come them, and kill them. And their dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified." The two witnesses here mentioned we take to be the Old and New Testaments, see Zechariah, iv. The angel here calls them his two witnesses, from which we may justly infer that he is none other than our Saviour; for a creature of God, we think, would not use such an expression. The reader will, of course, observe that this is the very same angel which proclaimed, in Rev. x., the event which shall mark the close of the mystery of God, the same that came "down from heaven, clothed with a cloud," "and a rainbow was upon his head," who held "in his hand a little book open." Every one of our readers knows, that the being clothed in sackcloth is a token of mourning and affliction; all, therefore, that is implied by the two witnesses being clothed in sackcloth for 1260 days or years, is that they shall figuratively be in affliction and humiliation during all that time. The word power in italics is not in the original, and is superfluously introduced here by the translators-the meaning of the passage being clear enough without it; for he who gives the two witnesses to prophesy, has the power to fulfil their prophecies. Verse 5" And if any man will hurt them, fire proceedeth out of their mouth, and devoureth their enemies and if any man will hurt them, he must in this manner be killed." There is much information, we believe, in this mysterious verse. Let us read forward in this chapter, and see who it is that hurts the two witnesses of God; and let us see if we can learn from the mouth of the witnesses themselves the doom of their enemy-how he is to be killed. "And when they [the two witnesses] shall have finished their testimony, the beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall make war against them, and shall overcome them, and kill them." The beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit, then, is the enemy of the two witnesses—it is he who overcomes and kills them. But of what is this beast typical? This beast is the scarlet-coloured beast full of names of blasphemy, described in Rev. xvii. as the beast that "was, and is not; and shall ascend out of the bottomless pit, and go into perdition ;" and which we shall shew, in our exposition of that chapter, to be typical of a future Antichristian power, the doom of which power is pronounced by the New Testament witness in Rev. xix. 20-" And the beast was taken, and with him the false prophet that wrought miracles before him, with which he deceived them that had received the mark of the beast, and them that worshipped his image. These both were cast

alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone."

Verse 6" These [the two witnesses] have power to shut heaven, that it rain not in the days of their prophecy: and have power over waters to turn them to blood, and to smite the earth with all plagues, as often as they will." The evils here said to be inflicted on the earth by the prophecy of the two witnesses seem to fall out under the four first trumpets, whose narrative is contained between v. 7 and 12 of Rev. viii. inclusively, which the reader may consult the fulfilment of which we think yet future.

M

Verse 8-" And their dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified." Now, we are told, v. 7, that when they shall have finished their testimony, or, as Bishop Newton makes it, "when they shall be about to finish their testimony," the two witnesses are to be killed; and in v. 3 we are told that they are to prophesy 1260 days or years; therefore it is at the end of this period of time that their dead bodies are to lie in the street of the great city. But if we account these years to be the papal period; and if it be already come to a close in the year 1806, or in the year 1792, as Mr Irving makes it; then where, we would ask, did the dead bodies of the two witnesses lie in the street of "the great city," which can be no other but Rome, according to every established principle of interpretation? for to Rome we find the terms " great city" applied no fewer than six times in the course of the Apocalypse-viz. Rev. xiv. 8, xviii. 10, 16, 18, 19, 21; and the term "great" five times, Rev. xvi. 19, xvii. 1, 5, xviii. 2, xix. 2; and Rome may certainly be with great justice spiritually called Sodom and Egypt, for her unnatural lusts, as well as her idolatry; and there our Saviour may be said, at the date when the witnesses are slain, to have been virtually crucified.

Verses 9, 10, 11, and 12 of this chapter, are so mysterious, that we leave the interpretation of them to those who shall survive the events by which the prophecies they contain shall be accomplished.

Verse 13-" And the same hour was there a great earthquake, and the tenth part of the city fell, and in the earthquake were slain of men seven thousand and the remnant were affrighted, and gave glory to the God of heaven." The same hour? what hour? when the witnesses had finished their testimony at the end of the 1260 days or years of the second Antichristian period of v. 3? Is this the date which Tremellius calls " sub tempus constitutum," at which the king of the south shall push at the wilful king, Daniel, xi. 40, and the king of the north shall come against him like a whirlwind, when the wilful king shall enter into the glorious land, and many shall be overthrown, towards the close of the 1260 years of the appointed period of supremacy of this power, or about 75 years from the first resurrection the 1260 and 75 making together the period 1335 years, at the end of which Daniel is to stand in his lot among his risen brethren? That the time of the great earthquake of v. 13 is close upon a time of great trouble, we may judge from being told, v. 12, that the two witnesses "ascended up to heaven in a cloud;" and, v. 19, that "the temple of God was opened in heaven, and there was seen in his temple the ark of his testament: and there were lightnings, and voices, and thunderings, and an earthquake, and great hail;" and that out of the temple of the tabernacle of the testimony in heaven opened, Rev. xv. 5, came the seven angels, having the seven plagues, or the seven vials of wrath which are to be poured out upon the earth after the seventh trumpet begins to blow, under the prophetical narrative of which, according to our scheme of the arrangement of the sealed book, that of the seven vials is arranged: and here it is very important to observe, that, in the

history of the seven vials in chaps. xv. and xvi., before the seven angels go out of the temple to pour out their respective vials upon the earth, we have a representation, in chap. xv. 2, of " them that had gotten the victory over the beast, and over his image, and over his mark, and over the number of his name," standing "on the sea of glass, having the harps of God:" shewing that, before the end of the 1260 years of v. 3, the worship of the papal beast had been enforced by the beast with two horns like a lamb that cometh up out of the earth, who "deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by the means of those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the (papal) beast which had the wound by a sword, (in the year 1806?) and did live" notwithstanding; and which beast with two horns "had power to give life unto the image of the (papal) beast, that the image of the (papal) beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the (papal) beast should be killed. And" who "causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the (papal) beast, or the number of his name: both which beasts exist together, and both of them yet remain to be prototyped by future powers. And it may be also worth while to notice here, that the angel of chap. x. proclaims the close of the mystery of God to be when the voice of the seventh angel begins to sound; as much as to say, that the periods of supremacy of all Antichristian apostacies shall come to a close at the time of the sounding of the seventh trumpet.

Mr Irving, after Mr Frere, we presume, interprets the two witnesses to be the Old and New Testaments, and thinks that the two witnesses were slain by the spirit of infidelity which prevailed at the French Revolution-understanding this spirit to be the prototype of the beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit. With the former of these positions we perfectly concur. But we appeal even to himself whether he has not, in the last, apostatized from every well-established principle of exposition, and thus totally upset the seemingly well-compacted fabric of interpretation which he has raised of this eleventh chapter. There cannot, Mr Irving knows as well as we, be adduced a single instance in all prophecy fulfilled, of a spirit of infidelity, or of a general apostacy from the true faith, being typified by a beast, which in prophecy is always the type of earthly power at the command of a man, or of a succession of men. And where, we would ask, should we look for an explanation of this beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit, but in the seventeenth chapter of the Revelations, which certainly interprets it to be any thing but a spirit of infidelity? It seems to us that, in comparing the charts of the stream of time which prophecy and history have left us, Mr Irving has mistaken the reckoning of the latter by more than a thousand years, and that he is always too ready to believe that History is nearer the ocean of Eternity and the close of her labours than she really is.

CHAPTER XIII.

Verse 11 "And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon." In verses 1 and 2 of this chapter we had the papal beast described; but this is another, a different beast; and, by the established rules of interpretation, must be held to be typical of a different power from the papal. This beast has two horns, to intimate to us that the power of which it is an emblem, is master of the power of two kingdoms. This beast is like a lamb, yet speaks as a dragon; that is, the power of which he is typical, affects meekness of character, but yet is relentless and uncontrollable in the execution of his will.

Verse 12- "And he exerciseth all the power of the first beast before him, and causeth the earth and them that dwell therein to worship the first beast whose deadly wound was healed." We are here told, that this beast with two horns causeth the inhabitants of the earth to worship the beast which we before shewed to be typical of the popes of Rome; from which we are to infer, that the succession of men who are the prototypes of the beast with two horns, shall cause the inhabitants of the earth to worship the popes of Rome at a future time, when the sixth or imperial head of the beast, which was typical of the Roman power at the command of the popes, shall again be healed, when, of course, the title of Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire shall again be restored.

Verses 13-17-" And he doeth great wonders, so that he maketh fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men, and deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by the means of those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast; saying to them that dwell on the earth, that they should make an image to the beast, which had the wound by a sword, and did live. And he had power

to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed. And he caused all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name." Here we have an account of real miracles to be performed by the person of whom the beast with two horns is typical, such as St Paul gives us of the lying wonders performed by his man of sin, after the working of Satan; and here also we are told that this idolatrous and tyrannical power brands the worshippers of his idol with the mark or name, or number of the name, of the idol image.

Both Bishop Newton and Mr Irving interpret this two-horned beast to be the pope of Rome. But how they can do so in consistency with a single rule of interpretation, we are utterly at a loss to see. The beast that we shewed to be typical of the papal power arose out of the sea, -this latter beast cometh up out of the earth; the papal beast has ten horns, this has only two. The papal beast has seven heads and ten horns, the mouth of a lion, the body of a leopard, and

the feet of a bear; the latter beast is like a lamb. And, more than all, we are told that the latter beast is another beast- that is, that it is a different beast altogether from the papal one described in v. 1 and 2. And when did the popes work miracles, which the sacred text tells us, in plain language not to be mistaken, that this beast shall do, -power being given him by Satan, with the permission of God, to serve some mysterious purpose of his providence, "that they should believe a lie," "because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved ?"

66

CHAPTER XVII.

Here we have a woman arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold, and precious stones, and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand, full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication; she has upon her forehead a name written, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS, AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH, and she is sitting upon a scarlet-coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns." Now, of what is this woman typical? and of what the scarlet-coloured beast? "The woman which thou sawest," says the angel to St John, v. 18, "is that great city, which reigneth over the kings of the earth," which sitteth, v. 9, on seven mountains-the city of Rome; and she is arrayed in purple and scarlet, the colours worn by her imperial and papal rulers; and decked with gold, and precious stones, and pearls, like the strange god of the wilful king of Dan. xi. 36 and 38; and she has written on her forehead the names of the Antichristian powers, to which she gives birth.

“And the angel said unto" St John, "Wherefore didst thou marvel? I will tell thee the mystery of the woman, and of the beast that carrieth her, which hath the seven heads and ten horns. The beast that thou sawest was, and is not; and shall ascend out of the bottomless pit, and go into perdition: and they that dwell on the earth shall wonder, whose names were not written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, when they behold the beast that was, and is not, and yet is," (or, according to Mr Irving after Griesbach, is just at hand.) There is a mystery here which it is not easy for interpreters to clear up. The only explanation that we can give of the mysterious expression, "was, and is not, and is just at hand," according to our own views, is, that one of the heads of the papal beast, the imperial head, was wounded as it were to death in the year 1806, as we shewed, when it might be said to cease to be, as it were; so that it might be said by the people of the present day, "it is not," which, however, might be said to be just at hand, if the abomination that maketh desolate should be set up in the year 1836, which we have shewn might take place if the daily sacrifice of Dan. xii. 11, were taken away by the establishment of the supremacy of the pope in the year 546, and if the 1290 years of Dan. xii. 11, lay between the taking away of the daily sacrifice, and the setting up of the abomination that maketh desolate. We are led to believe that the scarlet-coloured beast is the