i. The first three chapters, including the epistles to the seven
Churches, and the verses from chap. xxii. 5 to the end of the book, may
be taken to be respectively introduction and conclusion, the contents
of which, although strictly related to those of the intermediate
symbolical part, are not of a character so exclusively figurative.
This circumstance has to be taken into account in proposing
interpretations of passages contained in them. Now, there are certain
passages in the concluding part which appear to be contradictory to the
doctrine of salvation maintained in this Essay, and accordingly, before
bringing the argument to a close, I shall endeavour to ascertain the
true interpretations of these passages.

The angel who showed John "these things" (xxii. 8) says of himself, "I
am the fellow-servant of thee, and of thy brethren the prophets, and of
those who {115} keep the words of this book;" and yet this speaker is
not distinguished from him who afterwards says (_vv._ 12, 13), "Lo, I
come quickly, and my reward is with me, to render to each according as
his work is. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the
beginning and the end," who, without doubt, is the Lord himself. This
may be accounted for by the following considerations. This angel, of
whom it is twice asserted that he refused to receive worship proffered
to him by the seer (xix. 10, and xxii. 9), is the same that is spoken
of in Rev. i. 1, with reference to "the revelation of Jesus Christ,
which God gave to him, to shew to his servants things which must
shortly come to pass," in these terms: "He [Jesus Christ] by sending
signified it [the revelation] through his angel to his servant John."
In certain passages in the introductory part of the Apocalypse, as Rev.
i. 8, 17-20, and throughout the epistles to the seven Churches, the
Lord speaks in his own person; and this again he does expressly in some
passages in the concluding part, as xxii. 7, 12, 13, 16, 20; and
although the speaker in _vv._ 10 and 11 appears to be the same as the
speaker in _v._ 9, who certainly is the angel, such words as those two
verses contain could hardly have been uttered by any one but the Lord,
and, at least, they may be attributed to him on the principle that what
the Lord does through his ministering angel may be said to be done by
himself. It is as {116} ministering to Jesus Christ that the angel
calls himself a "fellow-servant" of prophets and apostles, a