13. And when the dragon saw that he was cast into the earth, he
persecuted the woman, which brought forth the manchild.

Vs. 12, 13.--Here is a note of warning. The dragon, though ejected from
the symbolic heaven, the seat of imperial and ecclesiastic power, is not
yet bound with the great chain, (ch. xx. 1, 2.) His late defeat has only
incensed his rage, "as a bear robbed of her whelps." But the special
reason assigned for his "great wrath" is, "because he knoweth that he
hath but a short time." How does the devil come to this knowledge? Is he
omniscient! No. Was he joint-counsellor with the Most High? No. (Isa.
xl. 13, 14; Rom. xi. 34.) He must have derived this knowledge from
revelation; and from some instances in Scripture, we might infer that
the devil is more skilled in theology, especially in prophecy, than
many, if not most modern interpreters. In the time of our Lord's
humiliation he quoted and applied to him a prophecy in the 91st psalm,
(v. 11, 12.) He also dreaded being tormented,--"before the time." (Matt.
viii. 29:) from which it appears that he reasons of the "times and the
seasons" as revealed in the Bible. But by the phrase, "a short time,"
the devil understood,--and we are to understand,--not the time to
transpire till the end of the world; but, the time intervening between
his ejectment out of heaven, and the overthrow of Antichrist, when he is
to be bound. Now, we may learn from the _devil's calculation_, that all
those learned and famous divines, especially of the prelatic church of
England, "do greatly err, not knowing the Scriptures;" who say, that the
dragon was cast out of the symbolic heaven _in the time of Constantine!_
The space of duration _from Constantine till the millennium_, cannot be
relatively "short," under the New Testament dispensation. The time of
the dragon's being cast out of heaven, and the instruments by which this
was accomplished, are to be found clearly verified in the authentic
histories of the sixteenth century, to which some references have been