Introduction

THE APOCALYPSE has now been before the world 1770 years. Since it's first. appearance among the Seven Ecclesias of Asia Minor there have been various short expository notices of certain parts of the prophecy by some of the earlier overseers of the Christian community, who flourished from about the middle of the second to the middle of the third centuries ; such as Justin Martyr Irenaeus Tertullian, Hippolytus, and the pseudo-Sybilline Oracles. The earliest essay at a systematic exposition of this wonderful and ingenious prophecy now extant, is one by Victorinus, overseer of an ecclesia at Pettau in Pannonia; who was put to death in the period (of the Fifth Sea], or "ten days' tribulation " of the Diocletian persecution, from A.D. 303 to A.D. 313.

The first four and THE SIXTH SEALS representative of the judicial manner of "taking out of the way" the PAGAN CONSTITUTION of the "Dreadful and Terrible Fourth Beast," which withheld the revelation Of "THE LAWLESS ONE;"(Dan.7:7; Apoc. 6; 2 Thess. 2: 3-9) and the consequent manifestation of the CATHOLIC MYSTERY OF INIQUITY or Man of Sin Power, in the Heaven of the said beast, or "GREAT FIERY-RED DR.AGON." (Apoc. 12:1-5, 7-13).

The end of the eleventh chapter of the Apocalypse conducts the reader into what Jeremiah Styles, "the time of Jacob's trouble," out of which be shall be saved -- ch. 30:7 -- a time in which there are "lightnings, and voices, and thunderings, and an earthquake, and great hail." -- Apoc. 11:19. This is that "TIME 0F THE END" of which Daniel prophesied, saying "There sliall be a time of trouble such as never was since there was a nation, even to that same time." This is that time which certain chronologists term "an unchronological period;" that is, a period which is left scripturally undefined, having no revealed commencement nor termination: so that it may be a moment exemplified by a flash of lightning, a year, or several years, for anything that is, or can be, known.

In studying the Apocalypse, the student cannot fail being impressed with a notable peculiarity, frequently illustrated, of its structural arrangement. The peculiarity is that of stating in the beginning first, that which is to be executed last. Thus, in the first chapter, the coming of Yahweh in clouds is announced; and his presence is symbolically exhibited: but it is not until the preterminal epoch of the sixth vial that He actually appears. So that it takes all "the things that shall be hereafter" exhibited in all the six seats, and so much of the seventh seal as is contained in the six trumpets; and so much of the seventh trumpet as is contained in all the five vials, and at least half the sixth, to develop the Advent. The apocalypse of the Ancient of Days, or his manifestation in his kingdom, is the end proposed in the prophecy. It is therefore first announced. It is the grand proposition to be illustrated and proved by the logic of events. The end divinely purposed is not stated first because it is to be first established, as the first thing to come to pass, after John had the vision; and because all "the things that shall be here-after" are to happen after it. The logical order of a prophecy in statement or fulfilment is first state, then illustrate, and afterwards prove. "Behold, he comes, and every eye shall see him." This is a proposition, or purpose, stated; but after eighteen hundred years, not yet proved by its coming to pass. By what course of events will that coming be developed? By the events coursed out in the seals, trumpets, and vials, which are the illustration of how the end proposed is to be made identical with the proof. Hence, the end, though first in purpose, and therefore first verbally stated in the prophecy, is the last in development; and consequently not to be looked for as the first event of a prophetic series. The Son of Man in the midst of the lightstand-embodiment of the Spirit is the symbolical prefix to the prophecy of the seven epistles; but the actual manifestation of the Spirit's presence in the midst of the redeemed is not revealed until he occupies the throne in the time of the ending of the Laodicean state (ch. 3:20-21). Again; this peculiarity is exhibited in the fourth chapter. Here the whole is occupied with a symbolical exhibition of the Spirit in covenantmanifestation. The throne and kingdom of David, termed Yahweh's by the prophets, have been covenanted to Jesus and his Brethren, who are to possess them when "glorified together." This purpose, or end proposed, is first represented to John; not because it existed then or since; but because all to be shown him, called "the things which shall be hereafter", are to result in the development of that revealed purpose. It would be a great mistake to look for the subject-matter of the fourth chapter as extant in heaven or upon earth while John was in Patmos. There was no counterpart to them. The figuration was simply a symbolic vision, showing, that at some future time not specified in the chapter, there should be a throne established in the air, or firmament, of the Romano-Dragonic Universe, which should be possessed by an Omnipotent Theocracy, from which should "burst forth lightnings, and thunderings and voices;" and having thereby established its sovereignty, should rule with universal dominion. But, though so early exhibited in the scroll, it is not until the seventh trumpet period that the announcement is made of its actual development, saying, "The kingdoms of this world are become Yahweh's and His Anointed's" (Ch. 11: 15). Thus the end, though first in purpose is in development the last; and we are taught that to establish this throne of omnipotence will require, according to the divine predetermination, the full development of all the events prefigured in the seals, trumpets, vials, and thunders.

"And a Great Sign appeared in the Heaven; a Woman who had been invested with the Sun, and the Moon under her feet, and upon her head a wreath of Twelve Stars. "

In this "great sign" is seen upon the head of the Sun-Invested Woman "a wreath of twelve stars". Thus I have rendered in my translation the words stephanos asteron dodeka. The twelve stars were set in a stephanos, not in a diadema. If there had been seen upon her head a diadem of twelve stars, it would have indicated that she was an integral part of the diademed sixth head of the dreadful and terrible dragon, all of whose heads are diademed. But no; the "crown" of the C.V., was a stephanos, and not a diadem.

This ch. 12:1 is the second place in the general prophecy where a figurative woman is introduced. The first place in which the Spirit speaks specifically of one is ch. 2:20. In his epistle to the Star-Angel presbytery of the ecclesia in Thyatira he charges it with suffering, or tolerating, teachers and seducers within its jurisdiction, whose traditions were destructive of those "servants" who received them. Those teachers and seducers constituted a class of men of which Balaam, is a representative. They "ran greedily in the error of Balaam's reward" (Jude 11). They were seducing spirits and demons who spoke lies in hypocrisy (1 Tim. 4:1-2): false teachers privily bringing in destructive opinions, and denying the Despot who bought them. Through covetousness, with feigned words, they made merchandise of professors unstable in the faith, sporting themselves with their own deceivings. They had once known the way of righteousness, and by the obedience of faith it inculcates had become children of God. But they afterwards forsook the right way, and went astray. Their heart was exercised like Balaam's with covetous practices; and without regard to the honor and interests of the truth, they zealously and volubly entertained their hearers with crotchety conceits and speculations. Their teaching and practices favored the wantonness and lusts of the flesh. The inconstant and unstable among the saints favored their traditions, which proclaimed a liberty in things which the word condemns. This licentiousness strengthened the flesh to which it is congenial; and as this was developed, the power of the word became impotent; their hold upon it was relaxed; they became entangled again in the pollutions of the world, and were overcome of their inordinate desires. Thus these teachers and seducers, with the disciples they had drawn away after them by the perverse things they taught, though they zealously contended for one God against the idolatry of the Roman State, adopted opinions and practices applauded by the profane. They "committed fornication, and ate things sacrificed to idols." For this contemptible "mess of pottage" they sold their birthright; and not only ruined themselves, but caused the truth to be evil spoken of by those whom it was designed to benefit (2 Pet. 2).

"And being pregnant she cries being in pangs and straining to bring forth" - verse 2

A dragon is a kind of beast, and therefore partakes in the characteristics of beasts. These in prophetic writing are the well-known symbols of destroying monarchies or powers; and, where the people of the Deity are found sojourning under their authority, the persecutors of the saints. But, though the dragon is a beast, he is apocalyptically distingished from the beast of the earth, and the beast of the se; nevertheless, possesses certain characteristics in common with then both: for are all found upon the same arena, though not contemporary in all they history.

I have said that behind the head seen by Daniel there were seven other heads which he did not perceive. This is equivalent to saying, that the head seen by him was an EIGHTH READ. This is the truth. The beast he saw was headed with this eighth head contemporary with its destruction by the saints. The seven heads, except the sixth, which precede this, have now no other political existence than what may be found on the page of history. They are things of the past, save -only so far as the eighth is a partaker of-the political character of the seven. The eighth head, in Apoc. 17: 11, is styled a beast', as, "the beast that was, and is not, even he is the eighth, and is of the seven, and goeth into perdition." The eighth head is styled the beast, because a headless beast is a mere carcase, and incapable of action. All the seven heads,, topographically Viewed. being politically defunct ages before the judgment sits for the slaying of the east, it became necessary to give it an eighth that it might live on to the time when judgment should be given to the saints. The Eighth Beast is therefore the "dreadful and terrible fourth" in eighth head manifestation. Its history begins after the fall of the seventh head, and winds up in its perdition after the advent of the Ancient of Days.

The tail of the old Roman Dragon swayed by this power must have partaken of the character of that power, as the tail of a beast partakes of the peculiar vitality of the beast. The dragon in the heaven, heads, horns, body and tail, as a sign there, is to be viewed chronologically, in his tail-conflict with "Michael and his angels". This tail-conflict was the last conflict of the Pagan Roman Serpent-power, or Dragon, with the partisans of the Christian Eve. "The ancient and the honorable he is the head, and the prophet that teaches lies he is the tail" (Isa. 9:15). All the pagan priests and philosophers were the teachers of lies in this, the crisis of the sixth seal. They would therefore constitute a very important element of the Dragon's tail. Added to these would also be all "the rulers of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains (or chiliarchs, commanders of a thousand men), mighty men, and every slave, and every freeman" (Apoc. 6:15) who adhered to the pagan prophets. Of these were "the Stars of the heaven" in which the Dragon was a sign. Entering into the composition of his tail, his tail is said to "draw" them. The tail of a power in motion, represents the fierce anger of that power against its enemies, as manifested in its movements of an army to destroy them. This appears from Isa. 7:4, where the armies of Syria and Israel, in march against Jerusalem, are styled the two tails of as many smoking firebrands, or their fierce anger. The tail of the Dragon is represented as in motion; for it i is written, "his tail draws the third of the stars of the heaven, and did cast them to the earth." The power of the Dragon, or crocodile, is in its tail. It sways it violently in its anger; but if the power of its tail is overcome, all composing the tail, or attaching themselves to the party of the tail, will be laid prostrate under the feet of the victor; or, in the words of the prophecy, be "cast to the earth." The conflict was between Michael and the Tail of the Dragon, both being in the heaven. A third of the stars of this heaven sided with the Dragon's Tail; while the two thirds ranged themselves under the Standard of "the Cross," by which sign "Michael" proposed to conquer. At that time, the Dragon dominion was divided into three parts - the Eastern, the Western, and the Illyrian, proefectures. On the defeat of Maxentius, Constantine ruled the Western, Licinius the Illyrian, and Maximin the Eastern, Third. Maximin was the champion of Jupiter and the gods. This third was chorographically the Dragon's Tail, his Head being in Rome. Maximin dying in great torments, was succeeded in the Eastern Third by Licinius; who, apostatizing from the Catholic profession, solemnly professed himself at an idolatrous altar the champion of the gods. He was now the Pontifex Maximus of Paganism, or Chief Prophet of the Tail of the Dragon. He was the centre of attraction to the stars of the Eastern Third of the Heaven; and therefore to a "third of the stars of the heaven." He drew them after him to a final struggle against the Archer of the First Seal. But he was defeated and dethroned, and ignominiously ejected from his high position in the state; and, in his fall from the heaven, drew with him to the earth, all the men of power, philosophers, and priests of Paganism, the stars of the Dragon's Tail, who had staked their all upon his success.

If he had not made known his purposes none of Adam's descendants could have discovered them. Hence, while ignorant of the word, they are as the serpent, and Scripturally classed with him as his seed or children.

This crocodile, or dragon, is said to be at once ho kaloumenos Diabolos, kai ho Satanas ho planon ten oikoumenen olen; - "surnamed the Diabolos, and the Satan who deceives the whole habitable."

The decorum of the symbol requires that the period of the woman's pregnancy be analogous to the time during which in nature a woman compasses a child before she gives it birth. Now it is well known, that the time of gestation from conception to birth, is a period of forty weeks or 280 days. This being the "set time" - the time appointed by Deity for the development of children from the womb of humanity - it became a law of nature. If, therefore, one of "the deep things of Deity" in a revelation has to be symbolized by the natural result of a woman's pregnancy, which is the birth of a child, it is necessary that the law of nature in the case become the measure of the duration of the symbolic pregnancy before the symbolic child is manifested in the world. This is styled "the decorum of the symbol," and must be regarded in the interpretation of all symbols. To neglect it would produce sad confusion in an exposition. We must therefore find the woman in espousable existence 280 years before the manifestation of any MAN OF POWER, who in any sense could be decorously styled "her child."

And the Dragon stood before the Woman about to bring forth, that when she may have brought forth, be might devour her offspring"- Vs. 4.

"And she brought forth a male child, who is about to rule all the nations with an iron sceptre." Ver. 5.

The Man-Child of Sin, or "the King," was born, or made manifest, after this wise. We have seen how Constantine escaped the designs of the Dragon-Emperor Galerius. Having arrived at Boulogne, he accompanied his father to Britain, who died soon after in the imperial palace at York, A.D. 306. According to the constitution of the empire, the appointment of a successor to the vacant office of Augustus, was the prerogative of Galerius. The flower of the western armies had followed the deceased monarch into Britain. The opinion of their own importance, and the assurance that Britain, Gaul, and Spain would acquiesce in their nomination, were diligently inculcated on these legions by the Woman's partisans, and other revolutionary adherents of Constantine. The throne was the object of his desires: and the attainment of it was his only means of safety. He was well acquainted with the character and sentiments of Galerius, who in vowing the destruction of the christian name, was implacable towards those who favored it. He was therefore sufficiently apprised, that if he wished to live he must determine to reign. After a show of decent and even obstinate resistance, affected to justify his usurpation, he yielded to the acclamations of the army, which saluted him as Augustus, and emperor. Upon this, he immediately dispatched a letter to Galerius, informing him of his father's death, modestly asserting his natural claim to the succession, and respectfully lamenting, that the affectionate violence of his troops had not permitted him to solicit the imperial purple in the regular and constitutional manner. The first emotions of Galerius were those of surprise, disappointment, and rage; and as he could seldom restrain his passions, he loudly threatened that he would commit to the flames both the letter and the messenger. But his resentment insensibly subsided. Without either condemning or ratifying the choice of the British army, Galerius accepted Constantine as the sovereign of the provinces west of the Alps, but gave him only the title of Caesar, and the fourth rank among the Roman princes, whilst he conferred the vacant place of Augustus on his favorite Severus. The apparent harmony of the empire was still preserved, and Constantine, who already possessed the substance, expected, without impatience, an opportunity of obtaining the honors of supreme power.

"And there was war in the heaven; the Michael and his angels waged war against the Dragon; and the Dragon fought and his angels, but prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in the heaven."

"And I heard a great voice saying in the heaven. Now is come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our Deity, and the authority of His Anointed; for the prosecutor of our brethren who accused them in the presence of our Deity, day and night, has been cast down.

"And her son was forcibly carried up to the Deity, and his throne"

The woman was pregnant, and therefore, if she lived through the period of her painful gestation, her time would certainly come to bring forth. It is therefore written of her, "she cries being in pangs and straining to bring forth."

"Who was to rule all the nations with an iron sceptre" - v.5.

"And the Woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place of the Deity, that they may sustain her there a thousand two hundred and sixty days" - Verse 6

"She hath a place which has been prepared of the Deity, that they should feed her there a thousand two hundred and threescore days" - verse 6.

Now, to what in our own times shall we liken the civil and ecclesiastical arrangement of things existing at the crisis of the woman's flight? The following constitution of things with which the reader is familiar, will answer the purpose of bringing vividly before his mind what was presented before John's in the dramatical exhibition of the woman in the wilderness. The British Imperial Unicorn is an element of the Serpent-power of the world. It is enthroned in all the splendor of the heaven; and sheds the rays of its glory and power upon all the constituted authorities of the state. Invested with this brightness is a Harlot, diademed with the jewels of the British crown. This woman is a daughter of "Mystery, Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots, and all the Abominations of the Earth;" and is constitutionally styled, "the Church of England and Ireland, as by law established." In the palmy days of the Tudors and the Stuarts, there was another woman, who fled from the face of the British Serpent. This was the woman of nonconformity and dissent. And to this fugitive were given the wings, or extremities, of the Great Unicorn; that she might fly into the wilderness, into her place, where she is nourished until the coming of the Ancient of Days. These wings are now known as the United States and British America. Here the Puritan Woman exists out of the sight of the British Serpent, fed by her spirituals, and nourished by "the earth," which is remarkably inimical to everything British. But, are the sects of which this Anti-British State-Church Woman is composed, "the remnants of her seed which keep the commandments of the Deity, and hold the testimony of the anointed Jesus?' Far, very far, from it; they are as far from it as the British Harlot herself; nevertheless, there will be found within the pale of Anti-British Harlotry a remnant, styled CHRISTADELPHIANS, whose intellectual and moral characteristics are answerable to the last clause of Apoc. 12:17.

"The woman fled into the wilderness, where she had a place that had been prepared of the Deity - verse 6: And to the woman were given the two wings of the Great Eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness into her place" - verse 14.

The most furious and desperate of rebels," says Gibbon, "are the sectaries of a religion long persecuted, and at length provoked. In a holy cause they are no longer susceptible of fear or remorse; the justice of their arms hardens them against the feelings of humanity; and they revenge their father's wrongs on the children of their tyrants." Such were the Circumcellions of Africa, the peasants of Paphlagonia, and such in the ninth century were the popular sympathizers with the Paulicians of Armenia and the adjacent provinces.

The Novatian remnant was numerous in most parts of the Great Roman Eagle until towards the end of the sixth century. After this their name is not found in the history of the times. This arose from the fact of other leaders appearing to direct the witnessing of the woman's seed against traditions and superstitions more recently introduced by the Catholic Satan. Laxity of discipline, which was protested against by Novatianus, had caused the division of Anti-pagans into two distinct bodies, A.D. 251, or thereabouts. The majority styled themselves Catholics; the others, NOVATIANS, and Puritans. Some sixty or seventy years after, these received an accession of strength and numbers by the secession from the catholics of multitudes, who were opposed to professors being ordained bishops, who surrendered the Holy Scriptures to be burned as the condition of personal safety in the Diocletian persecution; and who were also opposed to the incorporation of the church with the Roman State. These at the end of the sixth century were no longer the leading questions of the day. All the Woman's witnessing seed, whether called Novatian or Donatists, were united in judgment concerning them; but there were other topics that now came to demand more especial attention, in the witnessing for which other names than Novatians and Donatus strongly attracted the notice of mankind.

"The song of victory acclaimed by the privileged adherents of the MAN-CHILD OF SIN, in which they are made to ascribe their triumph over "the Great Fiery-Red Dragon" of Pagan Rome, not to themselves, but to the self-sacrificing devotion of their brethren, and to the faithfulness of their testimony even unto death; this epinikion, as it is styled by some, is contained, as we have seen, in the tenth, eleventh, and first clause of the twelfth verse of this chapter. The whole of the twelfth verse does not belong to the song. This verse should have begun at the word "Woe!". The address to "the inhabiters of the earth and sea" is continuous of the subject of the ninth verse, and in place would read thus: "the Dragon was cast out INTO THE EARTH, and his angels were cast out with him. WOE to the inhabiters OF THE EARTH and sea! for the DIABOLOS is come down unto you having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time. And when the Dragon saw that he was cast INTO THE EARTH, he persecuted the woman which brought forth the Man-Child" - Verses 12-13.

The Laodicean State, typified by the Apocalyptic ecclesia at Laodicea, is parallel with the Seventh Seal Period from its opening to the Fall of the apocalyptic Babylon after the appearing of "THE ANCIENTOF DAYS."

In the first year of Belshatzar, the prophet Daniel saw in a vision of the night, Four Beasts. The first resembled a Lion; the second, a Bear; the third, a Leopard; but the fourth was like nothing seen among beasts. It was diverse from all the beasts that were before it," which signifies, according to the interpretation given in Ch. 7:23, "diverse from all kingdoms."

Daniel reclined upon his bed and dreamed but John stood upon the Sand of the Sea, and saw things bearing resemblances to what he deemed sufficiently striking to establish their identity. Daniel says that It was stormy in his vision; or, as he expresses it, "the four winds of the heaven strove." But in this thirteenth chapter John says nothing about a strife of winds; but simply "I stood." I take it therefore that there is a sense in which John's standing is equivalent to storminess of the situation. Any one who has stood upon the sea shore, especially if rocky, will know that the situation is not characterized by silence, or the absence of noise. On the contrary, the roar of the waters is incessant. If the sea were quiescent as a pond, then to stand upon its beach would be to ex perience the silence and solitude of the boundless prairie. Such a standing for observation of phenomena would be symbolical of times of tranquillity and peace. But this could not be the nature of John's standing; for no such politico-ecclesiastical organizations could ascend into a position to command, or rather, to divide the command of, the world in halcyon days undisturbed by the storms of war and conquest. His standing then upon the margin of the roaring waters was significant of the storminess of the times, when what he "saw" should ascend to dominion "in the whole earth," en hole te ge. He stood, and the roar he heard was "the multitude of many peoples, making a noise like the noise of the seas; the rushing of nations, making a rushing like the rushing of mighty waters." Such a roaring of the waters implies a tumult of the sea from the strife of words. This implication places John and Daniel side by side as spectators of the storm. Daniel saw the four winds lashing the sea into fury; east, west, north, and south winds, all blowing upon the same sea. No ship could live in such a storm. Each of Daniel's four beasts, or dominions, was brought up out of the sea by the four winds of his vision. The Fourth Beast was brought up thereby; and so was his Sea-Beast development; and John apocalyptically beheld the same four winds as he "stood upon the Sand of the Sea, and saw." This leads me to remark as to the time of his standing. He stood there while the Four Winds continued the storm. The winds producing the roar of the sea, were "the four winds of the earth," which, in their blowing, gave voice to the first four trumpets, which in my Tabular Analysis, Vol.2 p.114, are styled, "Wind Trumpets." And from this tabular exposition I would transfer the "note" in Vol.2 pg. 115, as appropriate to the place. It reads thus: "The judgments of these four winds culminate in the development of the Seventh Head, which 'continues a short space'; and of the Ten Diademed Horns of the Beast that rises out of the sea; in the 'wounding as it were to death' of its Sixth Head; and in the consequent cession by the Dragon of his power, throne and dominion over the affected Third Part, which before the blowing of those winds, was a constituent of his empire". The time of tbis stormy period is indicated on p.115 of that volume, as "from A.D. 395 to A.D. 554-'59, the epoch, or beginning, of the darkened day and night in the third of them, being equal to a period of 159-'64 years."

But John in his symbolic standing "stood upon the Sand of the Sea". There must be some meaning in this standing upon the sand. In the tenth chapter the "mighty angel" stands upon the earth and sea; and in the fifteenth, John's brethren, and John himself, therefore, are seen standing upon the transparent sea, no longer mingled with fire; evincing that they had gotten the victory over the Ten Horned Beast, and the Image of the Sixth Head of the Beast, which had ascended out of the stormy sea while John stood upon the sand thereof. But here John stands not upon the earth to view the ascent of the Beast of the Earth; nor upon the sea to behold the ascent of the Beast of the Sea; but upon the sand of the sea to see the ascent of them both.

In the Hebrew tongue any collection of waters is termed seas as in Gen. 1:10, "The gathering together of the waters, he called seas." The word before us in the original is thalassa, on which the lexicon says, "when Homer uses it of a particular sea, he means the Mediterranean, for he calls the outer sea Okeanos, Ocean, and holds it to be a river. Herodotus calls the Mediterranean the inside sea; and the Ocean, the outside sea; the Latins called it MARE NOSTRUM, "Our Sea" as it is geographically and apocalyptically. What Matthew in ch. 8:20, calls thalassa, Luke in ch. 8:23, terms limne, a lake, or, an inland sea.

"The Beast that ascendeth out of the Bottomless Pit" - Ch. 11:7

A Beast," says Daubuz, "is the symbol of a tyrannical, usurping power or monarchy, that destroys its neighbors or subjects, and preys upon all about it, and persecutes the church of God?

"Horns are the symbols of power, exerted by strength of arms because such beasts as have horns make use of them as their arms.

The name of a person or thing, according to the Hebrew style, frequently imports the quality or state thereof. Thus in Ruth 1:20, "and she said unto them, call me not Naomi," that is, pleasant, "but call me Mara," that is bitter; "for Yahweh hath dealt very bitterly with me." And thus, when it is said in Isaiah 7:14, "she shall call his name Immanuel," the meaning is, that the Son of the Virgin there spoken of should be "AlL," or Eternal Power, "with us," Israel, dwelling in their midst. And so in Luke 1:32, "He shall be called the Son of the Highest," is, He shall be the Son of the Highest.

When the fiftieth day after the crucifixion had fully come, the apostles were all with one accord in one place, NOT IN ROME, but in Jerusalem. In obedience to the Lord's command, they were tarrying in this city until they should be endued with power from on high to execute the mission entrusted to them. Nor had they long to wait; for about nine in the morning of that day, they were all visibly and audibly filled with the Holy Spirit, and proceeded to speak as they were moved by the Spirit.

The Horns on the Dragon had no diadems upon them; because the nations of the abyss had not then issued forth to erect kingdoms upon the Roman Habitable. But in the chapter before us, the Dragon-Horns of the sea are exhibited with diadems upon them, indicating that they were not Republics; but States, whose chief magistrates were enthroned, and diademed, and who would figure in the unmeasured Court of the Gentiles (ch. 11:2) as "the Crowned Heads of Europe."

"And the Beast which I saw was like unto a Leopard, and his Feet were as of a Bear" - (Verse 2).

Now, to what in our own times shall we liken the civil and ecclesiastical arrangement of things existing at the crisis of the woman's flight? The following constitution of things with which the reader is familiar, will answer the purpose of bringing vividly before his mind what was presented before John's in the dramatical exhibition of the woman in the wilderness. The British Imperial Unicorn is an element of the Serpent-power of the world. It is enthroned in all the splendor of the heaven; and sheds the rays of its glory and power upon all the constituted authorities of the state. Invested with this brightness is a Harlot, diademed with the jewels of the British crown. This woman is a daughter of "Mystery, Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots, and all the Abominations of the Earth;" and is constitutionally styled, "the Church of England and Ireland, as by law established." In the palmy days of the Tudors and the Stuarts, there was another woman, who fled from the face of the British Serpent. This was the woman of nonconformity and dissent. And to this fugitive were given the wings, or extremities, of the Great Unicorn; that she might fly into the wilderness, into her place, where she is nourished until the coming of the Ancient of Days. These wings are now known as the United States and British America. Here the Puritan Woman exists out of the sight of the British Serpent, fed by her spirituals, and nourished by "the earth," which is remarkably inimical to everything British. But, are the sects of which this Anti-British State-Church Woman is composed, "the remnants of her seed which keep the commandments of the Deity, and hold the testimony of the anointed Jesus?' Far, very far, from it; they are as far from it as the British Harlot herself; nevertheless, there will be found within the pale of Anti-British Harlotry a remnant, styled CHRISTADELPHIANS, whose intellectual and moral characteristics are answerable to the last clause of Apoc. 12:17.

"2. And his Mouth as the Mouth of a Lion. 5. And there was given unto him (the Beast of the Sea) a Mouth speaking great things and blasphemies. 6. And he opened his Mouth in blasphemy concerning the Deity, to have blasphemed his Name, and his Tabernacle, and those who tabernacle in the heaven."

"And I saw one of his heads as if it had been wounded unto death" - verse 3.

The Name of Blasphemy is the Eye and Mouth, or ecclesiastic element of the Eighth Head. As we have seen, this ecclesiastical constituent of the Beast was working upwards towards enthronization over all, anterior to the establishment of the Ten Gothic Horns upon the Roman Habitable. When the citizens and clergy of Rome were seize with a spirit of patriotism and superstitious zeal, A.D. 536, "they furiously exclaimed," says Gibbon, "that THE APOSTOLIC THRONE should no longer be profaned by the triumph or toleration of Arianism." Belisarius was then at the gates, and the Gothic king in possession of the city. Hence, the people of that day evidently recognized two thrones contemporary existence within the walls - the Secular Throne of the king of Italy; and the Ecclesiastical Throne of the Archbishop and Patriarch of Rome. In Italy, the "Apostolic Throne" was overshadowed by the Secular; and as the Patriarch of Constantinople was in domestic slavery under the eye of his master, the Greek emperor, as he is at this day under the Sultan; so the Patriarch of Rome, occupying a distant an dangerous station amidst the Barbarians of the West, was the enthrone slave of his master, the king of Italy; who, while he professed great reverence for the throne of St. Peter, did not hesitate to chastise his pretended successor when convinced of disloyalty to the Gothic throne.

The Roman Empire of the West was extinguished A.D. 476-479, by the conquering sword of the king of the Heruli, Odoacer. This ruler reigned in Rome about fourteen years, when he was succeeded by the renowned Theodoric, the Ostrogoth, the Arian king of Italy. This prince was born in the neighborhood of Vienna, and educated at Constantinople with care and tenderness. On his father's death he had succeeded to the hereditary throne of the Amali, who were subsidized as defenders of the frontier by the government of Constantinople. His people murmured at this arrangement, until he found it necessary to withdraw from the service of the emperor, and to lead them to some enterprise by which their fortunes would be improved. Having determined on this course he wrote to the emperor Zeno in the following words:

"And authority was given unto him to practice forty and two months" - Verse 5.

"And a mouth was given to him speaking great things and blasphemies" - verse 5.

After what I have written concerning THE NAME in Vol.1 pp.98-114; 275-383; 368-372 and 395-400, I need say very little about it in this section.

"His deadly wound," as it reads in the English version, is he plege tou thanatou autou, in the original, which I have rendered, the plague of his death. The word plege, rendered wound, occurs fifteen times in the apocalypse . In five other places it is very properly rendered stripes; and sixth, Luke 10:30, it would have been better translated, laid on stripes, than "wounded" -plegas epithentes. The judgments of the fifth and sixth trumpets, in the aggregate, are styled "plagues" Ch. 9:20; and the judgments the two prophets were able to inflict, are also styled "plagues" (Ch. 11:6). The judgments of the Seven Vials are thrice termed the seven plagues in Ch. 15; and the hail-storm that descends out of the heaven upon men, under the last vial is called a plague in Ch. 16:21. The plague of death that afflicted the Sixth Head, was a smiting plague; for, as the result of it, the sun, moon, and stars of the Roman heaven are said to have been "smitten". Hence, also, in Ch. 13:13, it is referred to as he plege tes machairas, the plague of the sword. The war-like operations of Odoacer, king of the Heruli, against Romulus Angustulus; and those of Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths, against Odoacer, who, on the deposition of Augustulus, had become, by the title conferred upon him by Zeno, emperor of the Eastern Third, the Patrician Representative of the Sixth Head. These judgments by the sword, ultimating in the establishing of Theodoric in Rome as king of Italy, A.D. 493, made up the plague of the seeming death of the Sixth Head.

"And it was given to him to make war with the Saints, and to vanquish them" - Verse 7

Nothing, perhaps, can more strikingly illustrate the difference between the Christians we read of in the New Testament, and those who professed to be "orthodox christians" of the flock of the one Shepherd, styled the Universal Bishop, than the fierce disputes of the eighth and ninth centuries, concerning the worship of images. For these symbols of dead men and women, whose factitious immortalities are supposed to be in a heaven "beyond the realms of time and space," Apostolic Christians had no respect. They had renounced image-worship when they became Christians; and, as his little children, were earnestly exhorted by the disciple beloved of Jesus, among the last words he addressed to them, to "keep themselves from idols" (1 John 5:21).

"Here is the patience and the faith of the Saints" - Verse 10

The originating and establishing, which constitute the ascending, rising, or coming up of a dominion, are a work of power, conflict, conquest, and of time. The commencement of such a work is preceded by what is now commonly styled a situation; or concurrence of circumstances and agents, which, when a certain impetus is imparted to them impels them in a certain course to results, neither contemplated nor capable of being controlled. This obtains in regard to the ascending of the Two-Horned Beast out of the earth. The circumstances of the time, the questions agitated, and the ambitions of the leading spirits of the day, acting and reacting upon one another, was the situation which originated and ultimately developed the dominion symbolized by Daniel and John respectively.

"In the twenty-six years," says Gibbon, "that elapsed between the conquest of Lombardy and his imperial coronation, Rome, which had been delivered by the sword, was subject, as his own, to the sceptre of CHARLEMAGNE. The people swore allegiance to his person and family; in his name money was coined, and justice was administered; and the election of the popes was examined and confirmed by his authority. Except an original and self-inherent claim of sovereignty, there was not any prerogative remaining which the title of emperor could add to the Patrician of Rome."

A horn is a dynastic symbol - a symbol of power. A dominion having two horns is a sovereignty dominated by a plurality of dynastic or ruling orders, which, in their speaking or ruling, "as a dragon," are imperial. But these two imperial dynastic orders are not compared to the horns of an antelope or a buffalo; if to the former, it would have indicated something analogous to swiftness; or to the latter, to endurance and strength; but they are likened to a lamb. Every one knows the characteristics of a lamb - meek, patient, inoffensive, and unresisting under the knife of the slayer. It is the Apocalyptic symbol of Deity sacrificially manifested in the flesh, through which the lamb-like characteristics were displayed. But it is not in this sense that we find the lamb's horns illustrative of the character of the Beast of the Earth; for the prophecy itself shows that its ruling characteristics are the very reverse of inoffensiveness and meekness; for it causes all who do not obey its mandates to be killed.

"And he exerciseth all the authority of the first beast in its presence; and causeth that the earth and the dwellers therein worship the first beast, the plague of whose death was healed" - Verse 12.

The wonder-worker is the Beast of the Earth, or New Power; hence the semeia wrought must have been such "wonders" as military and ecclesiastical human powers have the ability and are known to work. In other words, they were wonderful, or remarkable, events, brought to pass by fraud and battle, "in the presence of the men" of the tribes, tongues, and nations of the European "Wilderness" (ch. 17:3). The thirty-three campaigns of Charlemagne in the woods and forests of Germany, in which he subjugated the pagan aborigines of that country, and imposed upon them the superstition of the Roman Priesthood, were among the wonders whereby fire was caused to descend upon them out of the heaven. The wars of Otho the First, by which the limits of his kingdom, which his father, Henry the Fowler, had transferred from the French to the Germans, were enlarged on every side; and by which the Ten-Horned Superstition was propagated northward, and forced upon the Sciavonian nations of the Elbe and Older; the marches of Brandenburg and Sleswig, Poland and Bohemia - were also "great wonders, causing fire to descend out of the heaven," in which the Two-Horned Beast of the Earth was enthroned. The "fire" which descended was the consuming wrath of the Little Horn, ministered by this military apostle of the Dragon-speaking Beast of the Earth, Otho the First. "Fire," says Daubuz, "with such adjuncts as betoken that it is not put for light, denotes destruction, or torment, great sickness, war and its dismal effects; and is thus used in Isa. 42.25, 66.15, Ezek .22.20 22, Zech .13.9. So Persecution is represented by fire, 1 Peter 1:7; 4:12; 1 Cor. 3:13,15. So in the Andromache of Euripides, ver. 147, dia puros, through fire, signifies through murder. And thus Sophocles calls the mischief done by the Sphinx to Thebes, 'a foreign flame of mischief'." Fire from heaven signifies the combination of persons in authority - their denunciations of vengeance and punishment, as well as their wrath and fury in actual manifestation.

The reader will remember what has already been stated concerning the relative position of the ecclesiastical and secular powers of the Lamb-Horned Dominion, as established by Otho the First, A.D. 962. It may, however, be as well to remark again in this place, that, when Otho fixed the imperial crown in the name and nation of Germany, he established the two following maxims of public jurisprudence;

And it was given to it to give spirit to the Image of the Beast, that the Image of the Beast might both speak, and cause as many as would not worship the Image of the Beast, that they should be put to death" - Verse 15.

"And he deceives the dwellers upon the earth through the wonders which it was given to him to have worked in the presence of the beast; saying to the dwellers upon the earth, to have an Image made to the beast that hath the plague of the sword, and lives. 15. And it was given to him to give spirit to the Image of the beast; that the Image of the Beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the Image of the Beast should be put to death."

"And he caused all, the small and the great, and the rich and the poor, and the free and the enslaved, that a sign should be given to them upon their right hand, and upon their foreheads" Verse 16

In the English Version, the eighth verse reads, "and all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him (the Beast) whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world." This is generally taken to mean that "the Lamb was slain from the foundation the world" - slain in the typical sacrifices of the Mosaic law. However this may be, the phrase "from the foundation of the world" in this place does not refer to the slaying of the Lamb, but to the writing of certain names in the Book of Life. This is evident from the parallel passage in ch. 17:8, "and they that dwell on the earth shall wonder whose names were not written in the Book of Life from the foundation of the world." This is expository of the former on this point. The Book of Life is essentially that of the Lamb slain; for there is no book registering names for eternal life, that has not been sprinkled with the blood of Jesus. The slain Lamb's Book of Life is the Book of the Abrahamic Covenant, dedicated with the blood of Jesus, the Mediator of the New Covenant; and in this Book their names are not written who are ignorant of the promises, and, therefore, faithless of the Gospel preached to Abraham, and afterwards in the name of Jesus Christ. These worshippers and wonderers are "alienated from the life of the Deity through the ignorance that is in them" (Eph. 4:18). The slain Lamb's Book of Life, whose first page was written at the foundation of the world in the days of Moses, promises the incorruptible, undefiled, and unfading inheritance reserved in the heavens to those, and to such only, "who are kept by the power of Deity (the gospel of the kingdom Rom. 1:16) through faith, for the salvation ready to be revealed in the last time" (1 Pet. 1:4,5); or "at the appearing (the apocalypse) of Jesus Christ-ver. 7. The promise is in thee, Abraham, and in thy Seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed;" and "all the land which thou seest to thee will I give it, and to thy Seed,for ever" (Gen. 12:3,7; 13:15). This is a promise of eternal life and of an eternal inheritance to Abraham and his Seed; for they must be made incorruptible and immortal to enable them to possess a country "for ever." Nor can any sane person be in doubt as to what country is promised to Abraham and his Seed for ever; for it is plainly and expressly stated to be the land Abraham saw with his eyes when he was seventy-five years old - the land lying between the Mediterranean and the Euphrates, at present a province of the Draco-Ottoman empire.

“Here is wisdom. Let him that hath the understanding compute the number of the beast; for it is a man’s number, and the number of it is, ,or Six Hundred and Sixty Six.”

1. "And I looked, and behold a Lamb stood upon the Mount Sion, and with him a hundred forty-four thousands, having the name of his Father, which had been written upon their foreheads.

"And I looked, and behold, a Lamb stood upon the Mount Zion, and with him 144,000, having the Name ofhis Father, which had been written upon their foreheads" - Verse 1.

“And (causes) that no one be able to buy or sell, save he that hath the sign, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name —(verse 17).

"And I heard a sound from the heaven as a sound of many waters, and as a sound of loud thunder."

"These are they who had not been contaminated with women; for they are virgins. These are the attendants upon the Lamb whither-soever he goeth. These had been redeemed from among men, an offering of firs fruits for the Deity and for the Lamb. And in their mouth had been found no guile; for they are faultless in the presence of the throne of the Deity".

"And I saw another angel flying in midheaven, having aionian good to proclaim to those who dwell upon the earth, even every nation, and tribe, and tongue, and people, saying with a loud voice, Fear the Deity, and give to him glory; for the Hour of his judgment hath arrived; and do homage to him who made the heaven, and the earth and sea and fountains of waters".

"And another angel followed, saying, Fallen, fallen hath Babylon, the Great City, because she hath made all nations drink of the wine of the raging of her fornication" - Verse 8.

"And a third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice, If any one worship the Beast and his Image, and receive a sign upon his forehead, and upon his hand:

"Here is the patience of the saints; here, they who keep the commandments of the Deity and the faith of Jesus" - Verse 12.

"And I heard a voice from the heaven, saying to me, Write! Blessed the dead dying in the Lord from this time. Yea, saith the Spirit, in order that they may take rest from their labors; and their works he goeth in aid of with them" - Verse 13.

14. "And I looked, and behold a white cloud, and upon the cloud one sitting like to a Son ofMan, having upon his head a golden stephan, and in his hand a sharp sickle.

17. "And another angel came out from the Nave, which is in the heaven, he having also a sharp sickle.

"No one was able to learn the song except the 144,000 who had been redeemed from the earth".

'And I heard a voice of harpers harping with their harps; and they sing as it were a New Song in the presence of the throne, and in the presence of the four living ones, and of the elders; and no one was able to learn the song except the 144,000 who had been redeemed from the earth" - Ver. 2,3.

The winepress of Divine wrath is trodden "without the City." That is, the fearful judgments to be manifested will not be confined to the Ten-Streeted Babylon, which is geographically bounded by the Rhine, the Danube, and the Euphrates, the English Channel, and the Atlantic. There are extensive regions beyond, or "without," these limits, equally obnoxious to the "fierceness and wrath of Almighty God". "Without the City" there is Germany, in its largest sense, styled by Ezekiel "Magog", upon which, saith Adonai Yahweh, "I will send a fire". This Magog, or land of Gog, will include Prussia, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Russia, and Poland. "Without the City" also are "them that dwell carelessly in the isles", among whom the fire is to be sent also. These isles will include the dorninions of Great Britain, that may not obey the proclamation in midheaven commanding obedience to the King of Israel. "Without the City" also there are Canada and its sister provinces the United States, Mexico, all South America, the Chinese Empire, Central Asia, Persia, Arabia, Abyssinia, and Egypt. All these countries, which include what Daniel styles, "the Rest of the Beasts," in ch. 7:12, the Lion, the Bear, and the Leopard, are all to be visited with "the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God;" which results in "taking away their dominion," though not in extinguishing their political existence, which continues "for a season and a time," or 1000 years. All these are "cast into the great winepress of the wrath of God," when, having destroyed the Great City of Ten Kingdoms, in its threefold dominion of the Seventh Vial, they are trodden in the judgments of the winepress "without the City"

The Seventh Seal. Seventh Trumpet, Seventh Vial, and Seven Thunders from the manifestation of Christ and his Brethren as the Lamb in the midst of the 144,000 redeemed from the earth, to the full establishment of the Millennial Throne and Kingdom of David upon the utter destruction of Daniel's dreadful and terrible Fourth Beast; and the subjection of the first three, or the Lion, the Bear, and the Leopard.

"I saw another sign in the heaven, great and marvelous, Seven Angels having the Seven Last Plagues; for in them is filled up the wrath of the Deity" - Verse 1.

This "thousand six hundred furlongs" is a great Apocalyptic puzzle. Is it a measure of territorial surface, a measure of length without breadth and depth; or is it such a measure of length, representative of a measure of time? It cannot be taken in the sense of territorial measurement, because this would require a continuous line of cavalry two hundred miles long; and whether in single file, or broadly massed, cannot be told. Such an exposition would not be reasonable; nor is there anything in the prophets to justify it. The winepress is not a locality sixteen hundred furlongs in length; but the aggregate of the wrath of the Deity, affecting all the nations "without the city". Wherever there is a nation, kingdom, or republic, beyond the limits of "the Great Babylon," to be trodden down, there is the winepress, though it may be ten thousand furlongs from Jerusalem.

"And I saw as it were a glassy sea, which had been mingled with fire" - Verse 2.

"And they sing the song of Moses, the servant of the Deity".

"And I saw the conquerors of the beast, and of his image, and of his sign, and of the number of his name, standing upon the glassy sea, having harps of the Deity".

When the Anointing Spirit in the mystical body of Moses gave the song celebrative of the destruction of Pharaoh's host it was only in connexion with the typical Lamb of the Passover they had so recently eaten, and whose blood was upon the door-posts and lintels of the houses they had left in Egypt. But when the same song comes to be sung by the saints in connexion with the song of the Lamb, the Lamb of the Deity himself, who beareth the sin of the world, is a conspicuous personage of the choir. It is the song of "the seven spirits of the Deity," incorporate in Jesus and his brethren "glorified together," and which had been "sent forth into all the earth" (ch. 5:6). The Anointing Spirit omnipotently manifested in the One Body, or "Man of War," sanctified by the sprinkled blood of the true paschal Lamb "Yahweh Elohim Almighty" (ch. 21:22) stands the conqueror upon the glassy sea, and sings the song of Moses, the servant of the Deity ("faithful in all his house" - Heb. 3:5), and the song of the Lamb, saying,

"And after these things 1 saw, and behold the Nave of the Tabernacle of the Testimony had been opened in the heaven"

"And the Seven Angels having the Seven Plagues came out from the Nave, having been clothed in linen pure and bright, and girded around the breasts with golden girdles" - Verse 6.

"And One of the Four Living Ones gave to the Seven Angels, Seven Golden Vials full of the wrath of the Deity, who lives for the Aions of the A ions" - Verse 7

"And the Nave was full of smoke from the glory of the Deity, and from his power".

"No one was able to enter into the Nave until the Seven Plagues of the Seven Angels were fulfilled" Verse 8.

The Seventh Trumpet, or Third Woe, comprehending the Seven Vials, or Last Plagues, in which is filled up the wrath of the Deity.

"And I heard a great voice from the Nave, saying to the Seven Angels, Go forth, and pour out the vials of the wrath of the Deity into the earth" - verse 1.

"And the Third Angel poured out his vial into the rivers, and into the fountains of the waters: and there was blood."

"And the first angel went forth, and poured out his vial upon the earth: and there ensued a grievous and malignant ulcer upon the men who have the sign of the beast, and who do homage to his image" Verse 2.

"And the Second Angel poured out his vial into the sea; and it became blood as it were of a corpse; and every living soul died in the sea" Verse 3.

Though the pacification of the European Continent in 1802, drove England into a momentary peace, the wrath of the Second vial still continued pouring out upon the sea. During the war with England, the navy of France was almost entirely ruined. Three hundred and forty vessels had been taken or destroyed, and almost all her colonies had fallen into the hands of the English. Nevertheless, during the short peace with England, Napoleon fitted out an expedition of forty thousand men, which he embarked for St. Domingo to reduce the island to submission. The enterprise was disastrous in the extreme. Unable to conquer in fair and open fight, the French had recourse to barbarities worse then ever before stained the annals of any people pretending to be civilized. After a doubtful and desperate struggle the French were expelled; and the expedition "became blood as of a corpse," terminating, as it deserved, in defeat and disgrace.

The peace of Tilsit had completely extended the new Frank domination over the Continent of Europe. By the judgments of the fourth vial thus far developed, Prussia was reduced by one-half; the two kingdoms of Bavaria and Wurtemburg were erected as a barrier against Austria; and the two feudatory kingdoms of Saxony and Westphalia, as a counterpoise to Prussia. Russia remained the only power untouched, though scathed. The Man of Destiny followed more and more the steps of Charlemagne. He had caused on the day of his coronation, the crown, the sword, and the sceptre of Charlemagne to be carried before him. But, unlike Charlemagne, who went to Rome to be crowned by the Pope, he caused the Pope to come to him in Paris, not to crown, but to consecrate his dynasty in the estimation of the worshippers of the Beast's Image; and modeled his new states upon the vast empire of that conqueror. The object of the resurrected and ascended witnesses of the Revolution of 1789, had been to destroy the Beast and his Image, in the re-establishment of the liberty of peoples; it had made citizens, and changed Europe into republics -.a state of things in no way typical of the future permanent results of the postresurrectional labors of the Saints, when under the command of "the Prince of princes," they shall have finished and rested from their labors. The work of the Revolution was simply transitional. The subversion of the ancient political order bya republican policy, prepared the way for what followed. Napoleon established a new military hierarchy, turned citizens into vassals, and transferred republics into fiefs. Potent and energetic as he was, and appearing upon the stage after a shock that had shaken the world to its centre and perfectly paralyzed it, he was enabled for a season to arrange it as he pleased. Thus the "great empire" grew up, with a civil discipline at home, which rendered France as obsequious as an army; and abroad, with its secondary kingdoms, its confederate states, its grand fiefs,and its supreme chief, "emperor," "mediator," "protector," and "king;" a perfect type of that greater and more glorious empire to be established by the Lord Jesus and his Brethren, as the result of "the war of the great day of the almighty Deity," which pervades the period of the seventh vial. Napoleon no longer experienced any resistance, and his commands were obeyed from one extremity of the European Continent to the other. The imperial power was at this moment at its maximum; and England, which had then eleven hundred vessels of war, was the only power that resisted his will.

"And the Fourth Angel poured out his vial upon the SUN; and it was given to him to scorch the men with fire. And the men were scorched with great heat, and blasphemed the Name of the Deity who hath power over these plagues, and they repented not to give glory to him" - verses 8, 9.

"And the Fifth Angel poured out his vial upon the THRONE OF THE BEAST; and it was his kingdom which had been darkened; and they did gnaw their tongues with the anguish, and blasphemed the Deity of the heaven because of their pains, and because of their ulcers; and they repented not of their works" - Verse 10.

And the same hour there was a great earthquake" (ch. 11:13). This "same hour" is characterized as that in which the Two Tormenting Prophets, having risen from three lunar days and a half of years of political death, ascended to the possession of terrific power in the government, or heaven, in the sight of their enemies. The three days and a half, and the 1260 days of their sackcloth prophesying, styled inch. 11:6, hen hemerais auton tes propheteias in their days of the prophecy, both ended together. The common terminus of these two periods was A.D. 1789-'90; and signalized the commencement of the "same hour," or twelfth part of "a time," equal to thirty years. These ended with the beginning of the outpouring of the sixth vial, and the death of the "Man of Destiny," who had figured so gigantically in the ministration of the wrath of the third, fourth and fifth vials. As the Hour began with the ending of one prophetic period, so it ended with the termination of another-the 1290 days of Dan. 12:11. It was an hour of judgment upon the Beast, to "slay it, and to give its body" politic to "the burning flame;" but not the hour. Between "a" or "an," and "the", there is all the difference existing between type and antitype, shadow and substance. Napoleon, "the most gigantic being of modern times," was a man of destiny, but not the Man of Destiny; who is indeed yet to appear, and before whose almightiness the gigantic proportions of Napoleon's glory and renown will shrink into the dwarfish insignificance of a babe. Still, as compared with other mortals, "this extraordinary man, whose name for twice seven years had filled the world with wonder and amazement," was a giant of immense proportions, contending for universal monarchy, which, for a moment, in the Beast's territory, he may be said to have realized. He was the man of the hour, whose tormenting pains and ulcers caused their victims to "gnaw their tongues," as the earnest, or installment, of that more terrible torment that awaits them in "the Hour of Judgment," in the presence of the Lamb (ch. 14:10,11).

"And they gnawed their tongues for the pain; and blasphemed the Name of the Deity, who hath power over these plagues, and they repented not to give glory to him, And they blasphemed the Deity of the heaven because of their pains, and because of their ulcers; and they repented not of their works" - Verses 8,11.

12. "And the Sixth Angel poured out his Vial upon the Great River Euphrates; and the water thereof was dried up that the way of the Kings who are out of a Sun's risings might be prepared.

12. "And the Sixth Angel poured out his Vial upon the Great River Euphrates; and the water thereof was dried up that the way of the Kings who are out of a Sun's risings might be prepared.

It is written in Dan. 9:27, "and because of an overspreading of abominations (there shall be) a desolating, even to destruction; and that determined shall be poured out upon the DESOLATOR". The subject of this desolation by successive abominations, begun by the old Roman power, is the Holy Land. It is to continue under the tramp of the Desolator to the consummation; and "until that determined" against the desolating power, by whatever name it may be known at the consummation, shall be "poured out upon" him.

Tillinghast, a commentator who wrote over 200 years ago, and quoted in Elliott's notes, in exposition of this vial says, "By the river Euphrates we are to understand the Ottoman or Turkish empire. It is called the great river because of the multitude of people and nations therein. The people who at the present time are of all others accounted the greatest are the Turks; who therefore, and no other, are here to be understood; especially as the Euphrates in Apoc. 9, under the sounding of the sixth trumpet, by general consent of expositors, has reference to the Turkish power".

"And I saw out of the Mouth of the Dragon, and out of the Mouth of the Beast, and out of the Mouth of the False Prophet, three unclean spirits like to Frogs (for they are spirits of Demons working wonders) go forth unto the kings of the earth, and of the whole habitable, to gather them together for the war of that great day of the Deity who is almighty".

This is the only place in the Apocalypse where "frogs" are introduced. They are produced here by way of illustrating the character of the spirits that, in the period of the sixth vial, would issue forth from the Dragon, Beast, and False Prophet, governments to all the rulers of the earth and habitable; and in a parallel series with the series of events by which the power of the Euphratean Ottoman empire is drying up. There can be no doubt that the wrath of the sixth vial is and has been for the past forty-eight years drying up this power. This is not to be gainsaid. It is an event, a sign-event, too notorious and palpable to be disputed. On the supposition that the reader is not one of "the hypocrites, who cannot discern the signs of the times" (Matt. 16:3); but is an intelligent observer and reader of current history - I would ask him, what power has been the most officious, suggestive, active, intriguing, and meddlesome, in all the political questions that have agitated the world, during the past twenty years; and amid the greatest professions of peace and progress, has, in that period, caused the most wars, and the greatest apprehensions of more? To this inquiry, but one answer can be given; and that is, the imperialized French democratic, termed "the Second Empire". This is a remarkable and leading feature of the times. French imperial policy is the moving and formative spirit of the situation; and when brought to bear upon Constantinople, Vienna, and Rome, political results are developed, or "unclean spirits go forth," in which the hand of French diplomacy is plainly to be seen - the spirits exhibit froggy characteristics.

The restoration of the Bourbons by foreign bayonets, in 1815, was a heavy blow and great discouragement, but not destructive, of the revolutionary spirit of 1789. A power had organized itself under the title of "the Holy Alliance," consisting of Russia, Austria, and Prussia, who bound themselves by a treaty at Paris, the real object of which was to maintain despotic and arbitrary power, in church and state, and to support each other against any revolutionary movement among their own subjects. They regarded themselves as delegated by Providence to govern three branches of one and the same Christian nation, of which the Divine Being, under His three characters, was the sole real Sovereign. This was a sort of anticipatory division of the great city into three parts

The evolution of the Frog-Sign is continuous with the existence of the Dragon, the Beast, and the False Prophet; and covers the whole period from 1848, till the gathering of the Powers in war with the Ancient of Days. When this result is consummated, "the Sign" will no longer be seen "in the heaven". When writing upon the subject in 1854, I remarked, that "manifestations from Austria and the Pope are yet wanting to complete the sign. Austria must come into collision with France at last". Five years after this the Frog-Sign entered upon the second phase in the going forth of the frog-excited unclean spirit from the Austrian Mouth of the Beast. Ever since the occupation of Rome by the French in 1849, Austria had also occupied Bologna and Ancona, important cities in the Papal States. However agreeable this might be to the Pope, it was exceedingly annoying to the Emperor of the Frogs, who desired the evacuation of the Roman States by the Austrian forces. It being a part of the mission of the Frogs, as time has shown, to deprive the False Prophet of the support of the Beast of the Earth, the Frog-emperor became restless and excited, and intolerant of the Austrians in Italy. On January 1,1859, he said to the Austrian ambassador, "I regret that our relations with your Government are not so good as they were; but I request you to tell the Emperor that my personal feelings for him are not changed". A high functionary of the French government remarked, that this conduct of the Emperor was incomprehensible. The abrupt proceedings was so extraordinary and uncalled for, that people seek for its cause in regions remote from politics. They cannot conceive that mere diplomatic disagreements would induce such an outburst of illtemper, and so complete an absence of courtesy.

The third and last phase of the great "sign of the Son of Man in the heaven" is that in which the unclean Frog-like daemon-spirit goes forth out of the Mouth of the False Prophet. It is worthy of note, that this is the first place in the Apocalypse where the phrase "False Prophet" occurs. It is found in two other texts after this, namely, in ch. 19:20; and 20:10. In the first of these, his perdition and the manner of it' are predic-ed; and in the last, it is a mere reference to his fate.

The most notable illustration of the working of the Frogs in their developing of the unclean spirit from the Mouth of the Dragon, is seen in the serneia, signs, wonders, or events, they originated and worked out, in regard to the "Holy Places of Jerusalem," as against the rival pretensions of Russia. Their policy in respect of these, brought the Autocrat into a threatening attitude against the Sultan to whom they belong; or rather, who has present possession of them; for they belong exclusively to the King of the Jews, who is coming to set aside all claimants by appropriating them himself But in advance of this decision the Frog Emperor, ignoring the secular supremacy of the Austnan Apostolic Majesty of Vienna in things pertaining to Latinism in the East as the Eldest Son of the Church claimed supremacy over the Holy Places, and to have the right, therefore of putting them in repair Against this unwarrantable pretension the Russian Tzar as the Orthodox Head of the Greek Catholic Church protested and threatened the Sultan with war, if he yielded to the claims of France As the Frogs or the Russians prevailed at Constantinople a firman was granted revoked, and granted again. endowing the Frog-Power with preferential rights in ecclesiastical affairs connected with the Holy Shrines. Having carried its point in Constantinople, the Frog-Power endeavored to maintain the advantage gained there by negotiating at St. Petersburg; but its instructions to the French minister were not of a nature to facilitate a settlement. The effect of Frog-diplomacy there is seen in the fact, that when

The position of this announcement of the thief-like advent in the prophecy, is remarkable. It stands between the going forth of the Frog-like Spirits, and the gathering of the kings into Armageddon. This indicates, that the Advent takes place before the gathering into that place or country.

"Blessed he who watcheth and keepeth his garments, that he walk not naked, and they see his shame".

"And he gathered them together into the place called Hebraistically, ARMAGEDDON" - Verse 16

1. And there came one of the seven angels having the seven vials, and talked with me, saying to me, Come along; I will show to thee the judgment of the Great Harlot that sitteth upon the many waters: with whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication; and they who inhabit the earth have been intoxicated by the wine of her fornication.

17. "And the Seventh Angel poured out his vial into the AIR: and there came forth a great voice from the Nave of the heaven, from the throne, saying, IT IS DONE!

The Air is the political firmament, or heaven, of the world. That air and heaven are regarded as synonymous, appears from Matt. 13:32, which speaks of "the birds of the air," as equivalent for what both Matthew and Luke style the birds, or fowls, of "the heaven". But better authority than James' Version informs us, that "the firmament" between the clouds and the earth's waters, which is the air, or ---- atmosphere, Elohim called "Heaven" (Gen. 1:6-8). When We look into this expanse we see the sun, moon, stars, and constellations, Which, though far beyond it, appear to be in the air or heaven. Now, the political world has its air as well as the natural. Like this, the political air, or firmament, "divides the waters," or peoples who rule, "from the waters," or peoples who are ruled; and whatever constitutes this division is the air or heaven. The governments of the world are in this air, and constitute the sun, moon, stars, and constellations of the air or heaven. If there were no air in the natural world, there would be no clouds, or "waters above the firmament;" but simply "darkness upon the face of the deep" - all waters would be commingled without order or distinction. Such would also be the case in the political world, if there were no political air or aerial. This air divides the ruling class from the common people or "waters," called also "the sea", and sometimes "the earth". The air, or heaven, is therefore that which divides; or in modern phrase, the constitution, or constituted order of things among the nations. When the Saracens made their irruption into the Dragon, or Graeco-Roman Constantinopolitan empire in the seventh century "the Sun and the Air were darkened" (ch. 9:2) in all the countries they subdued. In other words, the political authority and constitution which placed them in subjection to the Byzantine Dynasty in Constantinople were eclipsed; as the kingdom of the Beast was "darkened" by the judgments of the Fifth Vial, but which afterwards became light again when the darkening power passed away. Paul refers to the Air or Heaven of the Gentile world, or constitution of things, in Eph. 2:2, where he says, 'ye who were dead in trespasses and in sins, in time past walked according to the aion of this kosmos", or course of this order of things, "according to the chief of the authority of the Air, (which is) the Spirit which now worketh in the children of disobedience". The spirit that works in the disobedient is the spirit offlesh, or King Sin. He is the chief, the ruler, or prince, of "the authority of the Air". The constituted authority of an empire, kingdom or republic, is "the authority of the Air" in those several dominions or states. The Powers that be are the Sin-Powers of the Air, styled by the apostle in Eph. 6:12, "principalities and authorities, the world-rulers of the darkness of the course of things (aion) the spirituals of the wickedness in the heavenlies". These all belong to "the authority of the Air". The spirituals of the wickedness in his day were the civil, or secular, and the ecclesiastical, world-rulers, who Were either Jewish or Pagan; but in our day, they are emperors, kings, magistrates, popes, priests, and parsons, called "the clergy", of all orders and degrees, of imposture and blasphemy, pretending to be Christian. These spirituals of wickedness all, as the daemons, foul spirits, and unclean and hateful birds (ch. 18:2), are the ephemera which roost in the branches of the widespreading upas(*) which poisons the air of the Great City in which it grows. This Air of the Seventh Vial is the air or heaven of Daniel's Four Beasts, or dominions. In his seventh chapter it is styled, kol shemayah, "all the heavens" (ver. 27) under which the kingdom, dominion, and greatness, exist, which are to be given to the chosen people of the saints. The Air of this vial comprehends all these heavens or aerials. It is the same air or heaven, in which a door is opened, and a new throne estab-lished (ch. 4:1,2). This door will be opened, and the throne set therein, when the Armageddon victory shall have cast out the enemy from Jerusalem, and have planted the Lamb and 144,000 on Mount Zion. The denouement of the Sixth Vial opens the door and sets up the throne. There is then a throne in the Air which the air or heaven does not contain at the present time. All other thrones will continue to exist in the air contemporaneously with this new throne, which is the Throne of David restored, until they shall all be taken possession of by the saints of the Most High; when "the kingdoms of the world become our Lord's and his Christ's" (ch. 11:15). The Air of this Seventh Vial is "the Heaven" of ch. 20:11, which, in consequence of the wrath poured out into it, "flies away" with "the earth" that stands related to it. Both earth and heaven, as now constituted in church, state, and general society, will all be broken up and abolished; and a New Air, or firmament, constituted, in which will shine only "the Splendid Ones," the Sun of Righteousness and the kings of his rising, who obtain "the victory over the Beast, and over his Image, and over his Mark, and over the Number of his Name" (ch. 15:2). These will all meet together with the Lord in the Air, as the "New Heaven," styled also "the Heaven," in ch. 18:20, which rejoices over Babylon in the disaster of her fall. This New Air, I remark again, is the air in which, and for which, the chosen saints are convened. Paul tells us in 1 Thess. 4, that when "the time of the dead that they should be judged" arrives, the living saints will not anticipate the dead. That is, they will not be gathered together into the presence of Christ before them. When Christ comes, the living will have to wait, until the reproduction of the dead saints is complete. Be the time of this reproduction long or short, the how long is not revealed; this, however, is certain, that "the dead in Christ shall be restored (anastesontai) FIRST". He then tells us What is to happen next. "After that, We the living Who remain, together with them shall be hurried away in clouds for a convention of the Lord in an air (eis haera), and so (in that Air) We shall be always With the Lord". Thus the dead are the subjects of anastasis, or "restoration" to what they once were; and then, in company with their fellow earthborns in Christ of the generation contemporary with this great anastasis, they go to report themselves for better or worse at the Judgment Seat in Teman. All of them who are approved, or "accounted worthy to obtain that aion" (aion, course of things, or Air), are "clothed with the house from heaven;" and henceforth, appointed to be with the Lord always in the Air.

"And there came forth a Great Voice from the Nave of the heaven, from the throne, saying It is done!"

"And there was a Great Earthquake, such as was not since that men were upon the earth so mighty an earthquake and so great"

The most disgusting of womankind is chosen by the Spirit, as representative of the Ecclesiastical System in doctrine, institutions, and practice, approved and cherished by the peoples of Europe. It is compared to a drunken murderess and prostitute intoxicated with the blood of the holy and the faithful; whom she has destroyed by thousands and tens of thousands, for what she blasphemously styles 'Heresy". Her doctrine is represented by "a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornications," which "all nations have drunk of;" and have consequently all been "made drunk". Such is the Apocalyptic view of "Christendom," so called its spiritual guides, its rulers, its politicians, and its peoples, all made drunk by blasphemous and filthy doctrine and superstition.

"Great Babylon came in remembrance before the Deity to give unto her the cup of the wine of the fierceness of his wrath" - ch. 16:19.

"The Beast which thou sawest, WAS, and is NOT, but is hereafter to ascend out of the abyss, and to go away into perdition.

"And Great Hail as of a talent-weight descended out of the heaven and upon the men; and the men blasphemed the Deity, because of the plague of the hail; for the plague of it is exceedingly great"

"All the nations have drunk of the wine of the raging of her fornication," contained in "the Golden Cup, full of its abominations and filthiness".

"And after these things I saw an angel descending out of the heaven having great authority; and the earth was illuminated with his glory".

But before the Archangel Michael "invades them with his troops," he remembers that he hath a people in Babylon to deliver, as well as a people to destroy. The people to be delivered are "the Tribes of Jacob, and the preserved of Israel" "the children of Daniel's people," eight thousand of whom are inhabitants of Rome. Every one knows the degradation of Israelites in the capital of the Great Harlot; and the oppression and contempt they have been subjected to by "the demons, foul spirits, unclean and hated birds", called popes, cardinals, bishops, and priests, who roost in that filthy habitation. This tyranny of the abjectest kind has left its indelible memorial upon the hearts of the denizens of the Ghetto, whose hope is the desolation of Rome, which they look for as the crisis of their own redemption; for Kimchi, one of their rabbis, Says in his comment on Obadiah, "this is the hope of the nation when Rome shall be desolated, then there shall be the redemption of Israel".

In the prophecy against the Chaldean Babylon, it is written, "thy day is come"; and in the next sentence, the exposition of this is given in the words, "the time that I will visit thee" (Jer. 50:31). Again, "Babylon is suddenly fallen and destroyed" (ch. 51:8). And again, "My people go ye out of the midst of her, and deliver ye every man his soul from the fierce anger of Yahweh. And lest your heart faint, and ye fear for the rumor that shall be heard in the land: and there shall come in a year the tidings, and after that in a year the tidings and violence in the land, ruler against ruler" (verse 45, 46).

In the English Version the name is "Lord God" - "strong is the Lord God who judgeth her". This judgment upon Babylon is part of the "judgment given to the saints" It is the Omnipotent Spirit who executes the judgment written; not as an abstract and naked power, but clothed with, and clothing, the saints Jesus and his Brethren. These all become Spirit, as Jesus is already "we shall be like him"; on the principle that "he who hath been born of spirit is spirit". The One Body spiritualized, and therefore spirit, is the "Lord God" of the text the Spirit, who imposed upon himself at the bush the name YAHWEH, manifested in flesh "justified by spirit," as the Elohim of Israel - YAH-WEH Elohim, He who shall be mighty ones, the Omnipotent "who was, and who is, and who shall be" manifested in power and great glory, "the First and the Last Ones," to resist whom will be certain destruction.

"With violence shall that great city Babylon be cast down, and shall be found no more at all".

"Alas, alas, that great city Babylon, that mighty city! for in one hour thy judgment hath come".

The shipslading of a vessel is its cargo, which represents the revenues of the merchants, who own, or charter, or use, the ship. The Roman Ship has for many ages been freighted with wares, which have, through the trading of its importers, brought back to the State "lading of gold, and of silver, and of precious stones, and of pearl, and of fine linen, and of purple, and of silk, and of scarlet; and of all thyme wood, and every ivory utensil, and every article of most precious wood, and of brass, and of iron, and of marble; and cinnamon, and odors, and ointment, and frankincense, and wine, and oil, and fine flour, and grain, and cattle, and sheep, and horses, and of carriages, and of bodies, and souls of men". Hence these things come to represent the spiritual wares, which cause the revenues to flow in from all countries into the treasury of the Church; such, for instance, as masses for the dead, absolution for the living, indulgences for sin, consecrations of cemeteries, churches, sermonizings, reading Latin prayers, ordaining priests, consecrating bishops, sprinkling babies with "holy water," and putting the sign of the cross upon their foreheads, marriages, burials, canonization of saints, lying wonders, and so forth. These belong to the invoice of wares which are the stock in trade of the soul and body merchants of the Great Harlot and her Daughters and Abominations of the Babylonian World. All the State and Nonconformist Churches of Europe and America deal more or less extensively in the invoice. They do not all keep the same assortment of wares; but they will be found to deal in some of the articles enumerated as the lading of the old Ship Babylon, whereby they are proved to belong to the "shipmasters, ships' companies, sailors, and traders upon the sea," who bewail, and lament the fall of their harlot-mother, "because no one buyeth their shipslading any more" - the clergy-craft is played out, hireling priests and parsons, alias "wolves in sheep's clothing," become a worthless and contemptible drug, esteemed by none. No man or woman will any longer give "carnal things" in exchange for their twaddling conceits, and religious consecrations, and consolations, which they now style their 'spiritual things Protestantism, in all its harlots and abominations, will be as defunct as its Romish-Mother. It will translate no more murderers from the scaffold, to "kingdoms beyond the bounds of time and space;" it will give no thieves and prostitutes the "consolations of religion" in the article of death; it will regenerate no more puling unconscious babes with prevenient or "subvenient," grace; it will consecrate no more Saint Bazaars (churches) and cemeteries for the dead it will no more befuddle the brains of silly women, and sillier men with its pulpit and vapourous inanities All this foolery, paid for in gold and silver fine flour grain cattle sheep," and so forth, in salaries tithes and church rates will be abolish ed by YAHWEH ELOHIM, who will permit no more lies to be preached in His name by Latin, Protestant, or Greek (Zech. 13:2,3,4). All these things will be substituted by the knowledge of His glory by which the nations of the earth shall be illuminated. They will then come to Him from the ends of the earth, and declare their conviction, that their Catholic and Protestant fathers "inherited lies, and things wherein there is no profit" (Jer. 16:19). These unprofitable and lying vanities, sold to them at an enormous price by spiritual impostors, for the cure of their souls, they will indignantly repudiate. The veil which is now spread over all nations being destroyed (Isa. 25:7), they will look back with astonishment upon their present degradation and insanity. Freed from existing spiritual slavery, they will rejoice in the liberty of the Truth, and wisely resolve to walk no more after the imagination of an evil heart (Jer. 3:17); but to walk in the paths of Yahweh the Elohim of Jacob (Isa. 2:3):who will turn to them a pure language, that they may all call upon the Name of Yahweh, to serve Him with one consent (Zeph. 3:9).

"After these things I heard a great voice of much people in the heaven".

The word deuteron, a second lime, implies a first time, with an interval between the first and second. There is doubtless something intended in the information that they, the much people in the heaven a second time, said Hallelu YAH. Why did they say it in the first instance? They tell us that it was because YAH had judged the Great Harlot, and had avenged the blood of His servants in destroying her; in other words, because of the successful issue of the Second Angel's mission announced in Apoc. 14:8. The Hallel was Praise to YAH, because he had caused the fall of the Great City Babylon, which had made all nations drink of the wine of the intenseness of her spiritual fornication.

"Having a Name which had been written, which no one knew but he himself."

"And the Hosts in the heaven followed him upon white horses, having been invested with fine linen white and pure".

THE Commander-in-Chief, the real Commander of the Faithful, the Captain, who leads many sons to glory, was seen by John, sitting upon a white horse in the opened heaven; and all his "called, and chosen, and faithful", hosts, sitting upon white horses likewise. They are themselves the heaven that rejoices over the fall of the Great Harlot; the horses they ride upon are therefore Apocalyptically regarded as in the heaven also.

“The two had been cast alive into the Lake of Fire burning with brimstone".

1. And I saw an angel descending from the heaven, having the key of the abyss, and a great chain upon his hand.

"Having the Key of the Abyss, and a Great Chain upon his hand".

"Blessed and holy is he who hath part in THE FIRST RESURRECTION."

1. And I saw a New Heaven and a New Earth, for the former heaven and the former earth had passed away; and the sea is no more.

"The One Angel shouted with a loud voice saying to all the fowls flying in midheaven, Come hither, and assemble together for the banquet of the powerful Deity, that ye may eat the flesh of kings".

“But THE REST OF THE DEAD ONES lived not again until the thousand years had been finished”.

John directs our attention to "the heaven". If we look to the heaven, or Air, upon which the seventh vial is to be poured out, we can see nothing therein of a character hostile to the Powers that be, at all answering to the scene before us. The reason of this is, that the heaven hath not yet been opened. A few short years ago, the kingdom of Italy was a nonentity, and had no star shining among the constellations of the Gentile Heaven. A breach, however, was made; in other words, "a door was opened in the heaven" by successful war; and we now see the star of the kingdom of Italy for a short time shining among the other lights of the firmament. What was true of the Italian kingdom is also true of the kingdom of Israel and throne of David. These are at present nonentities; for no such kingdom and throne are seen among the kingdoms of the world. It is necessary that "a door be opened in the heaven," and that a Power enter through the breach, and set up its government therein To set up the throne of David in the heaven, Jerusalem, the place of the throne and capital of the Great King, must be wrested from the enemy - from Gog. This, as we have seen, is accomplished after the return of the Ancient of Days, and after his corporeal union with the Bride in Teman; and consequently upon the signal overthrow of the king of the north in the terminal epoch of the sixth vial. This having been transacted, John was able to look back upon the situation, and to say in ch. 4:1,2, "Behold a door had been opened, eneogmene, in the heaven; and a throne was set in the heaven". The throne of David had been re-established, and was occupied by David's Son and Lord; who was now prepared to make war in righteousness upon all the other thrones in the heaven, until he had cast them down, and transferred all their diadems to his own head.

“And I saw a GREAT WHITE THRONE, and him sitting upon it, from whose face the earth and the heaven had fled away; and place had not been found for them”.

“And I saw a New Heaven and a New Earth, and the Sea is no more”.

“And I John saw THE HOLY Cm’, NEW JERUSALEM, descending from the Deity out of the heaven, having been prepared as a Bride who had been adorned for her husband”.

The sea referred to in this oracle is that Apocalyptic confluence of “many waters,” or “peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues,” a restless, troubled sea, whose waters cast up mire and dirt (Isa. 57:20), out of which the dominions arose represented by the Beast with seven heads and ten horns, which was turned into “a Lake of Fire burning with brimstone”, when mingled with fire; and which became “before the throne, a sea transparent like to crystal” when the Saints stand upon it as conquerors, celebrating their victory over the beast and his Image, and over his sign, and the number of his name; and singing the song of Moses and the Lamb (Ch. 4:6; 15:2). For a thousand years this sea of flesh and blood continues transparent as crystal, and unruffled by the tempests of human passion, ambition, and wickedness. In all this period the sea of nations is calm; and “every creature in the sea, saith, Blessing, and honor, and glory, and power, be to him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb for the aions of the aions” (ch. 5:13). Being “blessed in Abraham and his Seed,” they have access to the healing leaves of the Tree of Life, which breathe forth an odor, or savor, of life unto life (2 Cor. 2:15,16) by which multitudes of them “are being saved” — ta ethne ton sozomenon Ch. 21:24; 22:2.

YAHWEH Tz’vaoth having punished the host of the high ones in the heavenlies, and the kings of the earth upon the earth (Isa. 24:21); and having established the Great White Throne in the heaven without pope, emperor, or king to dispute his supremacy and sovereign will; the Moon is effectually confounded, and the Sun put to shame. Reigning on Mount Zion, and in Jerusalem, before his Ancients, the twenty-four elders and the four living ones, gloriously, there is developed in the world a new constitution and order of things, ecclesiastical, secular, and spiritual. In the prophetic style, this “economy of the fullness of the times” (Eph. 1:10) in which “all things in the heavens,” thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers, and “all things upon the earth,” peoples, nations, and languages, are gathered together under one head, anakephalaiosasthai, is termed “A NEW HEAVEN AND A NEW EARTH”.

The Wall of the Great city is the most conspicuous element of it. It is representative of the Deity in federal relation to all the priests, lords and kings of whom it is composed; and the material of it, of His preciousness. That “wall” is used of persons in Scripture, is evident from these texts. “What shall we do for our sister in the day when she shall be spoken for? If she be a wall, we will build upon her a palace of silver. I am a wall; and my breasts like towers: then was I in his eyes as one that found favor”. This is a Bride that hath found favor: and she is styled a wall.

1. And he showed to me a pure stream of water of life, clear as crystal, flowing out from the throne of the Deity and of the Lamb.

“And the Wall hath TWELVE GATES: each one of the gates severally was one pearl”.

“And he that spake with me, had a Golden Reed, that he might measure the city, and its gates, and its wall”.

“And he shewed to me a pure stream of water of life, clear as crystal, flowing out from the throne of the Deity and of the Lamb”.

“In the midst of the Broadspace of the City, and on each side of the stream was a WOOD OF LIFE”.

“And THE LEAVES of the Wood were for the healing of the nations”.

“And the Kings of the Earth bring their glory and honor into it”.

“And the wall of the city had TWELVE FOUNDATIONS; and on them the Names of THE TWELVE APOSTLE Of the Lamb”.

“And there shall NO MORE BE ANY CURSE: but the throne of the Deity and of the Lamb shall be in it”.

The rest of this chapter, in view of what has already been written appears so obvious as to require but little additional to be said. The prophecy begins with the announcement in the seventh verse of the coming of Christ with clouds. The ecclesia in Sardis was threatened, that if they did not watch, he would come upon them as a thief, and they should not know at what hour he would come. To those in Philadelphia, he said, “Behold, I come quickly”, or suddenly; and to the Laodiceans, he said, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him and will sup with him, and he with me”. From this ch. 3:20, until we come to ch. 16:15, no warning is given of the advent with an exhortation to “watch”. In this place, the Spirit saith, “Behold, I come as a thief. Blessed is he that watcheth, and keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked, and they see his shame”. This coming occurs under the Sixth Vial, now in operation, and at the terminal crisis of the Laodicean Apostasy. After this the warning is not repeated until this last chapter. But it is three times suggested here — in the seventh, twelfth, and twentieth verses. “Behold, I come suddenly; blessed is he that keepeth the sayings of the prophecy of this book”. But how can they be kept, or treasured up, and observed, if they are not understood? It is the object of the labor spread over the past twelve years in the writing of this exposition now being concluded, to supply the information necessary to a Scriptural understanding of the prophecy that its sayings may be kept. “Behold, I come suddenly; and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be”. Then will the unjust be deemed unjust; and the filthy be deemed filthy, with a true judgment; and not as now, when the unjust are mistaken for the just; and the filthy for the clean. He that is really righteous, will be made manifest as righteous before the Father and the angels; and he that is holy, upon him will be written the name of the New and Holy Jerusalem.

The fourteenth verse, in certain particulars, is explanatory of the sixth. In this it is said that "the woman fled;" but nothing is hinted about "the two wings of the great eagle." The sixth verse testifies that "she fled into the wilderness," in which wilderness a place hath been prepared for her of the Deity. But where was this wilderness to be found? The Roman habitable was well stocked with wildernesses. Was it simply an uninhabited solitude, a desert waste? or did the word eremon, indicate her isolation and exclusion from the ecclesiastical pale recognized by the powers that be? She fled into the wilderness-state, in which she did not stand in the presence of the Serpent. The Serpent was in the heaven, from the sunshine and splendors of which she was caused to fly. It was the woman Jezebel that stood before the Serpent, and gloried in his embrace. The Serpent had beguiled her, and enthroned her in the heaven; but those of her party, who were proof against his enticements and subtitles, he banished from his imperial presence, that they might dwell alone in the solitude of social isolation.

Now, the Puritan Woman, styled by her enemies and persecutors "the Donatists;" but by the children of her body, Cathari, or the Pure Ones; for the first 1260 years of her existence was Providentially settled in the wings of the Roman Eagle. Her remnants were not to be found in Persia, India, China, or America: but after the discovery and settlement of America, the persecutions and massacre of her seed by the Serpent-Powers of Europe caused her to seek refuge in the American wilderness, whereby the help of "the earth," which styles itself "the unterrified democracy," she is fed and nourished to the full.

In the fourteenth verse, this is equivalently expressed by the words, "where she is nourished for a time, and times, and half a time out of sight of the Serpent." This parallelism shows us that "1,260 days" is a form of words importing the duration of "a time, times, and half a time". Whatever the word day may signify, it requires 1,260 of them to equal three Limes and a half. In common time, 1,260 days are forty-two months, or three years and six months. But in dramatic prophecy, where the things predicted are acted on a small scale, by the persons of the drama, the time is proportioned, and therefore expressed in miniature. Hence, when a piece is performed on the boards of a theatre, its incidents, which are spread over a long series of years, are all brought in the acting before the spectator's eye in the short space of an evening. This is a practical condensation of the time of the piece performed. If the acted time of the piece were dramatically expressed by the performer, according to the real time, an evening theatrical entertainment would be impossible. He has therefore, in his acting, to reduce the literal, or real, time of the incidents he represents, from years to minutes, which all the audience, from pit to gallery, easily perceives.

The ANTIPAGAN BODY, compared in the prophecy to a WOMAN, consisted of Catholics, Novatians, Donatists, Valentinians, Marcionites, Paulists, Cataphrygians, and others, whose names are no longer remembered. Out of this heterogeneous community, which agreed only in its Opposition to the reigning idolatry, the Man-child of Sin was developed, A.D. 312,313. The fall of Maxentius was the crisis of his birth. Being decreed by the Senate the first of the three Augusti of the Roman world, and being in intimate alliance with Licinius, then seemingly favorable to his policy, he published jointly with him the famous Edict of Milan. This was the great charter of toleration. It granted to "the whole body of the christians," as well as to others, the free choice to fol-low that mode of worship which they may wish; and that no freedom at all shall be refused them. No distinction was made between christian and pagan in this matter; so that each might have the privilege to select and worship whatsoever divinity he pleased. Nor was there any distinction made with regard to sect in "the whole body." When the edict was published, Constantine's mind was either undecided as to which religion was absolutely true, or he hesitated to speak plainly that he might not offend the latent prejudices of his colleague. This indiscriminate toleration, he said, "has been done by us, that we might not appear in any manner to detract anything from any manner of religion, or any mode of worship."

In consequence of the final overthrow of the idols by the defeat and death of Licinius, their champion, the Woman's Son, who had cast him and his partisans Out of the heaven, became, by right of conquest, the Supreme Ruler of "the whole habitable". He had now arrived at "the Deity and his throne." There was no power on the Roman inhabited earth equal to him; his authority was absolute in church and state, in both of which he did "according to his own will; and exalted himself and magnified himself above all." He was now the chief of a great dominion, and prepared to rule with an iron sceptre. He was to rule all the nations; not all the nations of the globe, but all the nations of Daniel's Fourth Beast so far as it was then developed. Beyond the limits of this symbolical dominion he exercised no rule. The nations of Persia, China, India, and so forth, with the tribes of what is now called Germany and Russia, were all exempt from his jurisdiction. He ruled "all the nations" inhabiting Britain, Gaul from the Rhine to the Atlantic, and from the Channel to the Alps and Pyrennees, Spain, Italy, the Roman Africa, Egypt, Syria from the Mediterranean to the Tigris, Asia Minor, the rest of Turkey and the Danubian Principalities, and Hungary (as they are now termed), Greece, the Islands of the Mediterranean, and the region lying between the Danube and the Adriatic: all the nations of these countries were subjected to his iron rule.

The period during which she was tormented with the pangs of parturition were the "ten days, " or years, preceding the proclamation and edict of Constantine and Licinius, which were issued, as I have said, A.D. 313. This parturient crisis in the woman's history is foretold in the letter to the ecclesia at Smyrna in these words - "the Devil shall cast some of you into prison, that ye may be tried; and ye shall have tribulation ten days" (Apoc. 2: 10). This ten days' parturient tribulation came upon her with the opening of the fifth seal, A.D. 303. This is known in history as the great Diocletian Persecution, the severest ever inflicted by the great red pagan "Devil and Satan" upon professors of christianity. In this fifth seal period her- "cries" were uttered "with a loud voice, saying, Until when, 0 Despot, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on the dwellers upon the earth?" Her pangs produced these outcries, which need not to be expounded here in detail, seeing that they have been sufficiently treated of in the second volume at p. 264. After the death of the Augustan emperor Galerius, in A.D. 311, her straining efforts began. Her pains now became forcing. She felt that she must die, if she did not give birth to a deliverer. The time of judgment and vengeance was to come at the end of "a little while, " chronon mikron; and of that little while about two years only remained for the manifestation of her son upon the throne of the Roman Orb. The straining efforts of the woman were synchronous with the opening of the sixth seal, by which was initiated that "war in heaven" which resulted in casting the pagan Dragon out, and her own investment with the sun; in allusion to which, Eusebius, in his Life of Constantine, says, "In short, as the sun, when he rises upon the earth, liberally imparts his rays of light to all, so did Constantine, proceeding at early dawn from the imperial palace, and rising as it were with the heavenly luminary, impart the rays of his own beneficence to all who approached his person" - lib. I ch. 43. The totality upon which these rays of the imperial beneficence fell, was all of the woman's adherents previously to his drawing the line between those who recognized his EPISCOPAL SUPREMACY and those who rejected it as the usurpation of the ANTICHRIST. After this line was drawn, the rays of his beneficence were reserved exclusively for what he styled "THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH," of which he was the acknowledged episcopal head. All others were regarded as perverse and wicked.

Before the Woman's Son could "rule ALL the nations" of the Roman Habitable, it was necessary that he be placed upon the throne of the Deity. "There is no power but of the Deity," says Paul; "and the powers that be are ordered of the Deity." The throne of the Deity upon the Roman Habitable would be the seat of the Supreme and Sole Sovereignty of the empire, wherever it might be located. Jerusalem is styled "the throne of Yahweh" in Jer. 3:17. That city is the place where supreme power will be established in the Millennium. It was also Yahweh's throne when occupied by David and Solomon - 1 Chron. 29:23. But in the days of Constantine, supreme power had long before departed from Jerusalem. Israel and Judah had been broken and divorced; and a people formed from among the Gentiles for the Divine Name. This people came to contend with the Pagan Dragon for supreme power. After a long and bloody conflict they acquired it by the will of the Deity, "of whom are all things" (1 Cor. 8:6). Their military commander is therefore, said to have arrived at the Deity and his throne. Hence Constantine, as sole emperor of the Roman world, invested with supreme power in all spiritual and temporal affairs, is the illustration of the import of the text predicting the translation of the Woman's Son "to the Deity and his throne."

11. "And they overcame him, through the blood of the Lamb, and through the word of their testimony; and they loved not their life unto death. 12. On account of this let the heavens rejoice and those who tent in them."

When Constantine was declared by the Roman Senate the first of the three Augusti, Licinius, the Illyrian Augustus, seemed cordially to endorse his policy with respect to the Catholic Church. But his subsequent conduct soon betrayed the reluctance with which he had consented to the wise and humane regulations of the Edict of Milan. The convocation of provincial synods was prohibited in his dominions; his catholic officers were ignominiously dismissed; and if he avoided the guilt, or rather danger, of a general persecution, his partial oppressions were rendered still more odious, by the violation of a solemn and voluntary engagement.

For the first, and indeed the last time, the Roman World was administered by six emperors, A. D. 308. The opposition of interest, and the memory of a recent war, divided the empire into two great hostile powers. In the west, Constantine and Maxentius acknowledged the superior influence of Maximian; while in the east, Licinius and Maximin honored with more real consideration their benefactor Galerius: but upon the death of the elder princes, Maximian and Galerius, a new direction was given to the views and passions of their surviving associates.

The Spirit is here careful to designate the sex of the child that was to be born of the Woman. It is termed in the original, huion appena, literally, a male offspring. He was brought forth at length but not "devoured" by the Dragon-Power; for he was destined "to rule all the nations with an iron sceptre," in the Italian Heaven, from which the Woman's adversary, or Satan, was to be ejected. It was not a female child that was to be born; but a man, whose birth had long been foretold in the prophets.In Ps.10:15,18, he is styled "the wicked and evil man," and "the Man of the Earth," whose arm is broken in the epoch when "Yahweh" becomes "King of the hidden period and beyond; and the heathen are perished out of His land The Spirit in David makes the following address to him in Ps. 52 "Why boastest thou thyself in mischief, O Mighty Man? The mercy of AIL is all the day. Thy tongue, deviseth mischiefs; like a sharp razor working deceitfully. Thou lovest evil more than good; and lying rather than to speak righteousness. Thou lovest all devouring words, O thou deceitful tongue! But AIL shall beat thee down forever, He shall take thee away, and pluck thee from thy dwelling-place, and will root thee out of the land of the living. The righteous shall see and fear, and upon it they shall laugh, saying, Behold the man that made not Elohim his strength; but trusted in the abundance of his riches, and strengthened himself in his wickedness."

Understanding that the "Great Red Dragon" is symbolical of the blood-stained power of Rome-pagan; and that the Woman represents the Anti-pagan Community of the Roman empire ; the only points for exposition under this head are the standing of the one before the other; and the time when the standing occurred.

The espousal of the "one body," symbolized in this prophecy by a woman, occurred on the day of that Pentecost, which first followed the crucifixion of the anointed Jesus. The apostles were instrumental in this betrothal, and promising the virgin bride of believers marriage to the Lamb when He should return to celebrate his nuptials with all who Should be found faithful to the end. "I have espoused you," says Paul, "to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ " He had begotten them to this honorable and glorious destiny by the truth he had taught them, and which they had received in its simplicity; therefore he says in another place, "to Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel" (I Cor. 4:15).

A surname is a name added to the original name. The original name for the embodiment of falsehood, unbelief, and disobedience, was "the Serpent". In all the five Books of Moses we do not once find it styled "the Diabolos," nor "the Satan." This surname was not bestowed upon the Egypto-Romaic Babylonian Dragon until, as the Little Horn of the Macedonian, or Grecian, Goat, it "magnified itself against the Prince of the Host (Christ~' (Dan. 8:11). It did this when it falsely accused and crucified him. I need not repeat here what has been written in the first volume of this work on the Diabolos and Satan. The reader can refer to this on pages 234 and 241, at his leisure. 'Suffice it in this place to say, that the Roman power acquired the surname of the diabolos, because, being falsehood and transgression politically incarnate, it enacted the part of the Old Serpent in tempting the Brethren of Christ to cross the line of their allegiance to him in burning incense to Caesar as,the god of the earth - diabolos, in its etymological import, being that which causes to cross the law-line of Deity.

Thus, mankind in whom the truth is not, being the Seed of the Serpent, the flesh of sin, is their natural parent. This is "their father the Devil, whose lusts they do." But when the truth obtains entrance into a serpent-man, or sinner, and makes a lodgment in his understanding and affections, a power gets possession of him, and generates there "a new man," styled also "the inward man;" so that a Christadelphian, or brother of Christ, is not what he appears to be in the eyes of ordinary men. The serpent-world of sinners does not know them. To the eye of sense they appear as serpent-men. Their outward man differs nothing from the seed of the serpent; while their inward man is beyond the range of the perceptions of the serpent-man, or sinner. It is this new man of the heart, within the old man of the flesh, which constitutes an individual a saint, a son of the Deity, and a brother of Christ. Collectively, the saints or brethren of Christ, constitute his woman or spouse; they are, therefore, styled the Seed of the Woman. This arrangement distributes mankind into two unequal and opposite classes - THE SERPENT-WORLD, and the Woman-Seed; the former, being based upon a lie; the latter, upon the truth.

But the seven heads have not only a political, or ecclesiastical and secular, signification; they have also a topographical one. By this, I mean, they represent the particular place, or city, where the seven heads, in their political manifestation, were to be enthroned. The heads were politically anchored to the capital of the body politic. They must be sought for there, and only there; for the legislative head of a dominion is constitutionally located at the seat of government.

The four beasts in Dan. 7:3, the winged lion, the bear, the winged leopard, and the anonymous fourth beast, are explained in verse 17, as representative of four kings or powers, styled kingdoms in verse 23. The less fourth beast, that is not named by Daniel, is styled by John diversely a dragon and a beast, according to the subject he maybe treating of.

En gastre echousa, literally, having in belly. She contained something within the pale of her communion afterwards to be manifested, or brought forth. She contained it, according to the fitness or decorum of the symbol, previous to her cries in parturition. She did not cry being in pangs and straining to bring forth after her investiture with the solar mantle of imperialism. Her being invested with the sun was consequent upon her giving birth to what was contained within her, and its being placed upon the Italian throne. Had her child not been born, the "great sign in the heaven" would not have there appeared. The Italian throne in Rome had first to be vacated by its pagan occupant, before anything produced from the Laodiceanized Christian Body, pre-figured by this woman, could be herpasthe, carried up from its birth-place in the Roman heaven to godship and its throne - pros ton Theon, kai ton thronon autou. Hence the "great sign" described in the first verse, was representative of the consummation of certain antecedents; and though first stated, was the last thing in the situation developed before the world. The woman's pregnancy, then, preceded her cries. With what was she pregnant? This is now the question to be solved.

Now teachers and seducers, of the Balaam type either gained the ascendancy in the ecclesias, or not being able to maintain themselves therein, separated from them, and organized "churches" to suit themselves in which they could lord it over their flocks. But whether tolerated within the ecclesias, as in Thyatira, or separated in distinct and independent congregations, they were all prefigured by a woman. The character of this figurative woman is known to the faithful by the name she bears. She is in certain relations apocalyptically styled JEZEBEL, because of the analogy subsisting between-the character of the infamous daughter of Ethbaal and wife of Ahab, and that of the teachers and seducers by whom the Laodicean Catholic Apostasy was organized and perfected within the Anti-pagan Community. The original Jezebel essayed the utter abolition of Yahweh's worship in Israel; and substituted the adoration of other deities, with the lascivious abominations which had formerly brought extermination upon the Canaanites. Her fate also made her a fit emblem of the apocalyptic Jezebel, whose children will be eaten by dogs in the day of Jezreel (Psa. 68:23). The false teachers and seducers of the first three centuries, although they did not avow it as their purpose, effected completely what Jezebel aimed to accomplish in Israel. They utterly abolished "the doctrine of Christ" by their traditions; and if it had not been for "a little strength" found among a very small remnant that kept the Spirit's word, and had not denied His name, "the Israel of the Deity" would have been entirely transformed into "the Synagogue of Satan." The Star-Angel Presbytery of Thyatira was too tolerant of "the depths of Satan as they taught," for the Spirit's approval; for, after commending the angel's love, service, faith, patience, and works, he adds, "Notwithstanding, I have a few things against thee, because thou sufferest that woman Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess, to teach and seduce my servants to commit fornication, and to eat things sacrificed to idols." In this toleration the StarAngel or Eldership, was culpable. They ought to have silenced their false teaching, and to have permitted nothing to reach the ears of the flock not in harmony with the written word. This would have preserved "the unity of the faith and knowledge of the Son of God;" and have prevented the development, out of the One Body espoused to Christ, of a self-complacent Catholic, Jezebel, who in the epoch of the "great sign" was at once wretched, and miserable and poor, and blind, and naked" (Ch. 3:17).

Now, the reader of the former volumes of this exposition is aware of the important apocalyptic difference there is between a Stephan and a diadem. The former was given to a combatant when victorious in his conflicts; the latter is the symbol of regal and imperial, or elective sovereignty of an established order. The Antipagan Woman was a combatant community, to whom dominion and power over the nations were promised, as a prize to be contended for, and bestowed upon the victor (Ch. 2:26,27). This prize was signified by a stephanos. If she were victorious, her success would be indicated by a stephan upon her head, as in the "great sign".

Thus reads the text of Rev. 12: 1. In the sixth verse this "great sign" is styled a "a great wonder." The word semeion signifies "a work by which something is known. " A footstep in the sand is a mark by which it is known that a human being had been there. Hence the footstep is a sign, or mark with a signification; a mark by which something is signified. The mark is not the foot; but the impression stepped by the foot - the sign of the foot, in a like sense is the sign of the text to be taken. This first verse exhibits a mark, or sign, by which something may be known. To constitute the sign there is a woman, the sun, moon, and stars, an investment, and a wreath. These are but lesser marks or signs of the "great sign." The woman, and the luminaries in the great sign are no more, as some imagine, a real human being of the female sex, and the lights of the sky, than the step of the foot is the foot itself. They are merely signs of something else, between which and them there is an analogy, or resemblance. These lesser marks when grouped together, as in the text, constitute "a great sign," which must, therefore, be regarded as representing a notable development, a wonderful appearance in the apocalyptic heaven

Another notable instance of this structural characteristic of the apocalypse is found in the eleventh chapter. It occurs in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth verses. In these is announced the end purposed in the complete sounding of the trumpet, and therefore the consummation of the seventh seal; or, as it is expressed in ch. 10:7, the finishing of the mystery of the Deity, as he hath declared the glad tidings to his servants the prophets., This is finished en tais hemerais hotan melle salpizein, in the days when he (the Seventh Angel) shall sound; not "when he shall begin to sound," as in the Common Version; nor while he is sounding; but when he shall have finished sounding, then the mystery shall be finished in the kingdoms of this kosmos or constitution of things, the unmeasured court of the G entiles becoming Yahweh's and his Anointed's. The sounding being over, and the wrath of Deity, consequently, all expended, the mission of the FOUR LIVING ONES FULL OF EYES is completed: the "lightnings" flash no more, the "voices" are hushed, the "thunderings" burst forth no more from the throne, the vibrations of the "earthquake" have ceased, and the "hail" falls no more out of the heaven upon men. In other words, the "judgment given to the saints" has accomplished its work in putting them in possession of "the kingdom and dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven" (Dan. 7:27). For this cause, therefore, in the ascription of thanks to YAHWEH AIL Shaddai, the four belligerent Living Ones are withdrawn from the figuration; and the four and twenty elders only are in prostration before the Everliving One. The reader is aware that the saints are symbolized both by the Four Living Ones and the Elders, only in different relations. The Four represent them in their militant antagonism to the powers that rule the nations; while "the elders" represent them as victorious kings and priests in the glorious and peaceful possession of their conquests. When "the war of the great day of AIL Shaddai" is over, and peace obtains in all the earth, there is no more premillennial work for the saints to do as the "Four Living Ones full of eyes." As militants they have "gotten the victory," and their community is wreathed with the coronals which "they cast before the throne." These are cast there when the cause of thanksgiving, rejoicing, and prostration has been developed. Hence, ch. 4:10, is parallel with ch. 11: 16. The saints, no longer belligerent, give thanks because YAHWEH AIL-Shaddai has acquired great power on the earth and reigned. When this thanksgiving was dictated to John in Patmos, it was the revelation of a purpose - an end which Deity had predetermined. The "great power" had not been taken, nor the reign commenced, when the apocalypse was given to John. Nor have they yet; nor will they be till the end of the seventh trumpet. Hence, the eighteenth verse of the eleventh chapter does not treat of what is to ensue after the reign mentioned in the seventeenth verse has commenced. "The nations are angry," not when the divine wrath is fulfilled, but when it comes. "The nations were made angry, and thy wrath came. " This arrival of the divine wrath is synchronous with the advent of Christ, and with the operation of the Frog-Power in the final development of its working upon the Papal False Prophet, as prefigured in the sixth vial (ch. 16:14-15). The arrival of the divine wrath in the advent of the YAHWEH-NAME from far with anger burning (Isaiah 30:27) is at the epoch of the resurrection of the saints. It is from this epoch that ch. 11: 18 originates a series of events, which ultimate in the destruction of the destroyers of the earth, and in the conquest and appropriation of their kingdoms by the Four Living Ones constituted of the prophets, the saints, and the venerators of the divine name, small and great. So that the order of the prophecy according to its succession of events is first verse 18, then 19, and after this verses 15,16,17: but, as a verbal revelation, the last event which crowns the whole series is first indicated; and then an outline is given of the series which ultimates in the victorious consummation.

But to such a conclusion as this, it it impossible that any one intelligent in the word can come. It is, on the contrary, a period well and clearly indicated. Its commencement is synchronical with the ending of "the time of the vision" seen by Daniel "in the third year of the reign of King Belshatzar;" for, it is written, "to the time of the end the vision" -- l'eth kaitz he khazon - ch. 8:17. Now in an answer to the question, "How long the vision? it was replied, "for an evening-morning of two thousand four hundred." This, according to what time has proved to be the best reading, is the time of the vision -- a period of 2400 years; which, having expired A. D. 1860, brings us to the time of the end, in which "the holy shall be vindicated" from the violence and injury resulting from so long a period of subjection under the feet of the Gentiles.

From A. D. 107 to A. D. 325. -- See Tab. Analysis, VoL 2, p. 97.

The next hundred and sixty years, extending from the accession of Constantine to the wounding of the Sixth Head of the Beast, and the manifestation of the Seventh Head upon the Seven Hills, several scribes belonging to the Laodicean Apostacy, enthroned by Constantine as the religion of the Roman State, bestowed upon their contemporaries some bewildering speculations, by which the prophecy was intensely darkened. These were the ecclesiastical historian Eusebius ; the tutor of Crispus, murdered by his father Constantine, the chief bishop of the Apostacy named Lactantius; Athanasius, Hilary, Cyril, Euphrem Syrus, Ckrysostom, Jerome, Augustine, and Tychonius, who was said to be a Donatist, reclaimed from Donatism by Augustine.

John saw one of the heads, which were common to the Dragon and the Beast, "as if it had been wounded unto death." This is as much as to say, that when he saw it lying prostrate, its death was only in appearance; it was not like the five heads that had preceded it. They were killed outright, never to recover sovereignty on the Seven Hills. But not so this Sixth Headship; for, though it seemed to be politically dead to all future sovereignty in Rome, where its supremacy no longer existed, yet the time would arrive when a like form of government would be located within its walls; and IMPERIAL HEADSHIP, as an Eighth Sovereignty, once more elevate "the Eternal City" to the command of the world - in the words of Leo III., to "a wider rule through divine religion, than by the power of earthly domination;" or more correctly, "through the working of the Satan, with all power, and signs, and lying wonders, and with all the deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish." The head had received a severe wound, but not a fatal one; for, says John, "the plague of its death was healed."

Every living, and many inanimate, things, have their mouth in a literal or figurative sense. In man, it is the hollow between the jaws, Shut or opened by the lips, which are, therefore styled "the doors of the mouth." In him, it is the outlet of that which defiles, or of wisdom, graciousness, and blessing. It is that which proceedeth out of the mouth by which the character of the inward man is in a great degree determined. A man whose mouth speaks the wisdom of the Deity, gracious words, and blessing, and whose conduct is in conformity with what he speaks, is one whose heart is right with the Deity, and from which no blasphemy can find utterance: "the heart of the wise teacheth his mouth," therefore, "the mouth of the righteous speaketh wisdom, and his tongue talketh of judgment" (Prov. 16:23; Psa. 37:30).

Now, the Puritan Woman, styled by her enemies and persecutors "the Donatists;" but by the children of her body, Cathari, or the Pure Ones; for the first 1260 years of her existence was Providentially settled in the wings of the Roman Eagle. Her remnants were not to be found in Persia, India, China, or America: but after the discovery and settlement of America, the persecutions and massacre of her seed by the Serpent-Powers of Europe caused her to seek refuge in the American wilderness, whereby the help of "the earth," which styles itself "the unterrified democracy," she is fed and nourished to the full.

The Leopard and the Bear elements of the Ten-Horned Monster of the Sea, indicate its identity with two others than the fourth, of the four beasts of Daniel's vision. The second beast-dominion he saw ascend out of the Mediterranean Earth, symbolized by the Great Sea (ch. 8:3,17), was "like to a Bear", which was appointed to "devour much flesh"; and the third beast was "like to a Leopard"; and "dominion was given to it." The Bear in this vision answers to the "Breast and the Arms of Silver"; and the Leopard to the "Belly and Thighs of Brass" - of the image-representation exhibited to Nebuchadnezzar, of WHAT SHALL BE IN THE LAST OF THE DAYS beacharith yomaiyah. In the interpretation he was told that the silver section of the image was a kingdom that would be inferior to the Babylonian, which was his; and that the brass kingdom, the third section thereof, should "bear rule over all the earth." This was equivalent to saying, that the Leopard is symbolical of a kingdom bearing rule over the whole earth.

The diadems upon the ten horns is a symbolical rebuke of the foolish prediction of republican politicians and prophets, who deceive their worshippers with the conceit, that the kingdoms of Europe are to become republics after the type of the "MODEL REPUBLIC" of this western world! A horn with a diadem upon it is nowhere to be found, in sacred or profane heraldry, as the symbol of a republic. It always represents a kingly power, or dominion. The Gothic nations of the Abyss acquiesced in the military leaders who had led them to victory, and founded States upon the Roman territory, being recognized as kings, and decorated with diadems, by the Dragon-power. Hence they were kingdoms in their beginning; and will continue kingdoms until the Ancient of Days shall come, and by their overthrow, transfer the many diadems of these horns of the sea to his own glorious and snowy head (Apoc. 19:12; 1:14; 11:15). The very reverse of these republican prophecies is the real truth of the matter. Instead of the kingdoms of the world becoming republics, all the republics of the world will become kingdoms. This will be a great blessing to mankind, who have proved themselves incompetent for self-government upon wise and righteous principles, under any form of rule they may devise. It is the Divine purpose to bless mankind in Abraham and his seed. This is the great gospel prophecy of the word (Gal. 3:8,9): and when the nations rejoice in peace and security under their own vines and fig-trees, they will be interested in nobler themes than the crude, unprofitable and lying vanities of those who now deceive them. Their political interests will be supervised by kings, who will then reign "by the grace of God". It will be theirs to command of their own sovereign will and pleasure; and for all nations simply to obey without question or dispute; for then, "judgment will be given to the Saints;" who will take the kingdom and the dominion under the whole heaven, and possess them for a thousand years and more (Dan. 7:22,27,18; Apoc. 20:4,6). Then the universal world will be "ruled in righteousness," and truly "blessed in Abraham and his seed."

This extraordinary inflation of the apostles with Spirit when noised abroad, caused a multitude of people to assemble to behold this marvelous exhibition of the supernatural. Among these were "STRANGERS OF ROME, Jews and proselytes," who had come from the Capital of the empire to celebrate the Passover, the Wave Offering of the Sheaf, and the Feast of First Fruits, according to the Mosaic Law. Being devout Jews and proselytes, they were zealous for the law, and earnestly intent upon all the sacrificial observances it prescribed. They were acquainted with Jews of Nazareth; and with the miracles, and wonders, and signs, with which the Deity had attested his claims to the Messiahship; and had witnessed also his ignominious execution by the wicked hands of his enemies. For anything they knew, he was still in death, and securely confined within its gates; so that, whatever they might have thought of him, while living, they had doubtless settled it in their minds, that, though a man of excellent deportment, and of gracious and benevolent disposition, he was self-deceived. Was he not dead? And could a dead man be the Christ of God for the redemption of his people?

Names of men are sometimes taken for the men themselves. Thus in Acts 1:15, "the number of the names," that is, the number of the men. And thus in Virgil, Sylvius, "Albanum Nomen," an Alban Name, is Sylvius, a man of Albania.

"As the symbol of strength they are used in Psa 18:2. They are also used to denote the regal power; and when they are distinguished by number, they signify so many monarchies. Thus horn signifies a monarchy in Jer. 48:25; and in Zech. 1:18, the Four Horns are the four great monarchies which had each of them subdued the Jews. See also Dan. 8:20-22.

"The four beasts in Dan. 7:3, are explained in ver. 7, of four kings or kingdoms, as the word king is interpreted, ver. 23.

In the apocalypse there are the earth, the sea, the sand of the sea, the abyss, and the pit of the abyss. All these terms have their own special signification where they occur. The sea, the sand of the sea, and the abyss styled in the Common Version, "the bottomless pit," are related to the Beast of ch. 11:7 and chapter 13:1. In the former text, it is said to ascend out of the abyss, and in the latter, out of the sea. But, though the terms expressive of the place of origin are two different ones, there are not two different beasts, but one and the same beast only. But then, why are these two different terms employed with reference to the same beast? There must be a reason for it. In elucidation of this inquiry, then, I remark in addition to what has already been written in Vol.3. p.85, that, though in the Septuagint and certain texts of the New Testament, abyss, or abussos, is identical with the sea and deep, yet symbolically and apocalyptically, sea and deep do not represent all that is intended to be conveyed by the word.

"Many waters," says Daubuz, "upon the account of their noise, number, and disorder, and confusion of their waves, are the symbol of peoples, multitudes, nations, and tongues. The symbol is so explained in Rev. 17:15. And in Jer. 47:2, waters signify an army, or multitude of men. The comparison of the noise of a multitude to the noise of mighty or many waters, is used by Isaiah in ch. 17:12,13, much after the same manner as Homer compares the noise of a multitude to the noise of the waves of a sea in a storm."

Jeremiah says, that the Deity placed the sand for a bound oft he sea- ch. 5:22. This is true in a natural sense; when, therefore, the sand of the sea is introduced into symbolical prophetic writing, it must be taken to represent the bound, shore, or limit, of the symbolical sea. But the sand of the sea is also the similitude for a multitude of people. Thus Hosea predicts the multitude into which Israel shall be developed in the day of their glory under this figure, saying in Ch. 1:10, "the number of the children of Israel shall be as the sand oft he sea, which cannot be measured nor numbered": and sand also in the sense of multitude we find used apocalyptically in chapter 20:8, where the hosts of the post-millennial Gog and Magog, or Dragon released from confinement in the abyss, are compared to the Sand of the Sea.

The reader will please compare what is written here concerning the "time of events," and correct what he finds on p.115 under this caption, by this erratum.

The vision was communicated to him with special reference to this Incongruous fourth beast. It had a head, and upon his head Eleven Horns, and claws of brass, and teeth of iron. Daniel saw it arise in a stormy period out of the Great Sea; and he perceived that it continued until the Ancient of Days came, when, judgment having been given to the Holy Ones, or Saints of the Most High Ones, they destroyed it with fire and sword.

The Seventh Seal, Seven Trumpets, and the Six Vials to the appearing of Christ "as a thief;" exhibitirig the development of the Ten Horns of Daniel's Fourth Beast in the wounding of the Sixth Head and the establishment of the Seventh; (Apoc. 8) the subversion of the Greek Catholic Dynasty of Constantinople, (Apoc. 9) the rising of Daniel's eleventh Episcopal Horn, or Eighth Head, that speaks blasphemies, and "as a Dragon;" (Apoc. 13:1-5, 11-18; 17) the war of the Saints and Witnesses with this power; their subjugation, death, resurrection, and ascension to the heaven at the ending of the Sixth Trumpet; (Apoc. 11:3-12; 12:14,16,17; 13:6-10) judgments upon their enemies, the Horns, Eighth Head, and Image; (Apoc. 16:1-11) and the preparation of their way (Apoc. 16:12-14).

It is evident from this connection, that the casting out of the Dragon into the earth, and the beginning of the "woe" to the earth, were synchronous, or contemporaneous events. Though cast out of the heaven, he still retained power as the Diabolos to persecute the woman. He had lost position in the heaven. The Supreme Dragon-power and authority was located apocalyptically upon the "Seven Mountains," the area of the "Seven Heads" - ch. 17:9,10. To be excluded from the exercise of dominion in ROME, the Queen City, over Italy and the African Wing of the Great Eagle, was to be cast out of the heaven; but this might obtain without the entire deprivation of authority and power. "The earth and sea," or all the Roman Habitable not included in Italy and Africa, still remained to be governed by emperors enthroned in other capitals. To lose authority in Rome, but yet to retain it in the earth and sea habitable, was to fall from the one "into" the other.

The tyranny and arrogance of catholic bishops had become insufferable. Their oppressiveness created what might be styled the episcopal question; or the inquiry, Does the New Testament make any difference, in order or degree, between Presbyters and Bishops? The difference was generally admitted in the fourth century; but is without the least sanction in the apostolic writings. This was the earnest conviction of a presbyter named 'Erius, whom Mosheim depreciates by nicknaming him "a Semi-Arian." He says, that in the latter part of the fourth century, "He erected a new sect, and excited divisions throughout Armenia, Pontus, and Cappadocia, by propagating Opinions different from those that Were commonly received. One of his principal tenets was, that bishops were not distinguished from presbytersby any Divine right; and that according to the institution of the New Testament, their offices and authority were absolutely the same." Had this tenet been received and maintained by the catholic church, the world could never have been afflicted by the blasting presence of the Roman Pontiffs. "How far Aerius pursued this opinion, through its natural consequences, is not certainly known; but we know with the utmost certainty, that it was highly agreeable to many good christians, who were no longer able to bear the tyranny and arrogance of the bishops of this century."

History styles these sympathizers Paulicians; but history is written by men who are ignorant of the principles of the doctrine of Christ, and are the enemies of "the remnants of the woman's seed, who keep the commandments of the Deity, and hold the testimony of Jesus the anointed." These are neither fanatics, nor furious and desperate rebels; neither are they hardened against the feelings of humanity, nor do they seek to avenge themselves; for this they are strictly forbidden to do by Him who says, "vengeance is mine; I will repay". The furious and desperate fanatics, steeled against the Divine law and the feelings of humanity, are the serpents, the generation of vipers, in place or power, "the spirituals of the wickedness in the heavenlies," who counsel and execute the sanguinary ferocity of the Dragon and the Beast. Providence has graciously and mercifully arranged that these insatiable shedders of the blood of His saints shall be fiercely antagonized by the indignant hatred of tyranny, and the love of civil and religious liberty, common to the Scripturally enlightened of mankind; for men may have light enough to discern the folly, and hypocrisy, and diabolism, incorporated in Church and State, and yet be very far from an intelligent belief of "the truth as it is in Jesus" by which alone they can be saved.

Now, Moses and Paul teach that the Seed connected with the father of the faithful in the promise, was to be manifested in the line of Isaac; and that the said Seed was to be the personal and mystical Christ; or the One Body, whose head is Jesus and the Father; in other words, Jesus Christ. "To Abraham and to the Christ," says Paul, "were the promises made, and confirmed 430 years before the Mosaic law was given." He then states that when "the faith came;" that is, when the truth was manifested through the slaying of the Lamb of the Deity, men and women became the children of Deity by obedience to it; for the faith was made known to all nations for obedience of faith (Rom. 16:26; 1:5). Believers became children of the Deity by this obedience; for, he says, "Ye are all children of Deity in Christ Jesus through the faith. " But, if they were not in Christ, though they might be believers, they were not His children; but mere worshippers of the Beast in the times of the Beast. Those believers only are "in Christ Jesus" who have entered into that heavenly state "through the faith;" or through the way pointed out in the one faith. This way is indicated in the words of Paul, who tells the believer of the truth by what process he may become a son of Deity; how he may get into Christ, and by consequence, be Christ's brother; and, therefore, a son of Abraham in the highest sense; an heir of the Deity, a joint-heir with Christ; and thereby entitled to the eternal life and inheritance promised to Abraham 430 years "before the foundation of the world". His words are, "As many as have been immersed into Christ have put on Christ; and if ye be Christ's, then are ye the Seed of Abraham, and Heirs according to the promise" (Gal. 3:26-29; Rom. 8:17).

There was no class of European society unsubjected to the authority of the Lamb-Horned, or episcopal constituent of the Beast of the Earth; hence, what Ecclesiastical Power did with the concurrence of "the Secular Arm," the Beast is said to do. "He causes" is therefore to be understood of the Lamb-Horned Beast, or Daniel's Little Horn with Eyes and Mouth. No general imposition of a charagma, impressed sign, stamp, or mark, was enjoined upon Europeans by the authority of any of the Ten Horns. Their subjects received it; but it was in obedience to the decrees of a foreign ecclesiastical power. This charagma was a characteristic sign; so that wherever it was observed, it would be known that the bearer was claimed by the Beast as his vassal. The charagma is styled in ch. 19:20, to charagma tou theriou, the beast's sign or mark; because it was characteristically employed by the Latin Hierarchy before the Image was set up as an independent monarchy.

On account of the difficulties and ill success of commentators in the exposition of the Image of the Beast here spoken of, Vitringa has said, "est in hac parte prophetiae quod interpres cruciat" - it is in this part of the prophecy that the interpreter is tormented. It would be no profit to the reader to specify their failures, for they are legion. The Image of the Beast has not only tormented them, but they have sadly tormented the Image, until it has been reduced to no Image at all. The commentators have commented upon one another, satisfactorily proving each other wrong; but when asked, what is the true solution of the mystery, they give no sign; so that we have to conclude, that what Doddridge confesses of himself is applicable to them all, saying, "what the Image of the Beast is, distinct from the Beast itself, I confess I know not."

To have power to speak, and to cause to put to death; or to decree and to enforce its decrees, was the result of spirit, pneuma, being imparted to the Image. A monarch, or pontiff king, who made laws and issued decrees, but could not enforce them, or cause them to be executed, would be an image without spirit That which is necessary to a monarchy for the execution of its laws and ordinances is its spirit or power; and when a king can no longer cause his will to be respected; when he decrees and threatens, and his utterances are laughed at or despised, he is a vox etpraetera nihl, a mere voice, his spirit has departed; and he ceases to be a power in the world of powers, which respect nothing which cannot itself be respected.

1. That the prince, who was elected in the German diet, acquired, from that instant, the subject kingdoms of Italy and Rome.

Fire proceeded out of the mouth of the Deity's two prophets, symbolized by the two olive trees and two candlesticks (Apoc. 11:5). The reader will note the different sources of the Beast's fire, and the fire of the Two Witnesses. The fire of the Beast comes from "the heaven" in which the Beast reigns; but the fire of the Two Prophets proceeds out of their mouth. They devoured their enemies with this fire; in other words, they killed them. Their enemies are Apocalyptically symbolized by the Beast of the Sea and the Beast of the Earth, and the Image of the Sixth Head of the Beast, which is the False Prophet that worketh wonders in the presence of the Ten Horns, by which he deceiveth them that had received the mark of the Beast, and them that worshipped his Image (ch. 19:20). These made war upon all the inhabitants of the European Wilderness who did not worship them, whether they were Slavic pagans, the Two Witnesses, or the Saints. The Slavonians and the Witnesses fought the fire of the Beast's heaven with the fire of their own power, though in the end they had to succumb; the fire of their mouth was extinguished by the prevailing of the Beast against them.

It is evident, from the last clause of this verse, that "the first beast" referred to in that clause is not the whole of the Ten Horns, nor all the Seven Heads, but only one particular head. We are authorized to say this, because "the plague" is, in the third verse, affirmed of "one of the heads" of the Beast of the Sea - of only one of them. This is the special import of the phrase in this clause; but in the first clause of the text, "the first beast" must be understood in a more general sense. The Episcopal Power "exerciseth all the authority of the first beast in its presence" -enopion. Though the secular authority of the emperors of the Holy Roman dominion, on the accession of the Saxon line, did not extend over France, which is one of the ten horns, the episcopal authority of the dominion was dominant in all the countries of Europe. It may therefore be truly said, that the Episcopal Beast of the Earth exercised all the auhority of the first beast's horns "in its presence." This "presence" is illustrated by Daniel's Little Horn standing contemporaneously in the midst of the Ten Horns; and besides occupying its own German territory, also standing upon that of the Vandals, Lombards, and Huns. From these considerations, it is regarded in the prophecy as the chief authority among the powers of the imperial republic of the west. In fact, this thirteenth chapter is a symbolical exposition of the constitution of Modern Europe in its civil and ecclesiastical relations. It does not undertake to exhibit it in all the phases it has assumed in the course of over a thousand years; but only an heraldic representation sufficiently striking for a ready recognition by those servants of the Deity who have made them-selves acquainted with the things that have been, and those which do exist. The recognition of the "Holy Apostolic" Caesars by the hereditary monarchs of Europe, as the supreme majesty of their political system, as testified in the concluding words of the previous section, constituted their order "the Sun" of the European firmament. The reader will please bear this in mind, for it was upon this Sun that the Fourth Angel poured out his vial; and in so doing scorched men with fire (Apoc. 16:8,9).

But a lamb being symbolical of "the Shepherd and Bishop of souls," comes also to represent things ecclesiastical. The true believers, or the saints, are all in the Lamb, because they are "in Christ," and constitute "his body the Ecclesia." They are, in other words, invested or clothed with the lambskin, and the horns of an animal are appendages of its skin. Hence, "horns like a lamb" would fitly symbolize a body ecclesiastical claiming to be Christian; and such a claimant might pass for Christian, if things were not affirmed of it incompatible with the principles of Christ. A truly Christian body would not set up an Image of the wounded sixth head of the beast to be worshipped upon the pain of death. This the Beast of the Earth was to do; and since he arose, has done. We are, therefore, under the necessity of concluding that whatever ecclesiastical domination may be represented by the sheep's clothing, "pallium," or state mantle, it is not a real sheep dominion, but a counterfeit one - the Dominion of the Romish Dragon in Sheep's clothing.

By the gift conferred upon the pretended Vicar of Christ by Pepin for the remission of his sins and the salvation of his soul, the world beheld for the first time a bishop invested with the prerogatives of a temporal prince: with the choice of magistrates, the exercise of justice, the imposition of taxes, and the wealth of the palace of Ravenna. In the plucking up the Lombard Horn by the roots, the inhabitants of the duchy of Spoleto sought a refuge from the storm, shaved their heads after the Roman fashion, declared themselves the servants and subjects of St. Peter, and completed by this voluntary surrender, the circle of the ECCLESIASTICAL STATE, or Patrimony of Saint Peter, as it existed previous to the first French Revolution. "That mysterious circle," says Gibbon, "was enlarged to an infinite extent by the verbal or written donation of Charlemagne, who, in the first transports of his victory, despoiled himself and the Greek emperor of the cities and islands which had formerly been annexed to the Exarchate. But in the cooler moments of absence and reflection, he viewed, with an eye of jealousy and envy, the recent greatness of his ecclesiastical ally. The execution of his own and his father's promises was respectfully eluded: the king of the Franks and the Lombards asserted the inalienable rights of the empire; and in his life and death, Ravenna, as well as Rome, was numbered in the list of his metropolitan cities. The sovereignty of the Exarchate melted away in the hands of the popes: they found in the Archbishops of Ravenna a dangerous and domestic rival: the nobles and people disdained the yoke of a priest: and in the disorders of the times, they could only retain the memory of an ancient claim, which, in a more prosperous age, they have revived and realized." It was realized when "the Image of the Beast" was created by the Beast of the Earth in after ages.

The Eighth Century had its Roman Question as well as this so called "Enlightened Nineteenth;" and Italy, then as now, was the arena of superstition, papal intrigue, political ambitions and war. Part of it, afterwards absurdly termed "St. Peter's Patrimony," was included in the Exarchate of Ravenna, which belonged to the Eastern Roman Dragon of Constantinople, whose emperor Leo Isauricus, was sovereign of Rome, and therefore master of the Bishop of Rome; but by the decree of Phocas, A.D. 607, or 608, the chief of all the bishops, and Head of all the churches of the Apostasy, which was territorially coextensive with the dominions symbolized by John's Beast of the Earth and Sea. The rest of Italy was occupied by the kingdom of Lombardy, and the rising Republic of Venice. The Bishop of Rome was as little able to protect himself then against these potentates, as he is now against Victor Emmanuel and the Red Republicans; nor was the Emperor of the East able to protect him, if he had been willing, more efficiently than the Austrian of A.D. 1866. He was in a very uncomfortable position, being liable to a change of masters at very short notice; neither of whom were at all congenial to his mind as the Infallible Judge of heretics, and their, to him, perverse abominations. A united Italy, and Rome for its capital, was the cry of the Lombards, or Langebards, (Long Beards) and their warlike kings. These Bearded Revolutionists wanted Rome, but the Eastern emperors did not want to part with it. It was a city of the Dragon dominion, and they intended to keep it; and' to preserve it, or rather deliver it from idolatry and the worship of demonials - ta daimonia kai eidola (ch. 9:20) if they could. They had recovered possession of it when they conquered the Seventh Head therein enthroned; and they had no idea of allowing an Eighth Head to establish itself upon the Seven Hills; much less would they consent, that the Lombard Horn should make it the capital of its dominion. The Bishop of Rome also was opposed to the Long Beards (and he has never liked to see Long Beards about him since, remembering the trouble they gave him in the eighth century; hence, at this day he forbids "his children" to wear beards, inasmuch also as it is the symbol of revolution, and a desire for the possession of Rome to the prejudice of his interests,) as he preferred subjection to a master afar off in Constantinople, than to a prying and troublesome supervisor at hand. He had been in this case under the Gothic kings, when they ruled as the Seventh Head in Rome. But it was by no means to his liking. He would prefer independence of all governments; but as the time had not quite come for that, he would rather be subject to Constantinople, than to the Lombards at the door.

When we read in the seventh verse, that exousia, authority, rule, dominion or jurisdiction, was given to the Beast," and consequently to his Lion Mouth, over every tribe, and tongue and nation, we know that the Beast represents the system of government existing in the outcast and unmeasured Court of the Gentiles (ch. 11:2): that is, over the tribes, tongues, and nations, of those countries, in which the Holy Polity in Christ, the Saints, and the Earth, or Witnesses, helping them, have contended for 1260 years against the Papacy.

The use of pictures in churches preceded that of images, the first notice of which is in the censure of the council of Illiberis, three hundred years after the birth of Jesus. The first introduction of a worship of stocks and bones was in the veneration of the cross, and of relics. The "immortal souls" of saints and martyrs, whose intercession was implored, were supposed to be seated at the right hand of God; and their worshippers imagined that they showered gracious, and often super-natural favors around their tombs, whose disgusting contents they touched and kissed as memorials of their merits and sufferings. From such memorials the transition was easy to delineations of the deceased by painting or sculpture. At first, the experiment of paying them religious honors was made with caution and scruple. Gradually, however, the honors of the original were transferred to the copy; and he who began by worshipping three gods devoutly prayed before the image of a dead person; and the pagan rites of genuflexion, luminaries and incense, became part of the ritual of the Greek and Roman superstition in which was firmly established the use and worship of images before the end of the sixth century. The style and sentiments of a Byzantine hymn will show the gross idolatry of this worship. "How can we with mortal eyes contemplate this image, whose celestial splendor the host of the heaven presumes not to behold? He who dwells in heaven condescends this day to visit us by his venerable image: He who is seated on the cherubim, visits us this day by a picture which the Father has delineated with his immaculate hand, which he has formed in an ineffable manner, and which we sanctify by adoring it with fear and love." These images of Christ were styled acheiropoietoi, made without hand; and were circulated in the camps and cities of the eastern empire, as objects of worship, and instruments of miracles.

This Beast that vanquishes the saints is the same that in ch. 11:7, is referred to as destined to make war against the Two Witnesses. There is, however, this difference of result observable in the Beast's war upon the Saints "who dwell in the heaven;" and his war against the Witnessing Prophets who had power to shut his heaven, that it should not rain in their days of the prophecy - he vanquishes the Saints, but does not "kill them;" but in regard to the Two Prophets, he both vanquishes and kills them. The reason is this: he could not kill the Saints as a body politic, exercising power and authority in the Court of the Gentiles; because, not being politicians and political partisans, they never possessed them: it is therefore stated simply, that they were vanquished or overcome by the war. Hence, we find nothing about the saints rising from death until "the time of the dead" when Christ appears. But, in the case of the Two Witnesses, or politico-ecclesiastical communities opposed to the Horns and their Lion Mouth, they were politically killed, and lay dead and unburied in the platea of the Great City three lunar days and a half of years, and afterwards became the subject of a political resurrection and ascension into the heaven of the Beast. The Saints who dwell in the heaven in Christ have never been there yet. A better resurrection and ascension than that of the Two Witnesses is in reserve for them. The reader is re-erred to my eleventh chapter for particulars about the Beast's war upon the Witnesses. The Saints of the Holy City shared in much of their affliction, and are still trodden under foot; and will continue so to be, until the synchronous termination of the Forty Two months and 1335 years. After what I have written in that chapter of Vol.3, it is unnecessary here to repeat the story of the war. The Saints were killed by thousands in the war because they would not worship the Beast's Image. This was the fate of multitudes who did not dwell in the heaven; for the slaughter by the Beasts was often indiscriminate, on the principle that "the Lord would know his own;" for even Catholics dwelling in witnessing communities were not exempted from massacre and flame. History is copious in the narration of the sanguinary persecutions and crusades raised against them by the Pope, who promised forgiveness of sins and eternal salvation to volunteers in his wars with the saints and witnesses, all of whom he blasphemed as "emanating from the pit of the abyss." These volunteers responded to his incentives with enthusiasm; and in reporting the execution of their mission, would say, "we have spared neither age nor sex; we have smitten every one with the edge of the sword." Besides being subject to massacre, they were at all times by the canon law deprived of all civil privileges; and it was declared "homicidas non esse qui excommunicatos trucidant," that they who butcher the excommunicated are not murderers.

And, in this place, it will be right to state the reason why I have not reckoned the Heruli and the Ostrogoths as two of the ten horns. No barbarians, the throne of whose dominion was on the seven mountains, could be horns. Rome is the throne of the Heads, not of the Horns. Hence, there must be reckoned ten horns and one head contemporary with the continuance of the "short space" of Seventh Head Ascendancy in Rome. Neither can the Exarchate of Ravenna nor the Dukedom of Rome, as Sir Isaac Newton and others suppose, be horns; for the former was the representative of the Sixth Head in Italy, and the latter, together with the Exarchate, are defective in this material attribute, that they were destitute of diadems; all the horns have diadems, but they had none.

In this chapter 13, we have two Names which are antagonistic - the blaspheming name, "whose number is six hundred three score and six", the number indicative of The Man of Sin-power; and the Name he blasphemes, which is written upon the foreheads of the 144,000-ch. 14:1. In ch. 13:6, it represents Christ and his Brethren, who, in antagonism to the Papal Blasphemer, constitute the Name of Deity. The phrases "his name," "his tabernacle," and "them that dwell in the heaven," are all synonymous with the phrase in the seventh verse, "the saints," of whom Christ is "the Head." The Deity dwells in them, and therefore they are his temple, habitation, or tabernacle; as Paul writes to the saints in Corinth, "Ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their Deity, and they shall be my people" (2 Cor. 7:16). They are the tabernacle "built upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, the foundation cornerstone being Jesus Christ himself: in whom all the building fitly framed together increaseth for a Holy Name in the Lord: in whom ye are builded together for an habitation of the Deity in Spirit" (Eph. 2:20-22).

The Mouth given to the Beast of the Sea was like a lion's mouth; and he delighted to compare himself thereto. His official utterances, or the things affirmed of him, by those who created and worshipped him, far transcended the utterances of the proud and impious rulers of the old Babylonian Lion. The last of these, styled by Isaiah, "Lucifer, son of the morning," the Belshatzar of history, said, "I will ascend into heaven; I will exalt my throne above the stars of AlL. . . ; I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the Most High" - ch. 14:13,14; and on the eve of his being brought down to Sheol, he lifted himself up against the Lord of heaven, and praised the images of silver and gold, of brass, iron, wood, and stone, which see not, nor hear, nor know (Dan. 5:23). These were the speakings of the Mouth of the old Lion of Babylion; but proud and impious as they were, they fell short of the "great things and blasphemies" which roared from the throat, or by the sanction, of the Universal Bishop of the Ten-Horned Monster of the Sea. This Babylonian Mouth, which has come down to us from the darkest ages of the clerical apostasy, when it opens its iron-teethed jaws, can give expression to nothing but great things of vanity and falsehood, and things defamatory of the Deity and the Saints. "He opened his mouth unto blasphemy concerning the Deity, to blaspheme his Name, and his Tabernacle, and the dwellers in the heaven." Jesus Christ, the apostle Peter taught, was the only name given among men whereby we must be saved (Acts 4:12). This name was the Father, whom no man hath seen, nor can see, by His power manifested in the flesh, crucified, and afterwards justified or perfected. This crucified and glorified Name, in the very nature of things, can have no substitute or vicar. The substitute or vicar of such a Name, must be all in reality that is affirmed of the Origi-nal, who must be set aside necessarily to make room for the Vicar. For a man to be a genuine Vicar of Christ, he must be what Jesus was as the Father's Vicar, or Mediator: sin must have been condemned in his flesh, and he himself a character "without spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing." Compare this necessity with what the popes really are, who affirm that they are the Only Name in the World, unicum nomen in mundo, and the enormity of their blasphemy of the Deity's Name will readily be seen.

The first question here is, What is the thing for which the personal pronoun "him" stands in the text? The answer is, It is the Beast; or that Politico-ecclesiastical constitution symbolized by the monster of the sea: as, "Who is like unto THE BEAST? Who is able to war with HIM? And there was given unto HIM a mouth, &c.; and authority was given unto HIM to practice forty and two months."

"Although your servant is maintained in affluence by your liberality, graciously listen to the wishes of my heart! Italy, the inheritance of your predecessors, and Rome itself, the Heart and Mistress of the world, now fluctuate under the violence of Odoacer, the Mercenary. Direct me, with my national troops, to march against the tyrant. If I fall, you will be relieved from an expensive and troublesome friend; if, with the divine permission, I succeed; I shall govern in your name, and to your glory, the Roman Senate, and the part of the republic delivered from slavery by my victorious arms." Theodoric's proposal was accepted by the Byzantine Court. He marched against the tyrant in the depth of a rigorous winter, and after many obscure and bloody battles, he descended from the Julian Alps and displayed his invincible banners on the confines of Italy. The conflict between Odoacer and Theodoric was severe; but at length the former capitulated, and, being removed by death, the royalty of Theodoric was proclaimed by the Ostrogoths, "with the tardy, reluctant, ambiguous consent of the Emperor of the East."

But as to this Apostolic throne. Whence its origin; by what authority was it established? John was informed that "the Dragon gave him his power, and his throne, and an extensive jurisdiction." This was the constitutional source of all the Bishop of Rome's preeminence. He obtained no honors, privileges, and immunities from the kings of the Seventh Head. He derived all he possessed from the emperors of the East and of the West; who were the great and powerful patrons by whom he was acknowledged as a god of gods upon earth.

The Seven Angels previous to the appearing of the Ancient of Days, as already shown, are the Seven Spirits of the Deity operating instrumentally through "the Powers that be". Now, what John sees and hears in vision, is a dramatic representation of what is to be transacted in the moves of the pieces upon the board by the HAND that manipulates them. The Powers are so many chessmen upon the great Babylonian chessboard, whose policy and movements do not originate from themselves, but "from the Nave;" whence issue the impulses which cause them to utter great voices, and to make moves, which are often disastrous, and even fatal to themselves; but which in no wise disturbs or impedes, but judiciously secures the final success of the incomparable Player in the Nave, who manipulates the game. Hence, when John "heard a great voice from the Nave" seventeen centuries before the beginning of the third woe, he heard an utterance symbolically prophetic of a declaration, proclamation, or manifesto, which should lead to the development of the events of the seven vials. The great voice he heard was evidently symbolical of this, because the words of the great voice were a command to the Seven Angels, and therefore to the Powers, to go forth and begin the work of pouring Out the wrath of the Deity into the earth.

The judgments of this last woe extend to the end of the Seventh Seal, or victory of the Saints over the Beast, his Image, his Mark, and Number of his Name (Apoc. 15:2). In the days of the voice of this woe when its calamities shall be complete, the Mystery of the Deity will be finished, as He hath declared the glad tidings to His servants the prophets (Apoc. 10:7). The Eloah of the heavens will then have set up the kingdom (Dan. 2:44) promised to them that obey him (Jam. 2:5); so that the kingdoms of this world will all have become Yahweh's and His Anointed's (Apoc. 11:15), who reigns for the Aions of the Aions.

I have already remarked, that the Nave not only consists of the ONE BODY "clothed" and "girded" with the Seven Spirits of the Deity in 'the time of the dead" at Christ's appearing; but, that it represents the Most Holy Kosmos, or Constitution of Things, upon earth, styled by the apostle, "oikonomia tou pleromatos ton kairon," the "Economy of the fullness of the times" (Eph. 1:10).

The Nave, or Most Holy Place, of the Mosaic Tabernacle, which was "the figure of the true," "which the Lord pitches, and not man" (Heb. 9:24; 8:2), was the enclosure containing the Ark of the Testimony, the Cherubim, and the smoking and flaming Glory of the Deity. In the true Holies which the Lord pitches, similar arrangements obtain. The tabernacle Moses erected was built of wood, curtains, gold, and so forth; but the building the Lord erects is raised up of living and enlightened beings, created in his own image, and after his own intellectual and moral likeness (1 Cor. 3:9,16; Eph .2:20,22; Heb. 3:2). These are the heavenlies in Christ" (Eph. 1:3)). The first is the heavenly, or the holy body, consisting of "the faithful in Christ Jesus," in the times preceding the advent of the Ancient of Days. The second is the most holy heavenly body, constituted of all who shall be accounted worthy to pass through the Vail, into incorruptibility and deathlessness; by being clothed upon with the "fine linen pure and bright;" and girded around the breast with the "golden girdle". Thus, we have the ONE BOD in two states - as it is before the Ancient of Days comes; and as it will be after that appearing.

The Four Living Ones full of eyes are representative of the Spirit manifestly encamped in the saints, as when they were anointed therewith in the Apostolic age, and the time immediately succeeding it. So long as the Stars of the Seven Golden Lightstands continued to shine, the Four Living Ones, as the encampment of the Spirit, occupy a place among the Apocalyptic symbols; but so soon as the lightstands of the Spirit are "removed out of their place" in the midst of the saints, the Symbolic Four Living Ones disappear from the scene. The last place they are observed in the history of the past, is in the period of the fourth seal (ch. 6:7). They are seen in ch. 7:11; but that is in a scene chronologically parallel with their appearance in this fifteenth chapter. They are not introduced into chapters eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, and thirteen. There are reasons for this which need not detain us here; but there is a reason for their reappearance in this chapter, which it is my business to produce.

The Seven Angels coming out from the Nave indicates that they are the Seven Elohistic constituents of the Nave "sent forth into all the earth". Before they issue forth thence as the Elohim, they are said to have been clothed and girded. The English Version omits to specify the tense or time of the verb: enthethumenoi, is the perfect participle passive; and so isperiezosmenoi, the former signifying, having been clothed in; and the latter, having been girded about. This implies, that there was a time in which they neither clothed, nor girded the Elohim. The unclothed and ungirded condition is characteristic of the dead; and also of those who come from the grave, and are condemned by "the Judge of the living and the dead", to walk naked, and be exposed to shame (ch. 16:15). These Seven Angels when clothed and girded, represent the two-and five-talent classes of the saints to whom will have been adjudged an entrance into the joy of their Lord (Matt. 25:21,23). Sentence of approval having been pronounced upon them, they are then "clothed upon with their house which is from heaven;" that "the mortal," or that which came forth from the grave, "might be swallowed up of life" (2 Cor. 5:2-4). Now, the Spirit gives this life that swallows up mortality, because of righteousness. It is an element of "the reward" bestowed in "the time of the dead" in recompense for that righteousness, which is fulfilled in them who walk after the Spirit, or in the Truth. The apostle assures such, that He who raised up the Christ will also quicken their mortal bodies" by His spirit (Rom. 8:4,10,11). Righteousness re-warded with incorruptibility and life is symbolized by "fine linen pure and bright", "white robes", and "walking with the Spirit in white, because worthy" (ch. 3:4,18; 4:4; 7:9,13,14; 19:8,14). This being the raiment with which the Seven Angels had been specially clothed, it is indicated, that they came to represent the approved saints, to whom authority and power were afterwards given, that they might go forth from the Nave, and "execute the judgment written" in all the earth.

"These things" is a phrase directing attention to the subject most recently treated of; "those things" to something more remote. Had the phrase those things been used, it would have referred us to the "Seven Angels having the Seven Last Plagues" mentioned in the first verse. After those things would have led to the conclusion, that the Nave of the Tabernacle was not opened until after all the wrath of the Deity contained in the Seven Vials was exhausted. This would have been equivalent to saying, that the Christ will not come, and the saints will not be raised, until the end of the outpouring of the Seventh Vial; and if neither of these events transpire until then, it is manifest that judgment will not be given to the saints at all; and that the destruction of the Beast and his Image must be looked for, if at all, by some other means! But opposed to this is the revelation that Christ comes in the Sixth Vial period; and that when he comes the 144,000 are seen with him on Mount Zion; so that they must have lived again (ch. 20:4), and been judged, and "clothed upon" in the interval between his coming and his appearance there. After they are manifested as "the approved," then judgment is given to them, that they may execute it upon the Beast and his Image; in the last portion of the Sixth, and in the whole of the period of the Seventh Vial

Yea verily; the works of YAHWEH Elohim in that great day of his wrath will be grand and marvelous. The kingdoms and empires of Europe and Asia will have been swept from the arena, as the chaff of the summer threshing floor. The popular sovereignties and universal suffrages of the Western Hemisphere will have reached a "destiny" so "manifest" that none will fail to see, that they are the mere devices of Satan for the perpetuation of his rule. "The kingdoms of this world will have become the kingdoms of YAHWEH and of His Christ, " personal and mystical; and as Moses sang, "YAHWEH shall reign for the Olahm and beyond;" or as the same is rendered in Apoc. 11:15, "He shall reign for the Aions of the Aions" - in the common version 'for ever and ever". He will have judged "among the nations, which will have been filled with corpses" (Psa. 110:6); and in so doing, "marvellous deeds will have been shown to Israel; by whose prowess the nations will have been confounded, and caused to lick the dust like a serpent" (Mic. 7:15-17).

The seven last plagues, in which has been filled up the wrath of the Deity, having by the end of the one thousand six hundred furlongs, or forty years of Micah, clarified the sea, and taught the inhabitants of the world righteousness (Isa. 26:9), the time will have arrived for the celebration of the FEAST OF TABERNACLES in the kingdom of the Deity. The present constitution of Antichristendom in church and state, with all blasphemous dissenting "abominations," in the time of this great feast will have no existence. They will all have been previously abolished as "lies, vanity, and things in which there is no profit" (Jer. 16:19), by the victorious saints, who in the time of the feast possess "the kingdom, and dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven" (Dan. 7:27). Not one rival dominion exists to dispute with them the sovereignty of the world; which henceforth is ruled in righteousness by them who had learned righteousness in faith and practice, in a previous state of tribulation and reproach. These are now the victors, standing triumphantly upon the arena of their conquests. In the days of their "patience," they kept the works of the Spirit to the end; in reward for which, they now receive authority over the nations, and power to rule them with a rod of iron (Apoc. 2:26,27). The sea, no longer mingled with fire, upon which they stand victorious, is a sea of peaceful nations, which have "beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks;" and abandoned forever the study of the most effectual means by which they can ruin and destroy one another. "Glory to the Deity in the highest heavens, over the earth peace, and goodwill among men, is now the order of the day. The glassy sea of nations is now irradiated with the glory of Yahweh, which shines through its translucent waters to its utmost bounds and lowest depths. Its nations are now "blessed in Abraham and his Seed," having been previously "justified by faith;" and "joined to Yahweh for a people to Him" (Gal. 3:8; Zech. 2:11). The twelve tribes of Jacob are no longer dispersed in the lands of their enemies. Not one of them is left a wanderer among the nations (Deut. 30:4); but all have returned to their possessions and rejoice before Yahweh their Elohim (Lev. 23:40). The nations, now enlightened, also rejoice with them; because their engraftment into their own olive tree has proved to be life from the dead to the world (Deut. 32:43; Rom.11:15).

The following is the song of Moses, which was sung by Moses and the Israelites, standing by the Red Sea, through which they had just passed; and which they now surveyed with feelings of triumph, as the tomb of Pharaoh's host. It is a memorial of the nation's deliverance from the Egyptians, and prophetic of its future salvation under the lead of the prophet like unto Moses, and the Saints.

The Apocalyptic sea is that aggregation of "many waters" Out of which the Beast having seven heads and ten horns arose (ch. 13:1); and upon which the Drunken Harlot-Mother of all the Gentile "Churches" sits (ch. 17:1,5,15). This sea of nations encircling the Mediterranean, or "Great Sea," is Apocalyptically exhibited in two states - in a state of storm; and in a state of transparent calm. When John stood upon its shore, and saw the Beast arise, it was in an uproarious and tempestuous agitation (Dan. 7:2). The dominions of the House of Esau, who lives by his sword (Gen. 27:40), do not arise in times of tranquillity and calm; these times ensue only when the tumult and tempest of war are hushed; and then the conqueror can stand upon it, and sing the song of victory. Dominions, in a world like this, can only be founded, and maintained by 'fire and brimstone". In the days of old, they were established by the sword, the spear, the battle-axe, and bow; but in modern times, victory is said to be on the side of the heaviest artillery; that is, where "the fire burning with brimstone" rages with the greatest intensity. Yahweh Tz'vaoth, in the days of Joshua, established His kingdom in the Holy Land, by the sword of Israel, strengthened by His judgments poured out upon the helpless inhabitants of the country: so also it is to be in the day of Jesus, called "the Day of his power;" the kingdom is to be established in the same country by "fire burning with brimstone" in the hands of Israel, commanded by the Saints; and strengthened with the Eternal Power, "who rideth upon the heaven in their help" (Deut. 33:26).

The question, then, in relation to the treading of the winepress is not where, but how long? How long is the smoke of the torment "from the glory of the Deity, and from his power" to ascend? In the eleventh verse the answer is eis ajonas aionon, unto aeons of aeons. This reminds one, that "it is the glory of the Deity to conceal a thing; but the honor of kings is to search out a matter". This answer, it is true, reveals the how long. It is to continue till the commencement of "the Economy of the fullness of times," commonly styled the Millennium: but still the question remains to be solved, How long from the reaping of the harvest of the earth by the Son of Man upon the white cloud, which puts the saints in possession of Mount Zion, and the end of the judgments when the Millennial Economy begins? The answer before us is "a thousand six hundred furlongs" off; that is,. a time of this length is the square of the time to be occupied in the execution of the judgment given, or committed, to the saints.

This fifteenth chapter is introductory to the sixteenth and following chapters to the twentieth in part inclusive. It treats of the beginning and the ending of the Seventh Trumpet, which is "the last trumpet", the complete sounding of which finishes "the Mystery of the Deity as he hath declared the glad tidings to his servants the prophets" (ch. 10:7).

The Little Open Scroll belongs to the Days of the Voice of the Seventh Trumpet, which are inclusive of "the Time of the End". From A.D. 1792 to the end of the "thousand and six hundred furlongs", or 40 years; A.D. 1908, or thereabouts. The events of this chapter are parallel with the Seventh Trumpet*.

The reader may easily conceive what an immense shedding of blood is implied by such a vintage as this. It is "the supper of the great God" prepared for the fowls of the heaven, who fill themselves with "the flesh of horses, and of them that sit upon them". The phrase "oceans of blood;" as expressive of the quantity shed in these extensive warlike operations of the Saints, or Angel of the Sickle, would hardly be an exaggeration. The blood which flows from the down-trodden armies of the nations, is represented as ascending to "the bridles of the horses for a thousand six hundred furlongs". This taken literally, would be about five feet deep, and two hundred miles long; but how broad we are left to imagine. But, as the literal is only symbolical of the real in this most ingeniously~devised prophecy, we need only inquire, what is signified by the phrase "came Out of the winepress even unto the bridles of their horses". The winepress judgments being identical with "the Supper of the Great God," which consummates the binding of the Dragon in the abyss, the terms of the one are expletive of the terms of the other. Hence, the more concise phrase, "the bridles of the horses," is interpreted by the words in ch. 19:18, "the flesh of horses, and of them that sit on them" - of them that hold the bridle. Thus the word bridle comes to represent the rider of the horse. Blood does not flow from the horses only; but the fierceness of the wrath falls also upon the bridle-men, or "bridles," who govern and maneuver them in battle; it comes even unto them.

Mount Zion is still the scene of the vision. Instrumental and vocal music gladdens the hearts and ears of the performers. As the Spirit predicted in Psa. 87:7, so it comes to pass; for "as well the singers as the players upon instruments are there." "Every' one of them" has his harp; for he is himself a "harp of the Deity," and therefore an instrument of joy (Apoc. 5:8; 15:2). The harp is an instrument used in giving thanks, in rejoicing, and in praising. To "hang the harp upon the willows," indicates great tribulation and distress; as in the present state of Israel, whose "harp is turned to mourning, and their organ into the voice of them that weep." So when torment and sorrow come upon Babylon, and she is found no more, "the voice of harpers, and musicians, and of pipers and trumpeters shall be heard no more at all in her." The absence of music shows that all joy has departed from a people; while its presence indicates the reverse.

The personal redemption of these thousands had been completed before they appeared on Mount Zion. They had recently emerged from the dust of death; and had passed through the ordeal of judgment; and being afterwards transformed, and made like to the King of Glory' by the quickening energy of his power, they were prepared truthfully to describe themselves in a song, which no one could possibly sing, who had not been the subject of the like condition.

18. And another angel came out from the Altar, having power over the fire, and he shouted with a great outcry to him having the sharp sickle, saying, Thrust in thy sharp sickle, and cut off the clusters of the earth, for her grapes are fully ripe.

15. "And another angel came out of the nave, vociferating with a loud voice to him sitting upon the cloud, Thrust in thy sickle, and reap, because for thee hath arrived the hour of the reaping; for the harvest of the earth hath been ripened. 16. And he that is sitting upon the cloud, cast his sickle upon the earth, and the earth was reaped".

The principal emendation of this verse is the rendering of the word akolouthei, which in the common version is incorrectly translated in the plural, as if "their works" were the nominative to the verb. The "Bible Union" Version, and all its "authorities," have fallen into the same grammatical error. In their attempted exposition of the words "their works follow with them" they add, "as an attendant train; so speedy is their recognition and reward". They then call Milton's poetry to their aid, saying:

This is parallel with ch. 13:10, in a certain degree. In this text the words have reference to the subject-matter of "the patience and the faith;" while in verse 12, it indicates the persons themselves who are specially related to this patience and faith.

10. "He also shall drink of the wine of the wrath of the Deity, which hath been prepared without mixture in the cup of his indignation; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the Holy Angels, and in the presence of the Lamb.

I have styled this angel "the Second," because the one that succeeds it is called "a third". The first angel, which must, of course, precede the second, is the messengerhood engaged in "drawing the bow," or sounding the good of the aeon (aion) in mid-heaven, after the manifestation of the Son of Deity upon Mount Zion. The second angel is constituted of the party of action by which the Roman Question can alone be solved. The purpose of their mission is the overthrow of Babylon, whose fall is proclaimed in the aorist, or indefinite tense, epesen, epese, which declares the event without specifying the exact time. This, however, is certain, that the Roman Babylon will not fall until the proclamation in mid-heaven shall have been announced, saying, "Come out of her my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues. For her sins have reached until the heaven (achri tou ouranou), and the Deity remembers her iniquities" (ch. 18:5). The people here addressed are the eight thousand Jews in Rome, and the tens of thousands in the kingdoms of the Beast; who, if they remain in her, are warned, that they will be treated as the enemies of the Great Shepherd of the Sheep.

Under the Mosaic Law, which is "the pattern of the things in the heavens," the Pentecostian Feast of Firstfruits of the third month was succeeded in the first day of the seventh month by the Memorial of the blowing of trumpets, a Sabbath of holy convocation - inviting to a holy rest and assembly. Between this Memorial and the offering of "an offering made by fire unto Yahweh," was an interval of ten days. This tenth day of the seventh month was yom hakkiphpurim, a Day of Coverings- a day on which the sins of the past were being covered over by fiery expiation. In the English Version this is styled the Day of Atonement. But before this day of affliction, in which all who did not afflict them-selves on account of their transgressions, were to be cut off from Yahweh's people, the trumpets blew a memorial blast, to remind the people that the hour, or month, of the annual judgment and covering of sins had arrived.

With what class of women had they not been defiled or contaminated? It must be remembered that amongst these 144,000 will be many women, perhaps one half the number of the redeemed. It cannot be, therefore, in a natural sense, that they were not so defiled. The whole company of the redeemed, men and women, are "virgins"; for they constitute the Lamb's gune, woman, or wife; whom Paul was solicitous, as far as he had to do with the presentation, to "present as a chaste virgin to Christ" (2 Cor. 11:2; Eph. 5:27). In what sense, then, is this chaste virgin company undefiled with women? Who are these women?

"Many waters" are Apocalyptically defined as signifying "peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues." But of these there are two classes; the one class consisting of those upon which the Great Harlot sitteth; and whose body politic is symbolized by a Scarlet-colored Beast, full of Names of Blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns (ch. 17:1,15,3): and the other class, of the "great multitude" in the heaven, "which no man could number, out of, ek, all nations, and kindreds, and peoples, and tongues, standing before the throne, and in the presence of the Lamb, having been clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands" (ch. 7:9). The sound of the many waters cannot proceed from the heaven, unless they be first in the heaven. The many waters of the heaven are the 144,000, giving utterance to their joy. Standing on Mount Zion with the Lamb, they are "in the place of Yahweh's holiness," which is "the heaven." John does not record, in this verse, what the many waters said. It was not necessary; for he had already made the record in ch. 7:10-12. The white robed multitude, having exchanged the sword of judgment for the palm of victory, shouted with a loud voice, saying, "The salvation be ascribed to him that sitteth upon the throne of our Deity, and to the Lamb! And all the angels stood in the circle of the throne (kuklo tou thronou) and of the elders, and of the four living ones, and they fell before the throne upon their face, and worshipped the Deity, saying, Amen! The blessing and the glory', and the wisdom, and the thanksgiving, and the honor, and the power, and the might, be to our Deity for the aeons of the aeons. Amen!"

In commenting upon this, bishop Newton remarks, “If any dissent from the stated and authorized forms, they are condemned and exe?cuted as heretics; and in consequence of that they are no longer suffered ‘to buy or sell;’ they are interdicted from traffic and commerce, and all the benefits of civil society. So Roger Hoveden relates of William the Conqueror, that he was so dutiful to the pope that ‘he would not permit any one in his power to ‘buy or sell’ anything, whom he found disobe?dient to the Apostolic Throne.’ So the canon of the council of Lateran under the pope Alexander III., made against the Waldenses and Al?bigenses, enjoins, upon pain of anathema, that ‘no man presume to en?tertain or cherish them in his house or land, or exercise traffic with them.’ The synod of Tours in France, under the same pope, orders under the like intermination, that ‘no man should presume to receive or assist them, no, not so much as to hold any communion with them in ‘sel?ling or buying,’ that being deprived of the comfort of humanity, they may be compelled to repent of the error of their way.’ Pope Martin V., in his bull set out after the council of Constance, commands in like man?ner, that ‘they permit not the heretics to have houses in their districts, or enter into contracts, or carry on commerce, or enjoy the comforts of hu?manity with Christians.’ ‘In this request,’ as Mede observes, ‘the False Prophet ‘spake as a dragon’.” For the Dragon Diocletian published a like edict, that no one should sell or administer anything to the Christtians, unless they had first burnt incense to the gods, as Bede also rehear-seth in the hymn of Justin Martyr:

All the events represented in this fourteenth chapter are in the future; for nothing having the least resemblance to them has ever been transacted upon the earth since the Deity gave the Apocalypse to Jesus Christ, who sent and signified it by his angel to John in Patmos. But, though all in that which is hereafter to become history, it is not unconnected with the things treated of in previous parts of the Apocalypse.

2. And I heard a sound from the heaven as a sound of many waters, and as a sound of loud thunder. And I heard a voice of harpers harping with their harps.

Upon the Seven Heads of the Beast of the Sea is “A NAME OF BLASPHEMY” (ch. 13:1). “This is the Name of the Beast” enthroned upon the Seven Hills, which is the topographic signification of the Seven Heads (ch. 17:9). This name belongs to the Beast and is represented by a man’s number; and a man’s number is significant of the man’s name to which the number belongs. In other words, the name is indicative of the Man himself — the Image of the Sixth Head of the Beast, adored by the Pseudoprophet Hierarchy, by which he was created — quem creant adorant.

the Prince-Bishop Daniel returned from St. Petersburg to Montenegro, he descended, without previous notice, from his mountains upon the Turkish garrison at Zabijak, and in the night slaughtered all he found there. Thus the war that followed was a Russo~Montenegnn experiment against Turkey, remotely and unintentionally excited by the Frogs. The fire thus kindled excited the wrathfulness of Austria against the Sultan. Count Leiningen was sent from Vienna in great haste as the bearer of a threatening message, demanding the termination of hostilities against Montenegro. The Sultan obeyed orders and things were replaced as before, to the chagrin of Russia who had excited it. The Autocrat had hoped that a general war would ensue between the Turkish government and the provinces of the empire. His Bessarabian troops were ready to enter the Moldo-Wallachian provinces, and the Sevastopol fleet was equipped for Constantinople. The pacific termination, therefore, of the struggle greatly annoyed Russia, which then demanded the independence of Montenegro, which, if granted, would have been equivalent to a transfer of its mountain fastness from Turkey to Russia, as there can be no real independence for a horde.

A prophet, in the New Testament use of the word, is not confined to the idea of one foretelling future events. In the larger sense of the word, a prophet is a spiritual allocutionist; or one who speaks to others with authority upon spiritual subjects. It is therefore equivalent to a teacher who speaks to men to edification, and exhortation, and comfort (1 Cor. 14:3). But of teachers or prophets, there are two kinds; the one true; and the other, false. True and false teachers are styled spirits in 1 John 4:1, who saith, "Beloved, believe not every spirit; but try the spirits whether they be of the Deity; because many false prophets are gone out into the world;" and Peter refers to these in 2 Peter 2:1, saying, 'there were false prophets among the people, even as there will be false teachers among you, who will privily bring in damnable heresies".

The emperor of the Frogs not only required the withdrawal of the Austrians from the Roman States, but that His Apostolic Majesty should join with him in causing certain reforms in the administration of the government. The Austrian mouth expressed its readiness to recommend administrative reforms to the Papal Government, but it would never, even if a war should result from its refusal, co-operate in an attempt to enforce the execution of such reforms. In regard to the occupation of the Roman States, the Imperial Mouth declared that it would withdraw its troops from Bologna and Ancona at the same moment that the French should quit Rome and Civita Vecchia; but that the right of garrison in Commachio, Ferrara, and Piacenza, which was sacred to Austria by treaty, should be maintained.

Greek Catholic under Russia; Latin Catholic under Austria and the Pope; and Protestant under Prussia. Having made this arrangement, they declared their readiness to receive into their holy alliance all the powers (the Ten Horns of the Beast) who should solemnly avow what they styled, "the sacred principles" that had dictated it.

Such is the great and undeniable political fact, which is as much the subject of the prophecy of the sixth vial, as the drying up of the Ottoman power, and the coming of Christ. It was shown to John, that in the sixth vial period there would be a power of no little influence, whose symbol was the Frog. If then it can be established that the Frogs are armorially representative of the French power, we shall have a harmony between historical and present facts and the prophecy as one of the great signs of the times, which no sane and candid observer will venture to neglect or dispute. The testimony to establish this is as follows:

A mouth is Apocalyptically a symbol of government, through which the political organization of which it is the executive, gives expression to its policy. In this remarkable text, three such mouths are indicated, as first, the Mouth of the Dragon Polity; second, the Mouth of the Beast Polity; and third, the Mouth of the False Prophet Polity. THE Mouth OF THE DRAGON is termed in ch. 12:15, the mouth of the Serpent; and in v. 16, the mouth of the Dragon: one and the same mouth, because the Serpent and Dragon indicate the same polity - sin imperially manifested in the flesh: the symbolical Devil and Satan; and enthroned in CONSTANTINOPLE.

The revolutionary wars of Europe, which had darkened the kingdom of the Beast, and scorched the worshippers of his Image with great heat, had passed away without seriously injuring the power of the Turks. It is true, that under the operation of the second vial, the French had conquered Egypt in 1798; but they were expelled by the British in 1801, who gave up the country to the Sultan; so that the political state of the Little Horn of the Goat's dominion became as before. This was so manifest that a Protestant writer in the year after, in speculating upon this vial, expressed his wonder how the prophecy was to be fulfilled; and a dominion, still so mighty in arms and population, could be wasted and dried up. "By what means," says he, "the Turkish empire shall be reduced to this helpless state (an empire formerly distinguished for its enthusiastic loyalty, ferocity and valor; and which is even at this day -1802 - as populous as any other upon earth, the Chinese excepted), is not intimated in this verse; and will perhaps remain concealed until the events themselves shall remove the veil However, this is certain, from the evident purport of the text, that a very extraordinary indifference or disaffection in the people to the government must take place to fulfil this part of the prophecy".

The Desolator is unquestionably the Little Horn of the Goat, which, in the days of Constantine, transferred its residence and Court to Constantinople, while its Senate continued to hold its sittings in Rome. In the days of Jesus and the apostles, Rome was the residence of Caesar and his Court, as well as of the Senate. It was then the exclusive capital of the Little Horn of the Goat; but, in the subsequent division of the Roman empire into the Greek and Latin empires, Rome became in the days of Charlemagne, the capital of the Little Horn, having "Eyes like the eyes of a man, and a Mouth speaking very great things" (Dan. 7:8,20); while Constantinople continued the sole capital of the Little Horn of the Goat (Dan. 8:9).

13. "And I saw out of the Mouth of the Dragon, and out of the Mouth of the Beast, and out of the Mouth of the False Prophet, three Unclean Spirits like to Frogs (for they are Spirits of Demons working wonders) go forth unto the kings of the earth, and of the whole habitable, to gather them together for the war of that great day of the Deity who is almighty.

13. "And I saw out of the Mouth of the Dragon, and out of the Mouth of the Beast, and out of the Mouth of the False Prophet, three Unclean Spirits like to Frogs (for they are Spirits of Demons working wonders) go forth unto the kings of the earth, and of the whole habitable, to gather them together for the war of that great day of the Deity who is almighty.

The intense sufferings of the Beast's Image-worshippers under the outpouring of the wrath of the fourth and fifth vials, is forcibly expressed by the saying, "they gnawed their tongues for the pain". Illustrative of their great misery, Sir Walter Scott's account is appropriate. "The French army," says he, "was poured into some foreign country by forced marches; without any previous arrangement of stores or magazines for their maintenance; and with the purpose of maintaining them solely at the expense of the inhabitants. This species of war was carried on at the least possible expense to his (Napoleon's) treasury; but at the greatest possible expenditure of human life, and the incalculable increase of human misery". "The officers gave the soldiers authority to secure supplies by what way; called la maraude, or plunder. When marching through a thinly peopled country, or when the natives and peasants offered resistance, then the soldiers became irritated at the danger they sometimes incurred in collecting provisions. Relentless and reckless, besides indulging in every species of violence, they increased their own distresses by destroying what they could not use. Famine and sickness were not long in visiting an army which traversed by forced marches a country exhausted of provisions. These stern attendants followed the French columns as they straggled on. Without hospitals and without magazines, every straggler who could not regain his ranks fell a victim to hunger, to weather, to weariness, or the vengeance of an incensed peasantry. In this manner the French army suffered woes, which till these tremendous wars had never been the lot of troops in hostilities carried on between civilized nations".

The Hour of Judgment, in which "the Man of War" celebrated by Moses in his song, develops himself as the Man of Destiny, is characterized in its incipiency, by the preparation of a people to whom judgment may be given. This preparation, which is antitypical of that in 1789-'90, and at the termination also of a symbolic period of 1260 days, consists in a resurrection and ascension process. This resurrection and ascension are greater than the resurrection and ascension of the two tormenting prophets; for the antitype and substance are always grander and more intrinsically important than type and shadow. The earth is to be made to cast out, or bring forth, literally, the feeble; but poetically, the dead - aretz rephaim tapil (Isa. 26:19). These feeble ones all appear before the bema, or tribunal of justice; not before the thronos, throne or seat of dominion: and there, having been previously made capable of so doing, by the impressment of their identity, they every one give account of themselves to Christ, "the Judge of the living and dead". The approved among them being accepted as "holy, and unblamable and unreprovable in his sight," are arrayed in the symbolical "fine linen pure and bright" - that is, what Paul terms in Rom. 8:11; 1 Cor. 15:54 and 2 Cor. 5:4, to thneton, "the mortal" is quickened in the twinkling of an eye; and in this momentary operation, raised from corruption to incorruption; from dishonor to glory; from weakness or feebleness to power; from earthiness to spirituality: so that, being clothed upon with the house from heaven, "THE MORTAL" is "swallowed up of the life" - hina katapothe to thneton hupo tes zoes. The life-power which descends upon it, permeates it in all its substance; so that "the corruptible" becomes incorruptible, and "the mortal" becomes immortal; and the raising of the "building from the Deity, the house not made with hands," is complete.

The subject of the outpouring of the fifth angel's vial of wrath, was "the Throne of the Beast." After giving the reader this information, it is added, that "it was his kingdom which had been darkened" - egeneto he basileia autou eskotomene: which was in effect saying, that the work of the preceding vials consummated in the fifth, had darkened the kingdom of the Beast.

The judgments or plagues of the Fourth Trumpet smote so as to darken a third part of the sun, moon and stars; so that for a third part of the day, and of the night, there was no light. This has been expounded in my second volume, and needs only to be referred to by way of reminding the reader, that the sun, moon and stars were there interpreted of the Imperial Catholic Constitution of the Western Third of the Roman Empire; which was superseded in Rome, by the Seventh Head, or Gothic kingly form of government; after the fall of which, Rome's political day and night continued darkened two hundred and forty years, when it again shone forth imperially, as the capital of "THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE," founded by Charlemagne. The crowning of this conqueror by the Pope in Rome "emperor of the West," terminated the Sun's ternary eclipse; dark spots have since crossed its disc, but with the exception of these, the Imperial Sun of the Two-Horned Beast's Image empire, has been subjected to no darkening, worthy of Apocalyptic notice, till the epoch of the fourth and fifth vials, which have special reference thereto.

At this crisis, as if to manifest his contempt, and to mark his defiance of all the potentates of Europe, Napoleon gave an extraordinary proof of confidence in the plenitude of his power, in the publication of the following decree, which signalized the approaching outpouring of the Fifth Vial, dated May 1808. "Whereas the temporal sovereign of Rome has refused to make war against England, and the interest of the two kingdoms of Italy and Naples ought not to be intercepted by a hostile power; and whereas the donation of Charlemagne, our illustrious predecessor, of the countries which form the Holy See, was for the good of Christianity, and not for that of the enemies of our holy religion: We therefore decree, that the duchies of Urbino, Ancona, Macerata and Camerino, be forever united to the kingdom of Italy: to which kingdom all cardinal prelates and natives of these districts are commanded to return by the 5th of June, on pain of confiscation of goods". This singular and salutary exercise of despotic power called forth a declaration from the Pope in which he maintained the rights of his See, and earnestly protested against the intended spoliation. This, however, did not prevent the entry of a French army, which took possession of all the strong places in the ecclesiastical territories. And this was followed by the annexation of Parma, Placentia, and Tuscany to the French empire; so that the kingdom of Italy was now guarded on every side by the empire.

War was renewed between France and England May 18, 1803, by which the wrath upon the sea was continued and increased.

The Seven Spirits of the Deity had all gone forth from the Nave on a mission of Divine wrath upon the inhabitants of the Apocalyptic earth (ch. 8:13). While the first angel was operating in France, the other six were not idle spectators of the flesh-devouring phenomena of the "grievous and malignant ulcer". Had the six been inoperative elsewhere, the other powers of the Great City would have left France to perish of the ulcer, while they maintained a strict neutrality, and confined themselves exclusively to their own internal affairs. But this, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, in harmony with the Apocalyptic program, is preparing things for their appointed and predetermined end, would not allow. They had to adopt a policy that would implicate them in the dire and woeful calamities of the time. All the powers of antichristendom were guilty before Heaven - they had all, in the 1260 years of the Papacy that had passed since its institution by Justinian, "committed fornication with her;" and their populations had all "been made drunk with the wine of her fornication" (ch.17:2; 18:3): why, then, should they not be made to "drink the wine of the wrath of the Deity poured un-mixed in the cup of his indignation", as well as the same class of worshippers of the Beast's Image in the Gallic Tenth of the Great City? No reason to the contrary can be adduced: and therefore, the Seven Spirits of the Deity were all engaged with the several powers of the earth and habitable in preparing a situation, which in due time and order, would bring them all under the operation of the wrath decreed against them.

This first angel is the only one of the seven of whom it is individually testified that "he went fortli". They all went forth together, and formed the situation. They did not successively go forth from the Nave, when the time came for each to pour out. If they had, a distinct situation would have required to be created for each; whereas all seven being represented as going forth together, it was only necessary to say of the first "he went forth" as the co-operative work of the twenty-one months laid a foundation, broad and deep. for the combined operation of the first five; and the successive out pouring of the sixth and seventh.

"And I heard from the Angel of the Waters, saying, Righteous, O Lord, art thou, who art, and who wast, and who art coming, because thou hast decreed these things! For they have poured out the blood of saints and prophets, and thou hast given to them blood to drink; for they are worthy. And I heard from another out of the Altar, saying, Yea, 0 Lord, the Almighty Deity, true and righteous are thy judgments" - Verses 4-7.

“My reward is with me”. “Behold, Adonai Yahweh will come with strong hand, and his arm shall rule for him; behold, his reward is with him, and his work before him” — the work of what yet remains of the Sixth, and the whole of the Seventh Vial. Then will be the time when this exposition will be appreciated at its real value; and its author be rewarded according to what he hath sown. Until this great crisis he is contented to wait, knowing that the criticism of the Judge of the living and the dead, will be without partiality, malicious envy, or hypocrisy. The work has been faithfully and honestly executed; and therefore, when “He who testifieth the things” expounded, “saith, surely, I come suddenly; Amen,” the author can say heartily with the apostle himself, “Even so, come Lord Jesus; Amen”.

The conclusion of the whole matter is that there shall be no more any curse upon the earth and upon them who inhabit it. The Eternal Wisdom and Power did not create the world that it might be forever under a curse. A curse is only an incidental occurrence, or casualty, in the Divine purpose; which was to erect a splendid habitation here fit for Him to reside in; surrounded by neighbors, all of whom should be intelligent, wise, faithful, and affectionate, sons with whom He could freely associate and enjoy life. This was His ultimate purpose in Creation as He has revealed it in this wonderful prophecy given to the Anointed Jesus; and by him communicated to the servants of the Deity, through his beloved disciple in Patmos. What is a week’s curse of seven thousand years compared with an eternity of blessedness to follow? The curse of this Millennary Week is a mere incident in the situation, turned to good account by the wisdom of Him who imposed it. The occasion of the curse was the transgression of the Divine law by the “very good” nature formed in and of the dust of the ground. “Cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken; for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return”. So long, then, as the Sin-Nature continues to inhabit the earth there must be sorrow, toil, and death; for the sentence pronounced upon the sinning nature declares the continuance of the curse to be in all the days of its life.

The names upon the foundation-stones of the city wall, indicate that each stone is representative of an apostle, as a foundation-element of the New Jerusalem Body Politic. Each of these great polished gems, or precious “living stones”, would be beautiful alone; but how much more beautiful when decorated, embellished, or adorned, by all manner of precious stones beside. The significance of this symbol is expressed in Paul’s words to them in Thessalonica whom he had been instrumental in “sealing in their foreheads,” and had brought into fellow-citizenship with the saints of Israel. “What,” saith he, “is our hope, or joy, or crown of rejoicing? Are not even ye before our Lord Jesus Christ in his presence? Ye are our glory and joy” (1 Thess. 2:19,20). They were not “wood, hay, and stubble,” but “gold, and silver, and precious stones”. Such destructible materials as wood, hay, and stubble; or ignoble vessels of wood and earth, are useless; and unfit for incorporation in the glorified Bride of the Lamb; it is only those who can stand fire “in a day of Inspection,” en hemera episkopes, who will find themselves the “stones of fire” by which she is adorned for her Divine husband. Such were many, not all, of the apostles’ converts to the faith. They will rejoice together in the presence of Christ, the Jasper Light and Wall of the great city; and those who have been brought to the obedience of the faith by an apostle, or by the apostolic teaching, and are declared worthy in the day of fiery revelation (1 Cor. 3:13); will be to an apostle-foundation gem of sparkling glory the garnishment of precious stones upon the foundations of the city.

The Spirit’s cubical wife of 144 cubits is the Imperial Governess of the nations for a thousand years. She descends from heaven in the manner explained; and every one of her heavenly constituents is a king and a priest of the Deity — “they shall be priests of the Deity and of the Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years” (ch. 20:6); “and they shall see his face; and his Name shall be in their foreheads. And there shall be no night there; and they need no candle nor light of the sun; for YAHWEH ELOHIM giveth them light; and they shall reign for the Aions of the Aions,” or the thousand years (ch. 22:5). The darkness and the light are the same to them (Psa. 139:12); for they are no longer flesh and blood, or earthy bodies, but Spirit, because “born from above”. Hence, there can be no night to them; for they will be the cloud and smoke by day, and the shining of a flaming fire by night, created by the Spirit upon every dwelling place of Mount Zion, and upon her assemblies (Isa. 4:5).

The wood produced fruit and leaves. A tree without fruit may be very beautiful to look at, but would not be life-sustaining; and a tree without leaves would be dead, or in the winter of its existence. A wood of trees producing fruit every month, or all the year round; and covered with beautiful unfading leaves: or in the words of Solomon, “an orchard of pomegranates with pleasant fruits; cypress with spikenard, and saffron; calamus and cinnamon, with all trees of frankincense; myrrh and aloes, with all the chief spices” — is a soul-inspiring symbol of the out-flowing, fragrant, genial, and happifying, influences of the New Jerusalem Paradise in the healing principles brought to bear upon the nations in its administration of the affairs of the subjected world.

The Broadspace of the New Jerusalem is the four-square area within the Wall. We read of no rows of habitations dividing the intramural space into avenues, and streets, broad or narrow. The Broadspace is constituted of all “the wise” who shine as the brightness of the firmament; and of “the stars” who have turned many to righteousness (Dan. 12:3): in other words, of “the general assembly — ecclesia of the Firstborns — spirits of just ones who have been made perfect” (Heb. 12:23).

In the things communicated to Ezekiel by the Spirit of Christ, he saw much that he could not discern, or penetrate to the bottom of, from a lack, common to all the prophets, of what Paul terms “spiritual understanding”, in Col. 1:9. They prophesied of the grace and truth to come through Jesus Christ, and inquired and searched diligently to find out, if possible, what the Spirit signified by the things they were commanded to write; but they were informed, that it was not for their special information that what they saw and heard was made known to them; but that they ministered as prophets the things they wrote concerning “the sufferings of the Christ, and the glory that should follow, “ for the use of those to whom the Gospel of the Kingdom should afterwards be preached by the apostles and the bride; into which things the angels desire to look (John 1:17; 1 Pet. 1:10,12).

When John was commanded by an angel to measure the temple, the altar, and the worshippers therein, the measuring reed given to him was “like to a rod,” the symbol of affliction and down-treading to the Holy City by the Gentiles of the unmeasured court, for the long period measured by it, and now happily soon to expire (ch. 11:1,2). But in the measurement of the Holy City, when the down-treading is no more, the measurer is not a man in the flesh, but an angel; nor is his measuring reed, a rod of affliction, but a reed of gold. This is the most precious of metals, and symbolical of the most precious things pertaining to the saints. But the gold of the city is more precious than the finest and purest gold current among men, for “the city is pure gold, like to clear crystal;” and “the broadway of the city is pure gold, as it were transparent crystal”. The gold of the reed is no exception, nor anywise inferior to the gold of the city. Whatever is measured by it has attained to the fullness of perfection, both of magnitude, number, structure, and intellectual and moral attributes. “The Almighty shall be thy gold, and treasures of silver to thee”. This will be practically illustrated when the saints, inspected and approved at the judgment seat, are born of Spirit from above — the transmutation of a baser metal into gold.

As many pearls as Gates — twelve; and at each gate an angel; upon each pearl, a name inscribed of one of the tribes of the Commonwealth of Israel: and three of the twelve gates on each side of the city, situated foursquare.

2. In the midst of its broad space, and on each side of the stream, was a wood of life producing twelve fruits, through one month, yielding its separate fruit: and the leaves of the wood were for the healing of the nations.

Again, the Spirit said to Jeremiah, “I will make thee to this people a fenced brazen wall, and they shall fight against thee, but they shall not prevail”. Also, as quoted before, He styles himself a wall of fire round about Jerusalem. The Bride, then, composed of them who find favor in the resurrection-epoch, is a wall; and the structure of that wall is jasper-like spirit. The Yahweh-Spirit, as the wall of the legislative and executive body of the kingdom, encloses all its members; who, having been “baptized into the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” are “in the Deity the Father, and in the Lord Jesus;” and being in him, “walk in him” faithfully and are born from above — are walled or enclosed in him with a wall so lofty and great in dignity and power, that nothing can enter within it that is not of the same structure intellectually, morally, and materially, as itself.

Now the heavens of this new economy are the successor of those that fled from the Elohistic forces of the Eternal Spirit sitting upon the Great White Throne in Zion; and for which no vacant spot is found upon earth for their continued existence. In the new heavens nothing can find place but Elohistic Spirit; for flesh and blood, which are corruptible, cannot inherit the kingdom of the Deity, which is indestructible, ever-continuing, and to be left to no other people, as successors of those who establish it in the hour of premillennial judgment (Dan. 2:44; 1 Cor. 15:50). These Heavens, which destroy and rejoice over Babylon the Great, and transform the constitution of “the Air” upon which the terrific judgments of the Seventh Vial exhaust themselves, are bright with the glory of the Deity, which radiating from Zion, enlightens the world. In them the Sun of Righteousness is the orb of perpetual day; and his Bride, the Moon and Constellations, which reflect his splendor. In these heavens there is “glory to the Deity in the highest;” nor is there anything unclean, or that worketh abomination, or loves and invents a lie. On the contrary, “they declare the glory of Ail; and the expanse showeth the work of his hands”. They that be wise are the bright expanse; and they that turn many to righteousness, the stars of olahm and beyond (Dan. 12:3). Their happiness and honor will be to “show forth the praises of him who hath called them out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Pet. 2:9): so that as children of the light, and of the day (1 Thess. 5:5) “day unto day will utter speech; and night unto night will show knowledge. There will be no speech, and no words, where their voice is not heard. Their line is gone out in all the earth; and their words to the ends of the world. Among them he hath set a tent for the Sun; and he, as a bridegroom coming out from his chamber, will be joyful as a mighty man to run the course. His going forth is from the end of the heavens, and his circuit unto the ends thereof; and there is nothing hidden from his heat” (Psa. 19:1-7). Paul quoted from this beautiful passage in his letter to the saints in Rome, ch. 10:18, and applied the fourth verse as predictive of the universality of the apostolic proclamation. But this was not all that the prophecy intended. How much more fully will it be accomplished when Christ and all the prophets, apostles, and saints, accepted and approved of him, shall have brought all nations into the blessedness of Abraham and his Seed.

But flesh and blood, or Sin’s flesh, is radically bad. When Paul subjected the nature he possessed in common with all the race of men, to an enlightened scrutiny, he declared that “in his flesh dwelt no good thing”. He felt that he bore about a loathsome, leprous, nature, which he styled “a vile body;” so that it caused him to exclaim, “0 wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from this body of death?” (Rom. 7:18,24; Phil. 3:21). Such a nature is incurable. It is essentially turbulent, rebellious, and prone to evil; and can only be controlled by the power of Divine principles, or an iron despotism. When either of these are relaxed, it becomes presumptuous, and hostile to authority in doctrine and government. Nations that in the beginning of the Millennial Aion had been “joined to Yahweh and became his people,” will be represented in the end of that Aion, by a generation practically unacquainted with the torment of the judgment hour, when their sea was mingled with fire. Seducers will arise among them, and lead them into revolt. This creates a crisis, in which flesh and blood nations are annihilated; and caused to cease for ever from the earth: whereby is at length fulfilled the saying addressed to Israel in Jer. 30:11, “though I make a full end of all nations whither I have scattered thee, yet will I not make a full end of thee”. When this full end is made, the immortal inhabitants of the earth will be able to say, in the words of this prophecy, “the sea is no more”.

The apostle informs us in the ninth verse, that he was presented with a view of the Bride, the Lamb’s wife, that great city, the Holy Jerusalem, by “one of the seven angels having the seven vials full of the seven last plagues”. The reason of this reference to the vial-angels here, is because the manifestation of the Bride belongs to “the time of the dead” when they are judged, and the approved and chosen receive the reward. This is the time of the Bride’s adorning, and investment with the fine linen of incorruption, clean and bright, in recompense according to her deeds. And as this adorning transpires at the coming of the Ancient of Days, which occurs under the outpouring of the vial upon the Euphratean Power in preparation of her way, that is, under the sixth; so it would be the sixth angel that shows John the bride. He is quite emphatic in stating what he saw; unusually so. He is not content to say, “I saw;” but he must say. “I John saw”. And he may truly say this; for when the Bride is manifested in the time of the dead, he, John, the beloved disciple himself, will see her with his own eyes; for he will be one of her constituents in glory, as he was formerly “in tribulation and patience” (ch. 1:9).

The reason given why a New Heaven and a New Earth are introduced is “because the Former Heaven and the Former Earth had passed away”. The Millennial Constitution of the World, as may be perceived from Isa. 65, is not perfect. It will be a great advance upon both the old Mosaic, and the Times of the Gentiles; but it will fall far short of the constitution and order of things beyond the Thousand Years.

In connection with this Great White Throne, John saw other thrones. “I saw thrones,” saith he, “and they sat upon them, and judgment had been given unto them” — a principal throne encompassed by other thrones. His vision of the thrones is more fully described in ch. 4. They are the thrones of the House of David occupied by “the Firstfruits unto the Deity and the Lamb,” who “sit with the Son on his throne” (ch. 3:21). It is the throne of the new kingdom ruling over all without a rival. John’s position in the vision when he saw this great throne of the redeemer, and the redeemed, who had “washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb,” and therefore communicated whiteness in vision to all things identified with them — is when he and they had “executed the judgment written” and “given to them;” and were able to “rest from their labors” (ch. 14:13). “Judgment had been given, edothe, to them sitting upon the thrones” he saw; and as the result of its execution by the means represented in the military array of ch. 19 they had cast down the thrones of the kings of the nations, and had appropriated their “many diadems” to themselves (Dan. 7:9; Apoc. 19:12). The thrones were now theirs who had conquered them; “and they sat upon them” ruling the subject nations (ch. 2:26,27). And so thoroughly and absolutely had they overcome “the kings of the earth and their armies,” that there remained no place, space, or country, where they could hold their own. The earth was conquered to the ends of it, and all the nations were inherited by the King of kings and Lord of lords (Psa. 2:8). ln the words of the Seventh Vial, “every island had fled away, and the mountains were not found” — the kingdoms and empires of the world had disappeared as completely as the empires of Alexander and Napoleon I.

The heaven thus opened is the same referred to in ch. 19:11. In this place he informs us, that the heaven in which he saw the white horse cavalry had been opened. If it had not previously been opened he would not have seen that body of horse therein. Hence, the time of the scene is subsequent to the opening of the heaven, and the appearance of the Lamb with the 144,000 upon Mount Zion, in the terminal epoch of the sixth vial.

The Apocalypse was showed to John, not alone for the benefit of the servants of the Deity in the Times of the Gentiles; but also for the same class among the subjects of the Millennial Kingdom. Eighteen hundred years ago, John wrote of the dead of the First Resurrection, multitudes of whom had not then been born; yet, he says concerning them, “I saw the dead small and great stand before the Deity”. Upon the same principle he speaks of “the Rest of the Dead,” who had not come into existence either in, or before, the time he wrote, or in the Times of the Gentiles, or before the resurrection of the Firstfruits. The “rest” is the remainder of a whole number of certain dead ones, to whom eternal life is to be imparted by the Son. The Firstfruits are only the earnest of the harvest to be gathered in. The Millennial Generations will have the, happy assurance that, though the resurrection of a Firstfruits had passed, there would be a resurrection of a remainder to complete the whole number originally given by the Father to the Son.

The proclamation of good in midheaven by the Saints (and there is none else to do it) is not only to warn the nations of what is about to break forth upon them, but so to operate upon the scattered Israelites, as to make them willing to acknowledge Jesus as David's Son and Lord, and to place themselves at his disposal; so that whatever he, as the Prophet like unto Moses, may command to be done, they will readily and zealously obey under the direction, orders, and superintendence of those of his Brethren he may appoint. The saints will have, not only to make proclamation, but to consummate such a military organization as will make Israelites and the "mixed multitude" who accept their proclamation, bodies of efficient soldiers in all the countries where such may be found. The means developing this result will be "a noise," and "a shaking," whereby the very dried bones of Israel shall come together, bone to bone, and flesh and si shall come upon them, and they shall live politically, and stand upon their feet an exceeding great army (Ezek. 37).

2. And I John saw the Holy City, New Jerusalem, descending from the Deity out of the heaven, having been prepared as a bride who had been adorn?ed for her husband.

The spirit and life words uttered by the Father, say, "I am the Resurrection and the Life" (John 6:63; 11:25). Here are two distinct things, the Resurrection, anastasis, and "the Life," the zoe. The life pertains to the thousand years, styled in Dan. 7:18, ad-ahlmah, wead ahlam ahlmaiyah; and in the English Version, for ever, even for ever and ever: but literally "during the hidden period, even during a hidden period of the hidden periods, the Saints shall possess the kingdom". This preeminent hidden period is termed in Dan. 7:12, "a season and a set time;" it is the COURSE OF TIME which reaches to "the end," when the Saints shall deliver up the kingdom, as mediatorially constituted, to the Father. In John's report of the discourses of Christ Jesus, this hidden and future course of time is termed aion; and in the Apocalypse, revealed to be of a thousand years duration; and the things related to it, such as "the life," and the kingdom, are termed aionian. The formula in Dan. 7:18, is equivalent nearly to the Apocalyptic form of words hoi aiones ton aionon, the Aions of the Aions; to the commencement of which, the Beast and the False Prophet are to be tormented by the Saints "day and night" (Apoc. 20:10).

The word abussos, is rendered in the English Version by the fancy phrase "bottomless pit". The Seventy (*)render the Hebrew word, tzulah, deep, by abussos, abyss, in Isa. 44:27; the great sea, or aggregation of nations acknowledging the sovereignty of Babylon. For like reasons, abyss in the prophecy before us, is representative of the aggregate of the nations occupying the Dragon-section of the inhabited earth.

2. And he laid hold of the Dragon, the old serpent, who is Devil and Satan, and he bound him a thousand years,

A lake is a tract of standing water. The lake into which the Beast and the False Prophet are to be cast, is not, however, of water, but of fire. A lake of fire is a tract of land in a state of fiery ignition. A tract of land may be in a state of conflagration, or it may not. When a country is in its normal state, it is Apocalyptically neither a lake of water nor of fire, but simply "the earth," out of which the Beast came; but, if that country be thrown into a state of destructive conflagration, it becomes Apocalyptically a lake of fire. Hence, the lake into which the Beast and False Prophet are cast, is all that tract of country upon which they exist as the secular and ecclesiastical constitution of the inhabitants. To cast such into the lake of fire in which they are destroyed, is to kindle an intense conflagration in the territory of their dominion, which is not extinguished, or quenched, until they are consumed; and the remnant of their subjects, who survive the fiery ordeal, transfer their allegiance to the tormenting and conquering power.

The white horse upon which the Commander of the Hosts of the heaven rides, is not representative of that symbolized by the white horse of ch. 6:2. This is the Roman Horse of the first seal period. The white horse of the scene before us, is the Hebrew Horse; and all the other horses upon which the faithful hosts who follow him sit, are horses of the same race. A clue to the signification of the horse in this place is found in Zech. 10:3, where the Spirit saith, "Mine anger was kindled against the shepherds (kings of the earth), and I punished the goats;" and the exposition given, showing how and when they were punished, is added in the words, "for YAHWEH Tz'vaoth hath visited his flock the House of Judah, and hath made them his GOODLY HORSE in the battle. And they shall be as mighty ones who tread down as in the mire of the streets in the battle: and they shall fight, because Yahweh is with them," "and shall be seen over them" (ch. 9:14). The House of Judah will then be not only the horse to be ridden, but it will be made a goodly horse, before YAHWEH Tz'vaoth will condescend to ride them in his wars. Zechariah tells us, that "He will save the tents of Judah first" (ch. 12:7): He will save them from Gog; and He will save them from their sins, which is an essential part of his mission. When He hath delivered Jerusalem, The governors of Judah will say heartily, The inhabitants of Jerusalem shall be my strength in YAHWEH Tz'vaoth their Elohim the 144,000 (ch. 12:5). They will have looked upon him whom their ancestors pierced, and repented (v.10); and so find access to the fountain opened to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and uncleanness (ch. 13:1). Thus they will become nationally white, or "goodly," being "washed in the blood of the Lamb" (Apoc. 7:14). They are by this process grafted into their own olive, and become fit for the master's use, as soldiers of the rank and file in the holy and righteous war.

These hosts being invested with the same clothing as the betrothed, indicates that they are the same persons. The fine linen investing the betrothed is declared to be representative of the righteous deeds, ta dikaiomata, of the saints. This is equivalent to saying, that the betrothed of the Lamb is constituted of the Saints. Hence the wearers of the fine linen, which is granted specially and exclusively to approved saints, whether on foot or "upon horses," are known to be saints by their uniform. The white and pure fine linen deeds shine forth resplendently in a pure and bright nature like that of the angels; for the saints are made "equal to the angels," when "the mortal is swallowed up of life". In the scene before us, they illustrate the name YAHWEH Tz'vaoth, which signifies in plain English, He who shall be hosts. The Eternal Spirit, who named himself YAHWEH at the bush, manifests himself in Jesus and his Brethren, who are the Commander and his Hosts of this remarkable scene. Each one of them is a distinct spiritual entity - an incorruptible and immortal flesh-and-bones organization, which is Spirit-body, or a man like to the Lord Jesus after he had been "revived" or quickened (Luke 24:39; Rom. 14:9). The first man Adam is multiplied into thousands and tens of thousands of millions, by a natural law, so "the second Adam the Lord from heaven," who is "the Lord the Spirit",(*) multiplies himself into hosts of immortals after his own image (1 Cor. 15:49) by the creative operation of his almighty power. These tz'vaoth, or hosts, in the heaven, cannot be computed; for they are "a multitude which no man can number," taken out from among "all nations, and kindreds, and peoples, and tongues," by the belief and obedience of the truth; and who "stand before the throne and before the Lamb," whom "they follow whithersoever he goeth," "upon white horses," "clothed with white robes;" and when "the war of the great day" is over, holding "palms in their hands," the emblem of victory (Apoc. 7:9; 14:4). But, though no man can compute the number of these heavenly hosts, they are symbolically represented by the number of their nationality, and measured by its cubical contents; or by 144,000, and 144 cubits, respectively (ch. 14:1; 21:17). They are the kings and lords, the official companions of the Great King, who accompany him in all his enterprises against the nations. They are the third angel, and the angels of the harvest and vintage scenes of ch. 14; Joel3:13: they tread "the vat of the wine of the indignation, and wrath of the all-powerful Deity," without the city, by the space of a thousand, six-hundred furlongs; or during the forty years of the seventh vial judgments upon "the Air".

Before John saw the Faithful and True One in the heaven, a name had been written upon his garment and upon his thigh, indicative of the wearer of the garment in his glory and majesty No one knew the name but he himself;" yet the name is given in verses 16 and 13 as KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS" and the Word of the Deity This is the Blessed and only Potentate who Paul saith dwells in light which no man can approach unto whom no man hath seen nor can see (1 Tim 6:15,16). This name of the Invisible Deity had been written upon a garment dyed with blood and upon a thigh The thigh and garment had been filthy; but their filthiness had been purged or caused to pass away so thoroughly, that the garment was as raiment changed (Zech 3 3 5) The filthy garment was the Human Nature, which the Word of the Deity was clothed with in His flesh-manifestation. "Jesus Anointed" is ex-pressive of this idea. The garment of humanity became changed raiment by the transforming power of Spirit in the moment of its ascent to consubstantiality with the Father. In this instantaneous quickening on the third day, the name of King of kings and Lord of lords, the name of the Invisible Father, was written, or engraved, into the blood-stained substance, or veil, that was rent upon the cross. In this process of inscription, the humanity was transmuted into the Divine Nature, which in the scene before us, appears metonymically as a garment and thigh inscribed with the glorious, majestic, and all-powerful, name of the Invisible Blessed and Only Potentate, the King of kings and Lord of lords; of which Spirit-manifestation, the appellation "THE LORD JESUS ANOINTED" is the concise and Scriptural expression.

But the judgment given to the saints, as the Elohistic agents of the all-powerful YAH, was not finished with the fall of the capital and government of the Roman Babylon. "The Remnant" still remained to be "slain with the sword of the King of kings" (ch. 19:21,16): "the kings of the earth", the merchants ruined by the wreck of their State-ship, and all its passengers and crew, who bewailed and lamented the harlot's destruction; and who could not, therefore, join in the celebration of her Destroyer's praise; but cordially hated and blasphemed Him in their anguish (ch 16:21) all these were yet unconquered. As hard of heart as the old Egyptian government, the greatest manifestation of power fails to subdue their pride and haughtiness, so long as they can arm their peoples, and marshal their hosts in the field of battle. "Their wickedness is great", too great to be forgiven. The Deity, therefore, hardens their hearts as vessels fitted for destruction; and thereby insures the execution of his purpose upon them. He puts it into their hearts to fulfill his will, until His predictions shall be fulfilled (ch. 17:7). This work of judgment has to be executed by the Seven-Horned Lamb and his companions, after they have said Hallelu YAH the first time, and before they say it the "second time". The mission of the Third Angel has to be discharged between the first and second Hallelu YAH. The third angel executes his vengeance upon the Harlot's survivors and sympathizers (ch. 14:9-11; 16:20,21; 17:14-the smoke of whose torment ascendeth unto the aions of the aeons (ch. 14:11; 19:3) - until the worshippers and sympathizers of the Beast, and the Governments of Europe are completely and thoroughly subdued; and their kingdoms have become the kingdoms of YAH and of his Anointed Bride (ch. 11:15).

The things here referred to are the events set forth in the eighteenth chapter. After these things, therefore, is a phrase indicating that what is about to be narrated in this nineteenth chapter was transacted after the Great Harlot's capital and government had been destroyed by YAH, the Seven-Horned Lamb, and those who were with him, the called, and chosen, and faithful.

The survivors of the consummation of the judgment of Babylon are the kings of the earth, the merchants of the earth and all interested in their traffic. These all bewail and lament for her. The kings bewail her because they have lost their favorite prostitute by whose witchery they were enabled to maintain their ascendancy over the deceived nations. The kings of the earth must be her survivors, or they could not lament for her. The merchants of the earth are the chief men of the earth. They are "the spiritual guides" of the peoples, of all ranks, orders, and degrees; together with "the lay lords," or nobles, and civil rulers of the states all who are represented in the phrase "Church and State" in the several streets, or kingdoms, of the great city. These, both kings and merchants, stand off in fear of the progressing torment, unable, or unwilling, to risk intervention in her behalf. Their sympathies are all with the Harlot; they bewail her, and blaspheme the tormenting power (ch. 16:21). The spiritual traders in souls bewail her "because no one buyeth their shipslading any more". The Roman State and Capital being all engulfed in the infernal abyss, papal wares cease to be of any value in the soul markets of the world, and all demand ceases. This is a grievous blow to all Romish Priests; who see before them only ruin and starvation. The reprobation of Heaven will be signally displayed in the total wreck of the ROMAN SHIP. If the Pope were really the faithful Vicar of Christ, and the Romish Church the true church of God, would Christ precipitate him and his church into the volcanic abyss, now in active preparation to receive them? This glorious catastrophe will open the eves of multitudes. Still the kings and priests, and their hosts of interested dependents, though seeing, will not perceive; for their hearts will be hardened, like Pharaoh's, that they and their armies may be destroyed

The plagues of Babylon are "death, anguish, and famine," consummated by her being utterly burned with fire. Death represents divers kinds of torments leading to that result. Whatever forms the torments may assume, they allow the subjects of them "no rest day nor night" during their operation (ch. 14:9-11). When all these restless days and nights are numbered, the consummation of their woes does not occupy long. The catastrophe is represented by a stone like a great millstone being let fall, or cast into the sea. The fall of the Chaldean Babylon was similarly illustrated. Jeremiah's prophecy in writing against Babylon was bound to a stone and cast into the Euphrates, accompanied with the words, "Thus shall Babylon sink, and shall not rise from the evil I will bring upon her" (ch. 51:61-64). The earth did not open and swallow her up; but she sank from the rank of the Queen of the Nations, the capital of the greatest power of the world, to a city without power, and at length without inhabitants, and to such extreme desolation that no material for building should be found upon her site, as at this day (verse 26). From this depth she is to rise no more; although there are some in our day who affirm the contrary. But notwithstanding their fiat, the Spirit saith, "She shall not rise from the evil I will bring upon her". More than two thousand years have elapsed since this decree was registered. In all that time she has never risen, nor will she ever rise again "she shall be desolate forever"

These Elohim are they addressed by the Spirit in the twentieth verse of this chapter, "Rejoice over her, 0 Heaven, and ye holy apostles, and prophets, for the Deity (the Yahweh-Spirit) hath punished your condemnation by her". She condemned the "heaven" to death; or, as it is expressed in ch. 13:6, "them who dwell in the heaven;" them who constitute the holy heavenly community in the generations embraced in the 1260 years; but who become the Most Holy Heaven-Community, or briefly, "the Heaven," preparatory to the judgment upon the Great Harlot. The judgment upon her is punishment for her blasphemy and maltreatment of the heaven in its primary constitution. The apostles and prophets belonged to, and were a part of, the heaven. The apostles were put to death by the power enthroned upon the Seven Hills, though not by the papal power; for this Eighth Head was not then developed in Rome. The apostles were put to death by the Sixth Head of the Beast; nevertheless, it was Rome who slew them, as it had previously slain the Lord Jesus; and for these slaughters she has to be finally destroyed. The prophets of the heaven for whose condemnation Rome is held responsible are not the old Testament prophets. Rome had no hand in their death. The prophets of the heaven are the "faithful men able to teach others" the doctrine of Christ, who were the true successors of the apostles. They are found among the witnesses who prophecy in sackcloth 1260 years, who were killed by the Roman Beast, and rose again politically in 1789-'90, and began the execution of judgment upon it. The present exigencies of the Great Harlot are the result of the judgment of the past seventy-five years. It has been in complete retribution for her condemnation of these prophets; and the earnest of what awaits her when the apostles and prophets shall be prepared to "rejoice over her". The prophets whom she condemned individually did not rise, but only the class to which they as witnesses against the Harlot, belonged. The resurrection of this class to execute judgment, was the earnest of the personal resurrection of its ancient members to finish the same judg-ment. This is implied in the exhortation, "Render to her as also she hath rendered to you, and double to her twofold according to her deeds;" and "rejoice over her, 0 heaven, and ye holy apostles and prophets;" for how can they whom the powers of the Seven Hills condemned and executed in torments, render to that capital twofold according to her deeds, unless they are restored to life and endued with power for the work? The saints must first be caused to exist incorruptible and omnipotent, and then it will be competent for them to execute judgment upon the Harlot, and to rejoice over her, standing upon the crystal sea, no longer mingled with the fire of their fierce indignation (ch. 15:2).

Now this prophecy against the Chaldean Babylon, though having its own special fulfillment, which commenced in the time of Cyrus, and Belshatzar, the Lucifer of Isa. 14:12, was typical of the fall of the Roman Babylon; so that the language descriptive of the judgment of the ancient city and state, becomes the key of the figurative expressions in the Apocalyptic prophecy. I conclude, therefore, that it will be with the Roman Babylon as with the Chaldean; and that "her day, or time ," of judgment will come "suddenly," "as a thief in the night;" that there will be violence in Italy, "ruler against ruler"; that the tidings inviting people to emigrate will find the country in this anarchical condition; and that in the "next day," or "year", her plagues will commence, even "death, and anguish, and famine" death, or pestilence, and anguish, as the result of it, combined with famine. How long these calamities will continue after they have come into play, does not appear. Her judgment is consummated by a fiery overthrow "she will be consumed in fire". The foulness and filthiness of her abominations, and the similitude of the fate that awaits her, has caused the Great City and State to be "spiritually called Sodom and Egypt" (ch. 11:8). The punishment of Sodom will be Rome's, and perhaps, that also of the whole "Patrimony of St. Peter". This will consummate the plagues which begin her torment and sorrow in one and the same year after the Aion-tidings of good salutes the ears of Israel in Rome. But following upon "pestilence, and famine" is the twofold rendering of torment and anguish by the troops of Michael, the Great Prince, who invades her territory and becomes a smoking furnace of judgment, "a lake of fire burning with brimstone" (ch. 19:19). From this she never emerges, and therefore, like Sodom, suffers the vengeance of a fire which is eternal (Jude 7).

The vengeance of Michael is suspended until the safety of all his people of the stock of Abraham, who may be willing, is assured. The vengeance upon Babylon impends, while the first angel is making proclamation that "the Hour of his Judgment hath come" (ch. 14:6,7). Michael, as "the Lamb and the 144,000 with him," having established himself on Mount Zion, is prepared "to give great Babylon the cup of the wine of the fierceness of his wrath" (ch. 16:19), but he is graciously willing to afford escape, not only to Israelites, but to Gentiles of "every nation, kindred, tongue, and people", upon whom the Harlot sits. He therefore sends forth a company of authorized heralds, qualified to authenticate their mission, after the old apostolic example, to announce good to the well disposed; but terrible vengeance upon all "who know not the Deity, and obey not the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ," as proclaimed by the Angel-Company "flying in midheaven;" or executing their mission with great dispatch.

After these things; that is, after the ten horns had made the Roman Harlot desolate and naked, and eaten her flesh, and burned her With fire (ch. 17:16); but not after those things indicated in the 14th verse. The descent of the angel upon Babylon takes place between the finishing of the Harlot's spoliation and consumption by the European Governments; and the conquest of these powers, or rather the commencement of their "war with the Lamb," which ends in their conquest by him.

The goblet presented to the lips of the people by their spiritual cup-bearers contains the following intoxicating ingredients, styled by an apostle "Damnable Heresies".

It is the Deity in the heaven from whom the hail-plague proceeds. In the heaven into which He introduced Himself, when He opened a door therein, and set up His throne. From the political heaven, into which the Seventh Vial is poured, and in which the throne of David is One among many, upon all of which it makes war, the great hail descends upon the men, who worship the Beast and his Image. Hail from a Political heaven would not be literally frozen waters; but rather something injurious set in motion against the enemies of the hailing power. When a government sends forth its armies to lay waste its adversaries and their countries with fire and sword, its troops are a storm, or plague, of hail; and every individual trooper is a hailstone of a certain weight. Speaking of the Power that should destroy the kingdom of the Ten Tribes, Isaiah says, "Behold, Yahweh hath a mighty and strong one, which as a tempest of hail, a destroying storm, as a flood of mighty waters overflowing, shall cast down to the earth with the hand" (ch. 28:2). And again, speaking of the time when "Yahweh Tz'vaoth shall come down and fight for Mount Zion," he says, "And Yahweh shall cause his glorious voice to be heard, and shall show the lighting down of his arm, with the indignation of his anger, and with the flame of a devouring fire, with scattering, and tempest, and hailstones". The hailstones are an element of the lighting down of the arm of Deity. In Ezek. 13:11, we read, "there shall be an overflowing shower; and ye, 0 great hailstones, shall fall; and a stormy wind shall rend the wall, daubed with untempered mortar". Sirach(*), commenting upon this, says, "Ezekiel made mention of the enemies under the figure of the rain". A hail-shower is the enemy of the men upon whom it descends. When the Saints, in the execution of their Third Angel mission (ch. 14:9-11), descend like a tempest upon the men who worship the Beast and his Image, they become an exceedingly great hail, whose average weight is respectively, according to tables in Calmet,(t) "a talent" of one hundred and twenty-five pounds troy. It is evident from Matt. 25:24, that a talent and an individual are relative things; and that the one is as fitly represented by the other, as a passenger by rail is by the ticket he bears. After the hail of talent-weights ceases the wrath of the Seventh Vial burns no more. The Beast and the False Prophet are destroyed, the Dragon is bound and shut down in the abyss, the Ten Horns are conquered, and nothing remains but the NEW JERUSALEM GOVERNMENT ruling in righteousness a world of regenerated nations, blessed in Abraham and his Seed for a thousand years.

After the exposition given of the Beasts in the thirteenth chapter of this work, it will be unnecessary for me to add more than a few words in this place.

"And there followed another (or second) angel, saying, Babylon hath fallen, hath fallen, that Great city, because she hath caused all nations to drink of the wine of the raging of her fornication " -ch. 14.8.

The Ecclesiastical Polity of Europe represented by this strumpet is imperial. This characteristic is indicated by the purple and scarlet with which she is arrayed; and the gold and precious stones, and pearls, with which she is bedecked. These colors and baubles are the decorations with which her officials, styled the "princes of the church," are distinguished and bedizzened. This Body of Antichrist essentially opposed to, and destructive of the Body of Christ, is apocalyptically labeled upon her shameless forehead, "Mystery, Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots, and the Abominations of the Earth". "MYSTERY" is the inscription that used to be worn as engraved upon the Pope's tiara, or triple crown; but removed by Julius III., when it came to attract Protestant attention as evidence that the wearer was no other than Antichrist - the Name of Blasphemy upon the Seven Heads(t). Elliott, a son of one of the Harlots, and a grandson of their "Mother," remarks, that "the apocalyptic title, 'Mother of the Harlots and of the Abominations of the Earth, is the very parody of the title Rome arrogates to herself "ROME, MOTHER, AND MISTRESS'." The words of the Tridentine Council are "Romana Ecciesia, quw omnium Ecciesiarum Mater est et Magistra"

When this earthquake shall occur, Yahweh Elohim will be enthroned in Jerusalem. This appears from Joel 3:16, where it is written, "Yahweh shall roar out of Zion, and utter his voice from Jerusalem" - the Great Voice of this vial: "and the heavens and the earth shall shake: but Yahweh shall be the hope of his people, and the strength of the children of Israel". This may be called the epoch of earthquakes; for the conclusion of the Sixth Vial is signalized by an earthquake that divides the Mount of Olives, and projects one half of the mount towards the north, and the other towards the south, and leaves a very great valley between. This shakes the earth while Gog is in the land, and accompanies the presence of Yahweh there, Who says, "all the men upon the face of the land shall shake at my presence, and the mountains shall be thrown down, and the towers shall fall, and every wall shall fall to the ground. And I will call for a sword against him throughout all my mountains", and so forth (Ezek. 38:19,20,21; Isa. 30:25). This will be an earthquake in the most literal sense; but it may also be accepted as the earnest of that more terrible and extensive political earthquake of the Seventh Vial, of which the Spirit speaks in Haggai 2:6,21, saying, "Yet once, it is a little while, and I will shake the heavens and the earth, and the sea, and the dry land; and I will shake all nations, and the khemdath of all nations uvahu, they shall come; and I will fill this house with glory, saith Yahweh Tz'vaoth". In the English Version, kheimdath is rendered the Desire of; and some Lexicons tell us that the word has no plural. But if this be true, by what rule is it made the nominative of the plural verb vahu, "they shall come"? The Messiah is supposed to be the person desired by all the nations at his coming. But in what sense can he be said to be the Desire of the nations, when they are all to compass him about, and in the Name of Yahweh he will destroy them? Psa. 118:10; Apoc. 17:14. It seems to me that a letter has been dropped in transcription, and that the word should read khemdoth in the plural; as, "and the excellencies of all the nations shall come;" but if khemdath in the singular be correct, then the construction is to be accounted for upon the same principle that Elohim, plural, is so often construed vvith a verb in the singular - "the Excellency of all the nations they shall come," or as Zechariah expresses the same thing, "Yahweh Elohim he shall come in, all the Saints with thee" - he and all the saints being the Excellency of all the nations. "I will shake all nations". This is a nationquake whose shocks are world-wide and affecting the earth, the sea, and the dry land, of the whole political community of the globe. But the heavens are to be shaken likewise. Even the heavens and the earth of the Commonwealth of Israel were not 'to escape. Paul who wrote the epistle to the Hebrews while the temple was yet standing in Jerusalem, adduced this prophecy in Haggai, in evidence that the Mosaic Heavens, which had waxed old, were to be so shaken as to vanish away (Heb. 8:13; 12:26-29). Look then into the land of Israel, and "behold trouble and darkness, dimness and anguish; and all driven to darkness" (Isa. 8:22). This state of things has obtained for a long series of ages. There is no Mosaic Heavens and Earth there. All the institutions of Moses have vanished away; and Israel's Sun and Moon are darkened, and their stars have withdrawn their shining, as the result of the fire and pillars of smoke, the wonders shown in the heavens and the earth when they were shaken; and all this came to pass "before the great and terrible day of Yahweh," which is not yet quite "come" (Joel 2:30,31; 3:15). What has thus befallen the kingdom of Israelis a striking illustration of what awaits the kingdoms of all the nations of the earth when they come to be shaken by the great earthquake of the Seventh Vial in "the great and terrible day of Yahweh". "I will shake the heavens and the earth"; and now behold the consequences of it in the following words: "and I will overthrow the throne of kingdoms, and I will destroy the strength of the kingdoms of the nations; and I will overthrow the chariots and those who ride in them; and the horses and their riders shall come down, every one by the sword of his fellow". This is a decree against Gog, the Two-Horned Beast, the False Prophet, and the Ten Horns, with all their armies. Into their heaven the vial is to be poured, and its effect will be to shake them and their nations so terribly that there will be no more left of their dynasties, governments, and institutions in church and state, than there now is of Israel's in the land. As a consequence of this shaking of all the nations, the Great City is resolved into thirds, and haipoleis, the cities, or states of the nations fall They fall, because in the shaking, the Lamb and his staff with their army cast them down. The idea is expressed by Daniel in the words, "the thrones were cast down" (ch. 8:9). In other words, the Lamb and they that were with him conquered the Ten Horns, and took possession of their kingdoms. The kingdoms of the world became Yahweh's, and His Christ's. As to the "three parts" into which the Great City Babylon is divided by the shocks of this great earthquake of nations, we are left Without positive information. From the subsequent parts of the prophecy, however, it would seem that the Dragon might be reckoned as one third; the Beast, the Ten Horns, and the False Prophet, the second third; and Egypt, Syria, Palestine, and the East, the third. This eastern third would be the first to fall under the dominion of the throne in Zion: "unto the daughter of Zion shall it come, even the first dominion; the kingdom shall come to the daughter of Jerusalem". And the Ruler come forth from Bethlehem shall be the peace, when the Assyrian (Gog) shall come into the land. Then the anointed ones shall waste Assyria with the sword, and the land of Nimrod in the entrances thereof; thus shall He deliver Israel when the Assyrian invades their land (Micah. 4:7,8; 5:2-6). Then, after the conquest of Assyria and Egypt by the Saints, "there shall be a highway out of Egypt to Assyria, and the Assyrian shall come into Egypt, and the Egyptian into Assyria, and the Egyptians shall serve With the Assyrians. In that day shall Israel be the third with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the land: whom Yahweh Tz'vaoth shall bless, saying, Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel mine inheritance" (Isa. 19:23-25). After this settlement of affairs in the Eastern Third, "Babylon the Great comes into remembrance before the Deity, to give to her the cup of the wine of the fierceness of his wrath". This is the series of events which succeeds the proclamation of the Aion-Gospel in mid-heaven -in the Air - announcing that the Hour of Judgment upon Babylon had arrived, and which precedes the Second Angel's announcement that "Babylon is fallen" (ch. 14:8). As the result of this remembrance, the ecclesiastical system of Europe, in its Greek, Latin, and Protestant divisions of spiritual wickedness is abolished; and its ecclesiastical capital, ROME, destroyed from the earth, as fearfully and graphically exhibited in ch. 18. The next result of the "very great earthquake" is the obliteration of all "islands" and "mountains" of the political world. A natural island is land entirely surrounded by water; a political island is analogous thereto inasmuch as it is a kingdom, or state, insulated from all other "waters," or peoples, by which it is surrounded. Belgium, Holland, Spain, Portugal, Greece, and so forth are political islands, insulated from each other, and from all other peoples by the political constitution peculiar to each. In Jer. 51:25, the Chaldean emperor of Babylon is styled a "destroying mountain which destroyeth all the earth;" whose destiny was to be rolled down from the rocks, and to be made "a burnt mountain". The little Stone, or kingdom of Christ, "the Shepherd, the Stone of Israel" (Gen. 49:24) is to become "a Great Mountain," or empire, after it has smitten "the destroying mountain," in its latter day manifestation, and to "fill the whole earth", (Dan. 2:34,35). A mountain filling the whole earth will leave no room for any other mountains. To declare, consequently, that "the mountains were not found," is equivalent to saying that the empires of Turkey, Russia, Austria, Prussia, Britain and the United States, were all superseded and abolished, by the New Empire of Israel's King, then become "the King and Elohim of the whole earth" (Zech. 14:9; Isa. 54:5). The world to come, or future habitable, of which Paul spoke (Heb. 2:5), will admit of only one mountain, "the mountain of Yahweh's House, to be established on the top of the mountains, and exalted above the hills; that all" the regenerated nations may flow into it" (Isa. 2:2). No rival empires will be permitted to exist; for in that "economy of the fullness of the times," all things in the heavens or the air, and upon the earth, or the nations, will be gathered together under One Head (Eph. 1:10). The judgments of the Seventh Vial, executed by the Saints as the omnipotent ministers of the Spirit, will bring to pass this Divine Determination. They will chase away the fugitive islands, and hurl into the abyss the lofty mountains, that now so proudly and defiantly tower above the political earth and sea. They will accomplish this by tormenting with fire and brimstone "thc Devil and his Angels;" in other words, by encountering in war the Beast, and kings of the Earth, and their armies (ch. 14:9-11; 19:19; 17:14). No island or mountain powers will be able successfully to withstand them. Their armies will be in the midst of many peoples as a lion among the beasts of the forest, as a young lion among the flocks of goats: who, if he go through, both treadeth down, and teareth in pieces, and none can deliver (Mic. 5:8). Thus, "the nations shall see, and be confounded at all their might: they shall lay the hand upon the mouth, their ears shall be deaf. They shall lick the dust like a serpent, they shall move out of their holes like worms of the earth: they shall be afraid of Yahweh EIohim. and fear because of thee" (Ibid. 7.16,17).

The Nave of the Heaven is "the Bride, the Lamb's Wife". The Most Holy Community, the One Body, of which the Anointed Jesus is the Head, in the sense that the Head of Christ is the Deity". The Nave is the Spirit's Bride purified from every thing that defiles (ch. 21:9,27). She is represented inch. 4:4-11, by four-and-twenty elders and four living ones full of eyes within, before, and behind. These are before the throne, and round about the throne, occupied by the Lord Jesus Christ, who is likened to a jasper and a sardine stone. Hence, what proceeds from the Nave of the Air or Heaven, proceeds also from the throne established on Mount Zion, "the place of the Name of Yahweh Tz'vaoth," who reigns there and in Jerusalem, before his Ancients gloriously (Isa. 18:7; 24:23). A voice proceeding from this throne in the midst of the Nave of the Heaven must needs be a great voice. And what voice can give utterance to a more important announcement than that all that had been predicted by the prophets is done, is all fulfilled. It reminds us of the words in Ezek. 39:8, "Behold, it is come, and IT IS DONE, saith Adonai Yahweh; this is the Day whereof I have spoken". That is, the day of the outpouring of the Seventh Vial is "the Great and Terrible Day of Yahweh". It is the day in which, after the fall of Gog upon the mountains of Israel, Adonai Yahweh will "send a fire on Magog, and among them who dwell confidently in the isles;" and which shall cause them to know that He is Yahweh. "So," saith he, "willI make my Holy Name known in the midst of my people Israel; and I will not let them pollute my Holy Name any more; and the nations shall know that I, Yahweh, am the HOLY ONE in Israel". During "the great and terrible day," the Nave smokes with indignation against Gog's land, or Magog, and against Babylon the Great, and other more distant lands. In the Nave is embodied the glory and power of the Deity; so that His fiery indignation smokes from the Nave; and while, therefore, this is in a state of activity while "the day of trouble" continues, in which "they have no rest day nor night who worship the Beast and his Image, and whosoever receives the sign of his name" no one engaged in the work of the Seventh Vial can rest from his labors; nor can the nations walk in the light of it (ch. 21:24). The smoke of torment must cease to ascend before the nations can be blessed in Abraham and his Seed, the Nave; and go up from year to year to worship the King, Yahweh Tz'vaoth, and to keep the Feast of Tabernacles at Jerusalem (Zech. 14:17). This is the worship of the Nave-State, into which "no man can enter till the seven plagues of the seven angels are fulfilled" -till the Seventh Vial, therefore, is all poured out; and the wrath of the Deity IS DONE. But, after "it is done," the Nave-Body will shine forth as the Sun in the kingdom of the Father, the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End; and mankind will be permitted to enjoy the light of it in peace; and to attain to a salvation with eternal glory, upon the conditions that then may be prescribed. "But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolators, and all liars," who have been brought forth from Death's charnel house, the grave, and have been driven with shame and contempt from the Judgment Seat of Christ; together with all like characters among the living, "shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone:" in other words, shall be subjected to the plague of the Seventh Vial, which will bring him with torment to a termination of his existence: "which is the Second Death" (ch. 21:8). Thus, those who have held the truth in unrighteousness, and so walked after the flesh, "go away into aionian punishment," in suffering which, they are punished with the goat-nations that "make war with the Lamb" (ch. 17:14; Matt. 25). They suffer this in the fiery indignation poured out of the Seventh Vial. They are scrutinized and condemned under the Sixth Vial, and executed under the Seventh. And when the tares among the saints are separated, and commanded to "depart into the aion-fire" - to set out upon the hard road appointed for them to travel, towards the country of their penal servitude and death; the saints who are accounted worthy of the aion, are sentenced to enter into "the house from heaven" from which they shall 'go Out no more (ch. 3:12; 21:7). The sentence is executed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, in "the mortal" being "swallowed up of life;" or what is equivalent, "the life of Jesus being made manifest in their mortal flesh" (2 Cor. 4:11; 5:4).

18. "And there were voices, and thunders, and lightnings: and there was a great earthquake such as was not since that men were upon the earth, so mighty an earthquake, and so great.

3. And he conducted me away into a wilderness in spirit; and I saw a woman sitting upon a scarlet beast, full of Names of Blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns.

Let it be noted by the reader, that a gathering of the Powers is the subject of the prophecy in the fourteenth and fifteenth verses. In the former, the daemon Froglike spirits are represented as the agencies so operating upon the kings of the earth and of the whole habitable, as to cause a gathering of them for the war of that great day of the Almighty Deity: but, from the sixteenth verse it would appear, that the daemon-spirits did not of themselves alone consummate the gathering; for it is here written "He gathered them". The case then appears to be this, that the Froglike Spirits begin a work in 1848, which they carry on for twenty or more years(*), during which, by their policy, they bring the powers of the world into such a situation regarding "the Dragon," or Eastern Question, and "the Beast and False Prophet," or Roman Question,(t) as to prepare them for a general move against any power, come from whence it may, that may intervene in the settlement of those questions contrary to their interests, and such a distribution and balance of power as they may approve. Every one may see that this is the present situation of affairs. The Powers are all "armed to the teeth," with their hands upon their swords, and in a highly irritable or inflammable frame of mind, upon the Roman and Eastern Questions, and ready to do battle against any who might venture athwart the path of their policy or ambition They are conscripting the cultivators of the soil to a vast extent, and preparing them for war; as though war, and not agriculture, were the normal condition of mankind. Thus, they are beating their plough-shares into swords, and their scythes into spears; and the weak say they are strong; as an indispensable preliminary to the great conflict which is to follow (Joel 3:10).

The Apocalyptic benedictions are not mere ornamental figures of speech, thrown in, as it were, for the ventilation of pious feeling. They are substantial and joyous realities, promising present and future benefits. Thus, "Blessed he that readeth and they that understand the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein: for the time is near" (Ch. 1:3). He that reads, understands, and keeps "the sayings of the prophecy of this book," thereby places himself in the blessed companionship of the apostle John, and of his brethren the prophets, one of whom (whether Enoch, Moses, or Elijah, we know not)(*) was the bearer of the Apocalypse to him (Ch. 1:1; 22:7-10). The knowledge herein revealed, understood and kept, is an infallible preservative against all the wiles of the adversary, and all the delusions by which the worshippers of the Beast's Image are deceived, and made meet only for capture and destruction.

But, who is it that comes as a thief? This must be answered Apocalyptically. This prophecy is introduced by directing the reader's attention to Ch. 1:4,8, to him, "who is, and who was, and who is coming". In this latter text, this august personage styles himself, ho pantokrator, the Almighty One: and in verse 13, "one like to a Son of Man," "he that liveth, and was dead, and is living for the aions of the aions" (verse 18). The Son-of-Man similitude, whose "voice is as the sound of many waters," or "the voice of a multitude," the ONE BODY of which the anointed Jesus is the Head, is the Omega and the End, "who is to come".

After these came certain Latin expositors, named Primasius, Bede, Ansbertus, Haymo, Andreas, Arethas, and Berengaud. These flourished from the wounding of the Sixth Head, and in the period of the rising of the Ten Horns, to A.D. 1,100. These were no more luminous in their expositions than their predecessors. They failed to discern the signs of their own times; and, either endorsed the foolishness, or made more manifest the impenetrable obscurity, of them that preceded them.

A great earthquake inaugurates this judicial period. War in the Heaven, (Apoc. 12:7) resulting in an eclipse, of the sun, in the moon becoming blood, in the stars of the heaven, the stars drawn by the Tail of the Dragon, (Apoc. 12:4) falling into the earth, and of the casting out thereinto of the great fiery-red Dragon. The heaven of the Dragon-Polity departs as a scroll rolled up; and every mountain and island change their places. The angels of the Dragon are cast out with him. (Apoc. 12:9) No place for them any more in the heaven from which they are ejected, having been effectually conquered by the Archer of the First Seal -- the Fellow-servants and Brethren of the souls under the Altar; who conquered him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony, on account of which they were slain, not loving their lives unto death (Apoc. 12:11;6:9). Great rejoicings in the heavens by them who succeed the ejected Dragon and his officials, who rage with great fury in the earth and sea of their late dominion. (Apoc. 12:12) The great day of Wrath upon Paganism.

The world must therefore now be in the eighth year of the Time of the End. The termination of the 2400 years, and the synchronical beginning of the time of the end, were both signalized by the outbreak of the American civil war, which in its development proved to mankind, that with all their boasted science, civilization, and religion, they are not one whit in advance of the beasts that perish. -- Psal. 49:12, 20. The time of the end thus portentously begun continued to unfold itself in the events of the Franco-Mexican war, and those of the Russo-Polish, and Prusso-Austrian Danish, and Prusso-Austrian Italian wars. By the American civil war several millions of Southerners have been subjected to an ignoble military despotism, and social degradation and ruin; while the fanatics used by Providence in its judicial visitation upon the South, have blasted the prosperity of the North, filled its families with lamentation and death, and laid the foundation of trouble that will only be finally assuaged in the absorption and obliteration of the so-called United States in the NEW UNIVERSAL EMPIRE of the Ancient of Days.

This structural characteristic of the primordial statement of the end, is illustrated also in ch. 14. In this the primordial statement is contained in the first verse. It specifies a great predetermined end-the occupation of Mount Zion by the son of the Divine Father, together with those upon whom he has previously written the name of his Deity (Ch. 3:12). But this predetermined end is not the first thing executed. On the contrary, it is the last. The redeemed get possession of Mount Zion consequent upon the effect of the "voice out of the heaven" indicated in verse 2 the voice of a belligerent multitude, even the roaring voice of the Rainbowed and Cloud-invested Angel, who takes victorious possession of the City where David dwelt.

The sun, moon and stars of this great sign, belong to the heaven in which the sign appears. It is the same heaven as that in which "silence, as it were a half hour," supervened after the departure like a scroll of the heaven which preceded it (Rev. 8: 1; 6:14). These two apocalyptic heavens are evidently revealed in these texts. In my exposition of the sixth seal (see Vol. 2. pp. 276, 292), 1 treated of the abolition of the former of these two heavens, in the taking out of the way that which hindered the revelation, or manifestation of the Anomos, or Lawless One (2 Thess. 2:7). The removal of this obstacle is predicted apocalyptically in these words, "the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood; and the stars of the heaven fell into the earth, even as a fig-tree casteth her untimely figs when she is shaken by a mighty wind." And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together. This prediction was fulfilled in the change of the constitution of the Roman Orb consequent upon the success of Constantine, crowned by the victory of Chrysopolis, A.D. 324. Until this epoch of eighteen years, "the heaven" of Daniel's Fourth Beast styled apocalyptically the Dragon, had been in all its constituents pagan. The emperors were all worshippers of Jupiter, and his associate gods. The sun-light of their imperialism was reflected from the idol superstition, of which they were ex-officio the High Priests or Supreme Pontiffs. This was the moon of the heaven shining by reflected imperial light. So long as the Roman constitution of the Fourth Beast continued pagan, none but pagans could constitutionally execute the functions of the imperial office; for none but a pagan could be Pontifex Maximus of the Roman Orb. But the victories of Constantine changed all this. He shook the Dragonic Fig tree with a mighty wind, and caused the stars of the heaven to fall into the earth, as perished figs from the parent tree. He slew with great and sanguinary defeats the adherents of the State Superstition, so that "the moon became as blood." She no longer walked in the brightness of imperial favor, reflecting to the earth the glory of the Roman Sun. The testimony of Jesus Christ against idolatry, borne by his witnesses, had alienated the popular mind from Jupiter and the gods, though it had failed to convert it to the gospel. The priests of the idols having lost their hold upon the affection of the multitude, the way was prepared for the subjection of Roman Idolatry to the Catholic, or Laodicean Apostasy. The consummation was necessarily sanguinary; for the testimony of history, and present experience, show that a minority in arbitrary power can only be brought to abdicate by the arbitrament of the sword. This award was appealed to by the contending parties of the day. The issue was between the PAGANS and the CATHOLICS; or between a pagan minority in place and power, and a majority of anti-pagans of all varieties and shades, who desired a change in the civil and ecclesiastical constitution of the Roman State. In their appeal to arms the power of the minority was broken. It could no longer bring an army into the field to defend the interests of the idols constitutionally vested in their priests; so that nothing remained but the favor of an infidel and alienated multitude, inconstant as the wind. The revolution was complete. The ancient order of things incorporated with the reigning idolatry was cancelled, and the scroll of its constitution rolled up out of the way. The pagan imperialty became black as sackcloth of hair. Since the death of Licinius, the last of Constantine's rivals, only one worshipper of Jupiter has occupied the Roman Throne. The total eclipse of the pagan sun, the sanguinary obscuration of the brightness of the pagan moon, and the hurling of the pagan stars into the lowest walks of life among the people, finally and effectually signalized the departure of the pagan heaven as a scroll rolled up. We have witnessed the departure of a heaven as a scroll when it is rolled up, in the collapse of the Southern Confederacyt. The dispersion of the southern forces resulted in the abolition of its civil constitution, and the consequent suppression of all things related to it; so that with the exception of the calamities entailed, it is as though it had never been. Such was the collapse of Roman Idolatry in its church and state constitution, or heaven. Its forces were overpowered and dispersed, and as the world never "wonders" after a sinking cause, but is always ready to worship success, it easily transferred its allegiance to the more powerful rival which had dethroned it.

It may be remarked here, that the antipagan Woman and the arrowless Archer of the first seal are representative of the same community in its warfare "against the principalities, powers, world-rulers of the darkness, and the spirituals of the wickedness in the heavenlies of the Roman Orb (Eph. 6:12). The Antipagan Archer went forth to conquer the Grxco-Latin Dragon, He had first to overcome and dethrone Jupiter and the gods, "by the blood of the Lamb, and the word of his testimony;" and afterwards to take possession of the diadems enthroned under the whole heaven, and to rule their nations for a thousand years. Significative of this it is written in ch. 6:2, edothe auto stephanos, there was given to him a stephan, or wreath. John saw that the archery of this communion, to which he himself belonged, was prevailing "against the darkness of the course of things" - tou aionos toutou - which obtained while he was in Patmos. He saw it, therefore, going forth "conquering, even that it might conquer." Its career of conquest, though harassed by the enemy, was not to be stopped. The stephan was to be placed upon the woman's head by the highest authority in the state, as the result of "a great earthquake," or revolution, which should place her son upon the throne. When John in vision saw the archer ride forth upon the white horse he had not then won the Stephan. He had a combat for the faith of over two centuries before him; at the end of which the fraternity he represented was seen in the heaven invested with the sun, the moon in subjection, and the Stephan of victory emblazoning her head with its stars. Thus far the triumph was complete: nevertheless, the earnest or type only of a greater yet to come.

Such was the figurative antipagan woman we behold exhibited in the heaven invested with the sun's majesty, and his ancient lunar idolharlot made subject "under her feet." The "great sign" represents her situation as it appeared-to the outer world, for under another aspect of things, the "few names not defiled" of the same figurative woman are represented by "the remnants of her seed who keep the Commandments of the Deity, and hold the testimony of Jesus Christ." Hence the figurative woman of ch. 12, invested with the Roman Sun, and fleeing from the Dragon, represents the whole ANTIPAGAN COMMUNITY; the vast majority of which answered to Jezebel and her children; while the remainder, with whom alone the doctrine of Christ was to be found, refused to have anything to do with a church in alliance with the "dreadful and terrible beast having seven heads and ten horns." These two divisions of the antipagans, though opposed on the question of church and state alliance, were agreed in their hostility to the ascendancy of 'the existing Imperial Idolatry, which grievously afflicted them all. The first ecclesiastical separation of these two divisions did not occur till after the birth of the woman's son, who was to rule all the Greek and Latin nations with an iron sceptre. When this event transpired, the anti-state church party repudiated the desecrating alliance with emperors and their courts. They refused to recognize the emperor's claim of being at once the representative of the Sixth Head of the Dragon, and Bishop of the, Bishops of Christ. The truth was with this party. They seceded; and by their secession incurred the enmity and bitter hostility of the. New Church imperially established. The secessionists became the subject of virulent persecution by this new power, which caused them to take refuge in the wilderness. In this flight they are prefigured by the woman, who therefore leaves behind her the sun and moon, and wreath of twelve stars.

Zion and Jerusalem not only signify the geographical and topographical things so called, but all those, whether Jews or Gentiles, who have acquired citizenship in the Commonwealth of Israel by adoption through Jesus Christ. These all constitute a community, which in Isaiah 66:7, and Jer. 6:2, is likened to "a comely and delicate woman". In the former text the Spirit saith of her, "before she travailed, she brought forth; before her pain came, she was delivered of a man child." It was the same comely and delicate woman the exile in Patmos saw in the heaven invested with the sun. Isaiah's woman and John's woman are both represented as pregnant, and bringing forth, or giving birth to, a man child. But the difference existing is this, that John's woman brought forth under the Sixth Seal, A.D. 312-313; while Isaiah's woman brings forth, under the Sixth Vial at "the time of the dead." There is difference also in the things brought forth. Isaiah's woman brings forth a multitudinous man child; that is, a nation, the "holy nation" (1 Pet. 2:9) consisting of the children of Zion, whom the earth is made to bring forth in one day. This nation is "born at once" before the travailing of Zion in the bringing forth her children after the flesh. As the saints are still mostly in the grave, and Israel and Judah in captivity among the nations - entombed in national graves - Zion is now a pregnant woman waiting until her time come to be delivered.

The Hebrew tannin, and the Greek drakon, rendered in our English version dragon, it is evident from Ezek. 29:3, signifies a crocodile; the great scaly serpent-fish of the Nile, the symbol of the Egyptian power styled "Pharaoh king of Egypt, the great dragon that lieth in the midst of his rivers."

Now "here is the mind which hath wisdom" - here is the sense or meaning which is true. "The seven heads are seven mountains, where the woman is sitting upon them." This is a Hebraism; an idiom, in which "are" is used for represent. It is a form of speech often used in Scripture; as, of the rock smitten by Moses, it saith, "that rock was Christ" (1 Cor. 10:4); it represented Christ: "this bread is my body;" it represents my body: "the seven lightstands are the seven ecclesias;" they represent them: and in many other places too numerous for reference. The seven heads have a two-fold signification, the first whereof is given in Apoc. 17:9. They represent seven mountains. But, if nothing more had been said, we should have been at a loss with regard to the particular seven represented. It was therefore added, "where the woman is sitting upon them." But what does "the woman" represent? There can be no doubt about the signification of this symbol; for John was informed that the woman represented "a Great City" - an Imperial City; even "that great city, which," while he was in Patmos, is "having dominion over the kings of the earth" (verse 18). From the description, it was impossible that John could mistake as to the signification of this imperial woman. He knew, as we may know, that no other city could be meant than "the Seven Hilled City" - ROME. This is the only city situate upon seven mountains, in John's day or since, that can be said to have dominion over the rulers of the earth. Her topography is seven heads, or elevations, of the land drained by the Tiber; and are thus named:

In the beginning, the Serpent-World consisted of no more than two sinners - Adam and his wife; yet small as was its extent, all the evil that has since manifested itself, was latent in them. Their symbol was the Serpent, or Dragon, and represented falsehood, unbelief, and rebellion against the Deity. Wherever these three have been found politically organized, and in conflict with the saints, there is the Serpent which was in the beginning - "the old serpent." Of this serpent-world the Scripture saith, "Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world - the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life - is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof; but he that doeth the will of the Deity abideth for ever" (1 John 2:15-17).

But, it also acquired the surname of "the Satan." This word sahtahn, signifies an adversary; and without the definite article the, may signify any adversary in general. It is applicable to persons and things of whatever kind they may be. Thus, when the sons of Zeruiah counselled the death of Shimei, David rejected their impolitic advice, and styled them, Satan, (2 Sam. 19:22). So also when Yahweh became adverse to Israel because of transgression, He is styled Satan. This appears from 2 Sam. 24: 1, where it is written, that Yahweh moved David against Israel to say, "Go, number Israel and Judah:" while in 1 Chron. 21: 1, it is writ- ten, "And Satan stood up against Israel, and provoked David to number Israel." There is also the case of Job. Job was a man of substance and power, being "the greatest of all the men of the East". He was one of "the sons of the Deity" belonging to that generation. There was among them also another man of power, an oriental, who was nominally a feeling towards Job. This is not an unusual circumstance, even in societies reputed apostolic. In these, Satans too often abound, and become the adversaries of those they cannot imitate. In Job's day, there were general gatherings of the Men of the East, with the sons of the Deity, at the place where the symbol of Yahweh's presence was established. If I might hazard a conjecture I should say, they assembled at Salem, in the days of the High Priesthood of Melchizedek. Be this, however, as it may, "the sons of the Elohim came to present themselves before Yahweh, and the Satan hassahtahn, came also among them." Here were two classes of worshippers, the nominal and the true; the former constituting the Satan; the latter consisting of the Sons of Deity, of whom Job was most eminent and conspicuous. Among his adversaries, one seems to have been more notable than the rest. This was probably the Chief of the Sabeans, a tribe of Arabia Felix, who fell upon Job and did him much mischief. To this man Yahweh said by His priest (for, in Scripture, what is said by his priests and prophets, Yahweh is said to say Himself) "Whence comest thou?" To which he replied as any marauder would, "From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it. His attention was then directed to Job, whose character was highly eulogized. This developed the latent enmity of the Sheikh, who insinuated that Job's fear of Elohim had been purchased by extraordinary favors; but that, if these were withdrawn, and he were reduced to poverty, he would curse Him to his face. Yahweh, however, knew Job better; nevertheless, He was willing that he should be tested, that his enemies might be confounded; and a triumph of principle in adversity might be exhibited, as an example for the Sons of Deity in all future times. Therefore to Job's adversary He granted permission to do what he pleased against him, short of personal injury. Having obtained this grant, he returned home, and organized his Sabeans and Chaldeans for raids, which, with the fire of heaven, soon stripped Job of all he possessed.

But the Christadelphian Eve had not been espoused twelve months before it became manifest that iniquity was working within her. The Cale of Ananias and Sapphira was illustrative of this. The evil manifested through them was the evil principle which generated that "Mystery of Iniquity" which at length developed the Lawless One or Man of Sin. It was the spirit of falsehood, which Paul styles "the deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish" (2 Thess. 2: 10).

For a power to stand before that which is offensive to it, is to assume a hostile attitude. In Esther 9: 16, the Jews against whom a decree of extermination had gone forth, and were afterwards permitted to use their weapons for attack upon all assailants are said to, have "stood for their lives." In Jer. 46: 15, it is said of the Egyptians " they stood not, because Yahweh (lid drive them." And in Dan. 8: 7, speaking of the relative power of the Macedonian Unicorn, and the two-horned Persian Ram, it says, " there was no power in the rain to stand before him." Hence, to have power to stand, is not only to be able to struggle for victory, but to do it with effect.

Daniel styles this Mighty Man, "THE KING "--a man of power ; ruling potentially and sovereignly over nations, during many centuries to the epoch of his destruction in the time of the end." He is thus described in Dan. 11: 36-39. "And the King shall do according to his will; and he shall exalt himself, and magnify himself above every ail (or Power); and shall speak marvellous things concerning the AIL of ails (the Power of powers, or the greatest, and the source, of all power) ; and he shall flourish till the indignation shall be accomplished: for that that is determined shall be done. Neither shall he regard the gods of his ancestors, elohai avothahv; nor the desire of wives, nor regard any eloahh, " or god." "But upon his place (or throne) shall he do honor to the mahuzzim eloahh, eloahh mahuzzim--the god of guardians: and to an eloahh, 'or god,' which his ancestors knew not shall he do honor with gold, and silver, and with costly gems, and durable things. Thus shall he do to the Bazaars of the guardians pertaining to a FOREIGN GOD (eloahh) whom he shall acknowledge and increase with glory: and he shall give them authority over many; and shall divide the land for gain.

During six years Maxentius reigned in Rome. He was repeatedly heard to declare that he alone was emperor, and that the other three princes were no more than his lieutenants, on whom he had devolved the defence of the frontier provinces, that he might enjoy without interruption the elegant luxury of the capital. In the crisis thus formed, A. D. 312, Constantine was convinced that the hostile and ambitious designs of the Italian emperor made it necessary for him to arm in his own defense. Maxentius was constitutionally the head of the Dragon-Power, being enthroned in Rome, and identified with the Roman Senate. He openly avowed his pretensions to the whole monarchy of the west, and had already prepared a very considerable force to invade Constantine's jurisdiction on the side of Rhoetia.

The interview between Constantine and Licinius at Milan was brief. In the midst of the public festivity these allies were suddenly obliged to take leave of each other. An inroad of the Franks demanded the presence of Constantine on the Rhine; and the hostile approach of Maximin required the immediate presence of Licinius. Maximin had been the secret ally of Maxentius, and without being discouraged at his fate, he resolved to try the fortune of a civil war. He invaded the dominion of Licinius with a disciplined and veteran army of about seventy thousand men. Licinius encountered him with thirty thousand, and after a severe contest, gave him a signal and decisive overthrow. Maximin, perceiving that all was lost, fled with great precipitation. He was the most implacable of all the enemies of the Catholic Church; but he did not long survive his defeat to torment it. Three or four months after he died by Divine justice; and the provinces of the east, delivered from the terrors of civil war, cheerfully acknowledged the authority of Licinius.

"The heaven," in which John, in prophetic vision, heard this "great voice," was the same heaven as that in which the Woman, the Dragon, the Michael, and the war, had contemporary existence. I say contemporary existence; for, on the defeat of Maxentius, A.D. 313, the Catholic Church, or "Woman clothed with the Sun, and the Moon under her feet, and a stephan of Twelve Stars upon her head," was the established religion of Constantine's dominion; but not of the whole habitable, the rest thereof still rejoicing in the ascendancy of the Dragon and the gods of antiquity. Hence there were two contemporary established religions in the empire, each of them sustained by rival political factions. The Dragon had been cast out as the result of the recent war in the heaven. His "short time" was at an end. He had no longer any place in the heaven, nor his adherents. He who ruled there had no regard for the defeated gods of his ancestors. The heaven had been effectually cleared of all who rejoiced in them; so that there were now found therein only the Sun-clothed Woman and her Son.

But under the circumstances of the case it was not possible for him to attain that high position without further conflict. He had fought his way up from a Caesar of the fourth rank of Roman princes, to be the first of the three Augusti of the empire; but he could ascend no higher while his two colleagues, Licinius and Maximin, ruled Illyricum and the East. These had to be removed by force of arms; for they were not the men voluntarily to abdicate position and power in favor of a rival as ambitious as themselves.

The character of Constantine as a ruler is no doubt correctly delineated in the eighteenth chapter of the Decline and Fall of the Roman empire. Therein Gibbon remarks, that by the grateful zeal of what he calls "the christians," he has been decorated with every attribute of a hero and a saint; while the vanquished party compared him to the most abhorred of those tyrants, who by their vice and weakness, dishonored the imperial purple. But neither of these opinions can be admitted with-out qualification. He was doubtless a hero and a tyrant; but neither saint, nor the worst of the tyrants that had reigned. Had he fallen on the banks of the Tiber, or even on the plains of Adrianople, he might have transmitted to posterity, with some exceptions, a less questionable fame: "but the conclusion of his reign," says Gibbon, that is, the last fourteen years, "degraded him from the rank he had acquired among the most deserving of the Roman princes." This remark of the historian assigns the worst period of his rule to that indicated in the prophecy; namely, from the time he arrived at "the Deity and his throne" by the overthrow of Licinius. This was the period "the conclusion of his reign," when he was to rule all the nations with an iron sceptre; and Gibbon re-fers to it as the period of his degradation among princes. In regard to this period of his life he says, "we may contemplate a hero, who had so long inspired his subjects with love, and his enemies with terror, degenerating into a cruel and dissolute monarch, corrupted by his fortune, or raised by conquest above the necessity of dissimulation. The general peace which he maintained during the last fourteen years of his reign (the Half-hour's silence in the heaven - Ch. 8:1) was a period of apparent splendor rather than of real prosperity; and the old age of Constantine was disgraced by the opposite yet reconcilable vices of rapaciousness and prodigality. The oppression of the people was the only fund which could support his magnificence. His unworthy favorites, enriched by the boundless liberality of their master, usurped with impunity the privilege of rapine and corruption. A secret but universal decay was felt in every part of the public administration, and the emperor himself though he still retained the obedience, gradually lost the esteem of his subjects. An impartial narrative of the executions, or rather murders, which sullied the declining age of Constantine, will suggest to our most candid thoughts the idea of a prince who could sacrifice without reluctance the laws of justice, and the feelings of nature, to the dictates either of his passions or of his interest." The murderous executions of his son Crispus, his nephew Licinius, and of a great number of respectable and innocent friends, who were involved in their fall, were sufficient to justify the discontent of the Roman people, and to explain the satirical verses affixed to the palace-gate, comparing the splendid and bloody reigns of Constantine and Nero. Such was the character of his rule - a sceptre of iron in the hand of the Man-Child of Sin.

But, though well disposed to Antipaganism, the Man-Child of Sin, at the time of the edict of Milan, did not know his own Mother. He was too young to be able to discern her. He did not know to which sect of "the whole body of christians" he belonged. It was not long, however, before the worst of the sects was able to establish its ascendancy over the untutored mind of this ambitious and fortunate soldier. This was the sect which styles itself, and taught him so to style it, "THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH." This was that sect which was preeminently "wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked;" but which said, "l am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing." It was the sect in which the rage of faction exploded in frequent and violent seditions; and the blood of its members was shed by each other's hands. Hilary, a contemporary of the times, writes to Constantine's successor, and declares concerning the catholic clergy, that "in the wide extent of the ten provinces of Asia, to which he had been banished, there could be found very few prelates who had preserved the knowledge of the true God. It is a thing equally deplorable and dangerous that there are as many creeds as Opinions among men, as many doctrines as inclinations, and as many sources of blasphemy as there are faults among us; because we make creeds arbitrarily. The Homousion is rejected and received and explained away by successive synods. The partial or total resemblance of the Father and of the Son is a subject of dispute for these unhappy times. Every year, nay every moon, we make new creeds to describe invisible mysteries. We repent of what we have done, we defend those who repent, we anathematize those whom we defended. We condemn either the doctrine of others in ourselves, or our own in that of others; and reciprocally tearing one another to pieces, we have been the cause of each other's ruin."

Now, upon the same principle of condensation is time exhibited in the apocalyptic drama. It is condensed from real time to acted time, the latter being proportioned to the former, and to the agents dramatically engaged. Thus, if the real time be 1,260 years, it is proportionally rep-resented by 1,260 days, or forty-two months, or three times and a half. It is also made proportional to the agents acting in the time. Thus, in the dramatic prophecy before us, the woman and her feeders, or nourishers, are the agents. She dwells in her place as a woman, the cycle of whose natural existence is threescore years and ten. Now, to affirm of her that they nourished her 1,260 years, would be in violation of the decorum of things. It would be a monstrosity in the picture, because out of all proportion, seeing that, naturally, women do not live 1,260 years. But the fitness and suitableness of things are observed; and the language descriptive of her pregnancy and subsequent life, does no violence, but is in strict accordance with, the laws of a real woman's natural existence. The remarks of Daubuz upon symbolic time, are to the point in this place.

"And the Serpent cast out of his mouth after the Woman water as a flood, that he might cause her to be carried away by the flood.

But the woman fugitive was not an abstraction, of a mere idea. She was a multitude of dissidents from the new and established order of things. Like Israel after the flesh, they were to dwell alone, and not be reckoned among the nations; still, like Israel, they required some place, or country, in which to dwell. Where did the woman dwell in her wilderness-state? This question is answered in the fourteenth verse in the words, "The two wings of the great eagle were given to the woman." These were the sections of the habitable Divinely appointed for her, that there she might be sustained in her wilderness-state.

Of this earthly class were the "Paulicians," so called, who revolted and warred against the Constantinopolitan Catholic Dragon, A.D. 845-880. They were the militant Paulicians of the pike and gun, stirred up to deeds of blood and valor by the cruel torments of the clergy, in defense of the spiritual and real disciples of the apostle Paul, whose only fight was "the good fight of faith." This thirty-five years of Paulician warfare with the Dragon was "the earth running with help to the woman, and opening her mouth to swallow up the flood cast out of the Dragon's Mouth." They were first awakened to inflict death upon a governor and a bishop, who lent themselves to execute the imperial mandate for the conversion and destruction of "heretics." A more dangerous and consuming flame was kindled by Theodora's persecution, and the revolt of Carbeas, a valiant sympathizer, who commanded the imperial guards of the General of the East. His father had been skinned alive by the Catholic Inquisitors. This horrible cruelty determined him to abandon the service of the Dragon. Five thousand sympathizers joined him in renouncing their allegiance to anti-christian Rome, and in forming an alliance against her with the Saracen "Commander of the Faithful." "During more than thirty years," says Gibbon, "Asia was afflicted by the calamities of foreign and domestic war; in their hostile inroads the disciples of St. Paul were joined with those of Mohammed; and the peaceful christians, the aged parent and tender virgin (the besotted catholics) who were delivered into barbarous servitude, might justly accuse the intolerant spirit of their sovereign. So urgent was the mischief, so intolerable the shame, that Michael was compelled to march in person against the Paulicians: he was defeated under the walls of Samosata: and the Roman emperor fled before the heretics whom his mother Theodora had condemned to the flames." The valor and ambition of Chrysocheir, successor to Carbeas, embraced a wider circle of rapine and revenge. In alliance with his faithful anti-catholic Moslems, he boldly penetrated into the heart of Asia Minor. These were the times of the Moslem Woe, in which the catholics were "tormented with the torment of a scorpion when he striketh a man." "The men who had the seal of Deity in their foreheads," the Paulicians, were "not hurt" by it; but, as we see, were defended by the Moslem Locusts, who, as the sword of Deity, avenged them upon "the shaven crowns" whose skulls they cleft without mercy. "In those days they sought death (or the political extinction of the State, which would relieve them of those tormenting inroads), but they found it not; and they desired to die, but the death fled from them" (Apoc. 9:4-6). The Dragon legions were repeatedly overthrown, and his edicts of persecution were responded to by the pillage of Nice and Nicomedia, of Ancyra, and Ephesus, whose cathedral was turned into a stable for mules and horses; and the Paulician sympathizers vied with the Saracens in evincing their contempt and abhorrence of the idols and relics of catholic superstition.

"There were other things in which Aerius differed from the common notions of the time: he condemned prayers for the dead, stated fasts, the celebration of Easter, and other rites of that nature, in which the multitude erroneously imagine that the life and soul of religion consists. His great purpose seems to have been that of reducing Christianity to its primitive simplicity. This was a great and noble enterprise, and places the Aerians, as those who associated themselves with Aerius were styled, in the apocalyptic category of "the remnants of the woman's seed."

This was the fate of the Pagan-Roman Power, the subject of the prophecy. As we have seen elsewhere, it was "cast down" from supreme authority, and "cast out" from the "Seven Mountains into the earth," when Maxentius was dethroned and superseded in the government by Constantine, A.D. 312. But the dominion of the idols was not thereby abolished: the situation, or relative position of parties, had only been changed. The imperial ascendancy of the idols had been destroyed in Italy, Africa, Spain, Gaul and Britain; but they were still sovereign in the lower, or less dignified and important countries of Illyricum, Dacia, Macedonia, Thrace, Grecia, Asia Minor, Armenia, Syria, and Egypt. Of these countries, Illyricum, comprehending the region south and west of the Danube, north of Macedonia, northeast of the Adriatic, and north of Lombardy and Venetia; DACIA, including Hungary and the region between the lower Danube and the Balkan Mountains; GREECE, MACEDONIA, and THRACE; these constituted "the inhabiters of the earth": while Asia Minor, Egypt, Syria, and the East, were occupied by "the inhabiters of the sea." Before the idols lost their ascendancy, all these countries were ruled by the great political firm "Dragon Serpent

TIME OF EVENTS From A.D. 324 to the Fall Seasons of A.D. 1864-'8, or thereabout.

This simple statement of facts identifies the Fourth Beast of Daniel with the Scarlet-colored Beast of John in Apoc. 17:3,11. The light shed upon the subject in these texts, reveals that the head seen by Daniel was the Sixto-Octavian, or the last; and gives us to understand what was concealed from the prophet, that the nameless beast he saw had Eight Heads. John's Scarlet Beast 'goeth into perdition." Daniel saw this consummation; and John saw the perdition inflicted by the same agents -by the Lamb, and his called and chosen, and faithful companions-the Saints (Ch. 17:14).

Now the time represented by John's standing on the sand, was all the time of the sounding of the four wind-trumpets, to the end of the darkened day and night in their third part. This was a long period; but defined by the work done as revealed in this chapter. It was a period of 405 years. This was the time of his symbolic standing upon the Sand of the Sea, beholding the development of the Fourth Beast, in its Seventh Head, Ten Horns, and Little Horn, with Man's Eyes and a Lion's Mouth. The four hundred and five years are composed of 164, from the beginning of the first trumpet to the darkening of Rome's day in the epoch of the Pragmatic Sanction, or settlement of Italian affairs, by Justinian, A.D. 554-'9. "Under the Exarchs of Ravenna," says Gibbon, "Rome was degraded to the second rank." Rome had hitherto been imperial or regal, under the Sixth and Seventh Heads of the Dragon; but she was now, as the consequence of the blowing of the four wind-trumpets, neither the one nor the other; but a city which had "reigned over the kings of the earth" (Apoc. 17:18), now degraded to a rank in which she exercised no sovereignty at all. She was therefore now in a state of eclipse both in respect of the luminaries of her day and night; for "the day shone not for a third part of it, and the night likewise" (Apoc. 8:8,12). The reader will please connect, by reference, what I am now writing with what appears in Vol. 3pp. 68-75. The phrase "the third part of the day," and "the third part of the night," implies a whole day and a whole night, each equal to the third part three times repeated. With the Jews, a day and a night were each twelve hours long; so that "a third part of' a day would be four hours; and "a third part of' a night, also four hours; in all eight hours. Now there is a certain class of Laodicean speculators in apocalyptic mysteries, who style themselves "Literalists," and who would have us to believe that day and night signify nothing more than what is ordinarily meant by these terms!, So that they would reduce us to the absurdity of believing, that the events of the four trumpets culminated in the darkening of the natural sun, moon, stars, day and night, for the short period of only eight literal hours! But this folly is too ridiculous for an argument against it, or for a serious refutation. The "day" and the "night" must be proportional to the subject treated of. The subject is the obscuration of the luminaries of a political universe of a dominion. These are things of centuries. Their day and their night, is their day-time and their night-time of ages. Hence a time is a minor cycle contained in the aeon, or aeon, of their duration. The aeon of the Sea-Monster's Mouth is three cycles and a half, or three times and a half, or three days and a half, or 1260 years and as a cycle, or circle, is geometrically divisible into three hundred and sixty equal parts -A time or day, is a year of years, or 360 lunar years. Rome's lights which ruled her day and night times were not eclipsed for a whole day and a whole night: but only for a third of each of these times. Had she lost her rule for a whole day and a whole night, her ruling would have been suppressed for seven hundred and twenty years, or a dual of times: but as it was, her day-time and her night-time only ceased shining two hundred and forty years, which are the sum of the thirds predicted; for the third of a day-time of three hundred and sixty years is one hundred and twenty years: and the third of a night-time of three hundred and sixty' years; is also one hundred and twenty years; and these two periods of one hundred and twenty years each added together give two hundred and forty years. Now if these 240 years be added to A.D. 559, the epoch of Rome's degradation, it gives the sum A.D. 799; when, if my exposition of the symbolic time of the Fourth Trumpet be correct, history ought to testify Rome's restoration to the IMPERIAL DIGNITY from which she had been degraded by the will of the Catholic Dragon. Now John informs us, that he stood and saw the ascending of the Sea-Beast and the ascending of the Earth-Beast: this then was the period of his standing - he stood while they were ascending. The latter Beast was developed imperially, with Rome for its tempo-spiritual throne, A.D. 799. Hence John's standing upon the Sand of the Sea reaches, in its significance, to this date, or to the end of the 240 years. Add then these years to the terminal epoch of the fourth trumpet, and we have a period of 405 years - a stormy period, which changed the face of the world; and laid the foundation of a polity, which, after a lapse of more than a thousand years, is manifest in the existing constitution of MODERN EUROPE.

Now John was "a man wondered at," a man of sign, or as we say in our vernacular, a representative man; and his actions and postures, like Daniel's and Ezekiel's, were dramatic. Hence John upon the sand represented that portion of "the great multitude which no man can number" (Apoc. 7:9) existing contemporaneously with the ascending of the beasts out of the sea; and who refused to worship the Image of the Beast, and would not receive his mark, nor the number of his name (ch. 13:15; 15:2). The position they occupied in the four hundred years of the ascending of the monsters of the sea and the earth, was that of neutral observers of events; whose antipathies were against their old enemy the Catholic Dragon, who was compelled by the four wind-trumpet powers to "yield his power, throne and an extensive dominion" to the Ten Horns. The judgments of the four wind-trumpets were not sent against the servants of the Deity, sealed in their foreheads with the Father's name (chap. 7:3; 14:1) whom John represented; but upon the catholic worshippers of daimonia and idols (ch. 9:20). Hence John's multitude in the Wings, or extremities, of the Great Eagle, had the sympathy of "the barbarians" who rushed in upon the Dragon's domain to establish king-doms for themselves. The saints and witnesses being at war with the Dragon (ch. 12:17), his enemies, "the barbarians," would naturally be their friends; so that, while the Dragon and the barbarians were in tempestuous and stormy conflict, their multitude in the Roman Africa atid the Alpine regions would hear the roar of the tempest-tossed sea, standing as it were upon the shore.

"SEA, clear and serene, denotes an orderly collection of people, in a quiet and peaceable state." "Sea, troubled and tumultuous, signifies a collection of men in motion and war. Either way, the waters signifying people, and the sea being a collection of waters, the sea becomes the symbol of people, gathered into one body politic, kingdom, or jurisdiction, or united in one design."

Abussos is derived from a priv. and bussos, the depth, and therefore signifies, that which is not, or has not been, fathomed; hence, in general, boundless, exhaustless. The apocalyptic terms above recited are terms of extension. The sea and the earth of this chapter are coextensive with the Mediterranean and its countries to the Rhine, and Danube; these were a deep that had been politically bounded, or fathomed: but, what of that vast unmeasured, or boundless, region beyond? That region styled in John's time, Germania, European and Asiatic Sarmatia, and Scythia, beyond the Rhine, the Danube, the Carpathian Mountains, the Dniester, the Black Sea, the Caucasian Mountains, and the Caspian Sea? This was a wild, unsubdued wilderness stretching along the northern frontier of the Great Roman Eagle, inhabited by swarms of fierce barbarians, whom the Romans were unable to fathom, or to bring within the appreciable depths of the earth and sea. They were an unorganized confused multitude an abyss of which no conqueror or legislator had been able to reach the bottom.

"In several other places of Scripture wild beasts are the symbol of tyrannical powers; as in Ezek. 34:28, and Jer. 12:9, where the beasts of the field are explained by the Targum, of the kings of the heathen and their armies.

"The Horn of David in Psa. 132:18, is explained by the Targum of a glorious king to arise out of the house of David.

Isaiah 30:27, it is said "The NAME of Yahweh cometh from far, HIS anger burning, and the burden thereof heavy; HIS lips are full ofindignation, and HIS tongue as a devouring fire." Here name obviously denotes a person, an individual of great power, developing great anger and fiery indignation. It is the name styled by Moses in Deut. 28:58, "the glorious and fearful Name, YAHWEH Elohim:" for the repudiation and blasphemy of which Judah and Benjamin, with a multitijde of Levi, have been banished from their country, and tormented among the Nations for nearly eighteen hundred years.

With these convictions, these devout Roman strangers stood before PETER and the rest of the apostles. They saw upon their heads Spirit, blazing in cloven-tongues of flame, the symbol of many languages in which they were declaring the wonderful works of the Deity. Astonished at the sublime eloquence outfiowing from these illiterate Galilatan fishermen, they said one to another, "What meaneth this?" They had seen nothing like it in Rome, nor yet in Jerusalem, before; and there were none that could expound it, save the Eternal Spirit before whom they stood. Moved by this Divine Power, PETER standing up with

A few last words may be added in reference to the diadems, which I find collected by the industry of Mr. Elliott, from Gibbon, and other writers with whom the reader will never probably become acquainted. What follows, he says, he has borrowed from Lelewel's great work ('n the coinage of the Middle Age. "It is well known," says Elliott, "that the barbarian Gothic or German kings, after their first conquests, were almost all anxious to receive appointment from the Roman emperor as Masters-General or Patricians of the empire" of the Dragon; "the appointment being equivalent to that of Viceroy; and most useful above all

Now history, that is Daniel himself, informs us, that the kingdom which arose after Nebuchadnezzar's was the Two-Armed, or Two-Horned, Silver bear, or ram, kingdom of the Medes and the Persians: and that the third kingdom, reckoning that of Babylon as the first, was the goat-kingdom of Grecia. The Medo-Persian empire comprehended one hundred and twenty-seven provinces, stretching from India to Ethiopia (Esther 1:1). These were distributed into "three ribs, "or presidencies, of which Daniel's jurisdiction was the first. The three ribs in the Mouth of the Bear are symbolical of these political divisions. Among the provinces of the Bear were Egypt, Armenia, Syria, and Asia Minor to the Bosphorus. These all came in due time to be annexed to the Dragon empire, or Daniel's Fourth Beast; so that the Bear became a constituent of the Dragon, and its four paws, armed with claws of brass, became the Sea-Monster's apocalyptic ' with which it is yet in our future, "the last of the days," to "break in pieces, and to stamp the residue" (Dan. 7:19).

"The Head of a beast answers to the supreme power, and that whether the supreme power be in one single person or in many. For as the power abstractly is not considered, so neither the persons abstracted from their power; but both in concreto, make up this head politic. And, therefore, if the supreme power be in many, those many are the head, and not the less one head for consisting of many persons, no more than the body is less one body for consisting of many persons." Daubuz.

But the Mouth of the Beast evidently doth not belong to mouths of this class; for it "speaks blasphemies concerning the Deity." Hence, the heart of the Beast must be desperately wicked; for "out of the fullness of the heart the mouth speaketh." The character of the inward Beast, therefore, or of that system of things spiritual and temporal, doctrinal, practical and political, hidden in the symbols before us, must be essentially "the Mystery of Iniquity in all the deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish" (2 Thess. 2:7,10). The Mouth of the Beast is the mouth of the wicked in their politico-religious organization. It is a mouth which "speaketh vanity," and "poureth out evil things:" the words thereof "are smoother than butter, but war is in their heart; their words are softer than oil, yet are they drawn swords." With this Mouth "the wicked boasteth of his heart's desire, and blesseth the covetous, whom Yahweh abhorreth: Through the pride of his countenance he will not seek, the Deity is not in all his thoughts. His ways are always grievous; thy judgments, 0 Yahweh! are far above out of his sight: as for all his enemies, he puffeth at them. He hath said in his heart, I shall not be moved; for I shall never be in adversity. His Mouth is full of cursing, and deceit, and fraud; under his tongue is mischief and vanity. He sitteth in the lurking-places of the villages: in the secret places doth he murder the innocent; his eyes are privily set against the poor. He lieth in wait secretly as a lion in his den; he lieth in wait to catch the poor, when he draweth him into his net. He croucheth and humbleth himself, that the poor may fall by his strong ones. He hath said in his heart, God hath forgotten: He hideth his face; he will never see it" (Psa. 10:3-11). If John had written this as descriptive of the Lion-Mouth of the Beast, nothing could have more accurately recorded what have been the facts developed in the many centuries of its wickedness and blasphemies. The words proceeding out of it have been "softer than oil" towards its wor-hippers; but they have been "drawn swords" against the poor saints and witnesses of the anointed Jesus. He has puffed at his enemies; for, though but feeble in arms, he has set the most powerful of his enemies at defiance; and by his spiritual thunders reduced them to the most abject submission. The Name of Blasphemy speaking by his Lion-Mouth, de-clares the eternity of his rule; and that he shall "see no sorrow" from which he shall not ultimately be delivered: "He saith in his heart, I shall not be moved; for I shall never be in adversity" (Apoc. 18:7); and, as for cursing, deceit, fraud, mischief and vanity, his mouth is indeed full; for in the atmosphere of these he lives, and moves, and has his being. The judgments of the Deity are indeed "out of his sight" far above him. He discerns them not. This is highly characteristic of him at the present time. Even his worshippers are hating him, and making him desolate and naked, as it has long since been predicted they would (Apoc. 17:16); yet so blind are his eyes with which he surveys the world, and so infatuate and unteachable his obdurate and beastly heart from his long surfeit and intoxication of blood (verse 6), that he can see nothing; so that, persisting in his obstinacy, the fate of the blind when they undertake to lead the blind, will come upon him in an hour when he thinks only of future glory, and he will suddenly "go into perdition," and there will be none to help.

The apostle informs us that he saw "one of the heads" in this severely wounded condition; but he does not tell us which one of the seven it was. This he leaves us to find out for ourselves. Is the mystery, then, impenetrable? I think not. Let us see. In Ch. 17:10, the Revelator tells him, in speaking of the Seven Heads, "they are seven sovereign powers; five are fallen, and one is, and the other is not yet come; and when he cometh he must continue a short space." One is; that is, at the time he was speaking to John in Patmos. The Heads being attached to the Seven Mounts upon which Rome sits, we have only to ascertain what form of Sovereign Power obtained there while John was residing in Patmos. This is well known to have been the Imperial; which is a sovereignty headed up in one or more emperors, uniting in themselves the supreme, civil, spiritual, and military authority of the state. As five sovereign powers had fallen, this must have been the sixth, and only the sixth, because "the other," or seventh, had not then as yet come.

His development, however, into an enthroned god was gradual and progressive. In the Canons of the Council of Chalcedon, A.D. 450, the Bishop of Rome is styled, "Beatissimus Papa urbis Rome, qui est capu omnium ecclesiarum," i.e. the most blessed Pope of Rome, who is "THE HEAD OF ALL CHURCHES." About five years before this the western emperor, Valentinian III., and the eastern emperor, Theodosius II., unitedly published an imperial edict, or law, in which the Bishop of Rome is styled, "DIRECTOR OF UNIVERSAL CHRISTENDOM." In this edict, the presumptuousness of resistance to the Holy See was sharply rebuked, the whole body of bishops bidden to do nothing without his approbation and the universal clergy to obey him as their ruler. "From this time (A.D. 445) says Ranke, "the power of the Roman Bishops grew up under protection of the Roman Emperor himself." He was their especial patron, and predicted as such, as we have already seen in what is testified concerning the Dragon in the second verse of this chapter.

After this manner the Seventh Head was developed and established upon the Seven Hills; the Dragon tardily, reluctantly and ambiguously ceding to it "his power, and his throne, and extensive jurisdiction (ch. 13:2). Theodoric reigned thirty-three years, from A.D. 493 to A.D. 526. Among the barbarian Horns of the West the victory of Theodoric had spread a general alarm. But as soon as it appeared that he was satiated with conquest and desired peace, terror was changed into respect, and they submitted to a powerful mediation, which was uniformly employed for the best purposes of reconciling their quarrels and civilizing their manners. A wife, two daughters, a sister and a niece, united the family of Theodoric with the kings of the Franks, the Burgundians, the Visigoths, the Vandals and the Thuringians, and contributed to maintain the harmony, or at least the balance, of the great western Republic of the horns. He reduced, under a strong and regular government, the unprofitable countries of Rhcetia, Noricum, Dalmatia and Pannonia, from the source of the Danube and the territory of the Bavarians, to the kingdom erected by the Gepidae on the ruins of Sirmium. His greatness awakened the jealousy of Anastasius, the emperor of the east, who ravaged the sea-coast of Calabria and Apulia, but the activity and moderation of Theodoric were soon rewarded by a solid and honorable peace. He maintained with a powerful hand the balance of the Horn-Powers of the west, till it was at length overthrown by the ambition of Clovis, king of the Franks, whose progress he checked in the midst of their victorious career. By the Visigoths he was revered as a national protector and guardian of their infant prince. Under this respectable character, the king of Italy restored the praetorian prefecture of the Gauls, reformed some abuses in the civil government of Spain, and accepted the annual tribute and apparent submission of its military governor. The sovereignty of the Seventh Head was established from Sicily to the Danube, and from Belgrade to the Atlantic ocean, and the Greeks themselves have acknowledged that Theodoric reigned over the fairest portion of the western empire.

The next question is, By whom was the authority given to the Beast to practice for that period? The answer is, that it was given by Him who alone knew how long the practicing was to continue. That is to say, the authority was given by the Deity, Who ordains all things, and Who foreshowed the period in the text before us. "The powers that be are ordained of the Deity" (Rom. 13:1): "He hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of the habitation of all nations of men" (Acts 17:26). No nation can permanently extend its bounds, or perpetuate any system of government, beyond the limitation of His predetermined, and prearranged, times. The forty and two months are the Divinely authorized period of the Beast's practicing; at the end of which, the European Commonwealth which it symbolizes for that period, will pass into the phase predetermined for it in Apoc. 17.

"Great things" are affirmed of the Mouth, which it sanctions ex officio. A celebrated monk of the time of Hildebrand puts these lying words into the mouth of Jesus Christ, as addressing the pope, and given in the original Latin text by Elliott. "I have delivered into thy hands the keys of my whole universal church, and have placed thee over it as VICAR for me; and, if these be few things, I have also delivered to thee the kingdoms. Yea, the king (or emperor) being removed from the midst, I have granted to thee the right of the whole vacant Roman empire." The orator of the tenth Session of the fifth Lateran Council thus speaks of Constantine's removal of his imperial throne to Byzantium, afterwards named Constantinople: "Constantine, breathed upon by divine grace from above, fully ceded the sceptre of the empire of the world and city to the true and proper Lord - to the Deity, and to the man in his own Roman seat, Sylvester, the Pontifex Maximus, in the primeval and natural right of Christ, the eternal priest; and he sought another throne by Apostolical concession, and erected it in Byzantium under the obedience of the Apostolic throne." It is true that the Dragon granted the Mouth his throne in old Rome, but it was not at the time alleged; the orator, doubtless, referred to "the Decretals of Constantine (*)," proved to have been forged by the popes.

But Christ and the Saints are not only the Name and Tabernacle of the Deity, but they are also, "those who dwell in the heaven." The phrase "in the heaven" is Apocalyptically equivalent to "in the heavenlies in Christ" -en tois epouraniois en Christo (Eph. 1:3). Paul tells the saints in Ephesus, that he with them were "blessed with all spiritual blessings" in these heavenlies; in which they and Christ, though the latter is at the Right Hand of the Divine Majesty, and they in Ephesus and elsewhere, were regarded as sitting together (Eph. 1:20; 2:6). A heavenly is a constituted supernal state. It may be Divinely constituted, or constituted by human authority. We have these two kinds of heaven-ies in Paul's letter to the saints in Ephesus. Inch. 6:12, he alludes to the heavenlies constituted by human authority. The Common Version styles them "High Places;" but Paul used the same word to indicate them as that rendered "heavenly places" in ch. 1:3,20; 2:6. There is no reason why the translation should not be uniform after the manner of the original. I see that in the Italian Version this uniformity has been observed. In this, in all the places of the epistle where Paul uses en tois epouraniois, the phrase is represented by ne' luoghi celesti, in places celestial. The French Version is also uniform, rendering it dans les heux celestes. The German is less uniform than the English; and in ch. 6:12, excludes the things mentioned there from heaven altogether, and puts them unter dem Himmel, under the heaven.

"It was healed," says John. The plague of the death by the sword was healed. To heal a death plague is to cause to live that which was smitten. This is the interpretation put upon the phrase in the fourteenth verse in the words, "the beast which had the plague of the sword, and did live." To heal is to institute a process of recovery. Healing is often a slow process, and always requires time; and the severer the injury to the constitution of the patient, the longer the time required for the recovery of health and strength. It is the same whether the patient be a sick man, or an enfeebled power. Time is demanded for a cure. It was so in the matter of restoring imperial dominion to Rome. There could, however, be no healing of "the plague of the sword," that IMPERIALISM might live and flourish again in the Seven-Hilled City, so long as the REGAL Seventh Head exercised sovereignty therein. While this reigned in conjunction with the Ten Horns, Rome's wounded imperialism was un-healed. The worship of "the peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues," or "many waters" of the Roman Habitable, upon which the woman sits, was an epluribus unum. It was no longer a worship, or political homage and allegiance, rendered to a Sole Emperor reigning in Constantinople; but it was a worship in which "they wondered after the beast in all the earth," or empire; so that "they worshipped the Dragon which yielded authority to the Beast;" for the Seventh Head belonged both to the Dragon and the Beast; and the Ten horns, as we have seen by their coinage, acknowledged the supremacy of the Emperor in Constantinople, whose Vice-Kings they claimed to be: while, at the same time, they recognized the Seventh Head as a legitimate sovereignty. The constitution of things was analogous to the United States system of powers, in which citizens owe a divided allegiance to their native state and to the general government - they worship the American Eagle, which gives authority to the State-Feathers of its wings and they worship the Feathers. This is well understood. There is, however, this difference in the similitude, that where as a Visigoth and a Frank, first worshipped their respective Horn-States; and secondly, the general government in Constantinople. Now, a Marylander or a Virginian first worships at Washington, and afterwards subordinately at Richmond or Annapolis. The comparison, however, is sufficiently close for illustration of the saying "they worshipped the Dragon which yielded authority to the Beast; and they worshipped the Beast, saying, Who is like to the Beast? Who is able to make war with him?" - Ver. 4. None. No beast-dominion can stand before him; for, as Daniel says of the SYSTEM OF Powers represented by the Dragon and the Beast, it is "dreadful and terrible, and strong exceedingly; and it had great iron teeth; it devoured and brake in pieces, and stamped the residue with the brazen clawed feet of it" (Ch. 7:7,19). The history of Modern Europe amply shows the truth of the Beast's invincibility. It is the predominant dominion upon the earth; and rules the so-called civilized nations of Europe, Asia, Africa, America, and Australia.

- But, in the beginning of the eighth century, in the full magnitude of the abuse, an apprehension was awakened among the Greeks, that the Incessant charge of the Jews and Mohammedans that they were idolaters might possibly be true. The murmurs of many simple and rational people arose against the superstition. They appealed to the evidence of texts, of facts, and of the primitive times, and secretly desired the reformation of the church.

The Saints, or true believers, have always known, though sinners, and sceptical professors, their kin, have not, that although their conflict with the secular and ecclesiastical rulers of the world would be proximately disastrous; yet, that finally they would themselves be the victors, and the personal avengers of the atrocious cruelties they had endured. They have always known what the Beast is that is politically "worshipped by all that dwell upon the (Romish) earth;" and by which they have in ages past been vanquished: and being of that class that hath ears, they have heard "what the Spirit saith to the ecclesias." They have understood what the destiny of "the Powers that be," which have led them into captivity and killed them by the sword, is decreed by the Eternal Spirit to be. They know that this Beast, with all its appendages of heads, horns, mouth, feet, and Name of Blasphemy, aggregately symbolizing the governments of the nations, are themselves to be led captive, or taken violent possession of; and to be destroyed by the judicial two-edged sword in the hands of the Saints. They knew that the honor of executing vengeance upon the nations, and punishments upon the people; of binding their kings with chains, and their nobles with fetters of iron; and of executing the judgment written, when the Ancient of Days should come, was, in the wisdom and justice of the Deity, assigned to them (Psa. 149:6-9; Dan. 7:22). By this knowledge, they were energized to endure for the time-being the atrocious cruelty inflicted upon them by the great iron teeth of the Lion-Mouth. They endured in hope of this honor, and waited for it in faith. It was their patience and their faith that the time would come, after the lapse of the forty two months, when they would slay Daniel's Fourth Beast, give his body politic to the burning flame, and deprive the other three Beasts of their dominion, which they would possess 1000 years (Dan. 7:11,12; Apoc. 20:4). This has never been "the patience and the faith" of the worshippers of the Beast "who dwell upon the earth." These, who constitute "the Names and Denominations of Christendom," do not believe that the power leading "heretics," so-called, into captivity, or, in the language of the Inquisition, "immuring" them, shall itself be "immured" in the binding of its kings and nobles with chains: nor that such a power having killed "heretics" by the million with the sword, shall in like manner be by them destroyed. They of whose names there has been no record (hou gegraptai) from the foundation of the world, in the book of the slain Lamb's life have no ear to hear such doctrines as this. The waiting for and belief of these things is a characteristic of the true believers, "who dwell in the heaven," though". pilgrims and sojourners upon the earth, and trodden under foot of the Gentiles; for where their treasure is, there is their heart, or affections, also.

Thus far in this exposition we have seen that Italy, the Heaven of the gods of the Roman system, experienced a variety of fortunes after it lost its ancient masters, and before it fell, as we shall see, into the hands of the founder of the Two-Horned Episcopal dominion. In the sounding of the fourth wind-trumpet it was entirely subdued by the Herulian Goths, who came from the extremity of the Black Sea. They held it for a short time, and were succeeded by the Ostrogoths, or Seventh Head. These acknowledged the Wounded Imperial Head, restricted to the Eastern and Illyrian Thirds, and still reigning in Constantinople, as their superior in rank, but not in jurisdiction. The Seventh Head was at last subdued by Belisarius and Narses, the generals of Justinian, the reigning emperor of the Wounded Sixth Head, who having "plucked up by the roots" the Vandal Horn of the Sea Monster, had the pleasure of uniting Italy and Africa once more to the Eastern Roman, or Greek empire; but not of so healing the Gothic sword-wound as to restore the city Rome to its former imperial rank among the cities of the empire. This pleasure was reserved, as we shall see, for a great conqueror, the influence of whose victories is felt in the constitution of Europe to this day. The Western Empire, which took its rise as a separate State on the death of Theodosius, A. D. 395' was wholly subverted by Odoacer, the king of the Heruli; and Rome, its capital, was now in the middle of the eighth century, a second-rate city, the residence of a mere duke, and an ambitious and turbulent prelate, called the Universal Bishop, and subject to the authority of the Eastern emperor's viceroy, styled the Exarch, whose seat of government was in Ravenna, near the Adriatic, and 117 miles distant from Rome. Soon after the subversion of the Seventh Ostrogothic Head, a great part of Italy was seized by Alboin, king of the Lombards, who made Pavia the seat of government. Autharis, a successor, embraced the catholic superstition about A.D. 586, in its Arian form, which was highly offensive to the Universal Bishop; who could have no more fellowship with him, than Pius IX. with Victor Emmanuel, the modern king of Lombardy, who lies under the Papal ban of excommunication for coveting his neighbor's goods. Liberty of conscience, so odious to the papal mind, was allowed under all the Lombard kings; and Rotharis was so moderate and indulgent, that during his reign, most cities of Italy had two bishops, one Trinitarian, and the other Arian. But king Grimoald, about A.D. 668, influenced by the bishop of Bergamo, renounced the tenets of Arius. His successors followed his example; so that Arianism was in a short time forsaken by the Lombard nation. Grimoald was succeeded by Luitprand, whose great qualities were in some measure obscured by his unbounded ambition. Not satisfied with the extensive dominions left him by his predecessors, like Victor Emmanuel, he formed the design of making himself sole master of Italy, which, of course, necessitated the conquest of the Exarchate, and the expulsion of the imperial authority from the country.

It was after the Nicene synod, and under the reign of Irene, that the Roman Pontiffs of the Latin Idolatry consummated the separation of Rome and Italy from the Dragon of the East, by the translation of the empire to the less orthodox Charlemagne. The popes were compelled to choose between the rival nations, which had been alienated from each other by the question concerning the demonials and idols for so many years. In that schism of the Apostasy the Romans had tasted of freedom, and the popes of sovereignty. The Greek Dragon had restored the idols, but he had not restored the Calabrian estates and the Illyrian diocese, which the Iconoclasts had torn away from the so-called successors of St. Peter. This embezzlement of Peter's goods, pope Adrian regarded as practical heresy to be punished with excommunication unless speedily repented of. The Greek emperors took a different view of the subject, and were more disposed to demand the restoration of the Exarchate, and the return of the pope from treason and rebellion to the alegiance of his rightful sovereign. But the popes had gone too far to recede; and besides Charlemagne was now the real owner of the Exarchate of Rome, and his right and power the pope was unable to alienate or abolish. Charlemagne was the Patrician of Rome, and Protector of the Romans, and consequently the Master and Protector of the pope who was too feeble to circumvent his policy had he been so disposed. His interests, therefore, attached him to Charlemagne: and it was only by reviving the western empire that they could pay their obligations to him, or secure their establishment. "By this decisive measure," says Gibbon, "they would finally eradicate the claims of the Greeks; from the debasement of a provincial town the majesty of Rome would be restored: the Latin christians would be united under a supreme head in their ancient metropolis; and the conquerors of the west would receive their crown from the successors of St. Peter. The Roman church would acquire a zealous and respectable advocate; and under the shadow of the Carlovingian power, the Bishop might exercise with honor and safety, the government of the city."

Such was the dominion of which Charlemagne was the founder in the eighth, and beginning of the ninth, centuries. These were the age of the Romish Bishops, as the eleventh and twelfth centuries were of the Popes. The Carlovingians and the Bishops were the Beast of the Earth in its primary phase. The position assumed by Charlemagne was military, civil and ecclesiastical. He was head of the church and head of the state. "The sovereign," says Hallam, "who maintained with the greatest vigor his ecclesiastical supremacy was Charlemagne. Most of the capitularies of his reign relate to the discipline of the church. Some of his regulations are such as men of high-church principles would, even in modern times, deem infringements of spiritual independence." He enacted of his own will that "no legend of doubtful authority should be read in the churches, but only the canonical books, and that no saint should be honored whom the whole church did not acknowledge. These were not passed in a synod of bishops, but enjoined by the sole authority of the emperor, who seems to have arrogated a legislative power over the church which he did not possess in temporal affairs. Many of his other laws relating to the ecclesiastical constitution, are enacted in a general council of the lay nobility as well as of the prelates, and are so blended with those of a secular nature, that the two orders may appear to have equally consented to the whole. But whatever share we may imagine the laity in general to have had in such matters, Charlemagne himself did not consider even theological decisions as beyond his province; and in more than one instance, manifested a determination not to surrender his own judgment, even in questions of that nature, to any ecclesiastical authority.

Now, this Imperio-Episcopal, or Little Horn, power "causeth that the earth and the dwellers therein worship the first beast, the plague of whose death was healed." In other words, causeth that the tribes, and tongues, and nations referred to in the seventh verse, worship, or do homage to, the Sixth Head, or form of government, common to the Dragon and Beast of the Sea. The phase "the First Beast" is evidently elliptical; and stands for "the Sixth Head of the First Beast;" for this was the only head of the Seven that was healed, or restored to sovereignty in Rome.

But the fire of the Two Horned Beast's heaven, which the authorities of that aerial were able to cause to flame forth with scorching and destructive effect, did not consist solely in war and its calamities. Had the Beast consisted solely and simply of a secular military power, its fire would have been restricted to its warlike operations; but it did not. It is also an ecclesiastical power; therefore its fire must be more or less of an episcopal character. Ecclesiastical fire is the flashing and forked lightnings of episcopal wrath, thundered against kings, nations, and peoples obnoxious to its displeasure. This fire used to be consuming and terrible, and was ministered by the Two Horns like a Lamb, or the Romish Episcopacy, whose judicial fire is its anathemas, or curses, and excommunications, executed by the secular authorities in all the Horn-Kingdoms of the European Commonwealth. These are sometimes called "the Thunders of the Vatican," whence they rolled forth, echoing through the heaven by the cooperation of the clergy. These lightnings and thunderbolts, as the Romanists themselves style them, were hurled by Pope Innocent, the Roman Jupiter Tonans, in the Council at Lyons against the emperor Frederick, A.D. 1245, to the great terror of the bystanders. "These words," says the record, "uttered in the midst of the Council struck the hearers with terror as might the flashing thunder-bolts. When, with candles lighted and flung down, the Lord Pope and his assistant prelates flashed their lightning fire terribly against the emperor Frederick, now no longer to be called emperor, his procurators and friends burst into bitter wailing, and struck the thigh or breast. 'That day,' said one of them, 'that day of wrath, of calamity, and of woe!"' The flinging down of lighted candles from an elevated position by the excommunicators, a mimic representation of fire from heaven, was the usual accompaniment of the solemn and great excommunication pronounced annually at the feast Cana Domini by the Pope in person, his Cardinals and his Priesthood, against all heretics from the elevated Vestibule of the Lateran Temple at Rome; and was directed to be practised by the Romish Bishops elsewhere also on certain solemn occasions.

2. But that he might not legally assume the titles of emperor and Augustus, till he had received the crown from the hands of the Roman Pontiff.

Such is the present condition of what remains of the Sixth, or Imperial Head of the Beast. It can order all Heretics to be roasted and exterminated, who defiantly refuse to abandon their heresy, and to worship or honor and obey it. But in none of its "catholic provinces" can its episcopal officials execute its commands. Neither they, nor the secular authorities, dare venture upon the experiment; because, like the rulers of old, " they fear the people. "All it dare attempt now is the canonization of murderers, who used to roast Jews, burn heretics, and try to exterminate protestants. This has been ostentatiously done in Rome by Pius IX. and his bishops in 1867. Their transformation of these bloodhounds of the Papacy into Romish Saint-Protectors, or Mahuzzim, demonstrates what the Image of the Beast would do even now, if its spirit or power to do or practise, had not departed; and shows that the mind of the Romish Hierarchy is to-day as hateful, stagnant and unclean as ever. But happily for mankind in the fairest countries of the earth, they can only typify their disposition towards robbery and murder by canonizing thieves and sanguinary wretches of a former age. By thus gnashing their teeth at the living, they give expression to their "heart-rending griefs" that they can no longer " cause as many as will not worship the Image of the Beast to be put to death."

But before we approach the Image these words of the text demand attention in passing, "and he deceives the dwellers upon the earth through the wonders which it was given him to work in the presence of the beast, etc." The word rendered "deceives" is plana, which also signifies, to lead astray, cause to wander; metaphorically, to mislead, deceive, cause to err. Understanding from the previous section what the semeia, wonders, or miracles, were by which the wonder-working Beast was enabled to cause fire to descend from the heaven, we may thence determine the nature of the deception practised. The dwellers upon the earth were "deceived" in being led astray by clerical fraud, and episcopal and military violence; which is characterized by Paul as "the working of the Satan with all power and signs, and lying wonders, and with all the deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish" (2 Thess. 2:9). The Beast of the Sea, or Sixth and Seventh Head, Ten Horns, and Mouth; that is, so much of it as is contemporary with Apocalyptic times: the Beast of the Earth, or Little Horn and Eyes of Daniel's vision, and the Image of the Beast - are all symbolical of "the Satan;" and were all manifested after the same kind of "working," which Paul subdivides into all kinds of dunamis, and semeja, and lying terata, which cover the whole ground of military, civil, and ecclesiastical violence, oppression, and fraud.

At the time the Apocalypse was given, and long both before and after, it was a common practice for slaves, soldiers, and devotees, to bear the imprint of those who claimed, or were supposed to claim, absolute control over them. The impression was generally on the forehead or the hand, in token of servitude. Speaking of the custom for slaves, an old author says, "literarum notis inuri," branded with marks of letters; so that the slaves was styled "literatus," or "lettered." Ambrose says, "charactere domini inscribuntur servuli," "slaves are inscribed with the mark of the master;" and Petronius notes the "forehead" as the place of the sign. Soldiers were marked in "the hand" by the name of the emperor. In Lev. 19:28, the Israelites were forbidden to imprint any marks upon themselves; for it was an idolatrous practice: and continued to the present time by the Hindoos, who mark themselves on the forehead with the "charagma," or characteristic emblem, of the god they are devoted to.

This is the Covenant of life in Christ confirmed by his blood, and styled Apocalyptically, "the Book of the life of the Lamb slain." Every one who can prove Scripturally that he is in Christ, and, therefore of Abraham's Seed, thereby demonstrates that his name has been written in that book from the foundation of the world. For, "known unto the Deity are all his works from the beginning of the world" (Acts 15:13). If any one be a son of Deity he is one of "his works;" for says Paul to the sons of Deity in Ephesus, "we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works" (ch. 2:10). Then every one of his children was known to Him by name when he laid the foundation of the aion and kosmos (both rendered world in the English Version) in the Abrahamic Covenant. To deny it, would be to say that the Deity did not know all his works from the beginning. But he did know them; and, therefore, it is said in the verse before us of the dwellers on the earth in contrast with the dwellers in the heaven, of "whom there has not been written from the foundation of the world the names in the book of the life of the Lamb that had been slain." The sentence resting upon these is "Depart from me, ye cursed that work iniquity; I never knew you" (Matt. 7:21-23; 25:41). Such are the wonderers after the Beast of all clerical orders, and names, and denominations of blasphemy, of which his body politic is full (Apo 17:3). Thus, "whosoever is not found written in the Book of Life is cast into the Lake of Fire, in which the Beast and False-Prophet powers are to be destroyed by the all-conquering saints (ch. 19:20; 20:15; Matt. 25:41).

The name to be ascertained, then, is the Name of “the Man of Sin, the Son of Perdition, who opposeth and exalts himself over every one called a god, or sebasma, worshipped; so that he sitteth in the temple of the god as a god, publicly showing himself that he is a god.” This Man of Sin is not a single person; but an order of men, ruling imperiously, and imperially, in Rome — the Man-Image set up for worship there. All things have their names, and this Man-Image is no exception to the rule. What then is his Name? — the name of the power represented by the Image? It is evidently not literally revealed, or we should be able to read it plainly in the prophecy. It is like every thing else in this wonderful book. It is revealed in an enigma.

3. And they sing as it were a new song in the presence of the throne, and in the presence of the four living ones, and of the elders: and no one was able to learn the song, except the hundred forty-four thousands, who had been redeemed from the earth.

Thus, the Lamb and his 144,000 virgin-companions (Psa. 45:14), are represented in the first chapter by the Son ofMan clothed with a garment of linen (Dan. 10:5) whose voice is as the sound of many waters, or the voice of a multitude (Dan. 10:6). They are the One sitting upon the throne, the New Throne in the opened heavens; and the four and twenty Elders in white raiment and golden stephans; and the Four Living Ones full of eyes, in the midst of the throne, and around it, exhibited in the fourth chapter. The 144,000 are exegetical of the symbolic Lamb whose personal chieftain, or Head, is Jesus Christ, "the Captain of their salvation," or the Deity manifested in flesh, justified by spirit (1 Tim. 3:16). He is the Lamb slain, and they are in him; and therefore constituents of the symbolic and mystical Lamb; an idea emblematically signified,by the phrase, Hwith him 144,000". In other words, JESUS AND HIS BRETHREN "glorified together" (Rom. 8: 17), are the Seven Lamps of Fire burning before the throne, or the Seven Spirits of the Deity sent forth into all the earth, represented by a Lamb with Seven Horns and Seven Eyes; that is, they are the Omnipotent and Omniscient Power in substantial and glorious manifestation, styled YAHWEH AIL-SHADDAI, "He who shall be the strength of the Mighty Ones, who was, and is, and is to come," and is superlatively holy - Ch. 4:5,8; 5:6; Psa. 50: 1-6.

That is, ‘they had not the power of buying or selling anything, nor were they allowed the liberty of drawing water itself, before they had offered incense to detestable idols.’ Popish excommunication’s are therefore, like heathen persecutions; and how large a share the corrupted clergy, and especially the monks of former, and the Jesuits of latter times, have had in framing and enforcing such cruel interdicts, and in reducing all orders and degrees toso servile a state of subjection, no man of the least reading can want to be informed.”

The sound from the heaven was the voice of the 144,000 after they had got the victory over "the Beast," and over his "Image," and over his "sign," and over the "Number" of his Name; in other words, after they had conquered all Greek, Papal, and Protestant, Antichristendom. Their victorious attitude is indicated by their being palm-bearers -"they had palms in their hands". "Branches of palm-trees," says Daubuz, "are the symbol of joy after victory', attended with antecedent sufferings. By the Mosaical law, Lev. 23:40, they were used as a token of joy at the Feast of Tabernacles. And they were used upon any solemn occasion of joy, as after a victory or deliverance." In John 12:13, we have an illustration of the use of palm-branches on joyous occasions. The action of the multitude then, was, unconsciously to themselves, typical of the voice of the 144,000 on Mount Zion; when they shall greet the King of Israel, in their celebration of the great Feast of Tabernacles in the kingdom of the Deity, with the hosannas of victory'. In their joy, they sing the song of Moses the servant of the Deity and the song of the Lamb, saying, "Great and marvelous are thy works, YAHWEH AlL-SHADDAI; just and true are thy ways, thou King of Saints. Who shall not fear thee, 0 Lord, and glorify thy Name? for it only is holy: for all nations shall come and worship before thee; for thy judgments are made manifest"' (ch. 15:2-4). All nations shall come unto Jerusalem and worship before the King, Yahweh Tz'vaoth, and keep the Feast of Tabernacles; for Yahweh shall then be King over all the earth; in that day, there shall be One Yahweh and his Name one (Zech. 14:16,9).

The only answer that can be given to this question is that they are the women of the Apocalypse. The worst kind of women - the Harlot daughters and Harlot Abominations of the Great Drunken Murderess, whom they style "the Mother of All Churches." The "Holy Apostolic Catholic Church", is the Harlot in chief; "with whom the kings of the earth," the Secular Rulers of European and American Antichristen-dom, "have committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication". This is the Mother of the Harlot Family. Her daughters are the Churches of Europe "by law established;" such as, the Lutheran Harlot, the Anglo-Hibernian Harlot, the Caledonian Harlot, and the Helvetian Harlot' all of them, bearing "the Sign of the Beast," indicating their utter destitution of the faith and its obedience. Besides these principal harlots is an innumerable fry of Harlot abominations, all of them distinguished as the relations of the Roman Mother by the livery they wear. The sign of the Beast is upon them all. In the aggregate, they are an unbaptized ecclesiastical community, distinguished in its subdivisions by various 'names," Apocalyptically styled, "Names of Blasphemy," of which the Scarlet-colored dominion is said to be "full". These are styled by the sprinkled worshippers of the Beast, "the Names and Denominations of Christendom;" but the Apocalyptic title is the true one - "All the Abominations of the Earth," of which the Roman Harlot is the Mother. For what is Lutheranism, but German Latinism diluted with the un-scriptural speculations of an Augustinian monk? Or Calvinism, but Swiss, French, Dutch, English and Scotch Latinism, diluted with the traditions of the man who caused Servetus to be burned? These dilutions of the Latin superstition have been very useful in crippling the absolutism of the Romish Hierarchy. The world has been greatly benefited by the Protestant Rebellion; and by the multiplication and rivalries of the sects. But, though promotive of civil and religious liberty, their dogmas are God-dishonoring and gospel-nullifying blasphemies. Added to these are other "names," which, though repudiating baby-sprinkling and practicing immersion, are as much worshippers of the Beast as the rest. These immersed sects recognize the sprinkled sects as denominations of christians, showing that they do not know, or do not believe what the Scriptures teach as the one faith and one hope of the calling.'

The Sons of Aaron, the priests, were appointed to blow the trumpets in the day of their gladness, in their solemn days, over their burnt offerings, and over the sacrifices of their peace offerings (Lev. 23:24; Num. 10:8,10).

The initiation of the second angel judgment is synchronous with the Seventh Vial, in the Outpouring of which "great Babylon comes in remembrance before the Deity, to give unto her the cup of the wine of the fierceness of his wrath" (ch. 16:19). The effect of this is the fall from which she never recovers; and which is proclaimed by the second angel.

11. "And the smoke of their torment ascendeth until the aeons of aeons: and they have no respite day and night, who worship the Beast and his Image, and whosoever receiveth the sign of his name"

The word hode, rendered "here" is as if one should say en tode, that is, topo, in this place: ta hode, signifies the things here, that is, the things transacted in this place.

This is the heathen fiction, poetically expressed, of "immortal souls" going up at corporeal death to joy and bliss; and their works and alms, and good endeavor, as an attendant train of witnesses, bespeaking for them a glorious welcome in the skies.

"And I looked," saith John. Previous to this his ears, not his eyes, had been addressed. He had just been listening to the "voice from the heaven," and the comment of the Spirit upon it. Having finished the writing of it in the book before him, he very naturally looked up, and thereupon perceived, that the scene had been changed. When he last wrote the words "I looked, and, behold," he introduced us to a scene upon Mount Zion, where the Lamb with the 144,000 are seen standing. This is a Pentecostian scene, an exhibition of First fruit. But, before Pentecost, comes the Passover in its fulfillment in the kingdom of the Deity (Luke 22:15-18). We had not been informed whether the Lamb and the 144,000 had entered Zion without a conflict, or as the result of a great disaster inflicted upon the enemy. The reader will perceive a remarkable transition from the subject treated of in the latter half of the thirteenth chapter to that of the beginning of the fourteenth. They are altogether different and unconnected. The former treats of the Name of the Beast, and the manner of its establishment in the earth; the latter, of the Name of the Father, and what it effects after its Apocalypse; but as to how it established itself in Zion, this fourteenth chapter has hitherto afforded us no information.

19. "And the angel cast his sickle into the earth, and cut off the vine of the earth, and cast it into the great winepress of the wrath of the Deity.

The song they will sing on Zion is recorded in ch. 5:9. In this place, it says, "They sung a new song, saying, Thou art worthy to take the scroll, and to open the seals thereof: for thou wast slain; and hast redeemed us for the Deity by thy blood out of every' kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation; and hast made us (the Four Living Ones full of eyes, and the twenty four elders) for our Deity kings and priests: and we shall reign on the earth." The Angels cannot sing this song. How could they address Jesus, and say to him, "thou hast redeemed us?" Neither can they sing, that they shall "reign upon the earth," for they assuredly never will. Nor can any of the worshippers of the Beast Sing this song; for they do not belong to the white robed multitude, whose garments are whitened in the blood of the Lamb: on the contrary', they are those whose names are not written in his scroll of life from the foundation of the world; and are robed in a scarlet colored vesture, dyed red in the blood of the saints. None such can "learn that song. "They have not been taught it by the Father, who hath given them over to their strong delusions. "No man cometh unto Me," saith Jesus, "except the Father who hath sent me draw him; and I will raise him up at the last day. It is written in the prophets, And they shall be all taught of the Deity. Every' man therefore that hath heard, and hath learned of the Father, cometh unto me" (John 6:44). These can learn the song; for the Father teaches it to all His true disciples, when He writes His new name upon them; and they Sing it, when He plays upon them as His harps. "The dead know not any thing; and there is no knowledge in the grave" (Ecc. 9:5,10). Whence, then, can the 144,000 harps give forth the melody and sentiment of the song, but from the Eternal Spirit who "brings all things to their remembrance;" and this he does in writing the Father's Name in their foreheads. After he has developed them corporeally from the dust, he flashes upon them the knowledge of a previous state, together with the knowledge of what shall be hereafter. Thus they are taught and made conscious of a previous existence. But for the operation of the Eternal Spirit in writing his name upon their new cerebral organization, they would have no more consciousness of the past, or of any antecedents therein, than Adam when he first opened his eyes upon the light. Unless the Spirit impress upon them the knowledge, they would be con-scious only of what present sensation could impart - of this, and no more. Take, for example, a man, and call him Paul. Let him be the same Paul of whom we read in the Acts. Let him die, and become what he is (if we may say "he is," of one who has no existence). Of what was once called Paul there remains a few pounds of dust. And this is all that remains of the 144,000 not at present alive upon the earth. Hence, individually or personally they are all nonentities. Dust, though once a component of intelligent beings, retains no knowledge. "Can the dust praise thee can it declare thy truth?" There is no profit in dust for praise or truth, apart from the operation of the Eternal Spirit It retains no trace of former personal identity. From the few pounds of dust left to Paul the Creator could form a Lion. When he had given the creature life, would it have the consciousness of the apostle? Would it be able to sing the song of redemption? If personal identity resided in the dust as dust, it might; but the supposition is absurd: Of men, it is said, "the Deity remembereth that they are but flesh, a wind that passeth away, and COMETH NOT AGAIN". Where is the personal identity when flesh has thus passed away? All personality is dissolved. The mere natural man perceives the difficulty; and has therefore invented the clumsy theory of inherent immortality for the perpetuation of personal identity in a future state. He differs from the Spirit, and believes, that the dead know more than the living; and that they are now singing the song of redemption before the throne! But the Scripture shows clearly, that man has no immortal consciousness; and that if he do not understand the truth, he is as the beasts that perish (Psa. 49:12,20). What provision, then, has been provided by the Creator for the reproduction of the non-existent Paul and his companions in nothingness? The creation of 144,000 (not less, but number-less more) living bodies from the dust; and stamping upon their foreheads, as with a seal, what is already on record, not in the memory of disembodied souls, but in the mind of the Eternal Father. This is where the personal consciousness of the past comes from, the Father's Name written in the forehead, not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God in fleshy tables of the heart (2 Cor. 3:3): 50 that whosoever is so written upon after creation from dust, is, in the creative operation, taught to sing the song of redemption by inspiration. The apostles who listened to the discourses of Jesus remembered little, and understood less; but the Eternal Spirit, who discoursed through Jesus, remedied this defect by afterwards bringing all things to their remembrance, opening their understandings and guiding them into all the truth (Luke 24:45; John 14:26; 16:13). In this operation, their consciousness of what Jesus really taught, was stamped or written upon the fleshy tablets of their hearts. What they had forgotten and did not understand, was not lost. It was retained in the Spirit's, in the Father's own mind, Who afterwards photographed in their foreheads what he had said. Suppose the apostles had all died with Jesus, and, like him, while dead, came to know nothing; and suppose after being dead, they were brought to life on the third day, where was their remembrance of all things to come from? When people fall into a trance they forget every thing, even the letters of the alphabet; and have to recover knowledge by the slow process of ordinary tuition. How total and complete, then, must be the oblivion of death; and how impossible the consciousness of the past, unless He who restores to life, also restamp or rewrite the "New Man," or "New Creature," formed by the Word in the old body of the present state, upon the new body of the future. And this He does; not by causing the newly created being to pass through the experience of the past again; but, by an instantaneous transfer of what exists in His own mind to theirs.

A harper harping with his harp is a saint, who has been judged according to what is written, and rewarded according to his works, and thereby admitted into the glorious company of the redeemed. The first thing he does when he finds himself on the mount of Yahweh's holiness, is not to celebrate battles to be fought, and victories to be won; but to show forth the praises, the worthiness, and loving kindness of Him, who called him out from among the worshippers of the Beast, and placed him within "the Circle of the Throne." The Four Living Ones, and twenty four stephaned Elders, are all harpers who harp with their harps. This is positively affirmed in ch. 5:8. In symbolic style, put harps, and golden vials full of odors, into men's hands, and say, that "the odours are the prayers of the saints;" and it is equivalent to saying that the harps and golden vials are representative of the saints themselves. The Angels within the Circle of the Throne, although they prostrate themselves upon their faces, and in obedience to the decree in Psa. 97:7, worship David's Son and Lord; yet are they not harpers. They join with the harpers in myriads in the ascription of "worthiness to the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honor, and glory', and blessing" (ch. 5:12): but they could take no part in singing the harpers' new song which they accompanied with their harps; for they have never learned it, and were they to study it ten thousand years, could never sing it truthfully. They are the angelic audience that listens with ravished ears to the Divine melody of the new oratorio. Never will such an extraordinary' choir have delighted so magnificent and dignified an assembly on the earth before. The birth of David's son was celebrated by the acclamation of a multitude of the heavenly host praising the Deity, and saying, "Glory to the Deity in the highest, over the earth peace, and good will towards men". Glorious, however, as this announcement was, the listeners to it were only a few simple shepherds; but in the approaching musical festival on Mount Zion, the performers will be not less than 144,000, immortals; who, like the Imperial President of the Festival, were once dead, but then are living for the aeons; while the listening and delighted audience, marshalled and convened by the King of glory', themselves illustrious and immortal, number "ten thousand times ten thousand and thousands of thousands" (ch .5:11). How gratified they will be in beholding the Royal Child, whose birth they celebrated over eighteen centuries before, enthroned by the Eternal Power, according to the words of Gabriel, in his father David's seat; and instead of a vile clamor for his crucifixion, in the very' place where he was condemned and put to death, songs of thanksgiving and praise, ascending in immortal strains to the Diety, from the innumerable multitude of the redeemed.

The armies within and "without the city" have large cavalry contingents, in which the kings and mighty of the nations pride themselves greatly. The governments, however, "without the city" can bring more cavalry into the field than those within it. In the constitution of the Asiatic armies it so preponderates as to be a characteristic. This is illustrated in ch. 9:16. But "a horse is a vain thing for safety; neither shall he deliver any by his great strength" (Psa. 33:17). This will be found to be true in the time of this terrible vintage. When Judah and Israel, as the Angel's Sickle, shall tread down their enemies in the mire of the streets in the battle, because Yahweh is with them, the riders on horses, the bridles, shall be ashamed (Zech. 10:5). "In that day, saith Yahweh, I will smite every horse with terror, and his rider with madness, . . . and every horse of the peoples with blindness" (ch. 12:4). "With thee, 0 Israel, I will break in pieces the horse and his rider" (Jer. 51:21): "and the horses and their riders shall come down, every one by the sword of his brother" (Hag. 2:22). What a terrible visitation will this be upon a cavalry force --- the horses all terror-stricken, and therefore wild and utterly unmanageable; rushing against and kicking each other in fury and blindness! This alone would be fearful; but the horror is increased by the multitude of mounted and dismounted bridlemen in the melee, being all smitten with madness; so that "the bridles of the horses" are useless in their hands. In this way, the fierceness and wrath of the Deity comes out even to the bridles of the horses. What is not consummated by this mutually destructive mass of infuriate flesh, Israel will be on hand to finish. As the fowls of the heaven, they will devour them; and their sword will be filled with their flesh.______________________________________________________________________________________________

1. And I saw another sign in the heaven, great and marvelous, Seven Angels having the Seven Last Plagues, for in them is filled up the wrath of the Deity.

The chapter begins with the announcement of "another sign in the heaven". The former sign in the heaven was that of the "angel who came out of the Nave which is in the heaven, having a sharp sickle". The latter was seen first, but was not therefore first in execution. The mission of the Angel of the Sickle is the concluding scene of the Seventh Vial, which is itself a part of this "great and marvelous" sign. The first verse of this fifteenth chapter carries us back to events, which began to transpire at the expiration of "the Second Woe" (ch. 11:14): in other words, to the epoch of the First French Revolution, which broke out 1260 years after the Justinian Epoch, A.D. 529-'33: and signalized the termination of that long and sanguinary period.

This principle of the square, traditionally incorporated in Masonry, is a specialty of revelation, from the Aaronic breastplate of judgment, to "the city that lieth foursquare". The measure of its wall, which is 144 cubits is the square of 12, obtained by multiplying 12 by itself- 12 X 12 = 144. The like treatment applied to the sixteen hundred furlongs will show that they are the square of forty. Thus, the division of 1600 without a remainder gives 40; and 40 multiplied by 40 gives 1600 --- 40 x 40 1600. Here, then, is the answer in figures. The treading of the winepress by the saints in command of the armies of Israel will continue by the space of forty years, at the end of which will be reached the fulfilment of the Jubilee in the kingdom of the Deity, when every Israelite shall return to his possession and to his family (Lev. 25:9,10).

In the English Version, the text before us reads, "a sea of glass mingled with fire". In the original it is not a substantive, but an adjective, as hyalinen, glassy, that is, smooth and transparent; from hyalos, a transparent Stone, soft kind of crystal; also glass. "Mingled with fire" is also objectionable. This rendering represents the conquerors as stand-ing upon it, and singing the song of victory, while the fire is flashing in consuming flames from the sea. This would be to sing the song of victory before the victory is won! The Saints do not perpetrate such an anachronism as this. Flames of fire burning with brimstone were not flash-ing like lightning and with the roar of "the Seven Thunders," when John looked, and saw the Divine harpists standing victorious upon the sea. All this had passed away, and the sea which had been thus convulsed, and commingled with the lightnings and thunderings proceeding from the throne (ch. 4:5), was now "glassy like to crystal" (ch. 4:6). This is clearly indicated in the word memigmenen agreeing with thalassan, sea. Memigmenen, is the perfect participle passive, and signifies an action past: as, having been mingled, or which had been mingled. A sea lashed into fury by the four winds of the heaven, and the bursting flames of the Seven Lamps of fire, which are the Seven Spirits of the Deity sent forth from the throne into all the earth (ch. 4:5; 5:6), is not a "glassy sea". A sea of Mediterranean nations, commingled with armies of valiant and lion-like Israelites, one of whom, like Samson of old, shall chase a thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight (Deut. 32:30), commanded by the 144,000, and executing the tormenting judgments of the Second and Third Angels, upon Babylon and its Beast, and Image, and Mark, and number of its Name; and upon the dominions outlying, or "without the city," until the end of the Sixteen Hundred Furlongs of time - is a sea commingled with fire burning with brimstone; in other words, it is a "Lake of Fire"; in which, while "the war of that great day of the Almighty Deity" is in continuance, the Beast and his False Prophet, and the ejected wicked, slothful, and unprofitable servants of the One-Talent class of saints, are all being scorched and tormented in the presence of the Holy Angels, and in the presence of the Lamb: who shall tread these wicked as ashes under the soles of their feet (Mal. 4:3), which are then "as pillars of fire" "burning in a furnace" (Apoc. 10:1; 1:15). This is vengeance in the day of vengeance, affording a practical illustration of Paul's saying, that "the Deity is a consuming fire"; and that "it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God" (Heb. 10:31; 12:29). But, how different the condition of the called, and chosen, and faithful saints of the two-and-five-talent class at this time! In the day of His vengeance there are among the nations wailing, blaspheming, and gnashing of teeth; but, on the other hand, "the righteous shall rejoice when he seeth the vengeance; he shall wash his feet in the blood of the wicked. So that a man shall say, Verily there is a reward for the righteous; verily there is Elohim judging in the earth" (Psa. 58:10-11).

The translation of king James' bishops, I have "diligently compared" with the original, and "revised;" it will be found, I think, an improvement upon the Common Version. I have transferred the titles of the ETERNAL POWER; and translated them in the bracketed spaces following. Thus they sang, saying:

"The stone which the builders refused hath become the Head of the Corner". He stands with his brethren on this glassy sea, which extends, as an immense plain, from before the throne on Mount Zion. "This is the day which Yahweh hath made; we will rejoice, and be glad in it;" "from now will His Name be blessed, even for the Olahm; from the rising of the sun to his going down the Name of Yahweh be praised: for He is exalted above all the nations; and His glory above the heavens" (Psa. 113; 117); Jesus and his Brethren "glorified together" (Rom. 8:17), are the conquerors, who, by the Spirit's aid and co-operation, have subdued the world, and possess it as their own. They are "a multitude which no man can number, clothed with white robes and palms in their hands" (Apoc. 7:9-17). Their square is 144,000. The "palms," the symbol of victory, connect them with the Feast of Tabernacles, in the celebration of which they rejoice, and are glad, as the harps of the Deity. What a glorious orchestra they will be, when established over the nations as their immortal and sovereign rulers, they shall celebrate their triumph in the songs of Moses and the Lamb! In that day, they will say, "Praise ye Yahweh, proclaim His Name, declare His doings among the people, make mention that His Name is exalted. Sing unto Yahweh; for He hath done excellent things: this is known in all the earth. Cry out, and shout, thou inhabitant of Zion: for great is the Holy One of Israel in the midst of thee" (Isa. 12:4-6).

Then, when the newly-developed and glorified ELOHIM stand victorious upon the glassy sea, all the earth "blessed in Abraham and his Seed" will make a joyful noise to the ELOHIM, sing forth the honor of YAHWEH'S Name, and make His praise glorious. Having by terrible deeds in righteousness, styled in the song of the Lamb, dikaiomata, "righteous judgments," stilled the noise of the seas, the roar of their waves, "the tumult of the peoples," this glorious NAME will have become the confidence of all the ends of the earth, and of them that are far off from Zion beyond the sea. These will all then fear YAHWEH, the strength of Israel, and "the glory in the midst of Jerusalem," and glorify His NAME. His works will have been terrible for the manifestation of the greatness of His power, by which His enemies will confess themselves subdued. Therefore "all the earth," enlightened by His glory (Apoc. 18:1) shall do homage to Him, shall sing to Him and to His NAME; for He will judge the people righteously and govern the nations upon earth (Psa. 65; 66, 67).

"After these things," then, does not signify after the end of the Seventh and last Vial. He does not tell us in these words, the exact time of the opening of the Nave of the Tabernacle of the Testimony in the heaven. He simply affirms that, after the music of the harps and voices of the glorious choir upon the glassy sea, had ceased its ravishing harmony, his attention was diverted from sound to sight; and that he perceived that the Nave, or MOST HOLY "had been opened," or manifested. The tense of the word enoige leaves the precise time of the opening indefinite. This fifth verse is an Apocalyptic annunciation, that the long-ex-pected and much-desired ANCIENT OF DAYS had made his appearance in the heaven. The event of this verse is parallel with the Lamb and the 144,000 standing on Mount Zion, and with the epoch of Ch. 16:15. It announces that the manifestation of the Most Holy of the Tabernacle is during the period of the "great and marvellous sign in the heaven;" but at what precise moment of the Sign-Period he appears in the midst of his holy brethren, no data are given in this chapter to determine.

The approved saints of the Nave are constituted aggebi, or angels," by being "SENT FORTH;" angelos signifying "one sent, a messenger," etc. The saints of the Nave have a mission to perform, which the powers that be cannot be made to accomplish; and they go forth into all the earth, clothed, girded, and accompanied by the Spirit, to execute it. Hence, whatever is done by them, or their presence, is said to be transacted "in the presence of the Holy Angels, and in the presence of the Lamb," or Spirit (ch. 14:10). Symbolically, they are seven in number. This represents the omnipotence of the Spirit, and the unknown, but complete number of the agents employed in the execution of "the judgment written" - a definite being put for an unrevealed, and therefore not defined, number; a "great multitude which no man can number" (ch. 7:9).

Of course, I shall not be expected to point out, which of the four living ones it was, that presented the Seven Golden Vials to the Seven Angels, seeing that it was not revealed to John. The Spirit has deemed it sufficient to inform us, that it was "one of the four". Its reappearance indicates, that in the period of the "great and marvellous sign in the heaven," without defining the exact time of the period, the Spirit is found again encamping on earth in the midst of the saints, as the Lion of the tribe of Judah (the Lamb slain) in the midst of the 144,000. When the war of the great day of the almighty Deity is fought out, the Four Living Ones appear no more in the prophecy. They join in the celebration of the praise of the Deity, YAHWEH ELOHIM, "who liveth for the Aions of the Aions," being "He who was to come" - ch. 19:4; but after this, peace being gloriously established, their military organization is dispensed with.

In the One Body as it will be are the Four Cherubic Living Ones, and the glory and power of the Deity. The body in its Nave, or Most Holy, constitution, is the Deity in Manifestation; "the Living One for the Aions of the Aions" - verse 7; from whom the wrath of the seven vials issues forth to its consummation. This Divine and glorified body is "full of smoke", because it is full of burning anger and indignation; and its breath like a stream of brimstone in fiery conflagration (Isaiah 30:27,33). Its feet are as "pillars of fire;" its wrath smokes unappeasably until everything is destroyed that would obstruct, or hinder the development of the purpose of the Eternal Power; which is, "to gather together under one head," the Christ, all "principalities, authorities, powers, and lordships," "the things in the heavens;" and all peoples and nations and languages, "things upon the earth" (Eph. 1:9,10; Dan. 7:14,27). Where smoke is, there is fire; and in the case before us, the fire that burns with indignation is in the Seven Spirits, or glory and almighty power of the Deity, with which the One Body is girded around the breast with a golden girdle (ch. 1:13). The Nave is full of smoke till the wrath of the Seven Vials is all exhausted. The Nave at the present time is invisible. The Eternal Father, the Seven Spirits of Deity and the Anointed Jesus, are the present known constituents of the Most Holy. When the veil of the flesh, which now obtains between the Nave, and the Tabernacle of faithful mortals, shall be done away, "the approved" will enter into the Most Holy, and be incorporated with it. By this its bulk, but not its power or glory, will be increased. The agents will be multiplied, through whom the burning wrath will be made to smoke. But, until the admission of "the approved" to incorporation with the Most Holy Nave, its smoke is made to fume through other agents.

An economy, or dispensation, the former being compounded of two words signifying house and law, signifies the management of a community, whether it be a household, a kingdom, or an empire; hence, in general, administration, management, government - the public economy of the State. The State to be founded by the ELOAHH of the Heavens, who clothes the Saints with fine linen pure and bright, and girds them around the breasts with golden girdles, for their cooperative performance of the work, is "the kingdom which is to come to the daughter of Jerusalem" - "the first dominion which comes to Zion;" in the setting up and establishment of which, halting, and exiled, and afflicted, Israel, in all her tribes, is being gathered, and made a strong nation, for Yahweh to reign oyer thenceforth even during the Olahm (Mic 4:7,8). This kingdom, with its secondary dominion, which is coextensive with "the whole heaven" (Dan. 7:27), must first be established before it can be entered upon administratively by any one. "The end of the matter" was declared to Daniel, as consisting in all dominions, or rulers, serving and obeying the Most High. This universal submission of nations and dominions to the King of Israel, is the result of the entire exhaustion of the Seven Plagues of the Seven Angels; or the conclusion of the judgment given to the Saints to execute under the whole heaven. The Saints themselves cannot "enter into rest from their labors" (ch.14:13) until "their labors" are finished; and as to the world of nations while those labors are in progress, "they have no rest day nor night" from the operation of the smoking plagues, whereby they are being tormented.

But before this glorious and blessed consummation, Yahweh Ail Shaddai, the Ancient of Days, comes in (Zech. 14:5) upon the world as a thief in the night (Apoc. 16:15). This is indispensable, because it is his personal mission to accomplish it (Isa. 40:10). At his coming the nations will be in a state of anger among themselves, with distress and perplexity; men's hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming upon the habitable (Luke 21:25).

That which was represented to John as issuing from the Nave, the Most Holy Lord Jesus Christ caused to issue from the Powers, and therefore from himself, in that great voice they unitedly proclaimed, and sent forth from PILLNITZ, July 27th, 1790. This was coeval with the earliest shocks of the "great earthquake". The famous treaty of this date prepared for the invasion of France. The Powers regarded the cause of the French king, then threatened by the revolution, as their own. In the declaration of Pilnitz, they required that he should be free to go wherever he pleased, that is, to join their standard; that he should be replaced on his throne, that the Assembly should be dissolved, and that the princes of the Holy Roman empire having possessions in Alsace, should be reestablished in their feudal rights. In case of refusal they menaced France with war, in which all the Powers would concur who had guaranteed the French monarchy.

Next in order of commencement was this third vial. The arena of conflict was a country of mountains and rivers, inhabited by the posterity of thieves and murderers, whose crimes nothing could expiate but draughts of human gore. The judgments of this vial upon the Great City are parallel with those of the third trumpet upon the Catholic world, before the constitutional institution of the Papacy by Justinian. The first four trumpets punished the Catholic west for its apostasy and crimes; the first five vials, the same region, for the sanguinary cruelty of its populations and rulers in their wars upon the saints and prophets of the Deity. Hence the parallel in the order and similitude of the judgments.

The first angel poured out the wrath committed to him "upon the earth". This arena of Divine indignation is expounded in the text by the words, "upon the men who have the sign of the beast, and who do homage to his image"; that is, upon the papal populations of Europe; and upon those of the same section of the Continent, who, although not constitutionally papal, are signed with the papal institutions of infant rhantism, which in violation of Scriptures, reason, and philology, they blasphemously style, "christian baptism!" As the first angel sounded his trumpet against the earth before it was planted with the modern kingdoms of Europe, or Ten Horns, to bring them into position as elements of the new papal constitution of the West (ch. 8:7); so the angel of the first vial pours out his portion of wrath upon the same arena considerably extended. He begins with France, the Tenth of the Great City, as the most murderous of the horns in their co-operation with the Papacy in its wars against the witnesses and saints of Jesus. His visitations descended grievously upon all the departments of that country; but with the greatest intensity upon those sections of it, where their blood had been most abundantly shed. France became an altar of sacrifice to which beasts were brought for slaughter that had devoured and oppressed the saints. The "great voice" brought them thither from all parts of "the Holy Roman Empire," and from Naples, Piedmont, Spain, Russia, and Prussia; in short, there remained no other states neutral than Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, and Turkey. All these peoples, on hearing of the ignominious decapitation of Louis XVI., by the republicans, proceeded to the invasion of France with forces amounting to 355,000 horse and foot; by which they flattered themselves they would sweep the Revolution from "the earth;" and re-establish the old regime.

While the wrath of the first angel-period of the third woe, or seventh trumpet, was generating and developing the grievous and malignant ulcer in the body politic of the Great City, the Seven Spirits were operating upon the British Power, and preparing it for the work of wrath upon the Apocalyptic sea; which, in this place, is representative of all the countries of "Babylon the Great" accessible to ships of war.

On the 18th of May, 1804, Napoleon was proclaimed Emperor; and, as he had restored popery to liberty in France, the Sovereign Pontiff, Pius VII., took a journey to Paris for the purpose of placing the crown of Charlemagne upon the head of one, whom the old blasphemer styled, "our dearest son in Christ, Napoleon, the emperor of the French". This was practically an insult of the most galling character to the House of Austria; which, as Imperial Secular Chief of the Sun of Europe, claimed to be the legitimate successor of Charlemagne.

After the lapse of some months, the Pope's protest was enforced by a sentence of excommunication against the authors and instruments of the act of spoliation. This was productive of new violence on the part of Napoleon, his "most dear son in Christ!" In 1809, the wrath of the fifth vial at length descended upon "the throne" itself. Its pontifical occupant, the Name of Blasphemy upon the Seven Heads of the Beast-Dominion, was arrested by his order, and brought as a captive to Avignon, in fulfillment of the saying, "He that leadeth into captivity shall go into captivity" (ch. 13:10). But this was not all. A provisional government was established in the ecclesiastical states; the Inquisition was abolished; many temporal and spiritual abuses were abrogated; and various civil and judicial reforms were introduced. Rome itself, wonder-fully improved and embellished in the hands of the Great Emperor, was degraded by decree from a sovereign to a subject rank. It was declared to be the second city of the New Empire; and empowered to send seven members to the Legislative Body; and a deputation, arriving from thence at Paris, presented an address of homage, to which Napoleon replied in style and language of an emperor of the West.

The Sun, then, of the fourth vial is the Imperial and Regal Sovereignty of European Antichristendom. The Pope, the Emperor, and the Kings, are the official terms indicative of the Sun in its shining forth upon the nations. To pour out wrath upon this sun, so that the out-pourer should scorch with fire the men who have the sign of the Beast, and who worship his Image, is to develop terrible disasters specially affecting in their consequences the power of these potentates.

The kingdom of the Beast was coextensive with the "Holy Roman Empire," and the countries of the Apocalyptic Babylon, as symbolized by the Beast of the Earth, and the Beast of the Sea; whose populations all worshipped the Image of the Beast, enthroned upon the Seven Mountains. The spiritual authority is superior to the temporal in dignity, if not in material power; but, where the spiritual and temporal are united, and its decrees obeyed by all peoples and rulers, ecclesiastical and secular, the throne it occupies is emphatically "the throne" of such a dominion. The kingdom of the Beast had many thrones occupied by secular potentates, none of whom had any legitimate spiritual jurisdiction. Spain, Portugal, Sardinia, Naples, and so forth, had no authority in Rome and the Papal States; while in all these countries, the Old Man of the Seven Hills made kings and peoples tremble at his frown.

The people thus prepared, the Firstfruits redeemed from among men for the Deity and the Lamb, in whose mouth was found no guile, stand faultless before the throne of dominion, and become sharers in it. They ascend to power, and in the prophetic vision are seen standing upon Mount Zion with the Father's Name impressed upon their foreheads (ch. 14:1-5). As for the rest of the feeble earthborns, they are deemed unworthy to be raised to "glory, honor, incorruptibility, and life". Their record is unclean. They are convicted liars, hypocrites, deceivers, and seducers, who have "held the truth in unrighteousness;" and walked faithlessly in the prejudices and conceits of their corrupt nature. Having thus, and in many other ways, proved themselves enemies of the cross of Christ, and sowers to their flesh, they are sentenced to reap according to their sowing. They are repudiated by the Man of Destiny, who indignantly expels them from his presence as unworthy to share with him in the throne of his glory.

As a specimen of the sufferings of non-combatant inhabitants of the Beast's territory on the actual scene of hostilities, the following extracts, borrowed by certain writers from official Reports, published by a committee in London, descriptive of the calamities consequent upon the campaign of Leipsic in 1813, may suffice. In a letter from the city of Leipsic, dated Nov. 1813, and addressed to the British Nation, the writers say:

15. "BEHOLD I COME AS A THIEF. Blessed he who is watching, and keeping his garments that he may not walk naked, and they see his shame.

15. "BEHOLD I COME AS A THIEF. Blessed he who is watching, and keeping his garments that he may not walk naked, and they see his shame.

Of this Little Horn of the Goat While its empire was as yet undivided, and the seat of its government not yet transferred from Rome, it was predicted, that he would "magnify himself against the Prince of the Host" of Israel; this he did in condemning and crucifying the Lord of Glory; and furthermore, "by him the Daily should be taken away, and the place of his sanctuary cast down;" and that he should "destroy wonderfully, and prosper, and practise, and should destroy mighty ones, and the people of the Holy ones". It is this power that Daniel refers to when he says, in ch. 9:26, "and the people of the Prince that shall come shall destroy the city (Jerusalem), and the holy" or temple. The people was "the host given against the Daily" (ch. 8:12) by the Nahgid, or prince, who sent them to destroy the city of the murderers of the Son of God (Matt. 22:7). When this people encompassed Jerusalem, and "cast a trench about her, and kept her in on every side," it was given to that generation as a sign, that her destruction was imminent; and in warning his disciples of what was predetermined against Judah's commonwealth, Jesus referred to this prophecy of Daniel, saying, as it stands in Matt. 24:15, "when ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place ("where it ought not" - Mark 13:14) whoso readeth, let him understand - then let them that be in Judea flee into the mountains", and so forth, "for then shall be great tribulation, such as was not from the beginning of the State to this time, no, nor ever shall be;" that is, upon Judah. This prediction was fulfilled about A.D. 70.

Affairs continued generally prosperous with the Turks till the commencement of 1820. "That year", it has been remarked, "the Ottoman empire, by unwonted good fortune, found itself freed at once from foreign war and domestic rebellion". But before the year was closed, the scene was wonderfully changed; and causes of exhaustion and distress were then introduced, which have continued their incessant operation, until at length the mighty empire of the Osmanlis, which used to make the heart of Babylon to faint, and her knees to tremble, has passed into a proverb as "the Sick Man," (*)soon to give up the ghost, and to leave the fragments of his estate to others.

THE Mouth OF THE BEAST is identical with the mouth of the Beast of the Earth, which speaks as a dragon (ch. 13:11); and which appears in ch. 17, as the imperial scarlet-colored supporter of the Mother of Harlots, having an Eighth Head. This mouth has been for a long time enthroned in VIENNA; but in the days of Charlemagne, who founded the dominion, the seat of its secular dominion was Aix-le-Chapelle at present included in Prussian territory.

1. Montfaucon, in his Monumens de la Monarchie Francaise, p. 4, plate 6, gives a Frog as one of the monuments of the French king, Child-eric; thus writing respecting it, "3. Another medal representing a frog, which was also an Egyptian symbol". This was found A.D. 1623, at St. Brice, near Tournay, with other things belonging to Childeric. Re reigned A.D. 456. That is, before the Franks acknowledged the Roman Bishop.

All this was very discouraging to The Revolution, which was not dead, though dethroned, but slumbering; and gathering new explosive force for another effort against the enemy. It made itself heard and felt again in Spain and Portugal, to the great disgust of the French Bour-bons. In Naples also, through the intrigues of the Carbonari (*), it was giving effect to constitutional principles. This alarmed the Austrian, who dreaded the propagation of revolutionary ideas which threatened to undermine the stability of his power in Italy. In 1821, the "Holy Alliance" held a consultation upon Naples at Troppau, whence in the arrogance of power, they summoned its king to meet them at Laybach, as if he had been one of their vassals or subjects. He obeyed. They dictated the invasion of his kingdom by Austrian troops. He consented. The revolutionary parliament was dissolved, the old despotism restored, and Ferdinand became a mere satrap to execute the orders issued from the Viennese Mouth of the Beast.

These conditions were by no means acceptable to the Emperor of the Frogs, between whom and the Emperor of the Beast there was now considerable jealousy and ill feeling. Francis Joseph was resolved not to bear any part of the yoke which it was thought Louis Napoleon was trying to impose on his brother sovereigns. A perfectly well-informed person remarked, that "for the sake of peace, the Emperor of Austria is ready and willing to make any concessions which are consistent with his honor and dignity, but he will not recognize the claim of the Emperor of the French to be considered the sole arbiter of all European questions of importance. His Majesty is of the opinion that one power has no right to put a constraint upon the will of another, and he therefore declines to make those reforms which are considered necessary

"Beware," said Jesus, "of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits" (Matt. 7:15): "and many false prophets shall arise and deceive many" (ch. 24:11). The rule laid down by John whereby the kind of teacher may be known by his fruits, is thus expressed in 1 John 4:6, we are of God;" that is, the apostles are the teachers he authorized:

Scarcely had the Sultan yielded obedience to Austria in the affair of Montenegro, than quite an avalanche of insolence descended from Russia upon the unfortunate Sick Man of Constantinople. Prince-Admiral Mentschikoff, Minister of Marine, Governor of Finland, and a relative of the Autocrat, arrived at Constantinople, unexpectedly to the Sultan and his Divan, but not to the Greek population of the city. He appeared there as the alter ego, or other self, of the Autocrat. He was surrounded by a brilliant escort of rear-admirals, generals, aides-de-camp, and many other distinguished persons. He was met at Topana by all the officers of the embassy on horseback, by all Russian subjects and protégées. Men in full uniform, loaded with orders, gold and diamonds, the ambassador in an open carriage, and surrounded by his staff, advanced toward the palace of the embassy, which he reached with difficulty, owing to the dense crowd of Greeks. This show of popularity was obtained by promises and money. The promises had reference to their obtaining the mosque of St. Sophia, built by Justinian, for the Greek Catholic worship, while whispers were adroitly circulated in their ears about the restoration of the Byzantine empire.

The Coming One, who makes his entrance stealthily, is not merely a single individual; but a body of individuals, consisting of the kings of the earth and their Prince (ch. 1:5) to prepare whose way, the Great River Euphrates has been dried up. It is the body of Earth's future kings, who will all be conformed to the Christ Image (Rom. 8:29; 1 John 3:2). They constitute the Mighty Angel, heaven-descended, who had been clothed with cloud (ch. 10:1); and from whose glory the earth is illuminated (ch. 18:1). This angel-body of kings is constituently exhibited ch. 19:11-16. In this place, it is shown to be constituted of the hosts in the heaven accompanying their Commander in war. He and they together illustrate the name, "King of kings and Lord of lords" - the Seven Spirits of the Deity manifested in the Saints.

Again, blessedness is pronounced upon them who die in the Lord, in Ch. 14:13. These are the same as they who keep the sayings of the prophecy. This text informs us when they are blessed — at the time, namely, when, as constituents of the Perfect Man, they rest from their arduous judicial labors.

But, the unclean daaemon-spinits like Frogs having prepared the situation; and the great river Euphrates being sufficiently dried up; who is He that gathers them into Armageddon? The Apocalyptic answer is, the "One Angel standing in the Sun" - ch. 19:17 - the One Angel-Body, invested with omnipotence and glory; the Perfect Man, constituted of "the kings of a Sun's rising;" (t)O prepare whose way "the water," or power, of the great Ottoman river has been dried up. This "One Angel," hena aggelon, whose "countenance is as the sun shining in his strength" (ch. 1:16; 10:1), has then command of the situation. He cries with a loud voice, "a voice as the sound of many waters;" or, "as when a lion roareth", making proclamation, and saying to all the fowls flying in midheaven, to whom judgment is given, "Come and gather yourselves together unto the supper of the great Deity". The gathering of the birds of prey which lodge in the branches of the kingdom (Luke 13:19), implies the previous gathering of the hosts to be devoured; and also the presence of a power potent enough to give their carcasses to the birds. This is the power that "comes as a thief;" which, having clothed himself with a cloud of brethren, next proceeds to gather by the policy he develops, the armies of the Beast and Kings of the Earth for a conflict with the New Power of Teman (ch. 19:19).

4. And I saw the woman who had been arrayed in purple and scarlet, and decked with gold and precious stones, and pearls, holding a golden cup in her hand, full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication;

19. "And the Great City came into three parts; and the cities of the nations fell: and Babylon the Great came into remembrance before the Deity, to give to her the cup of the wine of the fierceness of his wrath.

- "the Roman Church which is the Mother and Mistress of all the Churches". Whence the common phrase "Our Holy Mother the Church".

1. And after these things I saw an angel descending out of the heaven, having great authority; and the earth was illuminated with his glory.

The Beast before us is the Beast of the Sea with seven heads and ten horns, but with certain additional particulars. The Beast of the Sea in ch. 13, was the polity it represents, in its origin; but the Beast of the Abyss of ch. 17, is the same polity in the last thirty years, or "one hour," of its existence, and previous to its arrival at the "perdition" into which "it goes away".

In ch. 7:2, John saw an angel that had ascended (anabanta) from the east from the sun's rising. This was not an angel in power and great authority. His mission of sealing the servants of the Deity in their foreheads, did not require it; for the sealing is a work effected by testimony and doctrine expounded, and reasoned into the understanding and affections.

In calling upon the well-disposed to "worship Him who made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters," these Divinely called and sent preachers invite them to "come out of Babylon, that they be not partakers of her sins, and that they receive not of her plagues". This is not addressed to the saints as those referred to in the phrase "my people;" but to those who may become the Lord's people by obeying this "other voice from the heaven:" for this is a period in which, the Spirit saith, "Lo, I come, and I will dwell in the midst of the Daughter of Zion; and many nations shall be joined to Yahweh in that day, and shall be My' people" (Zech. 2:10,11). The saints cannot partake of her sins, and receive of her plagues; for, before this proclamation they have all been cleared out of Babylon by the gathering unto Christ in Teman; and by it having been given unto them to execute the judgment upon her and the four Beasts of the Sea (Dan. 7:22). They are the constituted avengers, and the avenged; and are then in no position to be addressed in the language of the voice.

The Chaldean Babylon was brought to ruin for its sins against Yahweh in making his temple desolate, oppressing Israel, and intoxicating the nations. The Roman Babylon has done all this, and added to the offense in making herself drunk with the blood of the saints and witnesses of Jesus. The crimes of the Roman Babylon have far exceeded those of the Chaldean; her punishment will therefore be more tormenting and more signal. Hence, she is not simply to be in desolation upon the Seven Hills; but she is suddenly, "in one hour," to be "found no more at all". When "death, and anguish, and famine," have done their work, then YAHWEH ELORIM, after the example of the angels who visited Sodom, will send the Roman Sodom surging and crashing down into the volcanic subterranean. Pope and cardinals, bishops, priests, monks and nuns, "the temple of the god" they call St. Peter, basilicas, and churches, and all monastic "dens of foul spirits, and unclean and hateful birds," with all "the dainty and goodly things lusted after" by the beastly soul of the intoxicated harlot of the nations all will rush headlong, yelling and blaspheming, into the roaring and fiery abyss to "be found no more at all". Thus, with violence she reaches the depths of her low estate, and is no more found among the cities of the earth. Henceforth "the voice of harpers and musicians, and pipers, and trumpeters shall be heard no more at all in her; and every craftsman of whatever craft shall be found no more at all in her; and the sound of the millstone shall be heard no more at all in her; and the light of a lamp shall shine no more at all in her; and the voice of the bridegroom and of the bride shall be heard no more at all in her: for her merchants were the chief men of the earth; for by her sorcery all the nations were deceived".

The scene with which this chapter opens transfers our attention from Rome to Jerusalem, the place of Yahweh's throne. The of Rome's catastrophe having arrived there, the much people in the new heaven gave utterance to a great voice, saying, "HALLELU YAH! The salvation, and the glory, and the honor, and the power" be ascribed, not to the called, and chosen, and faithful Elohim, but "unto YAHWEH" their strength, and to the Lamb with seven horns and seven eyes, their Elohim. These are the destroying and avenging power by which the saints obtain the victory over all their foes. To YAH, therefore, all the praise is due. The salvation of the nations from the continued corrupting influence of the great harlot, is solely due to Him; the glory of the deliverance, the honor of it, and the power to do it, are His alone; therefore, the great voice of the much people in the heaven," by whom the salvation, glory, honor, and power will be duly appreciated, will shout Hallelu Yah with an intensity of earnestness as never before gave utterance to the words.

It will be remembered that inch. 18:20, there is an exhortation, saying, "Rejoice over her, 0 heaven, and ye holy apostles and prophets, for the Deity hath punished your condemnation by her". This exhortation is responded to by the "much people in the heaven". They are the "heaven"' that rejoices, and gives utterance with "a great voice" to the Hallelu YAH for the first time. They did not raise the great Hallelu Yah voice when they first established the throne on Mount Zion. Their great enemy, the Roman Babylon, is then unbroken. They had first to destroy her before they could praise YAH, and ascribe to him the glory, honor, and power of her desolation. And being destroyed, is there not great fitness in the celebration of the event in the Capital of the Great King? When Napoleon the Great fell from his high estate, all the capitals of the kings he had dethroned celebrated his catastrophe with joy. So also in Washington and other principal cities on the fall of Richmond and the Confederacy. How much greater will the rejoicing be in the Capital of the New Government, when they who, in the days of their flesh, were cruelly tormented and slain by the Roman Power, are able to say, "she is no more, and shall be found no more at all!" They will acknowledge that the judgments of YAH are true and righteous: and Himself entitled to the loftiest praise. The celebration will be grand, and the earnest of the second not far remote.

But though the name can be read, and expounded, "no one knows the name but he himself'. The Father's name is written upon the Lord Jesus Christ, and upon all the "redeemed from among men" (ch. 14:1) but they are not therefore the Father. The only Personage in the universe that can answer to the name of the Invisible King of kings and Lord of lords is the Invisible Father Himself. He therefore only knows the name; it is truly representative of no one else. The personages in the scene are Spirit-manifestations of the Father, the Sons of the Deity upon whom His name has been written, (ch. 3:12) with One in their midst, in whom, it has pleased the Father, all fullness shall dwell; and that he shall have the pre-eminence among them in all things (Col. 1:18,19).

(*) It is worthy of note here, that Jesus having just emerged from the sepulchre, refused to allow himself to he touched; and gave as a reason for the interdict, that he "had not yet ascended to his Father" (John 20:17); or been "revived," anezese, as it is in Rom. 14:9. But on the evening of the same day he appeared in the midst of the eleven apostles, and invited all present to touch, or handle him and see, that he was not a terrifying thing (Luke 24:37-39). In the evening the cause no longer existed that obtained in the morning, why he should not be touched or handled. He had doubtless been the subject of the ascent to the Father, and therefore they might handle him; but if he had not, the same objection to touching him would have been in force in the evening as in the morning.

When Habakkuk saw "Eloahh come from Teman, and the Holy One from Mount Paran," he had a glimpse of the military armament of Apoc. 19. He inquires in ch. 3:8 saying, "Was YAHWEH displeased against the rivers? Was thine anger against the rivers? Was thy wrath against the sea that thou didst ride upon thy horses, thy vehicles of salvation? Thou didst march through the sea with thine horses, through the mire of great waters" (verse 15). The time of this movement against the nations he terms "the Day of Trouble", and prays that he may rest in it; and adds concerning it, "when he cometh up against the people, he will cut them in pieces with his troops".

The Dragon, the Beast, and the False Prophet, with their officials, are the symbols of what the Lord Jesus in his discourse recorded in Matt. 25., styles "the Devil and his Angels;" for whom to pur to aionion, the fire of the aionian judgment has been prepared. The Beast and the False Prophet are symbols of relation, and comparatively modern developments upon the original Dragon-territory. Their essential spiritual attributes are the same Sin-Flesh Iniquity in secular and ecclesiastical manifestation upon the Roman Habitable. This is the Apocalyptic arena, with a dominion, however, considerably augmented in modern times. The title, "the Devil and his Angels" is, in effect, inscribed upon the Dragon in the words, "the Dragon, the old Serpent, who is Devil and Satan". His origin is enrooted in rebellious human nature, and therefore he is "Devil;" and being always, in whatever form he may exist, the enemy of the Truth and righteousness of the Deity, and the adversary of its adherents, he is "Satan". Upon these principles, the Dragon, the Beast, and the False Prophet, with their Horn-appendages, are "the Devil and his Angels". These are the fuel of the fiery lake, or "TOPHET ordained of old; yea, for the king it is prepared; YAHWEH hath made it deep and large; the pile thereof is fire and much wood: the breath of Yahweh, like a stream of brimstone, doth kindle it" (Isa. 30:33). The effect of the fire upon the Dragon-king, or power, is its suppression for a thousand years; upon his horns, the appropriation of their kingdoms by the Saints, and the destruction of all armies; but upon the Beast and False Prophet organizations, their utter annihilation and eternal extinction.

3. and east him into the abyss, and shut him up, and set a mark over him, that he might deceive the nations no more, until the thousand years had been finished: and after these it is necessary that he be loosed a short time.

A key is representative of power to open and shut. To have the key of the abyss, is to possess the power of developing political organizations, after the example of the first Napoleonic Empire; and of su-pressing them, as in the same instance. In 1815, this empire was laid hold of, and cast into the abyss, and shut up there and bound there for thirty-seven years; but when these years were finished, it was loosed for a short time under Napoleon III. This that was accomplished by mere human agents, will illustrate what is meant by the descending angel laying hold of the Dragon-Power, and keying him up, and chaining him in the abyss. The Allied Powers of Europe held the key and chain in the case of the first Napoleon; but in the case of the Dragon, the Saints to whom "judgment is given," will be the holders of the key and chain, and do with him, and place him in the same abyss, but for a longer time, and with more terrible manifestations, as did the Allies the dominion of the Corsican. This mere human power is to remain in the national abyss without dominion; Sin's flesh is to be turned out of office, and to exist only in absolute subjection to Spirit, as manifested in Jesus and his Brethren, all the glorified sons of the Deity, ruling the habitable in righteousness for a thousand years. To keep Sin's flesh, so long accustomed to rule and revel in its own lusts and superstitions, in subjection, will require a government strong as iron. The necessity is provided for; for it is written, "He shall rule the nations with an iron rod;" so that no deceivers will be permitted to ply mankind with their sorceries, causing them to err from the way of truth and righteousness. The clerical sorceries of the Great Harlot and her Daughters will all be destroyed with the False Prophet by the judgments of the fiery lake. This signal destruction of all existing ecclesiastical establishments will effectually alienate the nations from their professional prophets, who now deceive and bewitch them with sorceries and lies in the name of the Lord; so that "when any (parson, priest, or rabbi) shall yet prophesy, then his father and mother that begat him shall say unto him, Thou shalt not live; for thou speakest lies in the name of Yahweh and his father and mother that begat him shall thrust him through when he prophesieth And it shall come to pass in that day that the prophets shall be ashamed every one of his vision when he hath prophesied or preached neither shall they wear a rough garment," or clerical vestments to deceive (Zech 13 3 4) The time for all this hypocrisy and grimace will have passed for no one buyeth their merchandise any more At present their sorcery and lies are in considerable repute; and to be a "prophet", or clergyman, is regarded by the deceived, and strongly deluded populations of "Christ-endom," as a highly respectable profession. But when Daniel's fourth Beast shall have been slain and his body destroyed, and given to the burning flame; and the other three Beasts have their dominion taken away, the descending angel will have bound the Dragon; the vocation of the false prophets will be abolished; there will be no hypocrites to keep the people in ignorance for the support of the church and state; and to subserve the interests of political adventurers and political factions; all this soul and truth-destroying machinery will have been broken up, and the nations shall be deceived by it no more for a thousand years.

There are two remarkable Aions contained in Daniel's one hidden period, or Ahiam, which is sometimes pointed at by the addition of the words waed, and beyond. The two Aions are first, the course of a thousand years, or "season and set time;" and second, the indefinite and interminable period which circles its course coevally with the absence of death from the earth, as expressed in the phrase, "There shall be no more death" (ch. 21:4). The life which is aionian, belongs to these two courses of time; so that he who, living under the Mosaic Law, and in the Times of the Gentiles, is justified by faith, and through the faith (Rom. 3:30), and patiently continues in well-doing (Rom. 2:7), will attain to the life of the thousand years' period, and consequently, of the endless period which is beyond it. But those who come forth from their graves, and therefore live, but are commanded away to share in the torment of the Beast and False Prophet, "the Devil and his angels", are not permitted to enter upon the thousand years, and fail therefore of reaching Life in the Aion.

3. And I heard a great voice out of the heaven, saying, Behold the tabernacle of the Deity with men, and he will dwell with them: and they shall be his peoples, and the Deity himself will be with them, their Deity.

This standing up of Israel upon their feet is the political resurrection predicted by Balaam, and recorded by Moses in Numbers 23:24,saying, "Behold, the people shall rise up as a great lion, and lift up himself as a young lion; he shall not lie down until he eat the prey, and drink the blood of the slain. His King shall be higher than Agag (or Gog), and his kingdom shall be exalted. AlL brought him forth out of Egypt; he hath, as it were, the strength of an unicorn; He shall eat up the nations his enemies, and shall break their bones, and pierce them through with his arrows" (ch. 24:7,8).

This whole number of the dead is the subject of great solicitude and affection to Christ, who speaks of it in the following Scriptures in this wise: “Thou, 0 Father, hast given the Son power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him”. “I pray not for the world; but for them whom Thou hast given me; for they are Thine. Father, I will that they also whom Thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me” (John 17:2,8,24). “All that the Father giveth to me, shall come to me. And this is the will of the Father who sent me, that everything which He hath given to me, I should lose nothing of it, but raise it again in the last day” (John 6:37-40). He styles this whole number given to him by the Father, the sheep of whom he is the Good Shepherd, and says, “I lay down my life for the sheep. And other sheep I have which are not of this (Mosaic) fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold and one Shepherd. Ye believe not because ye are not of my sheep. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me; and I give unto them eternal life, and they shall not perish in the Aion, eis ton aiona; neither shall any one pluck them out of my hand. My Father who gave them to me, is greater than all; and no one is able to pluck them out of my Father’s hand. I and the Father are one” (John10).

The establishment of the Great White Throne of Christ and his Brethren changes the face of the entire world. The Gentile Constitution of Society in Church and State is entirely abolished; and all the sinners, the “miserable sinners,” as they truly declare themselves to be, or “the spirituals of wickedness”, as Paul styles them, who constitute the hierarchies, aristocracies, and office-holders, of the body politic, will be abolished with it, being “scattered,” “put down.” and “sent empty away” (Luke 1:51-53). Popes, Cardinals, Archbishops, Bishops, Priests, Parsons, and all other sorts of superior and inferior dealers in “sorcery” and “lies;” emperors, kings, cabinets, diplomatists, officers of state, military and naval commanders, parliaments, congresses, and all sorts of legislative bodies — these all will be chased into the darkness of annihilation, and historical contempt, as “the Devil and his Angels,” who for ages were “them who destroy the earth” (ch. 11:18). All these constituted things, with the peoples, nations, and tongues, in their political aggregation, are the Gentile “Heavens and Earth,” or Body Politic. Its complete supersession by the world-wide dominion of the Saints, is Apocalyptically represented by the saying, “the Heaven and the Earth fled away; and place had been found for them no more.” The manner of their flight is symbolically illustrated in Dan. 2:34,35, where, as elements of Nebuchadnezzar’s political image, they are smitten by the Stone Power, and “broken to pieces together, and become like the chaff of the summer threshing-floors; and the wind carried them away, that no place was found for them; and the Stone that smote the image become a GREAT MOUNTAIN, and filled the whole earth”

We learn this from Paul in his reference to the visions and revelations granted to him, as it would seem, for his own exclusive benefit, for he would not, could not, or might not, communicate what he had seen and heard to others (2 Cor. 12:1). Speaking of himself, he says, “I have known a man in Christ fourteen years ago (whether in body, I know not; or without the body, I know not: the Deity knew), such an one suddenly transported unto a THIRD HEAVEN. I have known such a man, that had been transported in the PARADISE. and had heard secret things, which it is not lawful for the man to utter”. This third heaven, or paradise in full manifestation, is John’s New Heaven and New Earth, in which “there is no more sea”. In the “Former Earth” which passes away, there is sin, and generation, and death; and because of the existence of sin, and flesh and blood, and death, there are mediatorship, and priesthood, and ruling with an iron rod, in the “Former Heaven”. These things are not to continue permanently. Sin, which is the transgression of law, must be wholly and finally suppressed; flesh and blood must be exterminated from the earth; disease and death, which are “the wages of sin,” abolished; mediatorship, and priesthood, necessary in the offering to the Deity of gifts and sacrifices for the sins of the erring and the ignorant (Heb. 5:1,2) “delivered up to the Father;” and religion, which is a Divinely appointed remedy for an existing breach between the creature and the Creator, superseded, as having answered its purpose, and being therefore no longer necessary. All these things pertaining to the former, or Millennial, Heaven and Earth, John saw had “passed away”. In the final annihilation of the Devil by the judicial fire of the Deity in the destruction of the postmillennial Gog and Magog rebellion against the government of the Saints, the bruising of the Serpent’s Head by the Woman’s Seed, is consummated. Henceforth, the earth, not burnt up, but perfected, and rendered the paradisaic arena of all the unutterable joys and beauties and ecstatic things beheld and heard of Paul, becomes a fitting habitation of Deity in unmediatorial intimacy with the humblest of mankind; for then the Father will be “the all things in all men”.

The sixth angel, then, shows him the Bride. He hears his voice, saying to him, “Come hither! I will show to thee the Bride, the wife of the Lamb”. And in obedience to this call, John will come forth from the house of death; and be carried away to see the Bride descending out of heaven from the Deity upon a great and high mountain. When he arrives in Teman, he will again behold the Lord Jesus, whom he last saw on Oh-vet; and before him a crowd gathered by the angels of his power “from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other” (Matt. 24:31). This mixed multitude is not “the Great City, the Holy Jerusalem,” although all the prophets and all the apostles, and all the saints, are there; for “there shall in no wise enter into it any thing unclean, and working abomination, and falsehood”. The whole crowd, except “the living who remain,” are recently emergent from the place of skulls, and bones, and corrupting carcasses; and therefore, from the necessity of the thing, are all “of the earth earthy,” and consequently of an unclean nature or body, upon the principle that not one can bring a clean thing out of an unclean (Job 14:4). And beside this condition common to them all, there are many whose deeds in previous life will consign them to condemnation, to the sea mingled with fire, and to second death. Hence, a separation must be effected; and all deemed unworthy of the Holy Jerusalem, compelled to depart away.

p.340 Page 340 When the sea of nations, then, is made a full end of, but one nation remains the eternal occupant of the earth. Flesh and blood having been abolished in the destruction of “the last enemy Death,” that one nation must be a nation of immortals. It continues eternally a Body Politic under the sovereignty of the Lord Jesus Christ and the Saints; for the promise concerning him is, “He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest; and YAHWEH Elohim shall give unto him the throne of his father David; and he shall reign over the House of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be NO END” (Luke 1:32,33). David understood the promise made to him as well as to Mary in this sense; for Yahweh said to him “I will make his throne as the days of the heavens. His throne shall endure as the sun before me, it shall be established for ever as the moon, and as a faithful witness in the heaven” (Psa. 89:29,36,37). Hence, the Body Politic will be an everlasting Israelitish kingdom, all the subjects of which will be incorruptible and deathless; and its Kings and Princes, the glorious immortals who had already twice conquered the world, and between their conquests, ruled it for a thousand years.

The New Heavens and New Earth, styled Apocalyptically “the Former Heaven and the Former Earth,” and termed in ch. 21:4, “the Former Things passed away,” are the Second Israelitish Heavens, reckoning the Mosaic as the First; the destruction of which is treated of in 2 Pet. 3; Heb. 8:7-13. But though the Mosaic Heavens were to be fired, and dissolved, and their elements melted with the fervency of the heat, he consoled his brethren of the circumcision who believed with the assurance that they would be succeeded in the appointed time by “New Heavens and a New Earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness”. These are the Millennial Heavens, to establish which is an important element of the work to be performed by Christ at his appearing in power. “I have put my words in thy mouth,” saith the Eternal Spirit to him in whom He would afterwards manifest Himself; “and I have covered thee in the shadow of mine hand, that I may plant THE HEAVENS, and lay the foundations of THE EARTH, and say unto Zion, Thou art my people”. When this work is accomplished, Zion will have put on her strength, and Jerusalem, the Holy City, her beautiful garments; and thenceforth there will no more come into her the uncircumcised and the unclean (Isa. 51:16; 52:1). When the Lord Jesus and his Brethren come to be enthroned, the King and Princes of the State, Jerusalem’s widowhood will be ended; and she will no more be the afflicted and the tossed with tempest, and the uncomforted. They will be the precious stones of her foundations; and the constitution of the kingdom restored again to Israel will be the New Heavens and the New Earth; and “the former (Mosaic) shall not be remembered, nor come into mind. But be glad and rejoice for ever in that which I create; for, behold I create Jerusalem a rejoicing, and her people a joy. And I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and joy in my people: and the voice of weeping shall no more be heard in her, nor the voice of crying. There shall be no more thence an infant of days, nor an old man that hath not filled his days: for the child shall die a hundred years old; but the sinner a hundred years old shall be accursed. And they shall build houses, and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards, and eat the fruit of them. They shall not build, and another inhabit; they shall not plant, and another eat; for as the days of a tree are the days of my people, and mine elect shall long enjoy the work of their hands. They shall not labor in vain, nor bring forth for trouble; for they are the seed of the blessed of YAHWEH, and their offspring with them. And it shall come to pass, that before they call, I will answer; and while they are yet speaking, I will hear. The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the bullock; and dust shall be the serpent’s meat. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain, saith YAHWEH; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of YAHWEH. as the waters cover the sea” (Isa. 65:17-25; 11:9).

The relationship of the Lamb and the Bride in regard to the City Wall, will exemplify the idea of “no temple there”. The wall of a house or temple is the building itself; for no wall, no building — no Spirit, no New Jerusalem in “the time of the dead”. The mixed multitude of believers constitutionally in Christ, in the present evil world, are styled in Scripture, “the house of the Deity,” and “the temple of the Deity”. “Know ye not,” saith Paul to the Corinthians in Christ, “that ye are the temple of the Deity, and that the Spirit of the Deity dwelleth among you?” “Ye are the building of the Deity;” but without the Lamb; that is to say, if not built into him, they were neither house, temple, nor builded wall. Naturally, they were separate and distinct crude elements, like unconnected stones accumulated for building purposes. While thus they were neither wall nor temple. But when cut and polished, and built in by the Spirit, through Paul, as “a wise master builder;” that is constituted the righteousness of the Deity in Christ, “who became to them “wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption,” they became “One Body,” having him for their head and therefore one wall, one temple, and one building with, and inseparable from, him. This being so, such a society needs no temple being itself a temple. This, however, is not to say that there is no temple in the architectural Jerusalem at the time. Jerusalem in the hands of the Turks, though it should be utterly demolished, and rebuilt from the foundation, would not therefore be “Jerusalem above, the mother of us all,” or the New and Holy Jerusalem. The angel is not speaking to John of things unsymbolical and pertaining to men in mortal flesh; but of saints immortalized and glorified. Ezekiel in treating of the temple speaks of the unfigurative, which mortals will help to build (Zech. 6:15), and which become symbols in the construction of the Apocalypse. The temple he treats of is the house of prayer for Israel and the nations; but the Apocalyptic temple constituted of the Lamb and his Wife, both in the Deity, is for them who are “pillars in it, and shall no more go out”.

3. And there shall no more be any curse: but the throne of the Deity and of the Lamb shall be in it; and his servants shall serve him.

The twelve gates in the wall are the gates of entrance into the city from the east, north, south, and west, from whence are gathered all upon whom the Name of the City is engraved by the Spirit. The names written upon the pearls, show that the gates are representative of the tribes of the sons of Israel; and that, consequently, the members of the New Jerusalem community become such by adoption into the Commonwealth of Israel. Men must become “Jews inwardly,” “Israelites indeed,” to be citizens of “the Israel of the Deity”. At the twelve gates are twelve angels, indicating that messengers were at the gates to invite men to do the commandments of the Deity, “that they may enter in through the gates into the city” (ch. 22:14). These angels at the gates represent “the Spirit and the Bride” who “say Come;” together with those who understand, being the constituents of the Bride. They invite all who are athirst and all who are willing; saying, “Let him that is athirst, Come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely”. These are the commissioned angels of the gates of the city —faithful members of the bride in all ages and generations who are able to teach others “the truth as it is in Jesus”. They are in this passage, ch. 22:17, commissioned by the Jasper Light to turn men from darkness, and to invite to enter as heirs of the kingdom and glory of the Deity. This they do by preaching the gospel of the kingdom “for the obedience of faith;” by which obedience a people are separated from “all nations, and kindreds, and peoples, and tongues;” and adopted as citizens of the Commonwealth of Israel, in the national hope of that remarkable and favored people. They thus become part of the Israel, styled by Paul “the Israel of the Deity;” which in its glorified state, with the King of kings in the midst of them, was displayed in vision descending from the Deity to Mount Zion, as already explained.

The city is like the breastplate of righteousness worn by Aaron in the Most Holy, “four square”. Each side of the square was measured at 12,000 furlongs, or 1500 miles, giving 6000 miles for the four sides. But the height of the city is equal to its length; or 1500 miles high. The city is therefore a cube, or six-sided — the top the bottom and the four sides. The measure of the wall is 144 cubits, which include the length, breadth and height. Now, if the foursquare of the city be divided into equal square parts, it will be found to contain 144. Each of these gives an area 1000 furlongs long, and 1000 furlongs broad; and in the numerical symbol of the city stands for a 1000 citizens; or in the whole “broadway,”

Among the things pertaining to “the glory that should follow,” Ezekiel, Joel, and Zechariah, saw living waters flowing out from Jerusalem. Ezekiel saw the exact locality of the fountain from which they issued. It was, he says, at the south side of the Altar, and from under it they came. From thence, they made their way under the threshold of the front, or east, gate of the temple. They continued their outflow eastward: and were measured by the angel from the brink 4000 cubits, or four separate measurements, representative of a square. He was informed, that after a certain distance the streams flowed in two channels; one towards the Dead Sea, into which it is discharged with healing effect upon its waters; so that it teems with finny tribes, as the fish of the Great Sea; while the other half of the stream flows into the hinder, or Mediterranean, sea.

To him, then, who believes the things concerning the kingdom of the Deity, and the name of Jesus Anointed,” and has therefore been immersed (Acts 8:12), and thenceforth, “by a patient continuance in well-doing, seeks for glory, and honor, and incorruptibility” (Rom. 2:7): and thus overcomes the world — “to him,” saith the Spirit, “I will give to eat from the Wood of the Life, which is in the midst of the Paradise of the Deity” (ch. 2:7).

The leaves of a tree are the lungs, or breathing organs, of the tree or plant. The Wood of life, vitalized by the living water of the Spirit, symbolizing the incorruptible and immortal, and most holy hosts of the new heavens, in the aggregate; the Leaves of the Wood, like the Eyes of the Four Living Ones, are the individual saints in particular; in other words, each particular leaf is a saint-constituent of the Divine institution, through which the Spirit breathes when and where He pleases. When the earnest of the spirit was shed forth, the Spirit breathed upon the 3000 Pentecostians through the apostles, the leaf-bearing and fruitbearing branches of the true vine. The report of the wonderful works of the Deity they heard in their own tongues (Acts 2:8,11), was the breathing of the Spirit, which by the doctrine enumerated healed them of their ignorance and moral degradation. “He breathes where he pleases”. He breathed in Jerusalem of old; he will breathe thence anew; not upon a few thousand Jews only, and through twelve men of Israel; but through “a great multitude which no man can number,” upon all the millennial nations of the earth; so that as a consequence, “the knowledge of the glory of YAHWEH shall fill the earth, as the waters cover the sea”. Then shall the healed nations confess, saying, “Surely, our fathers have inherited lies, vanity, and things wherein there is no profit”.

They are a new race of kings of the earth. Before their manifestation as the Sons of the Deity, the nations never beheld such kings. They will be “kings by the grace of God,” and ruling “by Divine right,” and asking no favors of mankind. They are “the kings from the risings” of the Sun of Righteousness, to prepare whose way the great Euphratean Power, once the terror of Babylon’s kings and nations, has been drying up (ch. 16:12). When they shall appear upon the theatre of humanity,

The elements of the wall, and the precious gems, are built upon the jewels (Mal. 3:17) of the foundation. The reality incorporated into this symbol is found in the words — “Ye are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner; in whom all the building fitly framed together groweth into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom ye also are builded together for a habitation of the Deity through the Spirit;” which Spirit, in the Holy Jerusalem Association of the Saints, issues from the Deity out of heaven, and flows through every member of it, as “a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal”.

To abolish the curse, then, is equivalent to the abolition of the nature cursed with sorrow, toil, disease, and death. This abolition is the consummation of all things, by which is introduced an entirely new creation; the basis of which is a nature that neither has nor can transgress —that is, the Divine Nature. All that comes out of the ground is cursed, and unclean; so that even the body of Jesus, and the bodies of the approved saints, in resurrection, require to be justified, rectified, purged, or perfected, by all-absorbing Spirit: which makes every atom of their substance instinct with incorruption and life; in other words, transforms it into Spirit. In such a removal of curse and uncleanness, a higher nature is developed, which is so clean and pure, that when it is indicated, it is represented by “fine linen, pure and bright,” or “white,” and “pure gold, transparent as crystal”. How infinitely inferior to this is the nature cursed! And is it to be doubted for a moment by any reasonable mind, that the transition from the accursed sin-nature, to the pure bright, golden and crystal-like, or Divine-Nature, is truly an ascent to the Father, who is Spirit? The new nature is the fine gold, precious stones, and pearls of the Holy City, developed in the “swallowing up” of the curse; so that, in relation to the saints, “there shall no more be any curse”. When they are transformed into the New-Jerusalem by the energeia (Phil. 3:21) or inworking power, that “descends from the Deity out of heaven,” there is to them entire freedom from everything pertaining to the curse. But this is not the case with the nations subjected to their iron, but righteous and blessed rule. These are under treatment for their accursed maladies, which are being healed by the medicine administered by the Saints — the Royal and Divine College of Infallible Physicians. Their medicinal treatment progresses in all the thousand years; at the end of which the curative process will be consummated in the destruction of all offending matter; and the abolition of sorrow, pain, and death; so that thenceforth “there shall be no more any curse” known in all the earth. “The Leaves of the Wood are for the healing of the nations,” who walk in the light of the New Jerusalem — for the taking away of the curse. The healing is not done all at once. They are therefore styled, ta ethne ton sozomenon, the nations of them being saved; not, who have been saved, but, who are undergoing the healing process in the prospective removal of the curse. >

But, what was represented by this great bird of pray? The original is quite emphatic - ho aetos ho megas, the Eagle which is the great one. There was but one eagle contemporary with the woman's flight that could be styled emphatically, ho megas, the large, spacious, ample one. This was the Roman territorial jurisdiction. Rome was the eagle's head; Italy, its body; and the Roman Africa and the regions of the Alps, Pyrennees, Britain, Bulgaria, Thrace, Asia Minor, and Armenia its wings or extremities. The eagle is the well-known symbol of the Roman Power. Moses alludes to this power in connection with the eagle in Deut. 28:49,50,63,64, as, "Yahweh shall bring a nation against thee from far ,from the end of the earth, which as (kaasher) the eagle shall fly; a nation whose tongue thou shalt not understand; a nation of fierce countenance.. . and he shall besiege thee in all thy gates. .. and ye shall be plucked from off thy land whither thou goest to possess it; and Yahweh shall scatter thee among all peoples." This cannot refer to the Eagle of Nineveh and Babylon; because these eagle powers did not come "from the end of the earth" against Israel; and because they understood the tongue spoken by the Assyrians and Chaldeans. "The end", not ends "of the earth" in regard to Palestine, was Chittim, or Italy; whose ships came against Asshur, when Antiochus, king of Assyria, invaded Egypt (Dan. 11:30). Israel did not understand the tongue of Chittim, which is known as that of the Roman Eagle, the Latin, between which and the Hebrew there is no family likeness. This eagle nation was to come against them as a bird of prey to devour their body-politic, and to scatter them among all peoples, because they did not fear ~that glorious and fearful name, YAHWEH ELOHIM." This was accomplished by the Roman legions under Titus, A.D. 70; predictive of which, YAHWEH ELOHIM, in fleshly manifestation, said, "wheresoever the carcass is, there shall the Eagles be gathered together" (Matt.24:38).

16. And the earth ran with help for the woman, and the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed up the flood which the Dragon cast out of his mouth. 17. And the Dragon was enraged against the woman, and went away to wage war with the remnants of her seed who keep the commandments of the Deity, and hold the testimony of the anointed Jesus" - Verses 15-17.

"The way of the symbolic language," says he, "in expressions determining the spaces of time may be set in a plain light from the manner of predictions, or the nature of the prophetical visions. For a prophecy concerning future events is a picture, or representation of the events in symbols; which, being fetched from objects visible at one view, or cast of the eye, rather represent the events in miniature, than in full proportion; giving us more to understand than what we see; and, therefore, that the duration of events may be represented in terms suitable to the symbols of the visions, the symbols of duration must be also drawn in miniature. Thus, for instance, if a vast empire, persecuting the Church for 1,260 years, was to be symbolically represented by a beast, the decorum of the symbol would require that the said time of its tyranny should not be expressed by 1,260 years; because it would be monstrous and indecent to represent a beast ravaging for so long a space of time; but by 1,260 days. And thus a day may imply a year; because that short revolution of the sun bears the same proportion to the yearly, as the type to the antitype."

Such was the sect which Constantine concluded it would be to his interest to ally himself to. He, therefore, used the altars of catholicism as a convenient footstool to the throne of universal dominion. He came to imbibe the piety peculiar to it, and with it its sanguinary spirit of persecution, and murderous hostility to all who dissented from it. The catholic church became the especial object of his care and favorable legislation; and he was taught by its bishops to believe that its members were his only real and trustworthy adherents. Impressed with this conviction he established it by law; and set it up in the heaven as the "Woman invested with the sun, and the moon underneath her feet, and upon her head a wreath of twelve stars." And there she has remained over fifteen hundred and fifty years, even to this day. She has never been a fugitive in the wilderness: but has always (except in the short reign of Julian, who apostatized from her communion) retained her position in the heaven, by enacting the part of a Harlot with the kings of earth, until with her whoredoms and sanguinary abominations, she be-came "the Great Harlot sitting upon many waters, drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the witnesses of Jesus" (Apoc.17:1,2,6).

The word in the original indicating this necessity, is herpasthe; rendered in the Common Version, "was caught up." The phrase "to the Deity" implies ascending from a lower to the highest position. Hence the word "up." The word implies violence in the action it represents; as, to convey, take or carry by force. I have, therefore, rendered it, was forcibly carried up. Her son did not forcibly translate himself into the possession of supreme power; but he was carried up to that high position by his Victorious armies, whose hearts and arms were energized by Divine power.

This woman and her son constituted "the heavens and those who tent in them." In other words, they were the constituted authorities of the Church and State, who were now all real or pretended catholics. Their religious and political adversaries and oppressors had been turned out of place and power; and they had been turned into them by the wonderful revolution, with all the comforts and advantages accruing to those who by victory may claim the spoils. It was these in the heaven from whom the "Great Voice" ascended joyously. They had been long looking for "the salvation," "or deliverance," and "the power," which they now enjoyed without fear; and what could that constitution of things, exhibited in the Woman and her Son, be, but "the kingdom of our Deity and the authority of His Anointed?" So they thought; for Eusebius, the ecclesiastical historian, who was one of the most prominent among those who then tented in the heaven, being one of the bishops of the Woman, and a companion of her Son, speaking of the new order of things in Church and State, says, "The event surpassed all words. Soldiers with naked swords kept watch round the palace-gate. But the men of God passed through the midst of them without fear, and entered the heart of the palace. And they sat down, some at the emperor's table, the rest at tables on either side of his. It looked like the very image of the kingdom of Christ; and was altogether more like a dream than a reality. And on the occasion of opening a new catholic temple at Tyre, he said to the multitude assembled, 'What so many of the Lord's saints and confessors before our time desired to see and saw not, and to hear and heard not, that behold now before our eyes! It was of us the prophet spake when he told how the wilderness and the solitary place should be glad, and the desert rejoice and blossom as the lily. Whereas the church was widowed and desolate, her children have now to exclaim to her, Make room, enlarge thy borders: the place is too strait for us. The promise is fulfilling to her, In righteousness shalt thou be established: all thy children shall be taught of God: and great shall be the peace of thy children'."

The Roman world was now divided between Constantine and Licinius; the former being master of the West, and the latter of the East. Constantine, as the military chieftain of the Catholic Church, which the Deity had predetermined should have the rule instead of the Pagan Priesthood, is styled in the prophecy ho Michael, the Michael: that is, the Michael of the situation. This name is Hebrew in a Greek dress. The Hebrew is resolvable into three words put interrogatively, as Miyka'el, or Mi, who, cah, like, ail power? Or Who like that power Divinely energized to cast the Pagan Dragon, surnamed the Diabolos and the Satan, out of the Roman heaven? There was no contemporary power under this Sixth Seal that was able to contend successfully against it. Hence Constantine, as the instrument of the Deity in the development of his purpose, is styled "the Michael". He was not personally the Michael, or "first of the chief princes" spoken of in Dan. 10:13, nor the Michael termed in Dan. 12:1, "the great Prince who standeth for the children of Daniel's people;" but for the time being he filled the office that will hereafter be more potently and gloriously illustrated by the Great Prince from heaven, who will bind the Dragon and shut him down in the abyss for a thousand years (Apoc. 20:2,3). The militant mission of Constantine and the Great Prince, Jesus Christ, are similar, but not identical. The power of the Deity was with Constantine, as it was with Nebuchadnezzar, Cyrus, Alexander, and the first Napoleon; while Christ is the great power of the Deity corporealized. Constantine was to rule all the nations of the Roman Habitable with an iron sceptre from the time he attained supreme power till he died, which was about fourteen years. Christ Jesus and his brethren are to rule all the nations of the globe with an iron sceptre for a thousand years (Apoc. 19:15; 2:26,27). Constantine stood up with Catholics and for them and Christians, against the Pagan Dragon. Christ Jesus will stand up for the saints, and with them, against the Catholic Dragon and Beasts whom he will bind and destroy. Thus the word parallelizes the greater and the less in their military antagonism, to the powers hostile to the Divine Name. It may, therefore, be fairly admitted that in his military career against the Dragon, Constantine was a typical Michael - typical of that Michael who shall stand up in the resurrection period, and bring all the nations of mankind into subjection to his almighty power.

That Constantine at this crisis was in the womb of the Catholic Woman, appears from the fact, that while he exercised his limited sovereignty over the provinces of Gaul, his christian subjects were protected by his authority, while, says Gibbon, "he wisely left to the gods the care of vindicating their own honor. If we may credit the assertion of Constantine himself, he had been an indignant spectator of the savage cruelties which were inflicted by the hands of Roman soldiers on those citizens whose religion was their only crime." The example of Galerius, his implacable enemy, had made this severity odious to him. By the authority and advice of his dying father, he determined to pursue an opposite course. He immediately suspended or repealed the edicts of persecution, and granted the free exercise of their religious ceremonies to all those who had already professed themselves members of the church. They were soon encouraged to depend on the favor as well as on the justice of their sovereign, who had imbibed a secret and sincere reverence for the name of Christ, and for the God of the christians.

Thus, we see exhibited in the ancient and remarkable oracle of the Deity, an Absolute Sovereign Power, which repudiates the gods of his predecessors, and sets up in their place a god of foreign origin, who becomes a constituent of the power by which he is enthroned. Hence, the power consists of, or is represented by, the King and his god; who exalt and magnify themselves above every power, temporal and spiritual, claiming sovereignty and lordship upon the whole habitable. The King has the priority of existence in the New Constitution of things--new in relation to the old, under which the gods of his predecessors bore rule through their priests. The priority is manifest from the fact, that he is the founder of the glory of his New God--"whom he shall acknowledge and increase with glory." The acknowledgment of the candidate for divine honors, must be accepted as the date of his creation: that is, the aspirant became a god, as soon as he was recognized by the King. Until this recognition, the King would be supreme in all the spiritual and temporal affairs of his dominion. He would be the chief magistrate, the commander-in-chief of the military forces, and the chief bishop, of his empire; but when he should come to set up his new god, he would in so doing, delegate to him the supervision and administration of all spiritual and ecclesiastical affairs. This arrangement would make his god "the Head of all the Churches" of the habitable; while he would reserve to himself the headship of the State.

The standing of the Dragon before the Woman indicates that lie was in an aggressive attitude. His standing had no courtesy in it, for he stood before her that be might devour her offspring.

This case of Ananias and Sapphira marks the commencement of the woman's symbolic pregnancy. It occurred A.D. 33. This was the epoch of her impregnation. From this year of apostolic espousal to what Mr. Whiston styles "the famous proclamation and edict for the universal liberty and advancement of christianity (more correctly, "the Apostasy") by Constantine and Licinius, A.D. 313, which put an end to the pangs of birth in the heaviest persecution that ever was then known, was exactly 280 years." A pregnancy of forty weeks of years, at the end of which there was manifest a Man of Power, who professed the faith of the majority of the woman's community; delivered her from the sanguinary oppression of the pagan "Devil and Satan," whom he cast out of the heaven into the earth together with the stars of his tail; and who set himself up as the Bishop, or Overseer, episkopos (the Eyes and Mouth) of all the bishops of the Roman world.

Now, in the first chapter of Job, this is all attributed to Satan, as though, according to popular tradition, it had been done by a Fallen Angel, the world has agreed to call "The Devil." But, in the second chapter, the Eternal Power informs us, that it was He that brought Job to poverty; for addressing his adversary, He says, "thou movedst me against him, to destroy him without cause." All that was done being adverse to Job, it was attributed to his personal enemy, who was the moving cause; though the efficient cause was the power of Deity Himself.

Now, after Adam had brought sin into being by transgression of the law, the Deity proceeded to organize the "evil" to which man had subjected himself by his rebellion. He had come to know it elohistically, as the serpent had said; but he was not also to be like the Elohim in abiding for ever. He had sinned, and the law he had violated was now to take its course. YAHWEH Elohim therefore proceeded to expound the penalty of the law, and to teach him the practical import of the phrase, "Dying thou shalt die. He began with the instinctive whispering promoter of the mischief, whom having cursed, he addressed as the representative of the disobedient in all future time, and said, "I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between THY SEED and HER SEED; this shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel." To the woman, as first in the transgression, he said, her progeny should be greatly multiplied, her desire should be to her husband, who should rule over her. And to Adam, because he hearkened to his wife instead of to him, he said, "Cursed-is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; ... till thou return to the ground; for out of it wast thou taken; for thou art dust, and to dust shalt thou return" (Gen. 3:15-19). The specifications in these sentences upon the serpent, the woman, and the man form THE CONSTITUTION Of the Serpent-World, or KINGDOM OF SIN; and termed in Scripture "the Kingdom of Men" - dominion hostile to the Divine law administered by the Serpent's Seed. It matters not what form the dominion assumes, whether imperial, regal, republican, or papal, its basis is one and the same; and most appropriately symbolized by the serpent which was in the beginning - ho ophis, ho archaios.

Upon these seven mounts Rome, styled by its historians, "the Eternal City," is sitting; and, when the Apocalypse was revealed to John, contained a population of millions. She was founded by Romulus 753 years before the birth of Jesus Christ; so that in A.D. 1868 she is 2621 years old. Her limits are now I greatly reduced. About thirty years before Christ, and in the days of Augustus Caesar, Rome contained two millions of inhabitants; and was fifty miles in circumference; but in 1847, she contained only 175,883 inhabitants, exclusive of Jews, whose number was computed at 8000. As long as she continues above ground she will be an interesting city. She contains 354 edifices, termed by Daniel mivtzerai mauzzim, BAZAARS OF GUARDIANS; but, by "the daemons, foul spirits, and unclean and hateful birds" of "Christendom" so-called, "churches;" which, in their ignorance and folly, they have dedicated to ghosts or phantoms, which they have decreed to be immortal, and protecting guardians to all who worship them therein. Among these bazaars of Romish saints, St. Peter's, the temple of the Roman God, holds the first rank, being the largest temple in the world. It is 666 feet long, 284 wide, and its magnificent cupola rises to the height of 408 feet. It was 200 years in building. It is the temple of "the god of the earth", before whom, in belligerent antagonism, the saints and witnesses of Jesus stood; prophesying in sackcloths 1260 years (Dan. 11:39; Apoc. 18:2; 11:3). It is the temple in which is worshipped "the Man of Sin and Son of Perdition," styled also "the Lawless One"; who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called a god or is reverenced: so that, as a god, he sits in the temple of the god, publicly exhibiting himself that he is a god" (2 Thess. 2:4). Such are the capital and chief temple of the apocalyptic Sodom and Egypt; the Queen City of the Gentiles, and most holy sanctuary of Satan.

The dragon, then, whose force is in his tail, symbolized the power of the old Egyptian Polity. This, in the days of Moses, was the great enemy of Israel after both flesh and spirit. It embodied in its institutions all the filthiness, and superstition, and tyranny of human nature; and stood before the world as the great SIN-POWER of antiquity - "the Old Serpent, the Devil and the Satan."

But we have to do with the comely and delicate Zion-woman as pregnant neither with Israel and Judah, nor the Saints, but with some other thing. What was that thing?

But this transient appearance of the woman in the heaven characterizes the sun, moon and stars she had repudiated. They had become the catholic luminaries of a new heaven; which, under the sounding of the fourth wind-trumpet, are found ruling the day and the night of the Catholic Roman Orb. The transient standing of the woman upon the moon indelibly stamped the character of Jezebel upon it; and proclaimed it to be the lunar representative of the Laodicean Synagogue of Satan; which ever since has been allied, in some form or other, to the blasphemous and ferocious despotisms of the world.

But, the placing of a simple stephan upon the Woman's head would have merely signified that she was a victor. But what was the prize of Victory? What had she gained by her victory over the Dragon persecutor, which accused her people incessantly before the Deity? This question is apocalyptically solved by the TWELVE STARS inserted in the wreath. These were the twelve most conspicuous stars of the Roman Firmament. They were stars of the first magnitude which excelled all the other stars in the glory of their position. There were none brighter in the political astronomy of the state. They were the stars of that imperial dragon-headship of which it was remarked to John in chapter 17: 10, saying -,ONE is.- These stars of this Sixth Head at the time of the apocalyptic going forth of the archer of the first seal were exactly twelve, and may be enumerated chronologically thus

Thus the idol-heaven of Daniel's Fourth Beast-dominion was rolled out of the way by the judgments of the Sixth Seal to make room for a new heaven with its own appropriate luminaries. This "heaven" was a church and state constitution of things, in which the Apostasy, foreshadowed in the epistle to the ecclesia at Laodicea. shone with all the brightness and glory an unscrupulous world lying under the wicked could confer upon a system of delusion congenial to it. Its sun, moon, and stars shone brightly. Though a new constitution of the aerial was proclaimed, the sun was not abolished. The storm-clouds of a departing idolatrous institution had blackened it. It no longer shone in the splendor of pagan majesty which was totally eclipsed; still the supreme power continued to be a diademed imperiality. It was the same twelve-starred Sixth Head which was developed in the Augustan epoch of Daniel's "dreadful and terrible" beast. When the half hour's silence invaded the heaven, the "mighty wind" which had been rudely shaking the Roman Fig-tree for eighteen years, was calmed; and the sun of imperial power and majesty emerged again from the hair-sackcloth blackness of the darkening and sanguinary revolution by which it had been obscured. It emerged again to shine with an unclouded blaze upon an entirely new order of things - an order, such as the sun in the natural heaven had hitherto never shone upon since he was placed there to rule the day; an order therefore, which, in the words of the apocalypse, might fitly be represented as "a great sign in the heaven."

Thus, the end, first in purpose, is the last developed, but first revealed in the prophecy. Not attending to, or ignorant of, this structural peculiarity, some have committed grievous errors in their efforts at interpretation and exposition. It has led them to affirm, that the apocalypse is all to be fulfilled after the advent of Christ; while others declare that its revelation has been fulfilled long ago. Both these extremes meet in absurdity, where they embrace and kiss each other. They are mere assumptions, and too ridiculous for a serious refutation. The former theory is very convenient for the ignorant and the indolent; for if the apocalypse as yet is none of it fulfilled, nor even to begin to be fulfilled till after the advent of Christ, all are upon one low, common level respecting it. He that knows much of doctrine and history is at equal disadvantage with him who knows nothing of either, and thus ignorance is strengthened and consoled.

The invasion of Mexico by France, England, and Spain, resulted in the fall of a republic -- a corrupt and worthless popular sovereignty; and in the provisional establishment (for it will prove to be nothing more) of a Franco-Austrian imperiality, which has this redeeming quality, that it is hostile to the Papacy, and inimical to the priests. These events in Mexico are, it is most likely, only preparatory elements of the situation being now organized in the providence of the Deity. They are preparing for a future complication, by which the trouble of the latter days will pervade not Europe and Asia only, but America as well. This was written in 1866.

The woman Jezebel who calls herself a prophetess, the Laodicean Apostasy, imperialized, and the Man of Sin Power revealed. (Apoc. 2:20)

Anselm, Joachim Abbas, Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, the angelic doctor," Pierre d'Olive, and Walter Brute, followed after them; and set to their hands in the work of making darkness visible. They had no misgivings as to the divine origin of the Apocalypse. In this Luther, " The Great Father of the Reformation," who came after them in the 16th century, was not in the same assurance. He had doubts of the genuineness of the Apocalypse as an apostolic or inspired book; though he came at length when he perceived how it might be wielded against his, late master the Pope and papacy, to hold his doubts in abeyance, and presumptuously to venture upon its exposition. But this " great father " made out no better than the Laodiceans who preceded him. The " Mighty Angel," says he, " with a rainbow and a little bitter book, is Popery; the. open book being that of papal law,-,, given to John to eat ! " The Seventh Head he supposed, to be Spain; while the three frog-like spirits depicted papal sophists, like Faber, Eck, and Emser, stirring up opposition to what he called gospel. His conceptions of the Millennium were as cloudy as those of Jerome and Augustine, who could see nothing in it but the triumph over Satan in the hearts of true believers! In short, to men in the fog, even the truth itself is foggy Nit where The light within is not darkness, all things are bright and resplendent. Jerome. Augustine, and Luther did not understand the truth as it is in Jesus." nor the voices of the Old Testament; it was impossible, therefore, that they could discern the import of the Apocalypse, which is " the Mystery of the Deity as lie hath announced file glad tidings to his servants, the prophets " -- Apoc. 10:7. Luther was a useful anti-papal element of the Earth that helped the Woman " in her tormenting witnessing against "the god of the earth;" but, as a guide to the blind, and a teacher of babes, in the way of salvation; or an expositor of apocalyptic mysteries, his incompetency was only second to the Pope himself.

Now, when the sovereign powers of a state fall, they are prostrated by wounding to death. This was the case in the fall, or removal of the five, especially the fifth, to make way for the sixth, which continued a long Space in Rome, or over five hundred years; the Imperial Senate residing on the Seven Hills, and the Imperial Court of the West in Ravenna, and the Imperial Court of the East in Constantinople. This Imperial Sixth Head ruled all the Thirds of the Roman habitable; but, at the end of these centuries, the imperial authority was to be suppressed in Rome, and over the Third Part attached to the jurisdiction of that city. This was to be effected by wounding as if to death. The blowing of the fourth wind-trumpet inflicted the wound by which it was prostrated; so that when John saw it, it had the appearance of a dead head. This death state of the head was a necessary condition for the development of its successor in sovereign power. So long as the sixth flourished in political life on the Seven Hills, a successor could not exist in Rome. The death of the Sixth was indispensable to the manifestation of the Seventh. And it may be noted here that there is nothing more said about the seventh head in this chapter than that the beast had seven heads. It does not seem to perform any important part in the prophecy; nevertheless, as a seventh potentate, coming in between the sixth and the eighth, its presence upon the arena was highly important to the preparation of the way of the full grown Man of Sin. In John's time, "the other," or the seventh, "had not yet come; and when he cometh he must continue a short space." This "short space" was a period of great events. In the course of it, and during the nine decades that ushered it in, the Ten-Horn Sovereignties established themselves upon the western imperial third of the Roman Orb; Rome's imperial dominion was abolished, and, in place thereof, a regal sovereignty was developed upon the seven mountains known in history as the GOTHIC KINGDOM OF ITALY. This was the Seventh Head, which was only to continue "a short space," or sixty years. This passing away of the Sixth Head from Old Rome at the time of its successor, the Seventh Head's inauguration, is thus symbolized in Apoc. 8:12, "and the third part of the sun was smitten, and the third part of the moon, and the third part of the stars; so as the third part of them was darkened." The other two thirds were still unsmitten and left to shine in their proper spheres - two thirds of the sun, two thirds of the moon, and two thirds of the stars: that is, the imperial Sixth Head retained its position in Constantinople, from whence it continued to exercise rule and authority, in all matters, civil and ecclesiastical, over the other unsubdued two thirds of the Roman world.

When a man becomes a spokesman for another he is regarded as a mouth to him. This was the case with Aaron. He was appointed for a mouth to Moses, who was slow of speech, and of a slow tongue; and Moses was to be to him in the place of God (Exod. 4:16). Hence, Aaron was Moses' prophet, who spoke as he was moved by Moses. So of all in old time who spake as they were moved by the Holy Spirit; they became mouths to Him who moved them to speak; and therefore, it is written, "the Deity spake to the fathers by the prophets." There were such mouths of the Deity in the ecclesia at Corinth. They were styled prophets, and their utterances, prophesyings; or, speaking unto men to "edification, and exhortation, and comfort" (1 Cor. 14:3). And so also in relation to the worshippers of the Beast. They needed A PROPHET to teach and build them up in their superstition, and to be for them a bond of union in all things pertaining to it. As they designated their superstition "the Holy Catholic Apostolic," they required a Prophet, who should be the Mouth of that system; and would expound and defend it against the Holy Scriptures, Deity Himself, and all who claimed to be His witnesses. The utterances of this Mouth would be his prophesyings; and by no means to be despised by those who should enjoy the favor of the Beast; or, of that Name of Blasphemy upon his heads. The requirements of the worshippers were provided for by the Dragon, who gave them "a Mouth speaking great things and blasphemies"; and to the Mouth himself, he "gave authority over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations;" so that "all that dwell upon the (Mediterranean) earth should worship him, whose names are not written, from the foundation of the world, in the book of the life of the Lamb slain." To these millions of worshippers, upon whom the Deity sent "a strong delusion that they should believe a lie; that they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness" - the Mouth given became the spokesman of Anti-christendom - "the Mouth of the False Prophet," or Name of Blasphemy - (Apoc. 16:13; 19:30). He is styled a false prophet, because his utterances, or prophesyings, are mere fraud, deceit, and vanity; because the signs, and lying wonders wrought in the presence of the Beast-authorities by him, are an imposture, and his preaching, allocutions, decrees, and so forth, the falsehoods of a lying oracle, by which they are deceived who have received the mark of the beast, and who worship his image (Apoc. 19:20). His end is perdition by being "cast alive into the Lake of Fire burning with brimstone."

The Beast of the Sea has seven heads as well as the Pago-Cathelic Dragon. They are the same heads, and identify the Dragon and the Beast as apocalyptically diverse constitutional developments of the same power. The only difference of the two series of heads symbolically viewed is, that the Dragon series is diademed, while the Beast series is not. In the latter symbol the Horns, not the Heads, are diademed; but in the case of the Dragon it was the heads and not the horns. This diversity, of course, is significative of some peculiarity, and has to be explained when we come to the further consideration of the horns.

But the Leopard had a more extensive dominion than the Bear. This Greek kingdom was to "bear rule over all the earth." It commenced its predicted career about B.C. 330, under its "first king," Alexander surnamed "the Great." It extended from Macedonia into what is now a part of British India and styled the Punjaub: but notwithstanding it exceeded the dominion of the Bear it fell far short of "bearing rule over all the earth" - the earth, as defined by the symbol of the Great Sea.

in order to legitimize their government in the eyes of their Roman subjects, who in respect of number immensely exceeded the barbarian population that had conquered them. In the negotiations and treaties on which matter, it was usually stipulated by the Roman emperors, and agreed to by the barbaric kings, that the Diademed Bust and names of the emperors should be stamped upon the barbarian coinage (at least on their gold coins) not the Gothic princes' own. Hence there was a semi-Roman state of the Gothic coinage, as Lelewel calls it, for a century more or less, from about A . D .450 to 550; the Vandals of Africa forming however an exception apparently, and acting more or less independently in this respect. At length Clovis the Frank, at the opening of the sixth century, had the plenary sovereignty of Gaul awarded to him by the Byzantine emperor, with the title of Consul and Augustus, and the Diadem of Pearls as its badge and token: a grant renewed in A.D. 532 to Clovis' children, by Justinian, with full power over the coinage; and engagement that his purely Frank money should have the privilege of currency assured to it throughout the whole Roman empire. In the course of the sixth century, the example of Clovis was followed by others of the princes; the Lombards coming last about A.D. 600.

p.229 the Eleven, replied to their inquiry, by saying, "Hearken ye unto my words." Why did not James, or John, "the beloved disciple," or some other apostle, rather than Peter, who, they afterwards learned, had thrice denied his Lord, stand up and invite them to hearken to his words? This inquiry would certainly be mooted before their return to Rome. They perceived that Peter was, on this Pentecostian occasion, the Mouth of the Apostolic Body; nor was he a Babylonian Mouth, nor a Roman Mouth, but the Mouth of Deity, in the sense of the Deity speaking by him. Why was this? To this question it would be replied, that the Spirit had given the Keys of the Kingdom of the Heavens to Peter according to a previous promise through Jesus Christ, who had said, "I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of the heavens, and whatsoever thou shalt bind upon the earth, shall be bound in the heavens; and whatsoever thou shalt loose upon the earth, shall be loosed in the heavens" (Matt. 16:19). What they saw and heard was in fulfillment of this promise, and of what had been spoken by the prophet Joel. Their attention being gained by this, they were furthermore informed by Peter, the Holder of the Keys, that all that had recently been transacted in Jerusalem connected with the crucifixion, was "by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of the Deity." He charged them directly with the murder of Jesus, saying, "him ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain." They had demanded his life, and imprecated the curse of his blood upon them and their children. But, continued Peter, the Deity hath delivered him from death, and placed him at the right hand of power in the heaven, there to remain until the time shall come for Deity to give him the throne of his father David; in proof of which, he shed forth the Spirit which they saw upon the heads of the apostles, and heard in all the languages of the empire.

Name also is equivalent to power. This appears from Acts 4:7, where the rulers demanded of the apostles, saying to them, "by what power, or name, have ye done this?" - and in ver. 30, they pray that "wonders may be done by the name of Jesus," that is, by his power. Hence, the Jesus Name is a name of glory and power, as well as a name of holiness and truth, and is styled by Paul "a Name above every name; that at the Name of Jesus every knee shall bow" (Phil. 2:9,1Q).

It appears from Valerius Maximus, that the ancient Romans understood horns as the symbol of regal government; and the images of the gods, kings and heroes, among the heathen, were adorned with horns as a mark of their royalty and power.

"Among profane authors, the comparison of cruel governors to savage beasts, is obvious. And Horace calls the Roman People a many-headed beast - Lib. 1, Ep. 1 ver. 76. And as for the Oneiro critics, wild beasts are generally the symbols of enemies, whose malice and power is to be judged of in proportion to the nature and magnitude of the wild beasts they are represented by. 'As a roaring lion and a ranging bear; so is a wicked ruler over the poor people"' (Prov. 28:15).

But how changed this country of the abyss since John stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw arise out of the Latin Sea and the Earth, the Beasts of the Sea and Earth! Since then the Abyss has been fathomed, and no longer erupts its wild barbaric hordes in destructive inundations, whereby suddenly and without warning, cities and rural districts are plundered and reduced to smoking ruins. The abyss, which was "the Northern Hive" from which swarmed forth the destroying agents of the first four trumpets, sounded against the Roman Earth and Sea, is now the area of Germany from the Rhine and Danube to the Baltic, Bohemia, Poland, the Great Russian empire, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. In the times of the ascending of the Sea Beast, these were the ultramarine, abyssal fountains of the Great Sea; which, when broken up, roared forth their floods and tempests, and developed upon the Latin Habitable the Ten-Horn Kingdoms of Modern Europe. Hence the reason why the same beast is attributed to different sources. He came latent, or hidden, as it were, being as yet undeveloped, from the outlying abyssal region, when the Barbarians of the North rushed in upon the sea, and the rivers, and the fountains of waters, belonging to the Catholic Dragon: and he came up above the waters of the sea when the invading hosts of the abyss effected settlements upon the Dragon-territory, and were developed into the Ten Diademed Horns of the Beast.

"The resemblance between the noise of an enraged sea, and the noise of an army, or multitude in commotion is obvious, and frequently taken notice of by the prophets."

Now, a beast with an eighth head and ten horns, contemporary with the advent of the Ancient of Days, implies its previous existence, either under seven heads coevally extant, or under seven heads successively existing. The revelator disposes of this alternative by telling John that five of the heads had fallen, that the sixth was in being in his day, and that the seventh had not then as yet come. Hence this succession of heads, and development of horns upon the imperial head, implies the subjection of the Fourth Beast to successive revolutionary changes. Daniel saw one revolution connected with its horns, in which an Eleventh Horn with Eyes and Mouth, came up upon the head after the I considered the horns and behold there came up among them another little horn before whom there were three of the first horns plucked up by the roots and behold, in this horn were eyes like the eyes of man and a mouth speaking great things (Dan 7 8) the Papacy in power ten horns, of which it rooted up three; but in regard to the head he saw nothing.

The Apostle John, standing upon the Sand of the Sea, beholds a Beast ascending out of the sea, even that beast he alluded to in Ch. 11:7, as the destroyer of the Witnesses. Like the Dragon, it had Seven Reads and Ten Horns; and its power, throne, and great authority, it acquired from the Dragon. Thus it divided the Habitable with the Dragon; so that the inhabitants thereof worship the Dragon and the Beast. Upon the Seven Heads he saw a Name of Blasphemy, to which was given a Mouth like a Lion, with which he gave utterance to the great things and blasphemies he conceived. He sees them in continuance forty and two months, in the course of which long period they make war upon the saints and at length overcome them.

Diabolos and Satan." But these partners in iniquity quarreler, though all brethren of the same church. Dragon and Serpent lost caste, having fallen deeply into debt with nothing to pay. Their creditors therefore pronounced against them: and caused two other parties of the same name (and as after experience proved, of characters no less iniquitous) to take their place in the establishment. It was now "a house divided against itself," consisting of Catholic and Pagan parties in the State -Dragon and Serpent catholic; and Diabolos and Satan zealous worshipers of the gods of their ancestors. The situation being thus changed, the administration of affairs was changed also. DIABOLOS was allowed to retain the direction and supervision of things spiritual and temporal in "the earth and sea;" while the catholic members of the firm rejoiced in the greater dignity and authority of the Italian Heaven.

But the Novatian and Donatista remnants were not only reinforced by the Aerians; their strength and influence were augmented in the middle of the seventh century by the Paulicians. It was about A.D. 653, that a new sect arose in the Roman East, upon which this name was bestowed. There resided in the city of Mananalis, in Armema, a person of the class to whom the gospel is preached, the obscure, whose name was Constantine. One day a stranger called upon him, who had been a prisoner among the Saracens in Syria, and having obtained his release, was returning home through this city. He was kindly received by Constantine, and for some days entertained at his house. The stranger had been a deacon of a church. In return for the hospitality he had received, he presented Constantine with two manuscripts; one of the "four gospels;" the other, of Paul's epistles. Constantine studied them as they deserved to be; and when he came to understand them, he would touch no other books; and commenced to teach the doctrines of Christ and his apostle to the Gentiles. He threw away his Manichaean library, exploded and rejected many popular absurdities; and led his countrymen to abandon their former teachers whom they had most venerated; and opened an effective battery upon the superstitions of the catholic church and its hierarchy.

This was a righteous retribution encouraging to behold. Truly, as Gibbon remarks, "it is not unpleasing to observe the triumph of rebellion over the same despotism which has disdained the prayers of an in-jured people." The dragon was reduced to sue for peace, to offer ransom for catholic captives, and to request, in the language of moderation and charity, that Chrysocheir would spare his fellow-christians, and content himself with a royal donation of gold and silver and silk garments. "If the emperor," replied the Paulician defender, "be desirous of peace, let him abdicate the East, and reign without molestation in the West. If he refuse, the servants of the Lord will precipitate him from his throne." But the time for the fall of the Eastern Roman Empire had not yet arrived. The emperor Basil the Macedonian accepted Chrysocheir's' defiance, and led his army into "the land of heresy," which he wasted with fire and sword.

Now, the spirit, in allusion to this ancient custom and practice, predicted, that the Beast of the Earth would distinguish itself by a certain character, sign, or mark, as the symbol of its faith and power which it would impose, under the severest pains and penalties upon all recusants, upon every soul without exception under its dominion. What the characteristic symbol would be is not revealed. It was to be a sign of its own selection; and for the universal adoption of which, it was to be terrifically zealous. Commentators have thought that this emblematic mark consists of the three Greek letters, (XEC) of the last verse of his chapter, which stands for 666; and that the phrase, in verse 17, "the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name," is equivalent to the intimation, that the mark, name, and number, are all the same. I have no objection to the idea, that the triliteral sign (XEC) is a representative number symbolical of "the name of the beast," and of the numerals contained in the name; but I do object to the notion, that this triliteral is emblematic of "the sign" imposed by the legislative enactments of the Beast upon all its subjects without exception. The sign of the Beast is not apocalyptically signified; but is simply styled to charagma, the sign or mark, and is left to history and public notoriety for its identification.

He deceives through his wonder-working in the presence of the Beast. To what result does he deceive the dwellers upon the earth, or inhabitants of the territory of the Holy Germano-Roman dominion? To the making of an Image of the Beast that had the plague of the sword, and lives. In other words, in the metaphorical deception, or deceiving operation, there is a conflict of powers resulting in the development and compulsory establishment of the Image of the Beast.

But in the days of Innocent III., the great things and blasphemies spoken of by the Image, or Iconic Lion-Mouth, were something more than sound and fury signifying nothing harmful. They were terrific roarings that made all the beasts of the Roman wilderness to tremble. Lucius III. and Innocent III., by formal decrees, required heretics to be seized, condemned, and delivered by the bishops to the civil magistrates, to be capitally punished, and enjoined the princes and magistrates to execute on them the sentences denounced by the canon and civil laws. "Supported," says the Iconic Mouth, "by the presence and energy of our beloved son Frederick, the illustrious Emperor of the Romans, by the council of our brethren, other patriarchs, archbishops also, and numerous princes, who have assembled from different parts of the world, we rise by this decree against all heretics, and by apostolical authority condemn every sect, by whatever name it is designated

By the first maxim the election of the emperor by the secular electors of the empire made him the lord of the pope; who had no more power to withhold the crown and titles from the emperor elect, than the archbishop of Canterbury, whose function it is to crown the king of England, could withhold the crown and titles from the inheritor of the British throne. In the time of Otho, the Archbishop and Patriarch of Rome was to the Germano-Roman emperor, what the archbishop of Canterbury is to the king of England, namely, at once both chief sub-ect, and chief bishop, of the respective beasts, or dominions. The bishop of Rome was elected by the college of cardinals, with the ratifying approval of the Roman people; but he could not be legally consecrated until the emperor had graciously signified his approbation and consent. This being the ecclesiastical and civil constitution of the Lamb-Horned Beast, it is plainly to be perceived, that there was nothing in the body politic answerable to the Image of the Beast that lives.

In the nineteenth century and in Protestant countries we have no experience of the effects of this ecclesiastical fire from heaven. It is now as harmless as the faintest sheet lightning. Even in Italy the papal bolts are ineffective and despised. Not so, however, in centuries past. The estate or person of the excommunicated might be attached by the magistrate; and marks of abhorrence and ignominy attended these penalties. They were to be shunned, like men infected with leprosy, by their friends, their families, and servants. Two attendants only remained with Robert, king of France, who on account of an irregular marriage, was put to this ban by Gregory V., and a Roman Council, A.D. 997. The Beautes de 1' Histoire de France, p.104, thus describes the result: "Excommunication was at this epoch a terrible weapon in the hands of the sovereign Pontiff. Every one fled with horror from him who had been struck by it. The lords broke off all commerce with the king. There hardly remained any attendants with him to serve him. And these threw all the fragments of his table into the fire rather than eat them." The mere intercourse with a proscribed person incurred the "lesser excommunication," or privation of the sacraments, and required penitence and absolution. In some places, a bier was set before the door of an excommunicated individual, and stones thrown at his windows. Every where the excommunicated were debarred of a regular burial. Their carcasses were supposed to be incapable of corruption, which was thought a privilege unfit for those who had died in so irregular a manner.

The reestablishment of Imperialism upon the Seven Mountains, signalized by the coronation of Charlemagne, Emperor of the Romans, by the hand of the Chief Bishop of the New Empire, was the healing of the Sixth Head so grievously wounded by the Gothic sword. Rome was no longer in the rank to which she had been reduced by Justinian's 'Pragmatic Sanction" of A.D. 554. This ordinance placed her among the cities of the second rank in the Graeco-Roman, or Byzantine, empire; but by her becoming the capital of the Holy Romano-Francic, and afterwards Romano-Germanic, dominion, she was restored to the imperial, or dragonic, sovereignty; and the plague of her death was healed.

"This part of Charlemagne's conduct is duly to be taken into the account, before we censure his vast extension of ecclesiastical privileges. Nothing was more remote from his character than the bigotry of those weak princes who have suffered the clergy to reign under their names. He acted upon a systematic plan of government, conceived by his own comprehensive genius, but requiring too continual an application of similar talents for durable execution. It was the error of a superior mind, zealous for religion and learning, to believe that men (the clergy) dedicated to the functions of the one, and possessing what remained of the other, might, through strict rules of discipline, enforced by the constant vigilance of the sovereign, become fit instruments to reform and civilize a barbarous empire. It was the error of a magnanimous spirit to judge too favorably of human nature, and to presume that great trusts would be fulfilled, and great benefits remembered.

But Adrian did not live to witness the execution of the projects he had formed for the exaltation of the Roman church and the French monarchy. This rising up of a grand dominion was to be consummated by his successor, Leo III., who immediately sent to Charlemagne the standard of Rome, begging him to send some person to receive the oath of fidelity from the Romans; a most flattering instance of submission, as well as a proof that the sovereignty of Rome at that time belonged to the kings of France. Three years after, two nephews of the late pope attacked him in the street, dispersed the unarmed multitude, wounded htm in several places, and dragged him half dead into the church of St. Mark. He made his escape by the assistance of friends, who sent him under an escort to Charlemagne. He received him with all possible marks of respect, sent him back with a numerous retinue of guards and attendants, and went soon after to Italy in person to do him justice.

This project was favored A.D. 726, by the edict of Leo. Isauricus, then emperor of Constantinople, where theological disputes had long mingled with affairs of State. He zealously prohibited the worship of images; ordering all the statues to be broken in pieces, and the paintings in the Trinitarian Bazaars of Guardian Saints, whose worship also was forbidden, to be pulled down and, burnt. The populace, whose devotion extended no further than such objects, and the monks and secular priests interested in supporting the mummery, were so highly provoked at this innovation, that they publicly revolted in many places; and in Italy swore to live and die in defence of their idols. In these times of extreme ignorance and barbarism the dispute about image and picture worship was a very grave and vital question with both Trinitarians and Arians; the solution of which led to very important and mighty results. In view of these, I have thought it would be in place to present the reader, in a condensed form and as a distinct section, what history supplies upon this subject.

This tenth verse of ch. 13 is parallel with ch. 14:8-12. That is, the mission of the Second and Third Angels outlined in this passage is executive of the judgment written against the Beast in ch. 13:10 - ei tis, if any, etc., rendered "he that killeth, etc.; the outline shows that the "any" refers to Babylon, the great city, and the worshippers of the Beast and his Image; and that these are to be "tormented with fire and brimstone," or "destroyed in war" (ch. 11:18) "in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb." The saints are waiting for this. It is the patience of those "who keep the commandments of the Deity and the faith of Jesus;" for so it is written inch. 14:12, to which the reader is referred. Because the Great City, or "Christendom," has shed the blood of the saints and witnesses of Jesus, blood is to be given it to drink until it shall fall to rise no more. As "a great hail out of the heavens," the saints are to descend upon Babylon, and to "reward her even as she rewarded them, and to double to her according to her works" (Ch. 16:21; 18:6). They are to execute this judgment strengthened by Omnipotence co-working with them (ch. 14:13); in the time of the end, after they shall have been raised from the dead, and been commissioned (ch. 18:20).

Of this party was Leo the Third, who, from the mountains of Isauria, ascended the throne of the East. He is styled the Iconoclast, or Image-breaker. Though inspired with hatred of images, in the outset of an unsettled reign, during ten years of toil and danger, he submitted to the meanness of hypocrisy, bowed before the idols he despised, and satisfied the Universal Bishop, the special patron of the idols, with the annual profession of his orthodoxy and zeal. In the reformation he attempted, his first steps were moderate and cautious; but resistance and invective, and the urgency of his friends, provoked him to more active measures. The existence and use of religious pictures were proscribed; the churches of Constantinople and the provinces were cleansed from idolatry; the images of Christ, the Virgin, and the saints were demolished; the sect of the Iconoclasts was supported by the zeal and despotism of six emperors; and the East and West were involved in a noisy conflict of one hundred and twenty years.

But oceans of blood have been shed in the past 1,335 years of its existence, in attaining to a dominion so extended. This sanguinary and all-conquering career commenced with war between the imperial and regal potentates of Rome and Constantinople, which, after twenty years' continuance with various fortune to the combatants, ultimated in the removal and final death of the Seventh Head, which marked the termination of the "short space" of its reign. As, then, the removal of the Seventh Head was an indispensable prerequisite to the healing, or causing imperialism to live again in Rome, I shall now proceed to an historical sketch of its suppression, and then return to the exhibition of the heal- ing of "the plague of the death," which had been inflicted upon its predecessor by the sword; which will afford scope, also, for accompanying the Name of Blasphemy in further development, until we find it seated imperially upon the seven heads.

It is, however, to be remembered that Paul so expresses himself as not to be misunderstood by the enlightened. He defines the heavenlies in which they "sit together with Christ" as being "in Christ;" but he omits the phrase "in Christ" when he speaks of the heavenlies in which "the spirituals of wickedness" are found. Hence, the two kinds of supernal states are characterized by being "in Christ" or not in Christ; which is equivalent to being out of Christ - outside, or not included in the things, of which the manifestation of Deity in the Flesh is the great and glorious centre.

In the reported Decree of Pius the First, he says, "The people may not accuse a bishop; bishops are to be judged by the Deity, who has chosen them as EYES to himself." Speaking of the Episcopacy in general, Boniface I., styles it "the watchtower of Episcopacy;" and the Greek emperor, in writing to the Roman Synod, A.D. 681, says, "we show that the priests are the Eyes of the Church." So Boniface I. speaks of the pope under the name of Peter, saying, "The most blessed apostle Peter looks upon thee as HIS OWN EYES, in what way soever thou shalt use the office of Chief Ruler. Neither can it not be most suitable for thee, who art constituted perpetual Shepherd of the Lord's sheep." Also, Innocent IV., A.D. 1245, in his sentence against the Emperor Frederick, says, "We ought to perceive, in regard to the height of apostolic dignity, that it is for THE EYE of most intimate considering of the faults of all christians." Hence, the Universal Bishop is well represented by the "Eyes like the eyes of a man," in Daniel's Little Horn.

The third question is, What is to be understood by the indefinite expression "to practice"? Authority was given unto the Beast of the Sea to practice -poiesai. In the seventh verse the word polemon is prefixed to poiesai; as, "It was given unto him to make war polemon poiesai, with the saints." Hence the fifth verse, I take it, is elliptical, and expounded by the seventh. But, was he to practice against the saints successfully or otherwise? The use of the word in Daniel when treating of the same subject, shows that "practise" implies prevailing and prospering in what it might undertake against them. Speaking of the Little Roman Horn that "waxed exceeding great" and "cast the truth to the ground," it is said, "it practiced and prospered;" and of the same power, it is said in another verse, "he shall destroy wonderfully, and shall prosper and practice, and shall destroy the mighty ones and the people of the Holy Ones. And through his policy also he shall cause craft to prosper in his hand; and he shall magnify in his heart, and by prosperity shall destroy many (Dan. 8:24,25, and 12). Now this shows, that the practicing of the power was mischievous and destructive; and that it prospered by policy, craft, and all belligerent operations; and, as the prophecy has more especial reference to "the people of the Holy Ones," who, in Daniel and John's revelations, are the most important community, for whose sake are all things (2 Cor. 4:15), the prosperous practicing is especially equivalent to the treading of the Holy City under foot of the Gentiles forty and two months (ch. 11:2): to the making war, overcoming, and killing of the two witnessing prophetic bodies, by which, as by two lamps standing before the deified Name of Blasphemy, the light of the truth and liberty was caused to shine (ch. 11:7,3,10,4); to the leading of the saints into captivity, and killing them with the sword (ch. 13:10); equivalent also, to the saints being given into the hand of the Little Episcopal Horn-power which prevails against them until the expiration of a time and times and a dividing of a time (Dan. 7:21,25). The fulfillment of these testimonies converges in the practicing of the Beast of the Sea, the Papal Body Politic, which the Deity, for the developing of his own wise purposes, authorized so to do, as indicated in the text. And as this practising of mischief of which the saints are the victims, is for forty and two months, it follows that the periods similarly indicated inch. 11:2 and ch. 13:5, are the same period; and consequently begin and end at the same epochs; that is, the forty and two months are the period of the prosperous and destructive practicing of the papalized ten horns, and of the down-treading of the Holy-City body politic by them: and as this practicing continues in all this period, we may accept the Common Version, power was given unto him to continue forty and two months," as correct by implication.

"From a tender regard to the expiring prejudices of Rome," says the historian, "the barbarian declined the name, the purple and the diadem of the emperors; but he assumed, under the hereditary title of king, the whole substance and plenitude of imperial prerogative. His addresses to the eastern throne were respectful and ambiguous; he celebrated in pompous style the harmony of The Two Republics, applauded his own government as the perfect similitude of a sole and undivided empire (or Head), and claimed above the kings of the earth (the Diademed Horns) the same pre-eminence which he modestly allowed to the person or rank of Anastasius." "They worshipped the Dragon, and they worshipped the Beast," which is further illustrated by Gibbon, who continues: "the alliance of the East and West was annually declared by the unanimous choice of two consuls; but it should seem that the Italian candidate, who was named by Theodoric, accepted a formal confirmation from the sovereign at Constantinople." The fifteen regions of Italy were governed according to the principles and even the forms of Roman jurisprudence. The civil administration, with its honors and emoluments, was confined to the Italians, for whom were reserved the arts of peace, and the Goths were used for the service of war and public defense. These barbarians held their lands and benefices as a military stipend; at the sound of the trumpet they were prepared to march under the conduct of their provincial officers, and the whole extent of Italy was distributed into the several quarters of a well-regulated camp.

We come now to that remarkable epoch of four years, extending from A.D. 529 to 533. This belongs to the earliest years of Justinian, who began to reign in Constantinople, A.D. 527. The Catholics of Italy, then subject to the Arian kings of the Seventh Head, were greatly attached to him as "worshippers of the Dragon and the Beast," because as Gibbon says, "he trod the narrow path of inflexible and intolerant orthodoxy. After a schism of thirty-four years, he reconciled the proud and angry spirit of the Roman Pontiff, and spread among the Latins a favorable report of his pious respect for the Apostolic See. The thrones of the East were filled with (Trinitarian) Catholic bishops devoted to his interests, the clergy and monks were gained by his liberality, and the people were taught to pray for their sovereign as the hope and pillar of the true religion."

This great voice only irritated the Assembly and people of France. They demanded by what right the princes of Europe combined to interfere in their government; by what right they gave orders to a great people, and imposed conditions upon it; and since the sovereigns appealed from them to force, they prepared themselves for resistance. The frontiers were put in a state of defence, 100,000 of the national guards were levied, and they waited with assurance the attacks of the kings, well convinced that the French people, animated by the Spirit of the Revolution, "the Spirit of life from the Deity," and within their own frontiers, would be invincible.

In the midst of this the saints are raised from among the dead to their own judicial scrutiny; after which all of them who are approved and chosen are recognized by the Lamb as constituents of the 144,000, and follow him whithersoever he goes (Apoc. 14:1-4). Being approved, judgment is given to them for execution upon many peoples, nations, tongues, and kings (Apoc .10:11; Psa. 149:6 9; Apoc .14:10) in rendering of which there issue from them lightnings, and voices, and thunderings, and an earthquake, and great hail, every stone being about the weight of a talent (Apoc. 11:19; 16:21).

But when the judgment is over; when the wrath of the Deity is all filled up; when the great and marvellous sign has passed away from the heaven; when the end of the "thousand six hundred furlongs" "time of the end" hath been reached; when smoke no longer fills the Nave from the glory and power of the Deity - after the forty years of Micah are all in the past; and the kingdom hath been restored to Israel; what will then obtain, and be the economy of this fullness of the times? The Millennial Day of Christ will have come; the strong nations, recently so terribly rebuked, will be awaiting their conqueror's law; and the Saints resting from their judicial military labors, are henceforth blessed with the peaceable and glorious possession of the kingdom, without a disturbing element within or from without, to ruffle the glassy sea, over which is extended, for a thousand years, their righteous and almighty rule. Then their wars shall have ceased to the ends of the earth (Psa. 46 and 47), and they are exalted over the subject nations; then the new law will be proclaimed from Zion and the word of Yahweh from Jerusalem (Mic. 4:2). By this law, "a New Heaven and a New Earth" is created, in which Jerusalem is created a rejoicing, and her people a joy. Israel is admitted into the bond of the covenant, the truth and the mercy sworn to their fathers Abraham and Jacob from the days of old. Henceforth the voice of weeping will be heard no more in Jerusalem, nor the voice of crying. Longevity will bless her citizens, whose lives shall be enduring as a tree; and they shall long enjoy the work of their hands. Peace will be ex-tended to her like a river, and the glory of the nations like a flowing stream. The Bride the Lamb's wife will be there, as the Queen arrayed in the gold of Ophir, whose beauty will be greatly desired by the King, and her favor entreated by the rich among the peoples (Mic. 7:20; Isa. 65:17-24; Psa. 46).

The language of him who was anointed the Holy of Holies (Dan. 9:24) is, "All power in heaven and upon earth hath been given to me" (Matt. 28:18); and, referring to his departure from the earth, he said to his apostles and disciples, "I go to prepare a place for you; and if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again" (John 14:2,3). Some seventy years after this declaration, the ETERNAL FATHER, who had bestowed upon him universal power, revealed to him the scheme of its progressive development whereby the "place" promised should be "prepared". This scheme is THE APOCALYPSE (ch. 1:1), the developments of which, till the Holy of Holies comes again, are all manifestations of Divine power through "the Powers that be". The supervisor, director and developer of this power is the Lord Jesus Christ, "he that liveth and was dead, and is living for the Aions of the Aions" - and is therefore now "the Lord the Spirit". He stirred up Alaric, Attila, Genseric, and Odoacer; and girded them for their mission against the earth, the sea, the rivers, and fountains of waters, and the sun, moon, and stars, of the western Roman Catholic world. He caused the Byzantine, or Eastern Roman dominion, to pass from the degenerate Greeks to the more vigorous, and less superstitious and blasphemous, Ottomans. He raised his witnesses from political death, and placed them in the heaven, where they demolished the Bourbon kingdom; and, as the earnest of what is coming upon a grander scale, abolished the superstition and dominion of the Papacy in France. Having punished the royal family, nobility, priests and people of France by the Terrorists, for putting his witnesses to death, he commenced the outpouring of the Seven Golden Vials of Divine wrath. He girded the French with power to give the worshippers of the beast "blood to drink," to "scorch them with fire", and to fill the Papal Kingdom with darkness; and so manifest was this, that the first Napoleon could say, "the hand of God leads my armies". None could successfully withstand them till their mission was accomplished. While they were in full career upon the Continent of Europe, he made the British power invincible upon the sea; so that "it became as the blood of a corpse". All these things did the Lord Jesus Christ by his subordinate powers; so that, upon the principle that what one doth by his agents he doth by himself, he being the Most Holy or Nave, the Seven Angels or Spirits went forth from him "to pour out the vials of the wrath of Deity upon the earth". This they continue to do through "the powers that be," until the time arrives for him to reap in person; and to visit all the powers with a retribution that shall abolish them from the earth. His personal executive intervention changes the situation. The powers that be, instead of being executors of wrath upon one another in their wars, are all equally exposed to judgment by a new and Divine power marvelously set up in their midst. The Nave will then have been transferred from the heavens in which it has long been concealed from human ken, to Mount Zion, where it appears as the "Perfect Man," having attained to "the measure of the Angel" (ch. 21:17; Eph. 4:13). Henceforth, the Seven Spirits go forth with this Man who has been clothed and girded goldenly by them. His voice is then as the sound of many waters, his eyes as a flame of fire, and his feet like brass glowing in a furnace. Such is the almighty power that Smokes with indignation unappeasable, to the end of the "thousand six hundred furlongs;" which marks the end of the Seven-Vial period and of the "great and marvellous sign in the heaven". When the indignation ceases in the annihilation of the temporal and spiritual "powers that be," and in the submission of the peoples and languages, and nations to Christ and his Brethren, the Seven Angels will have accomplished their mission; and the smoke from the glory and power of the Deity will cease to ascend. The tormenting exercise of power by the Holy Angels and the Lamb will no longer maintain the combustion of the fiery lake; and the tumult of the world will subside into the undisturbed tranquillity of the Aions of the Aions-the Day of Christ, in which the place prepared will be inherited by the "blessed".

The only potentate that can effectually empower angels to pour out exhaustingly the wrath of the Deity upon mankind, is the Deity himself. The Living One, incorporate in the saints, gives judgment to the Seven Angels; which, to show their relation to the saints in judicial operation, are represented as receiving the golden vials of wrath from "ONE of the Four Living Ones," which indubitably represent the saints (ch. 5:8-10).

"Having been girded around the breasts with golden girdles". On becoming constituents of the Nave by being "quickened," the Saints, or Elohistic elements of the Seven Angels are not only "clothed in linen pure and bright" by which their mortality is swallowed up of life; but, before they go forth to enter upon "their labors," they are perizoned, or girded about, with golden zones, or girths. This girding transpires at the instant of their clothing. It is an element of their quickening. Like Daniel, after speech and consciousness had been restored to him, the imperation salutes their ears, "be strong, yea, be strong;" that is, be girded with great strength. Daniel tells us, that on hearing this, the effect immediately followed the word; upon which he said, "Let my Adon (lord) speak; for thou hast strengthened me" (Dan. 10:19).

The "Tabernacle" is one thing; the "Nave of the Tabernacle" is another: they are both, however, significative of a society of people, and a state of things to them pertaining. The Tabernacle, styled "His Tabernacle" in ch. 13:6 is the Holy, consisting of the saints in their present mixed and imperfect condition, blasphemed, and trodden under foot of the Gentiles. They are in their generations, "the Tabernacle of the Testimony," because they bear witness by the Word for Jesus and the faith. The Nave of the Tabernacle is the MOST HOLY. It consists of the One Body freed from every thing that defiles. The head of it is in the MOST HOLY AND ETERNAL FATHER, manifested in flesh, justified by Spirit, and styled JESUS CHRIST; and the members of it are his brethren "glorified together" with him. The Most Holy Nave consists only of "the approved," styled in ch. 17:14, "the called, chosen, and faithful," whose angel-measure is 144 cubits (ch. 21:17). No man that defileth can in any wise enter into it; but they only whose names have been written in the book of the life of the Lamb (ch. 21:27).

1. "I will sing to YAHWEH, (He who shall be) for He is greatly exalted:

The sea had been mingled with fire, by the Angel from the altar that had power over fire; but the wrath had now ceased to burn. The smoke from the glory of the Deity, and from his power, no longer filled the Nave, so that now the conquerors were able to enter into the peaceable possession and enjoyment of the kingdom, to stand upon the glassy sea, and to "rest from their labours". There was now, at the end of the forty vears. "before the throne a glassy sea like unto crystal". Henceforth, the sea remains at rest, perfectly calm, and smooth as glass. "The wicked are like the troubled sea when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt" (Isa. 57:20). Such a sea as this is neither "glassy," nor "like to crvstal". There is no transparency about it. Its waters are dark and muddy; and no light can penetrate below its stormy surface. But, when the lightnings, and thunderings, and voices, which proceed from the throne on Mount Zion, where stand the Lamb and the 144,000, shall have done their work, the wicked, whom Yahweh hath made for the day of evil (Prov. 16:4), in all their temporal and spiritual organizations, as symbolized by the Beast, his Image, his Sign, and the number of his Name, will all have been purged from its waters; the mire and dirt will all have subsided in the abyss, and its surface will be unruffled and crystal-line for a thousand years.

This forty years is the period of Israel's Second Exodus, in which "it shall come to pass that the Adon (Lord) shall add his hand to redeem a second time the remnant of his people which shall be left, from Assyria, and from Egypt, and from Pathros, and from Cush, and from Elam, and from Shinar, and from Hamath, and from the islands of the sea. They shall fly (as a bird of prey) upon the shoulders of the Philistines toward the west; and they shall spoil them of the east ("without the city") together; they shall lay their hand upon Edom and Moab; and the children of Ammon shall obey them. And there shall be a highway for the remnant of his people which shall be left, from Assyria; like as it was to Israel in the day that he came up out of the land of Egypt" (Isa.11:11,14,16).

The sign John saw was a sevenfold wonder, having a beginning and an ending, with "great and marvellous" intermediate developments. It was a sign that signified nothing but wrath to them who were the subjects of its plagues. These, as appears from the second verse, and from the whole of the sixteenth chapter, and so forth, are the worshippers of the Beast and his Image, and the people of the sign and number of his name, with the Mohammedans of the Dragon territory - the Catholic, Mohammedan, and Protestant peoples of Continental Europe.

2. And I saw as it were a glassy sea which had been mingled with fire; and the conquerors of the beast, and of his image, and of his sign, and of the number of his name, standing upon the glassy sea, having harps of the Deity.

Eighteen hundred years ago, the Father-Spirit said, I am the way, the truth, the resurrection, and the life. He affirms this of Himself. The truth in a man by faith, is Christ in him. When the man dies the truth and its personal developments remain with the Father, while the man, as flesh, is "a wind that passeth away, and cometh not again". But, though it cometh not again, the truth in its particular personal identity, whether called by the name Paul, or any other name, does come again. The Father being the resurrection as well as the truth, reproduces from Himself the personally developed truth, named Paul in a former state. Here-produces it in a newly created body. In view of the statement affirmed by John the Baptizer, it is immaterial whether that body be made of the dust to which Paul is reduced, or of some other crude matter; for, if of stones the Deity can raise up children to Abraham (Matt. 3:9) He can as easy reproduce Paul from one kind of material as another. Paul sleeps "in God the Father and in the Lord Jesus Christ". In this sense, he may be said to be "with Christ" even now. He sleeps in Christ the Resurrection - in Christ the Sun of Righteousness. When this Sun shines forth with healing in his beams, Paul and the 144,000 will be the embodied emanations of these beams. They will be hoi basileis ton apo anatolon heliou - the Kings which (are) risings from a Sun (Apoc. 16:12). They no longer sleep. Every individual is a rising the reproduction of a former character in a new body; the character, and not the body, constituting the personal identity. The body is of the earth, the writing upon it, from heaven. In the finishing of this, the body is transfigured in the twinkling of an eye; and from an earthy body, it is changed into the likeness of the Quickening Spirit, by which the redemption celebrated in the song is made complete.

20 "And the winepress was trodden without the city, and blood came out from the winepress unto the bridles of the horses for a thousand six hundred furlongs".

Before the Lamb can enter Zion with the 144,000, it will be necessary for him to expel the enemy. He comes to redeem Zion from the power of the foreigners, who have "come in like a flood", and afflicted her with "desolation and destruction, and the famine, and the sword". At this crisis of Zion's history, coeval with "darkness covering the earth, and gross darkness the people," Yahweh inquires through the prophet, "What have I here that My people is taken away for naught? They who rule over them make them to howl, saith Yahweh; and My Name continually every day is blasphemed". "They have scattered Israel among the nations, and they have parted My land;" and "the king of the north hath planted the tents of his entrenched camp between the seas to the mountain of the glory of the Holy One" (Isa. 59:19; 52:5; Joel 3:2; Dan. 11:45).

The Anglo-American Harlot in the United States, has omitted the words, "and their works do follow them," in its service for the burial of the dead; and it makes the blessedness of these to consist in resting from their labors in the grave! This idea is expressed by the word "for" instead of that" - Blessed are the dead; for they rest from their labors. Hence, as the grave was the horizon of their imagination, her bishops saw the impropriety of sending their "works and alms, and all their good endeavor" after them into the grave: they therefore cut the knot of difficulty by ignoring the words altogether!

"He that leadeth into captivity shall go into captivity." Hence, in the third angel-judgment, "the Beast is taken, and with him the Pseudo prophet" (ch. 19:20). The things represented by these symbols constitute a power that has led the saints and witnesses captive, and killed them with the sword. Therefore, the power "that killeth with the sword, by the sword must be killed;" and that, too, by the sword wielded by the saints (Psa. 149:6-9). Hence, also, in that section of the third angel -judgment represented in the eleventh verse, and further illustrated in the sickle scenes from the fourteenth to the twentieth verses inclusive, the remnant of the hostile power of the blasphemers (ch. 16:21) is slain with the sword of the "Faithful and True One," the Commander-in-Chief, "who judges and makes war in righteousness" (ch. 19:11).

"And a third angel followed them;" that is, the two angels treated of in the sixth and seventh sections. His following them indicates, that Babylon the great city has fallen before the third angel-power proceeds to finish the plagues of the last stage of "the Hour of Judgment". In other words, the terrible overthrow predicted in the eighteenth chapter will be complete. Rome will be where Sodom and Gomorrah are, and for a like reason because of the filthy conversation and unlawful deeds of the spirituals of wickedness in the heavenlies, who are reserved unto a day of judgment to be punished (2 Pet. 2:6-9). There will then be no "Name of Blasphemy" or Papal Dynasty, enthroned upon the Seven Heads or mountains. Popes, cardinals, bishops, priests and deacons; St. Peter, basilicas, and churches, and monastic "dens of foul spirits and all unclean and hateful birds;" with all "the dainty and goodly things lusted after" by the beastly soul of the drunken harlot of the earth all these abominations will have departed; and, "as a great millstone cast into the sea", will all have subsided into the volcanic abyss to "be found no more at all". This glorious and complete destruction of the temporal and spiritual papal power will have been consummated by the Second Angel which proclaims the fall of Babylon. But something more is necessary than the destruction of the Papacy to the complete enlightening of the earth with the glory of the angel, who descends out of the heaven having great power (ch. 18:1). There still remain "the kings of the earth, who have committed fornication and lived deliciously with her;" and "the merchants of the earth," who trade in the dainty and goodly things peculiar to the bazaars, dedicated by them to guardian saints, and which they call "churches". These kings and priests survive the Sodom over-throw of "the Eternal City". They still occupy their position "afar off" in the ten streets of the Great City; for after Rome has been "utterly burned with fire" by the power of the Lord God who judgeth her, they are said to stand afar off for fear of her torment, and to bewail and lament for her. "Alas, alas," they exclaim, "that great city Babylon, that mighty city! for in one hour is thy judgment come" (v.4,10, 11-19). But the lamentations of her ecclesiastics are the most mournful and grievous, because the fall of the Papacy by the power of the Lamb, ruins their imposture and thievery throughout the world "the merchants, or great men, of the earth, by whose sorceries all the nations are deceived, shall weep and mourn over her; for no man buyeth their merchandise anymore" (v.11,23).

I have said, that the second angelhood is constituted of the party of action. This party solves all questions beyond the ability of human govemments to settle. It consists of the Spirit in co-operation with the Saints, who in ch. 18:8, is styled "the Lord God," or Yahweh Elohim; in ver. 20, "the Heaven," or "holy apostles and prophets;" and in ver. 4,6,7, "my people". The Saints, to whom judgment is given under the whole heaven, in command of the hosts of Judah and their allies, are the constituents of the second angel power. It is their mission to give torment and sorrow to Babylon in a double proportion to the cruelties she has inflicted upon them; and not to withdraw their hand until they have destroyed her from the earth.

The antitype of this arrangement is found in this fourteenth chapter the Pentecost is celebrated in the inauguration of the Deity's kings and priests on Mount Zion - the Bread of the Firstfruits. Then comes the memorial proclamation through midheaven by these priests of the Deity, reminding the world that the hour of judicial retribution so long threatened has arrived; and inviting men to afflict their souls, in turning from their iniquities, to the reverential fear and worship of Him who made all things. When this proclamation has been made to the end of the world, the Jubilee Blast of the Day of Coverings, on the tenth day of the seventh month, is then blown - a Jubilee to Israel, proclaiming their return to their country, and consequent avengement upon all their enemies, who worship the Beast and his Image, and receive his sign in their foreheads, or in their hands. This is "the Day of Vengeance in the heart" of the Lamb, contemporary with "the Year of his redeemed" (Isa. 63:4); the works of which are detailed in Apoc. 14:8-11,14-20; 16:16-21; 17:14; 18; 19:1-3, 11-21; 20:1-4,14.

Now, in prophetic style, all these sects of the Court of the Gentiles are termed "women," whose favors lead to death. They are strange Women, who flatter with their words; whose houses incline unto death and their paths unto the dead. Their lips drop as a honeycomb and their; mouths are smoother than oil; but their end is bitter as wormwood sharp as a two-edged sword. Their feet go down to death' and their steps take hold on Sheol. The 144,000 have no fellowship with these unchaste women. Having come to the understanding and belief of "the things concerning the kingdom of the Deity, and the name of Jesus Christ they have obeyed the invitation. "Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins and that ye receive not of her plagues" Having the faith to be healed, they obey the Apostolic command, "repent' and be every one of you immersed for the name of Jesus Christ into remission of sins" (Acts 2:38). By this process, they are separated from the worshippers of the Beast, and washed, sanctified, and justified from all the defilement contracted in their days of ignorance and unbelief (1 Cor. 6:9-11). Thenceforth, they are no more to be found dangling and toying with these disreputable Mistresses of the Clergy. Being espoused to Christ, they have no more spiritual association with the impure; but, as wise virgins, keep their lamps trimmed, and their lights burning, that when the Bridegroom appears, they may be admitted to "the marriage supper of the Lamb."

'Palmam qui meruit ferat" - let him who is worthy bear the palm. This is the principle upon which the palms are put into the hands of the white-robed multitude represented by the symbolic number 144,000. Having gained the victory over themselves "by the power of God through faith," and over the world's corruptions, they are accounted worthy of standing with the Lamb on Zion; and of following him in all his warlike enterprises whithersoever he may will to go, in the great work of slaying the dreadful and terrible, and blasphemous, Fourth Beast, and of destroying his Body Politic, and giving it to the burning flame (Dan. 7:11). They cooperate in this work with great zeal and rejoicing

Now, this is all true and satisfactory as far as it goes; but it does not bring out all the truth contained in the prohibition of the text. The Scrip?tural use of the phrase “buy or sell” is not restricted to dealing in dry goods, groceries, and other kinds of secular daily traffic among the people. Spiritual wares are merchandise as well as silks, linen, tea and sugar. The Spirit deals in the choicest kinds of merchandise, which He offers to the public upon the most advantageous terms. His business ad?vertisement is conceived in the most liberal spirit, and runs thus: “Ho! every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money: come ye, buy and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.” He then proceeds to expostulate with people for wasting their means in buying mere sawdust of dishonest bakers, who sell it to them for bread. “Wherefore,” saith he, “do ye spend money for that which is not bread? and your labor for that which satis?fieth not? Hearken diligently unto me, and eat ye good (bread), and let your soul delight itself in fatness. Incline your ear, and come unto me: hear, and your soul shall live; and I will cut off to you the covenant of the hidden period (or future age), the sure mercies of David” (Isa. 55:1-3). In this advertisement, the article offered for sale is the truth — the good things covenanted to David; concerning which He saith to men, “Buy the truth and sell it not; also wisdom, and instruction, and understand?ing” (Prov. 23:23): that is, buy these four things; but when you have ac?quired them, see that you do not part with them for any consideration.

The wool with which the Lamb is clothed is of snowy whiteness Isa. 1:18; Apoc. 1:14. Standing in the midst of 144,000, invested with "fine linen, clean and white," he is clothed with a pure and faultless multitude; which is his snowy fleece, washed and made white in the blood of the individual Lamb, Jesus-ch. 1:5; 7:14. This Seven Horned and Seven Eyed Lamb-Multitude is the Mighty Angel descended from the heaven, clothed with a cloud; and holding in his hand a LITILE OPEN SCROLL- Ch. 10:1. One thing, however, is particularly to be observed here, namely, that, though this cloud-invested angel, and the Lamb with the 144,000, symbolize the same multitude, they represent this multitude in different positions and stages of its career. In this fourteenth chapter, while on Mount Zion, the multitude is "in the heaven," having opened the door, entered therein, and set up the throne (ch. 4:1,2; Psa. 24:7; Dan. 2:44): but, in the tenth chapter (though without abandoning the seat of government) the almighty, cloud-invested, angel-Lamb and his companions, "come down from the heaven," and take up a position upon the earth and sea - verses 1,2,5,8. In other words, war has been declared against the Beast of the Earth, the Beast of the Sea, the Image of the Beast, and the False Prophet; that is, against all Europe, for the utter destruction of all its institutions, civil and ecclesiastical; and the subjugation of all its peoples, nations, tongues, and rulers, to the absolute sovereignty of David's Son and Lord (Psa. 110:1).The Lamb and his 144,000, "who follow him whithersoever he goes," engaged in this, "the war of that great day of the all-powerful Deity" (ch. 16: 14), are the cloud-invested angel in the territories of the enemy which they have invaded, and in which they are progressing as pillars offire." In this warfare they are giving practical expression to the unwritten utterances of the Seven Thunders - unwritten in the tenth chapter; but illustrated in the fourteenth, from the eighth verse to the end.

4.These are they who had not been contaminated with women; for they are virgins. These are the attendants upon the Lamb whithersoever he goeth. These had been redeemed from among men, an offering of first fruits for the Deity and for the Lamb.

An enigma is a dark saying in which a known thing is obscurely expressed. Wise men in all ages have found satisfaction in presenting some of their choicest ideas in the form of enigma. This was characteristic of the teaching of Solomon, and of Jesus, who was wiser than he. The teaching of the Spirit has also been distinguished from the beginning by the presentation of “wisdom” in this form, which is characteristic of the Apocalypse throughout. How easy it would have been for the Spirit to have told the servants of the Deity plainly the Name of the Man of Sin. But no: “It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honor of kings to search out a matter:” He has therefore chosen to adapt himself to the genius of the Greek tongue in which He spoke, and to the customs pre valent in society when the Apocalypse was signified to John.

The sudden apparition of quasi Russian Majesty in the City of Constantinople excited the surprise of "the Great Powers". The object of Mentschikoff's mission was to check Turkey, and to humiliate and bind her to Russia. To effect this, demands were made directly antagonistic and subversive of the firm an granted to the Frog-Power in favor of the jurisdiction of the Papal Church, and of French influence in the Holy Land. ultimatum after ultimatum followed in quick succession; at length the Russians crossed the truth with the intention of locating in Constantinople, if nothing untoward prevented. This brought things to the crisis in the prophecy; and the "unclean spirit," in unmistakable verisimilitude to the anti-Russian policy of the Frogs, "went forth from the Mouth of the Dragon, "in a declaration of war against Russia; and an endeavor, sustained by France and England, to gather other powers into the conflict for the preservation of the integrity and independence of the Ottoman empire, and the limitation of Russian ambition. Thus commenced the Crimean war(*) in 1854. Sardinia joined England, France, and Turkey, through the influence of the Frogs; but Austria and Prussia refused to depart from their position of "armed neutrality". Sevastopol and the Russian fleet were destroyed. The Tzar Nicholas suddenly died; soon after which the Frog-Power proposed a treaty of peace, which was discussed, and agreed to at Paris in 1856. Thus ended the Crimean war, which had threatened to become wide as the great city itself. The Frogs excited it by their policy in regard to Latinism and the “Holy Shrines;" and they quenched it when they found its continuance inconvenient. Turkey lost no territory, and "independence" she had none to lose.

"He that knoweth the Deity," he continues, "heareth us; he that is not of the Deity doth not hear us. Hereby know we the spirit of truth, and the spirit of error".

This brings me to remark in further illustration of the Frog-Sign in entering upon its second phase, that at the Conference of Paris in 1856, the wrongs of Italy, as represented by the Sardinian plenipotentiary, had a hearing. The western allies sympathized, and remonstrated with Austria. But Austria would reform nothing, would promise nothing; and during the three years that afterwards elapsed, instead of ameliorating, she only aggravated, her despotic sway over Lombardy and Venetia. Italy was all the while growing more restless, and Sardinia, which assumed to be its champion, in like manner grew the more impatient to take up arms against the oppressor. The Frog-emperor, constitutionally jealous of the overshadowing Austrian influence in Italy, encouraged Sardinia in its hostile attitude; and through his cousin, Prince Jerome, formed a matrimonial conjunction with the House of Savoy. Thus the Frogs allied themselves with Italian liberty, and prepared the situation for the going forth of the unclean daemon spirit from the Mouth of the Two-Horned Beast of the Earth; who, so long as he ruled in Italy, maintained the Image of the Beast in life, "that it should both speak, and cause that so many as would not worship the Image of the Beast should be killed" (Apoc. 13:15). The 1260 years allotted to this constitution of things was hastening to a conclusion; and to the Frogs was committed the working of the political machinery whereby the speaking and power of the Image would cease to be fatal to those who refused to worship it. We have lived to see this accomplished in all the kingdom of the Beast. Even in Rome the Image ceases to cause men to be put to death who refuse to worship it. The Frogs are there, and will not permit it. They have worked Austria out of Italy and, as it were, placed the Pope under arrest upon the Seven Hills.

The revolutionary condition of things in Spain and Portugal was beheld by the Russian Autocrat with disgust and indignation, and caused him to convene a congress at Verona, in which it was determined to use the French Bourbons for the restoration of the old regime in Spain. In 1832, duc d'Angouleme invaded the country with 70,000 men, who took possession of Madrid, garrisoned all its principal fortresses, and virtu-ally reduced Ferdinand to vassalage under the "Holy Alliance".

2. In the "Monde Primitif compare avec le Monde Moderne," par M. Court de Gebelin, Paris, 1781, the author thus writes, p.181, "Nous venons de voir que les Armoiries de la Guyenne sont un leopard, celles de Celts (surtout les Belgiques) etoient un lion, et celles des Francs un crapaud. le crapaud designe les marais dont sortirent les Francs". And again, on p.195, "La Cosmographie de Munster (50.2) nous a transmit un fait tres remarquable dans ce genre. Marcomir, Roi des Francs, ayant penetre de la Westphalie dans le Tongre, vit en songe une figure a trois tetes, 1' une de lion, l'autre d'aigle, Ia troisieme de crapaud. Ii con-sulta la dessus, ajoute on, un celebre druide de la contree, appele Al Runus; et celuici l'assura que cette figure designoit les trois puissances qui aurojent regne successivement sur les Gauls; les Celts dont le sym-bole etoit le lion, les Romains designes par l'aigle, et les Francs par le crapaud, a cause de leur marais".( t)

THE Mouth OF THE FALSE PROPHET is identical with the Lion Mouth of Ch. 13:2,5,6. This is the Mouth which speaks "great things and blasphemies". It is the Mouth also of the Image (ch. 13:15) the Two-Horned Ecclesiastical element of the European Polity, headed up in the Papal Dynasty, and enthroned in ROME.

The first cause that operated thus, was, as had been surmised, internal revolt and insurrection. The terminal epoch of the 1290 was now on hand. In the summer of 1820, Ah Pasha of Yanina asserted his independence; and by his revolt, the Greek insurrection, which had been for some time silently progressing, was precipitated. The inhabitants of the Greek islands called in their merchant ships; and in November, the Suliote Greeks returned to their country from the Ionian islands, and raised the standard of revolt against the Sultan, in alliance with Ah Pasha, their former oppressor. In February, 1821, Chourshid Pasha of Tripolizza, having marched from thence against Yanina, leaving the Morea almost destitute of Turkish troops, the Moreote Greeks broke out into insurrection, which quickly extended to the Aegean Isles and districts of Northern Greece, Epirus, and Thessaly; while, at the same time, the standard of revolt was raised also in the trans-Danubian provinces of Wallachia and Moldavia.

This was the first of the series of abominations of desolation that overspread the Holy Land. Its existence there was signalized by the abolition of the Jewish State; the taking away or suppression of the Daily Sacrifice; the ruin of the city; the burning of the temple to the ground; and the scattering of the power of the people of the Holy Ones. The Daily, or continual, evening and morning sacrifice, was taken away to make room for this series of abominations, of which the principal have been the pagan Roman, the Greek Catholic, and the Mohammedan; all of them constituents of the Little Horn of the Goat; so long as these abominations overspread the land of Israel in power, the power of the people of the Holy Ones will be in a scattered state: that is, they will prevail until the consummation, "and that determined shall be poured out upon the DESOLATOR."

16. "And he gathered them together into a place called Hebraistically ARMAGEDDON".

16. "And he gathered them together into a place called Hebraistically ARMAGEDDON".

"We have before our eyes many thousands of the adjacent villages and hamlets landed proprietors, farmers, ecclesiastics, schoolmasters, and artisans of every description - who were some weeks since in circumstances more or less easy, but now without a home, stripped of their all, and with their families perishing of hunger. All around is one wide waste. The numerous villages and hamlets are almost all entirely or partially reduced to ashes".

Having thus separated the wheat from the chaff, and gathered the former into his barn, he confers upon his accepted brethren the honor of co-operating with him in the execution of "the judgment written;" and of accompanying him whithersoever he goes in the work, not merely of casting a dark shadow over the kingdom and throne of the Beast, as under the fifth vial; but of effectually and finally slaying the Beast, and destroying his body, and giving it to the burning flame (Dan. 7:11). Napoleon's work in his hour, assisted by his talented generals, was the type, or shadow cast before, of the work yet to be performed by Christ, the Man of War, and his brethren in arms, upon the same Beast, under the Seventh Vial, and in the terrible hour of his judgments. Napoleon and his marshals at the head of the French, was the shadowy representation in real life of the scene exhibited in ch. 19 of this prophecy, where Christ, the Faithful and True Warrior, is seen with his Brethren at the head of the Jewish white horse (Zech. 10:3), making righteous judicial war upon the same enemies, the worshippers of the Beast and his Image, that Napoleon scorched so effectively. And further, when his work was consummated, where among the Powers was the Papacy? It was nowhere. For about six years, the Papacy had no place in the Napoleonic Empire; neither in the antitypical dominion of Jesus and his Brethren will such a curse and blasphemy be tolerated. Napoleon effected a temporary abolition of it, and deprived Rome of its sovereignty for a while; but Christ Jesus, the king-breaker and king-maker of the fu-ture judicial hour, will abolish it forever, and sink Rome in the un-fathomable abyss of fire, to be "found no more at all".

At the crisis of the fifth vial, only one thing remained, for the complete darkening of the political organization of which this throne was the chief, and that was, the obliteration of it from among the kingdoms of the world. When this should be accomplished, there would then be no throne to shed forth the sunlight of its glory upon the kingdom of the Beast. The Bourbon kings of France, and Spain; the kings of Portugal, of Naples, of Sardinia, of Italy, were all wiped out; and the Holy Romano-German empire dissolved. All these old things had passed away; and all things had become new; in relation to which, the Pontifical Throne was a deformity and a curse. While therefore, the new things flourished in glory and power, this relic of an effete barbarism was decreed of Heaven to be wrathfully precipitated into darkness; and there to remain, until the reaction of unrepentant wickedness should cause its emergence from the shadow of death, in preparation for a second and final catastrophe at the hand of Christ and the Saints.

"It was given to him to scorch the men with fire". I doubt not, that this form of words was intended to indicate, that there would be a remarkable and distinguished personage concerned in the terrible operation of scorching "the men," who are characterized as blasphemers of the Deity's Name, "with fire," whose heat was predicted to be "great". We shall find that this scorcher of men, was the same whom the Egyptian Mamelukes termed "the King of Fire". His theory was, that Providence was on the side of the heaviest artillery: this, however, depends upon its being "given to him" who scorches with it, to handle it judiciously. It was so given to Napoleon Buonaparte, who, until his mission was performed, surpassed all his contemporaries in the use of it. He was truly a scorcher of blasphemers with great heat.

We have seen already that in the outpouring of the wrath of the third vial its plagues reached even to Rome; and that the papal states were transformed into the Roman Republic, in February 1798, when the Pope's temporal reign was declared to be at an end. On that occasion, the French ambassador wrote to general Buonaparte, "the payment of thirty millions (of francs) stipulated by the Treaty of Tolentino, has totally exhausted this old carcass; we are making it consume by a slow fire". It was on the 15th of February, while seated on his throne, and receiving the congratulatory worship of his cardinals. that the Pope was arrested by the French military, the ring of his marriage with the Romish Church torn from his finger; his palace rifled, and himself carried prisoner into France, where he died in August, 1799. All the territorial possessions of the church and monasteries were confiscated; all the sacerdotal vestments of the Pope and Cardinals were burnt; and the Pope's library, museum, furniture, and jewels, pillaged. This was a making of the Mother City "desolate and naked, eating her flesh, and burning her with fire;" not by the ten horns, however, but by the Revolution, as an earnest of what is yet to follow, at the hands of the Saints. But Rome was still the sovereign city of a Roman State, though it had lost its imperialism. But even this was soon after restored to her. Buonaparte's absence in Egypt, and the temporary success of the allies under the "invincible Suwarrow," enabled the worshippers of the Beast's Image to elect a new pope, Pius VII.' March 13, 1800; and to repair for a time, the ruin of the papal throne. Buonaparte's usurpation, and his restoration of Romanism in France, excited the hopes of the Pope, with whom he made a concordat in 1801. But they proved quickly delusive. "The designs of Napoleon," says Ranke, "were now (in 1805) revealed. The Constituent Assembly had endeavored to emancipate it-self entirely from the pope. The Directory wished to annihilate his authority. Buonaparte's notion was to retain him, but in a state of absolute subjection; to make him a tool of his own boundless ambition". After a while he was permitted to return to Rome. But, on his resistance to Napoleon's views, there followed in 1809, the outpouring of the wrath of the fifth vial upon the throne, originally given to him by the Dragon (ch. 13:3), in consequence of which the Roman State was abolished, and there was neither republic nor kingdom upon the Seven Hills.

On the 26th May, 1805, he received the iron crown of Italy, of which therefore he was now king, greatly also to the disgust of Austria.

The pouring out of the vial into the sea, indicates that a maritime war would commence with the outpouring; and that, as the sea was to "become blood as it were of a corpse," the war would be of unparalleled severity. To become blood as it were of a corpse, was also indicative that no hostile navies could ride the waves, except the ships of the power used as the agent of the Seven Spirits: That all naval life and activity would become stagnant, as the blood of a corpse, which is incapable of circulating, as during life, through the arterial and venous channels of the body. All the war ships of the Great City found at sea would be destroyed by the potential minister of wrath; or compelled to take refuge beyond his reach, or to shut themselves up and not to venture out to sea. The ocean being thus cleared of the war ships belonging to the Powers of Babylon the Great, every sea-faring living soul was, to all intents and purposes of war, dead. When "Britannia ruled the waves" there was no living soul afloat to fire a gun to her dismay. The French upon the land, and the British upon the sea, were the contemporary agents of the Seven Spirits for the tormentation of the worshippers of the Beast's Image in the second, third, fourth, and fifth vials of the sanguinary and scorching wrath of the avenger.

In the words of an orator of the Convention, "the Republic was nothing more than a great city besieged; France was nothing more than one vast camp". It soon had forty armies, and twelve hundred thousand soldiers; with which to combat the invading hosts, and to suppress the almost general rising of the departments, sixty of which were in open insurrection. But, having completely organized their immense armies, and planned their new system of tactics, their forces were rendered tremendously formidable. They subdued the insurrection, and in the memorable campaign of 1793-'4, carried the war into the territories of their invaders. At the end of this, they had been victorious in twentynine battles, and in more than one hundred less decisive engagements. They had taken a hundred and fifty-two cities and towns, and 3,800 pieces of cannon; ninety standards, and 70,000 muskets; they had killed 80,000 of their enemies, and taken 90,000 prisoners: and at length annexed Belgium and Holland to France.

The 10th of April, 1796, is the date of the commencement of the outpouring of the wrath upon the fountains of waters. It is celebrated by the battle of Monte Notte, the first of the victories of Napoleon Buonaparte. When he joined the army of Italy before the battle, he addressed it, saying, "Soldiers, you are hungry and naked. The republic owes you much, but she has not the means to acquit herself of her debts. The patience with which you support your hardships among these barren rocks is admirable, but it cannot procure you glory. I am come to lead you into the most fertile plains that the sun beholds. Rich provinces, opulent towns, all shall be at your disposal. Soldiers! with such a prospect before you, can you fail in courage and constancy?"

p.353 the reigning kings of Europe will make war upon them; because they proclaim themselves to be the sole and rightful sovereigns of the earth saying to their Great Captain, “Thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us for the Deity by thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation; and hast made us for our Deity kings and priests; and we shall reign upon the earth” (ch. 5:9,10). Such a song as this sung in the ears of the reigning monarchs of the world will madden them to fury; and they will lead out all their hosts to battle against them in the vain hope of their destruction. But the kings by Divine right will prevail over, and exterminate them (ch. 17:14; 19:19-21); for “all kings shall fall down before him; all nations shall serve him” (Psa. 72:11).

That a leaf, when used metaphorically in scripture, signifies a person, will appear from the following texts. Job, in his reasoning with the Deity concerning his hapless condition, says, “Wherefore holdest thou me for thine enemy? Wilt thou break a leaf driven to and fro?” Again; Isaiah addressing the transgressors in Israel who practised idolatrous rites in gardens, and under Druidical Oaks therein, saith to them collectively, “Ye shall be ashamed of the oaks ye have desired, and ye shall be confounded for the gardens ye have chosen. For ye shall be as an oak whose leaf fadeth, and as a Garden that hath no water”. In this, Israel, apostate in church and state, is likened to a withered oak, and a parched up garden; a similitude the very opposite to that of the New Jerusalem Paradise, where, as we have seen, the Divine Government of their nation is likened to a Wood of “every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food;” and to a well-watered garden. The dried leaves of Israel’s withered oak have done nothing for the nations, which are unhealed to this day; and will so remain for ever, unless their olive tree do “blossom and bud, and fill the face of the world with fruit”.

This passage taken in connection with ch. 22:2, shows, that the New Jerusalem is identical with “the Paradise of the Deity,” in the corporate sense of the phrase. Every individual of the Bride adorned, upon whom bath been engraved “the Name of the City of the Deity, New Jerusalem,” is therefore a constituent of His Paradise in the territorial Paradise of the Holy Land. Hence, in Cant. 4:12, “a Paradeisos, or Paradais, is my sister Spouse; a spring shut up, a fountain sealed. A fountain of gardens, a well of living waters, and streams from Lebanon”. In this Bridal Garden of the Deity is planted the evergreen, and aromatic, and fruit-bearing, trees of THE WOOD OF THE LIFE that shall never end.

These things are all stated with such geographical and practical particularity as to make it evident that these healing waters are as literally rivers of waters as the Hudson or the Thames. We can see, how that Jerusalem can become the centre of navigation and commerce, as well as the metropolis and capital of the world. By the waters flowing between the rent divisions of the Mount of Olives (Zech. 14:4) into the Jordan and with it into the Dead Sea, and thence by an old channel into the Red Sea, a water communication will be established with Hindostan, China, Australia, California, and the islands and shores of the Pacific generally; and by the branch flowing into the Mediterranean, with Europe, and the north and south Atlantic coasts of North and South America. This gives Jerusalem a position highly favorable for a geographical centre of government and religion; and for the easy access of Hindoos, Chinese, Japanese, Americans, and Europeans, when they shall go up from year to year to worship the King, Yahweh Tz’vaoth, to be instructed in His ways, and to keep the Feast of Tabernacles (Isa. 2:3; Zech. 14:16).

And this is “the measure of a man that is of an angel?” But, of what man, or angel? Of that man John describes symbolically in ch. 1:13-16, “whose voice was as the sound of many waters,” because he is constituted of “the redeemed out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation” (ch. 5:9). Every child is familiar with thirty millions of British in the person of the figurative John Bull; or the same number of Americans, in that of Uncle Sam. If these were measured, they would stand miles high, and be proportionately bulky. Now the man of the golden

In all the Divine arrangements, the principle laid down in 1 Cor. 15:46, is always observed in regard to the natural and the spiritual —“that is not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and afterward that which is spiritual”. This order of development obtains in regard to “the Heavens and Earth” body, kingdom, world, commonwealth, resurrection, bride, holy city, New Jerusalem, and so forth. The natural is the basis of the spiritual. If there had been no natural sons of Jacob, there would have been no Hebrew Commonwealth of natural citizens; and no natural commonwealth, there would be no spiritual one, or New Jerusalem. There is, therefore, a reality in the twelve Sons of the patriarch being set forth as the gates of the city, or polity, as indicated by their names having been inscribed upon the pearls, as they had previously been upon the precious stones of Aaron’s breastplate. All who “enter in through the gates into the city” are the sons of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob by adoption through Christ, so that the names upon the twelve pearls are as much the names of the glorified saints, as of the twelve men who originally bore them. The names on the pearls represent the “144,000 of all the tribes of the children of Israel” (ch. 7:4) become “Israelites indeed” by that which is sealed upon them, first, doctrinally, in the present state; and afterwards, bodily, in the epoch of resurrection.

4. And they shall see his face, and his name shall be upon their foreheads.

p.340 But, in view of this, what becomes of Paul’s saying in 1 Cor. 15:24, “then cometh the end, when Christ shall have delivered up the kingdom to the Deity, even the Father?” There is no contradiction between Paul, Gabriel, and David. The delivering up is in the sense of that “subjection,” or subordination, to the Father, implied in the abolition of Mediatorship. Hitherto, no one could have access to the Father, but through the Son; for “the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment to the Son; because he is a son of man” (John 5:22,27). But, when “the sea is no more;” when there cease to be men of flesh and blood upon the earth, this reason ceases to have any force. The Father resumes His position of direct relation to all, seeing that he is then “the all things in all”, the dwellers upon earth, who are spirit, or consubstantial with Himself. The delivering up is the change of the constitution of things, made necessary by the destruction of the Devil and his works —the destruction of Sin’s flesh and all pertaining to it. If there had been no sin, there would have been no Mediatorship. Man could always have stood naked in the presence of his Maker without being ashamed. But when “the sea is no more,” the breach between the Deity and man is thoroughly and completely repaired; and the kingdom is placed under a new constitution, or heaven and earth, suited to the altered condition of the world. There being no more judgments to execute, nor gifts and sacrifices to offer for ignorant and erring mortals, the High Priesthood of the Melchisedec Order is vacated, and the priestly office of the Saints abolished; while pre-eminence of rank is continued to them and the Captain of their salvation, as long as the sun and the moon endure.

And when they are gone, and “the called, and chosen, and faithful,” continue as they were, they are still not the New and Holy Jerusalem; for this Great City is said to “descend from the Deity out of the heaven,” not to ascend to the great and high mountain out of the earth. What then, is the solution of this mystery? If the approved and accepted saints be the Bride, and the New and Holy Jerusalem; and they by resurrection come out of the earth; how can the Great and Holy City be said to descend from the Deity out of heaven? If in coming forth from the graves, the prophets, apostles, and saints, all emerge thence immortal, perfect, and thoroughly furnished, ought not the Bride the Lamb’s wife, to be styled the New Jerusalem ascending from the tomb? Upon what principle then, is it, that John declares, that he saw the Great City, the Holy Jerusalem descending from the Deity out of heaven?

How truly great, then, is the voice John heard out of the heaven, saying, “Behold the tabernacle of the Deity with men, and he will dwell with them; and they shall be his peoples, and the Deity himself will be with them, their Deity”. They shall all of them be Divine people, like to the Saints then the rulers of the nations for the past thousand years. Having come forth from the graves, they become, together with the living who suffered not themselves to be deceived by the Devil and Satan, and seduced from their allegiance to the King of kings, in the Gog and Magog revolt, the postmillennial harvest of the dead and living, of which Jesus and his Brethren are the Firstfruits. “The Rest of the Dead” being thus added to these, the whole number given by the Father to the Son, is complete. “And the Deity shall wipe away every tear from their eyes and there shall be no more death; nor shall there be sorrow nor crying, nor pain any more: for the former things have passed away”. “And there shall be no more curse” (ch. 22:3).

In these testimonies we see, that the whole number is a gift bestowed upon the Lord Jesus Christ, whom he must bring, and upon whom he is to bestow eternal life; so that, when they die before the Aion, they may have part in the resurrection of Firstfruits; and if they die in the Aion, they may not perish in the Aion; but live again when the thousand years are past. Hence the whole number of the dead is a collection of persons taken out from mankind from the time of Abel to the end of the thousand years. Seven thousand years inhabitation of the earth by flesh and blood subject to death, is the Aion of Mortality: through all of which progresses the work of taking out a people from the race, who shall attain to incorruptibility and life upon the principle of a loving and faithful obedience to the Truth. These are given to the Son for Brethren by the Father; who bestows upon them the earth, in a finished and paradisaic perfection, as their inheritance and abode for ever. The manifestation of this whole number “redeemed from among men,” is assigned to two notable and extraordinary epochs; the first, the beginning of the thousand years: the second, the end thereof. The first epoch precedes the Millennium, and is illustrated by the Resurrection of the Firstfruits; the second epoch after the Millennium is passed, is celebrated by the manifestation in life of “THE REST OF THE DEAD” given by the Father to the Son to complete the fold — “One fold and one Shepherd” — “the Deity the all things in all”.

When all the necessary preparations shall have been completed, the time will have arrived for the Star of Jacob to set these forces into motion, for the purpose of "destroying him that remaineth of the city"; and in the work of destruction, of hewing their way out from the wilderness of the peoples into the land of Israel. In the development of this work, "it shall come to pass" that they will be an united people: "the envy of Ephraim shall depart, and the adversaries of Judah shall be cut off; Ephraim shall not envy Judah, and Judah shall not vex Ephraim. But they shall fly upon (as birds of prey) the shoulders of the Philistines westward; they shall wholly spoil the children of the east" (Isa. 11:13,14). Thus, it will be seen by these expressions, "eating the prey and drinking the blood of the slain," "eating up the nations his enemies," and "flying upon their shoulders," applied to Israel in the time of their political resurrection, and under the leadership of the Four Living Ones full of eyes, one of whom hath the face of an Eagle, and another of a Lion, that they are aptly represented Apocalyptically as "the fowls flying in midheaven". Israel will do valiantly under the Saints, and are the instruments in their hands by whom the kings and their armies will be devoured. As then Cyrus was styled "a ravenous bird from the east" in coming against Babylon to destroy it; and the powers hostile to Israel were termed birds (Isa. 46:11; Jer. 12:9); so Israelites are symbolized by flesh-devouring fowls, when they shall be summoned into activity against the "unclean and hateful birds" of Babylon the Great.

4. And the Deity shall wipe away every tear from their eyes, and there shall be no more death; nor shall there be sorrow, nor crying, nor pain any more: for the former things have passed away.

In that remarkable discourse recorded in John 6, the speaker says, "I am the bread which came down from heaven; if any man eat of this bread he shall live in the Aion" eis ton aiona (Ver. 51,58); and inch. 4:14, "whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall not thirst in the Aion" - eis ton ajona. Hence, the reader will perceive, that it is not living by resurrection simply that determines a man's destiny; this depends upon the resurrected being "accounted worthy of the Aion:" if at the Judgment Seat, they are accounted worthy to obtain of that, they are quickened by the Spirit; and become the children of the Deity, and the children of the resurrection, and equal to the angels (Luke 20:35,36). Such will not die in the Aion; nor will they hunger or thirst any more (Apoc. 7:16).

But after the thousand years are passed, the restraint, represented by the great chain in the angel's hand, will be relaxed. A generation of flesh and blood will then be living, whose men and women will have been born in times of peace and great prosperity. They will know nothing personally and practically of war: for, to use an expression of Homer, Mars will have been bound with a strong chain, for a thousand years. It is very different with us. The governments are wasting their revenues on standing armies; but then the government of the world will not have a single soldier in its pay! Its subjects will remember the binding, or suppression, of the Dragon-power a thousand years before, as our generation remembers the overthrow of Pharaoh and his army in the Red Sea. But this remembrance will have as little moral influence upon them, as Pharaoh's overthrow has upon the Pope and the kings of the earth in our time. Some ambitious men, who would "rather reign in hell than serve in heaven," will think the season favorable to the recovery of the lost independence of Sin's Flesh, or the Devil. They will conspire against the best government the sun ever shone upon; for they are styled the Satan, which signifies adversary". They commence to agitate and plot in the national abyss; and at length their secret society emboldened by numbers constantly increasing, proceeds more openly to preach revolt. Multitudes will be deceived with false hopes of glory, honor, and power, in the proposed new dominion of the Devil and Satan. Sin's Flesh under the rule of the Saints is ineligible for office. Under their iron rod and chain, men and women are only permitted to serve. This is a yoke too galling to the pride of human nature, and hence a determination to destroy the existing government, not doubting the enterprise might easily succeed. Their emissaries go forth among the nations of the old Dragon territory, which before the Dragon was bound, and in the time of his binding, was occupied by "Gog of the land of Magog, Rosh prince of Meshech and Tubal," and therefore styled "the Gog and the Magog". These agents of insurrection will be marvelously successful in deceiving the Gog and Magog nations. They call them to arms, and in response they forsake the plow, seize their weapons, and gather together for war. The rebellion is widespread, and the insurgents numerous as the sand of the sea. Their numbers make them bold and confident. Their commander-in-chief, and his council of war, whoever they may be, do not wait to be attacked; but assume the offensive, and order the invasion of the Holy Land, which is the Camp of the Saints. Their aim is to possess themselves of Jerusalem, the city that had been beloved, but now hated. To capture "the joy of the whole earth," and to dethrone the government, and to destroy, or imprison, the saints in the abyss, as they had served the Dragon-Power a thousand years before, would be the crowning success of the rebellion. But the reasoning of the carnal mind deceives them. They forget, or choose to disbelieve, that Jerusalem is Yahweh's furnace; and that He is unto her a wall of fire round about, and the glory in the midst of her (Zech. 2:5). They approach the place of devouring fire with reckless infatuation. The King of kings who could have crushed the rebels as the moth in their own lands, permits them, as a trial of faith and loyalty, to have great success to a certain point. They are in sight of the Holy City, and as confident and defiant as Sennacherib of old; or as Gog when the city was wrested from him a thousand years before. But, like the Beast and False Prophet then, the ground they occupy becomes the arena of a fiery destruction: and, although the locality and time of their judgment are not the same; yet, in coming to their end similarly, the postmillennial Devil and Satan combination of nations, is said to be cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, by fiery judgment descending from the Deity out of the heaven, and devouring them.

4. And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment had been given to them. And I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded on account of the testimony of Jesus, and on account of the word of the Deity, and who had not worshipped the beast, nor his image, and had not received the sign upon their forehead, and upon their hand: and they lived, and reigned with Christ a thousand years.

The things represented by these symbols, however, are not the only wood, or fuel, of the lake of fire. The reader will remember that before the Judgment Seat of Christ in the wilderness of Teman, there were two classes of saints in Christ Jesus constitutionally; the one class consisting of "the called, the chosen, and faithful;" or as Paul styles them in 1 Cor. 3 12, "gold, silver, and precious stones," which are made manifest as such in the day when things are revealed by fire; and the other class consisting of "the called," but not "chosen," because not "faithful;" or, as Paul styles them in the same place, "wood, hay, and stubble". The constitution and destiny of these two classes, though originally built upon the same foundation, is widely divergent. The gold, silver, and precious stones, of the New Jerusalem community, are fire proof. Like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, they can dwell with devouring fire, and with the burnings of Olahm; fire having no power over their bodies to singe a hair of their heads, nor to leave its smell upon them. Not so, however, the wood, hay, and stubble. They cannot continue to exist in fire, being in nature destructible. The judicial inspection of his house-hold, having separated the refuse and the vile, from those "accounted worthy to obtain of the aion, and of the resurrection;" the rejected, by virtue of the sentence pronounced upon them by Christ, saying, "Depart from me, ye cursed, into the aionian fire, prepared for the Devil and his Angels," forthwith enter upon their journey to the place of exile or torment; or, in the words of Jesus, "they go away into ajonian punishment;" while the righteous, by their being quickened, enter into aionian life.

Moses also, in Deut. 33:26, alludes to the same military display of power, saying, "there is none like the AlL of Yeshurun riding the heavens in thy help, and in his majesty the clouds. A refuge is the Elohim of old, and underneath the powers of Olahm; and He shall thrust out the enemy; and shall say, Destroy!"

But, when they saw him in the evening, at what were they in consternation and affright? Luke says, according to the Common Version, "they supposed they had seen a spirit". Although they were engaged in talking about the Lord Jesus with certain who had seen and eaten bread with him some hours before, when Jesus himself stood in their midst, they were in such consternation at his unexpected apparition, that they failed to recognize him, or to discern whether what they saw in human shape were substantial "flesh and bones," or an unsubstantial spirit. It seems to have been a question with them of substance or shadow. If not substance, what might he the disposition of the invisible original towards them who cast the shade, or spirit. was the spirit apparent for good or for evil towards them? They evidently concluded that it was an evil spirit they thought they saw, for they were in consternation and affright.

The pre-eminence is indicated by the name upon his thigh; and by the long-sword going forth from his mouth. The name written upon the thigh is elucidated by Psa. 45:3,4, addressed to the King: "Gird thy sword upon the thigh, 0 Mighty One, with thy glory and thy majesty: and in thy majesty ride prosperously in the matter of the truth and meekness and righteousness; and thy right hand shall teach thee terrible things". Thus, he rides forth upon the white horse in the scene before us, followed by the hosts of the heaven, of whom he is the Commander-in-chief, as indicated by the sword in apposition with his mouth - "He hath made my mouth like a sharp sword" (Isa. 49:2): and "the Word of the Deity is living and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart; neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight" (Heb. 4:12). Such is the power to which the garment and the thigh belong, and upon which the name of the Blessed and the Only Potentate is inscribed. The rider of the white horse is the Image of the Invisible One, from whose mouth issues the command for the smiting of the nations; a command which is executed by the people who are his sword. He gives the word; they obey with alacrity and invincible effect. This is symbolized in the scene before us by a sharp sword as it were going out of the mouth of the principal figure of the group, who is also styled, "the Word of the Deity" - the Word made FLESH; and afterwards, in its ascent to the Father, "justified by spirit," and therefore SPIRIT. This all-powerful Image of the Invisible King of kings, having smitten the nations by his all-conquering hosts, assumes the government of them by right of conquest. The mythic "sovereignty of the people" is effectually and finally abolished from the earth, partial or universal suffrage is extinguished; and the rule of a Righteous Despot, who shall govern the nations by his own absolute will and authority, will be substituted in their stead; for, it is written, "he shall rule them with an iron rod". Every approved and accepted believer of the Truth, who shall have been made "like him," will participate with him in the administration of this iron and righteous despotism - iron because of its invincibility and strength: for "he that overcometh, and keepeth my works unto the end, to him will I give power over the nations; and he shall rule them with an iron rod" (ch. 2:26,27); "even as," saith he, "I have received of my Father".

But before they can Apocalyptically say Hallelu YAR, a second time, all those things must be accomplished which are represented in this nineteenth chapter from the eleventh verse to the end. The four-and-twenty elders and the four living ones, the representatives of the saints before the throne, will then be able to say the Hallelu YAH, a second time; and to append to it the final "Amen!" for, it is written, "they fell down, and did homage to the Deity that sits on the throne, saying, AMEN; Hallelu YAH! "This fourth verse of our present chapter is synchronical with ch. 5:14, which points to the time when "every creature" shall say, in deed and in truth, "Blessing, and honor, and glory, and power be to him that sitteth upon the throne and unto the Lamb for the aeons of the aeons". To which the four living ones respond "Amen!" When this "Amen" is pronounced by them, "the war of the great day of the all-powerful Deity" will be ended. The judgment given to the saints will have been fully executed. The "it is done" of the seventh vial will have been attained. There will no longer be any Eighth Head and Ten Horns; the False Prophet will have disappeared in the fiery lake; the Dragon will have been chained in the abyss; and no dominions will be left to dispute the sovereignty of the King of kings, from the Euphrates to the ends of the earth - "all nations shall serve him; and call him blessed" (Psa. 72:11,17). All this is Apocalyptically implied in the "Amen" of the four-and-twenty elders, and the four living ones. They will co-join with it the Hallelu YAR in its second time utterance, because all these vast and glorious results are referable only to Him "who made the heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters" (ch. 14:7; Zech. 4:6).

This is the first place in the Apocalypse where these words are introduced. They are used four times in so much of the chapter as is now before the reader. They appear as one word in the Greek, Allelouia, which gives the unaspirated pronunciation of the Hebrew words, hal-'elu Yah, PRAISE YE YAH! They occur nowhere else in the Apocalypse than in ch. 19:1,3,4,6. Let the reader turn to Psalms 95, 96, 97' 98, 99, and 100, and he will there read predictions which find their accomplishment after the destruction of "the Throne of Iniquity", and in the time of this great Hallelu Yah celebration of the Apocalypse.

"Her sins have followed her until the heaven". This is the reason assigned for her being plagued. The word ekolouthesan, signifies to be a follower. Her sins have been her followers. They have not been fitful, or occasional, attendants; but have been the invariable, and constant, and desperate, ruffians of her train, "until the heaven," achri tou our-apiou: that is, until the time arrived to establish the New Heaven. Had she repented of her deeds fifty-three years ago, when the darkness, or political eclipse, of the Beast's kingdom was removed by the fall of Napoleon the Great,(*) her sins would not have followed her "until the heaven". But her officials "blasphemed the Deity of the heaven, and repented not of their deeds" (ch. 16:11), but continued in the practice of all their abominations until now, and will do until sudden destruction comes upon them from which there will be for them no escape.

The angel of this eighteenth chapter does not ascend. His career points in an opposite direction. John saw him descending, katabainonta, "having great authority;" and as authority is of no use in this rebellious world unsustained by power equal to its enforcement, the announcement of the greatness of the authority, implies that he descends also with great power, which is equal to the mighty enterprise of illuminating the earth with his glory.

In the days of John it did not exist, for the ten horns upon it had then received no kingdom. The territory upon which they now exist was then included in the western division of the Roman empire; but upon it, distinct horn-kingdoms, or toe-kingdoms, which are the same kingdoms, did not exist. In this sense, therefore, it is "the beast that is not".

2.And he shouted in power, with a loud voice, saying, Babylon the Great hath fallen, hath fallen! For she hath become a habitation of da'mons, and a hold of every unclean spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hated bird:

Such is the Name Apocalyptically inscribed on the forefront of the Ecclesiastical Polity of Europe in allusion to the practice of some notorious prostitutes, who had their names written on a label upon their foreheads, as may be collected from ancient authors. The Great Harlot is notorious, and recognized as the Ecclesiastical Mother by all the world. But, she being the Mother, who are her Daughters? These are as easily discerned as the Mother herself. The Protestant State Churches are "the Harlots;" and the Dissenting, or Nonconformist, "Names and Denominations," are "the Abominations of the Earth". The genealogy of all of them is traceable to Rome; with whose dogmas they have more accord than with the principles of the doctrine of Christ. The Harlots and the Abominations are "the Names of Blasphemy," of which the Beast is said to be "full".(*) They are all injurious to, and subversive of, "the truth as it is in Jesus;" which the following general outline and summary of the fiction they inculcate will sufficiently prove to all who are intelligent in the Truth.

20. "And every island fled away, and the mountains were not found.

5. And upon her forehead a name had been written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF THE HARLOTS, AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.

Such is the Apocalyptic answer to the question, who is He that gathers them? And the testimony of the prophets is in harmony with it. In Isaiah 66:18, the Spirit saith, "It shall come that I will gather all nations and tongues; and they shall come and see my glory;" and in Mic. 4:12, "Yahweh shall gather many nations as the sheaves into the floor" for threshing: "therefore wait ye upon me, saith Yahweh, until the day that I RISE UP to the prey; for my determination is to gather the nations, that I may assemble the kingdoms, to pour out upon them my indignation, even all my fierce anger; for all the earth shall be devoured with the fire of my jealousy" (Zeph. 3:8). The Spirit of Christ also informs us of the place to which he will gather them. In Zech. 14:2, he says, "I wll gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle; and the city shall be taken" and in Joel 3:2,14, "I will gather all nations, and will bring them down into the Valley of Jehoshaphat the Valley of Threshing". These are sufficient to show that it is the Spirit in Apocalyptic manifestation who is the gatherer.

But they are greeted with benediction as candidates for the high honor and glory of which he is the subject. This candidature is predicated upon "watching and keeping the garments"; not upon watching, or looking, only, but upon keeping the garments, as well. In this sense it is that the Christ personal shall appear with out sin to them who are looking for him for salvation (Heb. 9:28). They must first put on the garments, and then keep them from being soiled by the corruptions of the flesh and world. None can watch Scripturally, who do not "keep the sayings of the prophecy of this book;" for, without an understanding of them, it is impossible to know the signs of the advent, and whether it isnear or afar off. All the world sees the facts in regard to the Ottoman, Papal, Austrian, and French, powers; but it knows not what is indicated thereby, or whether anything is signified at all. This is the case also with many who profess that they are not of the world, but whose practice belies their profession. They talk glibly about the advent, but they are neither in the faith, nor do they know what it is. Such are "naked," and have no garments to keep; and all their professed looking for Jesus is not the "watching" of the text before us.

Such is "the Man who is the Angel" (ch. 21:17) who comes as a thief-the Man whose measure is 144 cubits. But, to whom is he to come as a thief? Certainly not to the constituents of his own body, which would be coming to himself. No; he comes upon the Dragon, the Beast, and the False Prophet, as a thief. He breaks in unexpectedly into the Great City by way of the dried up channel of the great Ottoman Euphrates. He plants himself in the limits of the Turkish territory, where he makes all necessary preparations for "the war of the great day of the Deity who is almighty". The exhausted condition of the Ottoman Power is favorable to this preparation of the way. It was dried up for this very purpose, namely, that after the drying up was sufficiently advanced, the way might be prepared to carry into effect what is to follow. This glorious and terrible man can make no progress until he is prepared. When he is created and perfected, he is the way prepared. "I am" said Jesus, "the way;" and this man with a mission, and therefore, man and angel, must be conformed to him as the model. But, if he be a man not yet created, who was that, who eighteen hundred years ago said in the text, "Behold, I come as a thief"? Who is indicated by the personal pronoun "I"? The answer to this is the ETERNAL SPIRIT. figuratively represented in Ch. 5:6, by "a Lamb as it had been slain, having Seven Horns and Seven Eyes" the Eternal Spirit, manifested in the glorified Jesus, who is to the One Body as the acorn to the oak. The Alpha, the First, the Beginning, is the Deity manifested in flesh justified by spirit, and called Jesus Christ; the Omega, the End, and the Last, is also the Deity manifested in flesh, justified by spirit, and styled, in Eph. 4:13, "the PERFECT MAN. the measure of the stature of the fullness of the Christ".

In the 16th century also appeared is apocalyptic expositors, Bullinger, Bale, Marlorat, Foxe, Brightman, Pareus, Ribera, and Alcasar. Bullinger interpreted the ascent of the witnesses of the ascent of their departed spirits entering Paradise! He dated the Millennium from Christ's ascension; or from A.D. 60, when Paul speaks of the gospel "having been preached to every creature under heaven;" or from A.D. 73, the date of the destruction of Jerusalem. In either case, of course, it has long since passed away. Bate commenced it at Christ's ascension. From these two may be learned all. It was only a question between them of more or less foolishness. Ribera and Alcasar were Spanish Jesuits who sought to expound the Apocalypse so as to deliver the Papacy from any identification with its symbols. Alcasar's Commentary was the result of over forty years' study; but a worshiper of the beast might study it twice forty years, and at the end thereof his speculations would not be worth the paper consumed. The true meaning of the Apocalypse is accessible only to the Brethren of Christ, and the fellow servants of the apostle, who keep the sayings of the book. All others will prove but vain and fanciful theorists with whom the secrets of the Deity are never found.

The "little strength" of the Philadelphian State exhausted, and Laodiceanism fully established, Pagan persecution having ceased, and "the Catholics," as nominal Christians were now called, being in high favor with the authorities, they say "We are rich, and increased in goods, and have need of nothing." -- Apoc. 3:17. Being "lukewarm," the Spirit "spues them out of his mouth." This state continues until abolished by the judgments of the Seventh Vial, which are executed by the Saints after the resurrection.

The Russo-Polish war was most ferocious. In the ratio of its extent it was as savage a conflict as the American civil war, though of shorter duration. It was a contest between Russo-Greek and Polish-Latin, in which the Greeks, "the worshippers of the Dragon," destroyed the Polish nationality of the Latins, "the worshippers of the Beast." Poland was blotted out from the political geography of the world. It became a monument of the dead, whose epitaph, forewarns the nations of the fate that awaits their kingdoms and republics when judgment shall be given to the saints, and the time comes that they shall possess the dominion under the whole heaven. -- Dan. 7:22,27. In devouring Poland, "Gog, the Prince of Rosh, Mesech, and Tobl," has prepared, and become a guard to so much of "Gomer and all his bands" as it contains. Nor has the Prince of Rosh, whom we style the Autocrat of All the Russias, been negligent of his mission in the direction of "Togarmah of the north quarters and all his bands." -- Ezek. 38:2,6,7. Since the end of the 2400 years, he has advanced his frontier so as to include Khokan and Bokhara, so that there is now but one state between him and British India, namely, Afghanistan, all of whose sympathies are in accord with the enemies and rivals of British rule in India. Thus "Gog of the land of Magog," the great king of the north, who is to figure so conspicuously "in the time of the end" -- b'aith kaitz, styled by Ezekiel "the latter years" and "the latter days," is standing almost face to face with "Sheba, and Dedan, and the Merchants of Tarshish;" whose young lions ere long will need all their strength and prowess for the repression of the further aggrandizement of the Russo-Assyrian power in the East.

There are others again who think that much of the apocalypse is fulfilled but have not discernment enough in things past and present to draw the line between the future and the past. Some of these have taken up a notion that all the vials are poured out after the advent of Christ! This imagination has been conceived in a misunderstanding of the fifteenth chapter. They have not perceived that the whole chapter is declarative of the end purposed to result from the outpouring of the vials. It is declarative of the victory of the saints over the constituted authorities of the nations; and the subjection of these to the King of Kings because of manifested national judgment. They err also in supposing, that "the seven last plagues" are identical with "the seven vials." The seven vials contain "the seven last plagues;" but the plagues and the vials are not severally synchronical. On the contrary, the seven last plagues are synchronical only with the seventh vial; and so much of the sixth as obtains between the advent of Christ and the opening of the judgments of the seventh, is the epoch when One of the Four Living Ones gives the plagues to the angels. The seven last plagues are identical with the Seven Thunders; and as they are comprehended in the seventh vial, the giving of the plagues is represented in the presentation of the "seven golden vials." These vials contain much more than the "seven last plagues." They contain first plagues, styled "these plagues" in ch. 16:9, as well as last plagues. The plagues of the vials exhibited in this chapter are separated by the thief-like advent of Christ. "Last plagues" imply others that are not the last. The former plagues precede the advent; and all developed after it are "the seven last plagues." What extraordinary blindness to affirm that none of the vials are poured out till after Christ comes, while his coming is predicted under the sixth! This sixth-vial prophecy is subversive of the notion. The position it occupies as a speaking hieroglyphic shows, that five of the vials, and a considerable part of the sixth, were to be poured out before the advent. It is impossible therefore for the outpouring of all the vials to be delayed till that event. When it takes place, then in giving judgment to the saints recently raised, judged, and chosen, as signified by the "golden girdles" and "pure and white linen," the golden vials are given to them; and they consummate in their seventh vial mission the work of the whole seven vials, which without their intervention would never ultimate in victory over the beast, his image, his mark, and the number of his name.

In the "great sign" of ch. 12: 1, the Roman Sun is no longer invested with blackness, but invests a sign-woman with a blaze of glory peculiar to himself - "a woman invested with the sun." Whatever the woman may signify, this investiture symbolizes the clothing of the thing signified with supreme imperial authority; so that whatever might emanate from the woman would be by the sanction and co-operation of the highest orders of the state.

1. AUGUSTUS, founder of the Sixth Headship of the Roman Dragon. This Star reigned 44 years from the battle of Actium, which was fought B.C. 30. He died A.D. 14, in his 76th year. He made Tiberius his colleague in the empire three years before his death A. U. C. 764 to................ A.D. 11

But, though "the Lamb's Woman" refused to be, allied to the Roman State, and retired into the wilderness, the State-Church Woman, Jezebel, was not so scrupulous. As "the church by law established" she retained her place in the heaven; and became "the Great Harlot" of the world. Little notice is taken of her apocalyptically until she is exhibited in ch. 17: 1, in all the enormity of her profligate career. In this scene, she appears in the wilderness, into which the Anti-State Church Woman fled. She is seen "drunk with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the witnesses of Jesus;" and sitting upon a scarletcolored beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. She represents a "great city" of polity, "reigning over the kings of the earth." Her name in the beginning was Jezebel; but in the crisis of her fate it is also "Mystery, Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots, and Abominations of the earth." She reigns until the Ancient of Days is revealed, who "casts her into a bed, and them who commit adultery with her into great tribulation, and kills her children with death" (Ch. 2:22). This is the end of Jezebel in the day of Jezreel (Hos. 1: 11).

In writing to the Corinthian section of the Zion-community, Paul says, "I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present a chaste virgin to Christ" (2 Cor. 11:2). By this we are taught, that the "One Body," likened to a woman, is to be considered in the absence of Christ, not as a married, but as an espoused woman - a bride elect. Paul desired that she might be presented in all the purity of her original espousals, when she was "sanctified and cleansed in the laver of the water with doctrine" (Eph. 5:26). But, though this was his desire, penetrating the darkness of the future by the light of the Spirit, he could not forbear the expression of his fears lest the fate of Eve, the espoused of the first Adam, who was corrupted from the simplicity of the truth, should become the unhappy condition of the betrothed of the second Adam. "I fear," says he, "lest by any means, as the Serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ."

But the empire of the Dragonic-Sin-power was westward. It did not remain enthroned in Egypt. Yahweh's servant Nebuchadnezzar transferred it to Babylon; whence in due time it migrated, and was at length found in the city of the Seven Hills. The power there, in the epoch of the sip, was the old Egyptian Dragon incorporate in the Graeco-Latin polIty, which possessed Egypt, Syria, 'and the East. Hence, the territory of the Dragonic fourth beast of Daniel is apocalyptically and "spiritually called Sodom and Egypt, where our Lord was crucified" (Ch. 11:8); "the great city Babylon."

The second signification of the seven heads is expressed in Apoc. 17:10; as, "And they are seven kings"; the "and" connecting them with the seven mountains - "the seven heads are seven mountains, and they are seven kings," or governing bodies, as basileis also signifies. These seven forms of government belong to the seven hills; and are therefore Roman and Italian. John was informed, that at the time of the revelation of the mystery being made, five of the heads had fallen; and that the one in existence, consequently, was the sixth head; and that the other, or seventh head, had not yet appeared; but that when it came up, it would continue only a short time: "they are seven kings; the five have fallen, and the one is, the other not yet come; and when he may come, it behoves that he continue a short time." The two greatest historians, Livy and Tacitus, have enumerated the five from the building of the city, as,

In after times, far distant from the beginning, the serpent-world acquired an immense development. From two persons it had increased to myriads of millions; and without specifying the outlying savages of the dominion, is treated of in Scripture as "the kingdom of Egypt;" which, in the days of Moses, had attained great political proportions - a kingdom of kingdoms. It was "the dragon, the old serpent," of his day -the great enemy and bruiser of the woman's seed, who sought their extirpation from the earth. This was the political relation of things then. The "Woman's Seed" was identified with Israel; the "Serpent's Seed," with all that had enmity against, or oppressed, them; while the "Head of the Serpent," styled in the sentence upon the serpent "thy head," is that chief government of the Gentiles, or nations, which directs, controls, or influences, the policy of the world for the time being.

Such was the Satan in Job's case. In the case of Jesus Christ the satanic development assumed a different phase. Jesus was tempted by both the Diabolos and a Satan. These were both concerned in the trial to which he was subjected; and as the one co-operated with the other, they are spoken of as if the same. Jesus was "led up," or "driven," of the Spirit, into the wilderness "to be tempted of the diabolos; " or that which causeth to transgress, and "hath the power of death" - sin's flesh. This was subjected to the long abstinence of forty days, at the end of which he felt a hunger that must have been very keen. We all know what would be the promptings of our flesh in a like it situation. "Hunger," it is said, "will break through stone walls." It is very obstreperous, and will do any thing to satisfy itself. If any one had the power, under the pressure of intense hunger, he would convert stones into bread and eat them. Jesus had that power; and there was one acquainted with the Scripture, introduced himself to his notice at this crisis, and suggested that he should use it. Paul doubtless alludes to this personage in 2 Cor. 11: 14 saying, "the Satan is transformed into an Angel of Light." Such an angel is a messenger enlightened in the word, who handles it in such a way as to test the fidelity of others to it. Such an one becomes a Satan in suggesting a course of action in conformity with the promptings of the flesh. And if Deity became Satan to Israel, and to Job, it is not to be denied that an angel may have assumed the same attitude in the case of Jesus Christ.

The time when he stood before her with this ferocious intent, was before her delivery. She was "about to bring forth" while he was standing, or making war upon her. Her child had not been manifested to the world. Hence, the historical illustration must be applicable to ,t time of the Woman's career when she had no champion, but when that " Coming Man " was just about to be manifested.

This foreign god unknown to his predecessors, is styled Eloahh Mahuzzim--a god of fortresses. A fortress is a strong place affording defence and protection. "The way of God," is termed in Proverbs 10: 29, "a fortress to the upright." Upon the same principle, "saints and angels" are regarded as fortresses, or guardians, to those who worship them. These are the fortresses, or Mahuzzim, of the system of superstition, whose Supreme Pontiff is the god created by "the King." His special fortress, is a phantasm he styles St. Peter. This is the guardian of his godship besides which, he claims the protection of all the supposed existences of "the spirit-world." The Virgin Mary whom he styles "the Queen of heaven," is conspicuous among these. No god, according to his own tradition, was ever so strongly fortified as he. All the conceivable saints and angels of the invisible world are his fortresses, protectors, or guardians. One cannot help but think, however, that they must be very negligent of their duty at the present time; for his godship is manifestly dying for want of protection by the powers of heaven and earth. Illustrative of these fortresses are the remarks of Chrysostom, a subject and priest of the King, who flourished in the 4th century. In his homily on the martyrs of Egypt, he says: "The bodies of those saints fortify the city more effectually for us than impregnable walls of adamant; and like towering rocks placed around on every side, repel not only the assaults of enemies that are visible' but the insidious stratagems also of invisible daemons, and counteract and defeat every artifice of the devil as easily as a strong man overturns the toys of children."

"The warm and active loyalty of the Catholics exhausted in Constantine's favor every resource of human industry; and they confidently expected that their strenuous efforts would be seconded by some divine and miraculous aid. The enemies of Constantine," continues Gibbon, "have imputed to interested motives the alliance which he insensibly contracted with the Catholic Church," or the Woman, and which apparently contributed to the success of his ambition. In the beginning of the fourth century the Catholics still bore a very inadequate proportion to the inhabitants of the empire; but among a degenerate people like the Romans and Greeks, who viewed the change of masters with the indifference of slaves, the spirit and union of the Catholic minority would assist the popular leader, to whose service, from a principle of conscience, they had devoted their lives and fortunes. The ranks of his legions were filled with the proselytes of the new faith; so that when they marched against Maxentius, a great number of the soldiers had already consecrated their swords to the service of Christ and of Constantine. In the Catholic councils assembled under Constantine's protection, the authority of the bishops was employed to ratify the obligation of the military oath, and to inflict the penalty of excommunication on those soldiers who threw away their arms during the enjoyment of peace by the church. But the Woman was not confined to the dominions of Constantine. She overspread the Dragon empire; so that while he increased his adherents from her communion in Britain, Spain and Gaul, he could depend on the support of the Catholics in the provinces, which were still possessed or usurped by his rivals. Thus a secret disaffection was diffused among the Catholic subjects of Maxentius and Licinius - the Dragon Power against which he was about to contend. The regular correspondence which connected the bishops of the most distant provinces, enabled them freely to communicate their wishes and their designs, and to transmit without danger any useful intelligence, or any pious contributions, which might promote the service of Constantine, who publicly declared that he had taken up arms for the deliverance of the Catholic Church.

But the Michael, Constantine, was not alone in his wars. There were associated with him "his angels". Angels are agents employed to execute the will and pleasure of those who commissioned them. They may be mortal or immortal agents, and hold their commission of the Deity or of men. In the prophecy, the Divine Power, or AlL, commissioned certain mortal agents, known as Constantine and his adherents, to cast the Dragon and his adherents out of the Roman Heaven. The same power that co-worked with Constantine cooperated with his retainers. They were, therefore, the Michael-power and its angels - the corrupt and militant class of the Woman's children.

From these quotations which have reference to the real kingdom of Christ, Eusebius in his application of them to the Catholic Church, in the good fortune of which, he says, they were fulfilling; manifestly concluded that it was not only "the image", but the very kingdom of Christ itself! This was his Opinion, and that also of the clergy and people of his communion generally. Their belief was that "the salvation, power, and kingdom of the Deity, and the authority of His Anointed" had really come; and that now, all that remained was for professors to lead moral lives, or at all events to live at peace with, and in the favour of "Mother Church," which would secure to them an abundant entrance into the only other kingdom known to them, termed "the kingdom of glory," situated afar off from earth, "beyond the realms of time and space!" This opinion of Eusebius and his coreligionists, that the church is the kingdom of God, took deep hold of the catholic mind of his generation; and in the nineteenth century is a characteristic of those who know not the truth. Catholics, papists and protestants all believe that what they call church is the kingdom of God, or the kingdom of heaven. Of course, Millennarians may claim exception from this rule. Still, few of them are free from the tradition; for while they expect the reign of Christ upon earth, they hold the church to be the kingdom in some sense; and send off disembodied "immortal souls" to transkyanal regions, there to await the terrestrial millennial reign!

But when Constantine came to recognize the catholic sect as his Mother Church, what became of the rest of the Anti-pagan Body "the whole body of the Christians" besides, namely, of the Novatians, Donatists, Valentinians, Marcionites, Paulists, Cataphrygians, and others? They were still "the Woman," only minus the catholic sect. Whatever other differences obtained among them, they were generally opposed to the union of church and state; for, as all of them could not be the world's church, they were displeased at any one sect enjoying that preeminence over the rest. "What," said they, "has the emperor to do with the church? What have Christians to do with kings, or what have bishops to do at court?" Hence, without ceasing to be anti-pagan, they now became an ANTI-CATHOLIC BODY. This was the Woman" of the sixth verse of this twelfth chapter - the ANTI-CATHOLIC WOMAN. Between this woman and the Sun-clothed Harlot in the heaven, there has been, and can be, no fellowship. They are essentially hostile Organizations. Not that the anti-Catholic woman as such is what Mr. Elliot styles "Christ's faithful orthodox church;" for there were sects in her communion whose principles and practices were both worldly and unscriptural; but there were to be found in her anti-Catholic pale hoi loipoi tou sper-matos autes, remnants of her seed, who were characterized by "keeping the commandments of the Deity, and holding the testimony of the anointed Jesus" (verse 17). These were anti-Catholic of the intensest character; but they were also opposed to all other sects of the anti-Catholic woman, which did not keep the commandments of the Deity, and did not hold the testimony of the anointed Jesus. This is illustrated by the position of CHRISTADELPHIANS in regard to all sects at this day.

Thus, the anti-catholic community was to be sustained, out of the sight of the Serpent-government, in the two wings of the Great Roman Eagle, for one thousand two hundred and sixty years from the epoch of its legal condemnation as heretical, its exclusion from high places, and its banishment from the sunshine of imperial favor, A.D. 312-315. The three years intervening between these dates, constitute the initiatory epoch of the Woman's flight. The individuals who composed the party of the woman were not all saints; they were all, as we have seen, exceedingly hostile to the State Church: but it was only a particular class of the woman's seed which was entitled to be regarded as consisting of the saints. Her seed was composed of remnants, hoi loipoi, not, as in the Common Version, of a remnant. She was providentially placed in the wilderness, that she might be fed and nourished; for without food and nourishment she could not exist in such a world as this. The "faithful men" who were within her pale, "who were able to teach others" (2 Tim. 2:2), fed her with knowledge and understanding (Jer. 3:15); and "the earth," with whom she found an asylum, "helped her" with the nourishment of protection, without which she would have been carried away of the serpent-flood. A remnant of her seed, and the common people of the Eagle's wings, "the earth," coalesced. They became political allies against the party in power; and were upon emergency prepared to withstand their oppressor by force of arms. These were the vanguard of the other remnant of her seed, whose principle is passive endurance of injury "unto death;" and trusting for vindication to Him who saith, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay." These were the saints sealed in their foreheads as the especial servants of the living God.

The Dragon, the Serpent, the Diabolos, and the Satan, in this twelfth chapter, are all terms expressive of the political, or civil, military, and spiritual, "enmity" in organized activity against the woman and her seed. When the political Organization that seeks her destruction is wholly pagan, then it is represented as "a Great Fiery Red Dragon" -ver. 3: if still pagan, but not wholly so in all departments of the state, then it is no longer the "great fiery red dragon," but simply the Diabolos, as in ver. 12; and if no longer pagan, but a subtle and seductive power, wise in its own conceit, and invested with supreme authority, it is indicated by "the Serpent" and "the Dragon," as in ver. 15,16. This identity is established by the testimony concerning the flood of water, which states that it issued both from the mouth of the Serpent and the mouth of the Dragon: now the flood being one, not two, the Serpent and the Dragon in the verses at the head of this section must represent the same power.

But, in relation to the woman's flight into the wilderness, the two wings of the great Roman Eagle, spreading along its northeastern and southwestern regions, were not for destruction, but that she might find safety and protection in obscurity; upon the principle of being "out of the Serpent's sight" (apo prosopon) she might be out of his mind also. The two wings" is regarded by some as a more correct reading than .two wings". They say that it reads thus in certain manuscripts - hai duo pteruges. They are, no doubt, right. Daniel's leopard had four wings; but there is nothing in symbolic prophecy to indicate that the great Roman Eagle had more than two. The mountains, glens, fastnesses. and more open valleys of these wings of the empire, would be but little cared for, or regarded, by the priests of the Catholic Church, who would crowd to those centers whence wealth and honors were distributed. The more interior locality of the eighteen hundred temples, endowed by the munificence of the emperor, would be the arena upon which they would, as Arians and Trinitarians, Iconoclasts and image-worshippers, disputatiously exhaust their zeal for the ensuing five hundred years. The violence of these all-absorbing disputes within the pale of the Serpent's communion, would so occupy him that he would have but little time or ability to hunt for "heretics" and "chismatics" in the two wings of his dominion. In this way was Providentially "prepared a p/ace," or country, for dissenters and nonconformists of whatever names their enemy, the Seed of the Serpent in church and state, might, in the plenitude of ignorance and malice, think proper to call them. It is not to be supposed, however, that in all sections of the Eagle's Wings they would be always nourished in peace and safety. The woman's seed could not evade the common lot of mankind, which is born to trouble. They are an afflicted people, clothed in sackcloth, until the end of their appointed time, when they will be invested with white raiment. But till then, affliction is more or less the rod of their condition; and necessarily so. for 'whom the Lord loves he chastens, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth;" that, by this wholesome, but unjoyous, discipline they who are exercised by it, now partaking of the Divine holiness, may hereafter reap the peaceable fruit of righteousness - Heb. 12:6; Apoc 11:1-3.

With the death of Chrysocheir the power of the Paulicians' defenders declined. About the middle of the eighth century, Constantine Copronymus had transplanted many of the Paulicians from the Euphrates to Constantinople and Thrace; and by this emigration their doctrine was introduced and diffused in Europe. The Paulicians of Thrace struck their roots deeply into this foreign soil, where they resisted the storms of persecution, maintained a secret correspondence with their Armenian brethren, and gave aid and comfort to their preachers, who labored, not without success, among the Bulgarians. They were restored and multiplied by a more powerful colony of Paulicians transpiated A. D. 970, by John Zimisces, from Armenia to Thrace. Their exile to this country was softened by a free toleration. They held the city of Philippopolis, and the keys of Thrace; the catholics were their subjects; they occupied a line of villages and castles in Macedonia and Epirus; "and many native Bulgarians," says Gibbon, "were associated to the communion of arms and heresy." As long as these Thraco-Bulgarian Circumcel lions "the Earth," were awed by power and treated with moderation, they were distinguished in the Dragon armies as volunteers; and the courage of these "dogs ever greedy of war and thirsty of human blood," is noticed with astonishment, and almost with, reproach, by the pusillanimous Greeks. The same spirit rendered them arrogant and contumacious; they were easily provoked by caprice or injury; and their privileges were often violated by the faithless bigotry of the Dragon- government and clergy. The emperor Alexius Comnenus undertook to proselyte them to the reigning superstition. Those of their leaders who were contumacious were secured in a dungeon, or banished; but their lives were spared by the prudence, rather than the mercy, of the emperor, at whose command a poor and solitary heretic was burnt alive before the cathedral of St. Sophia.

The history of the Paulictans is traceable only through the writings of their adversaries. The account given of their origin is derived from Peter the Sicilian, who was sent by Basil the Great to the Paulicians in Armenia, A.D. 870, to negotiate with them an exchange of prisoners. The following extract from Gibbon will show the special abominations against which they faithfully testified in their character of a remnant of the woman's seed. "Against the gradual innovations of discipline and doctrine," says he, "they were as strongly guarded by habit and aversion as by the silence of the Apostle Paul and the evangelists. The objects which had been transformed by the magic of superstition, appeared to the eyes of the Paulicians in their genuine and naked colors. They reasoned that an image made with hands was the common workmanship of a mortal artist, to whose skill alone the wood and canvas must be indebted for their merit and value; - that miraculous relics were a heap of bones and ashes, destitute of life or virtue, or of any relation, perhaps, with the person to whom they were ascribed; - that the true and vivifying cross was a piece of sound or rotten timber; - the body and blood of Christ, a loaf of bread and a cup of wine, the gifts of nature and the symbols of grace. The Mother of God, in the creed of the Paulicians, was degraded from her celestial honors and immaculate virginity; and the saints and angels were no longer solicited to exercise the laborious office of mediation in heaven and ministry upon earth."

But DIABOLOS saw clearly that this arrangement could not stand. He not only knew that the house of the kingdom was divided against it-self; but that such a house must fall. The administrative elements were too incompatible to work in harmony together; for, though essentially there is no difference between Catholicism and Paganism, yet the intense lust of the former for universal empire would inevitably bring on a collision that would ultimate in the destruction of the weaker of the firm. Diabolos therefore knew that "he had but a short time. "He was determined, then, to make the most of his present opportunities, and to pour out the "great wrath" of idol worship upon the sympathizers with Dragon and Serpent, the catholic partners of the West, whom he might find among his subjects of "the earth and sea.

After the ascending of this beast from the sea, John beholds another beast ascending out of the earth, having Two Horns and speaking as a Dragon. After his ascent, he sees this beast in contemporaneous existence with the other; and of like constitution with the wounded head of the Ten-Horned Beast. John also sees an IMAGE of the Wounded Head, which the Two-Horned Beast caused to be set up; and to which all on the earth of every degree were subjected.

Thus there is a great lack of particulars in Daniel's vision, which the Deity "reserved in his own power," as not important to be made known at that time. He gave Daniel a general outline of "the matter," in symbol and its description; but he deferred the details, or a more particular representation, until he sh6uld give them to "the Son of Man" in actual manifestation. When the Son had received them of the Father, he sent his messenger and signified them to John in Patmos. Among the signs exhibited were the Great Fiery-Red Dragon, the Catholic Dragon, the Beast of the Sea, the Name of Blasphemy, the Beast of the Earth, the Image of the Beast, and the Woman-Bearing Scarlet-Beast. All these apocalyptic signs are contained in Daniel's Fourth Beast. They are a symbolical analysis of this beast, which they exhibit in its chronological, geographical, and constitutional relations at different periods of its long and eventful, or its "dreadful and terrible," career.

Daubuz truly remarks, that "the accomplishment of a prophecy must be considered, and consequently applied according to the signification of the terms by which it is expressed. This signification is either symbolical or literal. But it happens sometimes that there are occasions in which the event appears to be suitable to both these. The first signification, if the terms are in their nature symbolical, is the principle in the intention; the second, if joined with the other, is only concurrent. If both suit the terms, the first (or symbolical) must always have the preference, as being the more noble, and worthy of the Holy Spirit's care to foretell it; and then we may give way to the latter, where it will concur. The principal event is that which answers fully to the majesty and first intention of the symbols; in which God does, as it were, speak in His own dialect, and so is always of greater extent, and more comprehensive than any other. The secondary event of a symbolical prediction is, when such an event, being also concomitant with the other, answers more nearly to the literal signification of the terms in which the symbolical prediction is expressed; and, as it were, alters the nature of the symbols, as if they were literal characters of the things meant by them. An example will set this in a clear light. The prophet Nahum predicts the over-throw of Nineveh in these words: 'with an overrunning flood he will make an utter end of the place thereof (Ch. 1:8). An overrunning flood is the symbol of desolation by a victorious enemy. The accomplishment, however, showed the signification to be two-fold, that is, symbolical and also literal. Diodorus informs us, that in the third year of the Siege, the river being swollen with continual rains overflowed part of the city, and broke down the wall for twenty furlongs; and the enemy entered the breach that the waters had made, and took the city."

But, very different to this is the speculation culled from "Horsley's Sermon on the Descent of our Lord into Hell." He says, "the abyss is where the wicked spirits are reserved in chains unto the great day. This abyss is situated in the central regions of the earth, and therefore is below the sea. It is therefore not impossible that in the ascent of the Beast (Rev. 13:1; 17:8) two different ideas may be combined. He might be described as arising out of the sea in reference to his secular and political resurrection; and as ascending out of the abyss, or region of condemned spirits, with relation to his spiritual removal. Moreover, even if he ascended from Hades, the sea might be the medium of his ascent; and there is a peculiar fitness in its being so represented, to denote his arising out of the commotions and struggles of the nations, the symbolical sea."

Upon the principle of this proverb the beasts of the apocalypse are symbolical of wicked rulers. They are "dreadful and terrible" to the choicest of mankind; for it is written, "the beast that ascendeth out of the abyss," said the Spirit, "will make war upon my two witnesses, and will overcome them, and kill them" (Apoc. 11:7); and the same thing is affirmed of the beast of the sea in ch. 13:7, as, "and it was given unto him to make war with the Saints, and to overcome them;" but in relation to these, which he overcomes, or treads them, as the Holy City, under foot, it does not say that he kills them as he killed the witnesses. Truly, as a roaring lion and a ranging bear," have these apocalyptic beasts been to the poor saints and witnesses over whom they have tyrannized for ages.

"Horns upon a wild beast are not only expressive of powers, but also of such powers as are tyrannical, ravenous and at enmity with God and his saints, as in Dan. 8" Daubuz.

But name not only denotes the existence, quality, or state of a person, power, or other thing, singly considered; it also' denotes these things in multitudinous manifestation. Thus, in Jer. 13:11, Yahweh caused "the whole house of Israel, and the whole house of Judah" to cleave unto Him, "that they might be to me, saith he,. for a people, and for a name, for a praise, and for a glory." Here is a name inclusive of the whole nation. There are numerous instances in the prophetic writings where name is representative of many , too numerous to be quoted here . The gods of the nations were so many names, whether idols or founders of sects. In this sense, name denotes an object of worship, invocation, or reverence. Thus, in Mic. 4:5, "all people walk, every one in the name of his God; we will walk in the name of our God." To walk in the name of any one is, first, to have said name constitutionally placed upon the walker; and, secondly, to shape the course of life according to the precepts and institutions of such name. Every one that does this is in said name; and, therefore, denominationally a part, or element, of that name. Thus, the NOMEN LATINUM, or Latin Name, the Nomen Anglicanum, or Anglican Name, Luther, Calvin, Wesley, and a host of others, are all names of Gods in which the peoples walk. They are specially related to the Romano-Gothic Beast of the Abyss, which John testified would be gemon onomaton blasphemias, full of Names of Blasphemy (Ch. 17:3). All the peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues, constituting the body politic of the fourth-beast system of nations, "walk every one in the name of his god," glorying in the Latin Name of Blasphemy upon the Seven Heads; the Anglican Name of Blasphemy in Canterbury, York, and Dublin; and in all the other blasphemies, to which the names of Luther, Calvin, Wesley, and others too numerous to mention, are attached.

p.229 The result of this discourse of the Spirit by the mouth of Peter, was the conviction, that the same Jesus they had crucified was alive again, and by the Deity made both Lord and Christ. These devout Jews and proselytes of Rome were pricked in their heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, "Men and brethren, What shall we do?" They perceived that they were involved in the greatest of crimes from which they knew not how they could be loosed. The import of their question was therefore, What must we do to be loosed from the consequences of our iniquity? Again it was Peter who took up the question put to all the apostles; for "Peter said unto them, Repent, and be immersed every one of you for the Name of Jesus Christ, epi to onomati, unto remission of sins," eis aphesin hamartion. This command of the Spirit was new doctrine in-deed to these Roman strangers from the Capital; but their conviction of its truth, "caused them to cease sacrificing and offering" (Dan. 9:27) ac-

"On the whole, it appears that at the opening of the sixth century, not only did the several Gothic princes exercise in their respective dominions the prerogatives of supreme sovereignty, but also had begun to appropriate to themselves the Roman Diademic Badge of such sovereignty; and that at the close of the century their assumption of the diadem, in sign of it ,had become universal."

Now, Daniel was given to understand that the four beasts he saw rising out of the Mediterranean Earth, would all coexist at the coming of the Ancient of days (ch. 7:12): and that, at that extraordinary time of trouble, the fourth beast body politic shall be abolished; but that the Lion, the Bear and the Leopard shall remain, only without dominion, and that for "a season and a time; or, as John expresses it, for a thousand years This was equivalent to saying that the Bear and the Leopard, and, consequently, the Lion, national organizations, or bodies politic, should be extant at the coming of Christ "as a thief," in the Sixth Vial period. In order, therefore, to represent this truth, the Leopard, and the Bear, and the Lion, symbols are constituted elements of the Ten-Horned Sea Monster, which is to continue in political life till the advent, as appears from the testimony that "the ten horns shall make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome them" (ch. 17:14).

The reader will please to turn to what has been written concerning the heads of the Dragon in the previous chapter. What is found there is equally applicable to the heads of the Sea Beast, and need not, therefore, be repeated here. Leaving the heads, then, for the present, I proceed to a further exposition of the horns.

In this epoch of his reign, and by his care, the Roman Civil Jurisprudence was digested in what Gibbon styles," the immortal works of the Code, the Pandects, and the Institutes." These, "the public reason of the Romans, have been silently or studiously transfused into the domestic institutions of Europe; and the laws of Justinian still command the respect or obedience of independent nations." "The Code, Pandects, and Institutes were declared to be the legitimate system of civil jurisprudence; they alone were admitted in the tribunals, and they alone were taught in the academies of Rome, Constantinople, and Berytus. Justin-ian addressed to the Senate and provinces his Eternal Oracles; and his pride, under the mask of piety, ascribed the consummation of this great design to the support and inspiration of the Deity."

With the protection, Theodoric assumed the legal supremacy of the Catholic Church. He was not ignorant of the dignity and importance of the Bishop of Rome, to whom was now appropriated the name of POPE. When "the chair of St. Peter" was disputed by Symmachus and Lawrence, they appeared at his summons before the tribunal of an Arian king, and he confirmed the election of the one he most approved. At the end of his life, in a moment of jealousy and resentment, he prevented the choice of the Romans, by nominating a pope in the palace of Ravenna. This produced great excitement, which he controlled, and the last decree of the Senate was enacted to extinguish, if it were possible, "the scandalous venality of the papal elections."

The fourth question is, What duration, or length of time, is signified by forty and two months? Is this period long or short? Is it forty-two months of days, or forty and two months of years? In other words, is it 1260 days or 1260 years? Is it a literal period, or is it symbolical of the real time? By what rule can the truth of the matter be ascertained? My answer is, that the truth is determined by the rule of facts, which are stubborn things. This rule, however, cannot be generally used. It is of no use to the blind who are unworthy to read the opened book, and to look upon it (ch. 5:3,4,5). It is a rule for the blessed who read, and under-stand the words of this apocalyptic prophecy (ch. 1:3). Such are not blind. They can see, or discern, the facts; for they are discernible by the light of the Spirit's testimony, which "is hid to them that are lost, in whom the god of this aeon hath blinded the minds of them who believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the Image of the Deity, should shine into them" (2 Cor. 4:3,4).

The symbol of a Lion's Mouth speaking great things is eulogistically ascribed by Pope Nicolas I., in the ninth century, to Pope Leo, styled "the Great," the earliest founder of the temporal dominion of the Universal Bishop. He says, "save only the imitator namely of that Lion of whom it is written, 'the Lion of the Tribe of Judah hath conquered,' divinely exalted, opening the mouth, makes the whole world, and also the emperors themselves to tremble; as well it calls the mind to piety, it might entirely overthrow the catholic religion." And so Hincmar, speaking of the same Leo, says, "Leo the Great by the greatest roaring from the city Roma, being the capital namely of the globe, thunders loudly through the whole world." In the words of Shakespeare's King John:

But the Heavenlies in Christ are not luoghi, heux, or places, but STATES, the foundation of which is laid in Jesus Christ - Deity manifested in the Flesh. "The Man Christ Jesus" is a real man. When on earth he was "holy, harmless, undefiled, and sinless," as to character; yet imperfect as to his material nature. He is now perfect - a perfect man "justified by spirit," and therefore incorruptible and immortal - a perfect character or moral nature, developed by Divine power, or spirit, into a perfect material nature. But Christ is also an allegorical man, as Hagar and Sarah were two allegorical women; the former representing the Mosaic Covenant; the latter, the New, or Abrahamic, Covenant. From the days of Moses until the Day of Pentecost, A.D. 34, the whole twelve tribes were constitutionally in their mother Hagar, or the Jerusalem system then in existence, and in bondage with her children. But on that celebrated day a new system was initiatorily developed, the Sarah Covenant, styled "the Jerusalem above the Mother of us all." Isaac was Sarah's son, and allegorically slain, and allegorically raised. The saints are all in Isaac; for "in Isaac shall thy seed be called." This seed is Christ; not Jesus only; but that great multitude also which no man can number. This "One Body" of people headed up in Deity is the allegorical or figurative Christ. They are the children of the promise as Isaac was; the free-born sons of Sarah the free woman. This is their state, without regard to the place or country of earth or heaven, where they might be supposed to be. But, if there had been no literal or personal Christ, there could have been no such Christ-State for Jews and Gentiles. Jesus of Nazareth was allegorically "a number which no man could number." He himself taught this, saying, "he that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit:" and, "Father, I pray for them who shall believe into me (eis eme) through the apostles' word: that they all may be one in us" (John 10:5; 17:20,21). Though few compared with the whole race of man, it is a great company absolutely - a people taken out from all the generations and the nations for the Divine Name. "He shall increase," said John the Immerser; "but I must decrease." Jesus increased, or grew, into a Divine and "chosen generation;" while John has dwindled down into a mere Baptist Denomination, which is either ignorant of, or opposed to "the truth as it is in Jesus."

Under the rule of the Gothic Arian Seventh Head, there was no scope for the development of the imperial tendencies of the Trinitarian Bishop of Rome. However, he might long for Universal Headship over all spiritual concerns of the Roman habitable, his subordination to an Arian kingship was an insuperable obstacle. So long as Arianism was king in Rome, he could not include Italy and that city in his universality. Hence, the policy of Symmachus and his successors would be to procure the ruin of the Seventh Head, and to prevent the return of the Sixth; so that Rome, being freed from the presence of both king and emperor, opportunity would be afforded for their own development into an Image of the Sixth Head upon the Seven Hills.

It was, however, with reluctance that the patient east was brought to abjure its sacred images; they were fondly cherished, and vigorously defended by the more violent zeal of the Italians, stimulated to sanguinary resistance by the pretended Vicar of Christ. "It is agreed," says Gibbon, "that in the eighth century, the dominion of the popes was founded on rebellion, and that the rebellion was produced and justified by the heresy of the Iconoclasts." This is equivalent to saying, that the dominion of the popes and their clergy was founded on idolatry and their zeal for its support. This is true, and upon this basis the pope stands before the world as the "Pontifex Maximus" of Roman Idolatry, in which character he is the striking counterpart or "Image" of the pagan imperial pontiffs of the Sixth Head of the Beast.

When this patience and faith is satisfied, the saints, living and raised, will no longer be in a waiting position. They will rejoice in victory, and "sing the song of Moses, the servant of the Deity, and the song of the Lamb" (ch. 15:3). There will then be no systems of government such as now exist. The Ten-horned Beast, the Two-horned Beast, the Image of the Beast, the Scarlet-colored Beast, and the drunken Harlot he carries, will all have been destroyed as "the destroyers of the earth." Not a trace of them will be left; for they are all to be carried away as the wind sweeps off the chaff of the summer threshing-floors. No place on the earth will be found for them; for the Power that smites them will be-come as a great Mountain filling the whole earth (Dan. 2:35,44). "Here is the patience and the faith of the saints. Here are they who keep the commandments of the Deity and the faith of Jesus;" all others are simply "the worshippers of the beast and his image," the mark of whose name is in their foreheads sealing them to death.

On the arrival of the French monarch at Rome, he spent six days in private conference with the Pope; after which he convoked the bishops and nobles, to examine the accusation brought against the pontiff. "The apostolic see," exclaimed the bishops, "cannot be judged by man." Leo, however, spoke to the accusation: he said the king came to know the cause, and no proof appearing against him, he purged himself by oath.

"It is highly probable, indeed, that an ambitious hierarchy did not endure without reluctance this imperial supremacy of Charlemagne, though it was not expedient for them to resist a prince so formidable, and from whom they had so much to expect. But their dissatisfaction at a scheme of government incompatible with their own objects of perfect independence, produced a violent recoil under Louis the Debonair (Charlemagne's son and successor) who attempted to act the Censor of ecclesiastical abuses with as much earnestness as his father, though with very inferior qualifications for so delicate an undertaking. The bishops (the Romish Wolves in sheep's clothing) accordingly, were among the chief instigators of those numerous revolts of his children which harrassed this emperor. They set upon one occasion, the first example of a usurpation which was to become very dangerous to society, the deposition of sovereigns by ecclesiastical authority. Louis, a prisoner in the hands of his enemies, had been intimidated enough to undergo a public penance; and the Bishops pretended that, according to a canon of the church, he was incapable of returning after to a secular life, or preserving the character of sovereignty. Circumstances enabled him to retain the empire, in defiance of this sentence; but the church (the two horns like a lamb) had tasted the pleasures of trampling upon crowned heads, and was eager to repeat the experiment. Under the disjointed and feeble administration of his posterity in their several kingdoms the Bishops availed themselves of more than one opportunity to exalt their temporal power. Those weak Carlovingian princes, in their mutual animosities, encouraged the pretensions of a common enemy. Thus, Charles the Bald, and Louis of Bavaria, having driven their brother Lothaire from his dominions, held an assembly of some bishops, who adjudged him unworthy to reign, and after exacting a promise from the two allied brothers to govern better than he had done, permitted and commanded them to divide his territories. After concurring in this unprecedented encroachment, Charles the Bald had little right to complain when, some years afterwards, an assembly of bishops declared himself to have forfeited his crown, released his subjects from their allegiance, and transferred his kingdom to Louis of Bavaria. But, in truth, he did not pretend to deny the principle which he had contributed to maintain. Even in his own behalf he did not appeal to the rights of sovereigns, and of the nation they represented. 'No one,' said this degenerate grandson of Charlemagne, 'ought to have degraded me from the throne to which I was consecrated, until, at least, I have been heard and judged by the Bishops, through whose ministry I was consecrated, who are called the Thrones of God in which God sitteth, and by whom he dispenses his judgments; to whose paternal chastisement I was willing to submit, and do still submit myself'."

This was a great revolution in the fortunes of the so-called "Eternal City." By the restoration of Western Imperialism, an Eighth Form of Government, styled in Apoc .17.8, "the beast that was, and is not, yet is," was established upon the Seven Mountains. In the seventeenth chapter, the two-horned episcopal element of the Beast of the Earth is replaced by the Great Harlot Mother of the Churches of the Gentiles; while the secular element is expanded into the Scarlet-colored Beast, symbolical of Ezekiel's Magogian confederacy of powers, which is the last phase of Daniel's Fourth Beast - the Eighth Head in its final manifestation, which, John says, "is of the Seven, and goeth into perdition" - a confederacy in which the European imperiality and royalties combine against Christ, and the Saints in the war of the great day of God Almighty (Apoc. 17:14; 16:14; 19:19-21).

But as excommunication, which descended from the heaven only upon one and perhaps an obdurate sinner, was not always efficacious, the Lamb-Horned constituent of the Beast had recourse to a more scorching and comprehensive punishment. For the offense of a noble-man, the ecclesiastical power put a county, for that of a prince, his entire kingdom, under an interdict, or suspension of religious offices. No stretch of tyranny was more fiery than this. During an interdict, the Saints' Bazaars, in which the clergy "who have the mark or the name of the beast, or the number of his name" trade their wares, were closed, the bells silent, the dead unburied, no rite but those of sprinkling and extreme unction performed. This fiery wrath descended upon those who had neither partaken of, nor could have prevented the offense, which was often but a private dispute, in which the pride of a pope or bishop had been wounded.

The years preceding the time of Hildebrand were a period of long and disgraceful servitude for the so-called "Apostolic See." In reference to this Gibbon says, "the Roman Pontiffs of the ninth and tenth centuries, were insulted, imprisoned, and murdered, by their tyrants; and such was their indigence after the loss and usurpation of the ecclesiastical patrimonies, that they could neither support the state of a prince, nor exercise the charity of a priest." In the course of this long series of scandal, there were two sister-prostitutes named Marozia and Theodora, whose influence was founded on their wealth and beauty, and their political and amorous intrigues. Their influence was sovereign, and the most devoted of their paramours were rewarded with the Roman Mitre, to which the Tiara had not yet been added. The bastard son, the grandson, and the great grandson of Marozia "a rare genealogy" of papal holiness, were seated in the chair of St. Peter, and it was at the age of nineteen that her grandson, John XII, became the Head of the Latin Church. Drunkenness, murder, discords, and gaming dishonored his profession, and disgraced the man. His simony was undisguised; and his blasphemous invocation of Jupiter and Venus, the consummation of his impiety. He lived in public adultery with the matrons of Rome; the Lateran palace was turned into a school of prostitution; and his rapes of virgins and widows deterred the female pilgrims from visiting the alleged tomb of St. Peter, lest, in so doing, they should be violated by his pretended successor. Charges were at length urged against him in a Roman synod in the presence of Otho the Great, who degraded him A.D. 967; an evident proof that the Image of the Beast was still a power in the undeveloped future, and had the design of Otho the third been carried into effect, A.D. 998, of abandoning the ruder countries of the North, to erect his throne in Italy, and to revive the institutions of the Roman monarchy, the Image of the Beast would have appeared in the likeness of the secular imperiality of Augustulus, A. D. 479; instead of in the likeness of that of the Lamb-Horned dominion, founded by Charlemagne and Otho the First.

"In the first place, therefore, we subject the Cathari, the Paterini, the Poor Men of Lyons, the Passagini, and the Arnaldists (Witnesses clothed in sackcloth - ch. 11:3), to a perpetual anathema; and as some claim authority to preach ("buy and sell" without money or price, the Divine mission of the Saints - ch 13:7), although the apostle saith, 'How can they preach except they be sent?' all who venture to preach, either publicly or privately, without authority from the Apostolic See, or the bishop of the place, and all who dare to think and teach otherwise in respect to the sacrament of the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, or baptism, or the remission of sins, or matrimony, or the other sacraments of the church than the Holy Roman Church preaches and practices; and generally, all whom the Roman Church, or individual bishops in their dioceses, or the clergy themselves, when the seat is vacant, with the concurrence, if necessary, of the neighboring bishops, shall judge to be heretics, shall be bound with the same bond of perpetual anathema. All their harborers, and defenders, and all who yield them any patronage or favor, we consign to the same sentence.

But, who is the instrumental deceiver and wonder-worker causing the development and establishment of the Image? The Beast of the Earth. True. But the Beast of the Earth is an aggregate of powers almost coordinate; such as the episcopal or ecclesiastical, and the secular imperial. Which of these orders in the state was the wonder-working deceiver? Exclusively neither. The wonder-working consisted in the bitter and sanguinary conflicts between the Crown and Mitre, the two-horned symbol of the Romish Hierarchy; the result of which was the triumph of the Mitre over the Imperial Crown; by which the Hierarchy became in-dependent of the secular order of the dominion. This Sovereign and Imperial Hierarchy, capitalized by the Dynasty of the Popes, and known commonly as the Papacy, is the Image of the Beast.

The "charagma," then, is to be considered as something apart, and distinct from the name and number of the name of the Beast. History and public notoriety show, that all the worshippers of the Clerical Hierarchy are impressed with a Sign emblematic of their spiritual profession and operation, as soldiers to their emperor, slaves to their master, and devotees to their god. The fulfillment of this stands out palpably in the ecclesiastical institutions of the west. Boniface VIII., who ascended the throne of the Pontifical Image, A.D. 1294, declared in the decree "Unam Sanctam," that "it is essential to the salvation of every human being that he be 'subject' to the Roman Pontiff;" and prefixing thereto the words, "whosoever obeys not as the scripture declares, let him die the death." In accordance with this, both the secular priests and those of the monastic orders, took on themselves the vow of obedience, and received the Romish Sign upon their hands, in public token thereof. This is evident from the "Pontificale Romanum" p.49, (A.D. 1627) on the Ordination of Priests. "Tum Pontifex cum oleo catechumenorum inun-git unicuique ambas manus, simul junctas, in formam crucis;" that is, then the Bishop anoints both the hands of each of the catechumens, joined together "in the form of a cross:" and before handing them the cup and paten, or plate, "Producit manu dextra signum crucis super manus illius quem ordinat;" that is, he makes with the right hand "the sign of the cross upon the hand" of him whom he ordains. The soldiers of the papacy enrolled for the murder and extermination of "Heretics," were to wear upon their vesture the Papal Cross, from which sign they acquired the name of "crusaders." In the words of the fourth Lateran Council, "crucis assumpto charactere," the mark of the cross being assumed, the Pontiff-king, through his anointed priests, imposed the sign of his order upon all other classes of his subjects. All these without exception were compelled to receive it through episcopal confirmation and the clerical ordinance of infant sprinkling, or "rhantism," which the worshippers of the beast, absurdly enough, term "baptism!" - in which ordinances of the Apostasy, the sign of the cross is impressed upon the "forehead." This was to be the "charagma" imposed according to Canon 9, Sess. 7, of the Council of Trent, entitled "De Charactere;" that is, "Concerning the Mark;" which states the doctrine thus: "Si quis dixerit in tribus Sacramentis, baptismo, scilicet, confirmatione, et or-dine, non imprimi 'characterem' in anima, hoc est signum quoddam spirituale et indelebile unde ea iterari non possunt, anathema sit:" that is, if any one shall speak against the three sacraments, to wit, baptism, confirmation, and ordination, that the "Mark" should not be impressed upon a soul (this is a certain spiritual and indelible sign, whence they cannot be repeated) let him be accursed." "Character," in ecclesiastical Latin, is the equivalent of "charagma" in the text. On this Canon, Chemnitz, in his Ex. Dec. Conc. Trid., observes, "And perhaps God permits that they should contend so perniciously in defending the opinion of 'the mark' in confirmation and orders (he ought to have added 'in baptismo') that it may be manifested among whom that mark may be, and is found, of which much may be said." "Their chrism," says Junius, "by which in the sacrament of confirmation (as they call it,) they make servile unto themselves the persons and doings of men, 'signing them in their foreheads and hands:' and as for the sign left by Christ, and of the holy sacrament of baptism, 'they make it void.' For whom Christ joined to himself by 'baptism,' this Beast maketh challenge unto them by her greasy chrism; which he doubteth not to prefer before baptism both in authority and efficacy."

The particular custom in the premises was that of indicating the names of sevasmata, or objects of veneration, reverence, or worship, such as gods, emperors, masters, and so forth, by the numbers of their names; that is by the numerical values of the letters constituting the name, enigmatically represented by the sum total expressed in the ordinary way. This statement will be unintelligible to a mere English reader, seeing that the letters of the English alphabet of which our names are composed are destitute of numerical values. We represent numbers by Arabic figures, not by letters; while these were the common numerical signs of the Greek. Thus, a man’s name, or a god’s name, written in Greek, would not only indicate the man, or the god, but would represent a sum total when added up, which, when specified in letters, would not be the name itself, but the symbolic number, or enigma, of the name. Thus, the mystics of Egypt spoke of “the messenger of the gods,” or Thouth, under the number 1218 because the Greek letters composing the name Thouth, computed according to their numerical value, when added up made that total. The following example will make the matter plain, and easy to understand:

5. And in their mouth had been found no guile; for they are faultless in the presence of the throne of the Deity.

The Lamb and 144,000 are the Nave of the Deity opened in the heaven in which is seen the Ark of his testimony (ch. 11:19). "Yahweh Ail-Shaddai is the Nave, even the Lamb - ho Kurios ho Theos ho pantokrator, naos autes esti, kai to arnion (ch. 21:22). YAHWEH-AIL, or Kurios and SHADDAI, or Theos, constitute the Lamb. In other words, the Multitudinous Unity, indicated by Jesus in his prayer, that believers into him through the Apostolic word "may be one, as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be ONE IN us" (John 17:21). This unity is many individuals in One Body. This body when deified is the Nave, or Most Holy, as represented by the thrice uttered exclamation of the Four Living Ones, "Holy, holy, holy!!!" The Ark of the testimony is in this body when manifested in glory - "Christ the Head over all for the ecclesia, which is his body" (Eph. 1:22,23).

The truth, then, is the spiritual merchandise to be bought and sold without money or price. The Spirit and His agents, “faithful men who are able to teach others” (2 Tim. 2:2), are the sellers, and those who seek to understand it, are the buyers. The commodities they offer for sale, under the Divine commission contained in Apoc. 22:17, are tried gold, white raiment and eye-salve, with many gifts thrown in to induce pur?chase. The Apocalyptic advertisement is found in ch. 3:18, thus: “I counsel thee,” saith the Spirit and the Bride, “to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eye-salve, that thou mayest see.” All this is valu?able merchandise that has been freely offered to them who dwell upon the habitable now occupied by the Dragon, the two Beasts, and the Image of the Sixth Head of the Beast.

Having fallen by thousands in the streets of Babylon, where their blood has been drunk to intoxication by her "pious," "venerable," and "reverend," monster of iniquity, when "judgment is given to them," they reward her even as she rewarded them, and double unto her twofold according to her works; in the cup which she hath filled, they fill to her double. How much she hath glorified herself and lived deliciously, so much torment and sorrow they retributively inflict upon her (Apoc. 18:6,7). And when the work is accomplished, and done so thoroughly, that Babylon can be found no more at all, they "rejoice over her," saying, "Praise ye Yah! Salvation, and glory, and honor. and power unto the Lord our God: for true and righteous are his judgments for he hath judged the Great Harlot, who did corrupt the earth with her fornication, and hath avenged the blood of his servants at her hand. And again they said, Praise ye Yah! And the four and twenty elders, an:1 the four living ones fell down and worshipped the Deity who sat oil the throne, saying, Amen! Praise ye Yah!" Then, an approving voice responsive to this, issued from the throne occupied by David's Son and Lord, saying, "Praise our Deity, all ye his servants, and ye that fear him, both small and great." Nor does this exhortation fall upon ears "dull of hearing" what the Spirit says: for John saith, "I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunderings, saying, Praise ye Yah! for the Lord God the omnipotent hath prevailed. Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honor to him; for the marriage of the Lamb hath come, and his wife hath made herself ready" (Apoc. .19:1-7). I have here rendered the word ebasileuse, "prevailed," instead of "reigned." He reigns because enikese, "he has conquered;" and it is his conquest of Babylon the great multitude is celebrating. He reigns over Europe as the consequence of her destruction, in the consummation of which, "the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David conquers" to the complete opening of the Scroll, and the loosing of its Seven Seals (ch. 5:5).

When seen on Mount Zion their redemption had been perfected. "These had been redeemed, egorasthesan, from among men". If the redemption had not been complete, they could not have sung the song of redemption. The price paid for their redemption was the blood of the Lamb, by which they are constituted aparche, "an offering of firstfruits" for Deity and for the Lamb. Under the Law of Moses, the firstfruits were the New Fruits of the harvest of the land, offered in the form of Two Loaves, called "the Bread of the Firstfruits," fifty days after the waving of a single sheaf of the firstfruits on the third day after the Pass-over. In the antitype, Jesus risen from among the dead, is "the wave-sheaf of the firstfruits; and the New Converts to the faith preached by the apostles, "The Bread of the Firstfruits". Of this there is evidence in 1 Cor. 15:20, where Paul says, "Christ is risen from among the dead, and become the firstfruits of them who have been sleeping;" and in James 1:18, addressing the true believers of his day, he says, "Of his own will the Father of Lights begat us by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of Firstfruits of his creatures." By this we are informed, that all who are truly begotten by the Word of Truth are designed to be what Jesus became in being waved before the Father after leaving the house of the dead. The Word of Truth, or the Gospel, illuminates the understanding; so that when the enlightened are immersed into "Christ the Firstfruits," they are planted in the likeness of his death, in hope that they shall also be planted in the likeness of his resurrection; or become "firstfruits for the Deity and the Lamb" "the Bread of the Firstfruits," which can only be offered in the land promised to the Fathers, as indicated in the type (Lev. 23:9-21); and symbolically represented in this chapter of the Apocalypse.

The Angel who makes the memorial proclamation is symbolical of the royal priests of the Meichizedec Household. The Mosaic type required that the silver trumpets be blown by priests of the High Priest's family. But the priesthood being changed the Aaronic priests are ineligible for the sounding of this proclamation in midheaven. Hence, the priestly trumpeters have to be provided from another source; and there is no other source of supply but the saints and faithful in Christ Jesus, whom he has made kings and priests for the Deity. The proclamation is there-fore made by as many of the 144,000 as the work to be performed may demand. Among these will be the apostle John, as the representative of a class. In the tenth chapter he tells us that after he had digested the little scroll of judgment, the Spirit told him that he "must prophesy again before many peoples and nations and tongues, and kings". To do this he must rise from the dead, be judged, and quickened, when he will be fitted for the work. But it is too much for one man to accomplish in the short space allotted for the proclamation. Others of like qualifications wll therefore be associated with him in the work; so that it may be carried on in different countries at the same time. The apostles had their colaboring attendants and subordinates when they sounded the gospel trumpet in old time. In the new proclamation the same condition may obtain. Be this as it may, it is "those that escape," or the saved remnant, that are sent, as sounders of the Truth, to the nations that have not heard the fame nor seen the glory of Yahweh; and they shall declare His glory to the Gentiles (Isa. 66:19). This is the plurality represented by the Angel - one messenger emblematic of a multitude; as it is written in Psa. 68:11, "Adonai will give the word; those who bear the tidings are a great host."

The Babylon whose fall is proclaimed by the second angel, is the city consisting of ten parts, or kingdoms (ch. 11:13); whose Queen, as yet unwidowed, is the Mother of Harlots enthroned in Rome (ch. 17:5,18). This ch. 14:8, is the first place where the name occurs in the Apocalypse; but, as we have seen, not the first place where it is alluded to. In ch. 11:8, it is "styled spiritually Sodom and Egypt;" because its wickedness is equal to theirs; and the judgments decreed against it, as terrible and disastrous. She is as Sodom, for her fornication is raging; and as Egypt, for she has made all nations drink of its wine. Hence the plagues of the second angel in all the fierceness of the wrath of God.

This class of traffickers in the bodies and souls of men (and the sympathizers with the Papacy and "the Eternal City" are not the only class of traffickers in such wares) in the text under consideration, are the men "who worship the beast and his image, and receive a sign in their forehead, or upon their hand;" termed in verse 11, "the sign of his name". The calamity which befalls their "holy city" evidently fails to transfer their love and worship to the Lamb Power, or Stone of her destruction. They "weep and mourn over her," because her fall ruins their vested interests. Their mourning is not so much their love of the city and its body ecclesiastic, as of themselves. "Brother," said one priest to another, "what a profitable thing this fable of Jesus Christ has been to us!" This is the spirit of the craft - they weep and mourn, not because they discover that the Catholic superstition is a bald and wicked humbug; but because they can no longer utilize it to their own aggrandizement in wealth and power - "for no man buyeth their merchandise any more". This is the secret of their grief!

What, then, are the saints waiting for, and what do they believe in? In other words, what is their patience and faith as the Brethren of Christ? The answer is, that they believe in and are waiting for the slaying of Daniel's fourth Beast, the destruction of his body politic, and the giving of it to the burning flame; and for the giving of the kingdom, and dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven, to the people consisting of the saints of the Most High Ones (Dan. 7:11,27); and Apocalyptically exhibited in chs. 14,15.

The error in the translation is not for want of a grammatical knowledge of Greek; but because the translators when they render it correctly, can see no sense in it. In order, therefore, to make what they regarded sense, they repudiated the grammar, and gave to the verb in the singular, a noun plural for its nominative: by which process they are enabled to transmute it, as by the philosopher's stone, into "divinity" more Sound and precious than the gold that perishes!

Such are Zion's relations, domestic and foreign, social, civil, and spiritual, at the crisis immediately preceding the appearance of the Lamb and his company within her walls. Being assembled in the Valley of Jehoshaphat, and having laid successful siege to Jerusalem, they rifle its houses, ravish its women, and send half of its population into captivity, many of whom they sell to the Greeks for slaves at the vilest prices (Zech. 14:2; Joel 3:3). This prostrates Jerusalem in the dust, and fastens bands around the neck of the captive daughter of Zion. The uncircumcised and the unclean, then in possession of Tyre and Zidon, and the coasts of Palestine, are in high feather over their success. This will be truly the day of Jacob's trouble, in which there will be none to help, norany to uphold (Isa. 63:5; Jer. 30:7). But, Zion's extremity is her Redeemer's opportunity. "When," saith Moses, "he seeth that their power is gone, he will repent himself for his servants;" and saith Joel, "He will then be jealous for his land, and pity his people, who shall no more be made a reproach among the nations" (ch. 2:18,19; Deut. 32:36).

"And another angel came out of the Nave." This is the same form of expression as in the fifteenth verse. The word "another" in verse 15 implies, that the one sitting upon the cloud was an angel, or Messenger-Power, also. The angel of the seventeenth verse is, doubtless, identical with the symbolic Son of Man. This is to be inferred from the fact, that they both have possession, or command, of a sharp sickle. The power of the sickle is vested in the Commander-in-Chief, who executes, through his officers and brigades, the behests of the Supreme Power. In verse 17, the holder of the sickle is styled an angel; and "another" in relation to the one on the cloud, who reaps the harvest, because the situation of the sickling executive is changed.

Here is the acquisition of knowledge in the same way as the apostles acquired the power, or faculty, of setting forth the wonderful works of Deity in languages they knew nothing about. It will be a Pentecostian display of omnipotence - 144,000 "first fruits unto the Deity and the Lamb" newly created from the dust, singing the song of their redemption from the earth. They sing the song thus "learned" before their conflict with the Beast and his Image. This is intimated by the prophetic declaration "We shall reign on the earth." This they cannot do so long as the Beast of the Earth is unsubdued. Their reign as "kings and priests" is incompatible with the existence or ascendancy of the Latin Kingdom. If in the song they sing, they said, we do reign upon the earth, we should know that the scene on Mount Zion was not Pentecostian, and inaugural; but palm-bearing and victorious. As conquerors of the nations, they stand upon the crystal-sea before the throne, and sing the song of Moses and the Lamb (ch. 4:6; 15:2). They will then have subdued their enemies. But, on Mount Zion is their induction into office with right royal solemnity, preparatory to their executing the judgments assigned to the second and third angels, the reaping of the harvest and the treading of the wine-press.

3. And they sing the song of Moses, the servant of the Deity, and the song of the Lamb, saying, Great and marvelous are thy works, 0 Lord the Omnipotent Deity; just and true thy ways 0 King of the Saints!

John saw the Sign "in the heaven" - in the heaven of Antichristendom: for a portion of its wrath was poured out upon "the Sun," and a portion upon "the throne of the Beast," and a portion upon "the Air" (ch. 16:8,10,17). The governments of the world and their armies were to be primarily the subjects of its seven-fold sanguinary visitation; which, of course, would inflict much misery and oppression upon the peoples who had to bear the burdens of the wars.

It is clear from this testimony, that the restoration of the twelve tribes of Israel in our future is to be after the example of their ancient migration from Egypt under Moses; when "Yahweh led them through the deep, as a horse in the wilderness, to make Himself an everlasting and a glorious name (Isa. 63:12-14). Ezekiel testifies to the same thing, and cites the Exodus from Egypt, as the similitude of the manner of their deliverance from the long dispersion of the past. "As I live, saith Adonai Yahweh, I will bring you into the wilderness of the peoples, and there will I plead with you face to face. Like as I pleaded with your fathers in the wilderness of the land of Egypt, so will I plead with you, saith Adonai Yahweh" (chapter 20:33-36).

2. YAH (an abbreviated form of Yahweh) is my strength and my song

This important moral difference between the Tabernacle and the Nave is based upon the scrutiny of character which obtains, when "the dead are judged out of the things written in the books, according to their works" (ch. 20:12). This judicial scrutiny and award is in "the time of the dead" (ch. 11:18) which intervenes between the advent of the Ancient of Days and the appearance of the Lamb on Mount Zion with the 144,000. Those members of the Tabernacle, "who walk after the flesh," and who work lies, are purged out, as unworthy of being "clothed in pure and white linen, and girded with golden girdles"; for the Nave, or Most Holy Heavenly, is composed only of those "in whose mouth is found no guile; and who are faultless before the throne of the Deity". The judicial scrutiny finds them guileless; and they are accounted worthy to obtain the Resurrection-Aion, and equality with the Angel-Elohim, who have preceded them (Luke 20:33-36). Thus, their moral excellence as Christians is made the basis of their promotion to honor and glory; and to material or substantial identity with the Holiest of All.

It is evident, that something more is necessary for men, who go forth to plague, and conquer such a strong world of nations, as that by which the earth is now grasped, than an indestructible nature. They need to be girded with almighty power; and with righteousness and faithfulness: that being faithful and true, they may be enabled "in righteousness to judge and make war" (ch. 19:11).

The wrath of the Seven Golden Vials is not poured out in all its details by the Saints. The sixteenth chapter shows this. It shows that five vials are entirely exhausted, and much of the sixth, before the "One of the Four Living Ones," Christ and the Kings of the East, appear upon the scene.

Such will be the blessedness of the Firstborn of the nations. The brilliant and precious living stones of fair colors, the immortal constituents of the Bride, will be kings and priests in all the earth. The nations, freed from the dominion of thieves and robbers, and enlightened in the truth, which they will heartily believe, will be permitted to enter into the covenant of the Most Holy; and thus to be joined to Yahweh, and to become his people in fellowship with Israel. One economy, or administration, will rule the world in righteousness, all of whose nations, being justified by faith, will be blessed in and with faithful Abraham, as the gospel of the kingdom preached to him has long declared. There will then exist a world of enlightened nations, ruled by the ONE BODY in perfect harmony with the truth, or word then proclaimed from Jerusalem. This is "the world to come;" the future constitution of things upon the habitable, which no one is able to enter into until the Seven Plagues of the Seven Angels are fulfilled" (Isa. 54:11-13; Zech. 2:11; Gal. 3:7-9).

1. And I heard a great voice from the Nave, saying to the Seven Angels, Go forth and pour out the vials of the wrath of the Deity into the earth.

Under the patronage of the Pillnitz Coalition, "the Emigration" was making alarming progress. The two brothers of Louis XVI, the prince of Conde and the Duke of Bourbon, had protested against the king's acceptance of the Constitution, as he had no power to alienate' the rights of the ancient monarchy. This protest soon circulated through France, and produced a great effect upon their partisans. The officers left the army, the nobles abandoned their chateaux, and whole companies deserted, to enroll themselves in the anti-revolutionary regiments on the frontiers. Those who refused to emigrate were threatened with being degraded to the class of the people, when the nobility should return victorious. The Emigration was styled "External France," and was formed in the Austrian Low Countries, and in the neighboring electorates. The Counter-Revolution was openly prepared at Brussels, at Worms, and at Coblentz, not only under the protection of Foreign Courts, but even with their assistance. This fact identifies "the emigration" with the operation of the "Great Voice;" through the emissaries of which in the interior of France, it was enabled to combat the Revolution in its camp, and to foment civil war.

In consequence of this success, the French were placed on that side of the Alps which slopes towards Lombardy, and where the rivers from these mountains flow down to join the Po. Napoleon, who soon convinced the world that he was a Man of Destiny, by the victory of Monte Notte and its immediate consequences, opened a highway from France, through the kingdom of Sardinia, into the Austrian possessions in Italy. The Austrian power was at that time the pillar and support of the temporal and spiritual power of the Pope in Italy the strong defence of the Papal States against the overwhelming inundation of the revolution, which in France had plucked up the Latin superstition by the roots. The decree of the French Directory was on record for the total ruin of the Pope and of his power, both spiritual and temporal; but this feat could not be executed while the British ruled the sea; and her allies, the Aust-nans, occupied Lombardy; and their confederates the Italian Duchies, Venice and Naples. These image-worshipping powers had therefore to be laid low in the dust, ere the Sans Culottes could reach the Pope to give him a foretaste of what awaits him in the current epoch. Hence the reason why the third vial judgments occupy their position in the prophecy. The fifth vial could not be reached until the work to be done in the third and fourth was thoroughly performed. Napoleon Buonaparte, a youth of twenty-six, and a small and ill-appointed army of hungry Sans Culottes, constituted the contemptible force with which the Seven Spirits of Deity commenced the enterprise of cutting up the formidable, well-disciplined, numerous, and ably-commanded armies of the Beast; of scattering them like chaff before the tempest; and of rolling off his Image-protecting power beyond the passes of the Tyrol.

"And there ensued a grievous and malignant ulcer upon the men who have the sign of the beast, and who do homage to his image". In the natural body, an ulcer is an open, running sore, resulting from local inflammation, or constitutional irritation,~more or less intense. In its formation, it is attended with (~eat, redness, pain, and swelling, which result in a solution of the continuity of the part, or an open sore; which often, if malignant, eats away the flesh, and lays bare the bones. Such is the figure used in the text illustative of the effect of the hot, fiery, painful, and swelling indignation of the Deity poured out from the vial of the first angel upon the men of the Body Politic, to which the Sign and Image of the Beast belong. In the first epoch of the French Revolution, it became the subject of a high degree Of irritation, which progressed rapidly into an intense and burning inflammation, which ulcerously destroyed the organic constitution of the State. No great popular revolution has ever been accomplished, nor ever will be, without the infliction of misery, and the commission of excess which makes humanity shudder. This misery and excess in all their ramifications and operations in relation primarily to the French people, and secondarily, to those other people whom they invaded, and among whom they introduced their disorganizing, and sanguinary revolutionary policy, is represented by the "grievous and malignant ulcer" of our text. The history of the period from May 5, 1789, to the August 4, of the same year, a short period of three months, is full of the most important transactions; and showing that had the Revolution not been opposed by the French Court, nobility, and clergy, all interested in maintaining abuses in church and state, it would have been less prompt and less complete. Each refusal by these to yield to the demands of the Revolution, became for it the occasion of new successes, it overthrew intrigue, resisted authority, triumphed over force, and by August 4, the whole edifice of absolute monarchy in "the Tenth of the Great City" had been shaken by the mismanagement of its supporters. The 17th of June, by a memorable decree of the Commons, annihilated the three orders, and changed the States General into the National Assembly . The royal sitting of the 23rd of June, at which Louis XVI. quashed all its resolutions and imperiously, but ineffectually, commanded the Orders to resume their original position, the moral influence of the crown was lost. The 14th of July, the date of the destruction of the Bastille, terminated its material power; the Assembly inherited the one, and the people the other; finally, the 4th of August, when all privileges were abolished by "a Saint Bartholomew of abuses," the first epoch of the Revolution was completed; an epoch conspicuously detached from the others, in which the seat of power was displaced, and all the preliminary changes were effected. The epoch which followed is that in which the new order of things is discussed and established, and in which the Assembly, after having been destructive, became constituent. This assembly terminated its own existence, September 29, 1791. It accomplished in two years "the greatest revolution which a single generation of mankind ever witnessed". In the midst of its labors it put down despotism and anarchy, by defeating the intrigues of the court, the high clergy, and nobility, and maintaining the subordination of the people. But its successors, the National Legislative Assembly, did not apply itself in the consolidation of the work already done; and the Revolution, which was Divinely commissioned to subvert the monarchy under its auspices entered upon its republican phase, in which the "grievous and-malignant ulcer" broke forth in all the hideousness of carnage and corruption.

The portion of wrath committed to the Angel of the Sea began to be poured out in Holland on the landing of the British there, Feb. 26, 1793. It continued to pour concurrently with the third, fourth and fifth vials, for twenty years, with no intermission save the brief and deceptive peace of Amiens in 1802.

While these things were transacting, Napoleon had resumed with much zeal the preparation of a maritime expedition against England. At the opening of the year 1805, a flotilla of two thousand small vessels, manned by sixteen thousand sailors, capable of carrying an army of a hundred and sixty thousand men, nine thousand horse, and a numerous artillery, was assembled in the ports of Boulogne, Etables, Vimereux, Ambleteuse and Calais. It was at this portentous moment, when the vulture was ready to pounce upon his prey, that Napoleon was roused from his recovery by the startling announcement that all the forces of the Austrian monarchy to the number of two hundred and twenty thousand men, were in motion; and that a treaty had been signed on the 11th of April between Russia and England, in which they bound themselves to use their utmost exertions for forming a general league of the States of Europe, for the purpose of putting a stop to the encroachments of the French government, and the securing of the independence of the different states. Two Russian armies were also preparing to join the Austrians, consequent upon this third coalition organized by England against France.

The occasion of this disaster to the Pope was his sympathy with heretical England, then campaigning against the French in Spain, a diversion to their arms, which afforded Austria another opportunity of trying to restore the shattered fortunes of the Beast's kingdom. This obstinate and determined champion of the Image, seized the opportunity of Napoleon's absence and that of his army in Spain, and determined to make one more powerful effort for the reestablishment of the old order of the European world. A hundred and fifty thousand worshippers of the Beast's Image were marched into the field of blood and fire, and began the campaign in the spring of 1809. The Tyrolese rose in rebellion; king Jerome Buonaparte was expelled by the Westphalians; Italy was wavering, and Prussia was only waiting a reverse in the fortunes of the Great Emperor once more to take up arms. The campaign of the fifth vial commenced on the 18th of April. On the 22nd, the French and Austrians met in long and obstinate conflict at Eckmuhl. The slaughter was great, and the darkness of night alone rescued the Austro-Beast's forces from ruin. After this, Napoleon advanced rapidly upon Vienna, the city of the Beast's Dragonic Mouth (ch. 13:11; 16:13), the Imperial Aulic Council - into which, on the 10th May, he once more entered as a conqueror. As Napoleon used to say, "the hand of God leads my armies . This was true; they were so led, until the mission marked out for him Apocalyptically was accomplished. On the 5th of July, the Austrians stationed at WAGRAM, were surprised and disconcerted by the appearance of the whole French army in order of battle. Next day at sunrise, the contest began, and continued till night. The result of the re-newal of the battle was the dispersion and almost ruin of the Austrian armies, and the reduction of the Pope's Protector to a forlorn and hopeless condition. Austria sued for peace, which was granted, and signed at the palace of Schoenbrunn, the headquarters of Napoleon.

Seven thunders, styled "Coalitions," were organized against the French by the Powers of the world. These, however, were not the Seven Thunders whose utterances John was commanded not to write. The former were only the shadows of the future coalitions that will be formed against the King of the Jews, for the like purpose for which they were formed against the Emperor of the French, as being "the enemy and disturber of the tranquillity of the world, and hostile to its civil and social relations". Napoleon and Jesus Christ are both chargeable with this hostility. The tranquillity of the Beast and his Image, and the perpetuity of their dynastic, civil, and social, institutions and relations, are doubtless highly desirable to all who profit by them. But, it is contrary to the Divine purpose that the wicked be at peace. The Deity hath decreed that there is no peace for them. It is only to the righteous that abundance of peace is promised. He therefore raised up Napoleon, and strengthened him by His power; and hath raised and exalted Jesus, and made him strong; and will send him again into the world under the sixth vial, to take peace far away from the worshippers of the Beast's Image; and to destroy them and their institutions, by "the energy whereby he is able to subdue all things to himself". Coalition after coalition will, doubtless, be formed against him; but, they will only serve, as under the third, fourth and fifth, vials, to bring their hosts up to the field of slaughter; that they may be "tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb".

Again; - "The destruction and distress which marked the countries through which the French army fled from the bloody fields of Leipsic were altogether indescribable. Dead bodies covered the roads. Half consumed French soldiers were found in the ruins of the villages destroyed by the flames. Whole districts were depopulated by disease. For a month after the retreat no human being, no domestic animal, no poultry, nay, not even a sparrow was to be met with: only ravens in abundance were to be seen, feeding on corpses".

Such is the prophecy of the Sixth Vial. The reader will perceive that it divides itself into four sections. First, into the prophecy concerning "the Great River Euphrates;" second, into that concerning the Frogs; third, concerning the Advent and those specially related to it; and fourth, respecting the place into which the Powers that be are gathered for the conflict. This being the order in which its parts are presented in the text, I shall proceed in the exposition, to expound it, in what may be termed, its natural order, and distinguishing its divisions by separate "Parts".

Such is the prophecy of the Sixth Vial. The reader will perceive that it divides itself into four sections. First, into the prophecy concerning "the Great River Euphrates;" second, into that concerning the Frogs; third, concerning the Advent and those specially related to it; and fourth, respecting the place into which the Powers that be are gathered for the conflict. This being the order in which its parts are presented in the text, I shall proceed in the exposition, to expound it, in what may be termed, its natural order, and distinguishing its divisions by separate "Parts".

But, what marks the consummation? That which is expressed in the words, "when he shall have accomplished to scatter the power of the people of the Holy Ones" (Dan. 12:7). At the time of this writing, February, 1868, this "consummation devoutly to be wished," has not arrived. How many weeks, or months, or years beyond the current year of the time appointed, yet remain to be consumed in waiting I know not; but, it would seem impossible that it can be long. Of this, however, we may be certain, that the consummation, as signalized by the coming of Christ, will transpire under the outpouring of the wrath of this sixth vial. This is plainly and clearly revealed in this sixteenth chapter. The consummation is also indicated by the phrase, "that determined shall be poured out upon the Desolator". This would seem to declare, that the consummation will be when all determined against the Desolator shall have been poured out. But, how long is this outpouring to last? Who can tell? When did the outpouring begin? This is the question to be determined now.

The progress and successful issue of the Greek insurrection is well known. This result was favored by an eruption of the Persians into the Asiatic provinces of Turkey in 1821 and 1822, when the Turks were subjected to heavy loss. The Greeks held the country in the Morea, while the Turks were shut up in the fortresses; and a Turkoman army of 30,000, that entered to reconquer it, having been destroyed in detail in1823, the freedom of the Peninsula was nearly completed by the insurgents. The insular Greeks were attended by almost uniform success in their maritime encounters with superior Turkish and Egyptian fleets, especially in their victorious engagements of September, 1824, in which the Turks lost twelve frigates, twenty brigs, and more than eighty transports. At length the sympathies of the European Babylon were awakened in their behalf, by the dreadful massacres perpetrated by the Turks, who spared neither men, women, nor children, in their terrible and remorseless warfare. In the Morea, Ibrahim Pasha being successful in reaching Patras, indulged in the indiscriminate slaughter of the inhabitants, and in the commission of irreparable and wanton devastation, by destroying the olive-trees and vineyards, and other productions of the soil. At this crisis, the tide of success seemed to be turned in favor of the Turks by Ibrahim's Egyptian government, which had almost completed the reconquest of the Morea. But, the decree of Heaven was against the Euphratean power; and the prophecy which the Greeks could not accomplish singlehanded, England, France, and Russia, in contravention of all their principles of policy, interposed to fulfil. Their friendly mediation between the belligerents being obstinately and persistently rejected by the Sultan, they determined to put a stop to his butcheries by force. They sent a fleet of twenty-six sail to Navarino, where they found the Turco-Egyptian armament of seventy sail drawn up in order of battle to receive them. The allies sought to avoid a conflict by friendly conference with the Turkish admiral; but the messenger was wantonly put to death, and a shot of defiance sent booming at the Asia, an English ship of the line. The salutation was promptly returned, and in a little time the action became general. The bloody and destructive bat-tle raged for four hours, and the scene of wreck and devastation was such as has been rarely witnessed. Sixty-two of the seventy Turkish vessels were burnt, sunk, or driven on shore complete wrecks. On board of the two line of battle ships, each with a crew of 850 men, there were killed, in one ship, 650, and in the other 400. The loss of the English and French was 118 killed and 341 wounded. Thus, in 1827, Greece was saved, and erected into a kingdom under the protection of the Allies; and by the destruction of the Turkish fleet, the way was prepared for other disasters, which quickly followed upon the devoted empire.

Out of these three several political centers, three unclean spirits go forth whose resemblance is like to Frogs. There were not three unclean spirits out of each mouth; but only one out of each, making three in all. The unclean spirits are "spirits of Daemons". Of the number of the daemons, no hint is given whether they are many or few. Half a dozen or more daemons operating upon the Dragon, Beast, and False Prophet, only excite the outflow of an unclean spirit from each, which is characterized by a symbol, representative of the power whose wonder-working daemon causes the mouth to speak. The Spirit of the Dragon, the Spirit of the Beast, and the Spirit of the False Prophet are "unclean", or unholy; and in their operation after the advent, directed against that which is holy and true, even against "the Deity who is Almighty". They are the spirits which cause the Beast and the kings of the Earth and their armies to gather together to make war against him that then sits on the white horse, and against his army (ch. 19:11,19; 17:14). The spirits themselves are sanguinary and warlike policies, through which the governments indicated breathe out threatenings and slaughters against their adversaries. These policies are generated in the minds of cabinets by the diplomatic influences therein developed. The influence that gains the ascendant affirms the policy that rules, and becomes the spirit of the executive or mouth. When it speaks it proclaims war, and puts in operation all the machinery necessary to carry it into effect.

3. In the sixth century, 46 of the prophecies of Nostra Damus (p.251) translated by Garencieres of London, 1672, occur the following lines:

But the artful policy of these powerful confederates against constitutional freedom, and the happiness of mankind was doomed to a rude and potent shock in 1830. In the words of Journal des Debats, "it seemed that the volcano which closed in 1815 was beginning to emit flames againt". The first Napoleon spoke truly when he said that the princes of the House of Bourbon were all imbecilles. Their subserviency to the "Holy Alliance," and the decline of French influence in Europe, disgusted all parties with their rule. The revolution rose against the government, and routed it at the barricades. Charles X, the representative of the Elder Branch of the Bourbons, fled to England, and Louis Phillippe was accepted as the "Citizen King of the French", in his stead. But, though there was more of the principles of '89 in this dynasty, it was still Bourbon. The fleur de lis was still the master of the situation; and, as time has proved, not the power to execute the mission of the Frogs. The younger branch of the Bourbons reigned eighteen years, in which various revolutionary attempts were made to destroy its citizen representative. In all this period the French had as much constitutional liberty, perhaps more, than they knew how to enjoy. Property was protected, life was safe, and ample scope afforded for money making, and profitable investment of capital; all of which, in all countries, affords much satisfaction to the middle classes, the bourgoisie, who imagine that the world was made for their especial profit and convenience. This, however, is a great mistake. The Bourbon kings had helped to dry up the Great River Euphrates; and the time had come in 1848 to direct French influence and power towards other objects. To elaborate these, it was necessary to remove the Bourbon Lilies and to bring a more revolutionary agency upon the stage The Bourbons forgot nothing and learned nothing. Their sympathies were all with the stagnant past by the malaria of which they had become "imbecile". The spirit of the age is "the Spirit of life from the Deity that entered into the two unburied dead prophets" (ch. 11:9-11 - in 1789). This is a restless, revolutionary, progressive, spirit, essentially hostile to the papacy, priestcraft, and all the governments that sustain them. This spirit was widely diffused among the people of Europe in 1848 (§) but intensely active in France, Italy, and Germany. In France especially, the volcanic fires broke out for the third time with a fury, which all the strength and policy of half a dozen forms of government during a period of sixty years, had failed to quench. In this "wonderful year," the throne of the "Citizen King," which had been set up by a ruse played off by Lafayette upon the revolutionists of 1830, was leveled to the ground; and the fleur de lis indignantly trampled in the dust. There was a general rising of the people throughout Europe against the governments which oppressed them; and every throne tottered to its foundation. In France, the kingly form of government was utterly repudiated; and the DEMOCRATIC AND SOCIAL REPUBLIC upon the basis of "Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality," established in its stead. Here was a revival of the Republic of 1793, founded upon the fall of the Bourbons, and subverted, or perverted, by Napoleon I. The battle was fought by the workmen in the streets of Paris; the victory was theirs: it was the victory of THE FROGS over the FLEUR DELIS. The dynasty represented by this flower was abolished; and the marsh people resumed their original Westphalian right of choosing the most notable frog among them for their ruler. But for four months their government and National Assembly were only provisional. During this time, it was practically the parliament and executive of the democracy throughout Europe. Under the influence of their favor Germany, Italy, and Hungary, become insurgent. The earth shook on every side. Urged on by its democracy, Sardinia attacked the Austro-Italian element of the Little Horn; and provoked by the treachery of its Papal Eyes and Mouth, the democracy of Rome became insurrectionary, and so alarmed him, that he fled for safety to the kingdom of Naples. But Sardinia was not successful. By the defeat at Novara, the Austrian became paramount in Italy. This alarmed the Parisian Frogs, who did not wish the False Prophet to be reinstated in Rome under Austrian protection. They determined, therefore, although Rome was in possession of a sister Democratic and Social Republic, to seize upon the Seven Hills and to get the pope into their own keeping. Hence, they drove out Mazzini and Garibaldi with their adherents; abolished the Roman Republic; and re-established the Pope. By this move, they got possession of Rome, and the Frog-power became an element in the policy of the Beast of the Earth and his Prophet; so that any spirit going forth from their Mouths would have resemblance to the Frogs, whose policy might originate, or give it shape.

In the Herald of 1859, I remarked, "we are now waiting to see the Second Unclean Spirit of the Frog-Sign proceed out of the Mouth of the Beast in a declaration of war by Austria against Sardinia, and therefore against France. France has created the present crisis as she did the first under the inspiration of various collateral influences; but we do not expect the declaration of war from Paris. And it is extremely probable that, before this June number is received, war will be renewed". And so it came to pass. War was proclaimed by the Imperial Austrian Mouth of the Beast against Sardinia. On this occasion, the following words found utterance from this Mouth: "The second French empire," it said, "is about to realise its long-cherished ideas; for the Throned Power in Paris has informed the astonished world, that political wisdom will replace those treaties which have so longed formed the basis of European inter-national law. The traditions of the first Napoleon have been resuscitated, and Europe is not ignorant of the importance of the struggle which is about to begin".

Tried then by this rule, we know that the whole clerical hierarchy of "Christendom" so called, are false prophets in the clothing of sheep, animated by the spirit of error, and deceivers of the people. They speak to the edification, exhortation, and comfort of all men, who, through ignorance of the Word, are unable to discern between good and evil, the false and the true. But, to those of knowledge, wisdom, and spiritual understanding in the Truth, they are an "abomination of the earth;" more especially that section of clerical false prophets, having "the sign of the Beast's Name in their right hand, or in their foreheads" (Apoc. 13:16; 14:11), and who minister before the worshippers in the Latin service of the Daemonials. The Chief of this Pseudoprophet Body is the Spiritual Allocutionist, commonly styled the Pope. He is the Mouth-piece of the Beast's false prophets; the "Holy Father" of their Latinity.

From the foregoing illustration of the Frog-Sign in relation to the Mouth of the Dragon, it will hardly be regarded as presumption to say that the exposition I have given is the only true one that can be given. Nc other writer on the Apocalypse ever caught a glimpse of its signification. Mr. Elliott, who revised his State Church Exposition of the Apocalypse. in the time of the origination of the Frog-Sign, and therein devoted forty-one octavo pages to "the Three Frogs;" although he admits that the Frogs were the original symbol of the French power; and republishes from French, German, and English sources, the heraldic illustrations I have transferred to these pages; yet he sees nothing particular in it. He says he hopes that it may "not be England's sad fate to act the part of the chief secular power employed by the three Spirits to head their gathering of the world's powers to the last great anti-gospel war of Armageddon. Rather perhaps France, 'the eldest son of the church,' may be the country called to that bad preeminence. Signs have not been wanting ever since the peace of Paris (in 1814) of the strong unvarying tendencies of France towards such a position in its foreign policy and proceedings

This Perfect man comes into Babylon the Great as a thief. A thief gets into the house as quietly and noiselessly as possible; and chooses a time when he supposes all the inmates are fast asleep, and consequently off their guard. Having opened a door, or effected an entrance of some sort, he prepares to carry off the spoil. All his preparations for this are done with great caution and carefulness, so as not to awake the sleepers; from whom, the little light he employs is averted, lest its stimulus should disturb their slumbers. This is as a thief comes, and exactly illustrates the coming of the "One like to a Son of Man". He does not come into Babylon like a descending balloon from the clouds, with all eyes fixed upon him, and wondering where he is going to alight! A thief does not come after this fashion.

But they who are truly "watching and keeping their garments" are blessed in that they see "the Sign of the Son of Man in the heaven," by which they are warned to trim their lamps with "the knowledge of the Deity's will, in all wisdom and spiritual understanding," that, when his arrival is announced, they may go forth to meet him with all confidence and joy. They are "blessed" in being able thus to stand before the Judgment Seat of Christ, in the wilderness of Teman; but more blessed still will they be when the account they are able truthfully to render of themselves is accepted and approved; and they are pronounced by the Judge to be the blessed of his Father (Matt. 25:34); and are exalted to be sharers with him in his joy (Matt. 25:21). In this exaltation they will have attained to that perfected blessedness to which they were called in the gospel of invitation to "the marriage supper of the Lamb" (Ch. 19:9). Being adopted, by the transforming power of the Spirit, as constituents of the Perfect Man, they are "blessed and holy:" not blessed only, but holy likewise. "Be ye holy in all manner of conduct: because it is written, Be ye holy, for I am holy". This was their character in the days of their flesh; but, being now participants of the Perfect Man, they are the holy, in the sense of the incorruptible and immortal "Firstfruits" of the resurrection. On them, the Second Death will have no power; but they shall be priests of the Deity and the Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years (Ch. 20:6).

But these passages in context also show, that the Spirit in Son of Man, or One Angel, apocalypse, will not be in Jerusalem during the siege and capture of the city: for when it is in the hands of the enemy, he then "goes forth and fights against the assembled nations, as when he fought in the day of battle" he goes forth from Teman, and having been victorious at Botzra, "he stands upon the Mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east," and also before and above the Valley of Jehoshaphat.

6.And I saw the woman intoxicated by the blood of the saints, and by the blood of the witnesses of Jesus: and beholding her, I marveled with great astonishment.

21."And great hail as of a talent weight descended out of the heaven upon the men: and the men blasphemed the Deity, because of the plague of the hail; for the plague of it is exceedingly great".

3. For she hath caused all the nations to drink of the wine of the raging of her fornication; and the kings of the earth have fornicated with her; and the merchants of the earth have become rich through the potency of her voluptuousness.

But it was "hereafter to ascend," mellei anabainein, out of the abyss; that is, at a time subsequently to John's vision. Having arisen, and continued its appointed time, or aion, it is to "go away into perdition". When this perdition is consummated, it will then be "the beast that was;" and then also, "the beast that is not, although it is" to be when John saw.

His mission demands the possession of great power, which, indeed, shall be omnipotent; for, as Isaiah sets it forth, "he bringeth down them that dwell on high, he layeth the lofty city low; he layeth it low even to the ground; he bringeth it to the dust. The foot shall tread it down, the feet of the poor, and the steps of the needy" (ch. 26:5). He hath also to "raise up the Tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved of Israel and to be a light to the nations for salvation to the ends of the earth" (Isa. 49:6).

The Deity having called to mind her iniquities, the cause of her drunkenness, and abominable idolatries and profligacy: and the time allotted for preaching the Aion-Tidings of good, and their acceptance, fulfilled; the "other voice from the heaven" commands the commencement of hostilities against Babylon, in the words "Render to her as also she has rendered to you, and double to her twofold according to her deeds: in the cup which she has mingled, mingle for her double. How much she hath glorified herself, and lived profligately, so much torment and sorrow give her; for in her heart she saith, 'I sit Queen, and am not a widow, and sorrow I shall not see at all'." If the reader know the history of the Roman Ecclesiastical State, the Great Harlot, in her dealings with what her murderous and adulterous thieves, termed clergy and priests, stigmatize as "Heretics;" he will be aware of the "torment and sorrow" they have inflicted upon the saints, and upon Israel, and upon all the friends of civil and religious liberty, they have been able to shut up in their loathsome dungeons. This torment and sorrow appreciated, if he double it, he will then be enabled to form some feeble idea, far short of reality, of the terrible retribution and vengeance to be poured out upon the Satanic Hierarchy of the Seven Hills.

But to the Hallelu YAH of our sixth verse, the voice of the great multitude, and the voice of the many waters, and the voice of the mighty thunderings do not prefix "Amen". Theirs is the utterance of the Hallelu YAH of the first time. There are no thunders connected with the "AMEN; Ha/lelu YAH;" for all that succeeds this celebration is "Glory to the Deity in the highest heaven, over the earth peace and good will to men". The Hal/elu YAH of the first time not only celebrates the ruin of the great harlot, and the prevailing of the Omnipotent, but gives the reason why they, the "heaven, and the holy apostles, and prophets" slain by her, are able to respond to the exhortation to "rejoice over her". They say, "we can rejoice and exult, and we have given the glory to him; for the marriage of the Lamb hath come, and his betrothed hath made herself ready And to her it hath been given that she may have been clothed with fine linen pure and resplendent; for the fine linen is the righteous actions of the saints". All this had been done in Teman, and before the Bride had been established upon Mount Zion. It is true that the English Version reads differently. It renders the verb chairomen and agalliome-tha, and domen, as imperatives instead of subjunctives; and elthe, as a present instead of a past tense: and peribaletai, a clothing to be effected that "she should be arrayed". But this is all incorrect, and anachronistic. The betrothed had made herself ready by deeds of righteousness; on account of which she had been married or united to the Lamb, in being invested with the clothing of incorruption. This enabled her constituents, "the heaven, and the holy apostles and prophets" to rejoice and exult; and they needed not to be exhorted to "give honor" to YAR; for, as they say, "we have given the glory to him". Their investment with the fine linen of incorruption, as the reward according to their pure and resplendent works, was preliminary to judgment being given them for execution upon the Great Harlot and the ten-horned Scarlet Beast that carried her. They had been clothed, and had thereby been made invincible; but it was not until the occasion of the first Hallelu YAR celebration, commemorating the destruction of the Great Harlot, that the prowess of the Omnipotent YAH, in concert with His previously prepared Bride, was celebrated by the "much people in the heaven".

Luke's words in the Greek are edokoun pneuma theorem, "they seemed to themselves to behold a pneuma," or spirit. But this word pneuma is made to signify many things. Before me are over thirty applications of the word to things. Among them is given "the human soul after its departure from the body, a spirit". The Pharisees believed in such apneuma; but their opponents the Sadducees denied that there was any such thing (Acts 23:8). Apneuma of this sort was aphantasma or phantom of the popular mind of the first century, as it continues to be of the nineteenth. The Eleven did not see a disembodied human soul; but "they seemed to themselves to behold" some-thing equivalent to it, popularly styled "a ghost", orpneuma - a terrifying thing by which men, women, and children, have been scared in all ages.

Here then we have a complete army exhibited for the conquest of the nations, and the salvation of the Twelve Tribes of Israel the Lord Jesus Christ the Commander; "the called, chosen, and faithful" his brethren and companions, filling all the offices of the army; and the men of the Hebrew race the goodly soldiery of the kingdom. The heavenly hosts, or immortal saints, are "the heavens" ridden by the Ail of Yeshurun; while these heavens ride upon their goodly Hebrew horses to the destruction of all the governments of the world. An armament like this, in which every soldier of the ranks shall be able to "chase a thousand, and to put ten thousand to flight" (Deut. 32:30; Lev. 26:8) - an army of Samsons cannot but be invincible. It will be just the force the necessities of the situation demand- These soldiers of the king of Israel will not only be the goodly horses ridden by the Saints, but they will be the long, or far reaching, sword of their Commander, and his bow and arrow, battle axe, and new sharp threshing instrument with teeth. "I declare," saith the Spirit, "that I will render double to thee; when I have bent Judah for me, and filled the (Judah) bow with (the) Ephraim (arrow), and raised up thy sons, 0 Zion, against thy sons, 0 Greece, and made thee as the sword of a mighty man. And YAHWEH shall be seen over and his arrow (Ephriam) shall go forth as lightning and Adonai YAHWEH shall blow the trumpet, and his arrow (Ephraim) shall go forth as the lightning: and whirlwinds of Teman" (Zech. 9:13). And in Isa. 41:14, "Fear not thou worm Jacob, and ye men of Israel, I will help thee, saith YAHWEH, and thy redeemer the Holy One of Israel. Behold I will make thee a new sharp threshing instrument having teeth: thou shalt thresh the mountains, and beat them small, and shalt make the hills as chaff. Thou shalt fan them, and the wind shall carry them away, and the whirlwind shall scatter them: and thou shalt rejoice in YAHWEH, and shall glory in the Holy One of Israel". Such is the means employed for the fulfillment of Apoc. 16:20,21, by which we are informed, that "every island fled away, and the mountains were not found;" and that "there fell upon men a great hail out of the heaven, every stone about the weight of a talent" a plague of meteoric stones from the Hebrew hosts of the New Heaven that will be "exceeding great".

It may be well to remark here, that aionian punishment, is so called, not as expressive of its duration, but of its epoch of execution. The epoch of judgment is the forty years of the Seventh Vial, which precede the commencement of the thousand years. These forty years are the course of time, or aion, constituting the epoch in which punishment is inflicted upon resurrected individuals, and the living worshippers of the Beast and his Image. It is therefore styled aionian, or the punishment pertaining to the aion of judgment.

5. But the rest of the dead ones lived not again until the thousand years had been finished.

This is the epoch of the consummation of the mission of the Son of the Deity. In 1 Cor. 15:24, Paul styles it "the end, when Christ shall have delivered up the kingdom to the Deity, even the Father; when he shall have put down all rule, and all authority and power. For he must reign until He (the Father) hath put all enemies under his feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is Death. For He hath put all things under his feet (Psa. 8:6). But when He (the Father) saith, All things are put under him, it is manifest that He (the Father) is excepted who did put all things under him. And when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him (the Father) that put all things under him, that the Deity may be the all things in all".

"The hour is coming," saith Jesus, "in the which all who are in the graves shall come forth". This coming hour is Apocalyptically styled "The time of the Dead Ones that they should be judged". He informs us. that the all who are to live and come forth, will consist of two classes, characterized by their deeds in a previous life. The two classes come forth in the same hour; and are defined as "they who have done the good things;" and "they who have committed the evil things". These are all resurrected in the same hour; but they are nevertheless, not all the children of the resurrection; nor will they all be permitted to "live in the Aion". They all "come forth unto" something good or evil. Some of them come forth to a good thing a good thing which they have not got when they come forth. This good thing is styled by Jesus, "a resurrection of life". The resurrected good saints do not attain to this "resurrection of life," until he hath heard and judged them, and "quickened whom he will:" for he saith, "as I hear, I judge; and my judgment is just".

5. And he that sitteth upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he saith to me, Write: for these are true and faithful words.

The Apocalyptic banquet for the fowls of the midheaven, is the last period of judgment upon the worshippers of the Beast and his Image. The loud voice of the one angel calls them to the work of slaughter. Babylon having fallen, the work of the third angel has now to be executed upon her sympathizing survivors, the kings of the earth and their armies. John saw them already gathered in battle array; and he saw the fowls gathered who were to devour them - the ravenous birds of him who rides the goodly horse, and his hosts of the heaven. In the two concluding verses of this chapter, he informs us of the result of the conflict. The secular and ecclesiastical Organizations styled the Beast and the False Prophet, the European Constitution of the nations in church and state, is abrogated, and finally destroyed, in the burning fire, issuing as a fiery stream from before the Ancient of Days (Dan. 7:9,10): while the armies in the field are cut up and dispersed by the Israelitish Sword of the Mighty One, who continues the kingdoms of the world, but appropriates their diadems as the spoil of the victor (ch. 11:15).

Such is the consummation of the Divine purpose in the creation of the heavens and the earth. He formed it to be inhabited (Isa. 45:18): to be a tabernacle for Himself with men. He could, had it pleased Him, have created it perfect, and filled with immortal inhabitants, at the beginning. To have done this would have prevented all the crime and misery that blot and crimson the record of the past; but then the world would have been a characterless automaton; and unfit for association with the Governor of the Universe, whose attributes are moral, as well as intellectual and potential. He desired a society for our planet consisting of tried and faithful friends, such as Abraham, who loved Him better than his dearest son. He proposed to develop it upon the principle of belief in His promises and obedience under trial; and to crown the whole with incorruptibility and life. Having prepared such a society as this, and concentrated it from all ages and generations into one glorious community, He would then put His hand to the final completion of its dwelling-place, as he declared to John, saying, “Behold, I make all things new”. When these true and faithful words are fulfilled, “IT IS DONE”. Everything is finished by the Alpha Spirit, Who began the work in the week of days: and, as the Omega Spirit, the Beginning and the End, completed it in the week of thousands of years. The invitation to a participation in the sublime inheritance is liberal, and worthy of Deity, who saith, “I will give to him that is thirsty of the fountain of the water of life freely. He that overcometh, shall inherit all things, and I will be Deity to him, and he shall be to me a son”.

In answer to this question, I remark, that the Holy Jerusalem is a spiritual body corporate; that is, it is a community of people, every one of whom is spirit, or an incorruptible, deathless, and powerful, individual. Their nature, or bodily substance, is clean, pure, holy, and divine:

5. And there shall be no night there: and they shall have no need of a lamp and light of the sun: for YAHWEH Elohim illuminates them: and they shall reign for the Aions of the Aions.

p.351 The measurements of the New Jerusalem describe it as a perfect cube. The very size of it (Rev. 21:16) precludes it from being a literal city; every detail of the description illustrating a spiritual aspect of the multitudinous Christ, and, in fact, it is the Lamb’s Bride (v. 9). For example, her light is “like a jasper stone, clear as crystal” (v. 11), which stone is also representative of Christ (Rev. 4:3). Verse 12 declares: “the length and the breadth and the height of it are equal”, so that the city formed a cube of twelve thousand furlongs (or 6000 miles). This is obviously symbolical. The Most Holy was also cubical in shape (1 Kings 6:20), and as such foreshadowed the perfection of God manifestation. Paul describes the love of God as a perfect cube (Eph. 3:17-20), and this perfect love will be manifested when the Lamb’s Bride is revealed in all her beauty and glory. The ground area or surface of the New Jerusalem cube is divisible into 144 equal parts of one thousand furlongs each, pointing to the symbolic number of its citizens which comprise the component parts of the symbolic city (Rev. 7:4; 14:1). Further details of the exposition are outlined in The Christadelphian Expositor relating to The Apocalypse Epitomised — Publishers.

But the Eternal Power has a higher and grander purpose to be accomplished than that of geographical changes in the physique of Palestine, and filling the Dead Sea with fish. It is evident that more is signified in what was revealed to Ezekiel than this. The waters he saw came out of a holy place inaccessible to flesh and blood, and had healing properties. There must therefore be flowing with them a stream of healing power. Pour all the waters of the Hudson and the Amazon into the Dead Sea, and they would not heal it any more than the Jordan has been able to heal it, though emptying itself therein, ever since the days of Lot. Hence, the waters Ezekiel saw must be regarded in the light of the visible containing the invisible, whose existence is discerned by the supernatural and unwonted effects attributed to the visible stream. In other words, there is deep spiritual significance underlying all that Ezekiel saw, which was Apocalyptically exhibited to John in the present chapter.

The reader will perceive that I have rendered xulon zoes, which in the English Version, is expressed by the phrase, the Tree of Life, by the words a Wood of Life. The sound of this form of words is not so euphonious, but it is more in harmony with the mind of the Spirit, as will appear from what follows.

The kingdom of men under the Chaldean dynasty of Nebuchadnezzar is thus likened to “a tree in the midst of the earth, whose altitude was great. The tree grew and was strong, and the height thereof reached unto heaven, and the sight thereof to the end of all the earth: the leaves thereof were fair, and the fruit thereof much, and on it meat for all; the beasts of the field have shadow under it, and the fowls of the heaven dwelt in the boughs of it, and all flesh was fed of it”. In showing what this signified, Daniel told the king that it represented his power which had “grown and become strong; for,” saith he, “thy greatness is grown, and reacheth unto heaven, and thy dominion to the end of the earth”. The tree was hewn down. Its fall represented the king’s fall from the throne. The fair leaves of the tree shaken off, were the nobles and dignitaries of the kingdom detached from all political connection with Nebuchadnezzar during the seven years of his insanity.

p.353 Having then, destroyed the old race of kings, “them who destroy the earth” (ch. 11:18), the kingdoms of the world are transferred to the New and Holy Jerusalem. Her royal constituents become “the kings of the earth”, according to the promise of the Spirit, saying, “he that overcometh, and keepeth my works to the end, to him will I give power over the nations; and he shall rule them with an iron rod; even as I received of my Father” (ch. 2:26). Their glory and honor, and the glory and honor of the nations they have acquired by conquest, become tributary to the New Jerusalem; for these new kings, and the Great and Holy City, are the same. They are Zion’s kings, and their throne of empire is the architectural Jerusalem on Mount Zion, where David reigned. For this now desolate, captive, widowed, and barren city, they have a special and unfailing affection. Even now their words are, “If I forget thee, 0 Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy” (Psa. 137:5). But, when the day of their glory, honor, and power, is revealed, they show their affection in their policy towards her. They deliver her from her captivity under Gog; and, as the kings her nursing fathers, and their queens her nursing mothers, compel the Gentiles to bow down to her with face toward the earth, and to lick up the dust of her feet (Isa. 49:23).

But the Dragon and his angels were cast out of the political heaven, or Roman government, "and their place was found no more in the heaven;" nevertheless, in the last four verses of this chapter we find the Dragon in power, and exercising it vengefully for 1260 years against the woman, and making war with the remnants of her seed. How is this? It was the pagan constitution of power enthroned in Rome and Italy that was cast out, and has reappeared no more to this day. But after the battles of Adrianople and Chrysopolis all power over the Roman Habitable came to be vested in Constantine. He was the sole imperial bishop of the Dragon empire; which, by the revolution he had consummated, was transformed from the Pagan Dragon, into the Catholic Dragon, dominion. It is this Catholic Serpent and Dragon that figures in the concluding verses of this chapter, as well as in the thirteenth and twentieth chapters of the Apocalypse, which has no more to do with the Great Fiery Red Dragon after ch. 12:13.

Now, to what in our own times shall we liken the civil and ecclesiastical arrangement of things existing at the crisis of the woman's flight? The following constitution of things with which the reader is familiar, will answer the purpose of bringing vividly before his mind what was presented before John's in the dramatical exhibition of the woman in the wilderness. The British Imperial Unicorn is an element of the Serpent-power of the world. It is enthroned in all the splendor of the heaven; and sheds the rays of its glory and power upon all the constituted authorities of the state. Invested with this brightness is a Harlot, diademed with the jewels of the British crown. This woman is a daughter of "Mystery, Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots, and all the Abominations of the Earth;" and is constitutionally styled, "the Church of England and Ireland, as by law established." In the palmy days of the Tudors and the Stuarts, there was another woman, who fled from the face of the British Serpent. This was the woman of nonconformity and dissent. And to this fugitive were given the wings, or extremities, of the Great Unicorn; that she might fly into the wilderness, into her place, where she is nourished until the coming of the Ancient of Days. These wings are now known as the United States and British America. Here the Puritan Woman exists out of the sight of the British Serpent, fed by her spirituals, and nourished by "the earth," which is remarkably inimical to everything British. But, are the sects of which this Anti-British State-Church Woman is composed, "the remnants of her seed which keep the commandments of the Deity, and hold the testimony of the anointed Jesus?' Far, very far, from it; they are as far from it as the British Harlot herself; nevertheless, there will be found within the pale of Anti-British Harlotry a remnant, styled CHRISTADELPHIANS, whose intellectual and moral characteristics are answerable to the last clause of Apoc. 12:17.

They are intensely anti-catholic, and are, therefore, an ecclesiastical element of the anti-catholic woman; but they do not, therefore, recognize as Christians, the anti-catholic sects of "Christendom" so-called.

If Eusebius had restrained his fancy, and contented himself with saying, that the New Order of things was the shadow, type, or pattern, of the kingdom of Christ, there would have been little ground for objection. But "the very image of the kingdom of Christ", is that kingdom it-self; "the very image," being used by Paul in Heb. 10:1, for the reality of things shadowed forth, or typified. The kingdom of "the Michael and his angels" shadowed forth the kingdom of Christ, the real Michael, and his angels, the Saints. Constantine, like Cyrus, in his military career, and in his ecclesiastical relation to the Catholic Church, was a type of Christ. The typical hero established his kingdom in its fullest extent on the ejection of the pagan dragon from the heaven; Christ will establish his by binding the Catholic Dragon, and shutting him down in the abyss (Apoc. 20:2,3). The typical hero attained "to Deity and his throne;" Christ will sit down with Deity upon his throne (Apoc. 3:21). The typical hero acquired all the kingdoms of the Roman earth; Christ will acquire all the kingdoms of the globe (Apoc. 11:15). The typical hero ruled all the Roman nations with an iron sceptre; Christ will rule all the nations of the globe with an iron sceptre (Apoc. 19:15). The catholic clergy shared with the typical Michael the glory, honor, and power of his kingdom; the Saints will share with Christ the glory, honor, and power of his (Apoc. 2:26,27; 3:21). After his birth of the unprivileged and persecuted woman, the sun-clothed catholic church became the Spouse of the typical Michael; the glorified Saints become the married wife, or bride adorned for her husband, Christ (Apoc. 19:7,8; 21:2,9). The power of the Deity was with Constantine in measure; Christ is the great power of Deity without measure. Constantine established a new religion, the catholic; founded a new administration of affairs; and built a new capital, called Constantinople, or New Rome: Christ will establish a new system of worship for all nations, the Millennial; will organize a new government of the world; and establish a new capital for the throne of the Deity, Jerusalem rebuilt, in the midst of which he will be the glory (Isa. 56:7; Zeph. 3:9; Acts 17:31; Eph. 1:10; Jer. 3:17; Zech. 2:5; 8:21-23).

"And there was war in the heaven." "Wherever the scene is laid," saith Daubuz, truly, "heaven signifies, symbolically, the ruling power or government; that is, the whole assembly of the ruling powers, which, in respect of the subjects, or earth, are a political heaven, being over and ruling the subjects, as the natural heaven stands over and rules the earth: so that according to the subject is the term to be limited." The scene is laid in "the whole habitable of the Dragon;" hence "the heaven" in the prophecy signifies the whole assembly of the ruling powers of the Roman Dragon. This being the subject of the prophecy, the term must be limited to the official region of the Roman world.

By this declaration he constituted himself the Woman's champion against the Dragon, in all the Roman World; nevertheless, he had not yet announced himself as one of her sons. The real and precise date of Constantine's conversion to Laodicean Catholicism has been variously stated. Eusebius has ascribed the faith of Constantine to a sign alleged to have been displayed in the heavens whilst he was waging war against Maxentius. A contemporary writer affirms with the most perfect confidence, that in the night that preceded the last battle with Maxentius, Constantine was admonished in a dream to inscribe the shields of his soldiers with the celestial sign of God, the sacred monogram of the name of Christ - thus (Sign was a Capitol P with an X superimposed at the bottom); that he executed this command, and that his valor and obedience were rewarded by the decisive victory of the Milvian Bridge. But it is not easy to determine if this were a real miracle, or merely a "lying wonder." Probably it was the last. Be this as it may, the victory of the Milvian Bridge developed Constantine as the FIRST IMPERIAL SON OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH, commonly, but absurdly, styled, "the first Christian Emperor." Previous to that victory he was an usurper of imperial rank, unrecognized by the Roman Senate, and the Coming Man of the Catholic party; favoring its policy, but temporizing between them and their opponents. He was in the womb of his mother, but not yet born of her, as the chief ruler of the Roman nations.

The buildings pertaining to this God of Guardian Saints and Angels are styled by Daniel, "the Bazaars of the Guardians." The noun mivtzahr, is derived from the root bahtzar, which among other meanings signifies to enclose with a wall. As a noun betzer signifies ore of gold and silver, precious metals, store, or treasure so secured. Parkhurst has the following upon the word: "Derivative, Bazaar, a kind of covered market-place among the eastern nations, somewhat like our Exeter 'Change in London; but frequently much more extensive. Latin, or rather Punic, Byrsa, the Burse at Carthage;" equivalent to the French Bourse. In the English version, the phrase is rendered, "the most strongholds," with which those who compiled the marginal readings were not satisfied; and therefore they havetried to improve it by substituting the words "fortresses of munitions". Moses Stuart renders it fenced strongholds; and the foreign god he styles, "the god of strongholds; that is, the god that has power over them." He confesses, however, that verse 39 is "a difficult verse, which has occasioned many discrepant interpretations. " He refers to Lengerke, who, he remarks, "makes the fenced strongholds to mean temples, and the sentiment to be, that the tyrant will do for temples and their foreign gods the same thing that verse 38 says he will do in respect to the god of strongholds, that is, he will bestow many liberal presents upon them." As neither Lengerke nor Moses Stuart seem to see anything in Daniel (the last chapter, perhaps, excepted) beyond the times of Antiochus, some hundred and sixty years, or so, before the birth of Jesus Christ, their temples and "strongholds" have relation to "fortified strongholds of foreigners" attacked by Antiochus, and temples of idols. Lengerke has almost fallen upon the correct meaning. Had he referred the betzer, heemantively mivtzar, to the temples of "guardian saints" instead of to those of the pagan Greeks, he would have hit the mark exactly; but then, how could he be so uncharitable as to turn the "Holy Father" of Christendom so-called, into a foreign god, and all the ecclesiastical edifices of his bishoprick dedicated to the dis embodied ghosts of reputed saints, into Bazaars, or places of traffic in spiritual merchandise, and in "the bodies and souls of men!" (Apoc. 18:13).

The time, then, of this standing was the period of the Fifth Seal or the ten years preceding the development of Constantine, as the imperial chieftain of the anti-pagan party. The exposition of the Fifth Seal will be found in Vol. 2. p. 252. Its historical illustration shows the attitude assumed by the Dragon, and how that Sanguinary power deported itself towards her in its standing. The following extract from Gibbon will furnish an exhibition of the situation at the crisis of the Woman's delivery :

Peter, though a good man and devoted friend of his Master, was styled Satan by Jesus. He had told his disciples, that he must go to Jerusalem, and be killed, and be raised on the third day after. But Peter rebuked him, saying, "Be merciful to thyself, Lord; this shall not be unto thee." He could not endure the idea of such a catastrophe. But Jesus said to him, "Get thee behind me, Satan; thou art an offence unto me; for thou savorest not the things that be of the Deity, but those that be of men." Had Jesus been merciful to himself, as Peter advised, he would not have been "obedient unto death;" in the, event of which he would have frustrated the Father's purpose, incurred the fate of the first Adam, and failed in the dedication of the Abrahamic Covenant by which alone man can be saved. Peter's well-meant advice was adverse to the first and last of these things, and therefore as such an adviser, he was for the time a Satan to Jesus.

The Scriptures oftentimes connect the beginning and the end without taking cognizance of the interval of a multitude of generations and ages, or, if at all, only very slightly. Thus, in Psa. 74:12, the Mosaic salvation from Egyptian bondage, and the future Messianic salvation from the down-treading of the mystic Babylon, apocalyptically and "spiritually called Sodom and Egypt" (ch. 11:3), are so connected: as it is written, "My King of old is Elohim, working salvation in the midst of the earth. Thou didst divide the sea by thy strength." Then, predictive of what will assuredly come to pass, and befall the same Serpent-power in its latter-day manifestation, as apocalyptically displayed in the binding of the Dragon, it proceeds in verse 14 to state, "Thou bruisedst the heads of leviathan, and gavest him to be meat to the people inhabiting the wilderness." LEVIATHAN signifying "a serpent coiling himself in folds," is the Dragon of Apoc. 20:2; and embraces all the intermediate dragonic manifestations of previous ages and generations, which are the folds of his coil. The "heads of leviathan" are those apocalyptically exhibited. "The people inhabiting the wilderness" are the saints, and Israel after the flesh made willingly subject to them. "The wilderness" is "the two wings of the Great Eagle" where the fugitive woman was fed and "nourished for a time, times, and half a time from the face of the serpent," or, for 1260 symbolic days (Apoc. 12:6,14); and where John saw Leviathan as he will be seen by the discerning after the thief-like advent of the Ancient of Days (ch. 17:3).

5. The Tribunitial Head with consular authority, which continued till it was superseded by

"The Dragon," says Daubuz, "is a crocodile, a creature which is ranked among the serpents by Horus Apollo; and is called by the Arabians Pharaoh, and which was held by the Egyptians as the symbol of all mischief. And therefore Typho being, in their belief, the author of all evil, was supposed to have transformed himself into a crocodile, or dragon. So that the principle of all evil, or Typho, was in the symbolical character represented by a crocodile or dragon; and under this symbol was the said principle worshipped. Agreeably whereunto it the Chaldean theology the principle of evil was called Arimanius; that is, the crafty serpent, from 'aruwm, crafty, and nachash, serpent. "

What Paul feared, and to prevent which he was "jealous over all with a godly jealousy," was even then secretly at work, impregnating the Christian Eve with principles which in fruition caused her to give birth to a Cain, who has been murdering his brother Abel for fifteen hundred years. It was even then at work. He styles it "the Mystery of the Iniquity" - the secret principles of that lawlessness which would develop itself into the Lawless One, or Man of Sin - anthropos tes hamartia - THE MAN OF THE APOSTASY. The seed-germ of this man was already in the womb of the espoused. "The mystery of the iniquity is already effectually working," says the apostle in 2 Thess. 2:7. Yes, it was this working, which, in verse 9, he styles "the inworking of the Satan," gave him so much trouble, and caused him such great anxiety, as evinced in his epistles. The principles of the apostasy were being inwrought, as he informs us, "with all power, and signs, and miracles of falsehood, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish." So effectual and specious was this inworking that, as Jesus predicted, even the elect would be endangered (Matt. 24:24). How could it be otherwise when, as Paul said to the Star-Angel of the Ephesian section of the betrothed Woman, "Of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them" (Acts 20:30). These StarAngel men had been made overseers of the ecclesia of the Deity by the Holy Spirit. They were the apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers, who had been supernaturally qualified by spiritual gifts "for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ" (Eph. 4:12). With all the sanction of these gifts from the ascended Lord himself, they had been recognised by the flock they episcopized as the ministers of Christ. How unlikely therefore, that they would speak perverse things, and, becoming deceivers, rend the flock as grievous wolves, instead of feeding it, as they were exhorted to do by Paul. But, unlikely as it might seem, such was the fact. It is true that the Lord had bestowed upon them spiritual gifts; but these gifts did not act compulsorily upon those who had them. They did not compel them to speak only the truth, and to use them aright; they only qualified them so to do if they were disposed; but if, under the temptation of the flesh, they were indisposed, they could falsely teach, and speak perverse things, and misapply the signs and miracles they were able to work, to confirm what they said; for Paul says plainly that "the spirits (or spiritual gifts) of the prophets are subject to the prophets" (1 Cor. 14:32): the prophets were, therefore, responsible for the right use of them. They could abuse them, and many of them did, to the overthrow of the faith of those who heeded them.

A different destiny, however, is apocalyptically indicated for the woman espoused as a chaste virgin to Christ. She entered the imperial presence, but soon found that it was impossible to enjoy imperial favor and protection, and maintain her honor and allegiance to her Divine Husband in purity and truth. She therefore fled from the sunshine of royalty, and left behind her the Jezebel of her communion, to whom the meretricious blandishments of courts were altogether congenial.

2. The SECOND STAR was Tiberius Caesar, successor to Augustus. In the 15th year after being made the colleague of Augustus, "the word of God came to John the son of Zachariah in the wilderness;" and he began to preach. This was 483 years from the 20th of Artaxerxes, the beginning of Daniel's seventy weeks. John was aged 27; Jesus 26 years and six months.................... A.D. 26

The woman, or Laodicean Community, could not have been invested with a more appropriate symbol than "the sun," expressive of the imperial embrace, as well as of the particular emperor by whom she would be patronized. Gibbon informs us that Constantine had a particular veneration for Apollo, or the sun, to which Julian alludes in his orations. His words are, "The devotion of Constantine (while yet in embryo) was more peculiarly directed to the genius of the sun, the Apollo of Greek and Roman mythology; and he was pleased to be represented with the- symbols of the god of light and poetry. The unerring shafts of that deity, the brightness of his eyes, his laurel wreath, immortal beauty, and elegant accomplishments, seem to point him out as the patron of a young hero. The altars of Apollo were crowned with the votive offerings of Constantine; and the credulous multitude were taught to believe, that the emperor was permitted to behold with mortal eyes the visible majesty of that tutelar deity; and that either waking or in vision, he was pleased with the auspicious omens of a long and victorious reign. The sun was universally celebrated as the invincible guide and protector of Constantine; and the pagans might reasonably expect that the insulted god would pursue with unrelenting vengeance the impiety of his ungrateful favorite in his becoming a Laodicean Catholic. Diocletian had chosen Jupiter, and Maximinian, Hercules; but Constantine preferred the sun before all the gods of his fathers, as his guardian and protecting deity." When, therefore, Constantine came to occupy the Roman throne, and was manifested as Supreme Bishop of the Catholic Church, this Laodicean community might fitly be said to have been "invested with the sun."

This structural feature appears in the prophecy of the seventh vial itself. This is given in the last five verses of the sixteenth chapter; while the result of the whole is briefly stated in three words of the first of them "it is done!" It is done consequent upon the pouring out of the vial into the air. The mystery is finished. But this finishing results only when there is no more wrath to pour out upon the air. Before the end thus primordially stated is developed, the voices, thunders, lightnings, earthquake, and hail,must do their work upon the Great City, the cities of the nations, and their political islands and mountains. When these are all disposed of judicially, then, and not till then, will the consummation, primarily announced in the words "it is done" be established.

Nor is the alliance of Austria, Prussia, and Germany, the two horned beast of the earth, against Denmark, for the possession of Schleswig and Holstein, without significance in this eventful time of the end. It is a question pregnant with trouble ; and a necessary complication of a situation in which "the kings of the earth and of the whole habitable" will be engaged in an angry and sanguinary conflict, (This was written in 1866, before the Prusso-Austrian Italian campaign, so fatal to the influence and interests of the Papacy.) preparatory to "the war of the great day of AIL-Shaddai," when their thrones will be cast down, and the Ancient of Days shall sit. -- Apoc. 16:14; Dan. 7:9.

End of the "rest for a little season," when the "Despot Holy and True" avenges the blood of the souls under the altar, upon them that dwell upon the earth. A great earthquake inaugurates this day of vengeance. The woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, appears in the Roman Heaven invested with imperial dignity and glory. Her son, having triumphed over the Great Red Dragon, which sought to destroy him, becomes the sovereign ruler of the nations.

Next after the era of the Lutheran rebellion against papal authority came Mede, Jurieu, Cressener, Bossuet, Vitringa, Daubuz, Sir Isaac Newton, Whiston, and Bishop Newton. Mede first published his Clavis Apocalypltica in 1627, and his Commentary in 1632. He was regarded by his contemporaries in England as a man almost inspired for the exposition of apocalyptic mysteries. And assuredly in comparison of all his predecessors who had written upon the subject, lie was a great light shining into thick and incomprehensible darkness. In several important points he much advanced the science. He interpreted the prophetic periods on the year-day principle; made the resurrection and ascension of the witnesses an ascent to political eminence; made the Sixth Head under which John lived, the Imperial Caesars; adopted lateinos as the Beast's name and number, explained the sun of the fourth vial of the German Dynasty, as the chief luminary in the Papal Imperial system; indicated Rome as the throne of the beast upon which the fifth vial would be poured; interpreted the drying up of the river Euphrates of the exhaustion of the Ottoman power; and coincided with Justin, Irenaeus, and others of the earliest date, in the first resurrection, being the literal resurrection of the saints to be developed on Christ's coming to the Antichrist's destruction; after which the Millennium will be introduced. This is quite refreshing after all the absurdity to be waded through in the writings of fifteen hundred years.

In Daniel's four beasts, each succeeding beast absorbed the dominion of its predecessor; so that the Bear may be said to have devoured the Lion; and the Leopard to have swallowed the Bear; and the Ten-Horned Fourth Beast to have eaten up the Leopard; so that in the Fourth Beast would be contained the Lion, the Bear, and the Leopard, in addition to appendages peculiar to itself. This is shown by John in his Sea Monster, who shows the Leopard he had gorged in "his body," and the Bear he had devoured in "his feet".

In connection with these remarks he gives an engraving illustrating the reservation of the diadem to the Dragon, which was not assumed by the horns in their beginning. I conceive that the apocalyptic reason of this is found in the Dragon symbol of ch. 12. In this all the Seven Heads are diademed or sovereign; but the horns not. The idea then is this, that the horns were not to be diademed in their own absolute right, until the Seventh head had passed away; when the Romano-Gothic Sea Monster would stand before the world with Seven undiademed Heads and Ten Diademed Horns.

p.230 cording to the law; and gladly receiving Peter's word, to be immersed for the Name. They were now immersed believers of the things concerning the kingdom of the Deity and the Name of Jesus Christ (Acts 2:38; 8:12). Peter by the use of his Key had opened the door of the prison in which they were bound, and gave them liberty in loosing them from their sins: and what he had done upon earth was ratified in the heavens, according to the words of Jesus.

But, while all the people walk every one in the precepts of these "worshipful names" of the unmeasured Court of the Gentiles, "the remnant of the woman's seed, who keep the commandments of the Deity, and have the testimony of the anointed Jesus," will walk in the name of their God alone. First, believing "the truth as it is in Jesus," the Name of the Deity has been constitutionally placed upon them according to the command that all such believers be "immersed into THE NAME of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit" (Matt. 28:19; Mark 16:15,16; Luke 24:47; Acts 2:38; 8:12,16): and secondly, being taught to observe the all things the apostles were commanded to teach (Matt. 28:20), they walk in the name of the Deity as constituents of that name; having no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness; but, as the grace of Deity which brings salvation teacheth, they "deny ungodliness and worldly lusts, and live soberly, righteously, and godly, in the present world; looking for that blessed hope, and the appearing of the glory of the great Deity, and of their Saviour, the anointed Jesus" (Tit. 2:12). This is the Name which, in Ch. 13:6, is styled His Name the name of the Deity, blasphemed by the Name of Blasphemy upon the Seven Heads, and by all the other names which fill up the body politic of the Beast.

The Horns of the Sea Monster represent Ten Kingdoms established by the Barbarians of the Abyss upon all that Mediterranean territory conquered by them from the Roman Dragon. This appears from the testimony that "the Dragon yielded to him his power, and his throne, and an extensive jurisdiction" - ver. 2. In relinquishing it to the beast, he yielded them to his appendages, the horns and mouth as well.

The general description of this symbolized dominion is, that it has seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten diadems, and upon his head the Name of Blasphemy." These are few words, but they comprehend much of an interesting and important character. I shall take them in their order, and proceed to treat therefore of The Seven Heads of the Beast.

"According to the Jews," says Daubuz, "the abyss was a place under the earth, in the most internal parts of it, and was thought to be a great receptacle of waters as a reservatory to furnish all the springs or rivers. And this opinion was not only held by the Egyptians, Homer, and Plato, but also by some of the modern philosophers. And Seneca seems to be of the same opinion. And in this sense, the abyss symbolically signifies a hidden multitude of confused men."

According to the same principles, the Sand of the Sea, and the Sea itself may be rightly viewed in the chapter before us. The events in their accomplishment show that the signification of the Sea is both symbolical and literal. Daniel's vision of the ascendency of the Horns plalnly shows, that their manifestation was in connexion with the literal LATIN SEA, the Mediterranean. His words are, "the four winds of the heaven strove upon THE GREAT SEA." This was the name given to the Mediterranean, or Sea in the midst of the earth, by the Hebrews. He describes the four beasts that came up out of it, as four dominions: and in the interpretation, the Sea is styled the Earth; and the beasts arising out of it, are termed kings (Ver. 17,3). Compare the symbol in verse 3, with the signification in verse 17: thus, "Four beasts came up from the sea (upon which the winds strove); diverse one from another;" and now read the explanation, "These great beasts which are four are four kings which shall arise out of the earth". Now the fourth king was the "dreadful and terrible" one. He came up with his body, head, and horns Out of the Great Sea, in the sense of arising out of the countries by which the sea is almost enclosed as a lake. Here is a blending of the symbolical and the literal; and so, that in the interpretation, the symbolical is anchored to the literal; by which I mean, that we must not go away to the Baltic, and Atlantic, and German Oceans, to find the fourth beast and his heads and horns; but must confine our investigations to those countries which in the days of the prophecy had outlets upon the Great Sea.

Thus, Daniel's Fourth Beast commences its career with the Foundation of Rome, B.C. 753, and does not finish it until after the advent of Christ and the resurrection, of which long period 2,621 years are now in the past. It was predestined to "devour the whole earth, and to tread it down, and to break it in pieces" (Dan. 7:23). This is the extent of what is styled in Apoc. 16:14, "the earth and the whole habitable" - its territorial dominion in its amplest extent; and comprehending the countries represented by the dynastic sovereignties of the gold, the silver, the brass, the iron, and the clay, of Nebuchadnezzar's Image. This is the whole earth, and exhibits the reason why Britain, France, and Russia, elements of Daniel's Fourth Beast, have been so much occupied of late In China, Cochin-China, India, Mexico, Algiers, and Central Asia. These countries added to Europe, Turkey, and America, are "the whole earth" subdued to the authority of the Fourth Beast.

DIABOLOS represented the interests of "the Great Fiery-Red Dragon" in "the earth and sea" after his supersession by the Man-Child of Sin upon the "Seven Mountains." His principal agents after the fall of Maxentius, were Maximin and Licinius; the former the ruler of "the sea;" and the latter, of "the earth," as already defined. The "short time" Providentially allotted to him to exhaust his "great wrath" upon the woman-inhabiters of the earth and sea, was a period of twenty years from A.D. 312 to A.D. 324. This great wrath constituted the "WOE" upon them; and consisted in the persecution of Maximin, "the most implacable enemy" of anti-pagans; his war with Licinius; the persecution of Licinius; and Licinius' war with Constantine, when he led the forces of "the earth and sea" in the great and final conflict between the Michael and the Dragon - verses 7,8.

"The Paulician teachers were distinguished only by their (assumed) Scriptural names, by the modest title of fellow-pilgrims, by the austerity of their lives, their zealous knowledge, and the credit of some extra-ordinary gifts of the Holy Spirit. But they were incapable of desiring, or at least obtaining, the wealth and honors of the catholic prelacy; such antichristian pride they bitterly censured; and even the rank of elders or presbyters was condemned as an institution of the Jewish Synagogue."

But the proud hope of eradicating the faith and testimony of the remnant was speedily overturned by "the invincible zeal of the Paulicians," who ceased to dissemble, or refused to obey. After the death of Alexius, they soon resumed their civil and religious laws. In the beginning of the thirteenth century their head-quarters were on the confines of Bulgaria, Croatia, and Dalmatia, with which filial relations were maintained by the Paulician congregations of France and Italy. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries they found great favor and success in these countries, which Gibbon says, "must be imputed to the strong, though secret, discontent which armed the most pious christians (catholics) against the Church of Rome," now in the seventh century of its legal supremacy over all the spiritual affairs of the Great Roman Eagle. "Her avarice," he continues, "was oppressive, her .despotism odious; less degenerate, perhaps, than the Greeks in the worship of saints and images, her innovations were more rapid and scandalous: she had rigorously defined and imposed the doctrine of transubstantiation; the lives of the Latin clergy were more corrupt, and the eastern bishops might pass for the successors of the apostles, if they were compared with the lordly prelates, who wielded by turns the crosier, the scripture, and the sword."

This wonder-working of the Lamb-Horned Beast is said to be transacted "in the presence of the beast." This phrase is equivalent to that in the thirteenth verse, "in the presence of the men" - enopion ton an-thropon: "the beast" in the one phrase being symbolical of "the men" in the other. Here is one Beast wonder-working in the presence of another Beast. Did not Daniel's Little Horn work its wonders in the midst of the Ten Horns when, coming up after them and among them, it plucked up three of them by the roots, and incorporated their peoples and annexed their territory to its Own? After the same manner the Hierarchial and Imperial Orders of the Lamb-Horned, or Mitred Beast, waged their intestine conflicts in the presence of the Ten Horns of the Beast of the Sea. In 1866, we had an example in point when Prussia, Austria, and Italy, countries of the Lamb-Horned Beast, were wonder-working in internecine war, in the presence of the rest of the European Powers who stood as spectators of the strife.

"And as it sometimes happens that the severity of ecclesiastical discipline is condemned by those who do not understand its virtue, we ordain that clergymen who are clearly convicted of the aforesaid errors, shall be divested of the prerogatives of their order, deprived of their benefices, and delivered to the secular power to be appropriately punished, unless, immediately on the detection of their error, they voluntarily return to the Catholic faith, and consent publicly, at the will of the bishop of the diocese, to abjure their heresy, and make a proper satisfaction. But a layman, who is infected with that pest, unless abjuring the heresy and making satisfaction, he instantly flies to the orthodox faith, is to be left to the will of the secular power to suffer a vengeance in correspondence with his crime. They, moreover, who shall be found marked by the mere suspicion of the church, unless they demonstrate their innocence in a manner suited to the nature of the suspicion, and to their rank, shall be subjected to the same sentence. But they who, after having abjured their error, or cleared themselves in a trial by their bishop, shall be convicted of relapsing to the heresy they have abjured, we order to be left to the severest sentence without further hearing, and their goods appropriated to the churches which they served, according to the canons.

But though the utmost licentiousness reigned in "the Eternal City," where six popes were deposed, two murdered, and one mutilated, the temporal power of the clergy generally was cherished and exalted by the superstition or policy of the Saxon dynasty, which blindly depended on their moderation, and fidelity to the imperial crown. The bishoprics of Germany were made equal in extent and privilege, superior in wealth and population, to the most ample states of the military order. This was an important stride towards the troublesome development of the wonder-working deceiver. As long as the emperors retained the prerogative of bestowing on every vacancy these ecclesiastical and secular benefices, their cause was maintained by the gratitude or ambition of their friends and favorites. The personal and local conflicts of the popes in the tenth century, left them no leisure, if they had possessed the capacity, to perfect the great system of temporal supremacy which was to deprive the emperors of their prerogatives pertaining to the ecclesiastical affairs of the empire. In this age, they looked rather to a vile profit from the sale of episcopal confirmations, or of exemptions to monasteries.

This fire issuing from the Beast's heaven and descending episcopally "in the presence of the men," or "of the beast," ver. 14, was the motive power of the machinery worked by the clergy, the lever by which they moved. "From the moment," says Hallam, "that these interdicts and excommunication’s had been tried, (and they originated subsequently to the ascent of the Beast out of the earth,) the powers of the earth might be said to have existed only by sufferance." The party scathed by this episcopal lightning had no remedy but submission. He who disregards such a sentence, says Beaumanoir, renders his good cause bad. "One is rather surprised," continues Hallam, "at the instances of failure, than of success, in the employment of these spiritual weapons against sovereigns, or the laity in general. It was perhaps a fortunate circumstance for Europe, that they were not introduced, upon a large scale, during the darkest ages of superstition. In the eighth or ninth centuries they would probably have met with a more implicit obedience. But after Gregory the Seventh (the notorious Hildebrand, elected pope A.D. 1073) as the spirit of ecclesiastical usurpation grew more violent, there grew up by slow degrees an opposite feeling in the laity, which ripened into an alienation of sentiment from the church, and a conviction of that sacred truth, which superstition and sophistry have endeavored to eradicate from the heart of man, that no tyrannical government can be founded on a divine commission." I shall close this section with the remark, that Hallam's so-called "sacred truth," is in direct Opposition to Paul's declaration in Rom. 13:1, that "there is no power but from Deity; and that existing powers have been put under Deity." The tyrannical governments of "the Earth" and "the Sea," are ordained of Him as his sword, to punish with war and other tormenting oppressions, the evil doers of the Apostasy for their abominations, and blasphemies uttered against Him "to blaspheme his name, his tabernacle, and the dwellers in the heaven;" until the time shall come to give judgment to the saints, whose mission it will then be "to execute vengeance upon the nations and punishment upon the people; to bind their kings with chains, and their nobles with fetters of iron: to execute upon them the judgment written: this honor have all the Saints" (Psa. 149:7-9). This will be "fire descending from the Deity out of heaven, and devouring them," at whatever epoch it may flame.

But the development of the Sixth Head of the Beast into the Eighth, was not only the healing of the plague of death, but it signalized the termination of the third part of the day, and the third part of the night, during which the third of the sun, moon, and stars of the Roman Firmament, Heaven, or Aerial, were to be darkened, or eclipsed, by the judgment of the Fourth Wind-Trumpet (Apoc. 8:12). This period of two hundred and forty years having elapsed, Charlemagne, the Sovereign of Rome and Italy, was no longer content with the substance of imperial authority, and the title of PATRICIAN OF ROME inherited from Pepin, which only represented the service and alliance of the Frank monarchs as Protectors of the Roman Pontiff and his church: he was ambitious of shining in the splendor of imperiality, as the coequal in the Roman Air of the Constantinopolitan emperors. This honor, however, he was providentially restrained from till the 240 years were expired; but after this, as have already seen, on Dec.25, 799, he added to his title ofPatri-cian, that of Augustus, and Emperor of the Romans. Thus the eclipse of the third of Rome's day ended, the plague of the first Beast's death was healed, and all of whom there hath not been written the names in the Book of Life from the foundation of the world, were caused to wonder or adore (ch. 17:8).

These are very remarkable passages, and throw considerable light upon the episcopal and ecclesiastical character of the new dominion of the earth. "It seemed," says Hallam, "as if Europe was about to pass under as absolute a domination of the hierarchy, as had been exercised by the priesthood of ancient Egypt, or the Druids of Gaul." Such was the appearance of things which did not belie the reality; so that the appearance, the reality, and the Apocalyptic representation thereof are found to be in harmony. What could more fitly symbolize a dominion in which the episcopal orders were the controlling element than a Beast with two horns like a Lamb, and speaking as a Dragon? The sheep's clothing was a mantle of the imperiality, and strikingly significant when we come to know the customs peculiar to the Romish, or Latin church. Dr. Keith quotes from "Rome in the XIXth Century," the following:

A more extraordinary scene soon followed this trial of the pope. On the festival of Christmas, A. D. 799, as the king assisted at mass in St. Peter's temple, in the midst of the ecclesiastical ceremonies, and while he was on his knees before the altar, the Roman Pontiff advanced and put an imperial crown upon his head. As soon as the people perceived it, they cried, "Long life and victory to Charles the most pious Augustus, crowned by the hand of God! Long life to the great and pacific Emperor of the Romans!" The head and body of Charlemagne were consecrated by the royal unction. During the acclamations, Leo conducted him to a magnificent throne, prepared for the purpose, and as soon as he was seated, after the example of the Caesars, he was saluted or adored by the pontiff, declaring that, instead of the title of Patrician, he should hence-forth style him EMPEROR and Augustus. Leo then presented him with the imperial mantle, with which being invested, Charles returned amid the acclamations of the populace to his palace.

Two original epistles from Gregory II., founder of the papal -monarchy, to the emperor Leo Isauricus are still extant. "During ten pure and fortunate years," says he, "we have tasted the annual comfort of your royal letters, subscribed in purple ink with your own hand, the sacred pledges of your attachment to the orthodox creed of our fathers. how deplorable the change! How tremendous the scandal! You now accuse the catholics of idolatry; and by the accusation you betray your own impiety and ignorance. To this ignorance we are compelled to adapt the grossness of our style and arguments; the first elements of holy letters are sufficient for your confusion; and were you to enter a grammar school, and avow yourself the enemy of our worship, the simple and pious children would be provoked to cast their horn-books at your head." After this not very complimentary salutation, the episcopal apologist of Catholic idolatry attempts the usual distinction between the idols of the pagans and the idols of the Catholics. The former, he affirms, were the fanciful representations of phantoms or demons, at the time when the true God had not manifested his person in any visible likeness. The latter, he says, are the genuine forms of Christ, his mother, and his saints, who had approved, by a crowd of miracles, (styled by Paul "all power, and signs, and lying wonders") the innocence and merit of this relative worship, which he lyingly asserted had been in perpetual use from the Apostolic age. To the impudent and humane Leo, more guilty than a heretic, he recommends peace, silence, and implicit obedience to his spiritual guides of Constantinople and Rome. He defines the limits of civil and ecclesiastical powers. To the civil he appropriates the body; to the ecclesiastical, the "immortal soul;" the sword of justice is in the hands of the magistrate: the more formidable weapon of excommunication is entrusted to the clergy; and in the exercise of their Divine commission, a zealous son will not spare his offending father: the Successor of St. Peter may lawfully chastise the kings of the earth!

But of the wounding of the Imperial Sixth, and the establishment of the Regal Seventh, Heads, I need not treat in this place. It will be sufficient here to refer the reader to pages 71,75, Vol.3, for the historical exposition thereof, with this explanatory remark, that the obscuration of Rome's imperial "day and night" would not cease with the fall of the Seventh Head but with the inauguration of the Eighth Head, or Image of the Sixth upon the Seven Hills

The heavenlies in Christ are two states answering to the two places of the tabernacle of Moses. One of these states is not yet manifested on earth; the other is. Hence, one may be said to be visible, and the other invisible; yet the saints, not sinners, who are quickened with him, and raised with him, sit together in both with him, and He with them. Now the solution of this mystery turns wholly upon the meaning of the phrase "in him." What is it then, to be in him? It is to be where Paul places the saints in Thessalonica, namely, en Theo patri, kai Kuno Iesou Christo, in Deity the Father, and the Lord Jesus Anointed. The saints are all in this manifestation of Deity. Being in Jesus and the Father, they must be, in a certain sense, where Jesus and the Father are. Alluding to this fact, Paul says in Heb. 12:23, "We are come to the Deity the Judge of all, and to Jesus the Mediator of the New Covenant", and so forth. But Paul says that Jesus is at the Father's own Right Hand. True; but he also says, that "being justified by faith, we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand." In other words, we have admission to the Father in heaven by faith; and when a person is permitted access to a place, and avails himself of the permission, he is in some sense certainly there; and when there in this certain sense, he is "dwelling in the heaven" in the presence of "the Judge of all."

In the time of Charlemagne; A.D. 799, a Roman council enacted precisely the same part as that convened by Theodoric. The Pope having been accused, the Council declined to hear his accusers; declaring that he who was judge of all men, was above being judged by any other than himself; and on his coming in, and asserting his innocence, he was considered as acquitted. Thus Urban II., A.D. 1090, "that the divine right of judging concerning every church is of the pope alone; and that he himself is subject to the judgment of none." Afterwards in the Canon Law, collected and published in the eleventh century, it was said: "It is certain that the Supreme Pontiff was called God by the pious prince Constantine; it is manifest that Deity cannot be judged by men." Daubuz who quotes this, styles the Canon Law and Decretals the Pope's Oracle; "the Decretal Epistles are enumerated with the canonical scriptures." They are the true expression of the papal mind.

The facts are predicable of two irreconcilably hostile parties, represented in the former section of this thirteenth chapter by the Beast of the Sea; or, the Ten Kingly Governments of Modern Europe subject to the spiritual authority of their Universal Bishop, of the one part; and by the Deity's Name, Tabernacle, Dwellers in the heavens, or saints, of the other part. Now one who cannot Scripturally define the Deity's Name, or distinguish a saint from a sinner, cannot define the facts developed in the history of the saints and witnesses, in their antagonism to popery in all the kingdoms of the Papacy, by which the period in question is deter-mined. Many of that exceedingly dark body, styled "the clergy," not knowing what a saint is, and who say that The Apocalypse is all in the future, declare that the forty and two months belong to the future likewise; and are to be understood of 1260 days, or three and a half literal years; in which a personal, or individual Antichrist will be manifested, and severely persecute the saints; by which they mean the pious of their several "names of blasphemy," of which the scarlet-colored beast is full; but which they term collectively "the Church of God!" Others of these professional leaders of the blind into the ditch, tell their unfortunate victims that The Apocalypse is all long ago fulfilled; and, consequently, that the forty and two months are buried in the oblivion of a remote antiquity! The real saints are ignored by both these parties of extremists. The conflict of the past twelve centuries between the Papal Powers of Western Europe and the Saints and Witnesses, they regard as simply a conflict between the Powers, and heretics and revolutionists inimical to law and order. The oceans of righteous blood shed by the Papal Powers, inspired by their Universal Bishop, go for nothing. What were they but the turbulent riffraff of society; were not the saints God's "hidden ones," the pious and orthodox professors of the ages, who passed current as good Catholics in churches and monasteries, but in their hearts silently repudiated the blasphemies of their church? These never imagined that the Universal Bishop was the Antichrist; and if he had been that substitute for Christ, would not they, as the saints, have known it? Against these "saints" of the church of Rome there was no warfare for forty and two months of days, or years; therefore, say these futurists, the period in question is in the future, and will be short.

The reign of Theodoric was mild, tolerant and promotive of the prosperity, security and happiness of the people. But his ungrateful subjects could never be cordially reconciled to the origin, the religion, or even the virtues of the Gothic conqueror; past calamities were forgotten, and the sense or suspicion of injuries was rendered still more exquisite by the present felicity of the times. The religious toleration which Theodoric had the glory of introducing into the Catholic world, was painful and offensive to the Trinitarian zeal of the Italians. They dared not disturb the armed heresy of the Goths; therefore, they sought to vent their pious and cowardly rage by falling upon the rich and defenceless Jews. Their persons were insulted, their effects were pillaged, and their synagogues were burnt by the mad populace of Rome and Ravenna, inflamed by the most frivolous or extravagant pretences. A legal inquiry was instantly directed by the king; who, as the authors of the tumult had escaped, condemned the whole community to repair the damage; and the obstinate bigots who refused their contributions, were whipped through the streets by the hand of the executioner. This simple act of justice exasperated the discontent of the Trinitarians, who applauded the merit and patience of these so-called "holy confessors;" and from three hundred pulpits deplored the persecution of the church. "At the close of a glorious life," says Gibbon, "the king of Italy discovered he had excited the hatred of a people whose happiness he had labored so assiduously to promote; and his mind was soured by indignation, jealousy and the bitterness of unrequited love." Thus were embittered the relations between the Gothic Head and the Trinitarian Italians, who were devoted to the traditions of the Council of Nice, whom Theodoric suspected of a secret and treasonable correspondence with the Byzantine representative of the Head smitten by the sword. The powers of this government were then in the hands of JUSTINIAN, who already meditated the extirpation of heresy, and the reconquest of Italy and Africa; in other words, the healing of the plague of the sword, with which imperialism had been smitten in these countries, as it were, to death. A rigorous law which was published at Constantinople to reduce the Arians by the dread of punishment within the pale of the Catholic orthodoxy, awakened the just resentment of Theodoric, who claimed for his distressed brethren of the East the same indulgence which he had so long granted to the Trinitarian Catholics of his dominions. At his stern command, the Bishop of Rome, with four illustrious senators, embarked on an embassy. The singular veneration shown to the Bishop, who was the first pope that had visited Constantinople, was punished by Theodoric as a crime; and a mandate was prepared in Italy to prohibit, after a stated day, the exercise of the Catholic worship. "by the bigot of his subjects and enemies," says Gibbon, "the most tolerant of prince was driven to the brink of persecution." The celebrated Boethius, "Roman senator, philosopher and minister of state, his father-in-law the patrician Symmachus, and Albinus, also a senator, were accused of treason for "hoping the liberty of Rome," and actually inviting the Emperor Justinian to deliver Italy from the Goths; in other words, to under take the healing of the wounded head that it might live. The suspicion of Theodoric were probably not groundless, and could only be appeased by their blood. They were executed, and the treason charged assumed a terrible reality in succeeding reigns.

In the theological character drawn of him by Gibbon, he says, that he sympathized with his subjects in their superstitious reverence for living and departed saints: his Code, and more especially his Novels, confirm and enlarge the privileges of the clergy; and in every dispute between a monk and a layman he was inclined to pronounce that truth, and innocence, and justice were always on the side of the church. His fancy was amused by the hope or belief of personal inspiration; and that he had secured the patronage of the Virgin, and St. Michael the archangel. Among the titles of imperial greatness, the name of Pious was most pleasing to his ear; to promote the temporal and spiritual interest of the Catholic church was the serious business of his life; and the duty of father of his country was often sacrificed to that of defender of the Catholic faith. Justinian was a bigoted tyrant; and his reign a uniform yet various scene of persecution. He surpassed his indolent predecessors, both in the contrivance of his laws against heretics and the rigor of their execution. He assigned three months for the conversion or exile of all such; and if he still connived at their precarious stay, they were deprived, under his iron yoke, not only of the benefits of society, but of the common birthright of men and religionists. The residue of pagans, Jews, and Samaritans were equally obnoxious to his theological ire. The last were exterminated with fire and sword; and the once fruitful province of Samaria was converted into a desolate and smoking wilderness. It has been computed that one hundred thousand Roman subjects were extirpated in this Samaritan war. "But in the creed of Justinian," says the historian, "the guilt of murder could not be applied to the slaughter of unbelievers: and he piously labored to establish with fire and sword the unity of the Catholic faith."

In preparing the situation for the outpouring of the First Vial, there were the European Coalition of the diademed horns, the Kings of the Earth, and the Image of the Beast; together with the Emigrant Nobility and non-juring Priests beyond the frontiers: also the Revolution, with its priestly and royalist enemies within the country. The refractory ecclesiastics lost no opportunity of exciting a diversion which might prove useful to the emigrants. "The priests, and more especially the bishops," says the Marquis de Ferrieres, "employed all the resources of fanaticism, to rouse the lower classes, both in town and country, against the civil constitution of the clergy," which was fatal to the dominion of the Pope in France. The bishops commanded the priests no longer to celebrate what they call "divine service" in the same churches with the constitutional clergy, lest the people should confound the two modes of worship, and the two orders of priesthood. "Independently," he adds, "of the circular letters addressed to the curates, instructions designed for the people were distributed through the country. In these it was stated that it was not allowable for any one to receive the sacraments from the hands of the constitutional priests, who were designated as intruders; that all who participated in them became guilty, by their mere presence, of mortal sin; that those who were married by the intruder should not be regarded as married; that they would draw down a curse upon themselves and their children; that no one was to hold communication with them, nor with those who had separated themselves from the church; that the municipal officers who installed them became apostates like themselves; that even at the moment of installation, the ringers of the bells and the sacristans were to abandon their duty. These fanatical addresses produced the effect expected by the bishops, and religious dissension broke out in all quarters".

2. And the first went forth, and poured out his vial upon the earth; and there ensued a grievous and malignant ulcer upon the men who have the sign of the Beast, and who do homage to his Image.

The word of Yahweh to Zerubbabel, was "Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit" (Zech. 4:6). The Spirit is the girder, or strengthener, whether it be Cyrus (Isa. 45:5), Alexander, Constantine, Alaric, Attila, Genseric, the British power, Napoleon, or the Saints. The British upon the sea, and the French upon the land, were girded in their operations against the worshippers of the Beast and his Image in the first five vial-periods, on the same principle that Cyrus was girded by the Spirit for the overthrow of the dominion of Babylon; and for the punishment of the worshippers of Bel. The Four Living Ones, and the Seven Angels, apart from the Spirit who energizes them, areas nothing. The wrathful power of the "great and marvellous sign in the heaven," is "golden," because just, and true, and faithful. This is supreme and righteous; its agents are subordinate, and not necessarily pure and holy.

To gird is to make strong; and in the case of these Seven Angels, to strengthen them with all things necessary for the consummation of their mission. Included in the angelic seven is JESUS, "the Angel of the Covenant," and the CHIEF of these angel-lords and kings (ch. 17:14). Hence, as they are made "like him" (1 Jhn. 3:2), what is testified of him is, all things being equal, applicable also to his brethren. Hence, the Spirit of Christ in David saith to the Father, "Thou hast girded me with strength for the war" (Psa. 18:39) for "the war of that great day of the almighty DEITY" (ch. 16:14) which is especially the war of the Seven Angels against "the kings of the earth, and of the whole habitable". They are the Deity-Manifestation; hence, the strength or power with which they are girded is almighty. Jesus and his brethren of the Nave, therefore, are the Apocalyptic YAR-ELOHISTIC element of the Seven Angels girded with almighty power.

When we arrive at the next chapter we shall be particularly in-formed what the things are, that must successively transpire in the development of this great and marvellous sign in the heaven, before the Nave is opened, or manifested therein.

4. Pharaoh's chariots and hosts He cast into the sea; His chosen captains also He drowned in the Red Sea.

But, do the prophets testify to the how long, as well as to the manner, of Israel's second exodus, or returning from the lands of their enemies to their own possession? Let us see. The spirit of Christ in Micah caused him to place on record in ch. 7:14, the supplication following: "Feed Thy people with Thy rod, the flock of Thine heritage, which dwell solitarily in the wood (or forest of nations), in the midst of Carmel; let them feed in Bashan and Gilead, as in the days of old". This is a petition praying, in effect, for the restoration of the kingdom to Israel; for their return from their present long dispersion in "the land of the enemy;" for their re-establishment as a powerful and independent nation in the holy land; for the subjugation of all kingdoms and nations to the laws and ordinances of their king. To perform this great work will require considerable time, and a great manifestation of almighty power. It consumed forty years of days "in the days of old," or "a thousand six hundred furlongs" of time, from the institution of the Passover in Egypt to its celebration in the Valley of Achor under Joshua; which was its typical fulfillment in the kingdom of God (Josh. 5:6,10). These were "the days of the coming out of ihe land of Egypt" into the land of Canaan; in which Yahweh fed His people with the rod, and purged out the rebels among them, whose carcasses fell in the wilderness - the days of the corning out, in which He made use of the twelve tribes as His soldiery in His wars against the Amalekites, Amorites, and so forth, as recorded in the earliest records of the nation.

The sevenfold apportionment of the judicial wrath of the sign, is symbolized by "Seven Angels" - "the Seven Spirits of the Deity sent forth into all the earth"; and therefore angels: and operating through human agents in the execution of the purpose of Him by whom they are sent forth and employed. Hence, the armies of a power inflicting wrath upon peoples are Yahweh's sword, or "angel" - a messenger for evil to those who are tormented by it. Thus the French armies under the first Napoleon, were an angel-power of this "sign in the heavens" - a vial out of which Divine wrath was poured upon "the earth," "the rivers and fountains of waters," "the sun," and upon "the throne of the beast," while the saints, when they appear upon the scene to execute their mission, are also angels pouring out their vial, the Seventh; but Apocalyptically contradistinguished from the others, as "the Holy Angels" (ch.14:10).

4. Who shall not fear thee, O Lord, and glorify thy name? For thou only art absolutely pure (hosios): for all the nations shall come, and do homage before thee; because thy righteous judgments (dikajomata) have been made manifest.

Thus the symbolic Son of Man, "whose voice is as the sound of many waters" (ch. 1:13-16), sickled the harvest for the purpose of "opening a door," through which the mighty ones of the Spirit, the Elohim of Israel, might enter in the heaven, and set up a throne therein

"The Harvest of the Earth," according to Joel, and John's angel that comes out of the nave, hath been ripened; "for their wickedness is great". The harvest is composed of vast multitudes of ripened wickedness in the plain, or valley of judgment, unconsciously awaiting a terrible overthrow. Joel in vision saw them all assembled there, as expressed in the words, "Multitudes, multitudes (hamonim, hamonim) in the valley of the judgment; for the Day of Yahweh is near in the valley of the judgment" (ch. 3:14). These hamonim are the hamon-gog of Ezekiel 39:11 - the multitude of Gog, which is buried in the valley of the judgment executed; and gives name to an adjacent city, called Hamonah, that is, Multitude. This and the preceding chapter of Ezekiel are parallel with Joel 3, and John's vision of the reaping. The prophet is indignant at their wickedness. He does not pray for their conversion, nor for their salvation; but for their sudden and complete overthrow, in the words, "Thither cause to come down with violence thy mighty ones, 0 Yahweh!" Nor will Joel's prayer be in vain; for, referring to the same crisis, Zechariah says, "Yahweh Elohim shall come in, and all the Saints with thee" (ch. 14:5). This coming in to Jerusalem will be with violence, and a terrific outpouring of wrath upon the multitudes in arms. In the words of Ezek. 38:18, "Adonai Yahweh saith, my fury shall come up in My face: for in my jealousy and in the fire of My wrath have I spoken, surely in that day there shall be a great shaking in the land of Israel.... and all the men that are upon the face of the land shall shake AT MY PRESENCE, and the mountains shall be thrown down, and the towers shall fall, and every wall shall fall to the ground. And I will call for a sword against Gog throughout all my mountains saith Adonai Yahweh: every man's sword shall be against his brother. And I will plead against him with pestilence and with blood; and I will rain upon him and upon his bands and upon the many peoples that are with him, an overflowing rain, and great hailstones, fire and brimstone". Thus, Yahweh goes forth and fights against these multitudes, as in the days of old (Zech.14:3).

But, let us turn from this theological trickery, and examine the difficulty by the light of the original. This is faithfully rendered in the words at the head of this section, to the exposition of which we shall now proceed in the order it suggests.

In the twelfth verse, the "here" leaves the reader without question

A common danger cements the union of the kings and princes of the late Babylon's dominion. The Drunken Harlot priesthood, the Eighth Head of the scarlet-colored Beast, and the Ten Horns, "have one mind, and give their power and strength unto the beast" in aid of the common cause. The Eighth Head is the Dictator of the confederacy, styled in ch. 20:2, "the Dragon, that old Serpent, which is the Devil and Satan". The Harlot Priesthood is the False Prophet of the situation, that works miracles before the Beast, and deceives them that had received the sign of the Beast, and them that worshipped his Image before it was destroyed by the judgments of the Second Angel (ch. 19:20). When '"christian nations" go to war, the clergy are always there to prophesy success; and to assure the combatants that the God of battles, who gives the victory, is on their side. True to their calling and character they will be the chaplains of the military establishments of the Beast in the field; and praying to their god of battles, and prophesying victory from their "sacred desks" and "altars" over the Israelitish Antichrist! As usual, they deceive the governments, and all who trust them. By their prophesyings they deceive the worshippers of the Beast, and harden their hearts for the capture and destruction to be inflicted on them by the Third Angel-power. The Beast and kings of the Goat-nations determine to make war against the King of the Jews, and to meet his forces in the field. It is not likely that they will attribute the recent overthrow of "the Eternal City" to power exerted by his will. They will no doubt consider it accidental, and but another phenomenon to be added to the overthrow of Pompeii and Herculaneum . The terrible catastrophe only inflames their wrath, and causes them to "make war upon the Lamb". The Napoleons, the Victor Emmanuels, the Francis Josephs, and the Alexanders, of the day, gather together their armies like swarms of bees, intending to scatter his troops with the whirlwind of their host(*) - "they came out as a whirlwind to scatter me; their rejoicing is as to devour the poor secretly" (Hab. 3:14). They will think to take him by surprise. But the Eternal Father is on his side; there will therefore be to him no cause of fear. Let the reader study Psa. 118, which treats of "the Stone which the builders refused", and he will find the nature of the situation under the third angel manifestation. "All nations compassed me about like bees;" but, as he inquires in the sixth verse, "what can man do unto me?" These armies will rush like the rushing of mighty waters, but "the Lamb shall overcome them" (Apoc. 17:14). "They shall be quenched as the fire of thorns; for by the name of Yahweh will I destroy them." By this Name they are "rebuked, and chased as the chaff of the mountains" before the wind, and like thistle-down before the whirlwind - by this Name, "the King of kings and Lord of lords," the ten horns are overcome. They are conquered by the Lamb with Seven Horns and Seven Eyes; because he is the King Almighty; "and they that are with him are called, and chosen, and faithful". Such disaster as this, saith the prophet, "is the portion of them that spoil us, and the lot of them that scatter us" (Isa. 17:12-14).

The initiation of the second angel tormentation of the worshippers of the Beast and his Image is the inauguration of the day of revenges, when Yahweh whets his glittering sword, and His hand takes hold of judgment. It is the opening of the Hour of Judgment upon the rebellious Goats in which Yahweh, the Man of War, will render vengeance to His enemies, and reward them that hate Him. Some idea may be formed of this vengeful recompense from Deut. 32:42, in which He saith, "I will make mine arrows drunk with blood, and my sword shall devour flesh; and that with the blood of the slain and of the captives, from the beginning of revenges upon the enemy". This will be "a time of trouble such as never was since there was a nation to that same time" (Dan. 12:1) -the antitype of the great Pentecostian Day of Atonement, in which the Trumpet of the Jubilee shall sound (Lev. 25:9). The second and third angels of this fourteenth chapter are the executors of "the judgment written" in this "great day of God Almighty" (ch. 16:14): a day in which an offering shall be made by fire to Yahweh unto the total and complete consumption of the Apocalyptic Beasts, which as the sin of the political world, shall be destroyed by fire and sword.

The proclamation is to be made through "midheaven." This is "the Air" into which the judgments of the Seventh Vial are to be poured after the proclamation of the message, or word given, is finished. It is the political aerial of Babylon the Great, which, instead of being as now the highest heaven of the political world, will occupy a middle station between the worshippers of. the Beast, and the new throne established on Mount Zion. The Midheaven is the political firmament occupied by all the ranks, orders, and degrees, of the world rulers - the supreme and subordinate governors of those "many people, nations, and tongues" before whom John is to prophesy again. This will be an exceedingly interesting time when the clergy of all orders, "the spirituals of wickedness in the heavenlies," shall be confronted by the apostles and saints, and proved to be liars and impostors before the world. And richly do they deserve to be exposed to this "shame and contempt". They will no longer be permitted to deceive the hearts of the simple with good words and fair speeches with impunity. The sheep's clothing will be stripped off them, and the wolf undisguised will be revealed. High and pompous ecclesiastical titles will then be at a discount; and regarded only by those who come to obey the proclamation, as the tinsel bespanglement of vain and foolish men. The occupation of the clerical False Prophet of the world will be gone; for the loftiness of man shall be bowed down, and the haughtiness of men shall be made low; and Yahweh alone will come to be exalted in that day (Isaiah 2:17).

In the type, the Pentecostian Firstfruits were waved in the form of Two Loaves, made from the fine flour of the new grain, and baked with leaven. This represented that the firstfruits would be taken from two classes leavened with the Truth - a loaf of the circumcision and a loaf of the uncircumcision; two loaves, but only one bread. This work began on the day of Pentecost, fifty days after the resurrection of Jesus, on "the morrow of the Sabbath," which he spent in the tomb. Three thousand were then leavened with the Gospel of the Kingdom, to which they became obedient. These were of the circumcision. After this many more thousand Jews became obedient to the faith. The invitation to God's Kingdom and Glory was then extended to people of other nations, beginning at the household of Cornelius. Since then, a people for the Father's Name has been collecting, as they sing, "out of every kindred, and tongue, and people and nation." The work is still progressing, but after such a manner as to show that there is little more can be done. The Jewish and Gentile Loaves are almost complete; and little remains, but for the High Priest after the order of Melchizedec to come, and make a Pentecostian wave-offering of them before the Father on the mountain of his holiness. When this is accomplished, a company of undefiled ones will have been developed, all of them like himself - Firstfruits, in whose mouth exists no guile, being faultless before the throne of God.

The sound John heard from heaven, was not only as proceeding from a great multitude; but also "as a sound of loud thunder." Thunder is the symbol of war. The "many waters" could not bear palms, and utter shouts of victory', unless previously engaged in war. Hence, their acclamations are styled "the sound of mighty thunderings;" or, as in the text, "as a sound of loud thunder." Before they could thunder forth, "Babylon hath fallen, hath fallen!" they will have to do the work of the second angel. Their shouts and acclamations are the echoes and reverberations of the thunder by which she is overthrown. The mighty thunderings of the 144,000, are not the impotent and meaningless "thundering applause" of a political meeting - the bellowings of the ignorant and fickle multitude. They are the potent utterances of those who have proved themselves almighty in battle; and to whom are committed the Seven Thunders which proceed out of the throne; that by these effective wars, the nations may be compelled to "wait for His law" (Isa. 42:4) who sits upon the throne. The thunder is styled "loud," because it consists of more than a single clap. It is a series of booming and crashing thun-derstorms, which, with the sound of the roaring hurricane, prostrate all the towering dominions of the earth. This "loud thunder" overthrows Babylon, torments the worshippers of the Beast with fire and brimstone, cuts down the harvest of the earth, and lops off the clusters of its vine. When all this is accomplished, the Dragon bound, the kingdom restored to Israel, and Jerusalem made a praise in the earth, the thronal lightnings will cease to flash, and the thunder to roll. The time will have then arrived, and not till then, for the going forth from heaven of “the sound as the sound of many waters, and as a sound of loud thunder."

I say, it has been liberally offered for sale in these dominions, and extensively purchased; but it is not so now. A rival establishment has been opened, professedly to sell the same goods; but instead of selling “wines on the lees well refined” (Isa. 25:6); that “cheereth Elohim and men” (Judges 9:13); they introduced a poisonous and intoxicating sub?stitute, which stole away the brains of all who purchased it. This noxious compound, which causes ramollissement du cerveau, or softening of the brain, and rottenness of the bones, is Apocalyptically styled, Babylon?ian wine of fornication (ch. 17:2-5). Under the influence of this “im?ported liquor,” they refused the cheering and strengthening, but not in?toxicating, wines of the Spirit; and gave all their custom to the False Prophet, whose “Mouth” speaks from the Seven Hills, and who distin?guishes himself with the skin and horns of a lamb. This principal of the rival establishment, who enriches himself “with all deceivableness,” knowing that his success in business depended upon the continued into?xication and infatuation of his customers, secured for himself, by good words and fair speeches, which deceive the hearts of the simple, an exc?lusive license to sell spiritual merchandise. The original firm, however, protested against the fraud, and would not submit to the exclusion; but continued to sell the true and genuine bread, wine, and precious things, to the few who wished to buy. But, in process of time, the fraudulent traders had so thoroughly established themselves, and so perverted the tastes of the people, “both rich and poor, small and great, free and en?slaved,” that nothing genuine was in demand. Their monopoly was sus?tained by the corrupt governments of the world; by which they were au?thorized to maintain it by any measures they deemed most effectual. They were not slow to avail themselves of this permit. They accordingly decreed, that “no one should buy or sell, save he that had the sign” of their establishment. He alone was “ordained” to sell the merchandise of the Lamb-Horned Prophet; and the worshippers of the Beast, who, by christening, were known as recognized customers, were alone permit?ted to buy of the ordained, or appointed, agents, what they were taught to esteem as “dainty and goodly things” (ch. 18:14). In other words, it was decreed, that no one should preach and administer ordinances un?less licensed or ordained so to do, by the recognized spiritual authority; which saith, “as some claim authority to preach,” or sell dainty and goodly things by auction, “all who ventures to do, either publicly or privately, without authority from the Apostolic Throne, or Bishop of the place, shall be bound with the bond of a perpetual curse.”

.John saw the Lamb and his virgin companions, or Bride, standing upon Mount Zion. This is the platform, or standing-place, of their Body Politic, both as the Holy, and the Most Holy community. In the state previous. to the advent of Christ, the Saints are the 144,000 in great tribulation, being subject to hunger and thirst, sun-stroke, and scorching heat - ch. 7:4,14,16. In this state of things they are subjected to the "much tribulation," through which, Paul testifies, "we must enter into the kingdom of the Deity" (Acts 14:22). They are an election taken out from the nations, by obedience of faith, for His Name (Acts 15:14; Rom. 1:5): by which faith in "the things concerning the kingdom of the Deity, and the name of Jesus Christ," "they walk," and "are come to Mount Zion, and unto the City of the living God, the Heavenly Jerusalem" (2 Cor. 5:7; Acts 8:12; Heb. 12:22). Though scattered and dispersed, and natives of divers remote places, when viewed collectively they are regarded as being born in Zion; and constituting the Holy City, the heavenly Jerusalem; for the time being trodden under foot by the worshippers of the Beast. "Glorious things are spoken concerning Zion, the city ofthe Elohim" - ir hah-Elohim. Those who believe these glorious things, and are born of water, become citizens of Zion; so that when Yahweh writeth up the people, He will count that they were born there; for all His springs are in Zion, and He Himself will establish her (Psa. 87; Gal. 4:26; Apoc. 11:2).

Besides the reception of the charagma from the clergy, there was to be a repetition of the Sign of the Cross by the people themselves, as appears from Bellarmine's "Dottrina Christiana Breve," in which a master asks his disciple, "In che consiste principalmente la Fede di Christo?" that is, In what principally consists the faith of Christ? To which he is made to reply, "In due misteri principali, che sono rinchiuisi nel Segno della Santa Crotce;" that is, In two principal mysteries, which are included in the Sign of the Holy Cross," adding, "Il segno della Santa Croce Si fa mettendo primo lamano destra al capo, dicendo, in nome del Padre; poi sotto al petto, dicendo, e del Fighuolo: finalmente alla spada sinistra ed alla destra, dicendo e dallo Spirito Santo;" that is, The Sign of the Holy Cross is made by putting first, the right hand to the head, saying, "In the name of the Father;" then under the heart, saying, "and of the Son;" finally on the left shoulder, and on the right, saying, "and of the Holy Spirit." In this way the devotees of the superstition were to sign themselves with the Beast's Sign in token of their bondage to him. These slaves of sin have great confidence in the efficacy of this sign as a defense against all sorts of invisible demoniacal influences. The sign of the cross, with the hand dipped in "holy water," is a great terror to the Devil, who is said to hate it exceedingly! They call it "the Sign of the Holy Cross;" as if that which brought the curse of the law upon Jesus for hanging upon it, could be holy. It would be as reasonable to say Holy Gallows, on which murderers are hanged, as Holy Cross. There is nothing holy pertaining to the Beast. Hence, its sign is like itself accursed, and significant of the perdition that awaits all who glory in it.

6. And I saw another angel flying in midheaven, having aionian to proclaim to them who dwell upon the earth, even every nation and tribe and tongue and people;

In this instance, the enigma would be to give the number of the god,, and to require from this total, his name.

Much more may such be the anticipation of reflective men, after the extraordinary expedition of the French army in 1849, under the republican regime of Louis Napoleon, and reestablishment of the Pope at Rome. There is a curious heraldic fact accordant with this view, which (considering how frequently such national emblems have been had in view in the Apocalyptic figurations) I cannot permit myself to pass over in silence, though I wish by no means to insist much on it; namely, that, as the three spirits do each and all most assuredly energize in the French nation and priesthood, so their Apocalyptic symbol, the three frogs, are the old arms of France". He regards the spirits as "three unclean, or unholy principles, characteristic of the Dragon, Beast, and False Prophet, directed and speeded by spirits of hell; and resembling frogs, the well-known type of vain loquacious talkers and agitators, deluding and seducing the minds of men". The spirit from the Dragon's Mouth, he says, is "the principle of pagan-like infidelity and scepticism, with its proper accompaniment of blasphemy; and perhaps, too, of rebelliousness of spirit against rightful authority, alike human and divine, 'by which sin fell the angels'." The spirit from the Beast's Mouth he terms, "the pure direct principle of Popery, based on its fundamental anti-christian dogma of the Roman Pope being Christ's Vicegerent upon earth". The spirit from the False Prophet's Mouth, he styles "the spirit of an apostate priesthood". These three spirits he regards as the unclean spirits of daemons like frogs; and considers that the precise period marked out in the prophecy is to be regarded as the twenty years ending in 1850. Having laid these premises, he occupies about thirty-seven pages with the retrospective sketch of irrelevant matters, as foreign to the prophecy as if a frog had never passed before the mind of John.

The False Prophet Body is located in all the kingdoms of the Great City, where they make merchandise of the peoples with their sorceries, in pretense of curing their souls. The Mouth of this Body has been, for many dark and gloomy centuries, established in Rome. It is the executive and legislative authority there, which despotically and absolutely administers or controls the spiritual affairs of two hundred millions(*) of worshippers of the two-Lamb-horned Beast of the earth, and of the Ten Horns. When the first vial began to be poured out, it wielded a temporal power of formidable proportions. The Roman Mouth counted three millionst of subjects in its own Church-States; this was its primary dominion the elective monarchy of the Pope-king. But, besides this first dominion, he had great political authority in all the popish kingdoms of Europe; so that he ruled in Rome like one of the emperors of old. In these high times of tyrannical superstition, the Papal Constitution of things was "the Image" of the Beast's Sixth Head, that had the wound of the sword, and lived. It was a terrible image of imperial power, sustained by the despotisms of the world, the ignorance of the people, and the internal Inquisition. But, how is it with this Image in the spring of 1868? What is it now after passing through the scorching, ulcerating, darkening, and tormenting plagues of the vials thus far poured out? It has lost its temporal dominion, which has passed to the Frogs; and the Papacy is a mere "False Prophet", or spiritual power, with its Mouth in Rome.

Again, the Two-Horned Beast-emperor, said, "the overthrow of the things that be is not only aimed at by factions, but by thrones;" that is, by France, Sardinia and Russia. But he continued, "the sword which I have been forced to draw is sanctified;" and suiting the action to the word while discussing the proposition of the Frogs, laid his hand upon his sword, and exclaimed, "Let the Emperor Louis Napoleon be told that I am too young to abdicate; he wants to pluck the Austrian Eagle:better to try and cut its throat. One thing let him remember in the coming struggle, that the game is far from equal between us. I risk a province; he stakes his empire on the issue of the war. Our struggle, is a just one, and we begin it with courage and confidence. We hope, however, that we shall not stand alone in it. The soil on which we have to do battle was made fruitful by the blood lost by our German brethren when they won those bulwarks which they have maintained up to the present day. There the crafty enemies of Germany have generally begun their game when they have wished to break her internal power. The feeling that such a danger is now imminent prevails in all parts of Germany, from the cottage to the throne from one frontier to the other. I speak as a sovereign member of the Germanic Confederation, when I call attention to the common danger, and recall to memory the glorious times in which Europe had to thank the general and fervent enthusiasm of Germany for its liberation. God and Fatherland! FRANCIS JOSEPH."

Thus began the French occupation of Rome in 1849. They occupied it, not out of love to the Pope but as a check upon Austna and Italy

~njuste sera un exile envoye Par pestilence aux confins de non seigle; Response au rouge le fera desvoye, Roi retirant a la Rane et a l'aigle.

In the English Version these spirits are termed "the spirits of devils". This is inaccurate, and arises from the translators erroneously Supposing that daemons and "devils" were the same things. The phrase is pneumata daimonon, spirits of daemons. These Apocalyptic entities are political daemons; that have to do with politics, civil and ecclesiastical. It is true, they may be diabobi, devils, as Judas was (John 6:70) but all devils are not daemons. The daemons of this prophecy are official person-ages engaged in doing or working out, signs, wonders, or remarkable events, poiounta semeia; all tending, in their combined operation, to the development of the situation termed "the war of that great day of the Deity who is Almighty".

But, the Greek insurrection and foreign intervention simply would have still left the Ottoman empire a great and strong current of water. Its evaporation was to be expedited by the fatuous and suicidal policy of its Sultan, Mahmoud. This imperial reformer of the state perceiving that his haughty, tumultuous Janizaries, once the terror of the nations, were incapable any longer of contending with the order, discipline, and weapons of modern tactics, determined to subject them to a new military system. But to such an innovation they resolved not to submit. Finding, therefore, the hope of reforming, and thereby rescuscitating the Turkish military power, vain, the Sultan determined to destroy those troops whose ancestors had been to the Porte its chief arm of victory. While the Greek insurrection was in progress, he assembled 30,000 of them in Constantinople; and, on July 15, 1826, caused them to be surrounded in the square of the Etmeidan, and massacred by discharges of grapeshot; and on their retreating to their barracks, the barracks were set on fire, and the cannonading was continued against them the whole night following, until there remained no more victims or fuel for the one and the other. "The morning," says Mr. Walsh, "presented a frightful scene of burning ruins slaked in blood; - a huge mass of mangled flesh and smoking ashes".

It is written in Dan. 12:11, "and when the Daily hath been removed, even for to set up an abomination of desolation (there shall be) a thousand two hundred and ninety days". Here is a long period without any other beginning indicated than that of its setting up. Its continuance is stated at 1290 years. This is the whole length of time during which the abomination was to prevail upon the land of Israel without beginning to dry up; in other Words, when the 1290 ended, the drying up process would commence; but, as to the exact number of years that would be consumed in the progressive outpouring of "that determined" before the consummation would be reached, we are not informed; of this, how-ever, we may be assured, that the outpouring of "that determined" upon the Desolator of the Holy Land, will not have reached its consummation, until Gog falls upon the mountains of Israel in the war of ARAMGEDDON; which is the great climacteric of the sixth vial.

"And the Sixth Angel poured out his Vial upon the Great River Euphrates; and the water thereof was dried up that the way of the Kings, who are out of a Sun's risings, might be prepared".

"And the Sixth Angel poured out his Vial upon the Great River Euphrates; and the water thereof was dried up that the way of the Kings, who are out of a Sun's risings, might be prepared".

And again: - "On the borders of Silesia seventy villages have been almost entirely destroyed". "In Upper Lusatia the whole tract between Bautzen and Galitz, which has been repeatedly traversed by the marches and counter-marches of the armies, is reduced to a desert".

I cannot suppose, that these resemblances between Napoleon's Hour, and Christ's Hour, of judgment, can be accidental. I am persuaded rather, that they are designed, and that the one series is pre-figurative of the other. Cyrus, in his conquest of Babylon, restoration of Judah, and laying the foundation of the temple, was a type of Christ in future and similar undertakings: Constantine "the Great" in the conquest of the "great red dragon," whom he ejected from the heaven; and in his deliverance of the church from his sanguinary power, was also a type of Christ in his yet future work of slaying the Scarlet-colored Beast, delivering his downtrodden people, binding the Dragon, and shutting him in the abyss: and I am satisfied, that Napoleon "the Great" should be associated with them in their typical relation to him. The parallel between Napoleon and Christ is still further remarkable in this, that they both were plebeian and poor in their beginning; and commanded by their wonderful works the attention and admiration of man-kind. They were both friends of Israel, and enemies of their oppressors; Christ was born to be a king, and therefore a military commander, which Napoleon became by extraordinary ability and success. They both entered upon their career in youth, to the confusion of the wise and prudent. Christ is the Mediator of the Commonwealth of Israel; Napoleon was the legally constituted Mediator of the Helvetic Common-wealth. Napoleon was king of Italy, emperor of Europe, and "Protector of the Church;" Christ is King of Israel, the destined Emperor of the world, and Protector of the Faithful in all future time. Napoleon abolished the ancient dynasties, gave their thrones to his brothers and relations, and darkened the kingdom and throne of the Beast; Christ will abolish all dynasties, will give their thrones to his Brethren, and de-stroy finally the same kingdom and throne: Napoleon suppressed the Papacy; Christ will destroy it, and leave not a wreck behind. In fine, I know not how the reader may view these things, but for myself, I see in the transformation of Europe under the first, third, fourth, and fifth vials; and in the military development, constitution, and triumph of the Napoleonic empire, a shadowy representation in real life of the approaching transformation of the world; and of the military development, dynastic constitution, and victorious establishment of the kingdom and empire of Christ and his Brethren, by the concluding judgments of the sixth, and all the plagues of the seventh, vials. There is an universal monarchy in these vials, whose judgments are not only destructive, but formative; and whose sovereignty will command and compel the obedience of all peoples, nations, languages, and rulers, to earth's utmost bounds (Dan. 7:14,27; Psa. 2:8,9). "Hitherto is the end of the matter:" and a glorious consummation it will be.

This notable opening of the campaign of the fifth vial by the conquest of the fifth coalition, was the military occasion of the issuing of his decrees from Schoenbrunn and Vienna for the humbling and spoliation of the Romish Mother and her Pope; which he had been threatening to do from the time of his triumphant entry into Berlin, in November, 1806. At this crisis he had an interview with the Papal Nuncio at Dresden in the Cabinet of Frederick the Great; and alluding to the refusal of Pius VII to exclude the English from the Papal States, and to declare war against them, in spite of flattery, coaxing, intimidation, and the most fearful threats, he said, as related in M.D'Hausonville's work, L'Eglise Romaine et le Premier Empire:

The wrath of the fourth vial now began to descend upon the Sun. Napoleon, to whom it was given to scorch with fire, abandoned the invasion of England, and marched for the Rhine, which he crossed on the 1st of October with an army of a hundred and sixty thousand men. By a series of bold maneuvers and successful actions, ninety thousand men under General Mack were cut off from the Austrian territories so completely, that by the middle of October he was entirely surrounded in Ulm with thirty thousand men. Being summoned to capitulate, he thought it best to comply; and his whole force, with all his artillery, magazines, etc., surrendered themselves prisoners of war.

The author of Modern Europe in writing of this period says, "In the grand drama that was at this time acting on the theatre of the world, all the powers of Europe were unhappily called to sustain a part: but France was unquestionably the prime actor, and her history must therefore be allowed to take the precedence of that of every other country. We may now be allowed to say, that it had been happy for England, and for the Continental States also, had she stood aloof at this awful crisis, as a mere spectator of the horrid tragedy, occupying an attitude of self-defence. Secure in her insulated situation and garrisoned by her wooden walls, she might have bid defiance to the volcano, and remained secure amid the tempest. It was her policy also to remain at peace; but unhappily at this time, the sympathies of the different parties in England were so powerfully excited by the state of things upon the Continent, that the dictates of sound reason could no longer be heard; and the wickedness of the ruling party in France was certainly calculated to awaken the horror of men in an extraordinary degree: the consequence was that the original friends of the Revolution became mute; the once sacred name of liberty itself became offensive; the alarmists rose suddenly in number and force; clamors and indignation sprang up in every quarter: and amid the wild uproar of false terrors and of virtuous sympathy, the nation was plunged headlong into a state of war".

Under the National Constituent Assembly, the shocks of the "great earthquake" had abolished all privileged orders; declared the possessions of the Catholic Church national property, and sold it for the use of the State: abolished tithes; ordained the civil constitution of the clergy, by which they were made independent of the Pope, and dependent upon the State; and abolished all titles, armorial bearings, liveries, and orders of chivalry; so that vanity lost its privileges as power had already done. These radical organic changes caused the high clergy to declare war against the Revolution; the nobility to emigrate; and foreign powers to abandon the struggle of kings against each other, and to begin, in alliance with the emigrant priests and nobility without, and the refractory ecclesiastics within, the struggle of kings with the awakening peoples of the world. Thus it was, that during this epoch, the parties separated more and more, and that the two classes, the noblesse and clergy, the enemies of the Revolution, prepared the elements of civil and foreign war, which when in operation were Ha grievous and malignant ulcer" upon all who suffered from them. Louis XVI had attempted to escape to the frontiers, but was recaptured and brought back to Paris; and provisionally suspended by the Assembly.

In the course of a brief campaign of scarcely a month, what history terms "fortune" placed "her favorite" in full possession of the desired road to Italy. He had gained three battles over vastly superior forces, who lost 25,000 men in killed, wounded, and prisoners; he had taken eighty pieces of cannon, and twenty-one stand of colors; reduced the Austrian army to inaction; and almost annihilated that of Sardinia; whose Savoyard King, one of the most distinguished in Europe, found himself at the feet of one, who for a time had power, in the emphatic phrase of Scripture, "to bind kings with chains, and nobles with fetters of iron".

p.353 With Jerusalem redeemed, and the glorified saints enthroned within her walls as the Kings of the Earth, “the abundance of the sea shall be turned to her, and the wealth of the nations shall come unto her. Her gates shall be open continually; they shall not be shut day nor night; that they may bring into her the wealth of the nations, and that their kings may be brought: for the nation and kingdom that will not serve her shall perish. Her officers shall be peace, and her exactors righteousness; her walls Salvation, and her gates Praise. Her sun shall no more go down; neither shall her moon withdraw herself; for YAHWEH shall be her everlasting light and the days of her mourning shall be ended” (Isa. 60).

To eat of the wood of life is to become one of its trees, or one of the leaves of it; and to partake constitutionally, therefore, of that nourishment which rises from the root through the stem and branches thereof.

In the Apocalypse there are two Greek words, xulon and dendron, which are both rendered tree in the E.V., but incorrectly, as I believe. I cannot suppose, that the Spirit selected these two different words to express exactly the same idea; but the rather, because there was a distinction of ideas, which required different words to convey it. To translate xulon by “tree,” involves one in a difficulty from which there is no satisfactory extrication. If xulon be rendered “tree”, the difficulty is, how a tree can be at one and the same time on both sides of a river. The difficulty, however, vanishes in rendering xulon by the word wood. A wood may be enteuthen kai enteuthen, “on this side and the other,” or “on each side” of a river, and yet be one wood; a singular noun of multitude, or plurality, which harmonizes with the structure of other Apocalyptic symbols, which are formed upon the principle of many in one; as many sons of men in One Son of Man; many emperors in One Head of the Beast; many clerical orders in One False Prophet; and many dendra, or trees, in One xulon, or Wood.

Ezekiel saw and described the temple which Zechariah says, far off peoples shall come and build (ch. 6:15); and Isaiah testifies shall be called a house of prayer for all the people, and upon the altar of which, the rams of Nebaioth shall find acceptance (ch. 56:7; 60:7). This is a temple in Jerusalem, as literal and visible as Solomon’s, when she becomes the residence of the Great King, and the capital of his dominion. But in the New and Holy Jerusalem, “John saw no temple therein; because YAHWEH ELOHIM, all-powerful, and the Lamb are the temple of it”. The Eternal Spirit embodied in the Saints are the temple in the highest sense; and the Most Holy Priesthood, the Seed of Zadok, who minister unto the Invisible Deity in the House of Prayer for all people.

p.351 reed, the Son of Man, is a cube of 144 cubits; and is representative of “a multitude no man can number,” all of whom are incorruptible and deathless, and therefore golden, as it were transparent crystal, and without fault before the throne. He is representative of the “holy nation,” to which the kingdom taken from the chief priests and pharisees shall be given, that it may, bring forth the fruits thereof (Matt. 21:43; 1 Pet. 2:9). This cubical man of 144 cubits is the same Paul alludes to in Eph. 4:13, saying to the saints, “till w~ all come into the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of the Deity, into A PERFECT MAN, into a measure of the stature of the fullness of the Christ”. From this it may be seen, that the perfect man is constituted of the saints, and that his stature is measured. John gives us his measure in bulk and height, which he attains in the resurrection epoch, when “the fullness of the Christ” is manifested in the Bride the wife of the Lamb.

6. AND he said to me, These words are faithful and true: and YAHWEH Elohim of the holy prophets sent his angel to show to his servants the things which must come to pass with speed.

and it is such, because “it is born from above,” gegenflemeflon anothen. That which is clean, pure, holy, and divine, is not produced from the earth; but, if the things produced from the dust become so, it must be made clean, pure, holy, and divine, by being born of the Spirit from above; and then the thing born, made, created, or developed, is properly and truly said to be “from heaven,” or to “descend from the Deity out of the heaven.”

6. And he said to me, It is done. lam the Alpha and the Omega, the Begin?ning and the End. I will give to him that is thirsty of the fountain of the water of life freely.

But some of the resurrected come forth to an evil thing an evil thing which they have not in possession when they come forth. This evil thing which is before them is termed by the judge, "a resurrection of condemnation". The resurrected evil doers do not attain to this "resurrection of condemnation" until they have been heard. They are allowed to state their own cases, and to make the best of them. Some will tell the judge that he is "a hard man, reaping where he hath not sown, and gathering where he has not strawed"; in other words, that he exacted more from his servants than he had a right to; and that, if they returned to him just what they had received from him, he ought to be satisfied, and account them honest and good. Others will claim admission into the life, glory, and kingdom of the Aion, because they have acknowledged him as Lord, and prophesied, or preached, in his name; and even done many wonderful works in it. But “in that day” he will declare to them, and to all such, that he never acknowledged them; and will command them, saying, “Depart from me, ye that work iniquity”. Here is a certain end to which they came forth from the graves; and it is this end to which they attain that characterizes their coming forth as “a resurrection of condemnation”. Hence, it will be perceived, that the aggregate coming forth of this mixed multitude is not “the First Resurrection;” for all the subjects of the first resurrection are “blessed and holy,” and cannot be funerealized by the Second Death: “upon these the second death hath no power; but they shall be priests of the Deity and of the Christ, and they shall reign with him a thousand years”. “He that overcometh shall not be hurt of the Second Death” (ch. 2:11). All such living ones believing the doctrine of Christ, “shall not die in the Aion” (John 11:26).

The mission of the Lord Jesus Christ was to "destroy that having the power of death, which is the devil;" or Sin's Flesh; in other words, to "take away the Sin of the world;" and to "destroy the works of the devil," or of Sin (Heb. 2:14; John 1:29; 1 John 3:8). In consummating this "the Woman's Seed bruises the Serpent's head". The "short time" at the end of the thousand years is the epoch when the work is finished.

6. This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is he having part in the first resurrection: upon these the second death hath no power; but they shall be priests of the Deity and of the Christ, and they shall reign with him a thousand years.

Neither is aionian life so called because of its duration, but because it is the life pertaining to a course, or aion, which circles around the kingdom of the Deity. Of this there is to be no end (Luke 1:33); so, therefore, the course will be always circling. The life is, consequently, eternal; not because the word aionian signifies essentially unlimited duration; but because the thing to be possessed, and to which the course belongs, is declared to be endless. Hence, aionian life is life pertaining to the aion, or course of the kingdom into which the Saints, approved and immortalized at the tribunal, go away and enter upon, in its dispensational developments, when they have established the kingdom

The lord Jesus had been mistaken for a terrifying pneuma, or unsubstantial shade of evil, before. He appeared to his disciples in their ship, in the fourth watch of the night, walking on the sea. This is related by Mark in ch. 6:49, and by Matthew ch. 14:26. In narrating the incident they both testify that they cried out in consternation, exclaiming that what they saw was aphantasma. They mistook him for the same thing, on the sea before, and in Jerusalem after, his resurrection; and with the same terrifying accompaniments: I conclude, therefore, that Luke's pneuma, and Matthew and Mark's phantasma, are the same sort of aphantom) and that the reading of phantasnia for pneuma in Luke 24:37, adopted by Griesbach (a German Hebrew and Greek scholar who specialized in the text of Scripture) is correct. The thing signified is the same, so that any dispute is a mere strife of words.

This first Hallelu YAH will be a great festival. John was commanded to write, and to say, "Blessed are they who have been called," or invited, "to the feast of the marriage of the Lamb". There will be two classes that will be blessed; the first consisting of those who, having believed the gospel of the kingdom, been immersed, and thenceforth continued patiently in well-doing till death, have been restored to life; and subsequently, on account of the purity and brightness of their character in Christ, clothed upon with the fine linen of incorruption: and the second class consisting of the "many waters," or peoples, who may have already become joined to YAR as the subjects of his dominion. These, then, blessed in Abraham and his Seed, partake of "the feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wines on the lees well refined, made by YARWEH Tz'vaoth in Mount Zion". The destruction of the Great Harlot corrupter of the earth, will prepare many people for the reception of the light. The veil spread over them will be removed; and they will be able to "buy wine and milk without money and without price" (Isa. 25:6,7; 55:1). Thus a new world will be in process of development, the heavens of which will be the blessed brethren of the Lord Jesus; and the earth thereof, the "many waters" of their dominion; the voice of each ascending in praise of YAHWEH Elohim, the all-powerful, because he hath prevailed (verse 6).

It is true, that she sitteth upon many waters, or peoples, who acknowledge Mistress Roma as the Queen City of the Ecclesiastical world. She is not without recognition as Queen even in America. But it is not true, that she will never experience the sorrow of widowhood. The widowhood of Jerusalem hath inured for many generations, and been to her a cause of reproach. Shall Rome, then, her fierce and relentless enemy, not become a widow? Jerusalem's Maker was the husband of her youth, from whom she hath been divorced, but only for a time, after which He will have mercy upon her, and adorn her as His bride (Isa. 54:4-8; 61:10). When she becomes the married wife by the law that goes forth from Zion; when the Lord Jesus Christ shall be King in Israel on David's throne, shall Rome and the Roman State be the married wife of the Name of Blasphemy styling himself, and being styled, "the Vicar of Christ," and who undertakes to make Christ, in flesh and blood, by mumbling a few words over a wafer? Rome no widow! Always to have popes for husbands of the church! A strong delusion, which the judicial annihilation of the Harlot can alone dispel.

This mighty angel John saw descending. It is not without significance that he uses the present participle. There are stages in the descent from "the right hand of the Majesty in the heavens," to the so-called "Patrimony of St. Peter". In the outset of the descent, the justified and glorified Jesus, the Son of the Father's Handmaid, the Man at His right hand whom He hath made strong for Himself, "the Lord the Spirit" (Psa. 116:16; 80:17; 2 Cor. 3:18), descends to Sinai, in whose wilderness he unites himself to his body, the Bride, of whom he becomes the Head. Thus recruited and enlarged, he is the "One Angel", whose measure is "144 cubits" (ch. 19:17; 21:17). Having finished his work in Teman, "he marches through the land in indignation, and threshes the Gentiles" he encounters "in anger". Arrived at the Mount of Olives, he descends from thence into Jerusalem, the city of the Great King. There, "standing in the sun," he pauses in his descent upon the lofty city, Babylon, which he purposes to level with the dust. Before he invades her peoples with his troops (Hab. 3:12,16,3), he sends forth a voice from the heaven, announcing the judgment that impends. When this proclamation is fulfilled, he will then complete his descent upon Babylon, which he will not abandon until he hath abolished her from the earth.

The Great Harlot was seen to sit upon this Beast; and she was seen to Sit "upon many waters," which are interpreted in verse 15, to signify peoples and multitudes, and nations and tongues"; subjects of the debauched kings, or rulers, of the earth, who are all drunk with her wine; and have no part in the life and glory of the blessed (verse 8). Sitting upon these peoples and the Beast is equivalent to saying, that this Beast is the symbolic representative of the political society they constitute. They are the peoples of the ten horns and of the imperial head giving countenance, veneration, and support to the Great Harlot, as the ecclesiastical system of their several States by law established.

4. And I heard another voice from the heaven, saying, Come forth out of her my people, that ye have no fellowship with her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.

The Seventh Vial is the concluding period of the Seventh Seal, and of the Seventh Trumpet; in other words, the vial, the trumpet, and the seal, all terminate at the same time. The seal began With "the silence in the heaven about the space of half an hour" (ch. 8:1), A.D. 323; the trumpet, which is called in 1 Cor. 15:52, "the last trump, " began to sound With the issue of the Great Voice, A.D. 1790; but when, or at what date, the seventh and last vial shall begin to pour out its wrath, I am unable to say. This, however, may be assuredly affirmed, that it will not begin until after the resurrection period, or "time of the dead;" and the capture of Jerusalem by Gog's forces; and its recovery by YAHWEH ELOHIM, "the Great King". The casting out of the enemy from Jerusalem is followed by the establishment of the Nave, or Most Holy, and the Throne of David, therein. This must precede the outpouring of the wrath into the Air; because "a great voice" goes forth from the Nave-Throne, saying, "It is done;" which could not be if the throne had not already been set up.

7. And the angel said to me, Wherefore didst thou wonder? I will explain to thee the mystery of the woman, and of the beast that carrieth her. having the seven heads and the ten horns.

Here then is a manifest interval of time and space; of space, between Teman and the Mount of Olives; and of time, between the completion of the development of the One Yahweh-Elohim Angel-Man ready for action and his arrival at the Mount of Olives. How does he occupy his time in this interval; and what means does he employ to cause "the kings of the earth and of the whole habitable" to "come out as a whirlwind to scatter him" (Hab. 3:14)? In other words, how doth he put hooks into Gog's jaws, by which he brings him forth, and all his army, horses, and horsemen, against the mountains of Israel (Ezek. 38:4,8)?

Such is the blessedness which results from doing the commandments of "the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, the First and the Last". By obedience to his institutions, they obtain "the right," which, not being forfeited by misconduct, is realized in "the adoption, to wit, the redemption of the body of us," "who are kept by the power of the Deity through faith for salvation, ready to be apocalypsed in the last time". As the blessed constituents of the Perfect Man, they are the Tree of Life, and the Great City, the holy Jerusalem, into which they have entered, and whose name is written upon each (Ch. 3:12). The door is yet open to all who aspire to so great and exalted a destiny; as it is written in ch. 22:14, "Blessed they who do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city".

Thus, "the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night: for when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them . . . and they shall not escape. But ye, brethren," continues Paul in 1 Thess. 5:3,4, "are not in darkness, that that day should over-take you as a thief". We see from this, the class upon whom the coming is as a thief it is upon them who are in darkness. While the Perfect Man is being developed, the Dragon, the Beast, and the Roman Prophet, will be saying, "Peace and safety;" and the last especially, as the organ of Catholicity, in heart saying, "I sit queen and no widow, and shall see no sorrow". These are all in the dark, doting upon speculations none of which Will be realized, but only the reverse.

Jurieu, who wrote in 1685, indicated the death of the Witnesses as occurring in that year; and that they would lie dead and unburied in the street of the great Papal city, or empire, which he judged to be France, where, of course, their resurrection and ascension would ensue.

The Spirit "spues" her Laodicean element "out of his mouth," and a remnant, of her seed, as the woman fugitive, is found in the wilderness.

And besides all this, not to dwell upon the increase of taxation, financial embarrassment, pestilence, destruction of mankind and their fellow-beasts, and all the minor evils by which humanity is grieved, there is the all-important and inevitable Roman Question. This is pre-eminently the question of the time of the end. It can only be solved in the final and complete abolition of the Papal Kingdom. This result, however, can not be developed by the action or policy of France, Italy, or the Roman people. They are blindly preparing this consummation; and will doubtless develop for "the Great Harlot that sitteth upon many waters" a hatred of the European Powers, that shall cause them yet more than ever to "make her desolate and naked, and to eat her flesh and burn her with fire." -- Apoc. 17:1,16. But the final and complete destruction of the Papacy is an honor decreed for a more noble and powerful class of agents than these. It is a glory reserved for "the Heirs of the Kingdom which the Deity has promised to them that love him." -- James 2:5. These are the destroyers of the Papacy in the time of the end. They are the Avengers of the Holy -- the avengers of the blood of the saints and witnesses of Jesus, and of all slain upon the earth in defence of righteousness and truth. -- Apoc. 18:6-8, 20, 21. It is from these proceed the lightnings, and voices, and thunderings, and earthquake, and great hail." -- Ch. 11:19.

The position of the imperially invested woman in this "great sign" with "the Moon under her feet, " indicates that she occupies the former place of the Roman Moon. In the heaven which had departed as a scroll, there was no woman standing upon the moon. There was simply the moon-heirarchy invested with the light of imperialism by which it shone; and between this hierarchal moon and the throne of the Dragon power, nothing intervened. But the Constantinian Revolution, or "great earthquake" of the Sixth Seal, had baptized the idol-hierarchy in blood; so that the moon became AS BLOOD.- The sun and moon were not annihilated, but only subjected to changed conditions consequent upon the great earthquake revolution. This popular convulsion exalted one from among the people, and placed her in the moon's orbit. The light and glory of the imperial majesty fell upon her. The rays whose brightness had formerly glorified the priests of Jupiter, and conferred dignity upon his superstition, were now intercepted by a Hierarchy more favored by the state. This new hierarchy had been elevated by the earthquake above the old one; so that, in the "great sign," their relative position is symbolized by the former moon being subjected, or placed under the woman's feet.

At the end of three years and a half, Jesus having been immersed, and John cast into prison, Jesus began to preach the gospel of the kingdom. This began the second half of Daniel 's seventieth week................... A.D. 30

While her Jezebel counter-self remained invested with the Roman sun, and acquired and exercised dominion over the kings of the earth, she was sojourning in the wilderness, in which, however, Jezebel afterwards succeeded in establishing her blasphemous, licentious and sanguinary rule. The Anti-Jezebel Woman dwelt in the wilderness as many months of years as Israel did years in the exodus from Egypt; and two months of years more. She remained there 1,260 years, or forty-two generations of years after her flight; and will continue trodden underfoot by the lovers and protectors of Jezebel until the end of another period of 1,260 years, when the Ancient of Days will come*, and avenge the wrongs she has suffered, in the judgment which shall sit. At this crisis, she is tarried to the Lamb to whom she has been so long espoused. Her husband who is her head is Christ'. In "the time of the dead," having 64 made herself ready", she is "arrayed in fine linen clean and white" (ch. 19:7-8). Her marriage with the Lamb establishes such a oneness between those she represents and Christ, as exists between him and the Father in heaven. She is then "the Holy and Great City, the New and Holy Jerusalem, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband" (Ch. 21:2,10). When thus "glorified together with Christ" (Rom. 8:17), the Jezebel-Synagogue of Satan will "be made to come and worship before her feet, and to know that Christ has loved her" (Ch. 3:9). Jezebel's children will have been slain with death, and her communion and sovereignty abolished; and the only woman seen in the heaven will be the glorified fugitive of the wilderness; clothed with the sun of Righteousness, the moon of the Laodicean Apostasy under her feet, and upon her head a wreath of twelve Apostolic Stars.

It was by the inworking of these unfaithful teachers constituting "the Satan", "the Serpent," that the Christian Eve was "corrupted from the simplicity which is in Christ. " The depths of the Satan as they taught (Apoc. 2:24) impregnated her with the mystery of iniquity. They formed within her the embryo of the Man of Sin. They preached a Jesus which was not according to the Jesus Paul preached; they taught another gospel than that proclaimed by him; and denied a future resurrection of the dead; or, which was equivalent thereto, said that it was already past. The inworking of this mystery, or perverse teaching, showed itself very early in the history of the Christian Eve. The first intimation on record of this subverting of souls is found in Acts 14:1-5. In this place we are told that certain who believed were not satisfied with the sufficiency of the simplicity which is in Christ for salvation. The belief of "the things concerning the kingdom of the Deity and of the Name of Jesus Christ;" and the immersion of such a believer for salvation from the sins of the past-did not satisfy them. They required that Moses should be obeyed as well as Jesus; and that no gospel short of this would save any one: "Except ye be circumcised after the manner of Moses, and keep his law, ye cannot be saved. " This was their perversion of the gospel, which Paul terms "another gospel," the preachers of which, though of celestial angelic origin, he pronounced "accursed."

Amongst profane writers may be mentioned Horace, who compares the Roman people, not only to a beast because of its ferocity, but to a many-headed beast - lib. 1 Ep. 1 ver. 76. The apocalypse denominates that Egypto-Roman monster a great seven-headed dragon.

6. The Imperial Head, B.C. 31. John the apostle and Tacitus the historian, lived under this head, which continued in Rome 507 years. It was then wounded as it were to death by the

In the thirteenth verse of the Psalm brief and passing reference is made to the dragon-powers of the interval; as, "Thou breakest the HEADS OF THE DRAGONS upon the waters." In the English Version, "breakest" occurs in relation to the "heads of the dragons" and "the heads of leviathan;" though in the original different words are used. In reference to the dragon-heads the word used is shivbarta; while the other is ritzatva. This verbal difference was doubtless not accidental. The former signifies "to break the power of, destroy;" the latter, "to bruise. " Leviathan is bruised and bound for a thousand years, and at the end thereof revives, and embraces the serpent-world in his coils: but the power of the dragons and their heads in the long interval antecedent to the epoch of the binding, is destroyed.

On another occasion, the Lord said to his disciples, "I beheld the Satan fall out of the heaven like lightning". This was the Satan in heaven contemporary with his sojourn upon earth. He beheld his fall as the prophets beheld things not yet come to pass: for this Satan was still in the heaven after his assumption to the right hand of the Majesty in the heavens. This is evident from Paul's assurance to the saints in Rome, the Capital of the Satan's empire, that "the Deity of peace should bruise- the Satan under their feet shortly" (Rom. 16:18). When Paul wrote this, the Satan was still in the heaven. It was the same Satan that prevented Paul more than once from visiting the saints in Thessalonica (1 Thess. 2:18). It was their great and potent adversary in the Dragon government, the Pagan Roman Church and State. It was this Great Red Dragonic Diabolos and Satan, that "magnified himself against the Prince of (Israel's) host: and by whom the Daily Sacrifice was taken away, and the place of its sanctuary was cast down" (Dan. 8:9-12). It is symbolized in this place by "a Little Horn, which waxed exceeding great." It was by this Satanic Power, "Messiah the Prince was cut off;" and by which the city and sanctuary were destroyed" (Dan. 9:26). It was the great adversary of Judah, and of the Saints, whom it reckoned also as Jews. When the Lord Jesus saw it in vision fall like lightning from heaven, he saw their adversary expelled from the Roman Heaven, as symbolized in this twelfth chapter of the Apocalypse. Paul said it would be braised "shortly" after he wrote. It was ejected by the lightning of war from the heaven, about 25O years after, when the Michael and his party fought against the Dragon and his angels (ch. 12:7). It fell out of the heaven, as Jesus said; and John records, that "he was cast out into the earth," to the great terror of those among whom he fell (ver. 9,12).

" The fame of Constantine has rendered posterity attentive to the most minute circumstances of his life and actions. The Great Constantine was most probably born at Naissus, in Dacia. He was about eighteen years of age when his father (Constantius) was promoted to the rank of Caesar. Instead of following Constantius in the west, he remained in the service of Diocletian, signalized his valor in the wars of Egypt and Persia, and gradually rose to the honorable station of a tribune of the first order. The favor of the people and soldiers, who had named him as a worthy candidate for the rank of Caesar, served only to exasperate the jealousy of Galerius (the chief emperor of the Dragon): and though prudence might restrain him from exercising any open -violence, an absolute monarch is seldom at, a loss how to execute a sure and secret revenge. Every hour increased the danger of Constantine, and the anxiety of his father, who, by repeated letters, expressed the warmest desire of embracing his son. For some time the policy of Galerius supplied him with delays and excuses, but it was impossible long to refuse so natural a request of his associate, without maintaining his refusal by arms. The permission of the journey was reluctantly granted, and whatever precautions Galerius might have taken to intercept a return, the consequences of which he, with so much reason, apprehended, they were effectually disappointed by the incredible diligence of Constantine, Leaving the palace (of the Dragon) at Nicomedia in the night, he travelled post through Bithynia, Thrace, Dacia, Pannonia, Italy and Gaul, and amid the joyful acclamations of the people, reached the port of Boulogne in the very moment when his father was preparing to embark for Britain." Such was the narrow escape of the Woman's future imperial chief from being "devoured" by the imperial Pontifex Maximus who "stood before her" in ferocity watching to that end.

The churches, chapels, and cathedrals, then, are "the most strongholds" of the King's superstition, which has spread itself over Europe and America. They are the houses of business dedicated by the prospering craft to "Guardian Spirits". There are laid up in store the images and pictures of reputed saints. They are Saints' Houses in which are deposited their shrines; silver, gold and ivory crucifixes; "religious articles" of all sorts; together with old bones, and various kinds of votive trumpery. They are literally, "Dens of Thieves," without ever having been houses of the Father - dens, where people are hoodwinked, and by "sharp practice" robbed of their money under divers false pretences. They are places where pews are sold by auction, the proudest sittings being knocked down to Mammon's greatest favorites; places where fairs of vanity and deceit are held for "pious objects;" and whose spiritual empirics pretend to "cure souls" in consideration of so much per annum. In view of these facts, the Scriptural epithet bestowed upon the ecclesiastical edifices of the Apostasy , is most appropriate. They are truly bazaars of spiritual merchandise; and the prospering craft, "the great men of the earth," papal, catholic, and protestant, made rich by trading in their wares, are the Bazaar-Men, who extort all kinds of goods from their deluded customers by putting them in sulphurous and mortal fear; and comforting them with counterfeits upon some transpatial bank when time shall be no more! They "buy and sell" under license from the Ecclesiastical Power, having received its "mark upon their foreheads, or on their right hands. " The reader may find their inventory of merchandise in Apoc. 18:12,13. Among the articles received in exchange for their "spiritual things," are tithes, bodies (somata) and souls of men. But the trade of these soul-and-body merchants is in anything but a satisfactory state at present. Great numbers of their customers have discovered that the profit is all upon one side; nor are they backward in proclaiming that when a favorable opportunity presents they will break up the iniquitous concern, and make the cheats disgorge their unhallowed gains. This will be to them a sad day - a day of universal bankruptcy for the weeping and wailing merchants of "Babylon the Great;" for "no man buyeth their merchandize any more." When a man's trade is thus extinguished, nothing but ruin stares the shattered tradesman in the face. This is the fate that awaits the preachers of all the "other gospels" of the bazaars - gospels other than Paul preached, and which leave men in ignorance and disobedience; gospels which make them partisans of human crotchets and traditions; and the apologists of anything sincerely professed as a substitute for the truth.

His birth could not be accomplished without the pains of parturition. His mother was "in pangs, straining to bring forth." These pangs and strainings were the pains of persecution, and the efforts of war for deliverance. The threatened invasion of his territory by Maxentius caused Constantine to hesitate no longer. He gave private audience to ambassadors, who in the name of the Senate and people, conjured him to deliver Rome from a detested tyrant; and without regarding the timid remonstrance’s of his council, he resolved to prevent the enemy, and to carry the war into the heart of Italy.

In the Roman Heaven, then, there was to be war. There had already been a war there; that namely, between Licinius and Maximin. But this could not be the war predicted; for, although Maximin was defeated, he was not cast out by Licinius; having died in office and from disease: neither were Licinius and his adherents "the Michael and his angels." The chief difference between Licinius and Maximin was, that the former was a hypocritical and cruel politician and pagan; while the latter was all this and more ferocious, but without the hypocrisy. No; the particular war predicted was to be waged between "the Michael" and the Dragon; and not to reach its final termination until the place of "the Dragon and his angels" should be "found no more in the heaven." Constantine took no part in the war against Maximin, being engaged in checking the incursions of the Franks across the Rhine.

Now, I take it, that these parallels are not accidental, but designed. Michael and the Dragon was literally enacted as previously explained. Its performance is the history of the last twenty-five years of the life of Constantine. This history in its most striking particulars was like much of the history of the Jews. Jewish history is not like common history - a story of the past unprophetic of the future. The things that happened to Israel as narrated in their history, happened unto them for types (tupoi); and they were written for our admonition, "upon whom," says Paul, "the end of the aeons is come" (1 Cor. 10:11). Typical history is the past representative of the future. This is the character of Michael and the Dragon. It is a past series of events. typical of a future contest between the Michael of Dan. 12:1 and the Dragon of Apoc. 20. This view of the prophecy imparts to it an interest for us which it would be devoid of if it were regarded merely as belonging to a past epoch over fifteen hundred years remote. There was war in the heaven then; and when the door shall be opened in the heaven, and the throne shall be set therein (Apoc. 4:1,2) there will be a war in the heaven again, "the war of that great day of AIL.Shaddai, "which will terminate in similar, but grander results; for "the very image" is always greater and more magnificent than the type. The great voice in the heaven, celebrative of the victory over the great red dragon, partakes of this typical character. It not only expresses what then obtained in shadow; but by anticipation celebrates the greater realities of the victory of Christ and the Saints over all the apocalyptic beasts; when the great salvation, and power; and kingdom of Yahweh, consisting of the kingdoms of the world, and the authority of His Anointed, the One Body of which Jesus is the head, shall have actually come. Then there will be in the heaven a great voice indeed "a voice as the sound of many waters; and as the voice of a great thunder; the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunderings, saying, Praise ye Yah: for Yahweh Elohim omnipotent reigneth. Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honor unto him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made her-self ready" (Apoc. 1:15; 14:2; 19:6,7).

The edict of Milan(*) had confirmed to each individual of the Roman world the privilege of choosing and professing his own religion. But this inestimable privilege was soon violated; for with the knowledge of Catholic principles, the son and protector of the Catholic church, imbibed the maxims of persecution; and the sects which dissented from it were afflicted and oppressed by the triumph of Laodiceanism. Constantine easily believed that Heretics who presumed to dispute his opinions, or to oppose his commands were guilty of the most absurd and criminal obstinacy; and that a seasonable application of seventies might save those unhappy men from the danger of an everlasting condemnation. Not a moment, therefore, was lost in excluding the ministers and teachers of the separated congregations from any share of the rewards and immunities which the emperor had so liberally bestowed upon the Catholic clergy.

Now, the Puritan Woman, styled by her enemies and persecutors "the Donatists;" but by the children of her body, Cathari, or the Pure Ones; for the first 1260 years of her existence was Providentially settled in the wings of the Roman Eagle. Her remnants were not to be found in Persia, India, China, or America: but after the discovery and settlement of America, the persecutions and massacre of her seed by the Serpent-Powers of Europe caused her to seek refuge in the American wilderness, whereby the help of "the earth," which styles itself "the unterrified democracy," she is fed and nourished to the full.

The throne of the Pagan Dragon was Rome; but when the Dragon-power came to be vested in Constantinople he established a New Polity in a New Capital, which after himself he styled, the City of Constantine, or Constantinople. In the period in which the woman became a fugitive, Constantinople, previously called Byzantium, became the capital of the Roman world. It has retained its sovereign rank over 1540 years. Its founder ascribed his resolution of building it to the infallible and eternal decrees of Divine Wisdom; and in one of his laws, he declares that it was in obedience to the commands of God, that he laid the everlasting foundations of Constantinople. His choice of Byzantium for a city is said, by contemporary writers, to have been owing to a vision which appeared to him while he slept within the walls of that city. Its tutelar genius, a venerable woman sinking under the weight of years and infirmities, was suddenly transformed into a blooming female, whom his own hands adorned with all the symbols of imperial greatness. The emperor awoke, interpreted the auspicious omen, and obeyed, without hesitation, the supposed will of heaven. On the day on which the foundation of the city was laid, Constantine on foot, with a lance in his hand, traced out the boundary of the destined capital. It was of great extent, which his assistants observing, ventured to remark, that he had already exceeded the most ample measure of a great city. "I shall still advance," replied Constantine, "till he, the invisible guide who marches before me, thinks proper to stop." Whether or not the emperor did see the vision of his dream, it is a fact as already sh6wn, that this twelfth chapter was generally supposed by anti-pagans of that day to refer to the events of the life of Constantine. Hence, it is more than probable that the dream he professes to have had was not a vision of his own, but a fiction into which he introduced the two women of this chapter, the one distressed, inferior, and persecuted, the other blooming and decorated with the sun, the moon and the stars, the symbols of imperial greatness, with which "his own hands adorned her;" and for whom he determined, dream or no dream, to found a new capital.

Under the Constantinopolitan standard, the Paulicians were often transported to the Greek provinces of Italy and Sicily: in peace and war they and their sympathizers of "the earth," who were confounded with them under the same name, freely conversed with strangers and natives, and their views were silently propagated in Rome, Milan, and the newly-arisen Ten-Horn kingdoms of the Beast beyond the Alps. It was soon discovered, that many thousand catholics of every rank, and of either sex, had embraced the "heresy" of Paul; and the flames that consumed twelve cathedral priests of Orleans was the first act and signal of persecution in the West. "They spared their branches," says Gibbon, "over the face of Europe." United in common hatred of idolatry and Rome; they were connected by an ecclesiastical organization of over-seers and presbyteries, usually styled elders and pastors. The French called them "Bulgarians" by way of reproach, meaning thereby "unnatural sinners". Their catholic enemies also falsely styled them Manichaeans, and charged them with contempt of the Old Testament, and the denial of the body of Christ, either on the cross or in the bread and wine. They repudiated the catholic dogmas connected with the cross and eucharist; but they took both bread and wine, discerning by "the testimony of the anointed Jesus which they held," the representation therein of his broken body and blood, shed for remission of the sins of the many (Matt. 26:28). "A confession of simple worship and blameless manners," says Gibbon, "is extorted from their enemies; and so high was their standard of perfection, that the increasing congregations were divided into two classes of disciples, of those, who practised, and those who aspired. It was in the country of the Albigeois, in the southern provinces of France, that the Paulicians were most deeply implanted; and the same vicissitudes of massacre and uprising of "the Earth" which had been displayed in the neighborhood of the Euphrates, were repeated in the thirteenth century on the banks of the Rhone. The laws of the Constantinopolitan Dragon and Serpent were revived by Frederick the Second, the reigning emperor of the Two-Horned Beast of the Earth, which "spake as a Dragon" (Apoc. 13:11). The barons and cities of Languedoc were "the earth that ran with help for the Woman: and Pope Innocent the Third surpassed the sanguinary and murderous renown of the ferocious Theodora. It was in cruelty alone that her soldiers could equal the Crusaders; and the cruelty of her priests was far excelled by the founders of the Inquisition. The visible assemblies of the Albigensian Paulicians were extirpated with fire and sword; and "the bleeding remnant" escaped by flight, concealment, or conformity to the hated superstition of the destroyer. But the invincible spirit which they had kindled still lived and breathed in the western world. A latent succession was preserved of "the disciples of St. Paul," who protested against the tyranny of Rome, and embraced the Bible as the rule of faith.

By the labors of Constantine, who added Sylvanus to his name, numerous disciples were made and collected into societies; and "the remnant," in a little time, was diffused over the provinces of Asia Minor and the region westward of the Euphrates. Ecclesias were constituted, as much upon the plan and model of the apostolic ecclesias as it was in their power to form them. Six of their principal congregations were designated by the names of those to which the Apostle Paul addressed his epistles; and their pastors adopted Scriptural names, as Titus, Timothy, Sylvanus, Tychicus, and so forth. "This innocent allegory," says Gibbon, "revived the memory and examples of the first ages." Their endeavor was to bring their contemporaries back to the original simplicity of Christian faith and practice. In this good and laudable enterprise Constantine Sylvanus spent twenty-seven years of his life with considerable success. The Catholic Dragon was greatly alarmed at the defections caused by his labors; and at the formidable proportions into which "the remnant" was being developed. After the ancient method of dealing with heretics, he proceeded to "cast out water like a flood" to sweep them away. He began to persecute the Paulicians with the most san-guinary severity; and the bloody scenes of the Great Fiery-Red Dragon ministered by Galerius and Maximin were repeated under catholic names and forms. "To their excellent deeds," says the bigoted Peter of Sicily, "the divine and orthodox emperors added this virtue, that they ordered the Montanists and Manichaeans (as he falsely styled the Paulicians) to be capitally punished, and their books, wherever found, to be committed to the flames; and further, that if any person was found to have secreted them, he was to be put to death, and his goods confiscated." "What more," asks Mr. Gibbon, "could bigotry and persecution desire?"

Thus, the great wrath of Diabolos expended itself in the complete bankruptcy of the old concern. But this house had been so long established, that it was deemed expedient to continue it under the ancient style of "Dragon, Old Serpent, Diabolos, and Satan;" the essential difference between the old house and the new being, that the former did business in the interest of Jupiter and the Idols; while the sharp practice of the latter is in the name of an imaginary Peter and fictitious saints. The foundations of the two houses are the same. They are based solely in the flesh and the speculations of the fleshly mind so that their normal condition is "enmity against Deity," and hatred of those who "keep his commandments, and hold the testimony of the anointed Jesus."

But, besides Daniel's Four Beasts, and their appendages, the prophet saw a class of people, for whose sake all things consist (2 Cor. 4:15). These he styles, "the Saints of the Most High Ones." They are the Seed of the Woman, against which the Fourth Beast in many centuries of his career, would have great and deadly "enmity;" for all the elements of said beast are "the Serpent" and his seed; or, in the words of Christ, ~the Devil and his angels" (Matt. 25:41; Gen. 3:15). He was to make war upon them, and to prevail against them till the end of "a time, times, and the dividing of a time," when the Ancient of Days would come, and join them in the execution of judgment unto the utter and complete destruction of their enemy.

Now, what Daniel beheld arising out of the sea as the results of the storms of war upon it, John also saw in part from his Patmian stand-point ascending from the same sea and in the same sense. He saw the kingdoms and empires of Modern Europe so far as their origin was Mediterranean, ascending from this sea. He stood literally upon its Patmian Shore, in a numerous cluster of its islands, which were as but the sands of its coast; and from this, as the representative of a multitude occupying the wings of this sea-region, he saw kingdoms arise from the symbolic sea inhabiting the literal maritime earth enclosing the Latin Sea, of which he has presented us with a symbolical description in the chapter we have in hand. 28.

In ch. 17:12, John was informed that the ten horns were symbolical of kingdoms: "the ten horns which thou sawest are ten kings, which have received no kingdoms as yet;" that is, they had received no kingdom at the time the interpreter was talking with John. Daniel gives the same record in ch. 7:23. He had said that he wished to know the truth represented by the ten horns upon the fourth beast's head; upon which it was stated to him that "the ten horns out of this kingdom are ten kings that shall arise;" and those in ver. 9, are styled "the thrones" which are to be "cast down" when the Ancient bf Days comes to sit in judgment upon them. And this judgment John indicates in the words: "These (Ten Horns) shall make war upon the Lamb, and the Lamb shall over-come them; for He is Lord of lords, and King of kings: and they that are with him (the Saints of the Holy City) are called chosen and faithful" (Apoc. 17:14).

The Name of Blasphemy is a power; and like the Beast over which it presides is, or rather has been, in centuries of its career, a "dreadful and terrible" power. It is an EPISCOPAL NAME, because it is the embodiment of those audacious "Eyes" Daniel was so observant of in his vision. He saw a Little Horn come up among, and after, the ten. It was not like the other horns. These had no eyes in them; nor had they any mouth . If they had possessed these, there would have been twenty eyes and ten mouths . But a different constitution of the evil was predete-mined. One pair of Eyes and one Mouth were to suffice for the Little Horn and all its ten associate horns. Had there been eleven pairs of eyes instead of one pair, there would have been eleven names of blasphemy upon the sea-monster's heads, which would have been incongruous, and a cause of inextricable confusion .

p.230 Having thus become CHRISTADELPHIANS, or Brethren of the Christ they had crucified and slain, they had placed themselves in such a position, that, on their arrival in Rome, they would be regarded as apostates from Judaism; and no longer worthy of fellowship in the Synagogue of the Jews. It can easily be conceived what an excitement would be created in the Jewish community of Rome. They would, of course, tell the story of what they had seen, heard, and done; but, from the temper of the Jews in those days, we may know that, if they had no other evidence than their own assertion, they would be accused of falsehood and blasphemy; and accounted as worthy of a like fate with the Nazarene. But, the Spirit in Jerusalem had provided for such an eventuality in Rome and elsewhere. He knew that "the Jews, devout men, from every nation under heaven," after the feasts were over, would have to return to their several countries and friends; and he knew also, that such extraordinary facts and doctrines as he had prepared for mankind, required no less than the attestation of Deity in his cooperation with his witnesses. Hence, he not only moved Peter to specify the condition upon which believers of the Gospel of the Kingdom might be loosed from all past sins; but he moved him also to promise the baptized "the gift of the Holy Spirit." Filled sufficiently with this, they would be prepared for any emergency that might arise.

The first coin .of the engraving is Burgundian On one face is the diademed bust of the Dragon-emperor, Anastasius, and on the other, Sigismund, king and consul. The second, is a coin of the Suevi, with the bust, diademed, of the emperor Honorius on one side; and on the other, Richiarius, king. This was issued by the Suevi twenty-seven years after the death of Honorius, and his name stamped upon it out of regard to Roman imperial authority. A third coin is Ostrogothic. It was issued during the reign of the Seventh Head, while Theodoric was king of Italy,

But it is customary to style Daniel's Fourth Beast "the Roman Empire," by which is meant the dominion exercised by Rome and Constantinople, until the latter city came to be possessed by the Turks, A.D. 1453, when it fell, or passed away. It is true, it does symbolize said Roman Empire, but it also symbolizes a vast deal more. The Roman Empire, of which Gibbon wrote the decline and fall, has never yet embraced within its jurisdiction the hundred and twenty-seven provinces of the Medo-Persian Bear, which it is necessary it should have done that its Leopard-Body might "bear rule over all the earth," and that it might stand upon its Bear-Feet, and with these feet "break in pieces and stamp THE RESIDUE." John's Sea Monster with the Bear-Feet and Leopard-Body, represents Daniel's Fourth Beast in its amplest development of the last of the days (*). It answers to Nebuchadnezzar's Image at the crisis of its demolition by THE STONE. When John's Beast of the Sea comes, in fact, to stand upon its four brazen-clawed Bear-Feet, its dominion will consist of the Russian Empire, Continental and Mediterranean Europe, Persia, Ethiopia, Libya, Togarmah, Egypt and Syria. When the throne of the Russian Autocrat is transferred to Constantinople, the Apocalyptic Bear-Feet, armed with Brazen or Greek Claws, will also be enthroned there, and be prepared for the work that remains of "stamping the residue". This residue that yet remains to be stamped, are the "many countries" to be "overthrown," inclusive of Turkey, Egypt and part of the Glorious Land. Edom, Moab and part of Ammon, will evade the stamping process. These three countries will be "the front" of the forces of "Sheba, and Dedan, and the Merchants of Tarshish and the Young Lions thereof" - the Anglo-Indian Leopard empire of the latter days (Ezek. 38:1-6,13; 11:40-44). The part which Britain has to enact in "the time of the end," when "the Eastern Question" is to be Scripturally resolved, clearly indicates that she is not one of the ten horns. She is not of their world, but the Oriental section of the Sea Monster's Leopard Body- a world peculiar to herself, and as distinct from them as Canada and the United States. In the approaching scramble for the effects of the expiring Sick Man of Ottomania, she will most likely secure for herself, or at least take possession of, Egypt and Syria. But Daniel shows that whatever power may primarily become seized of these countries, will not be able to prevent their being stamped by the Feet of the Bear. "The land of Egypt shall not escape" the power of the King of the North; "but he shall have power over the treasures of gold and silver, and over all the precious things of Egypt." From this conquest he will proceed into the Holy Land. The war between the belligerents will then be transferred to this country, upon which the Oriental Power must necessarily retire. The conflict waged will be furious; for the Northern Power, symbolized by John's Scarlet-colored Beast, will "go forth with great fury to destroy, and utterly to make away many. And he shall pitch the tents of his entrenched camp between the seas unto the mountain of the glory of the holy." This brings him to Jerusalem, which he besieges and captures (Zech. 14:2). Upon this the Oriental Leopard falls back upon Edom, Moab and Ammon, beyond the Jordan and the Dead Sea. At this crisis the face of Yahweh is flushed with fury, and he goes forth against the invader (Ezek. 38:18; Zech. 14:3). As the Stone-Power, he smites the Image upon the feet, and shatters it into fragments. The Bear, the Lion and Leopard, inclusive of the British section of the last, lose their dominion; but as Assyria and Egypt are annexed to Israel (Isa. 19:23-25) and the tide of war is rolled back from Syria, north and west, upon the countries of the Ten Hoins, and of the Two-Horned beasts, over which the Name of Blasphemy presides as their prophet, priest and king. This solution of the Eastern Question ushers in the solution of the Roman Question, neither of which can be finally disposed of until the Ancient of day's, that is, Jesus Christ, come; and he give authority and power to his brethren, the Saints, to execute the judgment written in ch. 13:10; which is, as David expressed it, to slay the beast (the Fourth Beast in Apocalyptic manifestation) , destroy his body in the burning flame, and take away the dominion of the Lion, the Bear and the Leopard (ch. 7:11,12). The slaying of the beast is the utter extermination of the Greek and Latin Catholic governments by the power of the sword; and the taking away of the dominion of the Lion, the Bear, the Leopard, or that of the Asiatic Powers, is the binding of the Dragon, casting him into the abyss, shutting him up, and Setting a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more for "a season and a time," or "a thousand years."

Such was Justinian, the diademed representative of the Dragon from A.D. 527 to A.D. 565; and of Daniel's Little Horn King, who worked according to his will; to whom the Patriarch of Rome was greatly indebted in the establishment of his self-exaltation "over all called god or sebasma" - an object of veneration. His "policy" was that of an ecclesiastical ruler of the class typified by Constantine the great." "Never prince," says Dupin, "did meddle so much with what concerns the affairs of the Church, nor make so many constitutions and laws upon the subject. He was persuaded that it was the duty of an emperor, and for the good of the State, to have a particular care of the church, to defend its faith, to regulate external discipline, and to employ the civil laws and the temporal power to preserve it in order and peace."

On the death of Theodoric, August 30, A.D. 526, the throne of the Seventh Head was occupied by his grandson, Athalaric, aged ten years, with his mother Amalasuntha as guardian and regent of the kingdom of Italy. She ruled the country about eight years, during which a spirit of discord and disaffection prevailed, and the Goths supported with reluctance the indignity of a female reign. Her son Athalaric dying, she caused it to be announced to the Senate of Rome and the Emperor of Constantinople, that she and Theodatus, her cousin, had jointly ascended the throne of Italy. But this regal partnership was soon dissolved by Theodatus, by whose orders she was first imprisoned, and then strangled in the bath, A.D. 535.

But this is mere clerical ignorance and folly. The Deity has no saints in the Church of Rome, nor in the Protestant churches of Antichristendom. He has a people therein, even as he had among the idolators of Corinth (Acts 18:10), who become saints by believing the gospel of the kingdom and name, coming out from among the unclean, and being immersed into Jesus as the Christ. Such, cease to be Pagans, Catholics, and Protestants, and become "the sanctified in Christ Jesus;" the Brethren of Christ, the Seed of the Woman, "who keep the commandments of the Deity, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ."

This claim that he was irresponsible to any laws, human or Divine, by which he identified himself with the anomos or Lawless One of Paul, continued to be urged in the fifteenth century. So A.D. 1463, on Paul II dismissing Platina from office after his election, and Platina's threatening to bring the case before the judges of the Rota. Paul fiercely replied, "Thou wilt call us to account before the judges! As if thou wert ignorant that all laws are placed in the coffer of our breast! I am Supreme Pontiff; and I can at the pleasure of my soul both rescind and approve the acts of others." And again the Roman Council, A.D. 877, declared that "Christ himself willed that the pope be the head of us all, in his stead upon earth."

Now the two places of the Mosaic tabernacle were the Holy Place and the Most Holy Place, which were divided the one from the other by the Vail. Even so it is with "the holies", the true tabernacle which the Lord pitches, and not man (Heb. 8:2). There are the Holy Heavenly State and the Most Holy Heavenly State, divided by the Flesh. The Holy must be entered before the Most Holy can be reached; and to pass corporeally from one into the other, the individual must put on incorruptibility and become immortal; for, so long as he is in mortal flesh he is outside, or rather, an element of the Vail which must be rent; though by faith and constitution in Christ, he is within it.

"You assault us, 0 Tyrant," he continues, "with a carnal and military hand: unarmed and naked, we can only implore the Christ, the prince of the heavenly host, that he will send unto you a devil, for the destruction of your body and the salvation of your soul. You declare, with foolish arrogance, I will despatch my orders to Rome; I will break in pieces the image of St. Peter; and Gregory, like his predecessor, Martin, shall be transported in chains, and in exile, to the foot of the imperial throne. Would to God that I might be permitted to tread in the footsteps of the holy Martin; but may the fate of Constans serve as a warning to the persecutors of the church. After his just condemnation by the bishops of Sicily, the tyrant was cut off in the fullness of his sins by a domestic servant: the saint is still adored by the nations of Scythia, among whom he ended his banishment and his life. But it is our duty to live for the edification and support of the faithful people; nor are we reduced to risk our safety on the event of a combat. Incapable as you are of defending your Roman subjects, the maritime situation of the city may perhaps expose it to your depredation; but we can remove to the distance of four and twenty stadia, to the first fortress of the Lombards, and then - you may pursue the winds. Are you ignorant that the popes are the bond of union, the mediators of peace, between the East and the West? The eyes of the nations are fixed on our humility, whom all the kingdoms of the west hold as a God upon earth, whose image, St. Peter, you threaten to destroy. The remote and interior kingdoms of the west present their homage to Christ and His Vicegerent; and we now prepare to visit one of their most powerful monarchs, who desires to receive from our hands the sacrament of baptism. The Barbarians (the Ten Horns) have submitted to the yoke of the gospel, while you alone are deaf to the voice of the shepherd. The pious barbarians are kindled into rage; they thirst to avenge the persecution of the East. Abandon your rash and fatal enterprise; reflect, tremble, and repent. If you persist we are innocent of the blood that will be spent in the contest: may it fall on your own head."

The pope had unquestionably no right to proclaim an emperor, but Charles the Great was worthy of the imperial ensigns; and though in a certain sense a successor to Augustus, he is justly considered as the founder of the NEW EMPIRE of the West, from the establishment of which Europe dates a new era. That dominion was not unworthy of its title; for its founder reigned at the same time in France, Spain, Italy, Germany and HUNGARY - the last of the three horns plucked up by the roots before him; the Horns of the Vandals, the Lombards, and the Huns. After a bloody conflict of eight years the relics of the nation submitted, and the rapine of the Huns, for two hundred and fifty years, enriched the victors or decorated the temples of France and Italy. After the plucking up of the Hungarian Horn, the New Dominion was bounded by the conflux of the Danube with the Teyss and the Save, with the unprofitable provinces of Istria, Liburnia and Dalmatia. The rest of the Ten Horns, which had degenerated into petty sovereignties, revered the power of Charlemagne, implored the honor and support of his alliance, and styled him their common parent, the sole and supreme emperor of the West. Two-thirds of the western empire of Rome were subject to him; while the other third was still possessed by the Dragon of Constantinople, in conflict with the Saracens, whose mission was to torment, but not to kill, the body politic of the east, during two periods of five months of years each (Apoc. 9:5,10).

"There is a peculiar sort of blessing given to two lambs on Jan.21, at the church of St. Agnes without the walls; from the sainted fleeces of which are manufactured, I believe, by the hands of nuns, two holy mantles called pallj, which the pope presents to the Archbishops as his principal shepherds." This was a literal investiture with sheep's clothing, which was completed in the Mitre with its two horns, originally springing up right and left over each ear.

The vices of the popes and their clergy were less dangerous to the secular imperialism of the Beast, than their virtues, whatever they might be. All writers concur in stigmatizing the dissoluteness and indecency that prevailed among the clergy. The bishops were obtruded upon their sees, as the supreme pontiffs were upon that of Rome, by force or corruption. A child of five years old was made archbishop of Rheims; and the see of Narbonne was purchased for another at the age of ten. By this relaxation of morals the Lamb-Horned Hierarchy began to lose its hold upon the prejudices of mankind. This favored the success of "Heresy" so-called; and the increase of secular authority and power in the nomination and investiture of spiritual fiefs. This power was exercised with the grossest rapacity. If the ancient canons against simony had been en-forced, the church would almost have been cleared of its ministers. Affairs continued to wax worse and worse in the eleventh century, until reform was indispensable to avert the impending ruin of the dominion.

"We add, moreover, by the advice of the bishops, and the suggestion of the emperor and his princes, that each archbishop and bishop shall himself, or by his archdeacon, or other honest and suitable persons, once or twice a year, go through the parish in which it is reported that Heretics reside, and compel three or more men there of good reputation, or the whole population if it seem expedient, to swear that should any one know persons who are heretics, or any who hold secret assemblies, or differ in life or manners from the usage of the faithful, he will endeavor to point them out to the bishop or archdeacon. And the bishop or archdeacon shall call the accused before him, and unless they clear themselves to his satisfaction, or should they, after having cleared themselves, relapse to their former heresy, they are to be punished according to his judgment

The wonder-working deceit was to develop an eikon, an image or likeness. Not an original, but a resemblance to something that had previously existed. As the prophecy is a symbolical revelation of powers to be developed in the Court of the Gentiles during the 1260 years of the subjection, or down-treading of the saints, the image to be developed was the likeness of some previously existing power. It was to be an image the counterpart "to the Beast that hath (ho echei in the present tense) the plague of the sword, and lives." What beast is this? I have shown that the Sixth Head of the Beast of the Sea was that which had been smitten with a deadly plague by the Gothic Sword; I have also shown that when Charlemagne founded the Imperial Lamb-Horned dominion, that the Sixth Form or Head, was healed, or came to life again in the West; and the New Empire became the Eighth Form of Government, or Head, upon the Seven Mountains. This being consummated, it became "the Beast that lives." The Image was to be a likeness of this living Eighth Head; in fact, a coordinate dynasty in the Holy Germano-Roman Habitable; an independent ecclesiastical imperial dynasty - an imperium in impeno, occupying the relative position to the Lamb-Horned Beast, that the Blasphemous Mouth does to Daniel's Little Horn.

Now, in the text before us the Number of the Man’s Name is given as This is the total, and expressed in our figures is equal to 666. In this case the riddle is, the sum total, or Number of the Name, being given, what is the Name of the Man of Sin; or of the Beast’s Name of Blasphemy upon the Seven Heads, or Hills?

7. Saying with a loud voice, Fear the Deity, and give to him glory, for the hour of his judgment hath arrived; and do homage to him who hath made the heaven and the earth and sea and fountains of waters.

But the Ecclesiastical Power was not satisfied with imposing its "sign" and "character" upon its willing devotees, as a spiritual and indelible impression imparting holiness to the crossed; it used the mark as a token of disgrace to heretics who had renounced their convictions to save their lives. It obliged them to wear upon their breasts two crosses of a different color from their clothes, to quit places suspected of heresy, and to establish themselves in cities zealous for their Romish idolatry, where the eyes of all would be fixed upon them by the cruciferous costume they were condemned to wear.

But the time approaches when in a literal or unfigurative sense, "our feet shall stand within thy gates, O Jerusalem." This standing was represented to John in the standing of the Lamb and the 144,000 on Mount Zion, where are then "set thrones of judgment, the thrones of the house of David" (Psa. 122:2-5). These "thrones of the House of David" belong to Zion, and nowhere else. They do not belong to the Seven Mountains, or Rome; but to the Holy Hill of Zion, which the Father styles His, in Psa. 2:6. These are the thrones in the heaven which John saw there after the door was opened - the twenty-four thrones circling about the central rainbowed throne, occupied by the Jasper and Sardine Stone, the twenty-four elders, and the four living ones (Apoc. 4:3,4,6: an emblematic illustration of the promise, "to him that overcometh I will give to sit with me on my throne, even as I overcame and sit with my Father on his throne (ch. 3:21). These thrones of the House of David belonging to Mount Zion are the thrones John refers to in ch. 20:4. "I saw thrones," says he, "and they sat upon them, and judgment was given to them. And I saw the souls of them who had been beheaded on account of the testimony of Jesus, and on account of the word of the Deity, and who did no homage to the beast, nor to his image, and received not the sign upon their foreheads and upon their hands". These are the 144,000 on Mount Zion, who, having been raised from among the dead, and quickened, and had judgment given to them, occupy "thrones of judgment," and thenceforth "reign with Christ a thousand years." Among them are the twelve apostles, to whom the Lord Jesus in the days of his flesh, promised a joint possession with himself of thrones of the House of David. In answer to Peter who said, "Behold, we have forsaken all, and followed thee: what therefore shall there be for us?" Jesus replied, "Ye who have followed me, in the regeneration when the Son of Man shall sit upon the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel" (Matt. 19:27,28). Among these also will be Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets; and worthies from the east, and west, and north, and south; a great multitude, which no man can number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues - all these stand before the throne and the Lamb, as the glorified 144,000, clothed with white robes; and when they rest from their labors, "with palms," instead of a two-edged sword, "in their hands" (Luke 13:28,29; Apoc. 7:9; Psa. 149:6).

Preaching and administering ordinances constitute the Apocalyptic selling of the text. Hence to sell canonically is “to perform every act of sacerdotal function among the people” who buy. No one has power to do this among the rhantized, or “christened” worshippers of the False Prophet ecclesiastical power, save he who is “canonically ordered to dis?pense the word of God and his holy sacraments, within the rails of the thing in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, than to believe the gospel of the kingdom and be immersed into that name. “Miserable sinners,” nor any other kind of sinners, can do any?thing else according to the will of Christ. They can only defile and blas?pheme; God does not hear sinners (John 9:31), and their most sanctimonious demonstrations are to Him mere “abominations of the earth” (Apoc. 17:5): but “the eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous, and his ears are open to their prayers; but the face of the Lord is against them that do evil” (1 Pet. 3:12; Prov. 15:8,9,26,29): and who are greater evil-doers than the clergy of all orders and degrees, who, in the name of the Lord, filch from their customers their hard earnings for that which is not bread, and their labor for that which satisfieth not? No evil can be greater in his sight than to sell lies, and to palm them off upon ignorant buyers as the truth of God. Their dainties and goodliest things exposed for sale in their bazaars, dedicated to Mahuzzim, or Guardian Saints Protectors, which they term churches, and houses of God, are mere trash and trumpery; and the crisis rapidly approaches, when “these mer?chants of the earth shall weep and mourn; for no man buyeth their mer?chandise any more” (Apoc. 18:11).

Thus qualified and thus prepared, the honor and glory are conferred upon them of being "the attendants upon the Lamb whithersoever he goes". And here it must be remembered, that the Lamb is a symbol 'having Seven Horns and Seven Eyes, which are the Seven Spirits of the Deity sent forth into all the earth" - the symbol of almighty and omniscient power, which goes in aid of the operations of the 144,000. In judgment being given to Jesus and his Brethren, "the Saints of the Most High" (Dan. 12:22) almighty power is given to them to execute it. In ch 14:13, this power is styled "the Spirit". Whithersoever the Spirit goes ir all the earth to "execute the judgments written," they are ho ako/outhountes, the attendants upon him, as soldiers attend upon the Commander-in-Chief. The Spirit energizing the 144,000 makes them almighty. Whither the Spirit is to go in taking the kingdom and dominion and the greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven, they go; and turn not when they go: and when they go the noise of their wings is like the noise of great waters, as the Voice of the Almighty, the voice of speech, as the noise of a host (Ezek. 1:12,20-24; Dan. 7:27). The mission of the Spirit is not confined to Europe; but extends "to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people;" to all of whom judgment is to go forth, that they may be taught to "Fear the Deity, and to give glory to Him". No power but that of the Spirit in terrible judicial manifestation can do this. "When the judgments of Yahweh are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness". This is the only argument man can comprehend. The world attributes mild measures to weakness and fear; and so long as it thinks principles and precepts cannot be enforced it treats them only with contempt: for "let favor be showed to the wicked yet will he not learn righteousness". Hence, the necessity of the Divine arrangement which gives omnipotence to the righteous, and sends them forth to subdue all things to the will of Him who makes them invincible (Isa. 26:9,10).

The situation is illustrated by 1 Chron. 21:16, where it is stated that David saw the Angel of Yahweh standing between the earth and the heaven - in midheaven, having a drawn sword in his hand stretched out, as he was just going to afflict Jerusalem with an impending judicial visitation. His position there was exhibited to David, that he might have time and occasion for obtaining the deliverance of the city from the wrath to come; so that the hovering of the Angel was to show, that there was room for escape on terms to be proposed, just as the Deity was going to inflict the punishment. So with the great host in midheaven on their proclamation of the good . The destruction of Babylon, and the overthrow of the governments of the world, are decreed. Nothing can save them from abrogation and obliteration. The proclamation invites mankind to abandon these spiritual and temporal institutions, in commanding them to "Fear the Deity, and give glory to Him". It affords them time and opportunity for saving themselves from the impending calamities of the Hour of Divine judgment. If any transfer their al-legiance from their clerical and civil rulers to the Lamb-Power, they will doubtless be exempted from the fire and brimstone torment, which is to destroy the Beast and his False Prophet (ch. 19:20; 14:9,10): but if they refuse to abjure these authorities, the plagues written in this prophecy for their destruction will assuredly consume the rebellious.

The Whole Burnt Offering of these Beasts is a grand condemnation in the flesh of the sin-powers. They are to be put to death by being slain with Yahweh's sword; and tormented with fire and brimstone in the burning lake, in the presence of the holy angels, or messengers, and in the presence of the Lamb, who kill and offer the sacrifice to the Eternal Power of the universe (ch. 14:10; 19:20,21).

Thus in "the great day of God Almighty," by the invincible troops of the King of Israel, is the Beast and False-Prophet polity "taken and cast alive into a lake of fire". This third angel judgment, which, like the second, belongs to the plagues of the Seventh Vial, slays Daniel's fourth Beast, destroys its body politic, and gives him to the burning flame (ch. 7:11). By this process the Latin Catholic superstition is eradicated from the kingdoms of Western Europe, which by conquest "become the kingdoms of Yahweh, and of his Christ" (ch. 11:15). The third angel judgments, however, are not expended with this result. Their smoke continues to ascend eis ajonas ajonon, to cycles of cycles, or courses of time which constitute what is commonly styled "the Millennium," because it is a period of a thousand years' duration. The smoke of third angel "torment" continues to ascend to the "establishment of the economy of the fulness of the times", by which time there will be no more Latin and Greek Catholics, Protestants, and Moslems to be subdued. This will be a glorious and blessed consummation of "the war of the great day of God Almighty" in which Israel will have done valiantly (Num. 24:18); chasing their enemies who fall before them by the sword- five chasing a hundred, and a hundred of them putting ten thousand to flight (Lev. 26:8).

p.57 as to who these saints are. They are those who have the faith of Jesus. True, "The Mother of Harlots and of all the Abominations of the earth," the Harlots and Abominations themselves - Latins, Greeks, State-Church and Dissenting Protestants of every name and denomination of blasphemy in the Court of the Gentiles - all of them claim to have "the faith of Jesus!" Of this there is no doubt. It is easy to make claims, but not so easy to establish them. The text before us, however, determines the question against them all. They who keep the faith of Jesus are there declared to be those who "keep the commandments of the Deity" - the obedient. They are all of them the reverse of this. The spirit of obedience to the Divine laws is not in them. The only spirit that is their familiar spirit, is "the spirit that works in the children of disobedience", who "are by nature the children of wrath" (Eph. 2:2,3). The "christians of every name and denomination of Christendom," as the phrase is, are not the saints; for they neither "keep the commandments of the Deity", nor "the faith of Jesus". They are piously alien from them all. Their own published confession of themselves is true -they are, as they say, "miserable offenders, who have erred and strayed from the Almighty's ways; and have too much followed the devices and desires of their own hearts, and offended against His holy laws; having left undone those things which they ought to have done; and done those things which they ought not to have done; and there is no health in them." This is a "general confession" made every Sunday morning by the whole congregation of the Anglican State superstition throughout the British Isles, North America and the Indies; everywhere, in short, where Episcopalianism is found. The miserable offenders who thus stigmatize themselves as being utterly destitute of spiritual health, are recognized as good and orthodox christians by all their pious contemporaries, though somewhat too aristocratic and overbearing. In thus recognizing them they are partakers with them. Listen to the individual outpourings of State-Harlot adherents and Dissenting Earth-Abomination members, and the same vein of self-condemnation will be found to run through them all. They all place themselves in the category of miserable offenders in whom is no health. This being their own testimony concerning their "inward man," we have no right to dispute it. We accept it as the truth, and nothing but the truth. This confession, however, is utterly incompatible with the claim of being the "keepers of the commandments of the Deity and the faith of Jesus". The keepers of these do not err and stray from the Father's ways like lost sheep, but they walk in His ways because they keep His commandments and the faith of Jesus; and being his sheep, "they know his voice, and a stranger they will not follow". No, "miserable offenders" have no identity with these; but are

John, who was contemplating the smoking torment, which had now reached the period of its extinction at the commencement of the ajons of aions, commonly called "the Millennium" - "heard a voice from the heaven". We must bear in mind this particular time in connection with its events, when he heard the voice; for the hearing of it at this crisis was indicative of the time when the subjects referred to in the voice shall be blessed and rest from their labors.

Such is the Harvest of the Earth, and its reaping. John looked, and beheld it in symbol. He saw "a white cloud"-a cloud of mighty ones habited in fine linen, white and clean, which represents the righteousness of them who are clothed with it (ch. 19:8,14). A cloud indicates a multitude; and such a cloud, when looked upon in reference to its intrinsic excellence, would look white to the eye of faith. "All the Saints with Yahweh Elohim" are "Yahweh's mighty ones," numerically represented by 144,000; these are the white cloud, or Cherub, upon which the Spirit rides (Psa. 18:10); or, in the language of the Apocalypse, "upon which one like to a Son of Man is sitting". Here the Spirit sits upon the white cloud; while, inch. 10, he is "clothed with a cloud". This tenth chapter is introductory to the fourteenth. The Ancient of Days must descend from heaven before he can be "clothed with a cloud," or ride upon a cloud, of Saints, now sleeping in the dust. Hence, the scene beheld represents events subsequent to the descent of Christ Jesus, and the resurrection and immortalization of the 144,000; and before they obtain possession of the Holy City. This is the epoch of the vision; and synchronizes with the concluding period of the Sixth Vial, and coeval with the gathering of the kings of the earth and their armies "into the place called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon" (ch. 16:16).

ch. 4:1-2. In this work, or labor, they succeeded gloriously. They opened a door, entered amid the acclamations of the people, planted themselves on Mount Zion, and established the throne of the Deity, be-fore and around which they circle in faultless myriads (ch. 14:1,5). But, the other angel that sickles the vine of the earth comes out of the Nave "which is in the heaven". The angel power of the harvest and vintage belongs to the Nave, or temple, in most holy manifestation; but between the advent and the harvest, it is the Nave "which is not in the heaven;" while after the harvest and before the vintage it is "the Nave which is in the heaven", or "Air," where it will continue evermore.

5. And after all these things I saw and behold, the Nave of the Tabernacle of the Testimony had been opened in the heaven.

The seven angels of this great and marvelous sign - "great and marvelous" because of the magnitude, and extraordinary character of the events it prefigures - are said to have "the seven last plagues" The "plagues" are a series of calamities and disasters affecting those who are the enemies of Israel and the Saints, and Witnesses, with whose blood they have intoxicated themselves. The plagues are great, but they are not reformatory; for the Operation of them causes them to blaspheme the Name of the Deity, which hath power over them (ch. 16:9,21).

Understanding these things, the reader will perceive the meaning of the words of the oracle delivered to the prophet in answer to his petition. The Eternal Spirit replied, saying to him as the petitioner for Israel, "According to the days of thy coming out of the land of Egypt will I show unto him marvellous things". That is, as the coming out of Egypt consumed forty years; so, in causing Israel to feed in Bashan and Gilead, I will consume forty years in the marvelous works whereby it shall be effected. Thus it is that Micah testifies to the length of the period Apocalyptically represented by the sixteen hundred furlongs. These are the square of forty; and this is the number of years during which the saints will be executing the judgment written, as symbolized, not only in this fourteenth chapter, but also in the sixteenth, from the seventeenth verse to the end; in the whole of the eighteenth and nineteenth, and the twentieth to the fourth verse inclusive. These forty years are included in Daniel's "Time of the End," which is the period of transformation and transition, styled by Jesus "the Regeneration" (Matt. 19:28); and by Peter, "the times of the Restitution of all things, which the Deity hatli spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets ap' ajonos, from the aion"; or beginning of the course of things instituted through Moses (Acts 3:21). In these forty years the present constitution of the world is abolished. At the end of them there will be no armies and navies. These destructive agents will cease to exist. The vintage will have cut them off, and disbanded them as useless and demoralizing encumbrances upon society. War will be studied no more; and a general disarmament, which is now impossible, will be enforced by the all-conquering "King of the Jews," then become "the Light of the Gentiles, and the salvation of the Father to the ends of the earth" (Isa. 49:6). Babylon will have fallen with its Papacy and all the powers, temporal and spiritual, which now sustain it. They will all have "licked the dust like a serpent;" and the Deity will have performed the truth to Jacob and the mercy to Abraham which he swore to the fathers from the days of old (Mic. 7:20).

5. The roaring billows covered them; They went down to the bottom as a stone.

But further, the almightiness with which they are girded in being quickened, is not the only quality of their girdles. Their mission is, in the execution of judgment, to teach the inhabitants of the world righteousness; that they may be induced to abandon the lies, and unprofitable vanities, by which the blind leaders of the Roman, Protestant, and other forms of "strong delusion," now hold them in superstitious bondage. Mere deathless almightiness cannot effect such moral results It might destroy without limit; but could neither enlighten, nor regenerate. Hence, it behooves the Seven Angel Elohistic constituents to be girded with more qualities than incorruptibility, life, and almighty power. The Spirit of Christ in Isaiah 11:5, informs us, what else the Chief they are like shall be girded with, saying, "righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins, and faithfulness the girdle of his reins;" so that "with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and contend with equity for the oppressed of the earth". These admirable qualities of righteousness and faithfulness, superadded to their immortality and omnipotence, will make them incomparable men of war; and competent not only for the conquest, but the regeneration of mankind.

The power being the same seven-spirit power, though the agents employed are diverse, in the outpouring of all the seven vials, these are all said to be given to the Seven Angels; although the saints do not come upon the arena till toward the close of the sixth vial-period. The saints and the Twelve Tribes of Israel at this crisis, become the agents by whom the Spirit consummates the fullness of the Divine wrath upon the world. Their operations are limited to the "thousand six hundred furlongs", or last forty years of the "great and marvellous sign in the heaven;" that is, to the concluding portion of the sixth, and the whole of the seventh, vial; which includes the Seven thunders, whose utterances were not written (ch. 10:4.)

3. And the second angel poured out his vial into the sea; and it became blood as of a corpse, and every living soul died in the sea.

The revolt of the disaffected popish faction occurred chiefly in thedepartments of Calvados, or Gevaudan, and of La Vendee. These provinces were not much disposed to welcome the Revolution, because the middle and more intelligent class was far from numerous there; and the populace, or ignorant multitude, were blindly devoted to the clergy and nobility, upon whom they depended. Such a population as this had to be prepared, therefore, for a severe visitation of the wrath of the first vial. This preparation was effected by the opposing forces brought to bear upon them. The Emigration without, and the refractory ecclesiastics within, operating upon a brutal and superstitious multitude, was perceived by the Legislative Assembly to be a danger for the Revolution, which required to be crushed out by the most vigorous appliances. It decreed, that all Frenchmen assembled beyond the frontiers found to be embodied on Jan. 1, 1792, should be treated as conspirators, and become liable to the punishment of death, and confiscation of property for the benefit of the nation: while the refractory priests were commanded to take the oath of citizenship, under pain of being deprived of their pensions, and of being declared suspected of revolt against the law.

Though the passage of great rivers is one of the most critical in modern warfare, Napoleon "subtlety outwitted the Austrian commander; and with great secrecy and celerity, enabled him safely to transport the French army across the Po, fifty miles below Valeggio, where he had induced Beaulieu to believe he would attempt the passage. He pushed on from thence, and encountered the Austrians at Lodi, a town of twelve thousand inhabitants, through which flows the Adda. Having effected "the terrible passage of the bridge of Lodi," the Austrians gave way before the victorious republicans; and without any further attempt to protect Milan, the ancient capital of Lombardy, retreated to the strong fortress of Mantua, till he could effect a junction with 80,000 reinforcements under Wurmser, who had been ordered from the Rhine to his assistance.

The terrible republican party now began to appear upon the stage. Their agency was necessary to the fall of "the Tenth ofthe City," Babylon the Great. The Court, the aristocrats, and the constitutionalists, were all in favor of monarchy, absolute or limited; therefore, to effect the fall decreed, it was necessary that a party should be developed, whose irrepressible passion should be a levelling hatred to everything savoring of the craft of kings. This party was the republican, which until the flight of the king, had no substantive existence, or no pretext for manifesting itself. It now began to struggle for itself under its own banner. Its strength was in the clubs of the Jacobins and Cordeliers, and in the mob. The republicans considered Louis XVI. as a private citizen, since he fled, and demanded a substitute for him. They were, however, the minority in the Constituent Assembly, and therefore failed; but when this was superseded by the Legislative Assembly, they found themselves in the majority. Among them were Danton, Marat, Camille Desmoulins, Favre d'Eglantine, St. Just, and the Robespierres, names suggestive of the malignancy of the ulcer about through them to break out upon the men who worship the Image of the Beast and have his Sign. As previously stated, France declared war against Austria, April 20, 1792. It was determined to invade Belgium. Scarcely had the French met the enemy than a panic terror seized the troops. The cry through all the ranks was, Sauve qui peut! The Jacobins accused the counter-revolutionists, who did not attempt to conceal their joy, of having occasioned the rout by raising the cry. It was thought that the Court was acting in concert with the Austrians and their emigrant allies; and that there was a secret committee which maintained a treasonable correspondence with the enemy. Public distrust was therefore now at its height. The state of the Constitution was acquiring daily more and more a revolutionary aspect. The king counted no longer upon anything but on the state of Europe, he therefore dispatched an emissary on a secret mission to the Coalition.

Thus the Seven Spirits of the Deity, ordinarily styled "Providence, operated upon parties in France and England for the development of the predetermined wrath of the Second Vial. No doubt England and the Continental States would have escaped the awful castigation of the vials, if she had stood aloof; for without her subsidies of many millions sterling, they could not have equipped and brought their armies into the field, to have fought the battles of the third, fourth, and fifth vials, through which they were to drink blood, be terribly scorched with fire, and to gnaw their tongues for pain. If she had stood aloof, the war and mercantile navies of Denmark, Holland, France, and Spain would not have been annihilated; she would not have lost her hundreds of thousands in the continental wars against the French and their allies; and she would not now be groaning under taxation, and a national debt that will never be paid. But she could not stand aloof. Her inevitable de-stiny was to play the part in the terrible tragedy of the vials which the wisdom of Deity had assigned her, and for which she had been prepared. Nations cannot do what they please, any more than individuals. The great manager of the world's theatre is the Lord Jesus Christ, whose dramatic program is the Apocalypse or Revelation given to him by the Father; the nations and powers are mere performers played off by him against one another for the denouement of the plot Divinely conceived. He creates war and makes peace; and without his permission "the powers that be" can do neither. He would not allow his judgments upon the men of the Beast's Sign, and the worshippers of his Image to be stopped, or interrupted even, for the comfort and commercial prosperity of England, and her Harlot Church, and nation of sectarian abominations. He paid no regard to their stereotyped petition of "Give peace in our time, O Lord!" He paid no respect to the twenty-six episcopal hypocrites in the upper house of Parliament, who prayed for peace, and voted for war. Such a nation had to be punished, as well as their brother-hypocrites and blasphemers upon the Continent. England, therefore could not stand aloof; but was compelled by inexorable necessity to send her children to the shambles, and to share in their miseries she was instrumental in inflicting upon the world.

Vienna, the place of the Mouth of the Two Horned Beast (ch. 16:13), was now the object before Napoleon. The Austrians had been joined by the Russians; but they were not Strong enough to retard his advance. The alarm at Vienna was extreme. The emperor Francis retired with all his court into Moravia, while the greater part of the nobility sought an asylum in Hungary. The inhabitants in general patiently awaited the conqueror, who entered the city on the 13th of November.

"The Pope is a holy man, who is made to believe all that they (Napoleon's enemies) think fit to tell him. They have presented to him my demands under a false light, just as Cardinal Gonsalvi did; and thus the good Pope gets angry, and says he will let himself be killed rather than yield. Who wants to kill him? good Heavens! But if he does not do as I would have him, most assuredly I shall take from him the temporal domain of Rome, but I shall always respect him as Head of the Church. There is no necessity for the Pope to be the Sovereign of Rome. The holiest Popes were not so. I shall make him an excellent allowance -3,OOO,OOOf. a year - that he may suitably represent his office. I shall place at Rome a King or a senator, and I shall cut up his states into so many duchies. What I want is that the Pope shall accede to the Confederation, and that he shall be the friend of my friend and the enemy of my enemies. I am the protector of the Church, and the Pope must be with me if he wishes to remain a sovereign; and certainly he may continue to be so if he acts as I wish him, because I have never intended, as he has been told, to take away from him the sovereignty of Rome. To come to the point, I have sent for you to tell you to quit Dresden in three days, and to signify peremptorily to the Pope that he must enter into the Confederation".

"At Hamburg 50,000 inhabitants, or perhaps, even 70,000, have left, and in part been driven from their homes; destitute of all means, and literally starving for want of the common necessaries of life. From the hospitals and infirmaries old and weak persons were driven in herds out of the Altona gate. Some having been long unaccustomed to the air, and exposed half naked to a cold of 190F, turned mad".

In these words, "the Great River Euphrates" is indicated as the subject of the wrath. Wrath is not poured out upon rivers as such; but upon people in some way related to them. In the figurative prophecy before us, "the Euphrates" is a sign representative of some thing analogous to "the flood", or "the river", of the name, well known in the geography of the East. In the days of Isaiah, the Euphrates was the principal river of Assyria; and is therefore used by the prophet, in ch. 8:7, as a sign, or symbol, of the many and strong peoples of the Assyrian empire. Because the Ten Tribes of Israel rejoiced in Retzin and Remaliah's son, instead of rejoicing in Yahweh. He therefore threatened both Damascus and Samaria with an Euphratean invasion and inundation, predicted in these words - "Behold Yahweh bringeth up upon them the waters of the river, strong and many, even the king of Assyria and all his glory; and he shall come up over all his channels, and go over all his banks; and he shall pass through Judah: he shall overflow and go over; he shall reach to the neck; and the stretching out of his wings (the wings of his armies) shall fill the breadth of thy land, 0 Immanuel"

In these words, "the Great River Euphrates" is indicated as the subject of the wrath. Wrath is not poured out upon rivers as such; but upon people in some way related to them. In the figurative prophecy before us, "the Euphrates" is a sign representative of some thing analogous to "the flood", or "the river", of the name, well known in the geography of the East. In the days of Isaiah, the Euphrates was the principal river of Assyria; and is therefore used by the prophet, in ch. 8:7, as a sign, or symbol, of the many and strong peoples of the Assyrian empire. Because the Ten Tribes of Israel rejoiced in Retzin and Remaliah's son, instead of rejoicing in Yahweh. He therefore threatened both Damascus and Samaria with an Euphratean invasion and inundation, predicted in these words - "Behold Yahweh bringeth up upon them the waters of the river, strong and many, even the king of Assyria and all his glory; and he shall come up over all his channels, and go over all his banks; and he shall pass through Judah: he shall overflow and go over; he shall reach to the neck; and the stretching out of his wings (the wings of his armies) shall fill the breadth of thy land, 0 Immanuel"

The period of the sixth vial, the wrathful contents of which are "that determined upon the Desolator", is not included in the 1290 years of the last desolating abomination of the series. The end of these terrible years connects with the beginning of the sixth vial; because there was to be a desolating by the ascendant abomination, until that .determined should come to be "poured out upon the Desolator". Now, what is the fact in regard to the abomination in the ascendant? It is, that the power en-throned in Constantinople, the Little Horn of the Goat, in the spasmodic grasp of Greek, Saracen, Latin, and Turk, summarily expressed in the terms Catholic and Mohammedan, has been the Desolating Abomination of the Holy Land for 1290 years, ending in 1820-'3. The condition of the country between the reign of Adrian, A.D. 137, and the beginning of the reign of Justinian, A.D. 527, was as prosperous as any other province of the Roman empire; but, a change of fortune ensued in the epoch of his reign, A.D. 529-'33, which was signalized by a desolating war between the empires of Persia and Constantinople, in which the Euphratean countries, including Palestine, were the seat of conflict. A peace was made in 533, which proved only a suspension of arms. The war was renewed in 540, and thenceforth continued its destructive course for twenty years. For 1290 years, wasting and desolation progressed with ruinous effect; especially since the adherents of Mohammed made Syria and Palestine (both included in the land promised to Abraham and his Seed) their battle-ground with the Greeks and Latins. The Ottoman Turks possessed themselves of Constantinople under the sixth trumpet, in 1453; and they will be expelled from it under the sixth vial, when "that determined" shall have had its full effect upon them. They were, as Mohammedans, identified with the 1290 years of desolating abomination for a long series of ages and generations; hence, being found in occupation of the Holy Land, and filling the throne of the Little Horn of the Goat, or Dragon, at the end of the 1290 years, they have become obnoxious to the wrath, which has reduced their power to the nullity we behold in 1868. If, then, we have correctly located the beginning of the 1290 years, in the epoch 529-'33, the termination of the period will be 1820-'23, which is signalized by the commencement of the sixth vial, or of "that determined upon the Desolator".

To this destruction of its own power was added a most disastrous foreign war excited by its own infatuation; so true is it, Quem Deus vult perdere prius dementat - "whom the Deity wills to perish he first infatuates". The Sultan appealed to the fanaticism of the Mohammedan population against Russia; and, in April, 1828, Russian "orthodoxy" being thus insulted, appealed to arms in vindication of its honor. Prince Paskewitch pressed on from the Caucasian frontier to Erzeroum; while Count Diebitch, with varied success, in the campaign of 1829 took the entrenched camp of Schumla on the Danube; crossed the Balkan; entered Adrianople; and, in spite of the unfurling of the Prophet's Banner against him, threatened the immediate investment of Constantinople. But, the time, if ever, had not come for the transfer of the Little Horn of the Goat's capital, to the Autocrat of all the Russias. The diplomatic "Daemons" therefore of the other powers interposed their "good", but really jealous, offices, and peace was made. It was a peace, however, by the articles of which "the drying up of the Great River Euphrates" was greatly advanced. The treaty secured emancipation from the Ottoman yoke to the Catholic principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia under the guardianship mishmar, of the Russian Gog (Ezek. 38:7). The independence of Servia was also assured, and no Turk permitted to reside north of the Danube. But, this was not all the drying up of Turkish power at this period. In this same year, 1829, the French government landed an army of 40,000 on the African coast, and having defeated an equal force of Turks and Arabs, captured Algiers; and converted the Turkish province into a colony of France; thus, another of the sources of "the water of the Great River Euphrates" was "dried up".

The Greeks, in their system of superstition, made a distinction between theoi, gods and daimones, da"mons. Over all there was Zeus, their king and father. The daemons were gods of an inferior order, yet an aerial race, occupying the third rank in their heavens. They were regarded as possessing wonderful intelligence; and in consequence of their middle position in the air, acting as interpreters and mediators between the superior gods and men. "The whole daemonial race", says Socrates, "is between God and mortals, acting as interpreters or messengers to both. Through this race passes all divination, and the art of the priests; for God mingles not directly with the human race, but through these daemons is ever carried on the intercourse between the gods and men, both when awake and when asleep". Plato says, that in the reign of Saturn the daemons were the political governors of mankind, ruling men as man rules the inferior animals. "Saturn knowing," said he "how that human nature, in the absolute self-control of human affairs, can never avoid being filled with violence and unrighteousness, appointed as rulers and magistrates to our cities, not men, but beings of a divine and nobler race, namely, the Daemons. We do not constitute oxen as rulers over oxen, nor goats over goats, but we ourselves retain the dominion; the same thing did the Deity, because he was a lover of men. He appointed over us a better race than ourselves, namely, the Daemons"

On which, Garencieres observes: "by the eagle he meaneth the emperor; and by the frog, the king of France; for, before he took the fleur de luce, the French bore three frogs".

Suppression of the revolutionaries in Vienna, October 1848. Cobbles have been used to make the barricades. Useful because they enabled revolutionaries to create instant defences. Similar risings were suppressed in Paris, Berlin, Milan, Mantua and other prominent centres throughout Catholic Europe.

Thus spake the Mouth of the Beast, whose heavy tramp upon the populations of Central Italy, extorted "a cry of anguish", which, reach-ing the ears of the king of Sardinia, caused him to unsheath the sword; and in concert with his "generous ally," the Frog-emperor, to flesh it in the vitals of the oppressors; whom he proposed to expel, and so free the country from the Alps to the Adriatic

But, such a Frog-civilization" is not based upon "satisfied" Italian "interests," which they deemed perfectly "legitimate," the Convention of September 1864 to the contrary notwithstanding. Since the evacua-tion of Rome by the Frog-troops, affairs had continued provokingly quiet; and there seemed to be no prospect of the throne of the Italian kingdom being transferred from Florence to the Seven Hills. "Rome the Capital of Italy" was still nothing more than a national cry, which the Convention forbade to be made effectual. The city was garrisoned by several thousands of mercenaries, called the Antibes Legion, made up principally of volunteers from the French army, who had been permitted to serve the Pope, but, at the same time, ordered to remember that they were French soldiers. This was what the Frogs called "evacuation" a mere substitution of a volunteer for the national force to be paid by the Papal instead of by the French, government. This arrangement made a show of temporal independence and power; and evinced that the Image still breathed the breath of political life, and could still speak, and cause that as many as would not worship it in its little territory, should be killed (Apoc. 13:15). Patriots within the walls did not rise; and false prophets by thousands came from far and near, to celebrate the martyrdom of the popish St. Peter, to witness the creation of new saints, and to pour into the papal treasury the contributions of its strong deluded worshippers. This was in 1866.

Mr. Lord very properly rejects Mr. Elliott's speculation; but, instead of throwing light upon the subject, only substitutes another, if not equally absurd, only less so, because he has very little to say about it at all. "Unclean demon spirits", says he, "are demons or devils, which enter into human beings and excite them to lawless appetites and passions. But these spirits are clothed in forms, as appears from their being compared to FROGS, hideous, groveling, noisy, and amphibious". This is all he sees in the Frogs mere symbols of qualities. Mr. Lord wrote in 1847. Mr. Cunninghame regarded the frog-like spirits, as atheism, despotism, and popery. These are specimens of the ideas of what are regarded as the best writers of the day upon Apocalyptic themes. If these are the best, what must the worst be! Being "wells without water," then, it is useless to linger longer on the brink. We shall therefore take up our bucket and proceed.

But, when, where, and how, is the Perfect Man apocalypsed, or revealed? As to the when, the answer is, in the interval between the arrival of the Lord Jesus, and the coming in upon the Dragon, the Beast, and the False Prophet as a thief, after the type of Cyrus and his companion kings. In this interval, the real Sons of the Deity are manifested, and separated from mere pretenders to Sonship. It is the interval termed inCh. 11:18, "the time of the dead that they should be judged"; and, in ch. 20:12,13, also referred to in the words, "I saw the dead, small and great, who had stood, hestotas, before the Deity; and the books had been opened; and another book had been opened, which is that of the life: and the dead had been judged by the things which had been written in the books, according to their works" hekastos, "every one:" parallel with which likewise is ch .22.12, In which it is written, "Behold, I come quickly: and my reward is with me to give back (apothounai) to every one as his work shall be" as his work shall on inspection be found to be. It is in this time, styled by Peter, in 1 Peter 2:12, "THE DAY OF INSPECTION,” hemera episkopes, that the Rainbowed Angel, or Perfect Man, is to be made manifest, and developed into being. "The apocalypse of the Sons of Deity" (Rom. 8:19), which is "the adoption" or "redemption of our body" (v.23), cannot occur in the absence of our Lord Jesus Christ, because he is "the resurrection and the life"; and till he revisits the earth, there can be neither.

The penalty incurred by neglecting to watch and keep the garments, is expressed in the words, "that he walk not naked, and they see his shame". When a body comes out of the dust of the ground, and there is impressed or written upon its organization a character previously developed in a former state, if that character be bad, such a person is said to "walk naked", even though he might be abundantly supplied with clothes. He is morally naked, and certain to be put to shame. Being morally naked, he will continue to walk naked, in the sense of not being "clothed upon with the house which is from heaven;" that is, his earthy body will not be transformed into an identity with the spirit-body of the Lord Jesus. He will be dealt with judicially after the example of the first man, who, after receiving sentence of death, was "driven" with shame from the Divine Presence, to live awhile in sorrow and pain, and then to die and rot in the dust from whence he came (Gen. 3:24). Such is the unhappy future of those "who profess to know God, but in works deny him;" and who, being "in Christ Jesus, walk after the flesh". After this order, "they come forth into a resurrection of condemnation," in which they reap of the flesh the corruption due to what they have thereunto sown.

It may be remarked here, that there will have been a considerable gathering of Israelites upon the mountains of Israel before the invasion of the country by Gog, and his capture of Jerusalem. This appears from the Spirit's address to Gog in the eighth verse of this chapter. In this place he says, "In the latter years thou shalt come into the land brought back from the sword, and gathered out of many people, against the mountains of Israel, which have been continually waste; but it is brought forth out of the nations, and they shall dwell safely all of them". Gog also is represented in the eleventh verse as admitting that it is a land of unwalled villages, whose inhabitants are at rest and in safety; for an evil thought comes into his mind, and he says, "I will go up to the land of unwalled villages; I will go to them that are at rest, that dwell confidently, all of them dwelling without walls, and having neither bars nor gates, to take a spoil, and to take a prey; to turn thine hand upon the desolate places now inhabited, and upon the people gathered out of the nations, which have gotten cattle and goods, that dwell in the midst of the land".

8. The BEAST which thou sawest, was, and is not: but is hereafter to ascend out of the abyss, and to go away into perdition: and they who dwell upon the earth, of whom there hath not been written the names upon the Book of Life from the foundation of the world, shall wonder when they behold the beast that was, but is not, although it is.

The crowning events of the Sixth Vial put the Lamb with the 144,000 in possession of the Holy City. Their throne is "the great white throne" of the Yahweh Name, "from whose face, the earth and the heaven," by the judgments of the Seventh Vial, will be caused to "flee away;" for when the white throne receives its full dominion, no place, or room, "will be found for them" (ch. 20:11; Jer. 3:17) the Gentile"heaven and earth" will be made to give place to the "New Heavens and New Earth" in which Jerusalem will be a rejoicing, and her people a joy (Isa.65:17).

5. For her sins have followed until the heaven, and the Deity hath called to mind her iniquities.

The Beast of the Sea in its origin could reckon up only seven heads upon the seven mountains; but this Beast of the Abyss can count the same seven with an additional head, which is styled "THE EIGHTH" -"the beast that was, and is not, even he is the eighth; and he is of the seven, and goeth away into perdition". The Eighth Head is the "Holy Roman Empire,'' under ''His Holiness'' and ''His Apostolic Majesty," forming a conjoint dynasty, as symbolized by Daniel's Little Horn with Eyes of a man and Mouth of blasphemy. This Eighth Head, with its spiritual emperor in Rome, and its secular emperor in Vienna, has ruled in the midst of the Ten Horns, during many centuries; but the time has not yet quite come when these deliver their power and authority to the Beast's eighth head for "one hour". When this event transpires, it will be consequent upon the operation of the Frog-Power causing the gathering of "the kings of the earth and of the whole habitable" against the Lamb and his forces. "I saw," says John, "the Beast, and the Kings of the Earth, and their armies gathered together to make war against Him sitting upon the horse, and against his army" (ch. 19:19). This is the same hostile gathering referred to inch. 17:14- these (the Ten Horns) shall make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb shall conquer them for he is Lord of lords and King of kings; and they that are with him (Jesus and his Brethren, the Saints with the Spirit ch. 14:13) are called, and chosen, and faithful". The conquest of the Eighth Head and these Horns, which represent the Latin Catholic Europe, is the third angel judgment of the Seventh Vial; and results in these island-kingdoms fleeing away, and their mountain-empires being found no more (ch. 14:10,11; 16:20). The perdition of the Eighth Head and its Horn-Allies will also be the destruction of the False Prophet Power; or, under another figure, the Drunken Prostitute that rides the Beast, or sits upon the peoples of divers tongues.

"And the earth was illuminated with his glory". The development of his glory is in the overthrow of the Great Harlot; the destruction of the military and secular political organization or power, "the Beast that carries her," and the conquest of the European kings and their armies: and in the new order of things he establishes upon the ruin of the old. This will be great glory for the descending angel, whose constituents begin their career in poverty, and finish it in the possession of all the wealth and countries of the earth. It will have been a fiery ordeal for the nations, which will have labored in the very fire, and for very vanity; but as the result of the whole operation, "the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the glory of Yahweh (of the Angel) as the waters cover the sea" (Hab. 2:13,14; Isa. 11:9; Num. 14:21; Psa. 72:19).

The following anecdote will throw some light upon the sense in which "I am no widow" is to be understood. It was blasphemously stated in the Tablet, a Romanist Paper, that about a month after Pio IX's accession, the Abbess of Minsk spent a whole night at Rome in prayer for the Catholic Church: and that while so occupied a voice (none other than that of the Saviour) addressed her thus: "Fear not, my daughter! I have not left my church a widow, I have chosen for her a Pontiff after my own heart".

"And he said to me," saith John, "these are the true words of the Deity" - these words delivered to John by the angel, at whose feet he prostrated himself to do him homage. But the angel, or bearer of the words, forbade the reverence, and said, "l am thy fellow-servant, and of thy brethren that have the testimony of Jesus: do homage to the Deity: for the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of the prophecy". These words are parallel with ch. 22:7-10, and refer to the time of the fulfillment of the promise, "Behold I come suddenly," or "as a thief'. John and the Angel in the scene personate the Brethren of Christ. They were the fellow-servants, brethren, and prophets, who keep the sayings of the Apocalyptic prophecy - who keep in memory the sayings, and who keep them in the sense of executing the judgments of the seventh vial. The angel's refusal of John's adoration was a direct rebuke of those professors who, in the days of the apostles, were beguiling themselves and others of their reward, in a voluntary humility and worshipping of angels (Col. 2:18)-a rebuke which would make the Apocalypse itself quite distasteful to them. The angel's declaration in the scene, indicated that the class he represented was restored to life; for he says he was of them. John and he meet in "the time of the dead", and see and hear the things of the prophecy in their fulfillment, which they were before acquainted with only in vision when the Apocalypse was communicated in Patmos. John had not yet attained to the angelic nature; if he had he would not have dramatically prostrated himself before the angel to do him reverence. All who are "equal to the angels" fall down before the throne, and do homage only to the Deity after the example of their representatives, the twenty-four elders, and the four living ones in the fourth and fifth chapters, and in ch. 11:16,17 of this wonderful book.

The sense of pneuma in verse 37, fixes its signification in verse 39, because the pneuma in the fortieth verse, is the subject of criticism in the latter. Speaking of such a pneunia, the Lord Jesus said, "a pneuma bath not flesh and bones, as ye see me having". He had ascended to the Father, or they would not then be invited to handle him; nevertheless, he was not a phantasmial pneuma, but still substantial flesh and bones, only incorruptible and deathless - incorruptible and undying flesh and bones which is "spirit", pneuma hagiosunes, in contrast with flesh, blood and bones, which is "flesh", and therefore corruptible and mortal. what Jesus was on that evening of the third day, he is now. He is "the Lord the Spirit," substantial, incorruptible, deathless and omnipotent flesh and bones, which now "flourish as an herb," and which say, "O Yahweh, who is like unto thee, who delivereth the poor from him that was too strong for him?" It is "of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones," the faithful are the "members;" for what he is now in respect to body, flesh, and bones, they hope to be when he shall appear to make manifest the hosts of the heaven in the scenes of this chapter.

When the wood, hay, and stubble, as unprofitable servants, are cast into outer darkness, they disperse themselves over the countries of the Dragon, the Beast, and the False Prophet; which, by the judgments coming upon them through the second and third angels, are to be kindled into a lake of fire. Thus the fuel of the fiery lake is increased. "Now will I rise, saith YAHWEH; now will I be exalted; now will I lift up myself. And the people shall be as the burnings of lime; as thorns cut up shall they be burned in the fire" in the European lake of fire (Isa. 33:10-17). Because of poverty, famine, pestilence, war, and the consciousness of what they have lost by their unfaithfulness, they will find there only "weeping and gnashing of teeth;" and though they may call upon Abraham to send a Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool their tongues, tormented in the flame; were Abraham to reply to them he would not grant their request; but addressing them as sons, would say, Remember that in your lifetimes ye received your good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things; but now he is comforted, and ye are tormented. And beside all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed; so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot; neither can they pass to us, that would come from thence" (Luke 16:24). Abraham being in the kingdom when this answer is returned, shows that the place of torment is not accessible at will, nor territorially continuous with Palestine; in other words, the Mediterranean Gulf separates the Lake of Fire countries from the kingdom of Israel. They are the countries invaded by the King of kings upon the white horse with his hosts of the heaven, styled, inch. 14:10, "the holy angels and the Lamb;" in whose presence the countries are kindled into flame; and the resurrected exiles, and the worshippers of the Beast, are all tormented with fire and brimstone; and made to drink of the unmixed wine of the wrath of the Deity, poured out into the cup of his indignation. Thus "Death and Hades," or the condemned resurrected exiles, are cast into the lake of fire, which is to them "the Second Death;" for by the fiery judgments of the lake, death and corruption overtake them a second time, and their "sorer punishment" is consummated according to their works (ch. 20:13-15; 21:8; Heb. 10:26-29).

7. And when the thousand years shall have been finished, the Satan shall be loosed out of his prison,

It hath been Divinely purposed that the earth shall be inhabited by flesh and blood for seven thousand years; but beyond that period its presence will not be tolerated. The postmillennial rebellion against the benign government of the Saints is the consummation of its iniquity, and the crisis of its fate. Symbolically speaking, the Devil is devoured by the fire of the Deity, in the lake of fire and brimstone, into which he is cast, as were the Beast and the False Prophet, who shall be tormented day and night, by the third angel (Ch. 14:11; 19:20; 20:10) to the aions of the aions; or beginning of the thousand years.

It will be seen, therefore, that this mixed multitude comes forth at the same hour, for two separate and distinct ends, or destinies — the one sort, to die again, and reap of the flesh corruption, before the Aion of the Thousand Years begins; the other sort, to be “clothed upon with their house from heaven,” (when all “the mortal” in their grave-developed nature, will be “swallowed up of life,”) and to live in the Aion and beyond, possessing the kingdom of the Aion, with eternal glory. Hence, this mixed multitude is separated into two resurrections, for a short time contemporary the one with the other. The one resurrection consists of all the just who have emerged from the graves; the other resurrection, of all the unjust who have “come forth”. The just and unjust are all mixed up together in their coming forth; hence the necessity of some arrangement whereby the two classes may be respectively separated the one from the other. This is provided for in the institution of the Judgment Seat of Christ in Teman. Before this, patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and saints, whether good or bad, great or small, are all to be gathered for manifestation. Through the account each will be able to render of himself, it will appear who he is, and what he is (Rom. 14:10,12). The judge hears, that he may judge; and according to what he hears from each, so will he decide, making the words and principles of the open books the standard whereby the things laid before him will be determined to be right or wrong, good or bad. All this John saw in vision; and taking his stand at the opening of the Millennial Aion, when the Second Death had been consummated, he says, “I saw the dead, small and great, who had stood before the Deity, and books had been opened; and another book had been opened, which is of the life; and the dead had been judged out of the things which had been written in the books, according to their deeds. And the sea had given up the dead in it, and death and the grave had given up the dead in them; and every one had been judged according to his deeds” (ch. 20:12,13). This is nearly parallel with what is written in ch. 11:18, “the time of the dead hath come, that they should be judged, and that the reward be given to thy servants the prophets, and to the saints, and to them who fear thy name, both small and great”. This testimony states, that the time had arrived for the judgment to “begin at the House of Deity;” and to give the promised reward to the approved: and the passage in ch. 20, declares that the work had been accomplished with diversified results.

7. He that overcometh shall inherit all things, and I will be Deity to him, and he shall be to me a son.

This principle is taught in the conversation of Jesus with Nicodemus, and afterwards illustrated in his own person. “Except a man,” saith he, “be born from above he cannot see the kingdom of the Deity”. No; such a birth being wanting in his case, if he come forth from the grave, he will be cast into “the sea mingled with fire,” and tormented in that fiery lake without rest day or night, to the beginning of the thousand years. He cannot become part of the New and Holy Jerusalem; nor enter into the kingdom of the Deity. Flesh and blood cannot inherit, or possess, that indestructible and incorruptible kingdom; but only that which hath been born out of spirit; for “that which hath been born out of Spirit is spirit:” therefore, said Jesus, “Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born from above. The Spirit breathes where he will, and thou hearest his voice; but thou hast not known whence he is come, and whither he goes away: so is every one that hath been born of the Spirit” — thou hast not known whence such an one cometh, nor whither he goes away (John 3:3-8). This was true of all the Pharisees, and others like them, in regard t him whence these “heavenly things” proceeded. “I know,” said he “whence I came, and whither I go away; but ye have not known whence I am come, and whither I go away” (John 8:14). That burning and shining light, John the Immerser, testified that the Bridegroom, his friend who is superior to all, “cometh from above” — “from heaven” (Joh 3:31): and when he appeared, he said, “I came down from heaven to d the will of him who sent me” (John 6:33): and again, “No man hath ascended into heaven, but he that descended out of the heaven, the Son of Man who is in the heaven” (John 3:13).

7. Behold I come suddenly. Blessed is he that keepeth the sayings of the prophecy of this book.

p.351 But the measure of the man is also said to be the “measure of an angel”. The man and the angel are the same; for when the man is perfected, he is a holy nation of citizens “equal to the angels”. Besides this, the perfect man is heaven-descended, whence he is commissioned to execute the judgment written against Babylon, the Beast, and False Prophet. He is therefore, an Angel-Man, now with “a rainbow upon his head” (ch. 10:1), elsewhere wearing a golden crown, and a sharp sickle in his hand (ch. 14:14); again descending from heaven with great power (ch. 18:1); then standing in the sun (ch. 19:17); and again, he is seen with the key of the abyss, and a great chain (ch. 20:1). The stature of this mighty angel is 144 cubits, and his symbolical numerical contents, 144,000 of all the tribes of the children of the Israel of the Deity(ch. 7:4;

Ezekiel saw the Dead Sea in two states — without any living soul in it; and afterwards teeming with life of every kind. John saw the same thing in its spiritual significance — the sea of nations dead in trespasses and sins; and the same sea full of nations walking in the light of the New Jerusalem. Ezekiel saw that it was the stream effluent from under the altar that gave life and health to the Dead Sea; and John saw that it was the stream issuing from the throne that gave to the leaves of the tree the power of imparting health and life to the world.

The word dendron, “a tree,” occurs in Rev. 7:1,3; 8:7; 9:4, and is so rendered there correctly enough; but in ch. 2:7; 22:2,14, “tree,” in the E.V. is, in the Greek, xulon; and in ch. 18:12, it is also xulon twice, but in both instances rendered by the E.V. wood; as “thyme wood,” and “precious wood”.

This life-sustaining and invigorating principle is the pure stream issuing from the throne, and maintains it in everlasting freshness and beauty. David, speaking of the blessed of the Father, says, “He shall be like a tree planted by rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not fade: and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper”. Human Government is a blasted and withering oak, but the New Jerusalem Evergreen of the kingdom when grown is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof. The birds of the heaven are the chiefs of the nations, whose subjects seek its fruit from one new moon to another, ministered to them by its Healing Lea.ves for their salvation.

'Water as a flood" is said to have been cast Out of the Serpent's mouth after the woman to sweep her away. Water flowing like a river indicates an army or body of men in motion. That water symbolises people is evident from Apoc. 17:15. Hence, when the water is in motion the people are moving; when it flows like a river the body of people moves In a certain direction; when the river overflows its banks, the army crosses its frontiers and invades another nation; when the water sweeps along like a flood, the army subdues and carries all before it; but when the earth opens and absorbs the flood, then the operations of the army are spent without effecting its purpose; and if the water of the river be dried up, as in Apoc. 16:12, the power and independence of the people represented are destroyed. Some of these definitions are strikingly illustrated in Isaiah 8:7: "Behold," says the prophet, "Yahweh bringeth up upon them (the Jews) the waters of the river, the strong and mighty; even the king of Assyria and all his force. And he shall rise above all his channels, and shall go over all his banks; and he shall pass through Judah, overflowing and spreading; even to the neck shall he reach; and the extension of his wings (the wings of his army) shall be over the full breadth of thy land, 0 Immanuel!" The kingdom of Assyria was divided from that of Israel by the Euphrates, termed in Scripture "the river," and "the great river." Hence, it came to symbolize his power; so that when he invaded Israel, the waters of his river are said to have swelled over their banks, and flooded their country to so great an extent as to rise "to the neck," or capital, but without submerging it; so that it would be an overflowing invasion, which would recede without finally subjecting the nation.

It is now over 1550 years since her flight began in the days of Constantine, or A.D. 315. In Apoc. 11:3, "the remnants of her seed" are specified by the names "THE HOLY CITY "and "The two Witnesses. "The former, consists of those "who keep the commandments of the Deity, and hold the testimony of the anointed Jesus:" the latter, the Politico-Religious Democracy essentially and constitutionally hostile to the "Mother of Harlots" and her Harlot Daughters, in all the countries where they are "by law established."

An imperial persecuting and represent influence was thus brought to bear upon the anti-catholic woman, who under the hostile pressure would set her face fugitively towards the wilderness - eis ten eremon. The anti-catholic sect that took the lead in Opposition at this crisis was that of the Donatists. It was in feud with the catholic sect before the overthrow of Maxentius; and, therefore, before the Roman Africa became subject to Constantine. It was such a feud as might be supposed to exist in the Baptist denomination, resulting in the development of the Campbellite sect. There was, doubtless, error and wrong-doing both with the Donatists and Catholics; but, as from among the Anti- baptist Campbellites was originated to foutro tou hudatos en remati, by the laver of the water with doctrine (Eph. 5:26), the CHRISTADELPHIAN DENOMINATION; so from among the anti-catholic Donatists began to be manifested in the three years of their trials before Constantine and his bishops, by the sealing angel that had ascended from the East (Apoc. 7:2), the first of "the remnants of the woman's seed, who keep the commandments of the Deity, and hold the testimony of the anointed Jesus." The name of this first remnant, if it had any other than Donatist, has not come down to us. But it matters not what it was called in its beginning it was the sect composed of "the servants of the Deity sealed in their foreheads." This is the apocalyptic description of it. Arising in the epoch of the Donatist trials, and being with the Donatists intensely anti-catholic, it is very likely to have been confounded with them, without having at all been mixed up with the feud between the party of Caecilian and that of Majorinus.

But to return to the "great voice" of the Constantinian period. The things spoken were uttered in the heaven: namely, by those appointed to the vacancies created by the ejection from the heaven of the adherents and worshippers of the gods. In other words, the voice proceeded from the officials in church and state, who all professed the catholic religion, and said they were now "rich, and increased with goods, and had need of nothing:" but "they knew not that they were wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked" (Apoc. 3:17). Such was the choir which sang:

Since the death of Maximin, Licinius by his patronage of "the gods of his ancestors," and his hatred, ill-concealed, of Constantine and the catholics, came to be represented from A.D. 314 to A.D. 324, by the Dragon-tail which "drew the third part of the stars of the heaven"

The enterprise was as full of danger as of "glory." Maxentius was prepared to resist him with 120,000 foot, and 18,000 horse. But Constantine was not to be deterred by this array. At the head of about 40,000 soldiers, he descended into the plain of Piedmont by the road across the Cottian Alps, now styled Mount Cenis, with such activity, that his army arrived there before the court of Maxentius had received any certain intelligence of his departure from the banks of the Rhine. He stormed, and entered Susa sword in hand, and cut in pieces the greater part of the garrison. About forty miles from thence, in the plains of Turin, he encountered the lieutenants of Maxentius, commanding a force largely consisting of heavy cavalry, horses and men clothed in complete armor. Their weight was almost irresistible, and they flattered themselves that they would easily break and trample down the army of Constantine. But his skillful evolution’s divided and baffled them. They fled towards Turin, which shut its gates against them, so that very few escaped the sword of their pursuers. The result of this victory was the submission of Milan, and almost all the cities of Italy between the Alps and the Po, which also embraced with zeal the party of Constantine.

it is a remarkable feature in this prophecy that the Bazaars for priestly and clerical wares are distinguished from houses or shops of fair and honorable trade, by being styled Bazaars of Mahuzzim. When jewellers, bakers, hardware-men, and such-like, open stores, they emblazon their signs with their own names. When people go to the baker's or the butcher's, they do not say they are going to St. Paul's or St. Barnabas', as if the stores were theirs. But when the clergy of "the King" and his foreign god, whether they be loyal or non-conformist, open bazaars for the sharp practice of their trade, they impose upon the credulous and strongly deluded public the idea that they belong to the apostles and their brethren! They say that these ancients "of whom the world is not worthy," are still alive and in heaven, and greatly interested in human affairs, especially in church edifices, and in the orchestral and pulpit demonstrations therein! Hence, they set up statues in niches, and on parapets, which they call by their names, and make them presents of their churches, as is evident from the names they bear; as St. Sophia's at Constantinople, St. Peter's at Rome, Our Lady's at Paris, St. Paul's at London, and so forth. The flagrancy of the imposture, however, consists in this, that while they profess to give these houses of the king's god to the "departed spirits" they call by these names, they will not permit the gospel the apostles preached, and the institutions they ordained, to be announced in their walls; but, by various arts, perversely persist in its exclusion, and in making it of none effect by their vain and foolish traditions. But the whole system is a cheat, and a very profitable one for the present to those who live by it. It is ecclesiastical craft caused to prosper by the Civil Power, or "the King;" and it will continue to prosper "till the indignation shall be accomplished;" when Israel's Commander will bring it to an end, and cause the truth, by the energy whereby he is able to subdue all opposition, and to unmask all impostures, to prevail at last.

The Dragon-Power of Rome, then, was surnamed THE SATAN, because it was the great and persistent Adversary of Christ, and His Brethren. No one intelligent in the word would confound the Satans related to Israel, Job, Jesus and Peter, and merge them into one and the same Satan, identical with such a Devil, as is pressed into the service of the Clergy, to aid them in scaring sinners into church-membership. The clerical devil and Satan belongs to the mythology of the heathen, and is as unreal as their gods: nevertheless, this mythical phantasm has a real and tenacious hold of their worshippers; who are much more careful to treat him with reverence, than to praise and honor Him by whom they live and have their being.

Now there have been different dragon-manifestations of "the old serpent" in the long interval between the Mosaic salvation of Israel and the Messianic, which is at the door. That contemporary with Moses, and styled "Rahab" in Isa. 51:9, was developed into what Ezekiel describes in ch. 29:3. Here the power of Egypt, called Pharaoh, is thus addressed by the Spirit, "Behold I am against thee, Pharaoh, King of Egypt, THE GREAT DRAGON that lieth in the midst of his rivers" - the mouths of the Nile, representative of the subjects of the power: "which hath said, My river is my own, and I have made it for myself." For this arrogance, and blasphemy against the source of all power, YAHWEH Elohim sentenced it to destruction, so that Egypt should no more exalt itself above the nations to rule over them; and, as Nebuchadnezzar had received no recompense for executing the sentence of Deity against Tyre, therefore YAHWEH Elohim gave the land of Egypt to him for his labor. Thus Egypt became a part of Babylon; the great Egyptian Dragon was abolished; and the power of "the old serpent" thus symbolized, transferred to the FIRST of Daniel's four Mediterranean empires; which under Nebuchadnezzar stood man-like upon its feet, with a lion's head, and the heart of a man (Dan. 7:2,4). Hence, at this epoch, when the Seed of the Woman; of which Daniel, Ezekiel and Jeremiah were constituents, was heelbruised in Babylon, the wing-plucked lion-power was "the Great Dragon, the old serpent, surnamed the Devil and the Satan."

7. Or Gothic Head, A.D. 476. But, as this was only to continue "a short time" compared with the sixth, it was slain after reigning 60 years, in A.D. 554.

The dragon was one of the military ensigns of imperial Rome. Ammianus Marcellinus, as quoted by Elliott, thus describes it: "The dragon was covered with purple cloth, and fastened to the end of a pike gilt and adorned with precious stones: its wide throat being opened, so that the wind blew through it; and it hissed, as if in a rage, with its tail floating in various folds to the breeze." He elsewhere often gives it the epithet of purpureus, purple-red; "purpureum signum draconis." In another note Mr. Elliott remarks that "in Trajan's time the dragon was a Dacian ensign, not a Roman; as appears from the bas-reliefs on Trajan's arch. A century afterwards it was, as a Roman ensign, sculptured on Severus' arch of triumph. Later in the third century it had become almost as notorious among Roman ensigns as the Eagle itself: and is in the fourth century noted by several authors. Among these John, surnamed Chrysostom, who flourished then, says that "the emperors wore among other things to distinguish them, silken robes embroidered with gold, in which Dragons were represented." Speaking of the procession of Constantine from Milan to Rome, Gibbon says, "he was encompassed by the glittering arms of the numerous squadrons of his guards and cuirassiers. Their streaming banners of silk, embroidered with gold, and shaped in the form of Dragons, waved round the person of the emperor".

But these accursed preachers did not regard the anathema of Paul. They did not desist from the sowing of tares; but continued to heap tradition upon tradition until the distinctiveness of the truth was lost in "the commandments and doctrines of men" (Col. 2:22); and the way of truth came to be evil spoken of. Many followed their pernicious ways. Nor were the apostles able to extinguish their evil influence. Their reasonings and denunciations and threatenings, although sanctioned by the Spirit, failed to check or restrain the rapidly developing apostasy. Whole houses were subverted from the faith by these mercenary, unruly and vain talkers and deceivers (Tit. 1: 11): and as error always progresses more rapidly than truth, the apostles found their influence waning, and the faithful falling into a minority; which steadily increased until there remained but few names who had not defiled their garments; and only a little stength to maintain the truth before the world (Apoc. 3:4,8).

What a remarkable contrast between these two apocalyptic women. The one, Jezebel, the Great Harlot and the Mother of Harlots; the other, the Lamb's wife and the Mother of all the Saints. The former, sovereign in all times of the Gentiles; the latter, trampled underfoot of the Gentiles in all their times; and persecuted with the utmost rancour and bitterness of hate: the former, "arrayed in purple and scarlet-color, and decked with gold and precious stones, and pearls, and reigning over the kings of the earth;" the latter, clothed in sackcloth, and the habiliments of subjection: the former, the embodiment of ignorance, superstition, cruelty, blasphemy, hypocrisy, and vice; the latter, holy, harmless, undefiled, and without fault before the throne. Nor is the difference of their destiny less striking. Jezebel is first hated by her subject kings, who make her desolate and naked, and eat her flesh and burn her with fire (Ch. 17:16); and afterwards, having somewhat of intermission from his rough usage, she is utterly and forever destroyed out of the way by YAHWEH ELOHIM, who avenges on her the righteous blood she has caused to be poured out upon the earth. The world being thus freed from the accursed presence of the Jezebel-superstitions of "Christendom" so-called; the nations henceforth enlightened, regenerated, and saved, walk in the glorified fugitive's light; who, for a thousand years, sheds the glory of the divine majesty with which she is invested upon all peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues; all of them blessed with faithful Abraham, in Abraham and his seed (Gal. 3:7-9). This blessedness under the government of Christ and his Bride is the theme which concludes the Apocalypse given by the Deity to Jesus Christ.

At the end of Daniel's Seventieth Week, or 490 years from the 20th of Artaxerxes, which was the 22nd of Tiberius Caesar, sin was condemned in our common nature by the crucifixion of Jesus Christ..................A.D. 33

The Roman is a question that cannot be evaded or postponed. A policy must be pursued towards the Pope that will cause his government to use all its influence to enlist the powers in his defence against the Red Republicanism of the Italians and their allies. The cry of these is "an united Italy with Rome for its capital, or death!" To give effect to this would be the expulsion of Austria from Venetia;*(* This has since been effected by the Prusso-Italian cainpaign against Austria.) and the incorporation of the States of the Church with the kingdom or Commonwealth of Italy. If Red Republicanism can acquire the ascendancy in Italy, it will assuredly adventure the experiment of giving effect to it's cry. In this event an appeal to arms would be inevitable. First, because Austria will never consent to the surrender of Venetia without a struggle; and secondly, because the spiritual influence of the Pope, which is still great in all the ten kingdoms of the beast, would go forth with all its unclean and demoniac activity to stir up war in his behalf. In this array of belligerents the combinations will be for a trial of strength between the expiring feudality of the middle ages, and the revolutionary principles of 1789 -- a sanguinary and final conflict between the adherents of Church and State Absolutism, and the partizans of popular sovereignty as "the voice of God."

War ensues in the Roman Heaven between the powers there, which results in the ejection of the great Draco-Serpent Devil and Satan from thence. The "Brethren" and "Fellow-servants" of the souls under the altar rejoice at his expulsion. But woe betides the inhabiters of the earth and sea, where the Dragon retains power for a "short time" longer; and persecutes the constituents of the woman dwelling in his dominion.

Cressener seems to have been the first who, in my judgment , rightly, in 1690, concluded that the Seventh Head was the Ostrogothic, which continued but a short time: the Eighth being the revived secular imperial, confederated with a Roman ecclesiastical head, somewhat as under the old emperors; that is, the secular Western Emperors combined with the Popes. The Image of the Beast lie makes to be the Roman Church, and the name lateinos.

From these premises, then, it will be seen that this Apocalyptic Sea-Monster is not exclusively the Romano-Gothic Ten-Horn constitution of Papal Mediterranean Europe, but symbolical likewise of the Byzantine, or Greek Empire, as indicated by the Leopard-Body and Bear-Feet; for, that the Bear is Greek as well as the Leopard, Daniel shows by testifying that the Fourth Beast "had Nails of Brass" (ch. 7:19); and in his prophecy brass is the symbol of the dominion of "the brazen-coated Greeks." Because, therefore, this Beast of the Sea symbolized the dominions of the whole eastern and western Mediterranean world, all the "kindreds, and tongues, and nations," styled Apocalyptically "the whole earth," in subjection to them, are said to have "wandered after the beast," and to have "worshipped" both the Dragon and the Beast-Vers. 3,4. The populations inhabiting Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt, Greece, "worshipped" the imperial power enthroned in Constantinople, and that only; while the populations of Italy, Africa, Spain, Gaul, "worshipped" the Constantinopolitan and the new Gothic powers as well. This two-fold worship of the subjects of the Franks, Burgundians, Lombards, Visigoths, Suevi, and so forth, may be familiarly illustrated by numerous modern instances. Thus, Egypt is a part of the Turkish empire, and at the same time a quasi independent kingdom under its own hereditary king, who acknowledges the suzerainty of the Sultan; so that the Egyptians may be said to worship the king, and also to worship the Sultan, and to say in their ignorance, "Who is like unto the Sultan? Who is able to make war with him?" The question is very appropriate with regard to the Beast, if not to the Sultan; for, as the Beast is the symbol of power bearing rule over all the Mediterranean Earth, where is the power able to make war with it? Men know of none , because they know not the purpose of Yahweh. But, in the tenth verse of this thirteenth chapter, He has in effect declared that there is a power able to make war with the Beast, and to bind and slay him; for as he has made war with the Saints and Witnesses, bound them in captive chains, and conquered and killed them, so he is to be bound and killed with the sword, when judgment shall be executed upon him, by the very victims of his "exceeding dreadful and terrible" tyranny, after they shall have been raised from among the dead, and strengthened for the war.

p.204 and Justinian was emperor. On one face is the diademed bust of the Dragon-emperor; and on the other, a wreath with the monogram of the king in the centre . There is another Ostrogothic coin about the size of a quarter dollar, with the diademed bust of Justinian on the one side; and the name and office of the ruler, king Witiges, on the other.

p.230 What, then, was necessary to equip these new converts for the work of introducing the gospel of Jesus Christ among the Jews of Rome? It was necessary that all things they had heard from the apostles should be brought to their remembrance; and that they should be guided into all the truth (John 14:8-14). This was as needful for them in Rome as for the apostles in Jerusalem. But more was required than this. It was necessary that what they affirmed as truth of Deity issuing from their mouth, should be acknowledged by Him as such; that their hearers might be-lieve for the work's sake. In this case, their faith would "stand not in the wisdom of men, but in the power of the Deity." In short, it was necessary, that they should have all "the diversities of gifts" constituting "the Manifestation of the Spirit;" such as the word of wisdom, the word of knowledge, faith as it were, to remove mountains, gifts of healing, the working of miracles, prophecy, discerning of spirits, diverse kinds of

The eyes Daniel saw were "like the eyes of a man." And not only so, but they were representative of a man; for, speaking of the glare, or fierce piercing look, of the eyes, he says, in Ch. 7:20, "whose look was more stout that His fellows." They represented a human power, whose function was preeminently that of supervision over certain styled "his fellows." His official state, therefore, was that of an episkokos, or a BISHOP. His look being "more stout" than his fellows of the episcopal order , he would , therefore, claim superiority over all spirituals; and to be entitled above all to the veneration and homage of mankind . Such an OVERSEEING NAME as this would be, within the sphere of his jurisdiction, a Bishop of bishops, such as Constantine claimed to be when he assumed headship over all the catholic churches of the Dragon empire.

The geographical extent of the Roman Habitable upon which the barbaric tribes of the abyss established themselves with Feudal Sovereignty, was the Mediterranean West. They have to be enumerated by the names they bore in the period when, they were engaged in the work of establishing themselves upon that territory. The symbol, as we shall see, requires at least eleven abyssal tribes - ten for the horns, and one or more for the Seventh Head. The following is the list that seems to me authorized by history: 1. Huns; 2. Vandals; 3. Visigoths; 4. Burgun-dians; 5. Gepidoe; 6. Lombards; 7. Franks; 8. Suevi; 9. Alans; 10. Bava-rians. These were the founders of the Horn-Kingdoms of the Beast. This divided form of Mediterranean Europe has continued for ages, even to the present time; though the number of its divisions has not always, nor is it now, ten. The prophecy does not require that the number of the kingdoms should be invariable. They were ten in the period of their foundation, and from this fact have acquired the symbolic designation of the Ten Horns. So that though their number might be reduced one-half, the power that might be established over the territory they originally occupied would, to that extent, be represented as the Ten Horns.

Now this, in the estimation of Deity, is an all important matter; and all worthy of ample illustration for the support and strengthening of "the faith and patience" of the sufferers in so long and sanguinary a conflict with the beast. Hence the signs apocalyptically exhibited to John. This one, especially, which he calls attention to as "the Beast ascending out of the Sea;" for, like Daniel's beast, it makes war upon them, and over-comes them; yea, and kills their allies, the witnesses (Apoc. 11:7; 13:7): but then, there is hope in their end. For, as this great sea monster "gathereth them into a captivity and killeth them with the sword" -fills his prisons with them and puts them to death; so the serpent-seed he represents are to receive measure for measure, heaped up and shaken down; or, as Daniel expresseth it, "he shall be slain, and his body destroyed, and given to the burning flame." "Here is the patience and faith of the Saints."

In the outpouring of the flood, a Greek official named Simeon, armed with legal and military powers, appeared at Colonia to strike the shepherd, and to reclaim, if possible, the lost sheep of Satan's flock. By a refinement of cruelty, this monster of vengeance planted Constantine Sylvanus before a line of his disciples, who were commanded, as the price of their pardon, and a proof of their repentance, to stone him to death. But they nobly refused to imbue their hands in his blood. Only one apostate named Justus, but styled by the wretched catholics, a new David, could be found boldly to overthrow the Goliath of heresy. This Judas again deceived and betrayed his unsuspecting brethren; and as many as were ascertained and could be collected, were massed together into an immense pile, and by order of Justinian the Second, whose native cruelty was stimulated by the piety of superstition, consumed to ashes.

Thus, I have briefly tracked "the remnants of the woman's seed," under the names of Novatians, Donatists, Aerians, Paulicians and Albigenses, through a long and sanguinary period of sack-cloth-witnessing of a thousand years, against the Apostasy as by law established in "the two Wings of the Great Eagle." In this weary and heart-rending journey, we have visited the Roman Africa, Armenia, Asia Minor, Thrace, Bulgaria, and working our way up the Danube, crossed the Alps into Italy and France. But how changed is the constitution of "the Great Eagle" at the close of this Millennium of Blood! When the remnants of the Woman's seed began their anti-catholic witnessing in the African Wing, the great eagle was subject only to "the Dragon the old Serpent," enthroned in Constantinople. Then there was no Pope of Rome; no Ten-Horned Beast of the Sea; no Two-Horned Beast of the Earth; nor any Image of the Beast. Then, the simple inquiry was, "Who is like the Dragon? who is able to make war with him?" for in those days they all "worshipped the Dragon," in all the length and breadth of the Roman world. But now, in the twelfth century, we stand in the Alpine regions of France and Italy as witnesses "before the god of the earth" (Apoc. 11:4); a god unknown to the Dragon in the epoch of the woman's flight, A.D. 315-345, and his pagan predecessors, in whose times he was but the simple OVERSEER of an ecclesia in Rome. But, ere this century, he had long become a god by the grace and power of the Dragon, who had bestowed upon him "his power, and his throne, and great authority" (Apoc. 13:2). And besides this, in surveying the subjacent landscape from the Alpine heights, we see the Beast of the Earth and the Beast of the Sea intensely catholic and hostile to "the commandments of the Deity and the testimony of the anointed Jesus". Whence came these dominions? They are the results of the outpouring of the Divine wrath upon the Dragon, in retribution of his catholic worship of daimonia and idols, and of the murders, sorceries, fornications and thefts of his clergy (Apoc. 9:20,21); in other words, they are the results of the sounding of the wind-trumpets in answer to the prayers of "the remnants of the woman's seed," which, as "much incense," ascended, through their Golden Intercessor, before the throne (Apoc. 8:3,4).

The wonder-working deceiving power directed the deceived to have an Image made to the Beast that lives. The English Version of this text is what may be styled a free translation, and reads "And deceiveth them that dwell upon the earth by the means of those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast; saying to them that dwell upon the earth that they should make an image to the beast, which had the wound by a sword, and did live." But the rendering I have given at the head of this section, is more literal. The word legon is rendered saying. The power of deception, or ability to deceive, the dwellers upon the earth is acquired, dia ta sumeia ha edothe auto poiesai, through the wonders which it was given him to have worked; hence what he said to the deceived or misdirected being the "saying" of a power, would be equivalent to an authoritative mandate, which it had the ability to enforce. The command of the power in the ascendant was poiesai eikona to theno, to have made an Image to the Beast; or, more conformable to our idiom, to have an Image made to the Beast. The English Version "did live," as the rendering of ezese, implies that the Beast, to whose likeness the Image was to be conformed, did live once; but was not in existence in the epoch of the creation of the image. The original word is indefinite. It leaves the time of the living undefined. The living of the Beast is affirmed in the announcement of its death plague having been healed; and the absence in the premises of any intimation of subsequent death. Hence, the indefinite present and lives, kai ezese is the best rendering of the word in the text they were directed to make an image to the Lamb-Horned Beast then, at the time of the creation of the Image, in. hale and vigorous existence.

"If from a superstitious objection to oaths, any of them should refuse to swear, they are on that account to be adjudged heretics, and smitten with the punishment which has been mentioned.

The German emperors of the House of Saxony conferred bishoprics in general by direct nomination; while the popes were nominated for suffrage by the seven cardinal-bishops of the Roman province, and their election by the college confirmed by the emperor. But in A.D. 1047, an explicit right of nomination was conceded to Henry III, as the only means of rescuing the Roman church from the disgrace and deprav-ty into which it had fallen. He appointed two or three popes of a very superior character to the illegitimate progeny of Marozia. This high imperial prerogative, however, was precluded from the possibility of its exercise, by the infancy of his son and successor, Henry IV, and by the factions of that minority. Pope Nicolas II, published a decree in A.D. 1059, which restored the right of nomination and election to the Cardinals of Rome; but leaving the confirmation of the pope elect to Henry, "now king and hereafter to become emperor," and to such of his successors as should personally obtain that privilege. This decree is the foundation of that celebrated mode of election in a conclave of cardinals, which has ever since determined the Headship of the Speaking Image of the Beast. It was intended, not only to exclude the franchise of the citizens of Rome, who by their rabble-violence had forfeited their primitive right, but as far as possible to prepare the way for an absolute emancipation of the papacy from the control of the secular imperial chief of the Beast of the Earth; reserving only a precarious and personal concession to the emperors, instead of their ancient legal prerogative of confirmation.

In one of his notes, Mr. Elliott informs the reader, that the Jesuit, Joseph Acosta, after approvingly stating the common patristic idea that the second Beast symbolized "a multitude of Antichrist's preachers on whom are the horns of a lamb, because through hypocrisy they pretend that they are saints," proceeds to express his opinion that probably some eminent church dignitary, supporting Antichrist, might very possibly be specially intended; because of two Lamb's horns being the symbol of the episcopal dignity: "quendam acerrimum Antichristi defensorem; eum merito non regem, aut militem, sed virum in ecciesia insignem, quod duo agni cornua episcopalis dignitatis insigne sinL

It is worthy of note here, that in treating of the enemies with which Charlemagne had to contend, the historian expresses his surprise that he should prefer attacking the poverty of the North to the riches of the South. "It was an effect of his moderation," says Gibbon, "that he left the maritime cities under the real or nominal sovereignty of the Greeks

The character of Leo, says an ecclesiastical writer, has been so blackened by catholic partisans, that it is difficult to form a just estimate of it; but when we consider that he not only condemned the worshipping of images, but also rejected relics, and protested against the intercession of saints, we cannot doubt of his possessing considerable strength of mind, while it may help us to account for much of the obloquy that was cast upon him.

How, then, does a sinner come to "dwell in the heaven?" By being "transformed in the renewing of his mind" "by knowledge" (Rom. 12:2; Col. 3:10); that he may discern and do "that good and acceptable and Perfect will of the Deity." In other words, by believing the gospel of the Kingdom and Name; and being immersed into and upon that Name. In so doing, he enters into the Holy Heavenly State. By faith in "the truth as it is in Jesus," and obedience, he puts on Christ, and is therefore, "in Him;" and being in him, he is constitutionally holy or a saint; and sitting together with him in the Most Holy, not personally, or corporeally rather; but by faith. This is his present adoption through Jesus Christ, by which he becomes a son of Deity, of Abraham, Sarah, and Isaac, and a brother of Christ himself (Gal. 3:26-29); and a "dweller in the heaven."

No one upon earth called a god, or worshipful individual, could plead exemption from subjection to the power of the keys in the hand of the Universal Bishop. Thus, Gregory the Seventh on excommunicating the emperor Henry IV., said, "I cannot find, that when the Lord confided to Peter the power of the keys, he made any exception in favor of kings." One of his dictates was "that all princes shall kiss the feet of the Pope alone." Raynald relates an exemplification which occurred A. D. 1515. The arrangement made by Paris, bishop of Pisaurum, Master of Ceremonies to the Pope, who was present on the occasion, was that the French king should kneel thrice on approaching the enthroned Pope; and first kiss his feet, ere he kissed his hand and face.

Now, it is a fact, that there was a separate and distinct community of such saints, who existed in all the twelve hundred and sixty years succeeding the Donatist trials in the reign of Constantine, which transpired in the epoch A.D. 312-316. It is also a fact, that during all that long period they were denounced as heretics, and persecuted as such, by the constituted authorities of the state; first, by the emperors for nearly three hundred years; and then by the Ten Horns, inspired by their Universal Bishop, to whose spiritual authority and Eyeship the last of them was converted, A.D. 600, and into whose hands the witnesses and saints were delivered by Justinian and Phocas; and who ceased not to make war upon them during many more centuries, until they silenced their testimony against Romish superstition and the Name of Blasphemy upon the seven hills. This was the Beast's practicing and prospering against the saints - the practicing of the Mouth and Horns for forty and two months. Not forty and two literal days or literal months only; for such a supposition would be contrary to historic facts; but for forty and two months of literal years, extending over twelve long and tedious centuries and sixty years beside.

The emperor Justinian, who had recently "plucked up by the roots" the Vandal Horn in Africa, beheld with joy the dissensions of the Goths in Italy, who were feebly and unworthily governed by Theodatus. He considered the opportunity as favorable for the healing of his wounded authority over Italy. He demanded therefore the abdication of the Gothic king, and the surrender of the ancient provinces of the empire. Though agreed to by the weakness and imbecility of Theodatus, its execution was prevented by his assassination, and the elevation of Vitiges to the throne. Justinian, however, was not to be thwarted in this way. He ordered BELISARIUS to invade Italy with the forces of the empire, and to wrest it from the Goths. The invasion was easy, but the expulsion of two hundred thousand warlike barbarians in arms, proved to be a work of great difficulty.

Although the Bishop of Rome had himself claimed supremacy over all other bishops of the Roman earth, including the Patriarch of Constantinople, this claim had not been imperially, or Dragonically, recognized, until the publication of a Decretal Epistle from Justinian to the Pope, dated March, A.D. 533. "It is hence evident," says Gothofred, the editor of the Justinian Code, cited by Cunninghame, "that they who suppose Phocas to have been the first who gave imperial recognition to the primacy of the Roman See over that of Constantinople are in error: Justinian having acknowledged it before."

But Louis XVI was unwilling to sanction any measures taken against the Emigrant Noblesse, protected by the Powers; and the seditious priests, their allies, throughout the land. He therefore, vetoed the decrees against them. By this use of his prerogative in their favor, he came to be regarded by the people as the accomplice of the enemies of the Revolution. The rejected decrees were not replaced by others. The Assembly, however, dispatched a message to the king by Vaublanc, saying, "Sire, scarcely had the Assembly cast its eyes on the situation of the realm, when it perceived that the troubles which still agitate it have their source in the criminal attempts of the French Emigrants. Their audacity is supported by the German Princes. These hostile preparations, these threats of invasion, require armaments which absorb immense sums, which the nation would have poured with joy into the hands of its creditors.

4. And the third angel poured out his vial into the rivers, and into the fountains of the waters; and there was blood.

In the events of the first four seals, the Spirit may be said to have been a party personally engaged in the contest with the pagan Roman power. Hence, the Four Living Ones, the symbols of His presence with the Saints, militant against Rome, are seen in the prophecy of those seals. But, when His presence was withdrawn from the holy encampment because of apostasy, the symbols are withdrawn likewise; and the developments of the Apocalypse are evolved through ordinary agents in the absence of the supernatural. But, the time arrives toward the end of the "great and marvellous sign in the heaven," for the conflict to be renewed, and determined, in the presence of the Spirit; it is therefore for this reason that "one of the Four Living Ones" is reproduced upon the arena; and is represented as giving the seven golden vials to the Seven Angels.

We may see now why the zones with which they are girded are styled golden. All the gold of the Apocalyptic temple and City of holiness, is symbolical of excellent and glorious qualities. "The Almighty," said Eliphaz to Job, "shall be thy gold". Whatever, therefore, possesses almighty characteristics is golden. The Seven Angels being symbolical Elohistic sub-divisions of the Son of Man similitude, they are like him, "girt about the breast with a golden girdle". They who become constituents of the Most Holy, are they who have bought gold of the Spirit, "gold tried in the fire," by which they have become rich; and are adorned with golden stephans, and golden girdles. Their intellectual, moral, and physical qualities, are manifestations of the Eternal Father's; Who thus equips them with infallible and invincible ability, to cause mankind to do His will upon earth, as it is done in heaven.

6. Thy right hand, O YAHWEH, is glorious in power; Thy right hand, O YAHWEH, hath crushed the foe.

They are styled the last plagues, and the reason why they are so called is given in the words, "for in them is filled up the wrath of the Deity". This testimony shows us, that His wrath is not infinite, or end-less. It has its limits, and beyond them it will not pass. As far as premillennial peoples are concerned, it will not transcend the limit of the "thousand six hundred furlongs", the Aion of Judgment, or the end of Micah's forty years. This is the period of the wrath in its great and marvelous manifestation. It begins with the House of Jacob, and ends with the deliverance of Israel, and the destruction of the House of Esau, of which no remnant is left (Obad. 17,18,21). The House of Jacob is the House of the Deity; of which the Saints, whose head is Christ, are the imperial and sovereign order. In all the "times of the Gentiles" the saints are a mixed community, in which are found fish of all sorts, good, bad, and indifferent. The good are answerable to the "few who are chosen, 'and find eternal life (Matt. 20:16; 7:14): while the bad and indifferent are those who "begin in the Spirit" and end in the flesh - those who at the outset of their career seemed to "run well," but were hindered from a "patient continuance in well-doing," or "obeying the truth," in being "bewitched" by the sorcery of designing knaves, who "by good words and fair speeches deceive the hearts of the simple" (Gal. 3:1,3,7; Rom. 16:18). In our generation, as in that of the apostles, the ecciesia or general assembly of the many, who are called, is composed of these heterogeneous materials. It has been thus in all generations before and since Satan, in the days of Job, mingled with the Sons of the Deity when they presented themselves in the Divine presence (Job 1:6). The satanic element has ever been among them with its "depths as they speak" (ch 2:24), corrupting and perverting the weak. In the wisdom of the Deity Satan has been permitted to practice, and to deceive the hearts of the simple, who are ever learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth" (2 Tim 3:7) without judicial interference. The Satanic element in an ecclesia is always prompt and vivacious for mischief. If it fears to attack openly the most prominent advocate of the truth, it has recourse to underhanded and secret influences. Handling the word of the Deity deceitfully, deceiving, and being deceived" are its characteristics. While inspired with personal hatreds, it affects zeal destroying it, or making it of none effect by the traditions of its monstrous ignorance and folly Yet the Judge of the living and the dead" is profoundly silent save in the word of his law and testimony. There are reasons for this The truth as it is in Jesus is entrusted to the ecclesia, or House of the Deity, which is the Pillar and foundation support of the truth . The members of this house are held responsible and accountable for their relations to this, as a treasure committed to them to be contended for earnestly, and to be upheld at all hazards in their day and generation. This house being furnished with vessels of' all sorts, some to honor and some to dishonor, the truth receives a characteristic treatment at the hands of each sort The vessels fitted to capture and destruction set forth traditions, or heresies which nullify the Word If men speak or write upon the things of the Spirit, they are commanded to do so as oracles of the Deity;" and if they disobey this injunction is because "there is no light in them " Nevertheless, they will give utterance to their folly. This cannot be helped, Fools will be fools come what may. From these premises it is inevitable that, as Paul says, "there must be heresies among you" They are permitted to exist , though not approved. Their existence arouses the flagging energies of sterling and faithful men, "who are able to teach others" (2 Tim. 2:2). It sets them to contending more earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints (Jude 2), which manifests them as the approved, who are grounded and settled in the faith, and not moved away from the hope of the gospel (1 Cor. 11:19; Col. 1:23).

6. And the Seven Angels having the Seven Plagues came out from the Nave, having been clothed in linen, pure and bright, and girded around the breasts with golden girdles.

The reaping of the harvest of the earth, which puts the saints in possession of "the City of the Great King," is only the beginning of national judgment. It is the smiting of the Babylonian Image upon its Russo-Gogian clayey feet by the stone-power. This shatters its homogeneity as a political organization under one imperial ruler. But though the continuity of its political elements is broken, the dynasties represented by the gold and the silver, the brass, the iron and the clay, of the image, do still exist; so that the work remaining for the mighty ones of the Spirit is that of reducing the broken fragments of the Image to the condition represented by the chaff of the summer threshing floors, which the wind carries away into nonentity (Dan. 2:35). This is the work of the vintage in its simplest illustration.

The "one like the Son of Man" sits upon the cloud, "having upon his head a golden stephanos," rendered crown, but not a diadem. This indicates that he is the Generalissimo of the cloud of mighty ones; but not yet in possession of David's diadem, removed from David's house, when Zedekiah , the profane, wicked prince of Israel, was abased by Nebuchadnezzar (Ezek 21:26). The stephan indicates that he is going to compete for a prize, which he has not as yet acquired. If he had been seen with a diadem upon his head, it would have implied that he was the ruling monarch of one kingdom at least; or that such was his destiny. On the contrary, the scene before us exhibits him in the outset of his military career, whose course will be that of a strong man to run and win a race (Psa. 19:5). The prize set before him is, not one, but diademata polla, many diadems (ch. 19:12): and these he acquires by "the energy whereby he is able to subdue all things to himself". He transfers the diadem from the ten horns to his own head, when their kingdoms have become his by right of conquest. He is then seen sitting no longer on a cloud, but "upon a throne set in the heaven," the throne of his father David, which Yahweh Elohim hath given him (Ch. 4:2; Luke 1:31-33).

It was a voice from the heaven; and considering that it respects the blessed of the Father, it is doubtless the voice of the Son of Man, sitting upon the throne of his glory after he had punished the Goats, and established the kingdom upon the ruin of theirs - "Then shall the King say to them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom which has been prepared for you from the foundation of the State" (Matt. 25:34). When they do this, they rest from their judicial labors, and enjoy the blessing promised to the Saints.

p.58 of them who worship the Beast and his Image, and receive the sign of his name the unhappy subjects of the judgments of third angel power

The purpose of the second and third angel-judgments is fourfold; first, to avenge the blood of the saints and witnesses of Jesus shed by the spiritual and temporal rulers of the Graeco-Latin nations; secondly, to render vengeance to the rebellious who refuse to obey the gospel announced in the First Angel-proclamation; thirdly, to develop the mercy decreed for Yahweh's land and the twelve tribes of Israel; and, fourthly, that all adversaries being subdued, the surviving population of the earth may rejoice as the reconciled people of the Holy One of Israel, in whom, and in his father Abraham, all the families of the earth are blessed. This fourfold purpose is indicated in Deut. 32, in the words, "To me belongeth vengeance and recompense. Yahweh shall judge his people, and repent himself for his servants, when he seeth that their power is gone. See now that I, even I am He (the Promised Seed), and that there are none of elohim (Ahyim Elohim) with me; I kill, and I make alive; I wound, and I heal; neither is there any that can deliver out of my hand. For I lift up my hand to the heavens (Apoc. 10:5,6), and say, I am the Living One of the Olahm (or Millennium). If I whet my glittering sword, and mine hand take hold on judgment, I will render vengeance to thine enemies, and I will reward them that hate me. I will make mine arrows (the Ten Tribes) drunk with blood, and my sword (Judah) shall devour flesh with the blood of the slain, and of the captives, from the beginning of revenges upon the enemy". Therefore, "0 ye nations, his people, cause ye to rejoice; for he will avenge the blood of his servants, and will render vengeance to his adversaries, and will be merciful to his Land and to his people".

But this "day of vengeance" in which the Great Shepherd who is a priest upon his throne (Zech. 6:13) punishes the Goats, is also "the year of his redeemed" (Isa. 63:4). He is the redeemer of the two classes of mankind; these are first, "his brethren" whom he has taken out from the nations for his name (Acts 15:14): and secondly, the many nations who shall be joined to Him as his people (Zech. 2:11). Of this second class are the twelve tribes of the house of Jacob. The nation of Israel is to be the first-born, or chief son of the national family, being the beloved nation for the fathers' sake (Rom. 11:28). The first class are redeemed from the earth, and stand with the Lamb on Mount Zion, and follow him in all his wars and enterprises "whithersoever he goeth". The redemption of the second class is the work of the Eternal Power through Christ and his brethren. "He saves the tents of Judah first," and strengthens Judah's house (Zech. 12:7;l0:7); and then saves the house of Joseph, or the ten tribes of the kingdom of Ephraim. This salvation or redemption of Jacob is developed in the Jubilee, when "the Great Trumpet is blown" against the Goats; and all Israelites are invited to "return every man to his possession."

The reader will not confound this angel flying through midheaven with that said also to fly through midheaven in ch. 8:13. The difference in their proclamations indicates a difference in the time, agents, and circumstances of the two. The proclamation of ch. 8 preceded the sounding of the fifth trumpet; and was made by those who were able to discern the signs of the times in which they lived; while that in the fourteenth is made by agents represented by John after their resurrection and inauguration as kings and priests for the Deity. There was only superlative "woe" proclaimed in the first; but in this remembrance of the Hour of Judgment, there is also an announcement of good .

The Lamb-Power invades the territories of the Beast and his Image: for their worshippers are said to be tormented in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb; hence, as the 144,000 are his attendants, they are there also (verse 9,10). This is, if possible, still more evident from ch. 17:14,12; and 19:19; where the Beast and kings of the earth and their armies gather together to make war against the Lamb, and against his army, which is marshalled by "the called, the chosen, and faithful" 144,000, with him. The conflict, however terrible, is not doubtful. The Seven-Horned Lamb overcomes them in spite of all their improvements in artillery and the art of war; for he is the Almighty King of kings and Lord of lords, who smites the nations with the sword of his mouth, and rules them with a rod of iron. They can drive three hundred pound shot through iron armor-plates several inches thick; and discharge with great rapidity breech-loading rifles; but this outside force is not almighty. The shadow of the Spirit's power has greater resistance than armor plates of the greatest thickness. Cannon balls and rifle shot cannot penetrate it; while he can crumble into dust without a blow defenses of the hardest steel. The 144,000 firstfruits are themselves "spirit", on the principle laid down by Jesus, that that is spirit which is born of the Spirit. Being spirit, they are in the shadow of the Spirit's power - a polished shaft in His quiver, like the great Captain of their salvation. No projectile can reach them to hurt them. A storm of rifle bullets will fall before them like paper pellets from walls of granite. The artillery of the Beast's armies being thus rendered powerless, they have no defence against the tormenting fire and brimstone of the 144,000 of the Lamb. The Beast and deceiving False Prophet become captives; and those who sustained them by the sword, are made a sacrifice of with great slaughter (ch. 13:10) in the great Day of Retribution, when the Seven-Horned Lamb, with his invincible attendants, shall go forth into all the earth.

The symbolic Lamb and 144,000 on Mount Zion are YAHWEH Tz'vAOTH, He who shall be hosts, of whom Isaiah prophesies in ch. 6, "I saw," saith he, "Adonai (the Spirit in plural manifestation - Lords) sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his robe-skirts filled the temple. Above it stood the Seraphim; each one had six wings; and one cried to another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, Yahweh Tz'vaoth; the whole earth is full of his glory" . Adonai with robe-skirts filling the temple is the Spirit as the Lamb and the 144,000. These thousands are the skirts of the investing robe of "the King" YAHWEH Tz'vAOTH; and symbolized by the six-winged Seraphim, or four living ones full of eyes, described by John in ch. 4:6,7,8. That Adonai is One in plural manifestation, appears from the eighth verse. "I heard," saith Isaiah, the voice of Adonai, saying, Whom shall I send? and who will go for US?" In other words, Whom shall I, the Spirit, or the Father, send? Who will go for us, the plurality symbolized by the Seraph-skirts of the investing robe? The Spirit of Christ in the prophet answers, "Here am I; send me!" And He said . "Go!" In the ninth and tenth verses is the message to be delivered to Israel. The delivery is noted in Matt. 13: 13-15, and the Messenger is there found to be Jesus. He came, and was slain. He was "delivered for our offences, and raised again for our justification" (Rom. 4:25). Unto him, then, "the faithful witness, the first begotten of the dead, and the Prince of the Kings of the Earth, unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood, and hath made us Kings and Priests for the Deity and his Father; to him be glory and dominion, for the rens of the reons, Amen" (Apoc. 1:5-6). This is the ascription of Isaiah's Seraphim, of Ezekiel's Cherubim, and of John's four Living Ones, and therefore of the 144,000, to the Lamb for what he has done for them. The question, "Who will go for us?" has been graciously responded to by the loving self-sacrifice of Christ for the ungodly (Rom. 5:6-8). But for this voluntary and disinterested sacrifice, there would be no redemption; and therefore no Seraphic 144,000 hereafter on Mount Zion, or anywhere else. But, the redemption price has been paid, and all the Seals will be thoroughly unloosed. As certainly as the Lamb was slain, so surely will he appear on the Mount Zion, with the 144,000; when the moon of the political firmament shall be confounded, and the sun ashamed, when "He who shall be hosts" (Yahweh Tz'vaoth) shall reign on Mount Zion, and in Jerusalem, and before his Ancients gloriously (Isa. 24:23).

The Sign of the Cross is the universal character of the Apostasy, both in its Romish and Protestant manifestations. It is erected upon their temples, or spiritual bazaars, and upon the flags of Protestant and Papal nations, as well as upon the hands and foreheads of individuals. The Papists impress the sign on these with water and "greasy chrism" in rhantism, confirmation, and orders, as already shown; while Protestants, or anti-papal rebels, still retaining the character, less frequently parade the sign in the practice of their superstition. They pertinaciously hold on to their institutions of the sign, rhantism, confirmation, and orders; though they do not sketch the character, charagma or mark, upon the hands or forehead in the observance of each. Millions of them think that, if the Sign received from their Roman Mother is impressed on the forehead rhantismally, it need not be repeated in confirmation or ordination; because none are admitted to these Papistical ordinances who have not been previously signed with the Sign of the Cross in what they call "baptism," but which is no baptism at all. The correctness of this statement may be verified by reference to the Mass Book of the "Harlots" of Britain and the United States, styled "The Book of Common Prayer." Thus, when the priest pours, or sprinkles, water upon the upturned face of an infant, he falsely affirms that he baptizes it in the name of the Father, etc., and then proceeds to say, "We receive this child into the congregation of Christ's flock, and do Sign him with the Sign of the Cross." In the book authorized by the Protestant Episcopal Harlot of America, is a marginal appendix to this, saying, "Here the minister shall make a Cross upon the child's forehead. "I do not know if the Maternal Harlot of England, "as by law established," would permit the sign of the cross to be omitted in rhantism on any consideration; if she would not, then we are bound to admit, that her American Daughter is more accommodating than she: or as politicians would say, "more liberal;" for she has inserted a note to the effect that, "if those who present the infant shall desire the Sign of the Cross to be omitted, although the Church knows no worthy cause of scruple concerning the same, yet, in that case, the minister may omit that part." The omission then of the betokening charagma does not impair the supposed efficacy of the sprinkling or pouring. The sprinkling and Signing of the Cross are two actions pertaining to one and the same ecclesiastical ordinance. The old Roman Mother will not permit either action to be omitted. Her disobedient grand-daughter in America thinks the sign might in some cases be dispensed with, seeing that the thing signified may be obtained by the sprinkling alone. She thinks it, however, safer to hold on to the sanctifying use of both actions; she therefore orders this "charagma" of the Beast be observed.

8. And another angel wed, saying, Fallen, fallen hath Babylon the great city; because she hath made all nations drink of the wine of the raging of her fornication.

There need be no doubt about the correctness of , 666; for Ireneus, who became overseer of the ecclesia in Lyons about 70 years after John received the Apocalypse, testifies to its correctness in the most positive manner; and also says, that the number of the name is according to the cipher of the Greeks through whose letters it is expressed; that is, it is a name in a Greek form, and as such the enigma must be explained.

But, glorify themselves as they may, peace will not abide with the wicked. In 1867, the Revolution became impatient. Events did not progress fast enough for the Garibaldini and the Italian Government. Signor Ratazzi chief minister of State, colleagued with Garibaldi's friends for an attack upon Rome. These invaded the Roman territory, defeated the Pope's mercenaries, who retired within the walls, and put the "Holy Father" in great fear. The Frog-Emperor (**) seeing that his power was gone; and that he could no longer defend himself; and that the Italian Government did not protect him, with the greatest dispatch sent a strong force to rescue him from impending ruin. It reached Rome in time to prevent it falling into the hands of the Garibaldini, who were in force at Mentana. Having encamped, they assumed the political and military direction of the city. They then proceeded to empty the prisons choked with the victims of papal tyranny, and to renew the war in the provinces. Six thousand papal mercenaries and French regulars, armed with the newly invented Chassepot rifle, encountered the Garibaldini at Mentana, whom they outnumbered two to one. The unequal conflict was decided against the revolutionists. The French conquered, and the Temporal Power passed into their hands.

The Frog-emperor informed the world, that "the object of the war was to restore Italy to herself". He said, that "the national and traditional policy of France is to maintain civilization;" and that although she had passed through a severe and bloody career of seventy years, "France had not, for all that, abdicated her task of civilization. Her natural allies had always been those who desired the improvement of the human race; and when she drew the sword it was not to dominate, but to liberate". Such a declaration as this was calculated to excite the liveliest expressions of good in the hearts of the downtrodden millions of Italy; and at the same time, the most dismal apprehensions of the False Prophet and his carrion birds of Rome. Therefore to keep their worshippers in France quiet, he declared that "he did not enter Italy to disturb the power of the Holy Father, whom France replaced upon the throne in 1849; but to remove from him the Austrian pressure, which weighed upon the whole peninsula, and to help to establish there order based upon legitimate satisfied interests".

Austria and the Papacy, by concordat, ~ are one horn with two capitals. The spiritual authority of the Pope is above the authority of the emperor in all the Austrian empire, until the Concordat is repealed; and the natural ally and protector of the Pope is his Austrian "Apostolic Majesty".( t) The Frog-power in Rome is a nuisance, tolerated there because it can-not be expelled. If the Frog-power had not intervened in 1849, Rome and Italy would have been subject to the Little Horn with Eyes; and the current of events turned into a different channel. The Austro-Papal dominion would have been strong in 1867; and not as it is now, almost ready to give up the ghost. It has been the working of the Frog-power for nearly twenty years past, that has developed what we know to exist in Italy and the Roman States. The "unclean spirit going forth" from the Viennese Mouth, and the "unclean spirit going forth" from the Roman Mouth, in all that period, have been spirits in political shape "like to Frogs".

4. In Pynson's edition of Fabyan's Chronicle, at the beginning of the account of Pharamond - the first king of the Franks who reigned at Treves about A.D. 420- there is a shield of arms bearing three frogs, (p.37, Ellis' edit.); with the words beneath,

This exhibition of daemons excludes all idea of their being devils. But this teaching of Socrates and Plato, styled by Paul "the wisdom of the world", is made foolish by the Gospel; nevertheless, its fiction was convenient for symbolical representation of political analogies. Illus, the governments of the world and their high agents and officials, are a system of power, ordered, or arranged, by the Deity. They occupy a position in "the Air" (ch. 16:17), or political firmament, intermediate between Him and mankind in general. They are therefore Daemons, a superior order of agents to the common herd; though often intellectually and morally inferior to many among the humblest of mankind. In unfigurative language, kings, cabinets, councils, conferences, ambassadors, ministers of state, and such like, are the Daemons of the prophecy in hand. They are not to be confounded with ta daimonia, the da.monia of ch. 9:20. The fictitious ghosts of the Virgin-goddess, and of all the other saint-gods and saint-goddesses of the Romish superstition, are the daemonials, answering to the daemons of the pagan Greeks; but the daemons of ch. 16:14, are real official men, such as the Sultari, the Austrian and French emperors, the pope, and their political representatives.

Again, very soon after the termination of the war against Russia, Mehemet Ah, the Pasha of the Egyptian province of the Little Horn of the Goat, asserted his independence of the Sultan. He attacked and conquered the Turks in Syria and the Holy Land, in the three great battles of Hems, of Nezib, and of Iconium, in 1832 and 1833. He now aspired to the throne of the Sultan, and in 1838 advanced as far as Smyrna on his march to Constantinople. "Man proposes, but God disposes". The wrath of the sixth vial was to dry up, not to invigorate and renovate, "the water" or power, of "the Great River Euphrates". Had Mehemet Ah been allowed to depose the Sultan, and to set himself upon his throne, the Ottoman empire would have been vastly strengthened: Providence, therefore, caused the diplomatic "Daemons" of the Great City Babylon to interfere, that they might unconsciously "establish the vision". Russia, Austria, Prussia and England, weary of the war between the Pasha and the Sultan, interfered, and ordered Mehemet Ah to return to Egypt. They then proceeded to regulate the affairs of the East in accordance with their own policy. They ordered the Pasha to surrender Syria and the Holy Land to the Sultan, and to restore to him the Turkish fleet which had revolted during the war. Mehemet Ah refused to do either, contending that these countries were his by right of conquest for ever, and the fleet as the spoils of war. The four powers, however, (France was not consulted in this affair), were not to be trifled with. They were willing that the Egyptian Pashalic should be hereditary in his family; but resolved that he should only be Pasha of Syria for life. But even this was contrary to the Divine arrangement; his heart was therefore hardened against such an accommodation, and he refused to yield. The result was that the Allied Fleet bombarded the cities of the Syrian sea-board, and took possession of St. Jean d'Acre. They again offered him "all that part of Syria, extending from the Gulf of Suez to the Lake of Tiberias, to-gether with the province of Acre for life," if he would restore the Turkish fleet. But this offer did not suit the Deity; he was therefore still hardened to refuse, and to maintain what he considered his rights. Seeing that negotiation availed nothing, they proceeded in the autumn of 1840, to compel the Egyptians to evacuate the Promised Land, and determined that he should not have it at all; and threatened furthermore, that if he did not restore the fleet in ten days, they would make Alexandria too hot for his continuance there. Such a conclusion being in harmony with the Divine purpose, he was led to comply. He evacuated the country, and surrendered the ships within the time; thus he was forced back within the limits of his Turco-Egyptian Pashalic, which he was allowed to retain as the hereditary inheritance of his family under the suzerainty of the Porte; while Syria and the Holy Land to the shores of the Red Sea, were restored to the Constantinopolitan jurisdiction, which is more nominal than real in all the land.

In concluding this section, I may add, that Dan. 12:11, has given the commentators much trouble. The Daily Sacrifice was taken away A.D. 70. As the passage stands in the English Version, it would seem that the 1290 should begin there. This would bring the end of the period in 1360, the very midnight of abominations making desolate. Not being able to work out the arithmetic in that line they have turned "the Daily" into a figure of the Romish Apostasy, or sanctuary to be cleansed, and so forth. We need not, however, trace out their theories, and consume time and space in arguments against them. It may suffice to remark, that the obscurity of the text is referable to the loose rendering of the word maiaith, and the tense of the verb husar. The former is translated "from the time;" but Gesenius, without particular reference to this text, gives more than in the time when", as a good rendering. In our text, more than from the time would be the exact signification, in the sense of when or after. The other word husar is in the perfect, not the future sense, as in the C.V. - maiaith husar hathtamid, after the Daily has been removed. It was removed to make way for the over-spreading of abominations of desolation; but how long after its removal to the beginning of the particular abomination that was to continue 1290, it gives no information. The beginning of the period would be known by those who should be able to perceive the Opening of the sixth vial at its termination, and from thence reckoning back 1290 years. It had a contemporary beginning with the 1260, ending in the fall of "the tenth of the great city," and resurrection of the Witnesses, 1790-'93; and with the 1335 of Dan. 12:12, ending 1868. If the Justinian epoch 529-'33, be not the correct beginning of these periods, I know not what other historical epochs can have any reasonable claims to be true.

We see, then, that in Scripture there are two Euphratean rivers analogically related to each other - the one, the natural; the other, the political Euphrates. The waters of the natural, are representative of the peoples of the empire to which the natural river belongs. This, in the rainy season, overflows its banks; which, by analogy, represents the armies of Assyria crossing the river for the invasion of adjacent countries.

We see, then, that in Scripture there are two Euphratean rivers analogically related to each other - the one, the natural; the other, the political Euphrates. The waters of the natural, are representative of the peoples of the empire to which the natural river belongs. This, in the rainy season, overflows its banks; which, by analogy, represents the armies of Assyria crossing the river for the invasion of adjacent countries.

Such were the "pains" and "ulcers" which tormented the inhabitants of all the countries of Papal and Protestant Europe, as they became in turn the scene of warfare. They were certainly terrific, and calculated to make the subjects of them "gnaw their tongues for the pain;" and, contemplated from a humanitarian standpoint, greatly to be deplored. But when it is remembered, that they were worshippers of an imaginary ghost of a dead woman, they called "the Virgin Mary, and Holy Mother of God;" were Protestant Blasphemers of the Deity's Name; and the representatives of those who hunted from their homes their "heretical" friends and neighbors whom they burned to death, or drove from the haunts of men, to perish in the woods by hundreds, yea, by thousands, of hunger, nakedness, and cold - when we remember this, we can but say, that they were rightly served; and respond with the voice from the Altar, "Even so, 0 Lord the almighty Deity, true and righteous are thy judgments!"

"Your Majesty will permit me to repeat what I have already said, that the Pope being the common Father of the Faithful, cannot separate from some to attach himself to others; and that his ministry being a ministry of peace, he cannot make war on anybody, nor declare himself the enemy of anyone whatever without failing in his duties and compromising his sacred character".

The French, with trifling loss to themselves, captured sixty thousand prisoners on their victorious march to Vienna. Without halt-mg, the advance-guard crossed the Danube, and pushed on to encounter the Russians in Moravia, where the main body consisted of about fifty thousand, under the emperor Alexander, and twenty-five thousand Austrians, under the emperor Francis. The French under the emperor Napoleon, who was his own general-in-chief, amounted to between seventy and eighty thousand. This battle of the three emperors was fought Dec. 2, 1805, on the plain of AUSTERLITZ, on the direct road from Vienna to Olmutz. The engagement began at sunrise and continued with the most scorching effect, "full of variety and sanguinary in the extreme," until evening. On the following day the French advanced; when the Austrian emperor proposed an armistice, the terms of which being so humiliating, the emperor of Russia refused to become a party to it; and commenced a retreat in his own way. In addressing his soldiers on the day after the battle, Napoleon said, "An army of a hundred thousand, commanded by the emperors of Russia and Austria, has been in less than four hours cut to pieces and dispersed: they who have escaped your swords have perished in the lakes. Forty stand of colors, the standards of the imperial Russian guards, a hundred and twenty pieces of cannon, twenty generals, and more than thirty thousand prisoners, are the result of this for ever glorious day. Their infantry so vaunted, and so superior in numbers, has been unable to resist your Onset; and henceforth you have no rivals to dread. Thus, in two months, this third coalition has been vanquished and dispersed." This was truly "scorching the men with great heat".

The words, "the sea became blood as it were of a corpse; and every living soul in the sea died," are amplified and somewhat expounded in the language of the Second Trumpet prophecy. In this, the sea became blood; the creatures that were in the sea, and had life, died; and the ships were destroyed. All this resulted from the great Genseric Mountain burning with fire, being cast into the same sea as the contents of the Second Vial. The consequences were similar, but upon a grander scale. The Vandal power destroyed the power and commerce of Rome from the sea; and afflicted its maritime provinces with sanguinary incursions. A like result ensued through the agency of Britain, which annihilated the maritime power, commerce, and colonies of the countries of "Babylon the Great". The following summary will be suggestive to the reader of the extent and severity of the wrath of this vial. In 1793, the greater part of the French fleet at Toulon was destroyed by Lord Hood; in June, 1794, followed Lord Howe's great victory over the French off Ushant; then the taking of Corsica, and nearly all the smaller Spanish and French West Indian Islands; after this, in 1795, Lord Bridport's naval victory, and the capture of the Cape of Good Hope from the Dutch; likewise, Soon after, the capture of a French and Dutch fleet sent to retake it; then, in 1797, the victory over the Spanish fleet off Cape St. Vincent, and that off Camperdown over the Dutch; then, in succession, Lord Nelson's three great victories of the Nile in 1798, of Copenhagen in 1801, and of Trafalgar in 1805. In this long naval war, extending from1793 to 1815, it appears from James' Naval History that there were destroyed altogether near 200 ships of the line, between 300 and 400 frigates, and an almost incalculable number of smaller vessels of war and ships of commerce. As Dr. Keith remarks, the whole history of the world does not present such a period of naval war, destruction, and bloodshed. In the figurative language of the prophecy "the sea became blood as it were of a corpse".

The influence of the Jacobins now became enormous. The populace was in the greatest agitation. Eight thousand armed petitioners waited upon the Assembly. They complained of the inactivity of their armies, and insisted upon the cause being discovered; and that if it proceeded from the executive power, they required that it should be annihilated. From the Assembly, their numbers having increased to thirty thousand, they marched to the king's palace. As they were demolishing the doors with axes, Louis XVI. ordered them to be opened. The stormy wave rushed in, and demanded his sanction to certain decrees he had vetoed, and the appointment of new ministers. But he refused their petitions; and for this time, they were persuaded to retire. Soon after this, the Assembly proclaimed that the country was in danger. The indispensable measures of defence it decreed carried to its height the excitation of the revolutionary frenzy. On July 25, 1792, the Duke of Brunswick put the army of Europe in motion for the invasion of France, the suppression of the Revolution, and the punishment of the republicans. He published "a great voice," or manifesto in the name of the emperor of Germany and king of Prussia. Russia and England, though they secretly approved the attacks of the European Coalition, had not yet co-operated in them. The duke reproached those who had usurped the reins of administration in France with having troubled its good order, and overthrown its legitimate government. He declared that the Allied Sovereigns had taken up arms in order to put an end to anarchy in France, to arrest the attacks upon the altar and the throne, to render to the king the security and the liberty ofwhich he had been deprived, and to put him in a situation for exercising his legitimate authority. In consequence, he declared the national guards and authorities responsible for all these disorders, until the arrival of the troops of the coalition. He summoned them to return to their ancient fidelity. He said that the inhabitants of the towns which ventured to defend themselves should be punished immediately as rebels, according to the rigor ofwar, and their houses demolished or burnt: that if the city of Paris did not restore the king to his full liberty, or refused to render him the respect due to him, the Allied Princes rendered personally responsible for such failure on their heads, to be judged by military law, without hope of pardon, all the members of the National Legislative Assembly, of the department, of the district, of the municipality, and of the national guard; that if the palace were forced, or insulted, the Allied Potentates would take an exemplary and memorable vengeance, by giving up Paris to plunder, and to total destruction. He promised, on the contrary, that he would engage to employ the good offices of the confederate princes with Louis XVI., in favor of the inhabitants of Paris, and obtain for them the pardon of their errors and offences, if they promptly obeyed the orders of the coalition. This "great voice" roused the spirit of the whole nation; and more than anything else hastened the fall of the throne, and opposed the success of the coalition. There was but one wish, one cry of resistance from one end of France to the other. The popular party, which was thus forced, as it were, to triumph, saw no other means than that of annulling the monarchy, and in order to annul it, to depose the king. His dethronement was discussed in the clubs. Forty-seven sections of Paris declared that if the resolution of dethronement were not pronounced by the Assembly that very day, the tocsin should be sounded at midnight, the drums should beat the generale, and the palace should be attacked on the 10th of August.

While the rivers and lakes became blood by sanguinary conflicts in the field, the measures resorted to by the archducal government to turn the tide of battle in favor of the Two-Horned Beast, were of a character befitting the worshippers of his Image. Processions were made, relics of the dead were exposed for popular veneration, and ceremonies resorted to, which the Latin superstition prescribed as an appeal to heaven in great national calamities. But the saints and saintesses of the Image-Aerial were both deaf and impotent shadows, from whom, of course, no succor could come for the deliverance of the fools that worshipped them. The Beast's Italian archducal government found that its guardian saints were no defence in time of trouble; it determined, therefore, to retreat, and leave Milan to its fate. Neither joy nor sorrow signalized its departure all thoughts being pre-occupied upon what was to happen next.

Blessedness and saving health is promised unto all nations. The leaves of the wood are the medicine of their cure. Naturally, there are powerful medicinal properties in leaves: but none so powerful and efficacious as in the Leaves of the Wood for the healing of the nations. Only think, what a wonderful enlightening, purging, and healing property there must be in leaves that can cure ignorant and bigoted papists, protestants, Mohammedans, Hindoos, and such like, of all their superstitions and abominations, clothe them in a right mind, and cause them to say in their convalescence, “Come, and let us go up to the mountain of YAHWEH, to the House of the Elohim of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways” — He who is the Life of the Wood and Water of Paradise. He will then produce, or reveal knowledge, pertaining to “his ways,” which knowledge will be exhibited in “the law”, and in “the word” that are to go forth from Zion and Jerusalem. The law and the word of the Spirit will issue from the throne through the Healing Leaves at duly appointed times, or “from one New Moon to another, and from one Sabbath to another” (Isa. 66:23). The “twelve fruits of the wood of life” are the knowledge of good tending to life, being made known, and fed upon, in all the year. Fruit is any thing produced. It is not produced to all the world at once; that is, in a single month: but at every new moon of the year’s twelve shall strangers present themselves in Jerusalem for instruction, and “from one Sabbath to another”. The living water through the wood produces the healing knowledge, the leaves yield it to the nations, according to the administrative institutions of the new Mi!lennial constitution and order of things.

It may be remarked that while dendron in the singular only repre sents one tree, the word xulon, in the singular, may represent a plurality; as “they made their feet fast, ejs to xulon, in the stocks”. In short, the matter of all trees is used symbolically for any number of individual trees

The pure transparent stream of water of life issuing from the throne of the Deity is his Almighty power, or Spirit, by which He creates, regenerates, makes glorious, and subdues all things to Himself. “Look upon Zion, the city of our solemnities; thine eye shall see Jerusalem a quiet habitation; a tabernacle that shall not be taken down: but there the glorious YAHWEH will be to us a place of rivers and streams; wherein shall go no galley with oars, neither shall gallant ship pass thereby” (Isa. 33:20,21). In this the place, the rivers, and the streams, stand for YAHWEH and His power.

8. And I, John, am seeing and hearing these things. And when I had heard and seen, I fell down to do homage before the feet of the angel showing these things to me.

Now, upon the same principle that it could be said, that one “born of a woman, and made under the law,” who, during his life, never went further from Palestine than Egypt; died on the cross, was buried, an came forth thence on the third day — came down out of heaven, and was “the Lord from heaven”: upon this identical principle it can truly be affirmed, that “a multitude which no man can number,” thousands of men and women coming forth from the earth, and who had never visited any other planet of the universe; were seen, as the Bride the Lamb wife, the New, the Holy Jerusalem, the Great City, “descending frot the Deity out of the heaven”.

8. But to the fearful, and unbelieving, and to those who have been detest?able, and murderers, and fornicators, and sorcerers, and idolators, and to all the liars, their part shall be in the lake burning with fire and brimstone, which is the Second Death.

These diverse results of the judgment of the Divine household according to the deeds of its members, in the light of the things written, is thus stated Apocalyptically. “In a great house,” says Paul, “there are not only vessels of gold and of silver, but also of wood and of earth; and some to honor and some to dishonor” (2 Tim. 2:20). So it is with the great house of the Deity. Inch. 20:14, the vessels of wood and of earth, the earthy vessels that come forth from the unclean charnel-house of the dead; and who are not accounted worthy of promotion to honor; and therefore remain in the earthiness with which they come forth; are symbolically represented by the phrase, “Death and the Invisible”, ho thanatos kai ho hades. This represents them collectively. The several classes of character comprised in this dishonorable and unworthy crowd, who, at the judgment, had been refused permission to “eat of the Tree of Life, and to enter through the gates into the City” (ch. 22:14) are styled in ch. 21:8, “the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers and idolators, and all liars;” and in ch. 22:15, “without the city are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolators, and whosoever loveth and inventeth a lie”. These are the characters who are the children of Death and the Grave; and have no part in the Life of the Aion. The fearful and unbelieving are a numerous class of professors of godliness, “who say Lord, Lord”, but neither believe what he says, nor do what he commands them. They acknowledge their ignorance of the prophetic writings; but refuse to be taught by them who are able to enlighten them. Jesus says, “I say unto you, that every injurious word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in a day of judgment: for by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned” (Matt. 12:36); but the unbelieving, who love and invent lies, when their attention is directed to these words, reject them; and say they “don’t believe a word of it”. They say, that there is no judgment for the saints when they have come forth from the graves; and that the only judgment day for them is the time of their existence between immersion and death. In this time, they would have the simple believe, they are standing before the tribunal of Christ and giving an account of themselves; and that at death the account closes: so that in their coming forth from the charnel-house of corruption, sentence is executed; and they will know their acceptance before they even see Christ! Such is the latest invention in the department of lies, which the inventors, with good words and fair speeches, seek to impose upon the hearts of the simple.

(*) That is, the Septuagint Version of the Old Testament, the name deriving from the fact that it was translated by a group of 72 Hellenistic Jewish scholars into Alexandrian Greek for Ptolemy Philadelphus. It is also suggested that the work was completed in 72 days. "Septuagint" is Latin for "70" — Publishers.

8. and he shall go forth to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, the Gog and the Magog, to gather them together for war; the number of whom is as the sand of the sea.

Such is the locality and the fuel of the lake of fire; the fire itself that consumes the wood, hay, and stubble, or "the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolators, and all liars" (ch. 21:8), is the burning anger of YAHWEH'S Name, as it appears in Isaiah 30:27, saying, "Behold, the Name of Yahweh cometh from far, his anger burning, and the burden heavy; his lips are full of indignation, and his tongue as a devouring fire. And he shall cause his glorious voice to be heard, and shall show the lighting down of his arm, with the indignation of anger, and the flame of a devouring fire, with scattering, and tempest, and hailstones". As Paul, therefore, truly saith, "our God is a consuming fire".

Before the end of the Beast and Horn Polity is reached, the Horns "hate the Harlot, and make her desolate and naked, and eat her flesh, and burn her with fire" (verse 16). This process has been going on for some time, but is not yet consummated. The Little Horn with Eyes, into whose hand the Saints were given 1335 years ago, was to lose his dominion, not all at once, but consumptively for a time, and after that to be destroyed without remedy "the judgment shall sit, and they shall take away his dominion, to consume and to destroy it unto the end" (Dan. 7:26): and Paul says, in reference to the same, "the Lord will consume the Lawless One by the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy him by the manifestation of his presence" (2 Thess. 2:8). The judgment has been sitting upon the Papacy and the secular imperiality that sustains it; that is, upon the Eighth Head, for the past seventy-five years, as shown in the exposition of the Vials. The effect of the judgment may be seen by comparing the Papacy and Austria as they were before the great French Revolution, with what they are at the present time. The Pope, the Emperor, and the Sultan, are the three sick men of Europe - in hospital, as it were, incurably sick. All his calamities have come upon the Pope and his Church by the powers occupying the territories of the Ten Horns, who have hated the Harlot, and made her desolate, and naked, and ate her flesh, and burned her with fire. Alison informs us, that the French ambassador writing from Rome to Buonaparte in 1797, remarked that "the payment of thirty millions stipulated by the treaty of Tolentino has totally exhausted this old carcass" (the Great Harlot, or Roman State): "we are making it consume by a slow fire". Ranke says that the losses of the Roman State were estimated altogether at 220 millions of livres. French occupation and oppression in Rome reduced its population from 180,000 to 90,000, and converted many villages into deserts.

6. Render to her as also she hath rendered to you, and double to her twofold according to her deeds: in the cup which she hath mingled, mingle for her double.

The Seventh Angel is the ETERNAL SPIRIT clothed with the white linen and golden-girdle company of splendid ones, Jesus and his Brethren; who, though incorruptible and deathless, do not let themselves out in their brightness, until they have accomplished the work of this seventh vial upon "the Air", I am led to affirm this upon the authority of the Spirit of Christ in Zech. 14:5,6,7, as follows in the original; "And Yahweh my Elohim shall come in; all the saints with thee. And it shall be in that day there shall be no brightness, the splendid ones drawing in; and it shall be one day that shall be known to Yahweh, neither day nor night; but it shall be at the time of evening there shall be brightness".(*) At the time of evening the day of glory begins. When the judgments of the seventh vial are all exhausted the time of evening will have come. All "the smoke from the glory of the Deity, and from his power" will have cleared away; and then the Saints who have been executing "the judgments written", will rest from the labors of the war of the great and terrible day; and no longer drawing themselves in, will "shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father" (Matt. 13:43); or, as Daniel expres-ses it, "as the brightness of the firmament; and as the stars for the olahm and beyond" (ch. 12:3).

9. The mind having wisdom is this. The seven heads are seven mountains, where the woman is sitting upon them: they are also seven governments: the five have fallen, and the one is, the other is not yet come; but when it may have come, it is necessary that it continue a short time.

It is evident from these last words, that "the land brought back from the sword" is not the land according to the original Abrahamic grant; but only that "tenth part" of it which Isaiah was informed in ch. 6:13, "shall return and be grazed". This tenth in the midst of the land is the locality of Armageddon; and not at all connected with Teman, which lies considerably to the south of it. The return of security and prosperity to this tenth of the land, must either precede the development of the "One Yahweh" man; or be concurrent with the operation in the recesses of Teman: or it may be in progress both then and before. It seems to me that the movement of the Anglo-Indian Merchants of Tarshish upon Abyssinia~, and the formation of the Suez Canal, are preliminary to the return of the tenth. How long a time may elapse from the arrival of the Lord Jesus at Sinai, to the perfected development of the Echad Yahweh(*) "ONE YAHWEH" Name (Zech. 14:9; Deut. 6:4) does not appear from the record: the interval however, will I conceive, afford time enough for the development of the Divine purpose with respect to the tenth of the land. From the present occupation of Abyssinia to the finished preparation of the Lamb> Bride, whose perfected readiness for action is the subject of the "Hallelu-YAH" of her great constituent multitude (ch. 19:6-9) will afford all the time so facile an international arrangement, in these days of political and scientific miracles, may require. Sardinia became the kingdom of Italy in two months: the kingdom of Naples was annexed in less time; Austria was expelled from Venetia and the Quadrilateral in d few days: how soon, then, could a convention between England, Turkey, France, Russia, Austria and Prussia, for the sake of advancing a step in the peaceful solution of the Eastern Question, give population, security and prosperity to the tenth of the land.

But, the first man of the earth was put to shame before a plurality of Divine Personages. This is evident from the narrative, which records the saying of the Judge, who remarked, "Behold the man is as one of us, knowing good and evil". The "us" is indicative of the associates of the speaker, styled by MOSES YAHWEH ELOHIM. These it was who, in the language of our text, "Saw his shame". This Court of Assize in Eden, which condemned the man of the earth to remain earthy unto death because of one offence, is the type, or example, of the future Court of Assize in Teman, where his earthy representatives, who come forth from the dust as he, will be tried, or scrutinized, and justified or condemned, "according to their works". As in the case of the first human pair, this justification and condemnation will be pronounced and carried into effect before a plurality of dignitaries. In relation to the condemned, this is indicated in the word bleposi "THEY see" his shame. If it be inquired, who are the "they," it must be admitted, that the words of ch. 16:15, do not inform us. The exposition, however, I have given, will supply this lack. The man of the earth condemned to walk naked in his shame, will stand in the presence of the Lord Jesus, of the angels of his power, and of the justified constituents of the Perfect Man, all of whom will be embodiments of the power or spirit of the Eternal Father. This "I" who comes "as a thief upon the sons of night, is the "they" who see the shame of the earthborns, who are sentenced to condemnation with the world. And this interpretation is in harmony with the words of Jesus, who saith in Luke 12:8, "whosoever shall confess me before men, him shall the Son of Man also confess before the angels of the Deity, and before my Father who is in heaven;" and "whosoever shall be ashamed of me, and of my words y of him shall the Son of Man be ashamed when he shall come in his own glory, and the Father's, and of the Holy Angels" (Luke 9:26): "I will deny him before my Father" (Matt. 10:33). So that what we confess, or deny, and do in the present state, will define our moral standing at the bar of the Divine Court of Teman; where "they who have been accounted worthy to obtain of that aion (the Resurrection-Aion) and of the resurrection from among the dead (which gives entrance into it) are equal to the angels:" all else are repudiated, or denied, and put to shame before all "his servants, both small and great," whether angels, or constituents of the Perfect Man.

He is no longer simply the earthborn body that was crucified and buried. After he came forth from the tomb, which of itself under the law was defiling to the party buried, and to any living person who should touch him, Jesus was also upon the third day "justified by spirit," or "made perfect," in ascending by the power of the Spirit from the earth-born nature, to consubstantiality of substance with the Father, "who is spirit" (John 4:24). Thus freed from all earthiness, he became spirit, upon the principle he had laid down in his discourse to Nicodemus, that "that which has been born out of the Spirit is spirit" (John 3:6). Hence, the perfected Jesus is the Spirit-Nucleus of the Perfect Man to be revealed, or apocalypsed. The Lord Jesus comes not as a thief to them that are watching. He is "the Lord the Spirit" for whom they are waiting and earnestly looking; knowing that he comes when the 1335 years are expired, "in the Time of the End", and before the gathering of the hosts of the nations in the field of Armageddon.

Vitringa's exposition was no improvement upon Mede, Jurieu, and Dr. Cressener. He was a spiritual Mllennialist, whose future age was to be characterized by a thorough of the world, by what lie regarded as "the Church," which would then answer to the New Jerusalem! Alas, for the world if its evangelization depend upon the ecclesiastics of Vitringa's church! He was a very learned man, and well versed in the wisdom current hundred and fifty years ago; but in apocalyptic intelligence, his wisdom was the foolishness of a babe. Daubuz, who published in A.D. 1720, was about as luminous as Vitringa which is not saying in much forthe result of his apocalyptic labors. Sir Isaac Newton published his brief commentary in A.D. 1733, appended to his treatise on Daniel. Many of his opinions were very crude. He generally agreed with Mede, but not always. The five-month period of tormenting in Apoc. 9:5,10, he expounds as I have done, as signifying two periods of 150 years each, or 300 years for the times of the Saracens. The "hour day month and year" he reckons to signify 391 years; namely, from Alp Arslan's first victories on the Euphrates, A.D. 1063, to the fall of Constantinople, A. D. 1453. Generally speaking, his commentary was not equal to his reputation.

The woman being in the wilderness is protected there for a period of 1260 days; and in her flight thither is pursued by the Serpent, her enemy, The Dragon is wroth with her; and resumes the war with the remnants of her seed.

Thus, by the intervention of the Roman and Eastern questions, a situation is created in the time of the end in exact accordance with the description of it in the prophetic writings. These questions create a trouble for all the nations and governments symbolized by the four beasts seen by Daniel arising out of the great sea. -- Ch. 7. They are all questions affecting the vested interests of the Image seen by Nebuchadnezzar in his dream. This great image, whose brightness is excellent, and its form terrible, appears in all its majesty and power in the time of the end. In the terminal epoch of the sixth vial, which obtains after the advent of the Ancient of Days, the great Russo-Assyrian Gogian Image stands prepared for conflict with "the Prince of Princes," whom Daniel styles "Michael, the Great Prince." -- Ch. 7:25; 12:1. When the image stands thus in the time of the end the crisis will be of the most troublesome and exciting character. "The nations" will have been "made angry;" nor will their anger subside henceforth until the image shall be utterly broken, and all its fragments ground to powder. This result, however, will be beyond their power to accomplish. No combination short of the mighty angel clothed with cloud and rainbowed (Apoc. 10:1) can shiver it to pieces, reduce these to chaff, and sweep them away that no place shall be found for them. -- Apoc. 2:27; Ps. 2:8,9; Dan. 2:35.

3. Tiberius dies in the 23rd year of his reign, and is succeeded by the THIRD STAR, named Caius Caesar Caligula................ A.D. 33

From these premises then, we perceive, that the Zion-woman community was no longer, as a whole, "a chaste virgin." She had been corrupted and defiled by the subtilty, or "slight of men and cunning craftiness, whereby they laid in wait to deceive," after the example of the beguilement of Eve. Hence, the woman community, originally a chaste virgin, and all her constituents virgins undefiled, came to be pregnant with a multitude of "children tossed to-and-fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine." These were tares, or "children of the wicked one, and sown of the enemy, the devil" (Matt. 13:38,39). In the seven Apocalyptic Epistles, the constituents of this embryo apostasy are termed "liars," "Nikolaitanes," blasphemers, spurious Jews, "the synagogue of the Satan," "Balaam", "that woman Jezebel", "her children", "the Satan", "the dead," "the wretched and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked. " In the pentecostal beginning, these constituents were not found in the Christian Eve. Then "the multitude of them that believed were of one heart, and of one soul" (Acts 4:32). They had not yet been distracted and thrown into confusion by "grievous wolves," and "men speaking perverse things to draw away disciples after them," for their own glory and advantage, reckless of the truth. But, in the course of three hundred years, all this was changed. The multitude of them who styled themselves Christians, were destitute of all unity of heart and soul; and had degenerated into a "wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked" set of catholic politicians. These gave character to the woman-community in the beginning of the fourth century. The Christadelphians or Brethren of Christ, at that crisis, were the "few names left, who had not defiled their garments." These alone were the pillar and support of the truth;" and but for them, it would have died out from among men; and there would have been no woman to fly into the wilderness, and to be sustained there 1,260 years. But the Deity had reserved to Himself a remnant, styled "the remnants of her seed, who keep the commandments of the Deity, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ" (Ch. 12:17).

Daniel's nameless "dreadful and terrible" fourth beast is a contraction, or condensation, - of John's great fiery-red dragon, ten-homed beast of the sea, two-homed beast of the earth, image of the beast, and scarlet beast and drunken woman. These apocalyptic symbols are illustrative amplifications of the head, ten horns, eleventh horn, and eyes and mouth, of Daniel's "dreadful and terrible" beast, in its relations with the saints in all the 1260 years of their subjection, or down-treading by the Gentiles . In Daniel's description of it no mention is made of more heads than one. "The ten horns that were on his head." This is all recorded of its head. Daniel says nothing about "seven heads" on any beast shown to him. He only saw one; but behind this one were concealed seven others, of which we should have no more knowledge than he, had not the Apocalypse brought them into view. In this, the seven heads are brought out conspicuously. They are seen upon the Dragon, the Beast of the Sea, and the Scarlet-coloured Beast of the Wilderness. Tbough seen on different symbolic beasts, they are not different sets of seven; that is, one set of seven heads for the Dragon; and a set of different seven heads for the Marine Beast; and yet a different seven from either, for the Scarlet Beast of the Wilderness. They are one and the same seven heads upon all three beasts; so that the signification of them in connexion with the scarlet beast, is their signification as the heads of the Dragon and the Beast of the Sea.

There was this peculiarity about the sixth head, namely, that, about A.D. 330, Constantine, the first catholic emperor, dedicated a new city, which, after his own name, he called CONSTANTINOPLE*. This new Rome was also built upon seven hills; nevertheless, it is impossible to mistake it for "the woman", or "great city", of Apoc. 17, inasmuch as it has never been the capital of hoi hepta basileis, the seven governing bodies enumerated by the historians of the Italian Rome. On the dedication of Constantinople, the imperial residence and court were established there; while the ancient Senate of the empire continued its sittings and the exercise of its functions in Rome, until it became contemporarily extinct with the seventh head A.D. 554, after a continuance of 1307 years from its institution by Romulus, the founder of the Roman State. Thus, from the dedication of the City of Constantine to the establishment of the Seventh Head upon the seven mountains, the Sixth Head of the Dragon had two capitals and two thrones to which the governing orders of the state were related. This was an arrangement peculiar to the sixth head, and doubtless providentially ordered with reference to future predetermined constitutional developments, to be manifested after the fall of the Seventh Head. The sixth head continues enthroned in Constantinople, though not in Rome, to this day. Rome has witnessed eight heads upon her seven mountains; but Constantinople only one. The government in Constantinople has always been imperial, whether administered by a Roman or Ottoman dynasty. The imperiality of the Ottoman capital has descended, through Constantine, from Augustus Caesar, the founder of the sixth head of the Dragon. The loss of old Rome by the sixth head did not deprive the governing power in Constantinople of its sixth headship. The sixth head there still rules over the eastern section of the territory of the Dragon; and perpetuates the Dragon Power for the developments of which it is to be the subject in "the time of the end". Hence, the Constantinopolitan power, without regard to the particular race administering it, be it Italian, Greek, Turkish, or Russian, is the Dragon, as opposed to the Beast of the Sea, and the Beast of the Earth, of Apoc. 13. The Constantinopolitan power, as we have seen, originally owned both Rome and Constantinople; but in after times "yielded to the Lion Mouth of the Beast of the Sea his power, and his throne, and great authority"; reserving to itself what it was able to keep: so that the Roman Orb came to be divided between the Eastern Dragon and the Western Beast; and the populations of the two sections "worshipped" each respectively, as it is written, "they worshipped the Dragon which yielded power to the Beast: and they worshipped the Beast" Apoc. 13:4.

The Head of the old serpent, in this first beast manifestation, was the dynasty represented by Nebuchadnezzar, who had conquered Egypt, and plucked the wings of the Assyrian Lion. This dynasty was "the Head of Gold" - the cockatrice, or adder, which came forth out of the Egypto-Assyrian Serpent's root, whose fruit the world has found to be "a fiery flying serpent" (Isa. 14:29).

The apocalyptic or Roman-Satan is the great enemy of Jerusalem, and of all related to her. Zechariah saw it in vision, when he saw the Satan standing at the right hand of Joshua to resist him. In all the times of the Gentiles, during which Jerusalem and the saints are trodden under their feet, the Holy City is subjected to the Satan. When these are fulfilled, then Yahweh who hath chosen Jerusalem, will rebuke the Satan, in "rebuking strong nations afar off," and making them powerless (Mic. 4:3); and "pluck Jerusalem as a brand out of the fire". Her warfare will then be accomplished; and her deliverer will be a wall of fire round about her, and the glory in the midst of her (Zech. 2:5; 3:1,2).

This king, or Imperial Power, and its foreign god, are presented in Dan. 7:8,20,24,25, under the symbol of a Little Horn, in which were EYES like the eyes of man, and a Mouth speaking very great things. In this, the Eyes and the Mouth are representative of the foreign god; while the Little Horn itself is significative of "the king," or power, that glorifies him. This remarkable constitution of Church and State did not obtain in the days of Paul and John. The former in 2 Thess. 2 predicted its manifestation as the result of apostasy from the faith; and that when that apostasy was well developed, the power would be revealed. Not, however, in full manifestation at the beginning. The power had to receive its birth, and to grow to manhood, or maturity; so that when it had fully established itself above all, it might be in a position to set up its foreign god. Paul styles the power, "the Man of Sin, the Son of Perdition: " and foreseeing the extraordinary arrogance of the spiritual element of the power, he speaks of it as one "who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called a god, or an object of reverence; so that he as a god sitteth in the temple of the god, showing himself that he is a god. " This is the god Daniel styles "a foreign god;" and by John in Apoc. 13:2,5, "the Mouth of the Beast as the mouth of a lion, and speaking great things and blasphemies;" and in verses 14,15, "the Image of the Beast," which received life and ability to speak from the Civil Power.

From Milan to Rome the AEmilian and Flaminian highways offered an easy march of four hundred miles. But he preferred for strategic reasons the route by Verona. He was met by a large body of cavalry which he defeated near Brescia, and pursued to the gates of Verona. He crossed the Adige, a rapid river encompassing three sides of the city, and laid siege to it. Pompeianus, finding that he could not successfully defend it, escaped from Verona, and with indefatigable diligence collected an army sufficient either to meet Constantine in the field, or to attack him if he obstinately remained within his lines. But leaving part of his legions to continue the siege, he led those troops on whose valor and fidelity he more particularly depended, in person against the enemy. The engagement began at the close of the day, and was contested with great obstinacy the whole night. The return of light displayed the victory of Constantine, and a field of carnage covered with many thousands of vanquished Italians. Pompeianus was found among the slain; Verona immediately surrendered at discretion, and the garrison was made prisoners of war.

Ver. 4.1 say from A.D. 314, because previously to this date, he was the chief luminary of two-thirds; of his own Illyrian third, and of Maximin's Asiatic third which he acquired by his death.

"Salvation now, and pow'r, are come, The kingdom also of our God, And the dominion of His Christ: For he who did our brethren try, And night and day 'fore God accus'd, Hath from the heaven been cast down. And they through th' Lamb's blood him o'ercame, And also through the word they taught: Nor yet their life lov'd they till death. Because of this, 0 heavens, rejoice, And all ye who sojourn therein!"

This feud is styled in history "the African Controversy." The provinces south of the Mediterranean, from the confines of Cyrene to the columns of Hercules, A.D. 312, were distracted with religious discord. The source of the division was derived from a double election in the Catholic church of Carthage, the second in rank and opulence of the ecclesiastical thrones of the West. Caecilian and Majorinus were the two rival bishops of Africa, and the death of the latter soon made room for Donatus, who, by his superior abilities and virtues, was the firmest support of his party. The advantage which Caecilian might claim from the priority of his ordination was destroyed by the illegal, or at least indecent haste, with which it had been performed without awaiting the arrival of the bishops of Numidia. The bishops of the contending factions maintained, with equal ardor and obstinacy, that their adversaries were degraded, or least dishonored, by the odious crime of delivering up the Holy Scriptures to the officers of Diocletian to be burned. In this state of bitter partisanship, the divided church was incapable of afford-ing an impartial judicature. Application was, therefore, made to Constantine by the Donatist bishops of Africa, A.D. 313, desiring him to appoint bishops of the church in Gaul to settle their difficulties. "Good emperor,' said they, "as you are of a just family, of all the emperors your father alone having never persecuted, and as Gaul is now exempted from that outrage, we ask you in your piety to appoint bishops from that province who may judge between us and the other bishops of Africa, with whom we are at variance." Their request was granted, and the controversy was tried in five successive tribunals, and the whole proceeding, from the first appeal to the final sentence, lasted above three years. A severe inquisition taken before the praetorian vicar and the proconsul of Africa; the report of two episcopal visitors who had been sent to Carthage; the decrees of the Councils of Rome and Aries, and the supreme judgment of Constantine himself in his "sacred consistory," were all favorable to the cause of Caecilian: and he was unanimously acknowledged, by the Civil and Ecclesiastical Powers, as the true and lawful catholic primate of Africa. The honors and estates of the church were attributed to his suffragan bishops, and it was with difficulty that Constantine was satisfied with inflicting the punishment of exile on the principal leaders of the Donatists

Now, the times of these two classes are differently arranged. The duration of the symbolical formulas is the same number of years with respect to each; though the symbolical formulas themselves are differently expressed. Thus the symbolical formula of "the Holy City" is written " forty two months" while the symbolical formula of the woman with especial reference to the remnant, "the witnesses," is written "one thousand two hundred and sixty days." This is also expressed in the form a time, and times, and half a time:" and the reason why these two various formulas are given in the sixth and fourteenth verses of this twelfth chapter is, that this form, which is reproduced from Dan. 7:25, and 12:7, might be shown to consist of 1260 symbolic days. The form in Daniel indicates a period reaching to the epoch when judgment is given to the saints of the Highest Ones, which implies the manifestation of the Ancient of Days and the subsequent resurrection of the dead; because, there can be no judgment until they are raised; and no resurrection till he comes.

The Mouth of the Serpent or Dragon is symbolical of the words, utterances and commands, proceeding from the power called Serpent or Dragon. The commands of a power are expressed or made audible and effective by the reigning administration of public affairs; and which holds a similar relation to the power that the mouth does to the brain of a man. Hence, "the Mouth of the Dragon, the Mouth of the Beast, and the Mouth of the False Prophet," are the governments of the powers signified by these symbols.

But, while we have been making this millennial tour through the Wings of the Great Eagle, has it been all peace and spiritual tranquillity in the interior regions? No; from time to time, reformers started up amidst the catholics themselves; and, as pioneers, prepared the ground for more advanced believers to cultivate and sow with the incorruptible seed. Of these pioneers was Claude, Catholic bishop of Turin, ap-pointed to that See by Charlemagne. He was in high repute for his knowledge of the Scriptures and his first-rate talents as a preacher; in consequence of which, says the Abbe Eleury, "the French monarch being apprised of the deplorable state of darkness in which a great part of Italy was involved in reference to the doctrines of the gospel, and anxious to provide the churches of Piedmont with a teacher who might counteract the growing rage for image-worship, appointed Claude to the See of Turin, about A.D. 817." Though he died the catholic bishop of Turin, he is regarded as the spiritual father of the "meek confessors of Piedmont," who seceded from the catholic church, and became for many centuries a remnant of the woman's seed. Claude continued his zealous anti-Romish labors until A.D. 839, by which time the valleys of Piedmont were filled with his disciples; and, says Jones, "While a night of awful darkness sat brooding on almost every other part of Europe, the inhabitants of Piedmont preserved the gospel among them in its native simplicity, and rejoiced in the healing beams of the Sun of righteousness".

But Simeon, the officer, who had breathed out threatenings and slaughters against them, struck with astonishment at their valor, in the face of such cruel torments, like another Paul, became a preacher of the faith he once destroyed. He renounced his honors and fortune, and three years afterwards became the successor of Constantine Sylvanus, and at last sealed his witnessing for the anointed Jesus against the apostasy with his blood.

But the saints were not to be scattered over "the whole earth," or fourth-beast habitable in its amplest signification; but, for two distinct, and partly parallel periods of 1260 years, to be fed and nourished in the Two Wings of the Great Eagle. Because of the Serpent's relations to them in the wilderness, or Court of the Gentiles, in their long antagonism, it was deemed necessary for the illustration of the times, to exhibit the Fourth Beast analytically. And this is the analysis with reference to him in his conflicts with the saints. The Fourth Beast made war upon them from the crucifixion of the Captain of their salvation, until A.D. 324. Daniel did not see this war in his vision; but John saw it; and predicted that the saints' would come out of the conflict victorious. This victory we have seen celebrated in the twelfth chapter, tenth and eleventh verses. In this relation the fourth beast appears as "the Great Fiery-Red Dragon." While this constitution of power obtained, its jurisdiction extended over "the whole habitable," but not over "the whole earth," as when the Ancient of Days comes. Had this particular been revealed to Daniel, it might have been in these words, "And the Great Fiery-Red Dragon made war upon the Saints; but the Saints overcame him, and cast him out of the heaven." But the Spirit condescended to be more specific; and instead of this brief and summary statement, represented the stages of the conflict ultimating in that result, in the prophetic symbols of the first six seals.

"The emergence of the wild beast of the sea," says Mr. Lord, "is not to be regarded as having been accomplished in a moment, or a brief space, but as having occupied such a period as would naturally be required for the invasion of the empire (of the Catholic Dragon) by many separate tribes migrating from vast distances, engaging in numerous wars, and, finally, after victory, establishing new and independent governments. Nor are the chiefs who rule them after the conquest of parts of the empire, to be considered as having assumed that relation in which they are symbolized by the horns while they remained, as in France for a long period, in subordination to Rome. They emerged from the sea as dynasties, when, by concession or victory, they became rulers of portions of the empire in independence of that power. The institutions of the horns, therefore, took place at different periods, and they were those that subsisted when the conquest of the (Western) empire was completed and the imperial power extinguished" A.D. 476.

But this Nomen Latinum, or Latin Name upon the Seven Heads, was not only a Supreme Bishop, but it was also a Name of Blasphemy. It was itself a blasphemy, and an utterer of blasphemy. A power claiming to be what it is not, is a blasphemy. Thus, certain of the synagogue of Satan in the ecciesia at Smyrna claimed to be Jews, when they really were not. This false claim is styled "their blasphemy" (Apoc. 2:9): because, being false, it injured the fair fame and reputation of those in Christ who were Israelites indeed.

p.231 tongues, and the interpretation of tongues (1 Cor. 12:4-10). Now, these gifts they would no doubt receive by the imposition of the hands of Peter, after the manner recorded of him, when the apostles sent him and John down to Samaria for a like purpose; who, when they arrived, "prayed for them that they might receive holy spirit: then laid they hands upon them and they received holy spirit" (Acts 8:15-17). In this way the gifts were imparted when apostolically and evangelistically bestowed.

p.204 I would remark here, that these two last-mentioned coins are evidence that the Ostrogothic kings of the Seventh Head, who reigned in Rome, did not consider the emperors of the Sixth Head as abolished from all influence in the affairs of Italy; but only "wounded as it were to death;" for here is evidence of the Sixth and Seventh Heads of the Dragon uniting in the coinage of the realm, which only mutually recognized governments and dynasties are free to do . Gibbon, writing of the first two kings of the Seventh Head, Odoacer and Theodoric, says of the former, that "he abstained, during his whole reign from the use of the purple and diadem;" and of the latter, he says, that "from a tender regard to the expiring prejudices of Rome, he declined the name, purple, and diadem of the emperors;" though "he assumed the whole substance and plenitude of imperial prerogative". This was the simple difference between the Imperial Sixth, and the Regal Seventh, heads of the Dragon and the Beast. Had Odoacer and Theodoric assumed "the name, purple and diadem of the emperors" when they reigned in Rome sovereigns of Italy, their government would have been a mere continuation of the Sixth Head. The substance and plenitude of sovereign prerogative remained, only the form of its constitutional administration

"And the King (the Dragon-Power of the Apocalypse) shall do according to his own will. . . And in his estate (or empire) he shall honor the god of guardians (the Bishop of Rome): even a god whom his (pagan) fathers knew not shall he honor with gold and silver, and precious stones and things desired. Thus shall he do in the Bazaars of the Guardians (temples dedicated to fictitious saints and angels) with a foreign god, whom he shall acknowledge and increase with glory" (Dan.11:36-39). The form of this acknowledgment is found in the aforesaid Decretal Epistle; from the Latin copy of which, as given in Elliot's Notes, I have translated the following extracts for the information of the English reader.

Having recovered Sicily, the general of Justinian landed his forces in Italy, A. D. 536. From the capture of Naples he proceeded against Rome, which had been left to a feeble garrison, and the fidelity of its citizens. "But", says Gibbon, "a momentary enthusiasm of religion and patriotism was kindled in their minds. They furiously exclaimed, that THE APOSTOLIC THRONE should no longer be profaned by the triumph or toleration of Arianism; that the tombs of the Caesars should no longer be trampled by the savages of the north; and, without reflecting, that Italy must sink into a province of Constantinople, they fondly hailed the restoration of the Roman emperor as a new era of freedom and prosperity. The deputies of the pope and clergy, of the Senate and people, invited the lieutenant of Justinian to accept their voluntary allegiance, and to enter the city whose gates would be thrown open for his reception." He readily accepted their allegiance, and made his entrance at the Asinarian gate, while the Gothic garrison departed without molestation along the Flaminian way; and the city after sixty years' servitude, was delivered from the yoke of the barbarians. The keys of Rome were sent to the throne of the emperor Justinian, to whom they were delivered by the Gothic commander of the garrison, who refused to accompany his troops in their retreat.

This, then, is the literal time symbolized by forty and two months in ch. 11:2, and ch. 13:5. The periods indicated in these two texts are parallel. The beginning of the one is the beginning of the other; consequently, they both end together. These identical periods do not have, as some suppose, a double commencement and a double termination, each seventy-five years apart. They have only one common beginning, and one ending in common, the one with the other. For this period the Holy City was to be trodden down; and for the same period, the Horns and the Mouth, and the Name of Blasphemy upon the Seven Hills, were to continue, or practise with one mind; and to agree, and give their power and authority, or kingdom, unto the Beast, until the words of the Deity shall be fulfilled (ch. 17:13,17). But, at the end of this forty and two months' period, or 1260 years, a change is to come over the spirit of their dream, and they are to hate what for that number of years they have been in love with: for, speaking of the Horns in relation to Rome's sovereignty, the Spirit said to John, "These (Horns) shall hate the Harlot, and shall make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and burn her with fire" (ch. 17:16). This hostility of the governments (*,) which have been the willing instruments of the Universal Bishop for nearly thirteen centuries, indicates a change in their relations to Rome; and, consequently, a new political combination of the Powers of our Modern World. This is indicated by the Scarlet-colored Beast of chapter seventeen - "the peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues,"ecclesiastically subject to Rome, under the EIGHTH HEAD in the eve of the crisis of its destruction by the sword and "the burning flame."

Among the "great things" of this Mouth is the dogma that all kingdoms are held of the pope. In support of this, Ducange, from Glaber Rodulphus, A.D. 900, quotes the popes "optimum decretum" following: "No prince shall impudently desire to bear the sceptre of the Roman Empire, or be called Emperor, or wish to be, except he whom by probity of manners the Pope of the Roman See shall convey as fit for the Republic, and to him he will commit the imperial badge." It has been said, says Elliott, that pope Constantine, A.D. 708, was the first pope that claimed the right of confirming temporal princes in their kingdoms (**). His successors claimed to make kings and depose them. An au-theistic account of the deposition of the race of Clovis by Pope Zachary in the eighth century, affords an instance of this: also, at a subsequent period, the disposal of the emperorship of the Two-Horned Beast of the Earth, as a fief of St. Peter, by Gregory VII; who deposed Henry, emperor of Germany, and conferred the diadem on Roduiphus in the words:

But there are heavenlies beyond the pale of the Christ-Body. These are Supernal States in which Paul locates principalities, powers, world-rulers of the darkness of the times of the Gentiles, which he styles "this aeon," and the spirituals of the wickedness enthroned throughout the earth. These heavenlies are constituted providentially or instrumentally by human authority and power after "the course of this world;" and are the tabernacle of "the Prince of the power of the Air, the Spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience" (Eph. 2:2). This Prince-power and Spirit of the Air is Sin's Flesh; whose spirit pervades all sublunary human constitutions, styled "thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers,'' which Paul specifies as ''things in the heaven" or "the Air'' (Col. 1:16). In such an unclean heaven as this, are found the Ten-Horned, and Two-Horned, Beasts, the Name of Blasphemy, the Lion-Mouth, and the Image of the Beast, or False Prophet, the God of the Earth - all things of power, in short, emanating from falsehood and superstition. The dwellers in this Air, or Heaven, are not the Saints. In their days of Apocalyptic prophecy the two witnessing prophets had power to shut this heaven that there should be no rain from it; and as often as they willed during 1260 years, to turn the popular waters into blood, and to smite the earth with all war-plagues (ch. 11:6). The dwellers in this Aerial are the civil and ecclesiastical orders of society; such as, emperors, kings, diplomatists, nobles spiritual and racial, legislators, magistrates, priests, clergymen, parsons, and all of that class, styled by the apostle "spirituals of the wickedness" which reigns in "the Court of the Gentiles without the temple." Between this heaven and "the Heavenlies in Christ" there is implacable and uncompromising hostility. No peace can be permanently established in the earth till one or other of these heavens be suppressed or subjugated: and who can doubt which of these heavens shall be shaken, be rolled up as a scroll, and be made to pass away with the great tumult of war? The heavenlies, or high places, of this world are decreed to Yahweh and his Anointed Body; who, by the thunders and lightnings issuing from the throne newly set in the heaven, shall take the dominion under the whole heaven, and possess it during the Olahm and beyond (ch. 11:15; 4:1-5; Dan. 7:18,22,27). This is the fiat of Eternal Wisdom and Power. The Seventh Vial, the last blast of the Seventh Trumpet, is to pour out its fury upon the Air, the secular and spiritual constitution of which will thereby be thoroughly and radically changed. The things now in the Air will be transferred to "them who dwell in the heaven" in Christ; who, having passed through the Vail of the Flesh which divides the Heavenlies, in the putting on of immortality, will be manifested as the Most Holy Heavenly in Christ; and the Air, filled with their glory, will become the New Heavens, in which righteousness will dwell forever. The Air will then no longer be malarious with the pestiferousness of secular and spiritual demagogues, who "with good words and fair speeches deceive the hearts of the simple." The Prince of the Power of the Air will then be the Spirit that works in the children of obedience - the truth incarnated gloriously in Jesus and his Brethren; who, in the highest sense, will be those who dwell in the heaven.

The first assault of Leo against the idols of Constantinople had been witnessed by a crowd of strangers from Italy and the West, who related with grief and indignation the iconoclasm of the emperor. But on the reception of his proscriptive edict, they trembled for their domestic deities - "the demonials and idols of gold, silver, brass, stone, and wood" (Apoc. 9:20). The edict abolished the images of Christ and the virgin, of the angels, martyrs, and saints, from all the churches of Italy; and a strong alternative was presented to the Roman High Priest of the New Idolatry, namely, the imperial favor as the price of his compliance, or degradation and exile, as the penalty of his disobedience. Gregory did not hesitate which to accept. Without depending on prayers or miracles, he' boldly armed against his imperial master, and by pastoral letters, excited the Italians to resistance. At the signal given, Ravenna, Venice, and the cities of the exarchate and Pentapolis, which adhered to the cause of idol-worship, unfurled the banner of rebellion. They swore, as fools only would swear, to live and die in defense of the Bishop of Rome and the demonials; and even the Lombards were ambitious to share in the war, not so much in the interest of the pope and his idols, as for the sake of expelling the Dragon Power from Italy, that the entire country might be theirs. The statues of Leo were destroyed, and the tributes of Italy withheld; magistrates and governors were elected, and the creation of an orthodox emperor was proposed. Gregory II. and his successor of the same name, were condemned at Constantinople as the authors of the revolt, and every attempt was made, either by fraud or force, to seize their persons and assassinate them. But these attempts did not succeed. The Greeks were thwarted and massacred; and at Ravenna, the Exarch himself was slain. To punish this flagitious treason, and to restore his dominion in Italy, the Dragon cast out of his mouth water as a flood; in other words, the imperial government of Constantinople sent a fleet and army into the Adriatic to depopulate and lay waste the country. But the earth opened her mouth and swallowed up the flood. In a hard-fought day the idolators prevailed. The imperialists retreated to their galleys, but the populous sea coast poured forth a multitude of boats; and the slaughter is said to have been so great that the waters of the Po were deeply infected, so that during six years the people abstained from eating the fish of that river. But, in the midst of these broils, while defending idolatry and promoting the rebellion with all his influence, Gregory II. was stopped short in his roaring blasphemies. "He was extremely insolent," says an impartial writer, "though he died with the character of a saint."

The three and thirty campaigns laboriously consumed in the woods and morasses of Germany, would have sufficed to assert the amplitude of his title by the expulsion of the Greeks from Italy and the Saracens from Spain. The weakness of the Greeks would have ensured an easy victory, and the holy crusade against the Saracens would have been prompted by glory and revenge, and loudly justified by religion and policy." But the historian did not know, or at least recognize the truth, that Charlemagne and the Saracens were the sword of Yahweh appointed to work out His purpose, which He had revealed to his servants through the apostle John. He did not intend Charlemagne and the Saracens to destroy one another. He gave the Saracens a mission against the demonial and idol worshippers of the East and South, and when they exceeded it, he caused the grandfather of Charlemagne, named Charles Martel, to give them a signal overthrow at Chalons, A.D. 732. He treated the first Napoleon in the same way at Moscow. Charlemagne's mission was precisely that which excited Gibbon's surprise. He was not employed by the Eternal Spirit against the maritime dominions. Hence, what Gibbon styles "his moderation." The Providential work before him was an operation in which the Romans with all their skill and power could never succeed. His work was the subjugation of Germany. This is why he laboriously consumed thirty-three campaigns in the woods and morasses of Germany. These constituted "the Earth" out of which the Two-Horned Dominion was to ascend - the Middle Europe of our time. This was to be the arena of the Little Horn among the Ten. Besides founding a dominion over the population of these woods and forests, he was to pluck up by the roots three of the Ten Horns. This enlarged his mission to the work of annexing Italy and Hungary to his Mitteleuropische Reich, or Middle European Kingdom, as the Germans style it. By the annexation of Italy, he also annexed the Roman Church with its Universal Bishop; and in so doing he inserted a pair of Eyes and a Mouth into his Horn, of which he regarded himself as the ruling brain.

Another Jesuit named Lacunza in considering the beast of the earth's Lamb-like horns, seems to have recognized their identity with the priesthood to which he belonged. "Our priesthood it is," he exclaims, "and nothing else, which is here signified under the metaphor of a beast with two horns like those of a lamb."

"The real author of this decree," says Hallam, "and of all other vigorous measures adopted by the popes of that age, whether for the assertion of their independence, or the restoration of discipline, was Hildebrand, archdeacon of the church of Rome, by far the most conspicuous person of the eleventh century. Acquiring by his extraordinary qualities an unbounded ascendancy over the Italian clergy, they regarded him as their chosen leader, and the hope of their common cause. He had been empowered singly to nominate a pope on the part of the Romans, after the death of Leo IX, and compelled Henry III. to acquiesce in his choice of Victor II. No man could proceed more fearlessly towards his object than Hildebrand, nor with less attention to conscientious impediments. Though the decree of Nicolas II, his own work, had expressly reserved the right of confirmation of the young king of Germany (Henry IV), yet, on the death of this pope, Hildebrand procured the election and consecration of Alexander II without waiting for any authority. During this pontificate he was considered as something greater than the pope, who acted entirely by his counsels. On Alexander's decease, Hildebrand, long since the real head of the church, was raised with enthusiasm to its chief dignity, and assumed the name of Gregory VII.

"We enact, moreover, that counts, barons, prefects, and consuls of cities and other places, at the admonition of the archbishops and bishops, promise under oath, that whenever they shall be required by them, they will boldly and efficiently aid the church against heretics and their accomplices, and study in good faith, according to their duty and power, to execute in the cases of which we have spoken, the ecclesiastical in the same manner as the imperial laws. And should they refuse to observe their oath, they shall be divested of their offices which they enjoy and become ineligible to others. They shall, moreover, be excommunicated, and their lands put under an interdict of the church. A city that excites resistance to these decrees, or neglects at the admonition of the bishop to punish those who resist, shall be deprived of the commerce of other cities, and divested of its episcopal rank.

But the Image was not to be a mere form of government; it was to be both living and powerful. To this end, it was given to the thaumaturgic deceiver, douvai pneuma te eikovi tou therion, to give spirit to the Image of the Beast; so that it might perform all the functions of a potent and formidable despotism. This is implied in the words, "that the Image of the Beast might both speak, and cause as many as would not worship the Image of the Beast that they should be put to death." This was a terrible inspiration - a speaking Image murderously hostile towards all men, of all ranks and degrees, who would not bow down obediently to its sovereign behest. Such an imperiality was "a Mouth speaking very great things against the Most High" - (Dan. 7:8,25); a Lion-Mouth, speaking great things and blasphemies against God to blaspheme his Name and his Tabernacle, and the dwellers in the heaven Apoc. 13:2,5,6; or, in the words of the eleventh verse, elale hos drakon, it spake as a Dragon; in other words, as being itself a Dragon, or imperial. This Dragonic Image was the arrogant, blaspheming, and ferocious speaking constituent, or Mouth, of the Lamb-Horn Beast of the Earth; and the great enemy that "made war against the Two Prophets, and the Saints, and overcame them" (ch. 11:7; 13:7,15). Whosoever did not receive and would not submit to its oracular utterances were anathematized by it, and scathed with its fire from the heaven, or were excommunicated and penally destroyed as Heretics beyond the protection of law, the killing of whom was declared to be no murder. This Dragon-speaking Image decreed their extermination, and pronounced curses against all who should protect or harbor them while alive, or when dead give them any other than the burial of a dog. It decreed also the subordination of the secular powers to the spiritual, for the purpose of their extermination; and against them excited crusades, with the usual promise of remission of sins to the wretches who should bear its mark. Thus, pursuing its victims unto blood, which it drank in copious draughts unto lascivious intoxication (Apoc. 17:5,6), it illustrated the oracle in the text, that "as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed."

What then is the solution of the riddle? Ireneus was of opinion that Latinos, was the name. He says, that “the name Latinos contains the number of 666; and it is very likely, because the last kingdom is so called, for they are Latins who now reign; but in this we will not glory.” From this it is evident, that he regarded the subject of the name as a royalty, not a person — the Latin Kingdom. Ireneus living so near the time when the Apocalypse was given, may have received the name through his friend Polycarp from John himself. Ireneus used to attend the expositions of Polycarp, whom he styles “that blessed apostolical presbyter.” He says, “Polycarp related to us his converse with John, and with the rest of those who had seen the Lord;” and in respect to what he told his hearers, Ireneus says, “I wrote them not on paper, but on my heart; and ever since, through the grace of God, I retain a genuine remembrance of them.” It is hardly probable that Polycarp, a member and presbyter of the ecclesia in Smyrna, would converse with John, and not seek to learn from him the probable solution of this enigma of the name of the Antichrist. If John told him Lateinos, it is easy to see how Ireneus came by it. Hippolytus, a brother member and successor to Ireneus in Lyons, urges the probability of the same name Lateinos in his writing concerning the Antichrist, more distinctly and decidedly than he. “The plague of the first beast,” says he, “was healed, and he shall cause the Image to speak, that is, to be powerful: and it is manifest to all, that the rulers are now Latins, Lateinoi: transmuted therefore into the name of one man, it becomes Lateinos.” Hence, Hippolytus plainly regarded Lateinos as the name of the speaking Image made powerful by the Lateinoi, or Latins; which image he regards as “one man,” and that man the Antichrist of whom he was treating.

9. And a third angel followed them, saying, with a loud voice, If any one worship the Beast and his Image, and receive a sign upon his forehead, or upon his hand.

But, certain of the Babylonian Harlot's progeny, born after her British Daughter, and styled apocalyptically, "Names of Blasphemy and the Abominations of the Earth;" but, historically and currently, "Protestant Dissenters" do not see why the Sign of the Cross may not be permanently omitted in rhantism, as their Episcopalian relations have dispensed with it in Confirmation and Ordination without their supposed virtue being impaired. Hence, therefore, the more to spite their Babylonian Mother, they have suppressed the cross-signing, and retain the sprinkling "as its equivalent." This, however, does not alter their spiritual relations to the Beast; for though they omit a constituent of the outward sign, they pertinaciously adhere to the "sign-ordinance" invented for them, and delivered to them by their acknowledged mother, the Babylonian Harlot; of whose golden wine cup they have imbibed copious and intoxicating draughts. The Nonconformist Sign-ordinance is the Romish "baptism," undecorated by the movement of the operator's finger crosswise upon the forehead. Dissenting "sorcery" contents itself with applying "holy water" to the forehead of an unconscious babe in the form of drops, and leaving them to assume what shape, or charagma, regenerating, sanctifying or dedicating, grace, may give them! It is the "grace" in aqueous suspension that produces the magical effects attributed to the rhantismal ordinance of the beast by his worshippers. Some of them style it "sub venient, "(§) others "prevenient," and perhaps others again may regard it as postvenient, and some not venient at all. Upon this matter they are not agreed. They are all, however pretty well agreed that the "grace" is what they call "Holy Ghost," or an invisible regenerating and sanctifying afflation from the object of their adoration, which they say is "without body or parts," dwelling beyond the bounds of space!" This spiritual essence, it is pretended, "sanctifies the water to the mystical washing away of sin;" that is, makes the water holy; so that, in whatever form applied to the new born Hin-doo, Mohammedan, Greek, Latin, Protestant, or Jewish, babe, the grace in aqueous solution, or suspension, "spiritually," or mystically, "regenerates" it; so that it is "born again, and made an heir of everlasting salvation," and "released from sin!" This is the theory of "subvenient grace," as taught by the Romish and Protestant Episcopal Churches of England and America, to which also Episcopal Methodism claims relation as mother and sister; and which all rhantist names and denominations recognize as Christians, though not of such an advanced type as themselves. In 1848, or thereabouts, an heretical opposition to this theory was started within the pale of the English Harlot by a Mr. Gorham. He was shocked at the conclusion to which this theory led. Christ said to Nicodemus, "Except a man be born of water and spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God;" which was equivalent to saying, he cannot be saved. The idea that water in any form was essential to salvation was intolerable to this episcopal priest. He had no objection to admit that "grace" was essential; but he could not brook the notion that it was conveyed to a babe only through the sanctified water. But, if not, why make the water holy by the infusion of "grace"? He contended that the "mystical washing" or "spiritual regeneration," ensued through the "grace" operating or coming upon the babe before the water in the drops and sign of the cross were impressed upon the forehead. Hence, the term prevenient, a coming before. The ridiculous issue between subvenient and prevenient grace greatly agitated the whole Protestant kingdom. Though the courts and council of the nation were appealed to, no-thing could be determined in solution of the difficulty. If grace came before, it might also come after, the use of water; so that "saved by grace," in the mouth of the Beast's worshippers, might supersede the Beast's rhantism, miscalled by them "baptism," altogether. And at this conclusion (§) the Quakers have long since arrived. They make no use of water in any form; but pretend that they have been mystically washed and regenerated by grace, styled by them "the light within!" "If the light within you be darkness," said Christ, "how great is that darkness?" This great darkness is common to them and all baby-sprinklers; for the operation of their traditions is to leave them all without grace and salvation in verity and truth. ______ (§)Prevenient and subvenient are theological terms. The former claitns that "grace" can precede repentance by predisposing the heart to seek God; the latter defines it as following repentance. The efficacy of Infant Baptism or rhantism (sprinkling) depends upon the doctrine of prevenient grace, that is, grace that precedes repentance, for it is obvious that the baby so sprinkled is ignorant of the significance of what is done. fn the middle of last century, great prominence was given to this doctrine, as well as related ones, such as the effect of Baptism, the present possession of Holy spirit power by an effluence from heaven, and so forth. These and other doctrines are discussed in the book Clerical Theology Unscriptural by J. Thomas reproduced in the book Contending For The Faith obtainable from Logos Publications - Publishers ______

Much that ought to be said about the 144,000 has already appeared in Vol. 11 ch. 7 § 5,6, to which the reader is referred. They are the "holy nation" the root of whose square is 12. The Name of the Lamb's Father is theirs; for they are said to have it. The Father's Name is representative of what He is - of His power, glory, substance, and character. The Anointed Jesus is now the apaugasma, or reflected splendor, of the glory of the Father; and the karakter, or exact likeness, of his hupostasis, or substance (Heb. 1:3). He is, therefore, "the Image of the Invisible Deity;" and occupies the rank of "first-born," or Chief, of "every creature" (Col. 1:15). Because of this, he is the impersonation, or embodiment, of the Father's Name. Isaiah speaks of him as this Name, in ch. 30:27: "the Name of Yahweh," saith he, "cometh from far, His anger burning, and the burden heavy; His lips are full of indignation, and His tongue as a devouring fire: and His breath as an overflowing stream, shall reach to the midst of the neck, to sift the nations with the sieve of vanity." Moses styles it, "the glorious and fearful name, aith Yahweh Elohekah - He who shall be thine Elohim, or Mighty Ones" (Deut. 28:58). Such is the Name that was written upon Jesus, when the Father "made him both Lord and Christ" (Acts 2:36). In flashing, or photographing, the power, glory, character, and very substance, of the Deity upon a body taken from among the dead, the Father's Name was written upon it; and the resurrected Jesus can now say, in every sense of the words, "I and the Father are One" - ego kai ho pater hen esmen (John 10:30). This could not have been affirmed of him while dead. But the dead body was made to live again. It was thus restored to its former life; brought back to what it was before; and so fulfilling the word, saying, "Yahweh restoreth my soul" (Psa. 23:3). Being thus restored, he came into the position of those Paul styles, "the living who are left for the presence of the Lord;" that is, the remnant keeping the commandment of the Deity and the faith of Jesus, who are living when he comes as a thief. These, he says, "shall not sleep," or die. They are living persons such as Jesus was when restored to life; and like him, waiting for the same things to be wrought in them. The risen Jesus waited to be changed, or transformed, into what he was not on emerging from the tomb. The true believers, who hope not to die, knowing that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom, are also waiting to be changed or transformed into what they are not. The position of Jesus and this remnant is identical. He had not long to wait for his change. When it did come, it was "in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye" - quick as a flash of lightning. This was his reviving after he rose, and by which he was made Lord and Christ.

This good is styled aionion, a word which I have not translated but only transferred. The Angel-Host has "aionian good to proclaim". It is styled ajonian, I conceive, because it announces "things not seen" pertaining to the aion, or COURSE, during which all nations will be "blessed in Abraham and his Seed." This course is not to last for ever, but for a thousand years, styled in Dan. 7:12, "a season and a time". At the end of this Course of Centuries, the nations revolt, and judgment comes upon them to extermination (ch. 20:9). For this reason I do not translate the word in this text "everlasting," as in the English Version. The proclamation is the announcement of MILLENNIAL GOOD ; namely, that the resurrection, immortalization, and inauguration, of the called, and chosen, and faithful firstfruits, have been accomplished by Jesus Christ; who, having returned in power and great glory, has set up the ancient throne of his father David on Mount Zion: that being established there, he invites the allegiance of all nations to himself, as King of the whole earth by the grace of his Eternal Father; who has appointed him to execute judgment and justice in the earth, and to rule the world in righteousness: that he is prepared to destroy the powers that corrupt and oppress the nations; and to wipe away tears from off all faces, and to take away the rebuke of his people, Israel, from off all the earth. That his purpose is to change the face of the world; and to enlighten mankind with the true knowledge from the rising to the setting sun. That, as mankind have been for a long series of ages in the bottomless abyss of ignorance and superstition, in commiseration of their helplessness, he invites them to hearken diligently unto him; and to come and buy wine and milk of him, without money and without price. That, if they will accept this invitation to the feast he has prepared for all peoples, they shall live under their own vines and fig-trees in peace, and none shall make them afraid. But if on the contrary, they determine still to worship the Beast and his Image, and to receive the Sign in their foreheads, or in their hands, then they shall be made to drink of the wine of the wrath of the Deity which hath been prepared without mixture in the cup of his indignation; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy Angels, and in the presence of the Lamb.

The day of the second and third angels is "a time of trouble" to all nations - to Israel as well as the rest; but there is this difference with respect to them, expressed in the declaration to Daniel that "at that time thy people shall be delivered every one that shall be found written in the book". Daniel was an Israelite and a saint. Hence his people are Israelites and saints, both of which classes are delivered in "the time of the end;" "when Yahweh shall have washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion, and shall have purged the blood of Jerusalem from the midst thereof by the spirit of judgment and by the spirit of burning" (Isa. 4:4). It is the day in which the captivity of Israel and Judah is to be brought against their own land, consequent upon the breaking of the yoke of the House of Esau from off their neck, that foreigners may no more serve themselves of them; but that they may serve Yahweh their Elohim, and David their king, whom the Eternal Power hath already raised up for them in raising up the crucified "King of the Jews" from the dead.

When these judgments of the Second and Third Angels are all exhausted, and the smoke of them consequently ceases to ascend, mankind will then come to know that "there is none like the AlL of Yeshurun (the Strength of Israel) riding the heavens in thy help, and with his majesty the clouds. The Elohim of the East elohai kedem, (Apoc. 16:12), a refuge, and underneath the Powers of Olahm (the Lamb with the 144,000). He shall thrust out the enemy from before thee, and shall say, Destroy! Then Israel shall dwell in safety alone. The Fountain of Jacob shall be upon a land of corn and wine; also his heavens shall drop down dew." Then it may be truly said, "Happy art thou, 0 Israel; who is like unto thee, 0 people saved by Yahweh, the shield of thy help, and who is the sword of thine exaltation! Also thine enemies shall be proved liars to thee, and thou shalt tread upon their high places" (Deut. 33:26-29).

p.58 That crucial rhantists (besprinkled infant sprinklers) are in no way related to "the saints," is clear from their total ignorance of the signification of the things symbolized in ch. 13:1-10; 14:l~20. Their greatest luminary Rev. Mr. Elliott, gives nearly the whole of this fourteenth chapter the go by, and the little he does speculate upon, from ver. 1 to 5, he expounds as finding its accomplishment in the time and events of the Lutheran Rebellion! The saints are waiting for the things represented in the first eleven verses of this chapter; the besprinkled subjects of the sign of the Beast's name are not. Hence, "the patience" symbolized en hode topo, in this place, is not their patience. They are waiting to "go to heaven" in Transkyania, where there is neither time nor space! It takes the credulity of the Beast's worshippers to believe in a place of such ample dimensions as "heaven," where there is no space! But nothing is too absurd for the "patience" of them who keep not the faith of Jesus.

John says, that this voice from the heaven was addressed to him -"saying unto me”. This does not please "the recent editors," nor the Bible Union annotators. They advise the omission. We would do better in rejecting the advice. For myself, I prefer to retain it; for John being by the voice told to write, and what to write, the voice said to him what he has written. And it was spoken to him as the representative of the "blessed" - of "them dying in the Lord;" for what is said to John is said also to his brethren in "the patience and faith of the Saints".

The sharp sickle in his hand is symbolical of his power to reap down the multitudes which have assembled on the valley or plain of their destruction. The sword called for throughout the mountains of Israel, their mutual slaughter, the pestilence, overflowing rain of hailstones, fire, and brimstone, the panic and blindness of the horses, and the madness of their riders (Zech. 12:4; 14:12-15) - all illustrate the sharp sickle cast upon the earth for its reaping at the appointed hour.

The harvest and the vintage of the earth are still further distinguished in Daniel's vision of the Four Beasts of the Great Sea, in ch. 7. First, there is the slaying of the Fourth Beast; a process, the beginning of which is the harvest; then, there is the destroying of his body in the burning flame; and the taking away of the dominion of the other three Beasts; which consummates "the judgments written", and constitutes the Vintage of the Earth, which the angel Son of Man with the sharp sickle is to gather and to tread without the city.

7. And one of the four living ones gave to the seven angels seven golden vials full of the wrath of the Deity who lives for the aions of the aions.

This manifestation of the approved after this process is one reason why Yahweh keeps silence, and permits Satan to continue their Operations among the Sons of the Deity, without any present judicial interference. There is also another very good reason for present non-intervention, and this is, because He has appointed a set time, styled by that in-fallible and incomparable exponent of the truth the Lord Jesus, "a Day of Judgment," hemera kriseos (Matt. 12:36); and by the no less accurate Paul, "THE DAY when the Deity shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ according to the gospel" Paul preached: "therefore," saith he, "judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come; who will both bring to light the hidden things of darkness' and will make manifest the counsels of the hearts;" and "who will judge the living and the dead at his appearing and kingdom" (Rom. 2:16; 1 Cor. 4:5; 2 Tim. 4:1) and styled by the earnest and faithful Peter, "the Day of Inspection", hemera episkopes (1 Pet. 2:12) "the time that the judgment begins at the house of the Deity" (ch. 4:17); when, as James testifies, the saints shall be judged by the law of liberty (ch 2:12)

7. And in the greatness of Thine excellency, Thou hast overthrown Thine adversaries! Thou sentest forth Thy burning anger, It shall consume them as stubble.

5. And I heard from the Angel of the waters saying, Righteous, 0 Lord, art thou, who art, and who wast and who art coming, because thou hast decreed these things;

"It is for you, Sire, to put an end to them, it is for you to hold, in addressing foreign powers, the language which becomes the sovereign of the French people! Tell them, that every country that continues preparations against France, must be numbered among her enemies; that we will religiously regard our oath of attempting no conquests; that we offer to live with them in brotherly neighborhood, and to grant them the inviolable friendship of a free and powerful people; that we will respect their laws, their customs, and their constitutions; but that we require in return that ours should be respected! Tell them, lastly, that if the princes of Germany continue to countenance preparations directed against the French, the French will carry into their country, not fire and sword, but liberty! It is for them to calculate what may be the consequence of this awakening of the nations!"In consequence of this message, the king yielded to the general wish. He notified the German princes to cause all hostile meetings and dispositions of the French emigrants to cease in their States, or he would regard them as enemies; and wrote to the emperor of Germany to interpose his authority, as head of the empire, to avert the evils which any longer obstinacy on the part of some of the Germanic Body might occasion.

The French occupied Milan, which received them with great show of republican joy. This did not disarm the purpose of Buonaparte, who imposed a requisition of twenty millions of lives. All the public funds were turned into the French military chest; and the church plate experienced the same fate. While Lombardy suffered much, the neighboring countries were not spared. Writing of this crisis, the historian remarks of these, "the Italian states stood like a brotherhood of old trees, decayed at heart and root, but still making some show of branches and leaves, until the French invasion rushed down, like the whirlwind which lays them prostrate". Before Buonaparte released his hold upon them he despoiled them all.

The Court had put itself into a state of defence, and the king hoped to re-establish himself entirely. The palace was defended in the best manner. But the king was very melancholy; and upon a review of the troops, found by the cries, Vive la nation! Down with the Veto! Down with the Traitor! that disaffection was widely diffused among them. While the review was in progress, the insurgents were advancing in several columns upon the Tuileries. They demanded the dethronement of the king. He was informed that they were everywhere successful; that the national guards were not to be trusted, and that the royal family -would expose itself to infallible ruin, if its members did not place themselves in the midst of the Legislative Assembly. This they reluctantly consented to do; and after much difficulty arrived there unharmed amid the abuse, threats, and vociferations of the multitude. After the king's departure the palace was forced, and the Swiss guards massacred. Shouts of victory reached the Assembly; and the fate of the monarchy was decided. The multitude and its chiefs had the entire power, and were detennined to exert it. The Assembly found itself constrained to yield. It was ordered to convoke a National Convention, to dismiss the ministers, and to suspend the authority of the king, who was transferred to the Temple as a prisoner, by the all-powerful commune, under the pretext that it was impossible otherwise to be sure of his person. The party now ordered the demolition of all the statues of its kings, and of all the emblems of royalty. The 10th of August divided France into two parties, of which the one was attached to monarchy, while the other desired a republic. Danton was at the head of the republicans; and his advice in the present danger of the country, was to "frighten the royalists". He wished to repress his enemies by means of terror. A great number of persons were imprisoned on the ground of their rank, their opinions, or their conduct. These were mainly selected from the clergy and the nobility. The capture of Verdun by the enemy caused Paris to fancy him at its gates. The Commune seized this moment of alarm to execute its terrible design. The cannon was fired, the tocsin sounded, the barriers were closed, and the massacres of the 2nd of September began.

It will be unnecessary for me to follow the British in their descents upon Holland, the maritime provinces of France and Italy; and their campaigns in Portugal, Spain, Belgium, and so forth. These all belong to the wrath of the second vial, consummated by the famous battle of Waterloo. The reader can consult the copious histories extant of these things, as illustrations of our subject, and of the meaning of the words, "our God is a consuming fire".

The peace of Presburg followed the victories of Ulm and Auster-litz, and was signed Dec.26. The House of Austria, which had lost its foreign possessions, Belgium and the Milanese, was now further curtailed of some of its German territories. Among its alienation’s, it ceded part of the territory of Passau, and all its possessions in Swabia, Bres-gau, and Ortenau, to the electorates of Bavaria and Wurtemburg, which were transformed into kingdoms. The treaty of Presburg completed the humiliation of the Austrian dynasty of the Two-Horned Beast of the Earth an abasement began by the treaty of Campo Formio, and continued by that of Luneville, under the third vial; all of which was preparatory to the consummation under the fifth. On his return to Paris, Napoleon, "the King of Fire" and "Man of Destiny," became the object of such universal admiration, that he was himself stunned by the general enthusiasm and intoxicated by his fortunes. He was now Napoleon "THE GREAT," and the Senate decreed him a triumphal monument.

"But I do not want him to make war on any one. I want him to shut his ports against the English, and to exclude them from his States, and that, as he is not able to defend his ports and his fortresses, he shall give them to me to defend. People have lost their heads at Rome. There are no longer any great men there, as in the time of Leo X. Ganganelli would not have acted so. How can the Pope imagine that I will consent to have between my Kingdom of Italy and that of Naples ports and fort- resses which, in time of war, may be occupied by the English, and may endanger the security of my States and my people? I want to be secure in my own house, for the whole of Italy belongs to me by right of conquest. The Pope has not crowned me as King, but as Emperor of France, and I succeed, not to the rights of Kings, but to those of Charlemagne. If I allow Sovereigns to be in Italy, it is not that they should favour my enemies and give me cause of disquiet. I want you to tell all that to the Pope, and explain to him his real interests. I had better intentions with regard to the Pope. I should have carried them out, and may yet do so; but he prefers being miserable and obstinate. If you are fortunate enough to persuade him, you do him a great service. I warn you, however, that all must be settled by the 1st of January, (it was then the 12th of November). Either the Pope will consent, and in that case will lose nothing, or he will refuse, and in this case I shall take his States from him. Excommunications are no longer in fashion, and my soldiers will not refuse to march whithersoever I bid them. Remember Charles V., who kept the Pope prisoner, and had prayers said for him at Madrid. I will do the same if I am driven to it. The Pope should not forget that I have raised up the altars in France; that I have restored religion; that I protect it in Germany, and that I shall continue to do so. Almost the whole of Catholicity is under my sceptre. The hand of God leads my armies, and this apparently is what displeases the Pope. He wants to cross me in every way. In Italy, in France, I have done much for the bishops and the priests. Everybody is content; but Rome is angry. It is not the Pope's fault; it is Antonelli's, and that other Cardinal he brought with him to Paris-how do you call him? Oh, aye! -Di Pietro. Di Pietrois an obstinate theologian who has no political views. The Pope complains of his poverty, and that he has not wherewith to go on. It is his own fault. I have paid (and more than I ought) the expenses of the first passage of my troops. I would have paid the second, the third - all the rest; but he wants to quarrel. Well, then, let them do so. I shall pay nothing more. Let the Pope only do as I would have him, and he shall be paid for the past and for the future".

'It was the kingdom of the Beast which was darkened" - egeneto he basileia autou eskotomene. Darkened, but not destroyed; for it still exists, and awaits the manifestation of the Ancient of Days to destroy it with "the brightness of his presence" (2Thess. 2:8). The darkness which had overshadowed the Beast's kingdom was dispelled by the events of 1814. The treaty of Paris, which deprived Napoleon of the throne; and that of Vienna of 1815, which reconstituted Europe - afforded "the Holy Alliance" and its sympathizers, an opportunity of showing whether they had learned wisdom and true holiness, by the scorching experience they had passed through. But they soon showed that they had learned nothing in that direction. Wise powers would have argued from the past, that "the Deity of the heaven, who had power over these plagues", must be highly incensed, incensed in the ratio of the severity of the plagues, against Greeks, Latins, and Protestants, represented in the Holy Alliance, by Russia, Austria, and Prussia; and that it behooved them to reform from that system of error so signally condemned by the plagues they had been subjected to' But their legislation evinced that they were as great fools as ever, and as much devoted to the lies and unprofitable vanities of their ancestors, as they were before the calamities and disasters of the past twenty-five years were inaugurated by the resurrection and ascension of the two tormenting prophets, whose scorching representative they had recently dethroned.

When the Ninevite Dynasty was abolished, Assyria was annexed to Babylon. The Euphrates then became a river of Babylon. It flowed into and through this great city and province. For this reason, as Babylon is introduced into the Apocalypse as symbolical of the Fourth Beast, whose dominion migrated from Babylon to Rome and Constantinople, so the Euphrates is also introduced there; for a figurative Babylon without a figurative Euphrates, would be in violation of the analogy and fitness of things. Babylon of old was a city and empire, with the Euphrates flowing through the latter into the former; so, Apocalyptically, the Great City of Babylon is OLD ROME and its Ten Kingdoms, with its political Euphrates flowing up to the Danube, and confining upon Hungary, the Austrian empire, the Adriatic and Greece; with "NEW ROME", or Constantinople, also built on Seven Hills, for the centre of its population, the great majority of which, though Antipapal, is "Catholic". Thus, the political Euphrates flows right into the city; and, at the opening of this sixth vial, in addition to the populations inhabiting the countries through which the natural Euphrates meanders its way to the Persian Gulf, there were reckoned among its waters, the peoples of Egypt, Algiers, Asia Minor, Greece, Roumelia, Albania, Bosnia, Servia, Bulgaria, Wallachia, Moldavia, and certain islands of the sea.

When the Ninevite Dynasty was abolished, Assyria was annexed to Babylon. The Euphrates then became a river of Babylon. It flowed into and through this great city and province. For this reason, as Babylon is introduced into the Apocalypse as symbolical of the Fourth Beast, whose dominion migrated from Babylon to Rome and Constantinople, so the Euphrates is also introduced there; for a figurative Babylon without a figurative Euphrates, would be in violation of the analogy and fitness of things. Babylon of old was a city and empire, with the Euphrates flowing through the latter into the former; so, Apocalyptically, the Great City of Babylon is OLD ROME and its Ten Kingdoms, with its political Euphrates flowing up to the Danube, and confining upon Hungary, the Austrian empire, the Adriatic and Greece; with "NEW ROME", or Constantinople, also built on Seven Hills, for the centre of its population, the great majority of which, though Antipapal, is "Catholic". Thus, the political Euphrates flows right into the city; and, at the opening of this sixth vial, in addition to the populations inhabiting the countries through which the natural Euphrates meanders its way to the Persian Gulf, there were reckoned among its waters, the peoples of Egypt, Algiers, Asia Minor, Greece, Roumelia, Albania, Bosnia, Servia, Bulgaria, Wallachia, Moldavia, and certain islands of the sea.

To the operation of political and military causes in the drying up of the Great River, may be noted in addition, the depopulating judgments of the Deity himself. In the great Syrian earthquake of 1822, the walls of Aleppo, the capital, were thrown down, and 14,000 buried in the ruins; and at Antioch, and other towns and villages in the province, the sufferings and loss of life were in proportion. In 1821 the cholera broke out at Bussora, and carried off some 16,000 persons - near a fourth of its population: then ascending the Tigris to Bagdad, swept away a third of its inhabitants: and then, in 1822, advanced into Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt, with a like fearful mortality everywhere attending it. At the same time, the plague was in its usual way Wasting the Turkish population; and besides it, other extraordinary and mysterious epidemics. The cities of Mecca and Bagdad, more especially, were fearfully desolated. In the Bombay Gazette, of August, 1831, the report is given that Mecca and Medina had been completely depopulated by a dreadful disease, the nature of which was unknown. It broke out among the Mohammedan pilgrims, 50,000 of whom it carried off, including the governor of the Holy City of the Mussulmans. In Bagdad also, the ancient capital of the Caliphs, 50,000 of the inhabitants perished by the plague. To the horrors of disease were here added the desolation of the flood and of the sword. The missionaries stationed there thus narrate the terrible story:

The banner underneath, having upon it the three frogs, is from ancient tapestry in the cathedral of Rheims, representing battle scenes of Clovis, who is said to have been baptized there after his conversion to Romanism.

By a vote of six millions, the plebiscite of the Frogs, the nephew of their great emperor was elected PRESIDENT of the Democratic and Social Republic. Having nearly served out his time, President Louis Napoleon determined to "save society" by slaying some two thousand people in the streets of Paris, sending numbers into exile, and making himself EMPEROR OF THE FROGS. Having accomplished this feat, he appealed to universal suffrage to sanctify this usurpation, and copious bloodshedding for the good of the social constitution. By aid of the machinery employed, and the prestige of his uncle's name, the Frogs accepted him as their emperor; and he now sits among the powers, in spite of the "Holy Alliance", and in defiance of the treaty of Vienna, as the "Mysterious Man of Destiny," the arbiter of Europe; the smiles of whose countenance is peace, and his frowns the thundercloud of war.

All parties having thus declared themselves, the battle cry was raised of "An united Italy from the Alps to the Adriatic, and Rome for the capital". Soon after the opening of the campaign, the battles of Magenta and Solferino were fought, and won by the Franco-Sardinian forces. The Austrians were compelled to evacuate Lombardy; but they were still in possession of Venetia and the Quadrilateral(*), and the fortune of war might still favor the recovery of lost ground. But whatever might be the cause "the dark and mysterious man" to the astonishment of all the world, without consulting his allies, made overtures to Francis Joseph, proclaimed an armistice, and signed the preliminaries of peace at Villa-franca. The campaign had lasted only two months, had cost the combatants about a hundred thousand lives, not less than a hundred millions sterling, and disappointed all expectations. The king of Sardinia hoped to be king of Italy, but had only obtained the annexation of Lombardy to Piedmont; the Frog-emperor promised to dry up the power of the Beast from the mountains to the Adriatic Sea, but had expelled its forces from Lombardy alone; the Garibaldini promised themselves the expulsion of the Austrians from the whole country, the downfall of the Pope, and a free and united Italy; but realized none of their hopes. The Roman False Prophet and hl:s priestly adherents, trembling for their worthless carcasses, were astonished to find their apprehensions unfulfilled, and the "Holy Father" the "honorary president" of a paper confederation! For the past ten years the pope had been a kind of captive in his own little kingdom, guarded by French troops, and nominal sovereign of rather more than three millions of unwilling subjects, by the favor of the Frog-emperor. During this disgraceful period, both France and Austria had made vast efforts to sustain the moral power of the Papacy for the sake of its influence in their respective dominions in behalf of the atrocious tyranny in the one, and the suspension of liberty in the other. The Concordat between Austria and the Pope surrendered powers to the latter which Hildebrand might have sought in vain, and every despotic ruler felt the necessity of paying an apparent homage to the most conspicuous symbol of moral slavery and intellectual darkness extant upon the earth. Pius IX had commenced his reign as a reforming pope; but the effort failed from the inherent impossibility of the thing; which, it has been truly said, "was like attempting to have a useful cholera, or a pleasurable small-pox".

The following extracts from Parisian journals show this. "Our Chassepot rifles have done wonders," says L'Opinion National, quoting the words of General Failly in his report of the fight. "It is, therefore, to the Chassepot rifle that the honor of the day at Mentana is due". Now we know the victor, but who was the vanquished? The vanquished was THE TEMPORAL POWER. The intervention of the French troops at the moment when the victory wavered between the Garibaldians the Papahans, has proved once more that the Pope-king was incapable of defending himself by his own strength. As the Journal des Debats says, by "sending our troops to the help of that power in distress, we have only furnished its adversaries with fresh arguments to show how impossible it is to restore life to it. Is it not Strange, that in order to safeguard him whose anathemas formerly made Europe tremble, it was necessary for modern invention to discover, just in time, the most murderous instrument? This is what the Papacy is now reduced to; it subsists because a rifle has been made which makes wounds larger, and more incurable than the old projectiles.

Such is in brief the answer to the inquiry when is the mighty angel-man to be apocalypsed, or developed into visible existence? The next question is where is his development to ensue? And here I may refer the reader to what I have already written in Vol. 3pp. 178-187. It would not be right to reproduce these eight pages in this place. It will be enough to refer to them, and to remark that the development of the Rainbowed Angel is the same thing as the development of the Perfect Man, whose constituents are "the kings from a Sun's risings". I would, however, remind the reader, that Habakkuk informs us, that "Eloah shall come in from Teman, and the Holy One from Mount Paran; and that while he is in Teman, he will also be in Sinai, in the holy" (Psa. 68:17). "Yahweh, says Moses, "came in from Sinai, and rose up from Seir unto them; he caused to shine forth from Mount Paran, and he came with ten thou-sands of the holy". These localities are in the north-western corner of Arabia, and south of the Palestinian pachalik of the Little Horn of the Goat's Euphratean empire. Further to the northwest is Egypt, also a province of the Great River Euphrates. In this wilderness region of the South, bounded by the Suez Canal, the Mediterranean, and the Red Sea from the Gulf of Suez to the Gulf of Akaba, the Arabian Desert, and Palestine; situate and being in the land promised to Abraham and his Seed - it appears to me, from the testimony already in the hands of the reader, the KING OF THE JEWS will first manifest his presence, not to the world at large; which will not know of his being there, or, if told the fact, would not believe it; but to those, whom "the blood of the covenant" brings before his tribunal. This southern region of which as King of the Jews he is king, therefore, "King of the South," is the locality of that tribunal, or judgment seat (bema, not thronos), before which we must all stand that we may be made manifest. The locality of the Throne (thro-nos) is Jerusalem, about 280 miles in a straight line from Sinai. Mount Zion is the place of "THE GREAT WHITE THRONE" (ch. 20:11; 4:2). This is not ascended until the victorious King of the Jews and his Perfect Man of 144 cubits, or thousands, have wrested the city out of the hands of the Little Horn of the Goat (Dan. 8:9,11,23,25;. We have not now to do with this; but with the bema, or Supreme Court, the judicial bench, styled in Rom. 14:10, and 2 Cor. 5:10, "the Judgment Seat of Christ". All who have made a covenant with Yahweh by sacrifice, and in any way related to "the Covenants of Promise," will be gathered (Psa. 50:5) and stand before this; but it will only be the chosen few, "the called, and chosen, and faithful," who will be admitted to share in the honor, dignities, and glory of the name of Yahweh in Jerusalem enthroned (Jer. 3:17). Let the reader note well this distinction between the Throne and the Judgment Seat, their different localities, and the different times of their establishment. The transactions connected with each are different series of events; which, if mixed up together create inextricable confusion.

(*) The Author believed that these three faithful men are still living, and that one of them described as John's "fellowservant, and of thy brethren the prophets, and of them which keep the sayings of this book" (Rev. 22:9), was "the servant" used by the Lord to convey The Apocalypse to the early Ecclesias (Rev. 1:1). He did so on the grounds that of Enoch it is clearly stated that he "was translated that he should not see death" (Heb. 11:5); of Elijah, that he was taken from Elisha who permitted a search to be made for him, in addition to which he is styled "the servant of Yahweh", and that "a writing" came from him in the days of Jehoram many years after the prophet had been taken from his companion (2 Chron. 21:12); and of Moses, because he was raised from the dead at the Transfiguration. Some may differ from the Author in this, but they then need to explain how the terms used in Rev. 22:9 can relate to an angel. — Publishers.

Bearing upon some arrangement of this kind, is a remarkable passage in Isa. 43:3,4. The reader can take it as it stands in the English Version, or according to my rendering as follows: "I have given Egypt, Cush, and Seba, thy covering in return for thee; since that thou hast been precious in my eyes; thou shalt become renowned: and I have loved thee; I will therefore give men in return for thee, even to peoples in return for thy life". Here is the Giver, who, being the proprietor of the earth, and distributor of the nations upon it according to certain bounds (Acts 17:26), establishes a new relation of things in the East, in consideration of Israel's return undercover, or protection, of some particular power. Israel is, as it were, transferred to the Divine Purchaser, that is, to the midst of His land, by a power, whose sway is Providentially extended over Egypt, Cush, and Seba, or Abyssinia, Nubia, and Egypt; so that it obtains command of the Red Sea, from the Straits of Babelmandel to Suez; and from thence to the Mediterranean. Having thus command of both sides of the Straits, being already settled at Aden in Sheba, and possessed of Perim, the highway to India is controlled, and assured to the covering or protecting power.

11.And the beast that was, but is not, even he is the EIGHTH, and he is of the seven, and goeth away into perdition.

The judgments of the Seventh Vial are all in the future. They are the voices uttered by the Seven Thunders, which succeed the lion-roar of the Rainbowed Angel (ch. 10:3,4), and which issue from the throne (ch. 4:5). John was commanded not to write their utterances, but to seal them up. Apocalyptically, thunders are significant of wars. Hence, seven thunders are seven wars, which collectively make up "the war of that great day of the omnipotent Deity". The details of the seven thunders are not given; but the general results are specified in the prophecy of the seventh vial. The ecclesiastical and secular constitution of Anti-christendom is the obnoxious subject of Divine vengeance. The Powers that be having answered the purpose of their permitted existence, the time has arrived under this vial for their abolition. This can only be accomplished by Divine power; hence the war of the Deity, by which Babylon the Great, or the ecclesiastical constitution of the world; and "the Cities of the Nations," "the islands", and "the mountains," or king-doms, empires, and states of all sorts, are transferred to the Saints; so that the wicked who now sit in the heavenlies, are hurled from their thrones, and sent empty away (Luke 1:51-53).

7. How much she hath glorified herself, and live profligately, so much torment and sorrow give to her; for in her heart she saith, I sit Queen, and am not a widow, and sorrow I shall not see at all.

See also the spirit of hatred evinced on Feb.15, 1798, by the French soldiery, who arrested the Pope while sitting in "the temple of the god," and receiving the congratulations of his cardinals; tore from his finger the ring of his marriage to the Latin Harlot; rifled his palace; and carried him prisoner into France, where he died in exile shortly after.

Such is the fire the anger and indignation of the Deity, descending with consuming effect upon the vessels of wrath fitted for destruction, in the form of pestilence, famine, and war. The furnace from which this stream of devouring fire is poured forth, is the capital of the Great King, "whose fire" saith the prophet, "is in Zion, and his furnace in Jerusalem". From thence, when he hath established himself there, "he will send a fire into Magog, and among them that dwell confidently in the isles; and they shall know that I am YAHWEH" (Ezek. 39:6). He that rides the white horse, and the hosts of the heaven riding the same troops, are "the Angel having power over fire" (ch. 14:18), whose face is as it were the sun, and his feet, planted upon the sea and upon the earth, are as pillars of fire (ch. 10:1,2) which he mingles with the sea (ch. 15:2). Thus, "the beast is slain, his body destroyed, and given to the burning flame" (Dan. 7:11).

9. And they ascended over the breadth of the earth, and encompassed the camp of the saints, and the city which had been beloved: and fire from the Deity descended out of the heaven, and devoured them.

But to these unbelieving lovers of lies, though they may say Lord, Lord, and prophesy in his name, Jesus says, “he that receiveth not my words, hath that which judgeth him: the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day”. To receive his words is to “believe on him”. They do not believe on him who receive not his words; but of them who do, he saith, “I will raise him up at the last day”. This shows that judgment by the Word is to be in the day of resurrection: concerning which Paul saith, in Rom. 2:12, “as many as have sinned without law shall perish without law; and as many as have sinned under law shall be judged through law in the day when the Deity shall judge the secret things of men by Jesus Christ, according to my gospel”. These sayings of Christ Jesus and Paul, expound the Apocalyptic idea of “the dead” being “judged out of those things written in the books, according to their deeds”.

9. And there came unto me one of the seven angels having the seven vials full of the seven last plagues, and he spake to me, saying, Come hither, I will show to thee the Bride, the wife of the Lamb.

But, what is the principle? It consists in the writing, stamping impressing, or engraving, of the thing designed, upon the subject, or material, to be engraved, stamped, or impressed. The writer, or engraver, is the Seven-Horned and Seven-Eyed Spirit (ch. 4:5; 5:6) who “engraves the graving thereof” (Zech. 3:9). When the dead body pn pared for the Spirit (Heb. 10:5) was restored to life, and had come fort from the sepulchre, the Spirit, “in a moment, in the twinkling of a eye,” engraved upon it, or impressed it with, every attribute necessary to constitute it “the Lord from the heaven” — He “made it both Lord and Christ”. The precious stone had come out of the earth, whence a precious stones also come; but it had to be cut, polished, embroidered and adorned, to bring out all the beauties of which it was susceptible This the Spirit effected in the operation of raising the risen body to con substantiality with the Deity.

9. And he saith to me, See thou do it not: for I am thy fellow-servant, and of thy brethren the prophets, and of them who keep the sayings of this book: do homage to the Deity.

That the water of life represents the Spirit in all its relations and effects, is evident from the words of Jesus in John 7:37-39: “if any man thirst,” saith he, “let him come unto me, and drink. He that believeth on me, as the Scripture hath said, out of his body shall flow rivers of living water. This spake he,” adds John, “of the Spirit which they that believe on him should receive; for Holy Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus had not yet been glorified”. A stream of this pure, transparent water of life was poured out upon the apostles on the Day of Pentecost. That, however, though great and marvelous in its effects, was only the earnest of what is yet to follow. It anointed them with knowledge, wisdom, and power; but it left them as it found them, subject to disease, sorrow, pain, and death. Now, people have so much Holy Spirit in them as they have of the words and ideas of the Deity understood, affectionately believed, and obeyed (John 6:63). But, when the time of the great Pentecostian outflow of Holy Spirit shall arrive, the assembled multitude of the approved convened before the judgment seat of Christ, will be filled, and covered over, and thoroughly saturated in all the atoms of their substance, with the flood of downpouring Spirit from unapproachable light; whereby they will be changed, and all that is in them of earthiness and mortality “swallowed up of life”. Henceforth, the pure, transparent stream of living water is distributed through them as its channel to mankind, until the knowledge of YAHWEH the fountain of living waters, shall cover the earth as the waters cover the sea (Isa.45:8)

— one material, or xulon, typical of a whole forest, or aggregation of dendra.

The Serpent and Dragon are said to have cast water as a flood out of their Mouth; that is, an army of pursuers was sent forth by order of the catholic government of Constantinople and Rome, to sweep the fugitive woman from among the living. The execution of this decree of extermination might have been successful, had not "the earth ran with help for the woman, and opened its mouth and swallowed up the flood." The Common Version says, "the earth helped the woman. "This is not incorrect; but it is not as exact as it might be, and as the events represented justify. The word boetheo, signifies properly, "to run to the aid of those who cry for help." The woman in her flight was pursued, or persecuted by power, which caused her in her sufferings to cry aloud. Her cries fell upon the ears of the earthiest of earthborns, who ran to and fro dealing the most terrific vengeance upon her foes. The ferocious purpose of the catholic power encountering this most unexpected resistance was defeated; the earth swallowed up the wrath which expended itself upon it, and the woman was saved.

But the time when the 1260 aeon commences is not the same in all its relations. In Dan. 7 and 12, it has special reference to "the Holy City," or saints, in the highest sense; and begins with their delivery as heretics into the hand, or power, of the Roman Blasphemer, styled in Dan. 11:38,49, "a foreign god" and "a god of guardians." The "forty-two months" of Apoc. 11:2, begins at the same time. Not so, however, the 1260 of the Two Witnesses, and the times of the woman in ch. 12:6,14. These all begin with the commencement of her flight in the Constantinian epoch. In these times she was to be fed and nourished; and fire was to proceed out of the mouth of her dualized witnessing remnant, to devour her enemies and theirs. During these times they had power to shut the heaven, that it might not rain in their days of the prophecy, or the 1260. But when they may "have finished their witnessing," which they accomplished at the end of that period, or 1260 years after their banishment by Constantine, that is, in the epoch of A.D. 1572-'75, war was made upon them, and they were overcome, and put to death politically: they were "killed" in a like sense to the killing of "the third of the men" in ch. 9:18 - a death which said third sought, but could not find, because the time Divinely appointed to extinguish the eastern Roman dominion had not yet come.

The punishment of exile was banishing, or causing to flee into a wilderness state. This was the imperial sentence upon the anti-catholic, or anti-state-church woman in the African wing of the empire. Her seed were banished from the high places of church and state, and made to seek refuge in the wild and uncivilized places of society.

It is not to be wondered at that such a people who imagined that "they had need of nothing," should mistake the shadow for the substance; and rejoice in what then existed as the full accomplishment of the Divine purpose. Salvation, or deliverance, had indeed come from the tyranny of the Public Prosecutor (ho kategoros) who continually accused them falsely, and punished them with torture unto death. But the "great salvation," preached by Christ and his apostles, has not come yet. A new power, and a new kingdom, and a new dominion, had taken possession of the Roman Heaven, to the exclusion of the old order of things; and to the generation witnessing so wonderful a revolution, it seemed "more like a dream than reality." The prophecy attributes it all to the power of Deity, as symbolized in the apocalyptic name Michael The salvation, power, kingdom and dominion, therefore, are very properly predicated of the Deity and Christ; for assuredly, if they had stood by Licinius instead of by Constantine, this epinikon, or song of victory, would never have been heard in the heaven. But we must be careful not to fall into the error of Eusebius and his Laodicean Catholic companions, who had need of nothing more, and to take the type for "the very image of the things." The typical "kingdom of the Deity and dominion of His Christ" had come; and therefore it was, that the Woman's Son, when he had fought his way up, by the providence of Deity, to supreme power in the heaven, is said to have been "carried up by force to Deity and his throne." The power of the Deity was enthroned in the New Capital, Constantinople. But the shadowy representation of the kingdom of the Deity and the dominion of His Christ, passed away with the death of the typical hero, Constantine. The reigns of David and Solomon were prefigurative of the reign of Christ; but the typical character of their reigns was not transferred on their decease to their successors. And thus it was in relation to Constantine and those who came after him. His career of conquest, and "half-hour's" peaceful reign (Apoc. 8:1), typified the future career of Christ in the conquest of the world, and the succeeding tranquillity of his times. But all this typical manifestation was dissolved when his three sons succeeded him, and divided the empire between them. The Heaven was still catholic; but, as the Spirit had "spued them out of his mouth" on their indifference to his "counsel" (Apoc. 3:16,18), he left them to their delusions; and "the Serpent" by whom they were beguiled; that is the Sin-power of the flesh, in a catholic instead of a pagan, political manifestation was enthroned; and became the future antagonist of the ANTI CATHOLIC WOMAN and her seed (vers. 14-17).

Now, he was reduced from a tail, or following, of two-thirds to one-third of the stars of the Roman firmament by a war with Constantine. A year had scarcely elapsed after the death of Maximin, before Constantine and Licinius turned their arms against each other. This was a war, but not the war predicted. It was a war for the development of the Dragon's Tail - the tail end of the pagan dragon-power. The character of Licinius was perfidious. He secretly fomented a conspiracy against the authority of Constantine. But this vigilant ruler discovered it before it was ripe for execution. Licinius haughtily refused the extradition of the criminals who had sought refuge in Illyricum. This confirmed the suspicions of Constantine; who, without further loss of time in the interchanges of diplomacy, marched against him with twenty thousand men. Licinius met him near Cibalis in Pannonia with thirty-five thousand. Licinius was defeated with a loss of twenty thousand. After this he retreated, but halted in the plain of Mardia in Thrace, where he determined to hazard another battle. This was no less obstinate and bloody than the former; the troops on both sides displayed the same valor and discipline; but the superior abilities of the Woman's Son again decided the fortune of the day in his favor. The loss of two battles, and of his bravest veterans, reduced the fierce spirit of Licinius to sue for peace. His situation was almost desperate. Constantine, however, consented to retain him in "the heaven," but with a dominion considerably reduced. He left him in possession of a third part of the Roman Habitable, consisting of Thrace, Asia Minor, Syria and Egypt; now comprehended in Modern Turkey: but the provinces of Pannonia, Dalmatia, Dacia, Macedonia, and Greece, the other third, were annexed to the Western Empire; so that the dominions of Constantine now extended over two-thirds, from the confines of Caledonia to the extremity of Peloponnesus.

The resources of Maxentius, both in men and money, were still considerable. A third army was soon collected, more numerous than those which had been lost in the battles of Turin and Verona. The contempt of the Roman people, who tumultuously reproached his pusillanimity and insolence, while they celebrated the heroic spirit of Constantine, compelled him to assume the command of the army in person. But before he left Rome he consulted the Sibylline books. These were the ancient oracles of the old Roman superstition, whose guardians were as well versed in the arts of this world, as they were ignorant of the secrets of fate; they returned him the very prudent answer that, Illo die hostem Romanorum esse periturum, "on that day the enemy of the Romans would perish;" which might adapt itself to the event, the vanquished prince, of course, becoming the enemy of Rome.

Now, the Pagan Imperial Roman Power existed before the Woman; and so did Jesus Christ. Neither of them, therefore, could be the son to be born of her. But in the days of Constantine, there was a great revolution in the State, the effects of which are felt in all Europe and America to this day. When he became Emperor of Rome, the constitution of the empire was modified in Church and State. He assumed supremacy in both; and became the Chief Bishop - "the Bishop of the bishops" of "the Holy Apostolic Catholic Church," so called. He established the Catholic Apostasy as the most favored religion of the Roman State; but, according to Labanius, "made no alteration in the legal worship; the temples indeed were impoverished, but the sacred rites were performed there." Though the Court was transferred to Constantinople, the Senate continued to hold its sessions in Rome, where by solemn decrees it still presumed to consecrate the divine memory of their sovereigns; and Constantine himself was associated, after his death, to those gods of his predecessors whom he had renounced and insulted during his life. "The titles, the ensigns, the prerogatives, of SOVEREIGN PONTIFF," says Gibbon, "which had been instituted by Numa, and assumed by Augustus, were accepted without hesitation, by seven christian emperors, who were invested with more absolute authority over the religion which they had deserted, than over that which they professed." Hence, this Son of the Woman, styled by historians "the first christian emperor," was at once Sovereign Pontiff of paganism, and Chief Bishop of the Catholic Church! Such a child born and son given could be no other than "THE MAN OF SIN.- The historical testimony of Gibbon concerning this personage is demonstrative of the true character of the Woman's Son. "The first of the christian emperors," says he, "was unworthy of that name till the moment of his death." This he clearly proves in his great work. In the days of the apostles they only were christians who believed "the gospel of the kingdom," and were immersed; but Constantine was ignorant of it, and therefore could not believe it, and was not immersed until three days before his death, A.D. 337. During many previous years he was reputed a christian by the Catholic Church. He assumed the character of a bishop, presided at ecclesiastical councils, gave judgment against christians reputed "heretical" by his party, enjoined the solemn observance of the first day of the week, which he called the day of the sun, Die Solis, after his once favorite god, and in the same year, A.D. 321, directed the regular consultation of AURUSPICES. He was permitted by the Catholic Woman to enjoy most of the privileges of her communion. Instead of retiring from the congregation, when. the voice of the deacon dismissed the profane multitude, he prayed with the faithful, disputed with the bishops, preached on the most sublime and intricate subjects of theology, celebrated with "sacred rites" the vigil of Easter, and publicly declared himself, not only a partaker, but, in some measure, a priest and hierophant of the "christian mysteries". In view of such premises as these, what shall we say of such a church, and of such a religion, whose professors could permit, and even applaud, such flagrant violation of the first principles of the doctrine of Christ? The only conclusion attainable is that such a community is the CHURCH OF ANTI-CHRIST, and her imperial protector and chief, THE MAN Of SIN.

The Satan of Apoc. 12, is characterized as the power "which deceives the whole habitable" - ten oikoumenen olen; not "the whole world," as in the English version, in the sense of all the inhabitants of the globe; but the whole of that portion of it subject to the Dragon-Power of Old Rome. When the apocalypse was communicated to John, the Satan in the heaven was pagan. It deceived the people of the empire by the priests and poets (and the emperor was the High Priest) of the reigning superstition. But while this Satan flourished in the heaven of Italy, there was another Satan in embryo preparing to occupy the same heaven from which the pagan Satan was foredoomed to fall like lightning. This was the Satan enthroned in Pergamos (Apoc. 2:13); where his principal synagogue was situated (ch. 2:9,24; 3:9). This Satan consisted of nominal christians; professors, who claimed to be Jews by adoption through Christ; but not being what they claimed, the Spirit denounced them as liars and blasphemers. They were zealous anti-pagans, as Protestants are, or used to be, zealous anti-papists; but their spiritual condition was that of Saidians and Laodiceans; and fit only to be "spued out of the Spirit's mouth." These pretenders styled themselves "the Church of God;" or "the Holy Apostolic Catholic Church." They contended earnestly against paganism; from which "with all power and lying wonders," styled by Paul "the working of the Satan" they alienated multitudes; but failed to indoctrinate them with "the love of the truth that they might be saved" (2 Thess. 2:9,10). Their Satan was enlarged, and their political influence increased; so that, when the pagan Satan fell from the heaven, the "Holy Catholic" Satan was prepared to-occupy the Bishoprick vacated by his fall. The revolution of the Sixth Seal substituted the one -Satan for the other. The Catholic Satan is still in the heaven; and will remain there, until he is ejected by Christ himself, after the type or pattern, exhibited in this twelfth chapter. This final expulsion of the Satan from the heaven, is represented in Apoc. 20:1-3. In this scene, his head is bruised; and "the Dragon the Old Serpent, which is Diabolos and Satan," is bound in the abyss, and shut up and sealed, so that the nations may be no more deceived for a thousand years.

The Dragon under this dynastic form continued only seventy years. At the end of this period it was changed; and "Lucifer, son of the morning, who weakened the nations, was cut down;" and made to give way to YAHWEH'S "sanctified ones," the Medes and Persians; who, under the command of Darius and Cyrus, "took the kingdom" (Isa. 14:12; 13:17; Dan. 5:28,31). This was the Medo-Persian dynasty of "the old serpent". It answered to the second of Daniel's four beasts; and is represented in Nebuchadnezzar's Lion-Man image by the breast and arms of silver; and by the two horns of unequal height upon the ram (Dan. 2:32; 8:3).

Further details concerning the Imperial Sixth Head will be exhibit ed when I come to treat of the Beast of the Sea. I would, however, the attention of the reader to the remarkable feature in the symbolism of the Dragon in contrast with that of the Beast, namely, that upon the seven heads are "seven diadems", while upon the seven heads of the Beast there are none. Now, a diadem is a symbol of sovereignty. Upon the ten horns of the Dragon are no diadems, but only upon its seven heads. Had there been seven diadems upon the heads, and ten diadem upon the horns, seventeen in all, there would have been no Beast of Sea and Image of the Beast, to have divided with it the political "worship ship in all the earth." The heads of the Dragon being only diademed in dicates that its heads are sovereign; and that the Dragon symbol during the continuance of the Beast has specially to do with apocalyptic develops velopments connected with the heads, Therefore it is we find the Dr agon in existence after the destruction of the Beast and his Image in the Lake of fire burning with brimstone" (Ch. 19:20). These are entirely distroyed stroyed when "judgment is given to the saints"; but the Dragon is no This power is bound in the abyss for 1000 years; but at the end thereof he lifts up his diademed sixth head, of which is the eighth, and by which the nations are again beguiled into the old delusion of the sovereignty the people, and independence of all power but that which is inherent in themselves (Apoc. 20:7,5). But this is the last effort of flesh and blood rule itself imperially upon the earth . The power that binds the Dragon and destroys the Beast and his Image, premillennially, will at the end the thousand years crush the Dragon's Sixto-Octavian Head, and so rid the earth forever of man's accursed nature, which is the Devil an Satan, in apocalyptic eight-headed and ten-horned manifestation verses 9,10.

Thus the woman, who had become excessively attenuated, as it were skin and bone, a living skeleton, in all the period of her pregnancy, was grieved with a multitude of nominal professors ready for "any enterprise by which they might acquire power and office in the state. This was the party with which she was pregnant. It styled itself "the HOLY APOSTOLIC CATHOLIC CHURCH;" and only waited for a catholic man of power to lead them in their attack upon the pagan Roman government. This was -ME COMING MAN" of the fourth century - a leading politician, a Man of Power, who should be able to make the party to which he should belong the ruling Dower of the state. With this party, waiting for the Manifestation of its chief, the woman was pregnant before "she cried being in pangs and strained to bring forth."

Of this human monster Tiberius said, that he had brought up a serpent for the Roman people; concerning whom he expressed the wish that they had but one neck, that he might cut if off at one stroke. He died ................A.D. 37

The time of the end, which is notably chronological, commences with the termination of the 2400 years, and ends with the exhaustion of the Seventh Vial. Hence the time of the end embraces part of the sixth and the whole of the seventh vials. It embraces so much of the sixth as pertains to the development of the Roman Question after 1860; the events attendant on the coming of the Ancient of Days; and those consequent on His appearing to the beginning of the seventh vial. Here are three epochs -- the present, characterized by the three wonder-working, unclean, frog-like demon-spirits, proceeding out of the mouth of the papal false prophet; the adventual epoch, characterized by the visible presence of Christ in Southern Asia; and the third, or terminal epoch, characterized by the gathering of the military forces of the powers into the Holy Land for that signal discomfiture, which constitutes the place of s1aughter the apocalyptic Armageddon. The events of the sixth vial in the aggregate prepare "the way of the kings" which arise in the light of the Sun of Righteousness. The way of these kings is the career of judgment marked out for them in the full development of the seventh vial, which is at once the consummation of the Seventh Trumpet, and the Seventh Seal; and the filling up of the wrath of the Deity upon the nations. The angriness of these, the coming of divine wrath, and "the time of the dead that they should be judged and rewarded," are series of events which synchronize with the adventual epoch of the sixth vial. In this epoch, the dead in Christ, both just and unjust, are caused to stand upon their feet again among the living. This anastasis, or standing again, precedes the destroying of them ""who destroy the earth." -- Apoc. 11:18. The honor of executing the judgment written belongs to all those saints whose names may, in the judgment which begins at the house of Deity, be found registered in the Lamb's book of life. -- Apoe. 20:15; Ps. 149:9; Dan. 7:22. Hence, resurrection must precede the setting in of judgment; and this must begin at the house of the Deity and if it first begin there, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of the Deity?" --1 Pet. 4:17. It will be "destruction from the presence of Lord, and from the glory of his power." -- 2 Thess.1:9.

1. And a great sign appeared in the heaven; a woman who had been invested with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a wreath of twelve stars.

Whiston, Sir Isaac Newton's successor in the Mathematical Professorship at Cambridge, combated the opinions of others without shedding upon the subject any particular light of his own, save that the seven vials ought to be deemed contained in, and the evolution of, the Seventh Trumpet.

p.205 was changed. This change in the form of the supreme power, with its exclusion from Mrica, Sicily , Corsica , Sardinia , Majorca , and Minorca , then possessed by the Vandalic Horn , established a marked dissimilarity between the Sixth and Seventh Heads.

p.231 Thus equipped, these "strangers of Rome, Jews and proselytes," would be transformed into a company of "prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers;" or saints perfected for the work of the ministry, for the formation in Rome of the Body of Christ, and its edification; until it should attain to perfect manhood in the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of the Deity - "to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ: that thenceforth it be no more composed of babes, tossed to-and-fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness whereby they lie in wait to de-ceive." All among these circumcised strangers from Rome, having the moral qualifications specified by Paul in his letters to Timothy and Titus, would be, doubtless, thus spiritually equipped through the instrumentality of Peter, who, with the rest of the apostles, would request them, as Brethren of Christ, to devote themselves with all earnestness to "speaking the truth in love" to the Brethren in Moses; not in Rome only, but in all Italy, as opportunity might serve: not forgetting, of course, this necessary principle of action, that they be faithful to the original elements of the doctrine delivered to them; and that they so build upon the foundation, that the converts they might make might "grow up into him in all things who is THE HEAD," and therefore both Eyes and Mouth of the Body; or, as Peter styles him, "the Chief Shepherd and Bishop (epis-copos) of their souls." "From whom the whole Body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working of the Spirit in the measure of every part (whether a prophet, evangelist, pastor or teacher) maketh increase of the Body unto the edifying of itself in love" (Eph. 4:9-16). These instructions would be endorsed by all the apostles, among whom John would tell them, that he and the rest had declared unto them what they had seen and heard, that they might have fellowship with them; "and truly," said he, "our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ, in whom is no darkness at all;" so that, if they walked in the light, they would have "fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ would cleanse them from all sin" (1 John 1:3-7).

BLASPHEMY is a thing but little understood by those who most glibly use the word in their denunciation of what they term heresy. In the Court of the Gentiles, in which the truth is trodden under foot by "the Spirituals of wickedness in high places" - THE CLERGY - everything is blasphemy, which, however Scriptural it may be, exposes their word-nullifying traditions to the well-merited contempt of mankind . Against this exposition they rend their garments instead of their hearts, put dust upon their heads, and with eyes and hands upturned to heaven, cry out blasphemy! But this is all theatrical. Mere sound has no terrors for the friends of truth. The clerical orders, whose apocalyptic chief is this Name of Blasphemy, are like him, essentially a blasphemy; because they arrogate to themselves the prerogatives of Christ and his Brethren, to which they have not the remotest or slightest Scriptural pretension. Being of the world, and speaking under the impression of the world, as proved by the world hearing and hiring them, their alleged identity with the members of the Divine Family, injures the reputation thereof, which is the import of the word blaspheme. For an order of men to claim to be "Vicars of Jesus Christ upon earth," that is, his official substitutes, by Divine appointment; or to be his ambassadors and plenipotentiaries to the nations, by the same authority; and for them to be notoriously deficient of the least proof substantiatory of their high pretensions , is to convict themselves of falsehood; and when self-convicted liars and hypocrites claim to be the brethren and intimates of honest and righteous men, on the principle of a man being known by the company he keeps, the reputation of those excellent, people is injured or in other words blasphemed, in the estimation of the Deity, and of those "who hold the testimony of the anointed Jesus." Thus, the Albigenses(*) among whom the faithful may be found, in the twelfth century testified to their generation, saying, "We must not obey the Pope and Bishops, because they be wolves to the ecciesia of Christ" - quja sini lupi ecclesiut' Christi. They repudiated the Name of Blasphemy and the clerical ministers of his name, as the transformed ministers of the Satan, who pretended to be ministers of righteousness, but were really nothing more than wolves in sheep's clothing of the most ravenous and ferocious description . They protested against them as the orders of that DREADFUL AND TERRIBLE NAME OF BLASPHEMY, enthroned upon the Seven Heads of the Fourth Beast. This name they denounced as the Antichrist, the Man of Sin, the Son of Perdition - the Antichrist, because he set himself up as the VICAR OF CHRIST; that is, the Divinely deputed substitute of Christ, as indicated by the word Antichristos, from anti, in the place of, christos, the Anointed One, or Christ: they denounced this Name as the Man of sin in maturity, or full manifestation. They did not regard the Man of Sin substitute for Christ as an individual man, but as an order of ecclesiastical rulers, a Name, or Body, with its Eyes, Mouth, and subordinate members. Being an imperial spiritual human power, its chief ruler would be a man, the supreme representative for the period of his reign, of the power that created him for adoration, as "the god of the earth" - quem creant adorant, whom they create they worship. And thirdly, they denounced this Man of Sin name of Blasphemy, as the Son of Perdition; because the power, in the Scarlet-Beast phase of it, is foredoomed, "and goeth into perdition" (Apoc. 17:11): and because Paul, in writing of the same power, whom he styles ho anomos, the Lawless One, as well as the Man of Sin, terms him likewise the Son of Perdition, "whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his presence" (2 Thess. 2:8).

On the conquest of Italy and termination of imperial authority by the deposition of Augustulus by Odoacer, the Herulian Goth, A D. 475, the barbarians of the apocalyptic abyss held possession of the whole western division of the Latin Sea, with the exception of a part of Gaul, and were distributed under ten kingly governments

But the Fourth Beast, though vanquished in this war of two hundred and ninety-one years, was not subdued: for afterwards, as we have seen, he put on a new uniform, and in all the sanctimonials of Lodiceanism, "he went away to make war with the Remnants of the Woman's Seed." He was the Fourth Beast in catholic uniform; and although he inflicted great cruelties upon the saints, he did not overcome them, nor have they as yet conquered him.

But though they did not fear to die for the faith, "the Paulicians," says Gibbon, "were not ambitious of martyrdom; but in a calamitous period of one hundred and fifty years, their patience sustained whatever zeal could inflict. From the blood and ashes of the first victims, a succession of teachers and congregations arose." The great instrument of their multiplication was the New Testament, as illustrated in the following example related by Peter of Sicily. A young man named Sergius, conversing one day with an aged woman, of the Paulician Remnant, was thus addressed by her: "I hear, Sir, that you excel in literature and erudition, and are besides, in every respect a good man: tell me, then, why do you not read the sacred gospels?" He answered, Nobis profanis ista legere non licet, sed sacerdotibus duntaxat "it is not lawful for us the profane to read them, but for the priests only." "Not so," she replied; "there is no respect of persons with God; he wills that all men should be saved, and come to the knowledge of the truth; but your priests, because they adulterate the word of God, do not read all to you." She then repeated to him various portions of the holy Scriptures. After hearing them, he took the gospels, examined them for himself, and became a Paulician. Sergius was an important acquisition to the remnant. For thirty-four years he devoted himself to the ministry of the word; or to give it in his own words, "From the east to the west, and from the north to the south, have I been proclaiming the good of salvation, and laboring on my knees." And this he did with such success that the catholic clergy of Rome and Constantinople considered him to be the forerunner of Antichrist; and declared that he was producing the great apostasy foretold by the Apostle Paul! Peter of Sicily pronounced him "the wolf in sheep's clothing, the Devil's chiefest champion, the crafty dissembler of virtue (that is, an accomplished hypocrite), the enemy of the cross of Christ, a blasphemer, the hater of Christ, the mother of harlots;" "all which epithets," says Turner, "have only one meaning, namely, that he taught with great effect."

In the tenth century, that is, from A.D. 900 to A.D. 1000, there were thirty occupants of "St. Peter's Chair." When describing this period Mosheim says: "The history of the Roman pontiffs who lived in this century, is the history of so many monsters and not of men, and exhibits a horrible series of the most flagitious, tremendous and complicated crimes, as all writers, even those of the Romish communion, unanimously confess". In this dismal period, the clergy was, for the most part, composed of a most worthless set of men, shamefully illiterate and stupid; ignorant, more especially in religious matters; equally enslaved to sensuality and superstition, and capable of the most abominable and flagitious deeds.

"All favorers also of heretics, as condemned to perpetual infamy, we order to be debarred from the office of advocates, from giving testimony, and from all civil employments."

His plans, however, not being sufficiently mature to throw off the secular yoke of the Beast altogether, though he acted as pope from the day of his election, he declined to receive consecration until he had obtained the consent of the king of Germany. But this moderation was not of long continuance. The situation of Germany speedily afforded scope for the ambitious display of the wonder-working deceiving power. Henry IV., through a very bad education, was arbitrary and dissolute; the Saxons were engaged in a desperate rebellion, and secret disaffection had spread among the princes to an extent of which the pope was much better aware than the king. He began the contest between the Church and the Empire, the Mitre and the Crown, the Lamb-Horned Eyes of the Dragon-Horn, or in plain terms, between the spiritual and temporal orders of the Holy Germano-Roman dominion, by excommunicating some of Henry's ministers on pretense of simony, and made it a ground of remonstrance that they were not instantly dismissed. His next step was to publish a new decree against lay investitures. The abolition of these was a favorite object of Gregory, and formed an essential part of his general scheme for emancipating the spiritual, and subjugating the temporal power. The ring and crosier, it was asserted by the papal advocates, were the emblems of that power which no monarch could bestow; but even if a less offensive symbol were adopted in investitures, the dignity of the Romish Hierarchy was lowered, and its "purity" (!) contaminated, when its highest ministers were compelled to solicit the patronage or the approbation of laymen.

Elliott also quotes from a work styled "The Church of our Fathers" in which the author in his chapter on the Mitre, observes how at the opening of the eleventh century, shortly after the Pope's complete subordination of the Western Clergy to himself, the first sproutings, as it were, of the two horns began to show themselves: and how the mitre then in England "arose into two short points, not raised before and behind as now, but right and left over each ear." He illustrates from figures on the font in Winchester Cathedral, as given in the Vetusta Monumenta. Bonanni remarks that the Greek Bishops do not use the mitre. It is a Latin distinctive.

Here, then, was an imperial ecclesiastical dominion, consisting of the episcopal orders and lay nobility under a secular chief, as the ruling power. This imperial constitution of the Beast of the Earth was predicted by John in the words, elalei hos drakon, he spake as being a Dragon. The reader is well aware that a dragon is the symbol, both in Heraldry and the Apocalypse, of the dominion of an emperor, not of a simple king. This new power was an emperorship among neighboring kingdoms; and the large admixture of the clerical orders with the lay nobles, over whom they preponderated in the administration of state affairs, constituted it an EPISCOPAL POWER. Charlemagne seems to have fore-seen that the claims of the clergy, though inactive against himself, would be urged in after times, and at length overshadow his throne. He determined, therefore, to assert the independent right of monarchy and conquest. Hence, the year before his death, A.D. 813, he summoned a parliament at Aix-la-Chapelle, where he asked every one present whether they would be pleased that he should give his son Louis, afterwards styled "the Pious," the title of Emperor, and they assenting made him his colleague in the empire. At this coronation he commanded Louis to take the crown from the altar, and with his own hands, without intervention of pope or bishop, to place it on his head, as a gift which he held from his father from God, and from the nation.

He was succeeded in the Roman Bishoprick, A.D. 731, by Gregory III., who entered with great spirit and energy into the measures of his predecessors. The following epistle addressed by him to the emperor, on his elevation, is an amusing illustration of his arrogance and blasphemy.

It was against the Saints, who, in the times of the Gentiles, constitute the Name, the Tabernacle, and them who dwelt in the Heaven in Christ, that the Ten-Horned Beast opens his Leo-Babylonian Mouth in blasphemy; and makes war, till the end of the Forty and Two Months of Years. In blaspheming Jesus and his Brethren, he blasphemes the Deity, on the principle laid down by Christ, that what is done to, for, or against, his brethren, is done to, for, or against him. The Lion-Mouth of the Apocalyptic Babylon spoke evil of them in words of the most acrid bitterness. He denounced them as heretics, accursed, the children of the Devil, the spawn of hell - not a blasphemous epithet was there that the pope and his agents did not heap upon them. The prophetic writings, though set aside for the purposes of truth and edification, were resorted to for names of infamy by which to make them odious to those who worship the beast and his image; and the evil symbols and appellations therein employed by the Spirit to prefigure the Apostasy and its "spirituals of the wickedness," this Mouth of Blasphemy applied to the Saints. In this it blasphemed the Deity himself. This principle is well illustrated in Ezek. 35, where a statement made by Edom concerning Israel and their country is styled blasphemy against the mountains of Israel, because it was false. Edom said, as he also says to this day, "these two nations and these two countries shall be mine, and we will possess it, though Yahweh were there." Now, He had promised the land to Jacob, and to him he will give it for an everlasting inheritance. Hence, every saying subversive of this purpose is blasphemy against the country, and blasphemy and boasting against the Eternal Spirit: for, if Edom's purpose of possession could possibly be established, the Deity's veracity would be destroyed, and his character for faithfulness overthrown. "Thus," in making false statements concerning the destiny of Israel, Judah, and their country, O Edom, saith Yahweh, "with your mouth ye have boasted against Me, and have multiplied your words against Me; I have heard: so that when the whole earth rejoiceth, I will make thee desolate." By Edom is here represented what John symbolizes by the Beast and his Image, etc. Hence, to blaspheme or speak evil and injuriously of God's people, and promises, is regarded by Him as blasphemy against Himself.

In this, Gregory styles the apostle, Petra; and the pope, Petrus: the plain English of which is, Peter gave the German Empire to the Pope; and the Pope gave its crown to Roduiphus; though the apostle did not know that such an empire would ever exist! But, no lying blasphemy is too absurd to issue forth from the Draco-Lion Mouth of the Beast. In A.D. 1303, we have another illustration of this sort of blasphemy in the case of Boniface, who, in his confirmation of Albrecht in the Emperorship, declared that it was by Papal authority, as Christ's Vicar, or personal and official substitute, that the Imperial Diadem had been transferred from the Greek Empire to Charlemagne and his successors, at the crisis, namely, when the healing of the Sixth Head was commenced. "And the Germans attend here," said Boniface, "because, just as the empire was transferred from others to themselves, so Christ's Vicar, the successor of Peter, has the power of transferring the empire from the Germans to any others soever, if he will; and this without injury of right" - a declaration humbly submitted to and confessed by Albrecht.

This 1260 is a very remarkable prophetic cipher. It is founded on the number of the generations from the birth of Abraham to that of Jesus Christ (Matt. 1:17); though the generations of the cipher do not average so many years each as those of the post-Abrahamic. These generations averaged fifty years and a fraction each; but the generations, or months, of the cipher, not more than thirty years each; but in the number forty and two they agree. Thus 30 x 42 = 1260, or three years and a half of years.

But Vitiges was not idle. During the winter season he collected an army of one hundred and fifty thousand men. With these forces he besieged Belisarius in Rome for more than a year. The city was greatly distressed. The general pitied the sufferings of the people, whose loyalty to the emperor had notably decayed, while their discontents proportionately increased. "Adversity," says Gibbon, "had awakened the Romans from the dreams of grandeur and freedom, and taught them the humiliating lesson, that it was of small moment to their real happiness, whether the name of their master was derived from the Gothic or the Latin language." Among the disaffected was Sylverius, the incumbent of the recently erected "Apostolic Throne." A letter subscribed by him was intercepted, which assured the king of the Goths, that the Asinarian gate, adjoining to the Lateran church, should be secretly opened to his troops. On this proof of treason, he was summoned to attend at the headquarters of Belisarius, and there to give an account of himself. The ecclesiastics who followed the pope, were detained in an anteroom, and he alone was admitted into the presence of the general. Belisarius was silent, but the voice of reproach and menace issued from the mouth of Antonina, his imperious wife. Being convicted of the treason, the pretended successor of St. Peter was despoiled of his pontifical ornaments, clad in the mean habit of a monk, and embarked without delay for a distant exile in the east, and was afterwards either slain or murdered upon a desolate island. At the emperor's command, the clergy of Rome proceeded to the choice of a new bishop; they therefore elected a deacon Vigilius, who had purchased the papal throne by a bribe of two hundred pounds of gold. From these circumstances the reader will perceive the relation in which the bishop of Rome stood to the imperial power in the first half of the sixth century. He was still subject to the civil authority though spiritual "Head of all the Churches" of the empire. The imperial authority was now in Rome again in power, or maintained by force of arms. Had this been permanent the pope would never have become a temporal sovereign; but would have lived and died the servant of the emperors. Hence, the removal of this pressure was necessary to the setting up of an imperial episcopal image upon the seven hills. The decollation of the Seventh Head, and the reduction of Rome to a subordinate rank among cities, would accomplish this; and therefore the calamities of the times as developed in this Gothic war.

"Justinian the Victorious, the Pious, &c., always August, to John the Most Holy Archbishop of the Sacred City Rome, and Patriarch.

6. For they have 'poured out the blood of saints and prophets, and to them thou hast given blood to drink; for they are worthy.

8. And by the blast of Thy nostrils the waters were heaped up The floods stood erect as a heap;

These are two all-sufficient reasons why the Satan should be Providentially tolerated among the sons of the Deity, until the Ancient of Days come. Now is the day of salvation," says Paul; but this, in effect, the Satan denies. He turns it into a day of judgment, saying, that there is no other day of judgment for the saints than this. Satan, of course, exceedingly dislikes the idea of being judged, and rewarded according to his works. He does not approve of the doctrine of eternal life based upon an inspection of faith and practice after resurrection. He demands resurrection with immortality, not resurrection unto eternal life. He wants to spring out of the dust immortal, and no questions asked; for he knows very well, that neither his faith rior his practice will bear the light. Be this, however, as it may, his pleasure and satisfaction will not be consulted. Inspection and its consequences begin at the house of the Christ: and Satan, who had received the one talent, and was afraid of the truth, and hid it in the earth, is purged Out as a wicked and slothful servant from among the sons of the Deity; and cast into the darkness of the outer world, where weeping and gnashing of teeth are the order of both day and night (Matt. 25:14-30; Apoc. 14:11).

8. And the Nave was full of smoke from the glory of the Deity and from his power: and no one was able to enter into the Nave until the seven plagues of the seven angels were fulfilled.

But, before this angel issues forth from the heaven, the proclamation of the aionian gospel is made through midheaven - verse 7. It announces, that "the Hour of the Judgment," or the time of the treading of the winepress by the angel is come. When these causes and its result are manifested, it is found that the political organization symbolized by "the Beast and the False Prophet," "the King of the Earth," and "the Ten Horns," making in the aggregate the Powers "within" and "without" the great city Babylon - refuse to comply with the demands; in evidence of which, "the Beast and the kings of the earth and" their armies, gather together to make war with the Lamb and them that are with him" (ch.19:19; 17:14).

"And the earth was reaped" - the "Little Horn of the Goat; the King of Fierce Countenance is broken without hand; the Image of Nebuchadnezzar is smitten by the stone; the Gog Multitude is prostrate upon the mountains of Israel; the King of the North hath come to his end without anyone to help him; and Judah is delivered from the Assyrian by the Bethlehem-born Ruler of Israel, whose goings forth are from of old, from everlasting (Micah 5:2-7; Dan. 11:45; 8:9,23,25; 2:34). This confederacy against the East is shivered to pieces as a potter's vessel, and Jerusalem is delivered. From henceforth she will be no more trod-den under-foot of the Gentiles; nor will the uncircumcised and unclean be permitted to enter. Zion hath now put on her strength; and Jerusalem her beautiful garments. She is no longer rebellious against her King, but blesses him as her Redeemer who hath come in the name of Yahweh. She had thrown open wide her gates, that the King of Glory, Yahweh Tz'vaoth, strong and mighty in battle, might enter in. Standing with his feet upon the Mount of Olives, he beholds the Pass over fill fllled in the kingdom - the Assyrian is slain, Zion is redeemed, and the Lamb with the 144,000 stand upon her holy mount: "Henceforth Jerusalem shall be holy, and no strangers shall pass through her any more" (Joel 3:17).

It was said to him, "Write!" He obeyed the command, and we have before us what he was told to write. "Blessed the dead dying in the Lord". These words specify a particular class of dead ones - a class of people, who while living believed the gospel of the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ; and having been immersed into the Lord, were in the Lord;" and thenceforth continued to walk in him until death. When death Overshadowed them, they fell asleep in Jesus, or "died in the Lord". Hence, "the dead dying in the Lord" are the saints of all the ages and generations preceding the future advent of the Ancient of Days. The "justified by faith" before "the faith" came, are included among these (Luke 13:28). These are all "blessed" in inheriting the kingdom and glory to which they are called, or invited, by the gospel of their salvation.

p.58 But in this vision of the first, second and third angels are brought to light the saints themselves. "Here," or in this place of the Apocalypse, are seen the saints in the execution of "the judgment written". This is equivalent to declaring that "the Holy Angels and the Lamb," of verse 10, are symbolical of Jesus and his brethren, and identical with the Lamb and 144,000 of the first verse. These at the head of their forces are the power symbolized by the second and third angels. They begin their career in "prophesying again before many peoples, and nations, and tongues, and kings," as the first angel making proclamation in midheaven; and they finish it in binding the Dragon, and celebrating their victory over the Beast, and over his Image, and over the sign and number of his name, standing upon the sea of glass, having the harps of the Deity (Apoc. 15:2). In all their career "the nations rage, and the kingdoms are moved; but He uttered his voice, and the earth melted". When their work of judgment is in progress, it will be said, "Come, behold the works of Yahweh, who hath set desolations in the earth. He is making wars to cease to the end of the earth; he will break the bow, and will cut the spear in sunder; and will burn the chariots in the fire. Be still, and know that I am Elohim. I will be exalted among the nations, and I will be exalted in the earth. Yahweh Tz'vaoth (He who shall be hosts) is with us; a strong place for us is the Elohim of Jacob" (Psa. 46:6-11).

The "smoke" of verse 11 which ascends, is the symbol of the glory and power of Deity in burning operation against the worshippers of the Beast. Inch. 15:8, it is styled "smoke from the glory of Deity, and from His power". In this place, "the temple" is said to be "filled with" this smoke. The Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple (ch. 21:22). The smoke is, therefore, His wrath; and while it flames, "no one is able to enter into the nave;" for the nave is the Most Holy Heavenly State, in which the nations hang the trumpet in the hall, and practise war no more.

But this great national redemption is only arrived at through a terribly severe refining process. It is styled in Joel, "the day of Yahweh, great and very terrible; and who can abide it?" (ch. 2:11). The Goat-nations will be unable to abide it; and all the dross of Jacob will be consumed. All the rebels will be purged out of the great army of resurrected dry bones, now scattered and "very dry" in all the countries of their dispersion where they are politically entombed; but in the time of the second and third angels, passing under the rod of discipline in the Wilderness of the people (Ezek. 20:33-38; 37:1-14). The prophet Malachi asks the same question as Joel. "Who may abide," saith he, "the day of his coming? And who shall stand when he (the Messenger of the Covenant) appeareth? For he is like a refiner's fire, and like fuller's soap; and he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver: and he shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer unto Yahweh an offering in righteousness. Then shall the offering of Judah and Jerusalem be pleasant unto Yahweh, as in the days of old, and as in former years" (ch. 3:1-4).

A proclamation of this kind, made by such "ambassadors of Jesus Christ," and attested by signs and wonders of a character to establish their claims to the confidence and respect of the nations and their rulers, cannot fail of arresting attention as the all-absorbing topic of the day. The message itself, and the reception it meets with by the world-rulers of church and state, will doubtless eclipse and supersede all other . The "leading journals" of Europe and America will be confounded; and seeing that the editorial staff of the world, like, "the spirituals" of the clerical kingdom, have no oil in their vessels, their leading articles upon this wonderful topic can only be the reflex of the darkness that covers the earth, and the gross darkness of the people. As folly and falsehood are their stock in trade, they will doubtless counsel rejection of the mes-sage, and hostility to all claims emanating from such questionable authority. As they live by trying to please the majority, they will trim their sails to catch the popular breeze. Their counsel will be a bridle in the jaws of the people causing them to err. The editors, the clergy, and the civil rulers, of the midheaven will be the ruin of society: so that under the guidance of their policy the armies of the nations will go forth as a whirlwind to scatter him (Hab. 3:14). It is not in human nature, much less in its political organization, to surrender power, wealth, and honor, at discretion. It does not part with these things without a struggle to retain them. On such a proclamation coming to the pope and "crowned heads" of Europe, from a Jew on Mount Zion, claiming to be Jesus of Nazareth King of the Jews, are they like to acknowledge him, to place their kingdoms at his disposal, and cast their crowns at his feet? We know certainly that they will not; for it is testified that all nations shall compass him about like bees; but they shall be quenched as the fire of thorns; for in the name of Yahweh he will destroy them (Psa. 118:10-12; Apoc. 19:19-21).

Such was the time of his transformation into "a quickening spirit;" and the operation by which the Father's Name was written, impressed, or flashed, upon him. It was his "NEW NAME," and identical with the Father's: not another name distinct from His. When this was flashed upon him, he became "The Blessed and Only Potentate, the King of kings and Lord of lords." It is " a name which no man knows, but he himself;" that is, it declares what cannot be affirmed of any other man; namely, that He is the Invisible Eternal Power, in incorruptible and deathless manifestation, having absolute dominion in heaven and upon the earth — The Father's Image (1 Tim. 6:15; Apoc. 19:12,16; Matt. 28:18).

Well might Junius say, "as for the sign left by Christ and of the holy sacrament of baptism, they make it void." In order that the uninitiated may know what the Beast's Hierarchy means by the word "sacrament" and the connection therewith of "sign," or "charagma," I will quote from the catechism of the American Episcopal Harlot. In this it is asked, "What meanest thou by this word 'sacrament?' Answer; I mean 'an outward and visible sign' of an inward and spiritual grace given unto us; ordained by Christ himself; as a means whereby we receive the same, and a pledge to assure us thereof. Question; How many parts are there in a sacrament? Answer; Two; 'the outward visible sign,' and the inward spiritual grace. Question; What is the outward visible sign or form in Baptism? Answer; Water; wherein the person is baptized, In the name of the Father," and so forth. This is the dogma of the Babylonian Mother, also from whom her harlot progeny receive it. The Mother and her Protestant Daughters are not all of one mind exactly concerning "the outward sign." They all agree that the proper subject to be "charagmatized" is an unconscious babe, Hindoo, Mohammedan, Greek, Latin, Protestant, or Jew. In other words, that intelligence, belief, and repentance are unnecessary for the subject of the Sign of the Beast, or the outward part of what the Beast's Hierarchy styles "baptism." They all agree that the outward sign, or "charagma," is to be made "visible" by the use of water; and that the water is to be "rhantized," or sprinkled, on the forehead; but they do not all agree that the spiritual wizard who performs the legerdemain should figure a cross with his dripping finger. Many of them say, that the Holy Water sprinkled is "sign" or "form" enough without the cross-figuration. In this opinion they differ from their Babylonian Mother who with tridentine indignation, pronounces them to be "accursed;" which no doubt they are. As already quoted, "if any one shall say," said she, "that in baptism the character (or sign of the cross) should not be impressed upon a soul, let him be accursed." This little difference excepted, they furthermore agree in the general, that this rhantismal ordinance of the Beast was "ordained by Christ himself." A greater lie was never uttered by the children of the Devil (John 8:44). The Babylonian Mother herself denies this. The late Archbishop Hughes, in his controversy with Breckenridge, the Presbyterian, in 1833, I think it was, candidly confessed, that Infant Rhantism was not taught in the New Testament, as Protestants stupidly and ignorantly affirm; but was decreed by the authority of the Latin Church, from which all baby-sprinklers have received it. This is true. It is emphatically the Beast's outward and visible sign; which, as Junius saith, "has made void the sign left by Christ."

10. He also shall drink of the wine of the wrath of the Deity, which hath been prepared without mixture in the cup of his indignation; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the Holy Angels, and in the presence of the Lamb.

But an objection has been raised to this name, that the orthography of the Greek word is Latinos, not Lateinos; giving the number 661, , not 666, But this is an objection of no weight; for both Ireneus and Hippolytus spell the word with the diphthong ei, pronounced i long in Latin words; in which the long i at length superseded the ei, as it used to be written in the oldest Latin authors, as appears from the sentence quoted by commentators from Ennius — “Quam primum cascei populei tenuere Lateinei” — At first the ancient people were Latins. It is of no consequence what “fathers” after Ireneus and Hippolytus thought of the word and of other solutions deemed admissible by the worshippers of the Beast. We are better able to judge correctly than they. The two writers upon the subject nearest to John raised no question about the spelling of the word; but adopted Lateinos, in word and orthography, as the least objectionable that could be supposed; and yet more worthy of acceptance by us by its appropriateness to what we have traced out as the Image of the Sixth Latin Head of the Beast, and the Man of Sin. All speculations based upon the Hebrew (though the Jews used their letters for numerals as well as the Greeks) in the solution of the enigma are excluded, because the text is Greek, not Hebrew. If the Hebrew had had anything to do with the solution there would doubtless have been an intimation to that effect, saying, “the number of his name, which in the Hebrew tongue is and in the Greek tongue he hath his number ” after the formula in ch. 9:11. But in the absence of such intimation we need not trouble ourselves about the Hebrew names suggested by commentators whose display of “ripe scholarship,” has embarrassed, without throwing a ray of light upon the subject.

“What do we see in Rome?" says the Journal des Debats. "It is no longer the Holy Father or his Ministers, it would appear, who exercise authority there, but a French general".

The recent war left Pio Nono, in 1860, still in the hands of his troublesome nurses, Louis Napoleon and Francis Joseph, who made him both miserable and contemptible. The dominion of Austria, by its Venetian province, was still contiguous to the States of the Church; and could therefore at any convenient time, cross the Po in succor of the Papal Image of the Beast, should any unforeseen event turn up in Paris to give a quietus to the wonder-working of the meddlesome Frogs. These contented themselves with doing garrison duty in Rome, and in parleying with Austria at Zurich; leaving the Pope to do the best he could for himself with the aid of Naples, the Grand Dukes, and the disbanded soldiers sent to Austria as volunteers, and the ragamuffins he could recruit in Ireland, against the Garibaldini and Sardinians. At this crisis, Louis Napoleon confined himself to giving advice, being really not displeased at the renewed activity of the Revolution. On his visit to Bordeaux, he said to the Bishop of that city, "that the Government that was the means of restoring the Holy Father to the Pontifical Throne, would only give utterance to such respectful counsels as were dictated by sincere devotedness to the interests of his Holiness

In regard to the Sultan*, the revolution that placed the Frogs in power was more to his advantage than otherwise. Under Charles X and Louis Phillippe, the French had assisted in drying him up; but since the fall of the Bourbons, the Frogs, in concert with England, had assured him of their support in case of attack from Russia; and had declared their policy in the Eastern Question to be, the integrity and independence of the Ottoman empire. In 1850, I remarked, that "this assurance was certain, sooner or later, to bring on a war between the Porte and the Autocrat. If the Sultan had been left to himself, being weak? he would have yielded, and so have avoided the chance of war; but being energized by France and England, two strong military and naval powers, the Sultan feels himself a match for Russia, and prepared to assume a bold and warlike attitude". And so it came to pass in 1854; when, inspired by the policy of the Frog-power, the "unclean spirit issued from" the Sultan-Mouth of the Constantinopolitan Dragon, in a declaration of war against Russia, and an attack upon Sevastopol by the French and English forces.

The next engraving is from the Franciscan church at Innsbruck; where is a row of tall bronze figures, twenty-three in number, representing principally the most distinguished personages of the House of Austria; the armor and costumes being those chiefly of the 16th century, and the workmanship excellent. Among them is Clovis, king of France, and on his shield three fleur de lis and three frogs, with the words under-neath, "CIodouus der i Christenlich kunig von Frankreich;" that is, Clovis the first Christian king of France.

"The plague prevailing to a fearful extent among the inhabitants, part of them attempted to escape into the country: but they were arrested by a sudden inundation of the Tigris, by which numbers perished; and the rest were driven back into the city. When at length it pleased God to stay the hand of the destroying angel, it was found that out of 80,000 human beings not more than 25,000 survived". The judgment of the sword then followed. "The plague had scarce ceased, and the waters subsided, when troops arrived in the name of the Sultan to depose the Pasha; and fierce and bloody contests succeeded". In another letter bearing date, Bagdad, April 23, 1831, they say, "Surely every principle of desolation is operating in the midst of the Ottoman empire; plagues, earthquakes, and civil wars. The Pasha's palace is left open, without a soul to take care of anything. His stud of beautiful Arab horses are running about the streets. Inquire what you will, the answer is, The City is desolate". With regard even to Constantinople, the chaplain of the British Embassy resident there from 1821 to 1831, thus writes, "Within the last twenty years Constantinople has lost more than half its population. Two conflagrations happened while I was there, and destroyed 15,000 houses. The Russian and Greek wars were a constant drain upon the Janizaries of the capital. The silent operation of the plague is continually active, though not always alarming. It will be no exaggeration to say that, within the period mentioned, from 300,000 to 400,000 have been prematurely swept away in this one city in Europe, by causes which were not operating in any other - conflagration, pestilence, and civil commotion".

The Ottoman Power being "the Great River Euphrates" of the symbolical Babylon, we have a subject before us capable of receiving, and as its sanguinary and earth-destroying history proves, well deserving, the indignation and wrath of Deity. As the fourth of the Euphratean Angels (ch. 9:15) loosed against the Greek Catholic division of the Babylonian Apostasy, it has judicially and terrifically executed its mission. In performing the part allotted to it, it has repaid justice the debt incurred by the demon-worshipping and idolatrous Greek Catholics, who, when they reigned in Constantinople, were more wicked, and less tolerant of truly good men, than the Turks. The Osmanlis are not idolators. Their zeal was great against all such; hence their Contempt of Catholics, both Greek and Latin, and their greater tolerance of Protestants. Still, the Euphratean is only a Sin-Power, well and heavily laden with its own peculiar offenses. One of its greatest offenses consists in the treatment Yahweh's land, and people Israel, have experienced at its hand. As the modern representative of the Little-Horn-of-the-Goat power, it has "parted his land" "for gain" (Joel3 :2; Dan. 11:39); and ruling over Israel, has made them to howl; so that His name continually every day is blasphemed (Isa. 52:5). No man likes his property to be laid Waste, and his slaves to be abused. Of both these counts the Constantinopolitan Little Horn has been so intensely guilty in regard to Yahweh's inheritance, that it has acquired the Scriptural epithet of Shomaim, THE DESOLATOR (Dan. 9:27). It is true that appearances Would seem to justify the conclusion of some, that the Deity has ceased to take any interest in the land of Palestine, and in the natural Israel. But let such remember the Words of Christ, who says, "Judge not according to the appearance, but judge true judgment". The appearance of things is not their real nature. It is the testimony of the prophets, that "Yahweh will be jealous for His land, and pity his people; . . . and will no more make them a reproach among the nations" (Joel 2:18,19). But they still are a reproach among the nations: it is therefore evident that the Divine jealousy for the land, and pity for the people in reproach are things pertaining to a future situation of the world's affairs. Hence, the political Euphrates standing in this antagonism to Deity, it is for this, and not because of its severity upon the Greeks, that the wasting wrath of the sixth vial is poured out upon it.

The Ottoman Power being "the Great River Euphrates" of the symbolical Babylon, we have a subject before us capable of receiving, and as its sanguinary and earth-destroying history proves, well deserving, the indignation and wrath of Deity. As the fourth of the Euphratean Angels (ch. 9:15) loosed against the Greek Catholic division of the Babylonian Apostasy, it has judicially and terrifically executed its mission. In performing the part allotted to it, it has repaid justice the debt incurred by the demon-worshipping and idolatrous Greek Catholics, who, when they reigned in Constantinople, were more wicked, and less tolerant of truly good men, than the Turks. The Osmanlis are not idolators. Their zeal was great against all such; hence their Contempt of Catholics, both Greek and Latin, and their greater tolerance of Protestants. Still, the Euphratean is only a Sin-Power, well and heavily laden with its own peculiar offenses. One of its greatest offenses consists in the treatment Yahweh's land, and people Israel, have experienced at its hand. As the modern representative of the Little-Horn-of-the-Goat power, it has "parted his land" "for gain" (Joel3 :2; Dan. 11:39); and ruling over Israel, has made them to howl; so that His name continually every day is blasphemed (Isa. 52:5). No man likes his property to be laid Waste, and his slaves to be abused. Of both these counts the Constantinopolitan Little Horn has been so intensely guilty in regard to Yahweh's inheritance, that it has acquired the Scriptural epithet of Shomaim, THE DESOLATOR (Dan. 9:27). It is true that appearances Would seem to justify the conclusion of some, that the Deity has ceased to take any interest in the land of Palestine, and in the natural Israel. But let such remember the Words of Christ, who says, "Judge not according to the appearance, but judge true judgment". The appearance of things is not their real nature. It is the testimony of the prophets, that "Yahweh will be jealous for His land, and pity his people; . . . and will no more make them a reproach among the nations" (Joel 2:18,19). But they still are a reproach among the nations: it is therefore evident that the Divine jealousy for the land, and pity for the people in reproach are things pertaining to a future situation of the world's affairs. Hence, the political Euphrates standing in this antagonism to Deity, it is for this, and not because of its severity upon the Greeks, that the wasting wrath of the sixth vial is poured out upon it.

"They blasphemed the Name of the Deity of the heaven". They gave expression to their blasphemy in their deeds. They committed the most blasphemous act against his Name in their power, in re-establishing upon the Seven Heads, or Mountains, "the Name of Blasphemy." They delivered the Pope from captivity; and restored to him his pontifical throne and kingdom, which had cost so much human blood and misery to darken. He had learned nothing, and forgotten nothing of his blasphemy. In his proclamation from Cezena, May 5, 1814, a little before reentering Rome, he characterized himself and his office by the papal title of "the Vicar of the Deity upon earth". The acts following this re-assertion of the old impiety were in blasphemous harmony with it. A few days after the proclamation, he crowned at Ancona, with all the sanctimoniousness of superstition, a "miraculous image of the Virgin," the duplicate of that at Rome, as the guardian and saviour of Ancona; and de-creed its festival, and connected a plenary indulgence with its worship. The Name of the Deity for salvation was superseded as of old, by the merits of the saints of the Romish calendar, and of the phantasm, styled by the worshippers of the image, "the Blessed Mary always a Virgin". Bible Societies were special objects of papal wrath. They were declared to be tares in the midst of wheat, and wolves in the guise of lambs; while the scriptures themselves circulated by them, unaccompanied by Romish explanations, were denounced by Leo XII in 1824, as poisonous pastures, and the gospel rather of the devil than of the Deity. And in 1825, he published a Bull of Jubilee, promising to exhibit Christ's cradle, as an attraction to the pilgrimage; and with authoritative instructions to the pilgrims to call upon the Virgin Mary, as the great advocate for sinners, on that day of grace and mercy.

Yes, Rome was angry, and the Pope persisted in his refusal. It is true, that excommunication’s were out of fashion; but angry and imbecile Rome, upon whom all experience is lost, still had faith in folly. Pius VII. hurled his mimic thunder against the emperor on June 10, 1809: but the Papal Jupiter had lost all his thunderbolts, so that the only party injured was his lying and blaspheming self. It was received with ridicule, and an order for his arrest. He was carried off prisoner to Savona, where he was detained nearly two years. While there he conceded the main point required by Napoleon, as stated in a Brief, bearing date Aug. 5, 1811, the preliminary condition of which was his separation for ever from Rome. On the approach of a British fleet, he was removed from Savona, Jan. 1812, to Fontainbleau. The Archiepiscopal palace of Paris had been repaired for his reception; for it was Napoleon's policy and intention to fix him and the Papal See in that abode: so that he could have "the False Prophet" (ch. 16:13; 19:20) then no longer the Image of the Beast, under his own eye and restraint in the New Capital of Catholicity. But, the sudden and wonderful overthrow of Napoleon's power prevented the establishment of his purpose. In 1814, "Catholicity having deserted him," says De Pradt, "four heretical kings (Russia, Prussia, England, and Sweden) bore the Pope back to Rome".

The steps taken by Louis XVI relative to the princes of the empire, were supported by military preparations. Three armies were formed under the command of Rochambeau, of Luckner, and of La Fayette. On the other hand, Austria gave orders to marshal Bender to defend the Elector of Treves if he were attacked, and ratified the conclusions of the Diet of Ratisbon. These demanded the restoration of the possessionary princes; the Diet refused to allow that they should be indemnified in money for the loss of their rights; and left to France the choice only of the re-establishment of feudality in Alsace, or war. These two resolutions of the cabinet of Vienna were of a very hostile nature. Her troops marched upon the French frontiers, and proved clearly that France was not to trust to her inaction. Fifty thousand men were stationed in the Low Countries; six thousand were posted in the Brisgaw, and thirty thousand were dispatched from Bohemia. This formidable army of observation could at a moment's notice, be rendered an army of attack.

Such was the notable commencement of the outpouring of the wrath of Deity from the fourth vial "upon the sun" of the so-called "HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE". The efforts of Napoleon were henceforth di-rected to extend his dominions over the Continent of Europe. He invaded the kingdom of Naples, and on March 30, 1806, established his brother Joseph there as King of the Two Sicilies. Shortly after he transformed the United Provinces of Holland into a kingdom, and filled its throne with his brother Louis. All republics were abolished, save that of Switzerland, of which he declared himself the Mediator, and he finished the organization of his new military empire, by placing the Germanic Body dependent on himself. On July 12, 1806, fourteen provinces on the south and west of Germany were united in "the Confederation of the Rhine," and Napoleon was recognized as their Protector. On Aug. 1st, they notified to the Diet of Ratisbon their separation from the Germanic Body; the Germano-Roman empire itself ceased to exist; and Francis II., abdicating the title, now adopted that of "EMPEROR OF AUSTRIA".

The prisoners shut up at the Carmelites, at the Abbey, at La F~rce, the Conciergerie, etc., were butchered during three days, by a band,of about three hundred murderers, under the orders and in the pay of t,he Commune. These men, inspired by a silent fanaticism, seemed less the ministers of vengeance, than the performers of a labour to be done; they massacred without fury, but without remorse - with all the confidence of fanatics, and the obedience of hangmen. The Assembly wished to put a stop to this operation of the "grievous and malignant ulcer" upon the worshippers of the Beast's Image, but could not. The ministry was as impotent as the Assembly. The terrible Commune alone was all-powerful, and directed everything. The soldiers who guarded the prisoners durst not resist the Avengers, and suffered them to do their work of death; the populace looked on as indifferent spectators or accomplices; and the rest of the citizens dared not even venture to discover their horror. The National Convention met Sept. 24, 1792. In its first sitting it abolished royalty, and proclaimed the Republic, by acclamation; and on the following day it was ordered that all public acts should be dated from "the first year of the French Republic" . Such were the salutary effects of the transient successes of the Austrian and Prussian armies, and of the ill-ju.dged manifestoes, or "Great Voice," by which they were preceded. They only exasperated a people they were intended to intimidate. They hastened the fall of that throne which they came to support, and consolidated that power which they intended to crush. Their object was to reestablish a monarchy - their efforts gave birth to a republic.

His headquarters, May 24, were at Lodi. He was soon informed that Pavia, with all the surrounding districts, in his rear, were in full insurrection. The Italians were disgusted at the spoliations of money and works of art, they had been subjected to; and with the open indignities thrown upon the places and objects of their superstition, as well as on the persons and character of their priests. About thirty thousand insurgents were in arms. Buonaparte lost no time in giving them blood to drink. The village of Benasco was taken by storm, the inhabitants put to the sword, and the place plundered and burned. He blew open the gates of Pavia with his cannon, dispersed the insurgents, and put their leaders to death. He menaced with fire and sword, all who in future should become insurgent; a threat which he made good soon after upon the inhabitants of Lago, which was taken by storm, pillaged, burned, and the men put to the sword.

But, I need add no more here upon the wood of life, which is the Great Wood of the many choice trees of righteousness planted by YAHWEH in his divine garden. By referring to pp. 208-218, of Vol. 1 of this work, the reader will find what might otherwise have been continued here. But, I do not wish him to be put to the necessity of paying twice for the same matter. If he possess the first volume he can refer to it, and read; which will save me time and labor, and himself expense.

10. And he saith to me, Seal not the sayings of the prophecy of this book; for the time is near.

Now, it matters not whether it be one man to be made “the Lord from heaven,” or a countless multitude of earthborns to be made flu Holy Jerusalem “descending from the Deity out of heaven” — the operation is the same. Every individual is subjected to a like polishing embroidering, and adorning, as saith the Spirit who will do the won “Him that overcometh,” saith he, “I will make a pillar in the Nave of rr Deity, and he shall go no more out; and I will write upon him the Name of my Deity, and the Name of the City of my Deity, New Jerusalem

10. And he carried me away in spirit to a great and high mountain, and he showed to me that Great City, the Holy Jerusalem, descending out of the hea?ven from the Deity, having the Glory of the Deity. And the brightness of it was like to a stone most precious, as to a jasper stone, clear as crystal.

“Death and the Grave,” then, represent those who come forth from the house of corruption, are tried before Christ “the Judge of all,” found guilty of cowardice, faithlessness, devotion to lies, and so forth, and are condemned. Though they “come forth” in the same “hour of judgment” with all well-doers, they are not “the first resurrection;” but simply heirs of the inheritance styled “Death and the Grave,” whence they came, and to which they are consigned again with shame, and the contempt of angels, and of those whose honor and privilege it is to “eat of the Tree of Life, and to enter through the gates into the city” (Dan. 12:2; Apoc. 3:5; Matt. 10:33; Luke 12:9).

10. And the Devil who deceived them had been cast into the lake of the fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet, also, shall be tormented day and night unto the aeons of the aeons.

In France, the Great Harlot still remains spoiled, impoverished, and legally only on a footing of equality with the other superstitions, whose adherents she used to murder as heretics. In Portugal, she was prohibited from resuming possession of her confiscated domains by decree of the secular authority in 1835. The national and ecclesiastical property then to be sold is stated at more than twelve millions sterling. Such a dilapidation of funds could not but sensibly affect the revenues of the Romish See. Even in "most catholic" Spain, the Harlot's flesh was eaten, and the confiscation of her immense property completed by queen Christina and Espartero. The papal apostolic letter states, that the ecclesiastical property in that country had been put up to sale, and the proceeds put into the public treasury; that all communication With the See of Rome was prohibited under severe penalties; that no Nuncio is ever to be admitted into the kingdom to grant favors and dispensations; that the ancient papal prerogative of confirming or rejecting bishops elected in Spain, was altogether abolished; and that the priests who seek confirmation, and metropolitans who solicit the pallium, or lambskin, from Rome, incur the penalty of exile. In 1844, Christina repented of this anti-Romish policy, and conjointly with Narvaez took measures for the partial re-endowment of the Harlot. The Times and Evening Mail, of April 16, speaks of "the signalization of her former government by the confiscation of Church property, burning of monasteries, desecration of churches, and massacre of monks, when the infidel party in her name, tore up the old ecclesiastical machinery of Spain, and shot down its adherents;" and then proceeds in these words, "the corruptions of the church have been beyond denial or apology. Friend and foe alike confessed and proclaimed them. Afiery ordeal was necessary for it; and a fiery ordeal it has had. It has emerged from the flames shorn of much of its paraphernalia. We may hope that it has been purified, as well as punished". (*)

8. On account of this her plagues shall come in one day, death, and anguish, and famine; and she shall be consumed in fire: for YAHWEH ELOHIM who judgeth her is powerful.

12. And the Ten Horns which thou sawest, are ten governments, which have not yet received kingdom; but they receive authority as kings one hour with the beast.

But what country doth the Scripture indicate will extend the shadow of its political protection over the tenth, in the midst of the land of Israel'? Whatever land is therein indicated will, I conceive, obtain supremacy in the Abyssinian Ethiopian or Cush; Seba, or Nubia; and Mitzraim or Egypt; whereby it will find it to be promotive of its commercial and political interests to obtain the resettlement of the central tenth of the Holy Land under the guarantee, perhaps, by the great powers, of neutrality. This would be in the sense of the text, receiving Egypt, Cush, and Seba, in return for the resettlement of the tenth.

The third question is, how is the Perfect Man, who is to descend upon Babylon's powers and populations "as a thief," to be apocalypsed, )r brought into existence? By the power of the Eternal Spirit, or Father, operating through the Lord Jesus Christ, according to the principles laid down in Paul's epistles. With a very few exceptions now existing among the living, the future constituents of the Perfect Man are nothing but incorporeal dust and ashes - dust without form or body. When living in the present state they were men and women, who understood, believed, obeyed, and walked, in the Truth, and thereby obtained registry in the Lamb's Book of Life (Mal. 3.16,17, Dan. 12.1, Exod. 32.32,33, Apoc. 20:15). In the resurrection epoch, dust is formed into bodies. They are then "the dead who are in the graves". The next thing is, they are caused "to hear the voice of the Son, who has the life in himself". On hearing this they then "come forth" from the graves by the momentum communicated to them by the earth which "casts them out". After this, their consciousness of a previously developed character being impressed upon them, the angels employed in the service, gather them together from the four winds, from one end of the heaven to the other, unto the Lord Jesus Christ; so that, if I have correctly expounded the testimony of Moses, David, and Habakkuk, the angels will gather them "unto him" in the South in the wilderness of Sinai. At this point the reader will please refer to the following texts (John 5:26-29; Isa. 26:19; Matt. 24:31; 2 Thess. 2:1).

When the great French Revolution caused the astonished world to shake to its foundations, a shock was given to the minds of men whose vibrations have not yet subsided. The murdered witnesses, slain by the sanguinary Bourbons, had started into life, and ascended into political eminence, as Mede had taught his readers to expect. This, and the coincidence also, that this ascension was exactly 1260 years from the epoch of the delivery of the saints into the hand of the episcopal element of the Little Horn by Justinian, in A.D. 533; all concurred in arousing some to a renewed and earnest study of the prophetic word. Prominent among these was Mr. Bicheno, who published his "Signs of the Times" in 1793. His writings were interesting, though abounding with many speculations proved fallacious by the lapse of time. One thing, however, he did which should not be forgotten. He showed that the three days and a-half daring which the two witnessing prophets were to lie unburied in the platea of the great city, should be interpreted as three lunar days and a half of years ; and that firieit. therefore, was right in his conjecture that their death ensued, A.D. 1685.

2. And being pregnant she cries being, in pangs and straining to bring forth.

The destruction issuing from this glorious presence, is styled in Apoc. 14:10, "tormenting with fire and brimstone in the presence of the Holy Angels, and in the presence of the Lamb." The end of the eleventh chapter expresses this torment in the words, "lightnings, and voices, and thunderings, and an earthquake, and great hail." Hence the conclusion of the eleventh chapter, with which the second volume of this exposition is concluded, is synchronous with all of the fourteenth chapter from the beginning to the end. I say from the beginning of it, because all the things therein represented are subsequent to the saints standing with the Lamb on Mount Zion. Now, when Christ comes, as I have shown in my second volume, he does not come direct to Zion. Moses, in his prophetic blessing of the sons of Israel, says, "Yahweh came from Sinai, and rose up from Seer unto them; he shined forth from Mount Paran; and he came with ten thousands of saints." -- Deut. 33:2. He comes to Sinai before he can come from Sinai; and to Seer and Paran before he can rise up and shine from them. He comes Sinai in the adventual epoch of the sixth vial; and to Mount Zion consequent upon the Armageddon overthrow, by which the. Sixth Vial is closed, and the Seventh Vial period is inaugurated.

4. The FOURTH STAR was Claudius Caesar. The famine mentioned in Acts 11:28, pervaded the whole Roman Habitable under this star. He reigned not quite fourteen years, and died aged 63 ................A.D. 51

The old serpent continued under the Bear, or silver, dynastic manifestation some two hundred and six years. Another change was then developed. Power set in from the west, and diffused itself "over the face of the whole earth. " The Medo-Persian Bear, or Ram dynasty was made to give place to Daniel's third dominancy, symbolized by the four-winged and four-headed Leopard, the brass of the image, and the four-homed goat (Dan. 7:6; 2:32; 8:5-8). These symbols represent "the old serpent" in the Era of the Greeks. Dominion was given to this people over the whole Dragon territory, which was enlarged towards the west. But the power of the old serpent was not to remain in the form of the four heads of the leopard, and four horns of the Grecian goat. The Greeks of "the whole earth," the sovereign race, were to yield the dominion given to them, to "A LITTLE HORN," or power; which, in relation to the Lion-Man territory of Daniel's first beast, which included the Holy Land, was to appear in the country of the Northern Horn of the Goat. This is evident from Dan. 8:9. The power, which was new to the Asiatic, came from Europe west of Greece; and planting itself in Syria, north of Palestine, extended its dominion eastward, and southward, until it had absorbed within itself the power of all the Four Horns of the Goat.

* When Eureka was written there was vigorous opposition manifested towards the Papacy throughout the countries of Western Europe in fulfiliment of the prediction of Rev. 17:16: "the ten horns which thou sawest upon the beast, these shall hate the whore, and shall make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and bum her with fire". This antagonism had been generated by the political philosophy of Karl Marx, whose Manifesto of The Communist Party, written in the same year as Elpis Israel, resulted in a revolutionary spirit being manifested throughout the Continent. There were widespread anti-papal movements and in Italy these culminated in the loss oftemporal power by the Papacy, anticipated by Bro. Thomas, but which took place in 1870 after his exposition had been published. However, in recent years, the Papacy has gained in influence both in Europe and the Third World; and this, too, is in accordance with the requirements of the prophecy. For John saw the Papacy at the epoch of its judgment at the hands of Christ and the saints, in a position of dominance over the "beast" and its European "horns" which in order to "fulfil the words of God" are required to give "their kingdom unto the beast" (Rev.17:17). In a very exciting manner, because of the implications relating to the return of Christ, the prophecies of The Apocalypse are being fulfilled. - Publishers.

On arriving at Saxa Rubra, about nine miles from Rome, Constantine discovered the army of Maxentius prepared to give him battle. Their long front filled a very spacious plain, and their deep array reached to the banks of the Tiber, which covered their rear, and forbade their retreat. Constantine charged in person at the head of the Gallic horse, whose impetuosity determined the fortune of the day. The defeat of the two wings left the flanks of the infantry unprotected, and the undisciplined Italians precipitately fled. The praetorians, conscious that their offenses were beyond the reach of mercy, were animated by revenge and despair. But they were unable to recover the victory. The confusion then became general, and the dismayed troops of Maxentius, pursued by an implacable enemy, rushed by thousands into the deep and rapid Tiber. Maxentius endeavored to reach the city by the Milvian Bridge, but he was forced into the river by the crowd, where he was immediately drowned by the weight of his armor. On the recovery of his body from the mud next day, his head was exposed to view, which convinced the people of their deliverance, and admonished them to receive with loyal and grateful demonstrations the victorious Constantine, "who thus achieved," says Gibbon, "by his valor and ability the most splendid enterprise of his life."

Thus terminated this war in the heaven. It had reduced the dominion of the pagan element; but had not given the Woman's son rule over all the nations of the habitable; nor had it cast the great red dragon and his angels out. The overthrow of Maxentius, with whom Maximin was allied, that is, the birth of the Woman's son; left "the earth and the sea" in the possession of Licinius and Maximin: who, in relation to "the inhabiters of the earth and sea," constituted "THE DIABOLOS." The signs of the times convinced them, that the pagan political power was doomed to speedy extinction, unless its fall could be arrested by the overthrow of the catholic party and its military chief. This they were determined to compass if possible. Hence, the two wars in the heaven, which brought "Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and sea: because the diabolos had come down (from Italy where he had reigned before the defeat of Maxentius) unto them, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time" - verse 12. This "short time" was a period of about twelve years; that is, from A.D. 312 to A.D. 324, when Constantine became sole emperor of the Roman world.

The Laodicean officials in their victorious declaration refer to those they style "our brethren, whom the public prosecutor accused day and night before the Deity." All passed for brethren untl'l the Spirit formally spued the state party out of his mouth. Politically, they might truly claim all the saints who had, for two hundred and eighty years previous, been engaged in the conflict with the pagans. They were all "brethren and fellow servants," as all democrats are brethren politically; while, religiously, they are scattered among sects of the most perverse and contradictory opinions. This is true of all other political factions in all ages; and it was true of those who uttered this great 'voice of triumph over the fallen adversary of their party. As anti-pagans, they belonged to a common brotherhood; but, when it became a question of religious doctrine, this political brotherhood resolved itself into two great hostile parties, between which no fellowship obtained.

Speaking of this "schism of the Donatists" A.D. 315, Gibbon remarks: "This incident, so inconsiderable that it scarcely deserves a place in history, was productive of a memorable schism, which afflicted the provinces of Africa above three hundred years, and was extinguished only with Christianity itself. The inflexible zeal of freedom and fanaticism animated the Donatists to refuse obedience to the usurpers, whose election they disputed and whose spiritual powers they denied. Excluded from the civil and religious communion of mankind (driven into the wilderness), they boldly excommunicated the rest of mankind, who had embraced the impious party of Caecilian, and of the Traitors, from whom he derived his pretended ordination. They asserted with confidence that the prerogatives of the catholic church were confined to the chosen portion of the African believers, who alone had preserved inviolate the integrity of their faith and discipline. Whenever they acquired a proselyte, even from the distant provinces of the east, they reimmersed and reordained him, as they rejected the validity of the baptism and ordination administered by heretics or schismatics. Bishops and virgins were subjected to the disgrace of a public penance, before they could be admitted to the communion of the Donatists. If they obtained possession of a temple which had been used by their Catholic adversaries, they purified the unhallowed building with the same jealous care which a temple of idols might have required. They washed the pavement, scraped the walls, burnt the altar, which was commonly of wood, melted the consecrated plate, and cast the 'holy eucharist' to the dogs, with every circumstance of ignominy which could provoke and perpetuate the animosity of religious factions. The narrow and solitary path which their first leaders had marked out, continued to diverge from the great society of mankind; so that they could affirm that when Christ should descend to judge the earth, he would find his true religion preserved only in a few nameless villages of the Caesarean Mauritania."

But, though the 1260 years of the sackcloth-witnessing of the anti-catholic remnant of the woman's seed ended in A.D., 1575; the other class of her seed, "the Holy City," still continued to travail in the affliction of its down-trodden condition; and to press on through the weary years assigned to it in the "forty-two months," or "the reed like to a rod" with which it was measured (Apoc. 11:1). The finishing of the witnessing by the secular element of the woman in A.D. 1572-'5, marks the lapse of nine hundred and sixty-eight years of the forty-two months; in all of which time "the Holy City" had been in the hand of the Roman Blasphemer. At the end of the witnessing in A.D. 1575, there still remained two hundred and ninety-two years of the forty-two months to be traversed by the Holy City. These elapsed, and she attains the A.D. 1867-'8; or, having traversed and completed an aeon or cycle, of forty-two months of years from A.D. 607, she is justified in looking for a speedy deliverance from the down-treading she has been subjected to in all that terrible and sanguinary time.

To stem this torrent of corruption, there appeared in the south of France, in the province of Languedoc and Provence, one Peter de Bruys, about A.D. 1110. He was the founder of the petrobrusians(*). His labors were successful. He taught that "the ordinance of baptism should be administered only to adults; that it was a piece of idle superstition to build and dedicate churches to the service of God, who, in worship, has peculiar respect to the state of the heart, and who cannot be worshipped with temples made with hands; that crucifixes are objects of superstition, and ought to be destroyed; that in the Lord's Supper the real body and blood of Christ were not partaken by the communicants, but only represented in the way of symbol or figure; and, lastly, that the oblatons, prayers and good works of the living, can in no way be beneficial to the dead".

The Paulician Remnant of the Woman's Seed were harassed by the ferocity of the Catholic Dragon for a long period. Michael the first, and Leo the Armenian, were foremost in the race of persecution; "but," says Gibbon, "the prize must doubtless be adjudged to the sanguinary devotion of Theodora, who restored the images to the oriental church. Her inquisitors explored the cities and mountains of the Lesser Asia, and the flatterers of the empress have affirmed that, in a short reign, one hundred thousand Paulicians were extirpated by the sword, the gibbet, or the flames!"

p.141 Such, then, is the meaning, or "mystery," of the form of words pre-sented in the prophecy. The Catholic Dragon, or Man of Sin power, in-corporate in the unbaptized episcopal emperor, Constantine, and in the ignorant and superstitious ecclesiastics whom he had associated with himself in synodical session, was the effluent pursuer of the woman, who rejected the traditions and commands of the tribunal which had arraigned and condemned her, and all her seed, as odious and pestilent heretics. Having lost their cause at Rome and Arles, the Anti-catholic Donatists had appealed for the last time to Constantine himself, who in A.D. 316, examined the whole affair at Milan, in the presence of the contending parties. The issue, as might be expected from the character of the judges, was not more favorable to the Donatists than the decisions of the previous councils, which were confirmed by the sentence he pronounced. Condemned by the Bishop of Rome, and by that bishop's imperial master, "this perverse sect," as they are styled by Mosheim, are said to have loaded the emperor with "the bitterest reproaches," and complained that Osius, bishop of Cordova, who was honored with his friendship, and was intimately connected with Caecilianus, had, by corrupt insinuations, engaged him to pronounce an unrighteous sentence. "Perhaps their complaint," says Gibbon, "was not without foundation, that the credulity of the emperor had been abused by the insidious arts of his favorite, Osius. The influence of falsehood and corruption might procure the condemnation of the innocent or aggravate the sentence of the guilty." Be this as it may, "the Dragon, the old serpent, incited to great wrathfulness by these irritating trials, which disturbed the serenity of the party in power, deprived the anti-catholic Donatists of their churches in Africa, drove their bishops into exile, and carried his resentment so far as to put some of them to death. This was the commence-ment of the Catholic Dragon's wrath against the woman, and of the war he waged against the remnants of her seed (verse 7). The immediate effect of these violent measures, were desperate commotions and tumults in Africa, as the Donatists were exceedingly influential and numerous in that wing of the great eagle. But these insurrections were regarded by them with the utmost detestation and abhorrence; and, therefore, though a persecuted people, we are not to attribute these popular uprisings in their defense to a spirit of recrimination in them against their "christian" oppressors. The Donatists Remnant had fled "into the wilderness" of Getulia that they might be "out of sight of the Serpent" - of "the first Christian emperor" and his catholic myrmidons, who had seized their property, exiled their teachers, and put some to death. Upon this, the Spirit of Deity stirred up the indignation of "the Earth"

But Daniel saw the saints conquered by the Fourth Beast. That is true in part. He saw them conquered by a horn of the fourth beast, styled "a Little Horn that had eyes, like the eyes of a man, and a Mouth that spake very great things, whose look was more stout than his fellows." This Little-Horn power subdued them, and prevails against them until the Ancient of Days come. Representative of this prevalance, we have the symbols of this thirteenth chapter. The Beast of the Sea, like the Catholic Dragon, who, since the cession of his throne, has assumed the uniform of Mohammed, is the enemy of the saints; and for the very obvious reason, that the Mouth of the Sea-Monster is the veritable Mouth of Daniel's Little Horn whose "very great things" John characterizes as "blasphemy concerning the Deity to have blasphemed his Name, and his tabernacle, and those tabernacling in the heaven." And for the same reason the Beast of the Earth is their enemy; for the Speaking Image he sets up is the embodiment of the same Mouth which commands all be killed who will not worship it. This command brings it into collision with the Saints, who worship no power but the Deity in manifestation. Hence war ensues between them and the beasts. This is the war Daniel saw; and both he and John testify that the Saints were prevailed against; while John goes further and explains the prevalence by saying their allies, the Two Witnesses, were killed.

1. The Huns, erupting from the Scythian region of the Alps, crossed the Volga, the Don, the Dnieper, the Dniester, and planted themselves in the vicinity of the Danube, and, therefore, styled Hungary, A.D. 370. Under Attila, A.D. 451, they descended into Thrace, about thirty miles from Constantinople; then turning westward into Macedonia, he wheeled north into Pannonia, a part of Hungary; and thence, passing through Noricum, a part of Austria and Bavaria, crossed the Danube and the Rhine near their sources, and pursued his march through Belgium almost to the English Channel. He then crossed the Seine, and descended to the Loire, whence he turned eastward, recrossing the Seine, the Rhine and the Danube near their sources; thence he descended into Lombardy, from which, repassing through Noricum and Pannonia, he again crossed the Danube, where he died at his seat of government. This was the course of the Great Blazing Star of the third wind-trumpet, the remains of whose dominion exists in the Horn-Kingdom of Hungary.

It may not be uninteresting to the reader to peruse, in their own words, the views entertained by the witnesses of Jesus concerning this Name of Blasphemy upon the Seven Heads, over seven hundred years ago. The following is from a remarkable tract written by one of them, in A.D. 1120, for the express purpose of vindicating himself and friends for separating from communion with this name. It professes to be an answer to the question, "WHAT IS ANTICHRIST?" which it thus proceeds to answer:

p.231 On their arrival in Rome, they would be, whether many or few

p.205 The fifth coin of the engraving I regard as a very remarkable one . It is a coin of the Vandals, about the size of an English shilling. Upon one side is the front figure of a man, standing upon an altar. From each shoulder projects a wing with four little circles in each, as if he were an angel, or were identified with an angelic mission. From his waist to his ankles is a four-square in which are inserted four rows of precious stones, three in a row, or twelve in all, and strikingly resembling the Jewish High Priest's breastplate of righteousness on which were engraved the names of the twelve tribes. In his extended right hand he holds a globe surmounted with a cross; and in his extended left, a rude representation of a trumpet. On the other side, is the legend GenserAu-gustus, and underneath, a star of considerable magnitude. The age of this coin is over fourteen hundred years.

Rendering honor to the Apostolic Throne and to your Holiness... we hasten to bring to the knowledge of your Holiness all things which pertain to the state of the churches: because we have always a great desire to preserve the unity of your Apostolic Throne, and the state of the holy churches of God which hitherto obtains, and unchangeably continues, nothing to the contrary intervening. Therefore we have hastened both to subject and to unite to the Throne of your Holiness all the priests of the whole eastern region. . . For we neither suffer anything that pertains to the state of the churches, although what is agitated may be man-ifest and indubitable, that may not be known also to your Holiness, who is the Head of All the Holy Churches. For through all, as it is said, we hasten to increase the honor and authority of your throne."

Succors arriving from Constantinople, Rome was delivered from the Goths, who raised the siege, and fell back upon Ravenna. This well fortified city was at length captured by Belisarius, who also obtained possession of Vitiges the Gothic king, whom he sent prisoner to Constantinople, A.D. 539. By these reverses they lost their king, an inconsiderable loss truly, their capital, their treasures, the provinces from Sicily to the Alps, and the military force of two hundred thousand barbarians magnificently equipped with horses and arms. Yet all was not lost. Totila the nephew of the captive king was chosen to succeed him; and, at the head of five thousand soldiers, generously undertook the restoration of the kingdom of Italy.

This cipher is variously stated in prophecy. In Dan. 8:25 and 12:7; and in Apoc. 12:14, it is written "a time, and times, and the dividing of, or half, a time;" in Apoc. 12:6; 11:3, it is written, "a thousand two hundred and sixty days;" and inch. 11:2 and ch. 13:5, it is written forty and two months. The aforesaid times in Daniel, together with his 1335, which is 75 years more than 1260; and the forty and two months of Apoc. 11:2 and 13:5, all terminate at the same crisis (*); at that, namely, of "the time of the dead." But the "thousand two hundred and threescore days" of sackcloth witnessing (ch. 11:3) and of woman feeding (ch. 12:6,14) do not end at that time; their ending being in the epoch of A.D. 1572-'6, marked by the Papal Massacre of Bartholomew's Day, which was 1260 years after the Donatist Trials, or flight of the woman towards the wilderness; the ending of their testimony in the presence of the god of the Roman earth; and the beginning of the first war by which the Ten Horns crushed them in all their kingdoms, A.D. 1685. For three lunar days and a half, which are equal to three months and a half of years, that is, to 105 years; for this period the witnesses lay politically defunct in the Great City; but, after the end of it, in the epoch A.D. 1789-'93, they rose again to political life, and ascended to power. This was 1260 years from the notable epoch of the Dragon-Emperor Justinian's acknowledgment of the Bishop of Rome as the Head of all the churches of the empire; and of the promulgation of a system of law adapted to the circumstances of the times, created by the establishment of Catholicism upon the ruin of paganism; and adopted by all the Horns as the public reason of their courts of law; an epoch of four years from A.D. 529 to A.D. 533, from which, I doubt not, are to be reckoned the 1335 and 1290 of Dan. 12:11,12; the latter being thirty, and the former seventy-five, years in excess of the forty and two months; the epochal termination of the 1290 being A.D. 1819-'23; and that of the 1335, A.D. 1864-'68.

France was declared by Gregory VII., to be tributary to Rome; and England, as also Spain, Saxony, etc., and Naples. The subjection of John of England, and after his deposition, the redonation to him by Innocent III., of the kingdom as a Papal fief; also his disposal of the German Emperorship in the case of Philip and Otho, are notorious. And Daubuz states from the letters of Pius II., that he proposed to the Turkish Sultan to give him a legal title to the Greek empire he already possessed by right of conquest, if he would assist him against his rebellious children.

"Because you are unlearned and ignorant," says he, "we are obliged to write to you rude discourses, but full of sense and the word of God. We conjure you to quit your pride, and hear us with humility. You say that we adore stones, and walls, and boards. It is not so, my Lord; but these symbols make us recollect the persons whose names they bear, and exalt our grovelling minds. We do not look upon them as gods; but if it be the things of Jesus, we say, 'Lord help us.' If it be the image of his mother, we say, 'Pray to your Son to save us.' If it be of a martyr, we say, 'St. Stephen, pray for us.' We might, as having the power of St. Peter, pronounce punishment against you; but, as you have pronounced the curse upon yourself, let it stick to you. You write to us to assemble a general council, of which there is no need. Do you cease to persecute images, and all will be quiet; we fear not your threats."

Charles the Great died A.D. 814, aged 72 years, having reigned forty-eight years, and as an emperor fourteen. His sceptre was transmitted from father to son in a lineal descent of four generations, and the ambition of the popes was reduced to the empty honor of crowning and anointing these hereditary princes who were already invested with their power and dominions.

Thus, the Spirit foreseeing that the Latin Episcopacy of the Western division of the Apostasy would symbolize its ecclesiastical dignity by a two-horned mitre and the fleeces of lamb, adopted them for the Apocalyptic symbol of a dominion to arise in the midst of Europe, the most striking characteristic of which would be its hierarchial and episcopal, so-called "Holy Roman," constitution. In other words, the two episcopal Lamb's horns are to the Beast of the Earth what the "Eyes like the eyes of a man" are to Daniel's Little Horn. The eyes and the Lamb's horns represent the same constituent of the dominion - the ecclesiastical orders of abbots, bishops, archbishops, cardinals and popes; a hierarchy of "Holy Orders" so-called which still support and over-shadow the secular thrones of the Latin world.

But interest in the question of investitures was suspended by other more extraordinary and important dissensions between the Church and the Empire. The pope, after tampering some time with the disaffected party in Germany, summoned Henry IV. to appear at Rome, and vindicate himself from the charges alleged by his subjects. Such an outrage naturally exasperated a young and passionate monarch. Assembling a number of bishops and other vassals at Worms, he procured a sentence that Gregory should no longer be obeyed as lawful pope. But the time was passed for those high prerogatives of former emperors. After A.D. 1073, the relations of dependence between Church and State were now about to be reversed; in other words, the time had come to erect the Romish Hierarchy, under its chief bishop, into a supreme independent imperial monarchy, after the model of the secular, but superior to it: or as it is Apocalyptically expressed, "to have an Image made of the beast that lives."

Similar canons were enacted A.D. 1215, by the fourth Lateran council under Innocent III., the most famous general council of the middle ages, at which over 1000 bishops and abbots attended, and ambassadors also from most of the kingdoms, in which the Lion Mouth decrees, that should a civil lord, on being required and admonished by the church, neglect to clear his territory of this heretical nuisance, let them be bound by the metropolitan and other bishops of the province with the bond of excommunication; and should he refuse to make satisfaction within a year, let it be signified to the supreme pontiff, that he may declare his vassals to be freed from allegiance to him, expose his land to be seized by Catholics, who, exterminating the Heretics, may possess it without opposition, and preserve it in the purity of the faith

At the time when the Apocalypse was given, the Sixth or Imperial form of government obtained in Rome. This was established by Augustus Caesar, whose native tongue was Latin. All the affairs of state were conducted in Latin; so that, until this language was superseded legislatively and executively by the Greek, it might truly be said in the words of Ireneus, “Latini sunti qui nunc regnant” — the Latins are they who now reign. But in process of time, the supreme power passed from those of the Latin tongue to those whose vernacular was the Greek. Had Irenaeus lived in the days of Justinian, he would have said, “Grieci sunt qui nunc Romanis imperant” — the Greeks are they who now rule over the Romans. The question would not have been of race, but of language. Was the Antichrist, or Man of Sin, to be a Greek or a Latin? Or, was the Image, endowed with the faculty of speech by the Pseudoprophet constituent of the Beast, to speak in Latin or Greek? In other words, was the Image-Man to legislate and promulgate his decrees and blasphemies in the Latin or Greek, as the language of the state? If the language of the Image-monarchy were Greek, then Lateinos could not be the name of the Iconic-power. Its name would then be Hellen, and its enigmatical number , or 123. Thus,

11. And the smoke of their torment ascendeth until the aeons of aeons: and they have no respite day and night, who worship the Beast and his Image, and whosoever receiveth the sign of his name.

If what the Beast's hierarchy teaches those that wonder after it as "the inward and spiritual grace" conveyed to the sprinkled baby be true, there can be no use for "the sign left by Christ." The clergy teach that the babe in the work performed, in opere operato, receives the "Holy Ghost;" by which it is washed, sanctified, regenerated, released from sin, made a living member of Christ's holy church, and an heir of everlasting salvation in the kingdom of heaven! Is not that parsonic aqueous manipulation of a baby's forehead a wonderful piece of sorcery or conjuration? Are not the spiritual performances of those clerical jugglers well styled "sorceries" in Apoc. 9:21; 18:23, and they themselves "sorcerers" in ch. 22:15? Yea, verily; they are those without the city "who love and invent a lie." In view of this "inward and spiritual grace" thus magically acquired by a babe, what possible use can there be in "the Sign left by Christ?" It can do no more for believing adults of the most Scriptural intelligence and Abrahamic disposition, than the Sign of the Beast is said to do for its worshippers. Even supposing a babe were a proper subject of baptism (the reader, not drunk with Babylonian Wine, will excuse the supposition by way of argument) the "reverend" sorcerers ignore both faith and repentance. It will not do to say that these are in the god-parents or sponsors, who answer for the babe. The doctrine of Christ knows nothing of such substitutional representatives in baptism. The "one faith," the "one hope" and the "one baptism," are a personal affair; no one can believe, or hope, or be baptized, for another; for "without faith it is impossible to please God; for he that cometh to God (and they say, "he, "the babe, "coming to thy holy Baptism;" and, therefore, in baptism, to God) must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them who diligently seek him." A babe cannot do this, and, therefore, no operation of which a babe is the passive automaton can be anything but disgusting and blasphemous before God. Besides, it is notorious that under the shadow of the archiepiscopal palace at Lambeth, god-fathers and sponsors are often hired from the neighboring cabstand at a shilling a head, to make "baptismal vows" for baby candidates they never expect or wish to see again, after returning to their cab from the clerical bazaar! These profane Jehus, as "sureties," undertake that the babe shall "renounce the Devil and all his works, the vain pomp and glory of the world, with all covetous desires of the same, and the sinful desires of the flesh; so that he shall not follow, nor be led by them!" But this blasphemous farce is not played only by these sons of the whip; it is substantially played off by all orders and degrees of the Beast's worshippers. All the royal family, nobility, gentry and clergy of England, have, by proxy in rhantism and personally in confirmation, vowed to do the same things. Yet all the world knows that their vows are unheeded and unperformed; for what else are these orders than the embodied "pomp and glory of the world" reveling in "the sinful desires of the flesh" by which they are led! They are the blind misleaders of the blind; for like priests, parson and minister, or by whatever name the public sorcerer may be known, who administers or performs the rhantismal conjura-ion, so are the people led. By proxy they promise to "constantly believe God's holy word, and obediently to keep his commandments," while they are as ignorant of what He requires them to believe and do, as if He had never spoken since He placed man upon the earth. The effect of all this upon papist, protestant and dissenter, is the inwrought supposition that they are baptized members of Christ's church, and heirs of everlasting life! This is what Paul terms a strong delusion and believing a lie (2 Thess. 2:11). They have substituted "the Sign of the Beast" for "the Sign of Christ" - or Rhantism of Babes for the Baptism of Adults, enlightened by "the truth as it is in Jesus;" so that the whole rhantized world is unbaptized and "alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart" (Eph.4:18).

But the Eternal Spirit hath invited others to a participation with Jesus in the Father's Name. "He that hath an ear," saith he, "let him hear what the Spirit saith to the ecclesias; to him that overcometh, I will write upon him the Name of my Deity, and the Name of the city of my Deity, New Jerusalem, which descended out of the heaven from my Deity, and my New Name; which no one knows saving he that receives it" (Apoc. 2:17; 3:12). This has been explained in the first volume. I quote it here to remind the reader that saints, who walk in the truth, have the promise, that this "glorious and fearful name" shall be written upon them, as it hath been already written upon their Elder Brother, the Great Captain of their salvation.

Seeing that it is the purpose of the Deity to give the nations to Jesus and his Brethren for an inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for their possession (Psa. 2:6-8; Apoc. 2:26) the proclamation, or prophesying again, to kings and nations, in the words, "Fear the Deity, and give honor to him," implies the surrender of all wealth, dominion, honor, and power under the whole heaven to them. Will the peoples of the American Continent be willing to do this; especially in view of the fact, that no unrighteous man will be permitted to hold the meanest office under their supremacy? What will they do with "the Monroe doc-trine" (*)then? Is the King of Israel to be interdicted from annexing Canada, Mexico, and the so-called United States to his dominions? Will he regard the screams of the American Eagle, or the roar of the British Lion? Not a whit. What are these powers to him before whom a fire goes, and burns up his enemies whose lightnings enlighten the world! At whose presence the earth trembles, and the hills thereof melt like wax! Now as to the precise time after Christ's advent, and the justification of his household by Spirit, in which this proclamation through mid-heaven shall be made, it may be remarked, that it is immediately consequent upon the smiting of the Assyro-Gogian image upon the feet by the Stone-Power, and before the grinding of its metallic and clay fragments to powder (Dan. 2:34,35; Matt. 21:44). It will therefore be in the interval between the Armageddon overthrow of the Sixth Vial, and the outpouring of Divine wrath upon "the Air" of the Seventh. This interval will be the period of this remarkable angel-proclamation. The Armageddon discomfiture of the belligerents in the land of Israel; that is, of the Lion-power of Sheba, Dedan and Tarshish, and of its antagonist the Assyro-Gogian confederacy of the North, at Bozrah and elsewhere (Ezek. 38:13,18-23; Isa. 63:1; Dan. 11:41-45) - will put Yahweh Tz'vaoth in possession of Jerusalem the Holy City, which he occupies as the Lamb with the 144,000. Standing thus upon Mount Zion, the Eternal Spirit, in multitudinous manifestation, is "in His dwelling place without fear, as dry heat impending lightning, as a cloud of dew in the heat of harvest" (Isa. 18:4). He is "still" as the calm and sultry atmosphere which precedes the tempest; and stands as the up-lifted ensign upon the mountains (Isa. 11:10,12); ready for the manifestation of those terrible judgments in the earth under the outpouring of which "the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness" (Isa. 26:9). In this still dry heat of impending vengeance, the Pentecostian proclamation of liberty and return is made; after which "the great trumpet is blown" by Yahweh Tz'vaoth (Isa. 18:3; 27:13; Zech. 9:14); the Jubilee Trumpet of the judgment of the great day. The angel-proclamation in midheaven is this Pentecostian proclamation briefly preceding the Jubilee Trumpet of "the Day of Atonement," when the Eternal Spirit casts up accounts with the nations, and exacts from them the settlement that is due. The proclamation in midheaven is Pentecostian, not judicial and vengeful. It announces the approach of judgment as impending, not in actual manifestation; and therefore invites return to God as the condition of liberty, or escape from the wrath to come.

This day so great and very terrible, is "the Hour of his Judgment" proclaimed by the first angel in midheaven. The judgments or plagues inflicted are styled "torment with fire and brimstone;" and those who are tormented, "them who worship the beast and his image, and whosoever receiveth the sign of his name". They are the plagues which cause Babylon the great city to fall. She falls, because of her wickedness in church and state; and of her sanguinary and merciless oppression of the saints and witnesses of Jesus, and of all the Jews and others she has slain upon the earth (ch. 17:6; 18:24). Jeremiah contemplating the terribleness of these "latter days" says, "Alas! for that day is great, so that none is like it; it is even the time of Jacob's trouble; but he shall be saved out of it. For it shall come to pass in that day, saith Yahweh Tz'vaoth, that I will break his yoke (the yoke of Esau's house) from off thy neck, and will burst thy bonds, and strangers shall no more serve themselves of Jacob. But they shall serve Yahweh their Elohim, and David their king whom I will raise up unto them. Therefore, fear thou not, 0 my servant Jacob, saith Yahweh; neither be dismayed O Israel; for, lo, I will save thee from afar, and thy seed from the land of their captivity; and Jacob shall return, and shall be in rest, and be quiet, and none shall make him afraid. For I am with thee, saith Yahweh, to save thee: though I make a full end of all nations whither I have scattered thee, yet will I not make a full end of thee: but I will correct thee, in measure, and will not leave thee altogether unpunished".

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But, when is Yahweh's body of dead ones "blessed?" Is it, as "theologians" teach, when they are deposited in graves? - when the worm is feeding upon them, and they are seeing corruption? Is this the time of blessedness? It may be to the worshippers of the Beast and his Image, but certainly not to the Saints. John, dramatically contemporary with the end of the third angel's mission, gives us a different reply. Referring to that crisis, he writes, aparti, "from now," or "from this time" It is the time indicated by Jesus in Matt. 16:27, saying, "The Son of Man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels; and then (topte, that is, afterwards) he shall reward every man according to his works". The time of blessedness is when the smoke has all cleared out of the temple; and the Saints have fully executed the judgment committed to them. The wrath of the Deity being all "filled up", "all the families of the earth are blessed in Abraham and his Seed" (Gen. 12:3; 22:18; Gal. 3:8). "From this time", the resurrected brethren of Jesus are blessed in the possession of the kingdom in abundant peace. The "war of the great day of God Almighty," with all its lightnings and "Seven Thunders" proceeding from the throne (ch. 4:5) will be hushed in millennial peace, when

Affairs having arrived at this crisis, the Deity determines to exercise forbearance no longer. This decision is evinced by another angel coming out of the temple from the altar, having power over fire (verse 18). The angel is said to come out "from the altar". He issues thence as the avenger of those whose blood had been poured out beneath it. Hence, the altar is symbolical of the apostles, prophets, and saints, and of all slain upon the earth, for the witness of Jesus, and the word of the Deity (ch. 17:6; 18:20,24;6:9,10; 20:4). All oft hese, accepted at the tribunal, are constituents of the avenging minister. They live again; and judgment being given unto them, they have "power over fire" - over that fire with which Babylon is utterly burned (ch. 18:8); that, into which the Beast and the False Prophet are cast alive (ch. 19:20); that, with which the worshippers of the Beast and his Image are tormented (ch. 14:10): that, which is mingled with the crystal sea; and that, the smoke of which ascendeth to the end of the "sixteen hundred furlongs". This is the "fire," or "wrath of the Deity poured out unmixed in the cup of His indignation," at their command. Their tribulations, sufferings and down-treading. have continued and accumulated for ages and generations; so that the cry for vengeance in the day when the Deity avenges his elect, is truthfully represented as the shout of a great outcry. The cry of Abel's blood, though faint as that of one man, was loud enough to reach the ear of Deity; hence the loudness of the cry proceeding from the angel of the altar, is not because the avenger is hard of hearing, but symbolical of the multitudes to be avenged - "a great multitude which no man can number;" "a great cloud of witnesses," of whom the world is not worthy (ch. 7:9; Heb. 12:1; 11:38).

Apoc. 4:5; 5:5-14; 7:9-17; 10; 11:15-19; 13:10; 14; 15; 16:15-21; 17:14; 18; 19; 20:1-6,11-15; 21:8.

This day of inspection is "the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of the Deity; who will render to every one according to his deeds" (Rom. 2:5,6). It is a day in which He will separate the satanic goats from the sheep who have heard his voice, and done the Father's will. Those slothful, unprofitable, and wicked professors are "cast into the lake of fire burning with brimstone," in which are destroyed the beast and the false prophet, by that portion of the last plagues which is executed by the Second and Third Angels, who have power over fire. In other words, the judgment given to the approved, who enter into the joy of their Lord, affords scope in the execution of it upon the Diabolos and Satan of the world, for the punishment also of the unprofitable servants of the house of the Deity; who are "condemned with the world" to the calamities of the last plagues, which to them will be "a sorer punishment" than to the adversaries at large (Heb.10:26-30).

10. Thou didst blow with Thy spirit, the sea covered them; They sank like lead in the mighty waters.

7. And I heard from another out of the Altar, saying, Yea, 0 Lord, the almighty Deity, true and righteous are thy judgments.

Having suppressed the insurrection by these severity’s, he proceeded still further to weaken the Austrians, before he executed the threatened vengeance of the Republic on the Pope. The only places held by them in Italy were the citadel of Milan, and the fortress of Mantua; Beaulieu having been compelled to retire within the frontiers of Tyrol. The defection of the king of Naples, who drew off sixty thousand troops, still further dispirited the Austrians. Fresh bodies of Germans, however, were arriving, and blackening the mountains of the Tyrol with their threatening masses. But before they were ready to discharge their thunderbolts, the storm was thickening around the devoted head of the Pontiff. Being located among the rivers and fountains of waters, it was not possible for him to escape the Outpouring wrath of the third vial. His waters had to become blood. Farrara and Bologna, which belonged to him, were occupied by the French. Four hundred papalians and a cardinal were made prisoners. Alarmed at the approaching danger, the government of the False Prophet authorized the Spanish ambassador to treat for an armistice. Rome, it was true, was an enemy whom the rulers of France both hated and despised, but with Wurmser collecting his hosts in the Tyrol, the moment was then inopportune for the prosecution of their well-merited resentment. Nevertheless, the "Name of Blasphemy upon the Seven Heads" was compelled to purchase the armistice at a severe rate. Twenty one million of francs in specie, with large contributions in forage and military stores, the cession of Ancona, Bologna, and Farrara, not forgetting one hundred of the finest pictures, statues, and similar objects of art, were the price of a respite which was not of long duration.

From the moment of the fall of this Tenth Monarchy of the Great City, two powerful parties enterd the arena, namely, the Girondists and the MOllntainists; and these parties divided the Convention, and by their violent and sanguinary struggles for the ascendancy, aggravated the "grievous and malignant ulcer" which was consuming the quivering flesh of the Image-Body in France. They attacked each other with the utmost inveteracy. None, however, of the measures of the Girondists succeeded. The Mountainists:f: profited ably by their want of the most ordinary prudence; and extended their views to the destruction of the Gironde, as well as to that of Louis XVI., whose condemnation to the guillotine was demanded as a security for liberty. The latter was decreed by the Convention, and executed January 21, 1793; two months nearly before the termination of the 1260 years, from Justinian's institution of the Bishop of Rome, ecclesiastical lord paramount of the Great City.

The march of Napoleonic rapacity, and encroachment upon the rights and liberties of the worshippers of the Beast's Image, gave rise to a fourth coalition, by which the wrath of the fourth vial continued to be poured out upon the sun

The Assembly felt that there was an urgent necessity of compelling the Emperor to decide. They regarded the emigrants as his instruments. They were desirous of anticipating this dangerous league of sovereigns, and of preventing it from having time to prepare itself. They therefore required the emperor to explain before Feb.10, 1792, in a clear and precise manner, his real intentions with regard to France, whose situation was daily becoming more and more dangerous. The answers of prince Kaunitz to the explanations demanded were by no means satisfactory. He even refused to treat directly, and the baron of Cobentzel was charged with replying that Austria refused to depart from the conditions she had imposed. The re-establishment of the monarchy on the basis of the royal sitting of June 23, the restoration of the property of the clergy, of the lands of Alsace with all their rights to the German princes, and of Avignon and the Venaissin territory to the Pope, such was the ultimatum, or among the last echoes of the "Great Voice," which brought about the outpouring of the first of the Seven Vials. All possibility of agreement was at an end, and the maintenance of peace was no longer to be expected. All that now remained to be decided on was whether to wait for commence the war.

Thus as the result of the terrible plagues of these vials the kingdom of the Beast was darkened, but not destroyed. The power of Napoleon, the Scorcher of the Beast, began to wane after he had executed the divine purpose of blotting out his Roman throne. He had divorced Josephine, and allied himself to the sanguinary and heaven-cursed pope-protecting house of Austria, by marriage with Maria Louisa, in March, 1810; and now, in 1812, with the Anglo-Spanish war upon his hands, he proceeded to precipitate the armies of Europe upon the Magogian empire of Rosh, Meshech and Tobl. In alliance with Prussia and Austria, which engaged to assist him with very considerable forces, he began the fatal invasion of Gog's dominion with a mighty host of six hundred thousand men. On the 17th of August, after a furious contest at Smolensko, the Russians retired from the city, which they left to the French burning and in ruins On the 7th of September the two armies, the Russian of two hundred and twenty thousand, and the French of a hundred thousand, met at Borodino. Seventy thousand Russians, and forty thousand French, killed and wounded, lay upon the field. Moscow, the capital of Meschecb, was evacuated by order of its governor, Rostopchin; and two hundred thousand human beings, of both sexes, and of every age, became wanderers, preparatory to its conflagration. Napoleon arrived at the Kremlin, and was now at the zenith of his fortune. Fire burst forth in every direction. In speaking of it, he said, "this terrible conflagration ruined every thing. I was prepared for all but this: it was unforeseen; for who would have thought that a nation would have set its capital on fire? It was a spectacle of a sea and billows of fire, a sky and clouds of flame; mountains of red rolling flames, like immense waves of the sea, alternately bursting forth, and elevating themselves to skies of fire, and then sinking into the ocean of flame below. Oh, it was the most grand, the most sublime, and most terrific sight the world ever beheld!"

"And they repented not of their works" - hou metanoesan, they changed not their old mode of thinking, feeling, and acting in regard to the worship and institutions of the Beast's Image. The judgments of the Deity are intended to alienate men from their iniquities, and to incline them to better things; and when they come to be executed by the saints, the world will learn righteousness (Isa. 26:9): in the absence, however, of such righteous executors of wrath, there is no hope of the world's re-pentance, but it will go on to transgress more and more, till the cup of its iniquity overflows.

"And the waters thereof were dried up" - The effect of the Outpouring of the vial is to dry up "the water" of the political Euphrates. The Euphrates being a political channel, the water flowing therein must be political also. Waters Apocalyptically signify "peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues" (ch. 17:15); but, in the text before us, it is not waters but "water", in the singular. The prophecy, then, doth not signify a drying up of population. The Euphrates represents a power of the Apocalyptic Babylon; and as the name is indicative of water flowing in a certain channel, "water must signify the power of the Euphratean empire, expressed, as governments ordinarily express it, by force and arms.

"And the waters thereof were dried up" - The effect of the Outpouring of the vial is to dry up "the water" of the political Euphrates. The Euphrates being a political channel, the water flowing therein must be political also. Waters Apocalyptically signify "peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues" (ch. 17:15); but, in the text before us, it is not waters but "water", in the singular. The prophecy, then, doth not signify a drying up of population. The Euphrates represents a power of the Apocalyptic Babylon; and as the name is indicative of water flowing in a certain channel, "water must signify the power of the Euphratean empire, expressed, as governments ordinarily express it, by force and arms.

Admitting, then, that "the Great River Euphrates" is the symbol of the Ottoman Power to whose empire it belongs, who can doubt that its water has been drying up during all the past forty-eight years; and that therefore we are assuredly contemporary with the outpouring of the sixth vial, in the course of which Christ reappears upon the earth? It is evident, that nothing supports the feeble remains of the once mighty power of Turkey, figuratively and proverbially styled "the Sick Man," but the Policy of the Antichristian Powers, founded upon their mutual jealousies and ambitions. The declared intention of France and England to maintain the integrity and independence of the Ottoman empire is evidence of its inability to defend itself against the strong. Its recent conflict in the little island of Candia illustrates its feebleness, and the shriveled condition of its power. The judgments of the sixth vial have made it the weakest of all the powers, except, perhaps, the other Sick Man of Rome. These two sick men, the representatives of the Two Little Horns, have both fallen upon evil times together; and both bid fair to "give up the ghost" in the same epoch. They have both in times past made the world to tremble; and now, in the righteous retributions of the Deity, they are made to tremble before the world. They have both been made sick, and made to lie at the gates of death, in the interest of the Saints, who are to supersede them in all the earth. The power of the Sick Man of Constantinople is to the power of the Sick Man of Rome, and his family of kings, as the Great River Euphrates to the Great City of Babylon. Christ and his Brethren, the Cyrus and Sanctified Ones of the 19th century, are the Divinely predetermined captors of this city. They are to enter it "as a thief", and to seize upon its thrones; but to enable them to do this with all the facility the situation may require, the Great River Euphrates has been dried up, and the way of the kings of the Resurrection-Sun duly prepared in all the region of "THE SOUTH".

1. Uptonus de Militari Officio, p.155, states that three frogs were the old arms of France, without specifying what race of kings.

Thus, by the revolution began in February, 1848, the Frogs were developed, and assumed the position marked out for them in the prophecy of the Sixth Vial. They were not to stand alone. If they had been destined to operate by themselves the prophecy would probably have read, "I saw three unclean spirits like to Frogs go forth unto the kings of the earth," and so forth. Had it read thus, our observation would have confined to Paris, where the Frogs are imperially enthroned; and we should have Watched for the going forth of the three unclean spirits from that city. Or, had the words, "like to Frogs", been omitted altogether, we should then have had no evidence to show, that the French were any more related to the "unclean spirits" than the Swedes or Hindoos. But, there the words are most ingeniously inserted; so that it may be perceived, that in the thirteenth verse, four leading political organizations, the French, the Constantinopolitan, the Viennese, and the Roman, are made the principal co-operating agencies in the work of developing the situation of the fourteenth verse. The working of these four powers, the French, Ottoman, Austrian, and Papal, in their political transactions with "the kings of the earth, and of the whole habitable, contemporaneously with the "dried up" condition of the Turkish power, is the GREAT SIGN MANIFESTED IN THE HEAVEN, that the Son of man is about stealthily to come in; and to resume the mission interrupted by his assumption to the right hand of Power (Matt. 24:30; Isa. 49:4-6). It is a sign of the times so manifest, that all who take interest in current events, not only can, but do see it. They see that the Ottoman Power is a Sick Man, with only two Strong friends, France and England, who stand guard at the door of his house to prevent assassins from breaking in, and plundering him of all that remains of his estate. They see also, that, for the past twenty years, there has been no great political question mooted among the powers, whether in regard to Italy, the "Holy Places," Austria, the Poles, Mexico, Rome, Denmark, or Luxenbourg, but that the French emperor has been the great agitator of the situation. All this they see, and wonder at. They term him a mysterious man, the arbiter of Europe, a man of destiny; and some regard him, ridiculously enough, as the Antichrist. Nevertheless, they fail to see the great signification of the great sign they observe; or indeed, to comprehend that it is a sign at all.

As Garibaldi told his little army in the papal town of Bologna, "the hour of a new struggle approaches. The enemy is threatening, and perhaps will attack us before many days are over". Austria seemed to be delaying the Zurich settlement in hope of something turning up. The Pope was very desirous to recover the Romagna; and the kings of the Two Sicilies, and the Duke of Modena, and other foolish princes, "seemed resolved on a pleasant excursion to meet ruin half way". But, about the middle of the year, a change came over the dream of Austria, weakened by poverty and held in check by the discontent of Hungary and the Tyrol. She determined therefore to postpone the renewal of the struggle in Italy. Advises were sent to the Pope from Vienna, which entirely cooled his ardor for the fray. The Austrian cabinet discouraged his contemplated attack upon the Romagnas, as, owing to their internal dissensions, they could not profit thereby. Nor could the young king of Naples aid him in a war; for his forces had more than they could do to uphold his authority in his own kingdom. This was being shaken to its foundation. Garibaldi had landed in Sicily, and co-operating with the insurgents, had driven the Neapolitan troops out of the island. Thence, he crossed the Strait into the Peninsula. He defeated the king's troops, took possession of Naples, and caused the king to shut himself up for safety in the fortress of Gaeta; which, after sustaining a siege by the Piedmontese for a while, he surrendered to the king of Italy.

"For the sake of truth," says Ii Diritto, "we must confirm the fact, that scarcely had the French arrived than the spirit of terrorism ceased, which the Papal Government had created in the country. The prisons in which three thousand suspected persons groaned are being emptied by order of the French, who have taken the political and military direction of Rome. We took up arms to put the Sovereign Pontiff in a state of command in his States, and yet it seems IT IS WE ALONE who exercise authority there".

This coming forth of the future constituents of the Perfect Man from the graves, restores them to an equality with the few among the living, who may attain perfection with them. In this co-equality they are intellectually, morally, and materially alike. That which is out of the earth, ek ges, is, and can only be, earthy, choikos. These coequals, who have all come from the earth directly or indirectly, are therefore "earthy;" and therefore also, until subjected to a further operation of Spirit, unfit to enter the kingdom of the Deity.

The answer to the question proposed is revealed in Isa. 18:1,2,7, which I translate thus: "Ho! land of widely o'ershadowing wings extend mg from beyond to rivers of Cush; which sendeth by sea whirling things even upon vessels of fleetness on the surface of waters! Go swiftly, ye fleet messengers, to a nation carried away and oppressed; to a people terrible from this and onward; a nation prostrate and trodden down, whose land rivers have spoiled. . . to the dwelling-place of the Name of Yahweh T'zvaoth, Mount Zion "- Herald, Vol.11!., p. J03.

13.These have one purpose, and they shall deliver their power and authority to the beast.

9. And the kings of the earth fornicating and luxuriating with her, shall bewail her, and lament for her, when they shall see the smoke of her burning,

On the same subject, the pope in his Allocution of March 2, 1841, Says, "as for the authors of these acts, who glory in being called children of the Catholic Church, we supplicate them to open their eyes on the wounds they have inflicted on their Mother and Benefactress". "We show you," he adds, "the patrimony of the Church almost entirely usurped; as if the irreproachable Spouse of Jesus Christ had not in her primordial right the faculty of acquiring and possessing temporal goods". What a different view the pope takes of the Latin Church! He styles it "the irreproachable spouse of Jesus Christ;" while the Spirit exhibited it to John as a prostitute drunk with the blood of the murdered Saints and witnesses of Jesus!

11. And I saw a Great White Throne, and him sitting upon it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away, and no place had been found for them.

The result of this denial before the Father, the angels, and the unreprovable (Col. 1:22), will be a terrible consummation of contempt. Not having kept their garments, they walk naked in shame (Apoc. 16:13), they “depart from” before the Judgment Seat with “weeping and gnashing of teeth,” and are cast into the lake of fire, which is to them the second death. This disposal of them is Apocalyptically represented by the saying, “Death and the Grave were cast into the lake of fire. This is the Second Death”. Others are also cast in the same lake, who had never died before. Such are the rejected vessels of wood and of earth in the House of Christ living in the time of his appearing; together with the worshippers of the Beast and his Image, and the receivers of the sign upon their foreheads, and in their hands; in short, all who have not been found written in the book of the life of the Aion; all these are cast into the lake of fire with the Devil and his Angels: so that the same fire becomes the first death to those who do not survive its judicial torments.

12. And it had a great and high wall, having twelve Gates, and at the gates twelve angels, and names had been written thereon, which are those of the twelve tribes of the sons of Israel.

which cometh down out of heaven from my Deity; and my new Name” (ch. 3:12). To have the Name of Deity, the Name of the City, and the New Name, engraved or written upon one, is for such an one first to come into existence, and then, to become a constituent of the things engraved. He becomes one of the City of the Deity, New Jerusalem; and in the operation is married to the Spirit in so close and intimate a union, that he becomes one body, flesh, and bones, with the Spirit; so that all the earthiness and corruptibleness of his grave-body is “swallowed up of life;” it loses its similitude to the nature of the first Adam; and acquires “the heavenly image” of the Lord from heaven.

11 He that is unjust, let him be unjust now, and he that is filthy, let him be filthy now; and he that is righteous, let him be righteous now; and he that is holy, let him be holy now.

But though the 1260 years of her sustentation in the two wings of the Roman Eagle were fulfilled, it must not be supposed that, because war was made upon her seed, and they were overcome and politically killed, she was therefore dead, and had no further part in the history of the papal world. So long as she has a remnant upon the earth, she lives in it; though she may no longer be found in her original place of abode. Exterminated in one section of the Habitable, her seed reappear in another, on the principle of being persecuted in one city, they flee to another. In the first 1260 years of her sojourn out of the Serpent's sight, her fugacious migrations were confined to the wings of his dominion. For three hundred years after her flight she was fed and nourished in the Roman Africa, and the Cottian Alps. At the end of these centuries, she disappeared from the African Wing of the Great Eagle, and manifested her presence in Armenia and Asia Minor; and when she could no longer find food and nourishment there, she migrated in the course of a hundred and fifty years into France, and thence into Bulgaria, and up the Danube westward and northward through Hungary and Bavaria. In the ninth century, the witnessing of her seed was no longer heard in Armenia, Asia Minor, and Thrace; but was more particularly limited to the Alpine regions of Italy, Switzerland, and France. In the twelfth century, the witnessing of her seed in these countries became so hateful to the Roman Catholic Church, that its malice against her became unbounded. "The rivers and fountains of waters," or those who ruled among the mountains and valleys of the Alps, were stirred up by the spiritual head of that communion, to shed their blood without mercy (Apoc. 16:4-7): nevertheless, the food and nourishment afforded her, enabled her to endure, and to continue her witnessing in these Alpine regions until the expiration of her 1260 years. But in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the power of the strong governments of Europe was brought to bear upon her seed. The two wings of the Great Eagle no longer afforded her protection; so that her witnessing against catholicism, and THE ANTICHRIST, whose power had now reached its greatest altitude and breadth, was suppressed in all the kingdoms, or Horns, of the Beast of the Sea (Apoc. 11:7; 13:1)

From this condensed quotation from Gibbon the reader will easily discern the feeling that existed between the Woman Jezebel in the heaven, and the Woman, by oppressive imperial edicts, caused to begin her flight into the wilderness. No enlightened professor of the doctrine which is according to godliness would think of looking for the true believers in “the heaven" where all was sunshine and imperial favor. "All that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution" (2 Tim. 3:12). This testimony is true and not to be gain-said, and directs us in our search for "the remnants of the woman's seed, who keep the commandments of the Deity, and hold the testimony of the anointed Jesus," to that anti-catholic community of professors, which has been ever since the great Donatist repudiation of the self-styled "Holy Catholic Church." and "Church of God," A.D. 315, an oppressed, proscribed and persecuted people - persecuted in some form or shape, if not by governments, by the machinations and slanders of scribes, pharisees and others; of all professors, in fact, whose foreheads are unsealed by the truth, and whose hearts, consequently, are unpurified by "faith that works by love" of the truth believed.

In this great voice, the whole brotherhood might to some extent concur. It was a deliverance to them all from the Great Red Dragon; but to many of them, it was only a change from his oppression to that of a new form of tyranny. They allude to the fallen power as the kategoros. This signifies one who speaks against another, especially before judges; one who appears as a prosecutor. The fallen power is said to have spoken against them as prosecutor "before the Deity, " enopion, in the sight of the Deity. This was literally true; for during the first five seals, which, at the end of the fifth, brings us down to the birth of the Woman's Son, A.D. 312-313, the Seven Eyes of the Deity, which are his Seven Spirits (Apoc. 5:6) were present in the ecclesias. In the first four seals, their presence is symbolized by the Four Living Ones full of eyes; and their absence from the scenery of the fifth is supplied by the phrase "and it was said unto them." The Deity dwelt in the encampment of the saints; and by His spirit, or power, "dwelt in them, and walked in them" (2 Cor. 6:16). Whatever, therefore, was transacted against them was done "in his sight," or "before his eyes. "He was therefore the Judge before whom the Dragon unconsciously displayed his malignity. He seemed to prevail for a time; but when the end of the "little season," or ten years persecution of Diocletian arrived, the Deity stepped into the arena, and judicially vindicated his elect.

The recent treaty of peace between the Diabolos-emperor, Licinius, and the Woman's Son, Constantine, maintained the tranquillity of the empire above eight years. A very regular series of imperial laws commences about the period of this treaty, the most important of which were intimately connected with the new system of policy and religion, which was not perfectly established till the last and peaceful years of his reign.

This "most splendid enterprise" was his birth as the Woman's Son. Before, he was an usurper and adventurer, but by these splendid defeats of the forces of the Dragon, and the acquisition of his throne and capital, he was assigned by the decree of the Roman Senate, the first rank among the three Augusti who governed the Roman World. He was now exalted to a position of great influence, which he speedily exerted in favor of the Catholic Church. He had not yet attained to Supreme God-ship in the Roman heaven, by which he could "rule all the nations" of the empire "with an iron sceptre." By the overthrow of Maxentius he annexed Italy and Africa to his dominion; but there still remained the territories held by Licinius and Maximin, the two other Augusti. The former ruled the nations of Illyricum; the latter, those of Egypt and Syria. But the destiny marked out by Deity for the Woman's Imperial Son, was that he should rule all these nations with an iron sceptre; so that we may expect to find that his career will be onward until he acquires the sole dominion over the whole Roman Habitable.

The Little Horn power was that of a rude and uncultivated people inhabiting Italy; and known in the history of that country, as Etrurians, Umbrians, Ligurians,Sabines, Veientes, Latins, Aequi, and VoIscians. About five hundred years after the foundation of ROME, Italy was subdued to the authority of this city of the seven mountains; and all these tribes came to bear indiscriminately the name of Romans. After the subjugation of Italy, the Little Roman Horn proceeded to conquer all the nations round the Mediterranean. It subdued Greece about 146 years before Christ. In 67 before Christ, it appeared in Syria; and from thence "waxed exceedingly great, toward the south," and "toward the pleasant land," absorbing Palestine and Egypt; "and toward the east," to the Tigris and lands of Euphrates.

5. The FIFTH STAR was his successor Tiberius Claudius Nero. This Caesar for the first five years reigned with applause, being provoked to good conduct by the perpetual admonitions of the renowned Seneca. But changing his manners, he sunk to the lowest depths of degradation. He reduced the greater part of Rome to ashes, and charged it upon the christians, upon whom he inflicted the most exquisite torture. He died by his own hand in the fourteenth year of his reign, aged 32....................................................A.D. 64

The time of the Seventh Vial is that portion of the time of the end chronologized in the words of Micah, "according to the days of Israel's coming out of the land of Egypt" -- ch. 7:15. It requires no proof that these days were a period of forty year. Hence, in the vindication of the Holy from injury and violence after the termination of the 2400 years, a judicial period of forty years will be manifested. The object to be attained in the vindication of the holy, is the deliverance of the holy and the host from the treading under foot -- "the transgression of desolation" -- to which they have been subjected for 2408 years to the date of this work: in other words, the putting an end, or accomplishing, to scatter the power of the people of the holy -- yad-am-kodesh -- Dan. 8:13,14; 12:7. The full import of these words is the restoration of the kingdom to Israel, in building again the tabernacle of David, that it may be as in the days of old; with the additional glory of Christ and his Brethren, the glorified Israel of the Deity. in possession of the throne -- Amos 11:11; Acts 15:16; 1:6; Mat. 19:28; Luke 1:32,33.

3. And there appeared another sign in the heaven, and behold, a great fiery-red Dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his heads seven diadems: and his tail draws the third of the stars of the heaven, and he casts them into the earth.

Since Mr. Bicheno's time several writers on prophecy have risen up. Of these may be mentioned Irving, Faber, Keith, Cuninghame, Frere, Bickersteth, Elliott, and others. But I am not aware that they have added anything that would at all increase the intelligibility of the Apocalypse. 0f this I am well assured, that from the days of Justin Martyr in the beginning of the second century, to the publication of Mr. Elliott's elaborate commentary, there has been produced by no writer, a systematic and thorough exposition of the Apocalypse that will stand the test of scripture, history , and reason enlightened by the truth. If there ever were such a work, it is certainly not, extant. A perusal of' a digest of their apocalyptic speculations, has convinced me that none of them, from Justin Martyr to Elliott, understood the. prophecy. With no other guides to the blind than these, it is not to be wondered at that men should give the Apocalypse the go-by, and, with a reviewer in a London weekly, conclude " that nothing is more ridiculous than for any one to arrogate to himself the power of interpreting the prophecies contained in Daniel and the Revelation; being convinced that it would require as divine and miraculous an inspiration to interpret and apply those prophecies as Was necessary to utter them." This is the conviction of' the general public, which, like the public of the third century that had no ear for what the Spirit said to the ecclesias, pronounced it " without sense and without reason ;" and denied that it was even a revelation. If so, then the man That composed it was the most extraordinary genius of the ancient or modern worlds. But it is not necessary I to defend the Apocalypse at this crisis. The Constitution of Europe for the past thousand years which it so accurately exhibits, is evidential of its inspiration. It was revealed to be understood by the uninspired : and that it can be understood by them is proved to a demonstration by the three volumes of Eureka, which are now, through the munificence of a few CHRISTADELPIANS, who desire to understand this neglected portion of' "the Word," and have confidence in the author's ability to expound it, in the hands of their fellow-servants and brethren. I claim no "divine and miraculous inspiration;" yet, I maintain, that whatever failures others may, learnedly have accomplished, the exposition I have given in these three volumes, however "ridiculous" and " arrogant" it may be considered to affirm it, cannot be set aside by a fair and candid appeal to the testimony of Jesus, political geography, and the truth of history.

p.205 Genseric was an Arian catholic, and the ally of the Circunicellions against the Dragon persecutor of the Donatists . Hence , when he conquered Africa and the islands of the Mediterranean from the Dragon, he proclaimed himself the Augustus of the Catholic world, as the word "Augustus" after his name, and the globe and cross in his right hand, upon the coin, evince. Having delivered the Donatists from the bloody persecutions of the Catholics, they, doubtless, gave him to understand, that they hailed him as one of the Angels of the Four Trumpets and the deliverer of the true church. Hence, the wings on his shoulders with four little circles upon them; and the four-square plate of Twelve Stones . All that Mr. Elliott has to say upon this interesting coin, is to correct Lelewel's reading of the name from Jensoe to Genser; but, to my mind it is a striking indication that the Donatists of Africa, contemporary with the sounding of the Four Trumpets, were sufficiently advanced in apocalyptical exposition, to discern the true character of the times in which they lived, and their own' ecclesiastical relations to them. The "terrible Genseric" and his Donatists clients, were neither Preterists, Futurists , nor Literalists; but rational interpreters of the Apocalypse as a symbolic prophecy of events concurrent with the conflict of the Saints with the powers that be, to be explained in the light of history. In this, Vandal barbarians of the fifth century far transcended the intelligence of the "ripest" and brightest scholars of our age!

p.232 would matter not, the Body of Christ in that city - the Holy Apostolic Ecciesia on the Seven Heads. They were a company of Christadelphians, Christou adelphoi, or Brethren of Christ, who believed into him through the word of Peter and the Eleven (John 17:20). This was the day of small things, which they did not despise. They had no temple, cathedral, or synagogue in which they could meet on their return, A.D. 33. Even seventeen years after they met in the house of Priscilla and Aquila, two Jews, who made tents for a living, Acts 18:2; Rom. 16:5. In this place, Paul mentions twenty-six by name, and alludes to others connected with them. Some of them, doubtless, were the original "strangers of Rome, Jews and proselytes"; but there is nothing extant to distinguish them from the rest. When Paul wrote to the ecciesia in Rome, he speaks of Tryphena and Tryphosa "who labor in the Lord." These may have been two of them, but there is no certainty. Whatever their names may have been, matters not now; they are no doubt on record in the heavens. They were apostolically "in the Lord," and were prepared to state "the truth as it is in Jesus," and to illustrate it, and to prove it, infallibly, or without making mistakes. This infallibility resided not in a Pope or a single bishop. There was no Bishop or Pope of Rome at that early day besides Tiberius Catsar, who was the Pontifex Maximus of the whole empire. There were bishops of the ecclesia in Rome; for these prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers," newly arrived from Jerusalem, were the presbyters, or elders, and overseers, or episcopoi, of their wonderful, though little, community, whose mission it was, first, to separate a people for the name of Christ; and secondly, to subvert the superstition of the capital. These saints, as the Star-Angel of the Ecclesia in Rome (Apoc. 1:20) were infallible teachers and rulers, whose infallibility was not of themselves, but of Holy Spirit ministered to them by Peter and the Eleven. This guided them into all the truth, and brought all things to their remembrance; so that thus they acquired a mouth and wisdom from Christ, which all their adversaries were not able to gainsay or successfully to resist (Luke 21:15).

"Antichrist is a falsehood or deceit varnished over with the semblance of truth, and of the righteousness of Christ and his Spouse, yet in opposition to the way of truth, righteousness, faith, hope, love, as well as moral life . It does not respect any one particular person ordained to any degree,-or office, or ministry; but it is a SYSTEM OF FALSEHOOD (Name of Blasphemy) opposing itself to the truth, covering and adorning itself with a shew of beauty and piety, yet very unsuitable to the ecciesia of Christ, as, by the names and offices, the Scriptures and the sacraments and various other things may appear. The system of iniquity thus perfected, with its officiating ministers, great and small, supported by those who are induced to follow it with an evil heart and blindfold -this is the congregation or composition of things (the Name, or Body) which, taken together, comprises what is called Antichrist, or Babylon, the Fourth Beast, the Harlot, the Man of Sin, the Son of Perdition, all of which are titles given to it in the Holy Scriptures. His ministers are called false prophets, lying teachers, the ministers of darkness, the spirit of error, the Apocalyptic Harlot, the Mother of Fornication, clouds without water, trees without leaves, twice dead, plucked up by the roots, wandering stars, Balaamites, and Egyptians.

2. The VANDALS descended from the Swedish section of the abyss, and entered Gaul, A.D. 406. They soon passed into Spain, and after occupying a part of that Mediterranean province nearly twenty years, A.D. 427, crossed into Roman Mrica, wrested it from the Catholic Dragon, set up an independent kingdom under GENSERIC, and ruled it until A.D. 533. The kingdom was founded under the sounding of the second wind-trumpet, when a Great Mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea.

In this thirteenth chapter, we have presented to us Daniel's Fourth Beast under the analytic symbols of the Dragon, the Beast of the Sea, the Beast of the Earth, and the Image of the Beast. The throne of the Dragon was Rome, so long as the Roman Senate existed there, and the Seven Heads of the Dragon were incomplete. But when this throne was "yielded," and the Roman Senate expired, the throne of the Dragon was confined to Constantinople exclusively. The jurisdiction the Dragon-Power was able to reserve extended over all the habitable Eastward of a line following the Rhine up to its point of nearest proximity to the source of the Danube, that is, half way between Strasburg and Basle; thence down the Danube to Belgrade; and thence southwardly to Dyrrachium, now called Durazzo, and across the Adriatic and Mediterranean to the Syrtis Major and the great Desert of Africa. All to the east-ward of this line was the Constantinopolitan Dragon, or Greek division of the Great Roman Eagle, and comprehended MCSIA, or Bosnia, Servia, and Bulgaria: THRACE, or Roumelia; Macedonia, Greece, ASIA MINOR, Armenia, Mesopotamia, Syria, and Egypt. This was a great diminution of the original Dragon dominion; still it was ample, and sovereign over rich and fertile regions.

p.142 - of those who, though neither catholics nor Donatists, had spirit enough to defend the oppressed against imperial and ecclesiastical tyranny, and that in their own irregular and violent way. This situation of affairs may be illustrated by the following supposition. Thus, Christadelphians where known are in very bad odor with "every name and denomination," against which they protest as the Anti-christian "Harlots and Abominations of the Earth." Suppose these were to lay aside all their animosities and strifes, and to combine to suppress and exterminate them with fire and sword; would not the "infidels," who have predilection for no sect, oppose force to force in their defence? There can be no doubt of it; and, though Christadeiphians deprecate, and would discountenance all violence in their behalf, the infidels, as in the first French Revolution, would make the quarrel with the oppressor their own; and the most horrible cruelties would probably be perpetrated upon the enemy under the pretence of assisting them. To a certain extent, such an event occurred in the epoch of the American revolution, when the infidel leaders of revolt against British tyranny in church and State, interposed between the episcopal church and the Baptists and other sects it was oppressing, and proclaimed an equality of rights for sects of every name. But they were not content with proclamations; they drew the sword, and watered the earth with blood for seven years, to establish it. Shall we charge the Baptists and Quakers of that day with appealing to the arbitrament of arms against the Established Church of England, because they, in common with others, obtained exemption from future whippings and incarcerations on account of their religious principles, by the triumph of revolutionary unbelievers? Even supposing that many Baptists and Quakers were found in the ranks of the insurgents, as no doubt there were, should we, therefore, condemn the Baptist and Quaker bodies as baptized in human gore? A community is not to be condemned as a murderer of its species, because of the delinquency of some of its adherents; if so, then most of the apostolic churches would have to be condemned as anti-christian. The case, however, is entirely altered where a sect, as the Catholic Anglo-Episcopal, in ts corporate capacity, condemns, imprisons, and puts to death as heretics, those who assert the imprescriptible and inalienable right of judging what is truth for themselves. Here the murder of "heretics" so-called, is the crime of the whole body; which, as in the case of individuals, will sooner or later suffer the just penalty of the Divine law. The case of the Donatists is parallel to our supposition. The indignation of the people was roused, and in the language of the prophecy, "the Earth ran with help to the Woman." The emperor and his party were alarmed, and Constantine endeavored by embassies and negotiations to allay the disturbances, but without effect.

A few years after the decease of Peter de Bruys, an Italian by birth, generally styled Henry of Toulouse, arose to bear witness against the corruptions of the time. He declaimed with fervid vehemence against the vices of the clergy and the superstitions they invented. He rejected the baptism of infants; treated the festivals and ceremonies of the catholic church with the utmost contempt, and held clandestine assemblies, in which he explained and inculcated the doctrine he set forth.

"Catholics who assume the sign of the cross ('the Mark of the Beast') shall gird themselves to the extermination of the Heretics, shall enjoy the indulgence, and be fortified by the sacred privilege, which are conceded to those who go to the relief of the Holy Land."

Gregory had no sooner received accounts of the proceedings at Worms, than he not only excommunicated Henry, but sentenced him to the loss of the kingdoms of Germany and Italy, releasing his subjects from their allegiance, and forbidding them to obey him as sovereign. This was another act initiatory of what might have seemed to be a romantic project of making himself the lord of "Christendom," by not only dissolving the jurisdiction which kings and emperors had hitherto exercised over the various orders of the clergy, but also by subjecting to the papal authority all temporal princes, and rendering their dominions tributary to the See of Rome. This Gregory VII. undertook with great audacity. He proposed to "cause all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive the mark" of supreme papal authority, in which he and his successors, "through the wonders which" their party "had power to work in the presence of the beast," were successful. Solomon, king of Hungary, dethroned by his brother Geysa, had fled to the emperor of Germany for protection, and renewed the homage of Hungary to the Secular Imperiality of the Lamb-Horned Beast. Gregory, who favored Geysa, exclaimed against this act of submission; and said in a letter to Solomon, "You ought to know that the kingdom of Hungary belongs to the Roman Church; and learn that you will incur the indignation of the Holy See (the Eyes of the Little Horn) if you do not acknowledge that you hold your dominions of the pope, and not of the emperor!"

Charles the Fat was the last emperor of Charlemagne's family. From his abdication to the establishment of Otho the First may be deemed a vacancy of seventy four years. His father Henry the Fowler, by birth a Saxon, was elected, by the suffrage of the nation, to save and institute the kingdom of Germany. Its limits were enlarged on every side by his son, the first and greatest of the Othos. In the north, he propagated the two-horned superstition by the sword, and subjected the Slavic nations of the Elbe and Oder to its authority. He planted German colonies in the marshes of Brandenburg and Sleswig; and the king of Denmark, and the dukes of Poland and Bohemia confessed themselves his tributary vassals. At the head of a victorious army, he passed the Alps, subdued the kingdom of Italy, delivered the Pope, and finally fixed the crown of the Two-Horned Romish Episcopal Dragon in the name and nation of Germany. "From that memorable era" (A.D. 962) says Gibbon, "two maxims of public jurisprudence were introduced by force and ratified by time; first, that the prince, who was elected in the German diet, acquired at that instant, the subject kingdoms of Italy and Rome: Second; But that he might not legally assume the titles of emperor and Augustus, till he had received the crown from the hands of the Roman Pontiff"(*)

"No sooner," says Gibbon, "had they confirmed their own safety, the worship of images, and the freedom of Rome and Italy, than the popes appear to have relaxed in their severity, and to have spared the relics of the Byzantine dominion. Their moderate counsels delayed and prevented the election of a new emperor, and they exhorted the Italians not to separate from the body of the Roman Monarchy. The Exarch was permitted to reside within the walls of Ravenna, a captive rather than a master; and till the imperial coronation of Charlemagne, the govern-ment of Rome and Italy was exercised in the name of the successors of Constantine.

There was no blasphemy too gross for papal acceptance. Whatever of this kind was offered to them, they accepted as their due. They claimed sovereignty over the land and sea, known or undiscovered; and the claim was recognized by the Horn Governments. This was exemplified in the Papal grants of the Indies to Spain and Portugal. After the conquest of the latter in the Far East, the king of Portugal sent an embassy to Rome, which arrived there and had an audience of Pope Leo, on March 25, 1514, and acknowledged his right to them. The oration, which was highly commended by the pope himself, is given in full by Roscoe, and quoted by Elliott in these words: "Listen to the orator of the embassy. For a moment he hesitates, as overcome by a sense of the majesty of him he is addressing." "Fear and trembling," he exclaims, "have come over me, and a horrible darkness overwhelmed me." Then, reassured by the Pope's serene aspect towards him - "that divine countenance, which shining," he says, "as the sun, had dispersed the mists of his mind" - he proceeds to the objects of his mission: narrates the eastern conquests of the Portuguese arms; addresses the pope as the Supreme Lord of all; and speaks of these conquests as the incipient fulfillment of God's sure promises. "Thou shalt rule from sea to sea, and from the Tyber River to the world's end;" "the kings of Arabia and Saba shall bring gifts to thee; yea, all princes shall worship thee, all nations shall serve thee;" and under thy auspices, "there shall be one fold and one Shepherd." That is, he explains the promised universal latter-day subjection of the world to Christ, as meant of its subjection to the Pope and the Portuguese discoveries and victories over the heathen, as signs that, that consummation was at hand. And he concludes by a solemn act of adoration to the Pope, as his king's Lord and Master: "Thee, as the true Vicar of Christ and God, the Ruler of the whole Christian Republic, we recognize, confess, profess obedience to, and adore: in thy name adoring Christ, whose representative thou art." A letter from the king of Portugal accompanied this oration, and was addressed, "To Our Father and Lord Leo X."

The only question, then, that remains under this head is, Admitting that the forty and two months are 1260 years, when did this long period begin? The answer is, that it commences at the epoch when the Dragon Power of Constantinople, then in possession of Rome and Italy, gave to the Roman Patriarch, as the Greatest Pontiff of the East and West, the ecclesiastical power the emperors had hitherto themselves exercised after the example of Constantine, and his throne of the Seven Hills; and an universal jurisdiction, as it is written in the second verse of this chapter, saying, "and the Dragon ceded to him his power, and his throne, and extensive jurisdiction." This important transfer of supreme spiritual authority was legally executed by Phocas, when he proclaimed Boniface the Third the Universal Bishop, with the right of transmitting the title, and the jurisdiction it represents, to his successors, "per secula," for ages. It is by virtue of this decree of Phocas that Pius IX. and all his predecessors are constitutionally "PONTIFEX MAXIMUS" of Belgium, France, Spain, Portugal, Naples, Sardinia, Lombardy, Venetia, Hungary, and Bavaria - modern names representative of the original Ten Horns converted to the Nicene Trinitarianism of the Bishop of Rome. When he exalted the Pope to this lofty position, in which he was above all possible episcopal rivalry and confirmed Justinian's acknowledgment of him, as "Head of all the churches," and consequently Judge of the Faith; in so doing, he gave the saints into the hand, or power, of the Universal Bishop, or Eyes and Mouth of Daniel's Little Horn (ch. 7:25): for all reputed "heretics" were turned over to him as their judge. All who were not Trinitarian Catholics were heretics with Justinian, Phocas, and the Bishop of Rome. They recognized none as saints who did not belong to their "Holy Apostolic Catholic Church." They were as ignorant in this matter as "the clergy" of our own day. Had ten thousand saints been arrayed before them with "the Father's Name written in their foreheads" (ch. 14:1), they would have condemned them all for pestilent and contumacious heretics, with whom no faith should be kept, and who ought not to be permitted to live. The truth relatively to the spiritual and temporal powers that be, styled by Paul, "the spirituals of wickedness in the heavenlies," has always been heretical and pestilent; because, in the mouth of the saints, it testifies against them and their traditions. It was to be expected, therefore, that, when the pope's claims of being Christ's substitute on earth, and arbiter of all doctrinal affairs, should be legally established, the saints would find themselves in the hand of a roaring lion ready to devour. He now claimed to be the constitutional and lawful shepherd and bishop of their souls; but the saints disputed this blasphemous pretension, and refused to accept him in any such capacity. They denounced him as the Antichrist, and lawless usurper of the titles and honors which belong to Christ alone, and declared that they would die rather than be numbered among his flock, or submit to his usurpation. Thus, the issue was formed between them: and there was but one alternative for them, submission or death. Hence, the power of the Universal Bishop was more "dreadful and terrible" than that of the Saracen Apollyon, who offered all catholic idolators, conversion, tribute, or the sword. But, tribute would not redeem the life of a saint; the ravening lion of the Seven Hills must have absolute and abject submission to his pontifical supremacy, or he would mercilessly drink their blood, and destroy all that belonged to them with fire and sword.

Having routed twenty thousand Romans near Faenza, he crossed the Po, and traversing the Apennine, laid siege to Naples, which he reduced; and then retracing his steps, laid siege to Rome, whose Senate and people he calmly exhorted to compare the tyranny of the Greeks with the blessings of the Gothic reign.

After this follows a statement of certain heresies then existing in regard to the person of Christ; also of Justinian's own belief, and its orthodox agreement with the dogmas of the four preceding General Councils of Nice, Constantinople, Ephesus and Chalcedon, in conformity with the creed of the Roman See - "Accordingly," says he, "all priests, following the doctrine of your Apostolic Throne, so believe and confess and preach." The epistle then proceeds.

8. And the fourth angel poured out his vial upon the sun; and it was given to him to scorch the men with fire.

11. Who is like unto Thee among the mighty ones (Ailim), YAIIWEH! Who like Thee glorious in holiness,

The judgment predetermined for the Diabolos and his angels, or for the slaying and destroying of Daniel's Fourth Beast, is all comprehended in the Seven Last Plagues, styled in the seventh verse of this chapter, "seven golden vials full of the wrath of the Deity." The territory of the Fourth Beast's dominion, upon which is developed the "fiery indignation which devours the adversaries," is the symbolical "lake of fire;" and when an actual wrathful conflagration, burning with the Divine anger, it is to pur to ajonion, the Aion-Fire, "prepared for the Diabolos and his angels," into which the unprofitable and slothful of the Ecclesia, or One Body, are ordered to depart, and into which, therefore, they "go away" to suffer Aion-torments in the symbolic period of 'a thousand six hundred furlongs". By the end of these forty years, "the tormentors" will have exacted all that is due (Matt. 18:34; Apoc. 14:10). In paying this their carcasses will have fallen in the wilderness, the victims of death a second time. "This is the Second Death: and whosoever" upon inspection, is "not found written in the Book of Life is cast into the lake of fire" (Apoc. 20:14,15): and thus "his name is blotted out" and unconfessed before the Father and the angels" (Apoc. 3:5).

But the Angelhood of the Altar, though possessing power over the fire, does not apply it to judicial purposes of its own accord. It appeals to the Angel of the Sickle, the Head of which is Christ the Lord. He being the Commander-in-Chief, all things await his mandate. Hence, the loud outcry must be understood, not as a command, but as an entreaty, that he would now "thrust in his sharp sickle, and "gather the clusters of the vine of the earth". Remembering their former sufferings in the flesh, which they endured without retaliation; and seeing that the day of vengeance has come, and that they are now in power, they long to begin the work of vindicating the truth, which cost many of them their lives, by overthrowing Babylon, destroying the Beast, and grinding to powder the broken fragments of the Image, so that these evil and accursed powers being abolished, they may enter upon "the rest that remaineth for the people of God", in which there is abundant peace so long as the sun and moon endure.

"No strife shall rage, nor hostile feuds Disturb those peaceful years;

(*) It is highly significant that the Papal doctrine of Antichrist identifies him with 'satan" who, the Papists claim will set himself up in Jerusalem as king, and attempt to rebuild the ancient Temple. This same doctrine is currently advanced by so-called protestants and evangelists such as Hal Lindsay, whose books advocating this theory have sold in their millions. The teaching of such men is preparing the religious world to join with the Papacy against Christ at his second coming. Christ, of course, will proclaim himself as King in Jerusalem, and announce his purpose to rebuild the Temple as a House of Prayer for all nations. This will be seen as a vindication of the prophetic anticipations of the Papal and Protestant doctrine of the Antichrist, so that they will, the more readily, join in military action against the one in Jerusalem in that day, as required by Rev. 17:14 -Publishers.

Nations are political organizations of men: to make a full end of such is to dissolve and abolish all national bodies founded and built up by the violence and craftiness of the wicked. A full end is to be made of all the nations whither Yahweh has scattered the Jews. This declaration is fatal to the independence and political existence of the United States, as well as that of all nationalities. The Second and Third Angels, which are identical with the Rainbowed Angel of the tenth chapter, in the great and terrible Day of Atonement, execute this Divine purpose of reducing mankind to a common and universal brotherhood; and of subjecting them to the imperial and regal sovereignty of Jesus and his Brethren. The Israelitish Nationality, however, is not destroyed. In this day of judgment, Israelites are "corrected in measure," and the rebellious among them destroyed: but a remnant will survive the refining process of this terrible day, and its constituents will every man return to his possessions in the land of the Holy One of Israel. Because, therefore, for the sake of his name, "all they that devour Jacob shall be devoured; and all his adversaries, every one of them shall go into captivity (ch 13~l0) and they that spoil him shall be a spoil, and all that prey upon him will I give for a prey. For I will restore health unto Jacob and will heal him of his wounds; because they call Zion an Outcast saying This is Zion whom no man seeketh after In the latter days Israel shall consider it (Jer. 30).

As to how long the period of proclamation will continue, it is not possible to speak with certainty. The work to be done indicates that it will not be an instantaneous operation. It is a work of "prophesying before many peoples and nations, and tongues, and kings." This will take time, and possibly years. The Deity is never in a hurry, but deliberate, effective, sure. We need not be surprised if ten years were consumed in the proclamation and the development of its results. Between the "memorial of blowing of trumpets" on the first day of the seventh month, and the Day of Atonement, there was an interval of ten days; after this pattern it may, therefore, be, that between the beginning of the proclamation in midheaven and the commencement of the Second Angel judgment upon Babylon (Ch. 14:3), there will be an interval of ten years. This would leave an "Hour," or month of years, that is, thirty years, for the judgment to sit in slaying the fourth beast of Daniel, and destroying his body-politic in the burning flame (ch. 7:11). These forty years after the manifestation of the Son of David and his mighty ones on Mount Zion, are the period of "the building again of the tabernacle of David, and of the setting up of its ruins, as it was in the days of old (Acts 15:16; Amos 9:11) the exodal period of the gathering together under one king of all the tribes of the House of Jacob (Mic. 7:15).

The Name that shall be written has certain novelties connected with it, that entitle it to be called "New". The Name is now doctrinally sealed in the foreheads of the Deity's servants, who are also immersed into His name. As the result of the sealing they believe "the things of the kingdom of the Deity and of the Name of Jesus Christ." They have now "no more conscience of sins;" but "the answer of a good conscience towards the Deity," and the hope of a resurrection for eternal life in the kingdom. But, though they have put on the New Man, and are predestined to be conformed to the image of the Son, whatever their present spiritual conformity, they are not yet "like him" in power, glory, and substance. This is their hope, the realization of which will endow them with new qualities. Instead of being corruptible, ignominious, and weak of body, this will be changed, or transfigured, into a like form with the body of Christ's glory. In the operation of this instantaneous transfiguration, the New Name of the Spirit is written upon them; so that that which in the state of tribulation is doctrinally written in their foreheads, is incorporated into their very substance by the Divine energy that subdues everything to itself (Phil. 3:21).

There is one remarkable absurdity not to be pretermitted in this exposition of the Sign of Beast. Its "reverend" sorcerers say that the water they use is sanctified by the Holy Ghost to the mystical washing away of sin, and that the babe, sprinkled on the forehead with this sanctified water, is released from sin, and sanctified with the Holy Ghost! Now, the question is, what sin is this ghostly sanctified babe released from? The apostle saith "sin is the transgression of law;" what law has a babe transgressed who is without speech and without volition? Every one not drunk or insane knows that a babe is not an actual transgressor; and, therefore, has no sins to be released from. But, as they refer to the fact, that "all men are conceived and born in sin," it is to be inferred that this is the sin to be released from - "original sin," as causing the flesh to be what it is. There is no other sort of sin a babe can be released from. To be released from sin is to be released from subjection to it, and from the penalty thereby incurred. Does such a release result from the subjection of a babe to the "outward visible sign?" Is it released from sin's flesh and its "emotions?" If so, how does it come to be sick or to die? The punishment of sin is death, a sentence passed upon all the descendants of Adam, eph' hopantes hemarton, in whom all sinned-Rom 5:12. Upon this federal principle, the babe sinned in Adam, and, therefore, falls sick and dies, although it has committed no sins. What a monstrous absurdity in the face of these stubborn facts, to say that sanctified water (supposing it were really sanctified) or the essence of holiness supposed to be in it, releases a babe from the only sin that can be imputed to it, seeing that it is released from none of the evils that sin entails! If the inward spiritual grace said to be contained in the outward visible sign released the babe from sin, it would be freed from "all the ills that flesh is heir to," and live forever. In such an event the Sign of the Beast would be a wonderful institution; but as it accomplishes nothing claimed for it by the "reverend divines" who practice it, there is no other conclusion that can be arrived at than that it is a sign characteristic only of those who obey and worship the Beast, "of whom there has not been written the names in the book of life of the Lamb from the foundation of the world"-ch. 13:8; 17:8.

12. Here is the patience of the saints; here they who keep the commandments of the Deity and the faith of Jesus.

It is evident, then, that the Man of Sin was not to be a Greek Power. Now, we have seen in the course of this exposition, that the Latin Imperial Executive became extinct, when the Western Roman Empire was superseded by the Seventh Head and the Ten Gothic Horns, A.D. 493. Three hundred and six years after, AD. 799, it was revived by Charlemagne, when the Latin language, which by decree of Pope Vitalian, A.D. 666, was made the religious tongue, began again to assert its supremacy in the state. Vitalian’s was an early move towards the ecclesiastical development of the Latinity of the Name. The Centuriator Bale says, “Vitalian sent monk-orators into England about A.D. 666, which from Christ’s birth is the number of the beast, that they might confirm waverers in receiving the papistic faith, and that they might sign their own faithful with the mark of Antichrist. He commanded Latin hours, Latin songs, Latin idolatrous and devotional ceremonies, and other frivolous trumpery, rites, &c., all to be performed in the temples in the Latin tongue, according to the Greek word Lateinos, which by numeral letters fulfills the predicted number of the Beast.”

Such was the course of events, the miracles worked by the unclean Froglike daemon-spirit that issued forth from the mouth of the Beast, 2400 years after the first year of the sole reign of Cyrus, the anointed Shepherd of Yahweh (Isa. 44:28; 45:1; Dan. 8:14); and, in things connected with Babylon, and his people therein, as his Divinely given-name imports, so "Like the Heir". The first unclean daemon-spirit from the mouth of the Dragon, had prepared the way in the Conference of Paris of 1856, for the going forth of the second one from the Mouth of the Beast in 1859, which in its wonder-working evolved the situation of 1860. And what do we see at this crisis? We see the Image of the Beast, the Modern Belshatzar and his cardinals, hemmed in by the Revolution; and his nominal dominion reduced to about 750,000 unwilling and disaffected subjects. Tuscany and the Romagna on the north, lying between the Roman territory and his constitutional protector, the Austrian Beast; and Naples and Sicily on the south, all in the hands of the excommunicated Victor Emmanuel: and the Great political Euphrates on the east, lying between the Papal Capital in the hands of the Frogs, and Mount Sinai in Arabia, to which the Destroyer of the Roman Antichrist comes, "dried up:" is not this a situation of affairs remarkably significative of the nearness of the manifestation of the Son of Man, the antitypical Cyrus; and of the fall of Babylon the Great, the abolition of the Papal Dynasty, and the establishment of the Kingdom of the Heavens?

Observation and reflection during the twenty years of the development of this remarkable Frog-Sign, have confirmed me in the conviction, that the exposition I originated in my lectures in Britain in 1848-50, and afterwards in Elpis Israel, was substantially correct. It could not then be proved that the sign was to spread itself over twenty years; though it might have been conjectured, that it would continue in manifestation until the thieflike coming of the Ancient of Days. We are now at this writing, in the spring of 1868, near the last months of 1260 years, during which the saints were sentenced to involuntary subjection to the Little Horn with Eyes and Mouth; and the Frog Sign is still in manifestation. My present conviction is, that the Frogs will continue to work even after the Ancient of Days comes, and until the gathering into Armageddon; and that their working is a Providential element of the means to be employed, in bringing the armies of the Dragon, the Beast, the Ten Horns and their False Prophets, into collision with the King of the Jews, and the kings of His rising. But this being in the near future, we shall not have long to wait to know the truth of the matter.

2. Professor Schott supposes the three frogs to have been distinctly the original arms of the Bourbons; bourbe signifying mud. This may have been the case. When their family became the dynasty of France, they probably assumed the frogs as their arms, being kings of the Franks, whose symbol it had been so long. The Bourbons arose out of the mud which is natural to frogs, and by the revolution of 1848 are deep in the mud again!

There is one other place, and one only, in the Apocalypse, where water is used in the singular; as, inch. 12:15, in the words, "the Serpent cast out of his mouth water as a flood after the Woman, that he might cause her to be carried away of the flood". In this place "water" signifies power incorporated in armies, Sent forth from government to sweep away, as by a flood, the objects of its displeasure. Hence, the water of the Great River Euphrates, in like manner, represents the military power of the Ottoman empire; which is dissipated by a process of evaporation, a drying up; a gradual exhaustion, so as at last to leave the channel of the river in the heart of the Great City, empty; and devoid of all power to impede, or interfere with operations developing in the south-eastern recesses of the empire.

There is one other place, and one only, in the Apocalypse, where water is used in the singular; as, inch. 12:15, in the words, "the Serpent cast out of his mouth water as a flood after the Woman, that he might cause her to be carried away of the flood". In this place "water" signifies power incorporated in armies, Sent forth from government to sweep away, as by a flood, the objects of its displeasure. Hence, the water of the Great River Euphrates, in like manner, represents the military power of the Ottoman empire; which is dissipated by a process of evaporation, a drying up; a gradual exhaustion, so as at last to leave the channel of the river in the heart of the Great City, empty; and devoid of all power to impede, or interfere with operations developing in the south-eastern recesses of the empire.

We have seen in the ninth chapter of this work, that the first and second woes, executed by the Saracens and Euphrateans upon the Greek division of the Apostasy, though they were of intense severity, worked no repentance in the Latins. They beheld anism enthroned in the City of the Great Constantine; and the Trinitarian Superstition he had vindicated by the sword in conflict with the Dragon, tram-pled in the dust by the Moslem; yet in all this, they did not perceive the Deity's repudiation of Catholicism; or, if they did, they would not be instructed and corrected by it. Thus, "the rest of the men who were not killed by these plagues," the Latin Catholics of the West, "repented not of the works of their hands" (ch. 9:20,21).

His retreat from Moscow was most disastrous. The wrath of the fourth and fifth vials descended upon the hosts drawn from the nations worshipping the Beast's Image with terrible effect. They perished by thousands from cold, famine, pestilence, and war; so that, according to Segur, only a sixth part recrossed the Russian frontier. He had lost an army, the most formidable, perhaps, that any nation had ever brought into the field. The wars of modern Europe had furnished no instance of so extensive and complete a destruction; nor ever will again until Gog himself shall fall upon the mountains of Israel under the outpouring of the wrath of the sixth vial: nor does history record any event like it since Xerxes' invasion of Greece, B.C. 481.

This question was determined April 20, 1792. Louis XVI, attended by all his ministers, presented himself before the Assembly on that day, and caused General Dumourier, then minister of war, to make report on the political situation of France. He concluded his recital of grievances by advising war against Austria. The king then proposed a declaration of war, which was received by the National Assembly with a deep and silent emotion. After the king had retired, they determined to meet in the evening, when the war was resolved on almost unanimously. Thus was begun with the chief of the confederate powers, that war which lasted a quarter of a century, which confirmed the Revolution triumphantly, and which changed the whole face of Europe.

While Austria and Russia were engaged in confronting the power of France, Prussia maintained a cautious neutrality. But alarmed now by the increase of the French empire, and encouraged by the fine condition of her troops, Prussia joined in a league with Russia to expel the French from Germany. Apocalyptically speaking, "every living soul in the sea" was now dead. The British arms had little employment. The number of ships and vessels of war in commission was truly enormous, being no less than seven hundred and twenty. The marine of France was almost annihilated, and the shattered remains of its fleets were shut up in its harbors, not daring to venture beyond the jurisdiction of the batteries. The British navy was employed in blockading the hostile ports, and nothing of importance took place on the ocean.

The consequences of this tragical event intensified the malignancy of the ulcer in regard to France, and scarcely less so to all Europe, being man-ifested in a fierce and devouring tyranny, and an almost universal war.

The plan of the French Directory for the campaign of 1796, was of a gigantic character, and menaced Austria with nothing short of total destruction. Moreau and Jourdan, with seventy-five thousand men each, were to press forward from the Rhine, and from the Sambre and Meuse, until they should be in a position to communicate with Buonaparte through the Tyrol. The part entrusted to Napoleon was completely executed. Moreau almost touched with his right flank the passes of the Tyrol; but the defeat of Jourdan compelled Moreau to retire. The fate of Austria was postponed, till the outpouring of the fourth vial; and the conflict was now renewed for the recovery of Lombardy.

12. And behold, I come suddenly, and my reward is with me, to render to every one as his work shaH be.

The prophets, apostles, and approved saints, having been all caused to exist incorruptible in being “clothed with their house from heaven” by the Spirit, are then regarded as the adorned bride, married to the Lamb, the Holy City, New Jerusalem, the Great City, “descending from the Deity out of heaven”. But, when John was carried away to see her, he saw her as “a city upon a hill” — upon “a great and high mountain”. When he became part of the New Jerusalem in Teman, she had not finished her descent. She had not reached Mount Zion; for it had not then as yet been wrested from the Gentiles. But, Mount Zion is not “a great and high mountain;” the mountain of Yahweh’s house, however, established on the top of the mountains, and exalted above the hills, with all nations flowing unto it (Isa. 2:2) is both great and high. It is “a great mountain filling the whole earth;” and upon the top of this John saw the Great City, the Holy Jerusalem, then governing the world “with an iron rod,” while she was descending and after she had completed her descent from the Deity.

13. On the east, three gates; on the north, three gates; on the south, three gates; on the west, three gates.

Perceiving, then, that “the First Resurrection” does not consist of the indiscriminate mingled people, who come forth from the graves in the hour of judgment; we proceed now to attend to what John declares the first resurrection is. He says, “I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded on account of the testimony of Jesus, and on account of the word of the Deity, and who had not worshipped the beast, nor his image, and had not received the sign upon their forehead and upon their hand; and they lived . . . This is the First Resurrection”, that is, the first resurrection consists of those who “come forth to a resurrection of life;” of the 144,000 redeemed from the earth, having the Lamb’s Father’s Name written in their foreheads; of the redeemed from among men, THE FIRST FRUITS unto the Deity and to the Lamb; in whose mouth is found no guile, and who are without fault before the throne of the Deity (Apoc. 14). These virgins, undefiled by the ecclesiastical woman of the Laodicean Apostasy — the Mother of Harlots, the State Harlots, and Nonconformist, or Dissenting, Abominations of the earth — with lamps well trimmed with the oil of the Truth (Matt. 25:4,7), together with the living who remain, and though mortal do not die (1 Thess. 4:17; 1 Cor. 15:51), these all, being “the firstfruits unto the Deity,” are apocalyptically styled “the First Resurrection”. It is not so styled in relation to a second or third resurrection; but because it is THE RESURRECTION OF THE FIRSTFRUITS. “Christ is the firstfruits; afterwards they that are Christ’s in his presence” — en ten parousia autou; and are “planted in the likeness of his resurrection” (Rom. 6:5) are resurrection-firstfruits also; and not only live, as “Death and the Grave” live before they are cast into the lake of fire; but, their names having been written in the book of the life of the Aion from the foundation of the world (ch. 13:8; 17:8), “they reign with Christ a thousand years”. Therefore “blessed and holy is he that hath part in the Firstfruits-Resurrection: on such the Second Death hath no power; but they shall be priests of the Deity and of the Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years.

12. And I saw the dead, small and great, who had stood before the Deity, and books had been opened; and another book had been opened, which is of the life; and the dead had been judged out of the things which had been written in the books, according to their deeds.

With respect to Italy, which now represents Sardinia, Naples, Lombardo-Venetia, and the Duchies, pope Gregory XVI., in an encyclical letter bearing date Aug.16, 1832, mourned over a tempest of evils and disasters. He says, "this our Roman Chair of the blessed Peter, in which Christ has placed the main strength of the Church, is most ferociously assailed: a horrible and nefarious warfare openly and avowedly waged against the Catholic faith". And he closes with a prayer to the Virgin Mary, "who alone has destroyed all heresies, and is our greatest confidence, even the whole foundation of our hope". This was published in the days of the Carbonari, to whom Louis Napoleon belonged, and whose outbreak was put down by Austrian soldiery. But worse times have come upon the harlot in Italy since then. Throughout that country, with the exception of Rome and the little patrimony held by French protection, the Roman Harlot has been made desolate and naked; her flesh has been eaten, and she has been subjected to a fiery ordeal, that has thoroughly impoverished her. Her property has been confiscated to the use of the kingdom of Italy, to an amount equal to six hundred millions of dollars; which is being eaten up in preparations for the struggle, which, it is hoped, will consummate the desires and ambition of all patriotic citizens; that Rome shall be redeemed from the beastly tyranny of priests, and made the capital of a free, happy, and united Italy.

10. having stood at a distance through the fear of her torment, exclaiming, Alas, alas, that great city Babylon, that mighty city! for in one hour thy judgment hath come.

14. These shall make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb shall conquer them, because he is Lord of lords and King of kings; and those with him, called, chosen and faithful.

A land of widely o'ershadowing wings is representative of a government of widely extended colonial dominion. It is hailed in the prophecy, which was delivered in Jerusalem, as a power located east of the rivers of Cush, or "extending from beyond;" and in its amplest Asiatic development, extending "to the rivers of Cash". The reader must bear in mind, that there are two separate and distinct regions known in Scripture by the name of Cush; the one, in Asia and now called Cushistan: the Other, in Africa, styled Abyssinia and Ethiopia. The latter is at the southwest extremity of the Red Sea; while the Cush of our text is at the north end of the Persian Gulf, where it is watered by the Tigris and Euphrates, and now lying partly in Persia, and partly in Turkey.

Furthermore, the grave is regarded in the Divine law as an unclean place, and defiling. Under Moses' law, if a man touched a grave, or a bone, or a corpse, he contracted a defilement, from which he could not be cleansed under a week. This was styled "filth of the flesh" (1 Pet. 3:21) and typified the real nature of all bodies coming forth from the grave. The "flesh" of these is that peculiar constitution of their substance which forms its earthiness. The subject of such a nature, however excellent a character he may be, or may have been, is materially defiled, or unclean. Therefore, nothing born of a woman is clean, even though it have been begotten in her substance by the power of the Spirit (Job 14:4; 25:4). Now, this is a principle of the knowledge revealed to us, and is of universal application. It obtains in relation to Jesus himself. In Gal. 4:4, Paul says, the Son of the Deity sent forth, "was made of a woman, made under the law". The body so made and born was therefore unclean materially and Mosaically; and could no more "enter heaven itself to appear in the presence of Deity for us" (Heb. 9:24) in that nature, than that flesh and blood should inherit his kingdom (1 Cor. 15:50). Would any one intelligent in the Word affirm that an unclean body, made yet more unclean by becoming a corpse, and therefore defiling to every one who touched it, becomes clean by being put into an unclean place, and lying there for three days, less or more? Would the simple fact of that corpse coming to life in a tomb which its presence had Mosaically defiled, and walking out of it, make it a clean body, or nature? If it be replied that it would, why then was not Lazarus, whom Jesus raised, clean of nature? If it be replied, "he was"; then Jesus was not the "first out of a resurrection of dead ones" (Acts 26:23).

It is then no longer a question of the Pope's temporal power. He is the SPIRITUAL HEAD of the worshippers of the Beast; and will so continue to be until he sinks into the volcanic abyss to come forth no more. His temporal power seems to have gone forever, and, true to its murderous antecedents, in its sanguinary departure, has signalized the last year of the 'forty-two months," or 1260 years, Divinely allotted to it to practise and prevail against its enemies. The revolutionary Frogs are in the very "Mouth," or government, "of the False Prophet," so that any spirit henceforth proceeding thence, must be, not only an unclean daemon-spirit, but also "like to a Frog". Doubt, then, is at length removed. We may now know that A.D. 607, is the true date of the confirmation of the papal institution by Phocas. The issue is now no longer between Italy and the Temporal Power; but between Italy and the Frogs. Shall Rome and its territory be, as now, a mere fief, or dependency of the French empire; or shall they become part of an united Italy? This is a question pregnant with great trouble to all concerned. M. Rouher, minister of state, has declared that the French government will not allow Rome to become the capital of Italy. This determination they are preparing to support by arms. They are at present engaged in making Civita Veechia an impregnable fortress for permanent occupation; and in storing up there abundant warlike materiel for whatever troops may choose to diverge thence upon Italian territory

Since the publication of the second volume, and even since the writing of the third was finished, events have, been progressing steadily and stealthily to the appointed end. The most striking characteristic of the times is the neglect, or indifference to, tending to the repudiation of, the Public WOMEN OF EUROPE, apocalyptically styled "the Mother of Harlots, and all the Abominations of the Earth." The women with whom the Lamb's Virgins are undefiled : Apoc. 14: 4. Behold the changed policy (it the Two-Horned Beast of the Earth since the overwhelming defeat of its hosts at SADOWA. This power, that formerly gave life to the Image, enabled it to speak, and caused that as many a, would not worship it should be killed, has now taken almost at I the life out of it, so that it can no longer speak in terror to the worshipers of the boost in all the Austrian Empire. Territorial continuity with " St. Peter's patrimony " being interrupted, through the intervention of the revolutionary 'kingdom of Italy, the Concordat, the political bond between " His HOLINESS " and "His Apostolic Majesty," is dissevered, and the worshipers of the beast are freed from the audacious inspection. and profane decrees, of the "EYES like the eyes of a man and tile MOUTH speaking great things and blasphemies." inspired by "the Spirit of the Age," which is "the Spirit of Life from the Deity" that entered into the slain prophets, who ascended to power in 1789, the Reichsrath, or Imperial Legislature of Austria, practically abolished one of the seven sacraments of the Church of Rome in authorizing "civil marriage." Besides this, it proclaimed "liberty of worship" to all sects; and has taken tile education of the people out of the hands of an accursed priesthood, and given it to schoolmasters of their own choice. By the Concordat the Roman Pontiff King, was above the emperor in all the spiritual affairs of the Austrian Empire; throughout which, all such things were "given into his hand" as absolutely as when Justinian made him "Head over all the Churches" of his estate. But behold how great a reverse of fortune hath befallen the "UNIVERSAL BISHOP" in this False Prophet section of his dominion. What doth all this mean? What else than that the 1335 and 1260 years of his ascendancy from the times of Justinian and Phocas, are come to an end; and that he is doomed no longer to "practise and prosper" to the ruin of the saints, and the quenching of the Spirit of' the Age; which is a spirit of liberalism, and of democratic hostility to the old order of things in Church and State -- a spirit that may be impeded, but cannot be extinguished till the manifestation of THE ANCIENT OF DAYS.

4. And the dragon stood in the presence of the woman about to bring forth, that when she may have brought forth, he might devour her offspring.

The work then of the seventh vial will be the setting up of the kingdom by the ELOAHH of the Heavens (Dan. 2:44). This work cannot be fully accomplished until the now widely scattered tribes of Israel are concentrated in the Holy Land, and restored to the independence they enjoyed under David and Solomon. No prosperity in the "breadth of the Great City spiritually called Sodom and Egypt," can compensate the loss of this. They must be brought out of this Egypt in the seventh vial section of the time of the end, as was the generation out of the literal Egypt in the days of Moses, "with a mighty hand, and with a stretched out arm, and with fury poured out" (Ezek. 20:33). In other words, the seventh vial is the exodal period of Israel's return from their enemies' lands; and of the punishment of all peoples who have burdened themselves in any way with the Holy City (Zech. 12:2-3; Rev. 11:2). In the accomplishing to scatter the power of the people of the holy in this second exodus of the nation, the Spirit, who will co-work with the saints in their seventh vial execution of the judgments written, says in the testimony already cited from Ezekiel, "I will bring you out from the peoples, and will gather you out of the countries wherein ye are scattered, with a mighty hand and with a stretched out arm, and with fury poured out. And I will bring you into the wilderness of the peoples, and there will I plead with you face to face; like as I pleaded with your fathers in the wilderness of the land of Egypt, so will I plead with you, saith the Lord God. And I will cause you to pass under the rod, and I will bring you into the bond of the covenant. And I will purge out from among you the rebels, and them that trangress against me: I will bring them forth out of the country where they sojourn, and they shall not enter into the land of Israel. " But concerning Israel cleansed from the rebellious; and, by continuing no longer in unbelief, prepared for the blessedness promised in Abraham and his seed, He saith, "in mine holy mountain, in the mountain of the heighth of Israel, there shall all the house of Israel all of them in the land, serve Me: there will I accept them, and there will I require your offerings, and the first-fruits of your oblations with all your holy things. I will accept you with your sweet savour when I bring you out from the peoples, and gather you out of the countries wherein ye have been scattered; and I will be sanctified in you before the nations. And ye shall know that I (the Anointed Jesus) am YAHWEH when I shall bring you into the land of Israel, into the country for the which I lifted up My hand to give it to your fathers." This regeneration of the twelve tribes of Israel, and resettlement of them in the Holy Land, is a grand and important result of the seventh vial outpouring of judgment. When it is consummated, "Yahweh's servant David will be a Prince among them, and be their Shepherd." They will have stood upon their feet an exceeding great army in their enemies' lands; and from thence have opened for themselves a way by divine cooperation into the land of Israel, upon the mountains of which they will be, for the first time since the fourth year of Rehoboam, B.C. 982, one nation, and one kingdom, under one king. "They shall no more be two nations neither shall they be divided into two kingdoms any more at all. " The sanctuary will be in the midst of them, and the tabernacle also; and Yahweh will be their Elohim, and they shall be His people (Ezek. 34:23; 37:10,11,12; 22-27). This restitution of all things pertains to the seventh vial, which embraces "the times of" that "restitution of all things which the Deity hath spoken by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the days of Moses" (Acts 3:21). Jacob is saved out of his trouble; the yoke of Esau is at length broken from off his neck; and the first dominion, the kingdom, has come to the daughter of Jerusalem (Gen. 27:40; Mic. 4:8). The vindication of the holy is complete.

7. The SEVENTH STAR was Otho, remarkable for his wickedness, and the shortness of his reign, which scarcely exceeded three month s. He died by his own hand, and was succeeded by a man of incontinent gluttony.

Thus the Little Horn became an exceedingly great power. Its empire, which, seven hundred and thirty years before the birth of Jesus, was confined to the walls of a small city, in the second century of our era, was about two thousand miles in breadth, from the walls of Antonine and the northern limits of Dacia, to Mount Atlas and the tropic of Cancer; it extended in length more than three thousand miles from the Western Ocean to the Euphrates, and was supposed to contain 6,000,000 square miles. The number of subjects, who, either as citizens, provincials, or slaves, observed the rule of Rome, is estimated at 120,000,000.

About five months after the conquest of Italy, in March, A.D. 313, Constantine made a solemn and authentic declaration of his sentiments, by the celebrated Edict of Milan, which restored peace to the Catholic Church. After the death of Maximin, it was received as a general and fundamental law of the Roman world. Constantine, with the ready, but not hearty, concurrence of Licinius, provided for the restitution of all the civil and religious rights of which the catholics had been deprived. It was enacted that the places of worship, and public lands, which had been confiscated, should be restored to the Catholic Church, without dispute, without delay, and without expense; and this severe injunction was accompanied with a gracious promise, that if any of the purchasers had paid a fair and adequate price, they should be indemnified from the imperial treasury. The two emperors proclaimed to the world, that they had granted a free and absolute power to the catholics, and to all others, of following the religion which each individual thinks proper to prefer, to which he has addicted his mind, and which he may deem the best adapted to his own use. Thus, as expressed by Eusebius, while the East was involved in the shades of infernal darkness, the auspicious rays of celestial light warmed and illuminated the provinces of the West. The piety of Constantine was cited as an unexceptionable proof of the justice of his arms; and his use of victory in their favor confirmed the opinion of the catholics, that their hero was inspired, and conducted, by the Lord of hosts.

In the exalted state of glory to which he had attained A.D. 323, it was impossible that Constantine should any longer endure a partner in the empire. Confiding in the superiority of his genius and military power, he determined to exert them for the ejection of "the dragon and his angels out of the heaven." For this purpose he commenced the war predicted in the seventh verse. Licinius prepared himself for the contest, collected the forces of his Eastern Third, the "Angels" of his power, and soon filled the plains of Adrianople with one hundred and fifty thousand f6ot, and fifteen thousand horse; and the straits of the Hellespont with a fleet of three hundred and fifty galleys of three ranks of oars. The troops of Constantine, the Michael of the situation, amounted to a hundred and twenty thousand horse and foot. Constantine's naval preparations were in every respect much inferior to those of Licinius. They did not exceed two hundred small vessels. With this naval preponderance he might have carried an offensive war into the centre of his rival's dominions, and so have changed the whole face of it. But the prudence of Licinius was at fault in contending with "the Michael and his angels," whose attack he awaited in a fortified camp near Adrianople. Constantine's advance from Thessalonica was arrested by the broad and rapid Hebrus, the steep ascent from which to the city was filled by the army of Licinius. Here were now assembled Licinius and Martinianus, whom he had made Caesar, "the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chiliarchs (chiefs of a thousand men) and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every freeman" (Apoc. 6:15). This was the great day of the Lamb's wrath upon the pagan dragon-tail, and the third part of the stars of the Roman firmament that followed it. "The Michael and his angels," the executioners of the Lamb's wrath, "waged war against the Dragon." Many days were spent in doubtful and distant skirmishes; but at length the obstacles of the passage and the attack were removed by the intrepid conduct of Constantine. Zosimus, an historian who was the partial enemy of his fame, relates a wonderful exploit of Constantine. He says that the valiant emperor threw himself into the Hebrus, accompanied only by twelve horsemen, and that by the effort or terror of his invincible arm, he broke, slaughtered, and put to flight a host of one hundred and fifty thousand men. Other causes combined to develop this result; for while he was perplexing Licinius with his artful evolution’s, a body of five thousand archers deployed from a thick wood in his rear, and made it necessary for him to take up a new position in the plain. The advantage of position being lost, the contest was no longer equal. "The Dragon fought, and his angels, but prevailed not". His confused multitude of new levies was easily vanquished by "the Michael," and his experienced veterans of the West. Thirty-four thousand of the Dragon's forces were slain; their fortified camp was taken by assault on the evening of the battle. The greater part of the fugitives "hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains." The logic of their flight hither was that they might hide from the conqueror; and the language of it was, "Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne" (Apoc. 6:16). Next day they came forth from their hiding places, and surrendered themselves to the discretion of the victor.

The victory of the souls weltering at the altar base is attributed by the "great voice" "to the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony. "These brethren, "who were slain for the word of the Deity, and for the testimony which they held" (Apoc. 6:9) were brethren, of whom those in place and power giving utterance to the great voice, were not worthy. "They loved not their life until death" laid them at the altar base. "The word of the Deity," in the prophecy of the fifth seal, is parallel to "the blood of the Lamb," in the great voice. The official utterers of this voice did not venture to say, "WE have overcome the fallen power by the word of the Deity concerning the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of our testimony." They knew very well that they had overcome him by hard fighting. No; the honor and glory of the victory was not due to them who drew the sword; but to those faithful brethren, who had so leavened the Roman world with the truth, as to make the strongholds of paganism no longer tenable. "The blood of the Lamb," as opposed to the blood of idol-sacrifices, was the great theme of "the word of the Deity." The word of their testimony demonstrated the efficacy of the one; and the inutility and utter worthlessness of the other. Every pagan convinced by the word and their reasoning in exposition of it, was alienated from the party of the Dragon, and added to the faithful. The threatenings and torments unto death, inflicted upon them by the pagan authorities, could not put their testimony to silence. Where one fell others stepped in and stopped the breach; so that, "the blood of the witnesses became the seed of the church." Thus, the power of the word accumulated, until society, but superficially acquainted with "the deep things of Deity," had become too much enlightened any longer to tolerate the licentiousness and absurdity of the old superstition. Therefore, having no conscientious scruples as to war, they repudiated the passivity of the faithful; and having found in Constantine an ambitious politician and skillful general suited to their purpose, they unsheathed the sword against the idols, and cried, "Victory or Death." As we have seen, they gained the victory; and in the great voice of triumph, clothed the memory of their non-resisting predecessors in the conflict with the "white robes of purity and truth" (Apoc. 6:11). The victims slain by the fallen power had borne the heat and burden of the conflict; and the catholic church entered into their labors. The "great voice" called upon all catholics in power to rejoice at this result; saying, "Rejoice, 0 heavens, and ye that tent therein!" They are addressed as hoi skenountes, dwellers, or rather, sojourners in a tent. This is a very temporary indwelling. They were not permanently established there. There tenantcy was transitory: the mere shadow of the holding to which the slain victors shall attain in "the time of the dead, when they shall be judged, and the reward shall be given to them," with the "white robes" of incorruption and eternal life. These will not then merely "tent" in the heavens of the conquered world. When they enter there, they become the pillars of the Divine temple, and go out no more (Apoc. 3:12): they possess the king-dom for the Olahm, even for the Olahm, and Beyond (Dan. 7:18). Then, not only will the heavens rejoice, but all the earth will be glad. This was not the case in the time of the "great voice;" for, while it called upon the heavens to rejoice, and those that tented in them, it gave no invitation to the inhabiters of the earth and sea to join in the joyousness of the time. But when the great salvation, and the power, and the kingdom of the Deity, and the dominion of His Christ, shall exist in the very image, then "every creature which is in the heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, shall say, Blessing and honor and glory and power, unto him that sitteth on the throne, and unto the Lamb for the aeons of the aeons (Apoc. 5:13), for all will then be blessed in Abraham and his seed.

This was the death of the witnessing of the politico-ecclesiastical remnant of her seed. The war upon her that ultimated in this result, continued over a century after the termination of her aeon (aion) of 1260 years. From A.D. 1685 to A.D. 1790, her seed's voice against the Roman Antichrist was death-stricken in all the Ten-Horns of the Beast of the Sea. During this period of three lunar days and a half of years, her anti-catholic communities lay voiceless in the streets, or kingdoms, of the Great City, very much to the joy and mirthfulness of the priests and rulers of the Horn-Powers, especially of the VICE-GOD of "Christendom" and his Cardinals, whose sanguinary domination is now tottering to its fall. These priestly and besotted tyrants "rejoiced over them, and made merry," because the tormenting testimony of her seed was, as they thought, effectually and finally silenced (Apoc. 11:4-10). But they knew not the purposes of Him who doeth all things after the counsel of His own will. They knew not that a great revival of this tormenting witnessing had been decreed; and that their joyous mirth was doomed to set in mourning, lamentation, and woe. For, after the expiration of the three lunar days and a half of years, that is, of 105 years; marked also by the termination of 1260 years from the epoch A.D. 530-533, in which the Dragon-Power "acknowledged" the bishop of Rome as "a god" over all the spiritual affairs of his dominion (Dan. 11:39): after the end of his cycle, "the Spirit of life from Deity was to enter into them, and they were to stand upon their feet." In the epoch of A.D. 1789-'93, this came to pass in the birth of what the terrified "foul spirits" and "unclean and hateful birds" of the Roman "cage," denominate "THE REVOLUTION." This fearful power, which is now sternly and threateningly glaring in the face of the trembling demon-and-idol-worshippers of the Roman "hold" (Apoc. 18:2), is the organized witnessing of the politico-ecclesiastical remnant of the Woman's Seed. Created A.D. 315, slain A.D. 1685, it rose again A.D. 1789-'93; and, in the last epoch "it ascended to the heaven," where it is now working through the Frog-like influences of the French, Italian, and Prussian powers which will not cease to operate until they shall have unwittingly "gathered the kings of the earth and of the whole habitable to the war of that great day of God Almighty - a day which is near, even at the door, and waiting only the expiration of the forty-two months of the down-treading of the Holy City; that is, of 1260 years from the giving of the Saints into the hand of "the Foreign God," A.D. 607-'8; or 1335 from his "acknowledgment" by the King that did according to his will in A.D. 533; which gives for a glorious epoch to the believer, A.D. 1868-'9.

Contemporary with Henry, and eight years his survivor, was Arnold of Brescia, who from A.D. 1147 to 1155, bearded the papal lion in his den. He was inferior to Peter de Bruys and Henry, neither in fortitude nor zeal, while in learning and talent he excelled them both. The zeal of this daring reformer was first directed against the wealth and luxury of the Romish clergy. He charged upon them most of the corruptions that disgraced religion, and called upon them to renounce their usurped possessions, and to lead a frugal and abstemious life on the voluntary contributions of the people. The inhabitants of Brescia revered him as the apostle of religious liberty, and rose in rebellion against their accredited bishop. Driven by persecution from place to place, he determined on the desperate experiment of fixing the standard of revolt in the very heart of Rome.

p.142 Who are represented by "the Earth" in the period of the woman's flight into, or towards, the wilderness, will readily appear from the fol-owing account. The persecution of the servants and brethren of Christ by the Catholic Serpent at this juncture was acquiring strength, the flame of discord gathered force daily, and seemed to portend the approaching horrors of civil war. To prevent this, Constantine, having tried in vain every other method of accommodation, abrogated at last, by the advice of the governors of Africa, the laws he had enacted against the Donatists, and allowed to the people the full liberty of adhering to that party which they in their minds preferred. This state of tranquillity, which did not long continue, was brought about by a horrible confederacy of desperate ruffians who passed under the name of CIRCUMCELLIONS. These bands were composed of a set of furious, fearless and bloody men, formed of the rough and savage peasantry of the Numidian and Mauritanian villages, who were semi-pagans, and had been imperfectly reduced under the authority of the Roman laws. "This outrageous multitude," says Mosheim, "whom no prospect of sufferings could terrify, and who, upon urgent occasions, faced death itself with the most audacious temerity, contributed to render the sect of the Donatists (whose cause they espoused) an object of the utmost abhorrence (to the Catholics) though it cannot be proved, by any records of undoubted authority that the bishops of that faction (those at least who had any reputation for piety and virtue) either approved the proceedings or stirred up the violence of this odious rabble." This was truly "the unterrified," and unterrifiable, "democracy." This may be styled the spontaneous soldiery of the Donatists, extemporized by the urgency of their distress. These Circumcellions never failed to take up arms to defend them against their enemies. The imperial officers were usually sustained by a military force in the execution of the wrath of the Catholic Dragon, which issued like a sweeping flood from its Mouth; but it did not carry the woman away. It was sometimes successfully repelled. The blood of some Donatist teachers which had been shed by the imperialists, in-flamed the Circumeellions with an eager desire of revenge. By their own cruelty and rashness, the ministers of persecution sometimes provoked their fate; and the guilt of an accidental tumult precipitated them into despair and rebellion. The leaders of the Circumcellions assumed the title of CAPTAINS OF THE SAINTS. Their principal weapon, as they were in-differently provided with swords and spears, was a huge and weighty club, which they termed AN ISRAELITE; and the well-known sound of "Praise be to God," which they used as their war-cry, diffused consternation over the unarmed provinces of Africa. At first, their depredations were covered with the plea of necessity; but they soon exceeded the measure of subsistence, indulging without control their intemperance and avarice; burned the villages they had pillaged, and, in defiance of the Roman legions, reigned the licentious tyrants of the open country. The occupations of husbandry, and the administration of justice, were interrupted; and as the Circumcellions pretended to re- store the primitive equality of mankind, and to reform the abuses of civil society, they opened a secure asylum for slaves and debtors and all other refugees, who fled to their standard in crowds from their pursuers; or in the language of the prophecy, "the Earth opened her mouth, and swallowed up the flood." When they were not resisted, they usually contented themselves with plunder, but the slightest opposition provoked them to acts of violence and murder; and some catholic priests, who had signalized their zeal, were tortured with the most refined and wanton barbarity. They engaged, and sometimes defeated, the provincial legions of the Dragon; and in the sanguinary action of Bagai, when the troops of Constans were sent against the Donatists, as a flood from the Dragon's Mouth, the Circumcellions attacked in open field, but with unsuccessful valor, an advanced guard of the imperial cavalry. Those who were taken prisoners died without a murmur, either by the-sword, the axe, or the fire; and the measures of retaliation were multiplied in rapid proportion, which aggravated the horrors of rebellion, and excluded the hope of mutual forgiveness.

The Beast of the Sea divided the Roman habitable with the Catholic Dragon of the East. They are the two limbs of Nebuchadnez-zar's Image. The dominion of this Sea Monster was, as John predicted, "extensive". It ruled all the habitable to the Westward of said line, including France, Spain, the Roman Africa, Italy, and the region between the Alps and the Rhine, Danube, and Save, anciently known under the names of Rhtia, Noricum, and Pannonia, but in our times as Switzerland, half Suabia, Bavaria, and Austria and the western part of Hungary. In this outline I have not included England, Scotland, and Ireland, for reasons which need not be mentioned in this place.

3. The VISIGOTHS, or Western Goths came originally from Sweden with the Ostrogoths, or Eastern Goths. The Visigoths, as the "hail and fire mingled with blood" of the first trumpet, after their separation from the Ostrogoths, who encamped between the Dnieper and the Dniester, descended upon Greece under the leadership of ALARIC, and after-wards, having ravaged Illyria, Lombardy and Italy, laid siege to Rome. In A. D. 408, they passed from Italy into the south of France, and maintained a kingdom there till A.D. 506, when, being driven by the Franks into Spain, they wrested a part of it, Gallicia, from the Suevi, and in A.D. 585, extended their sway over the whole peninsula.

"He is termed Antichrist, because being disguised under the semblance of Christ and his ecciesia, he oppugns or opposes the salvation purchased by Christ, and truly administered in his (Christ's) own ecclesia, which salvation the faithful are made partakers of by faith, hope, and love. Thus he counteracts the truth by the wisdom of this world, by false religion, by feigned holiness, by ecclesiastical power, secular tyranny, riches, honors, dignities, and the pleasures and allurements of this world.

p.232 At this early date, A.D. 33, all that were in Rome called saints, were "the beloved of the Deity." It was not then necessary to go to Rome to be "canonized" by a pope. They had been made saints at Jerusalem by the word, which called them to that holiness without which no man can see the Lord (John 17:17; Rom. 1:7). These spiritually-endowed saints were the Mouth of the Deity; first, to the Jews; and some years afterwards, to the Gentiles, of Rome. For a few years, they preached the gospel to none but Jews; so that for that space, the ecclesia in that city was composed solely of the circumcised. It is not surprising, therefore, that the pagans should make no distinction between the

p.206 Besides these he gives two other coins, one of the Franks, and the other of the Visigoths, to show that the diadem came at length to be Page 206

"Whence we have hastened to bring this to the knowledge of your Holiness by the Most Blessed Bishops HYPATIUS and DEMETRIUS, that the things be not concealed from your Holiness which are wickedly and judaically denied by some few monks according to the falsehood of Nestorius. We intreat therefore your paternal affection, as by your letters addressed to us and to the Most Holy Bishop of this Sacred City (of Constantine) and your brother Patriarch (and because he has written by the same (bishops), hastening in all things to follow the Apostolic Throne of your Blessedness) made manifest to us that your Holiness may acknowledge all who rightly confess the things aforesaid, and may condemn the falsehood of those who may dare judaically to deny the right faith. For so both the love of all increases more towards you, and the authority of your throne: and the unity of the holy churches which is to you will be maintained undisturbed: when through you all the most blessed bishops of those which pertain to you shall have learned the pure doctrine of your Holiness."

Totila was chaste and temperate; and none were deceived who depended on his faith or his clemency. By his virtues in contrast with the vices of the officials, who served the interests of imperialism, a new people, under the appellation of Goths, was insensibly formed in his camp. The situation of the imperialists had already become desperate; and the return of Belisarius to save the country he had subdued in the first war, was pressed with equal vehemence by his friends and enemies. He reluctantly accepted the painful task of supporting his own reputation, and retrieving the faults of his successors. The sea being open to the Romans, he entered the port of Ravenna. From thence he addressed both the Goths and Italians in the name of Justinian, his gracious master, who, he said, was inclined to pardon and reward. But not a man was tempted to desert the standard of the Gothic king. Belisarius soon discovered that he had been sent by Justinian to remain the idle and impotent spectator of the glory of the young barbarian Totila. This he by no means approved; and, in an epistle to the emperor, exhibited a lively picture of the crisis, which caused him great distress. "Most excellent prince," says he, "we are arrived in Italy, destitute of all the necessary implements of war, men, horses, arms, and money. In our late circuit through the villages of Thrace and Illyricum, we have collected with extreme difficulty, about four thousand recruits, naked, and unskilled in the use of weapons and the exercises of the camp. The soldiers already stationed in the province are discontented, fearful and dismayed; at the sound of an enemy, they dismiss their horses, and cast their arms on the ground. No taxes can be raised, since Italy is in the hands of the barbarians; the failure of payment has deprived us of the right of command, or even of admonition. Be assured, Dread Sir, that the greater part of your troops have already deserted to the Goths. If the war could be achieved by the presence of Belisarius alone, your wishes are satisfied; Belisarius is in the midst of Italy. But, if you desire to conquer, far other preparations are requisite: without a military force, the title of general is an empty name. It would be expedient to restore to my service my own veterans and domestic guards. Before I can take the field, I must receive an adequate supply of light and heavy armed troops; and it is only with ready money that you can procure the indispensable aid of a powerful body of the cavalry of the Huns."

Such was the practical import of the phrase in Dan. 7:25, "the saints shall be given into his hand." It mattered not what country of the Horns the saints might reside in, the Lion-Mouth upon the Seven Hills, with his chasm' odonton, his gaping jaws of iron teeth (Dan. 7:7,19) could seize and devour them on the spot; for the catholic priests and secular orders of the states, the hyenas of his kingdom, were jealous in executing his ferocious mandates, to revel with him in the blood of the slain. Thus, the Catholic Woman became "drunken with the blood of the Saints, and with the blood of the Witnesses of Jesus" (ch. 17:6).

On the ground, then, that the uttermost parts of the earth were given to the Pope for a possession, as Christ's Vicar, the king of Portugal prayed the pope to confer on the crown of Portugal a right to all countries inhabited by infidels the Portuguese might hereafter discover; the promise being added that he would spread the Catholic religion in them, establish the authority of the Pope, and so augment the flock of the Universal Bishop. This was too good an Opportunity to be lost of grandly exercising his alleged prerogative of giving nations and countries to whom he pleased. A bull was forthwith issued granting to the Portuguese all they might discover from Cape Non to India.

Rome and her territory were now reduced to narrow limits, extending from Viterbo to Terracina, and from Narni to the mouth of the Tyber. Nominally subject to Constantinople, still they were really without any other protection than they who were slaves by habit could create for themselves. They had become free by an accident, the effect of the grossest superstition; so that when the excitement was allayed, their liberty was the object of their amazement and terror; and they were devoid of knowledge, or virtue, to build the fabric of a commonwealth. Their scanty remnant, as at this day, the offspring of slaves and strangers, was despicable in the eyes of the victorious barbarians; who, as often as they expressed their most bitter contempt of a foe, called him a Roman; "and in this name," says the bishop Luitprand, "we include whatever is base, whatever is cowardly, whatever is perfidious, the extremes of avarice and luxury, and every vice that can prostitute the dignity of human nature." It must be remembered that the popes were the Eyes and Mouth of this Name - the unicum nomen in mundo; so that Luitprand's definition of it is true of that Name of Blasphemy on the Seven Hills; by whose authority in their now transition state from the dominion of the Little Horn of the East, to that of the Little Horn of the West, their foreign and domestic counsels were moderated. His alms, his preachings, his correspondence with the kings and bishops of the west his recent services in the interest of idolatry, and so forth, accustomed the idol worshippers of Rome to consider him as the first magistrate or Prince of the city. The pretended humility of the popes was not offended by the title of Lord; and coins of the date A.D. 772 are extant bearing the face and inscription of the popes, who now commenced a career of temporal ambition which was insatiable; and demanded exaltation "above every thing called god, or is worshipped."

The popes had not yet reached the height of their ambition. The secular constituent of the Beast was still the imperial master of the popes. This will appear from the established order of their election from A.D. 800 to A.D. 1060. On the death of a pope, the seven cardinal-bishops of Ostia, Porto, Velitra, Tusculum, Praeneste, Tibur, and the Sabines, the suburban dioceses of the Roman province, recommended a successor to the suffrage of the college of cardinals, and their choice was ratified or rejected by the applause or clamor of the Roman people. But the election was imperfect; nor could the pontiff be legally consecrated till the emperor, the Advocate of the Church, had graciously signified his approbation and consent. The imperial commission examined, on the spot, the form and freedom of the proceedings; nor was it till after a previous scrutiny into the qualification of the candidates, that he accepted an oath of fidelity, and confirmed the donations which had successively enriched the patrimony of St. Peter. In the frequent schisms, the rival claims were submitted to the sentence of the emperor; and in a synod of bishops he judged, condemned, and punished, the crimes of a guilty pontiff. Otho the First imposed a treaty on the senate and people, who engaged to prefer the candidate most acceptable to his majesty: his successors anticipated or prevented their choice; and bestowed the Roman benefice, as they bestowed the bishoprics of Cologne or Bamberg, on the chancellors or preceptors.

This presumptuous declaration, and the neglect it met with, brought the quarrel between the Secular Horn, or empire, and the Lamb-Horned Eyes, or church, to a crisis. In his circular letters he repeatedly asserts, that "bishops are superior to kings, and made to judge them," expressions alike artful and presumptuous, and calculated for bringing in all the churchmen of the world to his standard. Gregory's purpose is said to have been to engage in the bonds of fidelity and allegiance to the so-called Vicar of Christ, as King of kings and Lord of lords, all the monarchs of the earth, and to establish at Rome an annual assembly of bishops, by whom the contests that might arise between kingdoms and sovereign states were to be decided; the rights and pretences of princes to be examined; and the fate of nations and empires to be determined.

These enactments were incorporated in the decretals of Gregory IX., and became the law of the Image-State. Thus the Latin Hierarchy decreed the ruin and sanguinary extermination of all who dissented from its superstition, and refused to pay it the honor and obedience it required.

About four hundred years after Charlemagne, the Latin had become fully established as the language of the Pontifical kingdom and empire of the Man of Sin; or Image of the Imperial Latin Head, revived in the Beast of the Earth. When the empire of the Caesars came to assume the form of Eastern and Western Limbs, as symbolized in Nebuchadnezzar’s Image; and after the Gothic kingdoms had appeared, the Greeks appropriated to themselves the name of Romans: and bestowed upon all the kingdoms, in ecclesiastical fellowship with the See of Rome, the name of Latins. These Western Romans were not averse to the appellation; so that thenceforward it became the recognized name of the second universal monarchy — “a new species of despotism,” says Dr. Geo Campbell truly, “never heard of, or imagined before, whose means of conquest and defence were neither swords nor spears, fortifications nor warlike engines, but definitions and canons, sophisms and imprecations; and that by such weapons, as by a kind of magic, there should actually be reared a second universal monarchy, the most formidable the world ever knew, — will, to latest ages, afford a matter of astonishment to every judicious inquirer.” This universal monarchy of the west pervaded all its kingdoms; and though they legislate in the modern languages of the nations, the officials of the Pontifical despotism, in whatever kingdom or republic they may have established themselves, use not the languages of the worshippers of the Beast; but transact all their swindling traffic in the language of Pagan Rome: and as Dr. Henry More expresses it, they Latinize in every thing. “Mass, prayers, hymns, litanies, canons, decretals, bulls are conceived in Latin. The papal councils speak in Latin. Women themselves pray in Latin. Nor is scripture read in any other language, under popery, than Latin. Wherefore the council of Trent commanded the vulgar Latin to be the only authentic version. Nor do their doctors doubt to prefer it to the Hebrew and Greek text itself, which was written by the prophets and apostles. In short, all things are Latin; the pope having communicated his language to the people under his dominion, as the mark and character of his empire.” If Dr. More, who himself wrote in Latin, instead of saying “as the mark and character,” had written “as the name of his empire,” he would have been correct.

13. And I heard a voice from the heaven, saying to me, Write! Blessed the dead dying in the Lord from this time. Yea, saith the Spirit, in order that they may take rest from their labors; and their work he goes in aid of with them.

But, before closing this section it will be proper to make a brief statement of the sign left by Christ and made void by the Sign of the Beast. For the information, then, of sincere and candid inquirers after the truth, it may be remarked that the SIGN LEFT BY CHRIST is the "One Baptism." It is the institution to which all must subject themselves as evidential of their obedience to the faith; for as Rhantism is the Sign of obedience to the Beast, so Baptism is the Sign of obedience to Christ.

With this New Name of the Spirit, styled the Father's Name, the 144,000 will stand on Mount Zion. It is written upon them before they appear there. This is evident from the word gegrammenon, having been written. When was it written? Doctrinally, when sealed in their foreheads (ch. 7:3) in the great tribulation (verse 14); and corporeally, when "the dead, small and great," stand in the presence of the Deity, and are judged by what has been written, according to their works. Those who are found written in the Book of Life, receive their reward in the inscription of the New Name, which makes them like what Jesus Christ now is. All others are "cast into the lake of fire" with the Beast and False Prophet (ch. 11:18; 20:12-15; 14:9,10). Hence the standing before the Judgment Seat of Christ (Rom. 14:10-12; 2 Cor. 5:10; Gal. 6:7,8) precedes the standing with the Lamb on Mount Zion. The judgment of the household of Christ intervenes between the resurrection, and the ascending of Yahweh's Hill. This is evident from Psa. 24; where, in answer to the question, "Who shall go up into the Mountain of Yahweh? And who shall 'rise into' the place of his holiness?" — it says, "The innocent of hands and the pure of heart; who hath not lifted up his soul to vanity and hath not sworn to deceit". This implies previous scrutiny. All saints who rise, but whose moral qualities, on examination, are not found in accordance with the above, shall not "rise into the place of his holiness" — "yahkum bimkom kodsho;" which is Mount Zion. They shall not be permitted to stand there as constituents of the 144,000, who are the pure of heart, and in whose mouth no guile "had been found," heurethe.

These forty years will be the most important and terrible of the world's history. They are the period of the world's transition from what it calls "self-government," to the government of Christ and his Brethren. The most noteworthy developments of this transition period are depicted in the fourteenth, part of the sixteenth and seventeenth, the eighteenth, nineteenth, and part of the twentieth chapters of the Apocalypse. They exhibit the setting up of the Kingdom of David by the Eloahh of the Heavens (Dan. 2:44): by which the kingdom is restored again to Israel (Acts 1:6). The work of these forty years was foreshadowed in the reign of David. His forty years' reign was to that of Solomon's peaceful administration over Israel and the Gentiles, as a judicial preparation; for before he could "reign over all kingdoms from the river unto the land of the Philistines, and unto the border of Egypt," these kingdoms had to be subdued by his father David. After the same pattern it will be with the greater than Solomon. Forty years of judgment are consumed in preparing the millennial reign of peace and righteousness; which, as the chapters indicated show, will not be introduced and established by clerical preaching, nor by "the benevolent institutions of the day," but by "judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries".

Now the Lamb-Power as the Man of war Yahweh will do all this after the example of Joshua in his war upon the Canaanites; which illustrates the manner in which Yahweh fought in the day of battle (Zech 14:3). Christ Jesus, the King of the Jew', "with the 144 000 as the commanders of the armies of Israel are the HoIy Angels" and "the Lamb" in whose presence the worshippers of the beast and his Image are tormented in the lake of fire burning with brimstone As the prophet like unto Moses, he will serve these as the great law giver served Sihon king of the Amorites, and Og king of Bashan whose story is narrated in Deut. 3, 4. When He opens his eyes upon the house of Judah he will make the governors of Judah (the Saints) like a hearth of fire among the wood, and like a torch of fire in a sheaf and they shall devour all the peoples round about, on the right hand and on the left Judah will then be the sword, and the bow in the hand of the Lamb and the house of Joseph, the ten tribes of the old Ephraim kingdom His arrow which shall go forth as the lightning When this bow is drawn its arrows will be sharp in the heart of the king's enemies as ii is written to day do I declare that I will render double for thee when I have bent Judah for me filled the bow with Ephraim and raised up thy sons O Zion against thy sons, O Greece (the Goats) and made thee (the Lamb Power in Zion) as the sword of a mighty man And Yahweh shall be seen over them and His arrow (Ephraim) shall go forth as the lightning and Adonai Yahweh shall blow with a trumpet, and shall go forth with the whirlwinds of the south. And Yahweh Tz'vaoth shall defend them And Yahweh their Elohim shall save them in that day as the flock of his people; for they shall be as the stones of a crown lifted up as an ensign upon His land". "And they shall be as mighty men who tread down their enemies in the mire of the streets in the battle and they shall fight because Yahweh is with them and they shall be as though I had not cast them off. And they of Ephraim shall be as a mighty man yea their children shall see it, and be glad. And I will hiss for them and gather them. And I will sow them among the people: arid they shall remember me in far countries: and they shall live with their children, and turn again. I will bring them again also out of the land of Egypt, and gather them out of this terrible day, and its constituents will every man return to his possessions in the land of the Holy One of Israel. Because, therefore, for the sake of his name, "all they that devour Jacob shall be devoured; and all his adversaries, every one of them shall go into captivity (ch 13~l0) and they that spoil him shall be a spoil, and all that prey upon him will I give for a prey. For I will restore health unto Jacob andl will heal him of his wounds; because they call Zion an Outcast saying This is Zion whom no man seeketh after In the latter days Israel shall consider it (Jer. 30).

To ploughshares men shall beat their swords, To pruning-hooks their spears.

"The Vine of the Earth" is a phrase representative of the civil, military, and ecclesiastical, constitution of what is called "Christendom". The grapes of this vine are the nations clustered together into empires and kingdoms upon it. To gather the clusters of the vine is to cause the armies of the nations to assemble together for war, so that they may be cut off and trodden down. Wherever the trampling of them occurs, there is the winepress into which they are cast - "the great winepress of the wrath of the Deity".

Thus the satanic element of the One Body is purged out, or separated and destroyed. Its separation precedes the reaping of the harvest of the earth; and its tormentation and destruction are synchronous with the infliction of "torment and sorrow" upon Babylon the Great, and the treading of the winepress in the vintage of the earth. Their torment is eis ajonas aionon, and therefore aionian. It does not transcend this limit, because the wrath of the Deity is then all exhausted. Nevertheless, its effects abide upon them - "they shall not see life; but the wrath of the Deity abideth on them" (John 3:36).

12. Thou stretchedst out Thy right hand, The earth swallowed them up.

9. And the men were scorched with great heat, and blasphemed the Name of the Deity who hath power over these plagues, and they repented not to give glory to him.

Wurmser with eighty thousand men, at length began his march from Trent to the relief of Mantua, invested by the French, whose forces, dispersed in towns and villages on the Adige and Chiese, did not amount to half that number. He ordered his right wing under Quasdonowich to direct its march for Brescia; and his left under Melas to descend on both banks of the Adige at once, and manoeuvre on Verona; while he marched southward by the left bank of Lago di Guarda with the centre to relieve Mantua. The acuteness of Buonaparte soon perceived Wurmser's error on this disposition and dislocation of his forces. The march assigned to Quasdonowich's division made it impossible for the centre and left wing to afford it any support, or even to have intelligence of its motions or fate. Napoleon determined to overpower it. To do this he raised the siege of Mantua at a great sacrifice of material, and rushed with a superior force against Quasdonowich. In all his combinations he succeeded to admiration. Wurmser was defeated at all points, and nearly made prisoner. With great difficulty he reached Trent, from which he had so lately sallied forth with such confidence of victory. He had lost one-half of his fine army among "the rivers and fountains of waters," with the only consolation that he had thrown supplies into the city of Virgil. Thus "Destiny" gave them blood to drink; and, in their courses, fought against them on every side.

The despotism of the multitude under Danton, Robespierre, and Marat, under the name of the Republic of "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity" - was now the Sovereign authority. An inevitable result of their access to power was the civil war in La Vendee. This country, backed by the sea and the Loire, traversed by few roads, and covered with villages, hamlets, and castlewards, had maintained its ancient state of feudal existence. In La Vendee there was neither education nor civilization. The peasantry had acquired no other ideas than those communicated to it by the priests, or "men having the sign of the beast," and understood nothing of a revolution which was the result of opinions and wants altogether unknown to their situation. The nobles and priests, finding themselves a strong party in La Vendee, did not emigrate. This region and the new France that had arisen, had nothing in common but their language. It was certain, therefore, that the "grievous and malignant ulcer" would break out with terrible effect upon its priest-ridden population; which revolted, and brought upon their country the terrible visitation of the merciless revolutionary tribunal.

The state of public affairs throughout the Continent of Europe at this eventful crisis was "without a parallel in history". The submission and creation of kingdoms were become simple operations with which the world was beginning to become familiarized. An edict from Paris was all that was necessary to create a king, and furnish him with a kingdom. The promise of the annexation of Swedish Pomerania, Weigmar, and Hanover to his dominions, had tempted Frederick William III of Prussia to desert "the Cause of Sovereigns," and to lend himself to the imperial king-making projects of this terrible "king of Fire". But when his Prussian Majesty learned authentically the projected infraction of the existing engagements of France with Prussia, Frederick William's resentment became extreme. The tide of opinion at Berlin ran strongly in favor of war. On the 1st of October, the Prussian ambassador demanded that the French army without delay repass the Rhine; that the northern Germanic Confederation be established; and that certain places be separated from the Confederation of the Rhine. But to these requisitions Napoleon did not deign to reply, but advanced at the head of his troops with rapid steps, and approached the frontier of Upper Saxony before Prussia could possibly receive any aid from her ally the emperor of Russia.

By this historical sketch, the reader enlightened in the knowledge of the Deity with spiritual understanding, will be enabled to perceive the working of the Seven Spirits on all the agents of the situation, on the Powers, the emigrants, the refractory priests, the French king, political parties in the Assembly, the clubs, and the populace, to bring on a crisis in which there would be found scope for the outpouring of wrath upon the worshippers of the Beast's Image, and upon the men who had the Beast's Sign. The sketch illustrates, not only the "great voice", or note of preparation for war, but what the Seven Angel-Spirits did in obedience to the command, "Go forth!" They issued "from the Nave," July 27, 1790; and reached the crisis predetermined, April20, 1792, a period of twenty-one months. This was a short period, but pregnant with events, which after seventy-five years, are still in process of development(*).

This terrible destruction of the hosts led by Napoleon, was followed by the invasion of France by the British, who had expelled his armies from Portugal and Spain: and by the Russians, Prussians, and Swedes forming a sixth coalition for the restoration of the ancient order of things. The die was now cast; and the tide of events was turned The priests, the men having "the Sign of the Beast in their right hand" (ch 13:16) secretly conspired against him since his rupture with the Blasphemer of the Seven Hills: and the humiliated dynasties aspired to restore themselves. Negotiation had been tried, but failed; so that nothing but the outpouring of more wrath could determine the result. Deprived of the support of the people, who, in 1814, were mere spectators of the last act of the drama, Napoleon stood alone against the world with a handful of veteran soldier, aided by his genius, which had lost nothing of its audacity and vigor. He had to contend with the grand allied army of three hundred and eighty thousand men, marching from the north and east under Schwartzenberg by way of Switzerland Blucher by way of Frankfort; and Bernadotte, by way of Belgium all aiming to concentrate upon Paris. Napoleon dexterously placed himself between Blucher and Schwartzenberg; he flew from one army to another and beat them both in Succession. His combinations were so powerful, his activity so great, and his manoeuvres so certain, that he appeared on the point of entirely disorganizing these formidable armies, and by the annihilation of them to put an end to the coalition.

From the killing of the Eastern Third by the capture of Constantinople, to the resettlement of Europe by the Congress of Vienna in 1815, three hundred and sixty-two years had elapsed; and notwithstanding the terrible plagues of the past twenty-five years, the Latins, both Romish and Protestant, showed themselves to be as unrepentant of their "works" as ever. These works and deeds are recited in ch. 9:20,21; such as idols or images of gold, silver, brass, stone, and wood, which their hands had made, as representatives of the demons, ta daimonia, the "disembodied spirits," they worshipped as guardians, intercessors, ministers of grace, and mediators between Christ and men. The deeds of "the men who had the sign of the beast in their right hand, and in their foreheads," and who served as priests of these idols, vulgarly styled "the clergy", and of which they repented not, were murders, sorceries, fornication, thefts. And the people were like their priests. They continued to uphold and sanction all these abominations with the blindest veneration and devotion, till the exhausted patience of the Deity gave place, in 1796, to the terrible outpouring of the third vial, at the hand of his servant Napoleon, who, as "his servant Nebuchadnezzar" on a former occasion, gave the worshippers of images "blood to drink", and "scorched them with great heat". But, the events of the third, fourth and fifth vials have not brought the idolators to repentance; so as to cast their idols which they have made to worship, to the moles and to the bats (Isa. 2:20); and to abandon their murders, and their sorceries, and their fornication, and their thefts. We have seen how that the restored Pontiff evinced his incurable stupidity and idolatry in "solemnly crowning" a Madonna at Ancona, for incorrigible fools to worship. Demons and their images again became the fashionable objects of adoration. They repented not from these; but, in the words of Ranke, "the restored governments of Southern Europe repented of their former insubordination to Rome. They thought they had thus unchained the tempest by which themselves had been overthrown; and beheld in the Pope their natural ally." Thus, they failed to see the truth; that, instead of this, it was their fellowship with Rome in its villanies, superstitions, and blasphemies, that brought upon them all the evil by which they had been so dreadfully scorched. In France, the infatuated and demented Bourbons, after their restoration, dedicated their kingdom most especially to the disembodied nonentity, or demon, they call the Virgin Mary, as its patroness; they introduced those thieves and murderers, the Jesuits, whose society Pope Clement XIV declared to be a public nuisance; and in his Bull dissolving it, says, that "he who endeavored to let it loose upon society would be chargeable with high treason against the common interests and happiness of his species". Of this treason the Bourbons were guilty; and by their oppression of antipapalists, showed that the murderous spirit of their ancestor Charles IX, of St. Bartholomew renown, was not yet extinct in them. But, the seed of evil doers is doomed to confusion and contempt. The indignation of the Deity descended upon their incorrigible dynasty, in 1830, and in 1848. The revolution of the former year abolished the elder branch; and the more remarkable one of the latter date, the younger branch of the Capets; to make room for the developments of the Second Napoleonic Empire, whose mission is, not like Napoleon "the Great's", to darken the kingdom of the Beast and his Image, but to create by its policy such a situation as is prefigured in ch. 16:13,14, preparatory to the thief--like coming of the great Napoleon's antitype, YAHWEH TZ'VAOTH, who will resume his work, and refuse peace to the world until the Beast is slain, and his body destroyed; and, with his False Prophet whom he upholds, is given to the burning flame, never more to insult the habitable with their accursed presence.

"That the way of the Kings who are out of a Sun's rising, might be prepared". This is the exact rendering of hena hetoimasthe he hothos ton basileon ton apo anatolon heliou - which is the received text; and, though objected to by some commentators, who can see nothing in it but the natural sun-rising, is no doubt perfectly correct. The military and political power of the Ottoman empire was to be dried up by the wrath of the Sixth Vial, that the way for a certain class of kings might be cleared of all hindrances and impediments to their enterprize in its be-ginning.

"That the way of the Kings who are out of a Sun's rising, might be prepared". This is the exact rendering of hena hetoimasthe he hothos ton basileon ton apo anatolon heliou - which is the received text; and, though objected to by some commentators, who can see nothing in it but the natural sun-rising, is no doubt perfectly correct. The military and political power of the Ottoman empire was to be dried up by the wrath of the Sixth Vial, that the way for a certain class of kings might be cleared of all hindrances and impediments to their enterprize in its be-ginning.

3. Typoticus, p.75, gives as the device on a coin of Louis VI, the last French king before Hugh Capet, the first of the Bourbons, a frog with the inscription Mihi terra lacusque, land and water are mine, i.e. I am amphibious.

The Frog-Sign, interpreted by events, divides itself into sectional developments; first, the operation of the Frogs upon the Constantinopolitan Dragon; then, their operation upon the Austrian Beast; and third, their operation upon the Roman Prophet. These operations began at successive periods in the order they occupy in the prophecy; but though commencing at different times, the first operation is not finished when the second begins; but the first and second in their effects continue in contemporaneous operation with the third; so that when the Ancient of Days comes, the whole three will be brought to bear against him with all their accumulated force.

But, the Frog-Sign in 1860 was not as yet perfected in its second phase. The Beast was still a menace for Italy, and an element of hope to the Roman Prophet: in other words, the military power of Austria had not been sufficiently rolled back for the safety of Italy, and for the reduction of the Sick Man of Rome to the hopelessness of despair. So long as he had hope of cure from Austria, he would not take the physic prescribed by the Frogs. All he wanted of these was that they would drive out the forces of Italy and the Revolution from the Patrimony of St. Peter; restore their estates to his friends, the king of Naples, and the Italian Dukes; and, having taken themselves off to Paris, never to return, leave himself and the aforesaid princes, a happy Italian family, to the constitutional protection of His Apostolic Majesty of Austria. This was all the favor he asked of these dirty Frogs, who, with their revolutionary idees Napolioniennes, and fantastic "civilization based upon legitimate satisfied interests," came into his house, and into the house of his servants, and upon all the people of his estate his earnest entreaty to the Virgin, whom he decreed to be immaculate, was, "0 Queen of heaven, take away the Frogs from me, and from my people" (Exod. 8:2-15).

A letter from Rome in the Correspondence Italienne, says: "Cardinal Antonelli, in his private conversations, expresses firm belief in approaching war. He says, that the great works which the French are executing are by no means intended to shelter Rome from a coup de main of Garibaldi, but to guarantee it against an attack of the regular Italian army. In the war which is preparing, he recently said, the French army will fight alone against Italy, and we shall keep our troops to hold in respect the Roman population. The Cardinal Secretary of State is also said to have remarked, that 'the Emperor Napoleon has lost all sympathy for Italian Unity ever since the discovery of the secret between Signor Ratazzi and Herr Bismark'."

But, passing through the grave cleanses no one. They who emerge thence, "come forth" with the same nature they carried into it; and therefore their coming forth is Resurrection. If the same kind of body did not come forth that was buried, it would not be Resurrection, but only surrection, as in the case of the first man. Jesus "rose AGAIN" (1 Cor. 15:4); his coming forth was therefore resurrection. He rose again the same Jesus that was buried, only that instead of being dead, he was alive again. He was buried under the curse of the law, which "made him a curse for" our benefit (Gal. 3:13): he came forth while that same law was in force and Operation. His coming forth upon the arena of his execution did not relieve him from the curse of that law, which sentenced him to continuous and everlasting death; so that, if they could have recaptured him, the Mosaic authorities would doubtless have returned him into death. That law regarded him as dead, and its authorities refused credence to the report, that he had come to life. After he had come forth he saw Mary, a Jewess, who mistook him for the gardener, so like other men did he appear. Having convinced her of her error, he checked the impulse of her affection by saying to her, "Touch me not!" It was defiling for Jews to touch a thing declared to be unclean by the law. Any thing from the grave was enacted to be unclean, in reference to him who should come out of the tomb, until that he should be 'revived" (Rom. 14:9) or "made a quickening Spirit" (1 Cor. 15:45). Christ was "the end of the law," the substance or body of the shadow (Rom. 10:4; Col. 2:17); its lines concentred in the things pertaining to his body. The interdict forbidding it to be touched was indicative of its not then having been changed into spirit; and that it was still earthy and inferior to the substance of the Father. He gave the reason why he forbade his body to be touched; "for," he said, "I have not yet ascended to my Father". No one might touch him until that ascent had taken place. It did not occur till after Mary left him; but it had doubtless taken place before his walk with Cleopas and another to Emmaus; for they appear to have traveled very sociably together. The swallowing up of every particle of the earthiness of an earthy body, is an instantaneous operation; the work of "a moment, or the twinkling of an eye" (1 Cor. 15:51,52). It was one of the events that transpired in relation to Jesus on the third day. He "rose and revived" on the third day (Rom. 14:9). He not only rose on the third day, but he revived on the same day. Rising is one thing, reviving is an-other; and two different words are used by the apostle to express the different ideas. The Father who is Spirit, had "forsaken" Jesus upon the cross, and left him to die there. Having become a corpse and been laid in a tomb, that corpse was like all other corpses, utterly without intelligence and power; for "the dead know not anything" (Ecc. 9:5,10); and "the Lord (YAHWEH) is not the Deity (AlL, or Power) of dead, but of living ones, for they all live by him" (Luke 20:38). When this corpse, named Jesus, opened its eyes, stood upon its feet and came forth from the tomb, it "rose". At this point of time it was neither Lord nor Christ. The Father, who had forsaken him and left him to die, had not yet returned to him; for if he had returned to the corpse while in the tomb in causing it to stand and walk, that risen body after coming forth would not have said, "I have not yet ascended to my Father". This was equivalent to saying, I am an earthy, or natural, body just come forth from the unclean place; and have not yet been "made perfect," "justified by the spirit," or "made a quickening spirit". The Father hath not yet clothed me with my house which is from heaven; so that that which constitutes me earthy and mortal is not yet "swallowed up of life;" therefore, “Touch me not" until I have been "constituted Son of Deity in power, through Spirit of holiness, out of a resurrection of dead ones" (Rom. 1:4). I am now simply Jesus born of the tomb, "of the earth earthy;" but when my earthiness of body is instantaneously "swallowed up of life," I shall be Spirit; I shall be of equal and identical substance with the Father; and by this anointing, I shall become Christ, or the Anointed One, and "the Lord from heaven" (1 Cor. 15:47).

The overshadowing power is "from beyond" these rivers. By sea, the communication is direct from Hindostan to Cush, where there is well known to be a power, of widely extended dominion, whose navy is largely composed of fleet, or swift vessels propelled by "whirling things". Ezekiel styles this power "Sheba, Dedan, the Merchants of Tarshish, and all the young lions thereof" (ch. 38:13). This is the power to which Egypt, Cush, and Seba, the country of the Sabaeans, "men of stature" (Isa. 45:14) are given as the price for the resettlement of the tenth in the midst of the land. It is the British Indian Lion of Tarshish, which even now commands the Persian Gulf and Red Sea, and is pre-pared for any advance northwestward towards Syria or Egypt, deemed necessary by the home government for the satisfying of its interests.

15. And he said to me, The waters which thou sawest, where the Harlot is sitting, are peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues.

11. And the merchants of the earth shall wail and lament over her, because no one buyeth their ships lading any more.

Thus the Ten Horns which John saw upon the Beast have hated the harlot, and made her desolate and naked, and eaten her flesh, and burned her with fire; for the Deity put it in their hearts to fulfill His will: and He will yet put it in their hearts 'to agree, and deliver their kingdom to the beast,"(*) during the "one hour" in which they are at war with the Lamb; that is, "until the predictions of the Deity have been fulfilled" (verse 17).

13.And the sea had given up the dead in it, and death and the grave had given up the dead in them; and every one had been judged according to their deeds.

14. And the wall of the city had Twelve Foundations, and on them the names of the Twelve Apostles of the Lamb.

13. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, the First and the Last.

Such was the "great voice," and the interpretation of it. Did the character of the time, consequent upon the victory over Licinius, correspond to my exposition? Unquestionably it did. Eusebius, who lived at the time, testifies to this. "On the fall of Licinius," says he, "the great conqueror Constantine and his son Crispus the Caesar, received the East as theirs, established one government as formerly over the Romans, and swayed the whole in peace from east to west, and from north to south. The people therefore being freed from all fear of the Court by which they had before been overwhelmed, held festal days of great splendor. There were everywhere illuminations. They who were before dejected, looked on one another with joyful aspects and smiles, and with choirs and hymns through the cities and country, gave honor, first to God the Supreme Ruler of all, as they were taught, and then to the pious emperor and his children. The miseries and impiety of the past were forgotten; joy and exultation prevailed at the blessings now prom-ised, and happy anticipations of the future. Philanthropic edicts were everywhere published by the emperor, and laws that displayed his munificence and piety." And Lactantius also, a contemporary and friend of Constantine writes; "Let us celebrate the triumph of God with gladness; let us commemorate His victory with praise; let us make mention in our prayers day and night of the peace which, after ten years of persecution, He has conferred on his people." Eusebius narrates very fully how, at the same time, there was solemn remembrance of the witnesses and confessors that had illustrated the past persecution, and praise and honor rendered them: he tells how public notice was taken of those who had suffered unto death, as of heroes that had conquered by the doctrine of the cross in their conflict of witnessing unto death; and how, as a further tribute to their innocence and worth, the property con-iscated from them was reclaimed and restored to their surviving relatives, or to the catholic church.

This battle of Adrianople had been a consummation of "woe to the inhabiters of the earth:" the time had now come for a like consummation of "woe to the inhabiters of the sea." Here were five hundred and fifty vessels full of combatants, drawn together from the maritime part of the Roman earth, to engage in the great conflict between the worshippers of the idols, and the catholic believers in the Divine Unity. While Constantine was besieging Byzantium, to which Licinius had retired after his defeat at Adrianople, Crispus, the eldest son of Constantine, was entrusted with the daring enterprise of forcing the passage of the Helles-pont. This he performed with great courage and success. The engagement between the contending fleets lasted two days. A south wind springing up about noon, carried his vessels against the enemy, and as the advantage was improved by his skill and intrepidity, he soon obtained a complete victory. A hundred and thirty vessels were destroyed, and five thousand men were slain. The Hellespont being now open, Licinius perceived that he could not hold Byzantium much longer. Therefore, before the place was surrounded, he prudently removed his person and treasures to Chalcedon in Asia.

This Little Horn become so great was now the fourth of Daniel's beast-dominions. It planted itself in Jerusalem B.C. 63; and in A.D. 33, was popularly and pontifically acknowledged as "the King of the Jews" (John 19:12,15). It had acquired identity with "the old serpent" by its incorporation of the Syro-Babylonian, or Northern Horn power (out of which, in relation to the Holy Land, it came forth), into its Italian dominion. It was now "the Dragon, the Old Serpent" - Leviathan, the flying and very tortuous serpent, the dragon that is in the sea (Isa. 27: 1). But when it conquered the Syro-Babylonian Horn, B.C. 67, it did not thereby acquire the apocalyptic "surname" of "the Diabolos and the Satan." It was not until the Little Horn had "magnified itself against the Prince of the Host," or Messiah the Prince; and undertook, as "a roaring lion, prowling about, seeking whom he might devour," to exterminate the saints from among the living; that it acquired the character signified by the terms "fiery red," "diabolos," and "Satan" (Apoc. 12:9).

8. Vitellius was the EIGHTH STAR, whose reign of seven months was signalized by the expenditure of thirty millions of dollars in feasting and riot. In the 57th of his age, he was dragged half-naked by a Roman mob into the forum, and with exquisite tortures torn to pieces, and thrown into the Tiber.

Now, as the reader may well suppose, this wonderful and mighty operation of Deity becomes an affair of world-wide interest and importance. It will not be a work of peace. The Frog-Dominion has been proclaimed to be peace: l'empire c'est la paix but not so the kingdom proclaimed in the gospel. This kingdom, in the period of its establishment, is not peace; but war, until it has been broken in pieces and subdued the four beasts of Daniel; and planted itself without a rival in all the earth. Such an enterprise as this may be planned and prepared, but cannot be executed in secret. It is therefore testified that "the nations shall see and be confounded at all Israel's might: they shall lay their hand upon their mouth, their ears shall be deaf. They shall lick the dust like a serpent, they shall move out of their holes like worms of the earth: they shall be afraid Of YAHWEH our Elohim, and shall fear because of thee" (Mic. 7:16). The testimony of Micah is developed in the forty years of the time of the end immediately preceding the Millennium, as the result of the Seven Thunders, by which, not the earth, but those who corrupt the earth, are destroyed (Rev. 11: 18).

5. And she brought forth a male child, who is about to rule all the nations with an iron sceptre: and her son was forcibly carried up to Deity and his throne.

Then, if we turn our attention to Spain, the "Most Catholic," from which the virtuous and immaculate ISABELLA, the last of the infatuated and atrocious Bourbons, the ensanguined murderers of the saints, hath so recently been expelled, what see we there? Do we not behold the Spirit that rose and ascended to power in 1789, notwithstanding all its misfortunes, and frequent discomfitures triumphant in 1868? The virtuous, pure, and most catholic daughter of His Papal Holiness, his last and most devoted friend among the Ten Horns, driven into exile at the end of the 1335 and 1260? A letter front Spain to La Liberte, dated Sept. 22, says: "Isabella has lost her throne. She seized it in 1839, supported by the Spanish Liberal party, which in 1837, made her proclaim the Constitution, which suppressed les seigneuries, les droits des aines, and tithes. It was this party which caused her to sell the mortmain property, suppress privileges, shut up the convents, sending away with a pension 30,000 monks useless to the country, and hurtful to public prosperity. But as soon as the Queen was married to Prince Francis of Bourbon, in 1846, reaction gained the upper hand everywhere. All the conquests made by the Liberal party were lost again. In 1863, Conservatives, Progressists, and moderate Liberals, wished to resist the reaction. Marshall O'Donnell, the head of this party, recognized Italy, and promulgated several liberal laws in 1866. The Revolution was vanquished. O'Donnell could not profit by his success, for, to the great amazement of everybody, lie was suddenly replaced by Narvaez two days after his victory, Since then all the constitutional system has disappeared; and Spain is in the same condition as if Don Carlos and his ideas had triumphed in 1840.

p.206 adopted by the Gothic kingdoms, without regard to the Diadem Bust of the emperors. This was after the fall of the Seventh Head.

p.233 Ecclesia and the Synagogue. They regarded them all as Jews; so that, when Claudius commanded all Jews to depart from Rome, Aquila and Priscilla, though Christians, had to leave. But, before the publication of this edict, Peter had opened the door of faith to Gentiles, as recorded in Acts 10 and 11. The of this soon reached Rome, and the Mouth of Deity was opened there to the same effect. Pagans were invited to "the obedience of faith for His name," that they might become "the tabernacle of the Deity, and dwellers in the heaven," together with the saints already separated from the Synagogue. But for this extension of the Ecclesia, the edict of Claudius would have left none of the saints in Rome. It expelled all natural Jews, without regard to their belief; so that, in this crisis, the Ecclesia there would become in appearance entirely Gentile. But, when the edict became obsolete, the Jewish members would many of them return; nevertheless, the Jewish influence in the Ecclesia would predominate no more.

"It is notorious, therefore, that Antichrist never has been brought forth without a concurrence of all the things now mentioned, so as to form a system of hypocrisy and falsehood (or Blasphemy); that is to say, there must be a concurrence of the wise of this world, ecclesiastical orders, pharisees, ministers, and doctors; the secular power and the people of the world, all mixed up together: all these combined make up the Man of Sin, and that Wicked One complete. For, though Antichrist was conceived so long since as the times of the apostles (see 1 John 2:18,22; 4:3; 2 John 7) he was then only in his infancy (in embryo) wanting members both inward and outward. Consequently, he was the more easily detected, destroyed, and cast out of the ecclesias, being then unshapen and wanting utterance. As yet, he was destitute of that plausible, imposing, judicial or determinative wisdom which he afterwards attained; he wanted those hypocritical ministers (the clergy), and human appointments, and the outward show of those religious orders which were necessary to give him perfection. As he was destitute of those riches and endowments necessary to allure persons to his service, and enable him to multiply, protect, and defend his adherents, so he also needed the Secular Power to compel men to forsake the truth, and embrace a system of falsehood. Wanting these requisites, his deceitful practices had not their full effect - he was young and tender, and with difficulty got a footing in the ecclesias. But growing up in his members, that is, in his blind and dissembling ministers (the clergy) and in worldly subjects, he gradually arrived at maturity when men whose hearts were set upon this world, but blind in the faith, multiplied in the ecclesias, and BY THE UNION OF CHURCH AND STATE (in the time of Constantine), got the power of both into their own hands."

4. The BURGUNDIANS issued from the Germania region of the abyss east of the Vistula. They established themselves in Belgic Gaul A.D. 407. After a few years they obtained possession of Savoy, and sub-sequently of Gaul on the Rhone, and maintained a separate kingdom till A.D. 524, when they were conquered by the Franks. On the division of the Frank kingdom, it again became a separate state, and continued such most of the time for several centuries.

The beast, which John styles "another Beast," and which he says "ascended out of the earth," came up among the Horns of the Sea Beast, and after they had made their appearance (Dan. 7:8,24). The Beast of the Earth was to be "diverse" from the Beast of the Sea, and to subdue three of its horns. These three horn-territories were so much of the Dragon Fourth Beast habitable taken from the Beast of the Sea; and conferred upon it the Roman characteristic. A map of Central Europe will exhibit the Beast of the Earth with sufficient accuracy. Its acquisition of ROME conferred upon it the quality of holiness in the estimation of its worshippers; so that by them it came to be styled "THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE." It comprehended Italy, Austria, Bavaria, Hungary, and Germany to the North and Baltic seas. Its secular throne, in the beginning, was at AIX-LACHAPELLE, but afterwards at VIENNA; and its spiritual seat in ROME. The Beast of the Earth is an extension of Daniel's Fourth Beast northwards through the forests of Germany, in which the Romans of the old world could never effect a permanent settlement.

p.142 Such disorders are the natural effects of religious tyranny; but the rage of the Circumcellions was enflamed by a frenzy of a very extraordinary kind. Many of them were possessed with a horror of life, and the desire of martyrdom; and they deemed it of little moment by what means, or by what hands, they perished, if their conduct was sanctified by "the intention of devoting themselves to the glory of the true faith." Such was "the Earth," and such the manner in which she "opened her mouth, and swallowed up the flood which the Catholic Dragon cast out of his mouth," in voluntary defence of the woman's seed in the African wing of the Great Eagle.

He was the Garibaldi of the twelfth century. For a time he found protectors among the nobility and gentry. He harangued the populace with his usual fervor, and inspired them with such a regard for their civil and ecclesiastical rights, that a complete revolution was effected in the city. The papal Pontifex Maximus struggled in vain against this invasion of his power, and at last sunk under the pressure of calamity. His successors, Celestine and Lucius, were unable to check the popular frenzy. The leaders of the insurrection waited upon Licius, demanded the restitution of the civil rights which had been usurped from the people, and insisted that he and the clergy should trust only for their stipends to the pious offerings of the faithful, as at the beginning. The pope survived this astounding demand only a few days, when he was succeeded by Eugenius III., who, dreading the mutinous spirit of the inhabitants, withdrew from Rome, and was "consecrated" in a neighboring fortress.

In the epoch of the full manifestation of this ferocious power the Two Witnesses, styled in the above decrees "heretics," had become by their influence and doctrine very formidable antagonists to the pope and his derby. At the beginning of the thirteenth century, the provinces of Languedoc, Province, Catalonia, and all the surrounding countries, comprising the whole of the South of France, with the Pyrenees and a part of Spain, were peopled with an industrious and intelligent race of men, addicted to commerce and the arts, but generally fostering religious views exceedingly hostile to "the great things and blasphemies" of the Leo-Dragonic Mouth of the Image, or Imperio-Babylonish Hierarchy of Rome. They were styled Albigenses from the province of Albi, in the south of France, in which they flourished in considerable numbers. In the whole of this southern district, they not only dissented, but bore a lively testimony against Romish superstition and idolatry, and the vicious lives of the clergy. The author of the Belgian Chronicle, from Caesarius, A.D. 1208, says: "The error of the Albigenses prevailed to that degree, that it had infected as much as a thousand cities; and if it had not been repressed by the swords of the faithful, I think that it would have corrupted the whole of Europe."

The haughty pontiff knew well what consequences would follow the flaming thunderbolts of the heaven. The German bishops came over to his party forthwith, and drew along with them many of the nobles; the brand of civil war still lay smouldering, and a bull properly directed was sufficient to set it in a blaze: and those very princes and bishops who had assisted in deposing Gregory, gave up their emperor to be tried by the pope, whom they solicited to come to Augsburg for that purpose.

It is unnecessary to adduce any further historical illustration of this two-horned dominion of the earth. Enough has been cited for its identification. The history of the Holy Roman or German empire is the history of the Beast of the earth with two horns like a Lamb, and speaking as a Dragon. I shall therefore conclude this section in the words of Gibbon, that in the fourteenth century "the hereditary monarchs of Europe (the Ten Horns) confessed the preeminence of the German Caesar's rank and dignity; he was the first of the christian (catholic) princes, the temporal head of the great Republic of the West; to his person the title of majesty was long appropriated; and he disputed with the Pope the sublime prerogative of creating kings and assembling councils. The oracle of the civil law, the learned Bartolus, was a pensioner of Charles IV; and his school resounded with the doctrine, that the Roman emperor was the rightful sovereign of the earth from the rising to the setting sun. The contrary opinion was condemned, not as an error, but as a heresy, since even the gospel had pronounced, 'And there went forth a decree, that all the world should be taxed'."

Having thus by rebellion freed themselves from all but a nominal subjection to the Constantinopolitan Dragon, the great object of these ambitious blasphemers was now to preserve themselves in their feebleness from falling a prey to the Lombards, who longed for a united Italy with Rome for their capital. The love of arms and rapine was congenial to them; and they were irresistibly tempted by the disorders of Italy, the nakedness of Rome, and the unwarlike profession of her new chief, to embrace the present opportunity of effecting what would have been, if successful, the healing of the Seventh Head of the Beast. This, however, was not the Providential indication to be fulfilled. It was the Imperial Head, not the Regal, that was to be healed, or reestablished as an Eighth head upon the Seven Hills. But the Lombards did not know this; and in the confident hope of success, marched to the conquest of Spoleto and Rome. The storm, however, evaporated without effect; but alarmed the country with a vexatious alternative of hostility and truce, which caused a feeling of insecurity for life and property on every side. Hence, a Protector of the Roman People against the Lombards was the great desideratum of the time.

In A.D. 1493, after the discovery of America by Columbus, a like application was made by Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain to Pope Alexander VI; the same pleas and promises accompanying it of extending the dominion of the Pope. The Bull which decreed the grant, enacted that all westward of an imaginary line passing from pole to pole, and one hundred leagues west of the Azores, should belong to the Spaniards, all eastward to the Portuguese. In the judgment of the Horn-Governments, these pontifical grants were regarded as constituting an unimpeachable title, and a guarantee against interference and attack. Under Elizabeth of England, however, the validity of the grant was not admit-ted. For on the Spanish ambassador's reclamation against Drake, A.D. 1580, for having navigated seas which were in the dominion of Spain, the British Queen replied, that "the English did not recognize in any manner the property which the king of Spain attributed to himself, nor the pretended gift of a Pope, who had no right to dispose of countries and seas which did not belong to him."

Now, the legal beginning of this murderous administration of irresponsible ecclesiastical power, was made, as the reader may see, the beginning of the forty and two months. "The saints shall be given into his hand during (ad) a time, and times, and the dividing of time." Hence, they must have been given into his power at the beginning of the period specified, or they could not have been subject to him during the period. The delivering of the saints into his hand at the first must be taken as the starting point in the calculation. There is no clue in Daniel to the epoch of this delivery. John, however, in showing whence the Eyes and the Mouth of the Beast derived their power, and the use they would make of it against the saints with the historical description of the Dragon's grant, enables us to Say, with considerable assurance, that the forty and two months began in the epoch of A.D. 604-608. In all the subsequent 1260 years, the Papal Powers have practised prosperously against the Saints and Witnesses for the supremacy of Jesus against that of the Universal Bishop, unicum nomen in mundo. They have trodden them under foot, made successful war upon them, and killed them in all the streets of the Great City - the Witnesses for 1260 years after the Justinian epoch; the Saints for 1260 years after the Phocean epoch. This is the testimony of authentic history, and cannot be gainsaid by any one intelligent therein, who knows what saints and witnesses for Jesus are. Of course, this Phocean quadrenmal epoch being accepted as the time when the saints were given by the Dragon into the power of the Little Horn, Eyes and Mouth, "the time, and times, and half a time," or forty and two months, must now be in the quadrennial epoch of termination, which is from A.D. 1864 to A.D. 1868*. We who have lived in this epoch have witnessed great events, indicating a breaking up of the politico-ecclesiastical constitution of the Papal Kosmos, or Order of Things. Naples, Sardinia, Lombardy, Venetia, and the Italian Duchies, are merged in the Kingdom of Italy; the military element of the Little Horn, Austria, has been excluded from the Holy Land of the Romish Satan; and the Universal Bishop of the Horn Governments is smitten with the paralysis of death. Every thing in the Western Third of the Roman Earth is in a transition state. Nothing is settled, neither can be. The present lull is only preparatory to the tripartite division of the Great City under the Seventh and Last Vial; when the Beast under the Eighth Head, in the last stage of its existence, will be prepared for perdition at the hand of "the King of kings and Lord of lords" - the kings and lords, who are "the called, and chosen, and faithful," who follow him whithersoever he goes, in all his judicial enterprises of war and conquest - Apoc. 17:14; 14:4. 309

In the meantime, the siege of Rome was closely pressed by Totila, A.D. 546. The inhabitants were gradually reduced to feed on dead horses, dogs, cats, and mice, and eagerly to snatch the grass, and even the nettles, which grew among the ruins of the city. The failure of Belisarius to throw supplies into the place, left Rome without protection to the mercy or indignation of Totila; by whose instrumentality the Deity was inflicting plagues upon the Trinitarian adherents of the Name of Blasphemy upon the Seven Hills. The continuance of hostilities had embittered the national hatred; the Arian clergy were ignominiously driven from Rome; Pelagius, the archdeacon, returned without success from an embassy to the Gothic camp; and a Sicilian bishop, the envoy or nuncio of pope Vigilius, was deprived of both his hands for daring to utter falsehoods in the service of the Trinitanan church and state

This letter was written to the Bishop of Rome then subject to the king of Italy, while Justinian was meditating the reconquest of the country. Three years after, Rome was besieged by Belisarius. The letter was exceedingly flattering to the Bishop's pride and ambition, in that he found himself authoritatively seated upon the Seven Hills as enthroned head over all ecclesiastical affairs of the Roman world. But the Seventh Head, which was Arian, did not coincide with Justinian in the acknowledgment of the Pope as the Head of all churches. The Arian Catholic churches repudiated his headship; they were therefore, being heretics, the natural enemies of Justinian and his Universal Bishop, whose policy could not be established until the Seventh Head was abolished, and the Arians suppressed. Hence, the invasion of Italy; the sympathy of the Trinitarians in Rome with the invader; and the persecution of heretics of every variety of belief; and the location of the Dragon's Viceroy in Ravenna, instead of Rome. The settlement of Italy by Justinian according to the Pragmatic Sanction, granted at the Pope's request, A.D. 554, by reducing Rome to the second rank, left the Apostolic Throne therein free from the overshadowing and blighting presence of a sovereign temporal authority; and thus "the Dragon gave to him his power and his throne and an extensive jurisdiction," saying in the 131st of the Novels, we ordain that the Most Holy Pope of the Elder Rome be the first of all priests" even in that Rome, which in the 9th of the Novels he styles, "the native country of the laws, the fountain of the priesthood."

10. And the fifth angel poured out his vial upon the throne of the Beast; and it was his kingdom which had been darkened; and they did gnaw their tongues from the anguish, and blasphemed the Deity of the heaven because of their pains, and because of their ulcers; and they repented not of their works.

13. Thou hast led forth in Thy goodness the people whom Thou hast redeemed;

The great outcry shouted forth by the Angel of the Altar is promptly responded to by the Angel of the Sickle, who puts his forces into motion against the enemy. The sickle he handles in the sanguinary vintage of the earth, is "the Remnant of Jacob" who are then "among the Gentiles in the midst of many peoples as a lion among the beasts of the forest, as a young lion among the flocks of sheep; who, if he go through, both treadeth down, and teareth in pieces, and none can deliver. And I will execute vengeance in anger and fury upon the nations, such as they have not heard" (Micah 5:8,15). Such is the instrumentality of the Spirit in the down-treading of the wine press. Judah and Israel in their dispersion are handled by the King of the Jews as his sword, bow, arrow, battle-axe, sickle, fan, and so forth. "Behold," saith the Spirit in Isaiah 41:15, "I will make thee a new sharp threshing instrument having teeth; thou, worm Jacob, shalt thresh the mountains (empires), and beat them small, and shalt make the hills (lesser states) as chaff. And thou shalt fan them, and the wind shall carry them away, and the whirlwind shall scatter them; and thou shalt rejoice in Yahweh, and shalt glory in the Holy One of Israel". This has never come to pass since it was written. It will, however, assuredly be fulfilled, when He who hath been raised up "shall come upon princes as upon mortar, and as the potter treadeth clay" (v.25). And in Psa. 44 they say, "Thou art He, 0 Elohim, my King: command thou deliverances for Jacob. Through thee will we push down our enemies: through thy Name will we tread them under that rise up against us". Then "the righteous shall rejoice when he seeth the vengeance: he shall wash his feet in the blood of the wicked: so that a man shall say, Verily, there is a reward for the righteous: verily there is Elohim judging the earth" (Psa. 58:10,11). Jesus and his Brethren in command of the twelve tribes of Israel, are the Sickle of the Spirit by which he cuts off the vine of the earth, and treads its clusters in the great winepress of Divine wrath. Behold them all in battle array in ch. 19:11-16! There is the Faithful and True One, the Commander of the forces, who makes war in righteousness; His brethren in arms, who are "the called, and chosen and faithful;" and their hosts, the horses they ride, and the sharp sword of their warfare. These constitute the instrumentality symbolized in ch. 14 by the Angel of the Sickle who treads the winepress. This is evident from the fact that his mission is the same as theirs, which the reader may see by comparing verse 19 of this chapter with verse 15 of the former, where it is written "He treadeth the wine-press of the fierceness of Mighty God". Thus, those who "go forth, and grow up as calves of the stall, tread down the wicked: for they shall be ashes under the soles of their feet in the day that I shall do, saith Yahweh Tz'vaoth".

No longer hosts encount'ring hosts, Shall crowds of slain deplore;

Now the Lamb-Power as the Man of war Yahweh will do all this after the example of Joshua in his war upon the Canaanites; which illustrates the manner in which Yahweh fought in the day of battle (Zech 14:3). Christ Jesus, the King of the Jew', "with the 144 000 as the commanders of the armies of Israel are the HoIy Angels" and "the Lamb" in whose presence the worshippers of the beast and his Image are tormented in the lake of fire burning with brimstone As the prophet like unto Moses, he will serve these as the great law giver served Sihon king of the Amorites, and Og king of Bashan whose story is narrated in Deut. 3, 4. When He opens his eyes upon the house of Judah he will make the governors of Judah (the Saints) like a hearth of fire among the wood, and like a torch of fire in a sheaf and they shall devour all the peoples round about, on the right hand and on the left Judah will then be the sword, and the bow in the hand of the Lamb and the house of Joseph, the ten tribes of the old Ephraim kingdom His arrow which shall go forth as the lightning When this bow is drawn its arrows will be sharp in the heart of the king's enemies as ii is written to day do I declare that I will render double for thee when I have bent Judah for me filled the bow with Ephratm and raised up thy sons O Zion against thy sons, O Greece (the Goats) and made thee (the Lamb Power in Zion) as the sword of a mighty man And Yahweh shall be seen over them and His arrow (Ephraim) shall go forth as the lightning and Adonai Yahweh shall blow with a trumpet, and shall go forth with the whirlwinds of the south. And Yahweh Tz' vaoth shall defend them And Yahweh their Elohim shall save theni in that day as the flock of his people; for they shall be as the stones of a crown lifted up as an ensign upon His land". "And they shall be as mighty men who tread down their enemies in the mire of the streets in the battle and they shall fight because Yahweh is with them and they shall be as though I had not cast them off. And they of Ephraim shall be as a mighty man yea their children shall see it, and be glad. And I will hiss for them and gather them. And I will sow them among the people: arid they shall remember me in far countries: and they shall live with their children, and turn again. I will bring them again also out of the land of Egypt, and gather them out of Assyria; and I will bring them into the land of Gilead and Lebanon; and room shall not be found for them" (Zech. 9, 10).

Solomon reigned over the whole twelve tribes from the decease of his father and predecessor. This, however, was not the case with David from the death of Saul. Solomon and David were types of the Christ, who was to descend from them after the flesh, in respect of his career as a hero and conqueror, and the Prince of Peace. "Yahweh", says Moses, "is a Man of war; Yahweh is His name" (Exod. 15:3). David's career was illustrative of that of the Man Yahweh, styled by Paul, "the Man Christ Jesus," as the founder of the reign of peace. Hence, as David reigned several years over Judah before he became the recognized sovereign of the whole nation; it behoves that his Son and Lord reign as King of Judah before he become monarch of all the tribes of Israel and kingdoms of the earth. This typical indication is sustained by the testimony in Zech. 12:7, that "Yahweh shall save the tents of Judah first, that the glory of the house of David, and the glory of the inhabitants of Jerusalem do not magnify themselves against Judah." The victory of Bozrah will be fatal to Gentile supremacy in the land of Israel. In the day of this discomfiture its invaders will be beaten off by Yahweh from the channel of the river (Euphrates) unto the stream of Egypt (the Nile); after which he will gather them one by one from Assyria and Egypt to worship him in Jerusalem (Isa. 27:12,13).

Its constituents are a proper subject, sufficient water. and the action indicated in the word. A proper subject is one who has been "taught of God" (John 6:44,45). God's teaching finds access to a man's mind by the study of the Scriptures, which are sufficient for instruction in righteousness, and the development of a man of God (2 Tim. 3:16). A man thus taught believes "the things concerning the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ" (Acts 8:12); and, in acquiring this faith, finds himself possessed of an enlightened mind, a love for the truth he believes, and a disposition such as Abraham possessed; in other words, he is a subject of a "faith that works by love," and "purifies the heart" (Gal. 4:6; Acts 15:9). Such an one as this, having the "one faith" and the "one hope" is the only proper subject of the "one baptism."

14. And I looked, and behold a white cloud, and upon the cloud one sitting like to a son of man, having upon his head a golden stephan, and in his hand a sharp sickle.

Thus, no power upon the earth has so exclusive a claim to the name of Lateinos as the Iconic Power of the Seven Hills. All that per iains to it is Latin, and names are invented and conferred upon things in view of that most striking characteristic. The names of many modern powers are the names of the languages of their executives and dominant races; as the French power, the Spanish power, the Greek Power, the English power, and, as in the case before us, the Latin Power. Their several languages are characteristic of each; no wonder then that the Latin, the tongue in which the Image speaks, should be selected by the Eternal Spirit as the basis of its name.

But, it is impossible for this petition to be granted. The plague of the Frogs will cleave to "the great city spiritually called Sodom and Egypt," until their policy has brought ruin upon it, from which there will be no redemption nor escape.

4. In the Encyclop~dia Metropolitana, on Heraldry, it is stated that "Paulus Emilius blazons the arms of France, argent three diadems gules;" others say, they bear 'three toads,' sable in a field vert-ap. Gwil-lim, c. 1. which, if ever they did, it must have been before the existence of the present rules".

The reader will note, that in this sixteenth chapter there are two suns introduced into the prophecy; and that both of them are symbolic, but of different things. The first is the Sun of Europe, upon which was poured out the wrath of the fourth vial: the other Sun, on the contrary, is not the subject of wrath; but one which rises above the world's horizon, some time during the period of the sixth vial. During the five preceding vials and much even of the sixth, He is below that horizon concealed from view, and we know, that before the sun rises it is dark- "darkness covers the earth" (Isa. 60:2) - and that it is while he is rising that the darkness is receding; and the objects upon the earth gradually become visible.

The reader will note, that in this sixteenth chapter there are two suns introduced into the prophecy; and that both of them are symbolic, but of different things. The first is the Sun of Europe, upon which was poured out the wrath of the fourth vial: the other Sun, on the contrary, is not the subject of wrath; but one which rises above the world's horizon, some time during the period of the sixth vial. During the five preceding vials and much even of the sixth, He is below that horizon concealed from view, and we know, that before the sun rises it is dark- "darkness covers the earth" (Isa. 60:2) - and that it is while he is rising that the darkness is receding; and the objects upon the earth gradually become visible.

In Spain, also, "they repented not of their works". Ferdinand, when restored to the throne, re-established both the Jesuits, and the popish "Hell", styled the Inquisition; and "heretics" were again murdered at the burning stake. The subsequent civil wars, and continually recurring insurrections there, sufficiently indicate the indignation of heaven; and, as an earnest of what is to come, is measurably retributive of the blood of the innocent shed by the "reverend" assassins and thieves of Rome. In Sardinia the King, to whose tender mercies the Waldenses were made over by the treaty of Vienna, for no other reason than because they were Antipapists, revoked their privileges, and multiplied vexations and oppressions upon them. In after years, the king of Sardinia was defeated at Novara, and died an exile in a foreign land; and his son, Victor Emmanuel, now reigns king of Italy, a confederate of the Revolution, and a terror to the Pope.

But if he conquered wherever he was present himself, the enemy gained ground wherever he was absent. He was badly and treacherously supported by his generals. At length Paris, the only capital of the Continent which had not be en invaded during the awful outpouring of these terrible vials, now beheld the hosts of all Europe entering upon its plains, and on the point of undergoing the common humiliation It capitulated in the absence of Napoleon, March 31st, 1814, just 1260 years after the settlement of Italy by Justinian's Pragmatic Sanction A.D. 554. Eleven days after, perceiving that further resistance was' fruitless, he surrendered, and he renounced for himself and his children the thrones of France and Italy; and on the 20th of April, withdrew from the Continent to his little principality of Elba.

At this moment of rashness and passion Prussia seemed almost to exult in the idea of entering alone into a contest with France; of whose mission to "scorch the men" of the Two-Horned Beast "with fire," she was not yet able to perceive. Early in October, 1806, the whole collected force of the Prussians exceeded a hundred and twenty thousand men. The French were nearly of equal strength, but under very superior command. The two armies seemed to assume an attitude of mutual defiance. Napoleon by his manoeuvres succeeded in turning the left of the Prussians, and in cutting off all communication with their magazines, by which he was enabled to occupy in force the heights of JENA, which had been deemed impracticable for artillery.

After the 2nd of June, the Girondists, who had not yet been guillotined, extended the flame of civil war; so that sixty out of the eighty-three departments of France, were in insurrection against the Convention. The situation of the Republic could not now be worse. It had to put an end to civil wars, to repair the disasters of the army, and to repel the whole of Europe; yet the bold men at the head of it were not intimidated at their situation. At the suggestion of Danton, they took their great and last oath, that they would die or annihilate the tyrants. After this the tide of events began to turn in favor of the Convention, which soon became everywhere victorious. The Committee of Public Safety, thinking, not without cause, that its enemies, although subdued, were not disposed to submission, adopted a terrible system of extermination, to prevent their recovering themselves. They sent twelve columns, known by the name of the Infernal Columns, to scour the country with fire and sword, to explore the woods, to carry off those who were collected together, and to spread terror throughout the Vendean country of the Image-worshippers of the Beast. The Committee, now the great power in the republic, abandoned itself to the most terrible executions. Armies destroy only on the field of battle: it is a different thing with parties who, in violent situations, fearing that the struggle may be renewed even after victory, fortify themselves against new attempts by the most inexorable rigor. By this they increased the grievousness and malignancy of the ulcer, from which the hemorrhage was copious and incessant. They established an entirely NEW ERA as compared with that founded on the legislation of Justinian. In place of the Catholic calendar they substituted that of the republican, for the week of seven days, the decade of ten making every tenth day the day of rest, instead of Sunday. The New Era' was dated from Sept.22, 1792, the epoch of the foundation of the Republic. The Catholic worship of the Beast's Image was abolished in 1793. Gobet, constitutional bishop of Paris, proceeded in full procession to the Convention, and declared that the religion he had taught so long was, in every respect, a piece of priest-craft, which had no foundation either in history or sacred truth. The gold and silver plate of the Romish bazaars was seized; and the bazaars themselves, in most districts of France, were closed against priests and worshippers; the bells were broken and cast into cannon, and the whole ecclesiastical establishment worthily destroyed. Thus was righteously avenged upon "the men who had the sign of the beast, and the worshippers of his image," the terrible cruelties and massacres of St. Bartholomew's and of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, inflicted by the kings of the House of Bourbon, and the priests of Rome. The "grievous and malignant ulcer" was the Deity's way of doing justice to the slain. It was the first installment of wrath to be poured out upon the blasphemers of "his name, and tabernacle, - them who dwell in the heaven". It was a signal inception of the Third Woe, which awaits its consummation, when the Seventh Angel shall have ceased to sound.

Wurmser was reinforced by twenty thousand men, by which he was enabled to resume the offensive, but with no better success. He stationed twenty thousand with Davidowich at Roveredo; while he pushed on towards Mantua with thirty thousand. Buonaparte waited until the distance between Wurmser and Davidowich was sufficiently increased to prevent mutual support. On September 4 he poured down his thunder upon Davidowich in the battle of Roveredo. The impetuosity of the French shattered him to shivers as a potter's vessel; and drove the wrecks of his host through one of the chief defiles of the Tyrol, whither they were not pursued.

14. Blessed are they who do his commandments, that their right may be upon the wood of the life, and they may enter in to the gates into the city.

15. And he that spake with me had a golden reed, that he might measure the city, and its gates, and its wall.

14. And death and the grave had been cast into the lake of the fire. This is the Second Death.

This seventeenth chapter, which contemplates so much of the judgment of the Great Harlot as pertains to her preadventual consumption finishes with the words,," and the Woman which thou sawest, is that "Great City having dominion over the kings of the earth". In the days of John, it was customary to represent the Roman State by a woman sitting upon seven projections piled upon one another, to typify the seven mountains. This device may be seen upon a coin in the British Museum struck in the reign of Vespasian. Sitting upon the Seven Hills with "Roma" under the base line, indicated that that Great City as it 'really was in those days, was the capital of the State. In John's time she ruled militarily "over the kings of the earth"; as in after ages she came to do spiritually and more despotically. On a medal struck in 1825 in the reign of Leo XII, the Roman State is represented by a woman holding a cross in the left hand, and a cup In the right hand extended, with the Inscription Sedet super Universam, She sits upon the Universe "which is equivalent to the Apocalyptic intimation, She sits upon the many Waters or "peoples and multitudes, and nations, and tongues," or 'She Sits upon the Beast," and therefore reigns over the kings of the earth

12. Lading of gold, and of silver, and of precious stone, and of pearl, and of fine linen, and of purple, and of silk, and of scarlet: and all thyme wood, and every ivory utensil, and every article of most precious wood, and of brass, and of iron, and of marble;

16.And the Ten Horns which thou sawest upon the beast, these shall hate the Harlot, and make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and shall burn her with fire

How then doth "Yahweh, the Man of War," so styled by Moses in Exod. 15:3, occupy his time after his development as the "One Angel" is complete? Let the following testimonies enlighten us. "Behold," saith the Spirit of Christ in Isa. 43:19, "I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert. The living things of the plain shall glorify me, swift things and the daughters of voracious ones (the wild Arabs, figuratively "dragons" and "ostriches"): because I give waters in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert, to give drink to my people, my chosen. This people I have created for myself: they shall show forth my praise". This implies the subjugation of the freebooters of the Arabian desert, and its fertilization, which will make its people glorify the conqueror, and sing for joy.

This anointing with Spirit and Power was the revival in a greater degree of the former relations subsisting between the Father and the Son. He had been "anointed with holy spirit and power" after he had been born of water. This did not change his body into Spirit; it only invested the body born of unclean flesh, or "made of a woman," with the wisdom and power of the Father in heaven, who discoursed and worked through it (John 5:19,30; 6:38,63; 8:42,58; 10:30; 14:10,28). But when the body was anointed again with holy spirit and power, or "spirit of holiness," after it was born of the second unclean place, the tomb, it was not only endued and embued with wisdom and power as before, but it was itself transformed into an embodiment of eternal power, in which there is no weakness, or corruption, or principle of death at all. It was then "revived," anezese, as well as risen again, aneste. It became "the body of his glory," soma tes doxes autou (Phil. 3:21), "raised in glory" from the earthy body which is "without honor," en atimia (1 Cor. 15:43); and forty days after, "taken up in glory" (1 Tim. 3:16).

My maturest conviction is that "Rome the Capital of Italy,"(****) is a vain cry. Eight recognized forms of government have reigned there since the foundation of the city. The Papacy is the ecclesiastical element of the Eighth Head, which is the last, and goes into perdition with the city. We read of no Ninth Head upon the Seven Mountains. If Italy gained Rome, and removed the throne from Florence thither, it would be the capital of a new form of government, and therefore the Ninth. There may be a struggle between France and Italy to decide the point. The unclean daemon-spirit about ere long to issue from the Mouth of the False Prophet will enlighten us still further in relation to it. Were the Italians to get the city, they could not retain it long; for apart from the reason, that no ninth form can be constitutionally recognized, is the fact that there is one standing at the door, whose mission it is to destroy the city that it may "be found no more at all" (Apoc. 18:21). This will effectually settle all controversy about Rome, and put a quietus upon the Roman Question forevermore.

"The Queen has become the humble servant of the Pope. All Spain nearly burst with laughter, when, a year ago, she read the papal letter announcing to the whole world that Pius 9 sent the 'golden rose' to Isabella, in recompense for her virtues and the purity of her life!

6. And the woman fled into the wilderness where she has a place that had been prepared of the Deity, that they may sustain her there a thousand two hundred and sixty days.

9. The NINTH STAR was Vespasian. He emulated the excellences of Augustus, and grieved to inflict punishment when justice demanded it. He was, however, extremely avaricious. He reigned ten years, and died aged 69................................................................. A.D. 75

This crocodile, or Egypto-Romaic Babylonian, embodiment of falsehood and rebellion is styled purros, "fiery red," or red as fire. Daubuz, on the authority of certain heathen writers, says, "the Roman emperors and empresses had fire carried before them; also kings and generals at the head of their armies; it serving instead of trumpets as signs to begin the fight. " This was notably the fact in the aggressions of the Dragon. Fire preceded him when he stood before the woman and her seed. During 280 years he had contended with her in all the fire of his fury, blazing forth against her with all the power of destruction at his command. He became red with rage and slaughter, especially in the period of the fifth seal, in which he vowed the extermination of the very name of christianity, which he likened to a hydra. But the archer of the first seal, who continued his warfare through all the six, was Divinely commissioned to go on conquering until he conquered him "through the blood of the Lamb, and the word of their testimony." The fiery redness of his wrath caused multitudes of the woman's seed lo lie beneath the altar weltering in their blood. But their death availed him nothing in the end. The truth is stronger than human wrath - too mighty for the Dragon though confederate with all the potentates of earth.

Such were still the resources and abilities of Licinius, that, after so many successive defeats, he collected in Bithynia a new army of fifty or sixty thousand men, while Constantine was still actively employed in the siege of Byzantium. The vigilant Michael did not neglect the last struggles of the Dragon. He transported a considerable part of his victorious army across the Bosphorus; and soon after their landing fought the decisive battle of the war on the heights of Chrysopolis, or, as it is now called, Scutari. "The angels" of the Dragon, though lately raised, ill armed, and worse disciplined, made head against "the Michael and his angels" with fruitless but desperate valor, till a total defeat, and the slaughter of five and twenty thousand men, irretrievably determined the fate of the Supreme Pontiff of the Idols and his adherents. Licinius retired to Nicomedia from whence he opened negotiations with Constantine. Peace and affluence were granted to him on condition of sacrificing Martinianus, whom he had created Augustus, and of resigning the imperial office. Licinius accordingly solicited and accepted the pardon of his offenses, laid himself and his purple at the feet of his Lord and Master, was raised from the ground with insulting pity, was admitted the same day to the imperial banquet, and soon after was sent away to Thessalonica, which had been chosen for the place of his confinement, which was soon terminated by death at the hand of the executioner.

Arnold, who had withdrawn from Rome during this extraordinary insurrection, hearing of the escape of the newly-elected pope, repaired once more to the city, and animated with fresh vigor the energies of the populace. He called to their remembrance the achievements of their ancestors, and painted in the strongest colors the sufferings which sprung from ecclesiastical tyranny. He charged them never to admit the pontiff within their walls till they had prescribed the limits of his spiritual jurisdiction, and fixed the civil government in their own hands. The passions of the populace were aroused by these harangues; and, headed by the disaffected nobles, they attacked the cardinals and other ecclesiastics, set fire to the palaces, and compelled the inhabitants to swear allegiance to the new constitution.

p.142 But the defensive operation of "the Earth" was not restricted to the African provinces of the empire. The peasantry of Paphlagonia was inspired by the same spirit. During the reign of Constantius, son and successor of Constantine, when the catholic Trinitarians and catholic Arians unsheathed the sword of the flesh against one another to arbitrate the rights of Homoousion and Homojousion (*) to the claim of orthodoxy, the Novatians, another remnant of the woman's anti-catholic seed, became obnoxious to the Arian emperor and patriarch of Constantinople. The latter distinguished pietist, whose name was Macedonius, being informed that a large district of Paphlagonia was almost entirely inhabited by the Novatians, resolved in fiery excess of zeal, either to convert them to Arian catholicity, or to exterminate them; and as he distrusted on this occasion the efficacy of an ecclesiastical mission, he determined to vomit forth a legionary flood to sweep them from the earth. To this end, he ordered a body of four thousand legionaries to march against these unoffending dissenters, and to reduce the territory of Mantinium under his patriarchal authority. "The Serpent cast out of his mouth water like a flood after the woman, that he might cause her to be carried away by the flood." But the armed flood did not accomplish the purpose of the Constantinopolitan government. It was foreshown in the prophecy that it should not succeed; for it was Providentially arranged that the flood should be ineffectually expended upon the earth, as it is written, "the earth ran with help for the woman, and opened her mouth, and drank up the flood which the Dragon cast out of his mouth." And so it came to pass; for the Paphlagonian peasants, animated by despair and religious fury, boldly encountered the invaders of their country; and though many of them were slain, the Serpent's legions were vanquished by an irregular multitude armed only with scythes and axes; and except a few that escaped by flight, thousands of soldiers were left dead upon the field of battle. The Emperor Julian, who succeeded Constantius, an apostate from this sanguinary catholicism to paganism, speaking of his predecessor's reign, in his fifty-third epistle, says, "many were imprisoned and persecuted and driven into exile. Whole troops of those who were styled 'heretics,' were massacred, particularly at Cyzicus and Samosata. In Paphlagonia, Bithynia, Galatia, and many other provinces, towns and villages were laid waste and utterly destroyed."

The Beast of the Sea emerged after the collapse of the western Empire in 475 A.D. It was superseded by the Holy Roman Empire, or Beast of the earth in 800. The Dragon resented the military power of eastern Rome centered in Constantinople which fell to the Turkish Power in 1453.

5. The GEPIDÆ migrated from the Scandinavian country west of the Baltic, now called Sweden. They crossed the sea and proceeded southeasterly across the Dnieper, and encamped between that river and the Don. From thence they passed westward into Hungary and thence radiated to Illyria, now styled Dalmatia, in which they established them-selves on the Adriatic Bay of the Mediterranean, after the death of Attila in A.D. 453. Ardaric, the king of the Gepidae, erected his throne in the palace of Attila, whence he exercised royal authority over the old country of Dacia, from the Carpathian hills to the Black Sea. The kingdom of the Gepidae continued until A.D. 566, when it was destroyed by the Lombards.

After describing the wickedness of this Name of Blasphemy which arrogated Divine honor, the writer adds, "Christ never had an enemy to be compared with this; one so able to pervert the way of truth into false-hood; insomuch that the true ecclesia, with her children, is trodden under foot by it (Apoc. 11:2). The worship that pertains to God alone is transferred to Antichrist; to the creature, male and female, deceased-to images, to carcasses, and relics. The sacrament of the eucharist (the Lord's Supper), is converted into an object of adoration, and the worshipping of God alone is prohibited. The Saviour is robbed of his merits, and the sufficiency of his grace in justification, regeneration, the pardon of sins, sanctification, establishment in the faith, and spiritual nourishment - ascribing all these things to his own authority - to a mere form of words - to the intercession of saints and to the fire of purgatory. Thus people are seduced from Christ, their minds are drawn off from Seeking those blessings in him, by a lively faith in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and teaching his followers to expect them by the will and pleasure and works of Antichrist.

p.233 From this sketch of the origin of things in Rome, the reader will easily perceive how Peter, the apostle of the Circumcision, and the Two Keys, came in after times to occupy so prominent a position in the capital. When the strangers of Rome returned from Jerusalem, they would unquestionably speak more about Peter than the rest, because he was chief speaker. From this fact, he would acquire the title "Prince of the Apostles" and Holder of the Keys: and though there is no reliable evidence that he ever was in Rome (and, if he ever had been there, the account of it would hardly have been omitted from the Acts), the part he enacted was so conspicuous, that his relation to Rome in the introduction of the gospel there, would seem almost like his personal presence. In process of time, this would be affirmed, like many other imaginary things, to be a fact; and then, when popes came into fashion, they would seek to sanctify the imposition by styling Peter "the first pope!"

The Seventh Head being destroyed, and the Bishop of Rome acknowledged by the Catholic Dragon of the East, as the Pontiff of the empire, the next desideratum was that he should be acknowledged by all the Horns of the West. This implied their conversion from paganism and Arianism to what Justinian styles "the right faith," and the "pure doctrine of his Holiness." These Horns belong to the times of Imperialism, which was worshipped by them in the Western Emperor while there was one, and afterwards in the Eastern. They were the Diademed Viceroys of Rome, and Constantinople, being Masters-General and Patricians of the empire - a political relation to Imperialism which legitimized their governments in the estimation of their Roman subjects, who greatly exceeded the number of their barbarian conquerors. The beginning and the ending of this political relationship, with but slight recognition of them in the long interval of 1335 years, are the subject of Apocalyptic symbolization. The beginning was the seed or elements of things in the period of politico-ecclesiastical organization; the ending, the ripe harvest and vintage (Apoc. 14) in the period of analysis or dissolution: so as that in some sort, the beginning was typical of the ending.

At length on Dec.17 the Goths were treacherously admitted into the city. As soon as daylight had displayed the entire victory of the Goths, Totila devoutly visited the so-called tomb of St. Peter; but while he prayed at the altar, twenty-five soldiers and sixty citizens, were put to the sword in the vestibule of the temple. The archdeacon Pelagius stood before him with "the gospel" in his hand, and exclaimed, "0 Lord, be merciful to your servant." "Pelagius," said Totila, with an insulting smile, "your pride now condescends to become a suppliant." "I am a suppliant," he prudently replied, "God has now made us your subjects, and as your subjects we are entitled to your clemency." At his humble prayer the lives of the Romans were spared, and the passions of the hungry soldiers restrained. But they were rewarded with the freedom of pillage. The next day he pronounced two orations, to congratulate and admonish the victorious Goths, and to reproach the Senate, as the vilest of slaves, with their perjury, folly, and ingratitude. Yet he consented to forgive their revolt. Against the city he appeared inexorable; and the world was astonished at the fatal decree, that Rome should be changed into a pasture for cattle. The firm and temperate remonstrance of Belisarius suspended the execution; and Totila was at length persuaded to preserve Rome as the ornament of his kingdom. Having demolished one third of the walls in different parts, and stationed an army about fifteen miles from the city to observe the motions of Belisarius, he marched with the remainder of his forces into Lucania and Apulia. The Senators were dragged in his train, and afterwards confined in the fortress of Campania; the citizens with their wives and children, and the pope and his clergy of all ranks and degrees, were dispersed in exile; and during forty days and more Rome was abandoned to desolate and dreary solitude.

Because there is little hostility shown to the Papacy by European Powers today, readers may fail to comprehend the important point made by the Author of Eureka. In 1848, Karl Marx published his Manifrsto of the Communist Party. The booklet had widespread influence through Europe and the world. It stimulated a revolutionary spirit of Liberalism, Communism and anti-Papalism that swept the Continent, as mentioned in Elpis Israel:

Even in our own days, and in the time of his deep temporary humiliation under the first Napoleon, who had filled his kingdom with darkness (ch. 16:10) the same "extensive jurisdiction" was asserted. "Let them learn," said Pius VII., in his excommunication of that potentate, June 10, 1809, "that they are subjected by the laws of Jesus Christ to our throne, and to our commandment." This was truly a "great thing," and in keeping with the arrogance of Celestin III., A.D. 1191, who kicked the secular diadem from the head of Henry VI., in token of his right to assign kingdoms to whom he pleased, and to take them away. The fact is thus described by Roger of Hoveden. "But the Lord Pope sat in the political chair holding the golden imperial crown between his feet; and the emperor bowing his head received the crown, and the empress in the same manner, from the feet of the Lord Pope. But the Lord Pope instantly struck with his foot the emperor's crown, and cast it upon the ground; signifying that he had the power of deposing him from the empire, if he were undeserving of it. The Cardinals, however, lifted up the crown and placed it on the emperor's head." "He hath set me," said another pope, "even as prince over all nations, to root out, and to pull down, to destroy and to build." Indeed, there is no end to "the great things and blasphemies" to which this Papal Mouth of the Gentile Beast has given, and continues to give utterance: for as Cardinal Bellarmine says (writing under the sanction of the pope) expressly, "that every title which is in scripture given to Christ, appertains also to the Pope;" and to guard against misapprehension, he gives a copious enumeration of them. This is truly "blasphemy against the Deity, manifested in the Flesh," and called Christ; the effect of which is to blaspheme his name, and his Tabernacle, and them who tabernacle, camp, tent, or dwell in the heaven; that is to say, Jesus Christ and his brethren the saints. But to notice, or reproduce here, all the blasphemies and great swelling words of this mouth, which, all toothless as it has become, have issued from it, would be to write all the past and current history of the Papacy. Under this section head I have presented the reader with specimens whereby he may be able to identify among "the powers that be "that particular power symbolized by the Mouth and the Name of Blasphemy upon the Seven Heads. This is enough for exposition. I shall therefore pass on from the further consideration of "the great things and blasphemies" of him who in his latest manifestation as Pius IX. styles himself in his address to Mortara, "the Father of all the faithful," to the brief exposition of...

The Lombards were now masters of the Exarchate, and as ambition is only increased by accession of dominion, they began to lay claim to the Roman Dukedom, and to Rome itself. In order to enforce his demand, Astolphus marched an army towards the city, reducing many places in its vicinity, and threatening to put the inhabitants to the sword, if they refused to acknowledge him as their sovereign. The Romans hesitated, complained, used prayers and entreaties, and offered presents, but all in vain. Stephen III., then pope, alarmed at the severity of his message, sought to appease him by a solemn embassy; but all was useless, for the one desire of Astolphus was to govern Rome. Time, however, was gained by negotiations, till the friendship of an ally and avenger beyond the Alps was secured.

Henry suddenly finding himself almost insulated in the midst of his dominions, had recourse, through panic, to a miserable expedient. He crossed the Alps at Tyrol, accompanied only by a few domestics, with the avowed determination of submitting and seeking absolution of Gregory, his tyrannical oppressor, who was then at Canossa, on the Apennines, a fortress belonging to his faithful adherent the Countess Matilda. It was in the unusually severe winter of A. D. 1077. At the gates of this place he presented himself as a humble penitent. He alone was admitted into the outer court of the castle, where, being stripped of his robes, and wrapped in a woolen shirt and with naked feet and fasting, he was obliged to remain for three days in the month of January, while Gregory, shut up with his devout and affectionate Matilda, refused to admit him to his presence to kiss his feet. Matilda's attachment to Gregory and hatred of the Germans were so great, that she made over all her estates to the Image of the Beast in process of creation: "and this donation," says the historian, "is the true cause of all the wars which since that period have raged between the emperors and the popes. She possessed, in her own right, a great part of Tuscany, Mantua, Parma, Reggio, Placentia, Ferrara, Modena, Verona, and almost the whole of what is now called the Patrimony of St. Peter, from Viterbo to Orvieto; together with part of Umbria, Spoleto, and the March of Ancona."

David Hume, though regarding them as enthusiasts, bears witness to their moral excellence. "Pope Innocent III.," says he, "published a crusade against the Albigenses, a species of enthusiasts in the south of France, whom he denominated Heretics, because like all other enthusiasts, they neglected the rites of the church, and opposed the power and influence of the clergy. And these sectaries, though the most innocent and inoffensive of mankind, were exterminated with all the circumstances of extreme violence and barbarity."

But, in conclusion of this chapter, does Lateinos solve the enigma of 666? Let us see:

15. And another angel came out of the Nave, vociferating with a loud voice to him sitting upon the cloud, Thrust in thy sickle, and reap, because for thee hath arrived the hour of the reaping, for the harvest of the earth hath been ripened.

Baptism being the institution that affords scope for the obedience of faith, and obedience to the faith, can only be Scripturally and rightly observed by a true believer - a believer of "the truth as it is in Jesus." The religious use of water is of no efficacy to any other kind of subject. No invention can supply the lack of an intelligent belief of the gospel of the kingdom in the person to be baptized. He must be “dead to sin,” that he may be “baptized into Christ’s death,” who “died for sin once;” for it is only the dead, in this sense, who are released or freed from sin (Rom. 6:1,3,10,7).

p.40 This gathering of Israelites of the tribe of Judah, "one of a city and two of a family" (Jer. 3:14) to Zion, will result from the angel proclamation in midheaven. Being fed by pastors according to Yahweh's own heart with knowledge and understanding, the veil will be removed from the minds of many, who will become willing (Psa. 110:3) to emigrate from among the nations and return to their fatherland. Yahweh, the Man of War, will bring them there - "I will bring you," saith He, "to Zion". He will do this by the influence of his victorious power. Having expelled the Anglo Indian Lion from the land, that power will probably receive with reverence the angel proclamation, and consent to place its marine at the disposal of "the Man Christ Jesus," styled in the English Version "the Lord of hosts". This, indeed, will certainly be the case. He will command the ships of Tarshish, and they will obey; for what is testified they do, is done in obedience to his will. The last chapter of Isaiah and the nineteenth verse, testifies of the angel proclamation to Tarshish, and the next verse records the result. The "sounders of the truth" are effective bowmen. Their words move the nations of Tarshish, Pul, Lud, Tubal and Javan, to do the will of Yahweh, and to bring His people as an offering to Him in Jerusalem. Thus they "fly as a cloud, and as doves to their windows," in the fleet ships of Tarshish, which convey the sons of Zion from far with their silver and gold, to the place where the Name of Yahweh is enthroned (Isa. 60:8,9; 18; Jer. 3:17).

Thus, on returning home from their dispersion after they stand upon their feet as a great army, they will have to fight their way through all the countries of the house of Esau. In this Jubilee return, under the Second and Third Angels "the house of Jacob," says Obadiah, "shall be a fire, and the house of Joseph aflame, and the House of Esau for stubble, and they shall kindle in them, and devour them; and there shall not be any remaining of the house of Esau. For Saviours shall come up on Mount Zion (the Lamb with the 144,000) to judge the Mount of Esau; and the kingdom shall be Yahweh's".

They hang the trumpet in the hall, And practise war no more".

Thou hast conducted in Thy might to the habitation of Thy holiness.

12. And the sixth angel poured out his vial upon the great river the Euphrates; and the water thereof was dried up that the way of the kings who are from a sun's risings, might be prepared.

Having disposed of Davidowich and his army, he began operations upon Wurmser himself, still further weakened by a detachment sent against Kilmaine. Buonaparte left Trent, and by rapid marches, over twenty leagues in two days, precipitated his host upon the astonished Austrian, who imagined him to be in the far-off recesses of the Tyrol. Wurmser, and the military chest, nearly fell into the hands of the French. An almost general dispersion of his troops ensued. Wurmser fled to Vicenza, where he collected about sixteen thousand men, Out of the sixty thousand, with whom, scarce a week before, he had commenced the campaign. With this remnant constantly decreasing through severe combats, he got into Mantua, within the walls of which he was finally blockaded on September 15, with a garrison increased by twenty-six thousand men; among whom the woes of the third vial appeared in a more hideous form than when inflicted by the sword alone. Early in October, nine thousand of these were in hospital. In the six months' siege, the garrison lost twenty-seven thousand men by disease and the numerous and bloody sallies which took place.

On the 13th of October, the action commenced, two hours after day break, and quickly became general, exhibiting for some time equal skill and bravery; but a fierce cavalry assault under Murat, at once decided the fortune of this memorable day. Universal consternation ensued; and in the rout multitudes were slaughtered, and a still greater number made prisoners. The entire loss did not fall short of sixty thousand men, of whom twenty thousand were killed and wounded; while that of the French was below five thousand. The rapid successes of the French, and the accumulated and scorching misfortunes of the Prussians, are without precedent in military history. Napoleon immediately took possession of Potsdam and Berlin, where he levied vast contributions, and sent the sword of Frederick the Great as a trophy to Paris. One after another, the different corps of the Prussian army were obliged to surrender; so that in little more than a month, the French had taken no less than one hundred and forty thousand prisoners, two hundred and fifty standards, and about forty-eight hundred pieces of cannon, of which eight hundred were taken in the field, and about four thousand were found in Berlin, and the fortresses which had capitulated.

But, the worshippers of the Beast's Image, assembled in congress at Vienna, soon found, that between this minister of heaven's wrath upon blasphemers, and them, there could be neither truce nor peace. The astounding fact was communicated to them by Talleyrand, that the Exile of Elba had returned to France; that the Bourbon they had set up for king had fled; and that Napoleon was reinstated on the throne! They roared every one with the laughter of demons at the ; their merriment, however, did not last long - the event was too pregnant of mischief to be sported with. They threatened him with public vengeance as the enemy and disturber of the tranquillity of the world. All Europe now rang with preparations for war. Napoleon offered them peace, and to abide by the treaty of Paris; but his offers were disregarded; the Seven Spirits of the Deity had not energized him for peace; but to scorch the men of the Beast with fire: they had not yet had enough of this; therefore their hearts were hardened, and Britain, Austria, Prussia, and Russia, in a seventh and last coalition, decided again to try the arbitrament of fire and sword.

In Austria, so terribly "scorched with fire, " they repented not. By concordat with Rome, they assumed their former relationship to the 'Name of Blasphemy" on the Seven Hills. The Austrian kingdom of Lombardo-Venetia, being adjacent to the Pope's temporal kingdom, the Austrian Government became the pillar and support of the papal throne - an alliance always fatal, and full of misfortune, to the power so connected. In Austria, the Jesuits became as active as ever in propagating popery, with all its lies and blasphemies. Thus, when the Jesuit Sor-cerers in Hungary made any proselytes from Protestantism, they made them say that "the Pope cannot err; and that he has full power to forgive or retain sins, and to cast men into hell; that all he that he has established, whether out of the Bible or not, is true; that he ought to be honored with similar reverence to that paid to Christ himself; that those who oppose his authority ought to be burned at the stake, and to perish body and soul in hell; that the reading of the scriptures is the origin of all factions and blasphemy; that each priest is greater than the Virgin Mary because she was the parent of Christ but once, but the priest creates him anew again and again". Such was the "sorcery" sanctioned by Austria in 1828. Her misfortunes had failed to make her rational and the fruit of her folly and idiocy has been reaped in the wrath that has revisited her, and the False Prophet, her ally, upon the Seven Hills, under the judgments concomitant with the outpouring of the Sixth Vial, by which she has been dried up, and her protectorate of the Pope virtually dissolved.

Further, it may be remarked, that the Sun of this twelfth verse, is the illustrious personage of the fifteenth, who says, "Behold, I come as a thief". No one, I believe, doubts, that the subject of this thief-like manifestation is THE ANCIENT OF DAYS - He whom the ETERNAL FATHER by his power, "made both Lord and Christ", when he transformed the risen, earthborn, body of Gethsemane, into a life-engendering Spirit. This being beyond dispute, we have next to consider certain testimonies concerning him.

Further, it may be remarked, that the Sun of this twelfth verse, is the illustrious personage of the fifteenth, who says, "Behold, I come as a thief". No one, I believe, doubts, that the subject of this thief-like manifestation is THE ANCIENT OF DAYS - He whom the ETERNAL FATHER by his power, "made both Lord and Christ", when he transformed the risen, earthborn, body of Gethsemane, into a life-engendering Spirit. This being beyond dispute, we have next to consider certain testimonies concerning him.

Such is the testimony I have to offer in the case before us. The con-viction produced on my mind is, that the Frogs in the prophecy are the symbol of the French democratic power. It will be seen from the armorial shield of Clovis, that the frogs and the lilies were both used as Symbols. They are both indigenous to wet, or marshy, lands, and therefore very fit emblems of the French, who came originally from the marshes of Westphalia. But on the shield of Pharamond, so far back as A.D. 420, the frogs without the lilies appear in the armorial bearings of the Franks; and in the medal of Childeric I. there is no lily, but the frog only. It would therefore seem from this, that the lilies were not the original arms, but superadded many years after; and at length adopted by the Bourbons as the symbol of their race in its dominion over the frogs. These, then, represent the nation, and the lilies, or fleur de lis, the ruling dynasty. Now, if the apostle had said, "I saw three unclean spirits 'like lilies' come out of the Mouths," he would have intimated by such a similitude that the French Bourbons were the cause of the "unclean spirits" issuing forth from the Sultan, the Emperor, and the Roman Prophet. But he does not say this; he says they were like frogs. The truth, then, is obvious. In A.D. 96, when John was an exile in Patmos, the Franks were savages in an untamed country, living by hunting and fishing like American Indians. But the Holy Spirit revealed to him that this people would play a conspicuous part in the affairs of nations; and, foreseeing by what symbol they would represent themselves, He symbolized their nation by it, and styled them "Frogs". He informed him, that under the sixth vial their influence would be remarkably apparent. That the Frog-nation would have much to do with the Dragon, Beast, and False Prophet; in fact, that so intimate and direct would their dealings be with them, that its effect would be perceived in the warlike tendency and influence of the measures proceeding from the Sultan, the Emperor, and the Pope; who, being so completely entangled in the complications created by the policy of the Frog-power, would in their endeavors to extricate themselves, involve the whole habitable in war, which would end in the destruction of the Two-horned Beast, and the False Prophet and in the subjugation of the surviving horns to the new Imperial dominion of the kings of the Sun's risings, whose way is prepared by the drying up of the Great River Euphrates.

The quadrennial epoch signalizing the inauguration of "THE TIME OF THE END," having been completed, the crisis was at length formed for expelling the Beast from Venetia and the Quadrilateral; and thereby relieving Italy of the Austrian menace, and reducing the Pope to still deeper misery and distress. Austria and Prussia had broken into their neighbour Denmark's house, and stolen a portion of his goods, and like many other robbers, they quarreled over the division of the spoils. Prussia and Italy being both desirous of aggrandizement at the expense of Austria, entered into an alliance to attack her in Germany and Venetia, in June, 1866. This necessarily divided the forces of Austria, and weakened her on both points. She was signally and grievously defeated by the Prussians at Sadowa; and compelled to draw off her troops from Venetia to reinforce her discomfited hosts in Germany. Not being able to retain her hold upon this province, she ceded it with the Quadrilateral to the Frogs, who had taken no part in the war. These made a virtue of necessity, and promoting the civilization of legitimate satisfied interests, turned them all over to their ally the king of Italy; with whom the Frog-emperor had nearly two years before entered into convention, for the evacuation of Rome by the French troops in September, 1866. This arrangement was duly executed, and this remarkable year saw Italy delivered from both French and Austrians; the Pope left to his own resources in the midst of a disaffected people, and face to face with the Revolution and Italian government; and the "legitimate interests" of the Italians unsatisfied "Rome the capital of Italy" is now the popular

Such is the manifestation of the third phase of the Frog-Sign as far as it has been displayed to this February, 1868. In a short time the last of the 1260 and 1335 years will have expired; at all events, these numbers of years will have elapsed since the issue of Justinian, the Dragon-emperor's, Decretal Epistle to the Bishop of Rome, A.D. 533, constituting him the Chief Seer, or Prophet, or Spiritual Head of the Ecclesiastical Body of the Roman world: and since the confirmation of this appointment by Phocas, A.D. 607, respectively. As we have seen, the three phases of the Frog-Sign have had three successive beginnings, each signalized by a war; the first began in 1853, resulting in the Crimean war; the second, in 1859, in the Italian war; and the third, in 1867, in the invasion of the Roman States. But the Frog-Sign is not yet complete. The prophecy seems to require "a simultaneous going forth" of all the three daemon-spirits to the kings of the earth and of the whole habitable: to convene them contemporaneously to encounter some great and urgent danger, that threatens, if not overcome, to subvert and destroy all their "legitimate interests". Among the influences brought into exceedingly prominent activity will doubtless be the Franco-Papal, or the unclean froglike daemon-spirit that issues from the Mouth of the False Prophet. When the crisis is formed, the Prophet of the Great City will be in high feather, exerting himself in the presence of the Beast, with all the spiritual influence he possesses over the millions of Antichristendom, to induce them to join in the crusade preached, as the grand rally of "the earth and the whole habitable" against the great and pressing terror of the situation (*****).

Such was the model, or "Heavenly Man," whose image, intellectual, moral, and material, all must bear who may become the future constituents of the Perfect Man, who comes upon the world as a thief. I have been rather particular in the exposition of the things connected with the body of Jesus, which being made subjectively to know orach chayim, "the way of lives," became "the Way" (John 14:6) illustrative of the manner in which all his brethren will experimentally pass from the humiliation of death to the exaltation of eternal life and glory. They, as he, come forth from the unclean house of death earthy, and, therefore, unclean bodies. As such, they are gathered together by angelic agency into the presence of the Judge, who awaits them in the wilderness of the South. There they pass their examination as candidates for companion-ship with him in the kingdom and glory about to be established and developed by the Eternal Spirit through the Perfect Man. The examination is the scrutiny of character made flesh. If the characters of the candidates for Divine honors be approved, then their "mortal flesh" as Paul terms it in 2 Cor. 4:11, becomes the subject of a spiritual operation, which, "in the twinkling of an eye," justifies, or perfects it, and thereby causes it to ascend from flesh to Spirit, which is equivalent to ascending from the low origin and level of an earthborn, to the Heavenly Father who is Spirit.

"The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose. It shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice even with joy and singing; the glory of Lebanon (the cedar) shall be given unto it, the excellency of Carmel and Sharon, they shall be the glory of YAHWEH, and the excellency of our Elohim" (Isa. 35:1,2). And again inch. 41:18-20, "Twill open rivers in high places, and fountains in the midst of the valleys: I will make the wilderness a pool of waters, and the dry land springs of water. I will plant in the wilderness the cedar, the shittah tree, and the myrtle, and the oil tree; I will set in the desert the fir tree, and the pine, and the box tree together; that they may see, and know, and consider, that the hand of Yahweh hath done this, and the Holy One of Israel hath created it". And "Let the wilderness and the cities thereof exult, the villages that Kedar doth inhabit; let the inhabitants of the rocky country (Arabia Petraea) sing, let them shout from the top of the mountains. Let them give glory unto Yahweh, and declare his praise in the habitable lands" (ch. 42:11).

17. For the Deity hath given into their hearts to execute his will, and to perform one purpose, and to deliver their kingdom to the beast, until the predictions of the Deity have been fulfilled.

13. and cinnamon, and odors, and ointment, and frankincense, and wine, and oil, and fine flour, and grain, and cattle, and sheep, and horses, and of carriages, and of bodies, and souls of men.

(*) Spain made a concordat with the Vatican in 1851 which was repudiated in 1931. and a new concordat was made in August 1953.

16. And the city lieth foursquare, and its length is as much as also the breadth: and he measured the city with the reed at twelve thousand furlongs: the length, and the breadth, and the height of it are equal.

15. But without are the dogs, and the sorcerers, and the fornicators, and the murderers, and the idolators, and every one that loveth and inventeth falsehood.

Such was the result of this last "war in the heaven." "The Dragon and his angels fought and prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in the heaven" - verse 8. "He was cast out into the earth; and his angels were cast out with him" - verse 9: and in his projection, "his tail drew the third part of the stars, and cast them to the earth" - verse 4. The memory of Licinius was branded with infamy(*), his statues were thrown down, and, by a hasty edict, all his laws, and all the judicial proceedings of his reign were at once abolished. By this victory of Constantine, A.D. 324, the Roman world was united under the authority of one emperor; and he the first of a long line of emperors, who, though not christian, but catholic, repudiated "the gods of their ancestors." The immediate and memorable consequences of this revolution were the foundation of Constantinople, and the establishment of the Laodicean Catholic Apostasy as the religion of the State.

I have termed this symbol of fiery destruction, the Egypto-Romaic Babylonian Crocodile. The propriety of this designation will appear from what has been said in this section; and from the fact, that "the Great City" of the Seven Hills, which in John's day, as also in ours, reigns over the kings of the earth," is styled Babylon and Egypt (Apoc. 11:8; 17:5,18). These specifications identify Rome, Babylon, and Egypt, as well as Sodom, with "the Great City;" so that the crocodile, dragon, or serpent, symbolizing the power of which Rome was the capital until ceded to the Beast (ch. 13:2) is properly designated Egypto Romaic Babylonian.

10. The renowned Titus was the TENTH STAR. On account of his Singular humanity, he was called "the delight of mankind." In the life-time of his father Vespasian he destroyed Jerusalem. He reigned rather more than two years, and died aged 41. He is supposed to have been poisoned by his brother who succeeded him ................A.D. 77

7. And there was war in the heaven. The Michael and his angels waged war against the Dragon; and the dragon waged war and his angels.

"The struggle has now begun between the Liberal and the reactionary party. Everything would incline one to believe that the latter will be beaten; for, in fact, the Liberal party, composed of all shades opposed to absolutism, form a very compact whole."

p.233 In the earliest years of the ecclesia in Rome, its faith was spoken of throughout all the empire. Its members presented their bodies a living sacrifice, and were not conformed to the world; but were transformed by the renewing of their mind; which was characterized by unanimity, a disregard of high things, and association with men of low estate. The Star-Angel that ruled them was neither "Bishop of Rome," "Universal Bishop," nor "Pope;" but a presbytery, or eldership, of inspired men of low degree in society, whose only ambition it was to be "glorified together with Jesus Christ." They would have rejected with indignation and contempt the idea of being united with the State, or any state, as "the Church by law established." Their mission was to convert sinners from the error of their way, not to form alliances with them; for they

"A third work of Antichrist consists of this, that he attributes the regeneration of the Holy Spirit unto the mere external rite, baptizing infants in that faith, teaching that thereby baptism and regeneration must be had, on which principle he confers and bestows orders (Apoc. 13:16,17) and, indeed, grounds all his christianity, which is contrary to the mind of the Holy Spirit. He places all his religion and holiness in going to mass (as his Protestant relations now do in 'going to church') in which he has mingled together all kinds of ceremonies, Jewish, Heathen, and Christian; and by means thereof, the people are deprived of spiritual food , seduced from the true religion , and the precepts of God, and bolstered up with vain and presumptuous hopes. All his works are done to be seen of men, that he may glut himself with insatiable avarice; and to accomplish this, every thing is set to sale . He allows of open sins without ecclesiastical censure , and even the impenitent are not excommunicated. He does not rule or maintain his unity by the Sword of the Spirit, but by means of the SECULAR POWER the Horn in which the Eyes are set) using that to effect spiritual ends (ch. 13:12,15). He hates and persecutes , and searches after , and plunders , and destroys the members of Christ (ch. 13:7,15). These are Some of the principal of the works of Antichrist against the truth, but the whole are past numbering or recording. These are the most prominent features of that monstrous power.

6. The LOMARDS migrated originally from Scandinavia, ascending thence nearly due south to the Danube. On the dissolution of the empire of Attila, A.D. 455, whose standard they followed, they took possession of a portion of Pannonia, a part of Hungary. Subsequently to the conquest of the Gepidae, they extended their possessions as far as Bavaria, A.D. 568; they invaded and conquered Italy, where they maintained themselves till near the close of the eighth century, when they were "plucked up by the roots" (Dan. 7:8).

As, then, the moon hath her different phases, called new, half, gibbous, and full, nevertheless the same moon; so also Daniel's Fourth Beast hath his phases, which are different constitutional manifestations, yet the beast remains the same to the end of his "dreadful and terrible" career. He has nearly passed through his Sea-Beast and Earth-Beast phases; that is, in certain relations: but there yet awaits him a vast extension, and a constitutional development of thirty years duration which will be final. In this future and last phase of his existence, he will stand before the nations in his most dreadful and terrible aspect, scarlet of body with sin and blood, with his SIXTO-OCTAVIAN HEAD diademed with Ten Horns, and a Drunken Harlot sitting upon his back. Thus panoplied with the Mystery of Iniquity in Church and State, he will have consummated the mission revealed to Daniel, in the full discharge of which, he was to "devour the whole earth, and tread it down, and break, it in pieces." Having accomplished this, "he goeth into perdition," where in the popular abyss, he is bound for a thousand years (Apoc. 17:11; 20:1-3).

p.142 After the death of Constantine, in the division of his empire between his three sons, Italy and Africa were allotted to Constans. He sent Macanus and Paulus into Africa to heal, if possible, this "deplorable schism," as Mosheim terms it; and to engage the Donatists to conclude a peace. The efforts of Constans to induce them to coalesce with the catholic church were strenuous, but ineffectual. Force and corruption were the royal arguments employed for their conversion by these imperial commissioners. The chief bishop among the Donatists opposed all these methods of reconciliation with the utmost vehemence; and his example was followed by the rest of his brethren. The idea was odious to them of a coalition with those, who in the Diocletian persecution and distress, in order to avoid martyrdom, had delivered up the Holy Scriptures, the best gift of the Deity to man. This zeal for the word was a remarkable characteristic of the Woman's Seed. It underlaid the whole controversy between the Catholics and Dissenters of the period. The Catholics very lightly esteemed the Scriptures; and were daily with-drawing the people's attention from them more and more, until at length they came to legislate against the use of them by "the laity" at all. Not so their opponents, with whom the sacred writings have always been a tower of strength against their enemies. To the fugitive woman was Providentially committed the custody of the Divine Oracles; for it is the remnants of her seed which are testified to have held the testimony of the anointed Jesus, which is to be found only in the Holy Scriptures. No wonder, therefore, that these worthy and excellent people turned a deaf ear to every overture of reconciliation with the word-neglecting adherents of the tyrannical church of Constans. The cruelties of Macanus and Paulus only exasperated "the earth", and widened the breach. The Circumcellions, provoked by their arbitrary proceedings, wreaked their vengeance on the persecutors of the Donatists by assassinations and massacres executed with unrelenting fury. "The Dragon was wroth with the woman," when he saw his projects baffled. He, therefore sent Macanus against them with "a flood". The Earth encountered the flood in the battle of Bagnia, A.D. 345, in which, however, the Circumcellions were defeated. This "servant of God," as Gratus, bishop of Carthage styled Macanus, now gave vent to the fury and rage of the Dragon, and indulged in crimes of deeper dye than he had yet perpetrated before victory. There was now no safety for the woman but in flight. Optatus of Milevi, a contemporary writer, whose testimony, Mosheim says, is beyond exception in this matter, informs us that a few of the Donatists submitted; "the greatest part of them saved themselves by flight;" numbers were sent into banishment. Among them were DONATUS, whom they called "the Great," on account of his learning and virtue; and many of them were punished with the utmost severity. "During these troubles," says Dr. Mosheim, "which continued nearly thirteen years, several steps were taken against the Donatists, which the equitable and impartial will be at a loss to reconcile with the dictates of humanity and justice; nor indeed do the catholics themselves deny the truth of this assertion."

The excesses of this ungovernable mob, "the Earth," stirred up all the wrath of "the successor of St. Peter;" who, placing himself at the head of his troops, marched against the city, into which he was admitted after making some trifling concessions. The friends of Arnold were nevertheless still numerous, and for ten or a dozen years they "shut the heaven," or continued to agitate the city. It was not till A.D. 1154, that anything like a settled peace was established. The presence of Arnold and his witnessing brethren in the very face, as it were of "the god of the earth" was the cause of all this tumult. For it was their mission to agitate the waters, and "to shut the heaven, that it rain not in their days of the prophecy; and to turn the waters into blood, and to smite the earth with all plagues as often as they willed" (Apoc. 11:6). But at this date, a riot having ensued, Adrian IV. placed the city under an interdict, and from Christmas to Easter deprived it of all catholic worship. This gave a sudden turn to the public mind. Arnold and his friends were expelled from the city, and fled for protection to the Viscount of Campania. Thither the vengeance of the pope pursued them, and he instigated Frederick Barbarossa to force Arnold from his asylum in his territories. Immediately after this he was seized by Cardinal Gerard and burned at the stake, in the midst of the fickle populace, who gazed with stupid indifference on the bold and valiant champion who had fallen in defence of their dearest rights, and whom they had regarded with the highest veneration.

Ebrard of Bethune, who wrote A.D. 1212, says, "they call themselves Vallenses, because they 'abide in the Valley of Tears,"' alluding to their situation as witnessing in sackcloth, in the Valleys of Piedmont. Their opinions are thus recited from an old manuscript by the Centuriators of Magdeburg:

On the fourth day the emperor was permitted to throw himself at the feet of the pope, who condescended to grant him absolution, after he had sworn obedience to the pontiff in all things, and promised to appear at Augsburg on a certain day to learn the pope's decision whether or not he should be restored to his kingdom, until which time he also promised not to assume the imperial insignia.

This ally appeared on the arena in the person of Pepin, son of Charles Martel, who governed the French monarchy with the humble title of Mayor or Duke; but who by his signal victory over the Saracens, had saved his country, and perhaps Europe, from the Mohammedan yoke. Zachary, predecessor of Stephen, and successor to Gregory III., an aspiring and crafty politician, had attached Pepin to his interests by resolving a case of conscience in his favor. He desired to know whether a prince incapable of governing, or a minister invested with royal authority, and who supported it with dignity, ought to have the title of king? Zachary decided in favor of minister Pepin; and the French clergy supported his pretensions, because he had restored to them the lands of which his father had robbed them. The pope's decision silenced all scruples. Pepin threw his master, Childeric III., into a monastery; and caused himself to be crowned king with all orthodox solemnity at Soissons by Boniface the bishop of Mentz, the famous apostle of Rome's idolatry to the Germans.

The Name and Tabernacle of Deity, and Those who Dwell in the Heaven

"The hopes of the democracy throughout Europe were inflamed; and 'the earth' began to tremble until in 1848 every throne was shaken to its foundation. The events of this wonderful year are too recent to require to be chronicled in this place. It will be enough to say that the democracy broke loose, and commenced a movement (i.e. Communism- Publishers), which, though it has been restrained to prevent its progressing too rapidly, cannot be suppressed until the little horn, or two-horned beast and his prophet, be destroyed to the end, and the dominion of the ten-horned beast be taken away. The events of February 1848 have originated the 'great earthquake' of the seventh vial." (p.373).

And here it would be well for the reader to pause, and reflect upon this chasm of forty days in the life of "THE Mistress OF THE WORLD" -"the Woman, that Great City," which in the apostles' day, and ecclesiastically in ours, "reigneth over the regal powers of the earth" (ch. 17:18). If the foundation of Rome be correctly stated at 753 years before the birth of Jesus Christ, the "Eternal City," so called, became a vacant space twelve hundred and ninety-nine years after. This chasm of forty days is nearly the central epoch of the city's existence. Twelve hundred and sixty years afterwards, Totila was represented by Napoleon, crowned emperor and king of Italy by the Pope. Totila was not unlike his modern representative in some respects. He had but little respect for Rome or its bishop. He filled Rome with darkness, so that no political lights, civil or ecclesiastical, shone in it for forty days; so also, Napoleon, as the executive of the Fifth Vial, poured vengeance upon Rome; and filled the kingdom, of which it is the seat or throne, with darkness.

The rude-Horn Governments holding this relation to Imperialism, with the Lawyers and Clergy of their kingdoms practitioners and professors of Roman law and Roman Theology, easily accepted the legislation of Justinian in favor of the Pope and their own interests legal and ecclesiastical. A clergy the great majority of whom were Trinitarian, and Viceregal administrations, partly pagan and partly Arian, were the constitutional elements of the situation in the sixth century. The clergy of the kingdoms recognized and sympathized with the Pope and his patrons the Emperor of the East: and operated upon the barbarian kings and governments as imperial and papal missionaries for their conversion to "the right faith," and "the pure doctrine of his Holiness," in other words, to the Roman Catholic Trinitarian Superstition.

13. And I saw out of the Mouth of the Dragon, and out of the Mouth of the Beast and out of the Mouth of the False Prophet, three Unclean Spirits like to Frogs; (for they are Spirits of Drmons working wonders) go forth unto the kings of the earth and of the whole habitable, to gather them together for the war of that great day of the Deity who is almighty.

14. Peoples shall hear; and they shall tremble; Terror seized the inhabitants of Palestina.

'Yea, saith the Spirit." These words are an endorsement of what "the voice from the heaven" said to John; as if the Spirit had said, "Yea; the First fruits unto the Deity and the Lamb, in whose mouth was found no guile, and who had died in the Lord in ages and generations passed, are 'blessed from this time,' when the Seventh Vial of wrath shall have been completely emptied, and the smoke of its judgments entirely cleared away". But, why is the Spirit thus specially introduced in this place? In the first place, to inform the reader what will result to the saints in their blessedness at this time - "in order that they may take rest from their labors;" and in the second place, to explain to him how it comes to pass, that these who come forth from among the dead "in the nether parts of the earth," where all are weak (Isa. 14:10) should prove so omnipotent in all their operations "and their works He goeth in aid of with them".

In this way, Babylon and the Goat-nations are "made to drink of the wine of the wrath of the Deity, prepared without mixture in the cup of his indignation." Esau will have had the dominion over Jacob long enough; and the time will now have arrived to prove to mankind "that there is a God that judgeth in the earth". Esau has lived by his sword, but not righteously. He crucified the king of Israel, persecuted and killed his brethren, corrupted the faith, trod under foot the Holy City forty and two months, and poured out the blood of Jacob like water upon the ground. But they who war against Zion and her sons "shall be as nothing, as a thing of naught". Therefore, "fear not, thou worm Jacob, and ye men of Israel: I will help thee, saith Yahweh, and thy redeemer, the Holy One of Israel. Behold I will make thee a new sharp threshing instrument having teeth: thou shalt thresh the mountains (or empires) and beat them small, and shalt make the hills (or smaller states) as chaff. Thou shalt fan them, and the wind shall carry them away, and the whirlwind shall scatter them: and thou shalt rejoice in Yahweh, and shalt glory in the Holy One of Israel" (Isa. 41:11-16). This has never come to pass since it was recorded by the prophet; for hitherto Jacob has been under the heel of Esau, whose metallic Image stands unbroken upon its feet of iron and miry clay. The work of the Second and Third Angels is to grind to powder the various metals of which it is composed; and to do the work so effectually that no place be found for the things they represent (Dan. 2:35).

p.40 Thus the Angel proclamation recruits the population of the little kingdom of Judah, which, in its beginning, is smaller than the little kingdom of Greece (Matt. 13:31,32). During this decade, the settlers in the midst of the land are "at rest, dwelling safely without walls, and having neither bars nor gates" (Ezek. 38:11,12);.and are in league with the wide-shadowing land beyond the rivers of Khush - "Sheba, Dedan, and the Merchants of Tarshish" - which holds a similar relation to the kingdom of Judah under the "greater than Solomon," that Tyre did in the days of Hiram to the kingdom of David's Son. The peoples of the British Isles afar off from Jerusalem, having accepted the proclamation, the government will have been transferred from the hands of sinners such as now possess it, to the Saints; so that the constitution of the United Kingdom will be no longer the old British, but "the law which goes forth from Zion" (Isa. 2:3). This will account for the harmony and concert of action between Israel and Britain in the latter days.

The quantity of water is not sufficient if the subject cannot be buried therein. In whatever place there are persons “ordained for eter?nal life,” sufficient water will always be found. The quantity required is indicated by the word immersion, which is the English synonym for the Greek word baptisma. “We are buried with Christ,” says Paul, “through the baptism into the death” of Christ. The action of baptism is, there?fore, a burial in water as a sign of burial with Christ; which signified bur?ial no one can be the subject of who does not believe “the things of the name of Jesus Christ.” The phrase used by Christ in his conversation with Nicodemus, indicates the quantity of water, and the action insepar?able from baptism — “Except a man be born of water and spirit he can?not enter the kingdom of God.” To be born of anything is to emerge from that thing in which the subject of birth had been previously con?cealed. Hence, no one can be “born of water” unless he had been cov?ered with, or put out of sight, in water. The action of baptism is, there?fore, clearly a burying in water, or immersion, and an emergence from it. This is a sign based upon the burial of Christ crucified for our of-fences, and his resurrection for our justification (Rom. 4:25); and sig?nifies that the subject, having Christ in him by faith (Eph. 3:17), is crucified, dead, buried and risen together with him, to walk in newness of life.

16. And he that is sitting upon the cloud cast his sickle upon the earth, and the earth was reaped.

Another name, or title, has been suggested by Mr. Clarke, which is equivalent to Lateinos. This is He Lative basileia, or The Latin Kingdom. Thus:

In the sixtieth chapter of Isaiah, we are informed, that at a time when darkness covers the earth, and gross darkness the peoples, Yahweh shall arise upon Zion; that His glory shall be seen upon her; and that kings shall come to the brightness of her rising. Here, Yahweh is the Light arising who sheds forth brightness, which, among other objects previously enveloped in gross darkness, brings Zion into view. She is seen "rising" before it can be said she is risen. Her coming into view is progressive, as objects come into view in the dawn. Hence she is a rising ot this Rising Light, which shines her out of darkness, the gross darkness of Mohammedan, or other Gentile, down-treading, into his marvellous brightness, as by his rising it becomes developed.

In the sixtieth chapter of Isaiah, we are informed, that at a time when darkness covers the earth, and gross darkness the peoples, Yahweh shall arise upon Zion; that His glory shall be seen upon her; and that kings shall come to the brightness of her rising. Here, Yahweh is the Light arising who sheds forth brightness, which, among other objects previously enveloped in gross darkness, brings Zion into view. She is seen "rising" before it can be said she is risen. Her coming into view is progressive, as objects come into view in the dawn. Hence she is a rising ot this Rising Light, which shines her out of darkness, the gross darkness of Mohammedan, or other Gentile, down-treading, into his marvellous brightness, as by his rising it becomes developed.

Lastly, in Naples and Tuscany, in short everywhere throughout Roman Antichristendom, the "lying miracles" which had ceased during French ascendancy, were renewed. Such is the testimony of the author of "Rome in the Nineteenth Century". He remarks that "not one miracle happened during the whole reign of the French. It was not until the streets were purified with lustrations of holy water, on the return of the Pontiff, that they began to operate again". When he reappeared in the city, miracles revived. "Within this little month" (April, 1817), says he, "three great miracles have happened in Rome. The last took place yesterday (April 20); when all Rome crowded to the Capitol to see an image of the Virgin open her eyes". And where is Naples now whose guardian daemon is a nonentity they style "St. Januarius?" And where is Tuscany and its kindred duchies? All swallowed up in the revolutionary kingdom of Italy; and their former demented rulers refugient exiles in foreign lands. Yet have they not eyes to see, that the Hand that smites them is Divine. .

The result of this appeal was the victory of Waterloo, June18, 1815. The loss on both sides was immense; and all concerned "were scorched with great heat". It was the last battle of him to whom "it was given to scorch the men" obnoxious to Divine wrath for their blasphemies and evil deeds, "with fire". Perceiving that he was no longer the object of public confidence, he declared his conviction that his political life was terminated, and again abdicated the imperial crown on the 22nd of June. Having issued a farewell addressed to the army, he left Paris on the 29th for Rochefort, intending to embark for the United States; but being unable to elude the vigilance of the English cruisers, and apprehensive of falling into the hands of the Russians, Prussians, and Austrians, whom he had so dreadfully "scorched", he surrendered to the British on the 15th of July, and claimed their protection. The island of St. Helena in the South Atlantic was assigned to him as his future residence by the Allied Powers. This was the sinking of "the sun of France" into the darkness of the shadow of death. His energetic protest against it was unheeded. He arrived there in safety in the fall of 1815; and, after a rest, from his thundering and scathing labors, of over five years, he expired on the 5th of May, 1821.

After this dreadful scorching defeat at Jena, the king retired to Konigsburg, where he employed himself actively in collecting the scattered and feeble remains of his once formidable force. The French having made themselves masters of Silesia, the immense barrier which seemed to have wholly separated France from Russia, was now broken down; and the emperor Alexander resolved to make a grand effort to protect his own dominions, as well as to support the throne of Prussia and the independence of Europe. This resolution guaranteed the continuance of the outpouring of the scorching wrath of the fourth vial upon the sun, until the "King of Fire" should have run his course. In pursuance of this determination, an immense force was being collected in different parts of the Russian empire, and began to move towards the frontier.

But before the surrender, which put an end to the Austrian war in Italy, Buonaparte had yet to combat, for the fourth time, on the same ground, with new forces sent by the Two-Horned Beast of the Earth for the recovery of his Italian territories. By order of its Aulic Council two armies were assembled under Quasdonowich and Alvinzi. They commenced Operations the beginning of October 1796. "Destiny" allowed the Austrians some encouraging opportunities at first; but, not being sufficiently acquainted with the value of time in military movements, and of connexion and co-operation between their separate divisions, they failed to secure a favorable issue to the campaign. Hence, their opening prospects only deceived them, and lured them on to the ensanguined plains, where more copious draughts of blood were prepared for them to drink.

p.355 16. I, Jesus, have sent my angel to testify to you these things for the ecclesias. I am the Root and the Offspring of David, the bright and Morning Star.

17. And he measured the wall of it a hundred forty-four cubits, the mea?sure of a man, that is of an angel.

14. And the fruits of the cupidity of thy soul hath departed from thee, and every dainty and sumptuous thing is departed from thee, and no more shalt thou find them at all.

18. And the woman which thou sawest, is that Great City having dominion over the kings of the earth.

Now it must be evident to every one, that before the wild, untamed marauders, who inhabit Arabia Deserta, Arabia Petraea, and Paran, Horeb, Sinai, and the tents and villages of the Kedarite Arabs, can glorify Yahweh, and rejoice with joy and singing, and become the intelligent, happy, and contented population of this newly created Paradise, they must have been subjected to the severe discipline of the sword; to subsequent instruction, as to the true character of the New Power so recently developed in Teman; and made witnesses of the wonderful transformation of their section of Asia from an arid, sandy and rocky wilderness, into a well-watered park of choice, odoriferous, trees and shrubs! And such is the testimony of the prophets. Isaiah, in speaking of the crisis of Messiah's accession to David's throne, declares it to be "a day of Midian". His words are "thou hast broken the yoke of his (the Assyrian's) burden, and the staff of his shoulder, the rod of the oppressor upon him, as a day of Midian: for every battle of the warrior is with confused noise, and garments rolled in blood: but she shall be for a burning fuel of fire" -- the Bride shall be (ch. 9:4,5).

These transactions being finished whereby "they who have done good" are "made manifest," and separated from the refuse and the vile, like their model was, are "made higher than the heavens" (Heb. 7:26). They are the Perfect Man, whose constituents are all kings and priests the Yahweh Elohim omnipotent; the Wife of the Lamb with Seven Horns and Seven Eyes, married, or inseparably united, to the Spirit. Being Spirit, whatsoever they do the Spirit doth; so that all their great and glorious deeds in the subjugation and regeneration of the world, will be wrought in Deity.

The "kings of the earth" are the rulers of middle, eastern, and northern Europe; and those of "the whole habitable", western and southern Europe, with other outlying regions, whose powers are Apocalyptically symbolized. But, what is the Great Terror that throws the Dragon, the Beast, and the False Prophet, into such tumultuous alarm, that their several governments should seek to excite the whole world simultaneously to war? The answer to this important question will form thesubject of the third part of the prophecy of this Sixth Vial.

Here is the last pillar of the papal throne levelled with the dust. While yet upon the throne, the same correspondent wrote, "the clergy is above the Queen." But where will they be now that the spirit of '89 has driven into exile the humble servant and most catholic daughter of their UNIVERSAL BISHOP, the lambskin-invested wolf Of the Seven Hills? Will Louis Napoleon now be able to send 40,000 troops through Isabella to garrison. Rome and protect the Pope against Italy, while he combats Prussia for the Rhenish frontier of France? May we not rather expect that the Spanish section of "the Revolution" will ally itself with the Italian section, and revive the work with renewed energy of "hating the Harlot and making her desolate and naked, and eating her flesh, and burning her with fire?" Further developments will soon illustrate this point in the Roman Question; though it is not to be expected that Rome will become the capital of any other dominion than is enthroned there. No Ninth Head can constitutionally exist upon the Seven Hills.

8. And they prevailed not; neither was their place found any longerin the heaven.

11. Domitian was the ELEVENTH STAR of the Imperial Stephan. He persecuted the christians with the greatest rigour. He was a second Nero. John, the Apostle, was banished by his decree to the isle of Patmos, where the Apocalypse was revealed to him for the benefit of all true Christadelphians, or Brethren of Christ. After a reign of fifteen years, being detested on account of his cruelty, he was put to death by his own guards, aged 55 ................A.D. 92

While these stirring and exciting events were transpiring, their connexion with apocalyptic prophecy was not unperceived by Constantine and his adherents. In a letter to Eusebius he writes of "that dragon having been deposed from the governance of affairs, by God's providence". And Eusebius further relates, that in a picture elevated by Constantine over his palace gate, there was represented the cross placed over his head; and beneath his own and his children's feet, his enemies under the semblance of a dragon cast down headlong into the abyss. In a letter also to Eusebius he says, "But now that liberty is restored, and that Dragon driven from the administration of public affairs by the providence of the Supreme Deity, and our instrumentality, we trust that all can see the efficacy of the Divine power." A dragon is a symbol stamped on some of the coins of Constantine. I have the representation before me of two, on which the cross, the symbol of the catholic church, is erected over a fallen dragon, the symbol of Roman superstition in its political constitution.

"We may truly say," says Dr. Allix, "that scarcely any man was ever so torn and defamed on account of his doctrine as was this Arnold of Brescia. It was because, with all his power, he opposed the tyranny and usurpation which the popes began to establish over the temporal jurisdiction of the kings of the earth. He was the man who by his counsel renewed the design of re-establishing the authority of the Senate of Rome, and of compelling the pope not to meddle with anything but what con-cerned the government of the church, without invading the temporal jurisdiction; this was his crime, and this, indeed, is such a one as is unpardonable with the pope, if there be any such".

p.142 The following passage from a Donatist writer would seem to indicate that they discerned the apocalyptic sign of their time. In treating of the suffering of Marculus, he says, "Behold suddenly the polluted flood of the Macarian persecution burst forth from the tyrannical church of king Constans, and two beasts being sent to Africa from thence, to wit, Macarius and Paulus, a most horrible and cruel ecclesiastical war was proclaimed, that a christian people should be compelled by the naked swords of soldiers, by the standards of Serpents or Dragons (draconum proesentibus signis) and by the blasts of trumpets, to unite with Traditors!" Compare this passage with the 15th and 16th verses of this chapter. How striking the resemblance! The Donatists, doubtless, discerned that "the polluted flood of the Macarian persecution which burst forth from the tyrannical church of king' Constans," was the "water like a flood the serpent or dragon cast out of his Mouth.', From this, and other instances, I doubt not, that among the woman's seed there have been in all ages some who were able to discern the apocalyptic signs specially pertaining to the times in which they lived. They might not have been able to expound the apocalypse as a whole, but they could discern sufficient to answer the question. "Watchman, what of the night?" Let us be thankful, that the believer of the truth is also able, at this crisis of the woman's history, to discern the signs of these times; so that when the Ancient of Days comes in as a thief upon an intoxicated and insane generation like ours, he will find us with our lamps trimmed and our lights brightly burning, ready to go out to meet Him.

7. The FRANKS is a name assumed by a confederacy of German tribes, inhabiting that section of the abyss lying between the Lower Rhine and the Weser. It signifies the Freemen. In Gibbon's day, their original territory was in part enclosed within the Circle of Westphalia, the Landgravate of Hesse, and the Duchies of Brunswick and Lunenburg, now absorbed by the Prussians in their transitory confederation of Northern Germany. In their inaccessible morasses, redolent of mud, water, and frogs, they used to shake defiance at the Roman arms. When the time arrived for the ascending of the Diademed Horns out of the sea, they instinctively obeyed the summons of the First Trumpet, and in A.D. 407, entered Gaul, and within a few years established a kingdom upon the Rhine, which they continued to maintain and advance, until in the sixth century it extended over the whole territory embraced in modern France.

"On the other hand, he makes use of an outward confession of the faith, and therein are verified the words of the apostle - 'they profess in words that they know God, but in works they deny him.' He covers his iniquity by pleading the length of his duration, and the multitude of his followers; concerning which it is said in the Apocalypse, that 'power is given him over every tribe, language, and nation; and all that dwell upon the earth should worship him' (ch. 13:7,8). He covers his iniquity by pleading the spiritual authority of the apostles , though the apostle expressly says, 'we can do nothing against the truth; and, 'there is no power given us for destruction'. He boasts of numerous miracles, even as the apostle foretold - 'whose coming is after the working of Satan, with all miracles and signs, and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness' (2 Thess. 2:9,10; Rev. 13:13,14), also. He has an outward show of holiness, consisting in prayers, fastings, watchings, and alms deeds; of which the apostle testified, when he said, 'Having a form of godliness but denying the power thereof.'

p.234 well knew that the friend of the world is the enemy of God (James 4:4; 1 John 2:15).

Here, then, in this beginning were the Little Horn of the East (Dan. 8:9,12,23-25), the Catholic Dragon of Constantinople; and the Papal Eyes and Mouth, occupying the so-called Apostolic Throne upon the Seven Mountains, the Name of Blasphemy; and the Gothic Horns. Of these, the Vandal Horn, which was Arian, and defiant both of the Pope and the Emperor, had been "plucked up by the roots" by the forces of Justinian under Belisarius. The horn of the Gepidae was transferred to the Chagan of the Avars, the representative for two hundred and thirty years of the modern kingdom of Hungary. These were hostile to the Apostolic Throne. The opposition of the rest was gradually overcome. Clovis(*) king of the Franks, on occasion of a victory, embraced the faith of Rome, A.D. 496; and so being the first, received the title, which has been handed down through more than thirteen centuries, to his successors the kings of France, of Eldest Son of the Church. In the sixth century the rest of the Horns gave in their adhesion to the Papal Faith. Recared was the first papal king of Spain. He reigned from A.D. 586 to A.D. 589. "The royal proselyte," says Gibbon, "immediately saluted and consulted Pope Gregory, surnamed the Great, a learned and holy prelate, whose reign was distinguished by the conversion of heretics and infidels. The ambassadors of Recared respectfully offered upon the threshold of the Vatican his rich presents of gold and gems; they accepted, as a lucrative exchange, the hairs of St. John the Baptist, a cross which enclosed a piece of the true wood, and a key that contained some particles of iron, which had been scraped from the chains of St. Peter."

When Totila consented not to reduce it to a pasture for cattle, but to leave it a vacant and standing monument of the wrath of heaven, he carried off the pope with him into captivity; and 1260 years after, Napoleon degraded the city to a subordinate rank, and transferred the pope from a throne to captivity at Fontainbleau. Thirteen hundred and twenty years (1320) have now elapsed since this notable forty days of solitude; and it is exceedingly probable that but few more years will elapse ere this renowned centre of crime, blasphemy, and everything unclean and hateful, finds itself submerged in the unfathomable depths of a solitude, whose silence will never again be broken by the trumpet, or its darkness dispelled by a glimmering of light (ch. 18:22,23).

(*)That observation is true to the present. for the spirit of Socialism and Communism then Stimulated are developing the antagonism that will erupt in Armageddon. Meanwhile, as a result of the agitation generated in 1848, the revolutionary Garibaldi, in 1860 onwards, united Italy, and terminated the temporal power of the Papacy in 1870; all of which is illustrative of the hostility to which Eureka refers, and which is predicted in Rev. 17:15. But at the epoch of its judgment at the hands of Messiah, the Papacy is depicted in triumph as riding the ten-horned beast of Europe (Rev. 17:3). Today the hostility of the last century towards the political influence of the Papacy has largely disappeared, and it is rapidly growing in international influence and power. This commenced by the signing of the concordat by Mussolini in favour of the Papacy in 1929. By this means the Vatican became a Papal State, and the Pope was given political independence (taken from the Papacy in 1870). With the Vatican an independent State. the Pope was represented in politics as head of a political power as well as an ecclesiastical system, since then papal influence in international politics has dramatically increased - Publishers

(*) Illustrative of the chicanery of the Church in its relation to the State, isthe so-called Donation of Constantine. This was a document advanced by mthe Church in the 8th century to support its claim to exercise temporal power with the emperor as the secular arm of the church wielding the sword on behalf of the vicar of Peter. It was claimed that Constantine, onbtransferring the civil and military authority to Constantinople, conferredbdominion over Rome on pope Sylvester I (314-35). This document was proved to be a complete forgery. No such authority was ever conferred by the Emperor, but the Church is notorious for using any means to gain power — Publishers.

Stephen, made sensible that nothing but force could avail against Astolphus, resolved to crave the protection of Pepin; who, mindful of his obligations to Zachary, readily promised him assistance. A treaty was concluded between them at the expense of the Constantinopolitan Dragon, and the Lombard Horn of the Beast. On his visit to Paris, Stephen reanointed Pepin with the unction of papal holiness, declaring him and his son Charles, known afterwards as Charlemagne, Protector of the Romans; in return for which honors, Pepin promised to make a donation of the Exarchate and Pentapolis to the Romish Church.

Thus while Henry got nothing but disgrace, his abject humiliation elated Gregory with great exultation, who now regarded himself, and not altogether without reason, as the lord and master of all the crowned heads of "the Earth" and "the Sea," called "Christendom;" so that, in several of his letters, he said, it was his duty "to pull down the pride of kings."

"In articles of faith, the authority of the holy scripture is the highest, and for that reason it is the rule of judging: so that whatsoever agreeth not with the word of God, is deservedly to be rejected and avoided.

On this suggestion of Clarke’s, Mr. Elliott remarks, “it is indeed so remarkable that, were it but the name of a man, I should have thought that the Divine spirit had it also in view, as an alternative solution involving the word Latin in its more usual, though not the mystical orthography. But that which alone completely answers to every requirement of the sacred enigma, and which I therefore fully believe to be the one intended by the Spirit is Iremeus’ solution Lateinos.” Mr. Elliott and others have searched for the name of the Beast among the names of individuals, supposing that the name was to be some name previously borne by some distinguished man. Hence they have pitched upon Romulus, who is supposed to have founded Rome, the capital of the Latin kingdom. But Romulus is neither Romanus nor Lateinos. They have been thus misled by the words “the number of the beast is the number of a man;” upon which one of them remarks, “the number of his name, or the number of a man, being a Latin name derived from that of Romulus, a man who founded Rome pagan, and so peculiar to a man, viz., the pope, who is the foundation of Rome papal. Hence, their reading in exposition is, “the number of the beast is the number of Romulus!” But the number of Romulus, or Romulos, is or 1446, not 666. is not the enigmatical number of Romulos; and therefore, if the man referred to were a distinguished individual of antiquity, Romulus cannot be the man. But the reference in the text is not to a man existing anterior to the Beast; but one contemporary with the dominion founded by Charlemagne, which still exists in a dilapidated condition. The expository reading of the passage is, “the number of the name of the Image of the Sixth, or Imperial Latin Head, of the healed, or revived, dominion of the West, is the number of the name of the Man-of-Sin power; and that number is six hundred and sixty-six.”

17. And another angel came out from the Nave which is in the heaven, he having also a sharp sickle.

Such is the sign left by Christ for the mystical washing away of sins. If there were no literal or actual washing, as in the Sign of the Beast, there could be no mystical washing away. In the Beast’s sign there is no faith in the subject, no literal washing, and, consequently, no basis for a mystical or emblematical washing. The absence of faith in the subject is substituted by the bungling conceit of putting “holy ghost” in the water, and apply it homeopathically for an emblematic washing, where there is no sign-washing at all! Look now, gentle reader, upon this picture, then upon that. Contrast the Sign of the Beast with the Sign left by Christ, and you will easily perceive that the one is a mere invention of the drun?ken Sorceress of Babylon, authoritatively delivered to, and reverently received by, the worshippers of the Beast; while the other has the Scrip?tural impress of Christ’s image and superscription evincing its Divine authority; and has been recognized by the faithful in all the ages and generations since it was delivered, as the only true sign, betokening “the Father’s name written in the foreheads of the redeemed” (Apoc.14:1,3,4)

p.40 But a like result does not obtain in relation to all the powers to which the proclamation is addressed. Matthew 25:32 shows the separation of the nations into two classes in the day when the Son of Man shall come in his glory. This separation results from the conclusions at which they arrive with respect to the subject-matter of the proclamation. One

The saints are blessed at the time indicated, not simply because they rest, but to the end that they may take rest (hina anapausontai) from their labors. They are blessed in the inscription of the Father's Name upon their foreheads, by which they were "clothed upon by their house from heaven". This makes the earthy bodies with which they emerged from the nether parts of the earth, incorruptible, immortal, almighty, and spiritual. They are blessed in the possession of this "New Name" or Divine nature; and in having conferred upon them the honor and glory of "following the Lamb (or Spirit) whithersoever he goeth" in

15. Then the Dukes of Edom shall be affrighted; Trembling shall seize the mighty ones of Moab; All the inhabitants of Canaan shall be dissolved.

15. BEHOLD, I COME AS A THEIF Blessed is he who is watching, and keeping his garments, that he may not walk naked, and they may see his shame.

Secrecy and celerity are the soul of enterprise. Buonaparte combined them in his slaughterous struggles with Alvinzi, who lost eight thousand men in the three sanguinary battles of Arcola. Onho esomenos found, which reading hasp juli and the Tyrol; but retaining Bassano and Trent, the French were removed from "the fountains of waters," the mountains, through which access is gained to the hereditary dominions of Austria. The failure of Alvinzi to relieve Mantua, compelled Wurmser to surrender to the French, with his garrison of twenty thousand men. This decisive event put an end to the Beast's Operations in Italy, and afforded leisure to Buonaparte to turn his arms against his Image.

The respective strength of France and Russia was now to be put to a scorching and decisive trial. The battle of Eylau on February 7, 1807, and that of Friedland, on June 14, removed the mysterious veil with which the operation on the Vistula had been covered by the contradictory assertions of the hostile parties. The battle of Eylau, though very sanguinary, was indecisive; while that of FRIEDLAND equaled those of Austerlitz and Jena; nor were its consequences less hostile to the independence of the potentates of Europe. The Russians were "scorched with great heat". The fire of thirty pieces of cannon inflicted upon them dreadful loss; thousands were driven by bayonet-charges into the river Alle, where they found their death; and the streets of Friedland were covered with the dead. The defeat was total, and the carnage terrible, from fifteen to eighteen thousand being left dead upon the battle-field. This was wrath upon the Sovereign Sun, which scorched all under it with fire. The Russians recrossed the Niemen with a loss of forty thousand men, having in the space of eleven days, lost no less than twenty-seven generals and eighteen hundred and forty-eight officers killed or wounded. In their disastrous retreat they lost a great part of their artillery, and almost all their magazines and ammunition on a line of one hundred and twenty miles in extent.

"His glory shall be seen upon Zion". Whose glory? The glory of the Redeemer, who comes to Zion, to turn away ungodliness from Jacob (Isa. 59:20; Rom. 11:26). The glory which shall be seen there, is figuratively exhibited in Apoc. 14:1, as "the Lamb on Mount Zion with 144,000" Sons of his Father, whom He had "redeemed from the earth" - from among all peoples; and from the very dust thereof.

"His glory shall be seen upon Zion". Whose glory? The glory of the Redeemer, who comes to Zion, to turn away ungodliness from Jacob (Isa. 59:20; Rom. 11:26). The glory which shall be seen there, is figuratively exhibited in Apoc. 14:1, as "the Lamb on Mount Zion with 144,000" Sons of his Father, whom He had "redeemed from the earth" - from among all peoples; and from the very dust thereof.

(**) The term "Frog-Emperor" refers to Napoleon III of France, who as Louis Napoleon, becamePresident of France in 1848 after the abdication of Louis Phillippe. On the formation of the Second Empire in 1852, he appointed himself Emperor and took the title of Napoleon III. He was a nephew of Napoleon I, and hoped to gain popularity and power by the use of his family name and the nostalgic appeal to the "Napoleonic Legend". His rule came to an end with the disastrous defeat of France at the hands of the Prussians in 1870. This, like 1848, became another "remarkable year" in which prophecy was dramatically fulfilled. The success of the Prussians brought them to the forefront of the German nations, and the Second Reich (Germany) came into existence. The defeat of the French by the Prussians permitted the unification of Italy, followed by the termination of the temporal power of the Papacy. This was a terminal date for the 1260 year period (Dan. 7:25) according to the Papal times. The Emperor Phocas in AD 607-610 gave power to the Papacy, and 1870 saw the termination of its temporal power. Hitler established what he called the Third Reich which linked modern Germany with the past. The first Reich was the Holy Roman Empire; the 2nd was the Germany establish by the efforts of Bismarch in 1870, and the Third was that established by Hitler. So Germany took over from Austria the role of the Beast of the Book of Revelation. This was after the original publication of Eureka; but was anticipated by its Author — Publishers.

Such, then, is the Spirit who saith, "Behold, I come as a thief". He comes from the far country, "the right hand of the Majesty in the heavens," in the time of the end, veaith kaitz; that is, after the ending of the 2400 years, or, as the English Version has it, though I believe erroneously, 2300(t). Whichever number may be adopted, it is a satisfaction to be assured on good evidence, that the longer and the shorter periods are both in the past. The Time of the End consists of the years occupied in justifying or vindicating all that constitutes "the holy" - rectifying, or making it all right and straight, after so long a period of injury and violence wenitzdak kodesh, "then the holy shall be justified" vindicated or avenged (Dan. 8:14).

The original and appropriate district of the Midianites was on the east side of the Elanitic Bay of the Red Sea. They spread themselves northward along the desert east of Mount Seir, to the vicinity of the Moabites; and on the other side also, they covered a territory extending to the neighborhood of Mount Sinai. Midianites and Ishmaelites are different names of the same people. They are separated from "the tents of Cushan" by the northern extremity of the Arabian Desert.

"And there came one of the seven angels having the seven vials, and talked with me".

15. The merchants of these things who have been enriched by her shall stand afar off through the fear of her torment, wailing and mourning,

18. And the structure of its wall was jasper: and the city was pure gold, like to clear crystal.

p.355 17. And the Spirit and the Bride say, Come: and he that heareth, let him say, Come; and he that is thirsty, let him come, and he that will, let him take the water of life freely.

Licinius himself seems to have been aware that the conflict was not simply a matter of personal rivalry and ambition between him and Constantine, but the great question which system of belief and practice was genuine and designed of the Eternal Power, be that power the gods of the Roman Habitable, or "the foreign God" whom the adherents of those gods derided, to prevail. This question was considered by both parties as on trial in the contest of the "short time," and to be determined by its issue.

12. The TWELFTH STAR of this "dreadful and terrible" succession Cocceius Nerva, a man of prudence and moderation, who acquired the dominion late in life. During his brief reign of one year and four months, John was restored to the society of his brethren and companions in tribulation. He died, aged 66, and was succeeded by Trajan................ A.D. 94

9. And the great dragon, the old Serpent, surnamed Diabolos, was cast forth; and the Satan which deceives the whole habitable was cast into the earth and his angels were cast forth with him.

And what see we in England? We behold there the Spirit of '89 in its British manifestation, carrying out the principle of hatred and desolation, of stripping and eating, in regard to the Anglo-Hibernian Harlot, a daughter of ROME, "Mother and Mistress of All Churches," and sister to those other "Harlots" of England and Scotland, "as by law established." This, hating, desolating, stripping, eating, and burning of eccclesiastical establishments has been a striking characteristic of the past seventy-five years. The abolition of the Gallican harlot is "only a question of time." The world will progress until the ignorance, superstition, hypocrisy, and spiritual wickedness in the high and low places of old, worn out, ANTICHRISTENDOM, shall come to be abolished by Christ and his Resurrected Brethren, whose apocalypse is soon to be revealed. With all these signs of the times before the faithful, well may they rejoice and lift up the head; for assuredly "their redemption draweth nigh."

p.234 But this state of ecclesiastical affairs, so highly commendable, did not continue very long undisturbed by "unlearned questions and strifes of words," which do not edify. Peter's use of the SECOND KEY entrusted to him, and to him only, to the exclusion of all successors in Catsarea and elsewhere, aroused all the latent prejudices of the Jewish mind, whether identified with the Synagogue or the Ecclesia. The Jewish element of the Body of Christ soon found themselves in the minority; and that the uncircumcised were rejoicing in things which Peter said nothing about, when, by the use of the FIRST KEY, he opened the door of faith to them. Some of them were Judaistically disposed, while others who had been added from the Synagogue were but partially enlightened, and developed themselves as "false brethren unawares brought in, who came in privily (or with a secret purpose) to spy out the liberty which the Gentile party had in Christ Jesus, that they might bring it into bondage." These false brethren stood up in all the ecclesias of Christ, and became the occasion of much trouble and anxiety to Paul, who was "preacher, apostle, and teacher of the Gentiles" (2 Tim. 1:11). Thus, Paul being especially the apostle of the uncircumcision, and Peter the apostle of the circumcision, in Corinth the Judaizers said they were of Cephas, or Peter; while their Opponents, who advocated liberty from Mosaic bondage, said they were of Paul. The same condition of things manifested itself in Rome. The false brethren there were zealous for Peter, in whom they boasted as the Prince of the Apostles and Holder of the Keys. Their dogma was, that "it was needful to circumcise the Gentile converts to Christ, and to command them to keep the law of Moses, or they would not be saved" (Acts 15:1,5): and, although this was contradicted by all the apostles as well as Paul, they continued to teach it; and with so much success, that the leaders of the faction and their disciples through-out Asia Minor, all turned away from Paul (2 Tim. 1:15); whom they did not hesitate to speak of evilly and with disrespect.

"Thus it is that Antichrist covers his lying wickedness as with a cloak or garment, that he may not be rejected as a pagan or infidel, and under which disguise he can go on practicing his villainies boldly like a harlot. But it is plain both from the Old and New Testaments, that Christians are bound by express command to separate themselves from Antichrist .

8. The SUEVI filled the interior Germanian countries of the abyss from the banks of the Oder to those of the Danube. A short time before the sounding of the first trumpet, they united with the Alemanni. They passed through Gaul, conquered Gallicia in Spain, and maintained themselves there as a Diademed Horn of the Sea till A.D. 585, a space of one hundred and seventy-seven years.

p.142 "And the Dragon was enraged against the woman". These calamities triumphed over them until A.D. 361, when the "earthquake" of Apoc. 8:5, placed the anti-catholic nephew of Constantine, "Julian the Apostate," so called, upon the Constantinopolitan throne of the Roman world. This imperial pagan proved more humane and merciful to the Donatists than his "christian" (?) predecessors. He permitted them to return to their country, and restored them to the enjoyment of their former liberty. This revolution so far renewed their vigor, that they recruited their wasted ranks by bringing over, in a short time, the majority of the provincials to their interests. Gratian published several edicts against them, and in A. D. 377, deprived them of their houses of assembly, and prohibited all their meetings public and private. But the fury of the Circumcellions, and the apprehension of intestine tumults, prevented the vigorous execution of these laws. This appears from the numerous conventicles they possessed in Africa towards the conclusion of this fourth century ,to which were attached not less than four hundred bishops. About this time a celebrated, or rather, notorious ecclesiastic entered the lists against them. This was that veritable saint of the Serpent calendar, equally glorified by Greek, Latin, and Protestant, historically known as St. Augustine, bishop of Hippo. He attacked them in every way; and as he was a hot-headed and active spirit, he animated against them the whole antichristian world with its imperial court. "The catholic bishops of Africa," says Mosheim, "animated by the exhortations, and conducted by the counsels of this zealous prelate, exerted themselves with the utmost vigor in the destruction of those seditious sectaries (the Earth-assisted Woman) whom they justly looked upon, not only as troublesome to the (catholic) church by their obstinacy (as he calls her faithfulness to "the testimony of the anointed Jesus") but as a nuisance to the State (or Dragon) by the brutal soldiery ("the earth") which they employed in their cause (though on p.124,(*) viii. he says, "the Donatists regarded the Circumcellions with the utmost detestation and abhorrence"). Accordingly, deputies were sent, A.D. 404, from the council of Carthage to the emperor Honorius to request that the laws enacted against heretics by the preceding emperors might have force against the Donatists, who denied that they belonged to the heretical tribe also to desire that bounds might be set to the barbarous fury of the Circumcellions." In acceding to this request, the Dragon-emperor imposed a fine upon all the Donatists who refused to return into the bosom of the catholic church, and sent their bishops and teachers into banishment. In A.D. 405, new and severer laws were enacted against them under the title of Acts of Uniformity; and as the lay magistrates (the earth) were too tardy in the execution of vengeance for "christian priests," the council of Carthage, A.D. 407, sent deputies a second time to the emperor, desiring that certain persons might be appointed to execute the new edicts with vigor and impartiality, in other words, without mercy. This was granted also. But the Donatists, though much shaken by these repeated assaults of the Dragon, were still "nourished" and fed" by the Providence of the Deity. Their strength revived A.D. 408, aftet Stilico had been put to death by the order of Honoriits; and gained an accession of vigor the following year, in which the emperor published a law in favor of liberty of conscience, and prohibited all compulsion in matters of religion. This law, however, was not of long continuance. There is nothing the catholic clergy detest so much as liberty to think, speak, and act, contrary to their traditions. This has been characteristic of them in all ages. It is a characteristic of the craft of all orders, though times and circumstances repress its manifestation when things are not convenient or propitious. Liberty to discuss freely the demerits of the Traditorial Church was terribly annoying to those who justified the delivering up of the Holy Scriptures to be burned as the redemption price of their nondeliverance. These word-despising catholic traitors would let the Dragon government have no rest until the edict of toleration was repealed; and the blood of the Witnesses of Jesus was caused to flow afresh. The law was therefore abrogated at the earnest and repeated solicitation of the council of bishops which met at Carthage, A.D. 419; and Marcellinus, the tribune, was sent by Honorius into Africa with a flood

Though Arnold, like Garibaldi, was a zealous anti-papist, there is no proof of his belonging to "the Holy City;" but much presumptive evidence that he did not. He was a strenuous advocate of civil and religious liberty, and heretical according to the catholic standard of orthodoxy. But he might be all this, and yet not a christian of the New Testament type. However, he was enlightened enough to impugn the dogma of transubstantiation, and to deny that baptism should be administered to infants. And this alone in catholic judgment was sufficient ground for his condemnation.

"The decrees of fathers and councils are so far to be approved, as they agree with the word of God.

This extraordinary accommodation exceedingly disgusted the provinces of Italy. Their indignation at Gregory's arrogance, happily for Henry, overbalanced their detestation of his meanness. All Lombardy took up arms against the pope, while the pope was raising all Germany against the emperor. The Germans chose Rodolph, duke of Swabia, who was crowned at Mentz. Gregory affected to be displeased that he was crowned without his order; and declared he would acknowledge as emperor and king of Germany him of the two rivals who should be most submissive to the Holy See. But as Henry would not submit, he sent a golden crown to Rodolph with the inscription upon it,

Pepin's presence in Italy, at the head of a French army, caused Astolphus to sue for peace, and he obtained it, on condition that he should deliver up to the pope, not to the emperor, all the places he had taken. He consented; but when Pepin had returned, he resumed his former position, and laid siege to Rome.

(**) Pope Constantine (708-15), was also the last Pope to visit Constantinople seeking the support of the Emperor for political endorsement of his status. The Emperor reigning in Constantinople at the time wa Justinian II (A.D. 669-711). Justinian was murdered shortly after the Papal visit, and as the power of the Eastern Empire declined, the popes looked more to the West, and ultimately to Pepin and Charlemagne through whose influence the Holy Roman Empire came into existence from A.D. 800 onwards — Publishers.

It was the Author's intense "love of the Lord's appearing" that caused him to thus compute these time periods. Circumstances have revealed his conclusions to be incorrect. See comment Vol. 2p. 10 - Publishers.

After this forty days of solitude the city was reoccupied by Belisarius, who sent its keys (for there were then no "St. Peter's keys" to send) a second time to Justinian. But the imperialists were unable to hold it. In A.D. 549, the Goths laid siege to it again, and took it. Totila no longer desired to destroy the edifices of Rome, which he now respected as the throne of the Gothic kingdom; the Senate and people were now restored, and the means of subsistence were liberally provided. He reduced the cities of Rhegium and Tarentum; and annexed Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica. At every step of his victories, he repeated to Justinian his desire of peace, applauded the concord of their predecessors, and offered to employ the Gothic arms in the service of the Dragon-empire.

The Lombard Horn was the last of the ten to renounce Arianism, for "the pure doctrine of his Holiness" of Rome. This occurred A.D. 600, through the instigation of Gregory the Great, who encouraged his co-religionist, Theodelinda, the Queen of the Lombards, to propogate the Nicene faith among her victorious savages(*). "Her devout labors," says Gibbon, "still left room for the industry and success of future missionaries; and many cities of Italy were still disputed by hostile bishops. But the cause of Arianism was gradually suppressed by the weight of interest and example, and the controversy, which Egypt had derived from the Platonic school, was terminated, after a war of three hundred years, by the final conversion of the Lombards of Italy."

16. And he gathered them together into the place which is called Hebraistically, Armageddon.

By the greatness of Thy power they shall be still as a stone;

the evolution of all the works exhibited in this fourteenth chapter. They are thus "the blessed of the Father," being like what Jesus is now, and as the angels (1 John 3:2; Luke 20:36). They are thus made omnipotent, and like him, imbued with "an energy whereby they are able to subdue all things". They are blessed with these attributes of omnipotence that they may be able to create the sabbatism, and to take rest in "the sabbatism, that remains for the people of the Deity" (Heb. 4:9). This is the end set before them who are blessed; an end to the development of which vast and mighty "labors" will be required.

p.41 class rejects the Aionian Good , and refuses to fear Him who claims to be the God, or "Elohim of the whole earth" (Isa. 54:5), to give glory to him, and to do him homage. The other class of nations comes to an opposite decision, and without further controversy "wait for His law" (Isa. 42:4). Thus the proclamation in midheaven becomes the occasion of the division of the nations into sheep-nations and goat-nations. Of the latter class will certainly be those comprehended in the bodies politic symbolized by the Ten Horns, the Beast, the False Prophet, and the Dragon. I say certainly, for they are all represented Apocalyptically in actual warfare with the Lamb-Power. Thus, in ch. 17:14, the ten horns are said to make war with the Lamb; and in ch. 19:19-21, the Beast and the Kings of the Earth and their armies, oppose themselves in sanguinary conflict against him and his forces; the False Prophet goes into perdition with the Beast; and the Dragon is chained in the abyss (ch. 20:2,3), These are symbolical of the goat-nations of Belgium, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece, Switzerland, Hungary, Austria, Germany, and Russia. Ere this, Turkey will have been "dried up," and Holland, Denmark and Sweden, probably annexed to Germany or Russia, as part of the confederacy of Gog(*):. The sheep-nations will be separated from all these as the allies of the Shepherd of Israel. These he sets on his right hand with the lost sheep of the flock of Judah, which, as a repentant prodigal, will be returning to "the Great Shepherd of the Sheep." All of this fold he feeds, and gathers, and carries, and gently leads (Isa. 40:2), because they have become joined to him by faith, and are blessed in and with Abraham, his friend (Zech. 2:11; Gal. 3:8,9).

18. And another angel came out from the altar, having power over the fire, and he shouted with a great outcry to him having the sharp sickle, saying, Thrust in thy sharp sickle, and cut off the clusters of the earth, for her grapes are fully ripe.

Such is the wisdom enigmatically set forth by the Spirit for the computation of those of his servants, who have the understanding. No other solution of the enigma is so in harmony with historical and still existing facts. There was no Pontiff king reigning in Rome over a kingdom professing Christianity in the days of John, Polycarp, Iremeus, and Hippolytus. But they all expected that there would be such an one; and that a dynasty would rule it, whose name in Greek would be numerically 666. They judged that its most obvious character would cause it to be styled Latin. This they expected as the Antichrist Power, to be revealed when that which hindered its manifestation in their day was taken out of the way. What they expected, we behold — a Latin Pontifical Kingdom, whose Pontiff-King claims to be Christ’s Substitute on earth, and Successor to the Apostle of the Circumcision; the Name of Blasphemy whose pontifical throne has been for ages established on the Seven Hills; and though reigning in a country whose vernacular is the Italian, ignoring this language, and “speaking” only in that of his pagan fathers to whom he was unknown (Dan. 11:38): could any name be more appropriate to such a power than Latin, in the sense of the Latin Power, or the Antichrist? No other, I believe.

In the period of Zion's rising out of present darkness into future light and glory, she is manifested as the metropolis, or Mother City, of a rising world, styled in the English Version, "the world to come;" but in the original, he oikoumene he mellousa, the future inhabited (earth) or, habitable. This New Constitution of Things, which was the great burden of Paul's discourse, (Heb. 2:5) will comprise the "NEW HEAVENS AND NEW EARTH" to be created by the Eternal Spirit, through Christ Jesus arid his Brethren, in the development of which, He will "create Jerusalem a rejoicing, and her people a joy" (Isa. 65:17) - a New Government, and a New civil, ecclesiastical, and social Organization of the nations of the earth. Concerning this new government, or "Economy of the fullness of the times (Eph. 1:10), it is written in Psa. 19:1-6, "The heavens declare the glory of AlL (the Invisible Power), and the work of his hands the firmament shews. Day unto day will utter speech; and night unto night will shew knowledge. There is no language, nor any words, where their voice is not heard. Their line hath gone out in all the earth; and their words to the ends of the world. In them he hath set a tabernacle for the Sun; who as a Bridegroom coming out of his covering or place where he was hid from view), will rejoice as a mighty man to run a course. His going forth is from the end of the heavens, and his circuit unto the ends thereof; and there is nothing hidden from his heat".

In the period of Zion's rising out of present darkness into future light and glory, she is manifested as the metropolis, or Mother City, of a rising world, styled in the English Version, "the world to come;" but in the original, he oikoumene he mellousa, the future inhabited (earth) or, habitable. This New Constitution of Things, which was the great burden of Paul's discourse, (Heb. 2:5) will comprise the "NEW HEAVENS AND NEW EARTH" to be created by the Eternal Spirit, through Christ Jesus arid his Brethren, in the development of which, He will "create Jerusalem a rejoicing, and her people a joy" (Isa. 65:17) - a New Government, and a New civil, ecclesiastical, and social Organization of the nations of the earth. Concerning this new government, or "Economy of the fullness of the times (Eph. 1:10), it is written in Psa. 19:1-6, "The heavens declare the glory of AlL (the Invisible Power), and the work of his hands the firmament shews. Day unto day will utter speech; and night unto night will shew knowledge. There is no language, nor any words, where their voice is not heard. Their line hath gone out in all the earth; and their words to the ends of the world. In them he hath set a tabernacle for the Sun; who as a Bridegroom coming out of his covering or place where he was hid from view), will rejoice as a mighty man to run a course. His going forth is from the end of the heavens, and his circuit unto the ends thereof; and there is nothing hidden from his heat".

These fiery results caused the Czar and the king of Prussia to seek an interview with Napoleon to treat of peace, which was consequently concluded at Tilsit, July 7,1807. By this fatal war, the Prussian monarchy lost nearly the half of its territory and of its subjects, with more than half of its revenues; and Russia saw herself deprived of her extensive barrier against the dangerous and domineering power of France.

As we have seen, an armistice was purchased by the Pope, through the Spanish minister. He afterwards sent two plenipotentiaries to Paris to treat of a definitive peace. The conditions were destructive, degrading, and, in his opinion, impious; and he declared them totally inadmissible; and in prospect of Alvinzi's invasion, resolved to make common cause with the House of Austria, and have recourse to military force, which the Roman See had disused for so many years. The arming of the Pope's government, whose military force had long been the subject of ridicule, was the opposition of age and decrepitude to the youthful vigor of the unrivaled conqueror of five Austrian armies. Yet the measures of the Image-Power indicated no little energy. Pope Sextus brought back to Rome an installment of sixteen millions of stipulated tribute on its way to Buonaparte's military chest; he took every measure to increase his army, and by the voluntary exertions of the Roman nobles, actually raised it to forty thousand men. The utmost pains were taken by the clergy to give the expected war the character of a crusade, and to excite the fierce spirit of the peasantry of the Appennine "fountains of waters "who were doubly disposed to hate the French, as foreigners and as heretics. He also endeavored to form a close alliance with the King of Naples, who promised in secret to cover Rome. with an army of thirty thousand men. Little reliance was, indeed, to be placed in the good faith of the Court of Naples; but the Pope was compared, by the French envoy, to a man who, in the act of falling, would grasp for support at a hook of red-hot iron.

p.355 18. For I testify to every one hearing the sayings of the prophecy of this book: If any one add to these things, the Deity will add upon him the plagues which have been written in this book. 19. And if any one take away from the sayings of the book of this prophecy, the Deity will take away his part from the Book of the Life, and out of the Holy City, and the things which have been writ?ten in this book.

19. And the foundations of the wall of the city had been embellished with every precious stone. The first foundation a jasper; the second, a sapphire; the third, a chalcedony; the fourth, an emerald; the fifth, a sardonyx; the sixth, a sardius; the seventh, a chrysolite; the eighth, a beryl; the ninth, a topaz; the tenth, a chrysoprasus; the eleventh, a jacinth; the twelfth, an amethyst.

16. and exclaiming, Alas, alas, that great city, which had been clothed with fine linen, and purple, and scarlet, and adorned with gold and precious stone, and pearls! for in one hour so much wealth hath been destroyed.

John was in Patmos nearly eighteen hundred years ago. Why are we informed that he was visited by one of the angels of the vial? Why was he not visited by one of the angels of the trumpets? Because the subject of this chapter is "the judgment of the Great Harlot;" and this judgment belongs to the vials. And which of the seven angels was he visited by? By the Seventh; because, "the judgment of the Great Harlot" is the grand catastrophe of the seventh vial (ch. 16:19) and therefore the seventh only of all the seven could show the judgment to John. If it had been decreed to be executed under the outpouring of the fourth angel's vial, the fourth angel would have visited the apostle; but being the specialty of the seventh, the seventh angel must be the interlocutor and actor in the scene.

Midian had a terrible day when, by a panic from Yahweh, they destroyed themselves in the presence of Gideon and his three hundred torch-bearing trumpeters. Another similar day is in reserve for Midian and Cushan, when "Eloahh shall come in from Teman and the Holy One from Mount Paran". ~'From before him shall go the pestilence, and flaming fire shall go forth from his feet. He stood, and shall shake the earth: he beheld, and shall cause the nations to tremble; and the mountains of antiquity shall be dispersed; the ancient hills were humbled; the ways of Olahm are for him". In consequence of this terrible manifestation of supernatural power, Habakkuk informs the reader, saying, "I saw the tents of Cushan in affliction: and the curtains of the land of Midian did tremble". The lands of Cushan and Midian being within the limits of the land granted to Abraham are among the first to feel the sword of the King who begins his conquering career in Teman. Like his father David, he executes judgment upon the inhabitants of the South, before he obtains the sovereignty over the house of Judah in the midst of the land.

The Eternal Spirit incorporate in the Saints, to whom judgment is given, is the justifier, rectifier, vindicator, and redeemer of the holy land and nation. Habakkuk, in his vision of this time, saith in Ch. 3:13, "thou wentest forth for the salvation of thy people, for salvation with thine Anointed". This Anointed One is the Christ in fullness - the One Body consisting of the Lord Jesus and his brethren "glorified together". Developed in the South as a a body of kings, laying special claim to the land of Israel, and to the world in general, and commencing their enterprise for the conquest of their rights from Teman, they constitute a power, styled in Dan. 11:40 melech hannegev, "king of the south". Zechariah says in ch. 9:14, "Adonai Yahweh shall blow with trumpet, and shall go forth with whirlwinds of Teman". He goes forth thence for the salvation of his people "in the time of the end". In going forth thus, he "pushes at him," the Little Horn of the Goat, or power of Constantinople, "which distributes the land for a price" (Dan. 11:39). It is immaterial whether that power be then Turko-Greek, or Russo-Greek: the raised up Sons of Zion, as the sword of a mighty man, will operate against the Sons of Greece (Zech. 9:13). This sudden and unexpected attack of a hitherto unheard of power, will come upon the Dragon, the Beast, the False Prophet, the Kings of the Earth, and of the whole habitable "as a thief". The situation will be an astounding novelty in the "balance of power". The Christ in fullness in the Great City Babylon, and none suspecting even that the Lord Jesus had individually descended from heaven! Could any surprise be more complete! Here then is the Eastern Question in a phase not dreamt of in the philosophy of the worshippers of the Beast.

(***) The French were compelled through their defeat at the hands of the Prussians in 1870 to withdraw from Italy thus paving the way for Italian independence — Publishers.

In conclusion, as the Corsican remarked concerning the leadership of his victorious hosts, "it is the hand of God that leads my armies;" so, when I consider the difficulties surmounted in the development of this Exposition, I may truly affirm, that the power of the Deity has performed the work. The labor has been diffused over twelve years; but, if I had not well understood "THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM," which "is the Power of God," I might have contained in my earthen vessel all the lore of ancient and modern times, and consumed twelve years thrice told in the study of its mysteries, yet should I have signally failed, and have had to confess with Dionysius, "that great bishop of Alexandria," as Eusebius styles him, that the words of the Apocalypse were "too lofty to be comprehended by me." I have been careful to treat nothing as non-essential or unimportant because of apparent difficulties. The work is now finished by "the power" aforesaid through my instrumentality -- a work concerning which it may be said in the words of an old Roman exile, Exegi monimentum perennius aere: this generation may not appreciate it, but one in the future will.

10. And I heard great voice saying in the heaven, Now is the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our Deity, and the dominion of His Anointed; for the prosecutor of our brethren, who accused them in the presence of our Deity, day and night, has been cast down.

In the foregoing chronological table the dates are given according to the true time, which is four years earlier than the regular era.

As a religious preparation for the impending conflict, Licinius col-ected around himself Egyptian seers and diviners, enchanters, jugglers, and the priests and prophets of his idols, and having propitiated his deities with sacrifices, then inquired what was to be the issue to him of this "war in the heaven." If he had inquired of an enlightened Chrisladeiphian of the period he could have told him that it would be to cast him out of the heaven into the earth, and his angels (the Egyptian seers and diviners, enchanters, jugglers, priests, prophets, and all his officials) with him; but there was none such in his tail, or following, to testify the truth; he therefore, had recourse to the stars drawn in his tail, who unanimously assured him that he would undoubtedly prove the stronger in the contest, and be victorious; a judgment everywhere reiterated in long and elegant songs by the Oracles of the Idols. Elated by these deceitful promises, he advanced with great confidence, and prepared for battle. When about to begin, he summoned his trustiest attendants and friends to meet him in a consecrated grove, spacious and irrigated, in which were set up all kinds of idol-statues, and having lighted wax tapers, in the after-fashion of papists and ritualists, and offered the accustomed victims to them, he delivered the following address:

The memory of Arnold was long and fondly cherished by his countrymen, and his tragical end occasioned murmurs both loud and deep. His murder was regarded as the act of the Bishop of Rome and his clergy. Arnold's friends, who were numerous, separated themselves from communion with the pope's church, and by the name of Arnoldists long continued to bear their testimony against its numerous abominations, as another of "the remnants of the woman's seed".

p.142 --------------------------------------------- ·(*) The records extant of the Donatists and Circumeellions are mainly those of their enemies, and they have sought to blacken their reputation. The Circumeellions are branded as crazed suicidal fanatics ,blood thirsty terrorists, the scum of a desperate peasantry. It is claimed that they indulged in ritual drunkenness, and were capable of mass suicide. Murder and pillaging of Catholics was a way of life for them. - Publishers. --------------------------------------------

9. The ALANS migrated from the Asiatic Sarmatia, lying between the Black and Caspian Seas. They passed from this section of the abyss into Germania, being joined on their march by the Vandals, who had previously descended from Scandinavia, and had halted in European Sarmatia, between the Dnieper and the Don. In Germany their forces were still further increased by the accession of the Suevi. Thus strengthened, the Alans, who did not remain in Gaul with the Vandals and Sueves, crossed the Pyrenees into Spain, where they divided; the Suevi settling in Gallicia, the Alans in Portugal, and the Vandals in Vandalitia. After sustaining a separate government eight or nine years, they were incorporated by conquest with the Vandals and Sueves, and passed with the Vandals under Genseric into Africa. Another body of Alans had settled between the Rhine, the Seine, and the Loire. They repulsed Attila from Orleans, their capital, on his invasion of Gaul, A.D. 451, and were stationed in the centre of the army by which he was defeated at the great battle of Chalons. On his invasion of their territory, A.D. 453, they were supported by the Goths, and gained another victory. A.D. 464, they invaded Italy, and laid Liguria, the southern part of Sardinia, waste. Clovis, king of the Franks, extended his conquests over their territory as far as the Loire, A.D. 485, but they continued to subsist as a separate people till A.D. 507, or thereabouts, when they were conquered by the Franks.

"In the New Testament we read that the Lord is come and hath suffered death, that he might gather together IN ONE the children of God (John 12); and in the book of Revelation, he warns by his voice, and charges his people to go out of Babylon, saying, 'Come out of her, my people, and be not partakers of her sins, that ye receive not of her plagues; for her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquity' (Rev. 18:4,5). The apostle Paul says the same 'Have no fellowship with unbelievers - come out from among them, and be ye separate' (2 Cor. 6:16).

p.234 The false brethren in Rome were not behind their brethren in the provinces in zeal for the propagation of their traditions. By their fruits they were proved to be "grievous wolves, not sparing the flock; and speaking perverse things to draw away disciples after them." Their party was in secret alliance with the Synagogue; and their purpose seems to have been to Judaize Christianity, and then to use it in this corrupt form to turn the idolators from Jupiter to Moses, and subordinately, to Christ. In this way they would draw disciples after them, and thus acquire importance and influence in the world, which they clearly perceived were not to be obtained by devotion to the unadulterated Word.

Thus was the Bishop of Rome developed into "the Mouth" of the great VICEREGAL REPUBLIC OF THE WEST; and after this manner was fulfilled the oracle, saying, "And there was given to him (the Beast of the Sea) a Mouth." It was a mouth like the mouth of the symbol of Babylon, "the mouth of a lion." When it spoke it roared forth thunderings and blasphemies, far more hideous than ever defiled the ears of pagan or Mohammedan - a Mouth that still gives utterance to "blasphemies against the Deity to blaspheme his Name and his Tabernacle, and them that dwelleth in the heaven."

But, Justinian, true to the character of "the king who" should "do according to his will" (Dan. 11:35), was deaf to the voice of peace; but he neglected, through indolence, the prosecution of the war. From this slumber he was aroused by Vigilius, "the Head of all the churches" of his estate, and the patrician Cethagus, who appeared before his throne, and adjured him in the name of the Deity and the people, to resume the conquest and deliverance of Italy. An army was assembled, and under the command of Narses, was ordered to march against the Goths. Totila, conscious that the clergy and people of Italy aspired to a second revolution, resolved to risk the Gothic kingdom on the chance of a day, in which the valiant would be animated by instant danger, and the disaffected might be awed by mutual ignorance. The decisive battle was fought at Taginas, about ninety-five miles from Rome, in July, A.D. 552. The Goths were defeated, and Totila was slain. Narses, having paid his devotions to "the blessed Virgin," his imaginary goddess, and peculiar patroness, whose inspiration he professed had revealed to him the day, and the word of battle, advanced towards Rome, which did not long delay his progress. The keys of the city were for the third time sent to Justinian, under whose reign it had been five times taken and recovered. "But the deliverance of Rome," says Gibbon, "was the last calamity of the Roman people." Three hundred youths of the noble' families, who were hostages in the hands of the Goths, were slain by Teias, the successor of Totila. "The fate of the Senate suggests an awful lesson of the vicissitude of human affairs. All the fortresses of Campani were stained with patrician blood. After a period of thirteen centuries the institution of Romulus expired; and if the nobles of Rome still assumed the title of senators, few subsequent traces can be discovered of public council, or constitutional order. Ascend six hundred years, an contemplate the kings of the earth soliciting an audience, as the slaves or freemen of the ROMAN SENATE!"

In this extremity, Stephen again had recourse to his protector the king of France; but apprehensive of fatiguing the zeal of his transalpine allies, enforced his complaint and request by an eloquent letter in the name and person of St. Peter himself. This blasphemous forgery is too remarkable to be here omitted. It runs thus: "Peter, called an apostle by Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, etc. As through me the whole catholic, apostolic, and Roman church, the Mother of all other churches, is founded on a rock: and to the end that Stephen, Bishop of the beloved church of Rome, and that virtue and power may be granted by our Lord to rescue the church of God out of the hands of its persecutors: To you most excellent princes, Pepin, Charles, and Carloman, and to all the holy bishops and abbots, priests and monks, as also to dukes, counts, and people, I, Peter the apostle, conjure you, and the Virgin Mary, who will be obliged to you, gives you notice and commands you, as do all the thrones, dominations, etc. If you will not fight for me, I declare you by the Holy Trinity, and by my apostleship, that you shall have no share in heaven." Whether Pepin believed this forgery or not, he obeyed the summons, and delivered Rome from its peril a second time.

importing that it was given by virtue of the right to confer crowns from the apostle Peter! The donation was accompanied by an anathema against Henry prophetic of the aspirations of the rising Image-power. The anathema concludes with an apostrophe to St. Peter and St. Paul, saying, "Make all men sensible, that, as you can bind and loose every thing in heaven, you can also upon earth take from, or give to, every one according to his deserts, empires, kingdoms, principalities let the kings and princes of the age then instantly feel your power, that they may not dare to despise the orders of your church; let your justice be so speedily executed upon Henry, that nobody may doubt but that he falls by your means and not by chance."

"The reading and knowledge of the holy scriptures is free and necessary for all men, the laity as well as the clergy; yea, and the writings of the apostles and prophets are to be read rather than the comments of men.

19. And the angel cast his sickle into the earth, and cut off the vine of the earth, and cast it into the great winepress of the wrath of the Deity.

p.41 But the Holy One of Israel is not the Shepherd of the Goats. Their shepherd is the False Prophet of the Catholic world, who claims to be "the God of the Earth", successor of St. Peter, and Vicar of Jesus Christ. This Shepherd of the Goats is the lawless antagonist of the GREAT

The labors of the Saints are world-wide. Mankind has no conception of them. They are labors whereby "every island shall flee away, and the mountains shall not be found" (Apoc. 16:20). These are the islands and mountains of the political earth - the kingdoms and empires of the world. All these are to become the kingdoms of the Eternal Spirit, and of his Anointed Body consisting of Jesus and his Brethren (ch. 11:15). Let the reader figure out for himself the work to be performed in render-ing them powerless, and bringing them into absolute subjection to "the King of the Jews," and he will be enabled to form a faint idea of "the works and labors of the Saints," to be performed before they take rest in the kingdom of the Deity. These islands and mountains, of which Great Britain, Russia, France, and such like, are examples, are maintained in political existence by vast naval and military power and resources; and the Continental Powers are so constituted, that they can conscript "the last man" for conflict in "the last ditch," before they will yield to temporal and spiritual annihilation. But the decree has gone forth, and is here Apocalyptically recorded against them. They must succumb, and "wait for his law". Their fleets must be surrendered, and their armies routed, slaughtered, and dispersed. Their hearts will be hardened like the heart of Pharaoh. "Yahweh hath made all things for Himself; yea, even the wicked for the Day of Evil" (Prov. 16:4). Hence, He hath made the Powers that be for the day of evil, as "vessels of wrath fitted to destruction", in which He will make His power known (Rom. 9:22). Their hardened hearts will cause them to stand and resist, till they are broken to shivers as the vessels of a potter (Apoc. 2:27). It is Jesus and his brethren who have the glory of giving them this terrific overthrow, in the execution of their judicial labors upon Babylon, and the world-wide worshippers of the Beast and his Image. To reduce these islands and mountains to a submarine level - to overflow them with an unruffled and glassy sea; to make them as "a plain before Zerubbabel," and to develop "a great mountain thereon that shall fill the whole earth" (Dan. 2:35), these are the labors of the Saints, which will leave their mark upon the world for a thousand years; nor will they ever be forgotten, as long as the sun and moon shall shine upon the earth.

17. Thou wilt bring them in, and plant them, In the mountain of Thy inheritance;

17. And the seventh angel poured out his vial upon the Air; and there came forth a great voice from the Nave of the Heaven, from the throne, saying, It is done.

Having ruined the hosts of Alvinzi, Napoleon was now at leisure to execute the Directory's purpose of crushing the power, such as it was, of the Beast's Image, commonly termed, "the Holy See". To this end he sent his forces into the territories of the Church Multitudes of fanatical peasants obeyed the sound of the clerical tocsin. The Pope's army being taken in the rear, fled in every direction after a short resistance. A few hundreds were killed, among whom were several monks, who, holding the crucifix, or "sign of the beast," in their hand, had placed themselves in the ranks to encourage the soldiers. Faenza was taken by storm; and next day, three thousand of the Papalians in front of Ancona, commanded by the Pope's general-in-chief, Colli, were made prisoners without firing a shot.

Freed by the peace of Tilsit from all apprehensions in the north, Napoleon was now at leisure to prepare, by his operations upon the Sun of the European Peninsula, for the scorching with fire of the worship-pers of the Beast's Image, subject to the kingdoms of Spain and Portugal. The Portuguese Court voluntarily migrated to Rio Janeiro, in Brazil, in consequence of Napoleon's declaration, endorsed by a French army marching on Lisbon, that "the House of Braganza should cease to reign."

This Sun is the great illuminator, who "enlightens the earth with his glory" (Apoc. 10:1; 18:1; 21:23); and who, in the days of his flesh, said, "As long as I am in the world, I am the Light (or Sun) of the world" - a Light which shone into the darkness, but was not comprehended by it (John 9:5; 1:5). It is this "Great Light;" once seen by them "who sat in the region and shadow of death", which is styled in Mal. 4:2, "THE SUN OF RIGHTEOUSNESS," who arises with genial influences upon all who fear the Name of Yahweh Elohim; but with intensely scorching effect also upon the wicked who serve him not.

This Sun is the great illuminator, who "enlightens the earth with his glory" (Apoc. 10:1; 18:1; 21:23); and who, in the days of his flesh, said, "As long as I am in the world, I am the Light (or Sun) of the world" - a Light which shone into the darkness, but was not comprehended by it (John 9:5; 1:5). It is this "Great Light;" once seen by them "who sat in the region and shadow of death", which is styled in Mal. 4:2, "THE SUN OF RIGHTEOUSNESS," who arises with genial influences upon all who fear the Name of Yahweh Elohim; but with intensely scorching effect also upon the wicked who serve him not.

(****) Rome did actually become capital of Italy in 1870, when the French were forced to withdraw their troops from the city because of their disastrous defeat in the Franco-Prussian war. Italian revolutionaries then entered Rome and took the city, placing Victor Emmanuel of Sardinia on the throne. This, we believe, was prophetically necessary in order to provide a revolutionary political voice of intrigue to issue from the "mouth of the false prophet" as required by The Apocalypse (Rev. 16:13). The horns associated with the revived Beast uf^the Sea, the Western European powers, are required to first "hate the whore and make her desolate and naked," and afterwards to "agree and give their kingdom unto the beast" (Rev. 17:16-17). In consequence, at the epoch of its judgment at the hands o f Christ, Babylon the Great is seen triumphantly riding the beast (Rev. 17:3). The revival of a united Italy provided the means for this. Following World War I, Mussolini came to power in Italy, and in 1929 through the Lateran Treaty, revived the temporal power of the Papacy by granting Papal autonomy over the Vatican. After World War II, the Common Market was brought into existence by the Treaty of Rome in 1957, providing the means whereby the horns of the West began to "give their kingdom unto the beast". Today, Europe is divided into two parts answering to the two feet of the Image seen by Nebuchadnezzar, the Common Market is laying the foundation for the full manifestation of the "beast" of The Apocalypse, whilst the international influence and prestige of the Papacy are more widespread than at any time in its history. The Author of Eureka died on 5th March, 1871 so he did not see the remarkable political developments that have vindicated his interpretation of The Apocalypse — Publishers.

But, it cannot be supposed that, in our time of this, or the rising generation, when that ubiquitous personage "our own correspondent is peering and prying into all corners and by-ways of the inhabited earth, so extraordinary an Elohistic Power can have been developed; rejected candidates for constituency therein, cast forth and driven away into exile with shame and contempt into the countries ruled by the Devil and his Angels, to be there tormented with the world, until they have paid justice all it may demand (Matt. 18:34,35; 22:13; 25:41,46; 1 Cor. 11:32); 50 wonderful a transformation of the wilderness and desert section of the land promised to Abraham into a well-watered umbrageous paradise, can have been created; and the hitherto untamed and ferocious tribes of Midian, Kedar, Cushan and the Rocky Arabia, have become its enlightened, docile, and joyous, inhabitants: it cannot, I say, be supposed, that all this can have been developed in sight almost of that A grand and important work, the Suez Canal, and not have become the great and absorbing theme of speculative wonder in all the papers and Cabinets of the world. Among the latter, the Anglo-Indian Lion of Tarshish, as lord paramount of Abyssinia, Nubia, Egypt, Cushistan, Sheba, Dedan, the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea, and protector of the Tenth in the midst of the land, must be the first of the great powers to be directly affected by the epiphany of the Davidian Power in Arabia. The presence of this power would be, if in hostile activity, a very disturbing element of the situation; and eminently destructive of British interests in India and the East. It is impossible to speak with certainty of details not revealed. When we touch upon them, we speak only of what may probably be the course of things leading to a specified result. With this understanding, I may say, that the alternative before the British Government, consequent upon its maritime disasters visited upon it in the Red Sea (Psa. 48:7) will be that of peace, or war, with the New Arabian Power. If the British Sheba Cabinet have acquired accurate knowledge of its Divine Elohistic character, there is sufficient Millenarianism in high places, to counsel and to cause it to seek as a suppliant, the favor of the "greater than Solomon;" so that, as protector of the Tenth in the midst of the land, including the ancient territory of Tyre, it might be accepted, after the examples of Hiram of Tyre and the Queen of Sheba, as the humble servant and ally of "the Great King". This arrangement, of course only temporary, would fulfill Psa. 45:12, the daughter of Tyre with an offering, even the rich of the people, shall entreat thy favor" the offering, minchah, being the tenth in the midst of the land (Isa. 6:12,13); as the earnest, or installment, of that greater ingathering after the Armageddon overthrow. And again, in Psa. 72:10, 'the kings of Tarshish and of the isles shall bring presents: the kings of She ha and Seba shall offer gifts" - offer the countries over which they rule. 'Yea, all kings shall bow down to him; all the nations shall serve him". Thus, "the merchandise of Tyre will be for them who dwell before Yahweh, to eat sufficiently, and for durable clothing" (Isa. 23:18).

Being, then, in company with John, he said to him "Come along!" The English Version translates deuro, come hither! This would be very well if John had not already informed us that the angel had come to him. Had the angel remained stationary at a distance, and called out deuro! come hither, would have been correct. But, it was John who was station-ary, so the angel came to him, and invited him to accompany him, and he would show him the judgment of the Great Harlot.

17. And every shipmaster, and every company upon the ships, and sailors, and as many as ply the sea, stood afar off,

21.And the twelve gates were twelve pearls; each one of the gates severally was of one pearl: and the broadway of the city pure gold, as it were transparent crystal.

p.355 20. He who testifieth these things, saith, Yea, I come suddenly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus.

"Friends and fellow-warriors, these are the gods of our ancestors, whom, received from our earliest predecessors as objects of worship, we honor; but he who commands the army that is drawn up against us, having adopted an atheistic Opinion, violates the customs of the fathers, venerating a god from abroad, I know not whence, and disgraces his troops with his ignominious standard (the Cross with the monogram of Christ) trusting in which he arms not so much against us as against the gods whom he offends. This occasion therefore will show which of us errs in his belief, and will decide between the gods who are honored by us, and by the other party; for either by showing us victors, it will show our gods are most justly regarded as auxiliaries and saviours; or, if the Deity of Constantine, come from I know not whence, shall prevail over ours, which are many, let no one thereafter doubt what Deity ought to be worshipped, but go to the strongest, and present to him the reward of the victory. If the foreign god, whom we now deride, should appear the mightiest, we must acknowledge and honor him, and bid farewell to those to whom we have vainly lit wax tapers. But if ours prevail, which is not to be doubted, then, after the victory, we must proceed to war against the atheists."

Such was the WREATH OF TWELVE STARS extended by the Deity as a prize to be gained by the conquest of the Dragon. All the twelve were imperial supreme pontiffs. For the archer-and-woman fraternity to carry off the prize, was for it to be wreathed with the imperial Stephan of the Caesars; and to subdue their pontificate under their feet. This it did most effectually; and, as a sign prophetic of this great victory over the principalities, authorities, world-rulers, and spirituals of the Roman Heaven; and for the encouragement of all engaged in the good fight of faith against the gods, who had eyes to discern the import of the vision, the woman was photographed in the firmament of the Roman Orb, wreathed with the supreme pontifical authority of the twelve.

11. And they overcame him through the blood of the Lamb and through the word of their testimony; and they loved not their life unto death.

The following is my scheme of the prophecy to be studied in connexion with the Chron. Tab. in Vol. I., p. 428, and the Tab. Analysis, Vol. 2. P. 96.

p.235 The interests of Christ's flock they measured by their own selfishness, which was promoted by the assumption of clerical lordship over the multitude of them that believed. Paul alludes to these "grievous wolves," overlaid with wool, styled by Christ Jesus, "false prophets who come in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravening wolves," in his letter to the saints in Rome, ch. 16:17, saying, "I beseech you, brethren, mark them who cause divisions and offenses contrary to the doctrine you have learned; and AVOID THEM. For they that are such serve not the Lord Jesus Christ, but their own belly; and by good words and fair speeches deceive the hearts of the simple." They caused divisions and offences, which, when viewed in the light of the apostolic teaching, and that of the Star-Angel which presided over them, were clearly seen to be such.

"From what has been said, we may learn wherein consists the wickedness and perverseness of Antichrist, and that God commands his people to separate from him, and join themselves to THE HOLY CITY, Jerusalem (Apoc. 11:2). And since it hath pleased God to make known these things to us by his servants, believing it to be his holy will according to the Scriptures, and admonished thereto by the command of the Lord, we do inwardly and outwardly depart from Antichrist. We hold communion and maintain unity one with another, freely and uprightly, having no other motive thereto but to please the Lord, and seek the salvation of our souls. Thus, as the Lord is pleased to enable us, and so far as our understandings are enlightened into the path of duty, we attach ourselves unto the truth of Christ, and his ecclesia, how mean soever she may appear in the eyes of men.

10. The BAVARIANS. The present Bavaria in the time of the Romans formed part of the Dragon empire, known as Vindelicia and Noncum. Besides South Bavaria, Vindelicia also embraced the south-eastern part of the kingdom of Wurtemberg; while Noricum comprehended the Archduchy of Austria, Styria, Carinthia, and part of Carniola. The Jesuit Gordon in his Opus Chronologicum, referring to A.D. 511 says "Theodon, the first king of Bavaria, dies." We are not informed how long he had reigned; but Mr. Elliot thinks we may date it as before A.D.493. The Bavarian Horn is noticed by Gibbon as forming one of the boundaries of the Ostrogothic kingdom of Italy under Theodoric: "He reduced," says he, "the unprofitable countries Rhoetia (the Tyrol), Noricum, Dalmatia, and Pannonia, from the source of the Danube and the territory of the Bavarians." And again he says, "the Lombard kingdom extended east, north, and west, as far as the confines of the Avars, the Bavarians, and the Franks of Austrasia and Burgundy;" and Muller:"the Bavarians had now (that is, about the end of the sixth century) given name to Noricum."

p.142 of legionaries effluent of the Dragon's Mouth. Full power was given to him to sweep the woman away; and so to bring to a conclusion, or to extinguish, the testimony of these faithful witnesses against that DIABOLICAL AND SATANIC APOSTASY, blasphemously styled "the Holy Apostolic Catholic Church." Who can but be penetrated with disgust and horror at the villainous and execrable cruelty of the clergy of this and after ages! It was evident that the emperor was reluctant to persecute the Donatists. But, though an emperor, he doubtless had reason to fear, lest in shielding the lives of the innocent, he might forfeit his own at the bidding of his episcopal allies. Nothing but extermination seems to have satisfied these hissing serpents and dragon-speaking priests. How thankful ought we to be, that the Deity has put it into the heart of "the Earth," to open her mouth against the execution of sanguinary vengeance upon the believers and advocates of the truth by the generation of vipers whose vested interests are opposed to it.

A multitude of converts in all the southern provinces of France, and the states of Italy, resulted from the able and faithful labors of these three men. When it became aware of it, the Court of Rome became alarmed, and resorted to torture and destruction for the suppression and extermination of them, as heretics that troubled the church, or "tormented them that dwelt upon the earth" (Apoc. 11:10). "It made war upon them," and ultimately "overcame them, and killed them" (v.7; 13:7); for what was deemed a good and sufficient reason, namely, their tormenting testimony, styled by the catholic destroyer, "HERESY." The following extract from Venema's Ecclesiastical History will serve to show in what their heresy consisted:

"The sacraments of the Church of Christ are two, baptism and the supper of the Lord.

But Gregory's success in his immediate designs was not answerable to his intrepidity. Henry both subdued the German rebellion and carried on the war with so much vigor in Italy, that he was crowned in Rome by the archbishop of Ravenna, whom he had caused to be elected pope by the name of Clement III., instead of Gregory, who had taken refuge in the castle of St. Angelo, whence he defied, and again excommunicated the conqueror. In the meanwhile the castle was besieged, but the emperor being called off into Lombardy, Roger Guiscard, his Norman ally, effected his release and gave him asylum at Salerno, where he soon after died. His mantle, however, descended upon his successors, especially Urban II., and Paschal II., who strenuously persevered in the great contest for Ecclesiastical Independence, or the full development of the Image of the Beast.

Meanwhile, Constantine Copronymus, who had succeeded Leo Isauricus, informed of the treaty between the king of France and the Pope, by which the latter was to be put into the possession of the Exarchate and Pentapolis, remonstrated by his ambassadors against that agreement, offering to pay the expenses of the war. But Pepin replied, that the Exarchate belonged to the Lombards, who had acquired it from the East by arms, as the Romans had originally done; that the right of the Lombards was now in him, so that he could dispose of that territory as he thought proper. He had bestowed it, he said, on St. Peter, that the Catholic faith might be preserved in its purity, free from the damnable heresies of the image-breaking Greeks; and all the money in the world, he added, should never make him revoke that gift, which he was determined to maintain to the church with the last drop of his blood.

In the following March, A.D. 553, was fought the battle of the Draco, in which the new king was slain. While exchanging his buckle his uncovered side was pierced with a mortal dart. "He fell, and his head exalted upon a spear, proclaimed to the nations that the Gothic kingdom was no more."

But, notwithstanding Justinian's Decretal Epistle, and the professed desire of his servant, the Patriarch of Constantinople, "in all things to follow the Apostolic Throne" of Rome's Blessed One (!), the emperors and patriarchs, their immediate successors, did not partake of this desire. As the political stability and ecclesiastical organization of the West increased and progressed, the influence of the Oriental Catholic Power, enfeebled and almost extinguished by the victorious Persians and Avars, was greatly impaired; and had become in Italy little more than an ancient name, venerable chiefly for its antiquity and past renown. This emboldened the Pope in his schemes of absolute independence, and generated a spirit of rivalry and hostility between Rome and Constantinople. The patriarchs of Constantinople, who were scarcely less arrogant and ambitious than the popes, perceiving the advantages accruing from universal ecclesiastical supremacy, refused to acknowledge the Headship of "the Most Holy Archbishop of the Sacred City of Rome," and claimed it for themselves. These equal pretensions of the rival episcopal thrones of the East and West involved them in continual strifes, which were very considerably augmented by the course of John "the Faster(*)," who, in a council held in the sixth year of the reign of the Emperor Maurice, A.D. 588, assumed the title of UNIVERSAL BISHOP, which was confirmed to him by the council. This assumption was equivalent to a claim of spiritual lordship over the pope and over all the Gothic Horns, as well as over the countries now embraced in the Ottoman empire. This had been decreed by Justinian to the Bishop of Rome fifty years before, and was now a part of the constitution of the empire, which a council had neither the power nor the right to reverse. This invasion of his rights, Pelagius II., then pope, vehemently opposed as an execrable, profane and diabolical procedure. Though Rome was no longer an imperial city, and "Mistress of the World," she was supposed to be the Throne of St. Peter, which Pelagius regarded as a better foundation for the seat of an universal bishopric than the enfeebled and tottering imperiality of Constantinople; but his invectives and arguments were equally despised, and his indignation was soon after quieted in death. He was succeeded in the A.D. 590, by Gregory the First, surnamed "the Great," a voluminous writer, and, though superstitious in the extreme, not entirely untalented. His works are still extant, and in great repute with the worshippers of the Beast. The following artful epistle, written by him to his imperial master, Maurice, at Constantinople, in consequence of John the Faster assuming the title of Universal Bishop, casts considerable light upon the history of the times, and may, therefore, with advantage to the reader be inserted here, illustrative also of the deceitful and lying utterances of the Babylonian Mouth.

18. And there were voices, and thunders, and lightnings, and there was a great earthquake, such as was not since men were upon the earth, such an earthquake so great.

The holy place, O ADONAI (noun plural, Lords) Thy hands have established.

But their prowess is not exclusively of themselves. "The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do; for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise;" "The Father that dwelleth in me, He doeth the works" (John 5:19; 14:10). Upon this principle "their works" are performed likewise. The Saints can do nothing of themselves; for it is "not by might nor by power," originating from men; "but by My Spirit, saith Yahweh Tz'vaoth". The prowess of the saints is all attributable to the Spirit, which they will have become in being "justified by Spirit" after their appearance at "the tribunal of Christ" - "that which hath been born of spirit is Spirit" (John 3:6). The antithesis in Zech. 6:6, is between flesh and spirit. The "great mountain," which before Zerubbabel is to "become a plain," is the power of the old Adam, organized and concentrated in the powers represented in Nebuchadnezzar's Image. This is to be broken to pieces, and scattered as chaff, "not by the might and power" of mortal men, however effectively armed and disciplined; but by the Spirit incorporate in the Saints; and energizing the armies of Israel under their command; so that five Israelites, as so many Samsons, may chase a hundred, and a hundred put ten thousand to flight (Lev. 26:8).

p.41 (*)This statement does not indicate a doubt in the mind of the author as to whether Gog is to be identified with Germany or Russia, but because he recognized that before Armageddon, Europe would be divided into two parts answering to the feet of the Image seen by Nebuchadnezzar. In Exposition of Daniel he wrote: "Now while the head, breast and arms, belly, thighs, legs and toes, have all existed, the Feet have not yet been formed; so that it has been hitherto impossible for the Colossal Image to stand erect, as Nebuchadnezzar saw it in his dream. It is, therefore, the mission of the Autocrat to form the feet and set up the image before the world in all its excellent brightness, and terribleness of form; that all men subject to the Kingdom of Babylon may worship the work of its creator's power... The imperial fabric will rest upon the Russo-Greek and Latin Feet and Toes

20. And the winepress was trodden without the city, and blood came out from the winepress unto the bridles of the horses, for a thousand six hundred furlongs.

But who are "the Kings out of a Sun's risings?" Some say, they are the Jews returning from the East; others, eastern potentates in general; others change kings to "king," and explain it of Christ, as "King from the East;" others expound it as kings coming from the East to take part, as actors and sufferers, in the slaughters of the great day of slaughter; and lastly, it is said, that the Kings from the East signify "Christian Preachers," or the Clergy commissioned from Christ the Sun of Righteousness, for whose missionary operations an opening is made by drying up' the power of Babylon for opposing the truth; and who are called kings, from their zeal in ruling both themselves and the church!

But who are "the Kings out of a Sun's risings?" Some say, they are the Jews returning from the East; others, eastern potentates in general; others change kings to "king," and explain it of Christ, as "King from the East;" others expound it as kings coming from the East to take part, as actors and sufferers, in the slaughters of the great day of slaughter; and lastly, it is said, that the Kings from the East signify "Christian Preachers," or the Clergy commissioned from Christ the Sun of Righteousness, for whose missionary operations an opening is made by drying up' the power of Babylon for opposing the truth; and who are called kings, from their zeal in ruling both themselves and the church!

A treaty had been concluded between the "egregious" king-maker, Napoleon, and Charles IV. of Spain, the object of which was a partition of the kingdom of Portugal. By a secret convention, French troops were to be admitted into Spain, and others assembled at Bayonne, to assist in the conquest of Portugal. Thus it was given under this fourth vial for Spain to be placed at the disposal of him, who was to "scorch with fire the men" who worshipped the Beast's Image, both in Portugal and Spain.

Resistance was unavailing. The False Prophet in vain solicited his subjects to rise against the second Alaric, who was approaching "the holy city". They remained as deaf to his exhortations as "the blessed virgin, and apostles Peter and Paul," who had of old been the fabled protectors of the Mother City of the Latin World in a like emergency. All Was dismay and confusion in Peter's patrimony, so called; and nothing less was expected by the French priests hiding in the city from Jacobin vengeance, than to be slain by the republican troops between the horns of the altar at which they had taken refuge. But, though this fate would only have been rewarding them according to their works, policy caused Buonaparte not only to restrain his soldiers, but to direct the Italian convents to afford them board and lodging at twelve shillings and sixpence sterling a month per priest: for which they were to receive masses ad valorem! thus assigning the convents' payment for their hospitality in the same coin with which they themselves compensated the deluded people for their hard-earned contributions to the spiritual treasury.

p.355 21. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with all of you Amen

22. And I saw in it no nave for the Lord the all-powerful Deity is the Nave of it, and the Lamb.

18. and cried, seeing the smoke of her burning, exclaiming, What was like to that great city?

John was stationary. The seals, and trumpet, and vial, periods, as so many succeeding and passing scenes, had all to revolve until the sixth vial-period of the seventh seal and last trumpet, came before him. He would then be visited by the Sixth Angel, and feel his power in being "caused to exist incorruptible," for the dead are immortalized in the sixth vial-period. The judgment of the Great Harlot could not be shown to him by the sixth angel. He will have to wait until visited by the seventh angel. Then, being a living apostle, and one of those to whom it is given to execute the judgment written against the Great Harlot in the seventh vial-period, when that period arrives, he will go along with the Lamb, that is, with the Omnipotent and Omniscient Spirit, and not only see the judgment, but take part in it, and rejoice over her catastrophe and fall (ch. 18:6,20). This is the import of the words, "I will show thee the judgment of the Great Harlot".

Now, alliances between powers are often entered into and kept profoundly secret. The alliance between the Son of Solomon and the Anglo-Tyrian, may be unknown to the Mouth of the Dragon, the Mouth of the Beast, and to the Mouth of the False Prophet; that is, to "the kings of the earth and of the whole habitable". Not knowing the true character of the power in Teman; nor the real nature of the relations subsisting between it and Britain; they will act blindly in their policy respecting it. They will doubtless hear of its making great demonstrations in the East; and of its setting up a New Religion, in its principles and institutions, intolerant and subversive of all other faiths. That it had cut off all com- munication with Mecca, to which it would allow no more pilgrimages; that the Anglo-Tyrian protector of Palestine seemed to favor its views; and had abolished the exercise of all Greek, Latin, and Mohammedan, religious rites in Jerusalem upon pain of death. It may be supposed, that the British government would not venture upon such a course as this, if it was not assured that there was an Almighty power prepared to sustain it. To abolish the Greek and Latin superstitions in Jerusalem, would set the Frogs into violent activity, inflame the two hundred millions of European papists with burning fanaticism, and throw the Autocrat of all the Russias into fierce and furious paroxysms of wrath. The reader will not forget, that the question, "what power shall repair the Holy Shrines in Jerusalem," involved Britain, France, Turkey, Sardinia, and Russia, in war for three years; if such a mighty calamity resulted from so light a cause, what might not be expected from the expulsion by protestant England of every thing from Jerusalem not agreeable to the terrible power of Teman? Would not the False Prophet of Rome make proclamation, that Antichrist had come at last; and that he was aiming like another Mohammed, to destroy the Catholic church, and to propagate a new religion by the sword! There is a tradition among papists, that within two years or so, Antichrist will appear, and try to destroy their church. When the true Christ comes, his mission is in part to destroy the Papacy and the Roman Prophet at the head of it. All, therefore, who acknowledge that the Pope is the real Vicar of the true Christ, will be sure to regard the Arabian of Teman as the Anti christ;(*) being assured that the true Christ would not seek to destroy his own Vicar. The Frog power, which has taken the Papacy into its special keeping, and has set itself up as the champion of Latinism in the East, would doubtless in its working upon the Dragon, Beast, and False Prophet, urge upon them all, the necessity of providing, by a concerted action, for their common interest; and against a danger that threatens all the states and institu-tions of Europe. Persuaded of this, an unclean daemon spirit would go forth from the Mouth, or government of each to all the kings of the earth, and of the whole habitable, to gather them together for a general crusade against the Arabian Antichrist; and for the deliverance ofjeru-salem and the Holy Shrines out of the hands of the infidels. By this time, probably, Russia will have made a movement against Constantinople; and being in the forefront of the line of march from Europe, and extending its dominion far into the north and east, it would be prepared to take the lead in the great movement of the west. As the Gog of the land of Magog, the Autocrat of nations will be prepared to marshal under his banner the forces of Persia, Cushistan, Phut, Gomer, and Togarmah of the north quarters, in addition to those of his hereditary domain of "all the Russias".

(*****)This has provided the means for the extension of political prestige and power on the part of the Pope, which is today a significant sign of the times. — Publishers.

12. On account of this let the heavens rejoice and those who tent in them. Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and the sea, because the Diabolos

For two centuries after the reign of the twelve stars, the soldiers of the faith, when they perused the verbal description of the "great sign in the heaven," would understand what was the Stephan to be conferred; and would be filled with a full assurance of hope, that they would go on conquering until they obtained it. It was under this conviction, that on the opening of The Fifth Seal, they are represented as crying with a loud voice from underneath the altar, "How long?" How long till their brotherhood should wear the dodecal Caesarian starry Stephan? They knew that this wreath of victory was Caesarian. A believer living in the beginning when the apocalypse commenced to be fulfilled; that is, at the accession of Trajan; knew that twelve Caesars had occupied the draco Roman pontifical throne. From Augustus to Constantine there were about fifty-four emperors. Why, then, were there not as many stars upon the imperial Stephan, seeing that it was gained when so many had sat upon the Italian throne? Because, I conceive, the number of the stars was given to indicate, that the opening of the apocalyptic, seals was to begin when the twelfth imperial star had set; that is, with the reign of Trajan an, who was a thirteenth, or number one of a new series. Trajan an and his pagan successors may be said to have worn the crown of the Twelve Caesars* But they could not retain it. It was wrested from them by the Woman, whose Jezebel-son claiming to be her Head - the Supreme Pontiff of the Catholic Church - wreathed himself therewith; and then caused her to become a fugitive in the wilderness of the Great Eagle.

Thus, the contest was considered by both parties as between the christians' Deity and the many gods of paganism. Each party regarded itself as the respective instrument of these. Hence the propriety of the apocalyptic title bestowed on the enemy of the dragon-tail, "the Michael." Constantine's victory was regarded by him, by the church, and by the people at large, as the victory of the Deity, that is living and true, over the false deities, of christianity over idolatry. Eusebius says, that "when the whole was, by the power of Deity, the Saviour, subjected to Constantine, he made known to all the Giver of his prosperity, and testified that the Deity, not he, was the author of his victories."

"The chief articles of their heresy," says he, "were the following:

p.142 Marcellinus, by imperial commission, instituted a judicial investigation at Carthage. The trial lasted three days, and, as might be expected, judgment was given in favor of the dominant clergy. The catholic bishops present were 286; and those of the Donatists 279. The latter, like Paul, appealed to the emperor, but without any favorable result. The terrors of this persecution caused many to apostatize to the catholics; while the severest penalties were inflicted on those who continued to "obey the commandments of the Deity, and to hold the testimony of the anointed Jesus." Fines, banishment, and confiscation of goods, were the ordinary punishments visited upon the Donatists; and says Mosheim, "the 'pain of death was inflicted upon such as surpassed the rest in perverseness, and were the seditious ringleaders of that stubborn faction." Some avoided these penalties by flight, and others by concealing themselves; and the malice of their enemies has not failed to blacken their memories by imputing to them the crime of suicide In the meantime, the Circumcellion-Earth again "ran with help for the woman," and interposed between her and her oppressors to ward off the execution of the sentence against her seed. They ran up and down through the African wing of the Great Eagle in the most outrageous manner, committing acts of great cruelty upon the catholics, and defending themselves by force of arms.

Such, then, is my list of the ten notable abyssal horns of the sea. Though separate dynasties, they are very properly united in a single symbol, and exhibited as one great combination of tyrannical states, from the identity of their origin in the abyss, the oneness of their policy (ch. 17:13), and the similarity of these rulers. This European Common-wealth was composed of monarchies that were all feudatories of the Dragon; for Gibbon shows, that they all adopted, in a great degree, the laws of the ancient empire as their common law. They all came at length to submit themselves to the Papal Yoke; a power which was rising with them out of the sea, whose system of falsehood they cooperated in imposing upon their subjects at all hazards. They may truly be styled the Papal Horns; for their history has proved them to have been, in all their past career, the blind instruments of "THE NAME OF BLASPHEMY" that sits upon the Seven Heads.

"We, therefore, have thought it good to make this declaration of our reasons for departing from Antichrist, as well as to make known what kind of fellowship we have, to the end that, if the Lord be pleased to impart the knowledge of the same truth to others, those that receive it may love it together with us . It is our wish also, that if others are not sufficiently enlightened they may receive assistance from this service, the Lord succeeding it by his blessing. While, on the other hand, if any have received more abundantly from him, and in a higher measure, we desire with all humility to be taught and better instructed, that so we may rectify whatever is amiss."

p.235 Now, it was from this Judaizing Faction in the Ecclesia at Rome all those evils sprung, which afterwards attained maturity as "THE CHURCH OF ROME." The false brethren of this anti-apostolic faction were the out-ward expression of that "Mystery of Iniquity" which Paul said "doth already work." In the beginning, it worked cautiously until it gained sufficient hold to make it careless of appearances. It aimed at the establishment of a HIERARCHY, or Sacred Order of Rulers, whose authority should be supreme over all. This Order is styled by Paul "the Man of Sin, the Son of Perdition." So long as primitive apostolic equality was maintained among the presbyters, or overseers, of the ecclesia, there was no scope for the exhibition of such a tendency. The apostles were not lords over the faith of their brethren in Christ, but helpers of their joy. All the ecclesias were classed into rulers and ruled; but the rulers were no less governed by the authority of Christ in all their administrations, than the ruled were in all their religious practices. They were subject one to another, and clothed with humility. But, when a zeal for the doctrines and commandments of men, and a striving for power and dominion over one another took the place of the simplicity which is in Christ, the Mystery of Iniquity began to crop out, first, in the separation of the elders into a distinct order; and afterwards, in one particular presbytery usurping supremacy over the rest.

"Our Most Religious Lord," says he, "whom the Deity hath placed over us, among other weighty cares belonging to the Empire, labors, according to the just rule of the sacred writings, to preserve peace and charity among the Clergy. He truly and piously considers that no man can well govern temporal matters, unless he manages with propriety things divine also; and the peace and tranquillity of the commonwealth depend upon the quiet of the universal church. For, Most Gracious Sovereign, what human power or strength would presume to lift up irreligious hands against your Most Christian Majesty, if the clergy, being at unity among themselves, would seriously pray to our Saviour Christ to preserve you who have merited so highly from us? Or what nation is there so barbarous as to exercise such cruelty against the faithful, unless the lives of us who are called priests, but in truth are not such, were most wicked and depraved? But whilst we leave those things which more immediately concern us, and embrace those things for which we are wholly unfit, we excite the barbarians against us, and our offences sharpen the swords of our enemies, by which means the commonwealth is weakened. For what can we say for ourselves, if the people of God, over whom, however unworthily, we (the pope) are placed, be oppressed by the multitude of our offenses? - if our example destroy that which our preaching should build, and our actions, as it were, give the lie to our doctrine? Our bones are worn with fasting, but our minds are puffed up!" This is a hit at John the Faster. "Our bodies are covered with mean attire, but in our hearts we are quite elated! We lie groveling in the ashes, yet we aim at things exceedingly high! We are teachers of humility, but patterns of pride, hiding the teeth of wolves under a sheep's countenance! The end of all is to make a fair appearance before men, but God knoweth the truth!

Thus, after a reign of sixty years, the Seventh Head of the Drago and the Beast was destroyed from the Seven Hills. The Roman Senate and the Gothic kingdom became extinct together. Their place was filled by the Exarchs of Ravenna, who were the representatives in peace ant war of the Constantinopolitan Dragon. But, though this power, after the agitation of a long tempest, had regained possession of Italy, the wounded Sixth Head was not yet "healed;" neither indeed could it be until Rome again became the throne of an imperial dominion. Instead of this, on the fall of the Seventh Head, whose "short space" had passed away with the death of Teias, the former Mistress of the World was de throned. The civil state of Italy was fixed, A.D. 554, by a pragmatic sanction of twenty-seven articles, which the emperor Justinian promulgated at the request of the pope, who was still a subject, ruled by the emperor's lieutenant resident in Ravenna. Justinian introduced his own jurisprudence into the schools and tribunals of the west; and ratified the acts of Theodoric and his immediate successors. Under the Exarchs of Ravenna, ROME was degraded to the second rank among the cities of the empire. The regulation of weights and measures was delegated to the pope and municipal senate. But, however benevolent their edicts, the power of rulers is most effectual to destroy; and twenty years of the Gothic war had consummated the distress and depopulation of Italy; so that "a strict interpretation of the evidence of Procopius," says Gibboi "would swell the loss of Italy above the total sum of her present inhabitants."

Before Pepin returned to France he renewed his donation to what he called St. Peter, yielding to the Catholic church represented by the Popes the Exarchate Romagna and Marca d'Ancona, with twenty-one cities therein, to be held by them for ever; the kings of France retaining the superiority as Protectors of the Romans. Thus was the sceptre of temporal dominion added to the keys, the sovereignty to the priesthood, which was enriched by the spoils of the Lombard kings and the Roman emperors. It was a novelty among the Horns, and the beginning of the Two-Horned Beast of the Earth, and the Image of the wounded head, or of the Imperial Sixth.

Henry V. steadily refused to part with the right of investiture and the secular or lay constituent of the Lamb-Horned Dragon was still committed in open hostility with the Papal Hierarchy of "the Earth" for fifteen years of his reign. But Henry V. being stronger in the support of his German vassals than his father, Henry IV. had been, none of the popes with whom he was engaged had the boldness to repeat the measures of Gregory VII. At length, A.D. 1122, each party grown weary of this ruinous contention, a Concordat, or treaty of agreement, was arranged between the emperor and the pope, Calixtus II., which put an end by compromise to the question of ecclesiastical investitures. By this compact the emperor resigned for ever to the rising Image-Power the investiture of the bishops of the dominion by the ring and crosier, and recognized the liberty of elections. But in return, it was agreed that elections should be made in his presence, or that of his officers; and that the new bishop should receive his temporalities from the emperor by the sceptre. By this concordat the imperial order preserved its feudal sovereignty over the estates of the Episcopal Hierarchy, which possessed nearly half the lands in Europe, in defiance of the language which had recently been held by the pontificals. In the terms of this compromise the success of the emperor and the pope seemed pretty equally balanced; but from subsequent effects it is apparent to which party the intrinsic advantages of victory belonged: the events which followed, or "the wonders it was given him to work, in the presence of the beast," after the settlement of this great and sanguinary controversy about investitures, evinced beyond all dispute, that the See of Rome had conquered; or in other words, that the creation of the Image, or likeness to the Constantinian Sixth Head of the Beast, revived in the dominion founded by Charlemagne, was completed in the establishment of the absolute monarchy of papal Rome. Gregory VII, is universally regarded as the founder of this unlimited imperiality. "He may be called," says Hallam, "the common enemy of all sovereigns, whose dignity as well as independence mortified his infatuated pride." He conveniently exhibited St. Peter as a great feudal suzerain, or legitimate lord of all the countries and kingdoms of the earth. The gross and universal superstition of the Latin world admitted that the fullness of Christ's lordship in heaven and earth had been by Christ himself transferred to Peter, and therefore to the incarnate demons, the popes, who blasphemously style themselves the Vicars of Christ, and successors of that apostle. Admitting this monstrous and illogical falsehood, it was not difficult for such "dwellers upon the earth" to assent to the ambitious claims of the Roman Pontiff. The liberties of the national churches of the diademed horns of the Beast of the Sea, were as completely destroyed by papal arrogance, as those of the churches of the Lamb-Horned dominion, whose emperors had sustained the principal brunt of the war. By a papal constitution inspired by Hildebrand, no bishop in the Latin church was permitted to "buy and sell," or exercise his functions, until he had received the confirmation of the Roman See; "a provision," says Hallam, "of vast importance, through which, beyond perhaps any other means, Rome has sustained, and still sustains, her temporal influence, as well as her ecclesiastical supremacy." The National Churches now found themselves subject to an undisguised and irresistible despotism, whose favorite policy it became to harass all prelates with citations to Rome. Gregory VII. obliged the metropolitans to attend in person for the pallium, or holy lambskin, in which the wolves of that Episcopal order are officially clothed; and bishops were summoned even from England and the northern kingdoms to receive the commands of their spiritual monarch, the Papal Mouth of the Dragon-Image.

"The receiving in both kinds for priests and people was instituted by Christ.

By comparing the above with the Common Version the reader will see the difference for himself. I have found no benefit in the labors of the "recent editors" who have undertaken to mend the Greek text. They seem to think nothing of "taking away from the words of the book of this prophecy;" and of "adding" thereto - Ch. 22:18,19. We have examples of this editorial recklessness in the chapter before us. The first occurs in a note upon to onoma, "the name" in verse 1. "All the recent editors for to onoma, have to onoma autou kai to onoma. I recommend", says the revising editor of the Baptist New Version, "that this reading be followed and translated: his name and the name." But I have not followed the recommendation, because the proposed alteration is superfluous, and implies two names, the name of the Father and the name of the Lamb. But the name of the Father is also the name of the Lamb; and therefore the phrase, "the name," is doubtless correct, and certainly all sufficient.

p.41 There are but two Legs, therefore there can be only two imperial divisions of the dominion in its latter-day or time-of-the-end manifestation .

In this exposition the reader will see in what sense it is said, "their works He goeth in aid of with them;" and he will also perceive, who it is that goeth in aid with them, and what noun likewise is the singular nominative to the verb akolouthei, in the third person singular of the present indicative. The Spirit goeth with them in aid of their works. Without the Spirit they could do nothing; but aided by the Spirit, there is nothing too difficult f6r them to accomplish. The Spirit is their akolouthos or "attendant", in whatever capacity the circumstances of the situation may require them to act. "He goeth with them," akolouthei met' auton, so that, as Ezekiel saw in his visions of the Elohim, "whither-soever the Spirit was to go, they went" without being turned aside from the execution of their purpose (ch. 1:12,20). Thus, it is not the works of piety and "supererogation" performed by "professors of religion," and the charitable of no profession, which "follow them up to joy and bliss for ever," and obtain for them "a speedy recognition and reward". This is a vain conceit of the carnal mind, which, in all its thinkings, is at variance with the truth. Nor does it mean, that they who die in the Lord in the Millennium are blessed in an especial sense, as compared with those who die in the Lord in the times of the Gentiles. Such is not the fact. More blessed are they who die in the Lord during his absence from earth; for though their tribulations are greater while living, the glory and honor will be greater in the kingdom; when their post-resurrectional labors, aided by the Spirit, shall have conquered for them therein, "the rest that remaineth for the people of God."

18.YAHWEH shall reign for the Olahm (the Hidden Period) and beyond.

19. And the Great City came into three parts; and the cities of the nations fell; and Babylon the Great was called to mind before the Deity, to give to her the cup of the wine of the fierceness of His wrath.

The Neapolitan Court made no movement in defence of the Image of the Beast. The Pope therefore abandoned the proposed flight to Naples, which he judged equally unavailing with resistance; and decided on the humiliating alternative of unqualified submission to the will of the conqueror.

Under the pretext, therefore, of invading Portugal, attacking Gibraltar, and sharing the spoil with "His Most Catholic Majesty," the Corsican king-breaker, as well as king-maker, ingeniously contrived to introduce into the strong places, and most commanding positions of Spain, a hundred thousand men; and into Portugal, twenty thousand. In this manner, the revolutionary volcano had secretly and silently col-lected its convulsing and destructive forces; which began to pour forth its scorching streams of fire in March 1808. A report of the intended emigration of the royal family to Mexico, was the immediate occasion of the insurrection of the people. In the midst of this effervescence, Charles IV. abdicated the throne in favor of his son, the prince of Asturias, who succeeded him as Ferdinand VII. His friends and allies for the spoliation of Portugal, entered Madrid in support of his authority; by which friendly intervention, they found themselves to the number of sixty thousand, in full possession of the capital.

But none of these "orthodox" replies to the question throw any light upon the subject. Time and space are too precious to be occupied in stating objections to them, or in arguing against them. The shorter and more satisfactory course will be to ignore them altogether; and to present an answer that cannot be Scripturally gainsaid.

But none of these "orthodox" replies to the question throw any light upon the subject. Time and space are too precious to be occupied in stating objections to them, or in arguing against them. The shorter and more satisfactory course will be to ignore them altogether; and to present an answer that cannot be Scripturally gainsaid.

Such will be the formidable coalition developed through the agency of the unclean spirits like Frogs. "Tidings out of the East," from Jerusalem, Arabia, and Hindostan; "and out of the north," or, Britain; "shall trouble him" (Dan. 11:44)(t): "things that come into his mind and cause him to conceive a mischievous purpose: saying, I will go up to the land of unwalled villages; to take a spoil and to take a prey; to turn my hand upon the desolate places now inhabited, and upon the people gathered out of the nations, which have gotten cattle and goods, that dwell in the midst of the land" (Ezek. 38:10-12). This will not be an idle threat. "They came out," saith the Spirit, "like a whirlwind to scatter ME, their rejoicing was as to devour the poor secretly" (Hab. 3:14).

What John saw in Patmos, he saw "in Spirit". In his day, the Great Harlot to be judged under the seventh vial, had not been developed. Hence, he saw her "sitting upon the many waters" only in prophetic vision. In this sense, he was "inspirit", as he will be, in the highest sense, when he is incorruptible and immortal; and as a constituent of the seventh angel, rejoices over the Harlot-Mother and all her adulterous progeny, whom he contributes to destroy.

19. And they cast dust upon their heads, and cried wailing and weeping, saying, Alas, alas, that great city, by which all having ships on the sea were enriched through her costliness; for in one hour she has been desolated!

23. And the city hath no need of the sun, nor of the moon, that they shine in it; for the glory of the Deity hath lightened it, and the lamp of it is the Lamb.

p.355 The final chapter of The Apocalypse completes the description of the New Jerusalem, and then concludes with a personal message from Christ, and a response from John in Patmos. The first six verses describe the river of life which John observes proceeding out of the throne of the Holy City.

Ignorance and superstition have sadly misinterpreted the significance of this "great sign in the heaven." An engraving published with the sanction of the authorities of the Mary-worshipping synagogue of New York City, as a frontispiece to a book entitled "The Glories of Mary," interprets the sign as a signification of the "Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary." In the centre of the picture is a woman standing upon a cloud. She stands, as it were, in the sun, with beams of light issuing from the palms of her hands downwards towards the earth, as if they were rays of grace being shed upon her worshippers. Around her head is a halo, in which is a circlet of twelve stars; and over these a diadem supported by winged angels resting upon the upper margin of the cloud on each side of the woman. Under her feet is the moon, and beneath this, the ocean and rocks of earth. Thus is represented the ghost of a dead woman having been taken up into heaven and being on exhibition there as queen; for the legend of the picture is "salve regina, " Health to thee, O Queen! Assuredly, nothing can be more remote than this from the true import of this "great sign". The reader, unless he be a Mariolator or a Puseyite, need scarcely be told, that the sign is wholly irrelevant to the mother of Jesus; and but for the adoption of the heathen dogma of the immortality of the soul by the Laodicean Apostasy, such a signification could never have been invented. There is no such woman in being, whether in heaven above or in the earth beneath, as the Virgin Mary, body or ghost. The dust of what was once Mary is in "the pit of corruption," or Sheol, and will there remain until "the time of the dead," when she will stand again upon her feet the "blessed among women," and "thenceforth all generations will call her blessed." In all "the times of the gentiles," however, she is non-existent. This is well known to all who are not drunk - drunk with the wine of the abominations and filthiness of Jezebel's fornication (Apoc. 17:4; 18:3). Hence the object of the adoration of Romanists is the merest fiction that can be conceived. They have deified nonentity, and fall down and worship the conceit as the goddess-queen of heaven. This is not only folly, but the idiocy of pietism notably characteristic of the ecclesiasticism of our day.

13. And when the Dragon saw that he was cast into the earth, he pursued the woman who brought forth the male.

p.235 Originally the distinction of clergy and laity did not exist. The professors of Christianity were all brethren in Christ; and their several ecclesias, the clergies, kleroi, or heritages, of the Deity. The elders, or the episcopal presbyters, were exhorted by Peter to "feed the flock of the Deity, episcopizing it willingly; but not as lording over the heritages." The ecclesial heritages, or clergies, composed the flock, which the elders were to episcopize, or oversee, not for their own sordid interests, but for the benefit of the flock itself.

Such is a specimen of the testimony of the two prophet-witnesses, who, as lights, "stood before the god of the Earth," the Name of Blasphemy, the pretended Vicar of Jesus Christ, the Eyes of the Antichrist; and which "tormented them who dwelt upon the earth" (Apoc. 11:4,10). This testimony was delivered in the darkest period of the day of blasphemy, when men avowed their convictions in the face of ruin, captivity, torments, and death. But they were valiant for the truth; and though power was on the side of the oppressor, a power that roared from the "Mouth of a Lion," and made nations tremble, and kings upon their thrones; yet were they undaunted in its presence in their earnest contention for the faith once for all delivered to the Saints. The secret of their energy was "the power of the Deity," "the testimony of the anointed Jesus" which they held, "the word of the Deity which is living and powerful," understood and lovingly and heartily believed. Their enlightened testimony filled the clerical orders of Antichrist with madness; and caused them to roar forth blasphemies against them, with terrible threatenings and slaughters. But in all the onslaught of the enemy, the Name of Yahweh in which they were entrenched, was their strong tower. THE NAME OF YAHWEH, and the NAME OF BLASPHEMY, were the two great rival names of the situation. Between them there can be no peace or compromise. The Name of Blasphemy on the Seven Heads has learned this by grievous experience; and discovering that the strength of the Eternal Name in the great conflict resided in "THE WORD," he strove mightily to suppress it. But the greater his efforts in this direction, the more strenuous and determined were the witnesses to keep the Scriptures before the people. They learned the Bible by heart - Bib ha edis-cunt memoriter; and as we have seen by quotations in their declaration, they did not neglect to study the Apocalypse, by which they were enabled to discern the times in which they lived. This the contemporaries of Constantine were enabled to do; and a hundred years afterwards, the Donatists also, as evinced by the device of the Vandal coin; the Albigenses likewise of this twelfth century; and Peter Jurieu, who discerned in his own day, A.D. 1687, the death of the witnesses, and interpreted the fall of "the Tenth of the Great City" of France, a hundred years before it came to pass; and Bicheno, a century later, who discerned their resurrection in his own times; to say nothing of the author, about seventy years later still, lest he should seem to boast of things beyond his measure. But all these, and how many more who can tell, by the help of the Apocalypse were enabled to answer the question, "Watchman, what of the Night?" and to discern things in the Body Politic of Romano-Gothic society in their true relations to the Divine Name, which would otherwise have been inscrutable.

In the foregoing enumeration of the horns of the sea, I have made no mention of the Saxons and Danes, who issued forth from the Scandinavian and Germanian abyss against the Dragon province'of Britannia. In all the lists of the horns I have seen, the Saxons have been made to figure as one; and, consequently, the Anglo-Saxons of Britain, now styled England, have been set down as one of the horns of the Beast. But this classification of England with the horns cannot be admitted. It is true that the Saxons and Angles issuing from Holstein and Schleswig, A.D. 449, conquered Britannia. But, instead of constituting themselves one horn, they founded seven kingdoms, styled Kent, Essex~Sussex, Wessex, East Anglia, Mercia, and Northumberland. These were called the Saxon Heptarchy; and were as distinct and independent kingdoms as any of their ten contemporaries upon the Continent(*).

p.142 But, while the remnant of the woman's seed, which, in those trying times, "kept the commandments of the Deity, and held the testimony of the anointed Jesus," were thus witnessing unto death, and by their witnessing, tormenting them that dwelt upon the Catholic terrene, they had a powerful and influential intercessor within the veil, whose eyes beheld the ferocious wickedness of the Roman Serpent, and whose ears were not inattentive to their prayers. It is not difficult to conceive, that these prayers would be many, earnest and fervent; for, having faith in God and in his word, they would know that deliverance could come from Him alone. He had placed them in the African Wing of the Great Eagle, to testify against the Laodicean Apostasy in Church and State. This was a dangerous mission, but it had to be done, and faithfully performed until there should be no catholic power there to witness against. This was their hope; but of the time when it should be broken in Africa, and they delivered, they had no knowledge. All they could do then was to "offer much incense upon the golden altar before the throne" (Apoc. 8:3) - pray much, "contend earnestly for the faith once for all delivered to the saints," and patiently wait for an answer to their earnest supplications, which would "ascend before the Deity out of the hand" of the incense-bearing angel of His presence. These prayers had been partially replied to in the salutary events of the Julian Revolution, A.D. 361-'3. The angel Incense-Bearer had taken fire from the Golden Altar, and cast it from his censer into the earth; and there were in consequence, "voices, thunderings and lightnings, and an earthquake" (Apoc. 8:5). The time had now arrived to answer their prayers more fully in the breaking of the power of the catholic oppressor in Africa, by the events of the Second Wind Trumpet. For details, see Vol.2, p.53. The instrument of this great and righteous retribution was the world-wide renowned and terrible GENSERIC whose invasion of Africa, A.D. 439, was favored and prompted by the impolitic persecution of the Donatists. The king of the Vandals, though a catholic, was an enemy of the Trinitarian communion. Represented himself to the Donatists as a powerful deliverer from whom they might reasonably expect the repeal of the odious and oppressive edicts of the Dragon-emperors. Raving wrested the province from the hands of the Romans, he ministered "food" and "nourishment" to the woman in protecting her seed, and giving them liberty and peace.

That the Holy Scriptures were the only source of faith and religion, without regard to the authority of the fathers and tradition; and although they principally used the New Testament, yet, as Usher proves from Reinier and others, they regarded the Old also as canonical scripture. From their greater use of the New Testament, however, their adversaries took occasion to charge them with despising the Old.

"Masses are impious; and it is insanity to say masses for the dead.

From the time of Gregory VII., no pontiff of the Image-monarchy thought of awaiting the confirmation of the emperor of Germany, as in earlier ages, before he was installed in "the throne of St. Peter." On the contrary, it was claimed that the emperor himself was to be confirmed by the pope. When Frederick Barb arossa came to receive the imperial crown at Rome, he omitted to hold the stirrup of Adrian IV., who, in his turn, refused to give him the usual kiss of peace; nor was the contest ended but by the emperor's acquiescence, who was content to follow the precedents of his predecessors. This same Adrian in a letter reminded Frederick that he had conferred upon him the imperial crown, and was willing to bestow, if possible, greater benefits. This letter excited a great ferment among the German princes, in a congress of whom it was delivered. "From whom, then," one of the papal legates, or ambassadors, rashly inquired, "does the emperor hold his crown, except from the pope?" This so irritated a prince of Wittelsbach, that he was with difficulty prevented from cleaving the priest's head with his saber. It was Adrian IV. who bestowed the kingdom of Ireland upon Henry II., King of England; and in the grant declared that all islands were the exclusive property of St. Peter, which was only an indirect assertion, that they all belonged to the Image of the Beast, of which the popes are the absolute, omnipotent, and oracular chiefs.

After this double chastisement, the Lombards languished about twenty years in languor and decay. "On either side," says Gibbon, "their expiring monarchy was pressed by the zeal and prudence of Pope Adrian I., the genius, the fortune, and greatness of Charlemagne the son of Pepin; these heroes of the church and state were united in public and domestic friendship, and while they trampled on the prostrate, they varnished their proceedings with the fairest colors of equity and moderation." A quarrel between Adrian and Desiderius, the last of the Lombard kings, caused the latter to ravage the Patrimony of St. Peter, and to threaten Rome itself. In order to avert the pressing danger, Adrian sent privately to Charlemagne, not only imploring his aid, but inviting him to the conquest of Italy. Having a pique of his own to avenge, he accepted the invitation with great satisfaction. Being determined to pluck up the Lombard kingdom by the roots, he passed the Alps by an unexpected route, with an overwhelming force, and falling suddenly upon the enemy, struck them with such terror that they fled in the utmost confusion. He besieged Desiderius in his capital with great vigor. While the siege was progressing under the conduct of his uncle, he visited Rome for the celebration of Easter. The pope received his deliverer in the most pompous manner, the magistrates and judges walking before him with their banners, and the clergy, always ready to flatter and fawn upon the world's heroes, and to blaspheme those who dwell in the heaven, repeating, "Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord!" After Charlemagne had gratified his curiosity, and confirmed his father's donation to St. Peter, he returned to the camp before Pavia, which, after a blockade of two years, was surrendered by Desiderius with the sceptre of the kingdom. Thus ended the power of the Lombards A.D. 774, after it had continued two hundred and six years. The Vandalic Horn had been annexed to Italy by Belisarius, and Italy now became the property of Charlemagne; so that the Horn of the Vandals, and the Horn of the Lombards, both included in Italy, were two of the three horns Daniel predicted would fall before the Little Horn, with Eyes and Mouth, and be "plucked up by the roots." The third will appear in the sequel.

The Sixth and the Seventh Heads which hindered the manifestation of the Name of Blasphemy upon the Seven Hills being taken out of the way, scope was now afforded for its development into the EIGHTH HEAD of the Beast. From the epoch of the settlement of Italy A. D. 554-559, and during the ensuing two hundred and forty years of Rome's eclipse, the greatest, or most influential subject in the degraded city, was the pope. There was no constitutional superior therein to over-awe or keep him down. In the times of the Seventh Head, which was Arian, he was in great trouble, and especially during the Gothic war. Indeed, he has always fallen upon troublous times when he has had for ruler or neighbor, an independent king of Italy. It is so at this day. A king of Italy naturally enough claims Rome for the capital of his kingdom which is incompatible with the sovereignty and independence of the Name of Blasphemy upon the Seven Hills.

"Therefore, our Most Pious Sovereign hath been prudently careful to place the church at unity, that he might the better compose the tumults of war and join their hearts together. This verily is my wish also, and for my own part I yield due obedience to your sovereign commands" - the pope still a subject, and without temporal power. "However, since it is not my cause, but the Deity's it is not myself only but the whole church that is troubled, because religious laws, venerable synods, and the very precepts of our Lord Jesus Christ are disobeyed by the invention of a proud and pompous speech" - alluding to John the Faster's title of Universal Bishop. "My desire is, that our most religious sovereign would lance this sore, and that he would bind with the cords of his imperial authority the party affected, in case he (John) makes any resistance. By restraining him the commonwealth will be eased; and by the paring away of such excrescences the empire is enlarged. Every man that has read the gospel knows that, even by the words of our Lord, the care of the whole church is committed to St. Peter, the apostle - the Prince of all the apostles." Then follows the quotation of John 21:15-17; and Matt. 16:18,19. "Behold! He hath the keys of the kingdom, and the power of binding and loosing is committed to him. The care and principality of the whole church is committed to him; and yet he is not called 'Universal Apostle' - though this holy man, John my fellow-priest, labors to be called 'Universal Bishop!' I am compelled to cry out" -from jealousy, envy and vexation, doubtless - "0 the corruption of times and manners! Behold the barbarians (the Gothic Horns) are become lords of all Europe; cities are destroyed, castles are beaten down, provinces depopulated, there is no husbandman to till the ground, idolators rage and domineer over christians; and yet, priests, who ought to lie weeping upon the pavement in sackcloth and ashes, covet names of vanity, and glory in new names and titles. Do I, Most Religious Sovereign, in this plead my own cause?" - doubtless nobody else's. "Do I vindicate a wrong done to myself, and not maintain the cause of Almighty God and of the church universal? Who is he who presumes to usurp this new name against both the law of the gospel and of the canons? I would to God there might be one called UNIVERSAL without doing injustice to others!" - that is, the Bishop of Rome. We know that many priests of the church of Constantinople have been not only heretics, but even the chief leaders of them. Out of that school proceeded Nestorius, who, thinking it impossible that God should be made man, believed that Jesus Christ, the Mediator between God and man, was two persons, and went as far in infidelity as the Jews themselves. Thence came Macedonius, who denied the Holy Ghost, consubstantial to the Father and the Son, to be God. If, then, every one in that church assumed the name by which he makes himself the Head of all good men, the Catholic Church, which God forbid should ever be the case, must needs be over-thrown when he falls who is called UNIVERSAL. But, far from christians be this BLASPHEMOUS NAME, by which all honor is taken from all other priests, while it is foolishly arrogated by one. It was offered to the Bishop of Rome by the reverend council of Chalcedon, in honor of St. Peter, Prince of the Apostles; but none of them either assumed or consented to use it, lest, while this privilege should be given to one, all others should be deprived of that honor which is due unto them. Why should 'we refuse this title when it was offered, and another assume it without any offer at all? This man (John the Faster) contemning obedience to the Canons, should be humbled by the commands of our Most Pious Sovereign. He should be chastised who does an injury to the Holy Catholic Church; whose heart is puffed up, who seeks to please himself by a name of singularity, by which he would elevate himself above the emperor! We are all scandalized at this. Let the author of this scandal reform himself, and all differences in the church will cease. I am the servant of all priests, so long as they live like themselves; but if any shall set up his bristles (bristles belong to swine; so that by implication the Clergy are admitted by Gregory to be a swinish multitude) contrary to God Almighty and the Canons of the Fathers, I hope in God that he will never succeed in bringing my neck under his yoke - not even by force of arms. The things that have happened in this city in consequence of this new title, I have particularly declared to Sabinianus, the deacon, my agent. Let, therefore, my religious sovereigns (Maurice and Theodosius), think of me, their servant, whom they have always cherished and upheld more than others, as one who desired to yield them obedience, and yet am afraid to be found guilty of negligence in my duty at the last awful day of judgment. Let our most pious sovereign either vouchsafe to determine the affair, according to the petition of the aforesaid Sabinianus, the deacon, or cause the man, so often mentioned, to renounce his claim. In case he submits to your just sentence or your favorable admonitions, we will give thanks to Almighty God, and rejoice for the peace of the church procured by your clemency. But if he persist in this contention, we shall hold the saying to be most true. 'Everyone that exalteth himself shall be abased.' And again it is written, 'Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.' In obedience to my sovereign, I have written to my brother priest both gently and humbly, urging him to desist from this vain glory. If he give ear unto me, he hath a brother devoted unto him; but, if he continue in his pride, I foresee what will befall him - he will make himself His enemy of whom it is written, 'God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace to the humble'."

20. And every island fled away, and the mountains were not found.

And Miriam the Prophetess Aaron's sister with a chorus of women, answered Moses and the Israelites, saying,

p.41 In conformity with this prognostication, the postwar world has seen Europe divided into two parts, separated by the Iron Curtain: the nations of the Common Market in the west, and those of the Warsaw Pact in the east. This answers to the expectations of Brother Thomas, although the final formation is not yet complete. For example, England must retire from the Common Market, and Greece become more closely aligned with Russia. Today, students of the Prophetic word have the inestimable privilege of viewing the gradual formation of the feet of the Image. Brother Thomas saw Germany and Russia as dominant powers in the latter-day division of Europe, which, certainly, was not the case when he wrote Eureka, but is so today - publishers.

Again, in Verse 2, on the words, "I heard the voice of harpers, " etc., a note runs thus, "instead of phonen ekousa, all the recent editions have he phone hen eko usa hos. I recommend that this reading be adopted and translated: the voice which I heard (was) as." Now this would imply that the voice of the harpers was as "the sound of great thunder" a noise not very creditable to their music! The recent editors err in supposing that phonen, used four times in the second verse, refers to the same voice or sound. This is not the fact. The sound of many waters, and the sound of loud thunder, are the sounds of acclamation and war; while the voice of harpers is the song of personal redemption, and future glory, when the war is over. I have therefore disregarded the decision of "the recent editors;" and maintained the distinction between the thundering and the harping, by dividing the second verse, and translating the phone of thunder "sound," and the phone of the singing harpers, "voice," in the sense of music and Song.

If we understand what "the risings of a sun" are, we shall perceive who are "the Kings" that proceed therefrom. The word anatole rendered "rising", is derived from the verb anatello, "to rise,to cause to rise, to spring up". All that springs up out of the earth is caused to rise by the power of the sun acting upon the seeds therein. Every thing therefore brought up from beneath, or from darkness, into view is "a rising of the sun". Hence, "as the earth bringeth forth her bud, and as the garden causeth the things that are sown in it to spring forth; so Adonai Yahweh will cause righteousness and praise to spring forth before all nations" (Isa. 61:11). The earth brings forth, and the garden causes to spring forth, as the result of the sun's power so that the earthborn products of the garden, are the sun's risings. After this analogy, the Sun of Righteousness, who rises only once to set no more, causes righteousness to spring forth from the earth, in causing righteous men to spring forth from the grave; who, when "clothed upon with their house from heaven," will praise him before all the nations. The righteousness first pours down from heaven, then the earth opens, salvation is brought forth, and salvation and righteousness spring up together (Isa. 45:8): thus "truth shall spring out of the earth; and righteousness shall look down from heaven" (Psa. 85:11).

If we understand what "the risings of a sun" are, we shall perceive who are "the Kings" that proceed therefrom. The word anatole rendered "rising", is derived from the verb anatello, "to rise,to cause to rise, to spring up". All that springs up out of the earth is caused to rise by the power of the sun acting upon the seeds therein. Every thing therefore brought up from beneath, or from darkness, into view is "a rising of the sun". Hence, "as the earth bringeth forth her bud, and as the garden causeth the things that are sown in it to spring forth; so Adonai Yahweh will cause righteousness and praise to spring forth before all nations" (Isa. 61:11). The earth brings forth, and the garden causes to spring forth, as the result of the sun's power so that the earthborn products of the garden, are the sun's risings. After this analogy, the Sun of Righteousness, who rises only once to set no more, causes righteousness to spring forth from the earth, in causing righteous men to spring forth from the grave; who, when "clothed upon with their house from heaven," will praise him before all the nations. The righteousness first pours down from heaven, then the earth opens, salvation is brought forth, and salvation and righteousness spring up together (Isa. 45:8): thus "truth shall spring out of the earth; and righteousness shall look down from heaven" (Psa. 85:11).

But the most extraordinary instance of political infatuation on record, had yet to be developed. The two kings of Spain, with the whole of the royal family, and some of the principal grandees, were allured by pretexts full of illusions to migrate to Bayonne; the station which the PROTECTOR of Germany and the MEDIATOR of Switzerland had fixed upon for the more convenient accomplishment of his designs upon the Sun of the Peninsula. This rash and indiscreet step was followed by terrible commotions throughout the country, and particularly in Madrid, where the most terrible disorders, excited by the priests and monks, prevailed. Everything indicated a dreadful explosion, which ensued on the 2nd of May. Volleys of grapeshot and charges of cavalry "scorched" the populace "with great heat;" who, though cleared from the streets, continued their attack upon the French from the windows of the houses; the doors were then broken open, and all who were found in arms were put to the sword.

From considerations of policy, Buonaparte admitted the Pope to a treaty, by which he purchased such a political existence as was left him, at the highest rate which he had the least chance of discharging. He was compelled to cede Avignon and its territories; to resign the legations of Bologna, Ferrara, and Romagna; the occupation of Ancona; and to pay thirty millions of lives in specie or valuable effects, such as paintings, manuscripts, and objects of art. Thus Rome was, for the present, completely subjugated, and made to drink the wrath of the third vial, because she was richly deserving of the visitation.

p.355 What follows is exhortation and warning: an exhortation to understand and apply the principles set forth in The Apocalypse, and a stern warning against minimising the importance, meaning or effect of the revelation given. The book concludes with a prayer and a benediction; thus fittingly bringing to an end the wonderful revelation from heaven that we call “The Holy Bible”.

24. And the nations of them who are being saved shall walk in the light of it; and the kings of the earth bring their glory and honor into it.

20. Rejoice over her, 0 Heaven, and ye holy apostles and prophets, for the Deity hath punished your condemnation by her.

But Gog does not go forth with the consent of the power under the shadow of whose wings the Tenth in the midst of the land has flourished in security and comfort. It sends forth its forces to meet the invader, who "goes forth with great fury to destroy, and utterly to make away many:" for "Sheba and Dedan, and the Merchants of Tarshish, with all the young lions thereof, shall say to him, Art thou come to take a spoil? Hast thou gathered thy company to take a prey? To carry away silver and gold, to take away cattle and goods, to take a great spoil?" These inquiries are equivalent to a declaration from the protecting power, that such a spoliation would not be permitted. It occupies Edom, Moab, and part of Ammon, and Egypt; and we may suppose Jerusalem in strong force. But, the forces of the East are compelled to fall back, and evacuate Egypt; for "he shall have power over the treasures of gold and of silver, and over all the precious things of Egypt". He now pours in upon the land of Israel like a flood; or, as Ezekiel expresses it, "he ascends and comes like a storm, like a cloud to cover the land;" with the exception of Edom, Moab and the chief of Ammon, which escape the storm. The headquarters of this storm cloud invasion from the north are between the Sea of Sodom and the Jordan on the east side, and the Mediterranean on the west; and surrounding Jerusalem; as indicated in Dan. 11:45, to wit, "he shall pitch the tents of his entrenched camp between the seas in the mountain of the glory of the Holy". In other words, he shall besiege Jerusalem; and to do this, he must occupy the Valley of Jehoshaphat, a narrow glen which runs from north to south, between the Mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east, and Mount Moriah, and through which flows the Kidron. Of this valley, it is said in Joel 3:2,12, "Yahweh will gather all the nations (that is, the forces of the nations) into the Valley of Jehoshaphat, and will plead with them there". Yehoshaphat, in Hebrew, signifies the judgment of Yah. Joel also styles the glen, the Valley of Threshing: "Multitudes, multitudes," says he, "in the Valley of Threshing: for the Day of Yahweh is near in the Valley of Threshing". Apocalyptically, the same locality is styled ARMAGEDDON "And he gathered them together in a place called Hebraistically, Armageddon". Yahweh gathered them together without their perceiving the Hand that led them on to the slaughter -"I will," saith he, "gather all the nations against Jerusalem to battle". Various derivations have been given of this mystical name; for such it is, inasmuch as there is no such name of a place in the land of Israel. Micah says, "Yahweh shall gather many nations as sheaves into the floor, that the Daughter of Zion may arise and thresh them" (ch. 4:11-13). The floor of threshing of which they are to be made the chaff (Dan. 2:35) is this Valley of Jehoshaphat. Under this aspect of things, they are a heap of sheaves, upon the threshingfloor; and this idea is represented by the word, Armah, the first two syllables of the name: the third indicates where this heap is to be, namely, in the gai valley; and the last syllable, for what purpose the heap is there, namely, for duwn judgment - Armagaidon, which in a Greek dress, is, Armageddon. The reason why the text states, that the place, or valley, is "Hebraistically" called, is to give us to understand in what country the place is situated - in the country to wit, the native language of which is the Hebrew tongue.

14. And the two which seeks to sweep her away; but the Earth helps her, and defeats wings of the great eagle were given to the woman, that she might fly into wilderness, into her place, in which she is sustained there a time and times and half of a time, out of the sight of the serpent.

p.600 But not only have Romanists missed the truth of this great sign, but their Protestant brethren likewise. Dr. Newton, a former Bishop of Bristol, in his work on the prophecies, page 600, in commenting most meagerly upon this sign, says, "St. John resumes his subject from the beginning, and in ch. 12:1,2, represents the church as a woman, and a mother bearing children to Christ. She is 'clothed with the sun, invested with the rays of Jesus Christ, the sun of righteousness; having 'the moon,' the Jewish new moons and festivals, as well as all sublunary things, 'under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars,' an emblem of her being under the light and guidance of the twelve apostles." This is all he can see signified by this great sign! The bishop of Jezebel's English daughter has certainly made a nearer approach to the import of the sign than Jezebel herself. He does perceive that the woman represents church of some kind - that she is a sign-ecclesiastical woman, and not the emblem of a phantasma yclept the Queen of Heaven. But more than this he sees nothing signified.

They held the entire faith, according to all the articles of the apostles' creed.

p.142 "But the wounds", says Mosheim, "which this sect had received from the vigorous execution of the imperial laws, were so deep, that though it began to revive and multiply by the assistance of the Vandals, it could never regain its former strength and luster." They continued to enjoy the sweets of freedom as long as the Vandals reigned in Africa. These formidable barbarians were the Deity's messengers of wrath to punish the Trinitarian Catholics of the African Wing for the serpent ferocity with which they tormented his faithful witnesses. The scene, however, was greatly changed when the empire of the Vandals was overturned by the forces of Justinian, A.D. 534. Then, now nearly 1335 years ago, the African Wing was reannexed to the body of the Great Eagle, and the Donatist section of the Witnesses was brought into contact and collision again with the "Dragon, the old Serpent." They still continued a separate body, and not only retained their testimony, but toward the conclusion of the sixth century, and particularly from A.D. 591, defended their principles with renewed vigor, and were bold enough to proclaim the gospel publicly in the ears of the Romoousian Serpents themselves. Gregory, bishop of Rome, opposed these efforts with all the spirit and assiduity of the Antichrist, and tried various methods of putting them down; or, as Mosheim expresses it, "of depressing this faction which was pluming its wings anew, and aiming at the revival of those lamentable divisions which it had formerly excited in the church." From this time, however, they do not appear to have attracted the notice of ecclesiastics. The early subjection of Africa to the Mohammedans, will account for this. The mission of the Witnesses was not against Mohammedanism; but against Homoousian Blasphemy. When this was eradicated by the Saracens, the witnessing of the woman's seed was no longer required in Africa. As the Vandals favored Homoiousianism, which was the creed of Genseric, it is highly probable that they were from this time confounded with the Arians. The names of Arians and Manichaeans , although originally employed to designate sectaries of the class the apostle terms "false teachers privily bringing in damnable heresies" (2 Peter 2:1), they were afterwards used by the ignorant and malicious to distinguish the inhabitants of the mountains and valleys of the other wing of the Great Eagle, in after times known by the general terms Albigenses and Waldenses. In fact, all who repudiated the Bishop of Rome after he had been created a god by the Dragon-power, as the Antichrist, were denounced as Manichaeans, though they held nothing in common with those semi-pagans. Odious names imposed upon "heretics," so called, by catholic doctors and councils rarely expressed the truth concerning them. It is the Serpent's policy to call good things which are obnoxious to him and his sect by bad names. To bestow names expressive of the reality would be to speak the truth; and the highest authority has declared "that there is no truth in him" (John 8:44). Not being ignorant of this device, we are not to be hoodwinked by the foul names and hard speeches bestowed upon alleged "heretics" by popes, inquisitors, monks and doctors of "the church." These all being ignorant of what constitutes a saint, are more likely to style him an Arian or Manichaean(*), or by any other name that prejudice or malice may invent, than by one that truly and Scripturally represents him. "The saints of the Highest Ones" have been denounced as "heretics" by the ruling faction ever since the woman fled into the wilderness; and will doubtless continue to be until the times of the down-treading of the Holy City shall be fulfilled.

Another objection to England being numbered with the ten, is that she is not a country of the Great-Sea world. The ten horns were to ascend out of the Mediterranean upon which Daniel saw the tempest raging. Gaul, Spain, Italy, Illyria, Africa, and Dacia, are political sections of a torrene, whose waters, directly or indirectly mostly discharge themselves into the Mediterranean. But the British Isles afar off have no relation to it at all. As Origen says in Horn. 6, A.D. 230, "The Britons are divided from our world." They are no part of the Sea Monster's interior maritime territory. Even in modern times they are three kingdoms, not a single horn only; and those three horns, the horn of England, the horn of Scotland, and the horn of Ireland, are more imperial than regal, and more Oriental than European.Another objection to Britain being numbered among the ten horns is, that though, indeed, she is ruled ecclesiastically by a name of blasphemy, her constitution is, in word and deed, opposed to "the Name of Blasphemy" upon the heads of the Beast. The ten horns all worship this Name, and recognize it as their Holy Father; and maintain ambassadors at his court; and exercise their infitience to uphold him in glory and power, that his supposed relations with the heavenly world may, by his favor and blessing, be caused to redound to their spiritual and temporal prosperity. He is their Mouth in all spiritual utterances, "speaking great things and blasphemies concerning the Deity, his Name, his Tabernacle, and them that dwell in the heaven" (ch. 13:5,6). But, blasphemous as Britain is in her constitutional ecclesiasticism, she protests against, and repudiates, the Chief Blasphemer of the world. She does not belong to the politico-ecclesiastical system, or body politic, of which he is the Mouth. She sends no ambassador to the Court of Rome; and though there may be spiritual imbeciles who have real, and crafty politi-cians who have feigned, reverence for the Roman God and the mummery of his superstition, the heart of the British peoples is hardened against them with the impenetrability of adamant. This hostility is known and understood at Rome, where the will, but not the power, has always existed to reduce Britain to subjection to the so-called "Holy See." In witness of this, there is the Spanish Armada equipped and sent against England in the days of Elizabeth, at the instigation of the Court of Rome, that by the thumb-screw arguments of the Inquisition, the British nation might be brought within the pale of the Mediterranean Sea Monster, beyond which no heretical soul can be saved!

But this Name of Blasphemy was not only essentially and constitutionally a blasphemy, but it was an utterer of blasphemies also. To blaspheme required something more than "EYES, like the eyes of a man." These were necessary to constitute it an EPISCOPAL NAME; but that this Overseeing Name, or Power, might give utterance to its purely fleshly thinkings, it was indispensable that it be furnished with a MOUTH. Therefore it was, that Daniel in his vision, in considering the Little Horn that came up after and among the ten, saw that it had a Mouth as well as Eyes. He does not inform us what the mouth looked like; whether it were like the mouth of a man, a bear, a lamb, or other animal. John the apostle was appointed to supply this information in the chapter in hand. It is very certain, however, that the mouth of a lamb would have been a very unfit symbol to represent it by, even upon Daniel's showing; for he testifies, that it was "a Mouth speaking very great things against the Most High" (ch. 7:8,20,25); or, as John expresses it, "great things and blasphemies" (ver. 5). Between, the gentle, timid, voice of a lamb, and roaring blasphemies, there is no resemblance; but, on the contrary, from the nature of the thing spoken, we would expect that the organ of utterance would be symbolized by something ferocious and terrible; and because, likewise, all pertaining to the Fourth Beast "is dreadful and terrible."

p.235 But soon after the breaking up of the Mosaic Commonwealth by

This artful epistle, so replete with the finesse of the politician, and the envy of the priest, does not appear to have produced the desired effect. John the Faster, whose fasting had worn his bones and puffed up his mind, soon afterward vacated his "blasphemous name" by death; but this did not relieve Gregory of his distress; for Cynacus, who succeeded him as Patriarch of Constantinople, adopted the same superimperial and pompous title as his predecessor. Having had occasion to dispatch some agents to Rome, in the letter which he wrote to Gregory, he so much displeased him by assuming the title of "Universal Bishop," that the pope withheld from the agents somewhat of the courtesy to which they considered themselves entitled, and, of course, complaint was made to the emperor Maurice of the neglect which had been shown them. This caused the emperor to write to Gregory, advising him to treat them in future in a more friendly manner and not to insist so far on punctilios of style, as to create a scandal about a title and to fall out about a few syllables. To this Gregory replied, "that the innovation in the style did not consist much in the quantity and alphabet; but the bulk of the iniquity was weighty enough to sink and destroy all. And therefore I am bold to say," says this pontifical representative of infallibility, "that whoever adopts or affects the title of 'Universal Bishop,' has the pride and character of Antichrist, and is in some manner his forerunner in this haughty quality of elevating himself above the rest of his order. And indeed both the one and the other seem to split upon the same rock; for, as pride makes Antichrist strain his pretensions up to godhead, so whoever is ambitious to be called the only, or Universal Prelate, arrogates to himself a distinguished superiority, and rises, as it were, upon the ruins of the rest."

Having, then, put the reader in possession of so much of history as will enable him to identify the Seventh Head and having brought him down to the epoch of its decollation or destruction which was necessary for the subsequent "healing" of the wounded Sixth Head of Rome's imperialism; it behooves us to pause in our exposition, that we may bring up arrears in regard to the development of the Name of Blasphemy upon the heads. When this is sufficiently advanced we shall have brought the ecclesiastical into line with the civil; and be prepared to carry them on together until the healing process is completed in their expansion into the Eighth Head upon the Seven Hills, as symbolized in this thirteenth chapter by the Beast of the Earth with Two Horns like a lamb, and speaking as a Dragon.

The question, however, concerning images, was still far from settlement, either at Rome or Constantinople, but continued to agitate the Laodicean Apostasy for many years. During the reign of Constantine Copronymus, a synod was held at Constantinople to determine the controversy. It decreed, that "every image of whatsoever materials made and formed by the artist, should be cast out of the christian churches (as they styled their temples) as a strange and abominable thing," adding an "anathema upon all who should make images or pictures, or representations of God, or of Christ, or of the Virgin Mary, or of any of the saints," condemning it as "a vain and diabolical invention" deposing all bishops, and subjecting the monks and laity who should set up any of them, in public or private, to all the penalties of the imperial constitution. Paul I., then Roman Pontiff, sent his legate to Constantinople, to admonish the emperor to restore his beloved idols to their temples; threatening him with excommunication in case of refusal. But the Dragon chief treated his message with the contempt it richly deserved.

But the epoch when the arrogant and usurping spirit of the Papal Image of the Beast was most strikingly displayed was the pontificate of Innocent III. In each of the three leading objects pursued by Rome, namely, independent sovereignty, supremacy over the Latin church, and control over the princes of the earth, it was the fortune of this pontiff to conquer. This is the testimony of history. He completed the iconic, or image, fabric, founded by Gregory VII., and promoted steadily by his successors. He realized that fond hope of so many of his predecessors, a dominion over Rome and the central parts of Italy the territory of the Image of the Beast; given to the Roman See by the countess Matilda, and yielded after long dispute by the emperor Otho IV. on his coronation at Rome by Innocent III., who bore the keys from A. D. 1198 to A.D. 1216. "This," says Hallam, "is the proper era of that temporal sovereignty which the Bishops of Rome possess over their own city, though still prevented by various causes, for nearly three centuries, from becoming unquestioned and unlimited."

"Purgatory is an invention of men; for they who believe, come into eternal life; and they who believe not, into eternal condemnation -(credentes enim, invitam ~ternam venire - come, not go, as generally translated - Author).

Again, "the recent editors" do not like the word dolos, "guile", in verse 5, but substitute the word pseuthos, "lie". A man that is guileless does not lie: but a man may not lie, and yet be full of deceit. The change may be more favorable to their morality; but I doubt not altogether unnecessary.

p.42 SHEPHERD OFTHE SHEEP; and will be found stirring the goats up to the rejection of the angel-proclamation and to the declaration of war against the Chief of the flock, the house of Judah. The issue, however, will not be doubtful. The rejection of his proclamation by the goats and their shepherds, and their preparations for war, will arouse his indignation; as it is written in Zech. 10:3, "Mine anger was kindled against the shepherds, and I punished the goats". The when and the how, are ex-pounded in the succeeding sentences, saying, "For Yahweh Tz'vaoth (He who shall be hosts the Eternal Power) hath visited his flock, the House of Judah, and hath made them as his goodly horse in the battle. And they shall be as mighty men, who tread down their enemies in the mire of the streets in the battle: and they shall fight, because Yahweh is with them;" "and shall be seen over them".

The horse and his rider He hath cast into the sea" (Exod. 15:1-8,21).

21 And a great hall as of a talent's weight descended out of the heaven upon the men; and the men blasphemed the Deity, because of the plague of the hail: for the plague thereof is exceedingly great

But "the Angel of the Waters" had not yet exhausted the wrath of the third vial upon the Two-Horned Beast of the Earth, in giving its populations of "the rivers and fountains of waters" blood to drink. The Aulic Council sent a sixth Austrian army under the Archduke Charles to renew the contest on the Italo-German frontier. Buonaparte took the field in March, 1797. The stars in their courses still fought against the Austrians. Pushed in every direction, they sustained every day additional and more severe losses. In a space of scarce twenty days, he had defeated the Austrians in ten combats, in which Prince Charles had lost a fourth of his army; and now found himself incapable of covering Vienna from the attack of the invincible Napoleon. He retreated with hasty marches towards the capital of the Beast, to fight for the existence, it might be, of his brother's throne, under its walls. But the terror, grief, and confusion of the Court and people, opposed this daring resolution. The wrath against the throne of Vienna was reserved for the fourth vial. The alternative of treaty was adopted by the Beast; and granted by Buonaparte, to the great disgust of the Directory, who argued, that it would have cost him but another victory to have blotted the most constant and powerful enemy of the French Republic from the map of Europe; or at least to confine her to her hereditary states in Germany Napoleon's policy prevailed, and the treaty of Leoben definitively altered in that of Campo Formio, established peace between France and Austria for a time.

The crisis had now arrived when "the king of fire" deemed it no longer necessary to dissemble his designs "upon the Sun". At first he pretended a wish to restore Charles IV. to the throne; but perceiving Madrid to be in a ferment, and having the two kings in his power, he obliged them both to sign a formal abdication, and the infants Don Carlos and Don Antonio renounced all claim to the succession. This self-sacrifice effected, Napoleon proceeded to fill the vacant throne with a king that should do all his will. On the 25th of May, therefore, he issued a decree, declaring the throne of Spain vacant by the voluntary abdication of the reigning family, and ordering an assembly of prelates, grandees, etc., to be held at Bayonne, for the purpose of fixing the basis of a new government. A commission was also established for secularizing the lands of the church; which, as it vitally affected the covetousness of the priests of the Virgin Goddess, stirred up the exasperation of the public they controlled, indescribably. The result of the convention at Bayonne was, that, on the 6th of June, 1808, Napoleon conferred the crown of Spain upon his brother Joseph, who abdicated his kingdom of Naples in favor of Joachim Murat, who had married the sister of the wonderful man!

The Wings of the sun are his rays or beams. It is with these potent radiations that he causes things to spring forth from the earth. But, all he causes to spring forth are not good risings. Some are very noxious, poisonous weeds, which are not healed of their evil qualities by the brightness of his shining. Hence, his natural risings are some good and some bad, according to the seeds in embryo. Nor do the best and choicest of his risings spring forth in their perfection. They spring forth with bodies altogether unlike the bodies they will be, when clothed in the brilliance of their flowering glories. When they spring forth, these risings of the sun are only distinguishable from weeds by a well practised observer. As Paul indicates, they spring forth "not that body that shall be. . . but the Deity giveth a body that pleaseth him, and to every seed his own body".

The Wings of the sun are his rays or beams. It is with these potent radiations that he causes things to spring forth from the earth. But, all he causes to spring forth are not good risings. Some are very noxious, poisonous weeds, which are not healed of their evil qualities by the brightness of his shining. Hence, his natural risings are some good and some bad, according to the seeds in embryo. Nor do the best and choicest of his risings spring forth in their perfection. They spring forth with bodies altogether unlike the bodies they will be, when clothed in the brilliance of their flowering glories. When they spring forth, these risings of the sun are only distinguishable from weeds by a well practised observer. As Paul indicates, they spring forth "not that body that shall be. . . but the Deity giveth a body that pleaseth him, and to every seed his own body".

In conclusion of this exposition of the Sixth Vial, it may be remarked, that the crowning events of the series are the capture of the Holy City; the establishment therein of the Little Horn of the Goat, who thus "stands up against the Prince of princes" (Dan. 8:25; 11:45), as there-presentative of Nebuchadnezzar's Imperial Image (Dan. 2:31-35); and its being broken by the Stone not in hands; and no help for him (Dan 2:45; 11:45). Of the capture of the city there is no doubt. "The city shall be taken," saith Zechariah, "and the houses rifled, and the women ravished; and half of the city shall go forth into captivity, and the residue of the people shall not be cut off from the city". Such is the situation; the City of the Great King in the hands of the Greek and Latin Catholic crusaders, who cover the land like a cloud; and no safety for any but in Edom, Moab, and Ammon, on the east and south of the Dead Sea.

21. And one mighty angel took up a stone like a great mill-stone, and cast it into the sea, saying, Thus with violence Babylon the great city shall be cast down, and shall be found no more at all.

25. And its gates shall not be shut at all by day; for there shall be no night there.

p.355 The final chapters provide a description of the New Jerusalem which is based upon the literal Temple as described by Ezekiel in his closing chapters. There will be a literal and a figurative Temple in the age to come; the former serviced by the immortal priests the sons of Zadok (or antitypical Meichizedek class) for the edification of humanity. For further information regarding the Temple and worship of the Age to come, see The Temple of Ezekiel’s Prophecy by Henry Sulley —Publishers.

p.8 The Rev. E. B. Elliott, however, does not agree with the interpretation of his ecclesiastical superior. He admits with him that church in some sense is meant by the woman in the sign; but this is all. On page 8, vol. 1, he says, speaking of the sign, "But what the things prefigured hereby? This is the question. And first there can scarce be meant by the solar emblem, I think, what so many commentators have suggested in explanation - the church's investiture with Christ, as the sun of righteousness. The sun is no where in the Apocalyptic imagery made-the representative of Christ. His countenance with its own intrinsic light is described as like the sun, not as borrowing the sun to enlighten it: and, when fully revealed in the heavenly city, as altogether superseding it to the favored inhabitants. Nor, again, by her having the moon subjacent can there be meant a trampling upon things sublunary. Can the moon signify things under the moon? Consistency requires that we explain these greater luminaries to signify the chief rulers of the state, according to the general prophetic use of the symbols; and in the same way the stars, also seen in symbol, to signify lesser rulers in it. As to the precisely defined number of twelve stars - considering that the professing church on the Apocalyptic scene, including the true, was in an earlier vision (though one depicting somewhat later and worser times) numerically symbolized as the twelve tribes of Israel, we can not well err, I think, in explaining them to signify the heads, or ecclesiastical rulers, of those twelve tribes. The rather so, since this interpretation agrees with that which is given by inspiration itself of almost precisely the same symbol in the earliest of all emblematic visions, the dream of Jacob's son Joseph: and indeed with that explanatory note given at the very commencement of the Apocalyptic visions by the revealing angel himself; 'the seven stars are the angels (or chief and presiding ministers) of the seven churches.'

15. And the serpent cast out of his month after the woman water as a flood, that he might cause her to be carried away by the flood.

p.236 the Romans, A.D. 70, the Judaizers changed the relations of things. They argued, that now the Levitical Order was removed, the Elderships of the ecclesias should take its place; and as the tribe of Levi was Yahweh's clergy, lot, or heritage under the law, so the Elderships should now be regarded as his clergy under the gospel; not forgetting to put in a claim for Levi's tithes and other perquisites. Whatever might have been thought of the claim, and the argument to enforce it, matters not; the Judaizing Presbyters and Deacons became the "priest and Levites" of the growing apostasy; and soon after ripened into a Hierachy, or "Holy Order," called "The Clergy," in contradistinction to the multitude, whom they styled ho laos, the Laity, or common people.

The NAME OF BLASPHEMY, then, is the embodiment of the Eyes and Mouth of Daniel's Little Horn, in their episcopal relation to the ten horns. It is the LATIN SEE, without which there was no point of union between them. When it came to be enthroned, and they came to acknowledge its authority in all their kingdoms, it became their "HOLY FATHER" and they sons in his "holy keeping," of whom, the first of the ten that recognized "HIS HOLINESS," is surnamed "the Eldest Son of the Church."

No, the United Kingdom of England, Scotland and Ireland was never one of the ten horns . The taint of imperiality, as it were , was indelibly infixed in British soil by the Dragon. The Saxons and Angles from the abyss did not expel him. The Dragon withdrew, and told the Britons to defend themselves. Invaded by the Picts and Scots, they invited the Saxons and Angles to come over and help them. The Celts were repelled; but when the war was over, the Saxons refused to leave, and made the heptarchial settlement for themselves. Nearly fourteen centuries have passed since these events; and the Dragons carved in relief upon the interior of the House of Lords, are now the appropriate symbol of British power. The real ruler at Constantinople, the throne of the Dragon, is Britain, who claims "the Sick Man" there, as her "ancient and faithftil ally." Her interests are intimately associated with the destiny of the Turkish empire, more especially with that part of it termed Syria and Egypt. If the British power in any way be an element of the beast, it can only be in connexion with its body, which is like unto a Leopard." As the power indicated by the words, "Sheba and Dedan, and the Merchants of Tarshish and the young lions thereof," in Ezek. 38:13, she becomes identified with Daniel's third beast, the four-winged and four-headed Leopard, which is to have its dominion taken away when the Ancient of Days comes; but which, before it loses its dominion thus, is to come into collision wlth "the feet of the Bear."

p.142 Thus, then, while the eleventh chapter exhibits the sackcloth witnessing of the woman's seed "before the god of the earth" for the truth of "the God of heaven" in the Alpine Wing of the Great Eagle (verses 4-13); this twelfth chapter, verses 14-17, represents her obedient and faithful remnant and protectors at war with the Serpent and Dragon of Constantinople and Rome, in the African Wing more especially, and before the Bishop of Rome was developed by the authority of the Constantinopolitan Serpent into the Supreme Pontiff of Antichristendom, apocalyptically styled "the god of the earth; and by Daniel, "a foreign god, a god of guardians, acknowledged by the king who does according to his will; a god whom his pagan ancestors did not know." The twelfth chapter concludes at the epoch in which history loses all trace of a people, whose testimony against the superstition by law established kept the African Wing of the Catholic Empire in an excited and tumult-uous condition to the great annoyance of all privileged bishops, priests, and deacons, who sought peace and comfort in high places for three hundred years. This brings us down to A.D. 612; or about five years after the Dragon had confirmed the gift of all heretics into the hand of the Bishop of Rome, who had been "acknowledged" by Justinian as a god over all the spiritual affairs of his empire, A.D. 533.

They rejected all the external rites of the dominant church, except baptism and the Lord's Supper; such as temples, vestures, images, crosses, the religious worship of holy relics, and the remaining sacraments, confirmation, penance, holy orders, matrimony, and extreme unction; "these they considered as inventions of Satan and the flesh, and full of superstition.

"We must not obey the Pope and the Bishops; because they are the wolves of the Church of Christ.

The maxims of Gregory VII. were now matured by more than a hundred years, and the right of trampling upon the necks of kings had been received, at least among ecclesiastics, as an inherent attribute of the Image of the Beast; or the system of power based upon forgery, murder, and wonderful deceit, commonly styled THE PAPACY. "As the sun and the moon are placed in the firmament," said Innocent III. ,"the greater as the light of the day, and the lesser of the night; thus are there two powers in the church; the pontifical, which as having the charge of souls, is the greater; and the royal, which is the less, and to which the bodies of men only are intrusted." Intoxicated with these ideas which he succeeded in establishing, he deemed no quarrels of princes beyond the sphere of his jurisdiction. His foremost gratification was the display of unbounded power. His letters, especially to ecclesiastics, are full of unprovoked rudeness. As impetuous as Gregory VII., he is unwilling to owe anything to favor; he seems to anticipate denial, heats himself into anger as he proceeds, and where he commences with solicitation, seldom concludes without a menace. With such a temper and with such advantages, he was formidable beyond all his predecessors, and well qualified for the time "to speak" as the official incumbent of the Image-Mouth which "spake as a dragon;" and caused on every side the lightning of the Roman Heaven to thunder over the heads of princes. He claimed the right to confirm the election of the emperors of the Lamb-Horned dominion; and in a decretal epistle, declares the pope's authority to examine, confirm, anoint, crown, and consecrate the emperor elect, provided he shall be worthy; or to reject him if rendered unfit by great crimes, such as sacrilege, heresy, perjury, or persecution of the Roman church; in default of election, to supply the vacancy; or, in the event of equal suffrages, to bestow the empire upon any person at his discretion.

On Paul's decease, A.D. 768, the Lion-Mouth of the Beast was represented for one year by a bishop named Constantine, who condemned the worship of idols, for which he was tumultuously deposed, and Stephen IV., a furious defender of them, substituted in his place. He forthwith assembled a council in the Lateran, where they abrogated all Constantine's decrees, deposed all the bishops he had ordained, annulled all his baptisms and chrisms, and as some historians relate, after having beat him and used him with great indignity, made a fire in the church and burned him to death. After this cruel disposition of this papal specimen of "holiness" and "infallibility," they annulled all the decrees of the Dragon's council, ordered the restoration of the idols, and cursed that execrable and pernicious synod, giving the absurd and blasphemous reason for the use of images - "that if it was lawful for emperors, and those who had deserved well of their country, to have their images erected, but not lawful to set up those of God, the condition of the immortal God would be worse than that of man."

But, notwithstanding the good words and fair speeches of his former letter, Gregory's heart was full of venom and bitterness against Maurice and his family. Neither of these epistles caused the obnoxious title to be suppressed; and if Maurice had not been moved out of the way by a revolution, the "blasphemous name" would have adhered to Constantinople as the Apostolic Throne. But the heart of Gregory, the last of the "sainted popes," was made glad by the murder of Maurice, his wife and nine children, by a rebel and orthodox usurper named PHOCAS, who was peaceably acknowledged in the provinces of the east and west. Gibbon describes him as a monster, of diminutive and deformed person, grossly ignorant and steeped in lust, drunkenness and brutality. Such was the abandoned villain of the baser sort, who occupied the throne of the Catholic Dragon about eight years from A.D. 602 to A.D. 610. "As a subject and a christian," says Gibbon, "it was the duty of Gregory to acquiesce in the established government; but the joyful applause with which he salutes the fortune of the assassin has sullied, with indelible disgrace, the character of the saint. The successor of the apostles might have inculcated with decent firmness the guilt of blood and the necessity of repentance: he is content to celebrate the deliverance of the people and the fall of the oppressor; to rejoice that the piety and benignity of Phocas have been raised by Providence to the imperial throne; to pray that his hands may be strengthened against all his enemies; and to express a wish, perhaps a prophecy, that, after a long and triumphant reign, he may be transferred from a temporal to an everlasting kingdom." In his epistle to Phocas he says, "We are glad that the benignity of your piety hath arrived at the imperial dignity. Let the heavens rejoice, and the earth exult, and the people of the universal republic until now vehemently afflicted become hilarious on account of your benignant deeds." This base flattery, doubtless, predisposed the sanguinary tyrant to favor and promote the ambitious views of the pope, at the expense of the Patriarch of Constantinople. Such a biophthoros drakon, life-destroying Dragon, as he was styled, the worthy rival of the Caligulas and Domitians of the first age of the empire, was a very fit and proper patron to legislate the Bishop of Rome into the Universal Bishop of the world, the All-Overseeing Eye of the Apostasy.

The events of this sixteenth chapter are participants with those of the thirteenth verse of chapter eleven. The woeful calamity last noted there is the Reign of Terror in which "the remnant were aifrighted, and gave glory to the Deity of the heaven", The terror was preceded by the abolition of all titles of distinction; and by the conversion of the tenth kingdom of Babylon into the FRENCH DEMOCRATIC AND SOCIAL REPUBLIC. This was the "great earthquake," or political revolution, which made the earth to tremble 1260 years after the giving of the Saints into the hand of the ecclesiastical element of the Little Horn (Dan. 7:25), and the shocks and vibrations of which continued to be felt from A.D. 1790 to 1820, an "hour" of thirty years, reaching to the end of Daniel's 1290 years; and to the beginning of the Sixth Vial, which contains "that determined" to be poured out upon the desolator of the Holy Land (Dan. 9:27).

Such is the song of Moses, admirable for the boldness of its imagery, the sublimity of its sentiments, and the dignity of its style, which was sung by the Hebrew people standing upon the shore of Edom's sea. They were now a people saved by Yahweh - a national salvation, coeval with the signal overthrow of their enemies, and the destruction of their power. They had just put on Moses, having been all baptized into him in the cloud and in the sea (1 Cor. 10:2). They now constituted the One Body of Moses, and the Firstborn Son of Yahweh (Exod. 4:22; Zech. 3:2; Jude 9): and when they arrived at Sinai, fifty days after the institution of the Passover, they became the kingdom of the Deity (Exod. 19:5,6,8). These events signalize the katabole tou kosmou, or '"foundation of the world;" to which frequent reference is made in the New Testament, in connection with the prepositions pro, before, and apo, from, since, etc. (Matt. 25:34; 13:35; Luke 11:50; Jhn. 17:24). They also signalize the beginning of the Aion, or Olahm, or COURSE OF TIME, the duration of which was hidden from all but the Father, who reserved the precise year of its termination as a secret with Himself (Mark 13:32; M(itt. 24:36). The MOSAIC AJON was a Course of Time identical with the continuance of the MOSAIC KOSMOS, or Order of Things. The beginning of the one was the beginning of the other, and synchronical with the singing of this beautiful prophetic ode.

p.42 The acceptance of the angel-proclamation by the British Isles will plant the Lamb-Power in all their dependencies. Sheba, Dedan, the Hindoo Tarshish, Australia, New Zealand, the Cape, British North America, and the West Indies, will be "ends of the earth" and "isles afar off," from which the Gentiles shall come to the Great Shepherd and to whom they shall say, "Surly, our fathers have inherited lies, vanities, and things in which there is no profit" (Jer. 16:4,9). This honest renunciation of "the wisdom of our ancestors," then, by angel-proclaimers of the Truth, proved to be folly, will prepare them for a hearty co-operation with Judah, in slaying the Beast, and giving his body politic to the burning flame. The day of eternal doom will then have arrived for republics throughout the world. The fate of the United States, so-called, will depend upon the response they may return to the proclamation, which is sure to be announced throughout the Western Hemisphere. If they reject it, Judah and his allies in British America, as the forces of the Rainbowed Angel standing upon the earth and sea, whose progress is as pillars of fire, will be at hand to enforce obedience with the two-edged sword of Divine indignation. The only alternative in this unparalleled "time of trouble" for North and South America, will be submission or desolation. Annexation to the little kingdom of Judah, in accordance with the law proceeding from Zion, will be an indispensable condition, without which neither this, nor any other country, can obtain exemption from war, pestilence, famine, and desolation. We can hardly expect that the United States will transfer themselves to the dominion of Judah's Lion peaceably. If wise men were in place and power, they would doubt-less be prompt to "serve Yahweh with fear, to rejoice with trembling, and to kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and they perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little" (Psa. 2:11-12). But experience teaches, that wise and prudent men do not find their way into office, and where

Again, "all the recent editors" cancel the words, enopion tou thronou tou Theou. "I recommend," says the reviser, "that this reading be adopted, and that the words, 'before the throne of God,' be omitted" from the fifth verse, so that with this editorial mutilation it would read, ~and in their mouth was found no lie; for they are faultless." But, where do they stand in this faultless condition? The recent editors have canceled the answer; I therefore restore it, and insert it in my translation; as, before, or "in the presence of the throne of the Deity," as represented in ch. 4:4.

So, after this analogy, are the risings of the Sun of Righteousness out of, or from which proceed "the Kings," whose way is prepared by the drying up of the political and military power of the Ottoman empire. The rays of his power shine forth with creating and formative energy. Men and women are created in the earth, and projected from it. At this stage of the wondrous operation, they have "not the bodies that shall be;" but "come forth" (John 6:29), With bodies corruptible, without honor, weak, soulish, and earthy; for, that which is, "out of the earth, is earthy," ek ges choikos. Each one is the Sun's rising, because the Sun of Righteousness is "the resurrection" (John 11:25); and so long as he is below the horizon, there can be no springing forth. But those people who have sprung forth into existence, "must all," both good and bad, "be made manifest before the judgment seat of Christ, that every one may receive the things through the body, according to what he hath done, whether good or bad" (2 Cor. 5:10). That which makes manifest is light (Eph. 5:13). The light thrown upon the case of each individual is his account of himself to the Deity; "for we shall" not only "all stand before the judgment seat of Christ;" but "every one of us shall give account of himself to the Deity" (Rom. 14:10,12). This self-rendered account manifests the character of the reporter, and determines his case for better or worse. If he be approved by "the Judge of the living and the dead," he is recognized as "the blessed of his Father," and being quickened, is authorized to "inherit the kingdom prepared for" such as he; to sit with him in his throne; and to exercise power over the nations (Matt. 25:34; Apoc. 2:26; 3:21). Now, he that inherits a kingdom, sits upon a throne, and rules nations, is "a king;" and such a king, who was once dead, and sprung forth from the earth by the power of the Sun of Righteousness; and was selected from a crowd of people newly born of the earth, is "a king from, or out of, a Sun's risings".

So, after this analogy, are the risings of the Sun of Righteousness out of, or from which proceed "the Kings," whose way is prepared by the drying up of the political and military power of the Ottoman empire. The rays of his power shine forth with creating and formative energy. Men and women are created in the earth, and projected from it. At this stage of the wondrous operation, they have "not the bodies that shall be;" but "come forth" (John 6:29), With bodies corruptible, without honor, weak, soulish, and earthy; for, that which is, "out of the earth, is earthy," ek ges choikos. Each one is the Sun's rising, because the Sun of Righteousness is "the resurrection" (John 11:25); and so long as he is below the horizon, there can be no springing forth. But those people who have sprung forth into existence, "must all," both good and bad, "be made manifest before the judgment seat of Christ, that every one may receive the things through the body, according to what he hath done, whether good or bad" (2 Cor. 5:10). That which makes manifest is light (Eph. 5:13). The light thrown upon the case of each individual is his account of himself to the Deity; "for we shall" not only "all stand before the judgment seat of Christ;" but "every one of us shall give account of himself to the Deity" (Rom. 14:10,12). This self-rendered account manifests the character of the reporter, and determines his case for better or worse. If he be approved by "the Judge of the living and the dead," he is recognized as "the blessed of his Father," and being quickened, is authorized to "inherit the kingdom prepared for" such as he; to sit with him in his throne; and to exercise power over the nations (Matt. 25:34; Apoc. 2:26; 3:21). Now, he that inherits a kingdom, sits upon a throne, and rules nations, is "a king;" and such a king, who was once dead, and sprung forth from the earth by the power of the Sun of Righteousness; and was selected from a crowd of people newly born of the earth, is "a king from, or out of, a Sun's risings".

Such was the state of affairs in Spain, preparatory to his Operations "to whom it was given to scorch the" Spaniards and Portuguese "with fire". The renunciation of the crown in favor of Napoleon was the signal for a general insurrection. The patriotic flame burst forth in Asturia, whence it spread into Gallicia, and into several districts of Leon. A declaration of war was formally published by the assembly at Oviedo, which also sent deputies to request the assistance of heretical England against the infidel French! The request was immediately acceded to, and every possible assistance in arms, munitions, and men, were lavished in support of the adherents of the Inquisition, and worship of the Image of the Beast!

The day of judgment had now arrived for the Republic of Venice. While Napoleon was driving back the archduke towards the throne of the Beast, an insurrection was secretly organized by the Venetians, which broke out against the French in blood and massacre. By the appearance of an Austrian force from the Tyrol, they supposed that the fortunes of Buonaparte had at length found a check. But the awakening from this pleasing dream was equally sudden and terrible. arrived of peaceful preliminaries between France and Austria. The Venetian Senate was lost in stupor and consternation. It dispatched agents to deprecate the wrath of Buonaparte, who declared he would "prove an Attila to Venice". When he heard of the massacres, his indignation rose to the highest pitch; and on May 3, 1797, he declared war against Venice, which sealed forever the fate of the winged lion of Saint Mark.

26. And they shall bring the glory and honor of the nations into it.

22. And the voice of harpers and musicians, and pipers, and trumpeters, shall be heard no more at all in thee; and every craftsman of whatever craft shall be found no more at all in thee; and the sound of a mill-stone shall be heard no more at all in thee;

The career of the Rainbowed Angel already set forth in Vol.2 ch. 10, illustrates the crisis at which we have now arrived. "Yahweh shall go forth and fight against those nations, as when he fought in the day of battle." "He shall go forth with whirlwinds of Teman". "He will march through the land in indignation;" and "tread down the people in his anger at Botzrah, and make them drunk in his fury, and bring down their strength to the earth". “All the men that are upon the face of the land shall shake at his presence". And his feet shall stand upon the Mount of Olives, which shall cleave in twain" - "And he will plead against Gog with pestilence and with blood; and rain upon him and upon his bands, and upon the many people with him, an overflowing rain, and great hailstones, fire, and brimstone" - Thus shall Jerusalem and the Holy Land be delivered from "the kings of the earth and of the whole habitable" confederate with Gog. They will fall upon the mountains of Israel, and upon the open field, and a sixth part of them only will escape. Thus " the Catholic and Protestant, and Mohammedan heathen will see the judgments executed upon them; and "the house of Israel will know that Yahweh is their Elohim from that day forward". Therefore "sing, 0 daughter of Zion; shout, 0 Israel; be glad and rejoice with all the heart, 0 daughter of Jerusalem. Yahweh hath taken away thy judgments, he hath cast out thine enemy: the King of Israel Yahweh, is in the midst of thee: thou shalt not see evil any more" (Zeph. 3:14): "then shall Jerusalem be holy, and there shall no strangers pass through her any more" (Joel 3:17).(*)

16. And the earth ran with help for the woman, and the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed up the flood which the dragon cast out of his mouth.

p.8 "And thus we are led to see that the figuration here given of Christ's faithful church was not one universally or generally true; but designative of it at some remarkable and particular time and conjuncture, viz: when the ruling powers in the Apostolic world would be associated with it, as its decoration and support; and its ecclesiastical rulers, or bishops, would be recognized as dignified authorities before the world. And indeed much the same thing is indicated by the very representation of the woman as in heaven. For the heaven meant is evidently that of political elevation; just as in the vision, a little while since discussed by us, of the ascent of the witnesses; it being one in which the dragon might occupy a place as well as the woman; and one, the position in which is contrasted with dejection to the earth, as of a change from political power to political degradation."

They rejected purgatory, with masses and prayers for the dead, acknowledging only two terminations of the present state - heaven and hell; but in what sense of these terms, Venema says not.

p.142 When the witnessing remnant had accomplished its mission against the Apostasy in Africa, the power of their oppressor, the Catholic Church, was broken there by the Saracens, as predicted in Apoc. 9:1-11. "The common granary of Rome and mankind" as the fertile and highly cultivated province is styled by Gibbon, was appropriated by the followers of Mohammed, who have possessed it, (Algiers excepted, and since A.D. 1830 occupied by the French) from Tangier to Tripoli, unto this day. Thus had been blotted out from the arena of their power and glory, the people who had become "drunk with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the witnesses of Jesus" (Apoc. 17:6); a fate richly deserved, and one which awaits the same class of superstitious savages in all of the other wing and body of the Great Eagle.

[*Britain not included among the ten horns of the beast. This important fact of prophecy is outlined by the Author of Eureka above, but is frequently ignored by others who attempt to interpret The Apocalypse in accordance with current events. Though Bntain once formed part of the Roman Empire, by the year 449, on the eve of the termination of the Western Empire in 475 when the horns received their independence (indicated by them being crowned as described in Rev. 13:1), Britain was invaded by the Jutes, Angles, Saxon and Danes, and being divided into the seven kingdoms mentioned in the text of Eureka, never did form part of the "beast of the sea" the political order of Western Europe following the fall of the Western Empire in A.D. 475) nor the "twohorned beast" (the so-called Holy Roman Empire that superceded the "beast of the sea" in the year 800). Therefore, the present affiliation of Britain with the European Common Market must be only temporary, and before the "beast of the sea" is again formed in its latter-day manifestation as required by the prophecy of Rev. 17:8, she must withdraw or be excluded therefrom. The map on p. 200 depicts Europe about A.D. 449 — Publishers.]

But commentators and "recent editors," who have undertaken to mend the Greek text, are greatly puzzled to determine whether the reading should be onoma blasphemias, a Name of Blasphemy, or onomata blasphemias, Names of Blasphemy. Griesbach has adopted the latter reading; which, a note to the "Revised Version" says, "is received by all the recent editors except Bengel. Heinrichs also mentions it as the superior reading. But Ewald, Zullig, and De Wette, disapprove it, the last considering it as an accommodation to ch. 17:3; and Hengstenburg regards the question as one of difficult decision. "I recommend," says the Annotator, "the the marginal note of the English Version be retained: "or, names." In other words, he was at a loss to say which it should be, therefore, they might split the difference between, the margin and the text. Mr. Elliott bows reverently to the authority of the "recent editors," and speculates upon it accordingly. Lord also falls into the same line; and speaks of "the names of blasphemy on the heads of the Dragon!" This is certainly a newly found apocalyptic item not revealed to John; who affirms nothing about names of blasphemy on the heads of the Dragon. But, Mr. Lord falls into this error from the assumption, that the correct reading is names; and from the fact that the heads of the Dragon, and the heads of the Beast, are the same heads; and hence, the latter having names upon them, these names must have been on the Dragon likewise!

p.236 Having successfully usurped the birthright of Christ's brethren, andimposed themselves upon the Deity as his charge, or lot, an element of "the blasphemy of them who say they are Jews, and are not, but the synagogue of the Satan" (Apoc. 2:9), they were prepared to push onwards for the Satan's throne. About the middle of the second century, a very important change occurred promotive of this unhallowed ambition. The innovation then taking place, was a marked distinction between the Bishop and the Elder; in consequence of which a third kind of office was created; so that, instead of Episcopal Elders, or bishops and deacons, we come to read in ecclesiastical authors of bishops, presbyters and deacons. In a collection of epistles attributed to Ignatius, this novel and unscriptural distinction frequently and officially obtrudes upon the reader. This novelty soon came to be generally admitted, and paved the way for pernicious results. The adoption of the idea laid the foundation for the dominion of a Clerical King, or Pontiff, with clerical officials; a kingdom which, having originated in the Mystery of Iniquity, could not possibly ultimate in any other manifestation than that which has filled the habitable with hypocrisy and crime for sixteen hundred years. The passage alluded to in Ignatius is in a letter from him to Polycarp: "Attend to the Bishop," says he, "that God may attend to you. I pledge my soul for theirs, who are subject to the Bishop, presbyters, and deacons. Let my part in God be with them." No man guided by the Spirit into all the truth could write in such a style as this. Again, in his epistle to the Ephesians, ch. 6, it is said, "the more silent a man finds the bishop, he ought to reverence him the more": on which Dr. Campbell remarks, that "one would be tempted to think this has originated with some opulent ecclesiastic, who was far too great a man for preaching; at least, we may say, it seems an oblique apology for those who have no objection to anything implied in a bishopric, except the discharge of its duties. No one whose notion of the duties of a bishop correspond with the prophet Isaiah's idea of a watchman, ch. 56:10, would have thought taciturnity a

"In A.D. 604, just before the death of Gregory," Dr. Barton says, "Phocas wrote to him, proposing an orthodox confession of faith, acknowledged the supremacy of the Roman See, was very liberal to the Roman churches, and allowed the Pantheon to be converted to christian purposes: all which must have been extremely gratifying to a pope in the seventh century." But Gregory did not long rejoice in "the benignity of Phocas' piety," being removed by death this year. He was succeeded by Boniface III, who had no scruple about adopting the proud and "blasphemous name." His election was confirmed by Phocas (an imperial privilege which was formally abandoned A.D. 684) whom he importuned to bestow upon him the exalted title of Universal Bishop, with the privilege also of transmitting it to all his successors. "The profligate emperor," says Jones, "to gratify the inordinate ambition of this court sycophant, deprived the bishop of Constantinople of the title which he had hitherto borne, and conferred it upon Boniface, at the same time declaring the Church of Rome to be Head of all other churches." Thus Phocas confirmed what Justinian had ordained seventy-five years before. Justinian had given the pope his power, throne and jurisdiction; Phocas confirmed the same with the original and additional gift of the imperial title, UNIVERSAL OVERSEER; by which he attained a rank ecclesiastically superior to the emperor; and at the prospect of which Gregory professed to be greatly scandalized.

The fortunes of the demonials and idols were at length revived in the East. As soon as Irene reigned in her own name and that of her son Constantine Porphyrogenetus, she undertook the ruin of the Iconoclasts. The first step of her future persecution was a general edict for liberty of conscience; after which she convened a general council at Nice, A.D. 787, at which the legates of the Roman Pontiff Adrian, attended, and her domestic slave the Patriarch of Constantinople, who presided. This counsel of three hundred and fifty bishops unanimously pronounced, that the worship of images is agreeable to Scripture and reason, to the fathers and councils of the church. The acts of this council are still extant; "a curious monument," says Gibbon, of "superstition and ignorance, of falsehood and folly." An illustration of the judgment of these bishops on the comparative merit of image-worship and morality, may be found in the reply of one to a certain monk, that "rather than abstain from adoring Christ and his mother in their holy images, it would be better to enter every brothel, and visit every prostitute, in the city."

"The noonday of Papal dominion," says Hallam, "extends from the pontificate of Innocent III., inclusively to that of Boniface VIII., or, in other words, through the thirteenth century. Rome inspired during this age all the terror of her ancient name. She was once more the mistress of the world, and kings were her vassals." Such was the Image of the Imperial Head of the Ten-Horned Beast healed of its death-plague by Charlemagne, created by "the false Prophet," or Roman Hierarchial constituent of the healed head, "that wrought the wonders in the presence of the Beast of the Earth, with which he deceived them who received the mark of the beast, and them who worshipped his image" (Apoc. 19:20). This Image-Monarchy is styled "the Kingdom of the Beast" inch. 16:10; and was obnoxious to the vial-wrath of the fifth angel, by which it was filled with darkness. The judgments of this vial and those who have thus far transpired under the sixth, had reduced the image to very limited territorial and temporal dimensions. They are so inconsiderable that the Image may be said to be in the article of death; for beyond the very narrow limits of the little territory yet remaining to the pope, the papal government, however loud and fiercely it may roar, can no longer "cause as many as will not worship the image of the beast to be put to death;" nor can it cause all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark upon their right hand, or upon their foreheads; nor can it prevent men buying and selling any sort of spiritual or temporal merchandize they please. This is the condition of the Image in the latter half of the nineteenth century, which may be styled the dying hour of the life imparted to it by the wonder-working Pseudoprophet of the Lamb-Horned Beast. But while the Temporal Image is at death's door, there is considerable vitality in the Pseudoprophet, or Roman Hierarchy, itself. This has been evinced in the concourse of bishops at Rome under pretense of celebrating the martyrdom of Peter in that city of fraud and abomination; or, as it is termed by the Spirit in ch. 18:2, "the habitation of demons, and the hold of every foul spirit, and cage of every unclean and hateful bird." Of this Pseudoprophetic power, Pius IX, is officially, in 1867, the distressed and wailing mouth. How different his utterances from those of Gregory VII and Innocent III! When they roared princes and nations trembled; when he tries to roar, his roar becomes a wail of "heart-rending griefs," and they laugh, having no longer any fear of papal interdicts and curses; and continue their "machinations the most implacable" for the subversion of the authority of what he styles "the Apostolic See." But the Pseudoprophet Hierarchy, with all the vitality that lingers in its constitution, will never be able to galvanize the old shattered image into its ancient vigor. If it continue to exist in dilapidation, it is only tolerated until "the Hour of Judgment" be fully come to execute the sentence written concerning the Beast and its wonder-working deceiver that created the Image, saying, "These both were cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone" (ch. 19:20; 20:10).

"The pope hath not the primacy over all the churches of Christ, neither hath he the power of both swords.

In the sixth verse, I have left the word aionion untranslated. I have transferred it merely. The "aionian good " will be the subject of exposition, when it will be seen that "everlasting" is not the word best suited to express its quality. We may find a better word when we see distinctly what the thing is; or "aioni an" being understood in its true sense may be suffered to remain.

p.43 fools reign the people perish. The prospects of the country are dark and threatening; and it is much to be feared that model-republicans will not be disposed to accept their destiny until they have been broken with weeping, and wailing, and gnashing of teeth.

But, at that stage of their history the Israelites could only sing the song of Moses. They could sing it commemoratively and prophetically-commemoratively, of their deliverance, and the destruction of the Egyptian army; and prophetically, of that still future and greater deliverance awaiting them in the time of Jacob's trouble; and of that grander and more marvelous overthrow of Babylon and the Beast, by the Lamb and those who accompany him whithersoever he goes. The song celebrative of these victories over the system of nations "spiritually called Sodom and Egypt" - "the song of the Lamb" - they could not sing. No man can sing the song of Moses, who is not a member of the Mosaic Body; nor can any one sing the song of the Lamb, unless he be a citizen of the Commonwealth of Israel, is one of the conquerors of the Beast, his Image, his Sign, and the Number of his name, and these have been already vanquished and destroyed. True, he can repeat the words; but he cannot sing the words as expressive of the agents and the events that have come to pass; and this is the sense in which songs are Apocalyptically sung. This song celebrates the Name bestowed upon himself by the ETERNAL FATHER in his interview by his angel with Moses at the bush. Ehyeh asher Ehyeh, said he, on that occasion, I will be who I will be; EHYEH I will be; and in the third person, Yah, or Yahweh, He shall be. "Thou shalt say to the children of Israel, YAHWEH Elohim of your fathers, etc., hath sent me to you: this is my Name for the Olahm, and this my Memorial for a generation of the race" (Exod. 3:14,15). "Extol him that rideth upon the heavens," said David, "by his name YAH" (Psa. 68:4). This Moses has done in this ode, saying, "YAH is my strength and my song, and He hath become my salvation! He is my AlL, and Him will I extol; my father's ELOHIM, and Him will I exalt. YAHWEH is a Man of War; YAHWEH is His Name".

"The second woe hath passed away, behold the third woe comes quickly". It is not necessary to wait for the entire exhaustion of a period, or Series of events, before we may hope to find the commencement of a new period and another series. Thus, the second vial begins about the same time as the first, but in different sections of the habitable; and continues pouring out parallel or concurrently, with the third, fourth, and fifth vials. So also it may be with the termination of the second woe, and the beginning of the third, if ch. 11:14 is to be read as the sequence of verse 13. But, I rather understand, that this thirteenth verse of the eleventh chapter is the opening of the third woe; and not the conclusion of the second. This is my most recent conviction. Hence, I should read ch. 11:12 and 14 in succession; as, "And they ascended into the heaven in the cloud, and their enemies beheld them. The second woe hath passed away; behold, the third woe comes quickly. And in that hour there was a great earthquake," and so forth. This order of exposition based upon this arrangement of verses affords space for the synchronous beginning of the third woe and first vial; and the previous development of the "Great Voice," by which they were introduced.

But, notwithstanding these judicial "plagues," the terrible wrath of the third vial was still unexhausted. The second vial was concurrently developing the blood as of a corpse; and the time had now come for the Man of Destiny to contribute his agency in aggravating its intensity upon the sea. Under pretense of invading England, immense preparations were made, the real purpose of which was a descent upon Egypt, the first object of which was the destruction of the power of the Mamelukes; and then, by establishing the French power there, and in Palestine, to subvert the dominion of the Turks in Constantinople, and of the British in India. The power of the Mamelukes, who styled their destroyer "the king of fire," was completely broken; upper and lower Egypt were conquered; fire and sword were carried into the Holy Land; an army of eighteen thousand Turks, landed by the British in Egypt, was annihilated; but Buonaparte, after all this success, instead of being in India or Constantinople, had lost his fleet by the battle of Aboukir, and was shut up with the wreck of his army in Egypt, unable to receive reinforcements because of the ships of Britain; and, for the same cause, unable to withdraw the remnant from its critical and desperate situation.

The scorching operation now began in all the intensity of "great heat". The success of the insurgent Spaniards during June and July were important and "brilliant;" while the losses of the French were greater than they had ever been in so short a period since the accession of Napoleon to the imperial throne. They now considered themselves to be fully adequate to their expulsion; which a little time, however, convinced them was a fatal delusion. They seemed to decline the aid of the British forces in the north; and recommended in preference an expedition to Portugal, a suggestion to which England acceded.

But, though there is "healing in the wings of the Sun of Righteousness," all are not healed who spring forth from earth, by the potency of his formative and life-imparting beams. "Many," saith Daniel, "dust of the ground, shall awake from sleeping; some for living ones of the Olahm (the Millennium) and some for the objects of reproach and contempt of the Olahm" (ch. 12:2): an arrangement in the resurrection-state endorsed by Christ, who, in John 5:28, saith, "the hour is coming in which all who are in the tombs (mnemeios 'retained in memory' there) shall hear the voice of the Son of Man, and shall come forth; they who have done the good things, for a resurrection of life; but they who have practised the evil, for a resurrection of condemnation." All these whose destinies are so diverse, are "risings of the Sun;" but, we see, that they do not all attain to the kingdom; for none can possess this, who, having come forth", are condemned. The condemnation leaves them corruptible, without honor, weak, soulish, and earthy; and such, Paul testifies, in 1 Cor. 15:50, "cannot inherit the kingdom of the Deity". They are repudiated by the Judge; and consigned to a common fate with the Beast and the False Prophet; who are subjected to the sword and burning flame by "the Kings" "chosen" "out of the risings of the Sun;" to prepare whose way, the wrath of the sixth vial is drying up the power of the Euphratean Ottoman Dynasty of the Goat's Little Horn.

But, though there is "healing in the wings of the Sun of Righteousness," all are not healed who spring forth from earth, by the potency of his formative and life-imparting beams. "Many," saith Daniel, "dust of the ground, shall awake from sleeping; some for living ones of the Olahm (the Millennium) and some for the objects of reproach and contempt of the Olahm" (ch. 12:2): an arrangement in the resurrection-state endorsed by Christ, who, in John 5:28, saith, "the hour is coming in which all who are in the tombs (mnemeios 'retained in memory' there) shall hear the voice of the Son of Man, and shall come forth; they who have done the good things, for a resurrection of life; but they who have practised the evil, for a resurrection of condemnation." All these whose destinies are so diverse, are "risings of the Sun;" but, we see, that they do not all attain to the kingdom; for none can possess this, who, having come forth", are condemned. The condemnation leaves them corruptible, without honor, weak, soulish, and earthy; and such, Paul testifies, in 1 Cor. 15:50, "cannot inherit the kingdom of the Deity". They are repudiated by the Judge; and consigned to a common fate with the Beast and the False Prophet; who are subjected to the sword and burning flame by "the Kings" "chosen" "out of the risings of the Sun;" to prepare whose way, the wrath of the sixth vial is drying up the power of the Euphratean Ottoman Dynasty of the Goat's Little Horn.

23. and the light of a lamp shall shine no more at all in thee; and the voice of the bridegroom and of the bride shall be heard no more at all in thee: for thy merchants were the chief men of the earth; for by thy sorcery all the nations have been deceived.

27. And there shall in nowise enter into it any thing unclean, and working abomination, and falsehood: but they who have been written in the book of the Lamb’s life.

p.8 Thus far Mr. Elliott, in whom there is certainly more light than in bishop Newton. Still Elliott's light is but darkness after all. The woman church being crowned by the heads, or ecclesiastical rulers, of the twelve tribes of the apostolic Israel, is a very far-fetched conceit. He admits, that the sun and moon of the sign belong to the heaven common to the woman and the dragon; what consistency then is there in not recognizing the twelve stars as belonging to that heaven also! Why interpret the sun and moon of the Roman Heaven, and twelve stars of the woman's own polity in apostasy? The stars are Roman as well as the sun and moon; and stripped of these in flight, the twelve stars remain with the sun and moon in the same heaven from, or out of, which she flies; otherwise, we ought to behold her a fugitive with a wreath of beauteous stars upon her head in the wilderness; a symbolization which would be incompatible with her trampled condition there.

17. And the dragon was enraged against the woman, and went away to wage war with the remnants of her seed who keep the commandments of the Deity and have the testimony of the Anointed Jesus.

p.237 recommendation." The passage must have been an interpolation, or if Ignatius really wrote it, he must have been in league with the Judaizers. Surely he could not have been ignorant that Paul required a bishop to be "able by sound doctrine, both to exhort and convince the gainsayers; for there are many unruly and vain talkers and deceivers, specially they of the circumcision; whose mouths must be stopped, who subvert whole houses, teaching things which they ought not, for filthy lucre's sake." A silent bishop would be of no use in such a diocese. To talk down vain talkers who had made such a progress as this, would require an amount of words that would effectually destroy the reputation of any bishop for a taciturn, and therefore worshipful official.

But, it is refreshing to find four discerning men in such a crowd of the kind-Bengel, Ewald, Zullig and De Wette. These affirm the truth. It ought to read name, not names; and doubtless, De Wette has given a true reason of the difficulty among their recencies, namely, "an accommodation to ch. 17:3." But this is not the principal reason. It is this. They could not see how One Name could rest upon Seven Heads. If it had said , and one and the same name upon each of the seven heads, they might have interpreted it of one and the same inscription upon each; and there would have been no trouble with the text; but simply as it now reads , with the understanding that "the heads are Seven Kings," how One Name of Blasphemy was to be on these, sent them all adrift in doubt and speculation.

p.142 But the reader is not to suppose that the ferocity of the Catholic Dragon was confined to the seven fertile and populous provinces of the African Wing. All dissentients who protested against the imperial superstition in other provinces suffered as well as the Donatists. I have already referred to the case of the Novatians in Paphlagonia. By whatever name reproached, "the Serpent cast water, like a flood, out of his mouth after" them all. They were cast down, but not destroyed; persecuted and tormented in every way, yet not exterminated; for, says Mosheim, in speaking of "the heresies" of the 9th century, "the sects that had sprung up in the early ages of the church subsisted still with little change in their situation or circumstances;" and it may be added, that the saints of the Holy City and the witnesses of Jesus against the Laodicean Catholic Apostasy, have always existed under names imposed upon them, and holding views falsely attributed to them, by the malignity of their enemies, to the present day.

They admitted no indulgences, nor confessions of sin, with any of their consequences, except mutual confessions of the faithful for instruction and consolation.

"That is the Ecciesia of Christ which heareth the sincere word of Christ, and useth the sacraments instituted by him, in what place soever it exist.

Thus, in conclusion of this section, we have seen that after a conflict of more than four hundred years from Charlemagne to Innocent III., the ecclesiastics of all the hierarchies of Europe were united in one vast organization with the Bishop of Rome as their supreme legislative and judicial head, and a single ecclesiastical government established over the whole Roman church after the model of that of the Woman's Man-Child of Sin, developed in the person and power of Constantine the Great. This development of the Man-Child into the fullness of the age and stature of THE MAN or Image of the Beast, is denominated by Romanists themselves a monarchy. "All catholic doctors agree in this," says Bellarmine, "that the ecclesiastical government committed to men by God is a monarchy." "If the monarchical is the best form of govern-ment," says another, "as we have shown, and it is certain that the church of God instituted by Christ its head, who is supremely wise, ought to be governed in the best manner, who can deny that its rule ought to be monarchial?"

During the five succeeding reigns the contest was maintained with unabated rage and various success between the idolators and the breakers of idols. At length the enthusiasm of the times ran strongly against the Iconoclasts; and the emperors who stemmed the torrent were exasperated and punished by the public hatred. The final victory of the idols was achieved by Theodora, A.D. 842(*). Her measures were bold and decisive. She ordered her Iconoclast Patriarch a whipping of two hundred lashes in commutation of the loss of his eyes; the bishops trembled, the monks shouted, and the demonials and idols of all metals and woods were triumphant. Rome and Italy were jubilant; while the Latins of Germany, France, England and Spain, lagged behind in the race of superstition. They admitted the idols into their spiritual bazaars, not as objects of worship, but as memorials of faith and history. Nevertheless, idolatry advanced with silent and insensible progress; but, as Gibbon remarks, "a large atonement is made for their hesitation and delay, by the gross idolatry of the ages which precede the reformation, and of the countries both of Europe and America, which are still immersed in the gloom of superstition."

The authorities for this are Paul the Deacon, who says of Phocas, "Being entreated by Pope Boniface, he ordained that the throne of the Roman and apostolic church be the Head of All Churches; because the Constantinopolitan church declared that it was first of all churches"; and Anastasius who in his Ecclesiastical History on the A.D. 606 observes, "This (Boniface) obtained from Phocas the Prince, that the Apostolic Throne of the Blessed Apostle Peter should be the Head of all churches; because the Constantinopolitan church declared that she her self was the first of all churches."

The great prophetic subject of this song is YAHWEH as a Man of War- that Man of War to be manifested, who shall stand a conqueror upon "the glassy sea like to crystal;" when as the Spirit of Christ in Zech. 14:9, testifies, "YAHWEH shall be for King over all the earth; in that day there shall be ONE YAHWEH, and his Name one". This Man of War is that symbolic Son of Man seen by John, in Apoc. 1:13-16; and that Mighty Angel he speaks of in ch. 10:1; and the Son of Man upon the white cloud, in ch. 14:14; and the Word of the Deity and his celestial brethren in arms, in ch. 19:13, 14; and the Lamb with the 144,000, who constitute the bride. In other words, He is the One Body glorified, the head of which is Christ Jesus, whose head is the Eternal Father (1 Cor. 11:3). This personification of Jesus and his brethren as constituting ONE MAN is illustrated in Exod. 4:22, where the whole multitude of Israel, of which the adults were estimated at 600,000 (Exod. 12:37) is styled the Son and First-born of Yahweh. The "He who shall be" promised to Abraham 430 years "before the foundation of the world;" and prophesied of to Moses in the "Memorial" apocalypsed at the bush, is the Eternal, by his power, incorporate and manifest, first in Jesus of Nazareth, and hereafter in his resurrected, accepted, and quickened brethren, "glorified together with him". "These all as one glorified body are the "ONE YAHWEH" manifested in "One Name," which, enthroned in Jerusalem, is "king over all the earth" (Jer. 3:17).

p.43 The judgment which succeeds the Pentecostian proclamation in mid-heaven is "national," and executed by Christ and the Saints. But before the proclamation begins there is also judgment. This, however, is not national, but "individual" - a judgment having relation to the ancient Apostolical proclamation. The Son of Man presides judicially at both these gatherings before him; and in each sitting there is his right hand, and his left. The right hand is synonymous with friendship, favor, alliance, peace, and reward; while the left is indicative of their opposites. Nations on the Son of Man's right hand are "joined to Yahweh as his people" - the subjects of his empire; while individuals on the King's right hand, are associates with him in the glory, honor, and power, of his dominion. They share with him in the throne, as exhibited in Apoc. 4.

Again, in verse 15, it reads, hoti elthe soi he hora tou therisai "because for thee hath arrived the hour of the reaping." The "recent editors" omit the word soi, for thee, though the order is addressed to a certain party. The hour of the reaping hath arrived. But by whom? Their recencies have struck out the answer in Suppressing the words "for thee". I have restored them; and the answer is "for thee, upon the cloud." And here we may dismiss "all the recent editors" as more of a pest than a blessing to the original Greek text of the revealing Spirit.

"The Kings," then, are the sanctified ones, "the called and chosen and faithful," of whom Christ Jesus is the Imperial Chief, and therefore styled, "KING of kings" (Apoc. 17:14; 19:16; 1 Tim. 6:15). They are the same, who, at the outset of their arduous, glorious, and ultimately victorious, career, sing the new song in which, addressing the Great Captain of their redemption who leads them to glory (Heb. 2:10), they say, "thou hast made us for our Deity kings and priests; and we shall reign as kings (basileusomen) upon the earth" (Ch. 5:10). They begin their career under this sixth vial, and "turn not" from "the way," he hothos, (Ezek. 1:9,12,17) opened to them by the drying up of the Buphratean Power, until they have taken the Great City Babylon; and possessed themselves of all its thrones (Apoc. 20:4; 11:15; Dan. 7:9,18,27). The consummation of their "way" will be, that "the kingdoms of the world become our Lord's and his Christ's; and he shall reign king (basileusei) for the Aions of the Aions".

"The Kings," then, are the sanctified ones, "the called and chosen and faithful," of whom Christ Jesus is the Imperial Chief, and therefore styled, "KING of kings" (Apoc. 17:14; 19:16; 1 Tim. 6:15). They are the same, who, at the outset of their arduous, glorious, and ultimately victorious, career, sing the new song in which, addressing the Great Captain of their redemption who leads them to glory (Heb. 2:10), they say, "thou hast made us for our Deity kings and priests; and we shall reign as kings (basileusomen) upon the earth" (Ch. 5:10). They begin their career under this sixth vial, and "turn not" from "the way," he hothos, (Ezek. 1:9,12,17) opened to them by the drying up of the Buphratean Power, until they have taken the Great City Babylon; and possessed themselves of all its thrones (Apoc. 20:4; 11:15; Dan. 7:9,18,27). The consummation of their "way" will be, that "the kingdoms of the world become our Lord's and his Christ's; and he shall reign king (basileusei) for the Aions of the Aions".

The French, in the two months under generals Murat, Dupont, Moncey, and La Febvre, had lost about fifty thousand men; and by the victory of Vimeira, and the convention of Cintra, they were expelled by the British from Portugal; who also captured the Russian fleet in the Tagus.

While the countries of the sea were thus becoming "blood as it were of a corpse," the third angel was still pouring out wrath upon "the rivers and fountains of waters," whereby blood was given them to drink. During the time Buonaparte was shut up in Egypt by the British fleet, war had broken out again between the French Republic and its enemies. The English had taken possession of the Dutch fleet, and landed an army of Russians and British in Holland; Austria had renewed the conflict on the sources of the Rhine, the Danube, and the Po; and had undertaken, with the aid of sixty thousand Russians under Suwarrow, to reconquer Italy, and to deliver the Pope. All this caused terrible carnage of the worshippers of the Beast's Image in Switzerland and in all the North of Italy. The kingdom of Naples had been turned into the Parthenopean Republic; and the kings of Naples and Piedmont reduced to the islands of Sicily and Sardinia for their respective territories. But the renewal of the war infused hope into the hearts of all the adherents of the old order of things; and no little apprehension into them who had committed themselves in the support of the new. Blood flowed in torrents upon the rivers of Italy, and the fountains of Switzerland, of the Alps and Apennines. This field of battle was immense; and an erroneous idea then prevalent, that the key to the plain was in the mountain; and that, because heights are important on a field of battle of a few leagues, it was concluded that the power which was master of the Alps must be master of the Continent - this mistaken opinion determined the blind instruments of Divine wrath upon one another, to select for their shambles the locality indicated in the phrase "rivers and fountains of waters". The six campaigns of Napoleon had shed blood immensely; but sufficient had not been poured out proportionate to the crimes of the hosts and populations subject to the judgments. The terrible campaign of "the invincible Suwarrow," as far as the issue of the war was concerned, was a useless destruction of multitudes; a destruction, however, that answered its judicial end. Austria recovered Italy for a few months; and Suwarrow's host was miserably wasted among inaccessible rocks. The work of Buonaparte in Italy was undone; and the old de spotism of the Two-Horned Beast seemed to have re-established itself beyond the power of the French to shake it.

24. And in her had been found blood of prophets and saints, and of all who had been slain upon the earth.

p.8 _____ * The first twelve of the emperors, who ruled the Roman Habitable with undivided authority, assumed the surname of Caesar, this title was therefore their original distinction - Imperator Caesar.

They held the sacraments of baptism and the eucharist only as signs, denying the corporeal presence of Christ in the eucharist, as we find in the book of this sect concerning Antichrist, and as Ebrard of Bethunia accuses them in his book against heresies.

But, the solution of the difficulty is easy and apparent when under-stood. The key to the matter is in the signification of the Seven Heads, which requires another sort of wisdom than that by which the "recent editors" are inspired, to discern. Said the angel to John, "Here is the mind that hath wisdom. The Seven Heads are Seven Mountains on which the Woman (or Name of Blasphemy) sitteth. And there are Seven Kings: five are fallen , and one is and the other is not yet come; and when he (the Seventh Head) cometh, he must continue a short space" - ch. 17:9,10. In other words, the seven heads of the Beast and the Dragon, which are the same , have a two-fold signification; they represented the Seven Ruling Headships of the Fourth Beast, which down to the fall of the seventh, has existed in the Seven-Hilled City, ROME, as the capital of the dominion. The Name of Blasphemy came to be enthroned tliere; not contemporarily with the Seven Ruling Headships, or Forms of Government; but after they had passed away; and when it had Rome to itself without the rival presence of the ancient Senate, or Roman emperors, as at the date of this writing Feb. 3, A.D. 1867. Hence, the Name of Blasphemy was not, as Mr. Lord intimates, an arrogation of the prerogatives of the Deity, assented to by these several pagan and catholic forms of Government, obtaining in Rome from the foundation of the city; but a distinct and independent head, or Form of Government, the Germano-Roman with its own audacious Eyes, and "exceeding dreadful" Mouth, with "iron teeth" (Dan. 7:19). It sat upon the seven mountains as the spiritual overseer of the Secular Powers of Europe, who "gave their power and strength to it," that it might rule "until the words of the Deity shall be fulfilled" (Apoc. 17:13,17); it became to them a bond of union the Eyes, Mouth and Brain of the Romano-Gothic Body Politic, symbolized by this Seven Headed and Ten-Horned Monster of the Sea.

p.237 The writers in the interest of the Latin Name of Blasphemy have fabricated a list of what they style "Bishops of Rome." The first fifty-six they have named "Saints," in their sense of the word, which signifies one decreed to be holy by an official act of the pope! This sounds infinitely ridiculous in the ears of an enlightened believer, who knows that all true Christians, without distinction of class or order, are made saints by "the obedience of faith," independently of the acts and decrees of popes, bishops, presbyters, or councils. The memory of the faithful and humble presbyters who ruled the Ecclesia in Rome, is insulted and blasphemed by papal canonization. Though men of low degree, and despised by the wise and prudent of their day, they were men of whom Rome, the common sewer of nations, has never been worthy; but of all blasphemies ever uttered to their disparagement, that of being declared "saints," in the Romish sense of the word, is the greatest of all.

Gordon and Baronius make the date of the edict, A.D. 606; Muratori, A.D. 607.

Accordingly, the canonists, or skilled interpreters and practitioners of ecclesiastical law, are accustomed to style the Bishop of Rome a king. "The pope," say they, "may be called a king. He is the Prince of princes, and Lord of lords. He is, as it were, a God on earth. He is above right, superior to law, superior to the canons. He can do all things against right and without right. He is greater than all the saints except Peter. Some say he is greater than an apostle, and not bound by the commands either of Peter or Paul. His sentence prevails against the judgment of the whole world. His sole will is instead of reason in the bestowment of ecclesiastical offices. He does not commit simony in selling benefices. He may deprive any one of his office without any cause. He is able to free from obligation in matters of positive right, without any cause, and they who are so released are safe in respect to God. He can take away a possession from one church and give it to another, even without a cause; and no one can say unto him, Why doest thou so? He is not bound by treaties. The Pope and Christ make one consistory. He can make justice of injustice. He can change the substance of things, and make a thing out of nothing. He can change squares into circles" - Febronji de Statu Ecci. libi. c. ix. p. 527.

"Vows of celibacy are inventions of men, and occasions of sodomy.

p.43 But in the judgment of the King's household some will have to pass to the left, where "shame and contempt" await them. They arrive at this left hand after being "cast out" from the Divine presence "into the outer darkness, where are wailing and gnashing of teeth". This left hand is in the country occupied by the Goat nations, which, as the embodiment of all that is hostile to the kingdom prepared for the blessed of the Father, are styled by Jesus, "the Devil and his Angels". These are the same as Daniel's fourth Beast, which is styled Apocalyptically, "the Dragon, the Old Serpent, which is the Devil and Satan". The fourteenth chapter, from the eighth verse to the eleventh inclusive, treats of the kolasin ajon ion, the aion-torment, decreed for the Devil and his adherents; and into which they are commanded to "depart", who are adjudged unfit to appear among the 144,000 with the Lamb on Mount Zion. Thus the future national judgment of the great day affords scope for the "sorer punishment" of those "wicked and slothful servants," who are unprofitable for the Master's use. Such is the fate of those who "come forth to a resurrection of condemnation", for neglecting to improve the talents entrusted to their care. The reader can avail himself of these hints concerning the right and left hands of the Great Shepherd, in aid of a 'spiritual understanding" of the twenty-fifth of Matthew; and of the relative position of the two classes indicated in the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus.

"YAR is my AlL, and my father's ELOHIM," says Moses and the Israelites: that is, the ETERNAL INVISIBLE SPIRIT (Jhn. 4:24), who made all things by His power (Gen. 1:2), even YAR is "the strength of Israel" (1 Sam. 15:29); manifested in the ELOHIM, or incorruptible and immortal angels, who made themselves visible to Abraham and Jacob, "and who do his commandments;" "his ministers who do his pleasure" (Psa. 103:20,21), whether that pleasure be to fit up the earth for the indwelling of mankind, as related in Genesis; or to execute judgment upon Egypt, and the cities of the plain - the invisible YAH~SPIRIT working everything by His power through oft-times visible ELORISTIC SPIRITS. The Invisible One, "whom no man hath seen," visibly manifested in them to Adam in Eden's Garden; to Lot in Sodom; to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; to Moses, Joshua, Aaron, Hur, and seventy of the Elders of Israel (Exod. 24:10,11,13,17); to David; to Mary, the mother of Jesus; and in many other instances not necessary to mention here. This is the doctrine of GOD-MANIFESTATION expressed by Moses in his song - a manifestation of ONE through MANY. But Moses did not confine himself simply to what existed. His words were prophetic of a FUTURE SPIRIT-MANIFESTATION; for he adds, "Yahweh is a Man of War." But Samuel says, that "the strength of Israel is not a man". Moses and Samuel, however, are not at variance; but were contemplating the YAH-SPIRIT in different periods of manifestation. The strength of Israel was "not a man" until "manifested in the flesh" in the days of Jesus. The Man Christ Jesus was the YAH-SPIRIT manifested Adamically; that is, in our nature; but he has not yet been manifested as "a Man of War". These facts indicate that Moses in his song was referring to YAH'S manifestation, as Apocalyptically exhibited in the scene of ch. 19:11-16, where he appears as a Man of War in the midst of His "called, and chosen, and faithful" brethren in arms; who, with their invincible chief, are the Yahweh-Spirit Conquerors, standing victorious upon the glassy sea.

But the worshippers of the Beast's Image had not even yet drank sufficiently of the cup of Divine indignation. A file of papers transmitted to Buonaparte by Sir Sydney Smith, informed him of all the disasters that had befallen the French in Italy. He resolved, therefore, to risk capture by the British cruisers, and to leave Egypt for Paris. He left his army with Kieber and Dessaix, which was afterwards obliged to surrender to the British, and by them relanded in France, where Napoleon had safely arrived some time before. Soon after his return to Paris, a Cromwellian turn of the revolutionary wheel made him First Consul, by which he became "the head and the sword" of the Republic, Nov. 19th 1799.

The new king Joseph, after a brief residence of seven days in Madrid, found it necessary to retire precipitately towards France, not forgetting to carry off with him the crown jewels, and other valuables of the palace This state of affairs determined Napoleon to enter Spain, and to conduct the war in person. On the 2nd of December, after defeating three native armies, he reached Madrid; which was now a horrible scene of confusion, being in the power of an ungovernable rabble. The city was surrendered on the 4th; and having reduced its affairs to order, he hastened to try to cut off the retreat of the English army under Sir John Moore, who was falling back upon Corunna. On arriving at Astorga, he found that the expected prey had eluded his grasp; he therefore turned over to his generals the further operations against it, and soon after returned to France.

Whither the Spirit is to go they go, and they turn not when they go. These kings go their way, every one straight forward; for "their feet are straight feet," and consequently there is no deviousness in their way. "They accompany the Lamb whithersoever he goeth;" and his purpose is not crooked. His way is into the midst of the Great City, where, after the example of Cyrus, his prototype in the capture of Babylon, and the deliverance of the Jews, he hurls the Papal Belshatzar from his throne, and seizes upon his dominion for himself.

Whither the Spirit is to go they go, and they turn not when they go. These kings go their way, every one straight forward; for "their feet are straight feet," and consequently there is no deviousness in their way. "They accompany the Lamb whithersoever he goeth;" and his purpose is not crooked. His way is into the midst of the Great City, where, after the example of Cyrus, his prototype in the capture of Babylon, and the deliverance of the Jews, he hurls the Papal Belshatzar from his throne, and seizes upon his dominion for himself.

p.8 But when their successors associated colleagues with them in office, it became an inferior title, the chief emperor being styled Augustus, the rest Caesars. Hence the diadem of the Sixth Head of the Dragon was the Crown of the Twelve Caesars with which the woman's head was wreathed. The Austrian emperors, who claim to be the secular chiefs of the Holy Roman Empire, are styled Kaisar or Caesar to this day. - J.Thomas

p.237 Of the said fifty-six, the catholic bishop Sylvester, who flourished in apostasy in the reign of Constantine, is reckoned the thirty-fourth saint from the apostle Peter, to whom they lyingly assign a reign of twenty-four years in Rome, as the first pope! The only reign of Peter in Rome was after the manner of his reign in America or Britain at this day, where his doctrine may be believed and obeyed. Where this reigns, Peter reigns; nay, more, Christ and the Father reign; for, said the Lord

They held only three ecclesiastical orders - bishops, priests or presbyters, and deacons - and that the remainder were human figments: that monasticism or monkery was a putrid carcass, and was the invention of men; and that the marriage of the clergy was lawful and necessary.

"So many superstitious dedications of temples, commemorations of the dead, benedictions of animals, pilgrimages, so many forced fastings, so many superfluous festivals, those perpetual bellowings of unlearned men, and the observations of the other ceremonies, manifestly hindering the teaching and learning of the word, are diabolical inventions.

Such was the ICONIC MAN in the noonday of his existence, the number of whose name is 666. Is not this the Antichrist? Could any power arise in the world more deserving of the name? Is not this Image-power, Anomos, THE LAWLESS ONE, whose coming Paul predicted would be "after the working of the Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish?" It can be no other than "the Man of Sin, the Son of Perdition; who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called god, or Sebasma, an object of veneration; so that he in the temple of the god sits as a god, publicly exhibiting himself that he is a god." And yet in view of all the record extant concerning this ICONIC MA~ OF SIN, there are protesters who affirm that the papal dynasty is not the Antichrist, and that his revelation is still in the future! Can blindness be more complete than that which cannot see the Lawless One in him whose worshippers declare to be superior to law and above right? If the Antichrist have not been in full manifestation before the world for the past six hundred years, there need be no apprehension of his future advent. But, as we have seen elsewhere, Antichrist and vicar of Christ, or Vice-Christ, are synonymous expressions; so that in this vainglorious title of the papal power it stands confessed as Antichrist, the Image Man of Sin, for the worship or reprobation of mankind.

In addition to Paul and Anastasius, Ado in his Chronikon, repeats their testimony, and adds, "Phocas, being entreated by Boniface the Roman Pontiff elsewhere, the rabble of idolatry in the old temple which was called the Pantheon being removed, ordered that it be dedicated a church of the Blessed Mary always a Virgin, and of All the Martyrs: that, where at one time the worship not of the Gods but of the Demons was performed, there continually the memory of all the saints might be preserved."

This song of Moses will be sung by the victorious saints, when the Spirit's omnipotence aiding them shall have led forth in His goodness the people whom He hath redeemed; and shall have conducted them in His might to the habitation of His holiness. He will then have brought them in, and planted them in the mountain of His inheritance; the place He will have made to dwell in: the holy place for His ADONIM (Lords), which He will then have established. The Beast and his Image being destroyed in the marvelous work of "the restitution of all things" pertain-ing to the Kingdom and Throne of David; the Twelve Tribes of Israel being all restored, and graffed into their own Olive Tree, and established as the mightiest and most glorious of the nations, by the military prowess of Christ and his brethren; the regenerated nation and its immortal rulers will then be able, in the full prophetic import of the song, to sing it as marvelously accomplished in the then established constitution of the world. Therefore, YAWEH gloriously incorporate in his newly-developed and glorified ELOHISTIC FAMILY shall reign for the Millennial Olahm and beyond (ch. 5:9,10; 20:4-6; 21:23-27).

p.43 In conclusion of this section it may be added, that the acceptance of the proclamation by the British "Isles afar off' - "the Mart of Nations"- places all the wealth of the British Empire at the disposal of the Lamb and his 144,000. These are the subject of the forty-fifth psalm, where

Cyrus, and the "sanctified ones," his Medes and Persians, were typical of Christ and his Kings in "the way prepared," through the drying up of "the Great River Euphrates" by the sixth vial. Cyrus was named by Deity, and mentioned by name, about one hundred and sixty years before the capture of Babylon. His name and office are both representative as well as his mission. The name given was Coresh, which some interpret by the word sun; on the ground that the Greek writers affirm that the name in Persian signified the sun. Gesenius says, they were correct. But, should we go to pagan Greeks and Persians to learn the meaning of a Hebrew name conferred upon a man whom the God of Israel intended to raise up to accomplish a work upon Babylon, which was to find its an-titype over 2400 years after? My answer is, no. Coresh in Hebrew does not signify the sun, which is there represented by shemesh. Coresh is a proper name compounded of caph, like, and yoraish, the participle of yarash, which signifies, to seize, to take possession of, to occupy, mostly by force. Hence, Yoraish comes to signify one who takes possession of his inheritance by conquest. This definition of Cyrus' Hebrew name accords with the facts of his history. The Deity had predetermined, that he should inherit the Babylonish Empire, which included the Holy Land; and that he should take possession of it by conquest. He therefore made Yoraish a part of his name; and, as he intended his career to be typical of His own Son's, Whom he hath constituted "the Heir of all things" terrestrial; and who is also to acquire possession of his inheritance by conquest; he added the letter caph, and condensing the three syllables into two, named him Coresh, or Koraish, signifying Like the Heir.

Cyrus, and the "sanctified ones," his Medes and Persians, were typical of Christ and his Kings in "the way prepared," through the drying up of "the Great River Euphrates" by the sixth vial. Cyrus was named by Deity, and mentioned by name, about one hundred and sixty years before the capture of Babylon. His name and office are both representative as well as his mission. The name given was Coresh, which some interpret by the word sun; on the ground that the Greek writers affirm that the name in Persian signified the sun. Gesenius says, they were correct. But, should we go to pagan Greeks and Persians to learn the meaning of a Hebrew name conferred upon a man whom the God of Israel intended to raise up to accomplish a work upon Babylon, which was to find its an-titype over 2400 years after? My answer is, no. Coresh in Hebrew does not signify the sun, which is there represented by shemesh. Coresh is a proper name compounded of caph, like, and yoraish, the participle of yarash, which signifies, to seize, to take possession of, to occupy, mostly by force. Hence, Yoraish comes to signify one who takes possession of his inheritance by conquest. This definition of Cyrus' Hebrew name accords with the facts of his history. The Deity had predetermined, that he should inherit the Babylonish Empire, which included the Holy Land; and that he should take possession of it by conquest. He therefore made Yoraish a part of his name; and, as he intended his career to be typical of His own Son's, Whom he hath constituted "the Heir of all things" terrestrial; and who is also to acquire possession of his inheritance by conquest; he added the letter caph, and condensing the three syllables into two, named him Coresh, or Koraish, signifying Like the Heir.

Though I shall now proceed to the exposition of the fifth vial, the reader must bear in mind, that the wrath of the fourth vial is not exhausted. Like that of the second, the fourth continues its concurrent operation, until that "powerful and extraordinary mortal, Napoleon," is securely caged upon the rock of St. Helena.

Disappointed in the hope of peace with England, he proceeded to renewed efforts against Austria in Italy. This second was one of the most important campaigns of his life. With the strictest secrecy he made preparation of the renewal of the fortune of France, now united to his own. Though he assembled his forces with great publicity at Dijon as an army of reserve, which he reviewed on the 7th of May, 1800, its real destination was successfully concealed from the Austrians, whom it was in-tended to surprise; and attack in the rear. He set forward from Geneva on the 8th, to cross the Alps by St. Bernard, with sixty thousand men; while twenty thousand more were detached from General Moreau's force, by way of St. Gothard, as his left wing. The route was pronounced to be "barely possible". But the boundless and desolate scope of snow and sky had no terrors for the first consul and his army. Each soldier carried his sixty or seventy pounds weight; the artillery was dragged by a hundred men to each gun; and the carriages, in pieces, lashed upon the backs of mules. All difficulties were overcome; and on the 16th, the vanguard took possession of Aosta, a village of Piedmont.

Finally, they asserted the Roman Church to be the Whore of Babylon; and denied obedience to the pope or bishops, and that the pope had any authority over other churches, or the power of either the civil or ecclesiastical sword".

p.237 Jesus to his apostles, "he that heareth you heareth me; and he that despiseth you despiseth me; and he that despiseth me despiseth Him that sent me" (Luke 10:16). This saying constitutes the Father, Christ, and the Apostles, as one authority; and the only authority to which obedience should be rendered in spiritual affairs. Where this authority rules, everything works to the self-edification of the body in love. Had its members continued faithful to this supremacy, there would have been no scope for sovereign bishops and popes. But the Divine authority fell into disuse. It was no longer, what saith the Scripture? but, what saith

The "Annals of Italy" assign the decree of Phocas to the A.D. 607; upon which as a Note, Gieseler adds the following curious versified notice of Phocas' grant by Godfrey of Viterbo, in his Pantheon, about A.D. 1186.

The following testimonies concerning the holders of the foregoing truths, the Romanists will allow to be unexceptionable. They are the testimonies of Reinerius and Thuanus. Reinerius flourished about A.D. 1254; and his testimony is the more remarkable as he was a Dominican, and Inquisitor-General. "Among all the sects," says he, "which still are or have been, there is not any more pernicious to the Church than that of the Leonists. And this for three reasons. The first is because it is older; for some say that it hath endured from the time of Pope Sylvester; others from the time of the apostles (doubtless, 'the Saints' of ch. 13:7). The second reason, because it is more general; for there is scarce any country wherein the sect is not. The third, because when all other sects beget horror in the hearers by the outrageousness of their blasphemies against God ('the Earth that helps the Woman' in her hostility to Rome) this of the Leonists hath a great show of piety; because they live justly before men, and believe all things rightly concerning God, and all the articles which are contained in the creed; only they blaspheme the church of Rome and the clergy, whom the multitude of the laity is easy to believe."

p.44 they are treated of prophetically as a Divine and mighty king rejoicing with his bride and her companions. In the first chapter of Hebrews, Paul identifies this king with Christ Jesus, who has not yet been manifested in the circumstances set forth in the psalm. When the time arrives for the scene exhibited in Apoc. 19:11, he will, in the words of David, "Gird his sword upon his thigh with his glory and his majesty. And in his majesty he will ride prosperously because of truth and meekness, and righteousness: and his right hand will teach him terrible things. His arrows will be sharp in the heart of the King's enemies (the Goat-nations), whereby the people fall under him". When the union predicted between Christ and his Brethren hath ensued, and their throne established on Mount Zion, it is declared in the twelfth verse of the psalm, that "the Daughter of Tyre shall be there with a gift". This shows that in the day when Christ shall make "the blessed of the Father" princes in all the earth (v.16), there will be a Merchant-Power among "the powers that be," to which the prophetic title of "the Daughter of Tyre" will be applicable. This can be no other than Britain, the mart of modern nations, which inherits the wealth and commerce of her ancient mother; who, after being forgotten seventy years, revived and sang as a harlot; and like her British Daughter, "committed fornication with all the kingdoms of the world upon the face of the earth". The merchandise and revenue of the revived Tyrian Mother passed from her to Alexandria, Venice, Lisbon, and at length to Britannia; who holds on to them as her own peculiar and especial inheritance. She hopes to monopolize them as long as the sun and moon endure. Though this is objected to by other nations, and among these the United States, they have not the ability, and never will have, to divert them to their own ports and coffers. The decree of heaven is against them; for "the abundance of the sea shall be turned unto Zion, and the wealth of the nations shall come to her:" "for the nation and kingdom that will not serve the city of Yahweh, the Zion of the Holy One of Israel, shall perish, and be utterly wasted" (Isa. 60:5,11,12,14). Thus the commerce and riches of the world, instead of migrating westward, are to return to the Holy Land, where Tyre of old used to rejoice with Israel, when Solomon and Hiram were in league. And this will come to pass when Britain shall have exchanged her present rulers for "those who dwell before Yahweh" when the nations of the British Empire are ruled by the Lamb and his 144,000 on Mount Zion by the Eternal Power incarnate in Jesus and his Brethren "glorified together" (Rom. 8:17). Then, in the words of the prophet, "The merchandise and hire of Tyre shall be holiness to Yahweh; it shall not be treasured nor laid up; for her merchandise shall be for them who dwell before Yahweh, to eat sufficiently, and for durable clothing" (Isa. 23:18). Thus, "the wealth of the sinner is laid up for the just;" "for to the sinner God giveth travail, to

Having passed fort Bard by Strategem, and rested his army at Ivrea; and having deceived the Austrians as to his route, he pushed on to Milan unmolested, and entered that city June 2. He now issued a proclamation to his troops in which he declared, that the result he expected from their efforts was "cloudless glory and solid peace".

Now, let the reader note What occurred before Cyrus and Darius, with their "sanctified ones" (Isa. 13:3), the kings of the north, could take possession of Babylon. It was necessary, that "the Great River Euphrates," which flowed into and through the city, "should be dried up; that the way of Yahweh's Anointed Shepherd and his flock, might be prepared" (Isa. 44:25; 45:1). "A drought is upon her waters, and they shall be dried up;" "I will dry up her great river eth-yammah; and make her springs dry" (Jer. 50:38; 51:36). This was literally accomplished by Cyrus, who turned the Euphrates from its course; left the channel of the river dry; marched his troops along the dried way in the night into the very heart of Babylon; and, coming upon the king and nobles "as a thief," put them without discrimination, or mercy, to the sword.

Now, let the reader note What occurred before Cyrus and Darius, with their "sanctified ones" (Isa. 13:3), the kings of the north, could take possession of Babylon. It was necessary, that "the Great River Euphrates," which flowed into and through the city, "should be dried up; that the way of Yahweh's Anointed Shepherd and his flock, might be prepared" (Isa. 44:25; 45:1). "A drought is upon her waters, and they shall be dried up;" "I will dry up her great river eth-yammah; and make her springs dry" (Jer. 50:38; 51:36). This was literally accomplished by Cyrus, who turned the Euphrates from its course; left the channel of the river dry; marched his troops along the dried way in the night into the very heart of Babylon; and, coming upon the king and nobles "as a thief," put them without discrimination, or mercy, to the sword.

p.238 the Bishop? And in later times, what saith the Bishop of Rome, or the Pope? An incredible number of volumes have been written to propagate and defend the old wife's fable of Peter's popeship, with Mark, Barnabas, and all others, as his subordinate clergy. Having planted him upon the Seven Heads, with these for his college of Cardinal Princes, they have, as a consequence, claimed Rome as the throne of spiritual dominion, and the Bishop there as the only true undoubted Christian Pontiff! And thus, by such a lying conceit, Peter, Mark, Barnabas, and their company, are, in effect, made the inception of the Name of Blasphemy upon the Seven Hills!

Towards the end of the twelfth century heresy of this sort grew apace; for a new impulse was given to it by the labors of another enterprising witness against Rome, named PETER WALDO of Lyons. He was an opulent merchant, whose attention was drawn to the Holy Scriptures, which he was able to read for himself in the Latin Vulgate, the only edition of the Bible at that time in Europe. From the Scriptures alone he obtained the knowledge of the way of salvation; and being enlightened in this, he began to teach it to his neighbors. He felt the necessity of their having the word in their own tongue; he therefore, rendered the four testimonies for Jesus into French. This accomplished, he proceeded to expound their contents. Reinerius Saccho, a Romish Inquisitor, says of him, that "being somewhat learned, he taught the people the text of the New Testament in their mother tongue". "His kindness to the poor," says one of the Magdeburgh Centuriators, "being diffused, his love of teaching, and their love of learning, grew stronger and stronger, so that great crowds came to him, to whom he explained the scriptures. He was himself a man of learning; nor was he obliged to employ others to translate for him, as his enemies affirm." Be this as it may, the inhabitants of Europe were indebted to him for the first translation of the Bible into a modern tongue since the time that the Latin had ceased to be a living language - a gift of inestimable value to all who spoke French.

The candid and impartial historian, Thuanus, says, "Peter Waldo, a wealthy citizen of Lyons, about the year of Christ, 1170, gave name to the Waldenses. He, leaving his house and goods, devoted himself wholly to the profession of the gospel, and took care to have the writings of the prophets and apostles translated into the vulgar tongue. When now in a little time he had many followers about him, he sent them forth as his disciples into all parts to propagate the gospel. Their fixed opinions were said to be these: that the Church of Rome, because she hath renounced the true faith of Christ, is the Babylonian Harlot (Babylonicam meretricem esse) and that Barren Tree which Christ himself hath cursed, and commanded to be rooted up; therefore we must by no means obey the pope, and the bishops who cherish his errors; that the monastic life is the sink of the church, and a hellish institution; its vows are vain, and subservient only to the filthy love of boys: the orders of the presbytery are the marks of the great beast which is commemorated in the Apocalypse; the fire of purgatory, the sacrifice of the mass, the feast of the dedications of temples, the worship of saints, and propitiations for the dead, are inventions of Satan. To these, the principal and certain heads of their doctrine others are affixed concerning marriage, the resurrection, the state of the soul after death, and concerning meats."

Tertius est Papa Bonifacius ille benignus Qui petit a Phocamunus per secula dignum, Ut sedes Petri prima sit. Ille dedit Prima prius fiterat Constantopolitana: Est modo Romana, meliori dogmate clara.

p.45 gather and to heap up, that He may give to him that is good before God" (Prov. 13:22; Ecc. 2:26). How vast has been the travail through which the Daughter of Tyre has passed in hewing her way to her present greatness! What oceans of blood she has shed, what tears and groans she has extorted from her laboring and ill-fed millions devoted to the creation of wealth! It is gathered from all the face of the earth, and heaped up in store; but not for the capitalists, who pride themselves in its possession; nor for the impoverished multitudes, who as mere beasts of burden toil without cheer in its accumulation. No, it is for none of these; it is "for the just who dwell before Yahweh" "the poor in this world, rich in faith," then in possession of the kingdom promised to the obedient James 2:5.

Such was the practical representation of the entrance into the Apocalyptic Babylon by Yahweh's Anointed Shepherd, the all-conquering Heir of the World, and the Kings, whom he will have raised to consubstantiality with himself (1 John 3:2), and constituted his co-operators, and companions in arms. He has been, so to speak, besieging Babylon, and inflicting upon her all the miseries of a besieged city, by the forces engaged in the execution of the plagues of the first five vials; but, as in the typical operations of Cyrus, "the sanctified ones" of the Eternal Spirit have not come into the possession of the Apocalyptic Babylon by direct assaults. The Divine purpose required that the European Babylon should be entered by a coup de main, or unexpected attack. Cyrus entered thus. Since the commencement of the sixth vial, Christ Jesus has been, by his agents, drying up the Great River of Babylon, the Ottoman power; which, undried, would have been an inconvenience, and an embarrassment, in the development of those judicial household-arrangements, which must precede the manifestation of "the kings of the Sun's risings", to the world. Before the outpour of this vial, the Ottoman was a power, overshadowing Egypt, Syria, Palestine, and Syria, in great force. It could have concentrated its armies upon any of these provinces in great numbers; and with powerful and embarrassing effect, upon any un-warlike crowd that might be convened for the purposes of judgment, organization, and legislation, the necessary preparation for all great enterprises in a world like this. It is true, that the Deity could destroy them all, however numerous and powerful, as He did the army of Sennacherib, in the reign of Hezekiah: there is here no question about what He could do; He can do what He pleases: but it is not according to His revealed plan of operations in the work of manifesting His sons, to have that judicial and preparatory work interrupted by battle, and the burial of a host of corpses. To prevent this embarrassing inconvenience, He deemed it necessary to dry up from those countries the overflowing power of "the Desolator" - to diminish it, and hold it in check by other jealous powers whose mutual distrust should reduce "the Sick Man" to a nullity.

Such was the practical representation of the entrance into the Apocalyptic Babylon by Yahweh's Anointed Shepherd, the all-conquering Heir of the World, and the Kings, whom he will have raised to consubstantiality with himself (1 John 3:2), and constituted his co-operators, and companions in arms. He has been, so to speak, besieging Babylon, and inflicting upon her all the miseries of a besieged city, by the forces engaged in the execution of the plagues of the first five vials; but, as in the typical operations of Cyrus, "the sanctified ones" of the Eternal Spirit have not come into the possession of the Apocalyptic Babylon by direct assaults. The Divine purpose required that the European Babylon should be entered by a coup de main, or unexpected attack. Cyrus entered thus. Since the commencement of the sixth vial, Christ Jesus has been, by his agents, drying up the Great River of Babylon, the Ottoman power; which, undried, would have been an inconvenience, and an embarrassment, in the development of those judicial household-arrangements, which must precede the manifestation of "the kings of the Sun's risings", to the world. Before the outpour of this vial, the Ottoman was a power, overshadowing Egypt, Syria, Palestine, and Syria, in great force. It could have concentrated its armies upon any of these provinces in great numbers; and with powerful and embarrassing effect, upon any un-warlike crowd that might be convened for the purposes of judgment, organization, and legislation, the necessary preparation for all great enterprises in a world like this. It is true, that the Deity could destroy them all, however numerous and powerful, as He did the army of Sennacherib, in the reign of Hezekiah: there is here no question about what He could do; He can do what He pleases: but it is not according to His revealed plan of operations in the work of manifesting His sons, to have that judicial and preparatory work interrupted by battle, and the burial of a host of corpses. To prevent this embarrassing inconvenience, He deemed it necessary to dry up from those countries the overflowing power of "the Desolator" - to diminish it, and hold it in check by other jealous powers whose mutual distrust should reduce "the Sick Man" to a nullity.

The Sanguinary battle of Montebello being fought, and the Austrians defeated, that of MARENGO soon followed, between thirty thousand French and forty thousand Austrians. The immediate stake was the possession of Italy; and destruction to the party which should sustain defeat. After several hours fighting, the day seemed entirely against the French; but when the victory appeared within the grasp of the Austrian commander, Melas, then eighty years of age, his strength failed entirely, and he was obliged to leave the field. General Zach was left to complete it. At this critical moment, Dessaix, who had just re-turned from Egypt, rushed forward, and charged the enemy, wearied with fighting the whole day; Dessaix was killed; Zach was made prisoner, and his troops forced back at all points with immense loss. Their disaster was complete. Melas capitulated to Buonaparte, who permitted him to retire behind Mantua; being satisfied with the glory of having regained in the affairs of Montebello and of Marengo, almost all the loss sustained by the French in the disastrous campaign of 1799. After an absence of two months he returned to Paris, where he was regarded as "the Sun of France;" where all was gloom when he was hid from her - when he appeared, light and serenity were restored.

Animated with an enlightened zeal, he repudiated all the dogmas, rites, and ceremonies of human invention; and lifted up his voice like a trumpet against the arrogance of the pope arid the reigning vices of the clergy. In short, he seems to have taught the truth in its simplicity, while he exhibited in his own example its excellency, and labored most assiduously to demonstrate the difference between the teaching of the New Testament and that of the blasphemous clergy of the Latin church.

p.238 Ecclesiastical writers refer to the third century as the time when the doctrine, order, and worship, instituted by the apostles, under went a memorable and manifest change. The theology of the Judaizers had, to a great extent, drawn off the attention of professors from "the simplicity that is in Christ Jesus," and fixed it on a Hierarchy, particularly in Rome, Antioch, Alexandria, and Carthage, which, by this time, had become numerous, and ranked among their adherents many wealthy citizens. Professors of Christianity were now very numerous, and therefore, of no little consequence in the estimation of the government, which favored or repressed them as reasons of State dictated.

The following version is Close enough to give the mere English reader the sense;

From these testimonies it will be easy for the reader to discern the issue formed in the thirteenth century between the Lamb-Horned Beast and his Image, of the one part, and the Two Witnesses and the Saints of the Holy City, of the other. The spread of "Heresy" so alarmed the Ecclesiastical Power, that it determined to "cause all both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark" in token of their subjection, or be exterminated by fire and sword. Hence these decrees already cited. To carry these into effect, the first crusade was proclaimed of papal idolators against what they called Heretics, and the murderous Inquisition was first erected, the one to subdue their bodies, the other to enslave their minds. "It is enough to make the blood run cold," says one, whose episcopal succession from the apostles had come to him through those mendacious and sanguinary thieves and robbers, the popes, "to read of the horrid murders and devastation of this time, how many of these poor innocent Christians were sacrificed to the blind fury and malice of their enemies. It is computed, that in France alone were slain a million. The consequences of these atrocious barbarities are thus narrated by Thuanus, himself a Romanist. "Against the Waldenses," saith he, "when exquisite punishment availed little, and the evil was exasperated by the remedy which had been unseasonably applied, and their number increased daily, at length complete armies were raised; and a war of no less weight (ch. 11:7, and 13:7) than what our people had before waged against the Saracens, was decreed against them: the event of which was, that they were rather slain, put to flight, spoiled everywhere of their goods and dignities, and dispersed here and there, than that, convinced of their error, they repented. So that they who at first had defended themselves by arms (ch. 11:5,6) at last overcome by arms (ch. 11:7) fled into Province and the neighboring Alps of the French territory, and found a shelter for their life and doctrine in those places. Part withdrew into Calabria, and continued there a long while, even to the pontificate of Pius IV. Part passed into Germany, and fixed their abode among the Bohemians, and in Poland and Livonia. Others turning to the west, obtained refuge in Britain." In short, for the details are too copious to be narrated here, the Iconic Man-Power at length succeeded in its work of carnage and death. It overcame and put to death all opposition to its authority. By the cooperation of the imperial and regal horns of Egyptian and Sodomite Europe, styled "the secular arm," it trampled the saints of the Holy City under its impious and lawless feet; and prostrated the two sackcloth witnessing prophets in political death. But their anastasis in 1789-'92, when, exactly 1,260 years from Justinian's decree imparting spiritual supremacy to the pope, they again stood upon their feet (estesan epi tous podas auton) was the death knell of the terrific Image throughout the world. Since that reign of terror the ICONIC MAN became incurably sick. The facies Hippocratica pervades his senile and idiotic countenance; and like his brother of Constantinople is tottering on the verge of an abyss; into which when he falls, he will receive a measure, heaped up and shaken down, even "double" at the hands of his innocent and unoffending victims, such as in the day of his power, he meted out to them (ch. 13:10; 17:14; 18:6,20; 15:2). "Here is the patience of the Saints" this is what all true and genuine saints believe and are waiting for; and such are they who keep the commandments of the Deity, and the faith of Jesus (ch. 13:10; 14:12).

Vanquished at Marengo, and then defeated in Germany by Moreau, the Austrians sued for peace. On Jan. 8, 1801, the French Republic, and the Aulic Council of the Beast at Vienna, concluded the treaty of Luneville. This marks the termination of the third vial. Those readers who have not access to history, will, in this sketch, find such an outline as will enable them to discern the verification of the prophecy in the awful calamities of the recent past. But, intensely calamitous as they were, there was not a judgment of them all that was not richly merited by all upon which it fell. Pope, Kaiser, kings, and peoples are the representatives of a system of power, dyed red with the blood of men, of whom the world is not worthy. The third vial "gave them blood to drink," which they could in no wise evade. "Thou art righteous, 0 Lord," said the Angel of the Waters in the hearing of John, "because thou hast decreed these things" plagues, or judgments. "Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil". They forget the day of recompense. But the Lord God Almighty does not forget. The sentence of the third vial was on record seventeen hundred years before its execution; and in the hands of all who had a copy of the Scriptures. Those who shed the blood of Christ's Brethren, and oppress them in any way, must sooner or later be brought to judgment for the crime. "Whoso," said he, "shall offend one of these little ones who believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were drowned in the depths of the sea". Illustrative of this is the cause assigned for the judgments of the third vial. "The rivers and fountains of waters" had offended the little ones who believed, in shedding "the blood of saints and prophets;" not the prophets of the Old Testament; these were slain by the Jews, who atoned for the crime in the destruction of their State (Matt. 23:34-39); but "the two prophets," "who had power over the waters to turn them into blood, and to smite the earth with all plagues as often as they willed;" and who were hurt by their enemies in all the 1260 years of their days of the prophecy; and at length conquered and killed by the Beast of the Sea, at the instigation of its Name of Blasphemy enthroned as the Beast's Image upon the Seven Hills. For slaying these, who flourished contemporarily with the fiercest days of the Lion-Mouth of the Apocalyptic Babylon, the carnage of the third vial befell the countries where they mostly dwelt. The approval ex-pressed by the Angel of the Waters, is responded to by another voice heard by John, proceeding from "the Altar". The words of the seventh verse are represented as issuing thence, for the same reason that the Angel of ch. 14:18, is seen coming out from the altar, having power over fire. It is, because all slain for the witness of Jesus, being in him, the Altar, are regarded Apocalyptically as partakers with the altar, and under the altar; and as all the judgments upon the worshippers of the Beast's Image are on their account, the words, "Even so, Lord God al-mighty, true and righteous are thy judgments", are represented as proceeding thence.

But, shall it be said, that the wrath of the sixth vial was designed to dry up the great Turkish power, in order to put in its place a stronger and greater power, the Muscovite, before the coming of Christ and the manifestation of his Kings? The sixth vial is in part to remove Gentile Power to a convenient distance - to diminish, not to increase it, in the region of Sinai, and Teman, and Mount Paran (Hab. 3:3; Deut. 33:2): but, to substitute the Russian in Constantinople for the Turk; and to give the Czar dominion over the Ottoman empire before Christ comes; would render nugatory the drying up process of the past forty-eight years. My present conviction therefore, is, that the gathering together of the national armies against Jerusalem (Zech. 14:2) is after the appearance of Christ in the South; that is, in Teman; where he begins his career as "THE KING OF THE SOUTH(*) Dan. 11:40); and before he appears upon Mount Zion. Hence, we have not to wait the advance of the Russian Gog against Constantinople, and his overflowing and passing over, and stretching forth his power over Egypt, and the Holy Land. This will certainly come to pass; but it will all be consequent upon, not antecedent to, the appearing of Christ in Teman. The Great Euphratean Ottoman Power is not dried up to prepare the way of the greater power of Gog; but, "that the way of the Kings out of the Sun's rising might be prepared"

But, shall it be said, that the wrath of the sixth vial was designed to dry up the great Turkish power, in order to put in its place a stronger and greater power, the Muscovite, before the coming of Christ and the manifestation of his Kings? The sixth vial is in part to remove Gentile Power to a convenient distance - to diminish, not to increase it, in the region of Sinai, and Teman, and Mount Paran (Hab. 3:3; Deut. 33:2): but, to substitute the Russian in Constantinople for the Turk; and to give the Czar dominion over the Ottoman empire before Christ comes; would render nugatory the drying up process of the past forty-eight years. My present conviction therefore, is, that the gathering together of the national armies against Jerusalem (Zech. 14:2) is after the appearance of Christ in the South; that is, in Teman; where he begins his career as "THE KING OF THE SOUTH(*) Dan. 11:40); and before he appears upon Mount Zion. Hence, we have not to wait the advance of the Russian Gog against Constantinople, and his overflowing and passing over, and stretching forth his power over Egypt, and the Holy Land. This will certainly come to pass; but it will all be consequent upon, not antecedent to, the appearing of Christ in Teman. The Great Euphratean Ottoman Power is not dried up to prepare the way of the greater power of Gog; but, "that the way of the Kings out of the Sun's rising might be prepared"

p.238 In this century, a system of ecclesiastical management was introduced, aptly styled by some, the Episcopal System of Church Law. It got rid of the trouble of consulting the laity, or common people, on the affairs of their respective ecclesias; it introduced sacerdotal or priestly authority; it set up as many principalities as there were bishoprics; it acknowledged the Bishop in Rome as the first in order, but nothing more; and to consummate the whole, it eventually deprived the so-call-ed laity of all right to be consulted about their own affairs. This state of things, when compared with that exhibited in the Acts of the Apostles, indicates a notable falling away; of which, the following quotation from Mosheim will give the reader some idea:

These proceedings of Waldo were reported to the Archbishop of Lyons, who became very indignant. He forbade Peter to teach any more on pain of excommunication, and of being proceeded against as a heretic. But Waldo belonging to a remnant of the woman's seed, was not to be silenced by archiepiscopal authority. He replied, that though a layman, he could not be silent in a matter which concerned his fellow-creatures. Attempts were presently made to apprehend him, but without success: so that he lived concealed in Lyons for a space of three whole years. At the end of these, pope Alexander III. hearing of his doings, anathematized both him and his adherents. The shepherd and his flock were therefore scattered abroad, and like the faithful in Jerusalem on the death of Stephen, "went everywhere preaching the word" (Acts 8:4). Waldo retired into Dauphine, where he preached with great success. Persecuted from place to place, he next retired into Picardy. Driven from thence, he proceeded into Germany, carrying along with him "the testimony of the anointed Jesus." He at length settled in Bohemia, about A.D. 1184, where he continued witnessing until death.

Pope Boniface the third is he benign Who sought fit gift of Phocas for all time, That Peter's Chair the first may be. He gave't The First of rank Byzantine was before; 'Tis Roman now, more fam'd by doctrine pure.

In conclusion, it may be noted in passing from the exposition of the prophecy of the third vial, that the fifth verse of this chapter reproduces the formula of the Divine manifestation, previously announced in ch. 1:4,8; and 11:17 ho hon kai ho hen kai ho erchomenos. But the "recent editors" of the original text tell us that, in the text before us, hoer-chomenos, He who is coming, is superseded in some manuscripts, by ho osios, the Holy One, which some of them prefer. Beza reads ho esomenos, He who shall be; which is followed in the English Version. Upon this reading, Wordsworth says, "In no codex that I know is ho esomenos found, which reading has passed into the English Version from Beza's recensiori". It may be true, that there is no such reading extant; and that there never was such a reading as Beza's: the correctness, however, of hoer-chomenos, inch. 1:4,8; and 11:17, is not disputed. "He who is coming" and "He who shall be," are equivalent phrases; which "the Holy One" is not. No good reason can be adduced why "the Holy One" should be substituted for the prophetic announcement, that YAHWEH the almighty Elohim, who is and who was, is coming, or shall be, here again. In my translation, I have restored the ho erchomenos to what, I conceive to be, its proper place. "He who is coming" is exceed-ingly appropriate in this fifth verse; inasmuch as the third vial, in the outpouring of its wrath, was a sign to those who witnessed its terrible judgments, that the coming, announced in the fifteenth verse, was steadily and surely approaching. The reader can therefore adopt my rendering, or that of the Common Version, which is essentially the same.

His followers were chiefly called "Leonists," after the city of Lyons, where he commenced his labors: they were also frequently designated "the Poor of Lyons". Numbers of his disciples fled for an asylum into the Valleys of Piedmont, taking with them the new translation of the Scriptures. In this country they mingled with the Paulicians and other witnesses against Romish superstition previously existing there, and were afterwards known by the name of "Waldenses," or Vaudois: they also diffused themselves over the South of France, where they became known as "Albigenses;" for it is the same class of witnesses styled by these different names, according to the different countries, or districts of the same country in which they appeared. In Alsace and along the Rhine, the doctrines of Waldo spread extensively. Persecution followed in their wake. Thirty-five citizens of Mentz were consumed to ashes by the papists in one fire in the city of Bingen, and eighteen in Mentz itself. The bishops of Mentz and Strasburgh breathed nothing but vengeance and slaughter against them; and at Strasburgh, where Waldo himself is said to have narrowly escaped, eight persons were committed to the flames. Multitudes died praising God, and in the confident hope of resurrection to eternal life. The blood of the witnesses became the seed of a new generation of faithful ones; and in Bulgaria, Croatia, Dalmatia, and Rungary, societies were established which flourished throughout the thirteenth century.

p.238 "The most respectable writers of that age," says he, "have put it out of the power of an historian to spread a veil over the enormities of ecclesiastical rulers. For, though several yet continued to exhibit to the world illustrious examples of primitive piety and christian virtue (these were the "few names even in Sardis which have not defiled their garments," and the "little strength" of Philadelphia that had "kept the word, and had not denied the name of Christ" -Author) yet many were sunk in luxury and voluptuousness; puffed up with vanity, arrogance, and ambition; possessed with a spirit of contention and discord, and addicted to many other vices that cast an undeserved reproach upon the holy religion of which they were the unworthy professors and ministers.

This title, or name of spiritual power, was regarded by the popes as a splendid gift. It was, as Gregory the Seventh remarked, "unicum nomen in mundo, the only name in the world. There was no other name like it, distinguishing one son of pride from another. Father and Universal Bishop exalted the Bishop of Rome to the rank of "God of the earth," a title always coveted by those who filled the imperial office of the Seven Hills. Until the tide of successful villainy turned, the pope adored the Piety of the execrable monster; and a pillar was erected cal-ed "the Pillar of Phocas, " to commemorate his "innumerable benefits," conferred upon his Italian subjects; in other words, upon the Pope and his clergy. It was a Corinthian fluted column of Greek marble, standing upon a pyramid of seven steps. "In 1813, the Duchess of Devonshire having made an excavation around it, an inscription," says Elliott, 'was discovered on the base, stating that a gilt statue had been placed on the top of it to the emperor Phocas, by the then Exarch of Italy, in the A.D. 608." Dr. Burton in his book on Rome, gives the inscription at full. The date is thus defined. "Die Prima Mensis August. Indict. Und. ac Pietatis ejus Anno Quinto;" the 11th of the Indiction, and the 5th of the reign of Phocas. Now of that indiction the first was the year 598; the eleventh, the year 608: and as Phocas began his reign A.D. 602 or 603, its fifth year comes also to A.D. 608. The occasion of the honor is stated to be, "Pro innumerabilibus Pietatis ejus Beneficus, et pro Quiete procurata Italiae, ac conservata Libertate" - For the innumerable benefits of his Piety, and for the Repose procured for Italy, and Liberty preserved. Dr. Burton justly refers this to his concessions to the Pope. Thus the four years from A.D. 604 to A.D. 608, are notable in the history of Phocas' aggrandizement of the Papal See: and from A.D. 529 to A.D. 604, are seventy five years; and from A.D. 533 to A.D. 608, are also seventy five years:" or the difference between Daniel's 1335 of ch. 12:12, and "the time, times, and the dividing of a time," of his ch. 7:25, and 12:7.

It may be further remarked here, that in regard to ch. 11:17, all the recent editors cancel the words, kai ho erchomenos, on the authority of A.B.C. ,(*)certain manuscripts of the fifth and seventh centuries; their omission is therefore recommended by the annotator of the new Baptist Version. I have no other objection to this, than that the Apocalypse when given, was a prophecy of things afterwards to transpire, preparatory to, and introductory of, the thief like and glorious manifestation of Him "who is coming". The Divine formula, therefore, where introduced, as much required the words "and who is coming," as the words "who is and who was," in order to keep constantly before the minds of "the servants of the Deity" in all intermediate ages and generations, the great truth, until it shall be verified in the visible apocalypse of hoer-chomenos, THE COMING ONE. In the times of the A.B.C. manuscripts, the appearing of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, was deemed a pestilent heresy by the party in place and power; who had no scruples about altering and omitting words and phrases, if it suited their purpose. This being the fact, the testimony of their manuscripts is questionable. It is true, that inch. 11:17, the omission would seem warranted by the reason given for thanksgiving - "because thou hast taken thy great power and reigned;" which implies, that the almighty Elohim had come, and that therefore, after this event, to affirm that he is coming, would be anachronistic and inappropriate. This is true, still, for the reason given, I conclude, that the words were a part of the prophecy originally delivered to John, and ought not therefore to be omitted.

p.239 And in many places the bishops assumed a princely authority, particularly those who had the greatest number of churches under their inspection, and who presided over the most opulent assemblies. They appropriated to their evangelical functions the splendid ensigns of temporal majesty. A throne, surrounded with ministers, exalted above his equals the servant of the meek and lowly Jesus; and sumptuous garments dazzled the eyes and minds of the multitude into an ignorant veneration for their arrogated authority. Presbyters followed their example, neglected their duties, and abandoned themselves to the indolence and delicacy of an effeminate and luxurious life. Deacons imitated their superiors, and the effects of a corrupt ambition were spread through every rank of the Sacred Order."

It is not surprising that the great and rapid increase of the witnesses should stimulate the Court of Rome to great activity against them. Their testimony was tormenting; and it is not in human nature to endure torment without seeking relief. Rome had but one remedy, and that was persecution to the ruin of body and estate. Councils were held in continual succession, and persecuting edicts issued to check the growing evil, though with little or no effect.

Papists and Protestants seem to agree in assigning the constitutional beginning of the Papacy to this epoch of the reign of Phocas. Luther, in his Table Talk, says, 'the Pope and Turk both began almost at one time under the emperor Phocas." Osiander dated from the same, "a Foca Imperatore, qui Papatum, seu Primatum, publico edicto stabilivit" - by the emperor Phocas, who established the Papacy, or Primacy, by a public decree. And Bullinger, an early protestant, speaks of the Papacy having been established by Gregory I, and the Decree of Phocas. In fact, an imperial decree was indispensable to its establishment. The Bishops of Rome had made pretensions of a high and lofty character before the times of Justinian and Phocas; but their claims to supremacy, however approved by clerical adherents and canons, were of no account in a legal or constitutional point of view. Their pretensions to supremacy over all, only demonstrated the pride of their hearts, and the spirit of Antichrist therein, which, as Gregory truly said, would make him who was possessed of it "strain his pretensions up to Godhead". But an Italian or Roman subject of the empire, lay or clerical, might have strained to bursting after godhead, they could never have attained it without the sanction of an imperial edict which had the force of law. The reader will perceive this readily, aided by the illustrative supposition, that Pope Brigham Young of Utah, as respectable a pretender to godhead as Boniface the third, or any other blasphemer before or after him should proclaim himself Universal Overseer and Father of this consolidated despotism, the United States; his proclamation would only be the subject of ridicule and contempt with all the names and denominations of the day; but, if the factions in Congress, with the idea that in some way their interests would be promoted, were to pass a bill constituting said Brigham, Father of all men and Universal Overseer, with the approval of the President, the case would be wonderfully altered! The power and authority of Brigham would be enthroned in every family; he would be ex officio Judge of the Faith, and Head of all the churches of "The Union." This would be no matter of ridicule; but a subject of great fear and trembling to all not of his church; for all "the names and denominations" in relation to Mormonism being heretical, the bill or decree constituting him Pope and Universal Bishop, would place them all at his disposal. All this we can comprehend, feel, and appreciate; and would be thoroughly convinced that there was more in the name than "punctilio of style and a few syllables". If such a decree were promulgated in this country, it would convulse society from one end of it to the other. We should feel that our liberty had taken to itself wings and fled. This was the unrest and the apprehension of the Italians and citizens of Rome, when the emperor Maurice tacitly permitted the Byzantine Brigham, John the Faster, to proclaim himself, with the aid and consent of a council of Constantinople, Universal Bishop. The murder of Maurice by Phocas was therefore regarded as a joyful and auspicious event; especially when it was discovered, that he could be used in putting down Byzantine arrogance, and in transferring the "Blasphemous Name," as Gregory styled it, to the city of Rome. This gave repose to Italy, and restored liberty to the adherents of THE ANTICHRIST in Rome.

The following is an extract from the fourth canon of the council of Tours, held A.D. 1163. Evidently referring to the Albigensian Remnant, it thus proceeds:

p.239 In treating of the progress of episcopal authority he remarks that "the prelates of the third century imperceptibly changed the language of exhortation into that of command, scattered the seeds of future usurpations, and supplied, by scripture allegories and declamatory rhetoric, their deficiency of force and of reason. They exalted the unity and power of the church, as it was represented in the episcopal office, of which every bishop enjoyed an equal and undivided portion. Princes and magistrates, it was often repeated, might boast an earthly claim to a transitory dominion; it was the episcopal authority alone which was derived from the Deity, and extended itself over this and over another world. The Bishops (it was said) were the Vicegerents of Christ, the successors of the Apostles, and the Mystic Substitutes of the High Priest of the Mosaic law. Their exclusive privilege of conferring the sacerdotal character, invaded the freedom both of clerical and popular elections; and if, in the administration of the church, they still consulted the judgment of the presbyters (or elders), or the inclination of the people, they most carefully inculcated the merit of such a voluntary condescension. The bishops acknowledged the supreme authority which resided in the assembly of their brethren (of the episcopal order); but in the government of his peculiar diocese, each of them exacted from his flock the same implicit obedience as if that favorite metaphor had been literally just, and as if the shepherd had been of a more exalted nature than that of his sheep. This obedience, however, was not imposed without some efforts on one side, and some resistance on the other. The democratical part of the constitution was, in many places, very warmly supported by the zealous or interested opposition of the inferior clergy. But their patriotism received the ignominious epithets of faction and schism; and the episcopal cause was indebted for its rapid progress to the labors of many active prelates who, like Cyprian of Carthage, could reconcile the arts of the most ambitious statesman with the christian virtues which seem

And who else, even upon Romish principles and upon Papal authority, could the Bishops of Rome from Boniface downwards be than the Antichrist Name? Gregory the First, whom Papists surname "the Great," the last Bishop of Rome they have decreed to be "a saint," and with them a great authority, says, as already quoted, "I am bold to say, that whoever adopts, or affects the title of 'Universal Bishop' has the pride and character of Antichrist, and is in some manner his forerunner in his haughty quality of elevating himself above the rest of his order." John the Faster adopted the title and held on to it, and Cynacus, his successor, also. They were therefore either the Antichrist, or his Forerunner; they could not have been the Antichrist however much like him; be-cause Paul, who styles him ho Anomos, the Lawless One, teaches that he will be in supremacy till the reappearance of Christ to destroy him; and their supremacy fell under the dagger of Phocas: they must, therefore, have been his Forerunner; and he who obtained the coveted title, Boniface the Third, the first Bishop of Rome who wore it, and their successor in it, and all of whose successors adopt it and glory in it, must be, according to Gregory, an incarnation of papal infallibility, the first of the order and name termed in Scripture, "THE ANTICHRIST." And doubtless Gregory was correct; and, like Caiaphas the High Priest, prophesied the truth without believing or knowing it. The Man-of-Sin Power, born of the Woman about two hundred and ninety five years previous, was now transferred by this Decree of Phocas from the successors of Constantine to the Universal Bishop upon the Seven Hills. This "Only Name in the World" was now the Eyes and Mouth of the Man of Sin. So long as Italy remained a province of the Greek empire it was politically allied with the Eastern Roman Horn of Dan. 8:9; but, as the power of this receded, that of the Universal Bishop advanced; until, Constantinople losing all dominion in Italy, the Bishop became the Eyes and Mouth of the Little Western Horn of Dan. 7:8; when, in its after-growth, it reached the fullness of the stature of the Man-of-Sin Power, as we shall hereafter see.

p.240 "The same causes," he continues, "which at first had destroyed the equality of the presbyters, introduced among the bishops a preeminence of rank, and from thence a superiority of jurisdiction. As often as in the spring and autumn they met in provincial synod, the difference of personal merit and reputation was very sensibly felt among the members of the assembly, and the multitude was governed by the wisdom and eloquence of the few. But the order of public proceedings required a more regular and less invidious distinction; the office of perpetual presidents in the Councils of each province was conferred on the bishops of the principal city, and these aspiring prelates, who soon acquired the lofty titles of Metropolitans and Primates, secretly prepared themselves to usurp over their episcopal brethren the same authority which the bishops had so lately assumed above the college of presbyters. Nor was it long before an emulation of preeminence and power prevailed among the metropolitans themselves, each of them affecting to display, in the most pompous terms, the temporal honors and advantages of the city over which he presided; the numbers and opulence of the christians, who were subject to their pastoral care; saints and martyrs who had arisen among them, and the purity with which they had preserved the tradition of the faith, as it had been transmitted through a series of orthodox bishops from the apostle, or the apostolic disciple, to whom the foundation of their church was ascribed. From every cause, either of a civil or of an ecclesiastical nature, it was easy to foresee that ROME must enjoy the respect, and would soon claim the obedience, of the provinces. The society of the faithful bore a just proportion to the capital of the empire; and the Roman church was the greatest, the most numerous, and, in regard to the West, the most ancient of all the christian establishments, many of which had received their religion from the pious labors of her missionaries. Instead of one apostolic founder, the utmost boast of Antioch, of Ephesus, or of Corinth, the banks of the Tyber were supposed to have been honored with the preaching and martyrdom of the two most eminent among the apostles; and the Bishops of Rome very prudently claimed the inheritance of whatever prerogatives were attributed, either to the person, or to the office, of St. Peter. The bishops of Italy and of the provinces were disposed to allow them a primacy of order and association (such was their very accurate expression) in the christian aristocracy. But (in the third century) the power of a monarch was rejected with abhorrence, and the aspiring genius of Rome experienced, from the nations of Asia and Africa, a more vigorous resistance to her spiritual, than she had formerly done to her temporal, dominion. The patriotic Cyprian who ruled with the most absolute sway the church of Carthage and the provincial synods, opposed with resolution and success the ambition of the Roman Bishop, artfully connected his own cause with that of the eastern bishops, and, like Hannibal, sought out new allies in the heart of Asia. If this Punic war was carried on without any effusion of blood, it was owing much less to the moderation than to the weakness of the contending prelates. Invectives and excommunications were their only weapons; and these, during the progress of the whole controversy, they hurled against each other with equal fury and devotion.

"In the country about Toulouse, there sprang up long ago a damnable heresy, which, by little and little, like a cancer, spreading itself to the neighboring places of Gascony, hath already infected many other provinces; which whilst, like a serpent, it hid itself in its own windings and twistings, crept on more secretly, and threatened more danger to the simple and unwary; wherefore we do command all bishops and priests dwelling in these parts, to keep a watchful eye upon these heretics; and under the pain of excommunication, to forbid all persons, as soon as these heretics are discovered, from presuming to afford them any abode in their country, or to lend them any assistance, or to entertain any commerce with them in buying or selling; that so at least, by the loss of the advantages of human society, they may be compelled to repent of the error of their life. And if any prince, making himself partaker of their iniquity, shall endeavor to oppose these decrees, let him be struck with the same anathema. And if they shall be seized by any catholic princes, and cast into prison, let them be punished with confiscation of all their goods. And because they frequently come together from divers parts into one hiding place, and because they have no other ground for their dwelling together save only their agreement and consent error - therefore we will that such their conventicles be both diligently searched after, and, when they are found, that they be examined according to canonical severity".

The Antichrist who in A.D. 312, was a babe of sin, was now, in A.D. 604-'8, a young man, and still in his growth. He was not yet of full age; nor would he be, until the Two Horned Beast should rise up out of the earth among the already existing ten horns. The development of this Lamb-Horned Beast and the Image of the Wounded Head, would consummate the healing of that head. We have not yet quite arrived at that point in the vision. I must therefore pause again in tracing the development of "the Name of Blasphemy upon the Heads," and proceed to consider the period allotted to the Mouth, during which it is Divinely permitted to "speak great things and blasphemies; and to open in blasphemy concerning the Deity (!,ros ton Theon) to blaspheme his Name and his Tabernacle, and the dwellers in the heaven."

But, while power was on the side of the oppressor, the Deity had also given power to His witnesses (Apoc. 11:3). This made their sack-cloth witnessing singularly effective, as is very plain from the following extract of a letter from the Archbishop of Narbonne to Louis VII., king of France: "My Lord the King;" says he, "We are extremely pressed with many calamities; amongst which there is one that most of all affects us, which is, that the catholic faith is extremely shaken in this our diocese; and St. Peter's boat is so violently tossed by the waves that it is in great danger of sinking"!

p.240 "From the imperious declamations of Cyprian, we should naturally conclude that the doctrines of excommunication and penance formed the most essential part of religion, and that it was much less dangerous for the disciples of Christ to neglect the observance of the moral duties, than to despise the censures and authority of their bishops. Sometimes we might imagine that we were listening to the voice of Moses, when he commanded the earth to open, and to swallow up, in consuming flames, the rebellious race which refused obedience to the priesthood of Aardn; and we should sometimes suppose that we heard a Roman Consul asserting the majesty of the republic, and declaring his inflexible resolution to enforce the rigor of the laws. 'If such irregularities are suffered with impunity (it is thus that the Bishop of Carthage chides the lenity of his colleague) if such irregularities are suffered, there is an end of episcopal vigor, an end of the sublime and divine power of governing the church, an end of christianity itself.' Cyprian had renounced those temporal honors which it is probable he would never have obtained; but the acquisition of such absolute command over the conscience and understanding of a congregation, however obscure or despised by the world, is more truly grateful to the pride of the human heart than the possession of the most despotic power, imposed by arms and conquest on a reluctant people.

p.240 "A perpetual stream of strangers and provincials flowed into the capacious bosom of Rome. Whatever was strange or odious whoever was guilty or suspected might hope, in the obscurity of that immense capital, to elude the vigilance of the law. In such a various conflux of nations, every teacher, either of truth or of falsehood, every founder, whether of a virtuous or criminal association, might easily multiply his disciples or accomplices. The christians of Rome, at the time of the persecution of Nero, A.D. 61, in which Paul suffered death, are represented by Tacitus as amounting to a very great multitude. The church in Rome was undoubtedly the first and most populous in the empire" - not first in order of beginning, but in that of influence; "and we are possessed of an authentic record which attests the state of religion in

The god of the Roman earth was exceedingly incensed at this stormy buffeting of his bark. In A.D .1181, Lucius,. the third pope of that name, fulminated his decree against them, in which he said, "We declare all Catharists, Paterines, and those who call themselves 'the Poor of Lyons,' etc., to lie under a perpetual anathema!" All who presume to buy and sell without authority from the Roman image (Apoc. 13:17) - all who held or taught opinions concerning baptism, the Lord's Supper, remission of sins, marriage, or any of the sacraments of the church, differing from what the holy church of Rome doth teach and observe - are to be judged heretics, and anathematized. The refusal to take an oath is to be deemed a proof of heresy, and treated accordingly; and all the afore-mentioned were to be delivered up to the secular power for punishment, and their goods confiscated to the use of the church. The clergy are enjoined to make vigilant search after all such heretics, and to call to their aid all earls, barons, governors, and consuls of cities, and other places, to execute the ecclesiastical and imperial statutes concerning these matters; and any city that refused to yield obedience to these "decretal constitutions" was to be excluded from all commerce with other cities, and deprived of the episcopal dignity.

These intolerant proceedings, directed chiefly against the witnessing remnants of the Woman's seed in the south of France, drove multitudes of them into and across the Pyrenees, into Spain; in consequence of which, Ildefonsus, king of Aragon, published an edict, A.D. 1194, charging and commanding all the "Waldenses, Insabbati, who are otherwise called 'the Poor of Lyons,' and all other heretics, who cannot be numbered, being excommunicated from the Holy Church, adversaries to the cross of Christ, violaters and corrupters of the Christian religion, to depart out of our kingdom, and all our dominions." Moreover, "whosoever from that day forward, should presume to receive the Waldenses, Insabbati, or any other heretics, of whatsoever profession, into their houses, or be present at their pernicious sermons, or afford them meat or any other favor, should incur the indignation of Almighty God, as well as that of his majesty - have his goods confiscated, without the remedy of an appeal; and be punished as if he were actually guilty of high treason!" Such was the state of matters at the end of the twelfth century; and it may serve to make the reader's mind more appreciative to the appalling scenes of slaughter and carnage inflicted upon the woman's seed in the war upon them by "the Beast that ascendeth out of the abyss" (Apoc. 11:7). See Vol.3, p.268-269; and ch. 13:21.

p.243 List of the first 26 "popes" or bishops of Rome not shown as written in Latin

p.244 that city about the middle of the third century, and after a peace of thirty-eight years. The clergy at that time consisted of ONE BISHOP, (named CORNELIUS, and of the Babylonian Mouth Order,) forty-six presbyters, seven deacons, as many subdeacons, forty-two acolytes, and fifty readers, exorcists, and porters. The number of widows, of the infirm and of the poor, who were maintained by the oblations of the faithful, amounted to fifteen hundred. From reason, it may be estimated that the Christians in Rome were about fifty thousand. The populousness of that great capital will not surely have been less than a million of inhabit-ants, of whom christians might constitute at the most a twentieth part."

p.244 In the middle of the third century, this Cornelius figures as the Roman Mouth of that section of professors who now assumed to themselves the title of "the Holy Catholic Church." The spirit of the Lion fully possessed him; and he spoke with all the loftiness and inflation of his prototype in Babylon. A council was convened in Rome while he was in office, which decreed the propriety of excommunicating the founder of the Novatians, who could no longer tolerate the episcopal arrogance and corruption of the times. In writing to Fabius, bishop of Antioch, on the decrees of the council, he undertakes to delineate the character of Novatus, who, judged by an enemy, would appear a very disreputable person. The extracts given by Eusebius (himself also an enemy to Novatus) from the letters of Cornelius, show the latter to have been truly a wolf in sheep's clothing. He speaks of Novatus "aspiring to the episcopate" which he styles a "precipitate ambition," and a folly. He speaks of "the artifice and duplicity," "the periuries and falsehoods, the dissocial and savage character," "the devices and wickedness," of "that artful and malicious beast." The crime of Novatus consisted in maintaining that the Christian ecciesia was a society where virtue and innocence should reign; and whose members, from their entrance into it, were undefiled by any enormous crime. This most Scriptural position, consequently, caused him to regard every society which readmitted heinous offenders to communion, after the custom in Rome, as unworthy the title of a Christian ecclesia. This gave Cornelius and his adherents mortal offence, which was greatly'aggravated by the Novatians obliging such as came over to them from the Catholics to be reimmersed, as a necessary preparation for entering their society. By the maintaining of this impregnable position, the nominally Christian body in Rome and elsewhere was rent in twain. There was now a large minority who repudiated the system of things described in the above citations from Gibbon and Mosheim; and who, in so doing, renounced all allegiance to the episcopate of the Apocalyptic "Synagogue of the Satan." The Novatian minority regarded Cornelius as the prince of this synagogue in Rome,

p.244 denied the Christianity of what he called "the Holy Ecelesia," and claimed that the true apostolic faith and discipline was with the Novatians or Puritans, and with them alone.

p.244 This being the issue between Cornelius and Novatus, and knowing, on credible testimony, the awful corruption of morals that prevailed, we are at no loss to perceive the bitterness and malignity that inspired the epithets of Cornelius. A man who was contending earnestly for purity would be careful, for the sake of consistency, if for no other reason, to avoid such offenses against morality as Cornelius accuses him of. "We have seen," says he to Fabius, "within a short time, an extraordinary conversion and change in Novatus. For this most illustrious man, and he who affirmed with the most dreadful oaths, that he never aspired to the Episcopate, has suddenly appeared a bishop, as thrown among us by some machine!" Novatus, doubtless, affirmed the truth, that he did not aspire to the Roman Episcopate, as constituted by the novel episcopal system of church law; but had no objection to act as bishop, presbyter, or elder, with others, upon a pure and Scriptural foundation. The means by which he was appointed such, the jealous Cornelius likens to "some machine" projecting him into their midst. The appearance of Novatus, claiming to be Bishop of the Only True Ecclesia in Rome, ordained an elder by three sympathizing elders from an Italian province, would create quite a sensation; especially when his presence there was hailed, and his ordination endorsed, by a large minority of the original community. We can imagine how Bishop Cornelius felt by supposing what would be the feeling of Pius IX, the present successor of Cornelius, if a second Novatus were now to appear in Rome, endorsed by nearly half the Catholics of St. Peter's alleged patrimony, as the only true successor of the apostle! Bishop Pius would no doubt be in a foaming rage, and open his lion-mouth in the most orthodox Babylonian style. He would defame and curse his rival in the fashion and phraseology peculiar to Roman Holiness, which claims universal and absolute authority over all. Cornelius though neither universal nor absolute, yet spoke as an episcopal lion's whelp who felt the spirit of future greatness moving within, and said, "this dogmatist, this pretended champion of ecclesiastical discipline, when he attempted to seize and usurp the episcopate not given him from above (whence Cornelius claimed to have received it) selected two desperate characters as his associates, to send them to some small, and that the smallest, parts of Italy, and from thence, by some fictitious plea, to impose upon three bishops there, men altogether ignorant and simple, affirming and declaring, that it was necessary for them to come to Rome in all haste, that all the dissension that had there arisen might be removed through their mediation in conjune-

p.246 tion with the other bishops. When these men had come, being, as before observed, but simple and inexperienced in discerning the artifice and villany of the wicked, they were shut up with men of the same stamp with himself, and at the tenth hour, heated with wine and surfeiting, they forced them, by a kind of shadowy and empty imposition of hands, to confer the episcopate (pertaining to the ecciesia in Rome) upon him; which, though by no means suited to him, he claims by fraud and treachery. This was the roaring of the Lion-like Mouth, A.D. 251. The epithets sounded out against poor Novatus and his brethren, who were doing the best in their power to organize a Scriptural association, by which the original Apostolic faith and discipline introduced by the converted "Jews and proselytes" from Jerusalem, and strengthened after-wards by Paul's personal ministration for two whole years, might be maintained and perpetuated in Rome; and the Apostasy then so advanced there might be broken up, or restrained: the epithets which denounced this holy enterprise, and the unproved and reckless assertions accompanying them, are in themselves a justification of it. Cornelius claimed to be in possession of Holy Spirit; and therefore, when voted into office by his copresbyters, to have received "the episcopate from above;" all his sanguinary and blasphemous successors claim the same things; but his fruits and theirs clearly evince that the only spirit that has worked in them all is the spirit peculiar to "the children of disobedience." We know, by experience, how readily "fellows of the baser sort," pretending to great conscientiousness, and zeal for religion, busy themselves, for the promotion of their own wicked purposes, in defaming and bearing false witness against men whose lives are devoted to the propagation and defense of the truth. These were evidently the weapons of Cornelius wielded against the company of brethren convened in Rome. The wine and surfeiting story was most likely trumped up for the occasion. The author has been vilified, by so-called "elders," after the same fashion. The same sort of accusation was circulated against the Lord himself; so that we can endorse the truth and justice of an observation of Dr. Jortin, that "we should not trust too much to the representations which christians, after the apostolic age, have given of the heretics of their times. Proper abatements must be made for credulity, zeal, resentment, mistake and exaggeration."

p.246 It is easy to perceive how deeply Cornelius' episcopal pride was wounded, from the following words: "This asserter of the gospel then," says he, "did not know that there should be BUT ONE BISHOP in a catholic ecclesia - en katholike ecclesia. Novatius and Novatus both knew that, whatever there should be in a catholic church, there ought to be in a Scriptural ecclesia, more than one. If the original episcopal plurality had

p.247 not been departed from, there would have been no place found for an Episcopal Monarch in Rome. Cornelius was such a king in embryo. The "shadowy and empty imposition of hands," which he attributes to Novatus, had made him such; and it is the same sort of imposition, by which all bishops according to "church law," are imposed upon credulous and deceived communities. Sixteen bishops ordained Cornelius, and three ordained Novatus; the whole nineteen claiming to possess the Spirit. Which was the bishop from above? Cornelius was ordained first. True; and Saul was ordained before David. Priority therefore, determines nothing. The anointing of David was the repudiation of Saul. And so it proved with reference to the Five Episcopal Bodies in Rome. The organization of the NEW ECCLESIA in the capital of the empire was, Providentially, the first step to the spuing of the Catholic Synagogue of the Satan out of the Spirit's Mouth (Apoc. 3:16); and to the leaving it upon the Seven Heads, "a wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked," carcass; then after to be galvanized by imperial power and authority into a political existence, the judicial termination of which is waiting at the door. It seems that Cornelius avenged his wounded dignity, in true papal fashion, upon the bishops who ordained Novatus; for he says, "one of these, not long after, returned to his church, mourning and confessing his error, with whom also we communed as a layman, as all the people present interceded for him, and we sent successors to the other bishops, ordaining them in the place where they were." The successors sent were probably to rule catholic churches formed by the divisions endorsing the corrupt practices and lay discipline of the Cornelian church in Rome. The following extract from a writer on ecclesiastical affairs will finish what we have to offer in regard to the development of the Name of Blasphemy previous to the reign of Constantine.

p.247 "Novatianus was an elder or presbyter in the church at Rome about the A.D. 251, at which time Cyprian flourished at Carthage. He was a man of extensive learning, and the author of several publications in defence of the doctrine of the Trinity and other subjects. His address is said to have been eloquent and insinuating, while his morals were irreproachable. He beheld with just indignation the depravity of the church in his day, and sighed over its abominations. Within the space of a few years, Christians had been caressed by one emperor, and persecuted by another. In the day of prosperity many persons rushed into the church who had never seriously counted the cost; and, like the stony-ground hearers in our Lord's parable of the sower, when persecution overtook them, they denied the faith, and reverted to idolatry. When the storm had subsided, they returned again to the church; and the bishops, who were much more concerned about the number and respectability of their con-

p.248 gregations, than they were for the purity of communion and the free circulation of brotherly love among the members, encouraged all this, to the disgust of Novatian and all considerate persons. On the death of Fabian, who had sustained the character of bishop, one Cornelius, copresbyter with Novatian, who was a vehement partisan for taking in the multitude, was put in nomination for the bishopric. Novatianus opposed him, but ineffectually; and seeing no prospect of reformation in the church, but, on the contrary, a tide of immorality prevailing, he withdrew, and was joined by a number of the friends of reform. The consequence was, that Cornelius, irritated, it is said, by Cyprian, who was similarly situated, through the remonstrances of virtuous men at Carthage, and who was exasperated beyond measure with one of his elders, whose name was Novatus, and who had quitted Carthage and gone to Rome to espouse the cause of Novatianus, called a council, and got a sentence of excommunication against the latter. In a little time the friends of Novatianus formed themselves, or, at any rate, were formed into a church, which invested him with the pastoral office. The example was followed in various places, and Puritan churches were formed all over the empire, and flourished during the succeeding two hundred years. Afterwards, when penal laws (enacted by catholic emperors) obliged them to lurk in corners, and worship God in private, they became distinguished by various names, and a succession of them continued to the Lutheran reformation.

p.248 "It has been truly said," continues the same writer, "that it is next to impossible to avoid being misled in perusing histories of heretics. They are all written by interested ecclesiastics, who study to blacken the character of those whom they describe, in the most bitter terms that malice can invent. Novatianus is held up by these writers as the first ANTIPOPE, because he withdrew from the communion of a corrupt church. The stigma of Antipope is ridiculous; for, at that time, there was no pope in the true sense of the word; nor for jubilees of years after his day. They call Novatianus(*) the author of the heresy of Puritanism; whereas Puritanism, or the object for which the puritans, or CATHARI, as they were styled, contended, was a virtue, and not a heresy. In contend-

p.249 ing for purity of fellowship they were sustained by the concurrent voice of prophets and apostles. Novatianus was by no means singular in that respect even in the age in which he lived. Tertullian had quitted the church fifty years before, for the very same reason; and Privatus, who was an old man in the time of Novatianus, had, with several more, repeatedly remonstrated against the departures which had taken place from apostolic institution, and as they could get no redress, had withdrawn, and formed separate congregations, or worshipped God in private. These ecclesiastical writers attribute to Novatian what they regard as the crime of originating innumerable congregations in every part of the Roman empire; and yet he had no other influence over them than what his example gave him. The real friends of Christ and his cause everywhere saw the same ground of complaint, and sighed for relief; and when the standard of return to first principles was once lifted up, thousands gathered themselves around it; they saw the propriety of a remedy for a crying evil, and applied it to their own relief. In truth, so far are the charges of heresy and schism brought against Novatian from being well founded, that his memory ought to be embalmed in the recollection of the faithful for his zealous adherence to the cause of truth and virtue."

p.249 In tracing the development of the Name of Blasphemy, we now advance to the era of Constantine. Sixty years after the death of Cornelius, who died in exile at Civita Vecchia, A.D. 252, "the Catholic and Apostolic Church, Mother of the Faithful," was invested with the sunshine of imperialism, and constituted the religion of the State. The bishop of the Anti-novatian association in Rome now became "the Bishop of Rome," and a spiritual prince of the empire. Before this change of fortune, he had but a bare precedency in respect of rank which had been tacitly yielded to him as bishop of the church in the metropolis of the empire. As to authority, Irenaeus, bishop in Lyons, on account of his personal character, was of ten times more authority even in the West than Victor, bishop in Rome; and Cyprian of Carthage, than Stephen of Rome, who excommunicated him. "But," says Dr. G. Campbell, "matters under-went a very great change after christianity had received the sanction of a legal establishment. Then, indeed, the difference between one see and another, both in riches and in power, soon became enormous. And this could not fail to produce, in the sentiments of mankind, the usual consequences. Such is the constant progress in all human politics whatever. In the most simple state of society, personal merit, of some kind or other, makes the only noticeable distinction between man and man. In politics purely republican, it is still (many years ago when these words were penned) the chief distinction. But the further ye recede from

p.250 these, and the nearer ye approach the monarchical model, the more does this natural distinction give place to those artificial distinctions created by riches, office, and rank.

p.250 "When Rome was become immensely superior, both in splendor and in opulence, to every western See, she would with great facility, and as it were naturally, (if nothing very unusual or alarming was attempted,) dictate to the other Sees in the west; the people there having had, for several ages, very little of the disputatious dogmatizing humor of their brethren in the east. It no doubt contributed to the same effect, that Rome was the only See of very great note which concurred with several of them in language; Latin being the predominant tongue among the western churches, as Greek was among the eastern. It was natural for the former, therefore, to consider themselves as more closely connected with the Roman Patriarch than with the Constantinopolitan, or any of the other oriental patriarchs. A similar reason, when not counteracted by other causes, operated among the Greeks, to make them prefer a Grecian patriarch before a Latin one.

p.250 Sylvester(*) was the catholic saint, whom Constantine recognized as the Bishop of Rome and Patriarch of the West. The papists reckon him as the thirty-fourth pope. But, we know from history, that popes had not yet come into fashion. The spirit of a pope, however, wrought in him mightily; and when he opened his mouth, his utterances showed what he would do when power should be given to him by the Dragon. Take the following as an illustration: The Nicene Creed having been subscribed, Constantine, the Man-Child of Sin, who presided at the council, transmitted its canons and decrees to Sylvester, who, in the thirteenth council that had been held in Rome, at which were present two hundred and seventy-five bishops, ratified them in the following Babylonian style: 'We confirm with our mouth that which has been decreed at Nice, a city of Bithynia, by the three hundred and eighteen holy bishops, for the good of the catholic and apostolic church, Mother of the faithful. We anathematize all those who shall dare to contradict the decrees of the Great and Holy Council which was assembled at Nice (A. D. 325), in the presence of that most pious and venerable prince, the emperor Constantine.' And to this all the bishops answered, 'We consent to it.' Nebuchadnezzar himself could not have spoken more loftily and lion-like. He that dared to call in question their utterances was deemed unworthy of all blessings human and Divine; for, if Constantine be worthy of the belief, their voice was not the voice of men, but of 'the successors of the apostles, who had been established as priests and gods

p.250 This recognition of the Catholic clergy by the unbaptized and imperial president of their church, as "priests and gods upon earth, "was very flattering to their vanity and pride of life. They had instructed their imperial patron that this was their Scriptural relation to the sons of men. In their case, however, it was a mere assumption of Divine honors, and undeserved. In the days of the apostles, that which was spoken to Israel, might be truly applied to them, and to those who believed into Jesus through their word, saying, "I said, Ye are gods." The Lord Jesus explained in what sense this saying was applicable to Israel, but not to mankind at large. Thus, "if He (the Spirit) called them gods, unto whom the word of the Deity came, and the Scripture cannot be broken; say ye of him whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of the Deity?" The Jews considered this as "making himself equal with God" (John 5:18; 10:33-36). The gospel teaches, that a people to whom the Word of the Deity is sent, and who receive it, become Sons of God; and are, in this sense, gods. This Word was first sent to Israel, and then to the Gentiles. And who obeyed it in the love of it, became Sons of God by adoption through Jesus Christ. This is the Scriptural status of all true Christadelphians, or Brethren of Christ. This is a great honor, and an extraordinary manifestation of love on the part of the Father, the contemplation of which caused John to exclaim, "Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the Sons of God;" and lest any should say, that this sonship pertained exclusively to a future state of existence, he adds concerning the faithful, "beloved, we are Now the Sons of God;" which was equivalent to saying, "we are now gods upon the earth;" and he continued, "it doth not yet appear what we shall be; but we know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him AS HE IS " (1 John 3:1-3).

p.250 But, though it be true that such men are "gods upon earth," and also "priests," it is a mere blasphemy in the mouth of the Man-Child of Sin, when applied to the corrupt and arrogant clergy of the Laodicean Apostasy. The gifts of the Spirit had been withdrawn; and State-Church Catholics were left to their own delusions. The Spirit had raised up a testimony against them, by which He "spued them out of his mouth," as "wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked:" for He only recognizes them as "priests and gods upon earth," in the Scriptural sense, who, having believed the things concerning the kingdom of the Deity and the Name of Jesus Christ, have been immersed, and walk in purity, "even as He is pure;" a condition of things that could not possibly

p.252 be affirmed of Constantine and the professional ecclesiastics whom he delighted to honor.

p.252 Such, however, was the blasphemous assumption of the Catholic clergy, both Greek and Latin. Though utterly unworthy, by ignorance of the truth, by perversion of Apostolic institutions, and impurity of life, they claimed to be "priests and gods upon earth." But, though nothing but the spued-out ejecta of the Spirit's mouth, they were, in a certain relation of things, "priests and gods upon earth." They were the "priests and gods upon earth" pertaining to the Laodicean Apostasy; and acknowledged by the Man-Child of Sin "in his estate." According to Gibbon's authorities, there were eighteen hundred of these gods upon the Roman earth; of whom one thousand were enthroned in the Greek, and eight hundred in the Latin provinces of the empire. Episcopal thrones were closely planted along the banks of the Nile, on the sea coast of Africa, in the proconsular Asia, and through the southern provinces of Italy. The episcopal gods of Gaul and Spain, of Thrace and Pontus, reigned over an ample territory, and delegated their rural suffragans to execute the subordinate duties of the pastoral office. A god's diocese might be spread over a province, or reduced to a village; but all the gods possessed an equal and indelible character; they all blasphemously claimed to derive the same powers and privileges from the Apostles, from the people, and from the laws. The whole body of these priests and gods of Antichrist, was exempted by Sin's imperial Man-Child, from all service, private or public, all municipal offices, and all personal taxes and contributions, which pressed upon the laity with intolerable weight; and the duties of their clerical profession, deemed holy by the strongly deluded, was accepted as a full discharge of their obligations to the republic.

p.252 The gods of the Catholic heaven were regularly assembled in the spring and autumn of each year; and these synods diffused the spirit of ecclesiastical discipline and regulation through the hundred and twenty provinces of the Roman world. The Archdeity, or metropolitan bishop, was empowered, by the laws, to summon the suifragan demons of his province; to revise their conduct, to vindicate their rights, to declare their faith, and to examine the merit of the candidates who were elected by the clergy and people to supply the vacancies of the episcopal college. The chief gods, or primates, of Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, Carthage, and afterwards of Constantinople, who exercised a more ample jurisdiction, convened the numerous assemblies of their dependent gods. But the convocation of great and extraordinary synods was the sole prerogative of the god who filled the imperial Dragon throne. Whenever the emergencies of the spiritual department of his estate required this

p.252 decisive measure, the emperor dispatched a peremptory summons to the episcopal deities, or the deputies of each province, with an order for the use of post-horses and a competent allowance for the expenses of their journey. The Council of Nice was convened by this authority, A.D. 325. It was assembled by "the Mother's" imperial protector and proselyte, to extinguish, by their final sentence, the subtle disputes which had arisen in Egypt on the subject of the Trinity. Three hundred and eighteen gods obeyed the summons of their imperial creator whom Gibbon styles "their indulgent master." The inferior gods or demons, of every rank and denomination, have been computed at two thousand and forty-eight; the Greeks appeared in person: and the consent of the Latins was expressed by the legates of the Archdeity of Rome. The session, which lasted about two months, was frequently decorated by the presence of the imperial Man-Child, who claimed to be God of gods upon earth, as expressed in the title, BISHOP of bishops. Leaving his guards at the door, he seated himself (with the permission of the divine council) on a low stool in the middle of the hall, an eminent illustration of Satan's "darling sin," which is said to be

p.252 "He listened with patience," says Gibbon, "and spoke with modesty; and while he influenced the debates, Constantine humbly professed that he was the minister, not the judge, of the successors of the apostles, who had been established as priests and as gods upon earth."

p.252 Of all these gods of the apostasy, those of Antioch, Alexandria, Carthage, Constantinople and Rome, were the chief. They were, however, not only the chief of many, but they were rival gods, whose principle it was rather to reign in hell than to serve in heaven. Lust of power and love of contention were the ruling characteristics of them all; at least such is the testimony of a contemporary of those turbulent times. "If I must speak the truth," says Gregory Nazianzen, "this is my resolution to avoid all councils of the bishops; for I have seen no good end answered by any synod whatever; for their love of contention and their lust of power are too great even for words to express."

p.252 In the reign of Constantine's son and successor, Rome had become a most seducing object of sacerdotal ambition. In the episcopal order, the Bishop of Rome was the first in rank among the gods, and distinguished by a sort of preeminence over all the others. He surpassed all his companion deities in the magnificence and splendor of the temple over which he presided, in the extent of his revenues and possessions, in the number and variety of his ministers, in his influence over the deluded people, and in his sumptuous and splendid manner of living. Ammiamus Marcellinus, a Roman historian, who lived in the reign of Con-

p.254 stantius, referring to this subject, says: "It was no wonder to see those who were ambitious of human greatness contending with so much heat and animosity for that dignity; because, when they obtained it, they were sure to be enriched by the offerings of the matrons, of appearing abroad in great splendor, of being admired in their costly coaches, sumptuous in their feasts, outdoing sovereign princes in the expenses of their table." No wonder that Pretextatus, the pagan Prefect of the city, should say, "Make me Bishop of Rome, and I'll be a Christian, too!"

p.254 As a further illustration of the pass at which the Mystery of Iniquity had arrived in Rome, it may be added that Liberius, the bishop, died A.D. 366, and that a violent contest arose respecting his successor in the throne of blasphemy. The Catholics were divided into two factions, one of which elected Damasus to that dignity, while the other chose Ursicinus, a deacon. The party of Damasus prevailed, and obtained his ordination of the godship. The other party, enraged at its failure, set up separate meetings, and eventually had their favorite ordained also. This occasioned great disputes among the pious laity, as to which of them should possess the episcopal dignity; and to such an extremity was the dispute carried, that great numbers on either side were killed in the quarrel; no fewer than a hundred and thirty-seven persons having been put to death in the very "temple of the God" itself! "How much more rationally," remarks Ammianus, "would those pontiffs consult their true happiness, if, instead of alleging the greatness of the city as an excuse for their manners, they would imitate the exemplary life of some provincial bishops, whose temperance and sobriety, whose mean apparel and downcast looks, recommended their pure and modest virtue to the Deity, and his true worshippers." This lively picture drawn by Ammianus of the wealth and luxury of the gods in the fourth century, "becomes the more curious," says Gibbon, "as it represents the inter-mediate degree between the humble poverty of the apostolic fishermen and the royal state of a temporal prince, whose dominions extend from the confines of Naples to the banks of the Po."

p.254 Damasus was contemporary with "Theodosius the Great," who, on his advancement to the imperial office, evinced a fervid zeal for Trinitarianism. He addressed a letter to the divided Catholics of Con-stantinople, and told them that "it was his pleasure that all his subjects should be of the same profession as Damasus, Bishop of Rome, and Peter, bishop of Alexandria; that their church alone should be denominated 'Catholic' who worshipped the divine Trinity as equal in honor, and that those who were of another opinion should be deemed heretics, be regarded as infamous, and subject to other punishments. This was an imperial constitution of the Trinitarian gods of Rome and Alexandria as

p.255 Page 255 the standards of orthodoxy. This was an advance upon their rivals of Antioch, Carthage and Constantinople; still it was a divided glory which did not satisfy the ambition of the god upon earth residing in Rome

p.255 We are now, then, arrived at a great crisis in the development of the "Name of Blasphemy upon the Heads;" that is, at a period in which the second stage of its growth was nearly consummated a period which may be expressed by the epochal years A.D. 380-410. The beginning of this period is illustrated by the exaltation of Theodosius to the imperial office, and is marked by the sack of Rome by the tribes of Germany and Scythia, under the command of Alaric, who visited the sanguinary intolerance, blasphemy, corruption and crimes of the Catholics and their God in Rome, with the "hail and fire mingled with blood" of the First Wind-Trumpet. Theodosius was one of the most intolerant and perse-cuting of the Catholic emperors of the Sixth Head of the Dragon. We have seen how he set up his will and pleasure as the rule of his subjects' faith and conscience. This is further illustrated by his expulsion of all from Constantinople who would not subscribe the Nicene confession of faith. In A.D. 383, he issued two edicts against "heretics;" the first, prohibiting them from holding any assemblies; and the second, forbidding them to meet in fields or villages. These edicts would be especially oppressive to "the Angel having the Seal of the living God," engaged in sealing His servants in their foreheads (Apoc. 7:2,3): and, as though this were not enough, he followed it up by a law in which he forbade heretics to worship, or to preach, to ordain bishops, or presbyters, commanding some to be banished and others rendered infamous and deprived of the common privileges of citizens. This intolerant and wicked oppressor is surnamed "the Great," and by scribes of the same superstition declared to be "very dear to the Catholic Church." It was not to be supposed, however, that the Lord Jesus at the right hand of Power, to whom his brethren and servants are infinitely dearer, would permit these oppressions to pass away unavenged. He, therefore, let loose the four winds against the "earth, the sea and the trees" of the empire, by which it was extinguished in its western third, and the "god upon earth," not yet be-come "the god of the earth" in Rome, was reduced almost to a nonentity.

p.255 The six days pillage and slaughter of the inhabitants of the Queen City, was a terrible but richly-deserved calamity, and, at the same time, a blow that prostrated her dignity and honor in the dust. A city which, with the strength of iron, had broken in pieces and subdued all things; and had boasted of her reign over the kings of the earth, was now trampled under foot of barbarians, and insolently compelled to become a sport, and to sue for peace. This was a great discouragement and check to the ambition of the Bishop of Rome. Hitherto, he had based his claim to the first rank among "all called god, or an object of worship," upon the greatness of the city in which he officiated. A canon of the Council of Chalcedon expressly declares this principle of primacy in voting equal privileges to the Bishop of R6me and the Bishop of Constantinople, because the last, then called New Rome, was also the Royal City. Leo, of Old Rome, however, indignantly rejected this coequality in primacy, he would be first. But the time had now arrived to pour out the Divine wrath upon her which had been accumulating against her for over eleven hundred and sixty years. Her imperial and metropolitan dignity was doomed to suffer a total eclipse; so that, when it had departed, it would be necessary for the man who had "become a god," to invent some new theory whereby his dignity might be prevented from taking its departure likewise. The proud and luxurious bishop was hurled into the lowest depths of misery. Had Ammianus Marcellinus beheld him after being spoiled by Alaric, he would have seen a blasphemer smitten of the God of heaven for his sins, and there would be nothing, at this crisis, Proetextatus would desire less than to be Bishop of Fallen Rome. The following extract from a letter of Pelagius, an eye-witness of the pillage, will give the reader some idea of the change of fortune that had come over the bishop since the days of Ammianus and Proetextatus, when princely magnificence and luxury were the rule of episcopal life: "This dismal calamity," says he, "but just over, and you yourself are a witness how Rome, that commanded the world, was astonished at the alarm of the Gothic trumpet, when that barbarous and victorious nation stormed her walls and made her way through the breach. Where were then the privileges of birth and the distinctions of quality? Were not all ranks and degrees leveled at that time, and promiscuously huddled together? Every house there was a scene of misery, and equally filled with grief and confusion. The slave and the man of quality were in the same circumstance, and everywhere the terror of death and slaughter were the same, unless we may say the fright made the greatest impression on those who had the greatest interest in living."

p.255 Thus, then, the glory of the city having departed, the glory of the bishop built upon it had departed also. A god located in a city of inferior rank, with no other prestige, could not expect to command the world. As the city faded into insignificance and contempt among barbarians, so would he unless he "changed his base," and commenced to operate upon their ignorance and credulity from a new position. In a hundred and thirty-six years from its sack by Alaric, Rome was to be left a dreary solitude, without man or beast within its walls for forty days and more. It was time, therefore, that some pretension should be set up that would so awe the world, that a Divine supremacy should be accorded to its bishop altogether independent of the former plea. The pretension that seemed to meet the urgency of the situation, was that of the Bishop of Rome being the lineal successor of the apostle Peter; and that by virtue of this successorship, he possessed the Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven, and had Divinely intrusted to him the power of binding and loosing. The clergy were all assumed to be the successors of the apostles; but the Bishop of Rome claimed to be successor of "the Prince of Apostles," and that, therefore, he was the Prince-god of all clerical "gods upon earth."

p.255 But, upon what could this pretension be based so as to give it plausibility? It is true that Christ promised to give the keys to Peter, whom he pronounced "blessed;" it is also true that he fulfilled the promise; and furthermore, lt lS true that when Peter declared his conviction, in common with the rest of the apostles, that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the living God, the Lord said to him, that upon this rock He would build His ecclesia, against which the gates of the unseen should not prevail (Matt. 16:15-19). But, in all this there was not a word, no, not a hint, of any one else than Peter; much less of such an ignorant, corrupt, and de-graded blasphemer as the bishop of Rome. How, then, could what was promised and fulfilled to Peter, a Jewish fisherman of Galilee, be made applicable, even plausibly so, to a proud and luxurious man of fashion in Rome? This was a work and great labor to be done! A labor which only craft and falsehood, operating upon the grossest ignorance and superstition, could finish with success.

p.255 Paul testifies in Gal. 2:7,8, that the gospel of the circumcision was intrusted to Peter, the ministration of which constituted his apostleship

p.259 of the circumcision. Hence, as "the strangers of Rome, Jews and proselytes" received the gospel in Jerusalem from the Spirit through him, a relationship was established between him and them, which two hundred and~twenty years after came to be styled by Cyprian, "Petri cathedram, atque ecclesiam principalem, unde unitas sacerdotalis exorta est" - that is, the Chair of Peter, and the principal ecclesia whence priestly unity proceeds. But is it not ridiculous to style a little company of disciples of the Spirit in Rome, Peter's Chair, because they heard the truth from his mouth? The "strangers of Rome" were only a small portion of his audience on the day of Pentecost. Besides them, there were "devout Jews" from every nation under the Roman heaven. When they returned, they would plant ecclesias in their homes, every one of which upon the same principle would be a Chair of Peter! But, craft, which deceives the ignorant and the simple, has no use for reason. Assertion without proof is all that it requires. The crafty ecclesiastics of the apostasy affirmed it; and it suited the policy of the aspiring bishops of the imperial city to adopt it. If it were conceded that the Church in Rome was Peter's Chair, would not the man that occupied it as chief bishop of the church be Peter's successor; and if Peter's successor in office, must he not officially inherit all that is predicable of Peter? He would be "Vicar of the Blessed Peter" -Peter in every respect, save in personal identity.

p.259 This was the position assumed by "the Name of Blasphemy upon the Heads of the Beast;" and ultimately conceded by the Horns, which the judgments of the first four trumpets upon the Catholic West developed, when they gave in their adhesion to that Name; in evidence whereof the following gleanings of Mr. Elliott from divers sources will amply show:

p.259 He styles it, "the mighty fact" first privately spoken out by Boniface I., A.D. 419-22, to the Thessalian and Illyrian bishops. "The Blessed Peter," says he, "to whom the height of priesthood was conceded by the word of Jesus Christ;" "on whom, we read, was placed the foundation of the universal ecclesi a:" "on whom its government and supreme power rested:" "this, therefore, by ecclesias spread over the whole world, is established to be as the Head of its own members; from which whosoever cuts himself off, becomes exiled from the Christian religion."

p.259 After this the Legate of Celestine, the bishop of Rome, A.D. 431, in the Council of Ephesus before all Antichristendom, said, "It is a thing undoubted, that the holy and most blessed Peter, the Exarch and Head of the apostles, the pillar of the faith, the foundation of the catholic church, received the keys of the kingdom; and to him was given the power of binding and loosing sin; which Peter still lives and exercises judgment in his successors, even to this day and always." In the same style, bishop Leo's deputies, some twenty years later, in the Council of Chalcedon, proclaimed him "Head of All Churches;" and this evidently because, as the Council itself said, "Peter spoke in Leo!" On similar grounds the headship of the Antichristian Body and the world was claimed by Leo himself, in his letters and orations. In a sermon of St. Peter's day, he thus expressed himself before his Roman audience:

p.259 "There are those, O Rome, who advance thee to this glory as a holy nation, an elect people, a sacerdotal and royal city complete through the Holy Seat of the Blessed Peter, head of the World; thou hast a wider rule by the divine religion than by earthly domination." In these words he evidently applies 1 Pet 2:5, to the Roman See and people in communion with it. This is a specimen of the blasphemy of the Name, which perverts what the apostle says to the saints concerning their spiritual status, and applies it to the basest of mankind. Leo said that he, as Bishop of Rome, was officially "both the guardian of the catholic faith, and of the tradi-tions of the fathers."

p.259 Leo's immediate successor was Hilary. The spirit of Leo had passed with the office to him, so that what Leo had affirmed, he readily accepted as his rightful prerogative. In the estimation of these men, "whoever disputed the primacy and authority of the Roman See, as being that rock on which by Christ's own ordinance Christ's universal church was built, was none other than the Devil or Antichrist." Hence, the incense of the Tarragonese bishop's reference to him as officially the "Vicar of Peter; unto whom, forthwith from after the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the keys of the kingdom belong, for the illumination of all," was an odor of a sweet smell. From A.D. 492 to 496, Gelasius figured as Bishop of Rome, which was then the throne of the Seventh Head, the Gothic Kings of Italy. But though subject to Theodoric, he strenuously asserted his Divine supremacy over all kings and emperors. In a letter to Faustus, he wrote: "Things divine are to be learned by the secular potentates (the Horns of the Beast) from bishops, above all from the Vicar of the Blessed Peter"; and in a letter to the emperor in Constantinople, whom he excommunicated, A.D. 494, he writes: "There are two authorities by which the world is governed, the Pontifical and the Royal; the sacerdotal order being that which has charge of the sacraments of life, and from which thou must seek the causal of thy salvation. Hence, in divine things, it becomes Kings to bow the neck to Priests; specially to the Head of Priests, whom Christ's own voice has set over the universal church." But, to be Vicar of Peter was to be only the Vicar of a Vicar. There was a step still higher on the ladder of episcopal ambition, which the Blasphemer of Rome was ready to mount when opportunity presented. Two consecutive councils at Rome, held A.D. 494 and 495, rec-

p.259 -ognized and accepted his words as those of the VICAR OF CHRIST: "The Holy Roman Church," says he, "is preferred to other ecclesias by no synodical canons; but it obtains the primacy by the evangelical voice of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, saying, Thou art Peter. The Roman Church is therefore the chief seat of the apostle Peter, not having spot, nor wrinkle, nor any such thing;" "having authority over the whole church for its general superintendence and government." This same Gelasius, as if determined indelibly to affix the character of blasphemy to the Name he represented, styles the apostle, "our Saviour the Blessed Peter," because of the words spoken to him, "whatsoever thou shalt bind, etc.; so that none living are excepted from the church's authority of the keys; but only the dead." But, in after times, not even the dead were excepted. At the close of the Council in A.D. 495, when Gelasius had finished, the assembled bishops shouted, six times repeated, "We see that thou art the VICAR OF CHRIST."

p.259 There was more in the significance of the words of those episcopal shouts than they intended. VICARIUM CHRISTI te videm us! was in effect saying, "We see that thou art ho Antichristos, the Antichrist!" Vicarius answers to the word anti, that is, instead, or supplies the place of another; hence, as a substantive, a deputy, a substitute, a vicegerent, locum tenens, vicar. "We see that thou art a substitute for Christ!" and a substitute for Peter! And that thou art above every thing called god or is worshipped! Anti- Christos is the Greek for Vicarius Christi. This "was blaspheming those who dwell in the heaven;" it was injuring greatly the reputation of the Father and the Son among men, for an ignorant and profane Gentile, who proclaimed in council the words noster Salvator Beatissimus Petrus, "our saviour the most blessed Peter," to announce himself as their substitute and all-powerful representative upon earth. A Vicar-Christ is Anti-Christ; and though they did not mean to make that application, yet in shouting what they did, they for once proclaimed the truth to the world from the Seven Hills.

p.259 This same Gelasius at the Council of A.D. 494, had authoritatively drawn up a list of the Scriptures to be received as Canonical and Divine. The first list is headed, "The Order of the Books of the Old Testament, which the Holy and Catholic Roman Church receives and venerates; digested by the Blessed Father Gelasius, with seventy bishops." This includes the Apocryphal Books of Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Tobit, Esdras, Judith, and 1 Maccabees. The second list gives the books of the New Testament as still received. In a fourth list the writings of "the Fathers;" as Cyprian, Gregory Nazianzen, Basil, &c: and ending, "the rest, which are composed by heretics or schismatics, the Catholic and Roman Church by no means receives." A list of about one hundred of the Apocryphal writings, not to be received, is then subjoined; among which are the Opuscula of Tertullian and Lactantius, and of the Apocalyptic Commentators, Victorinus and Tychonius. All these, with their authors, the concluding clause consigns to eternal damnation: "with their authors and the admirers of the authors we declare to be damned to an indissoluble bond in eternity." Thus, like his predecessor Leo, he set himself up as the supreme arbiter and judge in all matters of faith!

p.259 At the opening of the sixth century, Symmachus was the official Antichrist and Antipeter. The Bishop of Rome was called PAPA, or En-glish, Pope. "He was declared," says Gibbon, "in a numerous synod to be pure from all sin, and exempt from all judgment." Nevertheless, this self-deceiver and liar, as John styles all such, 1 John 1:8, was a subject of Theodoric, King of Italy. Though he claimed an ample dominion in heaven and earth, he had not yet been able to exalt his Trinitarian Holiness above an Arian King. He was a turbulent and unruly subject, and made himself obnoxious to his royal master. Theodoric in consequence, summoned a council to meet at Rome, A.D. 501, to judge of certain charges against him. But, when convened, the Council demurred to entering on the matter, on the ground of incompetency; considering that the party accused was supreme above all ecclesiastical jurisdiction. And a little after, as the climax of blasphemy, another Roman Synod, with Symmachus himself presiding and consenting, in the most solemn manner, adopted a book written by Ennodius in defense of the resolutions of the former synod; in which it was asserted, "that the Pontiff is judge in the place of Deity, and can be judged by no mortal."

p.259 Assuredly there can be no mistake that we have before us an Order of Men, or a Name, answerable to Daniel's "god of guardians, exalting himself, and magnifying himself above every god, and speaking marvelous things against the God of Gods;" to Paul's Man of Sin, Son of Perdition, and Lawless One;" and John's "Name of Blasphemy, and Mouth like the mouth of a lion, speaking great things blasphemies." No person, or succession of persons, could be more like Lucifer of Babylon, more arrogant, more proud, more blasphemous, or more lawless. The reader will doubtless have perceived, that the falsehood lying at the bottom of all these blasphemous assumptions, is, that the clergy, as they style themselves, are the successors of the apostles and ambas-sadors of Jesus Christ; and that, consequently, all that is affirmed of the apostles, the true ambassadors of Christ, is truly affirmable also of them! Ignatius spoke of bishops as eis topon Theou, in the place of God; and Cyprian says, that every bishop within his own diocese, is a priest of God, and a judge appointed in the place of Christ. But there were professors of Christianity in the apostles' days, who, in effect, claimed the same things. The Spirit speaks of these as men "who say they are apostles (sent ones) and are not, but are liars (Apoc. 2:2); and Paul styles them, "False apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into apostles of Christ - the ministers of Satan, transforming themselves as ministers of righteousness, after the example of their master." Whoever says he is a successor of the apostles, in so saying affirms that he is an apostle; which signifies "one called and sent of God as Aaron was." Hence, Jesus styled himself the Deity's apostle: and all who say that he called and sent them to preach the gospel affirm the same thing.

p.259 But where did the clergy, so-called, get their dogma of Apostolic succession from? The answer is, from tradition and Scripture falsely interpreted. So long as the Star-Angel Presbytery shone in an ecclesia, the Spirit shined in its midst. That ecclesia was the dioikesis, jurisdiction, or diocese, of the presbytery; which was in the stead of the apostles, who could not be everywhere at once. It was the gift of the Spirit that made the Star-Angel Eldership what it was. It was concerning this spiritually-endowed order in each ecclesia that Paul wrote in saying, "Obey them that have the rule over you, and submit yourselves: for they watch for your souls as they that must give account, that they may do it with joy, and not with grief: for that is unprofitable to you." The Star-Angel consisted of many bishops in an ecclesia, not of one only. It was in the place of the Deity, as Moses was instead of God to Aaron. It was the Vicar of God, and the Vicar of Christ, in the particular ecclesia that rejoiced in its presence; and it was this, because of the Spirit being in the elders to guide them into all the truth. But the Star-Angels, which had power to abuse, as well as to use, the spiritual gifts, did not continue to be faithful stewards of the mystery of Christ; they fell away from the faith as apostolically delivered; and having become apostate, the Spirit was with-drawn, and nothing remained of the Star-Angels but presbyteries of vain and self-conceited ecclesiastics, each presbytery being ruled by an ignorant bishop, whose wisdom shone brightest when he spoke the least. But though "the Spirit had spued them out of his mouth," they claimed the same relation to God, to Christ, and to men - a claim, which being no longer endorsed by Deity, became mere arrogance, falsehood, and blasphemy. Thus, they claimed to be traditionally with-out the Spirit, what they were with it - apostles, ambassadors, and vicars, of Christ and of God.

p.259 But, evil men, when left to their own resources, always wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived. They flourish in deception. Being sensual, not having the Spirit, as the clergy have ever been even to this day, when they appealed to Scripture in support of their impious pretensions, they wrested it to their own destruction. They refer to the

p.264 words of Jesus to the eleven, which they ridiculously enough apply to themselves. He said to the apostles, say they, "Lo, lam with you alway, even to the end of the world." Now, they continue, this must refer to us, as well as to the apostles; for they did not live to the end of the world, which has not even yet come. It must, therefore, mean, "I will be with you, and your successors, to the end of time." But, some of these clergy are very learned, if not very wise and candid, men; and they know, that the English version of Matt. 28:20, is not a correct transcript of the original, idou ego meth' humon eimipasas tas humeras, heos tes sun teleias tou aiovos. This, they know, ought not to be rendered, "lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world;" but, "Behold, I am with you all the days, until the end of the age." There is nothing about "successors" in this. We are expressly told that Jesus Christ spoke these words to "the eleven disciples." The promise was to them, and it was strictly and literally fulfilled; for we are informed in Mark 16:20, that "they went forth and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them;" and he tells us also, how the Lord worked with them; it was by "confirming the word" they preached, "by the signs following thereupon" - epakolouthounton. In this way, he was with the eleven apostles, and also with the twelfth, Matthias, and with Paul, and their co-laborers, "all the days" of the Mosaic Dispensation, from the Day of Pentecost first after his resurrection, "till the end of the age," when it was abolished in the subversion of Judah's Commonwealth by the Roman power; a period of about thirty-seven years. But, as to the clergy, Apostolic successors, and ambassadors of Christ, as they style themselves, the application of the text to their Satanic Order, is a gross imposition upon the ignorance and credulity of their strongly-deluded worshippers. The Scripture, and the facts in their case, are against them. The Lord's promise was to co-work with eleven men preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom and Name; he did not promise to co-work with an impious order of impostors, who are ignorant of its first principles, and therefore could not make an intelligible statement of that Gospel to save their lives. Christ Jesus never promised to confirm, or bear witness to the truth of any teaching or preaching, by signs, and wonders,' and divers miracles, and distributions of Holy Spirit (Heb. 2:4), other than the preaching of "The Word." It was the preaching of this alone that he confirmed and attested; not the blasphemous and contradictory foolishness enunciated by the ecclesiastical mountebanks, and martexts, of "the times of the Gentiles," among whom they have substituted their own traditions, which they style "divinity," for the Word, which they have nullified, and made contemptible thereby. The clergy do not preach the Word the apostles preached, and which it was the function of the apostleship to do. No men can there-fore be their successors in apostleship who do not preach the same things. Faithful men, who have learned the things Paul preached, and are also able to teach them to others, are the only Apostolic succession possible (2 Tim. 2:2). These faithful men, men full of faith, cannot be found in any of "the Names and Denominations," Apocalyptically styled "Abominations" (ch. 17:5), of the excluded and unmeasured Court of the Gentiles (ch. 11:2). They are only to be found in "the House of Deity;" which is not a clerical bazaar, or temple, dedicated to fictitious entities canonized by the Apostasy; but "the ecclesia of Deity;" which Paul says, "is the Pillar and base of the truth" (1 Tim. 3:15). This is neither the Catholic nor Protestant organizations; but a company of Scripturally-enlightened and obedient believers, who have accepted the Deity's invitation to His kingdom and glory; of which they are all, without distinction of class or order, both the heirs and heritage, or clergy, of the Lord (James 2:5; Rom. 8:17).

p.264 Apostolic succession, then, as contended for by all ranks, orders, and degrees of the Antichristian clergy, is a mere fiction of the carnal mind. The only succession coeval in its origin with the Apostolic age they can truthfully claim to be partakers of, is, as successors of those troublers in God's Israel, who, "by good words and fair speeches, deceived the hearts of the simple." As successors of Satan's apostles, they have built upon his foundation a superstructure which crowned itself with the TIARA upon the Seven Heads. This enormous blasphemy could not have been developed apart from the Satanic dogma of Apostolic succession, any more than the worship of Mary, as Queen of Heaven, and the Saints, as intercessors and mediators, could have been invented apart from the mythological dogma of the "immortal soul" in mortal flesh, separately existing after death. The one is as vain an imagination as the other. But vain and fallacious as it is, it has been a very profitable fiction to them all, from the Mouth of Blasphemy on the Seven Hills, to the most recent imitation thereof in the Mormon settlements of Utah.

p.267 In this section of the thirteenth chapter, I have traced the development of the Name to the reign of the Seventh Head in the time of Theodoric, the Arian King' of Italy, and his Trinitarian subject, Symmachus, the Bishop of Rome, who was now all ready to avail himself of anything that might present, whereby he could improve his fortune; and, instead of being a servant of heretical rulers, he could assume sovereignty for himself. But of this hereafter. I proceed now to consider the subject of the third verse of the chapter in hand. Page 267