ommentators by these locusts understand heretics, and especially
those heretics, that sprung from Jews, and with them denied the divinity
of Jesus Christ; as Theodotus, Praxeas, Noetus, Paul of Samosata,
Sabellius, Arius, etc. These were great enemies of the Christian
religion; they tormented and infected the souls of men, stinging them
like scorpions, with the poison of their heresies. Others have explained
these locusts, and other animals, mentioned in different places
throughout this sacred and mystical book, in a most absurd, fanciful,
and ridiculous manner; they make Abaddon the Pope, and the locusts to be
friars mendicant, etc. Here it is thought proper, not to enter into any
controversy upon that subject, as the inventors of these fancies have
been already answered, and fully refuted by many controvertists:
besides, those who might be inposed on by such chimerical writers, are
in these days much better informed.

9:4. And it was commanded them that they should not hurt the grass of
the earth nor any green thing nor any tree: but only the men who have
not the sign of God on their foreheads.

9:5. And it was given unto them that they should not kill them: but that
they should torment them five months. And their torment was as the
torment of a scorpion when he striketh a man.

9:6. And in those days, men shall seek death and shall not find it. And
they shall desire to die: and death shall fly from them.

9:7. And the shapes of the locusts were like unto horses prepared unto
battle. And on their heads were, as it were, crowns like gold: and their
faces were as the faces of men.

9:8. And they had hair as the hair of women: and their teeth were as
lions.

9:9. And they had breastplates as breastplates of iron: and the noise of
their wings was as the noise of chariots and many horses running to
battle.

9:10. And they had tails like to scorpions: and there were stings in
their tails. And their power was to hurt men, five months. And they had
over them

9:11. A king, the angel of the bottomless pit (whose name in Hebrew is
Abaddon and in Greek Apollyon, in Latin Exterminans).

9:12. One woe is past: and behold there come yet two woes more
hereafter.

9:13. And the sixth angel sounded the trumpet: and I heard a voice from
the four horns of the golden altar which is before the eyes of God,

9:14. Saying to the sixth angel who had the trumpet: Loose the four
angels who are bound in the great river Euphrates.