"it was dangerous to dispute-but a " peculiar quarter was reserved for the "Patriarch with his clergy and "people and the fepulchre of Chrift " with the church of the refurrection, " was still left in the hands of his vota"ries. A crowd of pilgrims from the

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East and West continued to visit the holy fepulchre, and the adjacent "fanctuaries-Harun Alrashid, the greatest of the Abaffides, without re

signing the substantial dominion, pre" fented the Emperor (Charlamagne) " with the keys of the holy sepulchre, and perhaps of the city of Jerufalem."" From this time, as the historian continues to relate in his fifty seventh chapter the Chriftians continued with little interval to be permitted to visit Jerufalem in pilgrimage till the commencement of the Crusades; and even when these expeditions had ceased, and the victori. ous Turks had demolished the churches and

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and fortifications of the Latin cities: "a "motive of fear or avarice, says our "authour, still opened the holy sepul"chre to fome devout and defenceless "pilgrims." And that this has been continued to the present age, sufficiently appears from the testimony of our more modern travellers. While therefore we justly reprobate the superstition that ascribes to pilgrimages the merit of good works, fince we must still suppose, that many who have undertaken this burdensome iask, have however mistaken, acted from fincere truth and unfeigned piety; does not the recorded fact, that there has been, and is still left a place in the holy city, where those who wish so to do, may render this homage to Christ, though the rest be in possession of his adversaries, evidently correfpond with the emblem of the holy city, and outward court being giving to the Gentiles, while fome worshippers remain in the Temple, and

and about the altar? Nor can I leave it unobserved, that they are about the very altar on which the great sacrifice for the fins of the whole world was offered, even Mount Calvary.

But it was farther said to the Evangelift in the name of the Lord, and I will

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give power unto my two witnesses " and they shall prophecy a thousand two hundred and three-fcore days clothed in sackcloth." In the forty third chapter of Ifaiah, that prophet who was a type of Christ, and the Jewish people are denominated the witnesses of God; ye are my witnesses faith the Lord, and my fervant whom I have "chosen." When our Lord before his afcenfion told the apostles, that they should receive power, after that the Holy Ghost was come upon them, he added, and ye shall be witnesses unto

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Judora and in Samaria, and to the uttermost part of the earth." These passages are sufficient to prove that the true worshippers of God, and especially the preachers of his pure word, are his witnesses; and not only the fact of these laft having been repeatedly fent by two and two, but the ministry of the Gospel being on its first preaching divided, as it was, into two parts the one of the circumcifion and the other of the Gentiles, will account for two being here named, and point out, as the two bodies of men intended, (for that they are metaphorically only individuals, their prophefying during the space of twelve hundred and fixty years manifests) the Jewish and Gentile Chriftians. While their being termed in the subsequent verse, the

6.

two olive trees and the two candle

"sticks standing before the God of the "earth," needs no other elucidation, than what is afforded by St. Paul's application

plication of the emblem of an olive-tree both to Jews and Gentiles in his epistle to the Romans, and by our bleffed Lord's words to his disciples, " ye are the light " of the world." For the sufferings of these witnesses in the Western world, as well as for the accomplishment of the several figurative allufions to their influence and their acts, I must, as before, refer the reader to the former commentators; it coming within my design only to give the following historical proof of their prophesying in fack cloth in the East. The captive churches of

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the East have been afflicted in every age by the avarice or bigotry of their rulers; and the ordinary and legal "reftraints must be offensive to the " pride or the zeal of the Christians. "About two hundred years after Ma"homet they were separated from their fellow fubjects by a turban or girdle

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" of a less honourable colour; inftead