dad, Rhei, Ispahan, Samarcand, Bokhara, and Kashgar.

But the greatness and unity of the Turkish Empire expired in the person of Malek-Shah. On his death, in the year 1092, the vast fabric fell to the ground ; and, after a series of civil wars, FOUR DYNASTIES, contemporary and not suce cessive, were formed : namely, that of PERSIA at large; that of KERMAN, a province of Persia ; that of a large portion of Syria, including Aleppo and Damascus ; and that of RHOUM, or Asia Minor.

The existence, and even the name, of the first three of these dynasties soon expired: but the Seljukian kingdom of rhoum had a longer and more important duration.

The conquest of Rhoum or Anatolia had been effected in the life of Malek by Suliman, a prince of his family: and the generous policy of Malek allowed him to enjoy it. This kingdom extended, from the Euphrates to Constantinople, and from the confines of Syria to the Black sea. The Sultan fixed his residence at Nice, once the metropolis of Bithynia : and this city, which had been so famous for its orthodoxy in the early history of the Christian Church, was now polluted by the preaching of the divinity of the mission of Mohammed.

In the year 1240, the Ottoman Turks, who dwelt originally at the north of the Caspian sea on the plains of Kipjak or Cumania, made their appear

their existing representatives, the united Ottoman: and Seljukian Turks.

2. The purpose, for which they are declared to be loosed, is, in order that they might slay the third, part of men.

Respecting the import of this peculiar phraseology, enough has already been said in its proper place'. The third part of the Roman Empire, here consigned to political destruction, is doubtless the Empire of the East or the Constantinopolitan Monarchy: and it is specially for the overthrow. of this Power, that the four angels are unloosed.

The object of their liberation was duly accom: plished. In the year 1453, they took Constantinople, and subverted the Roman Empire of the East.

3. The prophetic account of those characteristics, by which the Euphratèan warriors might be distin, guished, accords in the most perfect manner with the description which history gives of the Turks. ?

(1.) Their troops are said to be cavalry; and this cavalry is represented, as consisting of myriads upon myriads : the heads of the horses are compared to the heads of lions, by way of indicating their great strength and fierceness: and the riders are depicted, as wearing breastplates of fire and of hyacinth and of brimstone, or, in. other words, of red and blue and yellow.

Agreeably to this minute and vivid description, the Turks brought immense armies into the field,

See above book iv. chap. 5.

chiefly composed of horse: and, from the first time of their appearance on the great political stage of nations, they have peculiarly affected the colours of blue and yellow and scarlet.

(2.) As the horses rushed to battle, fire and smoke and brimstone seemed to issue from their mouths and it was by the agency of these destructive flashes, that the third part of men appeared to be slain.

This part of the description is not less graphi cally minute than the former one. I readily agree with those commentators, who have supposed, that the flashes of fire attended by smoke and brimstone, which the prophet imagined to proceed from the mouths of the horses, were in reality the flashes of artillery. Cannon of an enormous size were employed by Mohammed the second in the siege of Constantinople and it was chiefly by their instru mentality, that he succeeded in taking the metro, politan city and in thus politically slaying the apocalyptic third part of men'.

(3.) The horses had power to do hurt by their tails, as well as by their mouths: for their tails were furnished with heads, and resembled serpents.

In the language of symbols, the tail denotes a corrupt superstition. Hence the propagation of a deadly imposture is here distinctly predicted. The event has accorded with the prophecy. Like

'Hist. of Decline, vol. xii. p. 197, 211, 213.
See above book i. chap. 1. § II. 2. (1.)

the Saracens of the first woe, the Turks were not merely secular conquerors. They were animated with all the wild fanaticism of a false religion : they professed and propagated the same theological system, as their Arabian predecessors : they injured by their doctrines, no less than by their conquests: and, wherever they established their dominion, the Koran triumphed over the Gospel.

4. Yet, notwithstanding the signal overthrow of the Eastern Empire, the rest of the men throughout the Roman territories, who were not politically killed by the plagues of the two first woes, repented not (we are told) of their worship of demon-gods and images : neither did they desist from their murderous persecutions, and their sorceries, and their pious frauds, and their spiritual fornication.

Accordingly we find, that, throughout the Latin Patriarchate, idolatry with all its concomitants was at its full height during the blast of the sixth trumpet and during the prevalence of the second woe. In the days of the Saracens, the Arabian imposture triumphed over the proud monarchy of Persia; but was able only to torment the declining remains of the once formidable Empire of Rome : in the days of the Turks, while it beheld the capital of Chosröes prostrate at its feet, it witnessed also the political death of the Eastern third part of the Roman sovereignty. Still, however, did the Latin Church continue to trample alike upon humanity and upon religion. Unawed by the punishment of her Constantinopolitan sister she reso