believers of the gospel, may well be esteemed her progeny, brought forth as they were, in pangs and throes, and manifold tribulations. The words of Jesus are spirit and are life. The symbol is an express similitude. It is as being born again that men enter into the kingdom of God; as well as by tribulation that they then approved themselves as its children. And there is the same relation between the gospel and believers, as between a mother and a child. The people that did know their God were strong and did exploits. And they that understood among the people instructed many; yet they fell by the sword, and by flame, and by captivity, and by spoil many days. The dragon could not devour them. The Roman empire could not destroy the church,-" the body of Christ,”— of which true believers are the members. A church was formed by the preaching of the gospel. A man-child was brought forth, who shall rule all nations with a rod of iron. Not only is it written of Jesus that he shall thus rule, and that God will give him the heathen for a heritage, and the uttermost part of the earth for a possession; but the Spirit also saith unto the churches, "He that overcometh and keepeth my works unto the end, to him will I give power over the nations, and he shall rule them with a rod of iron; as the vessels of a potter shall they be broken to shivers; even as I received of my Father, Rev. ii. 27. The kingdom of God shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and they shall become as the chaff of the summer threshing floors. Looking from the first conflict to the final triumph of the church, the apostle, in this vision, heard a loud voice saying in heaven, now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God; in like manner as it is said in the book of Daniel, "And the kingdom and the dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom under

the whole heaven, shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High, whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey him." He shall finally bruise the serpent's head.

But Christianity was not destined to triumph, till many subjects, throughout many ages, should first be gathered to the kingdom of God. Farther identifying his people as his own, it is said that the man-child was caught up to God and to his throne, even as Jesus after his exaltation on high, said-To him that overcometh will I give to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father on his throne.

But the pangs of child-birth were not the only perils of the woman clothed with the sun. After the man-child was brought forth, new dangers arose. And after a Christian church was formed, a long period was to elapse, and new dangers to be encountered, before the prince of darkness and of this world would cease to exercise his malignity, or be deprived of his power. After the emperor of Rome "should be removed out of the way, that wicked one would be revealed, whose coming is after the working of Satan, with all powers, and signs, and lying wonders," &c. And as Daniel represents the church passing from one state of tribulation, that inflicted by the Roman empire after the subversion of Judaism, to enter on another, that of papal persecution, to endure throughout an appointed time, so, after the man-child was born, and survived in defiance of all the power of the dragon, the woman fled into the wilderness, and, under another form, and even directly named, the serpent again was her persecutor. In the things noted in the scripture of truth, an "appointed time" of persecution succeeds to the early tribulation of the Christians, during which second and defined period, many were to fall,

to be tried, and to be purged, and to be made white. And the period to the end of the wonders is declared to be a time, times, and a half. Dan. xii. 7. The saints of the Most High were to be given into the hands of the papacy (the little horn of the fourth beast) until a time, times, and the dividing of time, (half a time,) Dan. vii. 25. The two witnesses were to testify a thousand two hundred and threescore days. It is specially to be noted that BOTH these forms of expression, or different modes of determining the same period, are repeated, in the exact terms, in the vision now before us, whereby all those prophecies are linked together, and identified as descriptive of the same power, retaining, as otherwise they do, a manifest uniformity and entire accordance (see Table). And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she had a place prepared of God, that they should feed her there a thousand, two hundred and threescore days, ver. 6. And to the woman were given two wings of a great eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness, into her place, where she is nourished for a time, and times, and a half a time, from the face of the serpent, ver. 14.

Some evidence will afterwards be adduced to show the probable commencement and termination of the 1260 years.

The dragon, during the second great period of persecution, and after a christian church had been formed, is spoken of under another form: and it was from the face of the serpent that the woman fled into the wilderness. As, at the beginning, believers had to wrestle with the rulers of the darkness of this world, and with spiritual wickedness in high places, or against the great red dragon which stood ready to devour the man-child at his birth, so even in the days of the apostles the mystery of iniquity began also to work in another form; and that wicked one was to be revealed in his time, or

after the subversion of the western empire, whose coming is after the WORKING OF SATAN, with all powers, and signs, and lying wonders, and all deceivableness of unrighteousness, &c. And the great dragon is that old serpent, called the devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world. The same prince of darkness had but separate agents, and wrought but by other means. The persecution against the saints was not less satanic, under papal than under imperial Rome. The knights or kings who slaughtered them at the dictation of a monk, were not more humane than Roman lictors, and Simon de Montfort was, in cruelty, another Nero. He was, as the philosophical historian relates, "the representative of THE EVIL SPIRIT; the prototype of all the persecutions they had endured." Nor when he forebore from the more gentle slaughter by the sword, that, in committing the saints to the flames, the priests might not be deprived of their expected joy, were they less fiendish than he. The old serpent, called the devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world, wanted not incarnate demons as the agents of his will, against those who would despoil him of his reign. But the brethren overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony, and they loved not their lives unto the death.

While the church of Christ, who came to dispossess Satan of his kingdom, lay obscure in the wilderness in a depressed and suffering state, it may be remarked, that it was with two wings of a great eagle that the woman, who was clothed with the sun, fled thither. There was no abode or resting place in Judea, nor in the lesser Asia, nor in Greece, where first she had flourished; nor was she suffered to remain in the rich plains of southern France ;*

The Albigenses may be traced to a remote region of the earth, as well as to an early age of the church. The Paulicians, or dis

but on the remote Alps, in some of the most sequestered of the villages of Piedmont, amidst the fastnesses of rocks and the wilds of the desert, and literally in an Alpine region where eagles dwell, the existence of the gospel was preserved, in active and embodied form, and the church of Christ had there her seat in the wilderness. But even there the trial of the faith of the brethren was, that they loved not their lives unto death; and peaks of mountains seemingly inaccessible, and caves in the rocks, were frequently their only fesort, in the place which the Lord had prepared for them.

These few observations have been hazarded, in the hope that they may not altogether tend to mystify mystery, or to obstruct the understanding of what has been called the most difficult part of the book of Revelation. But that which cannot yet be seen clearly in all its parts, cannot be fully defined. And it is not on such themes that we should dare to give scope to any vain imaginations. It were folly, not wisdom, to attempt to be wise above what is

ciples of Paul, were first established in Armenia and Pontus. And after suffering severe persecutions, they were transplanted, about the middle of the eighth century, from Armenia into Thrace. "A confession of simple worship and blameless manners is extorted from their enemies; and so high was their standard of perfection, that the increasing congregations were divided into two classes of disciples, of those who practised, and of those who aspired. It was in the country of the Albigeois, in the southern provinces of France, that the Paulicians were most deeply implanted; and the same vicissitudes of martyrdom and revenge which had been displayed in the neighbourhood of the Euphrates, were repeated in the thirteenth century on the banks of the Rhone. The laws of the eastern emperors were revived by Frederic the Second. The insurgents of Tephrice were represented by the barons and cities of Languedoc. Pope Innocent III. surpassed the sanguinary fame of Theodora. It was in cruelty alone that her soldiers could equal the heroes of the crusades, and the cruelty of her priests was far excelled by the founders of the inquisition; an office more adapted to confirm than to refute the belief of an evil principle. The visible assemblies of the Paulicians, or Albigeois, were extirpated by fire and sword," &c.-Gibbon's Hist. vol. x. p. 187, c. 54.