whose character precisely answers to that of the little horn. By the instigation of this corrupt spiritual power, the ten-horned beast, or the secular Roman empire, wages war with the saints during the period of the 1260 days, through the instrumentality either of his last head or his ten horns.

2. The desolating transgression of Mohammedism arose in the same year that the Papal horn became an universal spiritual empire. A few years after its rise, it acquired its predicted character of a little horn of the Macedonian he-gout; and soon, agreeably to the prophecy, waxed exceeding great toward the south, and toward the east, and toward the pleasant land. In the course of its progress it cast down many of the symbolical stars, or Christian pastors, to the ground; took away the daily sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving; polluted the spiritual sanctuary; and presumed to magnify itself against even the Prince of princes. As for its character, it was notorious for trampling upon the truth; for prospering in a wonderful manner; for making its appearance, exactly when the transgressors were come to the full by publicly re-establishing idolatry; for teaching dark sentences; for being mighty not through its own unaided power; for exterminating its opponents with the utmost barbarity; for persecuting with peculiar violence the people of the Holy Ones; for advancing itself by craft; and for destroying many while in a state of negligent security.

In the Apocalypse a more full account is given of the agents by whom this apostate religion should be propagated. A fallen star opens the bottomless pit, and lets out the destroying king of the locusts. These locusts are permitted to continue their ravages during the space of five prophetic months or 150 years; which is found from history to be the precise period allotted to the continuation of the Saracenic incursions. The locusts are succeeded by an immense body of horsemen under four leaders from the banks of the Euphrates; whose commission is limited to an hour and a day and month and a year, or 391 years and 15 days, and who are empowered to kill a third part of men or the Roman empire, which their predecessors the Saracenic locusts had only been permitted to torment.

History accordingly teaches us, that the Saracens were succeeded by the Turks: who came under four leaders from the banks of the Euphrates; whose armies consisted almost entirely of cavalry; whose career of conquest exactly continued 391 years; and who subverted the Constantinopolitan empire, which the Saracens, severely as they harassed it, had never been able to effect.

The Mohammedan little horn itself, or the religion of Mohammed, is to prevail to the end of 2200 years from the invasion of Asia by Alexander the great; which is found to bring us down exactly to the year 1866, and thus to allow precisely 1260 years for the triumphs of Mohammedism, reckoning from its commencement in the year 606.

3. After the era of the Reformation, and in the last days of atheism and insubordination, but previous to the commencement of the time of the end, the infidel king, according to the sure word of prophecy, was destined to arise; that Antichrist, who was alike to deny both the Father and the Son; that audacious tyrant, who should magnify himself above every god, who should speak marvellous things against the God of gods, who should neither regard the God of his fathers nor the desire of women, who should nevertheless honour a foreign god and acknowledge gods protectors, and who should be allowed to prosper till the indignation be accomplished.

As the contemporary rise and progress of Popery and Mohammedism is described in the Apocalypse under the two first woe-trumpets, so the appearance of the great Antichrist is announced by the third. His full develope

ment however is to be immediately preceded by the last event of the second woe-trumpet, a tremendous earthquake by which a tenth part of the great Latin city, or one of the ten horns of the Roman beast, is to be overthrown. This last woe, which extends beyond the termination of the 1260 years at least to the end of the seventh vial, if not to the commencement of the Millennium, comprehends the periods of the harvest and the vintage.

Thus, after the epoch of the Reformation, and immediately after the French Revolution of the year 1789, we have seen the manifestation of a terrific monster, which

alike set at defiance the laws both of God and man. We have beheld scenes of carnage and impiety, which well deserve to be ushered in by a distinct woe-trumpet, and which may justly claim to themselves the title of a harvest of God's wrath. These scenes have at length passed away, like the distempered and fantastic visions of a sick man; and the sun of military tyranny has begun to scorch the irreclaimable inhabitants of the Papal Roman empire with an intolerable heat. The madness of the harvest therefore is past; and we must expect in due season the commencement of the vintage, in which the enemies of God will be finally destroyed for ever.

At present we are living under the fourth vial ;* and, from the great length of time which both Popery and Mohammedism have continued, we cannot be very far removed from the end of the 1260 days, whatever be the precise year from which they ought to be dated. The year, which I have fixed upon for their date, is the year 606; a year marked by so singular a combination of circumstances, that I know not how any other can with. equal propriety be selected. If then I be right in my opinion, we are now removed but little more than 60 years from the commencement of the time of the end and of the vintage of God's wrath. Be this however as it may, we are undoubtedly living in the last days of blasphemous infidelity, in that awful period which is the peculiar reign of Antichrist. The signs of the times all concur to teach us, that we are fast approaching towards the catastrophe of the great drama. We have seen the unexpected union of Infidelity and Popery; an union, no doubt preparatory to the predicted final league of the beast, the false prophet, and the kings of the papal earth,† We have seen measures taken, as it were, towards making the atheistical king the last head of the beast. have seen Palestine, the predicted stage on which Antichrist with his congregated vassals is doomed to perish,

We

I have already stated it to be not improbable, that the fifth vial may have been poured out since this Work was first published. June 10, 1806.

+ This confederacy seems now actually to have begun to be formed. June 10, 1805. There is reason to believe, that the atheistical king is now become the last or Gaylovingian bead of the beast. June 10, 1806.

brought forward in a remarkable manner to public notice, and becoming at once a subject of political discussion and an object of hostile invasion. We have seen the kings devouring the flesh of the great whore, and making her naked and desolate, though her spiritual empire over the minds of men still continues. We have seen, and may now see, the waters of the mystic Euphrates rapidly drying up, previous to their final complete exhaustion under the sixth vial. And we have

seen of late years, what I cannot but consider as at least one of the minor signs of the times, an unusual and laudable attention paid, in this protestant country, to the predictions of the ancient prophets. Although the book be sealed, and will not be fully understood, till the time of the end yet, as that time is now approaching, many run to and fro and knowledge is increased. Of the wicked indeed, of those who are either members of the great Apostacy or have been tainted with the blasphemous impieties of Antichrist, none shall understand; but the spiritually wise children of the symbolical woman, they who profess the same evangelical principles as those who perished at the era of the Reformation in trying, in purging, and in making white, their apostate brethren, these shall understand.*

:

Compare Dan. xii. 3, 9, 10. with xi. 35. The wise, here mentioned, are evidently the same as those men of understanding, some of whom, at the time of the Refermation, should perish in attempting to propagate the truth. To these spiritually wise children alone shall it be given of their heavenly Father to understand the signs of the times their opponents, through ignorance or contempt of them, will suddenly pull down swift destruction on their own heads. I know not any better comment upon the words of the prophet than the sciolist Voltaire's pert remark, that the great Sir Isaac Newton wrote his comment on the Revelation, to console mankind for his superiority over them in other respects. With regard to an attention paid to the prophecies being one of the signs of the times, the opinion of Sir Isaac Newton and Bp. Horsley will at least exempt me from the charge of fancifulness in enumerating it among them. "Amongst the interpreters of the last age," says Sir Isaac, "there is scarce one of note who hath not made some discoveries worth knowing, and thence I seem to gather, that God is about opening these mysteries." In a simi lar manner, the Bishop remarks, that the character of the maritime people destined to take the lead in the restoration of Judab "seems to describe some Christian country, where the prophecies, relating to the latter ages, will meet with particular attention; where the literal sense of those, which promise the restoration of the Jewish people, will be strenuously upheld; and where these will be so successfully expounded, as to be the principal means, by God's blessing, of removing the veil from the hearts of the Israelites." It cannot but be pleasing to the serious reader to observe the different estimation in which prophecy is now held throughout the protestant kingdom of England, from what it was by the Jews previous to the sacking of Jerusalem. We are informed by Josephus, that in his days it was no uncommon thing to hear his

As yet we have beheld no signs of the restoration of Judah: nor, to all appearance, shall we behold any, till the three times and a half draw very near to their termination.*

But, when that famous period shall have expired, then will commence the wars of Antichrist with the kings of the south and the north, and the restoration of the unconverted Jews through his instrumentality. Then will the Lord call unto the land spreading wide the shadow of its wings, which is beyond the rivers of Cush, accustomed to send messengers by sea, even in quick-sailing vessels upon the surface of the waters. Then shall the swift messengers go unto a nation, dragged away and plucked, unto a people wonderful from the beginning hitherto, a nation expecting, expecting, and trampled under foot, whose land rivers have spoiled. Then shall all the inhabitants of the world, and dwellers upon earth, see the lifting up, as it were, of a banner upon the mountains ; and shall hear the sounding, as it were, of a trumpet. In spite of the opposition of the atheistico-papal confederacy, the great maritime power of the day shall take the lead in the restoration of the converted of Judah: while the enemies of the Lord, notwithstanding their invasion of Palestine, and notwithstanding their temporary success against Jerusalem, bent only upon the accomplishment of their own schemes, and unconsciously subject to the influence of Satanical delusion,t will madly rush on to their own destruction in the valley of Megiddo, in the

hardened countrymen ridicule the oracles of their ancient prophets, which they had already defied by crucifying the Messiah. Κατεπαλεί το μεν εν πας αυτοις θεσμός ανθρω των εγέλατο δε τα θεία, και τις μεν προφητων θεσμός ώσπες αγυρτικας λογοποιΐας έχλευαξον. (Joseph. de Bell. Judaic. L. 4. C. 6.) What a singular resemblance there is between this state of the Jews and that of the French at the time of their boasted Revolution

Since this was written, Buonapartè has begun to assemble the Jews in a grand council at Paris. Whether it will lead to their restoration, time alone can determine at present we have certainly no right to say that it will. The avowed plan of the usurper is to incorporate them with his other subjects: his real plan may be something different. It is said that the Jews of Frankfort have impiously hailed him as their expected Messiah. Though I do not suppose the individual Buonapartè to be Antichrist, it is worthy of notice that Popish commentators have adopted the belief of some of the fathers, that, whenever Anticbrist should appear, the Jeres would acknowledge him as their Messiah, and attempt to procure their restoration by his instrumentality. See Calmet's Dict. Vox Antichrist-Cornelius â Lapide's Comment. in Dan. vii. Rev. xiii. Nov. 20, 1806.

Rev. xvi. 13, 14.