first describes the rise of the two-fold Apostasy; the second represents it in the zenith of its power, till the primary and only partial manifestation of Antichrist; and the third exhibits its downfall, displaying at the same time the multiplied horrors of the harvest and vintage of the Lord, or the uncontrouled reign of the atheistical king and his subsequent destruction along with all the other enemies of God.

* The French revolution in the year 1789. It professed to establish a limited monarchy, respecting at once the prerogatives of a lawful prince, and the liberties of the people. This only partial revelation of Antichrist deceived numbers, and led them to form the romantic idea, that France was become (to use the detestable cant of the day) a regenerated kingdom. Four years however were not suffered to elapse from the commencement of the revolution, ere the streets of Paris and the provincial towns streamed with the blood of innumerable victims, ere the sovereign himself was brought to the scaffold, ere religion was abolished and a sort of jumble of atheism and idolatry was established in its stead. In the first year of Gallic liberty, Antichrist was partially revealed: in the fourth year of liberty, and the first year of equality (Aug. 12, 1792), he threw off his mask of toleration, candour, and universal philanthropy; and stood openly revealed in all his native deformity. His lamb-like pretensions to reason, moderation, and humanity, vanished as the fleeting clouds of the morning: and the astonished world sud-` denly beheld the existence of an "execrable power, which "alone has steeled the hearts of its votaries against every feel"ing of nature; has dared to sanction treason, parricide, lust, " and massacre; and to infuse into the breasts of its subject "multitudes a new passion, which has sunk them beneath the "level of the brute creation; a passion for the sight of their "fellow-creatures in the agonies of death, and a literal thirst "for human blood." Hist. the Inter. Vol. 11. P. 215, 216.

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CHAPTER IX.

Concerning the effects of the two first woe-trumpets in the east.

THE effects of the two first woe-trumpets in the East have been so fully and satisfactorily discussed by the excellent Bp. Newton, that I shall do nothing more than abridge his remarks, with the exception of noticing a single error into which I conceive his Lordship to have fallen.

At the sounding of the fifth trumpet, (the first of the three woe-trumpets) a star which had fallen * from heaven to earth, opened the bottomless pit and let out a vast swarm of locusts with their leader Apollyon at their head. The commission of these locusts was, not to hurt the grass of the earth, nor any green thing, nor any tree: but only those men, who had not the seal of God in their foreheads and, in point of time it was limited to five prophetic months, or 150 natural years. As for the locusts themselves, they were like horses prepared unto battle: their crowns were of gold: their faces were as the faces of men; they had hair

* Such is the proper translation of Teπlanda, as Mr. Whitaker rightly observes. Comment. P. 116.

as

as the hair of women; their teeth were as the teeth of lions; their breastplates were like breastplates of iron; they had the tails of scorpions, armed with deadly stings; and the sound of their wings was as the sound of chariots of many horses running to battle *.

Bp. Newton supposes the fallen star to be the impostor Mohammed; and yet afterwards represents the locust sovereign Apollyon as being Mohammed likewise. To say nothing of so plain. a repetition, the prophet evidently describes the star and the king as being two entirely different persons. The fallen star opens the door of the bottomless pit, and lets out Apollyon with his locusts : consequently Apollyon was confined in the pit, till he was let out by the star: therefore Apollyon and the star cannot both be Mohammed. Moreover, independent of this circumstance, the Arabian impostor can with no more propriety be symbolized by a fallen star, than the Vandalic monarch Genseric. Mohammed never was a star in the sense of a Christian pastor; and, when he afterwards became a sovereign, so far from falling from his high estate, he was uniformly successful in all his enterprises. We must look out therefore for some other character, to whom the hieroglyphic of a fallen star is more applicable.

I conceive then, that the fallen star of the first woe-trumpet is no other than the apostate Nestorian

*Rev. ix. 1-11.

monk

monk Sergius or Baheira; who assisted Moham med in the forging of his imposture, and who infused into it all the antitrinitarian venom of his own sect. The Mussulmans assert, that he first noticed their prophet while yet a boy: when he observed a luminous cloud around his head, which preserved him from the too intense rays of the sun; perceived the dry trees, upon which he sat, instantly to put forth branches clothed with ver→ dant foliage, to serve him for a shade; and dis covered the seal of prophecy, impressed between his shoulders*. But, according to Dr. Prideaux, "the truth of the matter is, Mohammed did not “fall acquainted with him till a long while after, "when he was projecting his wicked design in his “head; in order to the better forming of which, "being very desirous to acquaint himself with "the Jewish and Christian religions, he was very 'inquisitive in examining into them, as he met "with those who could inform him. And in one "of his journeys into Syria, either at Bostra as

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some say, or at Jerusalem as others, lighting on "this Babeira, and receiving great satisfaction "from him in many of those points which he de& sired to be informed in, he did thereon contract a particular friendship with him. And therefore, not long after, the monk, for some great crime. "being excommunicated and expelled his mo669 nastery, fled to Mecca to him; and, being there

Modern Univ. Hist. Vol. 1. P. 26,

enter

"entertained in his house, became his assistant "in the framing of that imposture which he after"wards vented, and continued with him ever "after till at length the impostor, having not "further occasion for him, to secure the secret, put him to death *."

In the year 606, Mohammed committed the first overt act of his imposture by retiring to the cave of Hera: consequently then it was, that the fallen star Sergius opened the door of the bottomless pit. The locusts however and their leader did not immediately issue forth, or publicly disclose themselves their open manifestation was to be preceded by the smoke and fumes of the false religion which they were about to propagate. Accordingly Mohammed emerged from his solitary retreat † about the year 609; and began to excite that

* See Prideaux's Life of Mohammed P. 47.

66

+ Mr. Whitaker's conjecture, that the bottomless pit, or the cave of the abyss, (which no doubt is the literal translation of the original expression) alludes to the cave of Hera, (caves being often considered by pagan superstition as the seats of "oracles and sources of inspiration,") has the merit of pos sessing much ingenuity; but I am not perfectly satisfied how far it may be deemed solid. In the first place, it does not appear that we are warranted in taking symbolical language in a literal sense, unless it bé avowedly descriptive; as, for instance, when the Euphratèan army is said to consist of horsemen, and to seem as if vomiting fire, and brimstone, and smoke: and, in the second place, Mohammed literally issued from the cave of Hera about the year 609, which will not agree with that part of the prophecy, which speaks of the locusts tormenting men five months. Whitaker's Comment. P. 123.

smoke,