ments and systems; removes the land marks of the people, both natural, moral, and political; subverts and models anew the constitution of states, overthrows the ancient thrones and sets up new ones, more congenial to his views: dissolves all bonds of union between nations, and exposes subsisting treaties to a necessity of being broken, and sets every thing loose except the tenacious grasp of his own authoriry, which is founded upon anarchy, and cemented by perpetuated revolution.

In this manner he proceeds in his career of ambition, with his eye steadily fixed upon universal sovereignty. The systems of

government which he recommends to the vassal kings and subjected nations for their own happiness, have but one view, to the consolidating his own empire, and weakening the power of resistance to it, by draining the exhausted earth of its wealth, and depriving it of its defenders. The wretched victims are, by force, dragged from their employments and their families, and compelled to become the tools of his insatiable thirst of augmented power and more

extended acquisitions, to extinguish in every human breast the expiring embers of the flame of liberty.

One thing alone there seems to be in this system of destruction, which after the many wonders the present age has gazed at with a stupid astonishment, until they are become familiar with them, still strikes the mind as wonderful, and as a thing apparently in contradiction to that sagacity and penetration which has directed all the measures of THE BREAKER. This is that seemingly impoli

tic, unnecessary, hazardous, and even, I may say, ungrateful stretch of power, by which he rages, in the spirit of atheism, against the sanctified superstitions of HOLY MOTHEr church, even to the blotting out the SUN OF THE PAPAL EMPIRE, and wrapping it in total darkness: "letting loose the dogs of war," to satiate their greedy hunger with the spoils of the ancient spoiler of the earth,* and reduce the voluptuous Lady of kingdoms to famine and nakedness, mourning and captivity.†

* Isai. xxxiii, 1.

† Isai. xlvii. 5. &c. Rev. xviii, 7, 8.

The retaining in good humour, such a coadjutor as his HOLINESS, SO powerful, and at the same time so willing an abettor of despotism and extortion in others, upon the old principle of going shares in the spoil,-(" when thou sawest a thief, thou consentest unto him, and hast been partaker with the adulterers,”) seems, in such a case as this, to be the most obvious policy, and necessary line of conduct. Yet it is departed from, with a wantonness of cruelty and insult, which cannot fail of provoking, almost to madness, a very numerous and still powerful party, if they were not (in all things that regard the defence of their own establishments) under a divine coercion, and a spirit of infatuation and blindness.-" For that which is determined must be done.'

When mankind shall behold such a MIGHTY and STRONG ONE, striding over the prostrate world as its TORMENTOR and EVIL GENIus, treading underfoot the "land of graven images," coming back from EDOM as the representative* of the divine avenger of her an

* Isaiah Ixiii. 1. This uninterrupted career of conquests, by which THE BREAKER is to bring the world into subjection, 3 T

VOL. II.

cient crimes, "in blood dyed garments from Bosrab," the anxious quere will agitate every breast,-art thou be that should come to fill

is in reality the victory of Christ over his enemies, as the victory of Titus was (by the Romans, and the vanquished jews themselves) acknowledged to have been achieved by the hand of God, Christ conquers, and his representative, the destroying angel, only performs the manual labor of cutting of throats, and receives his allotted pay in CROWNS AND SCEPTRES. These he carries at his back, and deals them out instead of change or paper, for value received, in pay to other cut-throats under him.

By such instrumental means, Christ is now fulfilling the prophecy in Ps. xci. 13, which the pope (like a false prophet and bad interpreter as he is) impiously applied to himself, when he made use of the emperor's neck for his horse-block, saying"Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder, the young lion and the dragen shalt thou trample under feet."-See Sect. xvi. p. 424.

It appears from the New Testament, (Matt, iv. 6,) that the devil understood the prophecies, and was more worthy of the title of an INFALLIBLE INTERPRETER than HIS HOLINESS; for he quoted to our Saviour the two verses of that Psalm immediately before this passage, as texts applicable to the Messiah. It is written, said he, " he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways. They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone.”—But here (like a wily reasoner, cautious not to prove too much,) he stopped short; for to have quoted the next verse would have been throwing a stone at his own head, which, in its recoil, would have wounded his friend the pope too; for he is the snake in the grass, and the Roman imperial power is the lion, and the devil, or old serpent, is the dragon, which Christ is now in the act of trampling

the earth with carnage and woe?—or do we look for another, at a still later period, to perfect the work which thou must leave unfinished?

under his feet. Satan was not reproved of Jesus for misappli cation of that text to a wrong person. but only for the deceitful and wicked" DOCTRINE-and USE" which he artfully wanted to draw from it, and which Jesus confuted. I therefore conclude, with the concurrent testimony of his satanic majesty himself, that this was spoken by the prophet, not of THE POPES OF ROME, but of THE EVER BLESSED CHRIST Coming in his kingdom.

Fas est et ab hoste doceri,

'Tis prudent still instruction to receive,

Tho' envious foes the wholesome counsel give