o the king of Babylon:--"How
art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, (day-star,) son of the morning!
How art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!"
(Isa. xiv. 12.) A star may indeed signify either a civil or
ecclesiastical officer, but the scope and context determine all these
judgments to the enemies of the church, and those of her illustrious
Head. It is the "vengeance of his temple." We have already found a star
the emblem of a gospel minister, and we shall hereafter find it employed
in that sense; but it does not seem to refer in the present connexion to
any apostate. The name of this star,--"Wormwood," embittering the
waters, is a lively emblem of the miseries experienced by the people, in
the use of the remaining temporal comforts which the preceding
calamities had left.

12. And the fourth angel sounded, and the third part of the sun was
smitten, and the third part of the moon, and the third part of the
stars; so as the third part of them was darkened, and the day shone not
for a third part of it, and the night likewise.

V. 12.--The design of all the trumpets is to point out the utter
destruction of the Roman empire,--Daniel's "kingdom of iron." (Dan. ii.
40.) For although from the time of Constantine it assumed the Christian
name, it nevertheless continued to be a beast. Of this we shall have
cumulative evidence as we progress. The first trumpet began to demolish
the fabric of antichristian power; and by the fourth the western
division was overthrown. For although the northern barbarians under the
first, the southern Vandals under the second, and the successors of
both, prevailed to bring down the last of the Caesars, yet the ancient
frame of government still subsisted. The political heaven, though
shaken, was not yet wholly removed, while the Senate, Consuls and other
official dignitaries continued to shine as political luminaries in the
firmament of power. But as the last of the Caesars fell from power in
the year 476, so the last vestige of imperial dominion in the west was
removed in 566, when Rome, the queen of the nations, was by the emperor
of the east reduced to the humble condition of a tributary dukedom. Most
of the saints had their residence at this time in the nations of western
Europe and northern Africa, where they were grievously afflicted by the
Arian, Pelagian and other heresies; as also exposed to persecution by
the civil powers, whom those heresiarchs moved to oppres