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attributes, he was to be invested; in what season, or about what time, and for how long a time, he was to reign and prosper: Consider these FIVE obvious characters of Antichrist, which the prophets have distinctly set forth, and which, from them, I have successively held up to you: And, then, compare them with the correspondent characters, which you find inscribed, by the pen of authentic history, on a certain power, sprung up in the West; seated in the city of Rome; calling himself the vicar of Christ; yet full of names of blasphemy, that is, stigmatized with those crimes, which christianity, as such, holds most opprobrious, the crimes of tyrannic dominion, of persecution, and even idolatry; and lastly, now subsisting in the world, though with evident symptoms of decay, after a long reign, whose rise and progress can be traced, and whose duration, hitherto, is uncontradicted by any prophecy: Put, I say, all these correspondent marks together, and see if they do not furnish, if not an absolute demonstration, yet a high degree of probability, that apostate Papal Rome is the very Antichrist foretold.

At least, you will admit that these correspondencies are signal enough to merit your attention, and even to justify your pains in looking further into so curious and interesting a subject. Ye will say to yourselves, That the prophecies con

cerning Antichrist deserve at least to be considered with care, since in so many striking particulars, they appear, on the face of them, to have been completed.

This conclusion, it is presumed, is a reasonable one: And the end of this discourse will be answered, if ye are, at length, prevailed upon to draw this conclusion.

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SERMON XII.

USES OF THIS INQUIRY INTO THE

PROPHECIES.

REV, xxii. 7.

Behold, I come quickly: Blessed is he that keepeth the sayings of the Prophecy of this book.

BEFORE we engage in a work of time and difficulty, we naturally ask, "CUI BONO, to what considerable end and purpose, are our labours to be referred ?"

Although it may, then, be presumed, that enough hath been said on the prophecies to excite. a reasonable desire of looking further into them, and even to produce a general persuasion, that they have been, or may be, understood; yet, it may quicken your attention to this argument, and support your industry in the prosecution of it, to set before you the USES, which may result from a full and final conviction (if such should be the issue

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of your inquiries,) That these prophecies are not intelligible only, but have, in many instances, been rightly applied, and clearly fulfilled.

These USES are very many. I shall collect, only, two or three of the more important, for your consideration.

Though every period of prophecy be instructive, that which takes in the great events and revolutions, which have come to pass in the Christian church, is, for obvious reasons, more especially interesting to us, who live in these latter ages of the world.

Of the numerous predictions, contained in either Testament, which, it is presumed, respect these events, the most considerable by far, because the most minute and circumstantial, are those of St. John in the Revelations; which treat professedly of such things as were to befall the servants of Jesus, from the prophet's own days, down to that awful period, when all the mysterious councils of God, in regard to the Christian dispensation, shall be finally shut up in the day of judg ment. To these predictions, then, a more particular attention is due, the rather because they have been fulfilling from the time of their delivery

* Rev. i. 1.

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