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they disgraced themselves, and tarnished, as far as they could, the character of the hallowed religion which they professed and abused, by rivalling their persecutors in bloodshed and in every form of barbarous violence. They blasphemed the name of God who hath power over these plagues, and they repented not, to give Him glory.

After the exhibition of the symbols of the first four trumpets an impressive vision interrupts the series, and arrests the attention of the prophet.

13. “And I beheld, and heard an angel flying through the midst of heaven, saying with a loud voice, Woe, woe, woe, to the inhabiters of the earth, by reason of the other voices of the trumpet of the three angels which are yet to sound!"

This awful annunciation plainly imports that the last three plagues, proclaimed by the three woe-trumpets, consist of a series of severe visitations, more extensively afflicting than the preceding four.

The three woes are developements of the terrible judgments implied by the symbols of the sixth seal.

To extinguish the spirit of religious and civil liberty, breathed by the reformation, was the unhallowed object for which the papal church and monarchy of France had united in their repeated and savage persecutions of the reformation. The extirpation of protestantism, finally effected by the revocation of the edict of Nantes, leaving the formation

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of the public mind, from the earliest infancy to the last gasp of existence, entirely in the hands of the papal clergy, ample room was afforded for the trial how far their church, of which the ablest and most highly instructed members were always in France, is qualified to inculcate observance of religious and moral obligation—to diffuse the blessings of a reverence for the light of revelation—for the principles of social order-and for the dictates of humanity. The sanguinary experiment resulted in due season in the french revolution, the commencement of which may be dated in the year 1789.

By the edicts of Lewis XIV., for the destruction of his protestant subjects, the papal clergy and monarchy of France imagined that they were effectually insuring their own security for ever. Their industry was rewarded with its appropriate fruits, and they were accordingly destined to reap, in the fulness of time, the bloody harvest which they had so prodigally sown.

*

History has recorded that the Bourbon monarchy

*The french monarchy had during many successive reigns been guilty of dreadfully persecuting its protestant subjects. 'Francois I. Henri II. Charles IX. Richelieu, Louis XIV., et même l'efféminé Louis XV., avaient torturé les consciences, imposé des dogmes, déterminé des regles pour le culte : ils avaient exigé des abjurations, des profanations sacramentaires, des billets de confession, &c.-les revolutionnaires de 1791, 2, 3, 4, copièrent ces hideux exemples.'-Histoire de France, par L'abbé Montgalliard.

The learned abbé in the course of his work frequently admits that of all the iniquities which he justly charges on the french monarchs, his clerical brethren were the sanguinary instigators.

and Gallican church issued the decree, for the revocation of the edict of Nantes, from the apartment of the queen (Madame de Maintenon) in the palace of Versailles, (see the Memoirs of the Duke de St. Simon,) in the month of October, in the year 1685. History will record the retributive justice of God!

'History will record, that on the morning of the 6th of October, 1789, the king and queen of France, after a day of confusion, alarm, dismay, and slaughter, lay down, under the pledged security of public faith, to indulge nature in a few hours of respite, and troubled melancholy repose. From this sleep the queen was first startled by the voice of the centinel at her door, who cried out to her, to save herself by flight-that this was the last proof of fidelity he could give-that they were upon him, and he was dead. Instantly he was cut down. A band of cruel ruffians and assassins, reeking with his blood, rushed into the chamber of the queen, and pierced, with a hundred strokes of bayonets and poniards, the bed from whence this persecuted woman had but just time to fly almost naked, and through ways unknown to the murderers had escaped to seek refuge at the feet of a king and husband, not secure of his own life for a moment.

This king, to say no more of him, and this queen, and their infant children (who once would have been the pride and hope of a great and generous people) were then forced to abandon the sanctuary of the most splendid palace in the world, which they left swimming in blood, polluted by massacre,

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and strewed with scattered limbs and mutilated carThence they were conducted into the capital of their kingdom. Two had been selected from the unprovoked, unresisted, promiscuous slaughter, which was made of the gentlemen of birth and family who composed the king's body-guard. These two gentlemen, with all the parade of an execution of justice, were cruelly and publickly dragged to the block, and beheaded in the great court of the palace. Their heads were stuck upon spears, and led the procession; whilst the royal captives who followed in the train were slowly moved along, amidst the horrid yells, and shrilling screams, and frantic dances, and infamous contumelies, and all the unutterable abominations of the furies of hell, in the abused shape of the vilest of women. After they had been made to taste, drop by drop, more than the bitterness of death, in the slow torture of a journey of twelve miles, protracted to six hours, they were, under a guard, composed of those very soldiers who had thus conducted them through this famous triumph, lodged in one of the old palaces of Paris, now converted into a bastile for kings.'

On the arrival of the cavalcade in Paris it had to pass through an immense assemblage of the populace who, perceiving two bishops in the royal carriage, greeted them with tremendous roars of Tous les évêques à la lanterne. Let all the bishops be hanged on the lamp-posts.'

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(Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France.) The first woe-trumpet proclaims the french revo

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lution an event,' Mr. Croly observes, from which the world still trembles.'

THE FIFTH

TRUMPET—ch. ix. 1. "And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit.

VIAL-ch. xvi. 10. "And the fifth angel poured out his vial upon the seat of the beast; and his kingdom was full of darkness; and they knawed their tongues for pain.

11. "And blasphemed the God of heaven because of their pains and sores, and repented not of their deeds."

2. "And he opened the bottomless pit; and there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit.

3. "And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth; and unto them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power.

4. "And it was commanded that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, neither any green thing, neither any tree: but only those men which have not the seal of God in their foreheads.

5. “And to them it was given that they should not kill them, but that they should be tormented five months: and their torment was as a torment of a scorpion, when he striketh a man.

6. "And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them.

7. "And the shapes of the locusts were like unto horses prepared unto battle; and on their heads were as it were crowns of gold, and their faces were as the faces of men.

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