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tended to prepare the public mind for future innovations, made with a RUDER HAND, and upon a much larger scale." After naming some acts of spoliation of this monarch, he adds: "Joseph was also the first Catholic sovereign who broke through the solemn degree of reverence attached by that religion to the person of the Sovereign Pontiff. The Pope's fruitless and humiliating visit to Vienna furnished the shadow of a precedent for the conduct of Napoleon to Pius the Seventh."

In another place (p. 96) with regard to this year, he thus fixes the attention to the important principles which it developed, and which marked it as the spring-head of the revolution:-"Looking back on the period of 1780 with the advantage of our own experience, it is possible to see a chance, though perhaps a doubtful one, of avoiding the universal shipwreck which was fated to ensue."

As the preliminary events which, under God, brought on the fall, and those which are to bring on the restoration of Israel, have thus corresponded to the period of "seven times;" so the next dates, of 1789 and 1793, equally correspond to those of 731 and 727 B.C., and bring us to the acmé of that awful catastrophe by which the nicely poised balance of power among the European nations (the work and boast of ages) and the old institutions and long-established barriers of civil society, were shattered to the earth; the

constitution of the republic formally proclaimed; the Christian era abolished; all religious worship suppressed; and death declared to be an eternal sleep! Thus was the important event of Shalmaneser's carrying the Israelites into captivity, and irrecoverably destroying the well-being of their nation, responded to by an equally important event, that has shaken all modern kingdoms, previous to their restoration.

The next date is the year 1796, which brings us to the first appearance of God's modern scourge and destroyer of nations, Napoleon Bonaparte, who in this year began his victorious career as the leader of the infidel hosts against the Papal nations. In the year 1798, the French army took and entered ROME; making the Pope a prisoner, banishing the cardinals, and abolishing for the time the whole system of Popery after which they fell upon the Italian states, ravaged and spoiled them, and annexed Savoy and other territories to the French republic.

The year 1806 is exceedingly remarkable, in the farther successes of Bonaparte, as marking the time when, after the deepest humiliation of the Emperor of Germany, he obliged him to resign his imperial headship over the Western empire; thus abolishing for ever the "sixth head" or form of government, and establishing in his own person the "seventh head;" making

himself king of Italy, and being crowned by the Pope with all solemnity and formalities required on so great an occasion. And it is this period of his life that brings him more immediately on the stage of prophecy. It was this act which especially constituted him "THE SUN," when power was given him "to scorch men with fire," and which likewise constituted him (Rev. xvii. 3) "the scarlet-coloured beast, full of the names of blasphemy." And it was in the year corresponding to this, when Sennacherib, a similarly blasphemous character, first appeared in the land of Judea, and for several years-that is, from 714 to 708 B. c.—was a scourge both to Israel and Judah; until, in the latter year, his immense army was destroyed in a miraculous manner before Jerusalem. After this most memorable deliverance there appeared a reflux in the tide of affairs: a period of repose and quietness succeeded: there was a long pause-but it was the last pause in the work of desolation; -and during this season things returned, as far as the nature of the case would admit, to their accustomed channel. And hence it was that the kingdom of Israel might so far recover itself as to remain still a nation, and its final overthrow not be reckoned until it was afterwards destroyed by Esarhaddon.

In like manner Napoleon, after he became head of the empire, for the same number of years

been read to them, are again in a most fearful manner rearing the standard of Infidelity, and men of every rank are unblushingly avowing their total denial of the Bible as the word of God. In France, particularly, to such an extent is this feeling said to prevail, that an imputation of having taken a part in any religious observance, or of believing in Christianity, would be shrunk from as if it were a moral degradation. The blasphemies of Atheism, as they so awfully appeared at the breaking out of the French Revolution, are giving fearful indications that they only wait the opportunity to exhibit anew the same revolting and diabolical scenes of ferocity as those which characterized the days of Robespierre. Even in our own country, to a more fearful extent than many are at all aware of, is this fatal poison, in unison with other causes, working the ruin of the country; and increasing in strength, in virulence, and in influence, beyond all former example. Thus are the Apostle's words fulfilling: "This also know, that in the LAST DAYS perilous times shall come: for men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, truce-breakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God!"

A SECOND sign of the times, is the renewed efforts of Popery to shut out the light of truth from the world, and to propagate its antiChristian abominations. And this is likewise remarkably and lamentably exemplified in this country, and forms one of the features of the last days. For it is said in Rev. ix. 20, 21, after giving the particulars of the Turkish woe, that "the rest of the men, which were not killed by these plagues, yet repented not of the works of their hands, that they should not worship devils, and idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and of wood; which neither can see, nor hear, nor walk: neither repented they of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts." In other words, throughout the Latin Empire, the men who were not politically killed by the plagues of the first two woes do not repent of their worship of idols, nor desist from their great wickedness they maintain their idolatry, with all its abominations, during the whole of the Turkish trumpet, and until it finally ceases; about which time this spiritual or symbolical Babylon shall then fall, before a still more tremendous power, and more impious principle, than that of either the Saracens or Turks. And up to the time that this final and overwhelming judgment comes upon them, it is here fully intimated that they will not repent of their deeds; that

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