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Rev 12:13. Καὶ ὅτε κ.τ.λ., and when the dragon saw that he was cast to the earth) Arnolf, a monk of Ratisbonne, says Ussher, who makes himself an eye-witness of the matter, affirms that a portentous dragon was seen in the air about these times (de S. Emmerammo, l. 2, t. 2, ant. lect. H. Canisii, pp. 98, 99). “Having been placed in Pannonia some years before, on a certain day from the third hour to the sixth, I saw the devil, or a dragon, suspended in the air. But his magnitude was incredible, his length so great, that he seemed to be extended, as it were, through the space of a mile.” Admonitius, who converses with him in this dialogue, asks of Arnolf: Did you at all remember at that time any of these things, which the blessed John writes in his Apocalypse respecting the dragon and the beast? He replies: Truly these things came into my memory, but the recollection of what is written in the same Apocalypse especially harassed me, in which is contained: Woe to you, because the dragon is come to you with great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time.-[Ussher[129]] de success. Eccles. Christian, f. 46, 47. The same, s. 36, from Glaber Rodulph, relates that such a portent was seen in Gaul, about A. 1000 or afterwards. And Arnolf flourished about A. 1040. Wherefore the visions related by Rodulph and Arnolf were between the beginnings of the short time and of the 3½ times, and then the dragon was certainly already cast to the earth, persecuting the woman: but I am not credulous enough to assent to the statement, that this enemy was then actually seen in Gaul and in Pannonia. Yet I thought that this account ought to be mentioned, because a man of great weight, James Ussher, both related it, and plainly enough assented to it. Let those who find more testimonies of such phenomena, produce them: let those who are strong in spiritual judgment, weigh them.
[129] Ussher’s collected works, vol. ii., p. 101.