ly it to errors that the Pagan party introduced baptized with
the name of Christianity, when they professed to become converts at a
later period. It is certainly an appropriate _figure of speech_ to say a
flood of error or of false doctrine; but whether a flood of water is a
proper _symbol_ of the same is another question. I do not think it is.
Water, being an object of nature, would point us to something political.
False doctrines are usually symbolized by something different from
objects in nature.

There is considerable difficulty in verifying the symbol, but I will
submit what up to the present has seemed to me as the most satisfactory
explanation. It appears from the description that this was about the
last great public effort the dragon made to overwhelm the church and
that he was exasperated to this supreme effort by the humiliating defeat
he had suffered. The means he employed was _water_, an object of nature;
hence we are to look for some great political event by which the dragon
made his master-effort to destroy the woman shortly after her flight
into the wilderness. In A.D. 284 Diocletian, a Pagan, succeeded to the
imperial throne. Before the close of his reign (305), the Christians
suffered the most terrible persecution ever received at the hands of
Pagan Rome. It continued ten years--A.D. 302-312. It was the design of
this emperor to completely extirpate the very name of Christianity, and
his unfortunate victims were slain by the thousands throughout the
empire. "But the master-piece of [his] heathen policy was the order to
seek and burn all copies of the Word of God. Hitherto the enemy had been
lopping off the branches of the tree whose leaves were for the healing
of the nations; now the blow was made at the root. It had once been the
policy of Antiochus Epiphanes, when he madly sought to destroy the
Jewish Scriptures. It was both wise and wicked. It had but one defect,
it could not be carried into complete execution. The sacred treasure was
in too many hands, and too many of its guardians were brave and prudent,
to make extermination possible. An African bishop said, 'Here is my
body, take it, burn it; but I will not deliver up the Word of God.' A
deacon said, 'Never, sir, never! Had I children I would sooner deliver
them to you than the divine word.' He and his wife were burnt together."
Butler's Eccl. History, p. 66.

But "_the earth_ helped the woman"--another unlooked-for political
event. Worn out wi