times. No sooner did Antichrist lift up his unblest head, but these two holy prophets raised their voice against him, and began to prophesy, (in sackcloth, more or less,) and to inflict their plagues upon the great enemy of truth and righteousness. But as the beast was not only to wage war against the saints, but to wear them out with persecutions, and prevail against them, and kill them;* so in fact, the scriptures were treated as seducers of the people, and enemies to the peace and uniformity of the church: and that they might do no more mischief, they were shut up in the pit of profound ignorance, and loaded with the fetters of an unknown tongue, or a mutilated and falsified translation. Thus they not only imitated, but far exceeded the lawyers and the scribes, who took away the key of knowledge, and shut the gate of heaven against them that were entering; for they withdrew the scriptures altogether from the use of the people, and burnt them by the hands of the common hangman, together

* Dan. vii 21-25,- Rev. xi. 7 :-xiii. 7.

with their heretical partisans and abettors, The prayers and ministrations of the church of Rome were altogether in latin, after it had become a dead language, and was no longer understood by the clergy themselves, except in a few rare instances.

The sufferings that both the jews and the protestants were exposed to, on account of religion, from the ignorant and intolerant zeal of the popish clergy, gives them a pre-eminent title, as martyrs and confessors of God, to be called in prophecy his two witnesses, the two olive trees, and the two candlesticks standing before the God of the earth. * The reason why so monstrous a wickedness and cruelty, (as the prophecies ascribe to the spiritual tyrant of the church, and which history has brought home to his door,) was for so long a term winked att by a righteous Providence, must not be too narrowly enquired into, until the time that God shall "bring to light the hidden things of darkness," and expose to our view the whole of his plan in the moral government of the world, of which we now judge as of things "seen only in part, and through a glass darkly." It is sufficient for our present satisfaction, that, as it was all foreknown to the wisdom of God, so it will be all directed, by his over-ruling power, to a good end. "I will bring the third part of them" (says God, by Zechariah xiii. 9) “ through the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried." Thus it has in all ages pleased God, in his infinite wisdom, to suffer some to be exposed to more severe trial than the rest of mankind; but they will receive a higher reward of their fidelity, at the same time that by their examples of faith and patience,* and the useful discussions that religion thus received, its influence was more effectually spread abroad, and its

* Rev. xiii. 10. "Here is the patience and the faith of the

saints."

DD

truth and convincing power more firmly established." Many shall be purified, and made white and tried; but the wicked shall do wickedly: and none of the wicked shall understand, but the wise shall understand." (Dan. xii. 10.) " For by fire, and by his sword, will the Lord plead with all flesh, and the slain of the Lord shall be many." (Isa. lxvi. 16.) Fire and the sword were the chief instruments of martyrdom, and the martyrs may be called the slain of the Lord, as being slain for his sake, and by his determinate counsel and foreknowledge.

The death of these two apocalyptic witnesses manifestly appears to be only a figurative death; because, in the short space of three prophetic days and a half, that is, three years and a half, we find them restored to life again, and raised to an elevation where the power of their persecutors "cannot come." But the death of the martyrs was real, and thereby incapable of corresponding with this essential part of the prophecy, that the same two prophets which were figuratively killed by the

tyrant, should, by a figurative resurrection, triumph over his power. The figurative death of political or religious societies, must be the extinction of their religious and civil liberties and establishments; their faith and religious worship put under so severe an interdict, as amounts to a total abolition. The synagogue of the jews, and the church of reformed christians, notwithstanding the apparently low and still declining state of popery at this time, may yet be one day subjected to such a coercion, and consigned to a political death, for their alledged impiety and contumacy against the revived power, and infallible oracle of holy roman church; and converts to popery may yet again be made at the point of the sword, and by the fires of persecution, rekindled in one vast and dreadful but final blaze.* In the present circumstances of the