devoured and brake in pieces, and stamped the residue with the feet of it.” Already the iron rules; already it subdues and breaks all in pieces; already it brings all the unwilling into subjection; already we see these things ourselves. Now we glorify God, being instructed by thee.—“Treatise on Christ and Antichrist,” Hippolytus, secs. 32, 33; “Ante-Nicene Fathers,” Vol. V, p. 210.SBBS 428.3

Rome, Its Policy and Aim of World-Conquest.—We have no room to doubt that Providence had decreed to the Romans the sovereignty of the world, and the Scriptures had prophesied their future grandeur; but they were strangers to those divine oracles; and besides, the bare prediction of their conquests was no justification with regard to them. Although it be difficult to affirm, and still more so to prove, that this people had from their first rise, formed a plan in order to conquer and subject all nations; it cannot be denied, if we examine their whole conduct attentively, that it will appear that they acted as if they had a foreknowledge of this; and that a kind of instinct determined them to conform to it in all things.SBBS 428.4

But be this as it may, we see, by the event, to what this so much boasted lenity and moderation of the Romans was confined. Enemies to the liberty of all nations, having the utmost contempt for kings and monarchy, looking upon the whole universe as their prey, they grasped, with insatiable ambition, the conquest of the whole world; they seized indiscriminately all provinces and kingdoms, and extended their empire over all nations; in a word, they prescribed no other limits to their vast projects, than those which deserts and seas made it impossible to pass.—“Ancient History,” Charles Rollin, book 18, chap. 1, sec. 7; “Reflections,” at end of section. New York: Nafis and Cornish, 1845.SBBS 428.5

Rome, Early Aim at Supreme Sovereignty.—Whilst the Gauls were victorious and the whole of the city in their power, the gods and men of Rome still held, still dwelt in, the capitol and the citadel. And now that the Romans are victorious and the city recovered, are the citadel and capitol to be abandoned? Shall our good fortune inflict greater desolation on this city than our evil fortune wrought? Even had there been no religious institutions established when the city was founded and passed down from hand to hand, still, so clearly has Providence been working in the affairs of Rome at this time, that I for one would suppose that all neglect of divine worship has been banished from human life. [chap. 51] ...SBBS 428.6

This is the 365th year of the city [388 b. c.], Quirites, yet in all the wars you have for so long been carrying on amongst all those ancient nations, not to mention the separate cities, the Volscians in conjunction with the Aqui and all their strongly fortified towns, the whole of Etruria, so powerful by land and sea, and stretching across Italy from sea to sea-none have proved a match for you in war. This has hitherto been your fortune; what sense can there be-perish the thought!-in making trial of another fortune? Even granting that your valor can pass over to another spot, certainly the good fortune of this place cannot be transferred. Here is the capitol where in the old days a human head was found, and this was declared to be an omen; for in that place would be fixed the head and supreme sovereign power of the world. [chap. 54].—“History of Rome,” Livy, “The Speech of Camillus Against Migrating to Veii,” after the destruction of Rome by the Gauls, book 5, chaps. 51, 54, Robert’s translation; Everyman’s Library edition, Vol. I, pp. 347, 351, 352.SBBS 429.1

Rome, as Plutarch Viewed Its Policy.—It is manifest to him that will reason aright, that the abundance of success which advanced the Roman Empire to such vast power and greatness is not to be attributed to human strength and counsels, but to a certain divine impulse and a full gale of running fortune which carried all before it that hindered the rising glory of the Romans. For now trophies were erected upon trophies, and triumphs hastened to meet one another: before the blood was cold upon their arms, it was washed off with the fresh blood of their falling enemies. Henceforth the victories were not reckoned by the numbers of the slain or the greatness of the spoils, but by the kingdoms that were taken, by the nations that were conquered, by the isles and continents which were added to the vastness of their empire.—“Morals,” Plutarch, “Fortune of the Romans,” par. 11.SBBS 429.2

Rome, Its Skilful Diplomacy.—The Romans were wont to take great care not to appear to be the aggressors, or to attack their neighbors without provocation; but to be considered always to be acting in self-defense, and only to enter upon war under compulsion.—“The Histories of Polybius,” Shuckburgh’s translation, “Shorter Fragments,” belonging in book 28; Vol. II, p. 549. London: Macmillan & Co., 1889.SBBS 429.3

Rome, Its Combination of Clemency and Harshness.—In later times, the Romans, thirsting after a universal monarchy, in a great measure obtained their ends by the force of their arms, but their clemency toward such as they had conquered, added much to the increase and enlargement of their conquests.... And therefore, upon the account of this extraordinary clemency, kings, cities, and countries, generally sheltered themselves under the protection of the Romans. But when they were lords almost of the whole world, then they strengthened and confirmed themselves in their dominions; by severity, and razing of towns and cities to strike a terror into their enemies. For they utterly destroyed Corinth in Achaia, Carthage in Africa, Numantia in Spain, and rooted up the kingdom of Macedonia, in the ruin of Perseus, and became a terror to many.—Diodorus, “Fragments Collected by Constantine, 7th Eastern Emperor,” book 26, chap. 83 (Vol. II, pp. 12, 13). London: Henry Valesius.SBBS 429.4

Rome, Always Watching to Advance Imperial Aims.—[Although in a life and death struggle with Carthage, whose army was in Italy,] ambassadors were sent to Philip, king of Macedon, to demand the surrender of Demetrius of Pharos, who had taken refuge with him after his defeat, and another embassy dispatched to the Ligurians to make a formal complaint as to the assistance they had given the Carthaginian in men and money, and at the same time to get a nearer view of what was going on amongst the Boii and the Insubres. Officials were also sent to Pineus, king of Illyria, to demand payment of the tribute which was now in arrears, or, if he wished for an extension of time, to accept personal securities for its payment. So, though they had an immense war on their shoulders, nothing escaped the attention of the Romans in any part of the world, however distant.—“The History of Rome,” Livy, book 22, chap. 33; Everyman’s Library edition, Vol. III, p. 96.SBBS 429.5

Rome, Policy of, in Asia.—From 188 to 133 [b. c.], not a Roman soldier appeared in Asia; but the commissioners of the Senate were always there, keeping watch upon the words and acts of the Asiatic princes; intervening with authority in all affairs, with the design of degrading the native rulers in the eyes of their subjects; exacting rich gifts, in order to keep them always burdened; taking their sons as hostages, to send them back like Demetrius [of Macedon], gained over to the interests of Rome.—“History of Rome,” Victory Duruy, chap. 33 (Vol. II, p. 218). Boston: C. F. Jewett Pub. Co., 1883.SBBS 430.1

Rome, Its Fierce Spirit of Conquest.—The vast host of the enemy [the Volscians], relying solely on their numbers and measuring the strength of each army merely by their eyes, went recklessly into the battle and as recklessly abandoned it. Courageous enough in the battle shout, in discharging their weapons, in making the first charge, they were unable to stand the foot-to-foot fighting and the looks of their opponents, glowing with the ardor of battle.—“History of Rome,” Livy, book 6, chap 13; Everyman’s Library edition, Vol. II, p. 15.SBBS 430.2

Rome, the Fierce Countenances of Its Soldiery.—The Romans admitted that they had never fought with a more obstinate enemy, and when the Samnites were asked what it was that first turned them, with all their determination, to flight, they said that the eyes of the Romans looked like fire, and their faces and expression like those of madmen; it was this more than anything else which filled them with terror.—Id., book 7, chap. 33; p. 94.SBBS 430.3

Rome, The Romans Described as “Robbers of the World.”—Do you not know that the Romans, when they found themselves stopped by the ocean on the west, turned their arms this way? That to look back to their foundation and origin, whatever they have, they have from violence,-home, wives, lands, and dominions. A vile herd of every kind of vagabonds, without country, without forefathers, they established themselves for the misfortune of the human race. Neither divine nor human laws restrain them from betraying and destroying their allies and friends, remote nations or neighbors, the weak or the powerful....SBBS 430.4

It will be for your immortal glory to have supported two great kings, and to have conquered and destroyed those robbers of the world. This is what I earnestly advise and exhort you to do; that you may choose rather to share with us by a salutary alliance, in conquering the common enemy, than to suffer the Roman Empire to extend itself universally by our ruin.—Letter of Mithridates, king of Pontus, to Arsaces, king of the Parthians; cited in Rollin’s “Ancient History,” book 22, sec. 3, par. 29 (Vol. IV, p. 368). New York: Nafis and Cornish, 1845.SBBS 430.5

Rome, Its Sway Extended East, South, and to the Holy Land (Daniel 8:9; 11:16).—The career of Pompey in the east had been one uninterrupted success. Forty days sufficed for him to clear the sea of pirates; he pursued them to their strongholds and destroyed them. Then he advanced against Mithridates and his son-in-law and ally, Tigranes of Armenia. A victory in 66 b. c. shattered the Pontic power and brought peace with Tigranes. The Parthians also allied themselves with Pompey. Steadily Mithridates was hemmed in, until, in 63 b. c., he fled to his dependency, the kingdom of Bosporus, to the north of the Black Sea, and there killed himself. His kingdom was made part of the Roman province of Bithynia. The kingdom of the Selucida was brought to an end and Syria became a province (64 b. c.). The Jewish king resisted Pompey, who stormed Jerusalem (63 b. c.) and reduced Judea to a Roman dependency ruled by high priests. The Euphrates River became the eastern boundary of the Roman state. Cities were founded, stable government was restored, and prosperity revived. Two new provinces, Bithynia-Pontus and Syria, were added to Rome’s eastern possessions; the province of Cilicia, which had been established in 102 b. c. at the time of Rome’s first operation against the pirates, was enlarged and friendly alliances with the border kings and chiefs were established or renewed. An immense sum was paid into the Roman treasury. Pompey had amply fulfilled his task, and now returned to Rome, where he triumphed, in 61 b. c.—“A History of the Ancient World.” George Stephen Goodspeed, Ph. D., pp. 410, 411. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1912.SBBS 431.1

Rome, Pompey’s Trophies from East and South.—He [Pompey] had a great desire and emulation to occupy Syria, and to march through Arabia to the Red Sea. that he might thus extend his conquests every way to the great ocean that encompasses the habitable earth.... [Then, describing Pompey’s triumph, on his return to Rome:] In the first place there were tables carried, inscribed with the names and titles of the nations over whom he triumphed, Pontus, Armenia, Cappadocia, Paphlagonia, Media, Colchis, the Iberians, the Albanians, Syria, Cilicia, and Mesopotamia, together with Phonicia and Palestine, Judaa, Arabia, and all power of the pirates subdued by sea and land.—“Plutarch’s Lives,” Vol. IV, “Pompey,” pp. 98, 106; translation called Dryden’s, collected from the Greek and revised by A. H. Clough. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1859.SBBS 431.2

Rome, Hostilities with Greece Begun by.—Rome came first into hostile relations with Macedonia. During the Second Punic War Philip V of that kingdom had entered into an alliance with Hannibal. He was now troubling the Greek cities which were under the protection of Rome. For these things the Roman Senate resolved to punish him.SBBS 431.3

An army under Flamininus was sent into Greece, and on the plains of Cynoscephala [b. c. 196], in Thessaly, the Roman legion demonstrated its superiority over the unwieldy Macedonian phalanx by subjecting Philip to a most disastrous defeat [b. c. 197]. The king was forced to give up all his conquests, and the Greek cities that had been brought into subjection to Macedonia were declared free. Unfortunately the Greeks had lost all capacity for self-government, and the anarchy into which their affairs soon fell afforded the Romans an excuse for extending their rule over all Greece.—“General History,” Philip Van Ness Myers, pp. 241, 242. Boston: Ginn & Company.SBBS 431.4

And now Macedonia, under the leadership of Perseus, son of Philip V, was again in arms and offering defiance to Rome; but in the year 168 b. c. the Roman consul Amilius Paulus crushed the Macedonian power forever upon the memorable field of Pydna. Twenty-two years later (146 b. c.) the country was organized as a Roman province. The short but great part which Macedonia as an independent state had played in history was ended. She now drops below the historical horizon.—Id., p. 242.SBBS 431.5

Rome, Succeeds Greece by Conquest of Macedonia (Daniel 8:9).—Thus [by victory over Perseus, king of Macedonia, battle of Pydna, June 22, 168 b. c.] perished the empire of Alexander the Great, which had subdued and Hellenized the East, one hundred and forty-four years after his death. [p. 508] ...SBBS 432.1

All the Hellenistic states had thus been completely subjected to the protectorate of Rome, and the whole empire of Alexander the Great had fallen to the Roman commonwealth, just as if the city had inherited it from his heirs. From all sides kings and ambassadors flocked to Rome to congratulate her, and they showed that fawning is never more abject than when kings are in the antechamber. [p. 519] ...SBBS 432.2

The moment was at least well chosen for such acts of homage. Polybius dates from the battle of Pydna the full establishment of the universal empire of Rome. It was, in fact, the last battle in which a civilized state confronted Rome in the field on a footing of equality with her as a great power; all subsequent struggles were rebellions, or wars with peoples beyond the pale of the Romano-Greek civilization-the barbarians, as they were called. The whole civilized world thenceforth recognized in the Roman Senate the supreme tribunal, whose commissioners decided in the last resort between kings and nations; and to acquire its language and manners, foreign princes and youths of quality resided in Rome. [pp. 519, 520]-“History of Rome,” Theodor Mommsen, translated by Wm. P. Dickson, D. D., LL. D., book 3, chap. 10 (Vol. II, pp. 508-519). New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1903.SBBS 432.3

Rome, under Julius Cæsar.—The decisive battle [between Pompey and Casar] was fought at Pharsalus in Thessaly (48 b. c.). Pompey was beaten and his army scattered; he himself fled to Egypt, where he was murdered as he sought to land. But lesser commanders held out in the various provinces against the victor and he was compelled to make a series of campaigns against them. First, the east was brought into order. In Egypt, Cleopatra and her brother Ptolemy, descendants of the old Greek rulers, were placed on the throne under Roman protection, and Casar came under the fascination of the intelligent and charming but morally unscrupulous young queen. [Daniel 11:17.] A battle at Zela (47 b. c.) overthrew the son of Mithridates, who attempted to withstand him. It is of these incidents that Byron writes:SBBS 432.4

“Alcides with the distaff now he seems at Cleopatra’s feet,
And now himself he beams and came and saw and conquered.”SBBS 432.5

The formidable array of Pompeian generals in Africa was annihilated in the battle of Thapsus (46 b. c.). A last stand in Spain was made, only to be overthrown in 45 b. c. at the battle of Munda. After four years of fighting, Casar was master of the situation, and the opportunity was open to him of solving the problems of the state, which had been in the balance for nearly a hundred years. But early in 44 b. c. (March 15) he was assassinated in the senate house by a band of conspirators, led by Gaius Cassius and a favorite friend, Marcus Brutus, and the Roman world again plunged into anarchy.—“A History of the Ancient World,” George Stephen Goodspeed, Ph. D., pp. 415, 416. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1912.SBBS 432.6

Rome, Cæsar Compared with Alexander.—He [Julius Casar] was a man most fortunate in all things, superhuman, of grand designs, and fit to be compared with Alexander. Both were men of the greatest ambition, both were most skilled in the art of war, most rapid in executing their decisions, and most reckless of danger, least sparing of themselves, and relying as much on audacity and luck as on military skill.—“The Roman History,” Appian of Alexandria, “The Civil Wars,” book 2, chap. 21, par. 149, translation by Horace White (Vol. II, p. 203). New York: The Macmillan Company, 1899.SBBS 433.1

Rome, Cæsar’s Fall.—[Scene of Casar’s death:] With rage and outcries Casar turned now upon one and now upon another like a wild animal, but after receiving the wound from Brutus he despaired and, veiling himself with his robe, he fell in a decent position at the foot of Pompey’s statue.—Id., book 2, chap. 16, par. 117 (Vol. II, pp. 179, 180).SBBS 433.2

Rome, in the Augustan Age.—The hundred years of strife which ended with the battle of Actium [defeating Antony, who had fallen under the influence and intrigues of Cleopatra, of Egypt] left the Roman Republic, exhausted and helpless, in the hands of one [Octavius Augustus] wise enough and strong enough to remold its crumbling fragments in such a manner that the state, which seemed ready to fall to pieces, might prolong its existence for another five hundred years. It was a great work thus to create anew, as it were, out of anarchy and chaos, a political fabric that should exhibit such elements of perpetuity and strength. “The establishment of the Roman Empire,” says Merivale, “was, after all, the greatest political work that any human being ever wrought. The achievements of Alexander, of Casar, of Charlemagne, of Napoleon are not to be compared with it for a moment.”-“General History,” Philip Van Ness Myers, p. 274. Boston: Ginn and Company, 1906.SBBS 433.3

Rome, the Age of the City’s Grandeur.—The city, which was not built in a manner suitable to the grandeur of the empire, and was liable to inundations of the Tiber, as well as to fires, was so much improved under his [Augustus Casar’s] administration, that he boasted, not without reason, that he “found it of brick, but left it of marble.”-“Lives of the Casars,” C. Suetonius Tranquillus, “Casar Augustus,” chap. 29.SBBS 433.4

Rome, Augustus as Raiser of Taxes.—[Introduction by Augustus of general census and tax system.] History has never, perhaps, suffered a greater or more irreparable injury than in the loss of the curious register bequeathed by Augustus to the senate, in which that experienced prince so accurately balanced the revenues and expenses of the Roman Empire. [par. 43] ...SBBS 433.5

The introduction of customs was followed by the establishment of an excise, and the scheme of taxation was completed by an artful assessment on the real and personal property of the Roman citizens, who had been exempted from any kind of contribution above a century and a half. [par. 47] ...SBBS 433.6

The excise, introduced by Augustus after the civil wars, was extremely moderate, but it was general. It seldom exceeded one per cent; but it comprehended whatever was sold in the markets or by public auction, from the most considerable purchases of lands and houses, to those minute objects which can only derive a value from their infinite multitude and daily consumption. Such a tax, as it affects the body of the people, has ever been the occasion of clamor and discontent.—[par. 49].—“History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” Edward Gibbon, chap. 6, pars. 43, 47, 49 (Vol. I, pp. 186-191).SBBS 433.7

Note.—It was at this time in the order of the prophecy of Daniel 11, that there was to “stand up in his estate a raiser of taxes [one that causes an exactor to pass over, margin] in the ‘glory’ of his power.” Verse 20. This stands in history as the glorious age of Rome.—Eds.SBBS 434.1

Rome, Enrolment in the Days of Augustus.—The oath was administered at the same time, according to the usage of the Roman census, in which a return of persons, ages, and properties, was required to be made upon oath, under penalty of confiscation of the goods of the delinquents, as we learn from Ulpian. And the reason for registering ages was, that among the Syrians, males from fourteen years of age, and females from twelve, until their sixty-fifth year, were subject to a capitation, or poll-tax, by the Roman law. This was two drachmas a head, half a stater, or about fifteen pence of our currency. See the case of our Lord and Peter afterwards, where “a stater,” the amount of both, was procured by a miracle. Matthew 17:24-27. [p. 49] ...SBBS 434.2

By the wary policy of Roman jurisprudence, to prevent insurrections, and to expedite the business, all were required to repair to their own cities. Even in Italy, the consular edict commanded the Latin citizens “not to be enrolled at Rome, but all in their own cities.” And this precaution was still more necessary in turbulent provinces, like Judea and Galilee. And the decree was peremptory, and admitted of no delay. Joseph therefore was obliged to go with Mary, notwithstanding her advanced state of pregnancy, to his family town, Pethlehem, where the Saviour of the world was born in a stable, and laid in a manger!SBBS 434.3

Thus did “the fierceness of man,” or the anger of Augustus towards Herod, “turn to the praise of God,” and to the fulfilment of prophecy, that Christ should be born at Bethlehem (Micah 5:2), so far from his mother’s residence; and that as Shiloh (the apostle) he should come into the world when “the scepter had departed from Judah” (Genesis 49:10), for Judea was made a Roman province by the introduction of a Roman enrolment therein. Julian, the apostate, unwittingly objected this to Christ’s claim:SBBS 434.4

“This Jesus, proclaimed by you [Christians] was one of Caesar’s subjects. If ye disbelieve, I will prove it presently; or rather let it be told now; ye say then yourselves that he was enrolled, with his father and mother, in the time of Cyrenius.” [p. 50].—“A New Analysis of Chronology,” Rev. William Hales, D. D., Ninth Period, “The Roman Enrolment and Taxing,” Vol. III, pp. 49, 50. London: C. J. G. & F. Rivington, 1830.SBBS 434.5

Rome, Law Regarding Place of Enrolment.—In connection with the census of Quirinius it is stated in Luke 2:3: “All went to enroll themselves, every one to his own city.” This has been felt by many scholars to be an improbable statement, and has been cited as an evidence of the unhistorical character of the whole story of the census in Luke. In this connection part of a papyrus discovered in Egypt, which is dated in the 7th year of the Emperor Trajan, 103-104 a. d., is of great interest. This document contains three letters. The third of the letters is the one which relates to our subject. It is as follows:SBBS 434.6

“Gaius Vibius, chief prefect of Egypt. Because of the approaching census it is necessary that all those residing for any cause away from their own nomes, should at once prepare to return to their own governments, in order that they may complete the family administration of the enrolment, and that the tilled lands may retain those belonging to them. Knowing that your city has need of provisions from the country, I wish” ... (At this point the papyrus becomes too fragmentary for connected translation.)SBBS 434.7

It is perfectly clear that in Egypt the enrolment was done on the basis of kinship. The word rendered “family” abo ve [Greek word, transliterated “ounethe”] means “kindred” in the larger sense. The phrase rendered “belonging to” [them, i. e., the tilled lands] also means “kindred.” It appears, then, that in Egypt the enrolment of each district was intended to include all the kinsmen belonging to that district, and that, lest those residing elsewhere should forget to return home for the census, proclamations were issued directing them to do so. It is well known that in ma ny respects the customs of administration in Syria and Egypt were similar. Luke’s statement, that Joseph went up from Nazareth to Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, to enroll himself with Mary (Luke 2:4, 5), turns out to be in exact accord with the governmental regulations as we now know them from the papyri.—“Archaology and the Bible,” George A. Barton, Ph. D., LL. D., p. 435. Philadelphia: American Sunday-School Union, 1916.SBBS 435.1

Rome, Tiberius, Successor of Augustus, a Dissembler.—Tiberius was a patrician of good education, but he had a most peculiar nature. He never let what he desired appear in his talk, and about what he said he wished he usually cared nothing at all. Thus his words indicated just the opposite of his real purpose: he denied any interest in what he longed for and urged the claims of what he hated. He would exhibit anger over matters that were very far from arousing his rage, and made a show of affability where he was most vexed.—“Roman History,” Cassius Dio, book 57, under A. D. 14 (Vol. IV, p. 259). Troy, N. Y.: Pafraet’s Book Company, 1905.SBBS 435.2

Note.—The prophecy of Daniel had listed next in order of history “a vile person,” given to “flatteries.” Daniel 11:21. The word translated “flattery” means also “dissimulation.” Elliott: “The word has a double sense; being applied both to slipperiness of a path, and the slipperiness or flattering and deceit of the tongue.” Psalm 35:6; Proverbs 2:16. Gesenius: “Arts of dissimulation.”-Quoted by Elliott, “Hora Apocalyptica,” Vol. IV, p. 133. Barnes: “By acts of dissembling.”-“Notes on Daniel,” p. 451. Vileness and dissembling were to be the characteristics of this power, which would receive adulation and flattery from others.—Eds.SBBS 435.3

Rome, Tiberius Described as a Vile Dissembler.—Though he made no scruple to assume and exercise immediately the imperial authority, by giving orders that he should be attended by the guards who were the security and badge of the supreme power; yet he affected, by a most impudent piece of acting, to refuse it for a long time; ... by ambiguous answers, and a crafty kind of dissimulation, etc.—“Lives of the Casars,” C. Suetonius Tranquillus, “Tiberius,” chap. 24.SBBS 435.4

The vile old lecher.—Id., chap. 45.SBBS 435.5

Rome, After Dissembling, Tiberius Accepts Sovereignty.—When no further news of a revolutionary nature came, but all parts of the Roman world began to yield a steady acquiescence to his leadership, he no longer practised dissimulation regarding the acceptance of sovereign power.—“Roman History,” Cassius Dio, book 57, chap. 7 (Vol. IV, p. 267). Troy, N. Y.: Pafraet’s Book Company, 1905.SBBS 435.6

Rome, Time of Flattery and Insincerity.—Such was the pestilential character of those times, so contaminated with adulation.—“The Works of Tacitus,” Vol. I, “The Annals,” book 3, chap. 65.SBBS 435.7

As for Tiberius, his body was now wasted and his strength exhausted, but his dissimulation failed him not.—Id., book 6, chap. 50.SBBS 436.1

At last, when all restraints of shame and fear were removed, and he was left to the uncontrolled bent of his genius, he broke out at once into acts of atrocious villainy and revolting depravity.—Id., book 6, chap. 51.SBBS 436.2

Rome, the Prince of the Covenant “Broken” (Daniel 11:22).—Christus, the founder of that name, was put to death as a criminal by Pontius Pilate, procurator of Judea, in the reign of Tiberius: but the pernicious superstition, repressed for a time, broke out again, not only through Judea, where the mischief originated, but through the city of Rome also, whither all things horrible and disgraceful flow, from all quarters, as to a common receptacle, and where they are encouraged.—Id., book 15, chap. 44.SBBS 436.3

It was in the midst of the reign of Tiberius that, in a remote province of the Roman Empire, the Saviour was crucified. Animated by an unparalleled missionary spirit, his followers traversed the length and breadth of the empire, preaching everywhere the “glad tidings.” Men’s loss of faith in the gods of the old mythologies, the softening and liberalizing influence of Greek culture, the unification of the whole civilized world under a single government, the widespread suffering and the inexpressible weariness of the oppressed and servile classes,-all these things had prepared the soil for the seed of the new doctrines. In less than three centuries the pagan empire had become Christian not only in name, but also very largely in fact.—“General History,” Philip Van Ness Myers, p. 282. Boston: Ginn and Company, 1906.SBBS 436.4

Rome, So-called Conversion of.—But the elevation of Christianity as the religion of the state presents also an opposite aspect to our contemplation. It involved great risk of degeneracy to the church. The Roman state, with its laws, institutions, and usages, was still deeply rooted in heathenism, and could not be transformed by a magical stroke. The Christianizing of the state amounted therefore in great measure to a paganizing and secularizing of the church. The world overcame the church, as much as the church overcame the world; and the temporal gain of Christianity was in many respects canceled by spiritual loss. The mass of the Roman Empire was baptized only with water, not with the spirit and fire of the gospel, and it smuggled heathen manners and practices into the sanctuary under a new name. The very combination of the cross with the military ensign by Constantine was a most doubtful omen, portending an unhappy mixture of the temporal and the spiritual powers.—“History of the Christian Church,” Philip Schaff, Vol. III, p. 93. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1893.SBBS 436.5

Rome, Degeneracy under Later Empire.—The secularization of the church appeared most strikingly in the prevalence of mammon worship and luxury.... Chrysostom addresses a patrician of Antioch: “You count so and so many acres of land, ten or twenty palaces, as many baths, a thousand or two thousand slaves, carriages plated with silver and gold.” Gregory Nazianzen, who presided for a time in the second ecumenical council of Constantinople in 381, gives us the following picture, evidently rhetorically colored, yet drawn from life, of the luxury of the degenerate civilization of that period: “We repose in splendor on high and sumptuous cushions, upon the most exquisite covers, which one is almost afraid to touch, and are vexed if we but hear the voice of a moaning pauper; our chamber must breathe the odor of flowers, even rare flowers; our table must flow with the most fragrant and costly ointment, so that we become perfectly effeminate.”-Id., p. 127.SBBS 436.6

Rome, to be Displaced by New Nations.—The uncontrollable progress of avarice, prodigality, voluptuousness, theater going, intemperance, lewdness, in short, of all the heathen vices, which Christianity had come to eradicate, still carried the Roman Empire and people with rapid strides toward dissolution, and gave it at last into the hands of the rude, but simple and morally vigorous barbarians. When the Christians were awakened by the crashings of the falling empire, and anxiously asked why God permitted it, Salvian, the Jeremiah of his time, answered: “Think of your vileness and your crimes, and see whether you are worthy of the divine protection.” Nothing but the divine judgment of destruction upon this nominally Christian, but essentially heathen world, could open the way for the moral regeneration of society. There must be new, fresh nations, if the Christian civilization prepared in the old Roman Empire was to take firm root and bear ripe fruit.—Id., p. 128.SBBS 437.1

Rome, Invasions of.—The death of Theodosius placed the administration of the empire in the hands of his two sons. Arcadius received the eastern portion, Honorius the west. Both were young and incapable. Meanwhile the flood of Germanic invasion which in the course of the following century was to overwhelm the fairest provinces of the Western Empire had already begun. The Visigoths (West Goths), fleeing before the Huns, who had already conquered the Ostrogoths (East Goths) settled for a time in Dacia, but with the consent of the Roman officers they crossed the Danube in the reign of Valens [364-378]. Feeling misused by their hosts, they rose in rebellion, and in the bloody battle of Adrianople (378 a. d.) they slew the emperor himself and destroyed his army. The best that Theodosius could do was to leave them in Mosia where only his strong arm restrained their further movements. Meanwhile, Vandals, Suevi, Burgundians, Alamanni, and Franks burst into the western provinces.SBBS 437.2

The very year of the death of Theodosius (a. d. 395), the Visigoths rose under Alaric, their chieftain, and marched into Greece. Seven years later they attacked Italy. Stilicho, the general of Honorius, successfully resisted them, until, out of jealousy and fear, he was murdered by his royal master. Then Alaric was able to overrun Italy and even to capture Rome (a. d. 410).SBBS 437.3

It was in this crisis that the Roman legions departed from Britain, leaving it exposed to the attacks of the Picts and Scots. The Suevi had penetrated into Spain, where they were followed by the Vandals. Upon the death of Alaric, the Visigoths left Italy and moved westward into Spain, where they set up a kingdom (a. d. 412) which was to last for three hundred years. The Vandals retired before them into Africa (a. d. 429), where they captured Carthage ten years later, and therein established a kingdom under their shrewd and enterprising leader Gaiseric [Genseric].SBBS 437.4

As if this were not enough, the cause of this tremendous upheaval of the German tribes now appeared on the scene in the advance of the Huns, a people of alien race and strange manners, wild savage warriors, rushing down out of the far northeast from their homes in Central Asia. Under their king, Attila, they were united and organized into a formidable host, which included also Germans and Slavs. Attila had no less a purpose than to overthrow the Roman Empire and set up a new Hunnish state upon its ruins. “Though a barbarian, Attila was by no means a savage. He practised the arts of diplomacy, often sent and received embassies, and respected the international laws and customs which then existed.” After ravaging the east as far as the Euphrates, he turned to the west, crossed the Rhine, and invaded Gaul. There he was met by an imperial army under Atius and was defeated and turned back in a fierce struggle at the “Catalaunian Fields” (Châlons) in a. d. 451, which is justly regarded as one of the decisive battles of history. The next year he penetrated into Italy, and the destruction of Rome seemed imminent, but mysteriously the heathen king stayed his advance on the receipt of the message from Pope Leo the Great: “Thus far and no farther.” In 453 a. d. he died, and with his death his vast empire dissolved and the Hunnish peril was over.SBBS 437.5

The emperors during this period were weak men and ineffective rulers, often set up and always upheld by their armies, which were made up almost entirely of Germans and led by men of the same race. Stilicho was a Vandal. Ricimer, another imperial general, was a Suevian. The emperors of the West emphasized still more their importance by placing the seat of government at Ravenna, an almost inaccessible fortress on the Adriatic Sea. The rest of Italy might suffer from the marches and contests of rival armies, while they were secure. Thus they beheld, in a. d. 455, the capture and sack of Rome by Gaiseric, the Vandal king of Africa, repeated in a. d. 472 by Ricimer.SBBS 438.1

Following Honorius, a succession of nine weaklings kept up a pretense of imperial rule, until Romulus Augustulus, a mere boy, was set upon the throne. His German mercenaries, irritated by a refusal to grant them lands on which to settle, took as their leader Odovacar, the Rugian, captured the emperor, and forced him to resign his office (a. d. 476). Then the imperial insignia were sent to the emperor of the East, Zeno, who thus became sole emperor and appointed Odovacar governor of Italy. In fact the latter ruled Italy as a king, while, as we have seen, other parts of the West did not even formally acknowledge the emperor’s authority. For this reason the year a. d. 476 is often regarded as a turning-point in the history of Rome as marking the fall of the Western Empire.—“A History of the Ancient World,” George Stephen Goodspeed, Ph. D., pp. 502-505. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1912.SBBS 438.2

Rome, Early Invasions as Viewed by a Contemporary.—At this time [about a. d. 364, 365] the trumpet as it were gave signal for war throughout the whole Roman world; and the barbarian tribes on our frontier were moved to make incursion on those territories which lay nearest to them. The Allemanni laid waste Gaul and Rhaetia at the same time. The Sarmatians and Quadi ravaged Pannonia. The Picts, Scots, Saxons, and Atacotti harassed the Britons with incessant invasions; the Austoriani and other Moorish tribes attacked Africa with more than usual violence. Predatory bands of the Goths plundered Thrace.—“History,” Ammianus Marcellinus, book 26, chap. 4, par. 5.SBBS 438.3

Rome, Fall of (Western Empire).—Odovacar [or Odoacer] ... had served under Ricimer in 472 against Anthemius; and by 476 he had evidently distinguished himself sufficiently to be readily chosen as their king by the congeries of Germanic tribes which were cantoned in Italy. His action was prompt and decisive. He became king on 23 August: by the 28th Orestes had been captured and beheaded at Piacenza, and on 4 September Paulus, the brother of Orestes, was killed in attempting to defend Ravenna. The emperor Romulus Augustulus became the captive of the new king, who, however, spared the life of the handsome boy, and sent him to live on a pension in a Campanian villa. While Odovacar was annexing Italy, Euric was spreading his conquests in Gaul; and when he occupied Marseilles, Gaul, like Italy, was lost.SBBS 438.4

The success of Odovacar did not, however, mean the erection of an absolutely independent Teutonic kingdom in Italy, or the total extinction of the Roman Empire in the West; and it does not therefore indicate the beginning of a new era. in anything like the same sense as the coronation of Charlemagne in 800. It is indeed a new and important fact, that after 476 there was no Western Emperor until the year 800, and it must be admitted that the absence of any separate emperor of the West vitally affected both the history of the Teutonic tribes and the development of the Papacy, during those three centuries.—“The Cambridge Medieval History,” J. B. Bury, M. A., Vol. I, pp. 430, 431. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1911.SBBS 439.1

Rome, in Hands of Invaders (about a. d. 500).—I have now accomplished the laborious narrative of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, from the fortunate age of Trajan and the Antonines, to its total extinction in the West, about five centuries after the Christian era. At that unhappy period, the Saxons fiercely struggled with the natives for the possession of Britain: Gaul and Spain were divided between the powerful monarchies of the Franks and Visigoths and the dependent kingdoms of the Suevi and Burgundians: Africa was exposed to the cruel persecution of the Vandals, and the savage insults of the Moors: Rome and Italy, as far as the banks of the Danube, were afflicted by an army of barbarian mercenaries, whose lawless tyranny was succeeded by the reign of Theodoric the Ostrogoth. All the subjects of the empire, who, by the use of the Latin language, more particularly deserved the name and privileges of Romans, were oppressed by the disgrace and calamities of foreign conquest; and the victorious nations of Germany established a new system of manners and government in the western countries of Europe. The majesty of Rome was faintly represented by the princes of Constantinople, the feeble and imaginary successors of Augustus. Yet they continued to reign over the East, from the Danube to the Nile and Tigris; the Gothic and Vandal kingdoms of Italy and Africa were subverted by the arms of Justinian; and the history of the Greek emperors may still afford a long series of instructive lessons, and interesting revolutions.—“History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” Gibbon, chap. 38, last par. (Vol. III, pp. 631, 632).SBBS 439.2

Rome, the Swarm of Invaders Fulfilling the Prophecy of the Division of the Empire.—What an imposing sight was that of all these barbarians rushing down from the east and from the north in numberless multitudes, crossing the Baltic in their boats, issuing from their forests on their wild horses, passing over rivers on the ice; and for the fulfilment in the Roman Empire of Daniel’s prophecy.... But where were all these Gothic races at the time when Daniel beheld them from his bed in Babylon, in the first year of Belshazzar? Where were these nations that were to come, 955 years after the prophecy, and throw themselves into the last of the four monarchies?-They were living in the distant regions of Asia, on the tableland of the Altaic mountains, in the high valleys of Hindoo-Cutch of Cashmere, and of the Himalaya. The great Odin, who was in aftertime to lead them into Scandinavia, and of whom they were to make a god, was not yet even born; and nevertheless all their paths were already traced in the councils of the Most High, and foretold in his Word.—“ The Prophet Daniel Explained,” Prof. L. Gaussen, Vol. I, p. 211. London.SBBS 439.3

Rome, Luther’s Saying Concerning.—Luther subsequently regarded his visit to Rome as a good providence of God; for he said to his friends that he would not have missed this journey for a thousand florins. On the other hand, however, he likewise recognized the danger of a lengthy stay in that city, on which account he was, in after years, accustomed to say, “He who goes to Rome for the first time, seeks a knave; the second time, he finds him; the third time, he brings him back with him.”-“History of the Reformation in Germany and Switzerland Chiefly,” Dr. K. R. Hagenbach, Vol. I, p. 89. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1878.SBBS 440.1

Rome, Pagan, the Hindering Power.—It is admitted by both Protestant and Roman Catholic interpreters that St. Paul’s “man of sin” and St. John’s “Antichrist” are the same. But the rise of the “man of sin” is preceded by the removal of a hindering power which was in existence in Paul’s own day, and to which he referred in carefully guarded language,-a power which the early church recognized as that of imperial Rome; and similarly the rise of the antichristian persecuting power in the Apocalypse is preceded by the removal of ruling power in the Roman state. The conclusion is that the hindering power removed in each case is the same. It is a remarkable fact, in relation to the “let,” or hindrance, to the manifestation of the “man of sin,” that “we have the consenting testimony of the early Fathers, from Irenaus, the disciple of the disciple of St. John, down to Chrysostom and Jerome, to the effect that it was understood to be the imperial power ruling and residing at Rome.”-“Key to the Apocalypse,” H. Grattan Guinness, D. D., pp. 113, 114. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1899.SBBS 440.2

Rome, Its Barbarian Invaders: Alani.—Alans, Alani, a Sarmatian people who inhabited the steppes north of the Caucasus Mountains and the Black Sea during the first three centuries of the Christian era. A large section of them were subdued and incorporated by the Huns in 370. Subsequently they settled in Pannonia, Lusitania (411), and Africa (429).—Nelson’s Encyclopedia, Vol. I, art. “Alans,” p. 126.SBBS 440.3

The Suevians and one branch of the Vandals established themselves in the northwestern corner [of the Iberian Peninsula, Spain and Portugal], the land of Gallicia.... The central lands of Lusitania and the province of New Carthage fell to the lot of Alans.... Of these kingdoms, that of the Suevians was the most abiding.... The West-Gothic sword, wielded in the name of Rome, before long made short work of the rest.—“Western Europe in the Fifth Century,” E. A. Freeman, pp. 141, 142. London: Macmillan & Co., 1904.SBBS 440.4

Rome, Its Barbarian Invaders: Allemanni.—Alamanni, or Allemanni, a German tribe, first mentioned by Dio Cassius, under the year 213. They apparently dwelt in the basin of the Maine, to the south of the Chatti. According to Asinius Quadratus their name indicates that they were a conglomeration of various tribes. There can be little doubt, however, that the ancient Hermunduri formed the preponderating element in the nation. Among the other elements may be mentioned the Juthungi, Bucinobantes, Lentienses, and perhaps the Armalausi. From the fourth century onwards we hear also of the Suebi or Suabi. The Hermunduri had apparently belonged to the Suebi, but it is likely enough that re-enforcements from new Suebic tribes had now moved westward. In later times the names Alamanni and Suebi seem to be synonymous. The tribe was continually engaged in conflicts with the Romans, the most famous encounter being that at Strassburg, in which they were defeated by Julian, afterwards emperor, in the year 357, when their king Chonodomarius was taken prisoner. Early in the fifth century the Alamanni appear to have crossed the Rhine and conquered and settled Alsace and a large part of Switzerland. Their kingdom lasted until the year 495, when they were conquered by Clovis, from which time they formed part of the Frankish dominions. The Alamannic and Swabian dialects are now spoken in German Switzerland, the southern parts of Baden and Alsace, Württemberg and a small portion of Bavaria.—Encyclopedia Britannica, Vol. I, art. “Alamanni,” p. 468, 11th edition.SBBS 440.5

Rome, Its Barbarian Invaders: Anglo-Saxons.—We need not doubt that the Angli and the Saxons were different nations originally; but from the evidence at our disposal it seems likely that they had practically coalesced in very early times, perhaps even before the invasion. At all events the term Angli Saxones seems to have first come into use on the Continent, where we find it, nearly a century before Alfred’s time, in the writings of Paulus Diaconus (Paul the Deacon). There can be little doubt, however, that there it was used to distinguish the Teutonic inhabitants of Britain from the Ola Saxons on the Continent.—Encyclopedia Britannica, Vol. II, art. “Anglo-Saxons,” p. 38, 11th edition.SBBS 441.1

It was in the middle decade of the fifth century of our era that the half-civilized Celtic people of South Britain, left naked by the withdrawal of the Roman legions, and hard pressed on the north by the Picts and the Scots, adopted the fatal expedient of inviting to their aid the barbarians of the Baltic. The tribes thus solicited were the Jutes, the Angles, the Saxons, and the Frisians. The first mentioned dwelt in the Cimbric Chersonesus, now Jutland, or Denmark. Parts of Schleswig and Holstein were also included in their territories. In the latter country the district known as Angeln was the native seat of the Angles. To the south of these two regions, spreading from the Weser to the delta of the Rhine, lay the country of the Saxons, embracing the states afterwards known as Westphalia, Friesland, Holland, and a part of Belgium. A glance at the map will show that these tribes occupied a position of easy approach by sea to the British Isles....SBBS 441.2

It is believed that Hengist and Horsa, the leaders of the barbarian host which accepted the call of the Celts, as well as a majority of their followers in the first expedition [a. d. 449] were Jutes. With them, however, a large body of Angles from Holstein, and Saxons from Friesland, was joined in the invasion. So came a mixed host into England....SBBS 441.3

The result of the first contest in the island was that all of Kent, the ancient Cantium, was seized by the invaders and ruled by Eric, the son and successor of Hengist. Thus was established the first Saxon kingdom in England.SBBS 441.4

Thus far the predominating foreigners were Jutes, mixed with Angles. This condition of affairs continued with little change for about a quarter of a century. In the year 477 a Saxon leader named Ella and his three sons landed a powerful force of their countrymen in what was afterwards called Sussex, or South Saxony. The first settlement made by the immigrant warriors was at Withering, in the island of Selsey. Thus far the Celtic populations had measurably held their own, but a serious struggle now began for the possession of Britain. The native peoples took up arms and made a spirited resistance. A great battle was fought in which the Saxons were victorious, and the Celts were driven into the forest of Andredswold. Meanwhile new bands of Saxons poured into the island and joined their countrymen. The British princes established a confederacy, but Ella defeated their army in a second battle and gained possession of nearly the whole of Sussex. Such was the founding of the second Saxon kingdom in Britain.SBBS 441.5

The coast now in possession of the invaders extended from the estuary of the Thames to the river Arun. Near the close of the fifth century the Saxon leader, Cerdic, with a second army from the Continent, landed in the island and carried the conquest westward over Hampshire and the Isle of Wight to the river Avon. Thus was founded Wessex, or the kingdom of the West Saxons. West of the Avon the country was still held by the Britons, who now fought desperately to maintain their frontier against the invaders.SBBS 442.1

North of the river Thames the first conquest was made in 527 by the Saxon prince Ercenwine, who overran the flat country of Essex, establishing here the kingdom of the East Saxons. Subsequent conquests soon extended the Saxon border northward to the Stour, which was maintained as the frontier till 547.SBBS 442.2

The next descent made by the German tribes from the Baltic was on the coast at Flamborough Head. A long space was thus left between the frontier of the East Saxons and the scene of the new invasion. This time the invaders were Angles. The wild country between the Tees and the Tyne, embracing the present county of Durham, was overrun, and here was founded the kingdom of Bernicia. The next incoming tribe was also of the Angle race. The territory between the Tees and the Humber was now occupied, but not without a long and bloody contest with the natives. This region became the kingdom of Deira.SBBS 442.3

Near the close of the sixth century the barbarians came in swarms. The most populous bands were out of Angeln.—“History of the World,” John Clark Ridpath, LL. D., Vol. IV, pp. 443-445. Cincinnati: The Jones Brothers Pub. Co., 1910.SBBS 442.4

Rome, Its Barbarian Invaders: Bavarians.—The earliest known inhabitants of the district afterwards called Bavaria were a people, probably of Celtic extraction, who were subdued by the Romans just before the opening of the Christian era, when colonies were founded among them and their land was included in the province of Raetia. During the fifth century it was ravaged by the troops of Odoacer and, after being almost denuded of inhabitants, was occupied by tribes who, pushing along the valley of the Danube, settled there between a. d. 488 and 520. Many conjectures have been formed concerning the race and origin of these people, who were certainly a new and composite social aggregate. Most likely they were descendants of the Marcomanni, Quadi, and Narisci, tribes of the Suevic or Swabian race, with possibly a small intermixture of Gothic or Celtic elements. They were called Baioarii, Baiowarii, Bawarii, or Baiuwarii, words derived most probably from Baja or Baya, corruptions of Bojer, and given to them because they came from Bojerland, or Bohemia. Another but less probable explanation derives the name from a combination of the old high German word uuâra, meaning league, and bai, a Gothic word for both. The Bavarians are first mentioned in a Frankish document of 520, and twenty years later Jordanes refers to them as lying east of the Swabians. Their country bore some traces of Roman influence, and its main boundaries were the Enns, the Danube, the Lech, and the Alps; but its complete settlement was a work of time.—Encyclopedia Britannica, Vol. III, art. “Bavaria,” p. 545, 11th edition.SBBS 442.5

Rome, Its Barbarian Invaders: Burgundians.—The Burgundians invaded the country with the Vandals, 410 a. d., but were vanquished by the Franks in 523 [rather, 523-534], and again became independent in the ninth century.—Nelson’s Encyclopedia, Vol. II, art. “Burgundians,” p. 389.SBBS 442.6

Their dominion [a. d. 500], considerably more extensive than when we last viewed it on the eve of Attila’s invasion, now included the later provinces of Burgundy, Franche-Comté and Dauphiné, besides Savoy and the greater part of Switzerland-in fact, the whole valley of the Saone and the Rhone, save that for the last hundred miles of its course the Visigoths barred them from the right bank and the mouths of the latter river.—“Italy and Her Invaders,” Thomas Hodgkin, Vol. III, pp. 357, 358. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1885.SBBS 443.1

Although subject to the Franks [by conquest of 534] and tributary to them in men and money, Burgundy continued as a separate part of the Frankish kingdom at the side of Neustria and Austrasia. At first partitioned, it was, on the death of Clotaire I (561), reunited, with a constitution of its own, its own government, and with boundaries modified in several respects. The Burgundians lived in the full enjoyment of their possessions and of their own laws, participated in the administration, and constituted a special force in war. In respect of the weregild [tribute, or “fine” for offenses], they stood on an equality with the other subject peoples-the Alamanni, Friesians, Bavarians, and Saxons. Repeatedly the old national pride flamed forth, even to open revolt, but never succeeded against Frankish predominance.”-“History of All Nations,” Vol. VI, “The Great Migrations,” Julius von Pflugk-Harttung, p. 403. Philadelphia: Lea Brothers & Co., 1902.SBBS 443.2

Rome, Its Babrarian Invaders: Franks.—Franks, The, a confederation of tribes who are found about 250 a. d. settled in the lower Rhine valley, and grouped shortly afterwards as Salian Franks (on the lower Rhine) and Ripuarian Franks (on the middle Rhine). After the accession of Clovis, in 481, to the throne of the Salian Franks, the dependence upon Rome, which had lasted since the early part of the fifth century, came to an end. Clovis, having occupied the Seine valley, overthrew (496) the Alemanni, and then became an orthodox Christian. This induced the church to throw all its influence on the side of the Salian Franks, who by 510 had conquered or absorbed all the other Frankish tribes. At that time the kingdom of Clovis included most of modern France north of the Loire.... The rise of the Carlovingians led to the formation of the empire of Charles the Great; but on his death quarrels ensued among his descendants, and finally, by the treaty of Verdun (843), the empire was dismembered. Three monarchies then arose, one of which was that of Germany, another that of France, and the third that of Burgundy and Lorraine.—Nelson’s Encyclopedia, Vol. V, art. “Franks,” p. 193.SBBS 443.3

Rome, Its Barbarian Invaders: Gepidæ.—The native haunts of the Gepida appear to have been on the Vistula, near the Baltic. It is from this position that their first movements were directed against the civilized states of the South. At the first they were associated with the Vandals, and were afterwards leagued with the Goths of the Middle Danube. At the time of the invasion of Attila they were obliged to follow the standard of that imperial savage, but after his death they regained their independence. Under their king Adaric, they beat back the Huns from their territories on the Lower Danube, and became one of the most prosperous states. Twelve years after the downfall of the Western Empire, Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths, defeated the Gepida in a great battle near Sirmium. Afterwards, in 566, the nation suffered a second overthrow at the hands of Alboin, king of the Lombards, and from that time the remnants of the people were gradually absorbed by the dominant populations around them.—“History of the World,” John Clark Ridpath, LL. D., (9 vol. ed.) Vol. IV, pp. 392-394. Cincinnati: The Jones Brothers Pub. Co., 1910.SBBS 443.4

Rome, Its Barbarian Invaders: Goths.—Goths, a people of Germanic race, who are first heard of on the southern shores of the Baltic.... Early in the third century, ... we find the Goths settled on the Black Sea, between the Don and the Danube. The eastern portion of the nation came to be known as the Ostrogoths, or East Goths, and western as the Visigoths, or West Goths....SBBS 444.1

Bishop Wulfila, or Ulfilas, labored for forty years among the Goths, and saw as the fruits of his labor the conversion of the entire people to the Arian branch of Christianity. It is a remarkable fact that the Goths were the most tolerant of religionists, and it was not till the Visigoths of Spain had become “orthodox” that they developed any persecuting tendencies....SBBS 444.2

Upon the Ostrogoths [East Goths] in 375 fell the invading army of the Huns, who subjugated and absorbed them, so that, at the famous battle of Chalons, part of the army of Attila, which the Visigoths helped to defeat, was composed of Ostrogoths, who had been servants of the Huns till that date (451). During the intervening period the Ostrogoths have no history, save as regards that small section which was allowed by the Emperor Valens to cross the Danube with the Visigoths [West Goths] into Thrace, to escape the Huns. But the injustice of the Byzantines provoked them to revenge, and in 378, near the modern Adrianople, they defeated and slew the emperor Valens. Under his successor, the emperor Theodosius, the relations of the Goths and Romans became peaceful, but when, on his death in 395, the empire was divided between his two sons, Arcadius and Honorius, trouble began. The Goths, under their king, Alaric, ravaged Greece. But Stilicho, ruler of the Western empire in the name of Honorius, having intervened, Alaric in 402 invaded Italy, but was twice defeated (at Pollentia and Verona), and forced to retire by Stilicho. In 408, Stilicho being dead, Alaric again invaded Italy, and swept all before him. Rome was three times besieged, and the third time it was sacked and plundered (410). Alaric died while engaged in the siege of Ravenna, to which Honorius had fled; and his successor, Ataulf, induced the Visigoths to turn their arms against his enemies in Gaul. As a reward for these services, their king, Wullia, was granted (419) Aquitania, the richest province of Gaul. His successors increased their territory, till under Euric (466-484) they not only held all Gaul south of the Loire and west of the Rhone, but subdued the greater part of the Iberian peninsula. After the battle of Voclad, near Poitiers (507), in which they were defeated by Clovis, king of the Franks, the Goths finally (about 510) abandoned all their French territory except a strip on the Mediterranean. Henceforth they were a Spanish power. At length, as a matter of political necessity, their king, Reccared (586-600), became a convert to Catholicism, and the Visigoths, weary of ecclesiastical isolation, were converted by battalions. The clergy, as the price of this political deal, succeeded in making themselves supreme....SBBS 444.3

[Ostrogothic Division] The Ostrogoths, released from their servitude by the defeat of the Huns at Chalons, settled in Pannonia, along the middle Danube, and for a time were busy as enemies or allies of the empire, till their young king, Theodoric, obtained permission to invade Italy, as the agent of the empire, to drive out Odoacer, who had usurped the throne of the Western empire. This was with some difficulty accomplished, with the help of certain Visigoths (489-493), and Theodoric, in fact, if not in name, became king of Italy. He ruled wisely and well, and Italy enjoyed a prosperity she had not known for centuries. After the death of Theodoric, the emperor Justinian sent his famous general, Belisarius, to subdue Italy. Belisarius got possession of Rome, where for a whole year (537-538), he was vainly besieged by Witigis, who had been elected (536) king of the Goths. And Belisarius had practically subdued the country when he was recalled, through court jealousies, to Constantinople. Although sent back to Italy in 544, Belisarius could effect nothing against the soldier and ruler of genius whom the Goths had made king over them. This was Totila, who rapidly recovered Italy. Justinian at last awoke to the seriousness of the task, and intrusted it to his aged chamberlain, Narses. who led a huge army to invade Italy from the north, and fought a decisive battle at Tagina, now Tadino (552), where Totila was killed. Under the newly elected king, Teia, the Goths made so desperate a stand at Mons Lactarius, near Vesuvius [554], that the imperial general was glad to grant them a safe-conduct out of Italy. Their subsequent history is not known.—Nelson’s Encyclopedia, Vol. V, art. “Goths, pp. 508, 509.SBBS 444.4

The Ostrogoths had grown to be first in influence among the barbarian states.... Theodoric accordingly undertook the conquest of Italy. The invasion was in the nature of an emigration of the whole Gothic people. The aged, the infirm, the women and children, were all borne along with the immense procession of warriors, and the whole property was included with the baggage.... The Goth fought his way through every opposing obstacle, passed the Julian Alps, and made his way into Italy.SBBS 445.1

Odoacer went boldly forth to meet him. The two hosts met on the river Sontius, and a decisive battle was fought, in which the Ostrogoths were successful. The country of the Veneti as far south as Verona thus fell into the hands of Theodoric.... Thus, in the year a. d. 493, the Ostrogothic kingdom was established in Italy.SBBS 445.2

Theodoric at once entered upon a reign of thirty-three years’ duration. In accordance with the rights of conquest, a third of the lands was apportioned to his followers. [p. 408] ...SBBS 445.3

It was deemed expedient by Theodoric not to assume the insignia of imperial authority. He accepted the title of king-a name more congenial than that of emperor to the nations of the North. [p. 409] ...SBBS 445.4

In the year a. d. 500, Theodoric visited Rome, where he was received with all the glory that the diminished sun of the old metropolis was able to shed on her sovereign. For six months the Gothic king remained at the ancient capital of the Casars, where his manners and morals were justly applauded by those who as children had witnessed the extinction of the empire....SBBS 445.5

In religious faith Theodoric, like his people, was an Arian. This fact opened a chasm between the Goths and the Italians, the latter accepting the Nicene creed. The king, however, was little disposed to trouble or be troubled in matters of faith. He and his Gothic subjects pursued their own way, and the orthodox Catholics, theirs. Those of the Goths who preferred to apostatize to the Athanasian belief were permitted to do so without persecution. The whole career of Theodoric [p. 410] was marked with a spirit of tolerance and moderation. The old theory of the Roman law that every citizen might choose his own religion was adopted as best suited to the condition of the people....SBBS 445.6

It appears that the religious toleration introduced into the state by Theodoric, though outwardly accepted by the Catholics, was exceedingly distasteful to their orthodoxy. Without the power to reverse or resent the policy of the king, the Italian zealots turned their animosity upon the Jews and made that persecuted race the object of their scorn and persecution. Many rich but defenseless Israelites-traders and merchants living at Rome, Naples, Ravenna, Milan, and Genoa-were deprived of their property and turned adrift as so many paupers. Their synagogues were despoiled and then burned, their houses pillaged, and their persons outraged. To the credit of Theodoric, he set himself against these manifestations of rapacious bigotry, and some of the chief leaders of the tumult were obliged to make restitution to their victims, and were then condemned to be publicly whipped in the streets by the executioner.SBBS 446.1

Then it was that the Italian Catholics set up a cry against the persecution of the church. The clemency and good deeds of the king were forgotten by those who were opposed to martyrdom when themselves were the martyrs....SBBS 446.2

Certain it is that Justinian, who had now succeeded to power at Constantinople, resolved to purge the church of heresy as well in the West as in his paternal dominions. An edict was issued from Constantinople against the Arian Christians in all the Mediterranean states. Those who refused to accept the established creed of the church were to suffer the penalty of excommunication. This course was indignantly resented by Theodoric, who justly reasoned that the same toleration shown by himself to his Catholic subjects in the West should of right be extended to the Arian Christians in the empire of the Greeks. Theodoric accordingly ordered the Roman Pontiff and four distinguished senators to go on an embassy to Constantinople, and there demand of Justinian the rights of religious freedom. They were commanded in their instructions to urge upon that monarch that any pretense to a dominion over the conscience of man is a usurpation of the divine prerogative, that the power of the earthly sovereign is limited to earthly things, and that the most dangerous heresy in a state is that of a ruler who puts from himself and his protection a part of his subjects on account of their religious faith. The rejection by Justinian of this appeal furnished, so far as any act could furnish, to Theodoric good ground for issuing an edict that, after a certain day, the orthodox religion should be prohibited throughout Italy.SBBS 446.3

It was in the midst of the bitterness excited by this schismatic broil that the virtuous and philosophic Boëthius, who had so long been the greatest and best of the king’s counselors, was accused of treason, imprisoned in the tower of Pavia, and then subjected to an ignominious execution. [p. 411] ...SBBS 446.4

Thus in his old age was the life of Theodoric clouded with suspicion and crime.... Especially did the specter of the venerable Symmachus, who had been executed soon after Boëthius, frown out of the shadows and menace the trembling king, who hobbled into his chamber, and after three days of remorse died, in August, a. d. 526. [p. 412]...SBBS 446.5

Now it was [about 535 a. d.] that the emperor Justinian undertook to avail himself of the dissensions of the Goths, and thereby recover Italy.... Abundant excuse was offered to the Byzantine court for prosecuting its designs against the barbarian kingdoms. The state of the Vandals was distracted with civil commotions. Hilderic, the rightful sovereign, had been deposed and imprisoned, and the usurping Gelimer was seated on the throne. The Catholic party of the West favored the restoration of the deposed sovereign, and appealed to Justinian to aid in that work, The latter fitted out a powerful expedition, the command of which was intrusted to Belisarius. In the year 533, the armament proceeded to the African coast. A battle was fought with the Vandals a few miles from Carthage, and Belisarius was completely victorious. The Eastern army entered the Vandal capital. Gelimer was again defeated and obliged to surrender. Within three months, order was restored in Africa, and Belisarius returned to Constantinople to be received with distrust by his suspicious sovereign. Such was his popularity, however, that a great triumph was celebrated in his honor in the capital of the East....SBBS 446.6

In a. d. 535, Belisarius was again sent out from Constantinople to reduce Sicily. That work was accomplished without serious opposition, and in the following spring Belisarius crossed over [p. 413] into Italy. The whole country south of Campania was speedily reduced....SBBS 447.1

The old Roman faction of Italy, thoroughly orthodox and thoroughly tired of the supremacy of the Goths, went over to Belisarius, and the city of the Casars was once more rescued from barbarism. The king of the Goths, however, collected a formidable army in the North, and in the spring of 537 besieged Belisarius in Rome. A line of fortifications was drawn around the city. Many of the ancient structures were demolished and the material rebuilt into the ramparts. The mausoleums of the old emperors were converted into citadels. When the Goths swarmed around the sepulcher of Hadrian, the immortal marbles of Praxiteles and Lysippus were torn from their pedestals and hurled down upon the heads of the barbarians in the ditch. Belisarius made one audacious sortie after another, hurling back his inveterate assailants. Nearly the whole Gothic nation gathered around the Eternal City, but Belisarius held out until re-enforcements arrived from the East, and after a siege of a year and nine days’ duration, Rome was delivered from the clutch of her assailants. Vitiges was obliged to burn his tents and retreat [538 a. d.] before his pursuing antagonist to Ravenna....SBBS 447.2

The king of the Goths now shut himself up in the impregnable fortifications of Ravenna. Nothing could tempt him to show himself beyond the defenses of the city. Nevertheless the Roman general laid siege to the place, and awaited the results of impending famine. He vigilantly guarded the approaches to the city, cut off supplies, fired the exposed granaries, and even poisoned the waters of the city. In the midst of their distress the Goths, conceiving that Belisarius but for his obedience to Justinian would make them a better king than their own, offered to surrender the city into his hands and become his subjects, if he would renounce his allegiance to the emperor of the East and accept the crown of Italy. Belisarius seemed to comply. Ravenna was given up by the Goths, and the victor took possession. It was, however, no part of the purpose of Belisarius to prove a traitor to the emperor, though the conduct of Justinian towards himself furnished an excellent excuse for treason. The suspicion of the thing done soon reached Constantinople, and Justinian made haste to recall the conqueror from the West....SBBS 447.3

With the departure of Belisarius the courage of the Goths revived. They still possessed Pavia, which was defended by a thousand warriors, and, what was far more valuable, the unconquerable love of freedom. Totila, a nephew of Vitiges, was called to the throne, and intrusted with the work of re-establishing the kingdom. [p. 414] ...SBBS 447.4

One of the alleged reasons for the recall of Belisarius had been that he might be assigned to the defense of the East against the armies of Persia. Having successfully accomplished this duty, he was again available as the chief resource of Justinian in sustaining the Greek cause in Italy. In the year 545 the veteran general was accordingly assigned to the command in the West.... Meanwhile Totila laid actual siege to Rome, and adopted starvation as his ally....SBBS 447.5

When Belisarius landed in Italy, he made an ineffectual attempt to raise the siege of the city, and the Romans were then obliged to capitulate, ... and the city was given up to indiscriminate pillage....SBBS 448.1

The Gothic king next directed his march into southern Italy, where he overran Lucania and Apulia, and quickly restored the Gothic supremacy as far as the strait of Messina. Scarcely, however, had Totila departed upon his southern expedition when Belisarius, who had established himself in the port of Rome, sallied forth with extraordinary daring, and regained possession of the city.... In 549 they [the Goths] again besieged and captured Rome....SBBS 448.2

In the meantime Belisarius was finally recalled to Constantinople and was forced into an inglorious retirement.... He was succeeded in the command of the Roman army in the West by the eunuch Narses, who in a body of contemptible stature concealed the spirit of a warrior. The dispatch of Justinian recalling Belisarius had declared that the remnant of the Gothic war was no longer worthy of his presence. It was this “remnant” that in the year 551 was intrusted to Narses. His powers were ample and his genius sufficient even for a greater work. On arriving in Italy he made haste to bring matters to the crisis of battle. On his way from Ravenna to Rome he became convinced that delay would be fatal to success. On every side there were evidences of a counter-revolution in favor of the Goths. It was evident that nothing but a victory could restore the influence of the Byzantine government in the West.SBBS 448.3

Advancing rapidly on the capital he met the Goths in the Flaminian Way, a short distance from the city. Here, in July of 552, the fate of the kingdom established by Theodoric was yielded to the arbitrament of arms. A fierce and obstinate conflict ensuea, in which Totila was slain and his army scattered to the winds. Narses received the keys of Rome in the name of his Master, this being the fifth time that the Eternal City had been taken during the reign of Justinian. The remnants of the Goths [p. 416] retired beyond the Po, where they assembled and chose Teias for their king.SBBS 448.4

The new monarch at once solicited the aid of the Franks, and then marched into Campania to the relief of his brother Aligern, who was defending the treasure house of Cuma, in which Totila had deposited a large part of the riches of the state. In the year 553 Narses met this second army in battle, and again routed the Goths and killed their king. Aligern was then besieged in Cuma for more than a year, and was obliged to surrender. It was evident that the kingdom of the Goths was in the hour and article of death.SBBS 448.5

At this juncture, however, an army of seventy-five thousand Germans, led by the two dukes of the Alemanni, came down from the Rhatian Alps and threatened to burst like a thunder cloud upon central Italy. The change of climate, however, and the wine-swilling gluttony of the Teutonic warriors combined to bring on contagion and decimate their ranks. Narses went forth with an army of eighteen thousand men and met the foe on the banks of the Vulturnus. Here, in 554, the petty eunuch inflicted on the barbarians a defeat so decisive as to refix the status of Italy. The greater part of the Gothic army perished either by the sword or in attempting to cross the river. The victorious army returned laden with the spoils of the Goths, and for the last time the Via Sacra was the scene of the spectacle of victory called a triumph. It was a vain shadow of the imperial glory of the Casars.SBBS 448.6

Thus, in the year 554, after a period of sixty years’ duration, was subverted the Ostrogothic throne of Italy. One third of this time had been consumed in actual war. The country was devastated-almost depopulated-by the conflict. The vast area of the kingdom was reduced to the narrow limits of a province, which, under the name of the Exarchate of Ravenna, remained as an appanage of the Eastern Empire. As for the Goths, they either retired to their native seats beyond the mountains or were absorbed by the Italians. [p. 417]-“History of the World,” John Clark Ridpath, (9 vol. ed.) Vol. IV, pp. 408-417. Cincinnati: The Jones Brothers Pub. Co., 1910.SBBS 448.7

So ended the long siege of Rome by Witigis, a siege in which the numbers and prowess of the Goths were rendered useless by the utter incapacity of their commander. Ignorant how to assault, ignorant how to blockade, he allowed even the sword of Hunger to be wrested from him and used against his army by Belisarius. He suffered the flower of the Gothic nation to perish, not so much by the weapons of the Romans as by the deadly dews of the Campagna. With heavy hearts the barbarians must have thought, as they turned them northwards, upon the many graves of gallant men which they were leaving on that fatal plain. Some of them must have suspected the melancholy truth that they had dug one grave, deeper and wider than all, the grave of the Gothic monarchy in Italy.—“Italy and Her Invaders,” Thomas Hodgkin, book 5, chap. 9, last par. (Vol. IV, p. 285).SBBS 449.1

The utter failure of the Gothic enterprise against Rome did not, as might have been expected, immediately bring about the fall of Ravenna. Unskilled as was the strategy of the Ostrogoths, there was yet far more power of resistance shown by them than by the Vandals. In three months the invasion of Africa had been brought to a triumphant conclusion. The war in Italy had now lasted for three years, two more were still to elapse before the fall of the Gothic capital announced even its apparent conclusion.—Id., book 5, chap. 10, par. 1 (Vol. IV, p. 286).SBBS 449.2

[Visigothic Division] We now return to the history of the Visigoths who had become a Spanish power. After Theodoric’s death his grandson Amalaric was acknowledged as sovereign of the Visigoths, but his direct rule was confined to the Gaulish dominions. Amalaric died in 531, and the Visigothic state now became what it had been prior to 419, a purely elective monarchy. Athanagild, who was placed on the throne by a rebellion in which he was aided by an army from Justinian, reigned prosperously for fourteen years (554-567); but his Byzantine allies (the ‘Greeks,’ as they were called) seized several of the Spanish cities, and were not completely dislodged until about 625.SBBS 449.3

The brilliant reign of Leovigild, who made Toledo the capital of the kingdom, was marked by the subjugation of the Suevic kingdom in northwestern Spain and Portugal. In 572 Leovigild associated with himself in the kingdom his two sons, Ermenegild and Reccared.SBBS 449.4

On the death of Leovigild his son Reccared, already a crowned king, succeeded without the formality of election. One of his first acts was to announce his determination to adopt and to establish the Catholic religion.SBBS 449.5

The conversion of the Visigoths was a political necessity. The secure establishment of their dominion was impossible so long as they were divided from the subject people by religious differences, and had against them the powerful organization of the Spanish church. They were converted in battalions, and the clergy made themselves supreme. The efforts of Witica (701-710) to carry out extensive reforms in church and state were indeed seconded by the archbishop of Toledo, but were virulently opposed by the great body of the clergy. Of his successor, Roderic, “the last of the Goths,” legend has a great deal to say, but history knows only that his defeat on the banks of the Guadalete (August, 711) placed the dominion of Spain in the hands of the Moorish invaders. Under the pressure of the Moslem yoke the Christians of the Peninsula became united into one nation, and the Goths ceased to exist as a separate people.—Standard Encyclopedia of the World’s Knowledge, Vol. XII, pp. 293, 294. New York: Funk and Wagnalls Company.SBBS 449.6

Rome, Its Barbarian Invaders: Heruli.—Heruli, a Teutonic tribe which figures prominently in the history of the migration period. The name does not occur in writings of the first two centuries a. d. Where the original home of the Heruli was situated is never clearly stated. Jordanes says that they had been expelled from their territories by the Danes, from which it may be inferred that they belonged either to what is now the kingdom of Denmark, or the southern portion of the Jutish peninsula. They are mentioned first in the reign of Gallienus (260-268), when we find them together with the Goths ravaging the coasts of the Black Sea and the Agean. Shortly afterwards, in a. d. 289, they appear in the region about the mouth of the Rhine. During the fourth century they frequently served together with the Batavi in the Roman armies. In the fifth century we again hear of piratical incursions by the Heruli in the Western seas. At the same time they had a kingdom in Central Europe, apparently in or around the basin of the Elbe. Together with the Thuringi and Warni they were called upon by Theodoric the Ostrogoth about the beginning of the sixth century to form an alliance with him against the Frankish king Clovis, but very shortly afterwards they were completely overthrown in war by the Langobardi. A portion of them migrated to Sweden, where they settled among the Götar, while others crossed the Danube and entered the Roman service, where they are frequently mentioned later in connection with the Gothic wars. After the middle of the sixth century, however, their name completely disappears.—Encyclopedia Britannica, Vol. XIII, art. “Heruli,” p. 403, 11th edition.SBBS 450.1

Heruli, a Teutonic tribe first mentioned in the reign of Gallienus, in the latter half of the third century after Christ. We hear of them ravaging the coasts of Southeast Europe, along with Goths, and shortly afterwards (289 a. d.) appearing in the country round the mouth of the Rhine. Later, they served frequently under the Romans, and later still (fifth century) made piratical expeditions in the Western seas, and had a kingdom in the basin of the Elbe. About the beginning of the sixth century they joined Theodoric, the Ostrogoth, against Clovis, king of the Franks, and soon after suffered defeat at the hands of the Langobardii. After this their name disappears from history.—Standard Encyclopedia of the World’s Knowledge, Vol. XIII, art. “Heruli,” p 334. New York: Funk and Wagnalls Company.SBBS 450.2

First of kingdoms established by the barbarians in Italy was that of the Heruli. This nation was led into the peninsula by the bold chieftain Odoacer.... Odoacer at once made himself king of Italy. Rome was down, and the residue was ground under the heel of a German chieftain out of the North, who, to the one third of the lands of Italy which had been demanded by his followers as a recompense for their services, added the remaining two thirds to fill up the measure. King Odoacer soon showed himself master of the strange situation which had supervened in Italy. He wisely adapted his methods of government to the condition of the people.... He accepted the title of king, but refused the purple and the diadem, thus conciliating both the German princes and the phantom nobility of Italy.... The Roman nobility led a life of tremulous anxiety, humbly subservient to the master to whom they owed their lives and the remnant of their fortunes. Nor did the king fail in many instances to interpose between the rapacity of his barbarian and the helplessness of his Roman subjects. The demands of the German chiefs were frequently resisted by the king, and several of the more insolent were put to death for the attempted robbery of native noblemen. In the pursuance of this difficult policy Odoacer consumed the fourteen years of his reign. With him rose and fell the Herulian kingdom in Italy. His people were neither strong enough nor sufficiently civilized to found a permanent dominion. Already the great nation of the Ostrogoths, under the leadership of the justly celebrated Theodoric, whom the discriminating Gibbon has declared to have been “a hero alike excellent in the arts of war and of government,” was ready to sweep down from the North and destroy the brief ascendancy of the Heruli in Italy.—“History of the World,” John Clark Ridpath, Vol. IV, pp. 406-408. Cincinnati: The Jones Brothers Pub. Co., 1910.SBBS 450.3

Odoacer, or Odovacar (c. 434-493), the first barbarian ruler of Italy on the downfall of the Western Empire, was born in the district bordering on the middle Danube about the year 434. In this district the once rich and fertile provinces of Noricum and Pannonia were being torn piecemeal from the Roman Empire by a crowd of German tribes, among whom we discern four, who seem to have hovered over the Danube from Passau to Pest, namely, the Rugii, Scyrri, Turcilingi, and Heruli. With all of these Odoacer was connected by his subsequent career, and all seem, more or less, to have claimed him as belonging to them by birth; the evidence slightly preponderates in favor of his descent from the Scyrri.—Encyclopedia Britannica, Vol. XX, art. “Odoacer,” p. 5, 11th edition.SBBS 451.1

On the defeat and death of Orestes they [“the barbarian mercenaries in Italy”] proclaimed their leader, Odoacer the Rugian, king of Italy. Romulus Augustulus laid down his imperial dignity, and the court at Constantinople was informed that there was no longer an emperor of the West.SBBS 451.2

The installation of a barbarian king in Italy was the natural climax of the changes which had been taking place in the West throughout the fifth century. In Spain, Gaul, and Africa barbarian chieftains were already established as kings. In Italy, for the last twenty years, the real power had been wielded by a barbarian officer. Odoacer, when he decided to dispense with the nominal authority of an emperor of the West, placed Italy on the same level of independence with the neighboring provinces. But the old ties with Rome were not severed. The new king of Italy formally recognized the supremacy of the one Roman emperor at Constantinople, and was invested in return with the rank of “patrician,” which had been held before him by Aëtius and Ricimer.—Id., Vol. XXIII, art. “Rome,” p. 658, 11th edition.SBBS 451.3

Odoacer was the first barbarian who reigned in Italy, over a people who had once asserted their just superiority above the rest of mankind. The disgrace of the Romans still excites our respectful compassion, and we fondly sympathize with the imaginary grief and indignation of their degenerate posterity. But the calamities of Italy had gradually subdued the proud consciousness of freedom and glory. In the age of Roman virtue the provinces were subject to the arms, and the citizens to the laws, of the republic; till those laws were subverted by civil discord, and both the city and the province became the servile property of a tyrant. The forms of the constitution, which alleviated or disguised their abject slavery, were abolished by time and violence; the Italians alternately lamented the presence or the absence of the sovereign, whom they detested or despised; and the succession of five centuries inflicted the various evils of military license, capricious despotism, and elaborate oppression. During the same period, the barbarians had emerged from obscurity and contempt, and the warriors of Germany and Scythia were introduced into the provinces, as the servants, the allies, and at length the masters, of the Romans, whom they insulted or protected. The hatred of the people was suppressed by fear; they respected the spirit and splendor of the martial chiefs who were invested with the honors of the empire: and the fate of Rome had long depended on the sword of those formidable strangers. The stern Ricimer, who trampled on the ruins of Italy, had exercised the power, without assuming the title, of a king; and the patient Romans were insensibly prepared to acknowledge the royalty of Odoacer and his barbaric successors.SBBS 451.4

The king of Italy was not unworthy of the high station to which his valor and fortune had exalted him: his savage manners were polished by the habits of conversation; and he respected, though a conqueror and a barbarian, the institutions, and even the prejudices, of his subjects.... Like the rest of the barbarians, he had been instructed in the Arian heresy; but he revered the monastic and episcopal characters; and the silence of the Catholics attests the toleration which they enjoyed.—“The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” Edward Gibbon, chap. 36, pars. 32, 33 (Vol. III, pp. 515, 516). New York: Harper & Brothers.SBBS 452.1

Rome, Its Barbarian Invaders: Huns.—Huns, a people of Tartar or Ugrian stock, who in the third century b. c. seem to have dominated the whole of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains to the Straits of Korea; and the famous Great Wall of China was erected at this time to check their inroads....SBBS 452.2

When the Huns first appeared in Europe remains a matter of conjecture; but crossing the Volga, they overthrew the kingdom of the Alans about 374, and pressed on at once to the conquest of the Gothic Empire.... Supreme between the Danube and the Volga, the Huns successfully invaded Persia, terrorized Syria, and threatened Italy; and in 446 Attila was in a position to dictate to the Byzantines a treaty by which they surrendered a part of their territory, paid an immediate indemnity of six thousand pounds’ weight of gold, and agreed to pay two thousand one hundred annually to the suzerain Attila....SBBS 452.3

Although Hungary may owe its name to the early Huns, the present Hungarians, the Magyars, are descended from immigrants of the ninth century, who came as successful invaders from the East. Whether the Huns who ravaged Italy in the ninth and tenth centuries were mainly of the old Hun race, or were their Magyar conquerors, is something of a problem.—Nelson’s Encyclopedia, Vol. VI, art. “Huns,” p. 300.SBBS 452.4

Rome, Its Barbarian Invaders: Lombards.—Lombards, or Longobardi, a German people who, at the beginning of the Christian era, settled on the Lower Elbe, and in the fifth century seem to have migrated to the regions of the Danube, where they became converts to Arianism. Throwing off the yoke of the Herula (490), under whose domination they had fallen, they destroyed the Gepida (566), took possession of Pannonia, and under Alboin invaded Italy (568). There they easily established themselves in the northern half, with Pavia as their capital, and were induced by Gregory the Great [Pope 590-604] and their queen Theodelinda to accept Roman Catholicism. On the seizure of the Pentapolis and Ravenna by the energetic Lombard king Liutprand, the Pope, fearful of further aggression, summoned Pepin, king of the Franks, who subdued the Lombards [756] and presented the disputed territory to the Pope. Charlemagne finally subjugated and made their kingdom an imperial province. The Lombards thereafter became merged in the general Italian population.—Nelson’s Encyclopedia, Vol. VII, art. “Lombards,” p. 395.SBBS 452.5

For a period of two hundred years Italy remained under the dominion of the Lombards.... The Lombard monarchy was elective. The right of the chiefs to choose their own sovereign, though many times waived in deference to heredity and other conditions, was not resisted or denied. About eighty years after the establishment of the kingdom, the laws of the Lombards were reduced to a written code. Nor does their legislation compare unfavorably with that of any other barbarian state.SBBS 453.1

This epoch in history should not be passed over without reference to the rapid growth of the Papal Church in the close of the sixth and the beginning of the seventh century. Most of all by Gregory the Great, whose pontificate extended from 590 to 604, was the supremacy of the apostolic see asserted and maintained. Under the triple titles of Bishop of Rome, Primate of Italy, and Apostle of the West, he gradually, by gentle insinuation or bold assertion, as best suited the circumstances, elevated the episcopacy of Rome into a genuine papacy [p. 418] of the church. He succeeded in bringing the Arians of Italy and Spain into the Catholic fold, and thus secured the solidarity of the Western ecclesia. [p. 419] ...SBBS 453.2

It was the growth and encroachment of Catholic power in Italy that ultimately led to the overthrow of the Lombard kingdom. As the eighth century drew to a close and the kingdom of the Franks became more and more predominant beyond the Alps, the popes with increasing frequency called upon the Carlovingian princes to relieve Italy of the Lombard incubus. As early as the times of Gregory III, Charles Martel was solicited to come to the aid of his Catholic brethren in the South. The entreaties of Pope Stephen were still more importunate, and Pepin, king of the Franks, was induced to lead an army across the Alps. Two centuries of comparative peace had somewhat abated the warlike valor of the Lombards. They were still brave enough to make occasional depredations upon the provinces and sanctuaries of the Holy Church, but not brave enough to confront the spears of the Franks. Astolphus, the Lombard king, cowered at the approach of Pepin, and he and his princes eagerly took an oath to restore to the church her captive possessions and henceforth to respect her wishes.SBBS 453.3

No sooner, however, had the Frankish sovereign returned beyond the mountains than Astolphus broke his faith and renewed his predatory war on the Catholic diocese. A second time the angered Pepin came upon the recreant Lombards, whose country he overran and left the kingdom prostrate. For a period of about twenty years the Lombard state survived the shock of this invasion, and then returned to its old ways. Again the Romans were dispossessed of their property and driven from their towns. Pope Adrian I had now come to the papal throne, and Charlemagne had succeeded his father Pepin. Vainly did the Lombards attempt to guard the passes of the Alps against the great Frankish conqueror. By his vigilance he surprised the Lombard outposts and made his way to Pavia. Here, in 773, Desiderius, the last of the Lombard princes, made his stand. For fifteen months the city was besieged by the Franks. When the rigors of the investment could be endured no longer, the city surrendered, and the kingdom of the Lombards was at an end. The country became a province in the empire of Charlemagne, but Lombardy continued for a time under the government of native princes. So much was conceded to the original kinship of the Lombards and the Franks.—“History of the World,” John Clark Ridpath (9 vol. ed.) Vol. IV, pp. 418-420. Cincinnati: The Jones Brothers Pub. Co., 1910.SBBS 453.4

From Rothari (d. 652) to Liutprand (712-744) the Lombard kings, succeeding one another in the irregular fashion of the time, sometimes by descent, sometimes by election, sometimes by conspiracy and violence, strove fitfully to enlarge their boundaries, and contended with the aristocracy of dukes inherent in the original organization of the nation, an element which, though much weakened, always embarrassed the power of the crown, and checked the unity of the nation. Their old enemies the Franks on the west, and the Slavs or Huns, ever ready to break in on the northeast, and sometimes called in by mutinous and traitorous dukes of Friuli and Trent, were constant and serious dangers. By the popes, who represented Italian interests, they were always looked upon with dislike and jealousy, even when they had become zealous Catholics, the founders of churches and monasteries; with the Greek Empire there was chronic war. From time to time they made raids into the unsubdued parts of Italy, and added a city or two to their dominions. But there was no sustained effort for the complete subjugation of Italy till Liutprand, the most powerful of the line. He tried it, and failed. He broke up the independence of the great southern duchies, Benevento and Spoleto. For a time, in the heat of the dispute about images, he won the Pope to his side against the Greeks. For a time, but only for a time, he deprived the Greeks of Ravenna. Aistulf, his successor, carried on the same policy. He even threatened Rome itself, and claimed a capitation tax. But the popes, thoroughly irritated and alarmed, and hopeless of aid from the East, turned to the family which was rising into power among the Franks of the West, the mayors of the palace of Austrasia. Pope Gregory III applied in vain to Charles Martel. But with his successors Pippin and Charles the popes were more successful. In return for the transfer by the Pope of the Frank crown from the decayed line of Clovis to his own, Pippin crossed the Alps, defeated Aistulf, and gave to the Pope the lands which Aistulf had torn from the empire, Ravenna and the Pentapolis (754-756). But the angry quarrels still went on between the popes and the Lombards. The Lombards were still to the Italians a “foul and horrid” race. At length, invited by Pope Adrian I, Pippin’s son Charlemagne once more descended into Italy. As the Lombard kingdom began, so it ended, with a siege of Pavia. Desiderius, the last king, became a prisoner (774), and the Lombard power perished. Charlemagne, with the title of king of the Franks and Lombards, became master of Italy, and in 800 the Pope, who had crowned Pippin king of the Franks, claimed to bestow the Roman Empire, and crowned his greater son emperor of the Romans.—Encyclopedia Britannica, Vol. XVI, art. “Lombards,” p. 934, 11th edition.SBBS 454.1

No sooner had he [Alboin, king of the Lombards (565-573)] erected his standard, than the native strength of the Lombards was multiplied by the adventurous youth of Germany and Scythia. The robust peasantry of Noricum and Pannonia had resumed the manners of barbarians; and the names of the Gepids, Bulgarians, Sarmatians (or Slavs), and Bavarians may be distinctly traced in the provinces of Italy. Of the Saxons, the old allies of the Lombards, twenty thousand warriors, with their wives and children, accepted the invitation of Alboin. Their bravery contributed to his success; but the accession or the absence of their numbers was not sensibly felt in the magnitude of his host. Every mode of religion was freely practised by its respective votaries. The king of the Lombards had been educated in the Arian heresy; but the Catholics, in their public worship, were allowed to pray for his conversion; while the more stubborn barbarians sacrificed a she goat, or perhaps a captive, to the gods of their fathers.—“The Historians’ History of the World,” Vol. VII, p. 435. New York: The Outlook Company, 1904.SBBS 454.2

The Longobards at the time of the invasion were for the most part pagan; a few had imbibed Arianism, and hence their ferocity against priests and monks whom they put to death. They destroyed churches and monasteries; they hunted and killed many of the faithful who would not become pagan; they laid waste their property, and seized Catholic places of worship, to hand them over to the Arians. The holy pontiff, Gregory the Great, does not cease to lament the desolation caused by the Longobard slaughter throughout Italy. Slowly however the light of faith made way among them and the church won their respect and obedience. This meant protection for the conquered. Gradually the church’s constitution and customs spread among the barbarians the ideas of Roman civilization, until at last, in defense of her own liberty and that of the people which the Longobards continued to imperil, she was forced to call in the aid of the Franks, and thus change the fate of Italy. This occurred only after two centuries of Longobardic domination.—Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. IX, art. “Lombardy,” p. 338.SBBS 455.1

Note.—The gloss given this bit of history is thoroughly characteristic of Roman Catholic writers. The Lombards had been converted to Latin Christianity at least nominally, more than a century and a half before their government was overthrown and their territory given to the Pope. The crux of their offending was, that, while Catholics by profession, they did not readily lend themselves to further the ambitions of the popes, who had now conceived the purpose of adding temporal dominion to their spiritual power. It was that this ambition might be realized that the kingdom of the Lombards was overthrown.—Eds.SBBS 455.2

Rome, Its Barbarian Invaders: Marcomanni.—The name Marcomanni signifies Marchmen, or borderers, and was, no doubt, applied to several neighboring tribes in the confines of Germany.... During the third and fourth centuries the cis-Danubian provinces were several times overrun by the Marcomanni, but they did not succeed, either there or elsewhere, in laying the foundations of a permanent state. In the fifth and sixth centuries, the relative importance of the nation grew less and less, until it finally disappeared from history.—“History of the World,” John Clark Ridpath, LL. D., (9 vol. ed.) Vol. IV, pp. 391, 392. Cincinnati: The Jones Brothers Pub. Co., 1910.SBBS 455.3

Rome, Its Barbarian Invaders: Quadi.—The Quadi were kinsmen of the Suevi, having their original homes in southeastern Germany.... During the years a. d. 357-359, the exposed provinces of the empire were dreadfully harassed by this warlike people, who, in alliance with the Sarmatians, captured the frontier posts, and made it necessary for Constantius to exert himself to the utmost to stay their ravages. They were, however, speedily subdued, and the chiefs of the nation, even from beyond the Carpathian mountains, were glad to save themselves by making their submission and giving hostages to the emperor. The nation maintained its independence until near the close of the following century, when they were absorbed by the more powerful Goths, and ceased to be a separate people.—Id., p. 392.SBBS 455.4

Rome, Its Barbarian Invaders: Saxons.—Saxons, a Teutonic race who lived along the banks of the Elbe and on the islands near its mouth in the second century. Ptolemy places them in the “Cimbric Chersonesus,” near the Jutes and Angles; but they afterwards occupied a much larger extent, from the delta of the Rhine to the Weser. After the migration of the Saxons to Britain the name of “Old Saxons” was given to the parent stock. One very large body of Saxon population occupied the present Westphalia, but the tribes by which Britain was invaded appear principally to have come from the country now called Friesland-at least, of all the Continental dialects, Frisic is nearest to the Anglo-Saxon of our ancestors. It was in the fifth and sixth centuries that the Saxons crossed to Britain and settled in the south of England, where the names Middlesex (Middle Saxons) Sussex (South Saxons), and Wessex (West Saxons) still bear witness to their influence. Those who remained in Germany extended their territory southward by conquest; and it is this southern and mountainous part of the old kingdom that now bears the name of Saxony. After a long series of sanguinary conflicts they were completely subdued by Charlemagne.—Nelson’s Encyclopedia, Vol. X, art. “Saxons,” p. 607.SBBS 456.1

Rome, Its Barbarian Invaders: Suevi.—Suevi, Germanic people or confederation. Caesar’s Suevi inhabited the modern Baden, while Tacitus places them to the north and east of that region: either they had migrated between 50 b. c. and 100 a. d., or Casar met only a portion of the people. After 250 a. d. the name is used of the Germanic people, from whom the modern Swabians have derived their name. In later history they appear in alliance with the Alemannii and Burgundians, and hold the German side of Gaul and Switzerland; and even enter into Italy and Spain, in union with the Visigoths.—Nelson’s Encyclopedia, Vol. XI, art. “Suevi,” p. 524.SBBS 456.2

It is probably from the Alamannic region that those Suebi came who joined the Vandals in their invasion of Gaul, and eventually founded a kingdom in northwest Spain.—Encyclopedia Britannica, Vol. XXVI, art. “Suebi,” p. 20, 11th edition.SBBS 456.3

Those provinces [of the Iberian peninsula, Spain and Portugal] were now occupied or torn in pieces by a crowd of invaders, Suevi, Vandals, and Alans.... Early in the fifth century they [the Alans] possessed a domain in central Spain which stretched from sea to sea. Their dominion passed for a few years into the hands of the Suevi, who had already formed a settlement in northwestern Spain, and who still kept a dominion in that corner long after the greater part of the peninsula became Gothic.—“Historical Geography of Europe,” E. A. Freeman, chap. 4, p. 90. London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1882.SBBS 456.4

Rome, Its Barbarian Invaders: Vandals.—Vandals, a Germanic tribe, probably closely akin to the Goths. In history they first appear about 150 a. d., dwelling on the south coast of the Baltic and on the banks of the Oder.... On the invitation of the Roman Bonifacius, in 429 they invaded Africa under their king Genseric, or Gaiseric.... They built a fleet, ravaged Sicily, sacking Pallermo, and in June, 455, landed at the mouth of the Tiber, and plundered Rome from the 15th to the 29th of June.... For years the Vandals continued to harry the Mediterranean coasts. They conquered the island of Sardinia, and, repulsing a Roman attack in 468, added Sicily to their rule. Their power was at its height when Genseric died (477). In his time the Vandals became Christians, but they were Arians, and fiercely persecuted orthodox believers and other heretics. In 533 the Byzantine general, Belisarius, landed in Africa. The Vandals were several times defeated, and Carthage was entered on Sept. 15, 533; and in November of the same year they were routed in the decisive battle of Tricamaron. In the next year Africa, Sardinia, and Porsica were restored to the Roman Empire. As a nation, the Vandals soon ceased to exist.—Nelson’s Encyclopedia, Vol. XII, art. “Vandals,” pp. 380, 381.SBBS 456.5

The Arian heresy [of the Vandals] was proscribed, and the race of these remarkable conquerors was in a short time exterminated. A single generation sufficed to confound their women and children in the mass of the Roman inhabitants of the province, and their very name was soon totally forgotten. There are few instances in history of a nation disappearing so rapidly and so completely as the Vandals of Africa.—“History of Greece,” George Finlay, Vol. I, p. 232.SBBS 457.1

It is reckoned that during the reign of Justinian, Africa lost five millions of inhabitants; thus Arianism was extinguished in that region, not by any enforcement of conformity, but by the extermination of the race which had introduced and professed it.—“History of the Christian Church,” J. C. Robertson, Vol. I, p. 521. London: 1858.SBBS 457.2

Rome, Babylon an Accredited Name for.—See Babylon, 61-65.SBBS 457.3

Rome.—See Idolatry, 216-219; Images, 219, 220; Ten Kingdoms.SBBS 457.4

Romulus Augustulus.—See Rome, 438, 451.SBBS 457.5

Rule of Faith, Protestant View of.—The Old Protestant doctrinal position was, that the one source and norm of Christian teaching is the Word of God, which is contained in the prophetic and apostolical books of the Old and New Testaments. These books, therefore, have always been looked upon by the church of all lands and ages as canonical books and as the unequivocal and exclusive record of the revelations of God.—“Modernism and the Reformation,” John Benjamin Rust, Ph. D., D. D., pp. 43, 44. New York: Fleming H. Revell Company.SBBS 457.6

Rule of Faith, Roman Catholic View of.—The Catholic rule of faith, as I stated before, is not merely the written Word of God, but the whole word of God, both written and unwritten; in other words, Scripture and tradition, and these propounded and explained by the Catholic Church. This implies that we have a twofold rule or law, and that we have an interpreter, or judge, to explain it, and to decide upon it in all doubtful points.—“The End of Religious Controversy,” Rev. John Milner, D. D. (R. C.), p. 61, New York: P. J. Kenedy.SBBS 457.7

The whole business of the Scriptures belongs to the church. She has preserved them, she vouches for them, and she alone, by confronting the several passages with each other, and with tradition, authoritatively explains them. Hence it is impossible that the real sense of Scripture should ever be against her and her doctrine; and hence, of course, I might quash every objection which you can draw from any passage in it by this short reply: The church understands the passage differently from you: therefore you mistake its meaning.—Id., p. 85.SBBS 457.8

Rule of Faith.—See Bible, citations from Confessions of Faith, 76-78.SBBS 457.9

Russia, Religious Liberty in.—See Advent, Second, 25.SBBS 457.10