third woe-trumpet, the flood was at its height; and threatened to carry away in wild indiscriminate confusion every thing sacred and venerable, every thing salutary and dignified, every thing wise, every thing lovely, every thing that adorns this life, every thing that fits us for a better life.

5. Short was the time that elapsed between the great earthquake and the blast of the seventh angel, when revolutionary France, in the frenzy of deinocratic enthusiasm, established atheism and anarchy by law; held out the right hand of fellowship to the insurgents of every nation; commenced a tremendous massacre of her enslaved citizens; proclaimed the Son of God to be an impostor, and his Gospel a forgery; swore to exterminate Christianity and royalty from off the face of the earth, as she had blotted them both out of her own dominions; and madly unsheathed the sword against every regularly established government. But the Church of the Lord is founded upon a rock; and he hath promised, that "the gates of hell shall never prevail against "it." Although "the heathen rage, and the people

imagine a lie;" although the destroyers of the earth" set themselves in array, and the rulers "take counsel together against Jehovah, and against his anointed; Let us break their bands “asunder, and cast away their cards from us :" yet "he, that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh; "the Lord shall have them in derision.". Congregated Europe, so God willed, met the infidels

in arms. Long and bloody was the contest; for the whole "earth helped the woman." Yet, not notwithstanding the various successes of the atheistical republic, when the general pacification took place in the year 1801, the earth had swallowed up the flood, which the dragon cast out of his mouth. A trial had been made of modern philosophy; and it had been most tremendously proved to be little adapted to promote the happiness of man. Its chief advocates sunk into contempt and oblivion. They seemed, as it were, to have vanished from off the face of the globe. The gross absurdity of their system was detected. Common sense began to resume its empire. The cry of an impracticable equality, and the avowal of a resolution to exterminate Christianity, were heard no more. Infected as many individuals might be with the principles of infidelity, Atheism itself was displaced; and Christianity, the apostate Christianity indeed of the Church of Rome, was re-established.

III." And the dragon was wroth with the woman: and went to make war with the rem"nant of her seed, which keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus "Christ."

We are repeatedly informed by St. John, that the little book extends through the whole period of the 1260 days, though a more particular account of the last times under the seventh trumpet is reserved for the prophecy that immediately succeeds

the

the little book. Such being the case, it is evident, that this war of the dragon against the woman, being mentioned at the very end of the whole history of the dragon's machinations, will take place at the very end of the 1260 days, or, as Daniel expresses it, at the time of the end. But, if it take place at the time of the end, it must be the same as the expedition of the infidel king predicted by Daniel, and as the war foretold by St. John as about to be undertaken by a confederacy of the beast, the false prophet, and the kings of the Roman earth, under the seventh vial. As yet therefore it is future. It will be the last great effort of Satan against the Church previous to the commencement of the Millennium; an effort made by his two agents, Infidelity and Popery, unnaturally then as at present leagued together, to oppress the faithful worshippers of God, and to prevent the restoration of the converted Jews t. From the declaration, that it shall be a war against the remnant (of the woman's seed, and from other parallel declarations ‡, I think we may infer, that it will be a sort of crusade or holy war; a war, entered upon by Infidelity and Popery, under the pretext of religion and under a pretence of seal for the catholic Church, against those that have come out of the mystic Babylon,

I have already observed, that the four chapters of the little book run parallel to one another; each extending from the he ginning to the end of the whole 1260 days.

† More will be said upon this subject hereafter. These will be considered in a future chapter.

and against such of the Jews as have been converted to Protestantism. If I be right in this opinion, the powerful protestant kingdom of England will certainly be one of the principal objects against which the wrath of the dragon will be directed. Her courage and wisdom have long been the main instruments under. God, of confounding all his measures, and of frustrating all his attempts. While he yet reigned in the symbolical heaven, she was his grand opponent, and thence obtained the glorious title of the bulwark of the Reformation: and now that he has been cast out into the earth, she hath still proved his most indefatigable and successful adversary, blasting his schemes, exposing his nefarious projects, and withering the arm of his wretched vassals. Hence we must expect, that his almost exclusive. rage will be directed against her. The end however is not yet. This war, professedly undertaken against the woman and the remnant of her seed, has not yet commenced: and, when it does commence, whatever temporary and partial success may attend Antichrist and his rebel rout, it will eventually and speedily terminate in their confusion and utter overthrow. Towards the close of the 1260 days, the dragon shall begin to gather together by secret diabolical agency the beast, the false prophet, and the kings of the papal earth, to the appointed place of their destruction at Armageddon; and shall cause his minister the infidel tyrant, then become the avowed champion of the false prophet, to "

go forth

with great fury to destroy, and religiously to "devote to extermination, many." But, although he shall succeed in "planting the curtains of his.

pavilions between the seas in the glorious holy "mountain:" yet in vain shall he "sanctify war;" in vain shall he assemble his enslaved multitudes against that mighty maritime nation, which is destined to take the lead in turning the captivity of God's ancient people. Unable to impede the progress of those "swift messengers" of the Lord unto a nation dragged away and plucked, unto a people wonderful from their beginning hitherto, a nation expecting, expecting, and trampled "under foot, whose land" the symbolical "rivers” of foreign invaders have spoiled;" unable to frustrate the least of the high purposes of Jehovah, this lawless despiser both of things human and things divine shall, in the fatal battle of Armageddon, "come to his end, and none shall help "him *." Into these yet future matters however we must not dare to pry beyond what is expressly written. The book of futurity is as yet sealed; and who shall open it before the appointed season?

* The proposition, that some great maritime and commercial nation will be very much concerned in bringing about the conversion and restoration of the Jews, is admirably proved by Bp. Horsley, in his letter upon the 18th chapter of Isaiah. Whatever degree of probability there might be in the conjecture, his Lordship does not venture to assert, that England will be this great maritime and commercial nation; and his prudent reserve upon that point I cannot do better than imitate,

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