ir origin."--Church History, Cent. II, Part 2.

When a usurping clergy grasps the power to prescribe "authoritative
rules of faith and manners," to employ the words of Mosheim, we may well
conceive that the true amount of pure spiritual food was exceedingly
small and could be procured only at starvation rates. He who reads the
ecclesiastical events of the third century will find it only too true
that many of the cardinal virtues of apostolic Christianity were almost
lost sight of and that a great spiritual famine existed in the earth
over which this dark horseman of the third seal careered. Instead of
salvation through the Spirit of God being carefully taught, baptismal
regeneration was exalted, and the people were instructed in the saving
virtues of the eucharist. The Platonic idea concerning sin having its
seat in the flesh was adopted, and therefore perfect victory or
sanctification was made to consist in the mortification of the natural
appetites and desires of the body, with the result that a life of
fasting, celibacy, or self-inflicted torture was looked upon as the
surest means of obtaining the favor of Heaven. The writings of such
eminent church Fathers as Tertullian, Origen, Cyprian and others now
lying before me, contain the surest evidences of the woeful extent to
which this dark cloud of superstition and error had settled down over
the world during the period of which I write.

7. And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of
the fourth beast say, Come and see.

8. And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat
on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was
given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with
sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of
the earth.

The usual interpretation given this horse and its rider is to apply it
to the desolating wars and famines that occurred in the Roman Empire.
This view is embodied in the celebrated painting "Death on the Pale
Horse," in which death is represented as going forth with war,
pestilence, famine, and wild beasts, to ravage the Roman empire. We are
informed by historians that dreadful pestilences and famines did prevail
and in some places nearly depopulated the country, and that the
remaining inhabitants could not make head against the beasts that
multiplied in the land. But the fact that such events occurred is not
sufficient proof that this symbol has