sion being kept up in the designation of Rome as "where the Lord was crucified." Do the annals of the 16th century supply a counterpart to this series of symbolic actions?

In the year A.D. 1416, John Huss expired in the flames at Constance, uttering the prophetic words (which were shortly afterwards struck on a medal representing him at the stake), "Centum revolutis annis, Deo respondebitis et mihi,"—" When a hundred years have elapsed, ye shall answer for this to God and to me;"-this being exactly a century before Luther's Reformation appeared. The following year, Jerome of Prague was burnt; and in A.D. 1434, the Bohemian Calixtines complied with the Council of Basil; after which the faithful Taborites were totally ruined, as well as their brethren in Piedmont, France, &c. ; which happened about A.D. 1492. The Waldenses in Austria and Moravia had complied so far as to dissemble their religion and turn to Popery in outward profession. Fleming says, "So low was the Church of Christ then, that when the hidden remains of the Taborites (or followers of Huss, named after their rocky stronghold of Tabor, near Prague; who were called Speculani, from their lurking in dens and caves) sent out four men (as Comenius relates in his "History of the Bohemian Church ") to travel, one through Greece and the East, another to Russia and the North, a third to Thrace, Bulgaria, and the neighbouring places, and a fourth to Asia, Palestine, and Egypt, they did all, indeed, safely return to their brethren, but with this sorrowful news, that they found no Church of Christ that was pure, or free from the grossest errors, superstition, and idolatry. This was in the year 1497. And when they sent two of their number two years afterwards, viz. Luke Prage and Thomas German, to go into Italy, France, and other places, to see if there were any of the old Waldenses

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left alive, they returned with the same melancholy news as the former had done, that they could neither find nor hear of any remaining; only they were informed of the martyrdom of Savonarola (who suffered at the stake in the year 1498), and they were told of some few remains of the Piedmontois that were scattered and hid among the Alps, but nobody knew where. Now, a few years after this, even the few remains of the Taborites were found out and persecuted, hardly any escaping; so that, A.D. 1510, six suffered together publicly, and the year following, that famous martyr, Andreas Paliwka, who, I think, was the last of that period." It appears, then, that the "two witnesses," or the organized societies or churches which had preserved the Gospel precepts and practice, were completely exterminated, their testimony silenced in every part of Europe and also in the East, where the Nestorians were no more, for a few years of the 16th century prior to the opening of the Reformation era. And with wonder and dismay the few individuals secretly preserved beheld the universal triumph of the beast, in the total extinction of Gospel light and the cessation of any constituted Church of believers. We are careful to show only that, for a brief interval immediately before the revival and reappearance of Bible Christians in infinitely greater power than ever before, there did occur such a universal smothering of the Church on earth as never was paralleled before, and which is fully adequate to meet the symbolic picture of the death and ignominious exposure of the corpses of the witnesses; but it is likely that a precise term of three and а half years may have passed between the final silencing of God's revelation in the world and the date when its voice again made itself heard, and which more minute historical details of those times would

enable us to fix with certainty. Fleming reckons three and a half years from the martyrdom of Andreas Paliwka in the beginning of A.D. 1512, to the first preaching of Carolastadius and Zuingle in Switzerland, A.D. 1516. But it appears that the secret remains of the Bohemian Churches carried on a stealthy missionary work, and noiselessly continued to gain over followers; one of whom, Nicholas Kuss, began A.D. 1511, at Rostock, to preach openly against the Pope; and Luther himself began to preach the true Gospel in A.D. 1513. Bearing in mind, however, that the witnesses represent Churches rather than individual Christians, we may find a better application of the period of three and a half years.

From A.D. 1512 to 1517 the Lateran Council was held, under the pontificate of Julius the Second and Leo the Tenth. The object for which it was assembled was the suppression of all that might yet remain in Western Christendom of witnesses for Christ, and particularly the Bohemian Hussites-both the Lollards of England and the Waldenses of Piedmont having been already reduced to silence. Elliott says, "In a Papal Bull issued, with approbation of the Council, in the very next or eighth session, held December 1513, a charge was issued summoning the dissidents in question (the Bohemian witnesses) without fail to appear and plead before the Council at its next session; unless, indeed, they should have previously done so before a neighbouring Papal Legate, the object declared being their conviction, and reduction within the bosom of the Catholic Church, and the time fixed for the said important session, May 5th, in the next spring ensuing. Thus was the crisis come which was to try the faith of the bleeding remnant of witnesses, and exhibit its vitality or death. And would they then face their Lord's enemies?

Would they brave the terrors of death, and plead His cause before the lordly Legate, or the antichristian Council, like the Waldenses at Albi and at Pamiers, like Wickliffe and Cobham in England, like Huss and Jerome at the Constance Council, or Luther afterwards at Augsburg and at Worms? Alas! no. The day of the ninth session arrived; the Council met; but no report from the Cardinal Legate gave intimation either of the pleading, or even of any continued stirring of the Bohemian heretics. No officers of the Council announced the arrival of deputies from them to plead before it. Nor, again, was there a whisper wafted to the Synod from any other state, or city, or town in Christendom, of a movement made, or a mouth opened, to promulgate or support the ancient heresies. Throughout the length and breadth of Christendom, Christ's witnessing servants were silenced; they appeared as dead. The orator of the session ascended the pulpit, and, amid the applause of the assembled Council, uttered that memorable exclamation of triumph-an exclamation which, notwithstanding the long-multiplied anti-heretical decrees of Popes and Councils-notwithstanding the yet more multiplied anti-heretical crusades and inquisitorial fires-was never, I believe, pronounced before, and certainly never since

-Jam nemo reclamat, nullus obsistit !' 'There is an end of resistance to the papal rule and religion: opposers there exist no more.' So did they, from the people, and kindred, and tongues, and nations,' assembled in 'the broad place of the Great City,' look on Christ's witnesses as (from thenceforth) dead. Let the reader well mark the description, for it is a description from the life; and let him well mark the day, for it seems scarce possible that we can be mistaken in regarding it as the precise commencing date of the predicted

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three and a half years, during which Christ's witnesses were to appear as dead corpses in the face of Christendom. was May 5th, 1514." The "broad place" of the Great City has a reference to the forum of ancient cities, and may be taken to symbolize Rome itself, where the papal gatherings took place, where the papal laws were proclaimed, where papal causes were adjudged and sentences pronounced, and where the papal merchandise was set forth. "And they from the people, &c., shall not suffer their dead bodies to be put in graves" there was to be an assembly of deputies from all parts of the papal world, at the time that the dead bodies of the witnesses should be lying in the street of the city, who should behold and enjoy the spectacle. This was remarkably fulfilled in the Lateran Council then met at Rome, composed as it was of princes and prelates. from every part of the Roman world. The reference to the practice of denying Christian burial to the bodies of heretics is also explainable. The same day on which it was proclaimed that there were no longer any opposers to the papal rule and religion, the Council issued an edict cutting off all heretics of whatever kind, and of whatever nation, from the Church, and decreeing against them the usual punishment. Seeing that, on the avowal of Rome herself, there was no longer any organized church anywhere opposing her authority, the edict could have respect only to individual dissentients which might and did exist, though concealed, in some places -the corpses of the witnessing churches. Now, by a variety of historical ferences and documents, Elliott has shown that, from this 5th of May, 1514, to the 31st of October, 1517--three and a half years-all public testimony against the Papacy was suppressed, and that at the latter date that testimony was suddenly and gloriously revived; the memorable act of

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protestation of the publication of Luther's famous theses at that date being commonly considered as the signal of the great struggle which really gave birth to the Reformation. The symbolic scene of the resurrection of the witnesses, their heavenly exaltation, and the accompanying consequences, forcibly place before us the sudden and surprising origin, progress, and effects of the Protestant Reformation. Though the martyrs themselves remained in their graves, the cause for which they had suffered arose; churches of faithful men came again into existence, and rapidly increased-the witnesses were alive again, and owned and honoured by God. "And I," said John Huss, speaking of the gospelpreachers that should appear after he had suffered at the stake, "and I, awakening as it were from the dead, and rising from the grave, shall rejoice with exceeding great joy." And, in A.D. 1523, after the Reformation had broken out, Pope Hadrian said, in a missive addressed to the Diet at Nuremberg, "The heretics Huss and Jerome are now alive again in the person of Martin Luther."

The consternation and dismay which fell upon all the adherents of the Papacy when Luther arose and the Reformation under him began to gain ground, are well known to all readers; and we need not enter into the history of that wonderful era. Within eight years, the German states of Saxony, Brunswick, Hesse Cassel, and the cities of Strasburg and Frankfort, embraced the new doctrines. Soon after, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark adopted the same tenets; and in A.D. 1525, articles of accommodation were proposed between the Reformers and the Catholics, the united power of the Pope and Emperor finding it impossible to check the progress of the truth. In 1530, the Diet of Augsburg, designed to crush the Reformation, definitively established and strengthened

it for ever. It was left for the Peace of Augsburg, A.D. 1555, to establish Protestantism legally and diplomatically; but by 1530, the Church of the first ages had reappeared, the great movement was accomplished, and the cause of evangelical religion had struck its root so deeply into the world that all the conferences, leagues, combats, corruptions, and horrible persecutions of succeeding centuries, have never been able to tear it up.

"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.' -Revelation xi. 13.

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"The great earthquake" which, "in that hour" of the rising of the witnesses, has the effect of casting down " a tenth part of the city," and slaying seven thousand names of men," while those who escape are terrified and "give glory to the God of heaven," we take as representing the political convulsions produced by and accompanying the Reformation, with the general awe and acknowledgment of God's hand in those great occurrences; and the figure of an earthquake is peculiarly expressive of popular revolution,—the Reformation having been essentially a movement for liberty, springing from the masses under the influence of enlightened teaching. We cannot explain the special number "seven thousand;" it is probably put for a great many of the "names of men," probably meaning rulers and authorities. It can hardly be explained of the seven United Provinces (territorial chiliads giving titles to their chiefs), separating from Rome and Spain in 1579. The falling of a "tenth part" of the city denotes a great blow to the hitherto universal dominion of the Papacy, by the losing of the allegiance of those countries which adopted the Protestant faith; or, perhaps, the separation of some one country repre

senting one of the ten fundamental kingdoms of the Western Empire may be intended,―as Britain, which then ceased to acknowledge the papal sway,—the Act by which all papal authority in ecclesiastical affairs was abolished out of this realm being passed in November 1534.

This chapter consists partly of a description of what John beheld in the vision and partly of the words spoken by the interpreting angel; and the change of tense in which the apostle now speaks, shows that he returns to the chronological order of the visions, which had been interrupted by the command to measure the temple. Immediately upon the scene of the upbursting and rocking earth, the destruction of many notable personages and powers, and the conversion of multitudes on their acknowledging the Divine hand in these great events, the angel announces that the second or Turkish "woe” is past, and that "the third woe" comes quickly. "The second woe is past and, behold, the third woe cometh quickly."-Revelation xi. 14. The only meaning must be that this " woe"--which is ushered in by the seventh trumpet, and comprises the seven seals or last judgment of God upon the earth-shall commence closely following upon this outbreak of the Reformation in the 16th century. For John is directed at once to "behold" it, and immediately the seventh trumpet is blown. This forms the subject of another section. It is a fact that an impression very generally prevailed among the Saxon, Swiss, and English Reformers that they were under the sixth trumpet-sounding of God's grand prophetic calendar-Juda, Bullinger, Bale, and Foxe in the 16th century, and Parens, Mede, and Vitringa in the 17th century, referring to the oath of the angel, and maintaining that the Reformation had been accomplished under the sixth trumpet, and that the doom of Antichrist was near.

WHEN the Lamb prepared to unloose the sealed scroll, the thanksgiving of the four living creatures and of the twentyfour elders revealed the object of the providences about to be inaugurated upon the theatre of the earth; and again, when the seven angels made ready to sound their trumpets, the retributory character of the events to be predicted was intimated by the dread portents of voices, and thunderings, and earthquake. In like manner the heralding of the third and final woe, previously announced to come at the sounding of the seventh trumpet, is greeted, but in this case by an anthem of praise from "great voices in heaven," and from the twenty-four elders.

"And the seventh angel sounded; and there were great voices in heaven, saying, The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever. And the four and twenty elders, which sat before God on their seats, fell upon their faces, and worshipped God, saying, We give thee thanks, O Lord God Almighty, which art, and wast, and art to come; because thou hast taken to thee thy great power, and hast reigned. And the nations were angry, and thy wrath is come, and the time of the dead, that they

should be judged, and that thou shouldest give reward unto thy servants the prophets, and to the saints, and them that fear thy name, small and great; and shouldest destroy them which destroy the earth.”Revelation xi. 15-18.

The redeemed give thanks to God for now at length taking to himself His great power, and in reality reigning over the earth. They declare that the time has come for avenging the blood of the saints, for rewarding all that fear His name, "both small and great," and "for destroying those that destroy (or corrupt) the earth." And the burden of their mighty choral acclamations is, that the kingdoms of "this world" (evidently meaning the earth, though the chorus is described as in the world above) are now become the kingdoms of God and of His Christ. past tense is employed as if these events were already accomplished; but the signification obviously is, that the period now opened is to bear the character and issue in the consummation here described. "The nations were angry, and thy wrath is come," intimates that people themselves are to be instruments in accomplishing God's vengeance upon His enemies,—a similar representation to that given by Daniel, as considered in a former section. It is a fact that

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