SECTION XIV.

Christ was a stone of stumbling on which the Jews fell;-be is now a rock falling on the heads of apostate Christians to their destruction.-The Apostle's caution to the primitive Christians very needful to be attended to in these days, lest by PHILANTHROPY and PHILOSOPHY, falsely so called, many be beguiled of their religion and faith.

OUR blessed Saviour, in the gospel, has conveyed to us, under various similitudes, an idea of the manner in which he will comfort and sustain his church of pure worshippers; as a vine nourishes the branches which proceed out of it, and as a building is sustained by the rock stone on which its foundations are laid. Under this latter image of a stone, in a contrary sense, as an instrument of destruc→

tion, he has represented also his vengeance upon the enemies of his church, by foretelling, consistently with many other prophecies, that he would be to unbelieving Israel, a stone on which they should stumble, and fall, and be broken: but upon the corrupters of his everlasting gospel, the same stone itself should fall, with a velocity and weight tremendous and irresistible, and should grind them to powder.

This destructive effect of the overwhelming stone falling upon the victims of wrath, is the master key of that prophecy of Daniel, (ii. 34,) which will be more particularly attended to in another place. It is represented as having been cut without hands, out of the indistinct and misty bulk of futurity. It falls upon the feet of the great image still standing, but advanced to its extremity of decline, and immediate ruin ensues. The whole mighty mass of power is broken by the resistless shock, into fragments as small (in figurative comparison) as the dust of the summer threshing floors," and the wind sweeps them away.

But the stone which was the instrument of Providence in the mighty havock, swells into a prodigious importance and magnitude: becomes of a stone a mountain, and filleth all the earth.

In the present shaking and crumbling state of the once formidable confederacy of the papal power, which has been so strikingly set forth to the imagination by so many prophetic figures, and similitudes, and plain verbal declarations, that so it should come to pass; what councils are those that would enforce the reluctant mind to join in intimate union, and to stand or fall together with so desperate a cause, and which (by such means) has long provoked its fate?-It is evident that no efforts of human skill, or wisdom, or bravery, can be of any avail to turn back the commissioned sword, or stay the velocity of the falling stone. No advantage of local situation, or superior numbers; not even the universal detestation of that burning sun, that scorches them with its intolerable oppression, nor the enthusiasm of rage and despair, nor the cry

of expiring liberty by which they are stimu lated to madness,can any longer protect "the men that worship the beast, and receive the mark of his name."-The short intervals of rest that seem to be allowed them, are but a deceitful peace; and the fore-runners of a fresh and more calamitous overthrow: the invariable answer to their anxious expectation from the avenger,—is it peace, Jebu? being still one and the same," what-peace!— so long as the whoredoms of thy mother Jezebel, and her witchcrafts are so many?"

How is it possible that renewed strength and augmented resources, should accrue from alliance with impending ruin? or that the ultimate salvation of our country should depend upon so unpropitious a combination of discordances; contrary to the wisdom of all experience past, and against the evident testimony of our own senses, and the melancholy reiterated tale of slaughter which every coming day brings with it? The present abject state, and fallen majesty of Rome and her confederate powers, is not to be restored for

the strengthening of England, their ancient and successful opponent; but for her hurt, and against the day of her visitation, if it should be the will of Providence that she also must fall. For it is written in the book of fate, that a day is yet to come, when the never dying rancour of the antichristian persecutor will revive, perhaps also his tripple diadem be resumed, and all the fulness of his once dreaded apostolical authority. And one more severe trial of the faith and patience of the saints, though not of long continuance, awaits the reformed churches.* in the falling fortunes of the man of sin, is very consistent with the prophecies, and in this eventful period of a changeable world, is not contrary to probability. It may be moreover requisite to the catastrophe of the long continued tragedy which he has been acting on the theatre of the church, that the last

Such a favorable turn

*See sect. vii. p. 203.-The opinion of Bishop Newton, Mr Mede, and other high authorities on this point, founded on the great disagreement amongst the commentators on the death of the witnesses, which is still obscure, because it is still future, in respect to the concluding parts of it.