HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY GIFT OF JOSEPH H. SCHAFFNER LONDON: PRINTED BY G. J. FALMER, SAVOY STREET, STRAND. THE GREAT CONTINENTAL REVOLUTION, SIR, &c. February, 1848. I have to acknowledge a letter obligingly addressed to me in your own name, and in that of several others, requesting to know my present views upon the subject of prophecy. It has been my misfortune, ever since I began first seriously to examine this subject, now thirtyfour years ago, though entirely disposed to communicate whatever I had reason to believe had been given to me, and, on the other hand, to partake equally in any gifts that might be possessed by others, that I have remained nevertheless in reference to it an isolated individual; neither able to obtain admission amongst my contemporaries for those truths, the evidence for which, if ever examined, I was persuaded would be found irresistible; nor, on the other hand, able to derive any profit from their views, which I have been constrained to consider, more or less, in every case, and particularly with respect to the Apocalypse, as built upon erroneous and defective foundations. Hence, having in 1814 published my Combined View of the prophecies of Daniel, Ezra, and St. John, containing a minute interpretation of those of Daniel alone, I have been unwillingly forced to wait for the completion of my work until the occurrence of events which were therein anticipated should verify my system, and compel the attention of the Church to the consideration of those principles upon which (I maintain) a true interpretation of the prophecies can alone be given; for, until then, I felt that I could not advantageously, nor with any hope of success, attempt to bring forward the minute interpretation of Ezra and St. John; although the manuscript of the former of these has been more than thirty years in my possession, and that of St. John would have been prepared at any time, without difficulty, had the Church (by their acceptance of what I had already published) shown any desire to obtain it. In consequence of this lapse of time, most of the events anticipated, either in my "Combined View," or in subsequent occasional papers, have already taken place agreeably to those anticipations; and these may be enumerated as follows, namely, 1st. The fall of the French empire, predicted in the spring of 1813, and fulfilled in April, 1814. 2ndly. The failure of Napoleon's attempt to reestablish it in 1815,-the defeat of his arms,-his being driven out of the kingdom of France,—and the only effect of his attempt being to bring upon that kingdom the judgment of the fifth apocalyptic vial of wrath;-which anticipation was formed on Napoleon's first return to France, in March, 1815, published in April, and fulfilled in part by the battle of Waterloo on the 18th of June following; and further by the consequent expulsion of Napcleon from the kingdom of France, and the occupation of that kingdom by the allied armies of Austria, Britain, Prussia, and Russia, from 1515 to 1818. 3rdly. The spread and prevalence of corrupt and revolutionary principles all over the papal continent of the western Roman empire, (in the period of the pouring out of the sixth vial of wrath on the eastern Roman empire,) preparatory only to the future great revolution of the next following, or seventh vial. Predicted in 1814, in the first edition of my “ Combined View," and manifested in the revolutions of Naples, Piedmont, Spain, and Portugal, from 1820 to 1823. 66 4thly. The putting down of those revolutions, which were only preparatory in their nature, within the above period, in order that they might burst out with greater violence at the period of the seventh vial: Predicted, in the first case, when the Austrian army was about to enter the Italian peninsula, in order to put down the revolution at Naples ; and in the second, when the French army, under the Duke d'Angoulème, was, with a similar object, about to enter the Spanish peninsula. The above series comprehends all the political events spsoken of in the apocalyptic civil history of the divided western Roman Empire as to take place, from A. D. 1813, when I first began my inquiries into the meaning of the sacred oracles, down to the present time. In like manner, with respect to the parallel Church history, the events described in Rev. xiv. 8-16, and xviii. 1-4, which were future at the time the Combined View was published, were anticipated in the most decided manner. These were, first, the Prophetic Societies, or the announcement by members of the Church of the judgments represented in prophecy as about to fall upon the papacy, and the papal Roman Empire. Secondly, the Reformation Society, or exhortations by members of the Church to the followers of Babylon to leave her communion previously to her fall. Thirdly, the Evangelical Alliance, (now in its infancy,) or the union of the followers of Christ of all the various denominations of the Church into one body, and their separation from the rest of the world, that they may be delivered from the final judgment of the vintage of wrath, or of the great day of the wrath of Christ, about to be inflicted upon his enemies; the predictions of which, as contained in the chapters above referred to, are so clearly and di |