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and Doctores Sententiarum-doctors of sentences

-expounders of the famous book of sentences by Peter Lombard, bishop of Paris.

In the worse than Egyptian darkness that, concurrently with the doctors, overspread christendom the papal fiend walked abroad; and, to the smoke wherewith they filled the temple, the Jesuits subsequently contributed, as it were from the fumes of assa fetida, "the dunnest smoke of hell."

On the long and dark night the reformation at length dawned, and we now know the quarter of the heavens whence the unclouded sun of revelation will ultimately pour the fulness of his meridian light; but his brightness is yet, in fulfilment of the apocalyptic prediction, veiled by thick mists for the operation of smoke-making in the temple has never been discontinued. It is, indeed, more than probable that Europe cannot now boast of any single theologian, capable of blowing a cloud so voluminous and dense as issued from such vomitories as the primitive fathers of the church, and the admirable-the profoundthe subtle the irrefragable-the angelic-the seraphic, or, the illuminated, doctors of the middle ages

every one of whom smoked like a steam-engine; but the art of printing has multiplied incalculably the number of small smokers, and the modern universities are seldom without some eminently learned professor, the Νεφεληγερέτα Ζευς of the day, whose powers of fumigation Fronto might have deemed worthy of a place in his LAUDES FUMI ET PUlveris.

CHAP. XVI.

1. “And I heard a great voice out of the temple saying to the seven angels, Go your ways, and pour out the vials of the wrath of God upon the earth."

Widely differing as I do, in some most material particulars, from Mr. Croly's application of events to the symbols included under the trumpets and vials, I will nevertheless follow the plan adopted by that able commentator, and will endeavour to interpret them both conjunctively.

The first step, in the interpretation of those two parallel series of prophecy, is to ascertain as accurately as we can, the time when and the place where, the events occur to which the prophecy refers.They are certainly details of christian historyare they, then, spread over the whole period of that history?—No-for they are distinctly stated tò pertain to the last plagues--the last visitations of the divine judgments, whereby God will purify his church-an expression implying that the events are to be found in its later period. Now, christianity has subsisted for eighteen hundred years— we are, then, directed to look to a period, not more remote than the last nine hundred years, for the commencement of the series-a period long subsequent to the time when the riders on the white and the red horses were succeeded by the riders on the black and the green--that is, after the rise of the papal and the mahometan powers--do the trumpets and vials, then, pertain partly to the papal, and partly to the mahometan dispensations ?-Certainly

not--we are distinctly apprised that they all relate exclusively to one dispensation alone--for all the vials were given, to the angels who pour out their contents, by ONE of the four animals' about the mystic throne. Consequently the series of vials, together with the corresponding series of trumpets, pertains entirely to either the papal or the mahometan dispensation and to one only of them. Have we, then, any indication to which of those two dispensations the concurrent prophetic series refer?Certainly, there is none to be found in the portion of the Apocalypse hitherto expounded, but I, nevertheless, think that the flux of seventeen centuries of the time of the end' has evolved a clue sufficiently plain to extricate us from any doubt on that point.

History-properly speaking, that is, moral history,-implies vicissitude,-progression,-change :now, the history of the papal church is pregnant with continued vicissitude of rise and declension-of corruption and purification-of temporal power and depression. While her history thus teems with incidents full of vital importance to the collective church, the history of the greek church in the Roman empire, since the establishment of the mahometan power over her, has been one monotonous blank-without any attempt at internal reformation, or any variation of her depression under mahometan tyranny-in a word, she has no history at all.-The history, then, of the christian church, (since the establishment of islamism) being confined to the incidents affecting its condition in the latin empire, it is to the pale of the papal dominion that we are to look for the anti

types of the symbolic trumpets and vials, as well as of the other mystic visions that intervene between the opening of the seventh seal and the exhibition of its contents. We have, then, good reason for inferring that the animal, or living being, which gave the seven vials to the angels, was the third,-or papal,-symbol having the outward appearance, or mask, of a human face. And we shall accordingly, if I mistake not, have but little difficulty in finding, among the principal occurrences of the papal history in the last six hundred years, a satisfactory solution of the symbols preceded and announced by the mystic trumpets and vials.

In the year 583 an ecclesiastical council bestowed the title of universal bishop, invented in the greek church, on the patriarch of Constantinople. In 602 the eastern imperial throne was usurped by Phocas, a centurion, who deposed and murdered the emperor Mauritius, together with his numerous family. In resentment of the grateful affection which was testified to the memory of the late monarch by the patriarch, the latter was in the year 606 deprived of the title and jurisdiction of universal bishop by Phocas, who transferred them to the bishop of Rome, by whom they were accepted, and by his successors ever since they have been regularly assumed.*

For several successive centuries from that period the authority, ecclesiastical and civil, of the papal

*The diligent, and accurate Mosheim says expressly that the title and power of universal bishop were transferred from the greek patriarch to the roman bishop by Phocas at the solicitation of the Pope, Boniface III.

see, was, together with the corruption of the church, continually augmented. They attained in the twelfth century their utmost magnitude. The papal power was nearly unlimited over all the latin empire. Of one of the popes of that century, INNOCENT, (the third of the Roman bishops who have disguised themselves under that name*) Gibbon (chap. 59.) thus writes— "Under that young and ambitious priest the successors of St. Peter attained the full meridian of their greatness; and in a reign of eighteen years, he exercised a despotic command over the emperors and kings, whom he raised and deposed; over the nations, which an interdict of months or years deprived, for the offence of their rulers, of the exercise of christian worship. In the council of the Lateran he acted as the ecclesiastical, almost as the temporal, sovereign of the East and West. It was at the feet of his legate that John of England surrendered his crown; and INNOCENT may boast of the two most signal triumphs over reason and humanity,- -the establishment of Transubstantiation, and the origin of the Inquisition.”

Infancy has little or no characteristic, except that of weakness and its inevitable consequences. A lamb and a suckling tiger are equally innocuous. Conscious weakness, and the timidity inseparable from it, repress the development of natural disposition. The deportment of a slave who, fearing to offend, studies to conciliate the favour, or to deceive the vigilance, of a master, is regulated by motives not derived from his own inherent propensities. He is necessarily an ha

*The ruffian's real name was LOTHARIO.

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