the period in which the death and resurrection of the witnesses took place. The first woe or the irruption of the Saracens, commenced about the year 612; and at whatever period its end

as well as all those writers, and those verbal expositors who pretend that the prophesying of the witnesses is yet a future event, or only now beginning, and that after prophesying 1260 literal days they are to be slain by a yet future Antichrist, I say according to all these schemes, the Reformation has no place whatever in the Apocalypse. But what would be thought of a summary, however brief, of the religious history of Europe from the fall of the western empire, which were to leave out the Reformation? were the summary as brief as to be comprehended in a space equal to the limits of the eleventh chapter of the Apocalypse, would not he who were to omit the Reformation, even in this summary, be counted a dunce? It seems to me, therefore, quite foreign from our views of the divine wisdom to suppose that the Reformation is altogether left out of the Apocalyptic prophecies.

I now proceed to lay before the reader another testimony, as to the stupendous importance of the Reformation, which I have met with since the former part of this note was written. It is in an article on Nare's Memoirs of Lord Burghley in the Edinburgh Review for April, 1832, p. 277, and it is evidently penned by an infidel.- "The life of Burghley was commensurate also with the period, during which a great moral revolution was effected; a revolution, the consequences of which were felt not only in the cabinets of princes, but at half the firesides of Christendom. He was born when the great religious schism was just commencing. He lived to see that schism completeto see a line of demarcation, which, since his death, has been very little altered, strongly drawn between Protestant and Catholic Europe.

"The only event of modern times which can be properly compared with the Reformation is the French Revolution, or, to speak more accurately, that great revolution of political feeling which took place in almost every part of the civilized world

may be supposed to have taken place, whether in the year 762, as Bishop Newton supposes, or a century or two later, a very considerable interval, not less than three or four centuries, intervened

in the eighteenth century, and which obtained in France its most terrible and signal triumph. Each of these memorable events may be described as the rising up of human reason against a Caste. The one was a struggle of the Laity against the Clergy for religious liberty; the other was a struggle of the people against the privileged orders, for political liberty."— "In both cases, when the explosion came, it came with a violence which appalled and disgusted many of those who had been previously distinguished by the freedom of their opinions. The violence of the democratic party in France, made Burke a Tory, and Alfieri a courtier: the violence of the chiefs of the German schism, made Erasmus a defender of abuses, and turned the author of Utopiain to a persecutor. In both cases, the convulsion which had overthrown deeply seated errors, shook all principles on which Society rests, to their very foundations. The minds of men were unsettled. It seemed, for a time, that all order and morality were about to perish with the prejudices with which they had been intimately associated. Frightful cruelties were committed. Immense masses of property were confiscated. Every part of Europe was filled with exiles. In moody and turbulent spirits, zeal soured into malignity, or foamed into madness. From the political agitation of the eighteenth century sprang the Jacobins. From the religious agitation of the sixteenth century sprang the Anabaptists."—" The feeling of patriotism was, in many parts of Europe, almost wholly extinguished. All the old maxims of foreign policy were changed. Physical boundaries were superseded by moral boundaries. Nations made war on each other with new arms-with arms which no fortifications, however strong by nature, or by art, could resist with arms, before which rivers parted like the Jordan, and ramparts fell down like the walls of Jericho-those arms were opinions, reasons, prejudices."—

"We by no means intend to moderate or palliate the crimes and excesses, which, during the last generation, were produced

before the sounding of the second woe trumpet. This event took place about the year 1302, when I find, by consulting the Modern Universal History, that the Turks under Othman first invaded the

by the spirit of democracy. But when we find, that men zealous for the Protestant religion, constantly represent the French Revolution as radically and essentially evil, on account of those crimes and excesses, we cannot but remember, that the deliverance of our ancestors from the house of their spiritual bondage, was effected by plagues and by signs and by wonders and by war.'- The Reformation is an event long since past. That volcano has spent its rage. The wide waste produced by its outbreak is forgotten. The landmarks which were swept away have been replaced. The ruined edifices have been repaired. The lava has covered with a rich incrustation the fields which it once devastated; and after having turned a garden into a desert, has again turned the desert into a still more beautiful and fruitful garden. The second great eruption is not yet over. The marks of its ravages are still all around

us.

The ashes are still hot beneath our feet.

In some direcYet experience

tions the deluge of fire still continues to spread. surely entitles us to believe, that this explosion, like that which preceded it, will fertilize the soil which it has devastated. Already in those parts which have suffered most severely, rich cultivation and secure dwellings have begun to appear amidst the waste. The more we read of past ages, the more we observe the signs of these times-the more do we feel our hearts filled and swelled up with a good hope of the future destinies of the human race."

This long extract from a writer whose infidelity appears at every step of his reasoning, is strongly confirmatory of the principles of the following particulars of my own scheme of interpretation. 1st, The application of the war of the witnesses to the period of the Reformation. 2dly, The application of the earthquake, in which fell a tenth part of the city, to the same event. 3dly, The viewing the French Revolution, and all its future consequences, as one convulsion, be it a volcano or

L

Greek empire. They continued to be a woe or plague, till the year 1697, when they were defeated by Prince Eugene in the memorable battle of Zenta. This battle was followed by the peace of Carlowitz, in the year 1699; since when, the Turkish empire has been on the decline, and the Christian states have rather been a woe to them than they to the Christians. I am of opinion, I am of opinion, therefore, with many able interpreters, that the Turkish woe ceased in the year 1699. It is added, "Behold the third woe cometh quickly." The word "quickly"

an earthquake, and not a series of different convulsions, as those writers make it, who apply the earthquake of Rev. xi. 13, to the former part of the Revolution, and that of xi. 19, and xvi. 18, to a later part. These two Apocalyptic earthquakes are the two volcanoes of the Edinburgh Reviewer, the first, the Reformation, the second, the Revolution in France, extending now to all Europe. They are also the two earthquakes of the scheme of interpretation, adopted in this volume-and thus my scheme, in its great outlines, harmonizes with what may be called the Political Philosophy of History.

* Mr. Faber, in his Sacred Calendar of Prophecy, quotes from Coxe's History of the House of Austria, Vol. III., chap. 66, the following striking confirmation of the interpretation here given." The peace of Carlowtiz forms a memorable era in the history of the House of Austria, and of Europe. Leopold secured Hungary and Sclavonia, which, for a period of almost two hundred years, had been occupied by the Turks; and consolidated his empire by the important acquisition of Transylvania; at the same time the Sultans lost nearly half their possessions in Europe: and from this diminution of territorial sovereignty, the Ottoman Power, which once threatened universal subjugation, ceased to be formidable to Christendom." Some further remarks upon the rapid fall of the Ottoman power in our own days, will be offered in the exposition of the vials.

seems to have a relative signification in this passage; and, as we have seen, that an interval of some centuries intervened between the end of the first, and the beginning of the second woe, and also that the second woe continued for a space of three hundred and ninety-six years; if the third woe happen only one hundred years after the termination of the second, then it may be said to come quickly, inasmuch as it happens after an interval much shorter than that which separated the second woe from the first. The expression, "Behold the third woe cometh quickly," may further be intended to keep our attention and expectations awake, and to mark the third woe (when it shall come), from its proximity to the second.