taken to himself his penal sovereignty, though the exercise of it might seem to have been long suspended: and the season was now come, to recompense all the sufferings of his persecuted servants upon the heads of their oppressors, and to destroy those who had for ages destroyed the earth with impunity. The sovereignty of the world, cries the chorus of proclaiming voices, as soon as the third woe-trumpet begins to sound: The sovereignty of the world has become our Lord's and his Christ's; and he shall reign for ever and ever. To this annunciation, the four and twenty elders, the representatives of the Church Universal, reply: We give thee thanks, O Lord, because thou hast taken thy great power, and hast exercised thy sovereignty. The conversion of the Gentiles is not the matter now in hand, but the punishment of God's enemies. It is not said, that the kingdoms of this world are become the converted kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ: but it is said, that God has now assumed his penal sovereignty for the purpose of vindicating his servants and of punishing the long-permitted enemies of his Gospel. Such is the general meaning of the passage: but we must not omit to notice its particular geographical limitation. The text does not speak of God's penal sovereignty over this world, by which phraseology all the inhabitants of our globe would have been intended: it speaks only of God's penal sovereignty over the world, by which phraseology is meant, in the language of the Apocalypse, the Roman world or the Roman Empire. Hence, in the exercise of this sovereignty during the period of the third woe, he destroys the destroyers of the earth or the persecuting tyrants who have long harassed with impunity the Roman Empire: and, hence, the third woe, like its two predecessors, is said to be a woe to the inhabiters of the earth or to the inhabitants of the Roman platform in its widest extent. The matter now begins to be abundantly plain. At the commencement of the third woe-trumpet, the time has come for God to exercise with great power his penal sovereignty over the whole Roman Empire. The season has arrived for the incipient judgment of Popery and Mohammedism: and, since the Lord regards with peculiar wrath and jealousy the corruption of his own law by his own professed ministers, the time is come that judgment must BEGIN at the house of God'. Hence, when the third woe-trumpet sounds, the penal sovereignty of Jehovah is first exercised upon Popery: it is not until the effusion of the sixth vial, that it is very sensibly felt by Mohammedism. But, as the exercise of this sovereignty commences with the third woe-trumpet, so does it run through the whole period of that trumpet: for all the seven vials are jointly called the seven last plagues, because in them is filled up the wrath of God. Accordingly, at the close of the third woe and while the seventh vial is on the point of being exhausted, the sove→ reignty of the Lord is most eminently exercised in the final overthrow of the entire antichristian faction '. In the exercise of his judgments, God has frequently, perhaps generally, through all ages, em→ ployed the worst of mankind; to whom, for that purpose, he gives a temporary success. Such, we are assured, were the idolatrous Assyrians under the Levitical Dispensation: such also, in their character of two great woes to the inhabitants of the Roman earth, were the professedly antichristian Saracens and Turks: such again, in their character of the third great woe to the inhabitants of the same Roman earth, are the yet more professedly antichristian adherents of practical Infidelity. Re specting the particular national agent employed in this service of penal judgment, when the sovereignty of the Roman world has become our Lord's and his Christ's, we may well say, as it was said of his type and precursor the Assyrian of old: I will send him against an hypocritical nation, and against the people of my wrath will I give him a charge, to take the spoil, and to take the prey, and to tread them down like the mire of the streets. Howbeit he meaneth not so, neither doth his heart think so: but it is in his heart to 'Rev. xix. 11-21. destroy, and to cut off nations not a few. Yet have we no reason to apprehend any danger to the cause of genuine Christianity. Our Lord has founded it upon a rock, against which the gates of hell shall never prevail. The agents of the third woe have performed a part of their allotted task : and, forthwith, we behold their power humbled, for a season, to the dust. A part yet remains to be done and, for this purpose, we are assured, that the sword-slain seventh head of the Roman beast will be revived as a nominally eighth king, though he is truly but one of the preceding seven. Under his auspices, the period of the third woe will be continued: and the unconscious tools of God's penal sovereignty will again torment the inhabitants of the earth. But, when the task has been fully performed, the worthless agents will be broken in the field of Armageddon, and will be thrown aside as a shivered rod no longer serviceable to its owner. 2. And the nations were angry, and thy wrath has come. When the wrath of God came at the commencement of the third woe-trumpet, the nations of the Western Empire were, on their part likewise, universally enraged. The anger of Revolutionary France shewed itself, in deeds of unexampled atrocity, in violent proclamations against kings simply 1 Isaiah x. 6, 7. * Isaiah x. 12, 13, 16, 33. as kings, în liberal offers of assistance to the ruffians of all other countries, and in a blasphemous defiance of God himself. On the contrary, the anger of the yet unrevolutionised nations vehemently expressed itself both in words of censure and in deeds of resistance. The conduct of the French Republicans was first loudly and very justly reprobated and this indignant reprobation was soon followed by a series of wars, which set fire to Europe in all its four quarters. Yet, though Protestants had long expected those awful judgments, by which the mystical Babylon was first to be shaken and afterward to be overthrown: nevertheless, when the judgments in question did come, they did not sufficiently see the hand of God in them. Because the rod of his indignation was stained with blood and polluted with blasphemy, they could not readily believe that it was the Lord himself who wielded so obscure an instrument. They forgot, that a public executioner is not selected, either by God or by man, on account of his eminent virtues or his exemplary religious conduct, The office of hangman, however necessary it may be in every well ordered government, is usually filled by the vilest of the people: it confers no respectability upon its possessor, though he is armed with the full authority of the law. Thus, analogically, when God has need to employ an execu, tioner of his wrath (and we are assured, that his wrath came at the commencement of the third woe), he does not ordinarily select his own people for the |