7.  And there was war in heaven:  Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought, and his angels.

8.  And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven,

9.  And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world:  he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.

10.  And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ; for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night.

11.  And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death.

Vs. 7-11.—­In this part of the chapter we have three attacks of the dragon upon the friends of true religion.  The first is the war in heaven, (vs. 7-12.) The second persecution on the earth, (vs. 12-16.) The third is mentioned in verse 17th:  and these three contests cover the whole period of the 1260 years.

The first war is waged in heaven.  The allusion is obviously to the rebellion of angels, for which they were cast down from heaven, (2 Pet. ii. 4.) The contest is the same in principle as the first war; but it is conducted in a different form and place.  Heaven here, is the church general, and the serpent acts by the authority of the empire.  The woman having fled into the wilderness, the dragon’s power becomes so great in the symbolical heaven, that he aims at the entire destruction of true religion in the world.  The advocates of the true religion at this time were the Waldenses, called by their adversaries in derision Leonists and Cathari,—­citizens of Lyons in France; and Puritans, a term of reproach heaped upon their successors till the present day.  These people were deemed the most dangerous enemies to the church of Rome.  Yet the reasons for their condemnation by the inquisitors, are their full vindication in the judgment of impartial men.  They are three,—­“This is the oldest sect; for some say it hath endured,—­from the time of the apostles.  It is more general; for there is no country in which this sect is not.  Because when all other sects beget horror in the hearers, this of the Leonists hath a great show of piety:  they live justly before men, and believe all things rightly concerning God; only they blaspheme the church of Rome and the clergy.”  While the beast by its horns, instigated by an apostate church, and both by the dragon, was “making havoc of the church,” represented by the Puritans:  there were some even in the Romish cloisters whose hearts God had touched, and who occasionally espoused the cause of a virtuous minority at the hazard of life.  This war in heaven, conducted with various success by Bernard, Peter Waldo, John Wickliffe and others on the European continent and in Britain, may