tion of his brethren, and commenced his work of reformation A. D. 612 in Arabia, with the best intentions. He was forty years of age, when he publicly professed in the city of Mecca, that God had sent him to overthrow polytheism and idolatry, and to restore the religion of their ancestors, Abraham and Ishmael, in its primitive purity among them. In the prosecution of this laudable undertaking, he discovered a pious disposition to promote virtue, and suppress vice; and, for the space of twelve years, adopted no other than just and righteous means, to further his great designs. He himself confessed, that he was not invested with compulsatory power, and would not grant his followers any liberty beyond instruction, persuasion and warning men of their danger. So noble was the disposition of his mind, that when he was persecuted in Mecca, he chose rather to leave his native city, than oppose his enemies by violent measures, which he had in his power. But this flight of Mahomed to Medina, which happened A. D. 622, and its attending circumstances, produced such a total change in this recently good man; that both the disposition of his mind, and the measures which he adopted for the accomplishment of his objects, daily became more violent, base and impious. The star had fallen from heaven, and now degenerated into moral ruin. He projected schemes of conquest and self-aggrandizement, used impious frauds to delude the credulous multitude, and even forged celestial visions to confirm his authority and establish the work he had so happily begun. And to complete the imposture he pretended divine revelations, exalted himself above the inspired prophets and apostles, and even claimed a superiority to Christ the Son of God; demanding implicit faith and obedience of all his followers. All these impious frauds and deceptions, he preached with a spirit of religious phrenzy, and with such a flow of attractive elo quence, as to silence all opposition, and excite a glow of enthusiastic devotion among all his audience.. Verse 2. And he opened the bottomless pit. Here our version falls short of the sense of the original. "ABussos is a noun, and in itself already signifies a gulf of infinite depth, the lowest part of creation; and gέag is an allusion to the wells of the ancient Asiatics, and means a deep narrow opening into the earth, walled in at the top, so that it may be secured by a lock. In the sacred Scriptures this word "Aẞussos, is used to express the unfathomable depths of creation, such as the depth of the ocean, the atmosphere, the expansion of heaven; but more especially the great solitary desert of the dead, the world of spirits, Luke viii. 31. Rom. x. 7. Job xxviii. 14. Job xxxviii. 16. 17. Habak. iii. 10; where demons are kept in confinement, and the wicked cease from troubling, until the great day of judgment. To this abyss there is an aperture from the human soul, where the τροχὸν τῆς γενέσεως, the wheel of generation, the first source of all thoughts and actions in man, may be influenced by the invisible powers of darkness, James iii. 6. But this gag, in man, is locked, and none can open it. The key is in the hand of Providence, and was given to Mahomed, who thereby opened a communication with the invisible powers of the abyss, and received assistance from that source to accomplish his purposes. This appears to be the most natural illustration of these important figures, perfectly warranted by the extraordinary events in the life of that impostor, which can never be explained as the effects of a merely human agency, nor yet attributed to the interposition of the Supreme Being. But by considering the subject in this point of view, I would not assert the truth of magic, that men have power, except by a Divine judgment, to form a connexion with demons and departed souls, for the purpose of producing unnatural and surprising effects. Mahomed sought this forbidden intercourse, as he himself partly confessed, in the cave of Mount Hara, near Mecca, in order to accomplish his ambitious projects, against the opposition of his enemies. He obtained it by a Divine judgment, on account of his relapse from grace, not only into a state of sin, but even beneath the hopes of recovery by ordinary means. The Divine permission of this intercourse, and the consequent successful practice of those impious frauds, feats and stratagems, is this key to the bottomless pit; and the rise and successful propagation of Mahomedism is signified by the smoke, which darkened the sun, the gospel of Christ in many Christian countries; and the air, i. e. reason itself in all his followers. By the efficiency of this smoke, ascending in thick vollies through the air, his reputation and authority soon extended themselves among the ignorant multitude, and daily increased in his native country. The crowd of his admirers was now seized by the fire of a religious fanaticism and enthusiastic valour, which justified the most sanguine hopes, of seeing all his wishes realized. No sooner did he observe these propitious symptoms, than he began to plan military expeditions, and projected schemes of attacks, which were instantly executed against the opposers of his pretensions. He began by making successful sallies for ravage and plunder, in which his small parties showed that kind of high courage and puissance, which in similar circumstances, proved invincible. Elated by his good fortune, Mahomed now collected an army, took his native city by assault, vanquished tribe after tribe of his own nation, rendered himself terrible by invasions into the adjacent countries, and died A. D. 632 sole lord of Arabia, having laid the basis of a new religion, and a new empire in the world. The spirit of the nation was now roused to a furious intrépidity, and excited to the performance of great enterprises. His followers led immense armies into the neighbouring kingdoms, and into almost all the countries of the ancient Roman empire; just as the natural locusts, at times, come forth from Arabia by innumerable hosts and spread into the adjacent countries, where they devour all vegetables, and often produce great distress. Exod. x. 13. For this reason the Arabians are often compared to locusts, and called by this name also in other parts of Scriptere, Jud. vi. 5. ch. vii. 12; and large invading armies are r presented by this threatening figure, on account of their sudden and ruinous incursions, Jer. xlvi. 23. chap. li. 14. They conquered Syria and Palestine with the holy city A. D. 634; Phoenicia, Mesopotamia, Armenia and the great Persian empire from A. D. 636-to 637; and penetrate into the East of Asia, even beyond the river Ghihoon into Samarkand. They also extended their conquests into Africa, and subdued the islands of Cyprus, Rhodes, Sicily and Leuca The African Moors, who, after being vanquished, had also received the Mahomedan religion, passed with their fleets into Europe, where they conquered Sardinia, A. D. 711, and the whole kingdom of Spain A. D. 713. Thus in less than a hundred years after the death of Mahomed, the Saracens had extended their terri tories and dominion into three parts of the world, Asia, Africa and Europe, where they on all sides opposed the progress of Christianity, and in many places effected the ruin of the Church. Their rapid course was however checked by Charles Martel's victory, near Tours, A. D. 734, in which bloody engagement they lost $70,000 men, with the general at their head. This signal triumph on the part of Christendom, seems to have given a reverse of fortune to the Mahomedan invasions; at least they soon discontinued their inroads into other countries, and their power ceased to be destructive to the Church of Christ. Verse 3. As the scorpions of the earth have power. There are three kinds of scorpions; the sea scorpions are a kind of fish, the scorpions of the air are winged, the scorpions of the earth are of the size and form of a crab, with stings in their tails, which are always prepared to do mischief, and are found in Italy, Africa, and the meridional deserts of Asia and America. These last are intended here, as an emblem of a treacherous, furious people, who unexpectedly fall on others, and inflict tormenting wounds by surprise; which perfectly corresponds with the charac ter of the Saracens, and their descendants, the Arabians. The only alternative to escape misery, was to fly from their presence. erse 4. And it was commanded them that they should 5. And to them it was given that they should not Here St. John begins to comfort the true Christians of those days, who had the seal of Almighty God in their foreheads, by an assurance, that these calamities were limited by Providence to a certain degree, beyond which they should not rise. The grass of the earth, green things, and trees, must here be taken in a figurative sense, as in ch. viii. 7. and in a comparative estimate with the locusts. They signify the sanctified believers, among the different classes of persons in the Church, which according to the religious fanaticism of the Mahomedans, would otherwise have become their first prey; as all green things are the natural sustenance of locusts, and what they mostly desire. These, they were commanded not to hurt. This word Adixia, to hurt, also signifies, to infringe on another's rights and privileges, Acts xxv. 10. 2 Cor. vii. 2. Gal. iv. 12. and, I presume this to be the true acceptation in this place. The Saracens, for many years treated the |