THE THIRD TRUMPET

In illustrating this trumpet, I shall make an extract entirely from Keith.SSTR 14.1

“Verses 10, 11: ‘And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters; and the name of the star is called Wormwood, and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter.’SSTR 14.2

“A third angel sounded;—and a third name is associated with the downfall of the Roman empire. The sounding of the trumpets manifestly denotes the order of the commencement, not the period of the duration of the wars, or events, which they represent. When the second angel sounded, there was seen, as it were, a great mountain burning with fire. When the third angel sounded, there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp. The symbol, in each instance, is expressly a similitude, and the one is to the other in comparative and individual resemblance, as a burning mountain to a falling star: each of them was great. The former was cast into the sea, the latter was first seen as falling, and it fell upon the fountains and rivers of waters. There is a discrimination in the similitude, in the description, and locality, which obviously implies a corresponding difference in the object represented.SSTR 14.3

“On such plain and preliminary observations we may look to the intimation given in the third trumpet, and to the achievements of Attila, the third name mentioned by Gibbon, and associated in equal rank with those of Alaric and Genseric, in the decline and fall of the Roman empire.SSTR 15.1

“Genseric landed in Africa in the year 420, and in the following year spread desolation along its coast, throughout the long-extended territory of Rome, which was then finally separated from the empire. Attila invaded the eastern empire in the year 441. From that period, ten years elapsed before he touched the western empire, and twenty-two years intervened, from 429 to 451, between the invasion of Africa by Genseric, and of Gaul by Attila. The burning mountain arose first, though it blazed longer than the falling star.SSTR 15.2

“The connexion between the events predicted under the first and second trumpets, is marked by the passing of the Vandals from Europe to Asia, and the consequent combination with Moors and Mauritanians in the conquest of Africa, ‘the most important province of the west;’ and in the overthrow of the naval power of Rome. The sequence and connexion between the events denoted by the second and third trumpets, are, we apprehend equally definite.SSTR 15.3

“‘The alliance of Attila,(A. D. 441,) maintained the Vandals in the possession of Africa. An enterprise had been concerted between the courts of Ravenna and Constantinople, for the recovery of the valuable province, and the ports of Sicily were already filled with the military and naval forces of Theodosius. But the subtle Genseric, who spread his negotiations round the world, prevented their designs, by exciting the king of the Huns (Attila) to invade the eastern empire: and a trifling incident soon became the motive, or pretence, of a destructive war. The troops which had been sent against Genseric were hastily recalled form Sicily.’SSTR 16.1

“But if symbolized, or described under the second and third trumpet, the respective nature of their power, or character of their warfare, must need be described, as well as the order marked, in which Genseric and Attila first assaulted the empire of Rome, and accelerated its ruin.SSTR 16.2

“A great star is the symbol—of which the significance has to be sustained; burning as it were a lamp, is the character of the warfare. The locality is neither the earth, in the full extent of the term as applicable to the Roman empire, and the wide scene over which the hail and fire swept on the sounding of the first trumpet, nor yet the third part of the sea, as expressive of the second, by which the African coast was forever separated from the empire, and the ships finally destroyed, but, as referring to a portion of the remains of the empire of Rome—the fountains and rivers of waters.SSTR 16.3

“There fell a great star from heaven. The name of Attila is to this day a memorial of his greatness, of which a brief description may suffice.SSTR 17.1

“‘The crowd of vulgar kings, the leaders of so many martial tribes, who served under the standard of Attila, were ranged in the submissive order of guards and domestics, round the person of their master. They watched his nod: they trembled at his frown; and, at the first signal of his will, they executed, without murmur or hesitation, his stern and absolute commands. In time of peace, the dependent princes, with their national troops, attended the royal camp in regular succession; but when Attila collected his military forces, he was able to bring into the field an army of five, or, according to another account, of seven hundred thousand barbarians.’SSTR 17.2

“Burning as it were a lamp. The armies of the eastern empire were vanquished in three successive engagements; and the progress of Attila may be traced by the fields of battle. From the Hellespont to Thermophlae, and the suburbs of Constantinople, he ravaged, without resistance and without mercy, the provinces of Thrace and Macedonia. Heraclea and Hadrianople might perhaps escape this dreadful irruption of the Huns; but the words, the most expressive of total extirpation and erasure, are applied to the calamities which they inflicted on seventy cities of the eastern empire.SSTR 17.3

“‘Attila threatened to chastise the rash successor of Theodosius; but he hesitated whether he should first direct his invincible arms against the eastern or western empire; while mankind awaited his decision with awful suspense, and his ministers saluted the two emperors with the same haughty declaration, Attila, my lord and thy lord, commands thee to provide a palace for his immediate reception. But as the barbarian despised, or affected to despise, the Romans of the east, whom he had so often vanquished, he soon declared his resolution of suspending the easy conquest, till he had achieved a more glorious and important enterprise. In the memorable invasions of Gaul and Italy, the Huns were naturally attracted by the wealth and fertility of these provinces.SSTR 18.1

“‘The trumpet sounded. The kings and nations of Germany and Scythia, from the Volga perhaps to the Danube, obeyed the warlike summons of Attila. From the royal village in the plains of Hungary, his standard moved towards the west; and, after a march of seven or eight hundred miles, he reached the conflux of the Rhine and the Necker. The hostile myriads were poured with violence into the Belgic provinces. The consternation of Gaul was universal. From the Rhine and the Moselle, Attila advanced into the heart of Gaul; crossed the Seine at Auxerre; and, after a long and laborious march, fixed his camp under the walls of Orleans. An alliance was formed between the Romans and Visigoths. The hostile armies approached. I myself, said Attila, will throw the first javelin, and the wretch who refuses to imitate the example of his sovereign, is devoted to inevitable death. The spirit of the barbarians was rekindled by the presence, the voice, and the example, of their intrepid leader; and Attila, yielding to their impatience, immediately formed his order of battle. At the head of his brave and faithful Huns, Attila occupied in person the center of the line. The nations from the Volga to the Atlantic were assembled on the plain of Chalons. The number of the slain amounted to one hundred and sixty-two thousand, or, according to another account, three hundred thousand persons; and these incredible exaggerations suppose a real or effective loss, sufficient to justify the historian’s remark, that whole generations may be swept away, by the madness of kings, in the space of a single hour.’SSTR 18.2

“The course of the fiery meteor was changed, not stayed; and, touching Italy for the first time, the great star, after having burned as it were a lamp, fell upon the third part of the rives, and upon the fountains of waters.SSTR 19.1

“‘Neither the spirit, nor the forces, nor the reputation of Attila, were impaired by the failure of the Gallic expedition. He passed the Alps, invaded Italy, and besieged Aquileia with an innumerable host of barbarians. The succeeding generation could scarcely discover the ruins of Aquileia. After this dreadful chastisement, Attila pursued his march; and, as he passed, the cities of Altinum, Concordia, and Padua were reduced into heaps of stones and ashes. The inland towns, Vicenza, Verona, and Bergamo, were exposed to the rapacious cruelty of the Huns. Milan and Pavia submitted, without resistance, to the loss of their wealth; and applauded the unusual clemency which preserved from the flames the public as well as private buildings, and spared the lives of the captive multitude. Attila spread his ravages over the rich plains of modern Lombardy; which are divided by the Po, and bounded by the Alps and Apennines. He took possession of the royal palace of Milan. It is a saying, worthy of ferocious pride of Attila, that the grass never grew on the spot where his horse had trod.’SSTR 19.2

“‘The western emperor, with the senate and people of Rome, embraced the most salutary resolution of deprecating, by a solemn and suppliant embassy, the wrath of Attila. The Roman ambassadors were introduced to the tent of Attila, as he lay encamped at the place where the slow-winding Mincius (Mincio) is lost in the foaming waves of the lake Benacus, and trampled with his Scythian cavalry the farms of Catullus and Virgil. The barbarian monarch listened with favorable, and even respectful attention; and the deliverance of Italy was purchased by the immense ransom, or dowry, of the princess Honoria.’SSTR 20.1

“Attila advanced not further into Italy than the plains of Lombardy, and the banks of the Po. He reduced the cities, situated on that river and its tributary streams, to heaps of stones and ashes. But there his ravages ceased. The great star, which burned as it were a lamp, no sooner fell upon the fountains and rivers of waters and turned cities into ashes, than it was extinguished. Unlike to the great mountain burning with fire, the great star that fell from heaven, after suddenly scorching a part of Italy, rapidly disappeared. During the same year in which Attila first invaded the Italian territories, and spread his ravages over the rich plains of modern Lombardy, which are divided by the Po, and bounded by the Alps and Apennines without advancing beyond the rivers and fountains of waters, he concluded a treaty of peace with the Romans, ‘at the conflux of the lake and river,’ on the spot where Mincius issues from lake Benacus (L. di Garda.) One paragraph in the History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, describes ‘the invasion of Italy by Attila, A. D. 452.’ Another is entitled, under the same date, ‘Attila gives peace to the Romans.’ The next paragraph describes the ‘death of Attila, A. D. 453;’ and the very next records, without any interval, the destruction of his empire.SSTR 20.2

“There fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters. Its greatness, its burning course, the place, the severity, and suddenness of its fall, leave nothing more to be here explained, while its falling from heaven seems obviously to imply that it came from beyond the bounds of the Roman Empire, on part of which it fell. Allusion will afterwards be made to the significancy of the term, third part, which so repeatedly occurs.SSTR 21.1

“But another verse is added, under the third trumpet, which, having thus seen the significancy of the former, we cannot pass over with any vague and general exposition, without calling on history to discharge its task, in expounding the full meaning of the words, which sum up the decline, and are the immediate prelude to the fourth trumpet, the death-knell of the western empire.SSTR 21.2

“And the name of the star is called wormwood. These words—which are more intimately connected with the preceding verse, as even the punctuation in our version denotes—recall us for a moment to the character of Attila, to the misery of which he was the author, or the instrument, and to the terror that was inspired by his name.SSTR 22.1

“‘Total extirpation and erasure,’ are terms which best denote the calamities he inflicted.SSTR 22.2

“‘One of his lieutenants chastised and almost exterminated the Burgundians of the Rhine. The Thuringians served in the army of Attila; they traversed, both in their march and in their return, the territories of the Franks; and they massacred their hostages as well as their captives. Two hundred young maidens were tortured with exquisite and unrelenting rage; their bodies were torn asunder by wild horses, or were crushed under the weight of rolling wagons; and their unburied limbs were abandoned on public roads, as a prey to dogs and vultures.’SSTR 22.3

“It was the boast of Attila, that the grass never grew on the spot which his horse had trod. ‘The scourge of God,’ was a name that he appropriated to himself, and inserted among his royal titles. He was ‘the scourge of his enemies, and the terror of the world.’ The western emperor, with the senate and people of Rome, humbly and fearfully deprecated the wrath of Attila. And the concluding paragraph of the chapters which record his history, is entitled, ‘Symptoms of the decay and ruin of the Roman government.’ The name of the star is called Wormwood.SSTR 22.4

“‘In the space of twenty years since the death of Valentinian,’ [two years subsequent to the death of Attila,] ‘nine emperors had successively disappeared; and the son of Orestes, a youth recommended only by his beauty, would be the least entitled to the notice of posterity, if his reign, which was marked by the extinction of the Roman empire in the west, did not leave a memorable era in the history of mankind.’”SSTR 23.1

I shall also permit the same author to give us the history of theSSTR 23.2