heavenly testimony and life, than they see around them, provided always they do not pass over to the extreme of causing schism and division in the church, by excommunicating those who are not apostate, and therefore not rightly under the discipline of excommunication: and such I perceive to have been the practice both of the Jewish church, and of the Christian church in primitive times; yea, even until the Inquisition; and I may say of the Protestant church at the Reformation. And though it is not now the practice of any church, which have all, more or less, given way to the spirit of schism, yet is it the true idea of Christian communion, and that to which every member of Christ should seek to conform himself, and that to which I have sought to conform my thoughts in the composition of the whole, but especially the second part of this book: so that if I have offended against the particular and partial views of individuals, and sects, and even churches, I trust I have not offended in any thing, certainly I have not wittingly offended in any thing, against our common Head, and our common Spirit.

Now, for the third part of these discourses, which treat especially of the national and political relations of the Church, and of God's providence unto Christendom, 1 shall endeavour to embody in a few words the substance of what I have set forth in these seven Occasional Discourses.-Infidelity and superstition are the two generative and assimilating principles around which the materials of evil are gathering themselves. Long did superstition ride paramount over Christendom; but since the Reformation, and chiefly by means of the Reformation, infidelity

hath grown in the church, until it is now in a state to try its strength against the ancient fortresses of superstition. The conflict between these two principles wrought all the havoc of the late revolutionary wars; and there is a pause which for twelve years hath permitted the wasted competitors for Christendom to renew their strength. This pause hath not been without restless commotions, of which the speedy suppression sheweth that the time is not yet but far distant it cannot be; and when it comes, we know that infidelity, under a great and mighty ruler, shall prevail over the papal kingdoms of Europe; and the pope, with all his clergy, shall bend unto the stream, and suffer themselves to be carried along with it. How it is to stand with Britain in this crisis, I confess I see not clearly. She is full of the elements of strife; she is marked with the signs of change; but still she hath an orthodox church, which, if preserved from the Pharisaical spirit, may be for a salt to preserve her.-In the first, third, fifth, and seventh discourses I have endeavoured to represent the condition of our land; but still, I confess, I see not whether we shall come for a season under the power of infidelity or not. While things have been ripening, and are ripening for this great and fearful change of Christendom, from superstition to infidelity, over the fair region of the western Roman empire, the Lord hath been busy setting in array against each other the two great powers of the Greek and the Mohammedan superstition. To this act of the great drama, which for many years hath been proceeding, and is now hasting to consummation, I have directed the attention of the church in the fourth dis

course. My judgment is, at this time when I write, that the great northern power will only be permitted to prevail so far as to bring most righteous and most heavy chastisement upon the Turkish power for its blasphemies against Christ, its cruelties of old inflicted upon Christendom, and its present most licentious, avaricious, cruel oppression of its subjects. How far this chastise ment will extend I take not upon me to say, fürther than that the Greek empire or kingdom will arise again into distinctness, and the Turkish kingdom come under such a subjection, or vassalage, or influence unto the power of the north, as Persia is at present: so that the Euphrates kingdom of the Turk, which, for its territory and its symbols, is, I think, the representative of the old Assyrian, or Babylonian,-and the Persian kingdom, and the Grecian kingdom, shall continue to be together in existence; and yet to exist under the awe, influence, and authority of the great northern kingdom. And so soon as this condition of things shall have been brought to pass in the East, the great drama of Divine Providence, will, I judge, shift its place into the West, and the Infidel power be revealed above the Papal power. This conclusion I arrive at partly from Daniel's vision of the four beasts; where it is said, That during, and after, the ten-horned papal beast hath been entirely consumed with fiery judgments, the other three beasts are still preserved for a season and a time, though their dominion be taken away. If, then, the Turk, who hath possessed Euphrates, Ninevah, and Babylon for seven centuries, be the Assyrian or Babylonian power, and Persia stand for itself, and Greece now struggling into a sepa

rate being, stand likewise for itself, then these three kingdoms are to continue in being, and to behold the fiery vengeance poured out upon the Roman Apostasy, when it shall have become Infidel. When, therefore, the drama shall so shift its scene back again to the West, and the Infidel power shall, by another mighty revolution, the earthquake of the seventh vial, organize the ten kingdoms once more under the eighth head, which is also the seventh; how shall this towering monarch, last king of Rome-last ruler of the mystical Babylon-be brought low, and his dominions wasted with the fiery wrath of God? This is the question which I have sought to answer in the sixth discourse, wherein I shew that this great Infidel prince and personal Antichrist, in whom the Apostasy of the West is consummated, shall be brought low by the marshal array of the Ten Tribes of Israel, long lost to human knowledge; but who shall then, under the immediate guidance of Messiah the man of war, whether personally or providentially, come up like Cyrus and his sanctified ones of old, to overwhelm this Belshazzar, last king of Babylon, who hath ignominiously planted the tabernacles of his palace, in the glorious holy mountain; and so deliver the two tribes of Benjamin and Judah, suffering captivity within Babylon's mystical hold. That this achievement of the Ten Tribes shall not be without the countenance of the king of the North, we know from Daniel, who makes tidings out of the North, as well as the East, to trouble the wilful, lawless king; and from the Apocalypse, which, besides preparing the way for the kings of the East, under the sixth vial, doth, under the seventh,

bring the whole dominion of the Infidel power under the hideous judgment of the northern hail, every hailstone of the weight of a talent. And from other parts of Scripture, I am inclined to conclude, that the land covering or sheltering with wings, even the ships of Tarshish, which is Britain, shall bear some part in helping forward this mighty march of the Ten Tribes of Israel: and to this end, as I judge, it is that God hath, as it were, divided the sway of all the East between the great northern king and the nation covering with wings, because in the East these tribes will be found, and from the East they will proceed. Now it is after the suppression, and in the suppression, of the Infidel Roman kingdom, that the ten tribes deliverers, and the two tribes delivered, will sit down in peace in their own land;-not brought thither through conversion, but by the tide of God's mighty providence; to the end, first, of terrible chastisement, and then of conversion. Thus, then, we have the Roman kingdom under judgment, the Jewish tribes restored, and the three first beasts, Turkey, Persia, and Greece, under the wing of the great northern power, and waiting the time of God. And now it is, as I deem, that the last act of the drama, the winding up of the whole proceedeth, which is that invasion of Gog the prince of Ross (Russ), Meshec (Mosc), and Tubal (Tobol), with his great confederacy, including Persia and all the northern kingdoms of the Gothic and Sclavonic families, as hath been shewn in the work of Granville Penn upon the prophecy of Gog. Then will it be seen for what end such power hath been slowly accumulated by God into the hands of the great northern power, when, moved by the desire