-flaming partizans;-the accomplices, and who will believe it, even the principal actors on those horrid days; of those men, who, to gain the Curule chair, feigned for liberty an unbounded enthusiasm in the clubs, in the sections, and in the primary assemblies;-deceived the people with respect to their true interests; bore on their foreheads, love of country, written in characters of blood; and building on the continuance of massacres, the continuance of their insolence and future grandeur.*"

Thus have we brought down, in a very imperfect and concise manner, it is confessed, the very slight abstract of great events which have happened in the government of France, from the year 1760 to this year, 1798, which we take to have been prefigured by the divine apostle John, in the Apocalypse, under the character of the beast arising out of the bottomless pit, or abyss of the

sea.

Any person, who will give himself the trouble of read. ing any of the histories of the French republic, will be surprized to find how faint our colours are, when compared with the full representation of the transactions of this all devouring beast, in the aggregate.

He will then, more clearly, see the concentration of all the marks, or signs, designated by divine wisdom and foreknowledge. He will not be able to avoid feeling the force of the angel's declaration to Daniel, "many shall be purified, and made white, and tried; but the wicked shall do wickedly, and none of the wicked shall understand, but the wise shall understand,”—that is, as Dr. Lowth paraphrases it, "the nearer the time approaches for the final accomplishment of this prophesy, the more * History of Crimes committed during the French revolution. 1st vol. p. 1.

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light shall men have for understanding it; for the gradual completion of this and other prophecies, shall direct observant readers to form a judgment concerning those particulars, which are yet to be fulfilled."

On a review of this subject, we find this extraordinary government, answering, in all its parts, the particular predictions of sacred writ, as if related since its rise. It is a government of an unusual origin; that is, from the lowest orders of a great and mighty nation, in opposition to military strength, power,-riches,-inclination, and the most rivetted superstitious attachments.

It is a government of a fierce countenance, and marked with every character of cruelty, desolation, and bloodshed. It has arisen when transgression, as we have herein before seen, was indeed full-when the whole body of the clergy professing obedience to the laws of Christ, was proscribed, banished or cruelly massacred. -The worship of Almighty God done away and laughed to scorn-The temples of the living God profaned, and literally cast down with the truth to the ground, by the institution of a blasphemous worship in its stead, worse than Pagan idolatry-All the sacred vessels devoted to the service of God, with the whole property of the Church, either confiscated, destroyed, or plundered. -Ordinances were passed by the convention permitting, and by their presence encouraging, the worst kind of idol worship; deifying nature, liberty, &c. and publickly denying and reprobating the God of heaven and earth, the creator of all things; thus denying the Father and the Son.-Death was declared only an eternal sleep.The most vicious and abominable characters were deified, and schools erected for instructing youth in these abominable practices. An altar was erected in one of the

Churches of Christ, and public homage thereon paid to an abandoned woman, under the character of liberty. All this was followed (as in the case of Jerusalem) by the revolt of the department of Vendee, which caused the destruction of about 30,000 of the citizens of France. But the government still prospered against the people of God, in all its schemes and practices, except in its desire of obtaining an implicit submission to its will; as much the greater part of the clergy refused obedience, and rather submitted to banishment, confiscation, and death, than acknowledge a power they considered as unlawful and abominable. Yet they succeeded and overcome all opposition, and in the most public and open manner, stood up against the Prince of the host of Heaven, the Prince of Princes, or Jesus Christ, the Saviour, whose worship they had contemned, whose being, together with that of God, the Father, they denied, and whose sanctuaries they had destroyed or defiled with every detestable practice, spreading a wing of abomination over the whole land. In one place we find them, to show the utmost contempt of the service of God, dressing up an ass in pontifical robes, with a Bible and some sacred vases put on his back, and thus, with the most diabolical joy and shoutings, burning him in a large fire.

This government has indeed exercised a mighty power, but it has been, in a great measure, by the aid of the neighbouring nations, both as to money and men-Spain, Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, Geneva, Genoa, Tuscany, Sardinia, Naples, Venice, and all Italy, not excepting Rome, that once mistress of nations, the beast with seven heads and ten horns, herself--It has not been

Vid. 1st Epist. John, 2d ch. 22d v.

(perhaps from Persia or the East Indies) and out of the north (from Russia or Great Britain) shall trouble him: therefore, he shall go forth with great fury to destroy, and utterly to make away many-And he shall plant the tabernacles of his palace between the seas, in the glorious holy mountain-Yet he shall come to his end, and none shall help him."

Thus has this government acted contrary to all the common principles of adventurers, in as much as it at once began its career by making open war with all the religious prejudices, superstitions, and attachments of a most formidable Church hierarchy, and the religious enthusiasm of the people at large, supported by similar principles in the neighbouring nations, who had been their ancient allies and connections.

It made war, not only with the errors of a rich and powerful clergy, but it openly aimed at the subversion of every principle of natural and revealed religion; and impiously erected a standard against the Almighty himself. The ordinances of the Gospel, that had existed for almost 1800 years, were entirely prohibited or done away; and, of course, all its teachings and instructions, those great witnesses for God were no more permitted. The regularly instituted clergy, to the number of nearly 300,000, besides 80,000 nuns, were murdered, banished, or made to apostatize from their faith. We have seen the public worship of Almighty God, not only forbidden and cried down, but an abominable species of idolatry, instituted by public authority in its room, which would have dishonoured the savages of the wilderness, or the darkest ages of Paganism.*

*The convention had decreed that there should no longer be any other divinity than reason and the country, it had legally es

That the surrounding nations, who have received the mark of the beast in their foreheads, by submitting to the most humiliating terms of peace with her, and thereby becoming her coadjutors in her nefarious system, have looked on the destruction she has aimed to bring on the religion of the Gospel, with a kind of unwilling, sullen indifference, and perhaps, in many cases, a secret approbation; and that the common people have, too generally, rejoiced in their supposed deliverance from the moral, as well as ceremonial, obligations of Christianity, are melancholy truths that few, who are conversant with the late history of Europe, will deny.

Particularly has the emperor of Germany, as the head of the house of Austria, given an alarming and danger-` ous sanction to the extravagant claims of this government, by accepting the cession of Venice as a compensation for those territories, the Directory thought proper to retain as annexations to the already overgrown power of France, as has been already mentioned.

The French army entered Venice as friends and protectors, promising the inhabitants liberty and happiness. Their right, then, to cede this territory, was no other than that of a thief or a robber. If they had a right to make this cession, they have an equal right to cede away any part of Germany, Genoa, Sicily, Tuscany, or even Vienna itself. It is true, that the name of religion is still kept up in some of the countries they have revolu

tablished atheism. These absurd decrees excited universal indig nation among foreign nations. Danton is found guilty, and the infernal genius of the committee of public safety, dared to take on itself to revenge the Deity."

* Consid: sur la revolution sociale. p. 224-5.