The Revelation of Jesus Christ - The Herald

propositions advanced by Luther which he offered to maintain and did actually maintain,
that nearly all the great dogmas of Rome were against Scripture.
The witnesses denied sacred burial
Concerning the expression, they "shall not suffer their dead bodies to be put into graves,"
we believe the thought intended to be conveyed is that the individuals faithful to Christ
and His Truth who were left here and there in Christendom, but who had ceased to bear
witness because of the awful persecutions, would now be subjected to great humiliation
and would be derided and scoffed at and abused. It was customary in the ancient nations
to deny burial to the lowest criminals. This usage prevailed among the Jews during and
before our Lord's day. The bodies of the lowest criminals were cast into the Valley of
Hinnom (Gehenna) and burned. The teaching seems to have gained credence among the
Jews that such were unfit for resurrection--a future life. The unrepentant heretic (?) was,
and is today, by the Papal hierarchy, denied burial on consecrated (?) ground, and
considered an outcast of both God and man. The figure under consideration is drawn from
these literal transactions. Mr. Barnes, quoting from Waddington and D'Aubigne, says:
"One of the punishments constantly decreed and constantly enforced [by Papacy] in
reference to those who were called heretics was their exclusion from burial as persons
excommunicated and without the pale of the Church. Thus in the third Lateran Council
(AD 1179) Christian burial was denied heretics; the same in the Lateran Council AD 1215,
and the Papal decree of Gregory IX, AD 1227; the same again in that of Pope Martin, AD
1422; and the same thing was determined in the Council of Constance, AD 1422, which
ordered that the body of Wycliffe should be exhumed, and that the ashes of John Huss,
instead of being buried, should be collected and thrown into the lake of Constance. It may
be added that Savonarola's ashes were in a similar manner cast into the Arno, AD 1498,
and that in the first bull entrusted to the Cardinal Carjetan against Luther, this was one of
the declared penalties that both Luther and his partisans should be deprived of
ecclesiastical burial."
In the language of this same commentator the significance of the symbol would then be
that "they [the witnesses] would be treated with indignity, as if they were not worthy of
Christian burial . . . they would be treated after they were silenced, like unburied corpses,
putrefying in the sun."
"And they that dwell upon the earth shall rejoice over them, and make merry, and shall
send gifts one to another because these two prophets tormented them that dwelt on the
earth."--Verse 10.
The rejoicing and exulting over the death of the witnesses would represent that the Papacy
and its followers would deem themselves rid of the annoying testimonies to the Truth and
their denunciations of the Papal abominations. It was true that there was always rejoicing,
and even public celebrations of victories over the humiliation of Christ's faithful tried
ones. That referred to here, however, describes particular rejoicings and celebrations at this
date, May, 1514, over the supposed complete suppression of "heretics." The historian has