give their power and strength to uphold those apostate principles, by which the Roman empire once more became a beast *.

Arguing therefore from analogy and from the context of the particular passage now under consideration, I will venture to affirm with some degree of positiveness, that the hour or season, in which the great earthquake was to take place, and which is declared by St. John to be the very same as that in which the war of the beast against the witnesses was to be carried on and their triumphant ascent into heaven to occur; that this hour or season is the period comprehended under the second woetrumpet †.

2. It

"Kingdoms they might be before, but they were not before "kingdoms or horns of the beast till they embraced his religion" (Bp. Newton's Dissert. on Rev. xvii.). Though I cannot agree with Bp. Newton, that the first beast means the Papacy, the propriety of this remark will be unaffected, whether his scheme or mine be adopted. Daniel, not noticing the threefold state of the beast as St. John does, simply describes the first rise of the ten horns and of the eleventh little horn which sprung up among them. This division of the empire however took place during the intermediate state of the beast: hence St. John does not consider the ten kingdoms as horns of the beast, till the Roman empire reassumed its ancient bestial nature; and hence Daniel carefully distinguishes between the period when the little horn first arose, and the period when the saints were delivered into his hand. This last period is the same as that when St. John beheld the beast, in his third or revived state, ascend out of the sea of Gothic invasion. .

† Mr. Butt objects to this interpretation of the word hour, on the ground, that, when it is said in that hour there was a

great

2. It is observable, that the two first woes are accurately distinguished from each other, as they took place in the East; but that no precise line of discrimination is drawn between them, as they commenced in the West: it is merely stated, that as soon as a tenth part of the city should have fallen by the earthquake, the second woe should be past, but that the third woe should quickly follow it: this line of discrimination therefore must be drawn by referring to eastern chronology. I have already stated, that the first woe-trumpet describes the rise and establishment of the twofold Apostasy; that the second represents the middle and most flourishing period of its existence; and that the third details the several steps of its downfall, introducing moreover upon the stage a new and most formidable power.

The first of the woe-trumpets seems to have begun to sound in the year 606, when the eastern

earthquake, the time alluded to must be the termination of the three days and a half (Comment. on Daniel's last vision. p. 51, 52.). I see not the cogency of this objection, which is plainly founded on the assumption that that hour must necessarily mean that same point of time. That such is not the sense in which St. John uses the expression, is manifest from the passages already adduced. Thus, when he says that the judgment of Babylon shall come in one hour, he cannot mean, Mr. Butt himself being judge, that the Papacy shall be overthrown in a single moment, but in one season; which season is evidently that of the last vial. In a similar manner, the hour or season, which comprehends the slaughter of the witnesses and the great earthquake, 【 conceive to be that of the sixth trumpet.

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revolt

recolt was completed by the rise of Mohammedism, and when the saints were given into the hand of the already existing Papal little horn. Under this trumpet are comprehended the five prophetic months of Saracenic conquest, which began in 612, and ended in 762, when Bagdad was built, and when Mohammedism may be considered as firmly established. Now, since the prophet assures us, that the first woe expired at this period, we must look for the establishment of Popery either in or before the year 762, in order that it may be comprized under the same woe as the establishment of Mohammedism. Accordingly the proper date of the firm establishment of Popery is the year 755, or as some say the year 758, when Pipin, king of France, having taken the apostolic see under his special protection, conferred upon it the Exarchate of Ravenna.

The second woe-trumpet began to sound, when the Euphratean cavalry, who were prepared even to the very hour, day, month, and year, in order that they might slay the third part of men or the Eastern empire, were let loose. This liberation, as we have seen, took place at the latter end of the thirteenth century, and probably in the year 1281. Now, in this same year 1281, the papal Apostasy may be considered as having attained the zenith of its power; as will sufficiently appear from the following statement of the several rapid strides which it had previously made to absolute universal domination. In the year 774, the Pope obtained VOL. II. I a grant

a grant of the greatest part of the kingdom of the Lombards. In the year 787, the worship of images, which had already been established in 607, was confirmed by the second council of Nice. In the year 817, the Emperor Louis finally confirmed to the Pope his Italian dominions. In the year 1074, Gregory the seventh strictly forbad the marriage of the clergy. In the year 1059, Robert Guiscard assumed the title of Duke of Apulia and Calabria; and afterwards did homage to the Pope, as his superior lord, for the dominions which have since been erected into the kingdom of the two Sicilies. In the year 1137, the same feudal submission was made by Don Alonso of Portugal. In the year 1213, John of England declared his monarchy a fief of the apostolic see. In the pontificate of Innocent the third, which lasted from the year 1198 to the year 1216, the Saladine tenth, a tax originally laid upon the whole Latin empire for the service of the holy war, was continued for the benefit of the successors of St. Peter: and Innocent himself, "may boast of the two most signal triumphs over sense and humanity, the establish

6.6

The Spanish kingdom of Arragon, the Dukedom of Austria, the islands of Sardinia and Corsica, and more than one of the Italian principalities, declared themselves, in the same dark period, feudatories of the Papacy. The long continued tyranny, which the Pope exercised over the kingdom of Naples, is well known. In short, it appears at one time to have been the studied design of the Bishops of Rome to render themselves temporal, no less than spiritual, sovereigns of Europe. In this design however, as we shall hereafter see, they by no means succeeded, ❝ment

**ment of transubstantiation, and the origin of the "inquisition *." Finally, to complete the aggrandisement of the church of Rome, in the period between 1274 and 1277, she bowed to reluctant submission the neck of her ancient rival of Constantinople; a submission, not long-lived indeed, but existing in its full force in the year 1281, when the second woe-trumpet probably began to sound †.

3. Thus it appears, that the second woe-trumpet seems to have commenced in the West, as it did in the East, in the year 1281. Now we learn from St. John, that the last event, comprehended under it, is to be the fall of a tenth part of the great city by an earthquake. Consequently, since the second woe-trumpet began to sound in the year 1281, and since the witnesses were slain in the year 1548, the two events, of the death of the witnesses and the earthquake, must of course happen in the same apocalyptic hour or season: that is to say, they must both take place under the second woe-trumpet which commenced in the year 1281; though the one event, as we shall find, was to be many years prior to the other.

(1.) And here we must carefully note, that the fall of the tenth part of the city is almost immedi

* Hist. of Decline and Fall, vol. xi.

p.

152.

It is a remarkable circumstance, that the submission of the Greek Church was withdrawn in the year 1283, as if it had only continued beyond the year 1281, that the Papacy might be in the full meridian of its power, when the second woe-trumpet began to sound. See Gibbon's Hist. of Decline and Fall, vol. xi. p. 334, 337.

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ately