pitated into the Teiss: and of 30,000, who had not crossed the river, scarcely one thousand es caped alive. This complete victory, which cost only 500 men, was gained within the short space of two hours: and, to use the emphatic expression of the heroic commander, the sun seemed to linger on the horizon to gild with his last rays the victorious standards of Austria. The Ottomans were now completely humbled: and, what was gained by the sword, was immediately afterward ratified by the pen. Plenipotentiaries were assembled, on the 14th of November 1697, from all the Powers in alliance against the Porte: the negotiations were conducted under the mediation of England and Holland: and, in little more than two months, a general accommodation was effected. The peace of Carlowitz forms a memorable era in the history of the House of Austria and of Europe. Leopold secured Hungary and Selavonia, 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 CHRISTENDOM1. 1 Coxe's Hist. of the House of Austr. vol. iii. chap. 66. p. 394-403. Such is the language of history, adopting undesignedly as its own almost the very words of prophecy. From the fatal battle of Zenta, the Turks may be said to have run an almost uninterrupted course of adversity: and, after accumulating loss upon loss, so far from being any longer a victorious and overbearing woe to the Roman Empire, they, who once threatened universal subjugation, now precariously subsist, rather by the jealous sufferance of their powerful neighbours who apparently find it difficult to arrange a satisfactory scheme of partition, than by any principle of native and inherent vigour. (5.) Plausible, however, as the foregoing ar rangement may be, it cannot be adopted unless it shall be found to quadrate with certain other prophetic marks which indicate and attend upon the passing away of the second woe. We are taught, that, immediately before its expiration, the two apocalyptic witnesses are slain ; that they lie dead, during the space of three prophetic days and a half; that they are restored to life at the close of that term; and that they finally ascend to heaven in a cloud, before the very eyes of their enemies. We are further taught, that, synchronically with these remarkable events, a great earthquake, or a great political revolution, takes place; which overthrows the tenth part of the mystical Babylon, or which ultimately subverts the ecclesiastical dominance of Rome in some one of the ten Gothico-Roman kingdoms. Then it is added: 1 The second woe is past ; behold, the third woe cometh quickly From this statement it is evident, that, if the second woe really passed away, on the 11th of September 1697, through the agency of the battle of Zenta; the circumstances, which have been just enumerated, must have occurred immediately before that epoch. Hence, if no such occurrence can be shewn, it will be quite clear, that the whole of the foregoing arrangement is nugatory and untenable. The prophetic history of the two witnesses will, in its own proper place, be discussed at large hereafter. I shall, therefore, at present, in order that the preceding discussion may be satisfactorily closed, do nothing more than briefly state, that every one of the circumstances in question occurred exactly at the time required by my proposed chronological arrangement of the second woe-trumpet. At the end of January in the year 1686, the two ancient witnessing Churches of the united Vallenses and Albigenses, which had never submitted to the thraldom of the papal yoke, and which therefore were not reformed Churches in any such sense as the national Churches of England or Denmark or Sweden, were politically slain in their corporate capacity of visibly subsisting communities. In the year 1688, occurred that great earth 1 Rev. xi. 7–14. |