and executions in every nation, to identify the object of this prophesy. St. John did not wonder that the heathen dragon should persecute the church, but he wondered with great admiration that this woman should destroy millions of the children she professed to nourish.

V. 7, 8, 9." And the angel said unto me, wherefore didst thou marvel? I will tell thee the mystery of the woman, and of the beast that carrieth her, which hath the seven heads and ten horns. The beast which thou sawest was, and is not; and shall ascend out of the bottomless pit, and go into perdition. The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sitteth." We have here a positive declaration, that the ambition of the apostate clergy, to enthrone themselves over the empire, proceeded from the bottomless pit, and that both them and their idolatries shall go into perdition, and rise no more. That Rome is here intended, appears from the seven hills on which the city is built.

V. 10, 11." And there are seven kings; five are fallen, and one is, and the other is not yet come, and when he cometh he must continue a short space. · And the beast that was, and is not, even he is the eighth, and is of the seven, and goeth into perdition." The five fallen kings or heads are, the kings, the consuls, the dictators, the decemvirs, and the tribunes. The sixth, who existed when John wrote, was the emperors. The seventh was the Christian emperors, when Constantine removed the government from Rome to Constantinople though this form still retained the same name, it was upon the whole attended with a thorough change. The triumvirate is not reckoned here, because it was a confusion rather than a government. The eighth is the pontificate, who also is of the seventh head, for he gradually invaded the emperor's rights in the assumption of temporal power.

V. 12. "And the ten horns which thou sawest are ten kings, which have received no kingdom as yet; but receive power as kings one hour with the beast."

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spiritual traffic, and destroy her by war, in the same manner as she destroyed the saints. The present. awful war appears to design the pillage of the church.

VI. In the eighteenth chapter, an angel came down from heaven, and proclaimed the fall of mystic Babylon, much in the same words as Isaiah predicted the fall of ancient Babylon, Isa. xiii. 21. And another angel cried from heaven, 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 unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities." From these words we learn, that God hath had a people in Babylon, who have mourned for her corruptions; and that the reformers, when these corruptions were forced on their consciences, had no alternative but to separate or become partakers of her sins. Indeed, through ignorance, and for want of intrepid reformers, they were partially contaminated with her depravity.

V. 6. "Reward her even as she rewarded you, and double unto her double, according to her works; in the cup which she hath filled fill to her double.” When Louis XIV. had ascended the throne of France, he was persuaded by the clergy to revoke the edict of Nantz in favor of the reformed churches. They urged the necessity of the whole kingdom being of one religion; and that it was in reality accounting his majesty a heretic to differ from him in religious worship. An edict was consequently published, which enjoined the protestant ministers to quit the kingdom in fifteen days or be hanged. Many of the fugitive pastors were detained in the frontier towns till the time was expired, and then executed. Those protestants who had property were obliged to deliver up their shops, warehouses, and estates, to the papists, and labor for their bread; for they could neither be postillions nor wagoners, unless they embraced the catholic religion. When they assembled in the woods or on the mountains to worship, the soldiers frequently pursued and slaughtered them without mercy; or if,

on some occasions, prisoners were brought in, one part was hanged, and another sent to the galleys. The soldiers were quartered on their houses in great numbers, and they consumed their property, and treated the weaker branches of their families with indignities which cannot be named. But God, at length, has completed the visitation of these crimes; for he is a jealous God, visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation. This persecution commenced in the year 1685; and in 1789 the revolution took place in France, which ruined the nobility and clergy, whose fathers occasioned these calamities to the protestants. They have lost their titles, their estates, and an immense number of them have lost their lives too. They have been banished in beggary to those very nations to which their fathers compelled the protestants to fly. Never was there a more striking instance of the di vine retribution!

The prophetic scene of this destruction closes with the elegies of her friends, and the songs of the martyrs. V. 9. "The kings of the earth," who are attached to her interest at the time of her destruction, * shall bewail her, and lament for her, when they shall see the smoke of her burning. And the merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn over her, for no man buyeth her merchandize any more: the merchandize of gold, and silver, and precious stones, and pearls, and fine lïnen, and purple, and silk, and scarlet, and the souls of men," &c. Yes, the priests, who have long traded for human souls in pardons and indulgences, shall weep and mourn when the light of revelation and literature shall have consumed her traffic.

On the other hand it is said, v. 20, 21. 66 Rejoice over her, thou heaven, and ye holy apostles and prophets, for God hath avenged you on her. And a mighty angel took up a stone like a great mill-stone, and cast it into the sea, saying, thus with violence

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

We have now traced the rise, splendor, and fall, of the apostate and harlot church, dignified with the titles, and arrayed in the pomp, of this vain world. She has made the nations drunk with her intoxicating cup of idolatry and superstition: she says, "I sit a queen, and shall see no sorrow." But the chaste spouse of Christ presents the believer with a different mien. According to the predictions of her Lord, reproach, affliction, and poverty, have generally been her lot. Her fine raiment, has been her righteousness; and her brilliant crown, her apostles and martyrs, Let us hasten to view her promised exaltation from obscurity, to the lustre of meridian glory and universal dominion. This subject requires here a copious consideration, because the time is near, and it adds to our comfort, by disclosing the growing evidences of the truth of our most holy religion.

SECTION VIII.

OF THE SECOND AND UNIVERSAL SPREAD OF THE GOSPEL.

Is it possible that God, who foretold to a year, and very clearly, the deliverance of Israel from their Egyptian bondage, their return from the Babylonian captivity, the building of the second temple, and the death of the Messiah, should have been silent, or not have spo ten as clearly concerning his coming to destroy the destroyers, and eet up his kingdom?

FLETCHER,

REAL piety, during the predominancy of antichrist, has prophesied in sackcloth, or been conceal ed like embers among the ashes; and if at any period it kindled into the enlightening flame of reformation,. the clergy were wanting in no efforts of fraud or force to exterminate the rising sect. Our most voluminous martyrologists are unable to acquaint us with the num bers which have been burnt, hanged, and slaughtered