Commentary on Revelation & Paul 22 part 2/5

Furthermore, in saying that Christ's garment was sprinkled with blood, the tokens of his passion are described, whether in the head itself or in the body which is the Church. Hence the Apostle teaches to the Hebrews (Heb. 9) that from the beginning remission of sins was not celebrated without blood in those legal sacrifices of beasts. Concerning the Church too he says (Coloss. 1), 'That I may fill up those things which are wanting of the sufferings of Christ in my flesh,' mindful of the voice he had heard (Acts 9): 'Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?' For whatever the Church suffers, Christ is truly said to suffer. Of whom the same Apostle says (Heb. 9): 'He was offered once to exhaust the sins of many.' The habit of this garment Isaiah too recalls thus (Isa. 63): 'Who is this that comes from Edom,

with dyed garments from Bozrah? This one, beautiful in his robe, walking in the greatness of his strength. It is I who speak justice, and am a defender to save.' 'Why then is your clothing red, and your garments like those of them that tread in the winepress? I have trodden the winepress alone, and of the nations there is no man with me,' etc. 'And the armies that are in heaven were following him upon white horses.' In heaven, in the Church, as though with unveiled face beholding the glory of the Lord (2 Cor. 3). All the pure in heart, whitened by grace above the snow (Ps. 51), are said to follow Christ.

'He was clothed in fine linen, white and clean,' which above it defined to be the justices of the saints, by which, when they each impart their own, they subject both body and soul to God; 'upon white horses,' that is, they ever go forward pure in body and mind, going before [the text may add: and] following the footsteps of Christ, to whom it is said in the Song of Songs (Cant. 1): 'After you we will run to the odour of your ointments.' 'And out of his mouth went a sword sharp on both sides, that with it he might strike the nations, and he shall rule them with a rod of iron.' Sharpened on both sides signifies either the edge of the twin Testament, or what we read of Wisdom (Prov. 31): 'She carries the law and mercy on her tongue,' as it were judgement and mercy.

The rod of iron is thence the unchangeable rectitude of justice, and he himself trod the winepress of the wine of the wrath of God the great and almighty. Just as, when threshing comes, the grain stripped of its chaff is stored up in barns, so in the winepress, when the weight of pressure is applied, either the wine is drawn off from the husks or the oil from the dregs, discerningly, after the usual manner. This the prophet, describing it of the vineyard, says (Isa. 5): 'And I dug a winepress in it.' This happens in the Church when, either by the persecution wrung out by adversity, or by the occasion of some calamity taken away, some fall like dregs, headlong in an irremediable collapse, while others shine more brightly in commendable worship. He has also on his garment and on his thigh a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords.

'On his garment,' that is, on the Church which Christ has put on, which, according to the Apostle (Ephes. 5), he cleansed by the washing of water in the word, that he might present the Church to himself glorious, having neither spot nor wrinkle. For as a garment is cleansed lest it incur a spot, so it is stretched out lest it contract a wrinkle. But by his thigh also the posterity of his seed is signified, in which all nations shall be blessed, according to the Apostle who teaches (Gal. 3): 'He did not say, and to his seeds, as of many, but as of one, and to your seed, which is Christ.' To him, as to a deceased brother, according to the law of ancient custom (Deut. 25), the same Apostle, spiritually raising up seed, says (1 Cor. 1):

'Lest anyone say that you were baptised in my name,' since from Jerusalem even to Illyricum he says he had filled all things with the Gospel (Rom. 15), to which nations he might truly say (1 Cor. 4), 'In Christ Jesus, through the Gospel, I have begotten you.' In this thigh, then, as in propagated sons, the knowledge of Christ is written, not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tables of stone but on the fleshly tables of the heart (2 Cor. 3). Who, when they confess him King of kings and Lord of all lords (1 Tim. 6), to these believers in him is this inscription of the thigh reputed, and they shall be blessed with faithful Abraham. 'And I saw one angel standing in the sun.' He calls the angel the preaching Church. Rightly indeed he added 'one.'

'For my dove is one' (Cant. 6), on account of the mystery of unity to be preserved; 'in the sun,' where it may now shine forth and no longer lie hidden through fear. 'And he cried with a loud voice.' In the loud voice is to be understood the liberty of great confidence, 'saying to all the birds of heaven.' Birds, according to the qualities of the places, are sometimes understood as evil, sometimes as good. Here indeed, just as a while ago (above, ch. 8) the appearance of a flying eagle is introduced, so now the spiritual are invited to the supper. Of which it was said to Peter, who bore the figure of the present Church (Acts 10): 'Kill and eat,' when those things are slain which they had been, that they might become what he himself is, that is, better, and passing into the body they are planted together as members of the Church of Christ and reign together.

For whatever we eat, we transfer into our own body. 'Come,' he says, 'to the great supper of God, that you may eat the flesh of kings, and the flesh of tribunes, and the flesh of the mighty, and the flesh of horses, and of those who sit upon them, and the flesh of all, free and bond, small and great.' By the horses and those who sit upon them can be understood the leaders, in that the Church receives converts even from the number of those who by their error and by the deceits of those whom they were seducing beforehand; the free who hold to celibacy, the bond who are married, the small, the mixed and ignoble common crowd, the great, either philosophers, or those exalted by birth or by means.

'And I saw the beast,' that is, the devil, 'and the kings of the earth, and their armies gathered together to make war against him who sat upon the white horse, and against his army,' that is, against Christ and the Church. Since the exposition of similar passages has been set forth, this passage too can be recognised. 'And the beast was taken, and with it the false prophet,' the devil and Antichrist, or the leaders and his whole body, 'who wrought signs before it, wherewith he seduced them that were led to adore the image of the beast, and who received its mark. These two were cast alive into the pool of fire burning with fire and brimstone.' Two, the head and body of the devil and his fellowship, by an anticipated narrative; for this was yet to come in the last time.

'And the rest were slain by the sword of him who sat upon the white horse, which sword proceeded out of his mouth.' He divided one body into parts, wishing to show that those also were long since dead whom the second coming of Christ shall find living, as we read (2 Thess. 2): 'Whom the Lord Jesus shall slay with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming.' 'And all the birds were filled with their flesh.'

We ought not to be so carnal in understanding as to believe that the saints, as those seeking higher things, are sated with the flesh of the impious; but rather, when the divine equity of judgement is revealed to the saints, whereby, redeeming the fullness of the elect, he has decreed the rest to be condemned, they are said to be sated with the knowledge of this justice, which one may hunger and thirst for in this life (Matt. 5), yet not perfectly comprehend. For Isaiah too, speaking of the impious at God's bidding (Isa. 66), says, 'And they shall go out, even to the satiety of the sight, unto all flesh.' This satiety of the birds, set forth here, I think is to be placed here. For the Apostle too confesses that here he has not yet perfectly attained, saying (Philipp. 3):

'Not that I have already attained, or am already perfect, but I follow after, if I may by any means comprehend that in which I am also comprehended by Christ.' They will therefore not rejoice at the condemnation of these, but rather that, sated with the light of divine justice, they now rejoice. Otherwise, the birds can also be understood in an evil sense as the transgressor angels, who, when they have led their followers to destruction, are thus said, their evil desire being fulfilled, to be sated with the flesh of the lost, seizing satiety from the condemnation of those to whom they had offered themselves as authors of error. Chapter 20. 'And I saw a strong angel coming down from heaven, having the key of the abyss and a great chain in his hand. And he laid hold of that dragon, the old serpent,

which is called the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years.' By the angel coming down from heaven we understand our Lord Jesus Christ, who is called the Angel of great counsel (Isa. 9), and who, visiting the region of mortals, being stronger, willed to bind the strong one, that of the vessels which had once been of wrath he might make vessels of mercy, accomplishing this by his work which he had before promised by his preaching: 'No one,' he says (Matt. 12; Mark 3; Luke 11), 'can enter into the house of the strong one and spoil his vessels, unless he first bind the strong one,' that is, the devil. The key of the abyss is the depth of the divine judgements. For the judgements of God are a great abyss (Ps. 36).

For it is known to him alone, who from the multitude of sinners calls down into the fullness of those who understand. Hence elsewhere we read, 'You who have shut up the abyss and sealed it over him.' Now he is said to have bound the devil with chains in this respect: that, restraining his power over those men who were to be freed from being seduced, he curbed him.

Now the thousand years can be understood in two ways: either because this matter is carried on through many years, a thousand, that is, in the sixth millennium of years, however long it may be prolonged until the end of the world, whose later spans are now unrolling, with the Sabbath which has no evening to follow thereafter, namely the rest of the saints which has no end, so that he calls the last part of this millennium, which will remain until the end of the world, a thousand years, by that manner of speaking whereby a part is signified for the whole; or else he has put a thousand years for all the years of this world, that by the perfect number the very fullness of time might be marked. For the number one thousand yields a solid square of the number ten.

For ten multiplied ten times makes a hundred, which is now a square figure, but not yet full; but that it may rise into height and become solid, again the hundred is multiplied ten times, and they are a thousand. Nor is that ill understood which is read in the psalm (Ps. 105): 'He was mindful of his covenant for ever, of the word which he commanded unto a thousand generations,' that is, all. 'And he cast him,' he says, 'into the abyss.' Assuredly he cast the devil into the abyss, by which name is signified the innumerable multitude of the impious, whose hearts, in their malignity against the Church of God, are very deep. Not that the devil was not there before, but he is said to have been cast thither because, shut out from believers, he began to possess the impious the more.

For he is the more possessed by the devil, who is not only alienated from God, but even hates without cause those who serve God. 'And he shut and sealed over him, that he might no more seduce the nations, until the thousand years be finished.' 'He shut over him,' he says, that is, he forbade him lest he should presume to transgress the boundary any further. But that he added 'he sealed,' seems to me to have signified this: that he willed it to be hidden who pertain to the party of the devil and who do not. For some of the stable fall away, and some of the reprobate, made certain, are saved, pricked to a fruitful conversion. But from seducing those nations the devil is prohibited and restrained by the bond and enclosure of this interdict, whom, as pertaining to Christ, he formerly seduced or held.

For these God chose before the foundation of the world to rescue from the power of darkness and to translate into the kingdom of the Son of his love, as the Apostle says (Eph. 1). That the devil even now seduces the nations, and drags with himself into eternal punishment, but not those predestined to eternal life, what faithful person is ignorant? For 'the Lord knows those who are his' (2 Tim. 2). Of these he seduces no one into eternal damnation. For to this end the devil is bound and enclosed in the abyss: that he may no longer seduce the nations of which the Church consists, whom he formerly held as seduced before they were the Church. For it was not said, that he might no longer seduce anyone, but 'that he might no longer seduce,' he says, 'the nations,' in which he doubtless willed the Church to be understood.

'Until the thousand years be finished,' he says, that is, either what remained of the sixth day, which consists of a thousand years, or all the years through which this world is thereafter to be carried out. But he set 'until' thus, not because he is afterwards to seduce those nations at least of which the predestined Church consists, from seducing whom he is prohibited by that bond and pure enclosure, as has already been said in that manner of speech. So too in the psalm (Ps. 123): 'As our eyes are unto the Lord our God, until he have mercy on us.' For not when he shall have had mercy are the eyes of his servants to be thought no longer to be unto God; or else this is the order of the words:

'And he shut and sealed over him until the thousand years be finished, that he might no more seduce the nations,' that is, for this reason he shut, until the thousand years be finished, that he might no more seduce the nations. 'After these things,' he says, 'he must be loosed for a short time.' If this is for the devil to be bound and enclosed, the Church's being unable to be seduced, then this will be his loosing, that he may be able to? Far be it. For never is the Church seduced by him, being predestined and elect before the foundation of the world (Ephes. 1), of which it is said (2 Tim. 2): 'The Lord knows those who are his.' But the binding of the devil is his not being permitted to exercise the whole temptation which he could, either by force or by guile, to seduce men into his party, whether by violently compelling or by deceiving.

For if this were permitted, in so long a time and amid the great weakness of many he would cast down very many such as God does not will to endure this, even faithful ones; and for this reason he is bound. But then he shall be loosed, when the time shall also be short. For he is read to be about to rage for three years and six months with all his own strength and that of his followers, and such shall they be with whom the war is to be waged, that they cannot be conquered by his so great onslaught and snares. But if he were never loosed, his malignant power would be less apparent, the most faithful patience of the holy city would be less proved, and finally it would be less discerned with how great an evil of his the omnipotent God has made such good use.

Now this binding of the devil was not only accomplished from the time the Church began to be spread beyond the land of Judaea into other nations, but it is also being accomplished now and will be until the end of the world, at which he is to be loosed; because even now, when men, from the unbelief in which he possessed them, are converted to the faith, that strong one is indeed bound, when his vessels are snatched from him (Matt. 12; Mark 3; Luke 11). 'And I saw,' he says, 'seats in a vision, and those sitting upon them, and judgement was given to them.' When he had said that the devil, bound for a thousand years, was deprived of his wonted power to seduce, and had foretold that his loosing would be for a short time, then, recapitulating what the Church does during these thousand years, or what is done in her, he said:

'And I saw seats and those sitting upon them, and judgement was given to them.' This is not to be thought of the last judgement, but rather to be understood of the governance of the leaders through whom the Church is now ruled by those presiding, which from her King has merited to hear the commendable sanction: 'Whatever you shall bind on earth shall be bound also in heaven; and whatever you shall loose on earth shall be loosed also in heaven' (Matt. 16). Whence the Apostle (1 Cor. 5): 'For what is it to me,' he says, 'to judge those who are without? Do you not judge those who are within?' 'And the souls,' he says, 'of those slain for the testimony of Jesus, and for the word of God.'

There is understood what he is afterwards to say here, 'they shall reign with Jesus a thousand years,' namely the souls of the martyrs, not yet restored to their own bodies; for neither are the souls of the pious dead separated from the Church, which even now is the kingdom of Christ; otherwise their memory would not be made at the altar of Christ in the communion of the body of Christ. Although, therefore, not yet with their own bodies, yet already their souls reign with him, while these thousand years run their course. Whence in this book it is said (above, ch. 14): 'Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord.' The Church therefore now reigns with Christ first among the living and the dead. For therefore, as the Apostle says (Rom. 14), 'Christ died, that he might have dominion over both the living and the dead.'

But for this reason he commemorated only the souls of the martyrs, because they especially reign after death, who strove even unto death for the truth. But by the part standing for the whole we shall understand also the other dead who pertain to the Church, which is the kingdom of Christ. As for what follows, 'And those who did not adore the beast nor its image, nor received its inscription on the forehead or on their hand,' we ought to take it of both the living and the dead alike. But what this beast is, which he has bidden, must be more diligently inquired into;

yet it does not shrink from right faith that the impious city itself be understood, and the people of the unbelievers opposed to the faithful people and to the city of God; and its image, its simulation, seems to me to be in all those, namely, who as it were profess the faith and live unfaithfully. For they feign themselves to be what they are not; they are called Christians by a true likeness but a false image, for they pertain to that same beast. Not only the open enemies of the name of Christ and of his most glorious city, but also the tares which are to be gathered out of his kingdom, which is the Church, at the end of the world. And who are they that do not adore the beast nor its image, except those who do what the Apostle says (2 Cor. 6): 'Be not you a yoke drawing together with unbelievers'?

For they do not adore, that is, they do not consent, they do not submit themselves. Nor do they receive the inscription, namely the mark of crime on the forehead on account of profession, on the hand on account of operation. Estranged, therefore, from these evils, whether still living in this mortal flesh or deceased, they reign with Christ even now in a certain way suited to this time, throughout this whole interval which is signified by the number of a thousand years. 'The rest of them did not live,' he says. For 'the hour is now, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God' (John 5), 'and those who hear shall live.' The rest of them, therefore, shall not live.

But as for what he added, 'until the thousand years be finished,' it is to be understood that during that time they did not live in which they ought to have lived, namely by passing from death to life; and therefore, when the day shall come on which the resurrection also of the bodies shall take place, they shall come forth from the tombs not to life but to judgement, namely to condemnation, which is called the second death. For 'until the thousand years be finished,' whoever did not live, that is, throughout all that time in which the first resurrection is being enacted, and did not hear the voice of the Son of God so as to pass from death to life, shall surely, in the second resurrection which is of the flesh, pass with that same flesh into the second death. For it follows and says: 'This is the first resurrection.'

'Blessed and holy is he who has part in this first resurrection.' That is, who has been a partaker of it. And he is a partaker of it who not only revives from the death in which he is in sins, but also abides in that in which he has revived. 'In these,' he says, 'the second death has no power.' It has power, therefore, in the rest, of whom above he said: 'The rest of them did not live, until the thousand years be finished,' since throughout that whole interval of time which he calls a thousand years, however long each of them may have lived in the body, he did not revive from death. But when he had said, 'in these the second death has no power,' he added, saying:

'They sat as priests of God and of Christ, and they shall reign with him a thousand years.' This is certainly not said of bishops and presbyters alone, but just as we call all Christs on account of the mystical chrism, so all priests, since all are members of the one Priest; of whom the apostle Peter says: 'A holy nation,' he says (1 Pet. 2), 'a royal priesthood.' 'And when the thousand years shall be finished,' he says, 'Satan shall be loosed from his prison, and shall go out to seduce the nations which are in the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, and shall draw them into battle, whose number is as the sand of the sea.' To this end, therefore, he then seduces, that he may draw them into battle: for before too, by the means he could, he seduced them through many and various evils.

But 'he went out,' it is said, into open persecution, that he might burst out from the sides of hatreds in a last persecution, at the judgement; therefore before the whole Church and the cities of Christ shall suffer from the whole city of the devil, however great each shall be upon the earth. Now these nations, Gog and Magog, some suspect to be the Getae and Massagetae, on account of the first letters of these names. But attending to the interpretation of the names, we recognise a better sense to be fitted to them. For Gog is said to mean 'roof,' Magog 'from the roof,' as it were a house and he himself who proceeds from the house.

The nations, therefore, are those in which we above understood the devil to be enclosed as in an abyss, and he himself in a manner raising himself up out of them and proceeding forth, so that they are the roof, he from the roof. But if we refer both to the nations, not one of them to those and the other to the devil, then they are both the roof, because in them the enemy is now enclosed and covered, and they will be 'from the roof' when they shall break out into open hatred. But as for what he says:

'And they went up over the breadth of the earth, and encompassed the camp of the saints and the beloved city,' they are certainly not signified to have come or to be about to come to one place, as though the camp of the saints and the beloved city were to be in some one place, since this is nothing other than the Church of Christ, diffused throughout the whole globe of lands. And through this, wherever the Church shall then be—which shall be in all nations, which is signified by the name of the breadth of the earth—where the camp of the saints shall be, there the city beloved by God shall be, there by all her enemies she shall be encompassed with the savagery of that persecution, that is, in the straits of tribulation she shall be pressed, urged, shut in: nor does she desert her warfare, which is designated by the term 'camp.' But as for what he says:

'And fire came down from heaven and devoured them,' it is not to be thought that this is the final punishment by which we know the impious are to be tormented (Matt. 25), but rather the fire of envy by which the adversary shall be tormented at the firmness of the saints; for it is the firmament, whence, because stability comes to the saints from thence, deservedly fire too is said to come thence upon the persecutors. Hence we read, 'Zeal took hold of the untaught people, and now fire shall consume the adversaries.' This last persecution, which is to be from Antichrist for three years and six months, shall be.

Whether this time, though brief, pertains to the thousand years in which he says both that the devil is bound and that the saints reign with Christ, or whether this small span is superadded to those same years and lies outside them, is with reason doubted: because if we say it pertains to those same years, the reign of the saints with Christ will be found extended for not so long a time, but a longer one, than the devil is bound. For assuredly the saints with their King shall reign, especially in that very persecution, conquering such great evils, when the devil shall no longer be bound, so as to be able to persecute them with all his strength.

How, then, does this Scripture determine both things—namely the binding of the devil and the reign of the saints—by the same thousand years, when by an interval of three years and six months the binding of the devil is designated to end earlier than the reign of the saints with Christ within these thousand years? But if we say that this small span of persecution is not to be reckoned within the thousand years, but rather to be added when they are completed, then it can be properly understood. For when he had said, 'priests of God and of Christ, and they shall reign with him a thousand years,' he added: 'And when the thousand years shall be finished, Satan shall be loosed from his prison.' For in this way he signifies that both the reign of the saints and the bond of the devil shall cease together.

Whence, if it be believed that the time of that persecution pertains neither to the reign of the saints nor to the custody of Satan—both of which are within the thousand years—but is superadded and to be reckoned outside, we are compelled to confess that the saints in that persecution shall not reign with Christ; but who would dare to say that then his members shall not reign with him, when they shall cleave to him most greatly and most strongly, and at the time when, the greater the onslaught of war shall be, the greater shall be the glory of not yielding, the denser the crown of martyrdom! Wherefore the years of the saints reigning with Christ were more than those of the bond and custody of the devil, because they, with their King the Son of God, the devil now being no longer bound, shall reign even through those three years and a half.

It remains, therefore, that when we hear 'the priests of God and of Christ shall reign with him a thousand years, and when the thousand years are finished Satan shall be loosed from his custody,' we should understand either that these thousand years belong not to the reign of the saints but to the binding and custody of the devil; or that the thousand years — that is, all their respective years — are to be reckoned by each part with differing and proper durations, longer for the reign of the saints and shorter for the binding of the devil; or else that Scripture was unwilling to reckon the very brief span of three years and six months, either because the reign of the saints seems to be somewhat longer, as we often find such things in the sacred writings.

After this mention of the last persecution, he briefly embraces the whole of what the devil, together with his prince, the hostile city, is to suffer in the final judgement. For he says: 'And the devil who seduced them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where both the beast and the false prophet shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever.' The beast is rightly understood to be that impious city itself, while the false prophet is either its Antichrist, or that image — that is, the fabrication of which he here spoke: 'And I saw,' he says, 'a great and white throne, and one sitting upon it, from whose face heaven and earth fled away, and their place was not found.' He says that he saw seated on the throne one from whose face heaven and earth fled.