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man, set thy face against Zidon, and prophecy against it, and say, Thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I am against thee, O Zidon, and I will be glorified in the midst of thee.For I will send into her pestilence, and blood into her streets; the wounded shall be judged in the midst of her by the sword upon her on every side: and they shall know that I am the Lord. This city is reckoned the oldest of all the cities of Phoenicia, but as early as the reign of Ethbaal I. whose daughter, Asa, king of Judah, married,* Zidon was subject to the king of Tyre, and in its best days afterwards, though its fleets and commerce were considerable, yet it remained an inferior kingdom. + But its sins were great according to its means, and therefore these denunciations.

There is every reason to conclude, that this prophecy also is to be referred to some maritime country of the latter times of the world, and that Old Zidon is here a type of some modern, inferior, commercial nation, situate on the borders of the sea; for the promise, which immediately follows, of the restoration of Israel, and of perpetual peace, as has been observed, has, most certainly, never yet been fulfilled.

I have but one observation to make, and I pass to the consideration of the third vial. It is this: that as the first and second trumpets appear to have brought those destructions, which were at once extensive, and of long duration; and as the hail cast upon the earth, and the burning mountain cast into the sea, appear, in those visions, to have signified those inland and military, and those maritime and naval calamities, which prevailed till the Western empire was destroyed, while the evils which were brought upon the rivers by the third trumpet and those of the fourth, which immediately smote the third part of the sun, moon, and stars, were more confined; so, it is likely, the judgments of the vials will be. It is probable, that the vials on the earth, and sea, will produce calamities at once extensive, and of long duration, running on together till the whole scheme of Providence, in purging and reforming

* 1 Kings, xvi. 31.

+ Univer. Anc. Hist. Vol. II. page 29. seq.

I say immediately, for the calamities of all the preceding trumpets, contributed to the extinction of these political luminaries, and prepared the way for their complete darkening. And thus it is likely to be with respect to the vials.

the nations, is accomplished, while those on the rivers, and the sun, though calamitous, will be more confined, or of shorter duration.

And the third angel poured out his vial upon the rivers and fountains of waters, and they became blood, verse 4. The calamities which were brought by the sounding of the trumpet of the third angel, chapter viii. 10, 11. and which fell upon the rivers, appear chiefly, and most fatally, to have affected the countries watered by the Danube and the Po, and those other numerous rivers which fall into them, viz. the present Lombardy, Venitia, Piedmont, the circles of Austria and Bavaria, and the kingdom of Hungary, at least the greater part of them. So it is probable, that the stream of the third vial will fall on these same countries, and produce there great calamities and revolutions; and it is not unlikely, that the commencement of these calamities is to be dated from the time when the French army, under Buonaparte, first passed the Alps and broke into the northern parts of Italy, where they have carried all before them. Whether events will turn up to retard, for a while, the full effect of this vial of wrath, until those on the earth, and the sea, have made farther progress, or whether the wrath will now hasten to a conclusion, by a speedy overthrow of the power of Antichrist in this district of Babylon the Great, time only can discover:* we wait with awful expectation. Let us seek, that peace may be upon our Israel, and pray that the Lord may be a wall of fire round our land, and the glory in the midst of us.

It is said, in Rev. xii. 4. that the tail of the dragon drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth. This is the sixth time that a third part is mentioned. As Mr. Mede had interpreted the tails of the Saracen locusts (chap. ix.) to be their mischiefs in that part of the world most distant from Arabia, whence they issued; so Dr. Cressener interpreted the tail of the dragon

Although the great outlines of a prophecy may be plain, at least discoverable, so as sufficiently to identify the original for which the picture was designed, yet the nice and minute shading is, in general, no part of the prophecy, or, at most, less distinguishable.

to be the most distant parts of the Roman empire, Asia; but Mr. Whiston appears to have had more correct ideas of this symbol. He interprets the tails of the locusts to signify, "The latter ages of their empire," Essay, p. 192. Thus I understand the tail of the dragon to be the latter part of his tyranny, or reign. This dragon, we are to rcmember, still exists, as has been already observed; for the dragon, mentioned in chap, xvi. 13. and xx. 2. is nei ther some new tyranny, nor the devil, properly, as some have mistaken him for, but the same monster as that we read of in chap. xii. and xiii, which persecuted the church, not only before, but after her residence in the wilderness, and which resigned his seat, Rome, to the ten-horned beast, and was cast out into the earth. His reign at Rome, before he gave his seat to the beast, may be considered as his former part; and his reign, after his revival in the Western empire, in the Imperial sovereignty of Charlemagne, and his successors, to the present Emperor of Germany, may be considered as his tail; that is, the period of his tyranny from the time of his being cast out from heaven into the earth, (chap. xii. 9.) And by his drawing the third part of the stars of heaven, and casting them to the earth, I understand his subduing those princes who formerly ruled over those dukedoms, marquisates, principalities, and kingdoms, which are now called the dominions of the House of Austria. And what a constel. lation of greater and lesser stars! They formerly shone in the zenith of Hungary, Austria, Stiria, Carinthia, Sclayonia, Croatia, Tyrol, Milan, Mantua, &c. every one situate in the third part referred to in chap. viii. 10-12. that is, in the Italian præfecture, as extended after the death of Constantine the Great. Attention to this little circumstance is not without its use, in explaining and illustrating these visions.

And if the dominions of the Houses of Austria and Savoy, in the North of Italy, Rhætia, &c. be specially intended by the rivers and fountains of waters, as I verily believe they are, how apposite is the episode here introduced. Ver. 5. And I heard the angel of the waters say, Thou art righteous, O Lord, which art, and wast, and shalt be, because thou hast judged thus: For they have shed the blood of saints and prophets, and thou hast given them blood to drink; for they are worthy. And I heard another out of the altar, say, Even so, Lord God Almighty, true and righteous are thy judgments. What family, unless that of

the Capets, and what government, unless the old government of France, has shed half the blood, in the cause of the ecclesiastical beast, as that of Austria? The House of Savoy too is deep in blood. Read the histories of the Waldenses, and of the Voidois, who inhabited the vallies of Piedmont, and who were amongst the first witnesses against Antichristian corruptions and usurpations; and whose most grievous sufferings began in the year 1488, and continued, with little intermission, till the latter end of the last century, when, a short time after their brethren in France, they expired. "This persecution," says Mosheim, in his Eccles. Hist. Vol. IV. p. 488. " was carried "on with peculiar marks of rage and enormity in the

year 1655, 1686, and 1696, and seemed to portend.no"thing less than the total destruction, and entire extinc❝tion, of that unhappy nation. The most horrid scenes "of violence and bloodshed were exhibited on this theatre "of papal tyranny; and the small number of the Wal"denses that survived them, are indebted for their exist❝ence and support, precarious and uncertain as it is, to "the continual intercession made for them by the English "and Dutch governments, and also by the Swiss cantons, "who never ceased to solicit the clemency of the Duke of "Savoy in their behalf." In the symbolic sense they have long since been extinct; and their death may be dated from January 31, 1696, when Victor Amadeus II. published the fatal ordinance which effected their utter ruin.* Their resurrection, we may hope, is not far off; for though the present sovereign has saved himself for a while by his treaty with the French Republic, yet his house and government will not escape.+

It does not comport with our design to track the bloody footsteps of the persecutors of Europe; or with what tales of blood and misery might we harrow up the feelings of the compassionate reader! They who want proofs of the guilt of the House of Austria, particularly, have only to read the history of the persecutions of its sacred princes, in Bohemia, Germany, Hungary, the Austrias, and their

* About this time also, the Protestant Church of the Palatinate expired with the Elector Charles II. And never did the witnesses suffer so general a political slaughter as at this period; and we may, therefore, I think, expect their symbolic resurrection in France, Italy, and Germany, to be about the same time.

+ The reader will recollect that this third part was first published in 1797.

other dominions, where they have pursued the Protestants with all sorts of cruelties, and overwhelmed them in torrents of blood.

Alas! all the waters of the rivers have been purpled with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus!-But the time of retribution is come. When I read the names of the cities and towns, of the mountains and rivers, in the reports of the marches and battles of the French armies, and of the flight of the monks, priests, and nobles, and recollect the scenes which here passed in the last and preceding age, when the excellent of the earth here heroically sealed their testimony with their blood, and almost wearied out the malice of their holy and ennobled butchers, I am impelled to exclaim, Righteous art thou, O Lord God, because thou hast judged thus; for they have shed the blood of saints and prophets !

In the history of France, of its persecutions and punishments, we see a picture of what we may expect to see in other countries soaked with the blood of the martyrs. When we read the history of the sufferings of the French Protestants in the reigns of Charles IX. and Louis XIV. and compare the horrors then perpetrated with recent events, we cannot but be struck with admiration at the ways of Providence. In the south, and west of France. especially, what torrents of Protestant blood have flowed! Nothing but the late slaughters can equal the horrors. The massacres at Lyons and Thoulouse are famous in history. But no where have there been so many and such horrible massacres, Paris excepted, as in the neighbourhood of the Loire, Nants, Angers, Orleans, Bourges, and all the chief cities and towns, situate on and near this river, from its source to the Bay of Biscay, have been scenes of carnage. The river Loire, says a late writer of the history of France-I quote from memory-was purpled with the blood of the Hugonots, and heaps of their dead bodies were left to rot in the fields, and to be devoured by beasts and birds of prey. And, as if singled out by some special interposition, these very cities and countries have experienced, during the conflicts and horrors of the late revolution, distinguished calamities; and that river, above all others, once so deeply stained with Protestant blood, has been swelled with the blood of the advocates of despotism and superstition, and choked with the dead bodies of those very orders of men that had been the chief instigators, and perpetrators, of the horrors of