the Belga. But the Belge were settlers in Britain far subsequent to the Aborigines, and the construction of Avebury is much earlier than Stonehenge.

Mr. Bowles very happily conjectures that Silbury Hill was originally SULBURY, from the British goddess SUL, the Minerva of Cæsar. Here we shall make some observations. Mr. Bowles quotes Mr. Lysons's splendid plates of the Antiquities at Bath, one of which was a temple to Sul Minerva, the British Minerva Medica. The etymon of Sul is utterly unknown. But in Mr. Lysons's Bath, besides several inscriptions to the Dea Suli, we find (p. 11) some to the Suleve, rustic deities, three in number, who are found upon an ancient marble, seated, holding fruit and wheat-ears. Montfaucon (Supplem. II. 6, 8, c. 7) has an inscription to the Sulfes, tutelar Gaulish gods, whence some have derived Sylphs. Supposing then Sul to have a sense similar to the Suleva of Fabretti (de Aqueduct.) as above, or the Sulfes of the Gauls, Sul-Minerva may imply "tutelar Minerva," or "rural Minerva." Sul, whence or where derived, seems to us in all the instances to be of tutelar meaning. All the inscriptions refer to this sense.

As to Tan-Hill being now called St. Ann's Hill, Mr. Bowles shows that the Roman Catholics

"Translated the old heathen names into the names of their own saints, and adopted those names from their own calendar, which approached nearest in sound to the names of those heathen deities which were thus supplanted. The Feriæ of Tanaris became the Fair of St. Ann; but I produce from indisputable authority a case in point. The feast of MITHRAS was changed to the feast of St. Michael. See Brucker's Hist. of Philosophy, vol. VI. p. 160."

Country compositors so dreadfully disfigure learned terms, that we shall begin from hence to notice such blemishes. In p. 19 we have Keister for Keysler; and Arc Latense for Arcla

tense.

The name of Mr. Bowles is too well known to require praise from us. A pretty girl has only to show herself to be accounted pretty; and ingenious works, like "good wine, need no bush."

71. The Apocalypse of St. John; or a Prophecy of the Rise, Progress, and Fall of

the Church of Rome, the Inquisition, the Revolution of France, the universal War, and the real Triumph of Christianity; being a new Interpretation. By the Rev.. George Croly, M. A. H. R.S. L. 8vo.

pp. 470.

IT was the observation of a most reputable philosopher, that the Apocalypse was the sealed book of Daniel, written in hieroglyphics, upon which (says Bishop Hurd) the prophetic style was fashioned, and communicated to St. John in an undeciphered state (Tilloch on the Apocalypse). Mr. Harmer, in his useful work on Oriental Customs, says, "St. John evidently supposes paintings, or drawings, in that volume which he saw in the visions of God, and which was sealed with seven seals." It is, therefore, our opinion, upon the strength of such respectable authorities, and the internal evidence derived from the construction of the Apocalyse (where depicted objects are only changed into verbal descriptions), that this is a just and true account of the mysterious book in question. Until, therefore, the language of the hieroglyphics in which the prophecy is written be understood, no exposition that can be pronounced authoritative, ex cathedra, is to be received. But though no interpretation in its present state may be susceptible of such solemn decisive adjudication, yet there are strong circumstances, preponderating probabilities,-for surely a man may understand the representation of a horse or a cow, though he may not be able to give a description of it in the Linnæan nomenclature. Certainly we think the Apocalypse must refer to prominent historical events in church history; nor do we conceive that it requires any knowledge of ancient hieroglyphical language to see plainly what city is meant by Babylon, and who was the mistress of that enormous brothel.

Taking, therefore, hypothetical ground as fair, under the circumstances, and the obvious reference, as we think, to prominent events, we doubt not but our readers will admit the interpretation of Mr. Croly to be ingenious. It is from striking coincidences that Mr. Croly deduces his pre mises, stated in the manner hereafter mentioned.

These premises form a curious introduction, viz. the coincidence of prosperity and Protestantism, in our

national history, since the Reformation; and the infliction of disaster and ill-success by Providence, whenever Popery was directly or indirectly encouraged. The truth is unquestionable, that wherever Popery is sincerely professed, political well-being withers away; and whoever has had the misery of living with devotees, well knows that reason never enters into their consideration. That Popery has the essence of devoteeism vested in its nature, is self-evident; and how it has succeeded is plain, from the troops of the Papal states and Italy; and the utter want of political consequence wherever it is sincerely professed. In short, success in worldly affairs depends upon reason (i. e. under Providence of course); and it being utterly impossible that reason and revelation, if correctly understood, can be at variance, we know that Protestantism does not impede, like Popery, the action of common sense. But Mr. Croly takes higher ground. He shows that the hand of Providence visibly interfered in making political good or political evil follow respectively the adoption of Protestantism or Popery.

"A glance at the British history since the Reformation is enough to show how closely this Providential system has been exemplified in England. Every reign which attempted to bring back Popery, or even to give it that share of power which could in any degree prejudice Protestantism, has been marked by signal misfortune. It is a striking circumstance that almost every reign of this Popish tendency has been followed by one purely Protestant; and, as if to make the source of the national peril plain to all eyes, those alternate reigns have not offered a stronger contrast in their principles than in their public fortunes. Let the rank of England be what it might under the Protestant Sovereign, it always sunk under the Popish; let its loss of honour, or of power, be what it might under the Popish Sovereign, it always recovered under the Protestant, and more than recovered; was distinguished by sudden success, public renovation, and increased stability to the freedom and fortunes of the empire.

"Protestantism was first thoroughly established in England in the reign of Elizabeth.

"Mary had left a dilapidated kingdom; the nation worn out with disaster and debt; the national arms disgraced; nothing in vigour but Popery. Elizabeth, at twentyfive, found her first steps surrounded with the most extraordinary embarrassments; at home, the whole strength of a party, in

cluding the chief names of the kingdom, hostile to her succession and religion; in Scotland, a rival title, supported by France; in Ireland, a perpetual rebellion, inflamed by Rome; on the Continent, the force of Spain roused against her by the double stimulant of ambition and bigotry, at a time when Spain commanded almost the whole strength of Europe.

"But the cause of Elizabeth was Protestantism: and in that sign she conquered. She shivered the Spanish sword; she paralyzed the power of Rome; she gave freedom to the Dutch; she fought the battle of the French Protestants; every eye of religious suffering through Europe was fixed on this magnanimous woman. At home she elevated the habits and the heart of her people. She even drained off the bitter waters of religious feud, and sowed in the vigorous soil, which they had so long made unwholesome, the seeds of every principle and institution that has since grown up into the strength of the empire. But her great work was the establishment of Protestantism. Like the Jewish King, she found the Ark of God without a shelter; and she built for it the noblest temple in the world; she consecrated her country into its temple. She died in the fulness of years and honour; the great Queen of Protestantism throughout the nations; in the memory of England her name and her reign alike immortal.

"Charles I. ascended a prosperous throne, England in peace, faction feeble or extinct, the nation prospering in the full spirit of commerce and manly adventure. No reign of an English King ever opened out a longer or more undisturbed view of prosperity, But Charles betrayed the sacred trust of Protestantism. He had formed a Popish alliance, with the full knowledge that it established a Popish dynasty. He had lent himself to the intrigues of the French Minister stained with Protestant blood; for his first armament was a fleet against the Huguenots. If not a friend to Popery, he was madly regardless of its hazards to the Constitution.

"Ill-fortune suddenly gathered upon him. Distracted councils, popular feuds met by alternate weakness and violence, the loss of the national respect, finally deepening into civil bloodshed, were the punishments of his betrayal of Protestantism. The sorrows and late repentance of his prison hours painfully redeemed his memory.

"Cromwell's was the sceptre of a broken kingdom. He found the reputation and influence of England crushed; utter humiliation abroad; at home, the exhaustion of the civil war; and furious partizanship still tearing the public strength in sunder.

Cromwell was a murderer; but, in the high designs of Providence, the personal purity of the instrument is not always re

garded. The Jews were punished for their idolatry by idolaters, and restored by idolaters. Whatever was in the heart of the Protector, the policy of his government was Protestantism. His treasures and his arms were openly devoted to the Protestant cause in France, in Italy, throughout the world. He was the first who raised a public fund for the support of the Vaudois churches. He sternly repelled the advances which Popery made to seduce him into the path of the late King.

"England was instantly lifted on her feet as by the power of miracle. All her battles were victories; France and Spain bowed before her. All her adventures were conquests; she laid the foundation of her colonial empire, and of that still more illustrious commercial empire to which the only limits in either space or time may be those of mankind. She was the most conspicuous power of Europe; growing year by year in opulence, public knowledge, and foreign renown; until Cromwell could almost realize the splendid improbability, that, Before he died, he would make the name of an Englishınan as much feared and honoured as ever was that of an ancient Roman.'

"Charles the IId. came to an eminently prosperous throne. Abroad it held the foremost rank, the fruit of the vigour of the Protectorate. At home all faction had been forgotten in the general joy of the Restoration. But Charles was a concealed Roman Catholic. He attempted to introduce his religion. The Star of England was instantly darkened; the Country and the King alike became the scorn of the foreign courts; the national honour was scandalized by mercenary subserviency to France; the national arms were humiliated by a disastrous war with Holland; the capital was swept by the memorable inflictions of pestilence and conflagration.

James the IId. still more openly violated the national trust. He publicly became a Roman Catholic. This filled the cup. The Stuarts were cast out, they and

their dynasty for ever; that proud line of Kings was sentenced to wither down into a monk, and that monk living on the alms of England, a stipendiary and an exile.

"William was called to the throne. He found it, as it was always found at the close of a Popish reign, surrounded by a host of difficulties; at home the kingdom in a ferment; Popery, and its ally Jacobitism, girding themselves for battle; fierce disturbance in Scotland; open war in Ireland, with the late King at its head; abroad the French King domineering over Europe, and threatening invasion. In the scale of natious England nothing!

"He had solemnly professed Popery on the eve of the Restoration.

"But the principle of William's government was Protestantism; he fought and legislated for it through life; and it was to him, as it been to all before him, strength and victory. He silenced English faction; he crushed the Irish war; he then attacked the colossal strength of France on its own shore. This was the direct collision, not so much of the two kingdoms as of the two faiths; the Protestant champion stood in the field against the Popish persecutor. Before that war closed, the fame of Louis was undone. England rose to the highest military name. In a train of immortal victories, she defended Protestantism throughout Europe, drove the enemy to his palace gates, and before she sheathed the sword, broke the power of France for a hundred years." pp. ii.-ix.

reigns of Elizabeth, James, CromThus it appears certain that the well, William III. Anne, &c. were prosperous; and it is equally certain that the Charleses, one conniving at Popery, the other secretly professing it, and James the Second, were politically unfortunate.

was

Mr. Croly brings up the inquiry down to more recent events. He states that the Administration pledged to support the Catholic cause marked by disgraceful events (viz. the retreat from Sweden; Egypt evacuated; Whitelock pulverized at Buenos Ayres, and Duckworth repulsed at Constantinople (all in 1807); but that on the succession of the "No Popery Administration," things again revived, Providence having crowned our arms with success ever since. These are

facts; and while the troops and internal government of the Papal states remain what they are, we shall think that circumstances actually vindicate the hypothesis of Mr. Croly in a cool, dry, mathematical view of things.

We now proceed to the substance of the work itself; the application hitherto unregarded of certain prophecies to the French Revolution and its results. Here Mr. Croly shall again speak for himself:

the Apocalypse, I was struck with the appa"Some years since, in a casual reading of of the two witnesses,' to one of the most rent reference of the eleventh chapter, that extraordinary events of our time, or any other, the abjuration of Religion by a Government and People! a circumstance perfectly alone in the history of the world. But I further found that this event was declared to mark the conclusion of an æra, in which the whole chronology of the Apocalypse

was fixed, the well-known twelve hundred and sixty years,' which in their turn were declared to mark the Papal supremacy from the time of its commencement until the cessation of its power over the saints,' its power of persecution.'

"This abjuration occurred in 1793, the first year of the French Republic; reckoning 1260 years back, led to their commencement in A.D. 533. On referring to Bishop Newton's work, to ascertain whether this date had been noticed, I found (vol. II. p. 305) a note containing the opinion of Dr. Mann of the Charter-house, then deceased, that the year 533 was to be considered as the true epoch of the Papal supremacy. On reference to Baronius, the established authority among the Roman Catholic annalists, I found (cent. 6) the whole detail of Justinian's grant of supremacy to the Pope formally given.

Baronius has been a suspected authority, where the honour of the Popedom is

concerned. But his statement was at least

proof of the Romish opinion of the original epoch of the supremacy; and it received an unanswerable support from the books of the Imperial laws, in which the grant of primacy and precedency over all the Bishops of the Christian world,' is registered, and repeated in a variety of forms. The entire transaction was of the most authentic and regular kind, and suitable to the importance of the transfer. The grant of Phocas was found to be a confused and imperfect transaction, scarcely noticed by the early writers, and, even in its fullest sense, amounting to nothing beyond a confirmation of the grant of Justinian. The chief cause of its frequent adoption as an epoch by the commentators, seemed to be its convenient coincidence with the rise of Mahometanism.

"From this point I laid aside all commentators, and determined to make my way alone, to form my opinions without bias, and discover whether the difficulties of the prophecy could not be cleared off by an inquiry in the common principles of interpretation. The difficulties were less stubborn than I had conceived; and the present arrangement and interpretation were soon decided upon."-(Introd. pp. 12-14.)

Mr. Croly then proceeds to give us the substance of the new interpretation in the following words:

"The Greek Church and Empire; the Mahometan Invasion; and the late extinction of the Germanic Empire, are usually presumed to be among the principal subjects of the Apocalypse. The present interpretation excludes them all. It further differs from its predecessors in the whole explanation of the trumpets and vials; in the solution of the number 666; in that of the very remarkable chapter, the vision of the locusts; and, as may be supposed, in

the general conception of the prophecy."— (Introd. 41, 42.)

The trumpets and vials, Mr. Croly says, begin after the date of the Inquisition; and by the fifth trumpet, he says, is predicted the French Revolution. But a very curious part is, the famous number of the Beast, 666, which in fact has been made to signify any thing. Mr. Croly shows that the plain meaning of the original has been mistaken; that it does not mean the "number of a man," but "a number of man, a number, such as are in human use, or simply a number." (p. 226.) He says, therefore, that "the problem is to be solved by the discovery of that peculiar number, which is at once" the number of the name of the beast," and equivalent to 666.” (p. 227.) Mr. Croly then says,

"It is to be remarked that dates and num

bers

are the frequent instruments of the Apocalypse; obviously from their use in fixing facts. The 1260 years' is so habitually applied to the Papacy, that the number is almost a substitute for the title; the 666 similarly applies to the Inquisition. The 666 is not the name of a man, nor contained in a name of any kind: it is a date, and to a certain degree a description; its purpose is to mark the birth of the Inquisition, and to connect that birth with the Papacy.

The natural paraphrase of the verse (18) is thus. The Inquisition has been in the preceding verses described and denounced by the Spirit of God; but to remove whatever doubt might arise from mere description, and to prove to posterity that it is the Inquisition which is here denounced and held up to the abhorrence of Christians by the Divine Spirit; the exact date of its origin shall be given. That origin shall be when the title of HEAD OF ALL THE

CHURCHES, the impious name of the Beast, number 666.' That name was given in 533; shall have reached its 666th year, shall the Inquisition shall be born in 1198.

"The prediction was exactly fulfilled. first year of the complete supremacy, when In the first year of Pope Innocent III. the the Papacy was enthroned spiritual and temporal lord of the civilized world-in the year 1198 was the portentous offspring of its nature and its crimes, THE INQUISITION, issued to mankind!" pp. 227, 228.

Mr. Croly finds, in p. 450, that the three temptations of Christ also denote

"THE THREE GREAT ERAS of CRIME in the Church of Rome."

is

Our readers will plainly see that this a very curious and ingenious book,