out, that it is equally erroneous in the case of the present prophecy.

Mr. Galloway supposes, that the two witnesses are the two Testaments. We have seen, on the contrary, that they are not the two Testaments, but the protestant confessors, the spiritual children of the twofold church of Christ. Now the revolutionary fanaticism of France was not directed against the protestants exclusively, but against all who professed the Christian religion: the supposed completion therefore does not accord with the prophecy in this particular.

Mr. Galloway further supposes, that the beast of the bottomless pit, who slew the witnesses, is the same as the second apocalyptic beast, or the twohorned beast of the earth; and that this two-horned beast of the earth is revolutionary France. Waving at present the discussion of the last of these points, I shall only now observe, that the beast of the bottomless pit, who slew the witnesses, is certainly not the two-horned beast of the earth, but the tenhorned beast of the sea*: consequently Mr. Gal

loway's

* Let the reader only compare together the following texts, and he will be sufficiently convinced of the truth of my assertion.

"The beast, that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit, shall "make war against them." Rev. xi. 7.

"And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast "rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns.” Rev. xiii. 1.

loway's interpretation will not hold good even upon his own hypothesis. He has largely endeavoured to prove, that the ten-horned beast is the Papacy*, and that the two-horned beast is revolutionary France: but, whatever power the tenhorned beast may be, he is evidently the same as the beast of the bottomless pit: whence it would follow, even according to Mr. Galloway's own plan, that the two witnesses were slain by the papal beast, not by the atheistical one: therefore his exposition of the whole prophecy must be radically faulty. This will yet further appear, when I have proved, as I trust I shall be able to prove, that neither the one, nor the other, of the two apocalyptic beasts, is revolutionary France.

IV. "And in that hour there was a great earthquake, and a tenth part of the city fell, and in

"I will tell thee the mystery of the woman, and of the beast "that carrieth her, which hath the seven heads and ten horns. "The beast, that thou sawest, was, and is not, and shall ascend out of the bottomless pit." Rev. xvii. 7, 8. It appears then, that, in one text, the seven-headed and tenhorned beast is said to arise out of the sea; and, in another text, to ascend out of the bottomless pit: whence it is a palpable truth, that the beast of the sea, and the beast of the bottomless pit, are the self-same ten-horned and seven-headed beast. Not that I conceive the sea and the bottomless pit to mean precisely the same thing; the history of the rise of the Saracenic locusts sufficiently confutes such an opinion: but I apprehend, that the sea typifies the natural origin of the beast; and the bottomless pit, his spiritual origin.

* Comment. p. 159-Proph. History of the Church of Rome, passim.

"the

"the earthquake were slain seven thousand names "of men and the remnant were affrighted, and

gave glory to the God of heaven. The second "woe is past; and, behold, the third woe cometh "quickly."

1. Before any satisfactory interpretation can be given of this passage, it will be necessary to ascertain the meaning of the word hour which occurs in it; for, upon that, and upon the circumstance of the earthquake being the last event of note under the second woe-trumpet, the hinge of the whole exposition turns.

A year, a month, and a day, are all definite terms, conveying only one single idea: but an hour is not so; for it either signifies the twenty-fourth part of a day, or a season of indeterminate length*. It occurs in both these senses in the Apocalypse, as its several contexts abundantly shew. Thus, when we read of the Euphratèan horsemen being prepared to the hour, the day, the month, and the year, we cannot entertain any reasonable doubt of the word hour signifying in this instance the twentyfourth part of a day. But, when we read of there being silence in heaven about the space of half an hour, between the opening of the seventh seal and

* Thus 'Opn erapion, the vernal hour, means the whole season of spring; the length of the pm, or season, being in this particular instance determined by the annexed adjective apn. El po is a phrase of a similar dature, though not precisely of the same construction. The two expressions occur in Homer and Theocritus.

the

the sounding of the first trumpet, a mode of expression used to denote the state of mute expectation in which the Church anticipated, as it were, from various less important invasions, the grand irruption of the Goths under Alaric: it is evident, that what is there translated half an hour ought rather to be rendered half a season: both because the meaning of the word is not limited by being connected with the definite terms a day, a month, or a year; and because common sense itself shews, that that half hour of silent and anxious suspence must not be confined to merely seven natural days and a half, which would be the length of half an hour if it were computed as the forty-eighth part of a prophetic day or a natural year. In reality, this half hour, or rather half season, extends from about the year 321 or 323, when the happy tranquillity of the Constantinian age began to be disturbed by the incursions of those Goths who finally subverted the Western empire, to the year 395, when, the half season of restraint having elapsed, they burst with irresistible violence the barriers which the great Theodosius had opposed to them, and poured like an overwhelming torrent into the empire.

When the word hour then occurs in an insulated form, unconnected with the specific terms a day, a month, or a year, it certainly means, not the twenty-fourth part of a day, but a season of indeterminate length: and, when it is thus used in the Apocalypse, I know not what season it can reason

ably be supposed to mean, except it be some one of the great Apocalyptic periods; namely, one of the seven seals, one of the seven trumpets, or one of the seven vials *. Thus the hour or season of God's judgment upon Babylon † is manifestly the one particular period under which the papal Apostasy is to be abolished; a period, comprehended within the limits of the last rial: and thus the one hour or season, in which the ten horns were to receive power as kings along with the beast, means the period of the fourth trumpet'; in which the western Roman empire was finally overthrown and the predicted number of the ten kingdoms completed, and during which the ancient idolatrous Roman beast was reviving in his character of a beast by gradually relapsing into demonolatry. The revival of the beast was at length perfected by his setting up a catholic spiritual tyrant in the Church, and by his openly reestablishing idolatry. This happened at the point of time, when the fourth trumpet ceased, and when the fifth trumpet began, to sound. In other words, it happened in the years 606 and 607. Then the ten kings became specially horns of the beast; and are considered in prophecy, as beginning unanimously to

It is almost superfluous to observe, that I except such passages as Rev. iii. 3, and iii. 10, from relating to any of the apocalyptic periods; but I am not aware of a third exception in the whole book of the Revelation, unless the half hour of the seventh seal be a sort of one.

. Rev. xiv. 7, xviii. 10, 17, 19. :