in that happy time, become the inheritance of God's people. To them the earth, teeming with the beneficence of providence, will yield its increase, and time, in its exclusive dedication to religion, become peculiarly holy. Oppression will cease throughout the world; and the fear of the Lord be a ruling principle. In it liberty, in an eminent degree, will be proclaimed to the captive and the slave; and every forfeited privilege be restored, as in the time of that Great Restitution. The righteous, emancipated from Antichristian bondage and oppression, will possess the earth; and the blessed, freed from the tyranny of sin and death, inherit the beatitude of heaven. Here, reinstated in that purity, immortality, and bliss, which were lost by transgression, they will enjoy an everlasting sabbath.

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To the attainment of an inheritance in this glorious state, it is, however, of the last moment to observe, that certain disqualifications are mentioned as irremediable by the Apostle. He has accordingly represented a third angel,' as following the two who shall announce the opening of the Millennium; to whom the charge is committed, to utter a warning voice, against the danger which might be thus incurred, and the dreadful retribution with which the transgression would be visited.

And the third angel followed, saying with a 'loud voice, if any man worship the beast and his

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image, and receive his mark in his forehead, or in his 'hand, the same shall drink of the wine of the 'wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation, and he shall 'be tormented with fire and brimstone, in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of 'the Lamb: and the smoke of their torment ascend

eth up for ever and ever; and they have no rest

day nor night, who worship the beast and his image,

and whoever receiveth the mark of his name.'445

The

The events of which the two first angels are represented as the heralds, will be discerned in their sensible effects; as the universal diffusion of the Gospel, and the retribution visited upon Antichrist will be manifested to the world. image of two angels, deputed on a special mission, under which these events were exhibited to the enrapt imagination of the Evangelist, may be understood as the personifications of the divine agency, by which they will be accomplished. The extraordinary power, by which the Evangelical Law will be disseminated, and the Antichristian usurpation suppressed, is indeed represented, with equal clearness and beauty, by those winged spirits who are the heralds of God's purposes, and the ministers of his judgments. In the latter sense, the third angel' is to be also understood, as a personification of the fiery vengenance of God,

445 Rev. xiv. 9, 10, 11.

directed against those who are the hired or sworn adversaries of his kingdom.

It has been justly observed by the expositors of the preceding passage, that slaves were branded in 'the forehead,' and soldiers in the hand.'446

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447

The figure by which the adherents of the beast' are said to receive his mark,' or the mark of his 'name,' in either part of the body, consequently means nothing more than that they were subservient to his purposes, or enrolled among his allies; bound either servilely to perform, or violently to enforce his commands. No greater liberty is taken by the Evangelist in the employment of this licence, than when he represents the righteousness of the saints' by white garments; a spotless purity being shadowed under the image. There is, however, a third class, who, in the opposition instituted between the followers of the beast, as small and 'great, free and bond,' must be distinguished from those who are hired or sworn to execute his purposes, and branded as his slaves. These are distinguished by the Evangelist, as having, not 'the mark,' but the number of his name.2449 Such, consequently, must be regarded as the allies of a less public and an independent character, who are known to him, and to each other, by a private

446 Vid. Wetst. et Wolf. in Apoc. xiii. 16. conf. Spencer de Leg. Hebr. Lib. II. cap. xx. § 3. Pitisc. Lexic, voc. Inscriptio.' 447 Rev. xix. 8. 448 Ibid. xiii. 16. 449 Ibid. 17.

symbol, or countersign.450 In a word, they compose his secret, as opposed to his branded adherents.

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As the beast and his image' have been already identified with the Antichristian power, which passed in succession from the Emperors to the Popes; the persons, against whom the denunciations of the third angel' are uttered, thus prove to be identical with the active agents of that profane usurpation; the servants and soldiers by whom his tyranny is maintained and extended. In the former class may be numbered those who uphold his influence by the more lenient modes of

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450 Rev. xiii. 16. 'That no man might buy or sell, save he ' that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of ' his name.' This allusion to the act of buying and selling' seems to point to the tesseræ, or tallies, by which the stipulating parties to a contract or obligation were known to each other. They were not only given by merchants, as pledges of a bargain; but scattered by the Roman Emperors, among the multitude at the theatres, as the price of their idolatrous acclamations and flattery: vid. Pitisc. Lex. ut supr. Vol. II. voc. ' tesseræ 'mercatorum.' p. 938. theatrales.' p. 939. On producing them, the party was recognised, as entitled to the price or value, of which they were the symbol or pledge. In the number of a 'name,' a verbal symbol is, however, plainly meant; such as was proper to the Cabbala; in which words were cryptographically substituted for each other, according to the numerical force of the characters: vid. supr. p. 31, 32. It may be thus easily seen, in explanation of the Apostle's text, how an ally or accomplice might reveal himself, by knowing the number' expressive of the characters of a name;' while the name'

persuasion, insinuation and address; in the latter, those who enlarge it by the terrific and violent means of persecution, oppression, and torture. While those who employ corruption and venality, as the method of exalting his throne, may rank by themselves, as a separate and less dependant order. From the connexion which is established between their fate, and the fall of the seat of Antichrist, by the Evangelist; it would appear, that the judgment with which they will be respectively visited, will be nearly coincident in time. Nor is it unreasonable to suppose, that their punishment, any more than the reward of the saints who were the victims of their fury, will be deferred to the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God.'451 As the Evangelist declares, with an emphatical change of tense, from past to present time; the 'smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and

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itself, and of course the sovereign whom he served, remained undivulged. It appears to me, that St. John, in opposing the ' number of a name,' in this sense, to the number of a man,' in the following verse (Rev. ibid. 17.), intended to contradistinguish a secret symbol from a proper number. The latter phrase is justly explained, after the Apostle himself, by Wetstein in loc. Esai. viii. 1. Hab. ii 2. Apoc. xxi. 17. quali homines vulgò utuntur, et qui ab hominibus inveniri potest.' This explanation is wholly inapplicable to a name of mystical significancy; of which the profane vulgar could divine nothing, and the initiated only could reveal the proper force: vid. supr. p. 33. 451 Rom. ii. 5.