they approached Savoy, Piedmont, and the southern provinces of France, which had been but little tainted with the general disease and which were afterwards the seat of the Waldenses and Albigenses, they were defeated with great slaughter by Charles Martel in several engagements. They were however only allowed to torment the great body politic of the apostate empire; they were not permitted to kill it. Accordingly, they were never able to take Constantinople, or to subvert its monarchy, though they frequently attempted it; the task of giving the fatal blow to its declining power being reserved for their successors the Turks.

The symbolical locusts were like horses prepared for the battle : the strength of the Saracens consisted chiefly in their cavalry--The locusts had on their heads as it were crowns like gold: the Arabs have constantly worn turbans; and even boast that they wear, as their common attire, those ornaments which among other people are the peculiar badges of royalty-The locusts had faces as the faces of men, and hair as the hair of women : the Arabs, as Pliny testifies, wore their beards, or at least their mustachios, as men; while their hair was flowing or plaited, like that of women-The teeth of the locusts were as the teeth of a lion ; an expression frequently used in Scripture to denote great strength * ; the sound of their wing's

was as the sound of chariots of many horses rurning to battle; to represent at once the rapid con. quests of the Saracens, and their proverbial skill in horsemanship; and they had stings in their tails like Scorpions; to signify that they should carry along with them, wherever they flew, a loathsome and deadly superstition *.

At the conclusion of the prophecy respecting the Saracenic locusts, it is added, “One woe is past.” Now, since we had already been informed, that their power of doing mischief was limited to five months, or 150 years ; it is evident, that the first Wae-trumpet ceased to sound at the end of the 150 years, or in the year of our Lord 762. It further appears, that a considerable period of time was to elapse between the end of the first woe-trumpet, and the beginning of the second: for the prophet here simply intimates, that "there come two more

woes hereafter ;” whereas, at the conclusion of the second wae, he asserts, "behold the third woe “ cometh quickly t."

2. At the sounding of the sixth angel, a command was given him to loose the four angels who were hitherto bound in the regions bordering on the great river Euphrates & Accordingly, they

. . were forthwith loosed, having been prepared in the

*

Bp. Newton's Dissert. on Rev, ix. + We shall find in the sequel that this has been exactly the

case.

f Gr, επι τω σόλαμω τω μεγαλώ Ευφρατη, on the great river Euphrates, not in it, as our common translation reads,

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councils

councils of God even to the very hour, the day, the month, and the year, in order that they might slay the third part of men. The cavalry, which composed their armies, amounted to two hundred thousand. The warriors themselves appeared to the prophet to wear breast-plates of fire, and hyacinth, and brimstone: and from the lion-like heads of their horses seemed to proceed fire, and smoke, and brimstone; by which, when the appointed hour arrived, the third part of men were killed. The horses of the Euphratèan cavalry, like the Saracenic locusts, had power no less in their tails than in their inouths : for “ their tails were “ like serpents, and had heads, and with them they “ do hurt." Notwithstanding the death of the third part of men, the prophet informs us, that those, who had escaped these two successire plagues, still hardened their hearts, and repented not of their idolatry, their sorcery, and their fornication *.

The four angels are the four sultanies of the Turks; the capitals of which were Bagdad t, Damascus, Aleppo, and Iconium I. These were

long

*

long restrained from extending their conquests beyond the territories, immediately adjoining to the river Euphrates, by the instrumentality, in the course of God's providence, of the crusades. But, when the Christians abandoned Syria and Egypt at the latter end of the thirteenth century, then the four angels on the river Euphrates were loosed. According to' Saadi, the first victory of the Turks over the Christians was achieved in the year 1981, when the city of Cutahi was taken by Ortogrul * This prince, dying in the year 1988, was succeeded by his son Othman; who, having united in one monarchy the four Turkish sultanies, immediately turned his arms against the Constantinopolitan empire. “ It was on the 27th of July, in the year

1999 of the Christian era, that Othman first in“ vaded the territory of Nicomedia ; and the sin

gular accuracy of the date seems to disclose some foresight of the rapid and destructive growth of the monster t."

Under the fifth trumpet, we have seen the men, who had not the seal of God in their foreheads, tormented, but not killed. We now find, under the sixth trumpet, that the third part of men, or the Roman empire then represented by the Constantinopolitan monarchy, is to be slain, and not

manner the prediction of the four Euphratèan angels be understood, it is accurately accomplished in the fortunes of the Turkish empire.

See Bp. Newton in loc. + Hist. of Decline and Fall. Vol. xi. p. 433.

merely

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merely tormented, by the Euphratèan horsemen. For this office of vengeance, we are told, that the, four angels, the representatives of the Turkish pouer, were prepared to the very day, the hour,, the month, and the year. Here it is natural to inquire, why the time should be specified with such, singular exactness; for, in the divine counsels, it may be sąjd, every event is alike fixed to its own predetermined imoment. The most obvious answer, seems to be, that the final destruetion of the Con-, stantinopolitan empire was not only fixed to a moment in the divine counsels secretly, but șikewise in some open and remarkable manner fixed to a precise point of time by the prepared warriors themselves. Let us hear the voice of history as she recounts the capture of Constantinople by Mohammed the second. “ The distress and fall of " the last Constantine are more glorious than the

* I have already stated, on what grounds the Roman Empire is represented as a third part of the symbolical universe. It may not be improper here to observe, that the death of a beast and the death of a community do not mean the same thing. The death of a beast denotes the extinction of those idolatrous principles which cause a pagan empire to be symbolized by a beast: whereas the deuth of a community denotes its suveersion. Hence we do not find it said, that the Roman beast was sļain by the Euphradèan horøemen, because sạch phraseology would not have con: veyed the intended meaning of the prophet; but that the third part of mer, or the body politic of what remained of the original Empire, was slain. Accordingly, in perfect agreement with this distinction, the Roman beast still continued to exist, and will exist to the very end of the 1260 years, notwithstanding the political death of the third part of men.

“ long