taken from the history of our Lord's passion. For the Lord Jesus, in like manner, when he was finishing his preaching, which lasted about as many days as the prophecy of the witnesses, was killed by the Roman president, a legate of that beast, which warred with the witnesses, (but in the shape of its sixth head.) The third day after, when there was a great earthquake also, he rose again; and a little after, namely, on the fortieth day, being received up in a cloud, he ascended into heaven. All which things God wished to represent in this slaughter of the witnesses or prophets; that as in the nature of their office they had borne a resemblance, as was stated before, to those illustrious pairs; so in suffering and death they should become conformable to Christ their Lord, that faithful Witness; which ought to be their consolation and their glory in the midst of their troubles.

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"When,"

But let us throw light on the text. says he, " they shall be finishing their testimony," (for so Orav TEλtowo should be translated, not by the preterite, when they have finished,) "the beast who ascends out of the abyss, shall make war upon them and shall kill them." That is, when at length, a part of the Holy City, or of the Christian world, having acknowledged the impurity of Gentilism, repenting, and cleansing the temple of God among them, and the wit

nesses rejoicing, shall begin to put off their sackcloth, and to be discharged from their daily lamentation, though they shall not be yet fully discharged from it, the seven-headed Roman beast in his last state, (of whom see ch. xiii.) indignant that the preaching of those hithertomourning persons should have prevailed, will make war upon them, conquer, and kill them: Of which, the first symptom of the lamentation of the witnesses beginning to come to an end, took place at the commencement of the Reformed Church, and has been continually repeated up to this present time. The other, respecting the war and slaughter, I suspect to be yet future. Our Brightman, indeed, supposed that it had been long ago fulfilled in the war of Smalcalde, under Charles the Fifth. Others accommodate it to the recent destruction of the German Churches. And who would not much rather wish that so sad a misfortune for the Church had already passed, than that it should remain to be apprehended? But the interpretation is not to be governed according to our wish; nay, the error will be greater on this side than the other; since the expectation of future calamity is more conducive to piety, than too credulous a security respecting it, as if already past. Two things persuade me that this last slaughter is yet to be dreaded. The first is, that those sor

rowful times, of the Gentiles treading under foot the Holy City, or the Christian Religion,-that is, the forty-two months, as long as the beast shall be reigning,-cannot be said to have completed their period; nor, therefore, the days of the witnesses lamenting in sack or hair cloth, contemporary and coeval with those months. The other is, that this destruction of the witnesses (as we shall in a short time see), is immediately antecedent to the overthrow and ruin of the great city, that is, of Rome, which the series of the phials will not permit to be at so short a distance, as we are not yet carried beyond the fourth of them, (though, in the present agitation of affairs, it is to be hoped, that is now passing,) as we shall then be instructed. But we will show, by-and-by, that the ruin of the city relates to the fifth, of which it is very probable that this slaughter of which we treat, will be the forerunner; especially since it is usual for our general Christ to contend with his enemies, and to bestow a victory upon his followers, only by the method of the cross. It does not follow, however, that because this should be the last slaughter, and even yet future, that any thing can certainly be determined of its severity, above all which preceded it. For perhaps it deserved a singular mention and description, not so much on account of its severity, (certainly, not of its

duration,) as because it was a sign that the sorrows of the witnesses were then about to be immediately concluded, and of the impending ruin of the Roman city, and therefore alone was selected out of all the slaughters by which the beast would wear out the saints. In like manner, for instance, as the surrounding of Jerusalem by the army of Cestius Gallus, a little before the fatal siege of Titus, was predicted as a sign of its ruin then impending before the doors. For as our Saviour said to his apostles, inquiring about the signs of the time of its destruction, "When ye shall see Jerusalem encompassed with armies, then know that its desolation draweth near." So here it should seem to be intimated by the overthrow of Babylon; when you shall see that slaughter of the witnesses for three years and a half, then know that the desolation of the great city approacheth.

But the destruction by which the witnesses are predicted to be overthrown, must I think be understood in a very general sense, in which it may comprehend death, metaphorically or analogically so called. In this notion, that is said to die, which in whatever state it was constituted, either political or ecclesiastical, or in any other, ceases to be what it was. Whence likewise he kills, who inflicts on any one such a death. For as in the sacred style, to live is oftentimes to be,

to die, is not to be. In which sense, we are said to die to Satan and sin, when we cease to be any longer their servants; and to live to Christ, when we begin to be his.

And the mode of opposition seems to require that as the resurrection of the witnesses to life, after the slaughter was perpetrated, should be of this kind, so the slaughter itself should be. But that is clearly analogical, because no resurrection properly so called, will take place before the advent of Christ, under the seventh trumpet; but this takes place while the sixth is still running on.*

The death of the witnesses then in war, if we explain it according to this rule of interpretation, will appear to be their overthrow and dejection

* If these observations be just, (and there is every reason to believe that they are,) what are we to think of the witnesses? They cannot be living persons in succession throughout the period of 1260 years, because they die and revive metaphorically. Are they not, then, as I before observed, the twin parts of the true religion; that is, the law and the Gospel, contained in the Old and New Testament? Their death, therefore, will be the temporary dissolution of their acknowledged authority in some part of the world, by the success of infidelity for a short time; and their resurrection will be the reinstatement of their influence over the nations, in consequence of some signal revolution, which will carry conviction to the minds of men, and bow their necks to the yoke of Christ. Thus explained, the whole parable becomes consistent and intelligible.-R. B. C.

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