was silence in heaven for half an hour; and that while the servants of God were sealing, the Angel with the golden Censer offered their prayers with incense upon the golden Altar, and read the Law:  and that so soon as they were sealed, the winds hurt the earth at the sounding of the first trumpet, and the sea at the sounding of the second; these winds signifying the wars, to which the first four trumpets sounded.  For as the first four seals are distinguished from the three last by the appearance of four horsemen towards the four winds of heaven; so the wars of the first four trumpets are distinguished from those of the three last, by representing these by four winds, and the others by three great woes.

In one of Ezekiel’s visions, when the Babylonian captivity was at hand, six men appeared with slaughter-weapons; and a seventh, who [5] appeared among them clothed in white linen and a writer’s ink-horn by his side, is commanded to go thro’ the midst of Jerusalem_, and set a mark upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and cry for all the abominations done in the midst thereof_:  and then the six men, like the Angels of the first six trumpets, are commanded to slay those men who are not marked.  Conceive therefore that the hundred forty and four thousand are sealed, to preserve them from the plagues of the first six trumpets; and that at length by the preaching of the everlasting gospel, they grow into a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people and tongues:  and at the sounding of the seventh trumpet come out of the great tribulation with Palms in their hands:  the kingdoms of this world, by the war to which that trumpet sounds, becoming the kingdoms of God and his Christ__.  For the solemnity of the great Hosannah was kept by the Jews upon the seventh or last day of the feast of tabernacles; the Jews upon that day carrying Palms in their hands, and crying Hosannah.

After six of the Angels, answering to the six men with slaughter-weapons, had sounded their trumpets, the Lamb in the form of a mighty Angel cane down from heaven clothed with a cloud, and a rainbow was upon his head, and his face was as it were the Sun, and his feet as pillars of fire, the shape in which Christ appeared in the beginning of this Prophecy; and he had in his hand a little book open, the book which he had newly opened; for he received but one book from him that sitteth upon the throne, and he alone was worthy to open and look on this book. And he set his right foot upon the sea and his left foot on the earth, and cried with a loud voice, as when a lion roareth.  It was the custom for the High-Priest on the day of expiation, to stand in an elevated place in the peoples court, at the Eastern gate of the Priests court, and read the Law to the people, while the Heifer and the Goat