of Satan, while the witnesses are filled with the Holy Spirit, and witness for the word of God and the testimony of Jesus; the Holy Ghost in the church witnessing for the Father and the Son. This general character the witnesses of all the three periods have, and they are all like the olive-trees and the candlesticks standing before the God of the whole earth. Like olive-trees, the witnesses have the Divine oil of the Holy Ghost with them, as a living fountain to feed the light of the candlesticks, which all the children of light must manifest, as followers of Christ, who is the light of life; and they stand before the God of the whole earth, that the Father may be glorified through the Son and the Spirit in the witnesses. Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven." Be the wise virgins, having oil in your vessels, to trim your lamps when the Bridegroom cometh.

All the witnesses bear the same testimony,-they all witness for the word of God, and the testimony of Jesus. The witness is co-extensive with the reign of the beast, or rather with his oppression of the people of God; and this should not be dated earlier than B.C. 133; and its first period was 666 years, expiring A.D. 533. At this time the Roman people attained legal footing in the East, by the will of Attalus. They had overthrown the Macedonian empire a little before, but their friendship was sought by the Maccabees; and it was not till after B.C. 133 that the Romans became persecutors of the Jewish people. The witness began, therefore, in the Old Testament prophets, the testimony of Jesus being the Spirit of Prophecy (Rev.xix. 10): "The Law and the Prophets were until John" (Luke xvi. 16): " John was a burning and a shining light....and he bare witness to the truth" (John v. 33). This was the witness for the Word of God as the testimony of Jesus; but from the Gospel times till the Papal period (A.D. 533) the witness for Jesus as the Word of God was the form of testimony; and maintained, not by the Holy Spirit in the word alone, or illuminating the mind alone, but indwelling in the persons of the members of Jesus thus giving to each one the double power of witnessing, not only by his knowledge of the truth, but also by the Holy Ghost within: "We are his witnesses, and so also is the Holy Ghost" (Acts v. 32).

These witnesses constitute the band whose souls are seen under the altar (Rev. vi. 9), having been slain for the word of God and for the testimony which they held and the altar under which they are seen is the brazen altar of sacrifice, which stood in the outer court; and which typifies Jerusalem the holy city, in a literal sense; and the holy ordinances trodden under foot in the court of the Gentiles, in a spiritual sense. It would

thus be a literal accomplishment of the burden upon Ariel, the city where David dwelt (Isa. xxix.): which name denoting "Lion of God," refers to the brazen altar in the first instance (Isa. xxix. 2; Ezek. xliii, 15 marg.); and to the slaughter of the Christians throughout the whole empire under Pagan Rome, in the second sense.

The second period of witness is under the Papacy, for 1260 years, beginning A.D. 533, ending A.D. 1793, The substance of the witness, and the parties who maintain it, are the same as during the former period; its form only being changed, to meet the altered form of the beast. The church, instead of being persecuted by the state, had been taken under its protection by Constantine, and the whole power of the empire was by his successors turned against Paganism: the heathen temples were shut by Constantine; many of them were destroyed by Theodosius, and all of them by Honorius; and Paganism persecuted, instead of cherished. This seemed a death-blow to the beast; but it only brought out a more crafty and pernicious form of opposition to God and to the truth, in the Papacy; and a more fierce and deadly persecution than even that of Pagan Rome, in Mohammed and his successors. For the beast now insinuated himself into the church, both in the East and the West; first producing ambitious strivings for supremacy between the bishops of Rome and Constantinople, which ended in a schism between the Eastern and Western churches; next bringing up heresies of the most fearful kind in the East, which ended in the utter and total apostasy from truth in the major part of the bishops of the East, and in the denial by all of that fundamental doctrine of salvation, the procession of the Holy Spirit both from the Son and the Father, a heresy which is held by the Greek church to the present day. In the West the workings of the beast were different, but scarcely less successful; for, beginning with Arianism, he set professing Christians against each other in most deadly persecution; and when this was put down by the strong hand of Justinian, he induced this emperor to make over the whole church into the hand of the little horn, who spake great words against the Most High, and sought to change times and laws (Dan. vii. 25). Thus the deadly wound of the beast was healed; and, astonished at this master-stroke of hellish policy, "all the world wondered after the beast and they wor shipped the dragon that gave power unto the beast; and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him?" (Rev. xiii. 4.)

The same beast, it must be carefully remembered, continues the whole time of the fourth monarchy; but his form changes in the act of healing the deadly wound, and he appears then as "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 them that dwell on the earth to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed" (xiii. 12). The deadly wound of the Pagan beast, inflicted by Constantine and Theodosius, was healed in the East by the revival of a spirit of persecution, fiercer and more intolerant than that of Rome, and the almost universal apostasy to Mohammedanism: and the wound was healed in the West by the adoption of most of the Pagan rites into the Papal church, and by the pope, under the mask of zeal for the truth, instigating the emperors to persecute the saints of God to Satan's utmost heart's content: they did not toss them to wild beasts in the amphitheatre, but they consigned them to inquisitors, more cruel than wolves and hyenas, and tossed them by hundreds, alive, into the flames.

The Eastern form of the beast is represented as a great red dragon (whose tail drew down the third part of the stars of heaven and cast them to the earth) standing ready to devour every son of the church as soon as born: the Western form is that of a woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. Against the Eastern form of the beast the witness is kept up by individuals, strengthened by the Holy Spirit to stand up alone for the truth, sealed by the living God, and preserved through all danger; but very few in number, and working no change upon the rest. Neither do the judgments of God work a change; for "the rest of the men, which were not killed by these plagues, yet repented not of the works of their hands, that they should not worship devils, and idols," &c. (Rev. ix. 20.)

The Western form of the beast is a drunken harlot riding upon a beast, to represent a false church instigating brutal force to crush all the witnesses for the truth against which she should direct its rage, This complex symbol represents a complex system of oppression--a whole false church uniting in one stream the various energies of its individual members, and bringing its whole force to bear upon the state, in order to crush the witnesses-and to meet this mighty force, God gave power to his two witnesses. The power given by God was coextensive with the rage of the beast, and superabounded; the true church increased by persecution, till it became a proverb, "The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church." But during this time they were clothed in sackcloth; indicating not only the oppression of this mortal flesh which we bear, having the heavenly treasure in earthen vessels; but indicating the poverty and loss of all things which the faithful followers of Jesus are content to undergo, and also the affliction of soul they

feel for their persecutors, who, in hating and smiting them, are wounding the Lord Jesus Christ himself.

A

The witnesses are two, one witness being insufficient. man's witness of himself must be twofold, by word and by deed. Jesus was a witness mighty in word and in deed (Luke xxiv. 19); and the words which he spake, and the works which he did, bare witness to the Father. The regenerate man is a twofold witness; having Christ formed in him by the Holy Ghost, to the glory of God the Father. The witness of a church is twofold; purity of word and purity of life. The witness of the Scriptures is twofold; to the literal and the spiritual understanding; to the reign of Christ, and the kingdom within. The glories of Christ are twofold; of the cross, and of the crown. Christ's confession is twofold; before Pontius Pilate, and before his heavenly Father. Our confession of Christ is twofold; by the word of God, which is sound doctrine, and by the testimony of Jesus, which is Christian walk and conversation.

The essential characteristics of God's two witnesses against the Papacy are truth of doctrine and holiness of life: where these two points have been wholly unreproveable, the witnesses were invulnerable; but these the adversary is continually plotting to subvert. For nearly a thousand years the witness was maintained in the heart of the Papacy itself, by purity of doctrine in her creeds and her confessions, and by holiness of life in many of her votaries: but against these witnesses the rage of Satan in the great body of the Papacy was continually directed, and none of them were kept together in distinct communities except the Waldenses and Albigenses, against whom several crusades were directed. At the Reformation the witnesses against the Papacy took an independent and separate form, in the Protestant church and the essence of its protest is twofold; against word, and practice.

The Reformers claimed the right of reading the Scriptures for themselves, and of exercising private judgment in understanding them; and they protested against the additions and false glosses of the Papal church, whose doctors had made the word of God of none effect by their traditions. They protested also against the practices of the Papal church, which, by its indulgences, dispensations, and absolutions, had utterly subverted holiness, and destroyed all distinction between good and evil. The forms of protesting also were twofold, monarchical and republican witnessing to the Kingly office in Christ by the first, in the members of Christ in the second: Episcopalian and Presbyterian, witnessing to the Priestly office in both Christ and his members. The Papacy had done this also in their cleracy and their laity. All of which forms have been abused by Satan into.

sinful as well as mistaken anticipations of the mystery of elec tion as it shall be revealed at the Second Advent in Christ and, his members; who shall then become a CLERACY, each standing in his lot; who shall be KINGS and PRIESTS, having subjects to rule, and intercessions to offer.

England was the head and bulwark of the Protestant witness, perfectly fulfilling this office in all parts of its constitution. The king held his dignity under Christ; from Him, Die gratia; Christ's representative: supreme earthly power, our Sovereign Lord the King. The church acknowledged her subjection to Christ her Head, in acknowledging subjection to the king his representative only ceasing to obey him when he ceased to be the representative of Christ, by commanding any thing contrary to the commands of Christ. All the institutions of the country witnessed for Christ: Christianity was part and parcel of the law of the land; it was embodied in every legal form, from the court of chancery down to the bill of lading of a ship; and our ancestors even now speak to us from their graves, having written their wills" in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." "O Tyrus, thou didst seal up the sum, full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty....Thou wast perfect in thy ways, from the day that thou wast created, till iniquity was found in thee! Thyrowers have brought thee into great waters: woe worth the day!"

While England continued to protest, it was not only itself a witness, but, as a shelter for the persecuted, served to shew the numbers who were faithful witnesses in the midst of the Papacy, as at the revocation of the Edict of Nantz, and on many similar occasions. But now there is no protesting nation, and scarcely a protesting church, and the witness stands again in single persons, as before the Papal period-though a witness of a higher kind, against a direr foe, and to be upheld by a still more mighty influence of the power of God.

The tail of the dragon drawing down a third part of the stars of heaven (xii. 4), symbolized the heresies by which the Eastern bishops were seduced and their churches laid prostrate and the smoke which ensued, darkening the sun, and the swarms of locusts issuing thence (ix. 2), symbolize the woes which came upon the Eastern empire in consequence of the apostasy of the church. During the same time also, false miracles were put forth by the Papacy in the west, to deceive the people, and instigate them to persecute the people of God. But now the brutal violence of the Mohammedans, and the lying wonders of the Papists, shall be acted throughout Christendom. The two horns, which had only budded before like a lamb's, shall now become strong as the unicorn, or the bull of Bashan: the beast shall become dreadful and terrible, and strong exceedingly; it shall

VOL. VI.-NO. I.