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Arguing therefore from analogy, and from the context of the particular passage now under consideration, I will venture to affirm with some degree of positiveness, that the hour or season, in which the great earthquake was to take place, and which is declared by St. John to be the very same as that in which the war of the beast against the witnesses was to be carried on and their triumphant ascent into heaven to occur; that this hour or season is the period comprehended under the second woe-trumpet.

It is observable, that the two first woes are accurately distinguished from each other, as they took place in the East; but that no precise line of discrimination is drawn between them, as they sounded in the West: it is merely stated, that, as soon as a tenth part of the city should have fallen by the earthquake, the second woe should be past, but that the third woe should quickly follow it: this line of discrimination therefore must be drawn by referring to eastern chronology. I have already stated, that the first woe-trumpet describes the rise and establishment of the two-fold Apostacy; that the second represents the middle and most flourishing period of its existence; and that the third details the several steps of its downfall, introducing moreover upon the stage a new and most formidable power.

The first of the woe-trumpets seems to have begun to sound in the year 606, when the desolating transgression of Mohammedism arose, and when the saints were given into the hand of the already existing Papal little horn. Under this trumpet are comprehended the five prophetic months of Saracenic conquest, which began in 612, and ended in 762, when Bagdad was built, and when Mohammedism may be considered as firmly established. Now, since the prophet assures us, that the first woe expired at this period, we must look for the establishment of Popery either in or before the year 762, in order that it may be comprized under the same woe as the establishment of Mohammedism. Accordingly the proper date of

tinguishes between the period when the little born first arose, and the period when the saints were delivered into his hand. This last period is the same as that when St. John beheld the beast, in his third or revived state, ascend out of the sea of Gothic invasion.

the firm establishment of Popery is the year 755, or as some say the year 758, when Pipin, king of France, having taken the apostolic see under his special protection, conferred upon it the Exarchate of Ravenna.

The second woe-trumpet began to sound at the commencement of the hour, the day, the month, and the year, when the Turkish horsemen were prepared to slay the third part of men, or the Eastern empire; this, as we have seen, was in the year 1281. In the same year 1281, the papal Apostacy may be considered as having attained the zenith of its power; as will sufficiently appear from the following statement of the several rapid strides which it had previously made to absolute universal domination. In the year 774, the Pope obtained a grant of the greatest part of the kingdom of the Lombards. In the year 787, the worship of images, which had already been established in 607, was confirmed by the second council of Nice. In the year 817, the Emperor Louis finally confirmed to the Pope his Italian dominions. In the year 1074, Gregory the seventh strictly forbad the marriage of the clergy. In the year 1059, Robert Guiscard assumed the title of Duke of Apulia and Calabria; and afterwards did homage to the Pope, as his superior lord, for the dominions which have since been erected into the kingdom of the two Sicilies. In the year 1137, the same feudal submission was made by Don Alonso of Portugal. In the year 1213, John of England declared his monarchy a fief of the apostolic see.* In the pontificate of Innocent the third, which lasted from the year 1198 to the year 1216, the Saladine tenth, a tax originally laid upon the whole Latin empire for the service of the holy war, was continued for the benefit of the successors of St. Peter; and Innocent himself" may boast of the two most signal triumphs over sense and humanity, the establishment of transubstantiation, and

The Spanish kingdom of Arragon, the Dukedom of Austria, the islands of Sardinia and Corsica, and more than one of the Italian principalities, declared themselves, in the same dark period, feudatories of the Papacy. The long continued tyranny, which the Pope exercised over the kingdom of Naples, is well known. In short, it appears at one time to have been the studied design of the Bishops of Rome to render themselves temporal, no less than spiritual, sovereigns of Europe. In this design however, as we shall hereafter see, they by no means succeeded.

the origin of the inquisition."* Finally, to complete the aggrandisement of the church of Rome, in the period be tween 1274 and 1277, she bowed to reluctant submission the neck of her ancient rival of Constantinople; a submission, not long-lived indeed, but existing in its full force in the year 1281, when the second woe-trumpet began to sound.†

Thus it appears, that the second woe-trumpet commenced in the West, as it did in the East, in the year 1281. Now we learn from St. John, that the last event, comprehended under it, is to be the fall of a tenth part of the great city by an earthquake. Consequently, since the second woe-trumpet began to sound in the year 1281, and since the witnesses were slain in the year 1547, the two events, of the death of the witnesses and the earthquake must of course happen in the same apocalyptic hour or season: that is to say, they must both take place under the second woe-trumpet which commenced in the year 1981; though the one event, as we shall find, was to be many years prior to the other.

And here we must carefully note, that the fall of the tenth part of the city is almost immediately to be followed by the third woe: "the second woe is past; behold, the third woe cometh quickly." Now, since both the first and the second woes form such very prominent epochs in history, as we have seen them do, it is but natural to conclude, that the third and last woe will by no means yield to its predecessors either in the wonderful or the horrible: nay, since it alone is subdivided into seven distinct periods, it is no very improbable supposition, that it will far outdo them in both. Those commentators, who first very justly applied the prophecy of the war of the beast with the witnesses to the war of the Emperor

* Hist. of Decline and Fall, Vol. ii. p. 152.

It is a remarkable circumstance, that the submission of the Greek Church was withdrawn in the year 1283, as if it had only continued beyond the year 1281, that the Papacy might be in the full meridian of its power, when the second woe-trumpet began to sound. See Gibbon's Hist. of Decline and Fall, Vol. ii. p. 334, 337.

Its last period, that of the vintage, will be, according to Daniel," a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation:" and its first period, that of the barvest, which comprehends the three first vials, is described by St. John as being a very remarkable season of trouble and distress.

Charles the fifth with the Smalcaldic protestants, did not sufficiently attend to this circumstance. Misconceiving St. John's expression of the same hour, they imagined, that the great earthquake was immediately to succeed, and as it were to be the consequence of, the war of the witnesses: hence they concluded, that by the fall of the tenth part of the city was meant, that "a great part of the German empire renounced the authority, and abandoned the communion, of the church of Rome." But here the question obviously occurs, what great calamity came so quickly after this event, as to merit the appellation of the third woe, and to begin the accomplishment of the prophecy of the seven vials? Analogy shews, that it must at least be equal to the two double woes of the two-fold Apostacy: but history mentions no event, as immediately succeeding the establishment of the reformation in Germany, that is either of a sufficient magnitude, or of a sufficiently peculiar nature, to warrant us in concluding, that the third woe did really "come quickly” after this establishment. Matters went on in the usual succession of state intrigues, hollow peaces, and rapidly recurring wars and it has frequently been observed, that the balance of Europe, as it is termed, was first thought of in the reign of Charles the fifth; and that afterwards the different states, by means of various alliances, and counter-alliances, were pretty equally poised till the tremendous explosion of the French revolution. It is plain therefore, that this explanation of the earthquake will not hold good: and, if it do not, all the other explanations, attached to the other schemes of interpreting the war of the witnesses, must of course fall to the ground along with the schemes to which they are attached. We must look out then for a very different event from the establishment of the German reformation, in order to find a satisfactory exposition of the great earthquake, which was to overthrow a tenth part of the city; and of the third woe, which was to "come quickly" after it.

We have seen, that Daniel predicts the tyranny of Popery and Mohammedism, under the symbols of two little

* The reader will find an account of them in Bp. Newton's Dissert. on Rev, xi.

horns; and that of the atheistical government of France, under the character of a king who neither revered the God of heaven, the Desire of women, nor any other god, but who magnified himself above all. Hence we may naturally expect, that St. John, writing under the influence of the same Holy Spirit, would observe the same order, and would foretell the same events: and such, I apprehend, we shall find to be really the case. The apostolical prophet, having fully detailed the history of the two double woes of the two-fold Apostacy, Mohammedan and Papal, introduces, at the close of the second woe, what may be termed the primary revelation of Antichrist; and immediately after, under the third woe, proceeds to the full developement of the same power in all its multiplied horrors: a power, fully worthy of being celebrated under a fresh trumpet; for Popery and Mohammedism only corrupted and mutilated the word of God, but it has defied him even to his face, and as a national act (a portent hitherto unheard of) has openly denied his very existence.

An earthquake is the symbol of a violent revolution either religious or political: and a tenth part of the great city, or the Roman empire, is manifestly the same as one of the ten horns of the Roman beast. But, from the time of the German reformation to the close of the last century, there has been no event to which this prophecy of the earthquake can with any probability be applied, except the revolution of France; a country, which has always been one of the most powerful of the ten streets of the great city, and which at the period of this earthquake was the only one of the ten original horns that remained.* Hence I scruple not to conclude, that that revolution is here foretold.

It is represented however as taking place before its own proper woe-trumpet began to sound; because, as the event has shewn, Antichrist was not destined to appear at first in all his naked horrors. The great earthquake of the second woe, and the fall of the tenth part of the city which it produced, were for some time celebrated, by the fanatical advocates of a chimerical liberty, as the very quint

* I have already observed, that, owing to the frequent revolutions of nations, the other original borns, have long since fallen.

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