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comparative rapidity, with which the third follows the termination of the second: we may reasonably conclude, that the word quickly is employed to describe any space of time not exceeding the period of about a century. For, if the third woe commences about a century or less than a century after the termination of the second; it may, when a comparison is instituted between one century or less and a period exceeding five centuries, well be said to come quickly.

CHAPTER II.

RESPECTING THE JOINT CHARACTERISTICS OF THE THREE HOMOGENEOUS WOES OF THE APOCALYPSE.

By the three woes, which the three last of the seven trumpets are said to introduce, we must evidently understand three periods of unusual and peculiar trouble to that Empire, which is the geographical platform of the whole apocalyptic prophecy.

Between the rival princes of the divided Roman Empire, there have always been wars and fightings: but these are of too vague and indefinite and transitory a nature to be specially described or characterised. The three woes, on the contrary, stand out from the undistinguishable mass of common troubles, preeminent both by their magnitude and by their singularity; so that they naturally form three marked and striking periods of history.

Nor is this, I apprehend, their only peculiarity. I have often insisted upon the very valuable and important principle of homogeneity, as a point which ought ever to be borne in mind by a prudent expositor of the Apocalypse. Hence, agreeably to this leading principle, there must, to a certain ex

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tent, be an uniformity of character discernible in all the three woes: so that they should all belong, as it were, to the same species of misery.

I. If, then, we open the volume of modern history, subsequent to the partition of the Western Empire, which was effected, by the ten Gothic nations, during the blasts of the three first trumpets; we shall readily discover a period, which, from the marked singularity of the events comprehended within it, may well be denominated a period of unusual woe to the grand platform of the Roman Empire.

While the princes of the West were waging war with each other much after the ordinary mode which characterises every age alike, the Saracens burst forth suddenly and unexpectedly from Arabia, vehemently attacked the Eastern Roman Empire, conquered the provinces of Syria and Palestine and Egypt and Africa, subjugated Spain, mastered Sicily and the south of Italy well nigh to the very gates of Rome, and penetrated even into the more northern region of France itself. Their progress was, for a season, portentously rapid: but, after the lapse of a century and a half, they ceased from their career of victory and thenceforth they were troublesome to the Roman Empire, only in the way of ordinary warfare.

Here we have evidently a period, which minutely corresponds with the predicted period of the first apocalyptic woe: a woe, be it observed, which, in

point of chronology, is represented as being successive to the partition of the Western Empire during the blast of the three first trumpets.

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After the year 762, when the Saracens became a settled people, and when they ceased to be any marked or peculiar woe to their Roman neighbours, nothing very particular occurred for the space of more than five centuries. During that period, the Latin princes were perpetually fighting, sometimes with each other, and sometimes with the Saracens. Success now inclined to this party, and now attended upon that party. The Latins beat the Saracens; and the Saracens beat the Latins. Sometimes, one Gothic prince obtained the preeminence; and, sometimes, another. But, through more than five whole centuries, no calamity occurred of a sufficiently definite nature to vindicate to itself the character of a second great woe, when viewed comparatively and analogically to the woe of the Sa

racens.

II. At the beginning, however, of the fourteenth century, another marked and extraordinary period of trouble commenced.

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The four Sultanies of the Turks, which had for a considerable time been confined to the Euphratean region by the arms of the Latin crusaders, being at length united under one sceptre and thus constituting the mighty Power of the Ottomans, strenuously attacked the Eastern Roman Empire, and ceased not until they had entirely subverted it. By this revolution, the whole eastern wing of the

eagle became subject to the Turcomans: nor did they desist from more or less tormenting the western wing, until, at the close of the seventeenth century, they were reduced to a point of depression, from which they never thoroughly recovered themselves; for, from that time down to the present, their power has rapidly decayed; and, instead of being any longer formidable to Christendom, their potent and ambitious neighbours have rather been formidable to them.

Here, then, we have evidently a second period, which no less minutely corresponds with the predicted period of the second apocalyptic woe, than the first period corresponded with that of the first woe and this second marked period was long in following the termination of the first period; a matter, clearly insinuated in what is said respecting the arrival of the third woe : for, if the third woe is quickly to follow the termination of the second; we are very intelligibly taught, by a necessary implication, that the second woe is to follow the termination of the first not quickly.

Thus, by only a moderate attention to history, we may very easily discern, what the prophetic Spirit must have intended by the two first apocalyptic woes: and, accordingly, on no point has there been a more general concurrence among expositors, than in the application of these two woes to the Saracens and the Turks. They form, as it were, two beacons or landmarks: the application of them has become almost an axiom or an adjudged case,

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