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justice shall turn upon their enemies, and render to them according to their deeds.If fomething of this kind be not meant by powers which are given to the witneffes, I own I am at an utter lofs to conceive what the Holy Spirit intended.

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But not only may the wickedness of the French people, as has been noticed, be considered as an objection to their cause being of God, but fome may suppose that the calamities which they endure, and the disappointments which they experience, must be looked upon as a proof that their rifing against their oppressors, is not the commencement of the refurrection of the witnesses, even though we should confider it as a political one.-By no means. The gathering of the difperfed Jews, preparatory to their converfion, is their political refurrection (Ezek. xxxvii.) and yet we are informed by many prophecies, that, after this, they are to endure great fufferings, and by which a great part of them are to perish, both in their way to their own land, and after their arrival there; (Ezek. xx. 38. Zech. xii. 2, 3. xiii. 8, 9. xiv. 2, 3, 7.) and it will

not be till the rebels are purged out from among them, nor till the last extremity, that the Lord will appear for their deliverance and thorough converfion.

And when they had finifhed their teftimony, i. e. when the thoufand two hundred and threefcore days are about to draw to a conclufion, the beast that afcendeth out of the bottomlefs pit, fhall make war against them and kill them. Here our fecond question prefents itself. Who, or what is it, that is fet forth by this heast ?

If the pofition refpefting the fecond beaft in the thirteenth chapter be made good, I answer, the French tyranny under Lewis XIV. who came up out of the bottomlefs quagmire. For as the abyfs does not neceffarily mean what is commonly understood by the bottomlefs pit, hell, (though in a fense, from thence he came,) there' appears a peculiar propriety in thus explaining it: for taken altogether, and confidering that some particular part of the antichrif tian city,* is to be the scene of the fufferings, death and refurrection

*

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By the antichriftian city, or, what, in the book of the Revelation, is called the city of Babylon and Babylon the Great, we are not always to understand Rome only, but the myfiical Babylon is that antichriftian tyranny and system of corrup tion which has, in different ages, more or lefs, fpread itself over all Europe.` Rome is the center and court, and the ten kingdoms, or states, appear to be confidered as the streets of this city.

tion of the witneffes, the beaft defcribed in this eleventh chapter, agrees better with the second beaft in the thirteenth chapter, than with the firft. And let us remember it must be one of them, or we create a third beast which was not fhewn to John in any of the following explanatory vifions; and it is not probable that so interefting an object would be prefented in this miniature picture, which is not to be found in any of those which are on a larger fcale. With Lewis it perfectly agrees. We have heard how he made war, both upon the witnesses for the pure religion of Jesus Christ, and upon thofe for civil liberty too, and flew them. By his continued and multiplied perfecutions and ufurpations, and particularly by the revocation of the edict of Nants, he flew the former especially, but with them the greater part of thofe of the latter description; for the true friends of religion and of religious liberty, if they know any thing of their principles, are the firmeft friends of civil liberty allo; as that which is most intimately connected with the designs of Chriit, and the triumphs of that uncorrupted truth wherewith Chrift hath made us free.

There is no nation existing which, first and last, has produced fuch a number of faithful witnesses against papal corruptions and tyrannies, as France. No people have fo long a lift of martyrs and confeffors to fhew, as the Proteftants of that country; and there is no royal family in Europe which has shed, in the support of popety, half the blood which the Capets have shed. Who deluged the earth with the blood of the Waldenfes and Albigenfes, that inhabited the fouthern parts of France, and bore teftimony against the corruptions and ufurpations of Rome? The cruel kings of France, flew above a million of them.-Who fet on foot, and headed the executioners of the mallacre of Bartholomew, which lafted feven days, and in which, fome fay, near fifty thousand Proteftants were murdered in Paris, and twenty-five thousand more in the provinces? The royal monsters of France. A maffacre this, in which neither age nor fex, nor even women with child, were spared; for the butchers had received orders to flaughter all, even babes at the breaft, if they belonged to Proteftants. The king himself flood at the windows of his palace, endeavouring to fhoot those who fled, and crying to their purfuers, kill 'em, kill'em. For this mafiacre public rejoicings were made at Rome, and in other Catholic countries.-Unnumbered thousands of Proteftants were flain in

the

the civil wars of France, for their attachment to their principles. But as if Lewis XIV. had determined to outdo all his predeceffors in perfecution, he perpetrated, by the base inftruments of his defpotism, all the enormities connected with the revocation of the edict of Nants. Those who wish to fee a full account of the cruelties of this horrid perfecution, a perfecution which did not wholly cease till the Revolution in 1789, may confult Mr. Claude's Complaints of the Proteftants of France. After fetting forth the unheard-of barbarities which were practised previous to the revocation of this edict, and enumerating the articles of the edict which crushed the caufe of Proteftantism in that country, he fays, (p. 114.) "In the execu tion of this ediệt, in the very fame day that it was registered and published at Paris, they began to demolish the church at Charenton. The oldest minifter thereof (Mr. Claude) was commanded to leave Paris within four and twenty hours, and forthwith to quit the kingdom. His colleagues were little better treated, they gave them forty-eight hours to leave Paris. The reft of the minifters were allowed fifteen days. But it can hardly be believed to what vexations and cruelties they were expofed, they neither permitted them to dispose of their eftates, nor to carry away with them any of their moveables. Befides, they would not give them leave to take along with them, either father or mother, brother or fifter, or any of their kindred, though they were many of them infirm, decayed, and poor, who could not subsist but by their means. They went fo far as even to deny them their own children, if they were above feven years old; nay, fome they took from them that were under that age, and even fuch as yet hanged on their mothers breafts; and refufed them nurfes for their new-born infants, which their mothers could not give fuck to.In some frontier places they stopped, under various pretences, the banished minifters, and put them in prifon. Then after they had thus detained them, they would tell them, that the fifteen days of the edict were expired, and they could not now have liberty to retire, but must be sent to the gallies,

"As to the reft, whom the force of perfecution and hard ufage conftrained to leave their houfes and eftates, and fly the kingdom, it is not to be imagined what dangers they expofed themselves to. Never were orders more fevere, or more ftrict than those that were given against them. They doubled the guards in fea-port cities, highways and fords; they covered the country with foldiers;

they

they armed even the peasants, either to stop or kill those that paffed. By these means they quickly filled all the prifons in the kingdom; for the dread of the dragoons, who were quartered upon them to oblige them to embrace popery; the horror of seeing their confciences forced, and their children taken from them, and of living for the future in a land where there was neither juftice nor humanity for them; obliged every one to think of escape, and to abandon all to save their perfons. All the poor prisoners have been treated with unheard of rigor, confined in dungeons, loaded with heavy chains, almoft ftarved with hunger, and deprived of all converfe but with their perfecutors. They put many into monasteries, where they have experienced the worst of cruelties. Some, indeed, have been fo happy as to die in the midst of their torments; but others have at length funk under the weight of the temptation: and fome, again, by the extraordinary affiftance of God's grace, do still fuftain it with an heroic courage. This was the ftate of things [p. 122.] in the latter end of the year 1685, and the full accomplifhment of the threats the clergy had made us three years before, towards the end of their pretended pastoral letter, in which they fay, Ye must expect miferies incomparably more dreadful and intolerable, than all thofe which hitherto your revolt and your fchifm have drawn upon you. And truly they have not been worse than their word."

-Cruel clergy! are these the minifters of the merciful Jesus? -Fiends from hell! Cruel government! Are these the powers which are ordained of God, and which men are bound to obey on pain of the divine difpleafure?To maintain fuch a pofition is a flander on the juftice and goodness of the Creator. Such pofitions are among the blafphemies of perifhing oppreffors. (Rev. xvi. 9, 11, 21.) When this bloody religion, and such inhuman tyrannies fall, and their base inftruments perish, under the vengeance of the oppreffed, is it any wonder that the angels fhout, Thou art righteous, O Lord! they have fhed the blood of faints and prophets, and thou haft given them blood to drink, for they are worthy? Shall not God take vengeance? He furcly will. He hath promised that he will. The falfe friends of Christianity, and all the creatures of tyranny will howl and cry, Alas! alas! that great city! But God will fay, Rejoice over her, thou heaven! Vengeance is mine, I will repay.

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But does not this perfect the beaftly character of Lewis? He it was, alfo, who gave the death-wound to the civil liberties of France, by taking from the Parliaments all their remaining power, and from France every fhadow of freedom. Their ancient conftitution had been long impairing. It was undermined by the crafty Lewis XI. and had been nearly fwept away by the daring and fanguinary councils of Richelieu, under Lewis XIII. The affembly of the states had been disused ever since the beginning of this monarch's reign. The last time of its meeting was in the year 1614. But all civil liberty did not then expire. Its complete extinction was left for this tyrant. "For heretofore," fays Puffendorf, in the style of a court fycophant, "the Parliament of Paris ufed to oppose the king's defigns, under a pretence that they had fuch a right. That the king could not do any thing of moment without its confent. But the king has taught it only to intermed dle with judicial business, and some other concerns, which the king now and then is pleased to leave to its decision." *

Thus perished liberty, thus perished the renowned reformers of France, whose faithfulness will be had in everlasting remembrance, and whofe fufferings will be avenged in the downfal of that ty

which inflicted them. For though their dead bodies fhall lie in the street of the great city, of myftical Babylon, which fpiritually is called, on account of its lewdnefs and perfecutions, Sodom and Egypt, where alfo our Lord, in his members, was crucified; (ver. 8.) and though the people, and kindreds, and tongues, and nations, fee

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* Thus did this tyrant establish a perfect defpotifm, and from his days to the time of the revolution in 1789, the people were ftrangers to both civil and religious liberty. It is true that perfecution and violence have not continued ever fince to rage in the fame degree. If they had, that kingdom must have been depopulated, and not an object left to be tyrannized over; and not only that country laid wafte, but all the acceffible world. The fame fyftem of oppreffion was pursued, though not always to the fame length; the fame tyrannic laws continued in force, and were exercised whenever the king or his courtiers conceived it neceffary for the promotion of their measures. The late banishments. and imprisonments of the members of the Parliament of Paris, for refufing to register thofe loans (because they thought them oppreffive to the people) which the court demanded, are in every one's memory. And though fome, to answer their own unworthy purpofes, may endeavour to perfuade us to the contrary, yet, to the difinterested and difpaffionate, thefe tyrannic proceedings appear manifeftly to have been the things which haftened the downfal of the unhappy Lewis XVI.

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