nature and likewise in prophecy, as the companion of the modern beast, (himself newly risen, and just in the manner as it had been foretold of him,) is a confirmation of my exposition, which no candid mind will hastily reject, or without mature deliberation, lest he hereby act contrary to the design of the holy Spirit, and obstruct the light, and defeat the warning, intended to be given to the church, to prepare herself for a time of severe affliction. (256)

(256) When the world shall behold a cordial re-union between the beast and the false prophet cemented again, and the latter taking up the cause of the catholics against their alledged oppressors, (as zealously, though at first more secretly, than in former time;) and particularly when the effect of the agency of the three mystical frogs shall begin to shew itself in corresponding dangers; then, but probably not till then, my ho. nest testimony will procure me the thanks of all the true friends to the protestant cause.

Would to God a timely and proper sense of these things might repress the ill employed zeal of the protestant abettors of the catholic claims, ere it be too late! how many more mas. sacres must their credulity to catholic faith and promises bring upon the afflicted church ?-Even the wiser and cooler heads of the catholics themselves, are led they know not whither, by incendiaries of a frog-like spirit and purposes. Only by unanimity and a due regard to the signs of the times, (and surely

they are significant enough) can the dangers which threaten us be moderated,-perhaps prevented, in some of their worst effects. The public declaration of a great legal authority on a recent occasion,* is a very formidable truth.—"A new body, the CATHOLIC CONVENTION, has arisen in our political horizon, obedient to no rules, governed by no attraction, a stranger to our system, and which menaces its ruin."

The intoxicating smoke of the bottomless pit, the harbinger of the beast himself, seems to have made its way into our sister Island very effectually. The unhappy catholics every where doomed to be the carvers of their own deplorable fortune, are there also assiduously labouring, in a luckless hour, to throw down the last prop that remains to support the tottering liberties of the world, and to smooth the way for the horrors of universal slavery.

The trials of the Delegates to the Irish convention, 1811.

SECTION LII.

The dark character of the third beast not yet fully displayed.—Recapitulation.-Proofs of the new bestial hypothesis.-1. A real FALL of the government of ROME, or eighth head.-2. The bottomless pit truly opened, and a NEW BEAST risen.— By actual usurpation of the Roman government.— 3. The Pope in a state exactly corresponding to the prophecy.-Inaccuracy no where chargeable on St. John.-The new names and new associations undoubtedly meant to intimate corresponding changes-Great utility of the information thus given under present circumstances.-Three other methods of accounting for the beast of the pit.1. That he is emblematical of the modern Turk. 2. Or of the Pope himself -3. Or of one of the former beasts restored.-This last opinion the most plausible But the possibility of it destroyed by the events of 1808.-Sentiments of the modern witnesses more indulgent to their destroyers than those of their protestant ancestors were, or the language of prophetic scripture will warrant.

THE two former beasts had both been very terrible in the day of their power, and the first in particular, had, in concert with the image,

or Pontifex Maximus, or little born, waged a perpetual war against the saints, to their great and frequent affliction; and had " prevailed against them. But the force of that expression was never so fully exemplified by either of these, as it is shortly about to be made good in the modern representative of Rome, or THE THIRD AND LAST BEAST. He breathes nothing short of an exterminating wrath, and at last succeeds by the unprincipled, ever varied, and artful methods of his warfare, and the unabating severity of his persecution. In his success he is greatly aided by the abilities of his emissaries, and the diabolical delusions which they too successfully practise upon the catholic powers of the earth, or Roman empire, "and of the whole world," or those in another hemisphere, (unfortunately for themselves, and for us, but too well disposed to suck in the infatuating spirit of fanaticism,)" to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty. (257) By

(257) Rev. xvi. 14.-xix. 19. It is probable that the intimation of the holy Spirit in 2 Thess. ii. 11, "God shall send them strong delusion," &c.-may have a particular reference to the mission of the three diabolical frogs, and its effect upon the apos

such means, and by unwearied perseverance in the use of them, after being themselves severely handled in the well contested struggle for life, religion, and liberty, the powers of darkness must once again prevail.

What is particularly meant by the death of the witnesses, to be fulfilled by such means, and in some part of the present period, ending in the prophetical number 1290,-no cautious expositor will, I presume, yet awhile take upon him to declare, The circumstance of the public exposure of their dead bodies to the general scorn and contumely of the catholic world, or "in the street of the great city," as it is figuratively called; (for but one religion can at that time be tolerated, dissenters of every denomination will be deemed beretics, and be converted to holy church by fire and faggot ;)—his not suffering the breathless bodies to be put in graves, during the whole time of his triumph; with the probable meaning of so singular a circumstance, and the

tate party: The punishment of Ahab and his idolatrous flatterers (1 Kings xxii. 22,) was precisely in this manner effected by divine vengeance.