appears, indeed, that the pope ostensibly supplies the vacancies in episcopal preferments; but the rule is, that the names and pretensions of four candidates are communicated to him by the Tuscan minister at Rome, who points out the one more particularly favored by the grand duke; and with this recommendation his holiness feels himself obliged to comply. The ordinary benefices are conferred on such persons as are deemed by the king or the bishops the most deserving; and the pope's confirmation of any appointment of this kind is considered as absolutely unnecessary. The injunctions of the pontiff are allowed to have some influence in cases of conscience or of private penance; but, if the answers to these cases should affect in any way the civil state of the persons who have solicited the illuminations of his wisdom, the acceptance is noticed and sometimes punished as a misdemeanor."

"Even the hereditary bigotry of the king of Sardinia does not render him a slave to the pope. He bestows the highest ecclesiastical preferments at his own discretion, and rejects such orders from Rome as relate to the external polity of the church. He, indeed, suffers appeals to be made from bishops or their judicial deputies to the pontiff, in those few causes which are still subject to the jurisdiction of an ecclesiastical tribunal; but these appeals are not actually transferred to Rome, unless each subject should have been thrice investigated, without an uniformity of decision, by pontifical delegates, chosen from the whole number of churchmen resident within the kingdom."

6. The two thousand five hundred and twenty days, or seven times. The two thousand five hundred and twenty years from the rise of the Babylonic-Assyrian Empire, B. C. 680, by the Assyrian king Esarhaddon's

uniting the kingdom of Babylon to his own, till the way to the Eastern kingdoms, of which that empire was composed, is prepared by the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, and they are converted to Christianity. See KING. 5. Dan. iv. 16. Let his heart be changed from man's, and let a beast's heart be given unto him ; and let seven times pass over him. vii. 3, 4. And four great beasts came up from the sea, diverse one from another. The first was like a lion and had eagles' wings: I beheld till the wings thereof were plucked, and it was lifted up from the earth, and made stand upon the feet as a man, and a man's heart was given to it. Dan. iv. 16, had a literal accomplishment in the person of Nebuchadnezzar; but the prophetic law of interpreting days by years and the passage, vii. 3, 4. teach us, that the prophecy has an accomplishment not only with regard to Nebuchadnezzar's person, but with respect to the Empire over which he ruled. For the beast acquires the posture and heart of a man after his wings are plucked, which were not plucked when Nebuchadnezzar existed, for it was then in full power: and consequently this new transformation must take place after the dominion of the beast is taken away and at the termination of the season and time of the prolonging of its life in the state of a beast. vii. 12. The beast can represent no other than that empire over which Nebuchadnezzar ruled; and the symbol of the wings must determine the time, when that empire arose from the sea, that is, started into existence. Now we shall know what these wings represented by knowing what, that could be symbolized by wings, was plucked : and when we learn that the two kingdoms, in which the strength of Nebuchadnezzar's united empire consisted, Nineveh and Babylon were taken, one by Cyaxares, the Mede, B. C. 606, and the other by Darius, the Mede,

B. C. 536, we shall not hesitate to conclude, that these were the wings by which the lion kept his head above the waters of the world. The time then that the lion emerged with these two wings, the component parts of his empire, will be the date of the commencement of his existence; and, since there is no other period in history which can answer to the rise of Nebuchadnezzar's empire thus two-winged, than the time when Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, united the kingdoms of Babylon and Assyrian under one dynasty, B. C. 680, then that period must be the commencement of that Emperor's dominion, and of its life for seven times or 2520 years. For, before the united empire of Esarhaddon, Nineveh and Babylon never existed together as the union of two kingdoms which had before been separate; but Nineveh and Babylon, and a third Media besides, when the former were before united, had ever been the three necessarily component parts of one vast empire, called the first Assyrian; and it was only the dissolution of that Empire by the death of Sardanapalus about B. C. 747, into the three separate kingdoms, that gave rise to those distinctions, which required two wings to symbolize the re-union of two of the fragments of it, when that took place in the reign of Esarhaddon, king of Nineveh, or king of what is called, the second Assyrian Empire, B. C. 680.

7. The thirteen hundred and thirty-five days.-Possibly the thousand years or Millennium with the excess of three hundred and thirty-five years for the duration of the unjust, Gog and Magog, on the earth, revived at the end of the 1000 years, till they are devoured by fire from heaven. Dan. xii. 12. Blessed is he that waiteth, and cometh to the thousand three hundred and five and thirty days: which seems to be the same as, Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection. Rev. xx. 6.

That to the beginning of those years is intended, is implied not only by the usual signification of language, but from the circumstance, that what is called the End, happening at the expiration of the 1290 years, it does not seem likely, (though of that day and hour no man knoweth,) that a further period will elapse before the first resurrection takes place. For as the abomination was to be set up a thousand two hundred and ninety days, and the sanctuary was to be cleansed at the end of the 2300 days, i. e. at the end of the 1290, which both terminate A. D. 1843, and the judgment was to sit on the papacy to consume and destroy it till the End, i. e. of course, till the sanctuary be cleansed, the end of the 1290 or 2300 days, and what is emphatically termed the End are one and the same thing; and consequently when it is said, that Daniel should stand in his lot at the end of the days, it means at the end of the 1290, and beginning of the 1335. Again, as at the accomplishment of the scattering of the power of the holy people, it is declared, that all those things would be finished of which the question had been asked " How long shall it be to the end" of them, and as the scattering of the power of the holy people must be accomplished when the abomination of desolation has ceased, or the sanctuary is cleansed, it follows, that the end of these things, and the cleansing of the sanctuary, must happen at the same time; but the cleansing of the sanctuary happens at the end of the 1290 days, therefore the End happens also at the end of the 1290 days: and consequently the standing of Daniel in his lot at the end of the days, cannot be at the end of the 1335 days, (whether you take them to commence with the 1290, or with the Millennium), but at the end of the 1290.

8. The hundred and fifty days, or five months.-The

hundred and fifty years during which the Saracens perpetually ravaged Italy and Greece, from the accession of Harun al-Raschid to the Khalifate of Bagdad, A. D. 786, to the fall of the Khalifate under Rahdi, A. D.936, when the revolt of the provinces circumscribed his dominion within the walls of Bagdad, the same year in which Otho the Great was made Emperor of Germany, and the last of the ravages of the Saracens in Italy is heard of, who, in that year, coming from Africa, surprised the city of Genoa, and carried thence its treasures and riches, after having killed all the inhabitants, save women and children. Gibbon, x. lii. n. n. 108. Les Fastes Universels. p. 118. After the Sun, or dominion of the Emperor, was darkened by the conquests of the Saracens who tore away from the Romans, Syria, Egypt, Africa, and Spain, and after the air, or all the rest of the inhabited globe, was overspread by these furious fanatics, (for Persia, India, Tartary, and even China without the confines of the Roman Empire, felt the smoke of the Arabian furnace,) the conquerors of half the world degenerated into the mere tormentors of Italy and Greece, descending upon those countries under their king-like emirs without attempting to deprive them of their political existence, and retreating, leaving the sting of desolation behind them-like land-scorpions, which, according to Bochart, have their weapons in their tails, and not like the marine scorpions in their heads, their object not being to face the enemy, but to accumulate booty and avoid an encounter by the rapidity of their flight. "Almost a moiety of the Eastern Empire was torn away by the arms of the Saracens. Syria and Egypt were oppressed by the Arabian caliphs; and after the reduction of Africa, their lieutenants invaded and subdued the Roman province which had been changed into the Gothic