the reign of Valentinian and Valens:  Hoc tempore, saith Ammianus, velut per universum orbem Romanum bellicum canentibus buccinis, excitae gentes saevissimae limites sibi proximos persultabant:  Gallias Rhaetiasque simul Alemanni populabantur:  Sarmatae Pannonias & Quadi:  Picti, Saxones, & Scoti & Attacotti Britannos aerumnis vexavere continuis:  Austoriani, Mauricaeque aliae gentes Africam solito acrius incursabant:  Thracias diripiebant praedatorii globi Gotthorum:  Persarum Rex manus Armeniis injectabat.  And whilst the Emperors were busy in repelling these enemies, the Hunns and Alans and Goths came over the Danube in two bodies, overcame and slew Valens, and made so great a slaughter of the Roman army, that Ammianus saith:  Nec ulla Annalibus praeter Cannensem ita ad internecionem res legitur gesta.  These wars were not fully stopt on all sides till the beginning of the reign of Theodosius, A.C. 379 & 380:  but thenceforward the Empire remained quiet from foreign armies, till his death, A.C. 395.  So long the four winds were held:  and so long there was silence in heaven.  And the seventh seal was opened when this silence began.

Mr. Mede hath explained the Prophecy of the first six trumpets not much amiss:  but if he had observed, that the Prophecy of pouring out the vials of wrath is synchronal to that of sounding the trumpets, his explanation would have been yet more complete.

The name of Woes is given to the wars to which the three last trumpets sound, to distinguish them from the wars of the four first.  The sacrifices on the first four days of the feast of Tabernacles, at which the first four trumpets sound, and the first four vials of wrath are poured out, are slaughters in four great wars; and these wars are represented by four winds from the four corners of the earth.  The first was an east wind, the second a west wind, the third a south wind, and the fourth a north wind, with respect to the city of Rome, the metropolis of the old Roman Empire.  These four plagues fell upon the third part of the Earth, Sea, Rivers, Sun, Moon and Stars; that is, upon the Earth, Sea, Rivers, Sun, Moon and Stars of the third part of the whole scene of these Prophecies of Daniel and John.

The plague of the eastern wind [7] at the sounding of the first trumpet, was to fall upon the Earth, that is, upon the nations of the Greek Empire.  Accordingly, after the death of Theodosius the great, the Goths, Sarmatians, Hunns, Isaurians, and Austorian Moors invaded and miserably wasted Greece, Thrace, Asia minor, Armenia, Syria, Egypt, Lybia, and Illyricum, for ten or twelve years together.