This book is a continuation of History Unveiling Prophecy by H. Grattan Guinness

SECTION VIII THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY NEW ERA STAGE

FOLLOWING the establishment of Protestantism in the Revolution of 1688, came the Expansion of England; the rise of America; the great Revival of Religion; and the dawn of modern world-wide missions. The siege and heroic defense of Londonderry, the battle of the Boyne, and the victories of Marlborough marked the termination of the struggle led by William of Orange against the Papal foe. On the 15th of September, 1697, William signed the Peace of Ryswick—a peace between Great Britain, the United Provinces, France, Spain, and the Emperor Leopold I. Under this Treaty, concluding the nine years’ war with France, Louis XIV acknowledged the Prince of Orange as King of Great Britain without condition or reserve; Strasbourg was restored to the empire, Luxembourg to the Spaniards, together with other places taken by the French since the treaty of Nimeguen; and all places in the Low Country taken by France were abandoned. Concluded on as fair terms as England could exact, this pacification, as far as the prospects of the continent were concerned, was but “a preliminary armistice of vigilance and preparation.”In England, however, the effect was of a more important character, and signalized the commencement of a new era of full civil and religious liberty.

On his return to England, William appointed the ad December, 1697, a day of solemn thanksgiving for the conclusion of the general peace. On that day, the Cathedral of St. Paul’s, the magnificent work of Sir Christopher Wren, was first opened to the public. The period thus inaugurated has seen the expansion of England to world-wide dimensions.

WARS WITH FRANCE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

“The great English Navy,”says Seeley, “first took definite shape in the wars of the Commonwealth, and the English army, founded on the Mutiny Bill, dates from the reign of William III. Between the Revolution and the Battle of Waterloo, it may be reckoned that we waged and won seven great wars, of which the shortest lasted seven years, and the longest about twelve. Out of a hundred and twenty-six years, sixty-four years, or more than half, were spent in war.

“Let us pass these wars in review. There was first the European war in which England was involved by the Revolution of 1688. It is pretty well remembered, since the story of it has been told by Macaulay. It lasted eight years, from 1689 to 1697.

“There was then the great war called from the Spanish succession, which we shall always remember, because it was the war of Marlborough’s victories. It lasted eleven years, from 1702 to 1713.

“The next great war has now passed almost entirely out of memory, not having brought to light any very great commander, nor achieved any definite result. This war lasted nine years, from 1739 to 1748.

“Next comes the seven years’ war in which we have not forgotten the victories of Frederick. In the English part of it we all remember one grand incident, the battle of the Heights of Abraham, the death of Wolfe, and the conquest of Canada. And yet in the case of this war also it may be observed how much the eighteenth century has faded out of our imaginations. We have quite forgotten that that victory was one of a long series, which to contemporaries seemed fabulous, so that the nation came out of the struggle intoxicated with glory, and England stood upon a pinnacle of greatness which she had never reached before. This is the fourth war. It is in sharp contrast with the fifth, which we have tacitly agreed to mention as seldom as we can. What we call the American war which from the first outbreak of hostilities to the peace of Paris lasted eight years, from 1775 to 1783, was ended ignominiously enough in America, but in its latter part spread into a grand naval war in which

England stood at bay against almost all the world, and in this, through the victories of Rodney, came off with some credit.

“The sixth and seventh of the two great wars with Revolutionary France which we are not likely to forget, though we ought to keep them more separate in our minds than we do. The first lasted nine years from 1793 to 1802, the second twelve from 1803 to 1815.

“Now probably it has occurred to few of us to connect these wars together, or to look for any unity of plan or purpose pervading them. But look a little closer. Out of these seven wars of England five are wars will) ‘France from the beginning, and both the other two, though the belligerent at the outset was in the first Spain, and in the second one our Colonies, yet became in a short time and ended as wars with France. . . . I say ‘these wars made one grand and decisive struggle between England and France.’ On the continent, in Canada, and in India, England overcame the armies of France. England, as a result, became a great world power.

“The Expansion of England in the New World and in Asia is the formula which sums up for England the history of the eighteenth century.”

The second great feature of the period is the

I. Rise of the United States of America.

The Puritans who after a warfare against arbitrary power in England subverted the monarchy and overturned the church, laid in America the foundation of the most mighty Republic the world has ever known.

Exiled from England during the reign of Mary, the Puritans returned on the accession of Elizabeth “bent upon the great design of extirpating from the constitution of the church what they deemed the last degrading vestiges of popery, and remodelling it after the doctrines and practices of the Continental Reformers.””Now commenced a stern and unrelenting struggle. The High Church party resolved to admit no compromise. The Puritans, on the other hand, exposed to the utmost rage of persecution, could only oppose to it an indomitable firmness and tenacity. The Puritan ministers ejected from their livings, driven from their pulpits and their homes began to travel the country, and disseminate their views, by preaching and issuing pamphlets, in defiance of fine and imprisonment.”

When James I came to the throne “the Puritans lost no time in presenting to the king a petition signed by 825 ministers, praying for the removal of superstitious usages and other abuses which deformed the Church.”The celebrated Hampton Court Conference was the reply, a conference in which James I brow beat the unfortunate Puritan ministers in the coarsest manner, “encouraged by the sycophantic smiles of the prelates and courtiers.””If,”said he, “you aim at a Scottish Presbytery, it agrees as well with Monarchy as God with the devil. I will none of that. I will have one doctrine and one discipline.”Rising from his chair, he added, “I shall make them conform themselves, or I will harry them out of the land, or yet do worse.”

Denied the religious liberty they sought in England, many of the Puritans fled to Holland, and from that country made their way to America. Their voyage in the Mayflower marked the commencement of the mighty development of civil and religious freedom existing in America today. After tossing on the Atlantic in their small and crowded vessel, for more than two months, the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock on the 25th December, 1620. “Here the low sandhills of Cape Cod covered with scrubby woods that descended to the sea, seemed at the first glance, a perfect paradise of verdure to the poor sea-beat wanderers.”Before entering the harbour they subscribed their names to a covenant in which they stated that “having undertaken for the glory of God, and advancement of the Christian faith, and honour of our king and country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the Northern part of Virginia,”we “do solemnly and mutually, in the presence of God, and of one another, covenant and combine ourselves together into it civil body politic, for our better ordering and preservation . . . and by virtue hereof to enact, constitute and frame such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions, and offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the colony, unto which we promise all due submission and obedience.”

American writers have denominated this voluntary agreement ” the birth of popular constitutional liberty,”and though it was no intention of the Pilgrims to cast off subjection to England, they did practically, by giving every man the right of voting and choosing officers to draw up and carry out the laws of the colony, “lay the foundation of a totally new system of government upon the basis of a democratic equality and practical independence, over which the nominal sway of a distant power could never exert any efficient permanent control.”

A further settlement of Puritan Pilgrims in Massachusetts in the time of Charles I, formed a later stage in the planting of American colonization. Like the Pilgrims of 1620, these had been “driven forth from their native country by the intolerable burdens of enforced conformity.”But the Puritan settlers had not completely shaken off the spirit of intolerance from which they had suffered. For announcing the principle that the civil magistrate had no right of control in the sacred sphere of conscience, Roger Williams was banished from the colony. Driven forth in the depths of winter, under storms more fierce than those that assailed the Pilgrim Fathers when they landed from the Mayflower, he had to skulk for many weeks amid the intricate wilds of the leafless forest, glad when he discovered a hollow tree to shelter him from the pitiless blasts of the north wind laden with ice and snow. “But the ravens,”said he, “fed me in the wilderness.”The wild Indians protected the outcast, and through his long life, he never forgot the debt of gratitude. Williams removed at length to Rhode Island. Five companions who shared with him the large views of liberty for which he had endured these sufferings, followed him thither; and there, with the advice of the benevolent governor of Boston, and beyond the reach of the Charter of Massachusetts, the pioneer of liberty founded a new settlement, to which he’ gave the name of “Providence.”

Thus was planted that sapling which has since grown into the mighty tree of the United States of America. The American Declaration of Independence in 1776 marks one of the most important stages in the New Era of civil and religious liberty which broke on the world at the commencement of the eighteenth century. The hand of a Higher Power is here seen, guiding events to nobler issues than had been contemplated by even the best of men. From the Pilgrims of the Mayflower to Roger Williams, and from Roger Williams to Washington, the path exhibits a continuous ascent to the lofty level of freedom attained by the American people. The discovery of the New World was the prelude to the Reformation; and the completion of the edifice of civil and religious liberty in the New World has been the crown of the new era inaugurated by the doctrines of the Reformers, and the deeds of the Puritans.

II. The eighteenth century witnessed a revival in England and America of spiritual life.

Liberty is not the chief possession needed by mankind. Spiritual life is still more essential, and God, who gave in this era enfranchisement and enlargement to oppressed Protestant peoples, granted also a deep and wide-spread revival of spiritual religion, whose effects have since extended throughout the world.

Like the Reformation of the sixteenth century, this revival began in Germany. August Herman Franke, a professor of Divinity at Halle in Saxony, filled with faith and love, placed an alms box at his study door, into which contributions were thrown for the purchase of books for the instruction of the poor. The erection of schools for poor children followed, and then the building of his great orphan home. A wonderful revival of the spirit of piety in the city and University of Halle accompanied the movement, whose influence extended to other places in Germany.

In 1710 Zinzendorf was sent to the seminary of Halle, where he became a pupil of Franke, and experienced the quickenings of spiritual life. Devoting himself to the service of God, Zinzendorf formed at Halle a society of like-minded persons called the “order of the grain of mustard seed.”After studying in the University of Wittemburg, and travelling in Holland and France, Count Zinzendorf went to reside at Bertholdsdorf, in Lusatia, on the borders of Bohemia. A few members of the Moravian Church, driven by persecution from their native country, sought refuge with him in 1722, and were permitted to form a settlemerit on his estate, which received the name of Herrnhut, “The Lord’s guard,”or “Watch of the Lord.”Other Moravian refugees joined the settlement, which grew under the fostering care of Zinzendorf to an important centre of religious life and missionary operations. In 1727 the Church of the United Brethren was established at Herrnhut. The Moravian brethren were the direct descendants of the ancient Hussites of Bohemia, among whom the Reformation had been crushed by cruel and prolonged persecution. It may be said that the slain Hussites were revived in the Moravians of Herrnhut.

From Zinzendorf John Wesley received the clear knowledge of the gospel. At that time religion in England was in a dreadfully low and dead condition. A few young men at Oxford University, of whom Wesley was one, formed a company knit together by ties of religious sympathy. By their fellow students they were derided as “Sacrament- arians,””Bible Bigots,””Bible Moths,””The Godly Club.”Whitfield was drawn towards them, and defended them from the revilings of opponents. Thus began the great Methodist movement, which has since grown to such gigantic proportions. In 1737 Wesley sailed for America, in company with some Moravian missionaries. After his return from Georgia, he connected himself more closely with Zinzendorf. Differences afterwards arose which led the Methodists and Moravians on diverging paths, but in spirit they were one. Baptized by the power of the Holy Spirit, Whitfield and Wesley did a glorious work of evangelization in the eighteenth century. Crossing the Atlantic repeatedly, they were the first great preachers in both hemispheres, and were the means of the conversion of thousands.

Whitficld’s ministry was one of unparalleled power. “Before Whitfield no one man had ever come into contact with so many minds; no one voice had ever rung in so many cars; no one ministry had touched so many hearts.”

A most remarkable outpouring of the Spirit of God was manifested at the same time in New England in connection with the labours of Jonathan Edwards.

The year 1741 witnessed a revival which seemed like the return of Pentecostal days. Edwards has left a full account of it. Deep convictions of sin, and transporting views of the excellency of Christ, and of the glory and sufficiency of the gospel, characterized this work, which was productive of numerous and wide-spread conversions, and unwonted growth in grace. In 1743 Edwards became acquainted with Brainerd, then a missionary to the Indians at Kaunaumeek, and subsequently wrote his memoir. From Brainerd may be dated the era of modern missions.

In Northampton, New England, the spot consecrated by the labours of Jonathan Edwards, the remains of David Brainerd and Jerusha Edwards lie side by side. Around their humble graves has sprung up a lovely and peaceful cemetery, whose inscriptions recall the history of the Puritan forefathers of America. The Puritans have passed away, but the spirit which inspired them still lives and operates, and is the mightiest influence of modern days. It has emancipated England, and given birth to America, and through these is transforming the religious beliefs and political institutions of surrounding nations.

The Anglo-Saxons number to-day more than a hundred millions, are in possession of a third of the earth, and rule over 400,000,000 of its inhabitants. Steam and electricity have given wings to the world-transforming movement; and it is evident to all thoughtful minds that the way is being everywhere prepared for the advent of a new and nobler order of things connected with the Kingdom of God.

III. Apocalyptic Interpretation in the Eighteenth Century.

The advent of the new era which followed the English Revolution had a most marked and important effect on Apocalyptic interpretation. Fresh fulfilments of prophecy were recognized, and the attainment of an advanced and commanding position for the study of the subject. The progress in science, philosophy, and theology which marked the period was reflected in Apocalyptic literature. The age of Sir Isaac Newton, of Butler, and of Jonathan Edwards saw the production of works on prophecy of greater learning and breadth of view than any that had previously appeared.

Among the most important works on the Apocalypse produced in the interval between the English and French Revolutions are those of Cressener (1690), Sir Isaac Newton (1691), published in 1733 after his death), Vitringa (1695), Fleming (1701), Whiston (1706), Daubuz (1720), Lancaster (1730), Roberts (1730), Lowman (1737), Bishop iof Clogher (1749), Bishop Newton (1754), Bengel (1757), Jonathan Edwards (1773), and Gill (1776).

To these we must add the work of the Swiss astronomer, Loys de Cheseaux, on the times of Daniel and the Apocalypse, published in 1754.

The following advances in prophetic interpretation are exhibited in these works:

1. The definite conclusion that the death of the Apocalyptic witnesses was past, and their resurrection accomplished.

In 1689, the year of the coronation of William of Orange as William III, Dr. Cressener published a volume on the “Judgments of God upon the Roman Catholic Church,”with a dedicatory preface addressed to the king in which he holds forth the prospect of a ” speedy revival of the Reformation where it has been extinguished,” and hails the English Revolution as “the first opening of the glorious scene.””It may now be reasonably concluded,”says Cressener, ” that the death of the witnesses is already past, and that in all probability the point of time from which the three and a half years of its continuance did begin was at the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes by the king of France.”In 1690 Cressener published “A demonstration of the first principles of the Protestant applications of the Apocalypse,”in which he maintained that it was impossible that the death and resurrection of the witnesses could have taken place before the period then reached ; and that their resurrection was ” unexpectedly fulfilled by the return of the Protestants of Savoy,”in spite of the opposition of their enemies to their own land, and the re-establishment of the Protestant religion in the Vaudois valleys where it had been suppressed three and a half years previously.

He remarks that the Vaudois were for many ages the only considerable party of Protestant witnesses, and are therefore not beneath the notice of the prophecy. Their return “may therefore be very well accounted as the first comfortable earnest of a more universal revival of the silenced churches in other places.”

The celebrated Whiston, Sir Isaac Newton’s successor in the chair of mathematics at Cambridge, maintained the same view in his work on the Apocalypse. Whiston calls attention to the interesting fact that the resurrection of the Vaudois “was foretold from this prophecy before it came to pass by the Lord Bishop of Worcester.”1 There is a mention in Evelyn’s Memoirs of a visit paid by Mr. E. on the 18th of June, 1690 to Bishop Lloyd. Referring to the death and resurrection of the Apocalyptic witnesses the bishop mentioned “that he had persuaded two exiled Vaudois ministers to return home, when there was no apparent ground of hope for them, giving them £20 towards the expenses^ and which return was wonderfully accomplished.”

The story of the Vaudois restoration is related as follows by Whiston: ” The Duke of Savoy, the sovereign of these Vaudois, by an edict dated January 31, 1685-6, N. S., forbade the exercise of their religion on pain of death; and therein ordered their churches to be demolished, and their ministers to be banished. The edict for the banishment was dated Turin, April 9th; enrolled the 10th, and published in the valleys the nth, and an army sent against them of Savoy and French troops who attacked them on the 22d of the same month, and totally subdued them in the following month of May; when many of the poor people were killed and barbarously slaughtered; great numbers cast into prison, and inhumanly used there, and the miserable remainder of them were at length released out of prison, and permitted to depart about the beginning of December, so that the total dissipation of them was not completed till that time, or the beginning of December the same year, 1686. In the meantime these poor Vaudois were very kindly received and succoured by the Protestant States, particularly those of Holland, Brandenburg, Geneva, and Switzerland, and so preserved from ruin. Towards the latter end of the year 1689, about three years and a half after the publication of the Edict above mentioned, in the valleys, or the beginning of its execution, they passed the Lake of Geneva secretly, and entering Savoy with their swords in their hands they recovered their ancient possessions, and by the middle of April, A. D . 1690, established themselves in it, notwithstanding the opposition of the troops of France and Savoy; of whom they, who were comparatively but a few, slew great numbers with inconsiderable loss; till the Duke himself, who had now, left the French interest, by his League, and an Edict signed June 4, 1690, just three and a half years after their total dis- sipation, recalled the rest of them and reestablished tham, with liberty to the French refugees themselves to return with them also. So that on the whole, these Vaudois, when they were about to finish their testimony, or near the conclusion of their 1,260 years’ prophecy in sackcloth, have been slain, i. e., in prophetic style, imprisoned, murdered, expelled and banished; . . . they have continued in that state of expulsion three years and a half, exactly according to this prophecy, and that in the public view • of the Papists, and to their great joy. And after those three years and a half now over the Spirit of life from God has entered into them, and they have risen again from the dead, and stood upon their feet, i. e., recovered their old habitations, and obtained the pardon and protection of their prince; and so terribly defeated their numerous enemies that fear and terror could not but fall upon them thereupon; exactly also as their prophecy foretold of them. And this event is the more to be observed because it takes in the resurrection of both the witnesses, the Waldenses and the Al- bigenses, which have been a united people, and dwelt together in these valleys of Piedmont ever since the conclusion of the Crusades against the latter of them in the thirteenth century; and because it was from this prophecy expressly foretold before it happened by the most learned the Lord Bishop of Worcester, as is well known to many, and exactly come to pass accordingly. And thus far of the prophecy seems to me to have been already fulfilled, and that very remarkably.”

Various books on the Vaudois written since Whiston’s time, tracing their history down to the present day, exalt the Glorieuse Rentree accomplished under Henri Arnaud, as the crisis of their restoration. After the treaty of 1690, their privileges were constantly confirmed, and perfect liberty of conscience accorded them. “The Protestant powers continued their protection, and particularly England; for a pension was granted by that country to the pastors under William and Mary, which was named the English Royal Subsidy; and this being found insufficient, in 1770 a general collection was made, the interest of which was paid under the name of the English National Subsidy.”

In Switzerland “studentships were established at the Universities of Geneva, Lausanne and Basle for the young Vaudois intended for the ministry.”2 The Vaudois church which has of late years experienced a spiritual revival is now engaged in conducting a wide-spread work of evangelization in Italy.

Thus has God fulfilled His Word. The resurrection of the slaughtered witnesses, prefigured by the resurrection of their Lord, ” the faithful and true witness,”has been accomplished. The memorable prediction in relation to Him, “Thou wilt not leave my soul in Hades, nor suffer Thine Holy One to see corruption,”has been fulfilled in a figurative sense in the experience of his slaughtered saints. On the third day He rose again from literal death—in the third year they rose from symbolical death. The powers of destruction were unable to retain their victims. The spirit of life proved victorious. Christ and His witnesses have arisen. He lives forever, and they too, live as witnesses to die no more.

2. The recognition of the fact that there have been several stages in the death and resurrection of the witnesses.

Some interpreters are of opinion, says Bishop Newton, that this prophecy of the death and resurrection of the witnesses was accomplished by the advent of the Reformation three and a half years after the complete suppression of the Waldenses, Hussites and Lollards celebrated in the Lateran Council in 1514. “Some again think this prophecy very applicable to the horrid massacre of the Protestants at Paris, and in other cities of France, begun at the memorable eve of St. Bartholomew’s Day, 1572. According to the best authors there were slain thirty or forty thousand Huguenots in a few days. “Their dead bodies lay in the streets of the great city,”one of the greatest cities of Europe, for they were not suffered to be buried, being the bodies of heretics; but were dragged through the streets, or thrown into the river, or hung upon gibbets, and exposed to public infamy. Great “rejoicings “too, were made in the courts of France, Rome, and Spain; they went in procession to the churches, they returned public thanks to God, they sang Te Deums, they celebrated Jubilees, they struck medals; and it was enacted that St. Bartholomew’s Day should ever afterwards be kept with double pomp and solemnity. But neither was this joy of long continuance, for in little more than “three years and a half,”Henry III, who succeeded his brother, Charles IX, entered into a treaty with the Huguenots, which was concluded and published on the 14th of May, 1576, whereby all the former sentences against them were revised, and the free and open exercise of their religion was granted to them: they were to be admitted to all honours, dignities and offices, as well as the Papists; and the judges were to be half of one religion, and half of the other ; with other articles greatly to their advantage. “Others again have recourse to later events, and the later indeed the better and fitter for the purpose. Peter Jurieu, a famous divine of the French Church at Rotterdam, imagined that the persecution then carried on by Louis XIV against the Protestants of France, after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in October, 1685, would In: the last persecution of the Church . . . Bishop Lloyd, and after him Mr. Whiston, apply this prophecy to the poor Protestants in the Valleys of Piedmont, who by a cruel Edict of their sovereign, the Duke of Savoy, instigated by the French king, were imprisoned and murdered, or banished and totally dissipated at the latter end of the year 1686 . . . but reestablished by another Edict signed June 4, 1690, just three and a half years after their total dissipation … at the same time “with these massacres, “popery here in England was advanced to the throne, and threatened an utter subversion of our religion and liberties, but in little more than ‘ three years and a half’ a happy deliverance was wrought by the glorious Revolution.”

Though more than two hundred years have elapsed since the English Revolution, the Protestant religion continues dominant in England. No great persecution of Protestants has ever taken place since the suppression of the Huguenots and Waldenses in 1685-6. So far Jurieu’s expectation has proved correct; the Papacy has manifestly lost the persecuting power it formerly possessed; it cannot now burn Protestants as heretics, or subject them to wholesale massacre. The inquisition has been abolished, and the reign of Papal tyranny brought to an end.

This accomplishment of the predicted “death and resurrection” of the witnesses in several stages is not an exceptional event, but has its parallel in the method in which other analogous prophecies have been fulfilled.

Thus the Babylonish captivity had several commencing dates, and corresponding termini; so also the “seventy weeks”of Daniel; and the great period of “seven times,”connected with the duration of the four Gentile empires. The same thing is observable in the fulfilment of the three and a-half “Times,”assigned to the duration of the Papal power, as shown in the “Calendar of the Times of the Gentiles,”appended to the work I published in 1878, on “The Approaching End of the Age.”All these prophecies have been accomplished “according to that latitude which is agreeable and familiar unto divine prophecies, being of the nature of the author, with whom a thousand years arc but as one day, and therefore not fulfilled punctually at once, but have springing and germanent accomplishment throughout many ages though the height of fullness of them may refer to some one age.”

3. The prophetic interpreters of the eighteenth century recognized the fact that the woe of the sixtb’trumpet had ter- minated at the Peace of Carlowitz.

This date of the termination of the sixth trumpet, or Turkish ” woe,”had long been foreseen. “The end of it,”says Whiston, “was foretold by Mr. Brightman about a century ere the time came; and by Dr. Cressener some years before; and both from the same prophecy, and all came to pass accordingly.”

The duration of the Turkish “woe”of the sixth trumpet is limited in the prophecy to “a day, a month, and a year “; which on the year- day scale of fulfilment is either 360 + 30 + 1 = 391 years, or 365 + 30 + 1 = 396 years.

Whiston, who was an astronomer, takes it as the latter. The Ottoman Emperors, whose device is the crescent, the sign of aggressive Islam, began their reign in Europe in the year 1299. Ertoghrul, the father of Otbman, had previously led the advance of the Turks from the Upper Euphrates. In the Turkish annals, Osman, or Orthoman, is looked upon by the sultans as the founder of their dynasty; hence the name Osmanlis. “Names come from heaven,” says the Koran; Ottoman’s signified “bone breaker,”and well have the Ottomans deserved the name they bear. “In 1301,”says Sir Edward Creasy, “Othman encountered for the first time a regular Greek army which was led against him by Muzaros, the commander of the guards of the Byzantine Emperor. This important battle took place at Koyounhissar, in the vicinity of Nicomedia. Ottoman gained a complete victory, and in the successful campaign of the six following years he carried his arms as far as the Black Sea, securing fortress after fortress, and hemming in the strong cities of Bousa, Nice and Nicomedia with a chain of fortified posts.” Under the reign of Aladdin the corps of the Janissaries was created, so long the scourge of Christendom, The formation of cavalry, arrayed under banners in thousands and in hundreds followed, and speedily effected the conquest of the Danubian provinces. The Byzantine Empire, fallen to the lowest degree of abasement, cankered with anarchy, idolatry and corruption, became a prey to the inroads of the Turks. The conquest of the Greeks succeeded, and the memorable capture of Constantinople. Under Mahomet II, “one of the most detestable manslayers recorded in history,”the Ottomans, who had been rather an army than a nation, were organized under a code of laws. The number four was taken “as the basis of the hierarchical government, in honour of the four angels who support the Koran, and of the four Khalifites, disciples of Mahomet.”1 Wallachia, Mosnia, Karamania, the Crimea, Rhodes, Cyprus, Egypt and Hungary were successively conquered by the Turks, against whom the Crusades launched in vain their enormous armies.

briefer lunar form. From the Era of Martyrs, A. D. 284, the earliest commencing point of the period, twelve hundred and sixty lunar years extended to Luther’s conversion in 1506-7. This was the date of spiritual quickening in the soul of the reformer. Luther entered the monastery of St. Augustine on the 17th of August, 1505, being then twenty-one years and nine months old. His conversion took place “in the second year of his abode in the convent (D’Aubigne, “History of Reformation,”p. 63). “From that moment light sprang up in the heart of the young monk of Erfurth.” From the fall of Paganism at the victory of Constantine at the battle of Milvian Bridge, October 28th,. 312, 1,260 solar years extend to the massacre of St. Bartholomew, in 1572. The Papal Era of Indictions began September*!, 312, and the massacre of St. Bartholomew began on the 24th of August, and continued during September, 1572; the interval being exactly i,26p solar years. The period from the end of the Western Roman Empire, August 22, 476, to January 26, 1699, the date when the peace of Carlowitz was signed, is just 1,260 lunar years. This and the almost contemporaneous Peace of Ryswick marked, as we have said, the inauguration of a new era, in relation to Papal and Mohammedan domination.

A. D. 284. 1,260 lunar years. A. D. 1506-7.
A. D. 312. 1,260 solar years. A.D. 1572.
B. C. 747. 1,260 lunar years. A. D. 476 (August).
A. D. 476. 1,260 lunar years. A. D. 1699 (January).
B. C. 747. 2,520 solar years. A, D, 1774.

The disastrous defeat of the Turks in the attempt to capture Vienna marked the approaching downfall of the Mahommedan Empire, in Europe. Under the “Holy Alliance”—a league of the Emperor of Austria, the King of Poland, and the Republic of Vienna, a successful war was waged against the common foe. Prince Eugene of Savoy was placed by the Emperor at the head of the Austrian army. A series of victories over the Turks was concluded by the Peace of Garlowitz, in 1699, and with the loss at that time of Hungary, Transylvania, the Morea, Dalmatia, Podolia, the Ukraine and Azof, the Ottomans ceased to be the terror of Christendom.

Under the sixth trumpet the Euphratean horsemen are loosed to slay “the third part of men,”or overthrow the Eastern Roman Empire, on account of the “worship of devils, and idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and wood,”and the “murders, sorceries, fornications and thefts “practiced by its inhabitants. But the judgment is limited to the period symbolically described as “a day, a month, and a year,”391 or 396 years. Brightman, writing in the year 1615 says that the commencement of the Ottoman ravages “falleth in the yeare 1300 by one consent of all the historians.”Measuring thence the 396 years of the Turkish woe he adds that the period “shall expire at last about the yeare 1696.”2 In his book on the “Judgments of God”published in the year 1689, Cressener says, “The grounds that I rely upon to make me apprehend that the ‘ second woe ‘ will be at an end within these few years are these. The second woe is the Turkish Empire, and its invasions upon the Roman Empire: and the time of the continuance of that woe is determined by the prophecy to a set number of years, which if we count from the rise of the Ottoman Empire, about the year 1300, will expire soon after the year 1690.” The fulfilment of these anticipations is remarkable. Whiston, writing after the event reckons the period of the woe as 396 years, and shows its accurate termination at the Peace of Carloivitz in 1699.

4. During the eighteenth century, Cressener, Tur-retine, and Vitringa set forth clearer and stronger demonstrations of the Protestant interpretation of prophecy than had ever before been made. A mighty change had taken place in England with reference to Protestantism, during the reigns of Charles II and James II. “The religion of Rome had become, not only fashionable at Court, but the religion covertly, or avowedly, of the reigning kings themselves. Moreover, the sufferings of the Episcopal clergy during the fifteen years’ ascendancy of Cromwell and the Puritans had tended to make them look on the latter as their nearest and chiefest enemy; and by a corfsequence not unnatural, to regard Popery with less of disfavour, and sometimes even with the thought and desire for friendly ap- proximation and union. This feeling could not but have its effect on the current view of the prophecies in Daniel and the Apocalypse, which had been hitherto by the Reformers alike German, Swiss, and English, applied undoubtingly to the Roman Popedom. By the celebrated dutch scholar and politician, Grotius, and by our english Dr.Hammond, a prasterist view was adopted of the Apocalyptic Beast, and his great city Babylon, very like Alcasar’s, referring it all to the old Pagan Roman City and Empire.”Bossuet traces the parentage of this view to the Jesuit Alcasar. “ Le savant Jesuite Louis d’Alcasar, a fait un grand commentaire sur 1’Apocalypse, ou Grotius, a prit beaucoup de ces idees.”1

Cressener writing in the year 1690 says “the present age is so generally prepossest with the interpretations of these learned men that it is necessary to remind (the approvers) that these are great novelties in the doctrine of the Church of England. . . . It is manifest by the Homilies, approved of in our articles as the faith of our Church, that the charge of Babylon on the Church of Rome is the standing profession of the Church of England: and it continued to be the current judgment of all the best learned members of it till the end of the reign of James I.”

Cressener’s book entitled “A Demonstration of the first principles of Protestant Applications of the Apocalypse,”as Elliott says “well answers its title . . . In a series of connected propositions he incontrovertibly establishes, against Alcasar and Bellarmine, that the Apocalyptic Babylon is not Rome Pagan, as it existed under the old Pagan Emperors, nor Rome Paganized at the end of the world, as Ribera and Malvenda would have it to be; but Rome Papal, as existing from the sixth century. For he argues it is Rome idolatrous and antichristian as connected with the Beast or Roman Empire in its last form, and under its last head, which last head is the seventh head revived, after its deadly wound with the sword: with and under which the Beast exists through all the time of the witnesses; in other words from the date of the breaking-up of the old empire into ten kingdoms, until Christ’s second coming to take the kingdom.”

The eminent Swiss theologian Turretine had published five years before in his “Theological Institutes,”his most powerful proof of the truth of the interpretation which identities the Church of Rome with idolatrous Babylon, and the Pope of Rome with the “man of sin,” or Antichrist; and five years after the appearance of Cressener’s Commentary the learned Dutch Theologian Vitringa, in answer to Bossuet, sent forth his standard work on the Apocalypse, Anakrisis Apocalypsios, with its copious and masterly demonstration of the same conclusion. Vitringa’s work is deservedly associated by Dean Alford with those of Elliott and Bishop Wordsworth on this subject, as especially worthy of consideration. 1

The works of Vitringa (7705″), Daubuz (77,20), and Sir Isaac Newton (1773) 2 viewed from the standpoint of learning, represent the high water mark of Apocalyptic interpretation in the eighteenth century.

Vitringa was Theological Professor in the academy of Franeker, and “from that petty Dutch town, near the mouth of the Zuyder Zee, sent forth those masterly and learned works on Isaiah and the Apocalypse which have always been regarded as placing him on a high rank among Biblical expositors.”3 He illustrated each subject he handled by “a wide ranging erudition alike in secular and ecclesiastical, Hebraic and Greek literature; often applying a just and acute criticism to show the untenableness of opinions, more or less plausible, adopted by expositors of note before him.”

The large folio commentary on the Apocalypse by Daubuz is “redundant with multifarious research and learning.”He was by birth a French Protestant; one of the many who had taken refuge in England after the Revocation of the edict of Nantes. While Vicar of Brotherton near Ferrybridge in Yorkshire he wrote his “Perpetual Commentary on the Apocalypse,”of which an abridgment was subsequently published by a writer named Lancaster, which however fails to give any adequate idea of “the research and learning of the original.”

Sir Isaac Newton’s “Observations on the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse”was the outcome of many years of study, his attention having been turned to the subject as early as 1691, while his work was not published till forty-two years later, in 1733. Of the exalted genius of Sir Isaac Newton, of his mathematical, scientific, historical and chronological researches, it is needless to speak. His skillful tracing of the most intricate subjects, accuracy of statement, clearness of demonstration, and far-reaching comprehensiveness of view have never been surpassed. In their acceptance of the historical interpretation of the Apocalypse, and in the general outline of their views, Vitringa, Daubuz, and Newton were in agreement. They held that history was the true interpreter of prophecy. They held that the seals, the trumpets, and the vials of the Apocalypse portrayed the course of Christian history from the time of St. John down to the consummation. They regarded the Church of Rome as Babylon the great. They interpreted the wild beast power in its three successive Apocalyptic forms, 2 under its crowned heads, under its crovvned horns, and as bearing and then casting off the Harlot of Babylon, as the Roman Empire, first as united under its earlier chiefly pagan rulers; then as divided under its Gothic kings; and lastly as submitting to and then casting off and warring against the corrupt and guilty Church of Rome.

To them the martyrs of the Apocalypse were the Christian martyrs who had suffered under pagan and papal persecution, and its witnesses the witnessing saints of Mediaeval and Reformation days. Their interpretations involved the rejection alike of the Praeterist view which confines the fulfilment of the Apocalypse to the Neronic period in the first century, and the futurist view which relegates its fulfilment to an imaginary still future period, some brief crisis at the close of the Christian dispensation, as erroneous, and contrary to the testimony of history, and of holy writ. As to unfulfilled prophecy, Sir Isaac Newton who avoided speculation both in science and theology, wisely said, “Let Time be the interpreter.”How great is the contrast between such interpreters of prophecy and the futurists of modern times; the interpreters who have forgotten history, and have rudely broken with the traditional interpretation of the past eighteen centuries. The fact that Koine has lost her persecuting power, and that infidelity looms largely in these modern days as the opponent of Revelation, explains in some degree, though it does not justify the abandonment of the traditional interpretation of the Apocalypse. To forsake the sober historical interpretation of that sacred prophecy, and substitute for it invented and imaginary fulfilments to take place at some future time, is unworthy of a rational and reverent mind. Instead of speculating uncertainly, or even wildly,- on what is to be, let the modern student of prophecy turn his attention to what has been, and what is. Let him soberly compare the indisputable facts of history with the mysterious predictions in God’s holy word, for in such a comparison, if anywhere, the truth on the subject is to be found.

5. “Jonathan Edwards, the greatest theologian of the eighteenth century, ably exhibited the meaning and place of Apocalyptic prophecy in the Divinely revealed history of Redemption.

Jonathan Edwards who is generally regarded as “the most distinguished metaphysician and divine of America,”exercised his ministry in New England from 1722 to 1750, and died as President of Princeton College, New Jersey, on the 28th of March, 1758. In his “essay on the writings and genius of Jonathan Edwards”Henry Rogers says, “By the concurrent voice of all who have perused his writings, he is assigned one of the first, if not the only first place, amongst the masters of human reason. The character of his mind was essentially logical; the dominant attribute was reason. He possessed probably in a greater degree than was ever before vouchsafed to man the ratiocinative faculty, and in this respect, at least, he well deserves the emphatic admiration which Robert Hall expressed when he somewhat extravagantly said, that Edwards was ‘the greatest of the sons of men.’ ”

Edwards’ “History of Redemption”appeared in the form of sermons preached by him in 1739, and published in 1773, fifteen years after his death. The date of the publication was remarkable as that of the inauguration of the French revolutionary era, with its woes on Papal Christendom. It was the year of the suppression of the Jesuits by Clement XIV. The appalling death of the corrupt and profligate Louis XV, took place the following year, on the 10th of May, 1774; and on the same day the accession of Louis XVI, and Marie Antoinette, subsequently dethroned and executed in the French Revolution.

The design of Edwards in his “History of Redemption “was “to show how the most remarkable events in all ages from the fall to the present times, recorded in sacred and profane history, were, adapted to promote the work of redemption; and then to trace by the light of scripture prophecy how the same work should be yet further carried on even to the end of the world.”

It was a work which singularly suited the sublime and comprehensive character of his mind. To him the history of the world with all its changes and revolutions exhibited one great divine work, ceaselessly carried on from age to age, for the redemption or recovery of mankind. The Bib|e was the book of redemption. Its histories and prophecies were histories and prophecies of redemption. In his view the story of redemption falls into three parts; the first, that of the antecedents of redemption; the second, that of the accomplishment of redemption; the third, that of the application of redemption. The first, that of history before Christ; the second, that of the history of Christ; the third, that of subsequent history. Seventeen hundred years had elapsed of this third period, up to Edwards’ time, exhibiting the progress of Christ’s kingdom, and the fulfilment of the prophecies regarding the Christian dispensation. Those prophecies included not only Old Testament predictions, as those in the book of Daniel, but also the prophecies of our Lord; of St. Paul, and of the Apostle John, the favoured seer of New Testament times. The Apocalypse, as the gift of the ascended Saviour, and the last great Scripture prophecy, held a place of preeminence. In its wondrous visions the story of the conflicts and triumphs of the Christian Church was told in advance; and its practical power as illuminating the perilous path the church was called to tread, sustaining her faith, inspiring her courage, nerving her efforts, and brightening her hopes, was of inestimable value. The views of Edwards as to the meaning of the Apocalypse were in harmony with those of the historical interpreters of pre-reformation, and reformation times. They were the views of the Puritans, and of the Pilgrim Fathers. The early Christian settlers of New England held these views. The men and women whose mouldering tombstones stand today in the pine shadowed cemetery of Northampton, where the dust of David Brainerd sleeps, professed them. To Edwards they were no doubtful speculations. The testimony of innumerable saints and martyrs consecrated them. The glorious work of the Reformation which was built upon these views, justified them. History sealed them with its unerring testimony. Such was their self-evidencing light that they afforded an unanswerable argument for the inspiration of Scripture, doubly needed in those days of scornful deistic unbelief, and threatened darker infidelity. To hold fast, and hold forth the Word of God under these circumstances, was evident duty, for “prophecy came not in old time by the will of man, but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.”And so in his most scriptural and comprehensive “History of Redemption,”Edwards interweaves, in simple unaffected language, the facts of Christian history, and the predictions of Apocalyptic prophecy, the prophecy reading as history in his luminous expositions.

The reader is referred to Edwards’ “History of Redemption”in which, among others, the following themes are dealt with.

I. The two ways in which the story of Redemption Is narrated in Scripture, historic and prophetic.

II. The terminal character of the Christian dispensation.

III. The kingdom of heaven as the fifth and final kingdom of Daniel’s prophecies.

IV. Rome, the persecuting Babylon of the Apocalypse.

V. The warfare and casting down of the Satanically inspired great red dragon of the Apocalypse.

VI. Signification of the judgment of the sixth seal.

VII. Satan as the dragon casting out a flood of water to overwhelm the woman fleeing to the wilderness.

VIII. Signification of the four first trumpets.

IX. The great apostasy and rise of Antichrist.

X. Date, and gradual character, of the rise of Antichrist.

XI. The locust woe of the fifth trumpet.

XII. The horsemen woe of the sixth trumpet.

XIII. The uninterrupted succession of gospel witnesses.

XIV. The persecuted woman hidden and sustained in the wilderness.

XV. The company of pure and faithful Virgins.

XVI. The Harlot Babylon drunken with the blood of saints and martyrs.

XVII. The persecuting little Horn of Daniel 7.

XVIII. The saints warred against and overcome by the revived wild beast of Revelation 13.

XIX. The glorious fulfilment of the prophecy that the gates of hell should not prevail against the church.

XX. The marvellous fulfilment of the prophecy concerning Antichrist.

XXI. Strong encouragement to expect the fulfilment of prophecies which are as yet unaccomplished.

6. By various interpreters of prophecy in the eighteenth century it was clearly shown that the outpouring of the vials remained unfulfilled; and that their accomplishment as following speedily after the conclusion of the sixth trumpet was then at hand.

The futurity of the vials was intelligently maintained in the work we have referred to entitled: “a new Systeme of the Apocalypse, written by a Huguenot minister in the year 1685, and finished but two days before the Dragoones plundered him of all except this treatise.”

While Jurieu asserted that the six first vials had already been poured out, and that the seventh had been pouring forth since Luther’s Reformation, the anonymous author of the above remarkable treatise maintained in opposition to Jurieu that the seven vials belong to the period of the seventh trumpet, or “Third woe” since they are the “last plagues”; that the “second woe”(that of the sixth trumpet), is expressly said to terminate before the “Third woe” begins; that the death and resurrection of the witnesses precede the seventh trumpet, and the whole order of the vials; and that under the seven vials Popery and Mohammedanism, together with all opposition to the gospel, will be brought to an end.

In this view of the vials the exiled Huguenot minister followed Launay, or Launeus, who wrote a Commentary under the name of Jonas le Buy, Sr. de le Perie. Vitringa refers with approval to the view of Launeus that the seven vials answered to the seven compassings of Jericho on the seventh day. Whiston also definitely held that the seven vials were contained in, and are the evolution of the seventh trumpet; and that the sounding of the seventh trumpet was still future in his time, but would occur shortly.

Bishop Newton maintained that the vials were future; and so did Dr. Gill in his “Commentary on the Apocalypse.”The expectation was general that the outpouring of these vials was at hand; an expectation strongly confirmed by the declaration occurring at the end of the “second woe,”that “the third woe cometh quickly”(Revelation 11:14).

7. In his “Observations on the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse,”Sir Isaac Newton expressed the view that only under the seventh trumpet would the time come for a perfect understanding of their mysteries. “The event,”he said, “will prove the Apocalypse; and the prophecy thus proved and understood will open the old prophets, and all together will make known the true religion, and establish it. For he that will understand the old prophets must begin with this; but the time is not yet come for understanding them perfectly, because the main revolution predicted in them is not yet come to pass. In ‘ the days of the voice of the seventh angel when he shall begin to sound the mystery of God shall be finished, as he hath declared to his servants the prophets, and then the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of our Lord, and His Christ, and He shall reign forever. 1

There is already so much of the prophecy fulfilled that as many as will take pains in this study may see sufficient instances of God’s providence : but then the signal revolutions predicted by all the holy prophets will at once both turn men’s eyes upon considering the predictions, and plainly interpret them. Till then we must content ourselves with interpreting what has been already fulfilled.”He adds, “Amongst the interpreters of the last age, there is scarce one of note who hath not made some discovery worth knowing; and thence I seem to gather that God is about opening these mysteries.”2

8. A century before the French Revolution Sir Isaac Newton anticipated that the prevalence of infidelity would in all probability be an instrument in the hand of God for the overthrow of the tyrannical supremacy of the Church of Rome. “Sir Isaac Newton had,”says Whiston, “a very sagacious conjecture, when he told Dr. Clarke, from whom I received it, that the overbearing tyranny and persecuting power of the anticbristian party, which hath so long corrupted Christianity, and enslaved the Christian world, must be put a stop to,and broken to pieces, by the prevalence of infidelity for some time before Christianity could be restored;”which, adds Whiston, writing A. D . 1744, “seems to be the very means that is now working in Europe for the same good and great end of Providence.

9. In the year 1701, Fleming, in his work on “The Rise and Fall of Rome Papal,”pointed out that the years 1794 and 1848 would be marked as crises in the overthrow of the Papal power.

Those dates were reached by reckoning the 1,260 years of Papal duration, first, from Justinian’s Pope exalting Edict, in A . D . 533; and secondly, from the similar decree of Phocas in A . D. 606. In the latter case 1,260 calendar years extend to 1848; and 1,260 solar to 1866. The year 1793 did prove the most central in the French Revolution, that of the Reign of Terror; while 1848-9 and 1866-7 were marked years of crisis in the downfall of Papal sovereignty.

Dr. Gill, in his “Commentary,”A . D . 1746, maintained that the date when the Bishop of Rome was made Universal Bishop, or Pope, should be considered that of the decree of the Emperor Phocas in the year 606; “if to this,”he says, “we add 1,260, the expiration of his reign will fall in the year 1866, so that he may have upwards of a hundred and twenty years yet to continue; but of this we cannot be certain; however, the conjecture is not improbable.”

Events proved this remarkable “conjecture “to be correct. The years 1866-1870 were those of the wars between Germany, Austria, and France, resulting .in the overthrow by Protestant Germany of the two chief Catholic powers in Europe; they also witnessed the Antipapal Revolution in Spain, the Vatican Council in which the Pope was decreed to be infallible, the downfall of the Papal Temporal power, and the liberation and unification of Italy.

10. The astronomical confirmation of the year-day theory. -While the celebrated German theologian, John Albert Bengel who held the historic fulfilment of the Apocalypse, was working out his curious and fantastic theory as to the significance of the prophetic times, a Swiss astronomer, Lays de Cheseaux, little known to fame, discovered their astronomic value, viewed as periods measured on the year-day scale.

It seems strange to think of these two gifted men, so different in character and occupations, working unknown to one another, at the same time, on the same problem, that of the true measure of the prophetic times, and reaching conclusions so opposite; those of the theologian doomed to disappear as time demonstrated their falseness; and those of the man of science destined to endure as founded, not on speculation, but on indubitable chronological facts.

Assuming as a fundamental principle the position that the Beasts number 666 construed as years must equal the Beasts’ numerical period forty-two months, Bengel shortened the prophetic ” months “to suit his theory, and fitted them to historical events in an arbitrary manner, supposing the forty-two “months”to extend from A.D. 1143 to A . D . 1810. 1 A second similar period of 666-7 years extends from the fall of the Western Roman Empire, in A.D. 476 to A.D. 1143. That Bengel was bordering on a correct view as to a double, or even treble fulfilment of the number 666, viewed as years, in the rise, reign, and decline of the great antichristian power seems to me evident. His error was (1) in the location of the 666 years, and (2) in arbitrarily shortening the prophetic forty-two months to agree- ment with 666 years.

Bengel’s mistake reminds us of the fact that there is commonly an element of truth in error; that our errors are often half-truths; and therefore not to be wholly rejected, but rather corrected by the separation of their dross, or the addition of omitted elements.

A copy in manuscript of the work of Loys de Cheseaux lies before me. I had it made from the original in the library of the British Museum. It is entitled “Memoires Postumes de Monsieur Jean Philippe Loys de Cheseaux, Correspondant de 1’Academie Royale des Sciences de Paris, Associe etranger de celle de Gottingen; sur divers sujets d’astronomie, et de mathematiques, avec de nouvelles tables tres exactes des moyens movements du Soleil, et de la lune.”

Its date is 1754. In the chapter on “the discoveries of M. de Cheseaux,”in “The Approaching End of the Age,”pp. 399-406, I have given an account of this remarkable work; and referred to it in ” Light for the Last Days,”p. 186; and in “Creation Centred in Christ,” Vol. I, pp. 324—330, have given a translation of M. de Cheseaux’ ac- count of his discovery of the astronomic character of the 1,260 and 2,300 years prophetic periods. I have added in these books accounts of further discoveries made by myself in the same line of investigation, and have furnished in Vol. II of “Creation Centred in Christ “full tables of solar years and lunar months for 3,555 years, calculated to days, hours and minutes from the prophetic periods contained in the prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of John, interpreted on the year-day scale.

These tables which extend to 627 pages contain 101,217 Solar and Lunar dates. Copies of the tables exist in all the principal astronomical observatories in the world, where they are in practical use, having been accepted by astronomers as correct and trustworthy. The confirmation afforded by these tables of the year- day theory is complete.

11. Towards the close of the interval between the English and French Revolutions Gibbon wrote his monumental work on the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

It was in Rome, as he tells us, on the 15th day of October, 1754, as he sat “musing among the ruins of the capitol, while the barefooted friars were singing vespers in the temple of Jupiter “that ” the idea of writing the Decline and Fall of the City”first started in his mind. “My original plan,”he says, “was circumscribed to the decay of the city, rather than of the empire.”Gradually the idea widened until it embraced the larger subject. For twenty years this work occupied the labours of his life. During this period the vision of the slow decline and ultimate fall of the Western and Eastern Empires of Rome, the mightiest and most enduring political fabric the world has ever beheld, passed before his mind; the “various causes and progressive effects”connected with the vast and awful movement ; ” the artful policy of the Caesars who long maintained the name and image of a free republic; the disorder of military despotism; the rise, establishment and sects of Christianity; the foundation of Constantinople ; the division of the monarchy; the invasion and settlement of the barbarians of Germany and Scythia; the institution of the civil law, the character and religion of Mahomet, the temporal sovereignty of the popes ; the restoration and decay of the Empire of Charlemagne in the west; the crusades of the Latins in the East; the conquests of the Saracens and Turks; the ruin of the Greek Empire ; the state and revolutions of Rome in the middle age.”On that history he continued to labour throughout all the eventful years of the second half of the eighteenth century, from the 18th of October, 1764, to the 27th of June, 1787, when “between eleven o’clock and midnight”he wrote the last line of his great work in the summer-house of his garden at Lausanne, on the shores of Lake Leman. More than once have I visited that spot, and sought to realize the circumstances and the emotions of the historian on completing his gigantic task. He tells us that on that memorable night as he paced the walk beneath the ” acacias, which commands a prospect of the country, the lake, and the mountains, the sky was serene, the silver orb of the moon reflected from the waters, and all nature was silent.”One wonders what were then the thoughts of higher intelligencies in the invisible world as they beheld from their loftier standpoint, and with clearer vision, the wonderful retrospect of the long decline and tragic fall of that Empire which they knew to be destined to be the last of human monarchies before the advent of the Eternal Kingdom of God? Had the work of the historian no interest in their eyes? Did they not recognize its value as giving for the first time a connected view of the course of events which prophecy had long before portrayed; and did they not note the fact that whereas the historian had brought down his narration only to the fall of the Eastern Empire in 1453, preceding the Reformation, and had but glanced at the latter event as almost foreign to his subject, the inspiring spirit of prophecy, overpassing these limits, had taken in the yet further stage in the history, that of the awful impending revolution which was destined to lay in ruins the still existing empire of Papal Rome; the ten-kingdomed Western Empire under its Papal head, the proud possessor of temporal and spiritual sovereignty, and of a dominion over the minds of millions such as the Caesars in the centuries of their loftiest elevation had never attained. For what but this, and the brighter scenes which should succeed it, was the theme of the Apocalypse, that last prophetic revelation of the course of human history, conveyed by angelic intervention? What was its theme but the decline and fall of earth’s greatest empire, and the rise and establishment of the Kingdom of God? What was its theme but that twofold conflict of Rome Pagan, and Rome Papal with the early martyrs and later witnesses of Christian history, and the long succession of judgments by which the might of the iron Empire was to be broken and brought to nought to make way for the kingdom of the Son of Man, and of the Saints of the Most High, whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and of whose dominion there shall be no end?

Suspense, expectation, review, such were the characteristics of the period which immediately preceded the great revolution which changed the face of the continent and of the world. Interpreters of prophecy had clearly recognized the fact that the pouring out of the predicted vials of Divine wrath and judgment on the papal power was still a future event; and one which would speedily occur. The short- ness Of the interval between the second woe, whose termination had taken place at the Peace of Carlowitz, and the third woe, that of the seven vials, had been foretold in the words, “the second woe is past, and behold, the third woe cometh quickly.”1 No long interval, therefore, was to be expected before the outbreak of the coming judgment, and one interpreter of prophecy, the great Sir Isaac Newton, had anticipated the rise of infidelity as a power destined to overthrow the vast structure of tyranny and superstition which still encumbered and oppressed the world; and even then, in those closing decades of the century, his expectation seemed to be in process of accomplishment, for such a tide of infidelity had set in as never before had been witnessed, threatening to engulf all things in its destructive flood.

Yes, the time seemed short, and even calculable. Had not the prophetic word limited the duration of the Papal power to 1,260 years, and did not the rise of that power take place when the Emperors Justinian and Phocas conferred on the Bishop of Rome the title of Universal Bishop of the Christian Church, or Head of Christendom, the former in the year 533; the latter in the years 606 or 607 ; and calculating the period of 1,260 years from those dates, would it not terminate in the years 1793 and 1866—7?

And taking the period in its calendar form of 1,260 years, of 360 days each, would not the period as reckoned from the decree of Phocas terminate in the year 1848-9? So had Fleming pointed out in 1701, and a long series of prophetic interpreters from Pareus in 1643, to Gill in 1776 had similarly indicated these dates. But were these expectations destined to disappointment? Were they idle dreams? Was the papacy after all to continue for centuries to come, and were the foretold vials to be delayed to some still distant date? No; that could hardly be. The inspiring Spirit had declared the interval would be short between the end of the second, or Turkish woe, and the advent of the third woe; and the prophetic times seemed to fix a proximate boundary to the continuance of the dominion of the Papacy.

And so the students of the prophetic word watched the course of events, and waited for the fulfilment of the judgments on the Papal power foretold in the Book of God.