Revelation 6:4

The Second Seal, Revelation 6:3-4

4. to take peace The word "peace" has the article, which according to Greek usage may mean merely "peace in general, peace in the abstract," but may also very well stand for "thepeace" which the conquests of the previous Rider have left as their fruit.

that they should kill one another Some understand this of civilwar exclusively: and such wars have indeed most of the character of war as indicated under this seal. But its full meaning perhaps includes all wars, so far as they are aimless bloodshedding, not painful steps towards human progress. Here we can agree almost entirely with the "continuous historical" interpreters, who see the fulfilment of these four seals in the reigns of the "five good emperors," when Trajan carried imperial conquest to its utmost height: in the civil wars and mutinies during and after the age of the Severi, in the famines that followed: and in the general distress that made the Barbarian conquest possible. Only we need not regard their meaning as exhausted in the fifth century (much less in the third). We may see e. g. the contrast of the two first seals in the Crusades compared with the religious wars of the Reformation: in the conquests of the French Republic and Empire, compared with the Red and the White Terror, and the mutual crimes of the Holy Alliance and the Carbonari: even in our own country, in a comparison of the reigns of Edward III. and Henry V. with those of their respective successors, or of Elizabeth's with Charles I."s: while again the civil war of the latter was noble and fruitful compared with the Dutch war of his son.