A closer examination of the Churches will lead us to see, that in the four first, where there is blame (in the Epistle to Smyrna there is none) and threatened judgment, the threat is to be executed not on the Angel but on the Candlestick in Ephesus-or on the guilty parties, as in Pergamos and in Thyatira. But in the three last it is not so. In Philadelphia there is no blame; and here, as in Smyrna, the Angel and the Church are not distinguished in the address itself; but in Sardis and in Laodicea the threatenings are continued as a part of the address to the Angel himself. This, I suppose, connects itself with the distinction already made between these two classes of churches; the four first have a definite church-place, and the Angel, that part which in God’s sight really represented the Church, is abidingly owned at all events, and the judgment is on the inconsistent part, or what falsified the public testimony. But, when we come to Sardis; we go back (for Thyatira goes on to the end); when speaking of the mass, the better and witnessing part comes out as witness, witness against Jezebel; if they are not a witness they are nothing at all. The corporate constitution is null here. Hence if there be failure, the whole thing fails and is judged with the world, and any faithful ones become a distinctive blessed remnant; because faithful witness is the whole thing. Hence, when Christ hast to become that, the Church so ruined is to be spued out of His mouth.