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in what christian land has not the harvest of those plots, and treasons, and incendiary prine ciples they had sown, been reaped in blood and tears?

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"And the third angel poured out his vial upon the rivers, and fountains of waters, and they became blood." These plagues seem liké those of Egypt, to rise gradually in terror and greatness, and to be preparatory and introductory of each other, doubtless with the view of exciting proper reflection upon the cause, and leading the sufferers to repentance. There is a great analogy between this vial and the first plague of Egypt, when " he turned their rivers into blood, and their floods that they could not drink." (Psalm lxxviii. 44.) And the effect is the same, the hardness of the tyrant's heart is only augmented by it, for his own magicians had done the same thing.*.

* As the advocates of the catholic cause have been able to push away from his holiness the vast accumulation of propheeies with which the protestants have saddled him; so, to make it appear that antichrist is not yet come, they will have no difficulty at all in accounting for this antichristian persecution of

• Rivers and fountains are the known emblems of religious doctrine. Thus in Isaiah xxx. 25, God promises that he will cause "on every high hill rivers and streams of waters, or, that he will convey abundant

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light and knowledge of God into those countries which at that time were the most inaccessible to truth and salvation, being filled by "the god of this world" with superstition and idolatry. And our Saviour often uses the same metaphor, in the same sense.† Indeed the rivers of this mystical Egypt were not waters of life before this change happened; they were no "wells of salvation," but fountains of bitter water; yet such as answered the purposes of such a church: but now they can do even that no longer. They are now literally turned into the waters of death, which spiritually they had long time been. From that fountain of corruption of the heart, and hardening of the conscience, and blinding of

their holy church. The turning of the scriptures or water of life into blood, is nothing new to them-they have done this miracle themselves, and think nothing strange of it.

* Isai. xli. 18.

+ John vii. 38.

the reason of man, those revolutionary streams issued forth, and soon became mingled wit blood. The curse of the first Judas.

upon this second, or MAN OF S, hud "that which should have been for bittagii health, becomes unto him an occasion of fis ing."

The rules of the notorious INQUISITION, like the cruel laws of DRACO, have been written in blood. "The dead bodies of thy servants have they given to be meat unto the fowls of the air, and the flesh of thy saints unto the beasts of the land. Their blood have they shed like water, on every side of Jerusalem, and there was no man to bury them."* -The woman, the emblem of the apostate church,† is represented as being "drunk with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus." But now, by a wonderful retribution of almighty wisdom and justice, in which her own crimes appear written

*Psalm lxxix. 2, 3, alluding to their denial of christian burial to heretics. + Rev. xvii. 6.

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in the particulars of her judgment, that corrupt and persecuting religion becomes a cause of martyrdom to themselves. It is the devoted object at which the thunderbolts of the divine indignation are launched, and the putrid car cass which the eagles are in search of, as the prey allotted to them by the decree of heaven. "The sword of God is unsheathed" against the kingdoms of the BEAST, and it "will no more depart from his house," in one part of the world or another, until all these things be fulfilled. For "GREAT BABYLON is come in remembrance before God, to give unto her

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cup of the wine of the fierceness of his wrath. And in her was found the blood of prophets, and of saints, and of all that were slain upon the earth.”* For this cause. "behold a whirlwind of the Lord is gone forth in fury, even a grievous whirlwind; it shall fall grievously upon the head of the WICKED. The of the Lord shall not return, until

anger he have executed, and until he have perform

Rev. xvi. 19.

ed the thoughts of his heart. In the latter days ye shall consider it.Ӡ

+ Jer. xxiii. 19, 20: Isai, xxxiv. 5, 6. The WICKED, as here (and in many other prophecies) connected with the judgments upon idolatry and apostacy from God, and with the emancipation of Israel, seems to allude to St Paul's MAN OF SIN,-the WICKED, or lawless one, the ANTICHRIST.Psalm 1.

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