the Heruli; 2. The kingdom of the Ostrogoths; and 3. The kingdom of the Lombards.

2. The apocalyptic ten-horned beast is not represented, like the same beast in the book of Daniel, with a little horn: because St. John wished to describe the power symbolized by the little horn, as having now, at the revival of the secular beast, become a great spiritual empire by being declared supreme head of the universal Church. Accordingly, the two-horned beast, which is not mentioned by Daniel, occupies the place of the little horn, which is not mentioned by St. John. This twohorned beast, or false prophet, is the same as the great scarlet whore, who rides triumphant upon the secular beast that is to say, they both equally. symbolize the adulterous tyrannical church of Rome, or the spiritual catholic empire of the Pope.

V. The prophecy awfully concludes with a call to attend to the just judgments of the Lord. "If

any man have an ear, let him hear. He that "leadeth into captivity, shall go into captivity: "he that killeth with the sword, must be killed "with the sword. Here is the patience and the "faith of the saints."

1. Hitherto we have beheld the secular beast triumphant, wearing out the saints, at the instigation of his little horn, by leading them into captivity or by mercilessly putting them to death*: we are now summoned

1

* Perpetual confinement, or the galleys, was the fate of those French protestants after the revocation of the edict of Nantz,

who

summoned to attend to the just retribution of a righteous God. The full execution of this sentence, long since pronounced upon the beast, is as yet future: for it will not take place until the last decisive battle of Armageddon after the termination of the 1260 years. Then, we are taught by St. John, that the beast shall go into perdition, being taken along with his associate the false prophet and cast into the lake of fire; and by Daniel, that the beast shall be slain, and his body destroyed and given to the burning flamé.

2. This I apprehend to be the ultimate meaning of the prophecy; nevertheless it seems, in some measure, to have begun already to receive its accomplishment. They that lead into captivity, and they that kill with the sword, is so general and comprehensive an expression, that it seems necessarily to include, not only the secular instruments of papal persecution, but likewise the ecclesiastical promoters of it: accordingly, both Daniel and St. John connect the fate of the beast with that of the little horn or the false prophet. We have beheld then in France the descendant and successor of those, whose memory has been rendered infamous by the diabolical crusade against the protestants of Provence, by the blood-stained night of

who escaped the stroke of the sword. To the eternal disgrace of Louis the fourteenth, many of the female protestants, even young girls, were transported as slaves to the West-India colo nies, merely because they refused to worship idols, and invocate dead saints,

St.

St. Bartholomew *, by the perfidious revocation of the edict of Nantz†, himself led into captivity and slain with the sword. We have beheld numbers of his papal clergy crowded together into gaols, and put to death. We have beheld the sovereign Pontiff, that man of sin who had led so many thousands captive, himself go into capti

"The French king gloryeth in his letters to the Pope, that "he had slain, 70,000 heretices in a few days." Isaacson's Chron. cited by Sharpe in An Inquiry into the Description of Babylon, p. 33. Bossuet acknowledges the murder of only

30,000.

+"Louis peremptorily required the Protestants in France ❝to sign a declaration of submission and strict obedience to "his royal orders; and that they should promise to attend the

mass, and entirely omit their own religious meetings; for "otherwise they should forfeit, not only their lands and all "other property, but also their personal liberty; the men being "doomed to slavery in the king's galleys for life, and the "women to be shut up for life wherever their enemies should "chose to immure them." It is supposed, that, in the course of this detestable persecution, about a million of protestants saved their lives by quitting their country, and that at least 100,000 were murdered (Sharpe's Inquiry into the Description of Babylon, p. 35-39.). Among those, who fled from their disgraced country at that dreadful period, was a pious ancestor of my own.

"The decree was passed on the 15th day of May 1792, "which condemned the non-juring clergy to banishment. "About the time of the federation which followed, many of "the clergy were put to death with circumstances more or less "sanguinary; great numbers also were crowded together in "gaols, and other places of confinement." Hist. the Interp. vol. ii. p. 232.

VOL. II.

T

vity.

vity *. The voice of the seven last thunders hath long been sealed: but now it hath begun to shake both heaven and earth.

3. We are not however to imagine, that the infidel tyrant of the last days is allowed to prosper for his own sake. He is doubtless a mere instrument of vengeance in the hand of God. Like his precursor and type, the haughty sovereign of Assyria, he is "the rod of the Lord's anger, sent against an hypocritical nation and against the people of his wrath, to take the spoil, and to “take the prey, and to tread them down like the "mire of the streets. Howbeit he meaneth not

so; but it is in his heart to destroy and to cus

:

off nations not a few." Hence, when he hath "performed his whole work," as "the fruit of "the stout heart of the king of Assyria and the “ glory of his high looks" were punished, so "shall he come to his end, and none shall help "him."

Yet more recently we have witnessed the captivity of the royal family of Spain. April 22, 1809.

SECTION

SECTION IV.

Concerning the two-horned beast of the earth.

To complete his account of the great promoters and upholders of the Western Apostasy, it now only remains, that St. John should describe the spiritual power, by the instigation of which the temporal ten-horned beast was to persecute the witnesses during the space of 1260 years. Accordingly, he concludes the third chapter of the little book with fully developing the character of this tyrannical empire within an empire, under the symbol of a second beast or universal empire, co-existing and co-operating with the first beast or universal empire.

"And I beheld another beast coming up out of "the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, "and he spake as a dragon. And he exerciseth "all the power of the first beast before him, and "causeth the earth and them that dwell therein to

worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was "healed. And he doeth great wonders, in order "that he may make fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men *. And he de"ceiveth

* Such I conceive to be the proper translation of the original. This bringing down of fire from heaven upon earth was not itself a miracle; but wonders were wrought by the beast in order that he might possess without dispute or controul the Cauthority

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