was revealed, the mystery of iniquity was already working even in the apostolic age * "The seeds "of corruption were sown, but they were not yet grown up to any maturity. The leaven was fermenting in some parts, but it was far from having yet infected the whole mass †."

We have seen how accurately the character of the mystic prince of Tyre answers to that of the Bishop of Rome; and we may safely venture to assert, that there is no other potentate of these last days, either popish or protestant, to whom the character will at all answer: let us now attend to the predicted time and method of his overthrow.

1. When the prince shall perish, there shall be no more a rankling thorn to the house of Israel of all those that despised them; but they shall be gathered to their own land from the people among whom they have been scattered. Hence it will necessarily follow, both that the prince was a rankling thorn to the Jews, and that he will perish. at the era of their restoration. In modern history we find, that the sovereigns in communion with the papal little horn have been the authors of all the persecutions and oppressions which the Jews have suffered, compelling them to apostatise and bow down before idols and relics, taking their children from them in order that they may be educated in the superstitions of Popery, robbing them of their

2 Thess. ii. 7. + See Bp. Newton's Dissert. xxii.

property, banishing and even murdering them*. And from prophecy we find, that this little horn and its secular instruments of persecution are to be destroyed at the close of the 1260 years; that is to say, at the period when the Jews are restored.2. The prince is to be destroyed by the instrumentality of the strangers, the terrible of the nations. The Scriptures abundantly testify, that the Jews, who have long been wanderers upon the face of the earth, whence they may emphatically be styled the strangers, will at the time of the end become a principal instrument in the hand of God of destroying the Antichristian confederacy; one of the chief members of which, as we learn from St. John, will be the false Roman prophet §.—3. The prince is to die the death of the uncircumcised by the hand of

*See Bp. Newton's Dissert. vii.

+ Dan. vii. 11, 25, 26. xii. 1, 7.

I wish this remark concerning the strangers to be considered only in the light of a conjecture. It is possible, that by them may not be intended the Jews, but some fierce norther nation, which there is reason to expect from prophecy will be very instrumental in punishing the sins of the Roman Babylon during the time that Antichrist is engaged in his expedition against Palestine. This matter will be discussed more at large, when I treat of the prophecies of Daniel and St. John. It is worthy of remark, that Vitringa, in summing up the particulars wherein the literal Babylon is typical of the mystical Babylon, enumerates the attack made upon it by fierce northern nations, the Medo-Persians and their allies, which termihated in its destruction. See the passage cited in the notes on Prophecy V. § Isaiah xli. 15, 16.-Obad. 18.-Zechar. xii. 6.

the

the strangers. The Jews are to be instrumental in finally breaking the power of the Pope in Palestine; as they formerly inflicted the vengeance of God, in the same country, on the various wicked uncircumcised nations of the Canaanites.-4. The prince is to die the death of them that are slain in the midst of the sea. The Pope, who has so long sat upon the many symbolical waters, is to perish during a time of unexampled trouble and confusion, the waves and the sea roaring, men's hearts failing them through fear.-5. The prince is to be devoured by a fire from the midst of him, and to to be cast to the ground a spectacle to all the kings of the earth. The Papacy is to waste away by an internal fire which has already begun to consume it; the ten horns of the Roman beast, are to hate the whore, and to make her desolate and naked, . and to eat her flesh, and to burn her with fire; she is finally to be completely destroyed by a fire, which may likewise be said to come out of her, even the house of Judah, which will be gathered out of her empire, and which will become like a hearth of fire among the wood and like a torch of fire in a sheaf; and then all the kings of the earth, who have committed fornication and lived deliciously with her, will bewail her and lament for her, when they shall see the smoke of her burning †.-6. The mystic Tyre is to be brought by her rowers into

deep waters, and to be broken by the east wind in the midst of the sea. The power of the Papacy is to be brought by its supporters, the beast and the kings of the earth, into great trouble; and to be broken by a violent wind, or dreadful war, in the midst of the symbolical sea, in the eastern region of Palestine *.-7. Finally God will cast the prince out of his holy mountain as profane, and will make him a terror among the nations, and will cause that he shall never be any more. In a similar manner, the dominion of the little papal horn shall be utterly consumed and destroyed; and the kingdom shall be given to the saints of the Most High, or those who constitute that pure millennian church out of which the horn shall be for ever cast: the man of sin shall be consumed by the spirit of the Lord's mouth, and shall be destroyed by the brightness of his coming: the beast and the false prophet shall be taken in arms against the Lord, and shall be cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone: Babylon the great shall become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a a cage of every unclean and hateful bird, and shall be thrown down, and shall be found no more at all in short the papal tyrant, who had so often excommunicated and thrust out of what he termed the catholic church, all who refused to partake of his idolatry and to pollute themselves with his

* "Tempestuous winds, or the motion of clouds, for wars." Sir Isaac Newton's Observ, on Dan, and St. John, p. 18.

abominations, shall now himself be cast with ignominy out of the true church of Christ; and shall be for ever separate from those, who had come out of his spiritual empire, in order that they might not be partakers of his sins, nor receive of his plagues *.

1

When

For the manner in which the character of this prince is applied to the literal prince of Tyre, the reader may consult Abp. Newcome's translation of Ezekiel. I confess it appears to me inapplicable either to Ithobal or any other Phenician sovereign, except in a very lax and merely inchoate manner. According to his grace, the rankling thorn was removed when Nebuchadnezzar subdued all the ancient enemies of the Jews. But this falls very far short of the plain import of the pro. phecy. The terms, in which it is expressed, extend it to the restoration of the whole house of Israel, Ephraim as well as Judah; and it positively asserts, that, after the downfall of Tyre, there should be no more a rankling thorn to afflict the ancient people of God. Now, from Babylon Judah alone returned; and, so far from afterwards enjoying a state of uninterrupted tranquillity, or (in the language of the prophet) being freed from the stings of rankling briers and ulcerating thorns, the Jews, after having been subjected to the persecutions of the Syro-Macedonian kings, were at length scattered by the Romans over the face of the whole earth. Formerly they were only chastised with whips; latterly they have been chastised with scorpions.

Mr. Bicheno I believe to be right in referring this prophecy to the yet future era of the restoration of Judah, but I think him mistaken in supposing that Tyre is the type of some great modern commercial nation. He argues, that the prediction cannot relate to the overthrow of papal Rome, because Rome is not a commercial city and does not possess any naval power: and