vanity and speak lies: they conceive mischief, and bring forth iniquity. They hatch cockatrice eggs, and weave the spider's web: he that eateth of their eggs dieth, and that which is crushed breaketh out into a viper. Their webs shall not become garments, neither shall they cover themselves with their works. Their works are works of iniquity, the act of violence is in their hands. Their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed innocent blood; their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity, wasting and destruction are in their paths." *

In the very wildest howling of the tempest, nevertheless, the bared arm of God's Providence appeared from the cloud, and directed the grand confusion to the ends of distributive justice. These monsters of iniquity had a reign as short and full of terror, as it was disgraceful to that light of human reason, which they set up as the OBJECT OF WORSHIP instead of God, whom they blasphemously affected to discharge from the government of

Isaiah lix. 4.

his own creation. For scarcely had the blood of the victims of their savage cruelty been cleansed away from the streets, before their own blood gushed from the same guillotine, and flowed in the same kennels.

This retribution, though dreadful, was yet most equitable.* It was a lively image by re flection, of those very sins of the mystic Babylon which God said in Psalm 1. 21, that he would one day set before her face; and which has now drawn down this heavy judgment upon her. These practiced tormentors now suffer from the same scourge which they themselves had platted for the backs of others, and had applied unceasingly as interest, or malice, or idolatrous superstition directed. For

* 1 Sam. xv. 33; Rev. xiii. 10

Quod quisque fecit, patitur; autorem scelus
Repetit; suoque premitur exemplo nocens.

SENEC. Her, fur. 735,

Whoe'er offends must suffer too,

Like punishments, like crimes pursue,

His own example sets the rule

Of suff'ring for th' unthinking fool.

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

"And the third angel poured out his vial upon the rivers, and fountains of waters, and they became blood." These plagues seem like those of Egypt, to rise gradually in terror and greatness, and to be 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 prophecies 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 eni blems 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 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 with blood. The curse of the first Judas comes upon this second, or MAN OF SIN; and "that which should have been for his saving health, becomes unto him an occasion of falling."

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.