These are they built upon the rock (Luke 6), who, while others fall by the earthquake—that is, by persecution—out of the uprightness of their own stability glorify God by confession. The recapitulation being finished, which he had inserted while passing over the seventh angel, he resumes the order, saying: 'The second woe is past, and behold the third woe cometh quickly.' For he had said, the battle of the locusts being finished, that the one woe was past, and he says the other two are coming, lest he should be thought to describe the third at once, since it had to be recapitulated. Now, that recapitulation being finished, 'the second woe,' he says, 'is past'—not of the recapitulation, but of the horses; and having described these, he had not rendered the woe. Therefore 'the second woe is past' is of the horses, upon which follows the third woe. 'And the seventh angel,' in whom is the end:
hence there seem to be two ends: one of the recapitulation, the other of the order. For he speaks of the end in the resurrection as the third, and he announces another, which was owed to the battle, saying: 'The second woe is past, and behold the third woe cometh quickly.' 'And the seventh angel sounded the trumpet, and there were great voices in heaven, saying: The kingdom of our God and of His Christ is come, and He shall reign forever and ever. And the four and twenty elders, who sit in the sight of God upon their seats, fell upon their faces and adored God, saying: We give thanks to Thee, O Lord God Almighty, who art and who wast, because Thou hast received Thy great power, and hast reigned.'
'And the nations were angry, and Thy wrath is come, and the time of the dead to be judged, and to render reward to Thy servants the prophets, and to them that fear Thy name, small and great, and to destroy those who have corrupted the earth.' Concerning the elders it will be enough and more than enough that what has already been set forth be understood as to what is to be meant. But now he has commemorated the beginning and the end of Christ's dispensation: for by saying 'Thou hast reigned' and 'the nations were angry,' he shows first the coming of Christ.
But what follows, 'Thy wrath is come and the time of the dead,' or, as another translation has it, 'that the dead should be judged,' shows the second coming, when both the saints and the prophets and those fearing His name receive their reward, small and great, perfect and little, because 'my imperfect being,' he says, 'Thine eyes have seen, and in Thy book all shall be written' (Ps. 138). And lest the wicked should promise themselves impunity, he added: 'And to destroy those who had corrupted the earth,' as the psalm says (Ps. 33): 'But the countenance of the Lord is upon them that do evil.' 'Behold,' he says, 'the third woe comes in the voice of the seventh angel';
and when he had sounded, he named none but the Church praising the Lord and giving thanks; whence we understand that the reward of the good is not without the woe of the wicked. Hence the psalm (Ps. 2): 'When His wrath shall suddenly be kindled'—surely upon the wicked—'blessed are all they that trust in Him.' So now also the Church herself says: 'Thy wrath is come and the time of the dead to be judged, and to give reward to Thy servants,' etc. This is the last woe. The Lord's bodily nativity having indeed been recapitulated, He intimates that He is about to speak the same things in another and fuller manner. 'And the temple of God was opened in heaven'—that is, the Church. The temple of God can be understood as the body of Christ. Whence the same Lord: 'Destroy,' He says (John 2), 'this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.'
Otherwise, here under a manifold variety of significations a certain understanding can be traced out, so that each thing, more aptly rendered to its own property, may be more clearly recognized. For since the ark for the most part signifies the Church, here in the temple the ark of the covenant admonished that something more profound must be understood; and by saying also 'in heaven,' he persuades us to penetrate something secret, so that this be the meaning: the temple is the Church; the ark of the covenant is the mystery of the incarnation of Christ, who bore within Himself the tables of the covenant unto the death of that ark, who had come not to abolish the law but to fulfill it (Matt. 5). 'For as many as are the promises of God,' says the Apostle (2 Cor. 1), 'in Him they are.' 'And having a golden urn with manna' (Heb. 9): because the spiritual...
...within the body He bears spiritual food, an understanding adorned with the splendor of wisdom, to be dispensed to others. 'For it is the bread of God, which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world' (John 6). 'And the rod of Aaron,' in that, singularly begotten by a new birth from an inviolate virgin, within the covering of flesh, after the manner of an almond, He is related to have hidden within Himself all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Col. 2). Hence the psalm: 'Arise, O Lord, into Thy rest, Thou and the ark of Thy sanctification,' and the rest which harmonize with the same sense. For thus God promises through Jeremiah that the ark of the covenant shall be abolished from the hearts of men—that one, surely, of the Hebrews—and that Jerusalem, that is the Church, shall be called the throne of the Lord, saying:
'When you shall be multiplied and shall increase upon the earth, saith the Lord, they shall say no more, The ark of the covenant of the Lord, neither shall it come upon the heart. In those days and in that time they shall call Jerusalem the throne of the Lord, and all nations shall be gathered to it in the name of the Lord' (Jer. 3). 'And there were lightnings and voices and thunders and an earthquake and great hail.' The lightnings are the powers by which Christ the Lord made His disciples to shine. The voices and thunders are the preachings by which the apostles, like clouds, thundered upon the peoples. The earthquake is the uproar, the agitation of the peoples, who often stirred up persecutions against the growing Church. Hail, dashed against the waves, always harms itself the more by being broken, and by laying waste it crumbles itself to pieces.
So too the savage multitude of the gentiles, which persecuted the faith of Christ, afterward, by following Him, was made in number either small or none. These things he had said were done in the description of the preaching of the seven angels, from the very coming of the Lord, and generally from the beginning to the end; then, by parts, how they were done, so now also that the temple of God is opened in heaven, and the battles that followed, saying: 'Chapter 12. A great sign was seen in heaven.' Which now also is seen in the Church—that is, that the human nature is joined to the wisdom of God by the working of the Holy Spirit, and that of both is made one and the same Christ, mediator of God and men, and that this is preached and believed; He Himself saying (John 2):
'Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up'; and the evangelist: 'But He spoke of the temple of His body.' 'A woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet.' It has often been said that a genus is divided into many species, which are one; for what is heaven, this is the temple in heaven, this is the woman clothed with the sun and the moon under her feet—that is, the Church clothed with Christ, for love of Him trampling all mutable things. For she is not carried away by these mutable things, who, cleaving to the stable good, truly says (Ps. 72): 'But for me it is good to be joined to God.' These are the voices which we read concerning the Church (Cant. 6): 'Fair as the sun, perfect as the moon'; and again:
'Established forever like the moon, and a faithful witness in heaven' (Ps. 88). He speaks indeed of the Church as sojourning; otherwise, after the human nativity of Christ we saw many opinions of heretics, and those false, brought forth. For concerning this temple one thing Valentinus, another Bardesanes, another Apollinaris, another Nestorius, another Eutyches, another Timothy Hilarus—heresiarchs—as it pleased them to lie, have said, so that, as truth arose from the earth and battles followed, whence the orthodox and faithful acquire a reward, thence the heretics, thinking evilly of Christ's incarnation, incur the punishment of eternal damnation. Hence we recall what was said of Him by Simeon in the Gospel (Luke 2):
'Behold, this one is set for the ruin and for the resurrection of many in Israel, and for a sign which shall be contradicted.' 'And upon His head a crown of twelve stars'—that is, of the Church; by the number twelve of the apostles he says that the beginnings of the Church, soon to be founded, are adorned. Hence the psalm says (Ps. 20): 'Thou hast set upon His head a crown of precious stone.' 'And she was with child'—in mind, not in belly—'and cried out.' In the valley of prayer, groaning, she brings forth those whom she travails with; and those already born she does not cease to travail with. Hence the Apostle (Gal. 4): 'My little children,' he says, 'of whom I am again in travail, until Christ be formed in you.'
'And another sign was seen in heaven, and behold a great red dragon'—bloody indeed and savage—'having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his heads seven diadems.' The seven heads are seven kings, and the horns are kingdoms, concerning which there must be a fuller disputation in its place; 'and his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and cast them to the earth.' The tail: the false prophets are they through whom the enemy fills up his wickedness. Hence Isaiah says (Isa. 9): 'The prophet teaching a lie, he is the tail.' Those who cling to their teachings are said to be cast down to the earth.
Moreover, the third part of the stars of heaven—this recalls the whole body of the wicked, whether in the angels whom he dragged down from heaven with himself in equal ruin, or in the men whom he seduced. But 'stars' are those whom the devil makes reprobate out of the good. 'And the dragon stood in the sight of the woman who was about to bring forth, that when she had brought forth he might devour her offspring.' That is, the treacherous devil strives to slay in the Church the new man, who is created according to God, and in whom we are renewed in the spirit of our mind in the justice and holiness of truth (Eph. 4), when in each one of the faithful he craftily endeavors to overwhelm his rising up or to extinguish his progress.
This too we recall to have happened in the case of one heretic, who is read to have smothered his own son unto death by lethal drowsiness, in whom the nativity of that life, in which we are commanded to walk, is prophetically figured to be slain. And he is said to have stood in the sight of the woman, since 'she,' He says, 'shall observe thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel' (Gen. 3). 'And she brought forth a male child, who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron.' Therefore a male, because we know that victory is owed by right to the male sex as the superior. Rightly here the head of the Church, Christ, is said to be born in the individual members, He who is known to hold the sovereignty. For He Himself is the author and consummator of faith, in whom we shall do valiantly.
'With a rod of iron'—that is, in inflexible justice. He shall rule, in the good; He shall shatter, in the wicked. Which is fitted also to His Church as to a body and a head. 'For all of you,' he says, 'who have been baptized in Christ Jesus, have put on Christ' (Gal. 3); and, 'They shall be two in one flesh.' Which is to be understood in Christ, says the Apostle, and in the Church (Eph. 5). 'Her son was caught up to God and to His throne.' Although in the head, Christ, it went before—He who, the dispensation being accomplished, ascended to the Father—yet it agrees also with the body. Hence are those voices of the Apostle (Eph. 2): 'Who raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places'; and (Phil. 3): 'Our conversation is in heaven'; and (Col. 3):
'If you are risen with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God.' But if you wish to take it also specially of the person of Christ, excepting the torment which it is not to be believed that Blessed Mary had in the birth—she whom we know to have contracted no sin of concupiscence in the conception—you may rightly fit the rest, if we recognize the snares of the red dragon, the persecutions which Christ endured from His very cradle at the hands of Herod (Matt. 2); and thereafter He willed to undergo even unto the death of the cross; and when, gaping, the dragon had sought His death, being frustrated of His resurrection, he groaned that He was caught up to the throne of God, that is, to the right hand of the Father.
'And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, that there he should nourish her, for a thousand two hundred and sixty days.' By the wilderness he sets the pilgrimage of this life, in which, with the singular hope of blessed reward, the Church lives 'as a solitary sparrow' (Ps. 101), she who received from her king the power of treading upon serpents (Mark 16; Luke 10) and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, now the red dragon: for even the people of Israel, led through the desert (Num. 21), by the sight of the bronze serpent were able to overcome the fiery serpents. 'For all these things,' says the Apostle (1 Cor. 10), 'were done as a figure of us'; and as He fed them with visible manna, so now He feeds the Church with heavenly bread.
But she has a prepared place, of which the prophet says (Ps. 83): 'In the place which He has appointed'; and which 'neither eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor has it ascended into the heart of man' (1 Cor. 2)—because the heart of man ought to ascend thither, the mutual peace of human speech compelling it, he was able to bring forth both 'the appointed place' and 'the prepared place,' since he had before premised, saying (Ps. 83): 'Blessed is the man whose help is from Thee, O Lord; he has appointed ascents in his heart, in the valley of tears, into the place which he has appointed.' For the same is both a place of refuge for pilgrims, and food of refreshment for hungering servants, which is promised as a reward to those who shall reign. These things, therefore, which God has prepared, as the Apostle says (1 Cor.
2), for those who love Him: 'To us,' he says, 'God has revealed by His Spirit,' by whom alone revealing, blessed John too was able to penetrate these deep things; and by this very number of days, which make three years and six months, he signifies here too all the times of Christianity, from the time when the preaching of Christ began, and, bearing fruit, grows unto the end. 'And there was a battle in heaven: Michael and his angels, that they should fight with the dragon,' etc. Here it is not to be thought that the angels of God dared to make war in heaven, since not even Job could be tempted here except by God's permission (Job 1). But heaven here more manifestly declared the Church, where against the wickednesses of the spiritual powers there is a continual struggle by each of the faithful. Hence the Apostle (Eph. 6):
'Our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, and against the rulers of the world of these darknesses.' But therefore he here says that Michael with his angels contends against the devil, because, according to his will, by praying for the sojourning Church and ministering help, he is rightly understood to contend on her behalf. 'Are they not all,' says the Apostle (Heb. 1), 'ministering spirits, sent to minister for the sake of those who receive the inheritance of eternal salvation?' For even the name Michael itself is said to be interpreted 'the help of God,' and fittingly this work is specially assigned to him. For Daniel too said that he would come to the help of the Church in the last tribulation.
'In that time,' he says (Dan. 12), 'shall Michael rise up, the great prince, who stands for the sons of thy people; and there shall come a time such as has not been from the time that nations began to be, until that time. And in that time thy people shall be saved, everyone who shall be found written in the book.' But that they are said to be 'his angels,' he here used that manner of speech by which we read (Matt. 18): 'For their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father who is in heaven'—namely of those who have begun to be citizens by believing in Christ, as also here 'his angels': because they are believed to be governed by one presiding king, and beatified by one life-giving Spirit.
'And the dragon fought and his angels, and they prevailed not, neither was their place found any more in heaven.' The devil and his angels are to be understood, who are like him in nature and will, but also the men who, ensnared in their nooses, have been followers of such. For according to the qualities of the wills, it was said both of the devil, 'An evil man has done this' (Matt. 13), and of Judas, 'he is a devil' (John 6). The body being indeed bipartite, the devil is delivered up in his own; and he is said to be expelled, vanquished, by those who, after renouncing him, having received the faith of Christ, no longer return to his errors, but in them charity perseveres 'out of a pure heart and a good conscience and faith unfeigned' (1 Tim. 1);
or when the Church, now separated from all admixture of the wicked and glorified in future blessedness, no place shall any more be granted to the devil and his angels either for seducing the wicked or for testing the good. Whence the psalm, marking him, says (Ps. 36): 'I passed by, and behold he was not; and I sought him, and his place was not found.' 'And that dragon was cast out, the great and ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, who seduces the whole world; he was cast into the earth, and his angels were cast with him into the earth.' Here they that are wise in earthly things are given to be understood, in whom, that opinion prevailing, the devil is recognized to dwell. 'Earth shalt thou eat all the days of thy life' (Gen. 3).
For, being excluded from the spiritual, by his own merits he invades the earthly who are fit for him—this is to be cast down from heaven and sent into the earth. 'And I heard a great voice in heaven saying: Now is come salvation and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of His Christ.' It is evidently shown in what heaven it befits us to understand these things. For in the Church we know the salvation of Christ's victory was wrought, through which, being recognized, she also received the power of binding things loosed and of loosing things bound, when in Peter alone, by a general signification, all heard: 'Whatsoever thou shalt bind upon earth shall be bound also in heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose shall be loosed' (Matt. 16). Of this the Lord says (Matt. 28):
'All power is given to me in heaven and in earth'—not that which He always Himself had, but that which He began to have in the Church, from the time when He willed, as the head in the members. 'Because the accuser of our brethren is cast down, who accused them in the sight of our God day and night. And they overcame him for the blood of the Lamb, and for the word of their testimony.' The aforesaid manner of speech having recently been employed, he speaks from the person of the angels: 'the accuser of our brethren'—that is, of those who will be our fellow-citizens, but now are pilgrims. For to that heavenly city Jerusalem the faithful now stretch, which the angels happily inhabit.
But that they are represented as saying with joy that he was excluded from the heavens and sent into the earth, they rejoice together at the redemption of those whom the Lord deigned to prepare for Himself as a temple to dwell in. For the soul of the just is the seat of wisdom. But concerning the earthly, into whom he is said to have descended, the angels, in recognizing it, praise together the inner recesses of the divine justice, and sing of mercy and judgment upon the blessed, since both goodness is shown in the redeemed, and divine equity in the lost. For they too are said to have been able to overcome the devil, conquering through the blood of the Lamb.
And what follows, 'And they loved not their lives unto death,' they are surely to be believed to have received that charity which 'is poured forth in our hearts, not from ourselves, but by the Holy Spirit, who is given to us' (Rom. 5). Teaching that this now great good is to be rejoiced over together, he says: 'For this rejoice, O heavens, and you that dwell in them.' Here, if as above in the angels heaven be recognized as the Church, it befits both to give thanks harmoniously together in the Lord, since both men are believed to be associated with the angels, and the angels serve the substance of men in Christ. There follows: 'Woe to you, earth and sea, because the devil is come down to you with great wrath, knowing that he has but a short time!'
As exultation was owed to the redeemed, so lamentation to the perishing. Hence Ezekiel says (chap. 2) that he received a book having written in it lamentation, song, and woe. In the lamentation he intimates the weeping of the penitent, in the song the gladness of the saints. But 'woe' properly manifests the condemnation of the wicked. Which he here too recalls, saying: 'Woe to you, earth and sea,' etc., unto 'knowing that he has but a short time.' Hence, compelled by the Lord's unconquered power to confess, he says: 'Art Thou come to torment us before the time?' 'And when the dragon saw that he was cast down to the earth, he persecuted the woman who had brought forth the male child.' This is what we said before, that the devil wages inextricable enmities against the Church.
For when, being about to be conquered, he is excluded, so much the more sharply does he not cease to multiply his wiles. 'And there were given to the woman two wings as of a great eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness, into her place.' The Church, after the manner of wings, uses the two Testaments, by which, being taught, she is instructed to flee the snares of the enemy by the precepts, and, being informed, overcomes them by the examples. She is ruled also by the twin charity of God and of neighbor. But the place of the wilderness is that of this worldly pilgrimage. For 'as long as we are in the body, we are pilgrims away from the Lord' (2 Cor. 5). Thither above all he directs his heart who departs from the world not in place but in affection; and the prophet says (Ps. 54): 'Behold, I have gone far off, fleeing away, and I abode in the wilderness. I waited for Him who would save me.'
But fittingly he here recalls the likeness of the eagle, which, though it is known to fly higher than the rest of the birds, yet, seeing food from afar, overcome by natural need, soon descends to the depths; just as the Church in her spiritual members, though she seek and savor the things that are above (Col. 3) in mind, yet, weighed down by the infirmity of the body, lies subject to the needs of bodily want, for which she groans and is in travail even until now; 'for the creature was made subject to vanity' (Rom. 8), 'not willing, but for the sake of Him who made it subject, in hope.' Likewise: 'For whether we are transported in mind, it is to God; or whether we are sober, it is for you' (2 Cor. 5).
Where she is nourished 'for a time and times and half a time' from the presence of Antichrist—that is, of that serpent—for the time of three years and six months. This again signifies the time in which, unto the end, the Church of Christ our God is propagated, fleeing the worship of idols and all the errors of the serpent—this is what he says, 'from the face of that serpent,' whom he above calls the dragon—which, when she has conquered it in the blood of the Lamb, she may truly sing (Ps. 90): 'Upon the asp and the basilisk thou shalt walk, and thou shalt trample under foot the lion and the dragon.' 'And that serpent sent out of his mouth after the woman water as a flood, that he might make her be carried away by the flood.' The water signifies the assault of the persecutors. Hence the psalm (Ps. 123):
'When men rose up against us, perhaps they would have swallowed us alive. When their anger was kindled against us, perhaps the waters would have swallowed us up.' Our soul has passed through a torrent, and so forth. But the earth helped the woman, and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed up the flood which the dragon had cast out of his mouth. Although the earth here too can be understood as the Church, as in the Psalm (Ps. 103): 'Who founded the earth upon its own stability; it shall not be moved for ever and ever' — that is, in the saints, whose prayers and teachings and saving stewardship expose and bring to nothing the enemy's cunning — yet it is better understood here as the human nature of the earth in Christ; He Himself is the truth that has sprung out of the earth (Ps.
84), who, ever appearing before the face of God, as the Apostle says (Heb. 9), intercedes for us. For this earth, swallowing down death which it had taken into itself, is said as it were to open its mouth, when by the abundance of its power it is known to have swallowed up the author of death (Rom. 8); and no less is it said to have taught that death must be swallowed up, when, seated on the mountain (Matt. 5) and opening His mouth, He handed down fuller precepts to the disciples, doing away with the law of commandments (Eph. 2). And the dragon was angry with the woman, and went to make war with the rest of her seed, who keep the commandment of God and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.
Seeing that the persecution could not be sustained, nor brought to those harmful ends by which he thought or aspired that the Church of Christ could be removed from the world — namely, since by the trophy of the Lord's body she prevails in the heavens, reigns on earth, and commands over the depths below. For to this end, says the Apostle (Rom. 14), Christ died and rose again, that He might be Lord both of the living and the dead; and again (Phil. 2): That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, on earth, and under the earth.
Seeing this, I say, he ceaselessly strives to bring war against the remnant of the Church's seed throughout every generation, since he now knows he can in no way root her out of the world, because, He says, the gates of hell shall not prevail against her (Matt. 16). Christ, wondrously using that very war, gains for Himself multiplied martyrs at the opportune time. But the dragon, with his companions, He has decreed to be punished with sharper judgments. Wherefore I think this book is more fittingly concluded with a memorable victory of that same Church, whose memory cannot perish from the world.