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the French revolution of the year 1792. These fulfilled prophecies, therefore, being interpreted by the event, it would have been utterly impossible not to have formed the anticipation that the judgment of the seventh vial would open with a great political convulsion, or popular revolution, that most dreadful and inevitable of all inflictions in the political, as an earthquake is in the natural world: which anticipation has been fully verified by the great events of the last three months.

"And the great city was divided into three parts." In the description given of the earthquake of the year 1792, Rev. xi. 13, it is said that a tenth part of the city, or one of the ten kingdoms of the divided Roman empire, viz., the kingdom of France, fell. It is impossible, therefore, that we should not now infer, from the declaration that the great city will be divided into three parts, that the ultimate effect of the present political convulsions on the Continent will be to bring that territory of the Papal Roman empire into the form of three great co-existent States, which, as bounded on the north by the Danube and the Rhine, had at an earlier period consisted of the ten kingdoms represented by the toes of Daniel's image, and the horns of his fourth beast.

"And the cities of the nations fell." The kingdoms here spoken of are obviously those distinguished from the ten which once constituted the great city of the Papal Roman empire; and are to be looked for as situated beyond its territorial limits. It were impossible, therefore, not to have anticipated from this prophecy, that the present revolution would extend itself to the other countries of Europe. The confirmation of which anticipation has been already seen in the revolutions of the Netherlands, Saxony, and Brunswick; and in the general revolutionary movements of the German States.

"And great Babylon came in remembrance before God, to give unto her the cup of the wine of the fierceness of his wrath." As we know that Babylon the Great, seated on its seven hills, represents Papal Rome, we cannot but see it to be here plainly revealed, that the present infidel revolution will be the means of bringing the full measure of God's wrath upon the whole Papal Establishment of the Continent; and of effecting that entire overthrow and destruction thereof described in Rev. xviii. The beginning of which we have already seen in the abolition of the Papal as the national religion both in France and the Netherlands; and in the contumely, and in many instances the infidel orgies, with which the public crosses erected since the restoration, throughout France, by the Jesuits, have been thrown down; so that, as has been lately stated by an eye-witness, the priests do not now dare to shew their heads in Paris. If we combine with these the threatening appearances in Spain, which have led the priests and monks to see the necessity of making preparations to defend their possessions, we may confidently say with him, that the fall of Charles the Tenth has drawn with it the fall of Popery."

"And every island fled away and the mountains were not found." These objects, as apparently the most immoveably rooted in the system of nature, represent in the symbolical, or, as I would prefer to call it, the highly poetical and figurative language of the Apocalypse, those civil institutions which are the most deeply laid and firmly fixed in the political system. The symbols have been bebefore employed in Rev. vi. 14, in describing the effects of the French revolution of the year 1792. The different wording of the two prophecies is however very remarkable; for whereas the earthquake of the sixth seal represented a revolution which was only preparatory, and introductory

to the seven vials; and the old civil institutions were, after a time, to be re-established, as was effected upon the restoration of the Bourbons, it was only said that " every mountain and island were moved out of their places;" while, in the present judgment of the seventh vial of the seventh seal, the removal being final, and to be followed by no subsequent restoration, the prophecy is couched in the strongest possible terms, and it is said that "every island fled away, and the mountains were not found:" to which result it has been stated that the hopes and wishes of the revolutionary party in France now tend, namely, "that nothing that has been should be."

"And there fell upon men a great hail out of heaven, every stone about the weight of a talent, and men blasphemed God because of the plague of the hail, for the plague thereof was exceeding great." In the meaning of the symbol of the hail there can be no ambiguity, as both from its expressive nature, as well as from the events of the period of the first trumpet relating to the history of the Eastern Roman empire, we know that it describes a desolating invasion from the cold regions of the north. If, therefore, we read the Scriptures with intelligence, can we avoid saying, that the final catastrophe of the Continent will be, that it will be overrun and desolated by the hordes or armies of the Russian empire; and that Buonaparte gave a manifest proof of his political sagacity, when he declared, (as is stated in the report of the conversations held by him during his captivity) that the march of events had an inevitable tendency to that crisis; and boasted that his own success in his Russian expedition could alone have averted it.

There remains only that part of the action of the seventh vial to be considered, which consists in its being poured out "into the air :" which, though it has not occurred

before in the prophecy, both from its expressive character, as well as from the effect which this vial is represented as producing over the whole Papal Continent, was many years ago interpreted as signifying that it would be one of universal influence. And now at its fulfilment we find it asserted, that the revolutionary fever is an epidemical disease pervading the whole Continent.

Thus it will appear, in examining this prophecy, that though the fulfilment, as far as it has occurred, has illustrated the views previously taken of it, there has in no instance been a necessity to wait for the event in order to give its true interpretation: and the same might be shewn to have been the case with respect to the preceding fifth and sixth vials, and all the other prophecies which have been fulfilled since the year 1813.

I am, &c.

October 30th, 1830.

14

LETTER III.

On the Ecclesiastical Prophetic Periods of the 1260, 1290, and 1335 years, as contained in Dan. vii. and x.-xii., and in the little opened Book of St. John.

THERE is no subject of enquiry more interesting than the prophetic periods; in which the Scriptures warrant us to believe, events most important to the interests of the Church will take place; and of the profitableness, and practical tendency of such enquiry, we have a remarkable instance in the history of Daniel; who, when in his captivity, he understood by books the number of the years whereof the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah the Prophet, that he would accomplish seventy years in the desolations of Jerusalem, this period then just expiring, was led to humble himself before God, and to pray that he would turn away his fury from the City Jerusalem, and cause his face to shine upon his sanctuary, which was desolate. And if the Church were not left in ignorance when the predicted period of her temporal captivity under the literal Babylon was about to expire, we can have no reason to suppose that she will now be so, as to the expiration of the longer period of her more grievous captivity under the mystic Babylon of the Apocalypse; her ultimate deliverance from which is represented as the object of a covenant ratified by the solemn oath of her Divine

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