era, and found the western part of it, with which alone our prophecy hath to do, wholly mastered and subdued by the Arian nations, the orthodox religion persecuted, and the aspiring bishop of Rome forced repeatedly to bow the neck before the Arian king of the Goths, who ruled Italy. In the beginning of his reign, he occupied himself with the great work of digesting all the former laws of the empire, and adding thereto such edicts as should bring the whole estate of society, government, and religion, into conformity with the spirit of his own enlarged mind, and that of the able counsellors with whom he was surrounded. Which noblest undertaking he completely effected in the year 534, and gave forth to the empire that body of civil law, which continues every where, in a greater or less degree, to exercise authority over the kingdoms of the west. This work embraced both the orthodoxy of religious faith, and the constitution of religious persons, brought into a fixed and perpetual form the hitherto fluctuating and undefined powers of the Roman pontiff, established the exemption of the clergy from persecution before civil courts: at once making the pope head of all the apostolical churches, and constituting the church a distinct political power from the state, an imperium in imperio. The acts by which this was effected bear date 533, as being preparatory to the grand onset upon the Arian powers, whereby they were destroyed, which was in a manner necessary to precede the promulgation and reception of his body of laws in the west, where the Arian nations governed, to the entire contempt of his authority. So that in one and the same year, the orthodox faith was retrieved, the pope's supremacy written in the constitutional law of the empire, and the twofold empire of church and state, within each other, was constituted, which are the three grand features whereby the beginning of the period is determined, and I hold it to be such a grand demonstration for the papacy as never since or before was made; and such an exact fulfilment of the threefold prophecy which determines the beginning of the period, as another like hath not by any commentator been found, nor can be found.

And for the event by which the close of the period is signified, there are in it so many striking particulars, that it is equally remarkable with the preceding, and equally fit

for signifying the conclusion of the period. The two witnesses, though they testify 1260 days against the abomination, are not slain till their testimony against it is finished. At this time there is an earthquake, or popular revolution, in which falls the tenth part of the holy city which had been trodden under foot of the Gentiles for forty and two months. A popular revolution, tearing away one of the ten horns from the beast, is an important thing, which no event of history answers to, but one, namely, the French revolution, when the witnesses had completed their witness of 1260 years. That they should be slain after continuing through 1260 years, without being hurt, but only obscured, is another occurrence, of which the whole body of European history gives but one solution. That they should come to life again after three years and a half, is definite beyond all parallel. And that all these things should concur just at the expiry of 1260 years, from the date of the commencement, is a most marvellous coincidence of things, which I defy the ingenuity of all commentators to force any event of history to explain, but that true one, which God foresaw and foretold by his holy prophets: the event in which we have found its accomplishment, namely, the desecration and abolition of the Scriptures by the government of France-perhaps the most extraordinary event in the history of Christian states, and by those who brought it to pass, deemed the greatest feat of power that had been ac complished since the coming of Christ, from which they proposed to date the beginning of a new era, a new division of the year, the abolition of weeks, and a thousand other proud imaginations of their wicked heart.

A period which is expressed in three different forms of times, of months, and of days, and twice, under two of these forms, in one and the same place, as if to preclude all chance of miscalculation,-a period whose beginning is defined by three events, political, ecclesiastical, and military, all concurring in one year, whose conclusion is defined in like manner by events, political ecclesiastical, and of a given duration, also concurring in one year; and these events not minute or unimportant; but the most important in the centuries on either side of them,-a period so defined and determined can only be misinterpreted by taking up a part of the evidence. Take it all as we have sought to do, and

you may defy any one to misinterpret it. He cannot find two other points of time between which it will lie. And he cannot deny that it lies fairly and squarely between these two points of time, which we have fixed for it, A. D. 533, and A. D. 1792-3.

Furthermore, before closing this head of discourse which treats of the great papal period, let me draw the attention of those who delight in the deep things of God, to the wonderful devices which Satan contrives against the church of Christ, and the new forms of deception into which he perpetually casts himself against the people of the Most High; whereof we have had no fewer than four, brought in rapid review before us. First, when the church appeared as a defenceless woman in the midst of her painful and sorrowful travail, he stood by in terrific form, ready to devour the fruit of her womb. That is while yet she was compassed about with weakness, and had no visible strength nor succour, he felt no need to use devices, but came against her in main force and cruelty, to slay and destroy her children. But when he found that her seed propagated itself upon the earth, and spread like the sand of the sea, which the boisterous waves that dissolve all things, do but cleanse, and purify, and enlarge, by the chafing of its rocky and pebbled bed; and when he found in heaven, where he is not hindered from appearing to his own mortification and discomfiture, that those, whom he had thought fairly made away with, and for ever silenced, did but testify the more strenuously and the more potently, so that by their martyrdom and faithfulness, war was waged against him and his wicked angels, by Michael and his angels, whereby he was cast out of heaven down to the earth; then down to the earth he came, in great wrath and vindictiveness, to be avenged of the woman whose seed had deprived him of his prerogative of appearing amongst the sons of God. Wherefore the heavens rejoiced, and they that dwell therein. But wo, "wo to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea! for the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time."

And now began he to put forth his devilish wiles; for that brute force which the pagans exercised upon the church, was rude, rebellious, ignorant worldliness-not wise, dexterous archangelic craft. Satan did heretofore

leave the destruction of the church to his blundering vicegerent, the world. But now, finding himself outcast from heaven, and restricted to the earth, and limited to a time, he gathers to himself all his angelic faculties, and bends them to the fulfilment of his maliciousness. And as he dealt with our first parents, so he dealeth with the church; as he dealt with Eve, the mother of men, so dealeth he with the church, the mother of saints, endeavouring to sap her faith in the unchangeableness of the word of God, and the divinity of Jesus, who is the Word of God. And ever too prosperous against flesh and blood, he succeeded in deluding a multitude of barbarous nations, who dwelt like howling wolves around the fold; whom having possessed with a false doctrine concerning the person of Christ, he brought rolling down in a tide of conquest; but not until he had provided them with spiritual weapons against the spiritual men, as well as with carnal weapons against the carnal men of the earth. And the Arian nations flowed into the dwelling-place of the church, like a flood to sweep her away. And, having established themselves in power, and brought the empire low, they began to persecute the orthodox believers, nay, went so far as to require that they should be rebaptized into the Arian creed, and renounce the belief of Christ as God; and were prevailing mightily in the West, (the Nestorians had already prevailed mightily in the East,) when the Lord raised up the emperor Justinian, bringing him as usual from among the clods of the valley, by whose means the Arian nations were suppressed.

Satan, perceiving that heresy would no longer avail him, and having reaped the Arian harvest, and gathered them to his garners, like a subtile changeling, a lying, and deceiving, and politic spirit of change, so that he may be called the changeable, saw that he could pass easily into the creature which had destroyed him, and in that new form destroy tens of thousands. Behold him, therefore, now clothed like an angel of light, in the dress of orthodox doctrine, and preparing in that shape to build up the mystery of mysteries, Babylon the Great, the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth. Heresy was but a first manœuvre of the archenemy, a skirmish, as it were, of observation upon our camp, and to try the temper of our troops, which having

proved to be assailable, he enters in with the harp of deceivableness, and bewitches the whole host with his sorceries; who calling themselves the host of God, and bearing his banner, do straightway address themselves to the devil's work. And now comes into being that masterpiece of Satan's workmanship, that most stupendous of all deceptions, the papal power, hated of God in all her works and inventions. Which may teach Christians this lesson, that more souls perish under the panoply of orthodoxy, than under the divided and discordant banner of heresy; that Satan as a formalist, is more dangerous than Satan as a schismatic:—a lesson, indeed, which might have been learned from our Lord's instructive life, whose most inveterate enemies, and resolute persecutors, and consummate murderers, were the Pharisees, the most faithful disciples of the dispensation which then was, the worshippers of Moses, and of the law.

And, for time, times, and half-a-time, this thick dark panoply of the clouds of deceiveableness serves the murderer of souls; but at length it also grows old, and will no longer deceive. The progress of light and knowledge, which the Reformation sheds abroad, consumes it with slow consumption; and it hangs in mist around him, whereby his naked devilishness is appearing. Upon which, the arch magician makes light his dwelling-place, the proud son of the morning comes forth from the shades of darkness,

And tricks his beams,

And flames in the forehead of the morning sky."

He makes knowledge his tent, and the tabernacle of his strength; and, by wonderful art, possesses himself of the intellect and reason of man, in order to destroy faith in the word of God, the light of the world, the one reason and intelligence of the universe. And he hatches from the egg of the cockatrice, the fiery flying serpent of infidelity, subtile as fire, pervading as the wind, and destructive of the host of God, as the serpents which fell in upon the camp of Israel in the wilderness. But into this last form of Satan, I enter not under this head of discourse, reserving the consideration of it till we come to the time of its great work under the seventh and last vial of the wrath of God; for though it came up out of the bottomless pit at the termination of the papal period, and the opening of the judgment,

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