generality of interpreters: or, if understood, that it should always receive an undisguised explication. Dr. Goodwin is not, however, the only writer, who has commented on this particular clause with some degree of freedom. This prediction is perhaps directed, says Mr. Kershaw, against men of rank as well civil as ecclesiastical. And seems

to imply the utter ruin of these ORDERS OF MEN, in the place where the earthquake happens". Mr. Pyle, speaking of this text and of the tyrannic power of Antichrist, says, it will lose a tenth part of the dominions it was possessed of; and a vast number of the dignities, honors, and preferments its votaries had enjoyed, will die and be lost.' Mr. Whiston, after applying this verse to France, says (though it must be acknowleged with a darkness of diction), ' in that earthquake 7000 names of men are to be slain"." St. John's expression signifies,' says Mr. Lauchlan Taylor, that, upon this event, no less than 7000 men of rank and eminence shall be deprived of their dignities. That the word name doth signify dignity, appears clearly from the 2d chapter to the Philippians, verse 9'.' Even Dr. H. More, though speculatively a most zealous advocate for civil and ecclesiastical titles, has been led, from the clearness of the original Greek, unguardedly to make the following observations on the text. They are called names of men,' says he,' denoting that they are Titles, Dignities, Offices, or orders of men.-Nothing can be more natural than the expounding the seven thousand names slain of extinguishing those several Orders and Offices of men"." To the same purpose he elsewhere says: 'in that this number of seven is multiplied into a thousand, it fignifies, perhaps a perfect and durable nulling all such offices and orders of men'.'

13 Ess. on the Rev. by Jam. Kershaw, Stockton, 1780, vol. II, p. 124.

14 P. 271.

15 An Ess. on Some Important Parts of the Rev. 1770, p. 15. 16 On the Apoc. p. 108; and Paralipomena Proph. p. 342.

17 Myst. of Iniq. p. 408.

Of Dr. Goodwin's ideas some found admission into the mind of bishop Newton, though, on the abolition of Titles, he is completely silent. From princes and from courts his expectations of reformation were indeed principally derived. Speaking of the papacy, the bishop of Bristol says, some of the kings who formerly loved her, grown sensible of her exorbitant exactions and oppressions, shall hate her, shall strip, and expose, and plunder her, and utterly consume her with fire. Rome therefore will finally be destroyed by some of the princes, who are reformed, or shall be reformed from popery: and as the kings of FRANCE have contributed greatly to her advancement, it is not impossible, that some time or other they may also be the principal authors of her destruction 18."

On St. John's prediction of the symbolic earthquake, DR. PETER JURIEU, or, as he is more frequently called, M. Jurieu, has very largely insisted, in his work entitled The Accomplishment of the Scripture-Prophecies. Whilst the university of Sedan continued in the hands of the Protestants, Jurieu maintained there a very high degree of reputation from the lectures which he delivered as the Hebrew and Divinity professor; and such was the celebrity of his Accomplishment of the Prophecies in his own time, that it excited Bossuet, the eloquent bishop of Meaux, to enter with him into the lists of controversy. Many, says Jurieu

18 Vol. III. p. 292. The same opinion may be seen in Christopher Ness on Antichrist, 1679, p. 89.

19 To overturn its credit by the petty artillery of a pamphlet, the prelate knew to be a vain attempt, though no man could have conducted the attack with superior skill. He therefore published, in answer to Jurieu, a labored explication of the Apocalypse. By this artful polemic our author's Pastoral Letters to the Protestants were also combated. What degree of impression these publications produced, I have not been informed; but of this we are assured, that a performance of our protestant divine, entitled A Preservative against Persons changing their Religion, arrested the successful career of the Exposition of the Catholic Faith, a work of the bishop of Meaux, which had not only been approved by the clergy and prelates of France, by the pope and cardinals of Rome, but had been written with such consummate art, as to have induced almost all persons of rank among

in the second edition20 of this work, have remarked, that I have spoken over-positively and with too much confidence. Perhaps some time or other, men shall know the principal reason, which made me speak in so confident a manner and with such tokens of assurance".' That he has spoken of future events in general, in a manner thus positive and peremptory, he does, however, deny; though he hesitates not to avow, that his conclusions respecting the Reformation of France, and its forsaking of the papal religion, are regarded by him as founded on somewhat more than mere conjectural criticism. We shall see,' says he, such an admirable agreement, between the events and the prophecies explained, that shall abundantly convince, that what I am about to say, is not simple conjęcture 22." But so numerous are his reasons for applying this prophecy to France, that I can yield admission only to a comparatively few passages.

Having observed, that several events, related in the xith ch. of the Apocalypse, and there represented as preceding the Revolution in the Tenth Part of the City, are predictions of the tyranny exercised over the witnesses in FRANCE; Jurieu of course ascribes to the same nation the remainder of the prophecy. Certain it is, that the number of faithful witnesses to the rights of conscience has been greater in

the French protestants to renounce their religion. But our author's litcrary glory was purchased at no small expense. Apprehensive of violence, he was obliged, in 1681, to abandon his native land, and to retire into Holland for shelter, where he immediately received the offer of a professor's chair in the university of Groningen. Declining however this invitation, he became minister of the protestant church at Rotterdam, and professor of divinity at the Schola Illustris, which was then erected there in favor of him and of the celebrated M. Bayle.

20 This French edition, which is in my possession, was published at Rotterdam in 1686. But, that there might be no suspicion of the ideas of Jurieu having been accommodated to the actual state of recent affairs in France, all the extracts, which are given me, have been copied, without any variation, from an English translation of the work, which, in the year 1687, was published in London, in two vols. 8vo.

21 Vol. II. p. 277.

22 Vol. II. p. 62.

France than in any other country; and of this every reader of history must be apprised, who has a tolerable accurate view of the long and unrelenting persecutions which have heretofore raged with so much violence in that kingdom against the Waldenses and the Protestants. Surely,' says, Dr. Goodwin, the Place of killing the witnesses must be where most witnesses are23.' If this proposition be admited, it evidently follows, that FRANCE must be the country pointed out in ch, xi. of the Apocalipse.

Mede" and bp. Newton's decide, that the prediction of the Second Angel, occurring in the xivth ch. of that sacred book, refers to those inhabitants of France, who under the name of Waldenses and Albigenses, roused a spirit of inquiry, and first shook the power of the papacy by boldly pronouncing it to be antichristian and idolatrous. By Dr. Goodwin this interpretation of the passage is deemed indubitable; and he declares it to be certain, that the foundation of the ruin of Antichrist was then laid in France. That

23 P. 165. Dr. Goodman himself observes (p. 176), that the witnesses of the truth in France did not only sustain the great heat in the 'Morning of Persecution,' but that ever since they have shared in it more largely than those of any other nation.

24 P. 644.

25 Vol. III. p. 244r

26 P. 84. Constans. upon the Apocalypse shews, that the reformation of the Western church began in France by the means of Waldo, and that from this source it spread itself through the rest of Europe.' Perrin's Hist. of the Waldenses, p. 13. From Perrin also the passages that follow are taken. 'Thomas Walden, who wrote against Wickliffe, saith, that the doctrine of Waldo was conveyed from France into England. To which agrees le Sieur de la Popeliniere, in his Hist. of France, who adds, that the doctrine of the modern protestants is but little different from that of the Waldenses, which having, saith he, been received in the quarters of Alby, and communicated by the Albigenses to the English their neighbors, when the English held Guienne in their possession, was infused into the understandings of some persons, who brought it into England, and was as it were handed down to Wickliffe,-who, by his eloquence and extraordinary doctrine, so won upon the hearts and understandings of several Englishmen, even of the greatest quality, that a scholar brought to Prague a book of Wickliffe, intitled the Universals, which being diligently read by John Huss, increased and explained the doctrine, sowed a

other, and greater, transactions in the same country may elsewhere be noticed in the Apocalypse, he accordingly very naturally concludes.

To the Waldenses and Albigenses More", Fleming-28, and Vitringa", think the representation of the witnesses in ch. xi. particularly suitable; and Mr. Whiston, in stating that it ought to be referred to them, says, their churches were never wholly enslaved to the idolatry and tyranny of the church of Rome: as the most learned Dr. Allix has proved at large in two distinct treatises30.' Mr. Whiston also and bp. Loyd were of opinion, that St. John's account of the witnesses had a particular reference to the Protestants of Savoy; and it is remarkable, that the effects of the French revolution have extended to that country, and that, in consequence, religious toleration has been there established. That the prophetic narrative of the witnesses has long been deemed applicable to the Waldenses and the Protestants of France, appears from the mention of this opinion in the Synopsis of Poole, a work printed in 1676. The learned Daubuz, when speaking of those who have borne testimony to the truth in France, not only directs the reader on this point to ch. xi. of St. John, but refers him for the fuller satisfaction to the work of M. Jurieu3. "It is remarkable,' says a late anonymous writer, that

long time before in Bohemia by the Waldenses.-Cardinal Hosius saith, that the leprosy of the Waldenses did spread its infection throughout all Bohemia, when, following the doctrine of Waldo, the greatest part of the kingdom of Bohemia separated from the church of Rome.' Perrin's Hist. of the Waldenses, p. 18. The monk Rainerius was a cruel persecutor of the Waldenses In his treatise respecting them is the following passage. Of all those that have risen up against the church of Rome, the Waldenses have been the most prejudicial and pernicious, forasmuch as they have opposed it for a long time. Secondly, because that sect is universal; for there is scarce any country where it hath not taken footing. Thirdly, because all others beget in people a dread and horror of them by their blasphemies against God: but this on the contrary hath a great appearance of godliness, because they live righteously before men.' See Perrin, p. 11, 27.

27 Myst. of Iniq. p. 406.

30 Whiston, p. 204.

29 P. 277, 458.

28 P. 51.

31 P. 658.