The arena upon which the predicted operation of sealing the servants of the Deity was to be performed was "the earth and sea." The reason given why the four angels were to restrain the four winds from blowing to the injury of these, is proof of this. The blowing of the winds upon the earth and sea, by injuring them with the tempests they were capable of exciting, would have rendered the work of sealing impossible. Greece, Italy, Britain, France, Spain, Africa, the islands and coasts of the Mediterranean, the countries of the Danube, the Rhine, and the heights and valleys of the Alps and Appenines -- these constituting the western Roman empire, were "the earth and sea" upon which the apocalyptic tempests were forbidden to blow until the work of sealing should have been complete. At the four corners of the terrestrial of this arena, stood four angels, or restraining powers, having a certain mission to execute in favor of the inhabitants of the earth and sea. In the period of the sixth seal, the Devil had come down to them with great wrath, knowing that he had but a short time (xii. 12); but that time had passed with the termination of the seal period, A.D. 324; and now a period of tranquillity was granted them, for the sake of those who might be separated among them as the sealed ones of the Deity.

History shows us that the first "wind" began to blow upon "the earth" A.D. 396. Hence, the interval between A.D. 324 and A.D. 396, a period of three score years and twelve, must be regarded as the time allotted for the work of "sealing the servants of the Deity in their foreheads." There can be no doubt of the sealing period commencing after the sixth seal, and not contemporary with it, as some suppose, inasmuch as this seventh chapter begins with the words meta tauta, after these things; and the only things that can be intended, are those recited in the sixth seal which immediately precede the chapter. I suppose the notion of the sixth seal including the sealing arises from the position of the chapter between the prophecy of the sixth seal and the intimation of the opening of the seventh in ch. viii. But the truth is, that the sealing is the opening event of the Seventh Seal, concurrent with "the silence in the heaven." It does not terminate with the breaking of the silence, but continued long after. The seventy-two years of the sealing were the first seventy-two years of the seventh seal-period; and though the Laodicean Catholic Apostasy imperialized in the heaven, richly deserved all the judgments restrained by the four angels, its adherents were spared the infliction for the sake of the servants to be sealed. The first seal-period was peaceful and prosperous for the idolatrous empire under Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, and the Antonines; not for the sake of the pagans, but for the sake of the work the Holy Archer had to perform in the period: so in this opening period of the Seventh Seal, judgment was restrained, not for the sake of the Laodiceans, but on account of the sealing angel’s work.