prophecy,-written in the tears and the blood of the present generation,-and which will form a memorable epocha in all future history.

There was an evident want of the information thus afforded, to explain the difficulty, otherwise inexplicable, by what means the existence of the witnesses is to be accounted for, after their persecutors had become extinct, both in respect of their prophetical time, and absolute matter of fact. The beast has been abolished in the very same manner in which he had been set up, and his image ejected from the possession of the dragon's throne and great authority (his chief constitutional mark as a born, or image of the imperial beast). He has been robbed even of his very title of PONTIFEX MAXIMUS, the mock deity being sunk into the common rank of his fellow bishops, whose proud boast it had formerly been," I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above

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the heights of the clouds; I will be like the Most High." (258)

By throwing in these useful explanatory hints in their proper places, and distinguishing the several characters of the piece with their appropriate and respective marks of difference, generical names, times of appearance, modes of rising; places of derivation, and the contemporaries and confederates with whom they severally act, the singular accuracy of the sacred writer, and his particular care to obviate mistake is very demonstrable, now that the proper time for these things to unfold their formerly secret meaning, is fully come.-Why they were not so delivered as to be intelligible at all times, (or in other words, why they were of no material use before they were wanted, and when the clear or general apprehension of them would have been pernicious to those for whose benefit they were designed,) is perhaps a query that will not be proposed by any but those determined at all adventure to find fault;

(258) Isaiah xiv. 13. "Sides of the north,"-perhaps in reference to Rome, which lies to the northward of the west from Judea, a kind of disguised, or sealed expression.

and to direct the divine wisdom to more prudential and wise methods than those which have guided the dispensation of its revelations. (259) It is sufficiently satisfactory to us humbler believers, that we find such notices as these, of the more frequent and important changes that were to distinguish the concluding periods of the last times, offering themselves to us freely, and in sufficient both fre quency and clearness, as we descend into the prophetical periods which they were designed to enlighten.

Instead of supplying any objection against the utility of a wisdom so curiously wrapped up and sealed, or the certainty that we can even now pretend to the right interpretation of it, this prophecy furnishes abundant argument of every thing the very reverse. It

(259) That the gentlemen of the minute philosophy are wont to be somewhat unreasonable in their demands of further evidence, is well known; but the cynic T. Pain has perhaps ventured a step or two farther than the boldest of the moderns, in his hostility against heaven. He has prescribed to the Almighty, when he would send another Redeemer, to have his name and credentials inscribed in the body of the sun. Thus it appears that Thomas could read as well as write.

greatly commends to us both the wisdom and goodness of God, in thus furnishing us with armour for our defence against the day of battle, and an armour of that kind which our enemies cannot deprive us of, nor wield it themselves to our disadvantage. It declares the inimitable art and design with which those figurative representations have been drawn by the masters hand, and arranged each in its proper place, from which they cannot be deranged without great and manifest injury. And it demonstrates the propriety and certainty of that dreadful curse, denounced against any presumptuous hand that shall dare to disturb that divine method, by any addition made to the sacred text, or any subtraction from it.

The substitution of his other beast by the learned Granville Sharp, in the stead of those formerly set up by the commentators, has given a basis and form to the chronology of prophecy, without which all these prophetical notices must have remained still wholly unintelligible to us; and without a possibility of being applied to the purposes for which they

seem to have been meant, and the times in which they respectively fall. Now that we have actually seen the ending of the reign of the beast, (which by a long previous decline had been let down gently into his very last stage of possible existence, and had kept up his feeble regalities for a long time past, rather by toleration of the christian powers, than any ability of his own to stand;) it was necessary to have a corrected idea of the time and circumstances of his commencement, corresponding with this termination, and of the true character of the other beast, by whom he had been set up. But the very same argument proves likewise the necessity of having also a clear idea of the manner and circumstances, by which his long reign has been terminated, and of the nature and character of the MODERN BEAST and FALSE PROPHET, which now stand up in his place. These, according to both prophecy and evident matter of fact, are to officiate in his stead for the whole prophetical period which is now in its course, and to conduct the unfinished war against the saints to its predicted end. The anongior or other beast, was to give a date to the rise of the spiritual tyrant, and