or as

Of how much greater and still more criminal folly and madness must you be constrained to pronounce yourselves guilty, if

a view to prevent the loss and of your souls, or to increase the to secure the salvation of his probability of their salvation? soul? Is it possible that he should look back on his past labors, pains and sufferings, and contemplate his then present state, and think of its everlast-instead of earnestly crying to ing continuance, and that, pro- God for mercy, and taking all bably, with endlessly increasing possible pains to prevent the joy and happiness, and once im- loss and to secure the salvation agine, that he hath acted un- of your souls, you should, with wisely for himself, in laying out a careless indifference and stuso much for it?-Must he not, pidity, or deliberate resolution on the other hand, pronounce all and obstinacy, neglect, turn his past labor and expense, of away from and refuse the ordievery kind, a mere trifle, and nary and best adapted outward not worthy to be named or means of grace and salvation, thought of, in comparison with, and indulge and give yourselves a courter-balance to, the up to the worldly pursuits and value and worth of the real posi-pleasures, and the gratifications tive good, to which he has attain- of the various irregular and sined, over and above the conside- ful propensities and lusts of the ration of a mere exemption from body and mind, which have the infinite evil implied in the an awful tendency in dieverlasting loss of the soul? rect opposition to the salvation of your souls, and to fit and prepare them for destruction; as well as to increase the righteous displeasure of God against you? If in the midst of such stupid, sinful, and soul-ruinous indulgences and pursuits, one and another of you should be stopped short by death, as hath fre quently been the case with others, and your souls, on a sudden plunged in darkness, `horror and despair, completely lost for ever, can any words express the keen self-reproaches and selfcondemnings, which they might naturally be expected to expe rience, for their past folly and madness?

Hence, If the natural disposition of your hearts, and the ways to which you are naturally inclined, have a direct and powerful tendency to the loss of your souls, and will terminate in it, unless prevented by an interposition of divine grace, to bring you to repent and return to God through Jesus Christ, and to enter upon and walk in the narrow way which leadeth to life, can you acquit yourselves from the charge of great and criminal folly, if you do not earnestly seek and cry to God, for his merciful interposition to rescue and save you, and exercise all the attention, and do every thing in your power, which, upon scriptural grounds, you may rationally hope will, in any way or measure, tend to lessen the danger of the everlasting loss

VOL. I. NO. 7.

Will you not, then, in a view of all these solemn, awakening, and most interesting considerations, be excited and engaged to seek the Lord, while he may be found to call upon him Hh

in the year 455, under the symbol of fire, Genseric king of the Vandals assaults the Western Empire from the South, and hurls it from its base, like a huge blazing mountain, or the head of it imperial Rome itself. At the sounding of the third in the year 476, under the symbol of a great star falling from Heaven, the line of the Western Cesars, in the deposition of Augustulus, became extinct, and Odoacer king of the Heruli was proclaimed king of Italy. At the sounding of the fourth, the

Abstract of Faber on the Pro-Roman Empire considered as one

THE

HE chief object of our author is to treat of the great period of 1260 years, or the period of the Papal and Mohammedan apostacies, but he gives a brief account of the events marked by the first four trumpets, as preparing the way for that period, by removing that which was foretold would for a season let or hinder the revelation of the man of Sin. He states in general, that the trumpets may be divided into the four which prepare the way for the revelation of the man of sin, and the three woe-trumpets, as they are called, which comprehend the whole history of the appostacy in its dominant state, both in the East and in the West.

great whole, under the symbol of an eclipse of the third part of the Sun, of the Moon and of the Stars, through the operation of the foregoing trumpets, became shorn of its power and splendour by the downfall of its Western half. Thus was he that letted removed out of the way; and an opening made for the man of sin and the western apostacy.

This account of the first four trumpets is different from that of Bp. Newton: for according to him at the sounding of the first trumpel, Alaric and his Goths invade the Roman Empire. At the sounding of the second, Attila and his Huns waste the Roman provinces, and compel the Eastern and Western Emperors to submit to shameful terms: at the sounding of the third, Genseric and his Vandals spoil and plunder Rome; and at the sounding of the fourth, Odoacer and the Herúli put an end to the very name of the Western Empire.

According to our author, at the sounding of the first trumpet which began in 395, the Northern nations Our author supposes that the Bp's. under Alaric, Radagaisus, and At-errors may be traced to an erronetila overrun the Roman Empire.ous curtailment of the effects proThese successive invasions are rep-duced by the first trumpet. He resented under the symbol of a hail storm, that in the year 446 a pause took place in the storm, and that in the year 450 it burst again on the Western Empire, and terminated on the death of Attila in the year 453-At the sounding of the second

thinks the symbol of the Northern hail storm will include all the inva sions of the Roman Empire, by way of Germany, Scythia, and the North whether executed by the Goths, the Vandals, the Suevi, the Alans or the Huns. And further, that on his own

arrangement, the symbols will have of imposture, in the year 606, by retheir proper and natural applica- tiring to the cave of Hera; then tion; but on the Bishop's arrange-it was the fallen star Sergius opened ment, they will not: for, according the door of the bottomless pit; the to his exposition, the burning moun-smoke and fumes of false religion tain will be Attila, ard not a subver-issued immediately; but the locusts ted empire? The falling star will and their leader were not revealed be Genseric, a victorious prince, till the year 612, when Mohammed and not a king hurled from the sum- assumed the prophetic office. This mit of his power; and the eclipse therfore was the commencement of the sun, moon, and stars, will be of the five prophetic months. an extinction of the Sun and only or period of 150 years; within which an eclipse of the other luminaries. the locusts were commissioned to torment mankind, and which, of course, expired in the year 762, when the caliph Almansor built Bagdad, or the city of peace: Then the Saracens ceased from their locust devastations, and became a set tled people; and Mohammedism was firmly established. The commission of the locusts was to hurt those who had not the seal of God in their foreheads, but not to kill them. Accordingly, when they ap proached the region which was af terward the seat of the Waldenses and Albigenses they were defeated with great slaughter, in several en

The author now entering on the detail of events symbolized by the three woe trumpets, observes, that the Prophet begins with the Eastern branch of the apostacy, under the two first woe trumpets, next proceeds to the Western brunch of the apostacy, which he gives at large under the two first woe trumpets, and more briefly under the third, for the whole period of 1260 years, from the little book, which he was commanded to eat, and concludes, with detailing the effects of the last woe trumpet, which contains the seven vials, both in the East and in the West. He further observes, in gen-gagements, by Charles Martel eral, that the first woe trumpet describes the rise, the second, the height, and the third the downfall of the twofold apostacy of Mohammedism and the Papacy.

They were to scourge the apostate empire where the transgressors were come to the full, but not to subvert it. This was reserved for their successors the Turks. At the con clusion of this prophecy, it is added The author accords with Bp. Newton as to the effects of the two "One woe is past." This wce en: first woe trumpets, in the East.ded, as has been said, in the year He differs from him as to the appli- 762. When the second should comcation of the symbol of the fullen mence is not here said, but simply, star to Mohammed, and applies it behold! there come two more woes to the apostate Nestorian monk Ser-hereafter. Accordingly, a considegius or Baheira who assisted Mo-rable period of time was to clapse, hammed in the forging of his im- before the commencement of the se posture: because, the symbol of a ful-cond woe. len star always imports either an apostate pastor or a king hurled from his throne : Mohammed was neither. Sergius was the former. Apollyon and his locusts were Mohammed and the Saracens Mohammed committed the first act

At the sounding of the sixth trumpet; or, second woe trumpet, the four angels, or four sultanies of the Turks, whose capitals were Bagdad, Damascus, Aleppo, and Iconium, who had been bound in the great river Euphrates, or in

Then, we are

Having shewn the effect of the two first wae-trumpets in the East, the prophet passes to the history of the contemporary Papal apostacy in the West, by unfolding the contents of the bile book, which cou

the whole of that great period.— From these chapters we learn, what the ten horned beast of the sea, or of the bottomless pit is; that he wages a war of 1260 years with the woman and the two witnesses; that he acts by the instigation of the two

the countries adjoining that river,, of the Roman city. were ordered to be loosed: they informed, that the second woe is were loosed accordingly, in the year past, and behold the third woe 1281, when the Turks under Orto- cometh quickly. grul gained their first victory over the Greek Empire, by the conquest of Cutahi. They were prepared to slay the third part of men, or the Roman Empire, then represented by the Constantinopolitan monarchy, for an hour, and a day, and a month,tains that history at large, and more and a year, or 391 natural years, generally the history, of the third and 15 days. In the year 1453 they woe-trumpet, under the symbols of took Constantinople and in the the harvest and vintage of the Lord; year 1672 they took Cameniec, their or, in other words, the history of last conquest, from the Poles. Now the whole great period of 1260 years. if we compute 391 years from the This book contains, according to year 1281, they will bring us down the author the eleventh, twelfth, exactly to the year 1672; and if we thirteenth and fourteenth chapters of the Revelation; and all of them, knew the day on which Cutahi was taken, as we do that on which Ca-in point of time, run parallel to meniec was taken, the same exact-each other; each reaching through ness might also be found in the 15 days. The Euphratian horsemen are represented as very numerous; as delighting in the color of fire, jacinth, and brimstone, or red, blue and yellow; their horses as vomiting fire, and smoke, and brimstone, an allusion to artillery and gun-pow-horned beast of the Earth; and der invented under this trumpet, that he is the tool of the great red and as propagating a false religion: dragon. In all which particulars, the Turks are described with wonderful exactness. Under these awful judgments, the rest of men, or the Papal church, repented not of their idolatry; but, unawed by the signal punishment of her sister Constantinople, she set her face against the reformation which commenced under this trumpet: a more tremendous power, therefore, will be revealed against her, under the third woe. The precise duration of this woe is not here expressly marked by the prophet; the conquests of the Euphratean horsemen, in subverting the Eastern empire, terminated in 1672, but the woe itself does not terminate till after the great earthquake in the West, and the fall of the tenth part

In explaining the contents of the first Chapter of the little book, the author says, that, by the temple, the altar, and them that worship therein, are meant true. Christians; by the Court without the temple, nominator apostate Christians; by the Holy City, the visible Church of Christ that the two prophets Ο witnesses were to prophesy in sackcloth through the whole period of 1260 years; and therefore could not be trid individuals that they are called the two olive trees and the two candlesticks which are known symbols of a church, therefore they cannot be the Two Testaments, as many have supposed; but are two

churches; or, the two-fold church of whom the first was Charlemagne,

of Christ, that before, and that and whose representative, at the after his incarnation; represented time of the reformation, was Charles by the twenty-four Elders, alluding the fifth: which fact the author now to the twelve patriarchs, and the assumes, and designs afterwards to twelve Apostles; and by the Holy prove. The witnesses first received City on whose twelve gates were political life, in the years 1530, 1531, inscribed the names of the twelve 1535 and 1537, by the association of tribes of Israel; and on whose the Protestant German princes in twelve foundations were inscribed the league of Smalcalde. The beast, the names of the twelve Apostles under his last head, on the 24th of of the Lamb: the notion of which, April, 1547, totally routed the Prothe two-fold church, is carefully pre- and their two great champions, the testants, in the battle of Mulburg : served through the whole book of the Apocalypse. Or, in other words, Elector of Saxony, and the Landthe two witnesses are the spiritual submit to the Emperor Charles, at grave of Hesse, were compelled to members of the Catholic Church, viewed as one great whole, though dead. The street of the great city, discretion. The prophets were now made up of two component parts. where their bodies lay exposed and Their prophesying means their avowal of the truths of the Gospel. unburied, was Germany: a kingdom or province of the empire, representTheir power to shut heaven, to turn the waters into blood, &c. must ed by one of the ten horns of the beast, be understood not in a causal, but subject more immediately to the a consequential sense; as God's jurisdiction of the last head, which charge to Isaiah must be understood, the Prophet identifies with the beast “Make the heart of this people fat," lie unburied, in this street of the itself. Their dead bodies were to &c. The witnesses which were slain by the beast were not all the faith-half; when they should revive, and city, three days, or years, and an ́ fut throughout the whole Roman Earth, or city, but a community of Christians in a part or street of that city; their death then must have been political, the only death to which a community is liable. This community must have received o-end of the year 1550, and, in Decemlitical life, before it could suffer ber of the same year, defeated the political death. This could not have Duke of Mecklenburg, and took him been at any time before the Reforma- prisoner; and at the peace ratified tion. At the Reformation they re- at Passau in 1552, and confirmed at ceived political life in Germany. Augsburg in 1555, the two prophets The foe that slays them is the beast ascended into the symbolical heaven, of the bottomless fit; or, the beast or became an acknowledged church. with seven heads and ten horns; Thus the prophesy in every trait of the same as Daniel's fourth beast; it, was exactly fulfilled, in respect or, the Roman Empire; and he to the time when the witnesses slays the witnesses under his last, or should be slain, the imperial head septimo-octave head: or the line of which should effect it, the place the Gothic Emperors of the West, where, and the period they should

stand upon their feet, and after ascend into heaven. During this time, the Roman Earth had great joy: but, to their utter amazement, the Protestants again stood upon their feet, at Magdeburg, in the latter