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most cruel death all people who would not suffer their consciences, as well as their reason, to be changed, regulated, and dictated to by her merciless will.

Again, St. John saw this Beast rise up out of the "sea." The sea is a body of water naturally calm and undisturbed, and therefore an emblem of many nations in a state of peace.The prophet does not intimate that it was disturbed by the winds, and therefore we must conclude it was calm when he saw the beast rise out of it. Indeed, he tells us he saw it rise while he stood" not upon the coast or shore of the sea, "but on the SAND" which he could not have done had it been agitated by a storm, the sand thrown up being at such times covered by its waves. Hence we may justly conclude, by this calm state of the sea, or of the nations, that he means to refer to a time when they should be at peace. So Daniel makes use of a similar figure: when foretelling the four great Heathen Empires which were to rise up out of the nations, when they should be at war one with another, he saw "when the four winds of the Heaven strove upon the great sea, four great beasts come up from the sea"; (Dan. vii. 2. 3.) and here additio probat regulam. The meaning of the text must then be, that the power foretold must rise up at a period of time when "the peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues,' should be calm and at peace.

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To do justice to this figure accurately, pointing directly to the time of the rise of the beast, we must take a summary view of the state of mankind from the flood down at least to the seventh century; a period of more than 3000 years. In the first ages of this period, we reasonably conclude from the nature of man, what ancient Histories intimate to be true, that the just and dreadful judgment of God upon the antedeluvian world, by which a greater number of the human race was destroyed than now inhabits the earth, must have been deeply impressed on the human mind, and greatly influenced their conduct towards him, and their fellow creatures. Hence they lived virtuously, contentedly, and peaceably under patriarchal dominion; and when an increase of their numbers rendered that mode of Government inconvenient, if not impossible, they changed it for regal; choosing their Kings out of that class of men most eminent for their piety, virtue, and wisdom,* Such kings studied the happiness of their people, and their people in return gave them a grateful allegiance.

It was a blind tradition of this blessed Æra, that gave rise to the ancient heathen fable of the golden age, in which reverence to the Gods, and good will to man are supposed to have reigned up the earth. But in time, all remembrance of the dreadful antediluvian judgment, and all knowledge of the true Gop,

* Rawley's History of the World.

who inflicted it, became effaced from their minds, and buried in oblivion; and with it all fear of punishment for their evil deeds, either here or hereafter. Yet having only some confused and blind traces of an unknown and invisible God, they thought they must have those that were visible, and therefore they adopted, some the celestial bodies, and made a variety of others with their hands, images of beasts, fish, serpents, &c. taking care that they should be such as were without the ability to punish, or molest them. Thus lost to all Knowledge of the truth, and having no fear even of their own Gods, they, like their antediluvian Ancestors, gave a loose to the lustful passions and propensities of their fallen and corrupt Nature and the fear of offending the true God, the only source of righteousness, truth, and happiness, became superseded by their Pride, Ambition, and Avarice: those hideous parents of Robbery, Murder, War and Conquest. Thus instead of punishing Mankind† for their disobedience a second time by a general destruction, it seems to have been the will of infinite Wisdom to leave them to the ruinous and dreadful effects of their own wickedness, until the TRUE GOD should be graciously pleased to make himself fully known through his immaculate Son" in the fullness of time.

For History informs us, that during the last 4000 years and more, Peace has been in a † Gen. ix. 11, 12, 13.

* Acts xvii. 23.

VOL. ii,

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manner banished from the Earth, and the state of mankind ever since been that of War, depredation, and slaughter; two short intervals excepted to be mentioned hereafter.

Three Centuries and a half after the flood had scarcely elapsed, before man began to plunder and slay one another. Ninus, King of Assyria, made War upon the Babylonians and the other nations of the Earth, which gave rise to the great Babylonian Empire; Darius the Medo-persian destroyed the Babylonian, and erected the Persian. Alexander conquered the Persian, and established upon its ruins the Grecian, and his successors kept the World in a state of Warfare, until it fell a prey to the Roman; and the Roman did not suffer the World to be at peace until she stiled herself the mistress of it, and that not before the beginning of the fourth Century. It was now for the first time, after the second Fall of man from his allegiance to the true God, they enjoyed any considerable respite from a state of tumult, war, and blood; a blessed tranquillity, as the Historians of the day call it, the natural and infallible effects of the divine operation, and the influence of the general faith of mankind in the truths of the Gospel of Christ.This happy period however continued not one complete century, from the conversion of Constantine to the death of Theodisius the Great; the world now for the most part professing christianity. But forgetting the misery of their late unhappy state, and not duly appreciating

a Blessing so novel, extraordinary, and unmerited, they departed from that divine light which had led their fallible reason out of the paths of error and darkness, to those of Truth, Justice, and brotherly Love.

They wickedly perverted and tortured the plain meaning of the Word of God into doctrines and practices congenial to their pride, ambition, avarice and lusts; and again pursued the dictates of their fallen nature. Hence arose those dreadful wars between the Roman Empire in its christian state, and the Huns, Goths, and other barbarian nations: horrible scenes of rapine and slaughter, which continued from the death of Theodosius, to the Expulsion of the Ortrogoths from the Roman Territory, about the middle of the sixth Century. Now again, whether because these divine judgments had wrought a degree of repentance and reformation, or from the abun dance of God's mercy, or that the appointed time of that universal destruction and punishment which mankind had now for the third time deserved, had not yet come, it pleased him to grant to them a second interval of a general peace, which lasted from the Expulsion of the Ortrogoths from Italy about the middle of the sixth Century to the year 630, when the Saracens under Mohamet commenced Hostilities against the Roman empire; hostilities yet more extensive, of longer continuance, and equally desolating and dreadful; and from that Era, partly by the ferocious injustice and cruelties of the Mohame

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