As the kings of the earth formerly agreed to give their power to the beaft, the other

part of the prophecy is already in a great measure fulfilled, Rev. xvii. 16. "The ten horns which thou faweft upon the beast, these shall hate the whore," (another emblem of the fame power) " and fhall make her defolate, and naked, and fhall eat her flesh, and burn her with fire. For God hath put into their hearts to fulfil his will, and to agree, and give their kingdoms unto the beast, until the words of God fhall be fulfilled. And the woman which thou fawest is the great city, which reigneth over the kings of the earth."

That the final deftruction of this mystical Babylon will be fudden, is evident from the account of its fall in the book of Revelation (ch. xviii. 7): "How much she hath glorified herself, fo much torment and forrow give her. For the hath faid in her heart, I fit a queen, and am no widow, and fhall fee no forrow. Therefore fhall her plagues come in one day, death and mourning, and famine, and the shall be utterly burned with fire; for ftrong is the Lord Hh 2 God

God who judgeth her. And the kings of the earth who committed fornication, and lived deliciously with her, fhall bewail her, and lament for her, when they shall see the smoke of her burning, standing afar off, for fear of her torment; faying, Alas, Alas, that great city, Babylon, that mighty city, for in one hour is thy judgment come.'

To this great catastrophe we now see things visibly haftening. The scenes that are more immediately opening upon us we may expect, as I fhewed in a former difcourse, to be exceedingly calamitous, what the Scriptures call "a time of trouble, fuch as has not been fince the foundation of the world," affecting more particularly that part of the world which has been the feat of the four great monarchies, and especially those that have been fubject to the papal power; but it will, according to the fure word of prophecy, iffue in a state of things the most glorious and happy, when "the kingdoms of the world will become the kingdoms of our Lord Jefus Christ," a state of righteousness and of univerfal peace; when, as the prophet fays (If. ii. 4), men

"fhall

1

"shall beat their fwords into plow fhares, and their spears into pruning hooks;" when "nation shall not lift up a fword against nation," and when they fhall" learn war no more."

May God, who rules among the children of men, and who is the common and the benevolent parent of all the human race, foon accomplish so desirable an event.

APPENDIX,

No: I.

A NOTE-P. 240. Line 12. CONSIDERING the highly figurative language used by the ancient prophets, and alfo by our Saviour, when they meant nothing more than to announce great revolutions in the world, it is very poffible that the apostle Peter might not mean any thing more when he defcribes the heavens and the earth melting with heat, antecedent to the formation of the new heavens and the

new earth. 2 Pet. iii. 10, "The day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in the which the heavens fhall pass away with a great noife, and the elements fhall melt with fervent heat; the earth also, and the works that are therein, fhall be burned. up."-verse 12, "Looking for, and hafting unto, the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire fhall be diffolved, Hh 4

and