Bellarmine, the great champion of the Church of Rome, advocates the same principles. It is, in fact, characteristic of the Papal Church, to make use of whatever instrumentality most effectually promotes its purposes. Despotism and democracy are of themselves equally good in her estimate. That is preferred which ministers most directly to her supremacy. The independence or supremacy of the church is her first principle: whatever enthrones and promotes it is good-whatever intrudes on it is anathema.

In the judgments which this Vial emptied on the French. clergy, we see also the proofs of a retributive Providence. The French priests had dyed their hands in blood in the day of their power. The massacres of the Albigenses and Waldenses, and the terrible murders of St. Bartholomew's day, when sixty thousand Protestants were butchered, at the instigation of the Popish clergy, in twenty-four hours-the reigning pontiff causing a medal to be struck to commemorate the carnage-a medal which I have seen-all came into remembrance in 1793. The leaders of the Revolution, in fact, quoted Bartholomew's day as a precedent. Persecution, as if experience taught no improvements, is still cherished in the Papal Church, and is ready to break forth whenever there is the power. Its past history is written in blood. Fouchet, and Collert d'Herbois, and Marat, were not worse than the Hildebrands of the Romish Church. They were less guilty, for they were less enlightened.

Let us not suppose there is any thing in the French character essentially worse than in our own. Had England been the scene of this horrible judgment, and her people schooled in no purer principles, in no sublimer faith, they had just developed the same excesses. Popery would pluck a seraph from his throne, and plunge him in the depths of hell. Angels, surrendered to themselves, and severed from God, would soon show themselves only demons. The gospel of grace makes all the difference. We had no national sympathy with Rome in 1789, and not partaking of her sins, we received not her plagues.

Let us love the blessed gospel more and more; let us think less of those trivial disputes, which, in an age of privilege, are liable to stir the passions of mankind; and contemplate with

intenser gratitude, and cherish with more ardent and enthusiastic feelings, those precious truths which are the roots of our prosperity. The unclean spirits are at work-the last struggle is approaching. They only who are born again will endure; all others shall be as chaff before the whirlwind, or stubble in the devouring flames. Are we Christians? Has the gospel touched our hearts, and transformed our nature? has it quickened us with divine life?

Let us spread far and wide that blessed volume which embosoms the embryo of Eden, and out of which the millennial glories are destined to break in all their splendours. Let us help forward that gospel which is the cement of society, the sweetener of life, the fore-light of heaven. In proportion as nations become Christian will they be happy.

True religion is the only cement and sweetener of society, and when it shall wrap our country like its atmosphere, and mould and shape the whole social economy, neither the tyrant's rod shall scourge us, nor the trumpet of sedition agitate it. There shall be no enchantment against Jacob, nor divination against Israel; when God shall be recognised as our Lawgiver and our King, when God shall be known in all our palaces, our condition will be one of increasing greatness, and our progress of uneclipsed and augmenting splendour. Beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth, will Great Britain be. The kings of the earth, as they assemble to contemplate us and pass by together, will wonder, and be troubled, and haste away; and the wise and holy of the earth will come from afar and walk about our nation, and go round about her, and tell the towers thereof, and mark well her bulwarks, and consider her palaces, that they may tell it to generations following.

LECTURE XVIII.

THE SECOND, THIRD, AND FOURTH VIALS.

"And the second angel poured out his vial upon the sea; and it became as the blood of a dead man: and every living soul died in the sea.

"And the third angel poured out his vial upon the rivers and fountains of waters: and they became blood.

"And I heard the angel of the waters say, Thou art righteous, O Lord, which art, and wast, and shalt be, because thou hast judged thus.

"For they have shed the blood of saints and prophets, and thou hast given them blood to drink; for they are worthy.

"And I heard another out of the altar say, Even so, Lord God Almighty, true and righteous are thy judgments.

"And the fourth angel poured out his vial upon the sun; and power was given unto him to scorch men with fire.

"And men were scorched with great heat, and blasphemed the name of God, which hath power over these plagues: and they repented not to give him glory."-Revelation xvi. 3-9.

I NEED scarcely here refer to one great design which has guided and actuated me in all these expositions, viz. to show that what the pen of God has written upon the sacred page, the hand of God is performing every day in providence: in other words, that facts in providence are the most brilliant comments upon texts in Scripture; that God is not confined to the Bible, but that he is in the world: God is in creation; his creative power is felt there: God is in providence; his superintending presence is exhibited there: God is in the Bible; his mercy and his truth are most vividly illustrated there and to unfold the harmony of all, by pointing out the coincidence of the facts of all, is one of the great duties of an instructor of the people, and not the least precious lesson that a Christian people can learn. It is one pre dominating tendency of the age, to believe that God is in the temple, but not in the Royal Exchange; that God is in our con gregations, but not in our armies; that God takes cognizance of ministers and Christian communicants, but that his voice is not

heard, nor his arm felt, in our palaces, our parliaments, our halls of commerce, and all that constitutes our existence as a nation. The fact is, there is a disposition to give God a portion of the earth, and to keep the rest; so much for mammon-so much for ambition-so much for power-and so much for sin: to let a certain portion of the earth be consecrated as the acre of God, and to insist on the remainder being reserved for man. The consecration of churches is thus capable-I do not say necessarily so— of being misconstrued, as if it implied that the rest of the earth was not for God. I believe that when the Lord of glory assumed to himself a portion of our clay, he consecrated, by that fact, every acre of the habitable globe. And, if so, there is no portion so unholy that a Christian's knee may not bow there; there is no portion of it so unsanctified that the ear of the God that formed it cannot hear us. How often have I repeated, what is worth repetition for the way to teach is to repeat-this great lesson: it is the work that consecrates the place, not the place that consecrates the work. If this vast auditory were assembled in Covent Garden Theatre in the name of Christ, it would be a congregation of the Lord it would, I confess, delight and refresh me to hear, where the language of fiction has so long prevailed, the words of truth and reality resounding in men's ears.

In order, however, to explain clearly and consistently with all that I have said, the allusions contained in the verses which I have selected for my text, let me remind you of the language almost similar in tone, though not the same in degree, in what were called the Trumpets. You remember that when the first angel sounded his trumpet, there followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and a third part of trees were burned up: when the second angel sounded, a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea, and a third part of the sea became blood; and the third part of the creatures which were in the sea and had life died; and the third part of the ships were destroyed. And when the third angel sounded, there fell a great star from heaven; and it fell upon the third part of the rivers and upon the fountains of waters. And the name of the star is Wormwood; and the third part of the waters became wormwood: and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter. Then the fourth

you

angel sounded, and the third part of the sun was smitten, and the third part of the moon. So that language perfectly parallel in imagery, though different in degree, and limited to a third part, is used on the sounding of the trumpets, to that which is used on the pouring out of the second, the third, and the fourth vials. The reason I refer to the action of these symbols, the trumpets, is to show you the perfect consistency of our exposition of the Apocalypse, by showing that the localities that were smitten by the woes pronounced by the trumpets, are the very localities. exactly that were smitten more terribly by the woes poured forth from the Apocalyptic vials. Under the second trumpet, then, we have read that, as it were, a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea, and the third part of the sea became blood: will recollect I explained that to mean that the third part of the maritime power, the naval power, and commercial greatness of the apostate Roman empire, was smitten at the time when the blast of the third trumpet was heard, and that the judgments which that blast conveyed fell upon them; if I was right in interpreting the action of the third trumpet, as affecting the maritime and commercial power of the western Roman empire,-in order to be consistent I must presume that the second vial has its action restricted to the very same thing, namely, to the maritime power, the commerce and the colonies, of the great Papal countries which had colonies and commerce, namely, France, Spain, and Portugal, and that these were blasted or destroyed at the pouring out of the second vial.

Last Sunday evening, you recollect I endeavoured to show you that the noisome sore bursting forth from within and spreading over the body, irritating and full of disease, was chronologically fixed, and symbolically explained to be the French Revolution. I have now to show you that the second vial following after it, is the action of the same revolutionary and infidel spirit, descending, in some shape, upon the maritime power, commerce, and colonies of France and Spain and Portugal. England, the great bulwark of Protestantism, was selected to be the instrument-the hand that took the vials from God, and poured out their contents upon the maritime forces, colonies, and dependencies of the Papal empire.