the application of the character to its proper antitype is declared to be a mystery; that is to say (for the phraseology is borrowed from the ancient Mysteries of the Gentiles), it is a secret revealed only to a comparatively small number and wholly undiscerned by the votaries of the harlot herself. The hierophantic angel, however, sufficiently reveals the mystery to those, who possess what Daniel calls understanding1: and, accordingly, it was always known to the two witnessing Churches of the Vallenses and the Albigenses, long before it was loudly and unreservedly declared by the Protestants of the Reformation 2.

The mystery, then, in question, is this: that Babylon the great is the professedly-catholic Church of Rome.

This great and powerful Church of the Western Patriarchate, having been enabled by the course of events to exalt herself above the coëqual Churches of the other Patriarchates, claims, as she herself expresses it, to be the mother and mistress of all other Churches: and the subordinate national Churches, which are actually in communion with her and which acknowledge her supremacy, are mainly seated upon the apocalyptic earth or upon the territory of the Roman Empire. Hence the predicted character of the mystic Babylon is, that she should be the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth.

1 Dan. xi. 35.

Allix on the Anc. Church of Piedm. p. 209.

(5.) The ten kings, for a season, unanimously give their power and strength to the beast and therefore to the harlot who rides him: but, at length, they hate her, and make her desolate and naked, and eat her flesh, and burn her with fire.

It was in the year 604, at the commencement of the latter three times and a half, that the ten Go thic kings first unanimously submitted to the Roman Church and gave all their strength and power to uphold and enforce the apostatic principles which she maintained. This devotion continued with little abatement during the greatest part of that period: but, at length, the temper of the kings began to experience a change; and, from the time of the Reformation down to the present hour, they have, more or less, been employed in stripping her of her wealth and in secularising her possessions. Her final destiny is to be burned with fire or to be utterly destroyed: and this event is chronologically fixed to the season of the seventh vial, which begins to flow at the close of the latter 1260 years.

Thus it appears, that this grand compound hieroglyphic of the harlot and the beast exhibits at one view the two coëxisting Roman Empires, ecclesias¬ tical and secular, which the prophet had before described separately under the symbols of two friendly contemporary beasts, leagued together for the purpose of erecting both a civil and a spiritual tyranny over the minds as well as over the bodies of men.

CHAPTER VI.

RESPECTING THE FIFTH SECTION OF THE LITTLE OPEN

BOOK, OR THE VISION OF THE LAMB WITH. THE HUN

DRED AND FORTY FOUR THOUSAND SAINTS.

THE fifth section of the little open book, which, from its leading subject, may be called the vision of the Lamb with the hundred and forty four thousand saints, divides itself into three portions: the appearance of the Lamb, with his redeemed saints, on mount Zion; the flight of the three successive angels; and the harvest and vintage of God's wrath.

I. With respect to the first of these portions, though, in point of composition, it occupies only the beginning of the vision; yet, in point of chro¬ nology, it extends through the whole of it: that is to say, though the mere description of the 144,000 saints is soon dispatched, their holy employment of prayer and praise on the figurative mount Zion continues through the entire length of the vision; so that they are still engaged in singing their new song before the throne, both while the three angels take their flight, and while the harvest and vintage of God's wrath are gathered in.

I looked: and, lo, a Lamb stood on the mount Zion; and with him an hundred and forty and four thousand, having his Father's name written on their foreheads. And I heard a voice from heaven, as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of a great thunder: and I heard the voice of harpers harping with their harps. And they sang as it were a new song, before the throne and before the four living creatures and before the elders: and no man could learn that song, but the hundred and forty and four thou sand, which were redeemed from the earth. These are they, which were not defiled with women; for they are virgins: these are they, which follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth: these were redeemed from among men, being the firstfruits unto God and the Lamb. And in their mouth was found no guile: for they are without fault before the throne of God1.

Hitherto we have beheld the affairs of the faithful only upon the gloomy side; for we have seen nothing, save the outward persecutions which they experienced from the dragon and the two wildbeasts during the permitted term of 1260 years: we are now invited to contemplate that paradox, which real Christianity can alone explain.

Though the tyrannical little horn of the Western Empire, or the second wild-beast of the Apocalypse, makes war upon the saints, and prevails against

them, and wears them out through the long period of three prophetic times and a half; though the apostate secular Empire, acting as the tool of the little horn or the ecclesiastical beast, performs the same bloody deeds during the same term; and though the two faithful witnesses prophesy in sackcloth, still throughout the self-same allotted pe riod: yet, notwithstanding these outward tribulations, the great body of the Lamb's sincere followers are represented in the present vision, through the very same term of 1260 years, as being in a state of exultation and triumph, as rejoicing in that joy which no man taketh from them, as exceeding joyful even in tribulation.

1. That the vision of the Lamb with the 144,000 saints relates to the same period as the other four preceding sections of the little book, might well seem to be insinuated by the general arrangement of the little book itself: but the circumstance, if I mistake not, is absolutely demonstrated by the occurrence of one of those artificial links, which St. John so frequently employs to bind together synchronical portions of the Apocalypse.

In the vision of the two witnesses, by a poetical machinery borrowed from the economy of the Hebrew Republic, certain mystical Israelites are separated by mensuration to the service of the living God, and are placed as his faithful worshippers at the altar and within the temple: while the entire holy city and the outer court are given up to a new race of demonolatrous Gentiles, who trample them