Rumpere sacrifica molitur colla securi."

This sacrificial ax was called the ax of the Hierophant. There are various coins in which these axes appear.

"The ax is laid at the root of the trees." That trees are a general symbol of men, is well known. See under Forest and Tree, See also Ezek. xxxi. 3 ; Dan. iv. 7, 8; Matt. vii. 19, and xii. 33; Ps. i. 3 ; Zech. xi. 1, 2. What John Baptist, therefore, refers to, is probably the excision of the Jewish nation. The tree of the Jewish commonwealth was to be rooted up by the ax of the Divine Judgment, and they were to remain, for many days, without a king, without a priest, without an ephod, and without sacrifices. How thoroughly this was done, Josephus tells us, b. 7, de Bello Jud. c. 1, "It was miserable to behold that country, formerly covered with trees and fertile plants, now lying plain like a desert; neither was there any stranger, who before had seen Judea, and the beautiful suburbs of Jerusalem, who, now beholding it, could abstain from tears, and not lament so woful a change. For this war extinguished utterly all signs of beauty ; neither could one coming suddenly, know the place which he well knew before." Others, however, are disposed to interpret the passage in Matt. iii. 10, as simply meaning the approaching Gospel season, by the preaching of which, such methods should be taken in the course of Divine Providence, for the subduing and mortifying the power of sin among mankind, which, if not properly improved, would dreadfully

aggravate the guilt of those still remaining in their sins, notwithstanding their possession of it.

When Paul says, Phil. i. 17, that he was set for the defence of the Gospel, the original word is the same with that in this passage answering to laid, viz. xsifeat.

ASS, an animal of a patient, laborious, and stupid nature, the emblem of persons of a similar disposition. Issachar is called a strong ass, Gen. xlix. 14, in reference to his descendants, as being a settled agricultural tribe, who cultivated their own territory with patient labour, emblematized by the ass. We rarely read of Issachar being engaged in any war, which is ever hostile to agriculture.

Of Jehoiakim it is said, in Jer. xxii. 19,

"With the burial of an ass shall he be buried, dragged along, And cast forth beyond the gates of Jerusalem."

"that

An event mentioned by Josephus, who says, the king of Babylon advanced with an army, that Jehoiakim admitted him readily into Jerusalem, and that Nebuchadnezzar, having entered the city, instantly put him to death, and cast his dead body unburied without the walls.

It is recorded of our blessed Lord, in Zech. ix. 9, and quoted thence in Matt. xxi. 5, that he should be

"Humble, and sitting on an ass,

Even on a colt the foal of an ass.

As horses were used in war, Christ may be supposed, by this action, to have shewn the humble and peaceable nature of his kingdom.

The WILD Ass, which is more than once mentioned in Scripture, is a very different creature from the

common ass in most of its qualities. Ephraim is compared to them, in Hosea viii. 9, meaning, that he was untamed to the yoke, and traversed the desert as earnestly in the pursuit of idols as the onager in quest

of his mates.

Though wild asses, says Pococke, be often found in the desert in whole herds, yet it is usual for some one of them to break away, and separate himself from his company, and run alone and at random by himself.

They are described by Jerem. xiv. 6, as snuffing up the wind like dragons, i. e. they suck in the air for want of water to cool their internal heat. Ælian describes serpents as doing the same, and Varro thus speaks of the ox,

"Et bos suspiciens cœlum (mirabile visu),

Naribus aerium patulis decerpsit odorem."

See more in Blayney.

Job says, ch. xxxix. 5, "who hath sent out the wild ass free ?" It seems to have no affinity with the common ass, but in the name, for it is beautiful, excessively swift, and wild.

BABYLON. Rev. xvi. 19; xvii. 5; xviii. 10, 21. That Babylon in these passages is symbolically meant of Rome, is not difficult to prove. Daubuz has very accurately given the reasons why the latter is so called, namely, not only on account of Rome's being guilty of usurpation, tyranny, and idolatry, and of persecuting the Church of God, as the literal Babylon did; but also as being the possessor of the pretended rights of Babylon, by a successive devolution of power.

The literal Babylon was the beginner and supporter of tyranny and idolatry; first by Nimrod or Ninus, and afterwards by Nebuchadnezzar; and therefore, in Isa. xlvii. 12, she is accused of magical enchantments from her youth or infancy, i. e. from her very first origin as a city or nation.

This city and its whole empire were taken by the Persians under Cyrus. The Persians were subdued by the Macedonians, and the Macedonians by the Romans; so that Rome succeeded to the power of Old Babylon.

And it was her method to adopt the worship of the false deities she had conquered; so that by her own acts she became the heiress and successor of all the Babylonian idolatry, and of all that was introduced into it, by the intermediate successors of Babylon, and consequently of all the idolatry of the earth.

Rome Papal, corrupted by dressing up the idolatry of Rome Pagan in another form, and forcing it upon the world, became the successor of the old literal Babylon in tyranny and idolatry, and may therefore be properly represented and called by the name of Babylon; it being the usual style of the prophets to give the name of the head or first institutor to the successors, however different they may be in some circumstances, as in Ezek. ch. xxxvii. the Messiah is called David, as being successor to David; and as the Christian Church, though chiefly composed of Gentiles, is called, Gal. vi. 16, by the name of Israel, as successively inheriting, in a spiritual sense, the promises made to the literal Israel.

So Rachel, in Jerem. xxxi. 15, Matt. ii. 18, is put for the town, or women inhabiting the town of Beth

C

lehem, in which was the sepulchre of the literal Rachel, of which consequently those inhabitants were still in possession.

And so the Persians and Moguls call the Ottoman Turks by the name of Roumi, Romans, because they are in possession of the country and capital (Constantinople), enjoyed by the ancient Romans. (See Herbelot, tit. Roum.)

Farther, that Babylon is Rome, is evident from the explanation given by the angel in Rev. xvii. 18, where it is expressly said to be "that great city which ruleth over the kings of the earth;" no other city but Rome being in the exercise of such power at the time when the vision was seen.

That Constantinople is not meant by Babylon is plain also from what Mede has stated, Works, p. 922. "The seven heads of the beast (says he) are by the angel made a double type, both of the seven hills where the woman sitteth, and of the seven sovereignties with which in a successive order the Beast should reign. This is a pair of fetters to tie both Beast and whore to Western Rome. The seven sovereignties must not be separated from the seven hills, nor the seven hills from as many sovereignties. Constantinople may have as many hills, but those hills never had so many sovereignties. In other cities, where the Sovereign Roman name (or but the name) hath reigned, are neither so many hills, nor ever were those seven succeeding sovereignties."

Rome or Mystic Babylon (says the same author, p. 484), is called the "Great City," not from any reference to its extent, but because it was the queen of other cities.