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each, given by these sacrilegious men, as a part of their grand restoration of things;-to be commemorative, for a short season, of the triumph of the beast from the bottomless pit, both over God the Creator, and over Christ the Redeemer, and over the two witnesses who had so long borne testimony, and were now overcome for a season. From this era, also, in the height of their pride, they began to count their time, reckoning from the first year of the French republic; in order to declare, by all possible means, to the world and to the church, that one of God's remarkable periods had closed, and another had begun its course, with direful omens of destructiveness. The joy which was testified by the learned and scientific classes, not of France only, but of all catholic Europe, when this great end of their labours for half a century had been signally accomplished, is on public record. They wrote to one another, and congratulated each other upon the introduction of a new era, as they judged, of the redemption of the human race. Insomuch that the tide of infidelity and republicanism reached Britain also; and as if to tell its own tale, "The Age of Reason" came forth, and the "Rights of Man," from the same pen, to convey poison into the very vitals of our people, while a new system of political justice was digested and promulgated for the learned and thinking classes, subversive of all social principle, and with it a system of ethics, of which one that examined and confuted it,* thus most wisely expresses the character:-"A system of ethics, which has long, in its principles at least, been stealing into favour, and which, in its certain tendency to undermine the foundation of whatever is excellent and valuable in the human heart, is exactly adapted to qualify us for either of the two descriptions of character which form the shame and scourge of this age for the obsequious and unprincipled tools of political corruption on the one hand, or the vain and desperate votaries of political empiricism on the other."

Thus did things come to pass in the end of the year 1792, and in the beginning of the year 1793. The witnesses were slain by the new power which then started into being from the bottomless pit. And anterior to this time, all that had been done in France by the States General and Legislative

* Mr. Green of Ipswich.

Assembly, was for the reformation both of monarchy and religion-for the destruction and subversion of neither; and he who before this time should have dared to breathe in public such purposes, would have lost his head, as surely as thereafter every man did lose his head who dared to breathe a word against them.

But this triumph over the witnesses, had but the short time of three prophetic days and a half permitted to it, after which the spirit of life was to enter into them again, and they were to stand upon their feet, and astonish their enemies by the glory to which they were to be exalted. Accordingly, in the end of the year 1796, exactly three years and a half from the perpetration of that deed, yet unheard of in Christendom, and not surpassed by the customary fury of the Japanese against the holy oracles, the spirit of the times had undergone such an amelioration, as to permit the bishops and clergy to hold meetings, and circulate encyclical letters, in preparation for a general council, which they contemplated, for the reformation of religion. But when a number of ecclesiastics met in the month of March, at Versailles, for the purpose of holding a synod, they were dispersed by an order from the executive power, as forming an association hostile to the peace and good order of the republic ;-because only three of the days of death had run their course over the head of the slain and contemned witnesses, and half a day had still to run. But when the three days and a half were fully accomplished, the way gradually opened for the restoration of the liberty of Christian worship; and in the earlier part of the year 1797, upon the election of a new third to sit in the council of five hundred, the end was accomplished, as it is thus written in the Annual Register for that year: "Amongst these men (who now held the power) a proper and commendable zeal for religion and morality soon began to display itself. The detestable laws authorizing polygamy, or rather a general system of debauchery, under the colour of a facility of divorce, were ordered to be reversed. On the 17th of June, Camille Jourdan made an important, and, in the opinion of many, an enlightened and philosophical report on the freedom of religious worship, which was ordered to be printed by the unanimous vote of the council of five hundred."

From this time forth, Christian worship being restored, the witnesses recovered their life and liberty to prophesy in the ears of men. And now even the sackcloth covering began to fall off, nor did bigotry and priestly authority ever again recover their power, even by the reconstitution of the Gallican church after many years, but are doomed to dwindle away until they be no longer found. At this time the Scriptures began also to receive great accessions of honour in this and other protestant nations, who were enlightened by the exhibition, which these three years of bloodshed and terror had given, of the state of a people, who had in frenzy cast themselves loose from their holy restraints. Henceforth it became a fixed and settled principle with all sound minded men, that the knowledge, and belief, and obedience of the Scriptures, is the foundation and cement of the best institutions of society, the hope and expectation of the barbarous nations of the earth. Whence arose, at this very time, that activity in translating the Scriptures into the various tongues of the earth, which is the most striking feature in the ecclesiastical history of the last ages. Insomuch that, from being found at the beginning of the last thirty years in fifty tongues only, they are now to be found translated into three times that number, and circulated with a porportionate zeal. So that the witnesses may be truly said to have ascended up to heaven in a cloud of glory! more honour having been conferred on them within the short period of thirty years, which has occurred since their murder, than during the seventeen centuries which have run their course since the sacred canon was completed. For why? because, as we shall see hereafter, these are the first years of the reign of Christ—his iron reign in respect to his enemies, his mouth of the sowing of seed in respect to his church. A feature of the times so remarkable, that in another part of this prophecy, it is given as the sign immediately preceding the fall of the spiritual Babylon. "And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, . and tongue, and people, saying with a loud voice, Fear God, and give glory to him; for the hour of his judgment is come: and worship him that made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters. And there followed another

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angel, saying, Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city, because she made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication."

And to complete the verification of the emblem: The same hour that this fearful deed was perpetrated upon the two faithful witnesses, there happened an earthquake or popular revolution, by the violence of which a tenth part of the city fell, and there were slain of men seven thousand. The bodies of the witnesses were to lie abused in the street or broadway, that is, in the most frequented and active part, of the city, where the wicked traffic was the briskest, and the work of treading down the saints went on the most fervently. And who doubts, that from the days of Charlemagne, France was entitled to this sad preeminency amongst the ten parts of the papal city? There, accordingly, were the witnesses slain, although there can be no doubt, that in every part of the city the adherents of the înfidel power, or beast from the bottomless pit, which murdered them, rejoiced with exceeding joy. And there, at that very hour, permitted by an angry God, fell out the most fearful event of any age, the revolution of France, which had been brewing for four years, but burst not forth till the end of the year 1792, before which time, not more than a month, they had fondly thought all their sores and burnings of heart were happily healed. In one week, when the hour was come, more was accomplished to revolutionize the country by the convention, than had been accomplished by the notables, the states general, and the legislative assembly: over whose legal and constitutional barriers, the fury of the popular tide burst, and deluged all the land with blood. For three years and a half, there was sack and carnage in the heart of France; and, upon its confines, whole armies of men were offered up to the beast from the bottomless pit. France, the tenth part, was not only wrenched away from the papal city, but took arms against all the rest; and became, in the hands of the King who ruleth in righteousness, the scourge of them all, after she had been well fleshed in the work of blood by maiming and wounding himself.

So exactly was this event, which marks the close of the period of "time, times, and half-a-time," fulfilled in its many very wonderful particulars; and with such a fearful note was rung the knell of judgment upon that beast with ten

horns, which had so long blasphemed against God, and held his saints in bondage. Daniel saw in his vision the ancient of days coming to this judgment, with a fiery stream issuing and coming forth before him. And surely a stream of fiery indignation hath preceded the act of judgment which then commenced upon the beast, because of the voice of the great words which the horn spake. The particulars of that judgment which are in the same fearful spirit of wrath and horror, are reserved for the next head of discourse. They fulfil to the letter, the prediction of the iron reign of Christ which then began: "He shall speak to them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure. Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel."

Now, before leaving this part of the subject, it is important to remark, that not only is this closing event of the period of captivity the opening event of the period of judgment; but that, while it is the dead throe, the last gasp and termination of life to the papal beast of forty and two months, it is the first breath and act of life to another beast," the beast from the bottomless pit;" concerning which much remains to be spoken hereafter, and to whose entrance upon the stage, and to whose identity, we therefore draw your attention the more particularly. He giveth fearful note of his being, and maketh signal discovery of his bloody character. From hell he cometh, and his presence maketh a hell upon, the earth. Infidelity is his name, the pride of Lucifer is his temper, and the murderous spirit of Satan is the element of his joy. He also clothes himself with light, like Lucifer, the son of the morning; and like him he "is last in the train of night, if rather he belong not to the dawn." Whose actions we shall have to study, and his destruction to foretell, after we have followed this fiery tract of the stream of the Lord's vengeance upon the beast which he hath brought to his end, whose lifeless trunk Daniel saw consumed and given to the burning flame.

But at the end of so long an argument, it may be good to take a brief review of the evidence which hath been adduced for the determination of the beginning and ending of the long papal captivity of the church. Justinian succeeded to the eastern empire in the year 527 of the Christian

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