When John beheld these two symbolical powers, Death and Hades, he saw that “exousia, authority was given to them to kill upon the fourth of the earth, with sword, and with famine, and with pestilence, and under the beasts of the earth.” The phrase, “the fourth of the earth,” implies other three fourths.

John says, that he saw ho Hades, following with Death.

John says that the name of the representative personage he saw sitting above, over, or upon, epano, the pale horse, was “Death.” The form of words in which he tells us this is according to the form of the previous seals.

Vol. 1., pp. 428,443

Spiritual death overshadowing the ecclesias from long peace and the philosophical “divinity” which had, to a great degree, superseded the gospel. The things that remain not yet dead, “ready to die.” The Thyatiran, or Jezebel-and-Satan, ethics, the seed which ripens into the Sardian — Apoc. 3:1.

ACT IV. — SEAL-PERIOD FOURTH
Apoc. 6:7,8

The declining health and last illness of S. Severus, inflamed the wild ambition, and black and blackening passions of Caracalla. He attempted, more than once, to shorten Severus’ life, and with as little success, to excite a mutiny among the troops. Severus deliberated, and threatened, but was too fondly parental to punish his son and colleague in the throne; and this last, and only instance of mercy he was ever guilty of, was more fatal to the empire than a long series of cruelty. At length he expired at York in Britain, A.D.

The voice made proclamation of a denarius the choinix of the wheat. There are various opinions concerning the choinix. The English version uses the word in its widest sense for measure of capacity, without defining the capacity. In Ezek.

John says, that when he saw this vision of the third seal, he heard "a voice in the midst of the Four Living Ones." Voice is sometimes used in scripture in the sense of the signification, or the thing signified

The rider of the black horse may be known by his badge. John saw one sitting upon him "holding in his hand a balance.” The other riders of the first and second seals were identified by their badges — the bow and the great dagger; and so must this of the third by the balance, which is his.

While it is true, that black is used in scripture in connection with scarcity and famine; I am satisfied that in this third seal famine is not indicated by the color of the horse. The reader will therefore be so good as to run his pen through the word "famine” in line 16 of our “Chronological Tableau of the Apostasy,” on page 428, Vol. 1.

Such is the expressive heiroglyphic by which the Spirit "signified" to "his servants" the nature of the situation which should succeed the period in which they would “slay one another," and "a great machaira" would appear to aggravate the strife. The Lamb also opens this third seal. It is an opening, not to give exit to blessedness upon Roman society; for that is not the nature of a seal; but, to loose those evils upon the world, which would be calamitous to pagan, Jew, and