cloth, a rueful and unwilling garb, a disgraceful and penitential attire, as if the true and blameless witnesses had been guilty of fraud. For, as we have seen, in less than a century, the god of the idolatry had them covered and concealed in an unknown tongue, and to this day continueth to maintain them so, that they may by no means be discovered to the eyesight of the people; feigning that all manner of wild opinions and heresies, would thereupon. blow their evil breath over the vineyard of the church. And they have taken the privilege of interpreting them, from the natural conscience of men enlightened of the Holy Spirit, into the hands of their own adulterous idolatry; setting up their idol as infallible, and their idolatrous church as surely infallible. But, though they have covered and obscured the glory of God's two witnesses, they have not been permitted to attempt their life, which is the characteristic of another abomination, or event to mutilate or maim them, in any respect though they have wronged them grievously, yet we have them, in the Vulgate, presented to us in their entire shape; which is marvellous, when we consider, that no other book witnessing in the spirit of truth, hath been permitted to escape the violent or mutilating hands of their inquisitory acts, and expurgatory indices.

Having thus identified the personality of these two witnesses, we now proceed to read those eventful facts in their history, which came to pass after they had finished their testimony, which was declared to be for a thousand two hundred and threescore days. It is thus written: "When they shall have finished their testimony, the beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall make war against them, and shall overcome them, and kill them. And their dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egpyt, where also our Lord was crucified. And they of the people, and kindreds, and tongues, and nations, shall see their dead bodies three days and a half, and shall not suffer their dead bodies to be put in graves. And they that dwell upon the earth shall rejoice over them, and make merry, and shall send gifts one to another; because these two prophets tormented them that dwelt on the earth. And after three days and a half, the spirit of life from God entered into them, and they stood up on their feet; and great fear fell upon them which saw

them.

And they heard a great voice from heaven, saying unto them, Come up hither. And they ascended up to heaven in a cloud: and their enemies beheld them. And the same hour was there a great earthquake, and the tenth part of the city fell, and in the earthquake were slain of men seven thousand and the remnant were affrighted, and gave glory to the God of heaven."

Now, if the argument of the three foregoing particulars, whereby the beginning of the period of forty and two months, during which the Gentiles trode the holy city under foot, and of the one thousand two hundred and threescore days, during which the witnesses testified against them, was fixed and determined to the beginning of the year 533 of the Christian era, the event narrated in these verses, whatever it is, must be found to have taken place about the end of the year 1792, or the beginning of the following year, so as to enclose the 1260 years of their prophecy exactly between them. Let us, then, first see what the event narrated in these verses is, when rendered out of the emblematical into common language.

When they shall have finished their testimony, and not till then, the beast which ascendeth out of the bottomless pit makes war with them. This is the first time that mention is made of the beast out of the bottomless pit, concerning which so much is found in the prophecy after this place. The dragon, in his first form of pagan Rome, with seven crowned heads, and ten uncrowned horns, came early to his end, in the abdication of Augustulus, being destroyed, as we shall see hereafter, in the judgments of the four first seals. His second device against the woman, of taking the nations into his mouth, and, having poisoned them, of casting them forth against the seat of her faith, hath also been defeated by the helpful earth. His resolution to persecute her thereafter, for "time, times, and a half," to execute which, he gave his seat, power, and great authority to the beast with seven heads, having blasphemy inscribed on them, and one grievously wounded, yet healed, and with ten crowned horns, hath now fulfilled his period of forty and two months, and the witnesses have closed their testimony against it; and the coast is clear for another demonstration of the dragon's form, his former three having served their appointed time, and done their permitted

work. And even then, at the expiration of his last form, another form appears upon the earthly stage, ascending from the bottomless pit, the fierce and raging abode of his hoary reign; whence nothing besides issueth in the prophetic history, save the executioner of that first trumpet of wo, whom we shall hereafter find to be the Arabic impostor, with his fierce hordes of Saracens, spreading like locusts over the face of the third part of the earth. This beast from the bottomless pit demonstrates, by his first act, that he is of a bloodier and more ungodly character than his predecessor from the sea, whose period is ended; for against these two witnesses, which he durst not slay or maim, though they witnessed constantly against him for one thousand two hundred and threescore years, this last monster of ungodliness directs his first attack, making war upon the Holy Scriptures, overcoming them, and slaying them. And, having slain them, he treats their dead bodies ignominiously, suffering them to lie in the street, or the way of chiefest resort, of the great city, whose spiritual name is Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified. Sodom was the sink of iniquity, Egypt the seat of gross darkness, and our Lord was crucified in Jerusalem, the holy city. Which three emblems put together, do denote a city, holy in name, yet the seat of darkness, and the sink of iniquity; or, as it is in the beginning of the vision, the holy city trodden under foot of the Gentiles, and invaded by all their abominations; that is, the holy city of Christendom, over which this blasphemous power had usurped it for forty and two months. In the main street, or chief resort of that great city, was this murder of the two witnesses consummated, where their dead bodies lay exposed to all contempt for a time. The time of their humiliation is three days and a half, which being rendered into common time, is three years and a half; after which, the spirit of life from God entering into them, they revived, and stood upon their feet, to testify again. Upon which, they heard a great voice from heaven, saying unto them, Come up hither; and they were exalted with glory, to the very heavens, to the great terror of their enemies who had slain them, and testified their excessive joy to see them lying dead and contemned. And the same hour there was a great earthquake, that is, a great popular

F

revolution, (for an earthquake is always, in emblematical language, the name for such,) and a tenth part of the city fell; that is a tenth part of the dominions of the papal supremacy, (which the city was determined to signify,) fell with the shock of the revolution, whereby were destroyed of men seven thousand, that is, a complete or vast number. This earthquake, cruel and destructive, is said to have happened at the same hour; and the question is, with which of the two events, the slaughter of the witnesses, or their resurrection, between which three years and a half intervened, was it contemporaneous? An inexperienced interpreter of prophecy would say, with their resurrection, to which it stands subjoined in the narrative: but an experienced interpreter, who knows the custom of prophecy to finish the detail of one action, and then commence again with another, with hints of synchronism where the two overlay each other, would hesitate and consider, and soon become convinced that it was the former: for as much as God's judgments and angry frowns always come upon the fact of wickedness done, not upon the fact of righteousness done. When Christ was crucified, the prison door of the grave burst open, the law which kept it shut, being vindicated, and the vail which held all but the High Priest from the palace and presence-chamber of the Great King, was rent in twain, to open the way into the holiest of all; the rocks were rent, the sun was darkened, and the earth quaked. But at his resurrection, there were no wrathful tokens, so that not even were the keepers disturbed, save by their own terrors at the tokens of glory. So at the slaying of the witnesses, these tokens of anger came upon the city in which they were slain, and that part of it, doubtless, where their bodies lay contemptuous, and upon those men who did the terrible deed, and rejoiced over it when it was done.

Here, then, is a most particular, various, and unexampled event, which must be found to have been exactly fulfilled in the year 1792-3, when the papal period came to its close; otherwise the account we have given of the period is incomplete, and therefore invalid. For such is the severe and strict law of the fulfilment of God's words, that heaven and earth may pass away, but one jot or tittle shall not pass from the law till all be fulfilled. Now, it was during the

greater part of the last century, that an insidious, yet systematic opposition to the Holy Scriptures, was carried on, by all the wits and men of genius, not only of France, but of all Europe, under the fostering care of Frederick, king of Prussia, in whose coteries they were wont to calculate, within what space of time the philosophers would be able to exterminate the faith of the Galilean and his fishermen. But the antichristian spirit, which was thus brooding, took not the form of undisguised and open warfare, until the Convention of France, which met on the 20th of Sept. 1792, and, having first decreed the eternal abolition of monarchy, and substituted the word republic, in the oaths, and other public acts, instead of the word nation, it was proposed, on the seventh day of its continuance, by M. Manuel, "that, as royalty was abolished, the order of priests, and all religious establishments, should be abolished along with it." This being premature, for the 1260 days wanted half a day to be fully accomplished, "his proposal was heard with murmurs, and rejected with disdain."* But "the success of the Jacobin conspirators, on the thirty first of May of the next year, completed the destruction of the civil establishment of religion in France. Constitutional and unconstitutional worship, were at once confounded in the same proscription; the void made by the abolition of the Roman catholic religion was attempted to be filled by what these new fanatics called the worship of Reason;' and atheism received the public homage and honours due to the Supreme Being." The Scriptures were declared to be a fable, and death to be an eternal sleep; and upon the altar, of the cathedral church of Notre Dame in Paris, the naked person of a prostitute was worshipped as the goddess of reason. And so in other parts of France, and particularly at Lyons, where the Scriptures were publicly dragged through the streets, with circumstances of the utmost contempt. And other things transacted in the exultation of their triumph, which it is shocking to narrate. And the sabbath was abolished, and the division of the year by weeks,-commemorative at once of creation completed, and redemption completed,-was abolished for that by decades of ten days

*New Annual Register, for 1792,

† Ann. Reg. 1796.