ndition that he go over and
take it. The outcome of the matter was that John was compelled to yield
to the power of the Pope. He even gave him England as a perpetual fief,
and agreed to pay the Papal See the annual sum of one thousand marks.]

The loss of life by spiritual famine was extreme. The Word of God, which
is spirit and life to God's people (Jno. 6:63), was laid under interdict
and the common people deprived of its benefits. At the time the black
horse appeared, a little food could be obtained at famine prices; but
when the fourth arrived, he was empowered to kill "with hunger." Also,
one of his agents of destruction was death, or pestilence, a fit symbol
of false and blasphemous doctrines breathed forth like a deadly
pestilence blasting everything within its reach. Invocation of saints,
worship of images, relics, celibacy, works of supererogation,
indulgences, and purgatory--these were the enforced principles of
religion, and like a pest they settled down upon the people everywhere.

This rider also brought into operation "the beasts of the earth" to aid
him in his destructive work. To kill with sword or hunger shows that
such work of destruction is performed solely by him who has it in his
power; but to kill with beasts indicates that _they_ perform the deadly
work according _to their own natures_. Nothing is clearer than the fact
that wild beasts stand as a symbol of persecuting tyrannical
governments; hence we are to understand that this rider was to employ
also the arm of civil power to aid him in the deadly work. How
strikingly this represents the historical facts of the case! In all
truly Roman Catholic countries the civil governments were only a cipher
or tool in the hands of the church, and the ecclesiastics were the real
rulers of the kingdom. But whenever any dark work of persecution was to
be performed, the wild beast was let loose to accomplish the result.
When charged, however, with the bloody work, the Catholics always
answer, "Oh, we _never persecute_--don't you see, it is the wild beasts
that are covered with gore--our hands are clean," yet they themselves
held the chain that bound the savage monsters. We shall have occasion in
a subsequent chapter to trace further the pathway of this dread rider as
he reels onward in the career of ages, "drunken with the blood of the
saints."

This work of destruction performed by the dread rider on the pale horse
is considered by many as a literal descripti