V. 10. And they shall not bring wood out of the countries, nor cut down out of the forests: for they shall burn the weapons with fire, and shall make a prey of them to whom they had been a prey, and they shall rob those that robbed them, saith the Lord God.

V. 11. And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will give Gog a noted place for a sepulchre in Israel: the valley of the passengers on the east of the sea, which shall cause astonishment in them that pass by: and there shall they bury Gog, and all his multitude, and it shall be called the valley of the multitude of Gog.

V. 12. And the house of Israel shall bury them for seven months to cleanse the land.

V. 13. And all the people of the land shall bury him, and it shall be unto them a noted day, wherein I was glorified, saith the Lord God.

V. 14. And they shall appoint men to go continually about the land, to bury and to seek out them that were remaining upon the face of the earth, that they may cleanse it: and after seven months they shall begin to seek.

V. 15. And they shall go about passing through the land: and when they shall see the bone of a man, they shall set up a sign by it, till the buriers bury it in the valley of the multitude of Gog.

V. 16. And the name of the city shall be Amona *, and they shall cleanse the land.

V. 17. And thou, O Son of man, saith the Lord God, say to every fowl, and to all the birds, and to all the beasts of the field: Assemble yourselves, make haste, come together from every side to my victim, which I slay for you, a great victim upon the mountains of Israel: to eat flesh,

and drink blood.

V. 18. You shall eat the flesh of the mighty, and you shall drink the blood of the princes of the earth: of rams, and of lambs, and of he-goats, and bullocks, and of all that are well fed and fat.

V. 19. And you shall eat the fat till you be full, and shall drink blood till you be drunk of the victim which I shall slay for you.

*Multitude.

V. 20. And you shall be filled at my table with horses, and mighty horsemen, and all the men of war, saith the Lord God.

V. 21. And I will set my glory among the nations : and all nations shall see my judgment that I have executed, and my hand that I have laid upon them.

Thus is Gog and his whole army exterminated. They are not allowed to reach Jerusalem, but are stopped by the divine hand at a distance in the mountains of Judæa, where by fire from heaven and other terrible judgments they all perish. And thus ends that impious enterprise of Gog, of which we have been reading in Ezekiel a full history rather than a prophecy.

Satan is here again defeated; nor is he now allowed to make further attempts. He has done immense mischief, by seducing mankind into idolatry, and raising up, a most horrible persecution against the faithful servants of God. He has by his agents desolated countries, and destroyed a prodigious multitude of the human race: for he was a murderer from the beginning, John, viii. 44. But though he has acted by the suggestion of his own malice and hatred against God and man, yet it has not been done without the Almighty's permission, and it all serves the unfathomable purposes of divine wisdom. But now the period of the releasement of Satan is elapsed, in consequence of which St. John informs us:

Chap. xx. v. 9. And the devil, who seduced them, was cast into the pool of fire and brimstone,

V. 10. Where * both_the_beast_and the false prophet shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever. Here the prince of the infernal regions is cast down again into his prison, there to be closed up; and is plunged into the lake of hell-fire, there to be tormented for evermore with Antichrist and the false prophet. One may suppose that the greatest part of his hellish crew are banished along with him, to undergo the same fate. Some determinate number of them may perhaps be permitted to remain upon earth, to tempt mankind; as

In the Greek, where the beast and false prophet are. And they shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever.

seemed to be the case when Satan was bound up in the abyss after the persecutions of the first Christian ages: but the power of these fiends will be circumscribed within much narrower bounds than it was before.

One cannot but here take notice, that our incomparable prophet opens to us a particular piece of history, which we were little acquainted with, namely, that of Satan, the prince of the apostate angels. In chapter xii. we see him falling down from heaven with his proud associates. We see his character described, and among other names there given him he is styled the old serpent, that is, the very serpent which deceived Eve, and by her seduction ruined all mankind. After having done that mischief, he proceeded by crafty insinuation to work upon mankind, and prevailed upon the greatest part of them to abandon the worship of their Creator, and to substitute idolatry in its place, that is, in reality the worship of Satan himself, and thus he seduced the whole world. At the rise of Christianity, we see him exerting his utmost efforts to crush it in its birth: for which purpose he stimulated the Roman emperors and others to oppose with all their might the propagation of the Christian religion. Christ, with his superior power, frustrated all these attempts; and expelled Satan from the face of the earth, and confined him in the infernal dungeon, Apoc. c. xx. where he is to remain for an appointed period of time, after the expiration of which he will be released for a short while. His employment will then be to re-establish idolatry, and to persecute the Christian religion. Antichrist will be his great instrument for these purposes. But after the extermination of that son of perdition and the destruction of Gog, Satan himself will then be remanded back to his infernal prison, never more to go forth from it.- Now to resume the thread of our history.

The expulsion of Satan from the earth who was the author of idolatry, and the extermination of Antichrist who was its supporter, are followed by the extirpation of idolatry itself. For such seems to be the language of the prophets. The loftiness of men shall be bowed down, says

Isaiah, and the haughtiness of men shall be humbled, and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day. And idols shall be utterly d stroyed, ii. 17, 18. Thus also speaks the prophet Sophonias: The Lord shall be terrible upon them, and shall consume all the gods of the earth, ii. 11. In like manner we see the same work of the divine hand announced to us by the prophet Zachary : And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord of hosts, that I will destroy the names of Idols out of the earth, and they shall be remembered no more, xiii. 2. It is fit the offspring should follow the parent, or that idolatry should disappear with Satan.

And now we seem to be arrived at the glorious epocha of the triumph of the Church over all her enemies. The tyrants, that domineered over her, are crushed; the boisterous winds of persecution are ceased: and the anger of God, before inflamed by the excessive wickedness of mankind, is now appeased and gives way to mercy. Idolatry is vanished, and the cross of Christ is the sole standard that is acknowledged and resorted to. Christ has suppressed all adverse powers, both earthly and infernal, and now extends his dominion from one extremity of the earth to the other. People and kings equally bow down to receive his commands, and join in professing their submission to his Church, as we learn from Daniel: And judgment shall sit, says he, that the kingdom and power, and the greatness of the kingdom, under the whole heaven, may be given to the people of the saints of the most High: whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and all kings shall serve him and shall obey him, vii. 26, 27. He shall rule from sea to sea, says the Psalmist speaking of Christ, and from the river unto the ends of the earth-And all the kings of the earth shall adore him; all nations shall serve him, Psalm lxxi. 8, 11.

The prophet Zachary acquaints us of the same, thus : And the Lord shall be king over all the earth: in that day there shall be one Lord, and his name shall be one, xiv. 9, his name shall be one, or there shall be but one religion over the whole earth. These are the Halcyon days of the Christian people, during which the Almighty pours

forth the abundance of his spiritual and temporal blessings. To the storms of persecution and war succeed the calm of peace and the sunshine of joy and prosperity. And to this period seems to belong the following admonition :

Apoc. ch. xiv. v. 13. And I heard, says St. John, a voice from heaven, saying to me: write, blessed are the dead who die in the Lord. For henceforth now, saith the spirit, that they may rest from their labours: for their works follow them. Or rather, according to the Greek text: Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from henceforth. Certainly, saith the spirit, that they may rest from their labours: but their works follow them. Those are

here pronounced Blessed, who from henceforth, that is, from the time of the extermination of Antichrist and all external enemies, or who, during the time of peace, having no expectations of the crown of martyrdom, nevertheless live in the constant practice of virtue, and so merit to die in the favour of their Lord, The spirit or Holy Ghost confirms the sentence of their happiness not only because at the moment of their departure their hard labours and penitential exercises cease, but their souls are admitted to a glorious immortality, the recompense of their good works.

Such is the extraordinary happiness of this period of time that, as in the days of the birth of Christianity, so now the supernatural gifts of the Holy Ghost descend plentifully upon the zealous Christians: And it shall come to pass after this, says the Lord by Joel, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy: your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions. Moreover upon my servants, and handmaids, in those days I will pour forth my spirit. And I will shew wonders in heaven, and in earth, blood, and fire, and vapour of smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood: before the great and dreadful day of the Lord does come, ii. 28, &c. While the bounties of God flow in a full stream upon mankind, we see nevertheless he thinks fit to send, at times, warnings of the approaching