identify it with what comes after, as the beast out of the bottomless pit, &c. There was a further point. The prophet could look at external events, and describe them; but here, though the taste of the knowledge of this was sweet, yet, when he saw what it really conveyed, when he digested it, when the sympathies of his own soul were concerned in it, painful and trying things concerning the position and ruin-state of the Church[1] were involved in it. Disorder and evil, and departure from God, and trial, connected with this in the saints. Ah! it was bitter in his belly. This term is ever used for the affections and inward thoughts of the man. Therefore, in the Church, the Holy Ghost is said to flow from the belly of the believer, because, it is not merely a communication of known events, but the Spirit, as an earnest of what belongs to ourselves, and therefore filling the soul; and, from our own association with the age the joy and testimony flow forth.
- ↑ In the crisis, rather the apostate results of what was nominally the Church.
In the seals the Lamb is concerned, and the saints are still liable to persecution; the trumpets are providential judgments on the evil, in which the saints are not found (often by wicked men on one another, as in Jewish history); then comes the display of the open enemies of the Lord Jesus Christ and their judgment, and in their full character, by the Son of Man himself.
