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and represents the angelic ministers of his providence, under the figure of horses and chariots. Thus in 2 Kings, vi, 17, the attendant of Elisha, alarmed at the dangers that threatened his master and himself, is permitted, for his consolation, to see the angelic guards that protected them, under the forms of horses and chariots of fire. In 2 Kings, ii. 11, Elijah is described, as ascending up to heaven in a chariotry and horses of fire; as Elisha, in his exclamation of delight and admiration, termed them, "the chariotry of Israel and the horsemen thereof," the angelic protectors set by divine providence to oversee and guard his people; or as Habakkuk calls them, "the horses and chariots of salvation." no where is the figure so pointedly determined to angelic ministers, as in Psalm, lxviii. 17. There it is said, "the chariotry of God is tens of thousands, thousands of iteration," (or reiterated thousands, thousands multiplied by thousands,) "Jehovah is among them; Sinai is in the sanctuary." That is to say, God protects and defends his holy place and his people, who worship therein, with invincible might. He is present among them and for them, with all his majesty and glory, attended by his celestial train; though invisibly, yet as really and effectually present, to every good and saving purpose,

But

as he was at the terrific mountain of legislation. Sinai, with all its awful grandeur, is in the holy place*. In the same manner, to the same purpose," and with equal effect, he is in the christian church, with his horses and chariots of salvation.

But before we proceed farther, it is to be observed, that the description of the emblem is not full and complete. The chariots are not said to be under any guidance; no mention being made of charioteers. Yet doubtless the prophet saw the horses under the direction and controul of charioteers; for the prophetic emblems are always to be understood, except specially described to be otherwise, as complete in their parts and as attended by all the properties and accidents, that are generally found to accompany the same subjects in a natural and ordinary state; as in the second scenet, the horns were found to imply the existence of animals who bore them. As proper and literal chariots then are not seen to set off on journies without charioteers, so neither were these; and the silence of the prophet is

* I have nearly followed Bishop Horsley, both in the version and explication of the passage, vol. 2, p. 26 and 180. I see no advantage in the two other renderings proposed by the learned prelate. Ludovicus de dieu, Geyer, and Hammond had preceded him in the first. The excellent commentary of de dieu may be seen in Pole's Synopsis.

+ Commentary, p. 48.

reducible to that elliptical form of expression, by which we commonly speak of horse, and of carriages, without thinking it necessary to specify the horsemen and drivers. The same ellipsis is not unfrequent in Hebrew. Thus in 2 Kings, vi, horse and chariotry are mentioned several times, but without mentioning the riders or drivers; and in one of those instances the chariots and horses are certainly emblematical.

As then the horses in the first scene had riders, so we conclude, that the chariots here had drivers. But there the spiritual agents were found to be denoted, not by the horses, but by the men who were seen mounted on them; and accordingly it cannot be doubted, that here the charioteers, visible to Zechariah, and not the chariots or the horses, are intended to represent the subjects described as four winds, that is to say, the angelic ministers; of whom, it must be confessed, that mere chariots and horses do not seem to be the most suitable emblems. The horses consequently denote here, as they do there, the inferior agents, moved and impelled by the celestial ministers of the divine will. Those agents may be either physical, or moral, or both; that is to say, either the elements of nature, wielded and directed by angels; or men, whose opinions,

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Commentary, p. 8.

motives, passions, and actions are in some manner and measure guided and impelled by their spiritual influences. After this, nothing is left for the chariots themselves, but to signify the events, which are produced by their operation, or controuled and ordered by their management. Accordingly it is to be observed, that in the first part of the vision, the events to be brought about or directed by the agency of the celestial ministers, through the human instruments, are not symbolically introduced; but are either predicted in the words of the divine oracle, or are reserved for the second part, where they are represented under a separate and quite different figure*; and therefore the symbols are in the first part carried no farther, than to represent the physical and moral agents. But here, when it was proposed to arrange both those agents and the spiritual ones, together with the effects produced by their agency, under one set of emblems, it became necessary to distinguish this scene from the first, by the addition of the chariots.

The chariots are said to come forth from between two mountains. A mountain, on account of the firmness and solidity of its materials, the extent of its base, and the loftiness of its summit, is the proper emblem of greatness, stability, and

* Commentary, p. 42.

duration, as we have before seen.

Hence it is

used as the figure of a kingdom or empire, and as such also it has appeared before, in the fifth part of the vision*. The two mountains are expressed in the original Hebrew with great emphasis to be mountains of brass; that is to say, impregnable, indissoluble, everlasting kingdoms. These are and can be no other, than the Jewish and Gentile branches of the church, the two provinces, of which the divine kingdom on earth consists, and which, though now mingled together in the common body of God's people, and therefore figured as a single mountain in other placest, were originally distinct, and will hereafter appear so again, when the fulness of the Gentiles shall be come in, and the partial blindness of Israel shall be removed.

Zechariah does not say, that the chariots came from both the mountains, or from either of them separately, but from between them; from an interval, or intermediate space common to both. Now the winds, denoting the charioteers, are said to come from standing before the Lord of the whole earth; and since the chariots, as we have before seen, are not separable from the

* Commentary, p. 238.

Ex gr. Isaiah, ii. 2, Daniel, ii. 35, 44, Zechariah, iv. 7.
Romans, xi, 25.

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