On

This abjuration occurred in 1793, the first year of the French Republic; reckoning 1260 years back led to their commencement in A. D. 533. referring to Bishop Newton's work to ascertain whether this date had been noticed, I found a note mentioning the opinion of Dr. Mann of the Charterhouse, then deceased, that the year 533 was to be considered as the true epoch of the papal supremacy.* On reference to Baronius, the established authority among the Roman Catholic annalists, I found Justinian's grant of supremacy to the Pope formally fixed to that period.†

Baronius has been a suspected authority, where the honour of the popedom is concerned. But his statement was, at least, a proof of the Romish opinion of the original epoch; and it received an unanswerable support from the books of the Imperial laws, in which the grant of "primacy and precedency over all the Bishops of the Christian world," is registered, and repeated in a variety of forms. The entire transaction was of the most authentic and regular kind, and suitable to the importance of the transfer. The subsequent grant of Phocas was found to be a confused and imperfect transaction, scarcely noticed by the early writers, and, even in its fullest sense, amounting to nothing beyond a confirmation of the grant of Justinian. The chief cause of its frequent adoption as an epoch by the commentators, seemed to be its convenient coincidence with the rise of Mahometanism.

From this point I laid aside all commentators, and determined to make my way alone, to form my opinions without bias, and discover whether the difficulties of the prophecy could not be cleared by an inquiry on the common principles of interpretation. The difficulties were less stubborn than I had conceived; and the present arrangement and interpretation were soon decided

upon.

Subsequently, I read all the commentaries that I could meet with; and the crowd of writers on this subject would be scarcely suspected by those who have not made the same experiment. But, admiring their frequent ingenuity and literature, I found but little to add to my own interpretation, and nothing to alter.

Where I could make use of them in illustration or reference, they will be found in the shape of notes. My chief authority in dates and points of history has been the very diligent and exact Lardner; in both his "Credibility of the Gospel History," and his "Dissertations." In the learning of the Apocalypse, Vitringa is a guide whose research extends through almost all languages and all authorship; but like his countrymen he is overwhelmed by his literary opulence, his meaning is lost in endless and irrelevant discussion, and the severest task that I have been put to in a work proverbially intricate and laborious, has been the toil of wading through the ponderous "Implementa Prophetiæ" of Vitringa. Pp. 12-14.

The whole prophecy of the death of the two witnesses bears so striking an affinity to the French Revolution, and so little similarity to any other occurrence in the history of the last 1800 years, that this event might very fairly be assumed as the completion of it; and when the dependent dates so aptly coincide, the assumption becomes conviction itself.

Dating and reasoning by this arrangement, Mr. Croly divides the three leading trains of prophecy in the Apocalypse according to the following order:

Bishop Newton on the Prophecies, Vol. II. p. 305. + Baronii Annal. Cen. 6.

TABLE OF THE SEALS, TRUMPETS, AND VIALS.

After a complete analysis of the above prophecies, Mr. Croly proceeds to those which relate to the history of the Church, and the extraordinary phenomenon of the Papacy. And it is not a little remarkable how accurately the principal dates and the principal events in the history of that conspicuous usurpation, are noted in the Apocalypse. The Inquisition is most directly indicated. A popish reader, it might be imagined, could not fail to be enlightened by the argument; and both to papists, and, more especially, to the advocates of their political power, would we recommend the perusal of Mr. Croly's powerful Preface. It is short, and may be perused unconnectedly with the work; and it is one of the finest pieces of philosophical reasoning on history which we ever remember to have read. By the clear and steady light of facts, he exhibits the uniform tendency of popish counsels in this country. He considers England especially as the depositary of pure Christianity, contradistinguished from its corruptions, no less than Judea was the depositary of true monotheism, as distinguished from its corruptions. He shows that

as Paganism corrupted the doctrine of one God, so has Popery corrupted the idea of one Mediator. And as the Jews rose and fell in political prosperity and importance in proportion as they resisted or encouraged Paganism, so has he demonstrated that England has risen and sunk in the scale of nations in proportion as Protestantism or Popery has influenced her counsels. These points being plain historical facts, capable of easy proof, are such as cannot be controverted; and, connected with the certain doctrine that national retributions take place in the present world, supply an inference altogether inevitable, and one which no legislator of religious impressions could possibly disregard.

Mr. Croly, however, like most discoverers, is ill-contented to see the bounds of his discoveries. He has struck out the true argument of the Apocalypse, and hence he too rashly considers himself able to interpret the minutest details of it; much of which is, perhaps, only oriental ornament, and much is obscure prophecy, which receives no light from the fanciful reveries of the commentator. It were better to leave passages of this sort untouched, than to explain "obscurum per obscurius." It is worse than unsatisfactory-it begets distrust where it is least deserved. We are sorry to find Mr. Croly carrying his conjectures beyond the book which he undertook to interpret, and applying them to the temptation of our Lord, of which he has made a typical transaction, prefiguring the "three great æras of crime in the Church of Rome." This interpretation appears to us very visionary. The transaction in question is doubtless mysterious; but a satisfactory solution, as it seems to us, may always be found in the consideration that Christ, as the second Adam, was obliged to undergo such a temptation, that thus he might "fulfil all righteousness;" and we think that Mr. Croly, in setting it aside, has offered nothing so truly explanatory. Sobriety in a commentator, and a biblical commentator especially, is a quality of primary importance.

In taking leave of Mr. Croly, it would be injustice to omit notice of his style, which is of a very superior order; highly nervous and eloquent, without soaring into poetry, or degenerating into bombast. While it sometimes reminds us of the luscious melody of Gibbon, we feel that we are, on the whole, doing injury to the masculine character of Mr. Croly's prose by the comparison. The extract with which we conclude, will afford our readers a tolerably fair opportunity of judging this question for themselves.

But Roman Paganism, with all its arts, was simplicity itself to the new master of its throne. It was a thing of external glitter, and there its powers and its ambition closed; it solicited no hold upon the mind; it had none of those keener and fiercer instruments of grasp and possession, the fangs and claws, that were yet to strike into the very marrow of mankind. It was a luxurious and giddy, a splendid, and sometimes a profligate exhibition, laughed

at by the higher minds, amusing to the multitude, popular and pleasant to all; the graver game of the idle and self-indulgent nations of the south; a more serious shape of human pleasure, gratifying the worshipper by some empty sense of duty done without restraint upon his passions, and keeping his vanity awake without disturbing the slumber of his conscience. It went down to the grave for a time, with its idle generation. But, when it returned to the world, a great revolution had passed over the surface. It found the old system of society broken into ruin irreparable, a host of new nations, with new and rival interests, a bolder temperament, and a manlier intellectual capability, struggling for mastery, sword in hand, on the soil which had once lain smooth and uniform as the slavery that moved over it. It found a still sterner trial in the presence of the true religion, that stood even in that day of adversity, like its Lord in the wilderness, the sign to the evil spirit that his time was at hand; and putting his proudest temptation to shame.

To fight its battle through this iron multitude up to empire, other means were essential than the feeble contrivances of the past. A kingdom and a priesthood, it must seek conquests and converts, and it must obtain the one without an army, and the other without the Gospel. Auricular confession, absolution, indulgences, miracles of bones, images, and pictures, and, to crown the whole stupendous imposture, transubstantiation, the claim of man to be the maker of God! were the guilty and powerful means by which paganism, new risen, forced its way through the tumult of nations, --the spells by which weakness was made stronger than strength; which turned the Lombard and the Norman, that had cloven down the Roman empire, into the nerveless slaves of Rome; and bowed in worship the bold barbarian crowns and helmets of the north and west before the feet of a monk and an Italian.-Pp. 233–235.

LITERARY REPORT.

Sermons principally designed to strengthen the Faith and increase the Devotedness of Christians in the present remarkable Era. By the Rev. JAMES HALDANE STEWART, M.A. Minister of Percy Chapel, St. Pancras; and Chaplain to the Most Noble the Marquis of Bute, and the Right Honournourable the Earl of Breadalbane. London: Seeley. 1828. pp. xvi. 455. Price 10d. 6s.

THE style of this book is, notwithstanding the date, of a very humble order, though intended to work a lofty work. We very much question the prudence of printing and publishing such familiar performances as those contained in the volume before us: extemporary discourses certainly enjoy a great latitude, and there are men who think the cause of serious religious views assisted by the introduction of a few lines of verse, or of a biographical anecdote;

but we did not expect ever to see such things in print. Mr. Stewart has, however, enlightened us on this point, and we have, in his sermons, all that can be desired, to form an opinion on the style of preaching more common in the humbler order of conventicles, than in the fashionable chapels of the metropolis, where the language is often more attended to than the doctrine. We cannot presume to say how far the march of intellect has extended into St. Pancras; but cannot help thinking Mr. Stewart's hearers are of a class in society whose minds have been too much polished by refinement and education, to relish the many singularities in the oratory of "their gratefully obliged friend and faithful servant.”

He is, evidently, a good man, and a very conscientious minister; and he clearly desires to see his people as good and conscientious as himself: and if, throughout the volume, there was