Hence the Apostle, instead of representing the ten-horned beast as having likewise a little horn, describes him as attended by a second beast, whose character precisely answers to that of the little horn. By the instigation of this corrupt spiritual power, the ten-horned beast, or the secular Roman empire, wages war with the saints during the period of the 1260 days, through the instrumentality either of his last head or his ten horns.

2. The desolating revolt of the East was completed by the rise of Mohammedism in the same year that the Papal horn became an universal spiritual empire. Soon afterwards, it acquired its predicted character of a little horn of the Macedorian hegoat; and, agreeably to the prophecy, waxed exceeding great toward the south, and toward the east, and toward the pleasant land. In the course of its progress, it cast down many of the symbolical stars, or Christian pastors, to the ground; took away the daily sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving; polluted the spiritual sanctuary; and presumed to magnify itself against even the Prince of princes. As for its character, it was notorious for trampling upon the truth; for prospering in a wonderful manner; for making its appearance, exactly when the two great revolts, eastern and western, were completed; for teaching dark sentences; for being mighty not through its own unaided power; for exterminating its opponents with the utmost barbarity; for persecuting with peculiar violence the people of the Holy Ones; for advancing itself by

craft;

craft; and for destroying many while in a state of negligent security.

In the Apocalypse a more full account is given of the agents by whom this apostate religion should be propagated. A fallen star opens the bottomless pit, and lets out the destroying king of the locusts. These locusts are permitted to continue their ravages during the space of five prophetic months or 150 years; which is found from history to be the precise period allotted to the continuation of the Saracenic incursions. The locusts are succeeded by an immense body of horsemen under four leaders from the banks of the Euphrates; whose commission is to kill a third part of men or the Roman empire, which their predecessors the Saracenic locusts had only been permitted to torment. History accordingly teaches us, that the Saracens were succeeded by the Turks: who came under four leaders from the banks of the Euphrates; whose armies consisted almost entirely of cavalry; and who subverted the Constantinopolitan empire, which the Saracens, severely as they harassed it, had never been able to effect.

The Mohammedan little horn itself or the religion of Mohammed, is to prevail to the end of 2400 years from the founding of the second temple, either in the latter end of the first or in the beginning of the second year of Cyrus, by the Jews then recently brought back from Babylon; which is found to carry us down exactly to the year 1866, and thus to allow 1260 years for the triumphs of Kk Moham

VOL. II.

Mohammedism, reckoning from its commencement year 606.

in the

3. After the era of the Reformation, and in the last days of atheism and insubordination, but previous to the commencement of the time of the end, the infidel king was destined to arise; that Antichrist, who was alike to deny both the Father and the Son; that audacious tyrant, who should magnify himself above every god, who should speak marvellous things against the God of gods, who should neither regard the God of his fathers nor the Desire of women, who should nevertheless honour a foreign god and acknowledge gods protectors, and who should be allowed in the main to prosper, though his career might experience some occasional interruptions, until the period of the der fiance should be finished.

As the contemporary rise and progress of Popery and Mohammedism is described in the Apocalypse under the two first woe-trumpets, so the appearance of the great Antichrist is announced by the third. His full development however is to be immedi ately preceded by the last event of the second woe-trumpet, a tremendous earthquake by which a tenth part of the great Latin city, or one of the ten horns of the Roman beast, is to be overthrown. This last woe, which extends beyond the termination of the 1260 years at least to the end of the seventh vial, if not to the commencement of the Millennium, comprehends the periods of the harvest and the vintage.

2

Thus,

Thus, after the epoch of the Reformation, and immediately after the French Revolution of the year 1789, we have seen the manifestation of a terrific monster, which alike set at defiance the laws both of God and man. We have beheld scenes of carnage and impiety, which well deserve to be ushered in by a distinct woe-trumpet, and which may justly claim to themselves the title of a harvest of God's wrath. These scenes have at length passed away, like the distempered and fantastic visions of a sick man; and the sun of mili tary tyranny has begun to scorch the irreclaimable inhabitants of the Papal Roman empire with an intolerable heat. The madness of the harvest therefore is past; and we must expect in due season the commencement of the vintage, in which the enemies of God will be finally destroyed for ever.

II. At present we are living under the fourth vial; and, from the great length of time which both Popery and Mohammedism have continued, we cannot be very far removed from the end of the 1260 days, whatever be the precise year from which they ought to be computed. The year, which I have fixed upon for their date, is the year 606; a year marked by so singular a combination of circumstances, that I know not how any other can with equal propriety be selected. If then I be right in my opinion, we are now removed but little more than 60 years from the commencement of the time of the end and of the vintage of God's wrath. Be this however as it may, we are undoubt

Kk 2

undoubtedly living in the last days of blasphemous. infidelity, in that awful period which is the peculiar reign of Antichrist. The signs of the times all concur to teach us, that we are fast approaching towards the catastrophe of the great drama. We have seen the unexpected union of Infidelity and Popery; an union, no doubt preparatory to the predicted final league of the beast, the false prophet, and the kings of the papal earth*. We have seen measures taken, as it were, towards making the atheistical king the last head of the beast. We have seen Palestine, the predicted stage on which Antichrist with his congregated vassals is doomed to perish, brought forward in a remarkable manner to public notice, and becoming at once a subject of political discussion and an object of hostile invasion. We have seen the kings devouring the flesh of the great whore, and making her naked and desolate, though her spiritual empire over the minds of men still continues. We have seen, and may now see, the rapid decline of the Ottoman empire, preparatory to the final complete exhaustion of the mystic Euphrates under the sixth vial. And we have seen of late years, what I cannot but

This confederacy seems now actually to have begun to be formed. June 10, 1806.

There is reason to believe, that the atheistical king is now become the last or Carlovingian head of the beast. June 10, 1806.

She is now completely deprived of her temporal dominion. August, 1808.

consider