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By these four angels, or instruments of God to execute his vengeance, I find the most valuable interpreters understanding the Turks, considered as distinct from the Saracens, and succeeding of them, whose empire began in Ottoman, Anno 1296, or thereabouts. Mr. Mede saith these four angels denote so many sultanies or kingdoms, into which the Turks were dispersed, having passed the river Euphrates, which river is famous for four things:
1. It was the boundary of David and Solomon’s kingdom, Deu_11:24 Jos_1:4.
2. It was that river by which Babylon stood, Jer_13:4-6.
3. It was the boundary of the Roman empire, beyond which it could never extend itself.
4. And it also was the seat of the Turks, who having some years before come over the Euphrates, first divided themselves into a tetrarchy; of which one in Asia, another at Aleppo, another at Damascus, a fourth at Antioch.
Mr. Mede gives us a table or diagram of it, Clav. Apoc. 40. p. 102. Here they were bounded for a while, but about the year 1300 they were loosed, and began further to invade Europe; which is the severe providence of God, conceived to be here foretold as the consequent of this sixth angel’s sounding. The Turks who, though come over the river Euphrates, had hitherto by the providence of God been bounded near unto it, not much contending to enlarge their territories, now joined together with the Saracens under Ottoman, and went further into Europe, and could by no means be stopped till they had got the empire of Constantinople.