The representative writers of this state were particularly Justin Martyr, and Irenaeus.

Ignatius was an elder of the ecclesia at Antioch, but possessed of a fanatical desire for martyrdom, which was contrary to the instruction of the Lord Jesus, who said, “when they persecute you in one city, flee to another.” But instead of this, when the Emperor Trajan came to Antioch, about A.D. 107, in his way to the Parthian war, Ignatius voluntarily delivered himself up to Trajan, into whose presence he was introduced.

The spiritual condition of the ecclesias in this state of things may be learned from the writings of the apostles and others as extant in the New Testament. Their faith in the “things of the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ” was unmixed with Nikolaitanism, or “philosophy and vain deceit after the tradition of men, and the ele­ments of the world;” and it worked by love and purified the heart— Gal.

Thus, having brought to a conclusion the particulars of the primary vision of the Apocalypse, and of the epistles, therein dictated by the

Lord Jesus the Spirit to the seven ecclesias of the Proconsular Asia, which we have found, as Mr. Elliot remarks in his apology for not un­dertaking the exposition of them, “of matter sufficient in itself to con­stitute a volume”—I shall proceed to consider briefly, the import of the seven moral sketches of these seven ecclesias.

To the remnant who should “overcome the Great Red Dragon—that old Serpent, surnamed the Devil and the Satan—by the blood of the lamb, and by the world of their testimony, not loving their lives unto the death,” (ch.

The door here referred to is evidently the ears collectively of those addressed. This appears from what follows, as, “If any one hear my voice and open the door, I will enter in to him, and will sup wth him, and he with me.” “Let Christ dwell in your hearts by faith,” says Paul.

As long as an ecclesia is a called-out association, the Lord the Spirit waits to restore it from the lowest conceivable ebb of faith; so that if she of Laodicea had taken the warning of the ejectment prepared for her in the future, she might have recovered, and not been spued out at all.

What was to be done with a generation of such apostates from the faith and hope of the gospel? Were the gifts of the Spirit to be continued with them, by which they had been as in the mouth of the Spirit speaking to the world for the conversion of sinners; and for the building themselves up in the knowledge of the Son of the Deity? Should the light of the Spirit still burn in the lampstand, and be regard­ed with indifference or as useless, to so rich and prosperous a commu­nity of Christians, as they esteemed themselves?

After the Spirit’s introduction of himself by stating certain of his characteristics having some special adaptation to the Star-Angel Presby­tery addressed, he forthwith declares to each of the seven, “I have known thy works”— oida ta erga sou; and then proceeds to point them out, and to approve or reprobate them, as the case may be. None of them seem to have been in so disgusting a state as this of the Laodiceans.