And the four angels were loosed, who were prepared for an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year, to slay the third part of men.
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Bede
AD 735
prepared: The malignant spirits, who at every moment of the hours and times hunger for the death of man, are then permitted for the trial of the Church to rage more freely, and are to be destroyed in their time? but what, thinkest thou, will they do, when they are lossed, who now injure so much while they are bound? The HORSEMEN <a
loosed: In the same manner as prophecy, which points out to us things to come, he himself in spirit sees them come to pass. And he has said four angels, because the persecution will rage in the four parts of the world. For these are they whom he saw above, standing at the four corners of the earth, and restrained from injuring the earth and the sea for the sealing of the servants of God.
And the four angels were loosed. This seems to indicate the moment in which Satan himself is loosed from the abyss or hell, where, as we shall see in Apocalypse xx. 2. he was chained up for a thousand years. This is the time of antichrist, whose coming, as St. Paul says, is according to the working of Satan. (2 Thessalonians ii. 9.) The antichristian period is described by the ancient Fathers as the most dreadful of all; and the Apocalypse plainly shows it to be so, as we shall see. But we have this comfort, that his time will be short. He must be loosed a little time. (Apocalypse xx. 3.)
'On this Caius says : It is not written that angels are to make war, nor that a third part of men is to perish; but that nation shall rise against nation [St. Matth. xxiv. 7].
Hippolytus in reply to him: It is not of angels he says that they are to go to war, but that four nations are to arise out of the region which is by Euphrates, and to come against the earth, and to war with mankind. But this that he says, four angels, is not alien from Scripture. Moses said, When He dispersed the sons of Adam, He set the boundary of the nations according to the number of the Angels of God [Deut. xxxii. 8 (LXX.)].
Since therefore nations have been assigned to angels, and each nation pertains to one angel, John rightly declared by the Revelation a loosing for those four angels: who are the Persians, and the Medes, and the Babylonians, and the Assyrians. Since then these angels who have been appointed over the nations have not been commanded to stir up those who have been assigned to them, a ...
